Wiki quotes two influential Christian heavyweights. I’m sure you’ve heard of them:
Martin Luther:
“It is also taught among us that since the fall of Adam all men who are born according to the course of nature are conceived and born in sin. That is, all men are full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers’ wombs and are unable by nature to have true fear of God and true faith in God. Moreover, this inborn sickness and hereditary sin is truly sin and condemns to the eternal wrath of God all those who are not born again through Baptism and the Holy Spirit. Rejected in this connection are the and others who deny that original sin is sin, for they hold that natural man is made righteous by his own powers, thus disparaging the sufferings and merit of Christ.”
John Calvin
“Original sin, therefore, seems to be a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused into all parts of the soul, which first makes us liable to God’s wrath, then also brings forth in us those works that Scripture calls “works of the flesh” (Gal 5:19). And that is properly what Paul often calls sin. The works that come forth from it – such as adulteries, fornications, thefts, hatreds, murders, carousings – he accordingly calls “fruits of sin” (Gal 5:19–21), although they are also commonly called “sins” in Scripture, and even by Paul himself.”
So basically you are born guilty and worthy of eternal conscious torment because some half-wit who didn’t know good or evil was persuaded by his wife, who was made from his rib after God realized none of the animals he paraded in front of Adam were a suitable mate for him, to consume a piece of fruit a talking snake convinced her to eat in a magical garden paradise with a tree of immortality and an angel guarding it with a flaming sword!
Original sin is a hot mess. It has no impact on my theology but a lot of very conservative Christian’s think the Gospel depends on original sin and that there was no death or disease before Adam sinned. The only way to thwart it was through Jesus’s sacrificial death.
From my estimation, Romans 3 makes a pretty strong argument that we are all sinful because of how we act, not because we are descendants of A&E. I would agree that the Bible is a bit hazy on who is held accountable, but I get the distinct impression from Romans 3 that we Jesus died to save us from the sins we committed, not from sin we inherited.
Hi Vinnie. Do you believe in libertarian free will? Science tells us that free will is not as simple as it seems, and some scientists claim that it doesn’t exist at all.
Yes, free will is not very simple. We are confined by our biological machinery, heredity, environment etc. If there is no free will then I guess I am predestined to think nothing matters and that I can’t even trust my own thoughts.
That’s fine. We’re responsible for our own beliefs, but I’m one who thinks Christian theology is done in community. No one person has “the” right answer.
Sorry for the confusion. That article was a review of @LorenHaarsma’s book. Call me old-fashioned, but I think a book review should be about the book, not my own views. We got into that in the original thread (here), or you can read my writing on the subject:
Short version
Long Version
No, I’m defining it as the first (original) sin, ha’adams and ha’issah’s “transgression.” What was it? It certainly wasn’t eating a literal fruit in a literal garden, or violating a single command.
Sure. I’m not saying human sin is inherited, or that we’re all sinful because we descend from A&E. I’m saying A&E represent the universal human experience, collectively and individually. That’s the definition of a literary archetype. In short, there is both individual and corporate (systemic) sin. Humanity as a whole achieved maturity when it acquired the knowledge of good and evil, just as every individual human person does. As I said previously, knowledge passed from generation to generation is the definition of “culture.” We’re not born “totally depraved.” We’re born into a morally ambiguous situation with both good and evil examples.
Hope that explains where I’m coming from.
Addendum: Yes, Jesus died to save each of us from our sins, but his resurrection is a foretaste of the “renewal of all things.” The Christian hope in the resurrection involves all of God’s creation, not just our individual salvation.
We know what we’re supposed to be doing, but we don’t.
We do things that perpetuate evil without thinking about the effects on others, although we have more than enough information to recognize our complicity.
We happily tell people how they should live their lives morally to please our standards, but don’t live up to the most basic human standards ourselves.
I love the work of Brené Brown, that I’m familiar with. But we don’t need (have never needed) good, scientific understandings of ourselves to avoid hypocrisy or practice human decency. Christians certainly have no excuse.
I agree which is why I gravitate towards Catholicism over an army of exegetes shouting sola scripture. The problem is people have to question things in order to get the ball moving. Change is slow. For me I do not doubt Jesus was God incarnate and that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of God the Father. I am just not convinced making all three eternal beings completely distinct from one another yet also completely one being makes much sense. It seems like a direct violation of the law of non contradiction. It is a hard pill to swallow. I won’t allow myself more than 2-3 divine ineffable mysteries because I’d feel like I was being irrational and believing nonsense beyond that. 1) God the Father, the Holy Sprit and Jesus are all God and somehow God incarnated himself and 2) the problem of evil. Those are my 2 divine ineffable mysteries. If I were to posit a 3rd it would be the Church.
