Everyone can see that something is wrong. Christians disagree about the mechanism. Are we guilty of what Adam did, or only damaged by it? Are we born condemned, born wounded, or born neutral and then ruined by imitation and habit?
A translation decision sits at the center of this, and it is one of the clearest cases anywhere of a version shaping a doctrine. Romans 5:12 ends with a Greek phrase, eph' ho pantes hemarton, best rendered because all sinned. The Old Latin and the rendered it in quo omnes peccaverunt, in whom all sinned, which points at Adam. Augustine read Latin and built on it. Greek-speaking theology never saw that phrase and never built the same structure, which is a large part of why the Eastern and Western accounts of the fall differ to this day.
That does not settle anything by itself. Augustine had other arguments, and defenders of the Western view hold that the doctrine stands on the passage as a whole rather than on four words. But knowing where the fork was makes the disagreement less mysterious.
Romans 5:12-19
12Therefore, as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death passed to all men because all sinned. 13For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not charged when there is no law. 14Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those whose sins weren't like Adam's disobedience, who is a foreshadowing of him who was to come. 15But the free gift isn't like the trespass. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. 16The gift is not as through one who sinned; for the judgment came by one to condemnation, but the free gift followed many trespasses to justification. 17For if by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; so much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. 18So then as through one trespass, all men were condemned; even so through one act of righteousness, all men were justified to life. 19For as through the one man's disobedience many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one, many will be made righteous.
No historic tradition teaches that people are born fine. All of them hold that human beings after Adam are in a condition they did not choose and cannot fix, that this condition is universal, that it shows up long before anyone is old enough to be blamed for it, and that only Christ remedies it. All of them read Romans 5 as saying that what Adam did has consequences for everyone and what Christ did has consequences greater still. The argument is about what exactly is transmitted, and how.
We inherit Adam's guilt as well as his corruption
Adam acted as the head of the race. His sin is reckoned to all his descendants, so that we are born both corrupt in nature and already under condemnation.
What it claims
Adam was not merely the first sinner but the representative of everyone who would come from him, as Christ is the representative of everyone in him. Romans 5 sets the two in exact parallel: through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, through one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. If the second half works by representation and , so does the first. This explains why infants die, why baptism has always been given to them, and why nobody has to be taught to sin.
Who holds it
Augustine, and Western theology after him. Defined at the Council of Orange in 529 and reaffirmed at Trent. Held by teaching and, in a sharper form, by the Reformed : Westminster says the guilt of this sin was imputed and the same death and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity. Lutheran confessions say much the same.
The texts it stands on
Romans 5:18-19 One trespass led to condemnation for all. The parallel with Christ's one act of righteousness is the backbone of the argument.
Psalm 51:5 In sin my mother conceived me, read as describing a condition present from the beginning rather than an accusation against his mother.
Ephesians 2:3 By nature children of wrath, which names a state rather than an accumulation of choices.
Strongest case
It takes the Adam and Christ parallel seriously in both directions, which is what the passage is actually doing. It also accounts for the universality of the problem without making it a coincidence, and it explains the church's practice, since infant baptism is very old and hard to justify if infants have nothing to be saved from.
Hardest question
Ezekiel says flatly that a son shall not bear the guilt of his father, and Deuteronomy forbids executing children for their parents' crimes. Holding people guilty of an act committed before they existed strikes many readers as exactly the injustice Scripture elsewhere rules out. Defenders answer with representation rather than genetics, which helps but does not fully dissolve the difficulty.
Holding the map
Notice that the practical stakes are lower than the heat suggests. Every view here sends you to the same place, because every view agrees you cannot fix yourself. The disagreements matter most where they touch other doctrines: what infant baptism is doing, whether grace assists or resurrects, and how much depends on Adam being one identifiable man.
If you want to test your own instincts, ask what you think happens to an infant who dies. Traditions have given several answers, some of which they have since revised, and how you answer will usually reveal which account of Adam you are already working with.
Questions that press on this one
None of these stands on its own. What you conclude here narrows what you can say there.
