IX. Of Original or Birth-Sin

I am about to speak of original sin. It seems appropriate to begin this discussion when a brief look at the news wires will confirm the inherent depravity of mankind to most people's satisfaction. I also should note that there is also plenty of evidence in the news of inherent goodness in us. The forbidden fruit is from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Thus in man unlike in the orthodox view of God, good and evil co-exist quite unhappily. Paul was an especially eloquent observer of this fact, theorizing that alienation from the worship, fear, and affection of the true God gave evil the clear edge (Romans 1). But Paul likewise writes of what a more recent theologian (Walter Wink) has called "the inner darkness of the redeemed." As much as we have been cleansed in the waters of baptism and continue in the sacramental life in which we are confronted by the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and the example of his life in the Gospel with all of the praxis and mystical beauty that entails, we still do what we know is evil. Indeed, the more we live into the Christian life, the more we know our need for salvation. I constantly say to myself, "You suck." This is not an indication of low self-esteem. I think quite well of myself. Instead, I see how sinful I am and imagine how sinful I would be if I did not think my life wasn't already a losing investment to be accounted for to God, especially compared to the many irreligious people I see around me. I smell original sin and all I want to do is drown myself in the Grace of God in whom there is no evil at all.

Looking at Human Origins and Searching for Eden

But as real as original sin seems to me most of the time, the Scriptural basis for the doctrine is problematic in that it is ultimately based on a portion of the Scriptures which I cannot read as anything but metaphor. Now, of course, there are plenty of young earth creationists who go around saying and attempting to prove that the science I practice is a deceit of the devil and the first few chapters of Genesis should be read literally. Their soteriology is quite compelling. For indeed if corruptibility did not come into the world through Adam and Eve, what is this whole Christian business about anyway? Well, their soteriology is compelling until you think: is the essence of corruptibility in what kills the body or what kills both body and soul? The body in union with a "living" rational soul is a special thing. It is simultaneously a creature and capable of abstract creativity that is essentially the same as its Creator if only much more puny in degree. It is said of most of the lower animals that they have a much different sense of time, in which past and future exist on a very low level and everything that might involve thought is in the present. A mind of that kind is not likely to have a soul that can maintain any integrity without the body. But our mind just might have enough sense of the future. Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers and other objects, suggesting they had some concept of life after death. Elephants, for all I know, may have this concept, since they bury their dead and move their bones around after decomposition. But I know nothing of elephantine souls. Nor do I think that belief in the immortality of the soul makes one's soul immortal. But I do think that the very attributes and affections of our souls that allow some of us to believe in the soul's immortality are the reason for its immortality. But the issue arises over what happens to that immortal soul after death.

The young earth creationists are right to point out that a more literal reading of Genesis puts the Fall and the immortality of the soul into better perspective than whatever those who read metaphorically seem to think. Anglicans and other Christians generally have done well in rejecting the exegetical and natural worldview of young earth creationists but still have not done enough work disambiguating the ancient theology from the ancient worldview. AKMA, for instance, has expressed his belief that theology is the primary discourse, the queen of all the sciences. He doesn't think sociology, cultural anthropology, or whatever fashionable discourse presently holds sway should dictate anything to theology. As well he should. Theology must be the primary discourse, for its purview encompasses all time and space. But it might want to think about some of the natural sciences now and then, whose purview is not far from all time and space but whose epistemology is less certain. After all, a good friend and colleague of mine points out that divine revelation is clearly the most authoritative form of knowledge. Most scientists know their limits. A few troublemakers like Dawkins shouldn't send theologians into lager .

In this kind of thinking, I follow Galileo Galilei and his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina , whose key point is strong analogy between the knowledge of Creation and the Holy Scriptures, since both emanate from the Divine Word. I once explained this idea to Mark McIntosh, who apparently is Canon Theologian to the Presiding Bishop. He thought the idea smelled of Bonaventure. This would not surprise me. Galileo counted radical theologians such as Paolo Sarpi among his friends. He certainly had very bright and learned men to bounce ideas off. And though Galileo often did not live his life in harmony with the more essential teachings of the Church, I think he earnestly believed he was arguing what was right and faithful. I call myself a Galilean theologian (yes, I understand the name has other significance), because I believe if we are going to treat passages in the Scriptures that have something to do with natural matters as metaphorical, faithful natural scientists will need to shed what light we can.

