I was born into a religious community that insisted that I, along with every other human being, had been “born in sin” which consigned all of us to eternal damnation. I had been in Adam’s loins, it was said, when he sinned, so I was implicated along with him; I was contaminated with original sin.
As an eleven or twelve-year-old youngster, I found this indictment to be unfair to the extreme. How, I asked, could I be held accountable, let alone damned to hell, for something in which I had not participated consciously? But because, at that point in my life, I was not aware of any alternative socio-religious construct, I entered a period of torment lasting at least four years, including repeated nightmares of falling into hell. My regular attempts at jumping through the hoops the church held up before me to escape this damnation always ended in failure. I simply was damned from the get-go, so I began acting like it to the growing dismay of my parents and teachers.
Eventually, at the age of sixteen, I was able to move beyond my childhood trauma into the arms of a gracious God. I still don’t understand how or why it happened when it did, but at least now I had received a pardon for my original sinful state and could be assured of escaping from hell. But my childhood skepticism of this pernicious doctrine never really left me.
When I recently picked up The Story of Original Sin by John E. Toews (2013), a respected retired Anabaptist educator, I discovered that Toews had quietly shared my distrust of this narrative for most of his life. In his book, he traces the history of the doctrine of original sin and concludes that it, “…is without biblical and historical foundation” (88).
Toews notes that in most western theological constructs, Genesis 3 forms the foundation upon which the concept of original sin rests. However, he observes that the text does not use the term ‘sin’ at all. As a matter of fact, “The story in Genesis tells us nothing about any fallen angel, Satan, or the origin of evil” (5). Further, the text does not say that Eve’s motive in eating the fruit of the forbidden tree was to become like God, but that she desired to gain wisdom.
As the pronouncement of punishment begins in verse 8, we take note that Adam and Eve did not die physically. What did die, however, was their intimate relationship with God; that is to say they were expelled from the presence of God in the garden where they had had regular communion with God. In a broader sense, says Toews: “the punishment, vv. 14-24, indicates that every relationship in life and in culture is disrupted because of Adam and Eve’s mistrust and disobedience – the relationship between an animal and God, between animals and humans, between man and woman, between humans and God” (12).
It is therefore fair to say that Genesis 3 does not speak of a ‘fall’ in the sense that there is an ontological change in Adam and Eve – that is that a change took place in their human nature. This is important to understand because it means that the story of salvation history in the Bible does not begin with a ‘fall’ into total depravity but instead with broken relationships. Accordingly, salvation can be seen in terms of healing that damaged relationship, rather than changing the nature of our beings.
Before turning to the New Testament commentary on Genesis 3, Toews reviews the literature on this subject in Second Temple Judaism (200BCE – 200CE). Here he finds an overwhelming consensus that sin is understood to be a free act of the will that disrupts relationships, not a condition inherited from Adam. Toews found that in Second Temple Judaism the sin of Adam and Eve were thought of in relational or covenantal, rather than ontological terms. So, it becomes clear that the notion of original sin was born somewhere beyond the Jewish Scriptures and traditions, likely much farther down the road.
It comes as a surprise to many that the story of Adam and Eve found in Genesis 3 is not repeated again in all of the Old Testament. Neither does Jesus pick up that story in his life and ministry. Jesus does not speculate about the cosmic origin of sin; instead simply assumes the universal presence of sin defined in terms of relational brokenness. This stance is perhaps best articulated in the parable Jesus tells of the prodigal son: a relationship has been broken between father and son, the father eagerly awaits his son’s return, and when he does come home the father showers him with grace and forgiveness (Luke 15:11-32).
As in the Gospels, there is no mention of the Adam and Eve story in Acts, even though the Apostles proclaimed the gospel message and many were converted. The message was about a voluntary turning toward forgiveness of sin and a restored relationship, not about undoing an original ontological flaw in people’s make up.
It is when we get into the writings of Paul that the story of Adam and Eve resurfaces for the first time. On two occasions he cites the deception of Eve as a warning: in 2 Corinthians 11:3 the warning is not to be deceived by false prophets and in I Timothy 2:14 he uses Eve’s deception as an argument for women to learn in silence rather than speak openly about things they had not yet learned about. In I Corinthians 15:22 Paul draws Adam into the text to suggest that: “Whatever happened in Adam is reversed in Christ. Paul provides no explanation of what he means by in Adam all die” (39).
