| Summary: | The Christian doctrine of original sin has ever since the Reformation been a central part of Lutheran theological understandings of human beings. Therefore it is of vital importance to see how this doctrine can be understood in a plausible way, with regards to contemporary society, 500 years after Luther is said to have nailed his 95 thesis to the door of the church in Wittenberg. The present study explores what contemporary issues different interpretations of the doctrine must interact with, and suggest a way of evaluating the plausibility and Lutheran identity of such interpretations. Two expositions of the doctrine of original sin published by Lutheran theologians in the 2010s are then evaluated: Utanför paradiset by Eva-Lotta Grantén (ethicist, Uppsala) and In Adam’s Fall by Ian A. McFarland (professor of Divinity, Cambridge). Particularly four aspects of their interpretations are analysed: the relationship to human experience, the integration of contemporary science and culture, the internal coherence and their narrative’s Lutheran authenticity. Even though both interpretations have their flaws, they can largely be seen as both plausible and Lutheran. Grantén gives a wholly existential picture of the original sin, while McFarland tends to see it in ontological terms. In order to avoid the pitfalls in their interpretations, a further developed understanding of the doctrine is proposed, integrating both the ontological and existential aspects.
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