The clayboy, Doug Chaplin, recently wrote a thought-provoking post on original sin and evolution. He entitled it ‘No Adam, No Fall’, because it struggled with the Pauline concept that that Adam’s failure was a decisive moment in history. I’ll be quoting exhaustively, because I loved some of what Doug said.

I note Paul’s method. He re-reads the earlier story in the light of Christ. He does this with most things. I wonder what ways are open to us if we take that method seriously and look at ways of re-reading the whole narrative in the light of Christ, an even more thorough-going move from solution to plight, in the knowledge of creation and evolution that we have subsequently acquired.

I think this is an important thing to realize; Paul’s interpretation of Adam in the light of Christ is something we should attempt to imitate in our own interpretation of the Old Testament. Paul writes many letters, all teaching his followers in the churches how to think theologically, and how to be like Christ. These two things are not entirely separate. But, I think because of the goals of these letters (education), if we disagree with how Paul re-reads the Old Testament, we are not negating God’s inspiration in his letters. Paul wouldn’t have minded if we disagreed with him about Adam, so long as we re-read the fall in the light of Christ. I think the rest of Doug’s provisional thesis is best read in this light.

Sin” (if I may be every bit as anthropomorphic and anachronistic as Richard Dawkins is) is not only in the world long before “Adam”, but is the mechanism whereby Adam’s species can emerge and flourish as the one who is able to name the animals (in increasingly sophisticated taxonomies) and tend to the garden of the earth’s ecosystem (or destroy it).

As regular readers know, I’m a thorough supporter of Rene Girard’s memetic theory as a theory of sin; and of Christ’s sacrifice as a miraculous overcoming of that sin, rather than a satiation of a wrathful God. And hence, I think Doug hits the nail on the head with this: Sin is, in fact, something intrinsic and important to not only our daily lives, but our ancestry, and it is what makes us what we are. We are both very good in the eyes of God (Genesis 1:31), and not (Genesis 2:18).

Creation is what God is about, creating order from chaos, drawing conscious forms of life able to love and praise out of the primordial soup, developing those who will come to find their true selves in the image of the one in whom God encounters his creation. The image of God, revealed in Jesus, is God’s intention for men and women, transcending the selfish gene to live in a self-giving love that mirrors and responds to the love of God.

But, most importantly, God drew us out to overcome this flaw that both made us thrive and (perhaps) disappointed him in us. Through Christ, we can transcend the sin that has made us thrive, we can live in a self-giving love mirror and respond to the love of God. A valuable concept, Doug, and one beautifully put.

Why do I say ‘perhaps’ when it comes to God’s disappointment in us?

…there are indeed those other traditions of the origins of evil in the world which go alongside and beyond the account of Adam, Eve and the serpent. [...] Some of them seem to lay the blame more clearly on God, who makes both darkness and light. I think we need to go back to a fuller exploration of those traditions, and see if they can help enrich our understanding.

I culled a little bit, because I wanted to draw attention to laying the blame more clearly on God. There is certainly testament in scripture to God’s control over both good and evil – and how could there not be, and he still be God? It is something we must live with, if we are to be truly monotheistic in our faith. However, to me this suggests that it is unlikely God was disappointed in us, because that sin that helped us thrive was likely something given to us to overcome. We were made in the image of God, and the eternal presence of sin might be a necessary balance to God’s difficult role as Lord over both good and evil. And yet, God’s to constantly transcend this dual character for good: So too, through Christ, we can transcend our sin, and respond to God’s love.

Thanks for provoking thought, Doug