I read the short version. First and foremost, I think the fall, as you describe it was a fall upward. Its actually not a fall at all. It was great thing for humans to advance, become moral, religious, be accountable and know their Creator! The Bible describes it as a bad thing as if God did not want it to happen. Furthermore, to me the garden story isn’t really interested in how sin came into the world. That is more of a Christian anachronism. It may wonder why humans and animals are different but it is an etiology for many things and it probably should be understood in context with the Gilgamesh epic, not human evolution. The garden story concerns itself with human suffering, the harshness of life and why God can seem distant at times. Pain in child bearing, hierarchy of men and women, toiling the land. Drought and famine. The account to me is less in the clouds about some theological concept and more down to earth. Thomas Thompson writes:
The garden story is an aetiology. It is a fictional tale that evokes a perspective of reality that helps us understand the truth of things, and here, the truth about being human. The garden story isn’t a story about a romantic place of paradise where no one is hungry, no one suffers and no one dies. Quite the contrary, its story’s goal is the real world we live in, where hunger, pain and death are commonplace, and where each, unfortunately, does a thorough job of defining us as human. The story does not talk about history. It talks about the realities of human life, and how we are defined through our hunger, our pain and our deaths.
Pain, death, hunger, struggle, natural disasters, strife, suffering…all that existed long before humans fully evolved into our present state. They have nothing to do with “universal sin nature” or “original sin” yet they are the chief concern–in addition to rearranging some Mesopotamian funrnitere (Eve is not a mere plot device and marriage brings us back to a primordial whole unless in the Gilgamesh version)
I think you are providing evidence for a universal sin nature and not a fall. I don’t think they should be equated because I don’t think that is the central point of genesis 2-3 and its just very misleading since “the fall” is considered a bad thing.
The date of Genesis 2-3 matters. I mean, if it was written after the exile it is literally a story about Israel being exiled from the land God gave them through their own sin and their hopelessness of entering back (angel with fire sword blocking the way). If its much earlier then it is etiological and it, like the rest of the Old Testament, is not interested in Augustine’s concept of original sin or Paul’s exegesis in Romans 5. Even if it was an older story incorporated after the exile one wonders which interpretation is “canonical.”
I don’t disagree with the evolutionary notion of humans progressing as you laid it out. I think that is probably just a brute fact in general. But for me our sin nature, which looks pretty universal, is a product of heredity, environment, enculturation and millions of years of evolutionary baggage. I think we also have a strong sense of reciprocal altruism from evolution. The key to me is not to over-exaggerate our sin nature to the point of us not being responsible for our own sins. I feel most formulations of original sin do that and place the blame on God. We are born sinful with no chance of overcoming it except to believe in Jesus or go to hell. Not a very inviting belief. What I recently wrote on Psalm 51:
The penitence of Psalm 51 is a model to emulate. We should feel remorseful when we sin. Though I naturally wonder why, if a person is born a sinner, and has no control over it, do they need to actually be remorseful for it? If it’s not their fault then there is no need for penitence. How can humans be guilty of anything if they are destined to sin due to something a person did thousands of years ago? You can’t fault a person inflicted with original sin for sinning any more than you can fault a person for being born with six fingers for having six fingers. The entire basis for remorse is removed from this beautiful Psalm if we interpret it in the context of original sin. The human being who is genuinely sorry for the evil he has committed of his own volition is stripped from the Psalm. In other words, using it to justify that babies are born sinful turns the psalmist’s confession into an excuse . An alcoholic born with alcoholism and a strong and uncontrollable predisposition to drink is to be pitied, not condemned.
So you ask:
Has the choice of metaphor in Genesis 2–3 primed us for an evolutionary understanding of human origins?
I can ask:
Have the dry bones vision in Ezekiel 37 primed us for understanding what life is like when we are born again in Christ?
