Original Sin? or Fallibility?
This has no doubt been raised here before, and I expect thoroughly debated. I find the doctrine of Original Sin completely unhelpful. In the popular mind it seems always to be equated with sex, thanks no doubt to SS Jerome and Augustine. Surely the concept would be better called 'human fallibility' and viewed as an inevitable consequence of the ability to exercise free will. I have always fought shy of explicily preaching along these lines, for fear of being reported for heresy. Am I unnecessarily timid?
Comments
Certainly there are probably very few Christians who take Genesis 3 literally, although I do know a few.
However, the suggestion that it's sex should be dismissed out of hand. Gen 1:28: "Be fruitful and multiply" Gen 2:24: "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one flesh." Two pre-fall explicit references to sex.
Leaving that aside, the phrase the human tendency to fuck things up is entirely appropriate.
The Church of Scotland ejected Rev Edward Irving on the basis of the latter's belief in this capability, although he acknowledged that, despite being able to, Christ did not, in fact, commit any sin.
If, as we are told, Christ was fully human, surely he, too, would have been capable of *ahem* fucking things up, as we all do?
No, you are not being unnecessarily timid. The Eastern Churches don't go in for Augustinian ideas on Original Sin.
That doesn't mean we don't take sin seriously.
I'd be happy with your human fallibility preference, provided it's allied to human perfectability by divine grace.
Not that we achieve some kind of 'sinless perfection'.
OTOH, one could argue that if one is dead, and there is no heaven, no hell, and no afterlife, then perfection - with total freedom from sin, and the ability to sin - has, in a sense, been achieved.
Yes. But I would say that as an Orthodox Christian.
We have our own problems of course, but we tend to think that 'the West', both RC and Protestant, has a tendency to ratchet things up to the nth degree.
Danielle Shroyer wrote a book, Original Blessing: Putting Sin in its Rightful Place. Look it up. You should be able to get it used.
Matthew Fox also has a book on Original Blessing, but Danielle's is easier to understand.
This.
This also.
The Catholic catechism teaches that original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants.It is a deprivation of original holiness though human nature has not been entirely corrupted.
Original sin is a state and not an act.
Baptism,by imparting the life of grace erases original sin and turns us towards God, hopefully ready to do battle with evil.
Ancestral sin, generational sin, or ancestral fault is the doctrine that individuals inherit the judgement for the sin of their ancestors. It exists primarily as a concept in Mediterranean religions (e.g. in Christian hamartiology); generational sin is referenced in the Bible in Exodus 20:5.
Hamartilogy is the study of sin. (I would guess by both observation and participation.)
I am merely a layman, but I think of Original Sin as the capacity within any human to behave badly, a capacity built in because of free will. We must choose to behave well, many times. It can be tiring. Sometimes we fail.
I think of this as the little imp that sits on your shoulder and suggests "Wouldn't it be fun to ..." (or worse than fun). I am reminded of old Warner Brothers cartoons. In the book of Job, I think of Satan as the little imp on God's shoulder, and when Jesus is tempted in the desert, we have the little imp of the shoulder of Jesus.
Sorry, the little imp was on my shoulder there ...
You make some good points, @HarryCH.
I s'pose what I'm wondering aloud - wondering allowed - is to what extent Western and Eastern views of sin complement or contradict one another.
Or really, in practice, whether there's that much difference at all.
The Orthodox will insist that sin is a 'disease' to be healed rather than a 'condition' to be punished. But then I've heard Christians from other traditions say the same.
Sure, I can see that Orthodoxy has a more 'positive' view of human nature than those traditions which draw more strongly on St Augustine of Hippo. But I don't find the Reformed contributors here (I'm looking at you @Nick Tamen) to have a bleak and chilling outlook devoid of joy and potential. Quite the opposite.
The same applies to RC posters here and RCs I know in real life.
I'm just wondering whether, for all our purported or vaunted differences of emphasis, we are all of us pretty much on the same page when it comes to how we work these things out in practice as it were.
I’ve been pondering this thread, but I haven’t had the time to make the kind of post I’d like to. Still don’t, but I’ll try to find that time soon.
