Three Modern Responses to Original Sin

Question 38  February 25

After having interviewed half a dozen pastors, ministers, priests and theologians, what are the main similarities and contradictions in Christian beliefs which have emerged?

FQ

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In the interest of full disclosure, that is not a real question submitted by a reader.  I had planned to publish another interview this week. Two more have been transcribed, written and submitted to the interviewees for approval and I was optimistic that at least one of them would be ready in time for today.  However, patience is a virtue and time is an essential ingredient in quality. When movie mogul Irving Thalberg was pushing writer George S. Kaufman to deliver a film script quickly, Kaufman laconically replied, ‘You want it Friday or you want it good?’    

Interviews conducted over the past two months have been extremely enlightening for me, and I hope they will be for you as The Believer’s Dilemma publishes responses to the 15 questions outlined on January 15, and January 29.  I am increasingly grateful to Tim Smart, Director of Lay Education at Montreal’s Anglican Diocesan Theological College (Feb 11), who was the first person I interviewed, in a fairly rambling fashion.  The written presentation did not do justice to the quality of Tim’s conversation and thought. I am also grateful to Wendy MacLean of the United Church of Canada, whose interview was conducted soon after Tim’s and suffered from the same problems.  Wendy has kindly agreed to redo her interview next week in order to make it consistent with subsequent interviews. Over the coming weeks, visitors to The Believer’s Dilemma will be surprised to see how central questions of faith are being revisited by Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Pentecostals and the United Church.

At the heart of this rethinking lies original sin.  When this doctrine was introduced by Augustine, the total depravity inherited from Adam and Eve meant that every baby was born under the wrath of God and could only be ‘saved’ by receiving the sacrament of baptism.  A thousand years later, Calvin and Luther made Augustine’s doctrine of original sin the cornerstone of their Reformation theology for Protestants. This ‘transmitted’ depravity affected every aspect of belief, from our understanding of Eden as allegorical or literal historical event, to questions of freewill, predestination and, ultimately, who is saved, how and why.

No one in the modern world believes in infant damnation and no one believes in the doctrine of double predestination. Everyone believes in human freewill and responsibility on one hand and the God’s love and justice on the other.  They also recognize that the theology of Augustine, Luther and Calvin makes these beliefs mutually exclusive. As we will see over the coming weeks, modern Christian denominations seek to resolve this paradox in quite different ways.       

There are three main responses to the problem of original sin:

1) To reject it as the greatest error ever committed in the name of faith.

2) To retain the historical term, but redefine to mean something completely different.

3) To defend it as the terrible, but inevitable, result of the literal, historical ‘Fall’.

1)  Rejecting Original Sin

Many books and papers have been written on the subject of original sin.  Pelagius in the 5^th century was Augustine’s arch-nemesis in the initial fight to establish it as Christian doctrine. Pelagius defended freewill and deplored the idea that new born babies should be condemned as Totally Depraved.  Bishop Augustine carried the day in 418 at the Council of Carthage, institutionalizing infant damnation and having Pelagius declared a heretic. Enlightenment humanist Erasmus defended human freedom and responsibility, which provoked Luther to write his scathing diatribe ‘the Bondage of the Will.’ Calvinists have been at war for centuries with Jacob Arminius, who criticised the ugly fruit of original sin: total depravity, limited atonement, double predestination.  John Wesley, who founded the Methodists and was a great defender of the Arminian belief in freewill was also a staunch defender of original sin.  He wrote a book-length rebuttal to Dr. Taylor’s criticism of original sin. Wesley, like all subsequent defenders, equated the universality of sin with a depraved human nature.  It must not be blamed on God’s perfect creation, but rather attributed to the historical fall of Adam, directly transmitted to his offspring, the entire human race.

The most prominent modern critic of original sin is Mathew Fox, an ex-Catholic priest who subsequently joined the Anglican confession.  Fox is popular among Anglicans, members of Canada’s United Church, and other liberal Christians.  His ideas are most thoroughly articulated in his 1983 book ‘Original Blessings’ where he argued that Fall/Redemption theology only dates back to Augustine in the 4^th century and was unknown to the Early Christian Church.  Fox supported his position from numerous sources.

Herbert Haag, former president of the Catholic Bible Association of Germany wrote Is Original Sin in Scripture?   "The doctrine of original sin is not found in any of the writings of the Old Testament. It is certainly not in chapters one to three of Genesis... The idea that Adam’s descendants are automatically sinners because of the sin of their ancestors, and that they are already sinners when they enter the world, is foreign to Holy Scriptures...  Consequently, we are not, as is often maintained, enemies of God and children of God’s wrath. We become sinners only through our own individual and responsible actions. "

Fox quoted from Jewish and Eastern Orthodox sources to demonstrate that they did not share the Christian - and specifically Western Roman Catholic - tradition of Augustinian original sin.   Timothy Ware in his book The Orthodox Church writes, ‘Most Orthodox theologians reject the idea of ‘original guilt’ put forward by Augustine and still accepted (albeit in a mitigated form) by the Roman Catholic Church. Men automatically inherit Adam’s corruption and mortality, but not his guilt: they are only guilty in so far as by their own free choice they imitate Adam.’