I can answer yes to both questions but I fully understand the intended meaning of Ezekiel 37 has everything to do with the Babylonian exile and a return to their land. I am adapting it to a new context it did not originally intend much in the same way NT authors used the OT. Its about finding meaning in passages and letting God speak to us. But in no sense do I think I am offering an exegetical or correct interpretation of what Ezekiel 37 meant in its ancient context. I see your views on the"fall" in the same way. You are jumping in on one detail and after 2000 years of Christian history, making the story relevant to us. Legitimate? What the garden story meant in its ancient context? Doubtful.
You realize that there’s a difference between being able to make a choice and actually choosing one thing or another, don’t you? I can choose which flavor of ice cream I want, how much I want, and whether I want it on a cone, in bowl, or straight out of the box or container. But isn’t it funny how you always choose the ice cream you like best and never choose the ice cream that you like the least; and you like lots of it more than just a spoonful; and you like it on a cone a lot more than straight off the floor?
So, who was Jesus talking with at the Transfiguration?
Sure…. We can all choose what kind of ice cream we like. Be like me and randomly get the flavor of the day vegan version. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s not so much but it’s my choice to choose the flavor of the day. But I’m not sure how this is supposed to counter my statements on free will and that there is no original sin and ect…
The very much non immortal Elijah and Moses. I’m not sure why you feel that counters my conditional immortality. Moses is not immortal. Not his body and not his soul and not his spirit.
The word for that is “paradox.” Jesus affirmed the “Shema” – “Hear, O Israel: YHWH is our God, YHWH is one.” Without the Trinity, Christians were open to the charge of polytheism.
Yes, I usually put the "fall’ in quotes for that reason. There was no “fall” from a state of innocent perfection to a state of sinfulness and corruption. I use the term as shorthand for the event because it’s widely accepted and understood.
Here’s how I interpret it: The injunction not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge isn’t a bad thing or a command meant to last forever. We routinely bar children from “adult” activities, but that doesn’t mean they are forever off-limits. I view the garden not as a test, but as a warning not to grasp for independence too soon. As I said in the “long version”:
Obviously, the author of Genesis had no knowledge of evolution. But the climax of the story in Ch. 3 is how the first humans violated God’s command and acquired the “divine knowledge” of good and evil. The imagery of Ch. 2 relates the garden to a “sacred space” with many allusions to the tabernacle/temple. Ha’adam’s job is described by the same verbs as the priestly service in the temple. In other words, ha’adam was to guard God’s sacred space against the entry of anything unclean or evil. He failed. Taken together, Gen. 2-3 is a story about “how we got to now,” which is the purpose of an aetiological myth. The answer in there and in the rest of Gen 1-11 is consistently human choice. Contrast this with ANE mythology, which chalked up the flood and other human miseries to the capriciousness of the gods.
I view the whole of Gen. 1-11 as polemic against Neo-Babylonian/Assyrian mythology (Atrahasis, Gilgamesh, Sumerian King List, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta). On the cusp of being absorbed in the Babylonian empire, Judah’s scribes (who were trained in cuneiform copying ANE myths) wrote an “alternate” mythology as an inoculation against Babylonian religion, riches, and culture.
There’s no reason to choose between one or the other. Here’s a scenario: Akkadian cuneiform was the lingua franca of international diplomacy and commerce. All scribes, even in Israel, were trained to write by copying ANE mythology. They were intimately familiar with it. Alphabetic (Ugaritic, Phoenician and Hebrew) writing was invented around the 10th century BC (~the start of the monarchical period). Like all alphabetic scripts, Hebrew was used for local purposes, such as writing down the oral traditions of the “fathers” (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob), national origins (Moses, Joshua, Judges), and histories/achievements of local kings. After 450 years, Israel had compiled a pretty impressive corpus, but they had nothing to compare with the more ancient origins mythology of Babylon. Gen 1-11 performs many functions. It’s a counterpoint to ANE etiological myths, and it takes Israel’s national experience with YHWH and universalizes it to the origins of all of humanity.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, I explain more about that in the “longer” piece. The garden story in its ancient context is pretty well covered by Walton and Middleton. I’m not jumping on one detail. I’m simply pointing out the parallels between the narrative of Gen 1-3, human evolution, and childhood development. Coincidence or inspiration? You decide.
Our views are very similar… but is it only a matter of time? Must all children mature at exactly the same rate? I would have thought that is a matter of requirements – that some responsibilities require the acquisition of knowledge and understanding to support it. I have a difficult time with the idea that it is an acquisition of knowledge and understanding which is the problem. For this reason I would think the meaning is an assumed responsibility rather than knowledge.