In the meantime, I’ll just note that I think this: haa a lot of truth to it.
In the first he makes observations about 'inherited sin' and the effects of sin in our lives that could easily have come from the pen of a Western Christian writer, whether RC or Protestant.
It's made me consider how the 'effects' of sin - and the 'remedy' for it if we can talk in those terms - are the same however much our understandings of its 'origins' may differ.
Much to think about. Much also to 'do'.
The recently canonised Sophrony of Essex is worth reading. I'm very challenged by him.
So sin is worse than being merely wrong? If I murder someone I'm merely wrong? But if I sin by coveting my neighbour's ass, that's worse?
So, one must be religious to sin.
I usually use the model of infection, as it seems to fit best with how sin propagates itself--basically, since sin entered our species, it's become something we're born with or born into, however you want to say it. Something that shows itself early--my son was eight months old when he first tried to deceive me--and something that is progressive and deadly if it doesn't get proper treatment. Something that is damn hard to get rid of, and merely treating the external marks of it (visible single "sins") isn't going to deal with the root cause.
I may as well say right here that the only way of treating it is what Jesus has done for us. In some way, his incarnation, life, suffering, death and resurrection has provided a cure for this disease, to everyone who wants it. That cure is not in our own hands, and we can't "do it yourself"--we need the Physician. But he's more than happy, indeed overjoyed, to provide it. And the result of getting treated by him (we refer to this as trusting in him, salvation, and so forth) is everlasting life. There is an immediate life-giving change instantly, but the clearing-up process (which makes a visible change in the person's life) takes quite a while--generally the rest of one's lifetime. Still, you can often see startling results in some people, and the effect on some who've been in the faith for a long time is amazing. There are others, of course, who make you wonder if they've actually been to the doctor at all...
Now the way the infection shows itself in human lives is generally in what we call individual "sins," which are acts, words, or thoughts that are anti-God and anti-life--the sorts of things almost everybody knows instinctively is wrong. So, envy and jealousy, hatred, malicious gossip, backbiting, conspiracy to harm another, lies, false witness, emotional abuse, adultery and other forms of unfaithfulness, murder, greed, indifference to the needs of others, disobedience to proper authorities acting properly and demanding that you do, too, arrogance, and the one that seems to be the source of everything else--making a god* out of anything but the real God. The most popular candidate for the replacement god is of course ourselves.
* Luther's definition of how this works seems helpful to me:
The problem with having a false god is of course that it means you are out of sync with reality in the most fundamental way of all; and that always leads to trouble.
It is generally not super helpful to the individual in the long run to try to reduce sin by focusing on the external, individual sins someone commits. I mean, you sort of have to for the sake of public decency, and to keep the world a decent place for other people to live in--thus the efforts of parents, teachers, and governments, to deal with the worst outbreaks, usually by teaching and enforcing laws and rules. But none of that touches the infection itself. For that, you need Christ.
It's also not helpful to debate whether this sin or that is worse than another (which I take to mean "guiltier, or deserving of more punishment). Christ wants to take the whole infection away completely; arguing about individual pox marks is generally a waste of time. Unless, of course, you are a magistrate or something of that sort, in which case it's your job. But for the rest of us, trying to classify and sort sins is sort of like becoming a connoisseur of garbage--not helpful, and sort of "ewwww" as well.
Well, the standard answer, I believe, is that if our ancestors HAD managed to do that, it would have arrested physical death all right, but the spiritual corruption would have continued unchecked. Just imagine what that would have been like. Or read the Picture of Dorian Gray. Yikes yikes yikes yikes.
I need one right now! Ah, that's better. We agree, the cure is love, regardless of the absence of Love.
If sin is 'falling short' of a particular standard - the Orthodox sometimes use the analogy of an arrow falling short of a target - then I think atheists could grasp that as a concept, although without the sense of this marring our relationship with God as it were.
I tend to think that Romans 2 provides some indication of how God might 'judge' those who, as it were, are a 'law unto themselves' and who don't see themselves as being 'bound' by particular Jewish or Christian standards of morality.
