Dr. George Therukaattil MCBS
What happened to ‘original sin’? How should I understand it? I have never believed in it. Is it really a sin we commit like personal sin? Can you give me a rational explanation of it?
Answer:
The teaching of St Augustine, the account of the fall in Genesis, St Paul’s letter to the Romans – all have played a central role in the traditional formulation of original sin. Augustine invented the concept from St Paul who believed in an inherited evil consequence or state of sin, which we would now term as “concupiscence.” Paul writes of it at length in the well-known passage from the letter to the Romans: “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me…So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members” (Rom 7:14-23).
Augustine’s reasoning about ‘original sin’ comes from the above passage of St Paul for whom Christ was the universal redeemer without whom men cannot be saved. But if they need to be saved, they must be sinners. Christ is the saviour of the newborn, so they must be also sinner. But what sins could they have but original sin itself. We are finite creatures and therefore unable to reach the very goal inscribed in us, which is to share in the life of the Trinity. This is salvation that comes through Christ regardless of sin because we are impotent to attain this goal, ourselves.
Now, Augustine had to explain how original sin could be handed down from one generation to the next. He does this by stating that though man possessed freedom and the ability not to sin, the fallen descendants of Adam, as a result of Adam’s sin, suffered mortality, ignorance and loss of the ability to accomplish the good one wills. The passions now interfere with and dominate rational thought in a disorder, Augustine called, concupiscence. Although baptism removes original sin and guilt for concupiscence, concupiscence remains. Concupiscence is not in itself a sin, but rather inclines one to sin. Grace won by Christ elevates human nature, but does not remove the distortion (concupiscence) caused by Adam, which continues to be handed down from one generation to the next but now can be overcome through the redemption brought about by Christ. Much of this Augustine’s reasoning on original sin was adopted into Church teaching in the year 418, at the Council of Carthage and continued afterwards.
When we analyze Augustine’s understanding of original sin, we find that ‘original sin’ as a doctrine must in all honesty be said to be the result of too literal a reading of the creation narrative in Genesis and other statements of St Paul. So we shall look into the concept of original sin first in Genesis and then in St Paul.
Biblical scholars generally agree that of the two traditions found in Genesis – Elohistic [the Priestly] and Yahwistic – the Yahwistic tradition of Genesis states that the story of Adam and Eve belongs to the genre of myth reflecting truths. The story of Adam and Eve is an attempt to explain symbolically the existence of evil in man’s condition. The Yahwist’s account blames man for man’s fallen condition. Man’s sin broke the harmony of God’s original plan for man. As a consequence of this original sin, subsequent generations were transmitted a human nature in a fallen state. This is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense, because original sin is “contracted” and not “committed.” That is, original sin is a state and not an act. Thus, as a result of original sin, generations subsequent to Adam and Eve inherited this state, but not the guilt and punishment.
But the inheritance of guilt and punishment by subsequent generations of an individual sinner was a common belief among the ancient Hebrews. This belief was reflected in the Hebrew proverb: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are on edge.” Some of the prophets attempted to lead Israel to a more refined consciousness, and denied the truth of the proverb (Jer 31:29-30; Ezek 18:24). However, the Yahwist account of Genesis probably saw the consequences of original sin as inherited guilt and punishment to the whole human race. In the Yahwist view, it was not the individual’s own sins that brought evils upon him, but the sins of his ancestors.
St Paul links concupiscence of which Augustine spoke earlier with death: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24). Clearly, St Paul believed, as did the authors of Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, that sin led to more than just physical death. The source of sin and the spiritual death resulting from it was Adam: “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22). St Paul further discussed the contrast between Adam and Christ in his letter to the Romans: “Then as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience many are made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:18-19). Paul discusses the link between death (spiritual) and sin: “As sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned…” (Rom 5:12).