But it is his longer passage in Romans 5:12-19 that has given the most oxygen to the debate about the role Adam played in the origin of sin in the world. Toews suggests that Paul is here formulating an apocalyptic theology of sin in light of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. To begin with, Paul introduces sin as a power present in the world, not as individual acts of wrong-doing. “Sin as a cosmic power was present in the cosmos before Adam. It strode onto the stage of human history through one person. Adam turned Sin loose in the world. And with Sin came Death, also personified in Romans” (42).
Second, it is important to note that Paul does not say anything in this text about how sin was transmitted to Adam’s progeny. On the other hand, he does make the point, that while Adam may have turned sin loose, the death that follows for all happens “because all sinned.” In other words, all persons become responsible for and suffer the consequences of their own sin. There is no hint in Paul of a biological transmission of sin from one generation to another.
At least according to John E. Toews, a careful reading of the New Testament does not provide any kind of foundation for the doctrine of original sin. It seems then that the logical place to search for its origin is in the writings of the early church fathers.
It seems logical to begin with the Eastern Church fathers because they spoke and wrote in Greek, the language of the New Testament. Toews reports that it was the middle of the second century before a “post-Paul” reference to Genesis 3 appears in the writings of the Eastern Church fathers, which suggests that, while the church was expanding rapidly during its first century, the concept of original sin was not part of its message. In summarizing the view of Eastern Church fathers, including Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement and Origen, Toews states that “…the Greek fathers taught that humanity inherited Adam’s punishment – death – but not Adam’s guilt. Guilt could only be the result of a freely committed personal act” (60).
The Latin-speaking church fathers, coming from North Africa, Milan and Rome, mostly read the New Testament from an early Latin translation from the original Greek, Vetus Latina, which was replaced by a more accurate work by St. Jerome in 382, known as the Latin Vulgate.” The problem was that this earlier translation renders the Greek phrase “eph ho” in Romans 5:12 as “in whom” rather than “on account of” or “because of” as the corrected Latin Vulgate does. Tertullian (155-220 CE) was the first of the Western church fathers to believe in the “traducian origin” of the soul, that is “in procreation a fragment of the father’s soul shapes itself into a new soul bearing all the hereditary qualities of the father” (63). It followed logically, that every soul then bears the mark of the “original moral fault” (64). This fault was seen as “corruption” rather than “weakness” as the Greek speaking fathers saw it. Cyprian followed up on Tertullian’s views by proclaiming that this hereditary sin is “remitted” through infant baptism.
Ambrose of Milan (339-97 CE) was the first to speak of Adam’s sin as a “fall” brought on by his pride of wanting to be equal with God. Ambrosiaster also wrote a major commentary on the Book of Romans, supporting these views using the faulty Vetus Latina. However, it was the very influential Augustine of Hippo who cemented original sin into its place in western theology. In 395 CE he wrote: “We have all become one lump of clay, that is, a lump of sin…we as sinners deserve nothing other than eternal damnation” (74). A few years later, in 397 CE he uses the phrase, ‘original sin’ for the first time in the history of Christian thought.
To sum up then, Augustine taught “that ‘original sin’ as ‘moral and legal liability’ was passed on genetically from Adam to all subsequent human beings because all subsequent human beings were present in Adam’s semen” (85). That is to say that all descendants of Adam were condemned to hell from the time of birth for a sin they committed before they were even born. This teaching became official church dogma at the Council of Orange in 529 CE.
I finally had found where and how the doctrine of original sin had originated. The next question I had was what the church had done with it since then. On this subject, I learned further from Toews that from the 6th century onward the doctrine of original sin was considered bedrock dogma in the western church. Infants were baptized to remit this original sin which had damned them to hell from the moment of birth. The Protestant Reformation of the early 16th century, for the most part, did little to ameliorate this sinister world view.