It ain't for us to say what the outcome of that might be.
In more secular terms we might think of 'crime' or simply 'wrongdoing'
One can be guilty of a 'crime' without knowing that one has done something wrong
but at least from my understanding of theology one can only commit a 'sin' if one knows what one is doing is wrong.
The knowledge of good and evil didn't seem to corrupt the angels, or any other celestial beings. There's the problematic "like us" clause (please don't try to shoehorn the Trinity in there -- that won't wash). The cumulative misery of the human species could have been prevented right there. Allegedly God already knew the flood was coming right there? Please.
Just add, project another 'o'. Jesus, as chronicled, was certainly a fully and solely human voice for good. His fallibility and good were inextricable in his delusion. I don't see angels as robotic.
This is written as if the Genesis narrative is describing real events. It describes the paradox of having more power, more control than we seem to be able to use well, and how this is compatible with a loving deity. Surely a lot of the problem is that our experience of life is more congruent with someone having said "well done, have a bite", than it is with a prohibition having been issued by an omnipotent deity.
Can you explain for me what the rest of your paragraph means? I'm sorry, I'm not getting it...
And here: It looks like you're saying that we're not innately evil, but that we are innately sinful, and that we all (with one exception) inevitably do evil things.
Do you think you were predisposed to see your son's behaviour as unhealthily "sinful" by virtue of your beliefs, in contrast (for example) to another mother who might view it as being healthily "wilful" behaviour, albeit behaviour that needed correcting?
Broad brushstroke? My understanding is that there are widely varying views on the morality of various issues, including some of the ones you mentioned. Are lies told in order to prevent harm wrong? Are they sinful?
I’d say that’s unquestionably the case, and would add that “sin” is a concept in some religions, but not in others. Which isn’t to say that other religions don’t have a sense of right and wrong or the like, but rather that the frameworks used in those religious might not map neatly onto a tropical Christian understanding of “sin.”
And I would push back strongly on equating “sin” and “evil.” (Not that you did that.) There can, of course, be overlap, but equating the two sets up, I think, a very unhealthy and unhelpful, and perhaps “othering” view of sinfulness.
That seems to be using a definition of “sin” that turns primarily on acts—“sins” are things we do, wrongs we commit. While I acknowledge that’s a common view for many Christians, I don’t find it to be an adequate or particularly helpful view.
As some others have said in one way or another, I think it’s more helpful and more accurate to think of “sin” as a condition or disease or infection. “Sins” in the sense of “wrongdoings” are perhaps better thought of as symptoms of “sin” as a condition.
From my particular Reformed perspective (a tip of the hat to you, @Gamma Gamaliel ), the concept of “sin” is pretty meaningless if separated from the love and righteousness of God. It is in comparison to that love and righteousness that we become aware of how we fall short of God’s love and righteousness, and that falling short—or “missing the mark,” as found in the Hebrew sense—is “sin” or “sinfulness.”
With regard to “original sin,” that seems to me to be a second- or third-tier doctrine. It’s not found the ecumenical creeds, nor is it a foundational doctrine in the way that, say, the Incarnation or the Resurrection are. Rather, it’s an attempt to understand both what Christians believe has been revealed—that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, and that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”—and what we observe about human reality, which boils down to despite their best efforts, humans screw up, make wrong choices and fail to do right. Everyone does, without exception.
To the extent that “original sin,” as it has historically been understood, helps in understanding that human reality, it is useful. To the extent it distorts human reality or leads us to incorrect assumptions or conclusions, it is not helpful. And to the extent that the name “original sin” misleads us, turns the idea into something it’s not (like being about sex) or otherwise distorts how we think about human reality (such as by setting up a false binary between “original sin” and “and God saw that it was good”), it’s no longer workable. (I could say very much the same thing about “total depravity.” Now there’s a name that doesn’t at all convey what the doctrine is really about.)
So, I have no problem using terminology other than “original sin,” and I’m very open to looking at how Christians of various stripes, as well as Jews, have understood human reality and human nature. But I do think “original sin” is trying, however imperfectly, to help us see and name something that is very real.