Original Sin and the Milgram Experiments
December 21, 2008, 8:39 am
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
The Pope is calling for people to think more about original sin. So how do you connect that ancient doctrine about human nature to contemporary frameworks–to make it real–a mysterious truth about everyone, not merely card-carrying bad people?
If I were teaching about original sin to contemporary college students, I’d start by having the students read about the Milgram experiments.
How does one reconcile the traditional doctrine of original sin with our evolutionary past? Let us assume that we as homo sapien sapiens have evolved from more primitive life forms and that we continue to evolve. Assume that the scientific view of our origins is correct, that we have a history red in tooth and claw because we are animals whose cerebral cortex developed to such an extent that we can now override instinctual and genetic predispositions to protect ourselves and survive at all costs. How do we make any sense of the choice our first parents made in the garden…assuming these creatures were the only two firsts, they had sufficient brain cpacity etc etc…. I understand we all are born into a wounded and dysfunctional world but is that not of God’s making…in that he chose evolution as the process by which we would develop. I am puzzled that the great theologians of our time have not seen the great contradiction between accepting the basic science of how we have come about and the Christian understanding of original sin. Please enlighten me.
Excellent posting. Would also suggest linking to some of the early 2008 statements around “Limbo” and how that re-evaluation changes traditional “original sin” beliefs.
The psychological studies do move the analysis away from confusing orginal sin with individual, choiceful sin. It moves it into an understanding of the human condition. B16′s comments on 12/3 also re-frame the discussion in terms of the human condition within the history of salvation…..again, he is not speaking about deliberate, individual sins.
When I taught Christian Anthropology I never used this example of the psychological study but did require students to read “To Kill A Mockingbird” and sections from the WWII Nuremburg trials in order to build a context for defining the human condition within the history of salvation.
Jesus’ death/resurrection is the “already” – “original sin/human condition” is the “not yet” – the human journey confronts the “original conditon” within the hope of salvation – achieved by the Kenosis of Jesus – the loving action of God to his human creation.
Please note two sentences from the pope’s talk that Cathleen cites.
1. “Evil remains a mystery, … of itself illogical.”
2. “Evil arises from a subordinate source.”
So far as I can see, these two sentences capture in a nutshell why there is no adequate theodicy that can provide a philosophical account of the occurrence of moral evil in a world created by a good and omnipotent God.
By faith, I believe that there is such a God and that there is moral evil, but the validity of my belief cannot be established by reason.
To acknowledge this condition is important because it should lead us believers to a greater modesty in proclaiming how “reasonable” our belief is and to a greater respect and sympathy for thoughtful people who have not received the gift of faith that we have received.
There’s something especially poignant about focusing on this condition at this Christmas season, a season that directs our attention not only to the time when Christ was born but also to an anticipation of his second coming, a “time” when faith and hope will have been surpassed in all inclusive love.
Bernard’s post reminded me of John Garvey’s column about theodicy that appeared in Commonweal after the devastating loss of life from the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Garvey’s column was in the 1/28/05 issue of Commonweal. Subscribers can access the whole article, but I’ve reproduced a portion of the article below. (Though not directly related to the topic of original sin, Garvey’s column underscores the tension between good and evil that is also present in the doctrine of original sin.)
From Garvey’s column, “Is God Responsible?”:
There is nothing that can justify what human beings have been made to suffer. It is impossible to imagine a point at which we would say, having had it all explained, “So that’s what makes it all right that a child was tormented to death or raped, or that a father lost his wife and children to the sea.” Nothing makes it all right, or can. It may be healed in the end, but it will not and cannot be all right, or explained.
Eastern Orthodox Christianity emphasizes apophatic theology-the Western equivalent is sometimes called “negative” theology. At its center is the fact that God’s nature is completely unknowable. If we speak of God as good or all-powerful, this has to do with our needs and the limitations of our language; “good” means something different from the sort of thing we mean when we speak of good pizza or even a good deed. Orthodox theology says that while God may not be understood and is unknowable, we participate in God’s being through sharing in God’s divine energies. But God is finally unknowable, and, because of his infinite otherness we can only approach-but never fully arrive at-God. (This dynamic sense of approaching God, and of being continuously transformed as we do, is the heart of Gregory of Nyssa’s sense of eternal life.)
God has revealed himself in Christ, and here we begin to see how far we are from God’s idea of what God’s power means. Our idea of power is represented by enormity and by force: we think of kings, armies-and tidal waves. If we were God we would have placed our almighty hand on the floor of the ocean and prevented that shift of tectonic plates; we would have sent armies of angels to fly people to safe ground. This assumes an unwounded universe, one in which death and sin are not the main powers, a place that is good in precisely the way God wanted it to be good, and in which God’s inaction is therefore seen as perversity or coldness. It also assumes a universe in which we presume to know what God should do, which means a universe in which God is imaginable, someone of whom we can conceive.
This is not the universe about which the Bible speaks, or the one where the God of the Bible reveals what can be revealed to our very limited understanding. When God approaches us, he comes as a baby who needs to be taken care of, who grows into a man who thirsts, is frustrated with the ignorance of his followers and friends, upsets kings, is capable of knowing fear and sorrow, and finally feels utterly abandoned-but because of his obedience to the Father’s will he destroys the power of death, the power that rules this world, and this leads us to resurrection. This is not power as we understand it, not at all, but we have been given no other sign that death can be overcome, and that the God we have is a God who weeps and can weep until the end of time with the mother holding her dead child.
