Original Sin: A Disputation
By Edward T. Oakes
Copyright (c) 1998 First Things (November 1998).
No doctrine inside the precincts of the Christian Church is received with greater reserve and hesitation, even to the point of outright denial, than the doctrine of original sin. … [T]he doctrine of original sin is met with either embarrassed silence, outright denial, or at a minimum a kind of halfhearted lip service that does not exactly deny the doctrine but has no idea how to place it inside the devout life. Even the Universal Catechism of the Catholic Church, surprisingly enough, calls original sin a "sin" only in an analogous sense (#404), because unlike other (presumably real?) sins it is only contracted and not committed-a concession that would certainly have surprised Augustine, who had a vivid and almost physical/biological understanding of the First Sin.
Should We Believe in Original Sin?
Videtur quod peccatum originale non sit credibile: It would seem that original sin is not believable, and for the following three reasons. First of all, not only is the doctrine intolerably paradoxical, it is never once mentioned, as such, in the Bible, not even where it is taken to be most evident: in chapter 3 of Genesis and chapter 5 of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Secondly, our understanding of both evolution and biblical science makes it even more obvious than before how far from the intent of the biblical authors was any doctrine of original sin (careful exegesis of Romans 5, for example, has led many scholars to hold that Augustine developed his view of original sin based on a mistranslation by the Vulgate of a verse in this chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans). Thirdly and finally, the doctrine damages souls. Belief in original sin leads to pessimism: it results in a resigned fatalism about changing those sinful structures that actually can be changed but which go unchallenged because they are all too lazily attributed to the effects of original sin, which by definition is a given and cannot be changed. (Hannah Arendt was rightly annoyed when she returned to Germany after World War II and discovered Germans were blaming Hitler, as well as their own romance with Nazism, on Adam and Eve, a subterfuge scarcely less vulgar than the common criminal’s pretext, "the devil made me do it.") …
Sed contra: on the contrary, the Psalmist says: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51:5). Or, for those who would deny the authority of the Bible but need to be brought up short so as to question the seeming plausibility of all of the above, I cite Reinhold Niebuhr: "The truth is that, absurd as the classical Pauline doctrine of original sin may seem to be at first blush, its prestige as a part of the Christian truth is preserved, and perennially reestablished, against the attacks of rationalists and simple moralists by its ability to throw light upon complex factors in human behavior which constantly escape the moralists."
Respondeo: And therefore, to all of the above, I respond as follows: First of all, the doctrine of original sin is … an inference that arises from reflection on the reality of evil when considered in the light of ethical monotheism. John Henry Newman, for one, always insisted that original sin is the only way believers can make sense of the world when they contrast that world to their faith in God. … Ad primum: as for the first objection, it is not necessary for the Bible to mention the name of a doctrine for it either to be true or for it to be located there in so many other words. … Ad secundum: as to the second objection, as we have seen, the doctrine in its essence does not depend on the historicity of Genesis 1-3 (very few Christians in the world now refuse to admit the figural language of the first three chapters of the Bible). In fact, to historicize it, to read it "literally" (and it is doubtful that even fundamentalists think God takes afternoon strolls in His garden), distorts the point of the doctrine and forces Paul to contradict himself about the physical body being naturally mortal. … Ad tertium: as to the third objection, we must take seriously the testimony of those raised in, and later reacting against, Augustinian strains of Christianity who claim that a stress on original sin leads to a morbid preoccupation with and fear for one’s salvation. But this concern must be coupled with a sober reflection on the immense harm that has been unleashed on humanity by a denial of this doctrine. …
Finally and in conclusion, I would like to add my own version to this argument: to deny this doctrine is … to warp the very core of the Christian gospel: that God so loved the world that He sent his only Son to save that world from its sin.
