In Adam's Fall

A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin

Ian A. McFarland

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781444351651
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología cristiana

IN ADAM'S FALL

Few doctrines of Christian teaching are more controversial than original sin. For how is it possible to affirm the universality of sin without losing sight of the distinct ways in which individuals are both responsible for and suffer the consequences of sinful behavior?

In considering the Christian doctrine of original sin, McFarland challenges many prevailing views about it. He shows us that traditional Christian convictions regarding humanity's congenital sinfulness neither undermine the moral accountability of sin's perpetrators nor dampen concern for its victims. Responding to both historic and contemporary criticism of the doctrine, In Adam's Fall reveals how the concept of original sin is not only theologically defensible, but stimulating and productive for a life of faith.

Drawing on both the classical formulations of Augustine and the Christology of Maximus the Confessor, McFarland proposes a radical reconstruction of the doctrine of original sin – one that not only challenges contemporary Western visions of human autonomy but emphasizes the integrity of each individual called by God to a unique and irreplaceable destiny. Engagingly written and infused with scholarly sophistication, In Adam's Fall offers refreshingly original insights into the contemporary relevance of a doctrine of Christian teaching that has inspired fierce debate for over 1, 500 years.

Part I

Setting the Stage: The Problem of Original Sin

1

Creation Gone Wrong: Thinking about Sin

At bottom, talk about sin (or, in the technical jargon of Christian dogmatics, hamartiology) is rooted in the twin convictions that things are not right in the world, and that human beings are deeply implicated in what has gone wrong. Stated in these terms, sin-talk may not seem especially controversial. It is hard to imagine many who live in the modern world, marked as it is by the realities of extreme and chronic poverty, environmental degradation, terrorism, torture, and war, who would not be willing to affirm as much. Christians, however (especially those whose roots lie in the Latin or Western tradition of the church), have tended to go considerably farther. They talk about original sin, claiming on the one hand that human beings’ implication in sin is both congenital and irresistible, and on the other that every human being nevertheless remains accountable for her sin. That set of claims tends to meet considerable resistance, and it is the aim of this book to explore and respond to it.

A Doctrine Grown Strange

For centuries few beliefs were more widely and deeply held in Western society than the doctrine of original sin. There was, of course, plenty of disagreement with respect to detail. Catholics and Protestants differed over the character and effects of original sin after baptism. And many groups tracing their lineage back to the radicals of the Reformation era attacked the idea that persons could be damned on the basis of original sin alone, leading them to reject the practice of baptizing infants. But very few would have seen no truth whatever in the opening couplet of the New England Primer, “In Adam’s Fall/We Sinned all.”¹ Even Immanuel Kant, champion of Enlightenment and relentless critic of traditional forms of Christian teaching, retained a place in his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone for a doctrine of radical evil that bears a notable resemblance to original sin.

By contrast, one is hard pressed to find much interest in – let alone enthusiasm for – the doctrine of original sin in present – day Western culture. This changed situation is, of course, bound up with the weakening of the power and influence of the churches in Europe and the Americas over the last two centuries, but even among committed Christians original sin has lost much of its hold on the imagination.² Although in one form or another it remains the official teaching of many denominations, it has ceased practically to be a central tenet of Christian belief even in those churches that are formally committed to it. And though (especially in the United States) Christians of all persuasions continue to be very active in seeking to influence public policy, their language is shaped by images of personal autonomy and individual freedom worlds removed from the idea of universal solidarity in sin.

Interestingly, however, this shift away from original sin has not in any sense been accompanied by a diminished sense of the power of evil in the world. On the contrary, the language of Christians, from liberation theologians on the left to premillennial dispensationalists on the right, is marked by a profound sense of the many ways evil impinges on human existence. And while it may be the case that such movements pay particular attention to evil’s supra-personal (i.e., social or cosmic) dimensions, it is far from clear that this has in any way displaced the call for individual transformation. Christians remain committed to the message, “Repent and believe” (Mark 1:15), but they are not typically inclined to develop it in terms of a doctrine of original sin. Why not?