Benedict still wears fourth century clothing so it is not a surprise that he reverts to that time with reference to original sin. (And that apparel remains one of domination) Original sin is a story to understand the choices humans make. Original sin is not so much a condition as it is a reflection of how people act. An action can be evil or good. We have outlived that mythology when the Roman Senate would delay a vote because someone saw (usually made up) lightning in the alley of the Senate building.
Jesus breaks the mode because of choice, not oncology. Otherwise, how can you give him credit? We have witnessed a lot of evil activity in the financial world. It really is no surprise. It is the way most humans act without laws. (Deregulation). That is why Caesar crossed the Rubicon. He wanted deregulation.
Of course, if we mess around with original sin we will have to admit that the IC is a Franciscan/Papal creation. That Dominican Thomas A. saw that right away. So much for the myth of Dominican/Franciscan closeness.
And what about Bloomberg of New York convincing everyone with his money that he should override term limits. This is the “condition” showing original sin. Massive bribery however disguised.
A strong argument can be made that the Fathers of the Church introduced mediocrity into Christendom with the “original sin made me do it mentality, but that’s ok we have magic sacraments within the one Catholic Church which saves you despite your lack of commitment.”And of course that woman Eve started it all.
In general, society approves of original sin. It is disguised as philanthropy or academic excellence which allow domination. There is really no room for crucifixion in that world as there is not in the Vatican either.
“The doctrine of original sin is a highly sophisticated
qualification of human desire. Far from being an abstract denigration
of what it is that humans are, it is the claim that we are all
created good, and that there is no such thing as an intrinsically
evil desire. All desire is severely distorted, and yet all is capable
of being undistorted over time, of being brought to share, starting
from where it is, in the life of God. Furthermore, it is also the
case that none of us can be the judges in any definitive sense of
anyone else, since none of us, not even the holiest of saints, is
outside the social construction of meaning produced by distorted
desire, and so none of us is able to look at anyone else in a way
that does not partake of the imagination which dominates us, an
imagination run by rivalry, resistance to change, the longing for
security, and by the need to protect ourselves against death by
seeking our survival at the expense of others.
“The doctrine has its sense because with the foundation of the
Church, an amplification of the people of Israel, God is bringing
into being a visible sign of a completely different imagination, one
which is not based on death and its fear, or the distortion of desire
into various forms of conflict, and which enables all humans to dwell
together with each other as enriching each other and enabling each
other to share God’s life and God’s goodness…”
~ James Alison
http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng04.html
How does the Milgram experiment throw light on human nature? Apparently it shows that many of us, but not all, will obey an order from someone we see as an authority to do something that we would not be inclined to do otherwise because we think it is wrong. The more general issue is: “Why do good people do bad things?” or “Why do otherwise reasonable people make what in the light of reason must seem bad choices?” I don’t think that anything “makes them do it” but I suspect that their cultural situation allows them to do these things. Culture can muffle and in extreme cases quite stifle the voice of reason. But culture itself is a social construction, and it is not bad in itself. The evil effects of culture have their ultimate origin in the social groups that create and maintain that culture. And the social groups are composed of individuals. Is this a vicious circle?
Try this. We seem to be born with a desire to assert ourselves. The society into which we are born, whose cultural options may be rather various, provides us always with some avenues for self-assertion. But it seems that any one human’s self-assertion, while it may benefit some others, is always at the cost of the well being of still others. Christ exemplified and lived a better way and a “new creation” was the result. In a word He redeemed us. The question is: “Why were we so created that we needed to be redeemed?” A currently fashionable and even theistic answer is that we were created by an evolutionary process that left us in need of redemption. The more traditional theory is that we were not created in need of redemption but came to be that way because we, in the person of our first ancestors, preferred to be autonomous rather that to listen to and obey the voice of God in us. There has to be some explanation. Simply calling it a mystery seems to me quite unsatisfactory. That is not to say that I claim to know the answer.
The experiment does wonderfully demonstrate the existence of sin – a propensity to evil – in all of us.
I wonder how many of “torturers” were regular church goers?
Original sin is generally called the privation of sanctifying grace, to which we have no claim. It is restored to us in baptism.
I wonder if Stanley Milgram’s findings, reported in his book Obedience to Authority, can’t be explained by the fact that from the time we are born, we are taught to obey authority? If a police officer or a teacher or a parent tells you what to do, you are not taught think for yourself and decide whether they are right. You are taught to obey. Also, it is probably in our nature, as primates, to belong to groups in which there were a few dominant individuals and the remainder were submissive. So it’s both nurture and nature that has taught us to obey authority.
Certainly Catholicism teaches that you must obey authority (the Church), even if you don’t understand why. If you have doubts, you are supposed to set them aside. Yes, there is lip service to the primacy of conscience, but if the Church tells you one thing and your conscience tells you another, it is probably because you don’t have a well-formed conscience.
Bill DeHaas: I confess to having no idea what this means:
Jesus’ death/resurrection is the “already” – “original sin/human condition” is the “not yet” – the human journey confronts the “original conditon” within the hope of salvation – achieved by the Kenosis of Jesus – the loving action of God to his human creation.
But, of course, this is my problem with most discussions of original sin and salvation in Jesus Christ. I think it is bold and correct of the Pope to link the doctrines of original sin and redemption in Christ. Unfortunately, I understand neither. It seems extraordinarily important that in the passage linked by Prof. Kaveny the Pope never answers the most obvious question: HOW does Jesus Christ, or faith in Jesus Christ, cure the contradiction in the heart of every person? If this contradiction is still present in Christians, what difference does Christianity make?
