Communal Nature of Sin

Does all sin have an inherently communal nature?

As I began to think about the significance of the Christmas story my mind drifted again towards that little-spoken-of event when the Holy Spirit came upon Mary (Luke 1:35). Normally I quickly jerk my mind back to the task at hand, probably for the reasons that some people might already be uncomfortable reading this blog. But this time, I allowed my mind to wander, trying to avoid anything sacrilegious while still contemplating the significance of this event. The question of original sin occurred to me, and why didn't original sin infect Mary's newly developing baby? I'm not the first to wonder about this. Some theologians have blamed the man's seed, or the lust involved in conception. I've never found either argument convincing. But as I dismissed those ideas again in my musings, I came across an idea I haven't heard before (although maybe others have?). What if it is the interaction of male and female - and I don't mean the act of intercourse - that is the root of sin? Genesis 1:27 quickly dismisses the thought that mixing male and female automatically makes sin the way that mixing blue and yellow automatically makes green. After all, God made male and female together and in His image, and in Gen. 2:22 - 3:4 Adam and Eve live together without sin. But then we get to Gen. 3:5 and see that human sin had a communal element right from the start - the serpent and Eve, then Even and Adam. Could it be that Satan's own fall from grace entailed the other apostate angels? Could it be that Jesus was exempt from original sin because the Holy Spirit created a human not out of a communal event between two creatures (a strange way to think of intercourse, I admit) but instead Jesus was born out of only one creature? Does it take at least two creatures to make sin? Is sin perhaps the event and result of one creature using its God-given abilities to promote the decay (the reversal of creation ex nihilo) of another creature? And finally, does Pentecost reverse this by Christ's giving us the Holy Spirit so that now through the creative powers of the Holy Spirit we can actually build each other up with our spiritual gifts, restoring the Triune God's created intent in each other, rather than reversing creation in each other?

To be clear - I'm not trying to teach these things by any means, I'm just putting these questions out there so that perhaps someone might read them and correct me if I'm heading into an sort of dangerous territory.