Another provocative comment from my liberal Episcopalian friend... I don't much like the doctrine of original sin either, but would object to it on other grounds: it's not biblical ('universality' of sin is, however). Rowland.

See http://jmm.aaa.net.au/catalog/keyword/o-4.htm for more on original sin, from several perspectives.

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By Harry T. Cook

Maybe it's not all that surprising that one would find on the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal a review of a book with such an original title as Original Sin. The book is, in fact, a cultural history of the concept of original sin.

Most of the sources the author cites laud the idea as the best explanation for the manifest evil in human affairs. I kept wondering why the Journal would devote a full two-column drop to such a book until I looked up its author, Alan Jacobs. I quote from the web site of the Zondervan Press: Alan Jacobs is a professor of literature at Wheaton College. He is the author of several collections of essays, including the recent Shaming the Devil: Essays in Truthtelling. A cultural critic and journalist, his work appears in such publications as First Things, Christianity Today, The Weekly Standard, Books and Culture and the Oxford American.

Aha, said I. "First Things" and "The Weekly Standard," eh? That explains it. The neoconservatives of both the theological and political worlds love the concept of original sin because it gives them a pigeonhole into which to insert all kinds of liberal, socialist ideas. Most of us socialist liberals think original sin is a bankrupt idea ab initio, which makes us candidates for that pigeonhole, too. Why a book on original sin in 2008? For one thing, it becomes an occasion to attack Enlightenment, progressive, secular thinking that does not dwell over much on the imperfectability of man, if only because the latter idea does not much interest such thinkers. We remember that Homo sapiens, for all his accomplishments, is, far from being "a little lower than the angels," just a cut or two above the primal savage.

We don't give Eden the time of day. We see no evidence whatsoever of an original state of grace from which our species has fallen. We certainly have witnessed and we rue plenty of instances of savagery - a lot of it manifested in the conquests and mechanized wars of the 19th and 20th Century and certainly in Mr. Bush's present war and Mr. Mugabe's recent "campaign." Jacobs from his necessarily evangelical position (Wheaton College) does not want us to forget the emotion of sin-based guilt that can only be absolved in the embrace of belief in a savior who bore the wages of that sin in the self-immolation of Calvary.

We, hopeless wretches of secular humanism, see no point in the secret and perverse enjoyment of guilt. We're more - much more - interested in the concept of responsibility. We embrace responsibility for what we can and ought to do and for what we have failed to do or thought of doing. We do not blame our irresponsibility on anything more or less original than our own neglect, laziness and selfishness. We do not say, "In Adam's fall we sinned all." We say, "We have done a stupid thing today." Or, "We surely could have done better today, though we could have done worse." Or, "We have done a splendid thing today." We are not so ready to go around beating our breasts muttering mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, pining for a restoration to a once pristine-state, because we figure that we didn't come from one and are not returning to it.

Jacobs cites - who else? - Augustine of Hippo, who did so much cement the idea of original sin into the vocabulary of Western religion. Guess why? While taking nothing away from the magnificence of Augustine's contribution to the thought and literature of Christianity, it does not take a professor of psychology to explain why Augustine believed not only in original sin but in what he called "prevenient grace." In his own words (The Confessions), Augustine told the world of his struggle with the sins of the flesh. He is said to have prayed for chastity "but not just yet." What a relief it must have been to imagine that his weakness was born in a misstep of a primordial ancestor, and that, having succumbed to it, to be led by an imminent god away from that dismal state toward perfection. There was nothing original in how Augustine sowed his oats, and nothing original in his conversion. Charles Colson was a notorious political schemer and felon who found Jesus and became an advocate of prison reform while in prison. The idea of original sin is a theological and psychological crutch. So line up in front of me, ye benighted ones, and I will anoint you with a dollop of secular humanism, and you will throw that crutch away and be healed. Hallelujah.

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© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.