Elizabeth asked:

What does the concept of original sin have to do with the distinction between body and soul? Does it
have some connection to humans' dominion over animals?

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In the Old and New Testaments of the Bible there is no distinction between body and soul as we
usually understand it. The writers of the books of the bible — the Israelites — never saw the soul as
distinct from the body, but rather the two were seen as a unified whole, a totality. The soul was the
animated living body, the 'breath of life' and not an eternal, spiritual substance. This idea of the soul
was adopted by the Christian world from the Greek philosophies of Plato and Aristotle and found full
treatment in the works of St. Augustine. This is also where the doctrine of Original Sin finds it's proper
formulation.

Augustine thought that all humans, after Adam and Eve were born 'soiled by sin' and that this sin was
passed along biologically via male semen. Some have taken this starting point and gone on to say
that it is our physical bodies that are corrupted, that the result of Adam's sin was to introduce death
into the world. Some even go so far as to say that matter, our physical bodies are inherently evil.

Others have, from the same starting point claimed that each person's soul (this time the eternal
spiritual Soul) is stained by sin and that unless we seek forgiveness or have faith in the sacrifice of
Jesus we will be condemned by God. Christians, specifically Catholics believe that via the sacrament
of baptism the original stain of sin can be washed away, and then whatever we do after the baptism is
our own responsibility and we can be judged by our own merits. St. Anselm who held this view also
thought that God would condemn to hell all infants and babies who died before being baptised!
Because they carried with them the stain of original sin. Even though the idea of Original sin is
objectionable, morally and historically, and logically, perhaps the best way to focus all this is to say
that when Adam sinned human nature was soiled. Before that humans were perfect, but after Adam
sinned humans became imperfect, we were mortal and were condemned to death.

Now human nature, that which we all have in common, is where Adam's sin takes effect and these
effects are both physical and spiritual. Physical in that we die, spiritual in that we are no longer
perfect. The point is that we do not have to think in terms of an eternal soul that carries the sin, in
order to make sense of the idea of original sin. (Although with, or without a soul the idea of original sin
is difficult to make sense of anyway.) On the point about humans' dominion over animals, I do not
think that it is connected to Original sin, because in the Genesis story of the Fall God gave Adam
control over the land and the animals before he sinned, and 1 do not think it says anywhere that God
revoked such an arrangement because of Adam's sinning.

Brian Tee
Dept of Philosophy
University of Sheffield