One obvious answer is that the doctrine of original sin is simply not gospel, or good news. It is tempting to dismiss this consideration as nothing more than a sign of the church’s collective failure of nerve – a market-driven desire to avoid some of the more depressing elements of the Christian tradition. But there is more at stake here than mere salesmanship. It is true that the doctrine of original sin is not the gospel; and because it is not, there is something problematic about making it a defining feature of the church’s proclamation. In his prison letters, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was highly critical of those styles of evangelistic preaching that seek first to persuade people how wretched and miserable they are and only then introduce Jesus Christ as the cure for their condition. He called it “religious blackmail” and thought it both ignoble and completely inconsistent with Jesus’ own preaching.³ In line with what will be an important claim of this book, Bonhoeffer objected that such preaching confused sin with personal weakness or guilt.⁴ This confusion, Bonhoeffer argued, failed to reckon with the fact that Jesus’ own preaching was not predicated on searching out his hearers’ flaws but rather addressed them in their entirety.

Yet if it is wrong to place original sin at the center of the gospel message, I will argue that it remains an important feature of the Christian understanding of the human condition and thus a crucial part of that message. Before addressing the topic of original sin in particular, however, it is necessary to clarify what it means to speak of sin in general – and that task presents significant challenges of its own. After all, in contemporary Western culture the word “sin” is used seriously (i.e., to name something genuinely fatal to human existence rather than a penchant for rich desserts) only within the church – and even there its use is not uncontested. Again, this reluctance to talk about sin cannot simply be attributed to the fact that people inside or outside the church lack a strong sense of right and wrong or are indifferent to the power of evil. Instead, it reflects profound uneasiness with the connotations of the word “sin” that is arguably a problem of the churches’ own making. The fact that Christians often have focused their sin-talk on issues of marginal moral significance (e.g., smoking, dancing, playing cards) – so that the churches most vehement in their denunciations of “sin” have often seemed unconcerned about war, poverty, or racism – has contributed to the sense that the concept of sin, far from contributing to the identification of and resistance to evil, only serves to distract attention from “the weightier matters of the law” (Matt. 23:23).⁵ In light of this situation, recovery of the doctrine of original sin needs to begin with an appreciation of some of the ways in which the way the idea of sin is used in Christian Scripture challenges popular understanding of the concept.

Biblical Configurations of Sin

The consumerist anthropology that shapes so much of contemporary Western culture is predicated on a model of freedom in which choice is determined exclusively by the will of the chooser. To be sure, possible objects of choice are constrained by material circumstances (e.g., a person with neither money nor credit cannot buy a hat), and the choices one makes may entail consequences that are not themselves desired by the chooser (e.g., someone who steals a hat is subject to arrest); but the act of choosing itself is conceived as radically private and autonomous: the individual is finally responsible only to herself for what she chooses. Within the consumerist paradigm, a person’s choices will certainly affect other people and will themselves be affected by other people’s advice and opinions; but however much such relationships may impact the calculus of choice, they remain external to the act of choosing, which can always be abstracted from them as a decision that is essentially by and for the self.⁶ The moral character of an individual’s acts is, correspondingly, determined by assessment of her capacities and intentions.⁷

Unintentional sin

Christian language of sin challenges the private character of choice, because it locates human deeds within a context of a relationship with God that is prior to and independent of any human choosing. This is not to suggest that the theological concept of sin is univocal. The Old Testament speaks of sin in various ways, distinguishing, for example, between active rebellion (p

ša) against God (e.g., Amos 4:4) and a more passive failure to attain some good (h

t

’) through error or ignorance (e.g., Gen. 20:6).⁸ In no case, however, is sin reducible to a purely private decision about personal behavior. Indeed, the Old Testament also includes what to modern ears sounds like a contradiction in terms: unintentional sin (š^eg

g

h). Though the fact that such sin is unintentional means that it falls outside the power of choice, it nevertheless renders the individual who committed it culpable in a way that requires ritual expiation (see Lev. 4:1–5; 19; Num. 15:22–30; cf. Ezek. 45:20).

