In the Old Testament guiltofferings were coupled with sin-offerings, both of which assumed violation of the covenant relations which demanded atonement. It involved the assumption that legal requirement, not so much personal as arbitrary and external, had been disturbed and that satisfaction had to be made. This idea has its ethnic parallels. In Roman law culpa designates the transgression of law where no dolus can be attributed to the conscious intention. The German Skulda was one of the fates.
Guilt thus appears in two relations-civil and personal.
In civil affairs one may come under obligations to compensate for an action legally defective, by the payment of money or other equivalent. Here the relation is no longer external, involving debt and things, but personal, involving crime and persons. Thus the necessity of punishment cleaves to the transgressor. This is the meaning of the doctrine of original sin. All men are involved in the general consequences and sufferings caused by sin.