We're all original sinners
Callahan, Sidney
WE, RE ALL ORIGINAL SINNERS ~ Don t give Adam & Eve all the credit s a practicing sinner I don't need to be convinced of the reality of personal sin. Whenever I give in to the dreary enslaving...
...But conflict between different systems and motives also becomes inevitable...
...They follow Lucifer's rebellious cry in Milton's Paradise Lost, "Evil be thou my good...
...Humans are by nacre wounded...
...The collective experience of history, especially of the deadly twentieth century, makes the point all too well...
...In human beings, evolution has produced a human body and brain that are incredibly complex and multistructured...
...In particular, reason brings the foreknowledge of death with its fears and anxieties over loss...
...The West continues to be the conceptual, economic, industrial, and scientific dynamo for the world, setting the terms by which all the rest function...
...Like most nice people, I specialize in sins of omission...
...The human proneness to sin has been explained by the church in its developed doctrine of Original Sin...
...Humans have the capacity to choose freely and consciously between alternatives...
...It regards humankind as entirely autonomous, existing within a moral framework entirely of its own creation, responsible only to itself...
...Yet a firm belief in the capacity for sin does not solve the problem of why human beings incline to evil...
...In their self-conscious freedom, human beings can choose selfishness or altruism, truth or deception...
...A multitude of different systems and modules must interact for humans to function in space and time...
...Our sense of longing for paradise springs not from the past but from the imprinted image of God in the human creature...
...The push toward selfish dominance and control that fueled successful evolutionary selective processes remains powerful while the pull of goodness, love, reason, and beauty remains potent...
...Heightened self-awareness brings the further realization that an individual does not have the ability to control the environment or the self...
...The United States has replaced Europe as the leading actor within Western civilization, but Europe and North America remain intimately linked...
...When the knowledge of good and evil becomes possible, so do shame, guilt, and pride...
...Harmony never existed in the past, but instead lies in the future...
...The human race as one species could be said to fall "in Adam" as well as to be redeemed by Christ...
...Yes, as evolutionary psychologists and Christianity affirm, we are one corporate body or human race (or species) that through genetic inheritance shares a psychic unity...
...We could agree too that death truly enters human history when human beings have developed the self-conscious intelligence to fear the extinction of the conscious self...
...The West has generated the most important forces in modern political and economic history: imperialism, nationalism, Marxism, liberalism, capitalism, ideological totalitarianismand now globalism (considered as an ideological movement of global economic deregulation and integration...
...The great mutation or creation...
...We lukewarm believers choose sloth and selfishness rather than commit mayhem...
...As the firstborn of a new creation groaning toward fruition, Christ transforms human nature...
...Yes, also, to the concept that a self-conscious knowledge of good and evil is the required prelude for sinning...
...As intelligence and consciousness increased, there came a time in which human selfconsciousness emerged...
...Until the twentieth century, religion was central to Western civilization...
...On the one hand, humans cannot survive or function as a social species without parental altruism and group bonds that produce sacrifice for others...
...Now how does a Christian who accepts the scientific findings that support evolution make sense of this traditional teaching...
...Humans are "the self-interpreting animals" because of their evolved capacities of reason, language, and emotional intensity...
...With the development of a symbolic abstract sense of sell a human being can reason and feel in ways beyond other animals...
...Of course there are advantages in having so many different operating systems at work, for if one fails, another can function...
...In contrast to the nineteenth century, there no longer is general deference to the Christian God, or serious acknowledgment that such a deity might exist...
...The beauty and goodness of the world, the wonders of humanity's innate capacities for thought, language, art, and love create the desire for the company of God...
...However, there are Greek sources, as well, for the central Western belief that a moral Commonweal 8 January 28, 2000...
...With their lack of trust in their Creator, "death makes its entrance into human history...
...Only dedicated crusaders for evil reach the depths, or heights (?), of sin...
...Christ fulfills our desire...
...While acts of selfishness that do harm to others for personal advantage, or acts of going along with evils to avoid pain and loss, are not necessarily determined, they are inevitable...
...His complete wholeness and integrity, his wholehearted loving union with God wins us salvation from sin...
...It originally defined that civilization...
...As I compare my evolutionary account of Original Sin with the catechism's exposition, I see a fairly good fit...
...Given the evolutionary evidence, [ would surmise that the biblical time line misidentifies the past with the present and future...
...When turning to evolutionary theories of human nature, I find more support for an inherited "mixed motivation" in the human species...
...One difference in my evolutionary account and the catechism's is the latter's claim that our human ancestors personally rebelled against God at some specific time in the past, and thereby destroyed an original harmony among God, humanity, and the natural world...
...The freedom to choose between good and evil brings inner conflict and temptation...
...This is a fundamental change because it means that the West today no longer acknowledges the existence of an external rule giver or moral authority...
...The monotheism of the Jews, and of the Christianity that developed from Jewish origins, was central to the moral identity of the West...
...In an evolutionary perspective, the human species is the result of mutations, natural selection, and contingencies that produced an ever more complex organism...
...After that first sin, the world is virtually inundated with sin...
...We may disagree over the sources of human sin and woundedness, but not about who heals...
...The original harmony of creation was lost because of the personal sin of our first parents who abused their freedom and disobeyed God...
...Classical Rome, with its cultural roots in Greece, became Christian with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century...
...Eventually, highly intelligent bigbrained social animals appeared...
...I respond by attempting to construct an account of the human condition that incorporates all the sources of truth available from Scripture, church teaching, scientific evidence, and human experience...
...LONELY NE W WORLD ~N ~ l giver ~ he arrival of the new millennium raises a question I have not seen discussed, and which seems of general concern because of the leading role the West plays in the world, and can be expected to continue to play throughout the new century, if not the new millennium...
...Such has been its role, at least since the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the emergence of modern science...
...However, the West has changed in one significant respect...
...Whenever I give in to the dreary enslaving powers of sin, it's not a question of ignorance or mental incapacity: I know what God wants of me and choose to do otherwise...
...The church no longer requires that we take the "figurative language" of Genesis literally, but the message remains...
...With the capacity for self-consciousness, rationality, and intense emotions, humans can evaluate their acts by symbolic and moral standards of worth...
...It has bestowed upon the rest of the world industrial technology and successive revolutions in theoretical and applied science...
...The human mind is modular, with different brain processes and circuits, conscious and unconscious, having evolved for different purposes...
...Christ's redeeming work is bringing a new creation to birth, a future Eden...
...On the other hand, each individual inherits a strong competitive drive toward self-interest, dominance, and an impetus toward pleasure and survival...
...The catechism explains that Original Sin ensures that each human being, as a descendant of Adam and Eve, inherits "a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice...
...Unfortunately, the human condition includes built-in inner weaknesses arising from impotence, fear, inner diviCommonweal 7 January 28, 2000 sions, and mixed motivations...
...To start with the last first, I can say that having raised six children and one granddaughter I am firmly convinced that all human beings, even the most adored and adorable, possess not only a hunger for love and goodness, but innate inclinations toward selfishness...
...Given the evolved inner divisiveness of human nature we can see why the concept of Original Sin is necessary...
Vol. 127 • January 2000 • No. 2