On the other hand… there is a question of emotional maturity. The story certainly suggests that Adam at least is rather lacking in this regard. Yet… it is hard for me to see how a mere acquisition of knowledge can be at the root of the problem. Responsibility for which they are unprepared seems a much more likely explanation to me.
The acquisition of knowledge does seem to be a central player, at least in my eyes.
For example, we see cruelty in animal interactions in the wild, both between species and within species. If we see a wolf steal food away from another wolf we don’t think the wolf is an evil theif, we just accept it as being part of their nature. The way chimps treat each other is also quite shocking, but would we consider that evil?
So if it isn’t evil when other species commit these acts and it is evil when humans commit these same acts, then what is making the difference? I can’t help but think it is intelligence, i.e. knowledge. We got smart, and that is what created evil.
Yes, our views are pretty close. All children don’t mature at the same rate; it’s a bell curve like most things related to “normal” development. I’d equate “a matter of requirements” and “responsibilities” to the image of God. In order to fulfill our calling/responsibility to represent God as his “image” on Earth, humanity had to reach a certain level of brain, language, and moral development.
My proposal is that humanity reached this stage of evolutionary moral development just prior to the Out of Africa migration. Modern children roughly replicate those stages of development, most of which depend on social learning/imitation. Humanity was “prepared” in the sense that God brought us to the point of maturity, but we chose to take our inheritance and go our own way, like the Prodigal Son.
Yep. But “evil” always existed, we just didn’t have a name for it yet.
I think A&E should be connected to the beginning of human civilization rather than a genetic alteration of the species. But I think this article you have linked is still interesting.
She certainly argues for the importance of graphic communication.
She has not shown us good evidence that the symbols she has listed represent any kind of graphic communication. I would be interested to see if she has any. I think she is fascinated by the possibility. And I think it is interesting enough. But even she doesn’t see any kind of language in it. And that is where I think the important demarcation would be found – in particular when language had the abstract and representational capabilities to rival that of DNA, opening up all the possibilities of the human mind.
I have no problem with her thesis that the invention of language was building on something much earlier. Of course that is the case. Before there could be spoken language we had to evolve the capabilities of verbal sophistication. And before there could be written language we had to evolve the capability to create visual graphics whether it be classified as art or communication.
That talk was in 2015. The book was published 2017.
She doesn’t go into language because she draws from Wynn & Coolidge, who specifically sought some measure other than symbolism and language to demarcate when we became “modern humans.” What they focused on was “working memory,” and they theorized some sort of genetic change endowed us with “extended working memory,” which allowed fully modern language and symbolism. (More recent discoveries have revealed a lot of the details of that narrative in the phenomenon of globularity. I explain how in the articles I linked earlier in the thread.) Here’s a 2012 video of hers that goes into a little more detail:
Just a few points:
First, there’s a difference between communication, protolanguage, and fully modern language and grammar. Animals communicate, toddlers speak a protolanguage, and elementary-aged kids have acquired modern grammar but don’t grasp metaphor and symbolism until the age of 10 or so (bell curve and all). Verbal sophistication doesn’t precede spoken language. Infants begin speaking with names (like ha’adam), but long before that they learn to point to make their needs known. As Wittgenstein noted, animals don’t point. Words began from gestures long before anyone understood that a particular sound represented a concrete thing/person in the world.
Second, before there could be spoken language we had to evolve the capacity to walk upright and control our breathing. H. erectus had the physical requirements a million years ago. And before there could be verbal sophistication, we had to evolve a brain that was different than all previous hominins, including Neanderthal and Denisovan.
Modern humans have large and globular brains that distinguish them from their extinct Homo relatives. The characteristic globularity develops during a prenatal and early postnatal period of rapid brain growth critical for neural wiring and cognitive development. However, it remains unknown when and how brain globularity evolved and how it relates to evolutionary brain size increase. On the basis of computed tomographic scans and geometric morphometric analyses, we analyzed endocranial casts of Homo sapiens fossils ( N = 20) from different time periods. Our data show that, 300,000 years ago, brain size in early H. sapiens already fell within the range of present-day humans. Brain shape, however, evolved gradually within the H. sapiens lineage, reaching present-day human variation between about 100,000 and 35,000 years ago. This process started only after other key features of craniofacial morphology appeared modern and paralleled the emergence of behavioral modernity as seen from the archeological record.