Perhaps asking how other traditions deal with this contradiction would help illuminate the difficulties in the traditional Christian answer. Take Buddhism: Buddhism says we mess up in the world, do bad and evil things, etc. because we are ignorant, some of us more than others. The root of our ignornace is desire. The way we overcome ignorance is to follow the Nobel Eightfold Path. Even this path image helps to explain our condition because it suggest either possibility of walking off the path or walking some other path.
My favority image of human ignorance from Buddhist writing is of a jar of water collected at the beach. At first, the water is cloudy. One cannot see through it, nor can one even clearly discern individual grains of sand. Yet, leave the jar on a shelf for 24 hours and the water will have become clear, one can see through it, and one can clearly discern individual grains of sand. So too, then, our minds must become still and clear. THIS, at least, is a consistent answer to what it would mean to do something about the human condition.
Jews affirm the persistence of sin, but see no need to find any deep ontological explanation for it. They just seek to lead better lives and to ask for forgiveness. Muslims do pretty much the same thing as well. Both of these traditions offer answers to the question of human sinfulness that seem far clearer to me than the Christian answer which never seems to get around to explaining the Christian difference with respect to our sinful condition.
Oops. That should read “favorite” image in the second to last paragraph. I will reread no further, lest I find even more mistakes.
As I recall, some of those in the Milgram study sued Milgram for psychological suffering after the tests. I seem to remember a made-for-TV movie about it starring William Shatner many years ago.
I tend to think of original sin as something that goes far beyond mere survival instinct that animals have. Don’t all of us wrestle with our jealousy of God? God’s power? God’s knowledge? God’s creative power? Don’t all of us at some level feel that we could have done a better job arranging things to better advantage than God has? Wasn’t that the whole point of the Eden myth?
In my view original sin isn’t reveling in sins like murder and mayhem, but the inability to see that taking certain circumstances out of God’s hands to “fix” them (see the post earlier this month about the doctors who helped a 70-year-old woman give birth) derive from our jealousy of God and our desire to “do it better.”
I understand we all are born into a wounded and dysfunctional world but is that not of God’s making
Picking up on what TK has said, the problem I see with the story of Adam and Eve and Original Sin is that it implies not that human nature is flawed and humans need help, but rather that the human nature we inherited is not human nature as it was originally intended and created, but a human nature that has been damaged in is in need of repairs.
However, it would seem that what we know from studying Darwin and Freud and their successors is that our bodies and our brains are the results of a long and not very elegant process of layering and adaptation. Back problems are common because our bodies weren’t “mean” to be upright. We tend to overeat because we evolved in a time when food was scarce and it was necessary to eat at every opportunity. Now food is plentiful, but our “nature” still tells us to eat at every opportunity. We often have emotional difficulties because we are built for “flight or fight,” and conflict or danger gets our adrenaline going, but generally the appropriate reaction to danger or conflict is neither flight nor fight.
So there is no good reason to think there was every once a better human nature that was significantly better than our own but was damaged by the original parents of the human race. In fact, there is no reason to suspect that the human race originated from two parents.
One of the problems I see with Catholic teaching about Original Sin is that although it is said that the story of Adam and Eve is “allegorical,” the official interpretations (as in the Catechism) make it seem more like a roman à clef or a story based on actual events. As I am fond of saying, it didn’t happen to Adam and Eve, but to two other people of different names. (What we do no for sure is that they weren’t named Adam and Steve.) It seems to me that if the story were actually allegorical, the Church would not insist that there were two people who were the parents of the entire human race.
Another profound problem, it seems to me, is that Adam and Eve, in the original and “perfect” state which God created them, still sinned. That implies that there was something wrong with them to begin with. How could they sin if there were not already created sinners? Also, from the story we know that eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil causes them to know right and wrong, good and evil. How culpable are two creatures for committing an evil act if they don’t know the difference between good and evil? They couldn’t possibly, in the story, meet the criteria for “mortal sin,” and yet they were punished severely themselves, as was the entire human race!
Punishing the children for the sins of their parents is utterly unjust, and probably every boy or girl who encounters the story in grade school has said, “It’s not fair!”
One final point. It would appear that the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the administration of baptism remove original sin from the soul, do absolutely nothing to restore an individual person’s human nature to what it was prior to the Fall. Mary, due to the Immaculate Conception, was sinless throughout her entire life, but those of those who have original sin removed by baptism, not a one of us remains sinless!
I shot my wad on original sin away back, but, as the posts here seem to indicate, good exigesis and good evolutionary knowledge would be integral to teaching the topic.
As to Milgram, the knowledge of psychological manipulation became so much greater in the last century and still goes on today.
Another good starting point: http://www.amazon.com/Original-Sin-Cultural-Alan-Jacobs/dp/0060783400
David Nickol:
Thank you for your two last posts… This is exactly my difficulty with the traditional notion of original sin. It is as if, in order to buy into the notion of original sin as it has been presented, you must accept an almost fundamentalist reading of Adam and Eve.
I believe with all my heart in the way Jesus has shown for us in his choice for a self emptying love that would go to any length for us, even death. But is the concept of original sin necessary for this.
Would it not simply be better for us to say that our human nature as a animal and spirit must move toward the way/example Christ has given us if we are to become what God has planned for us from the beginning of the universe…human beings who choose to live in self emptying love for one another without regard to cost.
J.Pettit – thanks for your question. Allow me to try to respond while picking up on the threads from others – D. Nickol’s, etc. and the original study indicating a pattern in humans that reveals evil.
