Original Sin

Illuminating the Riddle

Henri Blocher, D. A. Carson

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9780830871353
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Études bibliques

We live in a world shot through with evil. The twentieth century has witnessed suffering and human cruelty on a scale never before imagined. Yet, paradoxically, in recent years the doctrine of original sin has suffered neglect and ridicule. In this philosophically sophisticated treatment of the biblical evidence for original sin, Henri Blocher offers a robust response. Interacting with the best theological thinking on the subject, this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume shows that while the nature of original sin is a mystery—even a riddle—only belief in it makes sense of evil and wrongdoing. After a general survey of the biblical evidence, Blocher moves on to discuss the two key texts. First, he considers the relation of the Eden story of Genesis 2 and 3 to modern scientific, literary and theological thinking. Then, he offers a new and groundbreaking interpretation of Romans 5, where Paul discusses Christ and Adam. From this exegetical foundation, he goes on to show how the doctrine of original sin makes sense of the paradoxes of human existence. In the final chapter, he discusses the intellectual difficulties that some feel remain with the doctrine itself. Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead

Chapter One

Original sin as taught in
Holy Scripture

‘Nothing is so easy to denounce, nothing is so difficult to understand.’ So wrote Augustine on original sin.1

To him the doctrine was a battlefield. The controversy has continued unabated through the centuries. The leaders of the Reformation, with the exception of Ulrich Zwingli,2 renewed the emphasis on the Augustinian view. It was included in the main confessions of faith in the Reformation churches, such as the Forty-two Articles framed by Archbishop Cranmer for the Church of England in 1553. The arguments have not subsided; Protestant liberals carry on the various attacks against the doctrine of original sin which the Socinians and some Anabaptists had launched in the sixteenth century. The perpetual conflict probably witnesses both to the difficulty of the arguments and to the stakes involved.

A new stage was reached (and new heights in subtlety and sophistication) in the first half of the twentieth century with the powerful neo-orthodox reinterpretation of the doctrine. In the wake of Kierkegaard’s elusive The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Karl Barth, Emil Brunner and Reinhold Niebuhr – who praised Kierkegaard’s analysis as ‘the profoundest in Christian thought’ (Niebuhr 1941: 182 n. 2) – again preached original sin, but not without making far-reaching changes in their understanding of it.

Among evangelical theologians, John Murray’s series of short, sharp articles, published under the title The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (1959) and G. C. Berkouwer’s Sin (first Dutch edition 1959-60) illustrate two contrasting kinds of original thinking within orthodox bounds: the former with rigour and careful argument; the latter with well-informed sensitivity and openness to the concerns of contemporary theology – but still confessing, in a softer, more sympathetically nuanced tone, the main tenets of Reformed tradition. Both contributions still deserve our full consideration.

Has controversy cooled since then? After years of comparative neglect, at least in Protestant circles, there are signs that interest in the doctrine may be awakening. Feminist process theologian Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki has set out a vigorous reply to Niebuhr on original sin (Suchocki 1994). The American Lutheran professor Ted Peters does theology in a lively, thought-provoking way, raising deep questions on the subject of original sin (Peters 1994). Professor David L. Smith in Canada (though an heir to the US Southern Baptist tradition) has produced a most user-friendly presentation (Smith 1994), which follows in the train of Bernard Ramm’s moderate synthesis of evangelical substance and modern ideas a decade earlier (Ramm 1985) – the first token, maybe, of attention being paid to the old doctrine again. The contributions of these competent scholars are not great in number; they are, rather, wide-ranging, and semi-popular in style. They leave enough room, therefore, for a more concentrated study, one which may also take more notice of the work of Roman Catholic theologians from continental Europe.

