Theologic Musings: What about original sin?

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Not necessarily. If we think of original sin as uncleanness as conceived in the Old Testament, it is something that can be reversed. This is more of an eastern view than western, but Mary’s sin would not have passed on to Jesus because the mere arrival of the Incarnate Word would have, as with the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, purified her womb, removing any uncleanness.

The idea of uncleanness from the Old Testament is the best model for sin; indeed that’s the only reason for the concept in the first place! And under that concept one can become unclean by choice but also by accident. “Original sin” can mean two things: the sin that originated sin among humans, and the sin we are born into – the first act of uncleanness that made all later humans unclean, and the uncleanness into which we are born. My sister the quality engineer use the example of manufacturing off of a prototype: if the prototype is damaged, and all further units are based on the prototype, then they are also all damaged. That fits well with the “fallen short” model, that there is a standard we are supposed to meet but we are born already short of that standard because our “prototype” fails to meet that standard. It also fits well with the preferred model in the east, where sin is regarded as spiritual disease that is passed on. Today we might say that sin is a spiritual genetic flaw that manifests itself in actual sins; some ancient theologians regarded sin as pollution of the (metaphysical) nature of humanity, a pollution that we all share because it is totally intermixed with human nature.

Indeed it’s only under such a model that “the Lamb of God… takes away the sin of the world” makes any sense: “sin” is singular and is an attribute of the whole world. In the west theologians fell into a legal model where sin was all about individual actions that transgressed specific commands, but that fails to take into account the idea of sin, singular, as belonging to the whole world. And that sin-as-nature is the only concept that really reflects the depth of separation from God expressed as referring to us as “strangers” and “aliens”, terms that Oswald Hoffman, the great Lutheran Hour preacher, illustrated as being born into the wrong camp: we are enemies by nature, according to Paul, automatically soldiers on the wrong side because of ‘where’ we were born.

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A Franciscan monk I once talked with maintained that when Saint Francis sang with birds and talked a wold into leaving a village alone, among other communications with animals, it was the image of God in action, relating to Nature as we were meant to. I’d always had this idea of the image of God as some sort of metaphysical statue like one of the ancient masterpieces, and interpreted different theologians through that lens: to the Arminians the situation was like someone smearing dirt and excrement all over the statue and it just needed some cleaning up; to Luther the statue had been tipped over and cracked; to Calvinists it had been shattered and splintered till nothing was recognizable… But the image of Francis singing with birds and feeding deer and reasoning with a wolf as an illustration totally changes that picture! In fact as Martin Chemnitz, the author of the great analysis of the Council of Trent and its errors, put it, the image of God is an office we were given (in the ancient sense of “office” as a position and vocation or “station” that fills and defines a person’s life) and which we have lost.

I think that’s a good description of the “vocational” image of God concept; it isn’t a job we do in the modern sense, it’s a full-time ‘position’ and ‘function’ that could be viewed as being like that of a king, who was never not the king, who had the responsibilities and privileges of being king at every moment, pretty much stuck with his status and all that came with it.

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“Might makes right” is a dim echo of Lucifer’s declaration “I will be like God!”

Punishment, or mercy? According to the story, it was to bar them from obtaining eternal life without living lives suitable for it.

Quite so! The whole story is filled with mercy, from the condescension to their weakness by providing coverings to the angel protecting them from the Garden.

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I like your description of ‘sin’ as understood in the eastern tradition. A nice story with good points, like the point that ‘sin’ is singular. Yet, I am not at all sure it stays within the framework the biblical scriptures tried to teach.

If ‘original sin’ is understood as a tendency in humans to act in a rebellious way, to make decisions that are selfish in a destructive manner and to lift ourselves above the authority of God ( ‘I am the ruler/god’), then I can agree with the concept of original sin.

If ‘original sin’ is understood as a sinful disease that condemns us just because we inherit a spiritual genetic flaw, without any wrong acts or words, then I disagree with that concept.

If we are tempted to do something wrong, that does not condemn us. Only if we do something wrong, then we deserve a punishment because of what we did. I think there is a similar kind of logic with the concept of ‘original sin’. Being born with a tendency to do ‘sin’ does not condemn us, only when we actually do wrong things, then we have earned punishment (done ‘sin’).

Saying that we have a spiritual genetic flaw may work as symbolic speak in some contexts but in other contexts it may be understood as a claim that we have ‘bad’ genes and we are condemned because of the genes we inherit. That kind of idea is problematic.

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Jesus was not born into sin because of his divine Virginal Conception. Mary was not born into sin because of her Immaculate (nonsexual) Conception.

There is a well known painting entitled the Immaculate Conception. I suspect that many think that this is a depiction of Many becoming the mother of Jesus hut it is not. It is St Ann becoming the mother of Mary through a male, bur without physical sexual intercourse…

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That’s both shallow and superstitious and reeks of the Gnostic idea that sex is sinful. Jesus wasn’t born into sin because His presence in Mary’s womb drove out all sin. For the same reason Mary didn’t need to be born sinless; her womb was made holy by the arrival of God the enfleshed Word.