I borrow the concept of “already but not yet” from the Christian Anthropology laid out by Kung and Rahner. Inherent in any discussion of the meaning of original sin is the tension between God who is all good, creation which is good but also the existence of sin and evil; you also have the tension between the ongoing human journey even though the death and resurrection of Jesus has brought the promise of salvation e.g. if we are already saved by Jesus, why is there sin? why do bad things happen to good people? etc.
Would suggest that the best starting point may be to admit that for centuries cultures, peoples, religions have explained their concept of god, goodness, and sin/evil using stories e.g. adam/eve; gilgamesh stories; J. Pettit’s references to other religious meaning stories. It appears to me that these stories reflect an understanding that God is loving; created goodness (humankind) but like any love story, we know that even in love we find messiness, sin, hurts, miscommunication, even to the extreme of evil. Yet, honest love fulfills the hope of love – mercy, forgiveness, self-giving to achieve its final union. This moves us past some type of literal stories, objective sins, canon law, or even a dogma that seems to only capture part of the truth. Some of you have metioned disconnects or, at least, questions in the dogma of original sin. They seem to trace back to trying to literally define the stories used or the terminology in the dogma. As Mr. Daeunhauer said so well: in many ways this is a mystery.
J. Pettit asked about the contradiction between Jesus’ salvation and our continued contradiction in our hearts – or what difference does Christianity make?
My explanation of the original condition is that we are created good and loving. But for that love to be completely free and giving, God must allow for each of us to make choices for or against love. Thus, we begin a journey that for most of us involves struggle. The “self-emptying of Jesus” is our hope, our example, and our faith that the struggle has meaning. Christianity makes a difference not because of power – it makes a difference because it is willing to empty itself in love that is freely given. deChardin would have seen this process as evolutionary; human freedom grows but not as a straight, linear line; rather it is a journey that moves forward at times, backwards at times, each generation seeking meaning and adding to salvation history. Like evolution, it is not orderly, expected steps but rather more like chaos that evolves through each person’s choices. (I have friends who are very cautious of this explanation because they feel that the loving freedom explanation has “holes” in it – that it is not the foundation of Christian Anthropology.)
Obviously, there are other religions and cultures dating back centuries that express a different approach to creation and love. In some of these, there is no direct or obvious link to Jesus and yet we see goodness and love. TK also raises an interesting questions about science, evolution, and our understanding of original sin.
It appears to me that over the past 40 years theologians such as deChardin and Dupuis have struggled to explain or incorporate science/evolution and other religions into our understanding of ourselves and our original condition. Again, the more literal you get, the more difficult it becomes to be inclusive e.g. eastern church.
I believe the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall is allegory. This means the story is not true. The redemption was not something that was needed because of the nature of God or the nature of sin. The Catholic Catechism tells us that original sin is called “sin” in an analogical sense and that it does not does not have the character of a personal fault.
About Milgram — typical scientist. Interested in counting things — the number of levers pulled by the number of “teachers”, etc.
Jean touched on this: why wasn’t he interested in the existential effects on the teachers as they pulled the levers? Explaining the teachers’ behavior can never be just a matter of explaining why we sometimes obey authority. Not all of thm pulled the ultimate lever. Why? Why?
As to “original sin” or “the human condition”, I don’t equate them, I think there is our human condition of being free (to some extent), and being free we sometimes choose evil. This “condition” is what we partly *are*. As Sartre saw so clearly, “Man is condemned to be free”. (That’s an exaggeration, but it’s a major point.). Freedom is a condition (in the Kantian sense) of the possibility of our acting as humans. No free will, no human life.
What about Adam and Eve? I suspect that the theologians have not come anywhere near figuring that myth out. Maybe God is saving it for the last golden age of theology. As David Nichol says, you’d have to be a fundamentalist to accept it at all. It seems to me that even to associate it with the problem of our need for salvation somehow misses the point of the story, whatever that point might be. What, for instance, does it refer to when it talks of “the tree of knowledge of good and evil”? Why a tree? Which kinds of good and evil — all goods and all evils? Or just some goods and evilsl? And why would just *knowing* what is good and evil be a punishable offense?
And the biggest, most obvious mystery: how can we all be “guilty” of their sin? I suspect that the Hebrew terms for “good” and “evil” might originally have had meanings that were only somewhat like our meanings these days, or even their meanings when the myth was first written down. Even fundamental terms change meanings through time. See Alasdair MacIntyre’s analysis of “the meaning of “good” in Homer as contrasted with the meaning of “good” in Socrates and in Aristotle, etc. The meanings were very, very different in Homer.
This hardly even approaches Cathleen’s excellent question. But I think her question is really many, many questions, the most important of which are the existential ones. Among others, these include, I think:
1) Is God unjust to us? Is He guilty? Does He suffer too? Does He suffer *all sufferings*?
2) Was God particularly unjust to Jesus?
3) How can you die for someone else? (What does that MEAN??)
4) How can you live *in* someone else? (And what does THAT mean?)
My apologies for the numerous typos in my last lengthy post (especially, Nobel rather than Noble!)…darn scotch.
David N. and T.K. I think you are opening the door to Pelagianism (and since I am a self-avowed pelagian, no big whoop). As I see it, the two basic options are 1) either/or salvation; or 2) better/worse salvation. I think most traditional soteriology, and much popular Christianity, especially of the evangelical variety (I think Catholicism naturally inclines one toward pelagian thinking) produces an either/or soteriology. The difficulty with either/or soteriology is explaining how and why salvation is achieved.