There is no urgent need to rehearse the history of the doctrine. It has been covered in a number of monographs, and Norman P. Williams’s classic (1927), though sorely lacking in sympathy for Augustine, offers sufficient resources.3 My aim, as my sub-title suggests, will rather be to illuminate the riddle. Original sin is a riddle, certainly, and I dare hope that this book will cast some light upon it (audentes fortuna juvat!) ; even more importantly, however, the human phenomenon is a riddle, and I trust that the doctrine of original sin will illuminate that phenomenon.

This book will be an exercise in dogmatics, not apologetics – in this, I agree with Kierkegaard, who insisted that original sin comes under the jurisdiction of dogmatics (1980: sub-titles 9, 23 and passim). There may be some incidental apologetic benefits, but the central question will be: what are we to believe, in the obedience of faith? Since the first concern of evangelical dogmatics, in grateful obedience to its ‘external principle of knowledge’, is agreement with Scripture, I shall enquire first (chapter 1) about the general support which may be found in the whole Bible for the church dogma, that is, the ‘Augustinian’ doctrine, of original sin. I shall be wary of the enticements of those who follow Karl Barth’s lead4 and draw their theology of sin from Christ and the cross directly. Though apparently most ‘Christian’, this procedure conceals a subtle snare: the selection and abstraction of the relevant elements of Christology, a complex field of study, is bound to be arbitrary. If one starts with the cross, the character of Christ’s work as a remedy for sin, as redemption, is obscured;5 simply to read the meaning of original sin off the Christ-event is to act as if we were masters of revelation. Far from it! We are mere disciples, and cannot afford not to start with the teaching of God. Sound theological method requires that we listen to Scripture as a whole, according to the analogy of faith, and only then perceive how precisely the doctrine is proclaimed and, so to speak, reinforced in the Christ-event.

The path to be travelled by this volume is fairly easy to mark out. Once the biblical survey is completed, we shall turn to the ‘origin’ passage, Genesis 3, asking whether we should read it as history or as myth, saga or symbol (chapter 2). Then the other scripture upon which the doctrine of original sin was founded, Romans 5, will engage our scrutiny (chapter 3); against all the odds, will a new proposal break through the deadlock of interpretations ancient and modern? In the next chapter (4), we shall observe how the doctrine of ‘original sin’ unveils human experience, unlocks the enigmas of life and sets them in proper perspective. Finally, we shall confront the core difficulty of Augustine’s construction: the hereditary transmission of what is a most personal exercise of freedom, namely, sin.

First, though, we need some idea of just what it is we are talking about. Calvin’s definition offers as good a starting-point as any. Original sin, he writes in the Institutes, is that ‘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 which Scripture calls “works of the flesh” (Gal. 5:19)’ (II.i.8). By way of developing and commenting on that definition, we may note the following four points. First, original sin is universal sinfulness, consisting of attitudes, orientations, propensities and tendencies which are contrary to God’s law, incompatible with his holiness, and found in all people, in all areas of their lives. Secondly, it belongs to the nature of human beings (it is also called peccatum naturale), ‘nature’ being that stable complex of characteristics typical of the class of creatures known as ‘human’, and present from birth (natura comes from nasci, ‘to be born’). Thirdly, since it belongs to our nature, it is inherited; hence its usual name in German, Erbsünde, literally ‘hereditary sin’. Fourthly, it stems from Adam, whose disobedience gave original sin a historical beginning, so that the present sinfulness of all can be traced back through the generations, to the first man and progenitor of the race.

The ‘origin’ of original sin is touched on in John 8:44, which speaks of the archē of the devil’s murderous lie. This is the ‘enemy’ whom Revelation calls the ‘original (archaios) serpent (12:9; 20:2). Augustine preferred ‘original’ to ‘natural’ as a qualifying term in order to stipulate that universal sinfulness had a historical beginning and cause.6 The famous Genevan theologian François Turretin, who won the title of the ‘Protestant Aquinas’, made the perceptive remark that sin is not radically original, since it derives not from the first origin (creation) but from a second one; yet, he maintained, the term is apt because original sin flows from the originating sin, propagates itself in each person’s origination, and becomes the origin of actual sins (1847: 569 [IX.10.4]). ‘Actual sins’ are all other sins, though the demarcation line is hard to draw, as older divines recognized.7 In Judaism, we are told, ‘a distinction was drawn between the original stock or capital (so-called original sin; Heb. qeren) and interest (individual sins)’ (Hensel 1975: 721). It is probably wise therefore to think of both in the closest possible organic conjunction.

