Onde abundou o pecado superabundou a graça

Taking Gn 2-3 as its point of departure, understood as an origin myth which does not, therefore, describe an ‘original sin’, this article puts forward a consequent new interpretation of Rm 5,12-21, a text cited at the 5th session of the Council of Trent, in the decree about original sin (17.6.1546). The exegesis that proposes it reads Paul’s text not as dogmatic theology, but as midráš, the Jewish method that explained canonical sacred text by searching for anthropological and theological sense for present situations. By reading the text as midráš, recourse to the uniqueness of ’ādām appears simply as a springboard to illustrate the universalist vision of the historical sinful condition of humanity before Jesus and, above all, to affirm the need – then – for gratuitous universal salvation mediated by Jesus. It is not a theology of ‘original sin’, but of redemption.