original sin: a fresh look

I have learned the secret of being content

a window in a monastery in Suceava, Romania.

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Gen 3.22-24

Then the Lᴏʀᴅ God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—therefore the Lᴏʀᴅ God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

The concept is simple: When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil their human nature was changed. Because everyone is a descendant of Adam and Eve, everyone is born with that same human nature. There is no way to escape the human nature provided us by Adam and Eve except to not be born of a man and woman: Jesus, born of the virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit, Son of the Father, supposed son of Joseph.

The application of the concept is not so simple. Most variations of Christianity have an exception clause for infants. Some have an exception clause for people with mental disabilities that give them a mental age of an infant. Some have an exception clause for people who have never heard the Gospel: "the native in Africa" being the classic example.

Anytime we say we have a clear understanding of a Scriptural concept but then have to invent exceptions, the possibility is there that we do not have a clear understanding. We can dismiss the cloudiness with statements such as "the ways of the Lord are inscrutable" and "there are certain things we are not supposed to know", but if these can be used to dismiss the confusions why can't they be used to dismiss the concept? Why do we have a concept in our doctrinal statement that requires asterisks?

God told Adam that on the day he ate from the tree he would die. He ate. He didn't die on that day. We say that he died spiritually, or that on that day he was judged with death, or that on that day he lost his immortality. Those are explanations. They are not secured by the word of God. The only thing we know for certain is that (1) Adam and Eve didn't die and (2) their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked.

One of the reasons we say infants are innocent is that they don't know they are naked. They have no inclination to be covered, except to be warm, and have no awareness that they are naked or anyone else is naked. This is not a cognitive thing. They are not unaware of nakedness because they have no word for it; they are unaware because their eyes are not opened. They are Adam and Eve before eating the fruit.

When I was young I asked my mother what the age of accountability was. She said, when you are old enough to ask that question. Good answer, but good only because our church taught an age of accountability. What if there is none? Or what if you don't go to that church and have no idea there is an age of accountability?

God didn't expel Adam and Eve from the Garden because they sinned. He expelled them because he couldn't allow them to eat of the tree of life. This creates some issues:

• Were Adam and Eve mortal or immortal when they were created?

• If they were created immortal, why was there a tree of life in the Garden?

• If there had been no tree of life, could they have stayed in Eden?

• If Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of life first, would they have been immortal after eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil?

• If eating of the tree of life meant they would live forever, would that have reversed the sentence of death or would it have kept them alive forever in a state of death?

Original sin causes problem. It is the only human concept where a person is guilty until acquitted. That creates problems when we import that idea into a non-Christian framework.

• We cannot have a legal system where people are guilty until acquitted, but if such a legal system is considered by us to be not a legal system at all, how can God have such a legal system?

• The idea of systemic racism has adopted this idea of guilty until proven innocent and it is a nightmare.