This passage raises the question of what St Paul meant by the phrase “because all men sinned.” The word “because” in this phrase is a translation of the Greek word eph’nÇi, for which another possible translation is “so that.” The word “because” seems to imply a belief that mankind sins as a result of inherited example or inherited guilt. If eph’nÇi is interpreted as “so that,” then this implies that Adam gave mankind a fallen state, an inherited tendency to sin, which leads us to sin. The logic of St Paul’s passage in Romans taken as a whole, however, supports the interpretation of “inherited guilt.” The Church today has rejected the notion that original sin is “inherited guilt,” and teaches that we tend toward sin, because of our fallen state which in turn results from original sin.
In his encyclical letter, Credo of the People of God, Pope Paul VI discussed original sin: “We believe that in Adam all have sinned, which means that the original offence committed by him caused human nature, common to all men, to fall to a state in which it bears the consequences of that offence, and which is not the state in which it was at first in our first parents – established as they were in holiness and justice, and in which man knew neither evil nor death. It is human nature so fallen stripped of the grace that clothed it, injured in its own natural powers and subjected to the dominion of death that is transmitted to all men, and it is in this sense that every man is born in sin. We therefore hold, with the Council of Trent, that original sin, is transmitted with human nature, ‘not by imitation, but by propagation’ and that it is thus ‘proper to everyone’.”
Pope Benedict XVI explained the concept of original sin in terms of relationships. The Trinity, a communion or relation of three Persons in one God, is the image in which human beings are created. So, human beings are relational, and that they possess their lives only by way of relationship. To be truly human means being related to others in love. Sin is a rejection of relationality because it wants to make the human person a God. Sin is loss or disturbance of relationship, and consequently, sin always touches others, altering and affecting the world. Thus, when the network of human relationships is damaged from the beginning, then every human enters a relational damaged world. We can only be saved and become ourselves, when we engage in the proper relationship. Since the relationship with creation has been damaged, only God the Creator can save us. God takes the initiative and stretches out His hand to us, even though we are the ones who initially cut ourselves from Him. Pope Benedict writes that only being loved is being saved, and that only God’s love can purify damaged human love and radically re-establish the network of alienated relationships.
The tendency to sin or break the relationship on the part of humans is acknowledged by Bible, right from the beginning and it is said to be part and parcel of human nature itself or what we might say as the essential aspect of ‘being human.’ It is because every man and woman is free to choose and somehow chooses in accordance with one’s own will instead of the will of God that sin ensues. The root cause of the so-called ‘original sin’ may be this inherent tendency to sin. Because of this inherent tendency to sin, we may say there is no human being, who is an exception.
Original sin is not a committed sin, but rather a contracted sin. Unlike all other sins, which are acts of one’s own personal sin, it is a state of the soul, representing the fallen nature that was handed on to us by Adam who fell into death upon committing the original sin. It represents the fallen state of humanity in which we find ourselves devoid of the original grace and holiness with which humanity was created, (Genesis 1:31). Sin not only has personal consequences on one’s own soul, but collective consequences that damage all souls. Original Sin forever changed humanity by allowing sin to enter the world. Sin is rooted in our preference for ourselves over God. Through the Original Sin humanity took on a fallen nature, one that is incomplete without Jesus’ saving work on the cross.
Original sin means: “every human being from the first moment of his humanity is a sinner, and hence he needs the saving grace of Christ.” Therefore, infants, too, are sinners. All are sinners “not because their nature is evil, but because they have freely chosen to be sinners.” The traditional theology’s preoccupation with Adam and Eve and their sin and its transmission to us, and the sin of our first parents is but the symbolic expression of the universal sinfulness of mankind. [Alfred Vanneste, The Dogma of Original Sin].
There are other theologians who interpret original sin as the sin of the world, which is composed of actual sins and sinful situations. These sinful situations are the way in which the free actions of one person impact the life of someone else for evil. This understanding of ‘original sin’ avoids the defects of an evolutionary world view which would neglect the drama of sin and salvation. [Piet Schoonenberg, Man and Sin].