Traditions of holiness emphasize better/worse notions of salvation, and I would include in this category the Eastern traditions of theosis becoming divine. The holiness tradition makes sense insofar as we can explain the difference between a more or less holy life. The one problem is that most of us never achieve perfect holiness. What then is salvation? I think the holiness traditions also, correctly, emphasize the mercy of God.
Pelagianism is simply the affirmation of a holiness tradition where a real distinction (but not a separation) exists between the human effort to achieve holiness and the grace given that makes this effort possible.
“In the story of creation it says, ‘Indeed, it was very good.’ But
in the exhortation of Moses it says, ‘See, I have placed before you
this day life and good, death and evil.’ From where has evil come?
“Evil too is good, it is the lowest rung of perfect goodness. If one
does good, then evil too becomes good; but if one sins, then it
becomes really evil.
“The indwelling Glory embraces all worlds, all creatures, good and
evil. And it is the true unity. How can it bear in itself the
opposites of good and evil? But in truth there is no opposite, for
evil is the throne of the good.
“As the Glory embraces all worlds, good and evil, so were they
enclosed in Moses.
“When God called to Moses the first time, Moses did not answer, ‘Here
I am,’ because he was lost in astonishment: How then can the
unification take place? For when God revealed Himself in the thorn
bush, that is, in evil, as the lowest rung, all the fountains of fire
opened themselves, from the highest unto the depths – but the thorn
bush did not burn up, the evil was not consumed: how could that
happen? Then God called a second time: ‘Moses!’ – then the lowest
rung bound itself to the highest in Moses himself, and he said, ‘Here
am I.’”
~ Martin Buber, “Hasidism and Modern Man -The Baal Shem Tov’s Instructions”
“Would it not simply be better for us to say that our human nature as a animal and spirit must move toward the way/example Christ has given us if we are to become what God has planned for us from the beginning of the universe…human beings who choose to live in self emptying love for one another without regard to cost.”
Sounds good to me, T.K.
This is the way we get reconciled to God. By recognizing the source of all goodness. Wo/man needs reconciliation, not God. “Your faith has saved you” means that you recognize the source of all goodness and choose to participate through the mercy of God.
Recently I have read a little about the thoughts of philosopher Gianni Vattimo of Italy. He tells us we have to be cautious about big dichotomies (ie: active or contemplative, sacred or
profane, good or evil, etc.) and about big ideas. Vatimo tells us that Both have a totalizing effect on what we think, understand, and communicate.
Vatimo tellus that totalizing ideas and totalizing ways of thinking and communication
can’t lead to better thoughts and to bigger horizons.
“Rather than signifying a simple rejection of Christianity, this
reimagined religion is interpreted by Vattimo as the necessary and
inevitable outcome of nihilism’s historical unfolding of the
internal ‘logic’ of Greek-Christian metaphysics. Philosophy is thus
rejoined in a radical fashion with religion through the realization
of the initial weakening of metaphysical foundational structures in
the early apprehension of the kenotic incarnation of Christ,
requiring philosophy to assume the responsibility of recognizing ‘the
eventuality of Being and the violence of metaphysical essentialism’
and therein ‘the link between the history of salvation and the
history of interpretation’” [Carmelo Dotolo]
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=10563
In the November 7, 2008 edition of Commonweal, there is a review by Michael Peppard of the book “Joseph’s Bones Understanding the Struggle between God and Mankind in the Bible” by Jerome M. Segal. The book is about the Jewish struggle with God. Among other things, It tells us about God’s guilt and suffering.
Michael–
I can’t belief e that God is sinfull and so has no guilt. But I have to believe that he suffers every pain suffered by the innocents, which somehow implies that suffering is part of His very realty. I hope it doesn’t last forever for Him.
Ann-
I don’t believe that God is sinful and so he has guilt. I do not believe we can explain the suffering of the innocent or for that matter the suffering of the guilty. Why do people suffer? I don’t know.
Perhaps suffering can reveal something about reality. And perhaps it reveals something about hope. Simone Weil tells us “It is necessary to have had a revelation of reality through joy in order to find reality through suffering.” The poet Christian Wiman qualified Weil’s statement: “I would qualify Weil’s statement somewhat, then, by saying that reality, be it of this world or another, is not something one finds and then retains for good. It must be newly discovered daily, and newly lost.”
Bill DeHaas: Sorry, somehow I missed your last post before writing my previous post. I did not mean to ignore it. You seem to have described what I would call a better/worse mode of salvation, teleological may be a more classic term.
What I am not clear on is how it differs from Judaism. What is the difference between love as presented by Jesus and the love that is called for in the Shema? How do such loves actualize differently in us? If the love presented by Jesus is no different than the love called for in the Shema, what is the distinctively Christian addition to salvation?
Ann: I endorse completely the notion of God’s suffering. Heschel says this suffering is at the heart of the prophet’s cry. It is not first the suffering of the world that is intolerable, it is the suffering of the infinite because of the suffering in the world that is intolerable.
joe P.–
If God, the Most Innocent, suffers with all His suffering creatures, that for me eliminates at least part of the problem of the suffering of the innocents. Why? Because a large part of that problem, it seems to me, is that a non-suffering God who causes the innocents to suffer could not be God at all, could not be the All-Just. Somehow the injustice is lessened if God suffers with the.innocent..
