Wesleyan Fidelity to Scripture:

Why the Global Methodist Church Should Reconsider “Original Sin”

‍ ‍Rev. Dr. Victoria Campbell is ordained in the Global Methodist Church and a John Wesley Fellow with AFTE. She holds an MA and PhD in Theology from Asbury Theological Seminary and its doctoral program with the London School of Theology – Middlesex University, as well as a PhD in Chemistry, University of Texas. Victoria is the author of “Understanding Christian Perfection and its Struggle with Antinomianism,” The Problem of Animal Pain, and “Unthinking Old Narratives: Augustinian vs Mesopotamian Paradigms in the Science-Religion Debate.”‍ ‍

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At the March 2026 conference of the Wesleyan Theological Society, a panel of respected deans and biblical scholars was asked a simple but important question: “How do we know a Wesleyan biblical interpretation when we see it?” The responses from Brad Kelle, Robert Wall, David Watson, and Renee Dutter Miller highlighted several key features. A Wesleyan reading of Scripture is dialogical: it brings the text’s own socio-historical-linguistic context into conversation with the core Wesleyan themes of holiness and perfect love. It reads Scripture holistically rather than as isolated proof-texts. It honors the Jewish worldview of the Bible—the same worldview held by Jesus, Paul, and the first disciples. And it is willing to bring Scripture into honest dialogue with other domains of knowledge, including science.

These commitments matter because history shows that even sincere Christians can sometimes misread Scripture when they import foreign worldviews into the text. The Galileo controversy of the seventeenth century is a sobering example. For centuries, the Church taught that the earth was at the center of the solar system and this proved human beings were important in God’s divine plan. These ideas came not from the Bible itself, but from Aristotelian philosophy. So, when Galileo provided clear evidence that the earth orbits the sun and challenged church teaching, Church leaders condemned him as a heretic rather than reexamine their interpretation of Scripture. It took nearly two hundred years for the Catholic Church to correct its theology and more than three hundred years to apologize. The lesson is clear: when we force Scripture to fit a foreign worldview, we risk distorting God’s Word and damaging the Church’s witness.

Articles of Religion in the Global Methodist Church

Today the Global Methodist Church faces a similar moment. For generations, the Church has interpreted Genesis 1–3 through Greco-Roman “lost paradise” paradigms that are foreign to the text’s original Mesopotamian worldview. This reading produced the doctrine that all human beings descended from a single man named Adam who lived about 6,000 years ago, inheriting his sin guilt and corrupted nature. Yet the Jewish community rejects this interpretation, recent biblical scholarship situates Genesis firmly in its Mesopotamian context, and modern genetics shows humanity has existed far longer than six thousand years. Had John Wesley had access to Mesopotamian studies and scientific evidence, there is every reason to believe he would have rethought his understanding of Genesis and the doctrine of Original Sin. As the Global Methodist Church rearticulates its Articles of Religion and declares Holy Scripture “the primary rule and authority for faith, morals, and service” (BODD ¶104), we now have both the opportunity and the responsibility to examine this long-held tradition with the same spirit of Wesleyan fidelity.

What Makes Interpretation Truly Wesleyan?

John Wesley himself modeled the dialogical, Scripture-centered approach the panel described. He held Scripture as the ultimate authority for faith and life, yet he remained open to new light from the Bible and God’s creation. After his Aldersgate experience in 1738, Wesley radically shifted his understanding of salvation—from prioritizing good works to a joyful trust in God’s fruitful grace. He was also open to scientific discovery. Wesley embraced scientific evidence for Galileo’s heliocentric model, acknowledged that the Church had wrongly interpreted Scripture, and rejected the flawed theology attached to the old view.

Wesley demonstrated this same humility before Scripture when correcting long-standing misunderstandings about Christian perfection. For centuries, Western Christians had read Jesus’ command “Be perfect” (Matthew 5:48) through the Latin word perfectio, suggesting a state of complete infallibility. Wesley, however, turned to the Greek word teleios, meaning “whole, complete, mature.” He saw Christian perfection not as a static state of sinless perfection but as a dynamic process of growing in love—maturing into the likeness of Christ. If Wesley was willing to correct centuries of Latin-influenced thinking when better insight from the original Greek emerged, there is every reason to believe he would have done the same with new research from Mesopotamian studies on Genesis or modern scientific evidence showing that humanity has existed for hundreds of thousands of years and biological death existed long before human beings.

This adaptive spirit defines genuine Wesleyan interpretation. When fresh biblical scholarship or scientific evidence challenges older readings, Wesleyans do not cling to tradition for its own sake. We return humbly to Scripture in its original context and ask how best to understand God’s Word for our time.

