Pilgram Marpeck on Original Sin
“As shall be clearly shown, to ascribe original sin to the infants is the invention of the sophist himself, and is without any basis in Scripture.
“First, one should know where sin found its origin, and that is in our first father and mother, Adam and Eve. God forbade Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and he also forbade them to touch it; the same hour they ate of it, they would die. When Adam and Eve transgressed this command and ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, sin became their inheritance and death their wage. And just as Adam and Eve first inherited sin in the knowledge and recognition of good and evil, so also do all their progeny first inherit it in the recognition of good and evil. Thus, in the knowledge and recognition of good and evil, sin has its beginning, origin, and heritage; before this, Adam’s and Eve’s transgression, no sin, hereditary or real, is mentioned by God. Only after Adam and eve recognized good and evil did God accuse them of the sin, and not before.
“Thus, the children are born with the purity of creation, unaware of good and evil. Who, then, would want to accuse the innocent children of an inherited sin? Since the origin and basis of sin, the knowledge of good and evil, does not come with birth, the inheritance of the sin against God comes only with the eating of the forbidden fruit. Of its own volition, the hand has to touch the tree of knowledge, and not sooner, before man sins against God and stands accursed. For Ezekiel states that neither will the child carry the father’s guilt, nor the father the child’s (Ezek. 18:19, 20). Who, then, wants to accurse innocent children of a sin?”
—Pilgram Marpeck, The Writings of Pilgram Marpeck, 245–246.
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It seems like original sin, the nonmoral state of separation from God which all inherit, is being confused here with actual sin, those moral wrongs which individuals commit and for which they are responsible.
Original sin, in my understanding, is the state of the world (and all who live in it) that is dominated by evil. It is the Kingdom of Satan, the Kingdom of the Spirit of the Air, the Johanine World – the rule of those principalities and powers which, in rebellion from God, have enslaved creation regardless of its knowledge or lack thereof. In fact, this dominion extends even to the inert, unknowing creation which itself groans in travail as it waits for Christ’s redemption. Just as the natural world, which knows neither good nor evil, suffers from a state of separation from God, so do as yet morally undeveloped infants. These children are not being blamed for the sins of their fathers, they are simply being born into place in which their fathers chose to bear them. I am an American citizen not by virtue of being more worthy of it than a Lithuanian, but because I happened to be born here. Through no fault or merit of my own, I inherit all of the goods and ills of being an American citizen. Original sin, I think, is analogous.
Since Augustine, however, original sin is also a quality of the individual—inherited quasi-genetically from our first parents. The newborn is not subject to damnation merely because creation is in travail, but also because original sin also marks the newborn particularly. We would need to have a different conversation if it were only the former. Marpeck is almost directly denying (against most of the Western tradition) that original sin is a personally inherited matter, and thus it is both practically unnecessary and destructive toward the true sacrament of baptism to rush infants to the font. We rather condemn ourselves to the curse, as Adam and Eve condemned themselves, at that moment when we too eat the forbidden fruit.
To make this argument feasible, you’re right, we would need to supplement it with a positive account of original sin like the one you’re suggesting—and I don’t think the two are contradictory. A good doctrine of original sin has to somehow take account of the lasting consequences of the fall. But here Marpeck is only concerned to refute the idea that infants are born into personal damnation. He’s at least not too far off base here, since the Christian East has also usually denied Augustine’s ‘genetic’ explanation of original sin. (See another conversation on that matter.)
Let me try to approach the doctrine of original sin negatively, from the doctrines of salvation.
What does it mean to “go to heaven”? To be recreated in Christ as an adoptive son of God and therby eternally to share in the life of the Trinity. This recreation is the process of sanctification which begins at baptism when a person is joined to Christ’s death and attains the hope of attaining a resurrection like his. But this is precisely a “new creation” and is not merely an acceptance of the old creation in its current state. To put it crudely, grace must be added to nature for it to be saved. And for human beings this is not just any grace in general, but the particular grace of being really and mystically joined to the Second Person of the Trinity in Jesus Christ that is given, at least in its beginning, in baptism. Baptism, of course, is given to individuals particularly.