Fox went on to illustrate the consequences of this Augustinian doctrine of original sin, which was revived by Luther and Calvin.  He noted that "churches are moving subtly away from Augustine’s original sin hypothesis as is evident, for example, in the renewed theology of baptism, which orients the sacrament properly so that it becomes a celebration of new life in Christ and in a voluntary Christian community instead of being an occasion for removing original sin." Rather than tinker with definitions and degrees of guilt, Fox rejected the doctrine in its totality and proposed that the central truth of creation is ‘original blessing’. 

Fox connects original blessing to Eastern religions, North American native spirituality, liberation theology, social justice, ecumenism and feminism, which made him the poster child of New Age heretics among deeply Conservative Christians.  Fox is credited/blamed for being a major influence on the controversial Emerging Church movement as represented by popular author Brian McLaren, Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz (California), and Doug Pagitt from Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis.   The following blog by Apprising Ministries traces the links and genealogy of the Emerging Movement.

http://apprising.org/2010/06/05/mike-morrell-on-matthew-fox-john-wimber-and-the-emerging-church/

2) Redefining Original Sin

Many Christians have reconciled themselves to contradictions inherent in classical original sin by redefining it. The most influential articulation of this modern understanding of original sin was made by American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in his  opus ‘The Nature and Destiny of Man’.  (Human Nature, 1941; Human Destiny, 1943.)

See the original New York Times book reviews below

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/niebuhr-nature1.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/niebuhr-nature2.pdf

Niebuhr was born in Missouri in 1892, the son of a German-born minister of the German Evangelical Synod of North America. He was trained for the ministry at the Synod's Eden Theological Seminary and at the Yale Divinity School. In the 1920s he took a church in industrial Detroit, the scene of bitter labor-capital conflict. Niebuhr's sympathies lay with the unions, and he joined Norman Thomas' Socialist Party. Meanwhile, New York's Union Theological Seminary, impressed by the power of his preaching and his writing, recruited him in 1928 for its faculty. There he remained for the rest of his life. He died in 1971.

Langdon Gilkey, in his book On Niebuhr, recounted how Reinhold Niebuhr dramatically refashioned the classical doctrine of original sin to the point where, as Niebuhr stated, "all 'literal' elements of the story were now gone". "Adam and Eve are now for him symbols of the human condition, not any longer causes of that situation. The Fall thus has ceased to point to a historical event in the past and has become a symbol, a description of our perennially disrupted state, and one that discloses to us the deepest levels of that state. . ."

Gilkey summarized Niebuhr's innovative refashioning of the doctrine of original sin: "If Adam is a symbol of our bondage and not its historical cause, how are we to understand this situation? What now is 'original sin'? Or, put another way, what is the cause of our ills that replaces the historical fall? Of course, as Augustine pointed out, there is no cause of our sin in the sense of an external factor that necessitates it, as a material cause necessitates an effect. We sin through our will and thus somehow freely; we could love (and avoid sin) if we willed to do it, but we do not so will it, even if we wish we could. Something, therefore, is awry. Our wills are not themselves; and though it is our will that is at fault, we cannot seem to do anything about it. What is amiss?"

Niebuhr's answer is that the prior 'sin' drives us to the actual sins we each commit. In effect that underlying sin (original sin) consists in a break in the central relationship to God. In the literal story, or course, that break was established by Adam's act; now it is shifted into our own spiritual depths where the self establishes itself.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr in his 2005 essay Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr, wrote, "The idea of original sin was a historical, indeed a hysterical, curiosity that should have evaporated with Jonathan Edwards's Calvinism. Still, Niebuhr's concept of original sin solved certain problems for my generation. The 20th century was, as Isaiah Berlin said, "the most terrible century in Western history." The belief in human perfectibility had not prepared us for Hitler and Stalin. The death camps and the gulags proved that men were capable of infinite depravity. The heart of man is obviously not O.K. Niebuhr's analysis of human nature and history came as a vast illumination. His argument had the double merit of accounting for Hitler and Stalin and for the necessity of standing up to them. Niebuhr himself had been a pacifist, but he was a realist and resigned from the antiwar Socialist Party in 1940.