How Lost Paradise and Original Sin Overcame Jewish Tradition

For many Christians, the doctrine of “Original Sin” feels like it has always been part of the Bible. But a careful reading of Scripture in its original Jewish context reveals something surprising: the classic doctrine of Original Sin—humanity inheriting Adam’s guilt, a fallen creation, total depravity from birth, and biological death entering the world through one man’s sin—is not taught in the Hebrew Bible or in the Jewish worldview shared by Jesus and the apostles.

Judaism has never accepted the inheritance of Adam’s sin, total depravity, or inherent sinfulness in children. Scripture explicitly states that sin cannot be inherited (Ezekiel 18:1-32) and it arises from broken relationships with God and others. The Jewish view of human nature holds that we possess two inclinations—yetzer tov (good inclination) and yetzer ra (evil inclination)—but God’s grace and wisdom enable us to choose good over evil. This teaching is confirmed by the biblical witness of Moses, Proverbs, and Jesus where humans are instructed to choose God’s wisdom and the ways of righteousness over earthly wisdom and its sinful ways (Deuteronomy 28–30; Proverbs 1–9; Matthew 5–7).

Children, being too young to possess full wisdom and discernment, were not held accountable for sin until they reached puberty. Jewish rabbis taught that the soul enters the world free from sin and transgression; a child’s foolishness was viewed as immaturity rather than moral guilt. This perspective explains why Jesus elevated children as models of innocence and kingdom readiness (Matthew 18:1–10; 19:14), never as embodiments of sin or total depravity.

Furthermore, the Jewish worldview affirmed that God created a “very good” world (Genesis 1), a conviction powerfully expressed through God’s providential care for creation in Job 38–41 and Psalm 104. This directly contradicted pagan dualism’s claim that the material world is inherently corrupt. It is why Paul never taught a fallen creation; instead, he pointed to the created order as evidence of God’s invisible qualities, eternal power, and divine nature (Romans 1:20).

So where did this teaching come from? It developed as the Greco-Roman worldview began reshaping how people read Genesis. In the ancient Greek world, popular stories told of a perfect “golden age” lost by human failure. Lost paradise paradigms were shaped by Hesiod’s Pandora’s Jar (ca. 700 BCE; II. 42-105)and Myth of the Races (II. 106-201), Plato’s Timaeus (ca. 400 BCE), and Greek dualism. The reigning paradigm of Plato—which later influenced Augustine and other Church Fathers—was that a perfect God would never create suffering or death, making the material world a corrupted version of the ideal. Consequently, these pagan concepts of a “lost paradise” became widely familiar across the Mediterranean world.

Then, when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek (the Septuagint, ca. 250 BCE), a small but significant change occurred. The Hebrew terms ha-adam/adam (referring to “the human/humans”; Gen 1:26–27) were frequently rendered as the proper name “Adam.” This encouraged Greek-speaking readers to think of Genesis 2–3 as the story of one specific individual rather than a universal archetype of humanity. Subsequently, from 200 BCE to 100 CE, non-canonical writings began blending Greek ideas with the Genesis account, blaming Adam and Eve for losing a deathless paradise (Sirach 25:24; Wisdom of Solomon 1:13–16, 2:23–24; Apocalypse of Moses; 4 Ezra; 2 Baruch).

Paul’s Strategic Engagement with the Hellenized World

Paul, a Jewish Pharisee, ministered in a Hellenized world deeply shaped by Aristotle’s view that non-Hellenistic cultures were barbaric. This environment often showed disdain for Jewish beliefs, making Paul’s evangelical approach necessarily strategic and contextual. He therefore drew on Stoicism, Platonism, Epicureanism, and non-canonical lost-paradise traditions to connect with Gentiles and persuade them to follow Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah. Yet for Paul these were merely tools for communication, never intended as sound foundations for Christian theology. The whole of Scripture alone was to hold final authority in the Church (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

In his letter to the Romans, Paul had to address the deep conflict between Gentiles and Jews who held opposing worldviews and mutual contempt rather than uniting in their love of Christ. As a Jewish Pharisee raised in the Greco-Roman intellectual center of Tarsus, Paul understood both the Scriptures and the Gentile philosophical paradigms. He frequently quoted Stoic and Epicurean thought, pagan poets, and other cultural ideas that Gentiles could relate to, taking “captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). He would also have been familiar with the non-canonical Fall interpretations created by Hellenized thinkers that assumed Genesis 1–3 described the origins of biological death, much like the pagan lost-paradise myths of Hesiod.