To Ann Oliver: Some biblical scholars have pointed out that the origin of story of the Fall of Adam and Eve comes from the 10th century BCE as written by the Yahwist author. The Yahwist author(s) were concerned with the violation of the first and only commandment of Israel ( YHWH is God alone). The inhabitants of the land flowing with milk and honey, as a nomadic people, turned to the Canaanites to help them with farming. They adopted not only farming techniques but also the worship practices that involved fertility rituals. Hence, in the story of Adam and Eve’s temptation…it is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that is forbidden. Trees representing the sacred poles found at the “high places” worship sites. “knowledge” being a common Old Testament allusion to sexual intercourse (with the sacred prostitutes at the worship sites). If these scholars are correct the “original” and really “only” sin is one that violates the first commandment in places other gods/idols before the one true God. I suspect this is the root of all of our other moral evils and as such has an perennial value as THE myth explaining the root of all our moral troubles…
To Joe Petitt: I see the problem of bordering on Pelagianism. I do not believe that I or anyone else can “work” out our own salvation on our own terms. As I see it, salvation, life with God, can only be received as a gift. But it is a gift given by God that I am required as a free and moral person, to respond to by assimilating my life as best I can to the way/example of Jesus. Speaking for myself only – I am pretty much a failure at this because the animal part of me seeks to survive at all cost over and against everyone else. I think even the best of us, the saints ( and maybe even Jesus himself) struggle with this every moment of every day. In the end, it is only by God’s continual intervention in my life that I can continue picking myself up after failure to love and trying again. I am increasingly convinced that in the end. God’s offer of his mercy, grace, life – will be accepted by every person (even the worst in our midst) because this side of death or in death or on the other side we will see that there is no better offer – than to have life with God.
If loving in the self emptying way like Christ is the only way to salvation than I am faced with a seemingly impossible task…but then, nothing is impossible with God so I continue to seek a relationship with Him.
I can’t let the thread end without mentioning that if life (personhood) begins at conception, and if 60 to 80 percent of lives end within about a week of being conceived, then it’s the case that a solid majority of human beings — by “design” — die in the state of original sin. How does one make sense of this?
J.Pettit – not sure I have an answer to your question. I mentioned Dupuis earlier because he has worked on addressing the type of question you ask – if Jewish Shema believes in a loving God but not Jesus; how can they be saved? or, if they are saved, what difference does Jesus make?
This, of course, raises all kinds of “alarms” for theologians/CDF because of syncretism, relativism, etc. but, concisely, the approach is to use some of the other threads’ concepts of God’s loving gift – Jesus for those who know him; mercy, love for other religions and traditions, etc.
If you ever get a chance to read James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, Dupuis and others in a way use his structure/stages to show that it is not an either/or – Jesus and faith in Jesus is a gift but not every religion has been granted that gift. To deny them salvation really makes no sense. At the same time, we have faith that Jesus did make a difference and that over time his example will impact the world – that is the evolutionary part or the journey.
Theologian David Tracy reminds us that the New Testament
begins, in terms of the Gospels, chronologically with Mark’s strange
apocalyptic Gospel. This Gospel doesn’t end in a triumphalist
closure, even after the resurrection, but with the plaintive
cry “Come Lord Jesus, come.” In fact the entire Christian Bible
ends with that cry. The New Testament cannot be adequately
understood without taking into account its apocalyptic tone of “Come.”
Tracy tells us, “We need to have great sensitivity, which is often
lacking, to the event that did not occur—the event of the Second
Coming of this Jesus the Christ, of the Son of Man—and what that non-
occurrence might mean for a reading of the New Testament itself.”
With the symbol of the Second Coming, with the apocalyptic,
Christianity is a religion with a profound sense of the not yet and
it also has a profound sense of God’s hidden-ness in history.
Apocalyptic doesn’t point to triumphalism or a sense of history that
is pure continuity ending in us as victors. Apocalyptic points at
the ruptures in history and to God’s hiddennes.
http://www.ctinquiry.org/publications/tracy.htm
Just another thought that popped into my head . . . .
For those who see in Genesis 3:15 (the so-called Protoevangelium) the first promise of a Savior, it’s interesting to note that by Genesis 6:5-7, God regrets the whole enterprise:
You have to explain that away if you are intent on seeing a grand, overarching plan for human salvation from the very outset.
Just because something is mentioned in the Bible doesn’t mean that it is part of some great
divine scheme. Much of Genesis is actually just family gossip, a record of the tribes’ beginnings. God calls out this motely crew and starts shaping them, but they remain quite human and soap opera prone.
Michael Miller, thank you very much for the reference to the David Tracy article. It will surely take time for me to digest it, but I feel sure that it will be time well spent. Again, thanks.
Just because something is mentioned in the Bible doesn’t mean that it is part of some great
divine scheme.
Michael,
I some ways, I think this puts you on the cutting edge of Catholic Biblical scholarship.
“[O]ne cannot foist a later Christian meaning on a passage that was supposed to have a distinctive religious sense in guiding the Jewish people of old.” Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The One Who Is to Come
David,
I am not a biblical scholar. I am a retired surplus lines insurance broker. I was not trying to foist a later Christian meaning on anything in the Hebrew Bible. I simply wrote that Genesis is gossipy and that because something is in the Bible doesn’t mean that it is part of some great
divine scheme.
Michael,
The point I meant to convey was that by your saying “because something is in the Bible doesn’t mean that it is part of some great divine scheme,” you were in line with Joseph A. Fitzmyer’s book The One Who Is to Come(at least as I understand him). The Hebrew Bible is not filled with prophecies of Jesus. Rather, the earliest Christians used Hebrew Scripture as a way to understand, interpret, and write about Jesus. So when Zechariah said, “See, your king shall come to you; a just savior is he, Meek, and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass,” he wasn’t writing with foreknowledge of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem.
It just struck me, but the way, that I don’t recall anything in the Gospels that would lead me to call Jesus “meek.”
By clicking on “home” and then ‘publication” at the David Tracy link provided by Michael Miller, interested readers will find a variety of papers, lectures, etc. by many distinquished theologians and scholars, including N.T. Wright, Stanley Hauerwas, and Robert Louis Wilken. One item in particular caught my eye, a lecture delivered in 2002 by Walter Cardinal Kasper on the state of the ecumenical movement at that time. (True, it isn’t about original sin, but ecumenism seems particulary relevant at Christmas, so I hope my digression will be excused.) The lecture can be accessed at
http://www.ctinquiry.org/publications/reflections_volume_6/kasper.htm
Here’s a taste:
“The 20th century, which began with a belief in progress which is quite unthinkable today, turned out in the end to be one of the darkest and bloodiest centuries in the history of mankind, with two world wars, many local wars, civil wars and ethnic conflicts, two humanity-despising totalitarian systems, concentration camps and gulags, genocides, expulsions and waves of refugees. Never before had so many people violently lost their lives in one single century. But in that dark century one bright light also shone: the rise of the ecumenical movement. After the centuries during which the ‘una sancta ecclesia’, the ‘One Holy Church’ confessed by all Western Churches in a common profession of faith, broke increasingly into separate churches, a counter movement set in.
All Churches became painfully aware that such a situation contradicted Jesus Christ’s will, and was a sin and a scandal. The separation of the Churches—1500 year ago with the Ancient Oriental Church, 1000 years ago with the Orthodox Churches, and almost 500 years ago with reformed Christianity, with a tendency to still new divisions—has seriously prejudiced the credibility of the Christian message. The divisions have brought much harm to mankind, inducing disunity and estrangement even within families, even to this very day.”
David,
I am sorry I misunderstood you. Thanks for letting me know this. I agree with you and Fitzmyer.
After reading through these posts, I think many interesting things have been said but nobody is getting at what Pope Benedict is talking about–the essentially Christological basis for the doctrine. All of the discussion above is perfectly compatible with the point he is trying to argue against. Is it enough to say there is good and evil in everybody? Benedict says no. Everybody who is posting seems to be saying yes.
Because of the success of enlightenment thinking, we spend a lot of time trying to convince people that pervasive evil exists, when it should be evident from opening the newspaper. The real question is, how can it be sufficient for the redemption of all people that one man was obedient to God, if you don’t posit an original act of disobedience which Christ’s obedience overturns?
As for the existence of Adam and Eve, I have to disagree with Michael Miller; to say a story is an allegory or a myth is not to say it is false, it is to say it conveys a truth by means of story or type.
Incidentally, I am not an evolutionary biologist, but I’ve read that current scientific opinion concerning human genetic matter traces it all back to one woman. I don’t think that’s a reason for literal reading of the story, but I mention it as an interesting fact.
David Nichol, you’ve isolated one of my favorite passages from Genesis, that preceding the great flood. But I think it would only argue against what you call an “overarching plan” if you conceive of that plan in a philosophical sense. Read within the entire pre-history (Genesis 1-11) the biblical story is an elegant and powerful testimony to the unfolding drama of God’s relationship to the world he created. The repeated failures of that relationship are what set the stage for the call of Abraham, and the choosing of a people.
Rita: You write, “The real question is, how can it be sufficient for the redemption of all people that one man was obedient to God, if you don’t posit an original act of disobedience which Christ’s obedience overturns?”
Aren’t you creating a problem in order to “solve” it? What does the obedience of one person have to do with the disobedience of another person? If there was not one person to disobey, what is the relevance of one person’s obedience? If many, many people (every person, in fact!) continues to disobey, again, what is the relevance of one person’s obedience?
Your post makes it sound like we are not getting something. I confess that after your post I am still not sure what it is we are not getting. Being the kind of person who never likes not getting things, your assistance would be appreciated.
To me, the pope seems to be espousing a sort of Manichaeism lite. Espcially when he contends that:
“Evil arises from a subordinate source; God with His light is stronger. For this reason evil can be overcome…”
He also says:
“In the evolutionist and atheistic view of the world … it is held that human beings as such have, from the beginning, borne evil and good within themselves. … Humans are not simply good, but open to good and to evil … both of them original. Human history then, according to this view, does nothing more than follow the model present in all evolution. What Christians call original sin is only this blend of good and evil”.
“This, in the final analysis, is a vision of despair. If it is true, evil is invincible..”
To the best of my knowledge, no atheist or evolutionist believes in the Manichaen notion that good and evil are quantifiable in any sense of the word. What exists and will continue to exist until the species becomes extinct however is the capacity to perform such acts. More fundamentally, what exists is the ability to distinguish good and evil acts, which is a consequence of the discriminating intellect we are endowed with.
Rita E. Ferrone,
The fact that I believe the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall is allegory doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that it conveys truths. The story also provides us with meanings that lie outside the story.
“Allegory is a form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy. Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.” (can be googled)
“Myth is a sacred story about the origins of the world and how the world and its creatures came into their present form, etc”. (can be googled)
In the Book of Genesis we learn something very important. After Adam had eaten from the forbidden fruit, Adam hid. God then asked Adam, “Where are you?”. God did not ask Adam, “Are you being good or evil?”
God is teaching Adam not to hide. Transformation and our journey with the Lord begins when we stop hiding. Once we stop hiding from ourselves, others, and God, our transformation begins. Genesis tells us that women, men, and children are not whole.
