Contents:
1. Setting the stage: the problem of original sin - Creation gone wrong: thinking about sin
- A doctrine grown strange
- Biblical configurations of sin
- Contemporary attempts to reclaim sin-talk
- Original sin and actual sin
2. Original sin as Christian doctrine: origins, permutations, problems
- The emergence of the doctrine
- The Augustinian turn
- Augustinian revisions
3. Reconfiguring the debate: sin, nature, and the will - Augustine of Hippo: willing and the ambiguity of desire
- Augustine's views in outline
- Concupiscence: humanity internally divided
- The fall: humanity temporally divided
- Assessing Augustine's doctrine of the will
4. Maximus the confessor: willing is not choosing
- Maximus's Christology in context
- Dyothelite Christology in outline
- Maximus' analysis of the will
- Maximus' interpretation of Christ's willing
- Anthropological implications
5. The status of Christ's will: fallen on unfallen?
- The question in the tradition
- Preliminary assessment
- The problem of Christ's will
- Theological implications
6. Original sin and human nature: solidarity in sin
- Original sin and the damaged will
- The problem of the origin of original sin
- Reconceiving the ontology of original sin
7. Original sin and the individual: being a sinner
- The scope of sin
- Sin and agency
- From actual sin to original sin
8. Original sin and the Christian life: confronting sin
- From original sin to actual sin
- Original sin as unbelief
- Vocation and the defeat of sin