Thanks Jay, for laying out your view on Original Sin. I had the same question after reading your post as Nick:
If I have understood the views you present in your podcast: you do not see Adam and Eve as a literal, historical couple, but you read their story as being symbolic of every person’s experience. Is that right? Thus in your view, Original Sin would not point back to Adam and Eve. But all humanity has a Sin Nature, because we all share a common, universal experience of not behaving perfectly, as we should. Am I understanding that correctly?
That is true, we are all guilty and are held responsible for our own actions. I think any Reformed thinker would agree with that statement, but I think that the Reformed view would point to a historical point in time when Mankind/Humans were given moral responsibilities, and were found to fall short in their ability behave in a perfectly moral way. So people who believe in a literal first couple can easily point to that time in history. But adding in evolution makes that more challenging. How does your view on evolution solve that problem? When did Sin (or Moral Culpability) originate? Did Sin enter the entire population all at the same time, or did it spread in some way as people developed an ability for moral reasoning? Did God endow people with that sense of morality, or did morality evolve into the population? When did God start holding people responsible for their moral failings?
I think that all of these questions are relevant and central to my question that this thread was divided off from, so I’ll post them there, too, to see what other’s think: