Be warned: I’d like to say a few words about Original Sin. It may take me a while—like, maybe the next few weeks—but I intend to say them.
I’m not the only one interested in this Christian doctrine, by the way. Amazon.com lists over 34,000 books under the tag “original sin,” and though some of them have nothing whatsoever to do with theology, the fact that so many authors make use of the phrase “original sin” is telling: the notion, if not the actual doctrine, is in the very marrow of our culture.
For those of you not familiar with Original Sin, allow me to quote Rand Paul Wikipedia:
According to a Christian theological doctrine, Original sin, also called ancestral sin , is humanity's state of sin resulting from the fall of man, stemming from Adam's rebellion in Eden. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a "sin nature", to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt of all humans through collective guilt. 1
According to my childhood catechism, in which I was instructed at St. Thomas More School, the story goes like this:
God made heaven and earth for His own glory and for the good of His creatures. God did not have to make the world. Without it His life was infinitely full and happy.
God gave to Adam and Eve some wonderful gifts. They were allowed to live in paradise, where they were especially close to God. He illumined their understanding with a special light and strengthened their will with special power. Their longings and their strivings were all towards what was good. They were free from the inclination to do evil and lived happily in God’s presence. Work was not tiresome for them; they were free from suffering, sickness and all evil, and they were to be preserved from death. All these gifts we call the special gifts of paradise…or original grace.
Adam and Eve wanted to be like God, and therefore ate the forbidden fruit. By original sin Adam and Eve lost the special gifts of paradise. Their intelligence darkened and their power of will was made weaker; they now had an inclination towards evil. They had many things to suffer, and at the end of it all they had to die. Because of Adam’s sin we are born without the grace-life, which, according to God’s plan, we were to inherit from Adam. In addition, the evil results of original sin have descended on all men; that is why we have an inclination to sin, which is called concupiscence.
Many say: “God is unjust because he lets others suffer on account of Adam’s sin.” Our answer is that God is just; He owed the grace-life to no one, nor the special gifts of paradise.2
It is puzzling, to be sure, perhaps even baffling: how could these blessed creatures, Adam and Eve, illumined and strengthened as they were by God’s patented “grace-life,” with nary a thought of nor inclination towards evil, fall for the first fast-talking serpent that slithered across their path? It’s a puzzlement, as I said, perhaps even a bafflement. If it were me, I’d check the manufacturer’s warranty on that “grace-life”.
In any case, many are they who have pondered all this. David Daiches has pondered. “Because of Adam’s sin,” he has written, “all his descendants must be depraved in mind and will. The nature of this necessity remains obscure…One might concede that all men are born corrupt; but if that is how they are born, how can they be held responsible for their corruption, be considered guilty [for their sins], and be punished for it?” 3
Edward Yarnold, on the other hand, sees the doctrine of Original Sin as being not simply about a fall from grace but about a complete evolutionary shift: “A human being who could not die or feel pain and had complete self-mastery would be virtually a different species…an immortal human being with a body that cannot suffer and a will that is drawn solely by the true good is almost a contradiction in terms, [a being] so different from us that it could hardly be called human at all.”4
Like it or not (I don’t), and agree with it or not (I don’t), the notion that the human race has fallen from its originally created state and from God’s intentions for it, represents what I call the “implicit anthropology” of Western Civilization (such as it is). Christianity's imputation of ontological guilt and its pessimism about humanity play a role to this day in our culture and in our politics, and the tale of Adam and Eve certainly informs our individual self-understanding—at least, those of us who are exposed to the story in our tender, formative years. Albert Camus, in THE PLAGUE, puts the charge succinctly:
“Calamity has come on you, my brethren, and, my brethren, you deserved it.”
Well, maybe; but I’d like to think about it a bit. And that is what I intend to do in subsequent posts.
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1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin
2 CATHOLIC CATECHISM (Herder & Herder, 1957)
3 David Daiches, GOD AND THE POETS
4 Edward Yarnold, THE THEOLOGY OF ORIGINAL SIN
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