Sin – how original!

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles)

I remember Bishop David Jenkins, who rather revelled in his reputation as the enfant terrible of the English bishops, beginning a sermon at the (evangelical) St John’s College, Nottingham, by saying: “I don’t believe in original sin.” He paused for effect before continuing: “That’s the trouble with sin, someone’s always done it before!”  

Many people would sympathise. Contemporary Christianity has problems with the doctrine, because it is unpopular to speak so negatively about humanity, or leads to mediaeval views on the fate of dying infants that we find unacceptable today.

It is also problematic for at least three better reasons than changing taste in doctrine: a) because we are more aware today from our Jewish friends of other ways of reading the early part of Genesis; b) because we (that’s “we” as in all right-thinking people ) treat the Genesis stories as myth, and Adam as ahistorical; and c) because the foundation text of the Augustinian doctrine (Rom 5:12) is not understood to say what the Augustinian interpretation took it to say.

Augustine understood Paul’s phrase (“ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον”) guided by the Latin version he knew (preserved in the Vulgate’s “in quo omnes peccaverunt”) to mean “in whom [i.e. Adam] all sinned”. This became the standard Western tradition, reiterated at Trent, which repeats the appeal to this verse (Session 5, Decree Concerning Original Sin, ¶2). The ninth article stands firmly in this Augustinian tradition: sin is fundamentally hereditary, and comes down to us like spiritual DNA from Adam. (Although Catholic and Protestant at the reformation tended to suspect each other of being Pelagian and seeking salvation by works, from the broader perspective of history they are both equally Augustinian.) Anyway, here is the text.

IX. Of Original or Birth-sin

Original Sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in the Greek, phronema sarkos, which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection some the desire, of the flesh, is not subject to the Law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized, yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.

I am not going to engage with all the details of the article’s wording. I first want to note the fundamental affirmation of doctrine this article makes, then its fundamental deficiency, before going on to explore the problematic areas of biblical interpretation.

The fundamental affirmation is that sin is not simply to be reduced a set of individual faults, failings or wrongdoings performed in isolation by individuals, but that it is a characteristic of human existence as we know it, a disfigured social network, and an ineluctable chthonic marring of what it means to be human. It is not just deed, but matrix; not just act, but the encompassing framework within which we act. Most (perhaps all) of us, baffled by our own behaviour, and a sometimes sense of helplessness in the face of our own inclinations, will recognise something of that idea of original sin. However uncomfortable we may be with some statements of it as a doctrine, we can nonetheless see that it points to something significant in how we experience ourselves and others in the world.

The fundamental deficiency is a lack of any prior related statement of the doctrine of creation. The reference in the first article to God as “the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible” and in this article to “original righteousness” really aren’t enough. Without a thorough grounding in the doctrine of creation, a statement such as the article makes that “man … is of his own nature inclined to evil” looks as if it is on the way to an unguarded Manichaeism. Where is original goodness, or the blessing that precedes and follows the Fall of Adam? Where is the image of God in which humankind were fashioned from the humus, the earth-creature from the earth (a metaphor particularly close to this clay boy’s heart)? I don’t see how one can talk about what corruption of nature might mean, without speaking first of that nature. On this ground, the article is plainly deficient.

It also makes poor use of scripture in its allusions. As I noted above, the Augustinian interpretation of Paul’s “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον” as meaning “in whom all sinned” makes it the most disastrous preposition in history. All modern translations agree that its proper meaning is “because.” The hereditary idea of “naturally … engendered of the offspring of Adam” is poorly rooted in this text.

It then moves on to another Pauline idea: “so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit”. This would appear to allude to Galatians 5:17. What Paul sets out as two spheres of being (even if precise interpretations are disputed, this much is largely agreed) Cranmer seems to take as two components of human nature, setting up an internal dualism. He then compounds this by conflating a reference to Romans 8:6-7 with the argument of Romans 7. He takes from the first the phrase phronema sarkos (τὸ γὰρ φρόνημα τῆς σαρκὸς θάνατος – the mindset of the flesh is death) and assumes it means the same as the phrase “the lust of the flesh” and then argues that this is “is not subject to the Law of God” (i.e. cannot obey it) apparently paraphrasing from Romans 7:7. All of these might mildly be described as tendentious exegeses (although Romans 7 does rather lend itself to tendentious exegesis)! Quite simply, original sin, as the article expounds it, is a scriptural mess.

(As a quick aside, one notes that when contemporary preachers start a point by saying “the real meaning of the Greek is…” they are about to say something particularly odd or questionable. It would seem that Cranmer anticipated the habit with that “called in the Greek”.)

I conclude what has become part one of a longer argument than I expected. I need to underline that fundamental affirmation that lies in the doctrine of original sin, that a satisfactory understanding of human sinfulness has to be more than just “All individuals individually do wrong.” But the scriptural basis which the article takes for this affirmation is very shaky, leaving aside our own more modern problems of an ahistorical understanding of the early chapters of Genesis. In a subsequent post I will try to take up some different readings of scripture, and be more affirmative of the doctrine of creation.

Tagged as: 39 articles, anglican, fall, sin