Actual sins incur guilt. The traditional Augustinian line is that original sin does too, and Calvin’s definition, ‘liable to God’s wrath’, implies it clearly. But not all are so tough-minded. Many have doubted whether, in the Christian tradition, there is a concept of true original guilt. If we speak, as Cyprian did, of an alien sin,8 is not the phrase ‘alien guilt’ a contradiction in terms?

The scandal seems even greater when heredity is the stated mode of transmission. Karl Barth vehemently rejects the idea, and with it the term Erbsünde. ‘“Hereditary sin” has a hopelessly naturalistic, deterministic and even fatalistic ring. If both parts of the term are taken seriously, it is a contradictio in adjecto in face of which there is no help for it but to juggle away either the one part or the other’ (1956: 501). Even those who hold to the traditional thesis still have to think how sin and guilt can be inherited.

To the law and the testimony! Does Scripture support, at least in broad terms, the doctrine I have just delineated?

Universal sinfulness

That a bent towards sinning does affect all humankind, and that it cannot be isolated as belonging to any one part of the person, has been agreed on all sides, or nearly so, in the twentieth century. Even those who oppose the church dogma of original sin concur in this basic assessment of our reality. It would be hard to close one’s eyes to the data of experience. The value of solidarity, highly prized in the modern scale of values, forbids one to draw radical distinctions between individuals,9 and the renewed perception that the individual is a psychosomatic unity does not favour a division between ‘parts’ of the person with regard to sinfulness.

The witness of Scripture fully warrants this consensus. It majors on sinfulness as the human problem, which alone causes separation between the Creator and his creatures (Is. 59:2). It stresses that none escapes the reign of sin and that no part of the human person is left untainted (Pr. 20:9; Ps. 14; and Paul’s quotations in Rom. 3:10ff.). But it does not formally distinguish our proneness to evil from our sinful acts or failures to act. Yet the twofold universal spread of actual sin (that is, throughout the whole race and within the whole individual life) could hardly obtain without an equally universal bent, or corruption. The Bible itself explicitly follows that logic.

Illustrations abound. As early as the case of Cain, sin is depicted as ‘crouching at the door’, implying an impulse or desire which Cain ought to master (Gn. 4:7).10 For Paul also, sin, ever ready to cause all manner of evil, is ‘lying there’ (parakeitai, Rom. 7:21), a tyrant ‘indwelling’ his members (v. 17); a few verses earlier, sin resembles a snake, apparently lying dead within the person, which springs to life in the presence of the commandment (w. 8-11). James’s letter highlights the process that gives birth to particular sinful acts; the source is the person’s own epithymia, ‘concupiscence’ or inordinate desire (Jas. 1:14). Ligier (1960: 106f.) interprets the ‘stubbornness’ of the heart, which Jeremiah so often denounces (3:17; 7:24; 9:14; 11:8; etc.), as a passionate impulse of freedom, an anarchic unloosing which cannot but issue in disobedience.11 The same idea of the existence of sin before sins are committed is suggested by the metaphors of sin written upon the heart (Je. 17:1), of heart and ears uncircumcised (Je. 6:10, 9:25f.; cf. 4:4 and Dt. 10:16; 30:6; Acts 7:51) and of the heart being of stone (Ezk. 11:19). Our Lord himself stressed that all the things that truly defile people originate in their hearts (Mt. 15:19f. and par.), and that evil words flow from what fills their hearts, and evil deed...