Original Sin (Main Forum)

Thank you Peter
Your response makes sense to me.

I found your post very "refreshing"!
The older I get the more I wonder about all the negative "stuff" that we were taught as children.

Peace to you
Veronica

If you have ever looked into the eyes of a young baby it would be impossible to accept this dreadful doctrine of original sin. We had a learned priest at the time at UQ in the 1950s & 60s who had informed us that limbo was just a construct by theologians. When however in 1973 our daughter our daughter was preparing for her first communion she came home upset that this concept was discussed with the youngsters, especially as her three week old brother had just died before baptism. I was appalled and passed on my information to the nun - but religious seemed to find it hard to accept that lay persons could be well informed on theological issues and I was regarded as an interferring woman.
It took a long time for the bulk of the church to catch up!
We do however often need to be be saved from the effects of the sins of all those we we have come in contact with. I suspect this realisation may have made the doctrine of original sin acceptable for we see the children of abusive parents themselves becoming abusive. This is only one of the worst results but even in little things we are prone to copy the examples of others around us- good and bad!

While in PNG I once witnessed the Baptism of a 3 year old whose parents had also just been baptised. The child was very noisy and against the idea of being baptised & even made offensive remarks.

Then as the baptismal water was about to be poured on her she opened her mouth very wide & let out an almighty scream. Smoke came out of her mouth & then after the baptism she gave us all a wonderful smile of delight & was completely calm.

For disbelievers this is absolutely true. I witnessed it personally,

BarryS

I live for those that love me
For those that know I am true
For the heaven that smiles above me
& awaits my coming too
For the cause that needs assistance
For the wrong that needs resistance
For the future in the distance
& the good that I can do.

Thank you, Peter, for your wonderful piece.
You have so eloquently articulated exactly what I believe re the whole notion of Original Sin.

If only the Doctrine of Original Blessing had been taught, I honestly believe that the world/Church would today be a very different place.

Jesus does not redeem us from original sin. Rather he enhances our lives, lives so richly blessed before the foundation of the world.

Just a couple of thoughts...

Peter

Peter, I have come to this realisation too - we should really talk about 'original joy' as we are all made in the image and likeness of the Holy One who created us. I wonder why the Church has kept the doctrine of Original Sin going - surely it is time to leave it where it belongs - in the past.

Marian

Hi Peter,

Thanks for a great post; and one with which I heartily agree. One other issue that I feel is often forgotten when we focus on Jesus’ death as saving us from sin is the actual message of Jesus. All-too-often Jesus’ moral and ethical principles are seen simply as an “add on” to the salvific events of Easter. I believe that you have hit the nail on the head with your reflections here; and I would say further. We should probably reverse the normal understanding of the relationship between Christ’s death and Christ’s ministry and see Christ’s death as the result of his revolutionary program and Christ’s resurrection as a vindication of his teachings.

Jesus did not die for our sins, or because we had to be ransomed back from Satan, he died because sinful people could not or would not accept his teachings. God raised Jesus from the dead as a divine vindication, or we might call it an imprimatur, on the Jesus message.

I think that we might similarly return to the story of the man and woman in the garden and rediscover its true meaning...and even find that there still is a place for original sin.

The story of the Man and Woman in the Garden is a very ancient story that is meant to “explain” human suffering and limitation. It is not meant to be read literally – that God punished our first parents for their sin. Rather, this story “explains” that when relationships break down (i.e. relationships between god and humans, men and women, humans and nature) things go awry. Humans try to be “like gods”, men dominate women, humans misuse and destroy the earth; and, as a result, we have societies that are beset by crime, immorality, and manmade disasters (like global warming).

In this view, the doctrine of original sin retains a strong mythic quality that continues to speak to human inadequacy and limitation – inadequacies and limitations that can, if unchecked by recourse to God, lead to sin, depravity and tragedy. The concept of original sin evolved out of our shared experience of being limited humans as well as our shared experience of being totally dependent upon God for redemption and salvation from those limitations. As such, I think that the doctrine of Original Sin is far too valuable to simply discard; but we do need to reimage it – which brings us back to the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Surely the life, death and resurrection of Jesus were not simply a “fix-it”, a last-minute attempt by God to rectify what we humans had stuffed up. Even Thomists understand that, since God knows everything within the divine being, God knows the whole of creation; every cause and its effect derives from the “First Cause” (God) and is, therefore, an emanation of the divine will. God makes provision for our needs in advance.