But then there are theologians, like Herbert Haag, who say that original sin is not there in the Scripture. According to him, the proof text use of Scriptures of the past that wanted to find in it a foundation for the prerogatives of Adam and Eve, the hereditary nature of original sin, and so forth tends to focus on these texts in contrast to the Scriptures as a whole. Thus in the priestly account of creation there is no scriptural basis for Adam’s preternatural gifts or immortality. And the curse of the Yahwist account “reflects rather the human situation, or situation grounded in the nature of man and independent of whether he sins or not.” And so the beginning of sin in Genesis does not really mean original sin, but more that there is a sinful world, and generation after generation of sinners. When we arrive at St Paul’s famous verses in Romans 5:12-21 about how through one man sin came into the world, the thrust is the same. There is no biological unity with Adam. Sin enters the world through Adam, and we commit our own sins, and thus stand in need of redemption. There seems to be no teaching of original sin here. Sin somehow enters the world and becomes, a rushing torrent, but we maintain our freedom and enter into the world not as sinners until we commit our own personal sins. [Herbert Haag, Is Original Sin in Scripture?].
The replacement of a static view of the world by an evolutionary one provides a necessary and invigorating context, according to Ludwig Ott, for a thorough revision and renewal of the traditional concept of original sin, and keeps us from being perpetually at odds with science for misplaced religious reasons. He says that as the Sacred Writer of Genesis had not the intention of representing with scientific accuracy the intrinsic constitution of things, and the sequence of the works of creation but of communicating knowledge in a popular way suitable to the idiom and to the pre-scientific development of his time, the account is not to be regarded or measured as if it were couched in language which is strictly scientific…
Thus, in a scientific and evolutionary perspective on life it is difficult to reconcile with the story of a primordial couple rebelling against God in the Garden of Eden and handing down to posterity the consequences of their disobedience through a genetic history. So, theologians, like Zachary Hays, J.F. Haught, and P.A. Williams would, therefore, like to view the original sin, if at all to be accepted, as integral to an unfinished and evolving universe.
The classical gifts traditional theology attributed to Adam and Eve fly “in the face of our evolutionary worldview and renders the Fall itself wholly unintelligible.” “Obviously, Christology eliminates the need for the supplementary hypothesis of monogenism to ground the assertion of sin’s radical and universal sway.” And again: “Obviously, the shaking of the scriptural foundations by critical consciousness brings the received doctrine of original sin crashing down.”
Therefore, theologian Stephen Duffy proposes a reconstruction based on the components of existentialist angst, Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the sin of the world, and an eschatological dimension. “The central point,” in regard to angst, “is that humanity is saddled with a basic ontological insecurity and dread which derive from freedom itself as the capacity for self-transcendence.” Fallibility and anxiety become the ontological constituents of freedom. Sin knows, therefore, a tragic historic inevitability. And in a passage that appears close to the heart of Duffy’s reconstruction, he tells us: “Original sin” is a code word for an involuntary existential condition that is natural to humans as disordered and incomplete.
Science has shown us that what we read in Genesis is not historical fact. There was no paradise, no freedom from suffering and death, and most of all, no offence committed by the first human beings. Original sin was not some primal crime. “It is the contradiction between what humans are and what they are called to become in ChriSt” The contradiction is that human beings are the product of a long evolutionary process which at times required aggression and violence. There was suffering and evil for millions of years, but no guilt, and no sin. It is by genes and culture that we are in a state of alienation from God. Original sin, then, becomes a biologically and culturally inherited state which is the result of God’s creation by way of evolution.
In this regard Teilhard de Chardin was ahead of his time, for he saw the importance of evolution in developing a new understanding of God. God is the Omega, drawing evolution into the future, and providing a foundation for understanding evolutionary emergence. But Teilhard, and Tillich, as well, “moved decisively in the direction of interpreting sin, evil, suffering, and death as tragic, or as somehow inevitable.” For Teilhard this meant, “original sin, taken in its widest sense, is not a malady specific to the earth, nor is it bound up with human generation. It simply symbolizes the inevitable chance of evil… as an inevitable consequence of their effort to progress. Original sin is the essential reaction of the finite to the creative act. Inevitably it insinuates itself into existence through the medium of all creation.”
In conclusion, modern theologians are of the opinion that there is no original sin in the sense of a free and deliberate sin we commit, but only a state, a hereditary impairment, hence ingrained or a natural and nurtured instinct of selfishness, that flows from the evolutionary process itself. This could be taken as the rational explanation on ‘original sin.’
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