I agree with Catholic theologian James Alison when he writes about Original Sin. Alison doesn’t think we should throw St. Augustine out the window because he still has much to teach us. St. Augustine taught us about desire or what the Catholic Church calls concupiscence or a tendency toward sin. The rivalry and conflict over objects of desire that exists among human beings is inevitable given human freedom and the fact that these desires can be unstable.
Incidentally the Catholic Church doesn’t teach that baptism removes our desires and it doesn’t teach that baptism removes our need to struggle against those desires that can lead to abuse.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s1184713.htm
Michael Miller, thanks for your further comments. I was responding to your post of 12/21, 7:23, in which you said: “I believe the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall is allegory. This means the story is not true.” I would agree with your description of myth and allegory at 8:13 above. Perhaps the earlier post omitted some of your thought?
Joe Pettit, you wrote “If there was not one person to disobey, what is the relevance of one person’s obedience? If many, many people (every person, in fact!) continues to disobey, again, what is the relevance of one person’s obedience?” I think you name here the very question Benedict wants us to wrestle with. Why is the obedient suffering of Jesus salvific? Just to be clear, it is not I who created this problem, but St. Paul in his letter to the Romans. I have probably stated it badly. But I do believe it’s worth thinking about. The idea Christ as the “new Adam” has had a long run in Christian history.
Oops. 7:35.
Rita E. Ferrone,
I quoted James Alison and his thoughts about original sin before my post at 7:35. I didn’t quote Alison because I was disagreeing with him about original sin.
As to the Pope’s call for people to think more about original sin and the good v. evil “inner contradiction of our being,” I remember reading an article several years ago by an evolutionary biologist who took a crack at explaining original sin in evolutionary terms. I can’t remember where I read the article or who the author was, but I do recall some vociferous letters to the editor a few weeks later.
The biologist’s argument went as follows. Natural selection has likely been a constant over the many millions of years that life evolved on Earth. “Survival of the fittest” ensures that the most robust of a species propagate and pass along their ‘superior’ genes. In the context of evolution and natural selection, selfishness is a desirable trait. Looking out for # 1 is an integral component of survival of the fittest, and in purely biological terms, selfishness is a good. That “good” has no moral dimension, however, when considered in the context of the non-human animal kingdom.
If God created life on Earth, then surely God, as an omnipotent being, would know that selfishness would become an instinct in evolving living things and, paradoxically, would be a trait that would help a species to continue from generation to generation.
Selfishness becomes a huge problem, however, once reason is introduced into higher life forms, either directly by God or indirectly over evolutionary time. Once a life form can reason, many acts that were once instinctive and morally neutral begin to take on moral dimensions. (BXVI would say that reason allows a being to recognize the pre-existing natural law “inscribed in the heart.”) Selfishness becomes an evil in a community of beings with the power to reason. In such a community, self-centeredness and propagation of the species through time by the fittest of the species takes a back seat to acting in a manner that is morally good. Moreover, selfishness becomes equated with sin. (Every sin, at its core, is essentially an act of selfishness.)
Augustine spoke of our concupiscence, our propensity to sin. An evolutionary biologist venturing into the religious realm might say that sin, i.e., selfishness, is inherent in all of us because it is a product of eons of biological development, and that Baptism provides us with the spiritual grace to resist acts of selfishness. Likewise, only by following the example of Christ can we make a complete break with our original instinct towards selfishness.
[S]elf-centeredness and propagation of the species through time by the fittest of the species takes a back seat to acting in a manner that is morally good.
While I don’t like to reduce issues of morality to simplistic matters of survival (ala Denning), it’s not self evident that the impulse to behave morally and survival imperatives are always at odds with one another. Humans must act in cooperative groups simply to survive.
Also, it does not take Baptismal grace to resist acts of selfishness. It seems to me that sort of self-restraint pervades huminaity as a species. Christians have no monopoly on it.
To William Collier:
Thank you for your post (12/22/08 10:47pm). It is a succinctly presents a view of “original sin” that can be compatible with evolutionary biology as we understand it today.
I started the posting on this issue after “emotionally” reacting to Benedict XVI’s comment on evolutionists and atheists –
“In the evolutionist and atheistic view of the world … it is held that human beings as such have, from the beginning, borne evil and good within themselves. … Humans are not simply good, but open to good and to evil … both of them original. Human history then, according to this view, does nothing more than follow the model present in all evolution. What Christians call original sin is only this blend of good and evil”.
“This, in the final analysis, is a vision of despair. If it is true, evil is invincible…”
My sense has been that too often religionists/theologians/church leaders have condemned scientific outlook without trying to understand what the science is trying to say. This is particularly acute with an issue like evolution and a Christian religious culture that tends to dismiss evolution in light of a fundamentalist biblical reading. While the “official” position of the Catholic Church will not admit to reading the bible in such a way, the Vatican seems to have a predisposition to using scriptural texts as “proof texts” in this way. (I have in mind the use of New Testament texts to defend the notion of not being authorized to ordain women as priests) The Cathechism of the Catholic Church too often treats scripture in this way.
If God gave us minds to use and science is a legitimate avenue for seeking truth then it would seem that God would want us to use science as one avenue to search out a way of understanding how we came to be the human beings we are today and what that means in our relationship to God and his Son.
Your comments help me to put my understanding of the science of evolutionary biology in the context of a workable theology.
Maybe I misunderstand what the pope is saying but his comments on evolutionists seeing that we bear good and evil from the beginning needs more nuance and explanation. There are scientists who accept evolution and its consequences but also believe in God and his offer of salvation. They do not see their scientific exploration as leading to despair but seek to make their faith intelligible and in dialogue to what they know about the universe and how it has come to be.