The Immaculate Conception notion is the result of poor Christology. It presumes that God the Word could be polluted by sin and so needed to be protected, despite the fact that the enfleshed Word was born as the Lamb of God and was already taking away the sin of the world. The marvel of Mary is not that she was this alien creature fashioned differently than us but that though born the same way and fashion as the rest of us she was cleansed and made a living temple.

Mary born sinless is useless to us; Mary born a sinner makes her our great example of surrender.

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But not the greatest one.

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I was going to open a thread about the definitions of Sin and Original Sin but this one covers it pretty well

The views seem to fall into a few categories

  1. Original Sin relies on a real Adam

  2. Original Sin would seem to anthropomorphisise Sin

  3. Sin itself can be defined as an action or a state, and your view will depend on which you choose.

  4. A fallen race would see to indicate a failure in God’s creation that he had to correct

  5. The need for perfection (no Sin) gives a specific view of God that could be viewed as narcistic and or impossible without His help (making it pointless)

To this I will throw into the mix the problems of choice and free will that any sort of overpowering force (Sin) would negate, and also mean that saying “no” to God must be a valid choice, rather than a doomed one.

There would seem to be room for further discussion.

Richard

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If original sin is defined as inherited guilt or corruption caused by a single historical individual, then it plainly depends on a real Adam. But original sin does not, by definition, require a historically first individual named Adam; at most it requires that human moral agency emerges at some point—that there is a first capacity-dependent failure, individual or corporate.

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If original sin was truly something that was passed down from Adam’s linage, or if a soul was something passed through his linage in the GAE view, then it could be edited out. That is just silly, IMHO.

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That’s ambiguous. There are only a small number of coherent alternatives you could reasonably have in mind, but you’re going to have to name them to discuss them.

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So any first will do. Adam is just a name or a scapegoat.

This basically means that we were created to fail. Humanity was destined to fall, from the moment it became capable of doing so.

What a wonderful vision of God’s creating handiwork.

I will assume that you are accepting the continuance of this failure to be endemic and inescapable.

Richard

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For sin to be transferable, either by contact, or genetics, or any other form of inheritance it has to have shape and form Original Sin would seem to encourage this thought.

The only alternative is that it is “copied”, or even taught (at least the actions) to the youth as they grow into it, so that it has become the norm. The underlying thought behind that being a low level of morality for all humanity.

Richard

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So, according to you, inheritance must be material, or sin must be culturally copied. Magical substance transfer or sociological learning looks like a false dilemma to me. Why do you avoid a “disordered desire” account?

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Your response depends on 3 unstated assumptions: (1) If failure is possible, it is inevitable. (2) If failure is inevitable, God intended it. (3) If God intended it, creation is defective or cynical.

Once disordered desire is on the table, the discussion shifts from: slogans, caricatures, and binaries, to moral psychology, development, habit formation, and responsibility.

A disordered desire is a misalignment of orientation rather than a transferable thing or a learned script, and excluding that category is what allows the dilemma against original sin to appear compelling.

A disordered desire is not a desire for something evil as such, nor a desire that is chosen, nor a desire that is a “thing” or force. It is a misalignment between a desired object, the manner of desiring, and the proper end or good of the person. In classical moral psychology (biblical, patristic, medieval, and even modern), desires are ordered when they are proportionate, rightly directed, and integrated with reason and love; they are disordered when they are excessive, deficient, misdirected, or wrongly prioritized, for example:

  • Hunger is good; gluttony is disordered hunger.
  • Sexual attraction is good; lust is disordered attraction.
  • Desire for justice is good; revenge is disordered justice-seeking.

What a disordered desire is not: not a substance, not a gene, not a demon, and not a learned script. It is a condition of orientation—a skew in how desire relates to goods.

A disordered-desire model allows us to say, consistently, that something can be inherited without being material; something can precede choice without negating freedom; something can be universal without being deterministic.

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So where doe this “disordered desire” come from? Why should we be born with it? Why should we have it?

You must know by now that I am wholeheartedly against any notion of endemic sin or fallen humanity.
I certainly do not think that people deliberately teach sinful morality. My experience is that most parents try and imbue a sociable and acceptable behavioural pattern onto their children, and I do not see every non Christian as rife with sin and unable to function properly or do good.

Richard

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“Disordered desire” doesn’t mean a transferable substance, nor inherited guilt, nor that non-Christians can’t do real good. It means that human desire is often misaligned—out of proportion, misdirected, or wrongly prioritized—so that we can want good things in bad ways, or lesser goods over greater ones.

Where does it come from? From the fact that we are finite, developing creatures whose desires and impulse systems mature before our judgment and self-control do, and whose choices (and cultures) then shape those desires into habits over time. That is a developmental and moral-psychological claim, not a claim about “sin genes” or parents teaching evil.

Why should we be born with the capacity for that disorder? Because any real moral agency includes competing goods, limited knowledge, and the possibility of mis-ordering love. The alternative is not “freedom without disorder,” but something closer to automation.

I’m don’t argue for endemic guilt or for human incapacity to do good; I’m arguing that moral failure is intelligible once you admit disordered desire plus genuine choice.

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That would not be my view of Original Sin. It would be closer to the pragmatic “You can’t get it right every time”. As such, that would only matter if God needs or demands perfection. (But that is a different conversation)

Richard