Following this line of thought, we may return to the original issue of Jesus’ death on the cross. Given the Divine omniscience and omnipotence, God must have already factored in the death of Jesus and shaped all of human history in advance to bring it to a climax in the resurrection of the Christ. As noted above, through the resurrection, God places a divine imprimatur on the message of love and self-sacrifice taught and, ultimately, lived by Jesus – “even unto death on a cross” (as Paul puts it so eloquently in Carmen Christi in Philippians). The death becomes a symbolic illustration of the message, and the resurrection acts as divine confirmation.

In this sense all of creation and human history have been woven into a tapestry awaiting the final defining thread found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. To that tapestry we add our own meagre colours as we conform our lives to the pattern traced by Jesus and are accordingly liberated from the fundamental limitations of human sinfulness (in the broad sense explained above).

Thanks again, Peter, for your thought-provoking post.

Godspeed,

Ian

Ian J. Elmer

I am prepared to press onto the end along a path on which each step makes me more certain, towards horizons that are ever more shruded in mist (Teilhard de Chardin)

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Peter thanks for this thought provoking post. It makes me far more cheerful reading this and then able to cope with day to day living than the reminder that we are all grovelling in the mud of original sin!!

Helen

I made the point that Original Sin makes no sense in the scientific world we live in. By suggesting that it was because of a misdemeanour committed by Adam and Eve that death came into the world ignores the fact that our world has been evolving for millions of years and our universe for something like 16 billion years with all the death and all the chaos that goes with this evolutionary process. Men and women did not fall from any kind of preternatural existence. They are the result of an evolutionary process! And so it seems to me that it is not possible for the Doctrine of Original Sin and our cosmological world outlook to coexist.

......the notion of an inherited sin seems very difficult to reconcile with any convincing view of God's goodness, mercy and justice.

The way I see it, for what it's worth, is that we didn't inherit an original "Adam and Eve" sin but we did inherit our evolutionary beginnings of unenlightened animal natures based on mere instinct and survival (of the fittest (which leaves me out)) - then as humanity developed and evolved we gave this the metaphorical description of original sin. This makes much more sense to me given the meanings of the names Adam and Eve as representative humans.

So what does Jesus 'save' us from? He saves us from (as long as we choose to follow his example and call on his companionship (companion - com/panis - meaning literally 'eating bread together')), he saves us from the uselessness of being mere animals and living as such, sort of what Keirkegaard described as the aesthetic/material/experiential/physical phase. I use the word 'useless' as in 'wasted' in that being fully human to me means transforming our mere animal natures into that which encompasses all the divine aspects and potential of human life as expressed in human culture but especially as expressed in love as God is Love.

I doubt that, without Jesus, the world as we know it, at least in the West, would have evolved into the culture we have which, for all its crap, is still one based on love, justice and equality, something we tend to forget. However, it seems to me that many today are hell bent in ignoring this these days and would prefer to live according the animal/aesthetic nature that ever resides within us (call it original sin if you wish) - a world red in tooth and claw, both physically and psychologically speaking, and where survival of the fittest and all its resulting cyclical effects on the recipients of such violence becomes the norm, rather than the 'heavenly'/'Eden-like'/'kingdom of Love' view expressed in the beatitudes/Gospels.

Why this trend back to our animal natures? Well, one reason, I think, is that the church/Christianity is failing miserably to get Jesus' message across - if there are those who have chosen against the Gospels (and who in their right mind would want to do that when they speak of God's deep love and acceptance of us in a way that transforms hearts and minds into health and fulfilment - who would not want that, seriously), it is not because the Gospels and the incredibly loving God/man Jesus who is behind them, have failed to be Truth, it is because we have failed to be His hands and feet and mind and heart.

So, the choice is ours, but as always, our choices are based on our experiences but also, hopefully supported by reason and humility, especially when those experiences have been damaging and negative.

Stephen

Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill…….