For too long, Christianity has imposed a foreign understanding of Original Sin, a theological notion that simply has not been present in most of the Jewish tradition, onto the text. Largely thanks to Saint Augustine (who really developed the theology of Original Sin), we have held this notion that sin is inherited, passed down from our progenitors. And that, friends, is pure, ridiculous, and infantile poppycock. I promised myself that I would restrain from using vulgarities in order to maintain some semblance of decency, so I posit this critique with the strongest wording I can machinate.
Original Sin, stated 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is the only doctrine of Christianity that is “empirically verifiable,” for we can look at the world around us and we can look into our own hearts, and understand that things are royally, terribly askew. To refuse that the cosmological and anthropological states of affairs are chaotically violent and broken would be an assertion of blindness, willful or otherwise. Despite my stance, I want to clarify that I do not deny the doctrine of Original Sin, but I also want to make known that I refuse to cynically embrace total depravity. I will not deny that for all the atrocities that humanity inflicts upon itself, we remain imperfectly capable of cooperating with grace, of enabling beauty to shape who and what we are. This being said, I don’t associate with Pelagianism.1
Indeed, if we look at the Hebrew text, the word that we generally translate as “sin” (chattah) is not present whatsoever, nor is any word for “fall”; if you crack open your English translation to Genesis 2:4 and read through the end of the third chapter, you will in all likelihood come across a heading that declares Genesis 3 as being a narrative of “The Fall” 2, or some variation thereof. This being said, the theologically inaccurate practice of isolated “eisegesis” -- reading something that is not there into the text -- has given rise to these headers. The original Hebrew manuscripts (hand-written copies before the printing press) did not possess such headers, and we Anglophiles have gradually inserted these section dividers over the years in order to make the text more readable. Eisegesis opposes the scholarly task of exegesis, which attempts to uncover what a particular text has to say for itself, what arises out of the text.
Apart from this basic textual criticism 3, allow me to explain -- through a more explicitly theological lens -- why reading Adam and Eve as the story of Original Sin is goofy.
First, the serpent is not evil. The serpent is described as arum, which is often translated as “crafty” or “subtle” or “shrewd,” and in certain contexts, arum is translated as “prudent,” serving as a laudation. Nowhere does this passage describe the creature as evil. Nowhere in Genesis does the serpent possess satanic qualities. Allow me to be very clear: the serpent is not demonic. It is an ancient Near Eastern symbol of wisdom, fertility, and longevity. If we read the text carefully, we find that its perfect ambiguity persists, as to whether the serpent is good or evil. Being the most “arum” creature in this garden, the serpent represents more a paradoxical element of chaos than anything else.
Moreover, the serpent introduces a truth to Adam and Eve that they could not have been previously aware of. Indeed, neither YHWH nor the serpent tells the complete truth, nor do these characters entirely lie; I believe that this is not due to some sadistic motivation on their parts, but rather to a difference of perspective. YHWH promises the fledgling humans that “in the day that you eat from [the tree of knowledge of good and evil] you will surely die,” whereas the serpent informs them, “You surely will not die! For YHWH knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like YHWH, knowing good and evil.”
Indeed, while Adam and Eve do die as YHWH promises, it is not “in the day,” and the serpent accurately informs them that they will know good and evil just as YHWH does. This is all a matter of perspective, truths inhere within both the warning and the encouragement. The serpent is not demonic, but rather a sort of truth-teller, albeit the teller of a truth that is paradoxically darker and enlightening. Eastern Christianity has long stressed the goal of theosis to be the eschaton of human existence, following the maxim of St. Athanasius, “God became human in order that humanity might become God,” and both the Catechism and Western patristic theologians make this apparent as well. While we are not to become deities (and here’s where Latter Day Saint theology has misconstrued things a bit), we are to become like God, both in our freedom and in our capacity to love. Real freedom entails knowing what good and evil are to begin with.
Second, Adam and Eve do not “sin” in full maturity, awareness, or freedom. Parents have the option of locking their growing children in their home’s basement, never allowing them to touch the outside world, or to experience suffering. And yet the greater act of love on a parent’s part is to grant their progeny freedom, to step out into the world. As parents grant their children greater independence with each passing year, their offspring come to an intensified understanding of the world, a deeper awareness of the dangers and beauties that await them.
Adam and Eve are essentially toddlers upon their creation. They know nothing of their existence, held in the paradisal basement of their creator, shielded from the dangers that might await them otherwise. Just as a toddler does not commit a grave atrocity by devouring the cookie that his or her parent tells them not to consume 4, neither do Adam and Eve rebel against YHWH with hearts that burn with complete knowledge and unadulterated cruelty. Perhaps YHWH is not entirely pissed off as he explains the curses once the fruit has been eaten. We have a tendency to read YHWH’s list of curses as if he screams these indictments with rage, with anger and disgust, but maybe YHWH’s voice resonates with a different timbre, with sorrow and sadness. Just as parents bid farewell to their children as they leave home for the last time, offering bittersweet words of warning and advice, I believe that in this text YHWH does nothing more than inform Adam and Eve of their decision’s consequences.