Thus, I read the early parts of Genesis not as the literal play-by-play of Creation but as a broad overview of how the universe came to be and how and why humans came to be. And the first piece relevant to our story is this, "In the image of God He created him, male and female He created him." You may have seen other translations of this verse. I'm fairly sure this is the right one... In this verse, I see the first human as androgyne (or really of common gender) both telling us of a God of common gender in whose image we are made and something quite interesting. The most primitive forms of life (and even higher ones) generally are asexual. Asexuality is quite boring. Reproduction essentially is by splitting up. Adulthood, if it can be called that, is attained by the new individuals quite quickly. Some asexual organisms I believe are colonial, but otherwise asexual creatures lead boring lives in which sex can be a strong barrier to sex. Sex for asexual reproducers involves spending energy modifying the genetic code of another creature while it does so for you. Yet survival is much more strongly guaranteed if you avoid sex, just reproduce as quickly as possible. But this is a short term view. If ecological conditions change, asexual reproducers cannot change their genes by natural selection very quickly. They are wiped out quite easily. From what we can tell, sexual reproduction originated with an asexual organism splitting meotically rather than mitotically, producing individuals with only a half-set of genes. This might produce useful mutations if there was recombination of the meiotic pairs of the individual combining with itself. But it allowed for much more interesting and advantageous to fitness combinations when the meiotic parts of different individuals combined.

Thus, the instinct of life for sociability was enhanced by sexual reproduction. Take from this what you will, but I do think there is some interesting theology buried in the transformation of rational androgyne into man and woman which speaks to a deeper purpose of gender than we can conceive. When Archbishop Akinola worries about homosexuals blurring gender distinctions, he implicitly slanders the proto-Adam without the justice of God behind him. The defect of the asexual and the proto-androgyne is not a blurring of gender, but instead the solitude of such creatures. "It is not good for the man to be alone." For a creature of such solitude is incapable, even if rational, of knowing love. And if such a creature cannot love a fellow, how can such a creature love God? There is much here...and Jesus' quotation of the first creation story of man attached to the conclusion of the second always has made me wonder about the limitations of the second account. Scientists also have investigated the possibility of life originating like Adam from the dust of the ground in recent years, but that's another story.

And of Adam and Eve I only can say, "Who did Cain etc. marry?" I think the story of Eden is God finally seeing the creature worthy of being in love with Him and sharing his dominion. The image of Christ and the Church as Bridegroom and Bride is good and glorious, more glorious than what originally was possible, but its foundation is in the relationship God thought he might have with Adam and Eve and their children before the Fall. Evolution came to a point where one among us was physiologically capable and "man became a living soul." God yearned to love and be loved as the Areopagite says. But it didn't work. We were given great gifts and we decided to disobey the One who should have been our Beloved, the One to whom we should have listened (and yes I do see in the story of the Baptism of Jesus by John an allusion to the Fall. One should be there, after all...). We didn't listen.

At the same time, I would beware of saying this is some sort of eco-myth. I do not think the essence of the Fall is killing of the large mammals or the invention of agriculture. These were merely effects of the Fall. For indeed, God before the Fall instructed us to dominate nature, which always has been the silent enemy of life. To give you an example, our present form of respiration, which is of such metaphorical importance to theology, is only possible because cyanobacteria developed photosynthesis, whose input is carbon dioxide and waste product is oxygen. There is some evidence that the Earth was kept warm in the past (when the Sun gave less light) by a methane greenhouse. Oxygen oxidizes methane to carbon dioxide. Hence, plants keep atmospheric methane at lower levels than in the past (volcanoes add methane to the atmosphere). Thus, the plants might have removed so much methane from the atmosphere that the Earth froze over. This is still a very unproven story, but it gives you an example of the kind of struggle with nature it requires for natural selection to make creatures worthy of reason. Stephen Jay Gould (and others) are convinced we are a random fluke. The Holy Scriptures say we were planned and desired, but nature never was cooperative. And nature still isn't very cooperative. But if we had maintained the pre-Fall relationship with God, I am quite sure God would have taught us to dominate nature as he does as Creator, to still the winds and the waters, to change water into wine.

