I’m new here. I’ve been searching the blog posts to see what Bart has to say about the notion of original sin as an explanation for suffering, and I couldn’t find any commentary. Can anyone direct me to any books or blog posts or lectures where Bart discusses that? Thank you!
For a little context as to why I’m asking: A Christian I know explains the suffering in the world as resulting from original sin. According to his beliefs, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they somehow “broke” creation (or, alternately, they were forced to live in a land–Earth outside of the Garden–that was full of evil and death and Nephilim and whomever married Cain and Abel). We have tsunamis and murder because of this world broken by original sin; babies are food in the animal world because of this sin; and we are forever separated from God because of this sin. So, suffering is not God’s fault or God’s doing–it is our fault and our doing because we chose not to obey God. Jesus allowed us to be reconciled with God by taking the punishment for this sin, but unless we believe in Jesus, we cannot be saved–not because God chooses not to forgive us, but because it is somehow physically impossible to us to live in the promised paradise at the end of time unless we believe in him (why? my friend doesn’t know–maybe because we’d screw up paradise with our evil; maybe because we can’t join with something we don’t believe in).
Since Bart did not mention this explanation for suffering in his book, I’m wondering now if this idea is perhaps not a mainstream Christian idea after all. What does Bart say about original sin?
I can’t tell you offhand where Bart takes this up, but what you are describing is pretty mainstream. The doctrine of original sin is pretty controversial among Christians–it is intimately tied up in the doctrines of justification and grace, which were among the principal points of contention during the Reformation–but the general idea that suffering and death and the general brokenness of the world we live in are results of the Fall was pretty standard theology for most Christians for most of the history of Christianity. Today it is still going to be common among more theologically conservative Christians. (I had an evangelical protestant argue against evolution a few years back by pointing out that evolution by means of survival of the fittest requires death to work, and there was no death until man sinned, therefore man could not have resulted from evolution.)
The general idea is Scriptural:
God’s curse of the serpent and Adam and Eve Gen 3:14-19 already attributes some basic problems of the human condition (death, labor pains, the need to toil) to the Fall. That gets reinforced as the tradition develops: see, Wisdom 2:23-4 “for God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his party experience it,” and in the NT, Rom. 5:12 and 1 Cor. 15:21-22.
The idea gets taken beyond just death (and some specific forms of suffering) in the early Church; in fact the idea is pretty common among the Fathers that *all* suffering and *all* death, even animal death, is a result of that first sin.
I think it is important to realize how absolutely central the Fall is to Christianity as a system of thought: It is the orthodox Christian answer to the problem of evil, and it is the reason we needed a savior (a new Adam) in the first place.
Thank you. I was pretty sure that the fall was used to explain death and suffering, but when Bart didn’t address it in God’s Problem, I thought I might be mistaken. I find the contradiction in the story curious – Adam was cursed to “return to dust,” implying that this wasn’t the case before he sinned–yet they were thrown out of the garden so they wouldn’t eat of the tree of life and live forever. Unless … they were allowed to eat of this tree previously, and now it was not allowed (because immortality + knowledge = God). Anyway, I’m sure Bart talks about this somewhere – I’ll keep an eye out. Thanks again.
Sorry to editorialize but my view is that “Original Sin” is the most vile, pernicious doctrine of the Christian Church. Guilty from birth, not because of anything we’ve actually done, condemned and punished because of our “nature”. But then to sell a cure you frequently have to invent a disease. Interestingly, as Porphyry says, not a universally held doctrine. The anti-Augustinians of the Eastern Orthodox Church reject it. Jews reject it. (Here one is faced with the absurdity of Christians telling Jews what their scriptures “really” meant!)
The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good article on ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
my view is that “Original Sin” is the most vile, pernicious doctrine of the Christian Church
I can’t disagree.
As I went through my deconversion, I had conversations with a number of my colleagues, and with remarkable frequency they made the argument that we *need* a savior because we are fallen. I suppose the relevance for present purposes is simply that the Christian conception of grace and sin runs really deep, even to the point of becoming a foundational truth for many well educated Christians.
Part of my awakening was realizing it wasn’t the only coherent view of the matter. Who says I need a savior for someone else’s sin? As to my own sins, maybe my salvation is simply to repent, make amends, and do better next time–why would that not be enough?
That is an interesting take. I certainly am familiar with the concept of original sin being used to that effect–“the world is broken, don’t think you can ever really fix it.” Still, it strikes me as strange to assign that as the essential core of the doctrine, but maybe that is a blindness on my part.
But what makes you think the world is broken? The universe is what you would expect of an unguided, contingent, probabilistic process. Rather than object because it doesnt exist to accomodate us, we should consider how extraordinary it is to even exist. And then go to work.
I think that the idea that the world is broken is necessary if you believe in God. If someone actually created the world, then you have to apply some sort of moralistic take on the way things are. If a tsunami kills 100,000 people, and you believe in God, then that God is ultimately the cause of it–even if that God just created a world where such a thing could randomly happen. I think the idea of original sin came about as the explanation for why God would allow such things. It isn’t his fault–it’s OUR fault for disobeying him. It’s the only way Christians can have a god who is all powerful and all good. Of course, you can say that God knew very well that we would disobey him and break reality. That sort of argument usually leads Christians down the path of saying that God has a reason, or that we’re here on earth to try to fix things, or free will, etc. etc.
I was raised a Christian but have always rejected this notion–maybe because it seems so ugly that God would create creatures with curiosity and an independent streak (what we all should love about our children) and then set them up so a quest for knowledge breaks the world.
Now, if I was God and I was going to come down to earth as Jesus to try to influence people, I might note that all the evil they do is driven, mostly, by a fear of death. I might take a page from the Civil Rights Movement and get myself martyred so that people could see the horror of what they do to each other. And then I might rise from the dead so people knew that death wasn’t the end–they could stop fighting over territory and riches and just relax and be nice to each other. That seems a lot more likely then some bizarre payback scheme which is ultimately SO unjust. I mean, if someone did me wrong, I would not be satisfied with a type of justice that let somebody else take the punishment for them.
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