{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/105/1050900.htm","path":"chr/ecf/105/1050900.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/105/1050900.htm","text":"Chapter 7.\u2014What is the Meaning of \u201cIn Whom All Have Sinned\u201d?\nBut these speak thus who wish to wrest men from the apostle\u2019s words into their own thought. For where the apostle says, \u201cBy one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so passed upon all men,\u201d 2784 they will have it there understood not that \u201csin\u201d passed over, but \u201cdeath.\u201d What, then, is the meaning of what follows, \u201cWhereto all have sinned\u201d? For either the apostle says that in that \u201cone man\u201d all have sinned of whom he had said, \u201cBy one man sin entered into the world,\u201d or else in that \u201csin,\u201d or certainly in \u201cdeath.\u201d For it need not disturb us that he said not \u201cin which\u201d [using the feminine form of the pronoun], but \u201cin whom\u201d [using the masculine] all have sinned; since \u201cdeath\u201d in the Greek language is of the masculine gender. Let them, then, choose which they will,\u2014for either in that \u201cman\u201d all have sinned, and it is so said because when he sinned all were in him; or in that \u201csin\u201d all have sinned, because that was the doing of all in general which all those who were born would have to derive; or it remains for them to say that in that \u201cdeath\u201d all sinned. But in what way this can be understood, I do not clearly see. For all die in the sin; they do not sin in the death; for when sin precedes, death follows\u2014not when death precedes, sin follows. Because sin is the sting of death\u2014that is, the sting by whose stroke death occurs, not the sting with which death strikes. 2785 Just as poison, if it is drunk, is called the cup of death, because by that cup death is caused, not because the cup is caused by the death, or is given by death. But if \u201csin\u201d cannot be understood by those words of the apostle as being that \u201cwherein all have sinned,\u201d because in Greek, from which the Epistle is translated, \u201csin\u201d is expressed in the feminine gender, it remains that all men are understood to have sinned in that first \u201cman,\u201d because all men were in him when he sinned; and from him sin is derived by birth, and is not remitted save by being born again. p. 420 For thus also the sainted Hilary understood what is written, \u201cwherein all have sinned;\u201d for he says, \u201cwherein,\u201d that is, in Adam, \u201call have sinned.\u201d 2786 Then he adds, \u201cIt is manifest that all have sinned in Adam, as it were in the mass; for he himself was corrupted by sin, and all whom he begot were born under sin.\u201d When he wrote this, Hilary, without any ambiguity, indicated how we should understand the words, \u201cwherein all have sinned.\u201d\n[This is a distinction as to the kind of genitive involved in the phrase \u201csting of death.\u201d Augustin says \u201cof death\u201d is genitive of the object, not of the author or subject.\u2014W.]\n420:2786\nCommentaries by Hilary the Deacon, printed among the Works of Ambrose, vol. iv. (Patrol. Lat. xvii.)","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V: A Treatise Agains...","type":"page"}