Edgework

I was born into a religious community that insisted that I, along with every other human being, had been “born in sin.” This sin was so engrained in me that even if I had not personally done anything wrong, my sin nature which I had inherited from Adam was enough to consign me to eternal damnation. Of course there was a way to escape that damnation, but that possibility only came on stage in scene two of the biblical drama. The foundation of the salvation story was the inescapable truth that I, together with all human beings, had participated in the great Fall because in some inexplicable way I had participated in the disobedience of Adam. I had been in his loins, so I was implicated. Stealing a cookie from the cookie jar was not my main charge; rather that I had come into the world as a damned sinner through no fault of my own.

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 no conscious part. But because at that point I did not have the wherewithall to imagine an alternative socio-religious construct, I entered a period of torment lasting at least four years. I wished I had been born a frog or a dog; at least then I could just die and it would all be over. My repeated attempts to jump through the right hoops the church held up before me to escape this unjust 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, but at least now I had received a pardon for my original sinful state at birth as well as the list of intentional sins that I had accumulated. In looking back on my youth, I could well understand that I had been guilty of willful sin, but I must confess that I never fully accepted the notion of original sin being passed on to me through Adam’s semen, as the Traducian theory expostulated.

I recently picked up the book, The Story of Original Sin, by John E. Toews (2013), a respected, retired Anabaptist educator, only to discover that Toews had quietly shared my skepticism for most of his life. In his book, he attempts “…to carefully trace the history of the interpretation of Genesis 3 that led to the formulation of the doctrine of original sin.”(3). Although it is a short book, it is clear that it represents an exhaustive study on the subject. Toews’ ultimate conclusion is that the doctrine of “original sin” which Augustine developed in the late 4th century A.D. and which much of the western church has adhered to for 1600 years, “…is without biblical and historical foundation” (88).

I will not repeat all the arguments Toews makes in his book. I recommend that all serious questers read the book for themselves. However, for those who will not likely read the book itself, I will attempt to highlight the markers on the pathway which Toews takes to come to his conclusion. By doing so, I will be articulating my current position on the subject, which in essence parallels that of John E. Toews.

In most western theological constructs, Genesis 3 forms the foundation upon which the concept of original sin rests. To begin with, it is interesting to note 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). These concepts first appear in apocryphal writings many centuries later. 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 we enter the pronouncement of punishment, beginning in verse 8, we take note that Adam and Eve did not die physically. What did die, however, was their intimate relationship with God. “To be expelled from the Garden is to be expelled from the presence of God, to be cut off from the intimate relationship of regular communion with God…That is the end of a relationship, or death…” (8). In a broader sense, “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).

So it is 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 a change in their human nature. This is important to understand because that means the story of salvation history in the Bible does not begin with a “fall” into total depravity but with broken relationships. Salvation, then, will be seen in terms of healing that damaged relationship, not 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. “In other words, the sin of Adam and Eve was interpreted in Second Temple Judaism in Jewish categories of thought – relational or covenantal rather than ontological” (37).

So the notion of original sin was born somewhere beyond the Jewish Scriptures and traditions; and likely much farther down the road.