So where, I asked, does that leave the modern church with respect to the issue of original sin? While some disenchanted western Christians have adopted the Eastern Orthodox Church as their new spiritual home, others have attempted to bring eastern non-ontological understandings about original sin into their churches in the West where they feel more socially and culturally at home. However, such moves have affected relatively few persons. Another option for some has been to re-engage with the Anabaptist story beginning in the 16th century. Anabaptists stubbornly held to Ezekiel 18:4 which explicitly states that “…it is only the person who sins who shall die.” It seems that this freed the movement from the pessimism with respect to sin so characteristic of Catholic Church and Protestant orthodoxy. According to Robert Friedman, Anabaptists held that “…the sin of Adam and Eve introduced into the world a powerful tendency or inclination to sin which resulted in universal sinfulness, but it was a sinfulness by choice rather than by nature…The consequence of the sin in Eden was moral, not ontological, that is, inherited in human nature” (100).
Unfortunately, I have noticed that the notion of original sin has found its way into many Anabaptist circles. My personal trauma related to this doctrine took place in an Anabaptist church that had in essence become fundamentalist/evangelical at its core. While I thought the Anabaptist and Eastern Church perspectives on original sin were a big improvement over Augustine’s views, I still felt I was living in a kind of limbo. Was there perhaps a more positive theological formulation that could be an employed in relation to the question of original sin?
The answer to that question came to me recently through reading Danielle Shroyer’s book, Original Blessing: Putting Sin in its Rightful Place (2016). Shroyer gladly acknowledges that she is basically popularizing the work of Matthew Fox, a prominent 20th century theologian who coined the term, “original blessing,” in his book, Original Blessing, A Primer in Creation Spirituality. In her book, she declares that instead of sin and separation being the headline of the gospel, “original blessing” takes that priority position. “Far more than just being made in God’s image, original blessing claims we are steadfastly held in relationship with God. Original blessing reminds us that God calls us good and beloved before we are anything else. Sin is not the heart of our nature; blessing is” (xi).
I consider this a major step forward from Augustine’s formulations. From this perspective we begin to see that we are designed to belong to God. Shroyer insists that the Christian story is one that begins with ‘God-with-us,’ a reality that is present throughout the story. That means that even though our relationship with God may vary from time to time, it is never located far away. We are in God and God surrounds us, holding us in love.
Shroyer goes on to say that original blessing means that we do not have to work “against” our human nature to live the life God has intended for us: “when we rest in original blessing, we recognize we are kept by God, seen by God, and given peace by God” (16). It is God’s sovereign choice to love his creation, which then means that this original blessing is much more of a great leveler among us than our common experience of making sinful choices: “Original blessing means realizing your sin is not the most important thing about you, even if the world – or the church – makes you feel like it is” (24).
In chapters two and three of her book, ‘Revisiting the Garden’ and ‘Rethinking Sin’, Shroyer, summarizes most of the arguments against adopting original sin as our starting point that John E. Toews made in his book we have discussed above, so I will not repeat those arguments here. She does, however, add a number of salient perspectives I found meaningful. For one, she suggests that: “…original blessing invites us to enter each stage and aspect of human life as a gift…We do not need to become less human to follow Jesus, but more fully human, embodying both the image and likeness of God” (163). Further, she claims that with this perspective Jesus is more a Great Physician who has come to heal what has gone wrong than a debt officer; a significant distinction in my estimation. The doctrine of original blessing also acknowledges that the deepest level of our human nature is designed to hear God’s voice and walk in his way. Another way of saying that is that our ‘center of gravity’ is original blessing.
Shroyer does not ignore or make light of sin, which is always beckoning us to go against our true nature and do the wrong thing. If we give in to that temptation, we will soon find ourselves off the rails in one way or another; living in ways that are unnatural to who we really are. If we persist in choosing sin, we will find the image of God increasingly obscured by the debris these sins leave behind. But these sins are always volitional – resulting from the wrong choices we make – not evidence of a totally depraved nature that naturally tends to choose evil options.
Original blessing is the great news of the gospel and it has major ramifications for everything that pertains to life and godliness. It means that the trauma of eternal separation that haunted me as a youth was an unnecessary diversion in my journey toward acknowledging God. I am being drawn eternally into a deeper relationship with a God who loves unconditionally, instead of a God who is willing to damn me if I don’t return that love in appropriate ways.
An old star has reappeared in the heavens, and I intend to follow it!