No doubt, these consequences are quite real and deeply profound. They essentially represent a fracturing of relationships on various levels: the human and animal worlds will forever be at odds (“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel” [Genesis 3:15]); humanity and the created order will forever be defined by hard labor and pain (“In toil you will eat of [the earth] all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” [Genesis 3:17-19]); and even the relationship between man and woman will be thrown out of whack, taking on misogynistic imbalance that did not inhere previously (“Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” [Genesis 3:16]).
The Bottom Line: Original Suffering & Original Freedom
When a two year old child dies of a blood-borne cancer, believing that this results from a decision made by the first humans offers no consolation whatsoever. Not only is this an intellectual cop-out, but it twists our image of God into that of a distorted monster, one who imposes cruel deaths upon innocent creatures for some choice made long ago. If these two chapters of Genesis are not a story of Original Sin, what is this mythology about?
Ultimately, this tale presents the Judeo-Christian tradition with an existential drama of the highest order, in all its paradox and ambiguity. Like any good myth, it offers insight as to why things are the way they are. The story of salvation history begins with the resounding affirmation that the created, material cosmos is irrevocably good, and proceeds to offer insight into the most potent mysteries of our existence: suffering and freedom.
Consider this: what sort of an existence would we rather partake in? One in which we are infantile automatons, ignorant of all things, entirely unable to appreciate goodness and beauty and truth? Or one wherein we are able to partake in goodness and beauty and truth (knowledge of good) at the cost of experiencing suffering (knowledge of evil)?
The story of Adam and Eve is not a story of Original Sin, but a story of Original Suffering, and even Original Freedom, for the two cannot be extricated from one another. In a world filled with pain and atrocity, a world of fractured relationships and injustice, we must ask ourselves if we would prefer the alternative: an existence of ignorance, defined by an inability to fathom the grace and beauty imbued within every iota of the cosmos. Paradise without suffering would be nothing more than vapid meaninglessness, for meaning can only be discovered in the midst of suffering and loss and ambiguity, and how we use our freedom to transform that suffering.
Saint Paul writes eloquently that we have all partaken in Adam and Eve’s disobedience, and thus in Christ all might be redeemed 5, but maybe this disobedience results in a wonderful gift: death. 6 In turn, this suffering and death moves the triune Godhead to implant itself into creation with Jesus. 78 Ultimately, Genesis 2-3 posits that humanity would rather choose the suffering that comes with real freedom. This choice does not cheapen or degrade our existence, but rather charges it with the possibility of meaning.
1 “Pelagianism” refers to the early heresy -- perhaps the mother of all heretical thought -- that human beings can do good works without grace, or can get to Heaven of their own accord.↩
2 Some examples from various translations: the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), and the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) all have the headers “Another Account of the Creation” and “The First Sin and Its Punishment”; the English Standard Version (ESV) has “The Creation of Man and Woman” and “The Fall”; the New International Version (NIV) has “Adam and Eve” and “The Fall”.↩
3 “Textual criticism” is the scholarly practice of examining biblical manuscripts, those original hand-written copies of the Bible that antecede the printing press. ↩
4 For some reason, younger generations (and perhaps this is true of all generations) cannot simply acknowledge and follow a parental command. We feel the need to experiment with potentially harmful activities for ourselves, and this mythology thus wisely taps into a deeply-seeded/seated aspect of our shared human nature. ↩
5 See Romans 5:12 and following. Keep in mind that Paul had his own religious worldview, that Luther really adored Romans, and this adoration gave rise to his doctrine of total depravity. Proof-texting (focusing on one verse out of context) is no bueno, friends.↩
6 On another note, this is why I love vampire stories, because at heart not only does an inverse Catholic sacramentality (vampires consume the blood of humans, whereas Christians consume the blood of Christ) lie at their symbolic heart (pun [?] intended), but they philosophically explore what sort of creatures we would become if we could live forever without consequence or final judgment. ↩
7 As someone who has spent 14 years in Jesuit circles, I’ll quote Saint Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises here as an example of this theology. The following is taken from George E. Ganss, S.J.’s translation of the First Day of the Second Week, the contemplation of the Incarnation, wherein God decides to enter the world: “I will see the various persons, some here, some there. First, those on the face of the earth, so diverse in dress and behavior: some white and others black, some in peace and others at war, some weeping and others laughing, some healthy and others sick, some being born and others dying, and so forth. Second, I will see and consider the Three Divine Persons, seated, so to speak, on the royal canopied throne of Their Divine Majesty. They are gazing on the whole face and circuit of the earth; and they see all the peoples in such great blindness, and how they are dying and going down to hell. [...] I will listen to what the persons on the face of the earth are saying; that is, how they speak with one another, swear and blaspheme, and so on. Likewise, I will hear what the Divine Persons are saying, that is, ‘Let us work the redemption of the human race,’ and so forth.” ↩
8 I hate to insert two footnotes in a row, but I can’t help but quote the Exsultet hymn sung at the Easter Vigil Mass (which also has one of the loveliest lines in all of Christian hymnody, about bees) in order to provide another example: “O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”↩
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