But if going to heaven requires the grace of baptism that exceeds nature, then lacking the grace of baptism means remaining in the old creation, the old nature. But human infants are not born joined to the Second Person of the Trinity. They are, rather, born as a part of the current state of the old creation. This “curernt state”, of course, is original sin. But while original sin, in this sense, is something general, it is general in the sense that it applies particularly to the various natures or essences which are found in the old creation. This holds, at least, in the case of human beings, for whom heaven is opened by the reception of a particular grace from God that is given to individuals and not groups. A human infant who has not received this grace is simply not constituted for heaven. One would have to suppose that a dead infant would, therefore, normally reap the eternal opposite of that blessed state (unless God, in his absolute freedom, intervened with some special grace).
Furthermore, human beings receive their natures/essences from their parents – genetically or quasi-genetically, depending on how we understand “nature/essence.” But it precisely this human nature/essence which accounts for that state which, while not an actual sin, nonetheless separates from God in the manner of sin. I don’t know how close this is to Augustine’s “genetic” explanation, but it seems reasonable to me.
I’m not going to say anything more specifically about Marpeck or the East because 1) I’m not knowledgeable enough and 2) I’ve rambled on way too much already.
Well put!
I’m not trying to say, and neither is Marpeck, that the infant has somehow already ‘achieved blessedness’ or has naturally been incorporated into the life of God—indeed, this is the work of grace. But for Marpeck, neither water nor formulas themselves embody the wonder of grace, nor even the bare commitment of the church to bring up this child under the care of God; rather grace shows its face in God’s gift of our own holy vow of discipleship, submitting to the waters of baptism and being risen to life in the power of the Spirit by the body of God’s Son, the church. Infants are subject to the fallen order, perhaps even disposed to it, but they are not yet joined to it against God—so in their suffering God has mercy on them, lifting them into his very life.
Admittedly, I find it difficult to guard the gratuitousness of the grace of baptism in rejecting infant baptism. But neither can I sever the intrinsic connection between baptism and repentance.
Back to original sin: it’s this ‘joined to it’ that’s key for Marpeck. We are not born already rebellious; it makes no sense to speak of a newborn child as being rebellious. Sin, as a failure in love for God or neighbor, cannot be ascribed to an infant. Infants, born under (original) sin, are not born already incorporated into the life of God, but that does not imply their personal sinfulness. I’m agreeing with your initial distinction between actual and original sin, but trying to stress the distinction—since Marpeck was only disputing the ascription of personal sinfulness to the newborn baby. Of course, the God we confess would never abandon this miracle of new life, “born with the purity of creation, unaware of good and evil,” simply because we had not dropped the right water or spoken the right words.
I submit that there is no alternative to achieving blessedness which results in heavenly beatification, and there is no way of achieving blessedness apart from incorporation into Christ’s body.
Assuming the above: If a baby is not born in a state of blessedness (or in the process of achieving it), then the baby is not on the track to heaven. But the baby is not in a state of blessedness if she is not incorporated into Christ’s body. Furthermore, incorporation into Christ’s body happens in baptism. Therefore, we cannot expect that any unbaptized infants will go to heaven.
The key point here is to recognize that “not being culpable” does not get one into heaven, as if beatitude were something which we could have coming to us as a reward for not being personally responsible for evil. The gift of heaven is entirely gratuitous. We may, however, still balk at the suggestion that such babies will suffer the torments of hell for all eternity. There are two conceptual adjustments which I think ought be made in the face of this discomfort.
1) What is hell? Here I will merely suggest. We tend to conceptualize hell as an eternity in the worst of the Inquisition’s torture chambers. But if hell is the default and heaven is the gratuity, perhaps we can imagine it as something less physically brutal and maybe even not homogenous in its punishments. Maybe “punishment” isn’t even the right word, since hell is merely the natural result of a life lived without the free grace of redemption.
2) Although (if I am right about the above) we cannot presume that any given unbaptized infant is saved, we cannot rule out God’s free grace. God is sovereign and absolutely free to save babies if he wants. But salvation consists simply in being joined to Christ (and all that entails), so if God saves a baby, he does so by joining them to Christ somehow. If baptism is the normal entryway into this union with Christ, perhaps we can speak of other acts which are analogous to baptism. Traditionally, for example, there has been the notion of the baptism of desire, in which a catechumen who died before baptism is counted as baptized through their desire. Maybe we can say something similar about babies joined to Christ without being given the actual physical sacrament.
Let the little children come to me… these were the words of our Lord Jesus. His glorious Kingdom is made up of these little ones. If the stain of original sin meant that little kids were damned without being able to hear, understand, or receive the Good News…that’s bad news, to anyone who holds to that, I say… your God exists in your doctrinal imagination, and not in my Bible.