Instead, we are told the Fall led to the pollution of the ground, so that it would not yield food without effort. The travails of childbirth likewise continued. "You will desire your husband" says the Lord. Might we think of a dog in heat? Through reason and right relationship with God, we might have been liberated from the corporeal exigencies of nature and learned to control it as God can. Instead, we polluted it with sins and the blood of our fellows, making ourselves subject to it and the corruptibility of the body. The Fall was not precipitated by our mismanagement of nature, but it did leave us more capable of mismanagement than any other creature on the planet. But indeed the Articulators knew nothing of this. What do they say of these things?

IX. Of Original or Birth-Sin

Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;)

I had a fling with Pelagianism about the age of eleven. I did not the understand the fullness of the doctrine but simply liked the idea that infants weren't damned. The basic idea, as I now understand it, is that sin originated in the bad example of Adam (and Eve) that precipitated the Fall. Thus, the purpose of the Incarnation was for Christ as God-Man to set a better example. Through faith and imitation of that example, one can be saved. The way I first heard about Pelagianism probably was reading about the doctrines of Caelestius, which deny the resurrection of the body, the unique efficacy of the Gospel, and the unique sinlessness of Christ but also state that children come into the world in the state of Adam before the Fall.

In the theology of the Fall I set forth above, the less extreme view of Pelagius is clearly false. We are not inclined to sin because Adam merely set a bad example but because he was given the opportunity to dominate nature in relationship with God but rejected the commandment (and in the commandment the love of God who sought his good) and thus again became subject to nature and the evolutionary struggle though we now possessed rational souls. And as we have inherited rational souls from Adam, we are as subject to nature as Adam after the Fall or Adam's irrational ancestors according to the flesh. [Gosh, the young earth creationists really would be shocked by all this, wouldn't they? Thy ancestors were clever apes but God raised up thy father Adam and thy mother Eve from the apes and gave them mighty gifts, but they chose to disobey and so returned to the level of the apes yet they retained the chief of their gifts...]

The ancient and orthodox argument against the Pelagian view is that it has some weak resonance with the view of Paul, but it passes over much of Pauline theology about the regeneration of the baptized etc. More importantly, it belittles the Incarnation and all it entailed. Christ was more than mere teacher and exemplar. He triumphed over death. At the root of Pelagian theology is very bad Christology. And thus the ancient church rejected it, though it endured more mild forms.

Because of Luther's emphasis on justification by faith, Luther has been called a Pelagian. This is ridiculous. Luther had too strong a notion of the importance of the Incarnation and regeneration through Baptism to be a Pelagian.

...but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit...

This view of original sin is strongly Western, owing its first source to Paul, especially in Romans 7 and 8. But its strongest elaborator is that of Augustine, who was a strong advocate against Semi-Pelagianism but also a man who had lived a life which he problematized as a long wandering wallow in the flesh finally smatched by Christ and regenerated through the fruits of the Spirit. His chief work, as we should remember, is a discourse on the fruit of the Spirit known as peace against the inferior product peddled by the typical Greco-Roman city-state otherwise known as City of God . Original sin under that heading I believe is his creation. The Cappadocian Fathers had some conception of it did not believe it to be so important. Anglican Scotist might be able to give some further information about Duns Scotus' view of the matter, since he apparently elaborated on it. But I think the Articulators are giving the Augustinian view (based on "naturally engendered in the offspring of Adam," which implies inheritance but not stain per se), since Aquinas does not emphasize Original Sin too strongly (perhaps because it would complicate his vice-virtue ordering of morals).

The debate between the views of Original Sin held by the orthodox of the East and the West mainly concerns the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. In the Eastern view as I understand it, Original Sin is not some heritable stain on the soul but just theinclination to sin and away from original righteousness that is clear as we grow. Thus, Christ was sinless not because He did not inherit Original Sin through his mother (for Original Sin was held from her), but presumably because His righteousness was from God.