Paul’s genius as an evangelist is especially clear in how he speaks of Adam in Romans and 1 Corinthians 15. He knew that Jewish hearers understood Adam archetypally—as a representative of every human being’s inevitable turn from God’s wisdom, resulting in relational death (separation from God). At the same time, he knew that Gentile hearers understood Adam ancestrally—as the first human whose sin introduced biological death into the world. Rather than force one group to abandon its worldview, Paul proclaimed a message that spoke meaningfully to both: Jesus’ death deals with the problem of sin and restores relationship with God (the Jewish concern), while Jesus’ bodily resurrection conquers biological death and offers eternal life (the Gentile concern). In this way, two communities that held deep cultural contempt for each other could be brought into one body, united not by a shared interpretation of Adam but by a shared love of Jesus Christ.

This dual approach also explains the different genealogies in the Gospels. Matthew, writing primarily for Jewish readers, traces Jesus’ lineage only to Abraham, because Jews already understood themselves as heirs of the promise and children under the Law who were responsible for their own sin. Luke, writing with Gentiles in view, extends the genealogy all the way to Adam so that Gentile readers could see their connection to Jesus through the figure they regarded as the ancestral source of their human mortality.  

The Hellenized Reading Takes Hold: The Church Fathers & Augustine

By the fourth and fifth centuries, this “paradise lost” reading of Genesis had become dominant in the Gentile Church. Leaders like Basil of Caesarea and Augustine of Hippo developed interpretations claiming that Adam and Eve’s sin corrupted creation and brought thorns, sickness, and biological death into the world approximately 6,000 years ago. Yet the ideas of inherited guilt from Adam and a deathless lost paradise receive no scriptural support from Genesis 4 to Malachi, even as sin is addressed throughout the Old Testament. Augustine, who could not read Hebrew and relied on the Latin Vulgate with its mistranslations of Genesis and Paul, wove the philosophical assumptions of his time into his theology of Original Sin.

In the Pelagian-Augustinian debate, Pelagius wrongly believed humans could choose to do good without the help of God’s grace. But Augustine’s claims were also incorrect when measured against the plumb line of Scripture. Augustine argued that every child is cursed with Adam’s sin into perpetuity. But by claiming Adam’s sin is inherited, Augustine nullified God’s explicit teaching that people are not responsible for their parents’ sin and are only accountable for their own sin (Ezekiel 18). By claiming humanity was cursed into perpetuity by Adam’s sin, Augustine directly contradicted God’s declaration in the Ten Commandments that the children of those who hate God are only punished to the fourth generation, while the children of those who love God are blessed for a thousand generations (Exodus 20:2–6).

Augustine distorted proof-texts to support his theological claims. He interpreted Psalm 51:5, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me,” as evidence of universal human sinfulness, even though David was only speaking personally in this psalm of contrition after his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah. David wrote seventy more psalms, yet none of them assert universal human depravity. Moreover, David’s statement that humans are created “a little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8) reinforces Genesis 1:26–28 and shows the Jewish worldview in his time did not include a fallen view of humanity.

Augustine also misused hyperbolic language in Psalm 14:1–3 and Romans 3:10–12: “There is no one righteous, not even one.” Psalm 14 is about fools who deny God, not all humanity, since it also declares God is present with the righteous (Psalm 14:5). Proverbs clearly teaches that both righteous wise people and wicked fools exist. Furthermore, Scripture recordsmany righteous individuals: Abel and Zechariah, son of Berekiah (Matt 23:35), Noah (Gen 6:9), Abram (Gen 15:6), Lot (2 Pet 2:7), Job (Job 1:8), Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1:5–6), John the Baptist (Mark 6:20), and Simeon (Luke 2:25).

The point is not to criticize Augustine or the early Church Fathers who were sincerely trying to defend the faith. But they were reading Genesis through a Greco-Roman lens alien to the text’s original Mesopotamian-Jewish worldview. As a result, the lost paradise tradition came to be treated as if it were the plain teaching of Scripture itself. So, given the Global Methodist Church’s commitment to Scripture as its highest authority, how can we endorse interpretations of Scripture that ignore and contradict the explicit teachings of Scripture?

Reading Genesis 1–3 in Its Original Mesopotamian Context

When biblical scholars such as John Walton help us read Genesis 1–3 within its ancient Mesopotamian worldview, the text presents a very different story from the traditional Augustinian interpretation.

