Is It Punishable? Are We Forgiven? | Mats Wahlberg

One of the most controversial aspects of the doctrine of original sin is the idea of original guilt, which seems to be presupposed in the practice of baptising infants “for the forgiveness of sins”. In this lecture, I argue that Thomas Aquinas’s explanation of original guilt provides a good foundation for a reasonable contemporary understanding of this notion. The lecture consists of three parts. In the first part, I give a brief overview of modern views on original sin and identify a number of ideal types. Against the background of this overview, I then argue that all construals of original sin that erase guilt from the picture have to pay a hefty price for this. I also argue that theories that attempt to retain original guilt but deny a historical Fall entail an absurdity. In the second part of the talk, I present Aquinas’s explanation of original guilt and suggest that it can be appropriated in a contemporary context, although it has one important weakness. In the third and main part, I present a constructive proposal about how this weakness can be fixed.