In order to appreciate how radically this differs from modern sensibilities, it is important to recognize that the Old Testament category of unintentional sin is not reducible to culpable ignorance, as though the offending party’s fault could be attributed to her having failed to take account of a particular moral or legal principle that she ought to have known. If that were the case, the sin could still be interpreted in terms of autonomous choice – something that could have been avoided had the person’s moral calculations been more thorough.⁹ Instead, in terms of content, unintentional sin refers to “any one of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done” (Lev. 4:2, 13, 22, 27). In this way, the category of unintentional sin suggests that the model of moral calculus is inadequate precisely because it conflates human responsibility for sin with the conscious choosing of sin. Some sins may well be deliberately chosen (Num. 15:30 contrasts unintentional sins with sins committed “with a high hand”), but the range of terms employed for sin in the Old Testament suggests that sin cannot simply be equated with conscious choice. Instead, it seems better understood as any human action that deviates from God’s will, whatever the particular combination of factors that may have contributed to it. In this way, the Old Testament suggests that sin be identified in terms of the character and quality of one’s relationships with God and neighbor. One can, correspondingly, be convicted of sin when one’s action damages those relationships, even where that damage was not freely chosen.

Though the vocabulary for sin in New Testament Greek is more limited than that of Old Testament Hebrew,¹⁰ it, too, bears witness to a refusal to limit sin to conscious choices. In one of his more anguished reflections on the human situation, Paul writes:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is not longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Rom. 7:14–19)

While the interpretation of this passage remains disputed,¹¹ it is clear at least that Paul distinguishes between the good that he wants and the evil that he commits. It does not seem appropriate to interpret this disparity as a simple collapse of Paul’s powers of choice, as though he found himself physically unable to keep his limbs from committing murder or adultery in a particular instance.¹² Aside from the fact that such a scenario flatly contradicts Paul’s claim elsewhere that he was personally blameless with respect to God’s law (Phil. 3:6), it implies a mind–body dualism that is inconsistent with Paul’s overall anthropology. A better option seems to view the situation he describes as one in which the material consequences of his willing escape his control, so that the results of his actions go wrong in a way that bears little or no relation to his intentions.¹³ In this respect, his sin, too, is unintentional – though not for that reason any less catastrophic.

In both the Levitical and Pauline contexts, unintentional sin opens up a perspective in which the sinfulness of an action is assessed primarily by reference to its external effects on one’s relationships to God and neighbor. Insofar as the law is understood as the framework regulating those relationships, this conclusion appears consistent with the biblical definition of sin as “lawlessness” (anomia, 1 John 3:4). Crucially, this objective mode of assessment decouples the fact of sin from the sinner’s internal dispositions. To be sure, sin is regarded differently depending on whether or not it is committed with “a high hand,” but the fact that sin was unintended does not eliminate the sinner’s responsibility. Though sin may not be within one’s direct control, the fact that it is a matter of damaged or distorted relationship means that the sinner cannot dissociate herself from the situation as a purely passive victim of circumstances. On the contrary, moving to the context of relationship in analyzing sin subverts any simple binarism according to which responsibility is assessed solely in terms of whether or not the sin was intentional. A person’s responsibility is not dependent on the ability to exercise conscious control over her thoughts and actions, but rather derives from that fact that her agency cannot be abstracted from the network of interpersonal relationships in which she participates. Indeed, Jesus’ insistence that the two great commandments are love of God and neighbor (Matt. 22:37 and pars.) suggests that this impossibility of abstracting oneself from one’s relationships is central to his vision of what it means to be a moral agent. Quite contrary to the consumerist perspective, complicity in sin is a function of one’s ineluctable participation in a web of relationships and is thus not simply reducible to the choices one makes.

Sin as external power

Though the idea of unintentional sin breaks the link between responsibility and conscious control, it nevertheless continues to operate with the model of sin as a particular act performed by an identifiable agent. Yet biblical language about sin goes considerably further in rubbing against modern sensibilities when it challenges even the apparently self-evident idea that sin is something a person does. In this context, it is worth noting that though the transgression of Adam and Eve is easily the most well known sin in the Bible, it is not named as a sin in Genesis. The first explicit reference to sin in Scripture comes only after humanity is expelled from Eden, in the story of Cain and Abel. When Cain grows angry because of the favor shown to Abel’s offering, God warns him: “if you do not do well, sin [hatt

’t] is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4:7).¹⁴ The implication is that while a person may avoid committing sin in any given instance, at no point can she avoid reckoning with sin as a force at large in the world. In short, sin is not simply a kind of act people commit; it is a power that hovers around all human acting.

This way of characterizing sin is not limited to the primordial world of Genesis. In the verse that follows immediately on the passage quoted in the previous section, Paul ma...