Genesis 1 portrays creation as a great Cosmic Temple where God dwells in communion with his creatures. The chapter describes the order and provision of creation rather than a scientific timetable of how God created. God crowns male and female human beings as rulers and stewards of this temple. Genesis 2 then answers the question of why God entrusted human beings with this responsibility: because God shares his divine wisdom with them. Those who live by God’s wisdom will receive life—both covenantal blessing and eternal life—but those who grasp equality with God by following their own wisdom face expulsion from sacred space and relational death (Genesis 3). Thus, in the Jewish tradition of Paul’s day, Adam was understood primarily as a literary archetype of humanity, not its biological progenitor.

The central tragedy of Genesis 3 is relational death—broken fellowship with God—rather than biological death. Mortality was already a baseline reality of God’s good creation, signified by humanity’s metaphorical formation from “dust,” a common Mesopotamian symbol for mortality. “Death” often functions as a Jewish metaphor for broken relationship with God, both in this life and the afterlife. Paul employed this metaphor when addressing living believers: “You were dead (corpses) in your transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1).

Likewise, when Scripture calls Eve “the mother of all the living” (Gen 3:20), it uses a Mesopotamian idiom referring to the first person to do some special new thing—in this case, live in right relationship with God and follow his wisdom. The same idiom appears with Jabal and Jubal, who are described as the “father” of those who live in tents with livestock and the “father of all” those who play musical instruments (Gen 4:20–21). Therefore, the text does not claim Eve is the biological mother of all humanity any more than it teaches Jabal and Jubal are genetically related to all cowboys and musicians.

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The High Cost of Enshrining Original Sin in the Articles of Religion

If the Global Methodist Church incorporates the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin into its unalterable Articles of Religion, it will create several serious problems.

First, it will implicitly elevate Church Tradition above Scripture, placing the Articles in direct conflict with clear biblical passages which refute the idea that Adam’s guilt has been inherited by children into perpetuity.

Second, it will create permanent and unnecessary conflicts with science. Genetic evidence shows that humanity is hundreds of thousands of years old and did not descend from a single pair who lived six thousand years ago. The fossil record shows that thorns and biological death existed millions of years before humans. By tying the authority of Scripture to biological claims the text never makes, we risk making the Bible appear unscientific to a generation already struggling with faith.

Third, it will force faithful Christians to affirm theological claims about human origins that conflict with genetic evidence and are rooted in Hellenistic paradigms rather than biblical thought.

Fourth, it will enshrine pagan-derived “lost paradise” paradigms in our doctrinal standards—the very danger Wesleyan interpretation is meant to protect against.

Finally, it will continue to subtly shift our focus away from Jesus’ positive call to love toward a self-despising view of humanity that was never part of the Jewish worldview.

A Better Way — Defining Sin by Jesus’ Two Greatest Commandments

None of the Normative Documents of the Global Methodist Church (BODD ¶105)—the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, and Definition of Chalcedon—endorse the doctrine of Original Sin. They do, however, declare that our Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Logos and Wisdom of God made flesh, the only Son of God the Father. Jesus’ teaching should therefore carry ultimate authority for how we understand sin, not Augustine’s.

Jesus declared that the two greatest commandments—to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves—sum up the entire Law, the Prophets, and lead to eternal life. The Global Methodist Church should therefore define sin as any failure—by thought, word, action, or inaction—to obey these divine commands to love. This approach harmonizes with the whole of Scripture, Wesleyan understandings of grace, and the Jewish view of humanity’s inclinations for both good and evil. It resonates with Wesley’s doctrine of Christian perfection as maturing in agape love, removes unnecessary conflicts with science, spares future generations from having to affirm theological claims that are biologically untenable, and centers Jesus’ own summary of God’s will in our doctrinal standards.

Conclusion

The Global Methodist Church stands at a historic crossroads. We have declared Scripture our highest authority and committed ourselves to a Wesleyan interpretation that honors the Jewish roots of our faith. Fresh Mesopotamian scholarship and scientific evidence on human origins now invite us to do what Wesley himself would have done: return humbly to Scripture, listen to new light from God’s Word and God’s world, and correct an earlier misunderstanding.

Removing the Augustinian concepts of the Fall, Original Sin, and Total Depravity from our Articles of Religion does not weaken our doctrine of sin. It sharpens it and returns us to the relational heart of the gospel — humanity’s broken relationship with God and his gracious restoration through Jesus Christ. This change supports our proclamation of holiness as agape love, the very heart of Wesley’s message and the two greatest commandments of our Lord.

Let us have the courage and humility to follow Scripture wherever it leads. In doing so, we will strengthen our witness, deepen our love for God and neighbor, and remain faithful to the Wesleyan heritage we hold dear.