Well, what does the theology I propose have to say of this? Well, it would lean toward Original Sin as inheritable inclination. Animals are not held to sin, after all, having no knowledge of the moral as such. What distinguishes us from them and leads us into sin is possessing a rational faculty while being subject to nature. Thus, as our rational faculty develops, our potential to sin increases and so does our potential subjection to nature, thus also increasing our potential to sin. Thus, all infants are fairly close to original righteousness, but as we grow up, the inheritance of Adam works the desires of the flesh in us, inclining us to sin. As for the Immaculate Conception, I think of the Theotokos's response to Gabriel, "How can this be, since I have not known a man?" Gabriel tells her that the Holy Spirit shall come upon her, "All things are possible with God." And she replies, "Let it be with me according to your word." Thus, Mary really is the second Eve, since the first Eve disobeyed and became subject to nature rather than obeying and dominating it. But Mary obediently agrees to join with God in dominating nature (what else would you call the Incarnation after all?), and so in her womb she brings to fruit the Redeemer of the World. Her own sinlessness is a minor issue. She chooses the fruit, the act, the plan, and the gift of obedience just as her ancestors chose the fruit, the act, the plan, and the curse of disobedience.

...and therefore in every person born in this world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation...

Well, maybe the Articulators thought it was a stain, but the language is ambiguous. If it were truly a stain, they would have said, "and therefore through it, every person born in this world deserveth God's wrath and damnation." But the idea is that the "wages of sin are death." Or in my view, when Adam became a living soul he and Eve were given the means of immortality for them and their descendants. In cooperation with God, their domination of nature and the immortality of their souls would have given them eternal life in the world and the approbation of God. Instead, we humans are capable of seeing the world and acting upon the world in many of the ways God does but because we do so in alienation from Him and in cooperation with the corruptibility to our flesh is subject, we injure one another and the creation to which I think we were meant to bring peace (inferring from the example of Christ).

And this infection of nature doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated...

And yet we cannot be brought out of our fallen nature completely in this world. This has many implications for our dreams of the plasticity of nature. Our technology cannot save us, not because it has no effect on spiritual matters or because it is otherwise irrelevant before the power of God, but because nature ultimately is victor against us in this world. It is only after death or at the final trumpet sounds that "this corruptible body must put on incorruptibility, this mortal body must clothe itself in immortality." And the same is true of our utopian dreams, since our social order, even if all the citizenry were regenerate, would still have many lost every once in a while in the "inner darkness of the redeemed." Hugo Schwyzer has a good post on this: like Paul and Augustine, the inner darkness is an important part of Hugo's faith narrative. This is not an injunction to let things go. This is not a prohibition against innovation and improvement. This is a call to us who have been cleansed in baptism to recognize our limitations in this world. There is no man without sin. There is no perfect program of reform. The hope we have is in Him who comes on the clouds and refines all things in his fire, so that in an instant, in the twinkling of the eye, the dead shall be raised and the kingdom of this world become the kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ.

whereby the lust of the flesh, called in Greek, phronema sarkos (which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh), is not subject to the Law of God.

The last discussion covers this. The Fall makes our conformation to divine law through Christ and the Gospel incomplete in this world. But I do like the term phronema sarkos . A couple of years ago, I thought it might be cool to introduce the term into the English language. Thus I would mention every once in a while that my "sarks was phronemating." No one bothered to ask why I was saying this. I am known to say a variety of weird things. But I do feel this phronemation rather often, usually directed in the ways common to men of my age and those common to all flesh. I struggle to resist, and thus when I consider my sins, I repent most firmly of those I see rooted in clear phronemation. For everything else, I just pray God give me a discerning heart. It's easier to fight the enemy you know rather than the enemies you don't.

And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized; yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.

We don't even need the Apostle (Romans again is likely the key text meant). Think of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, e.g., "Whoever calls his brother 'good for nothing' deserves the sentence of the court; whoever calls him "fool" deserves the hell-fire." That gives me far deeper pause than looking at women or imagining them with lust in my heart. Divine law must be internalized. The Fall gives our interiority too much potential to sin. Those who use the Jesus Prayer I imagine can gain deep understanding of the depths of their concupiscence. And when the civil law loses force, phronemation may win great victory in the heart. The Law of God is not the only thing to which the flesh does not wish to be subject.

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Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may be strengthened by faith, prayer, and all good works that are the fruits of these and by the Grace of God in Christ resist every evil to which the flesh inclines you in inheritance from Adam.