Some have asked for my view of original sin and the connection between Adam and us. I cannot do better than recommend Bernard Ramm’s Offense to Reason: A Theology of Sin (Harper & Row, 1985). It was one of his last books and one of his best. (It’s a bad title because Ramm did not think original sin is irrational; he thought it is beyond reason’s ability to comprehend.) Ramm covers all the Christian options including Barth’s idea of saga. The Bible calls sin the “mystery of iniquity.” If we could “explain” sin we would be explaining it away so that it is no longer sin. It would become ignorance or fate or something else. Either sin is existential mystery or it is not really sin in the full biblical sense.
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