"Many of us understood original sin as a metaphor. Niebuhr's distinction between taking the Bible seriously and taking it literally invited symbolic interpretation and made it easy for seculars to join the club. Morton White, the philosopher, spoke satirically of Atheists for Niebuhr. "About the concept of 'original sin,' " Niebuhr wrote in 1960, "I now realize that I made a mistake in emphasizing it so much, though I still believe that it might be rescued from its primitive corruptions.(emphasis added) But it is a red rag to most moderns. I find that even my realistic friends are inclined to be offended by it, though our interpretations of the human situation are identical (emphasis added)." "

Niehurh’s ‘realistic’ friends were quite right in arguing that a complete understanding of sin and suffering has no need of the bogeyman of original sin.  By the time he was finished redefining original sin, there was nothing of Augustine or Calvin left in it. It is a mystery why Niehuhr devoted so much time and energy to redefining a doctrine which is indefensible in its traditional form.

3) Defending Original Sin

Many Christian fundamentalists defend original sin blindly because it is part and parcel of their literal interpretation of the Bible, including Eden, and their belief that the traditions of Christianity are divinely inspired and perfectly propagated from generation to generation.  It is inconceivable to them that almighty God could have permitted Augustine, Luther and Calvin to teach such a destructive and terrifying doctrine unless it were infinitely and eternally true.

The following 1998 article by Edward T Oakes, from First Things magazine website, provides a thoughtful defense of original sin.  The arguments against are far more devastating than anything proposed by Pelagius, Erasmus, Dr Taylor or Mathew Fox. The arguments in defense are similar to Neiburh’s:  sin has always existed, therefore let’s call it ‘original sin’.  This is as logical as saying ‘rape’ has always existed, therefore let’s call it ‘human sexuality’ and defend it as natural and normal.    

I find it impossible to understand why Oakes insists on arguing that ‘original sin’ as a perfect synonym for the very different phenomenon of personal sin. Perhaps it will be clearer to you.

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/03/001-original-sin-a-disputation-18

Questions or comments?

Tags: Pelagius, Erasmus, Jacob Arminius, John Wesley, Dr. Taylor, Mathew Fox, Original Blessings, Herbert Haag, Is Original Sin in Scripture?, Timothy Ware, Emerging Church, Brian McLaren, Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Dan Kimball, Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz (California), and Doug Pagitt, Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Langdon Gilkey, On Niebuhr, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr, Edward T Oakes, First Things, Original Sin: A Disputation.

What do modern Anglicans/ Episcopalians think of Original Sin?

Fifteen Questions for Anglicans.  In a continuing series begun on January 14, The Believer’s Dilemma has examined the problematic theologies of Augustine, Luther and Calvin, which were based on original sin.  What do modern Christians believe? This week we have an interview with Tim Smart, Director of Lay Education at Montreal’s Anglican Diocesan Theological College.

(copywrite February 10  The Believer's Dilemma  http://www.believers-dilemma.org/)

 

Officially, all Christian theologies make some reference to the Fall of mankind in Eden as the origin of evil, sin and death. In practice, believers hold a wide variety of views about whether Eden is a literal event that occurred circa 4,000 BC or is an allegory for the human experience. This series of interviews is not intended to present official denominational theology. There are two reasons for this. 1) Not all denominations possess an agreed upon confession of faith like the Westminster Confession, or a founding theologian like John Calvin or Martin Luther, or a central authority such as the Roman Catholic magisterium to set the parameters of acceptable belief and practice. 2)  Parameters of acceptable belief and practice shift over time in response to social changes.  A great gap can exist between ‘official theology’ and ‘acceptable belief’. These interviews represent denominational beliefs as understood by a single knowledgeable individual.  

History: The Anglican Church of Canada is an independent, self-governing church in communion with the other churches of the worldwide Anglican Communion (Church of England, Episcopalian). It has its roots in the Church of England, which separated from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534. Influenced by the Protestant Reformation, the new English church simplified rituals and introduced the Book of Common Prayer (1549), which enabled services in English instead of Latin. At the same time, the church preserved certain traditions, including the early church creeds and the succession of bishops from the line of the apostles. Because of its history, Anglicanism is sometimes referred to as “Reformed Catholicism.” During the violent centuries when Protestant Reformers accused the Pope of being the antichrist and Roman Catholics decreed that Protestants were ‘outside the Church’ and therefore ‘outside salvation’ Anglicans have represented the middle ground (via media) between Catholics and Protestants.

Position:  The range of ‘acceptable’ beliefs and practices within the Anglican Church is large, making it one of the more liberal denominations.

Current situation:  The Anglican Church of Canada struggles with aging congregations, declining attendance and churches that are closing.

1)  Does the universe exist for a purpose?  If so, what is it?

Many Anglicans have been scientists who studied both scripture and nature to understand what is ultimately true about the universe. Anglicans are not defensive about scientific research into the ‘Big Bang’ theory of creation, string theory, multi universes, or life on other planets. They do not want to make the mistake of the Enlightenment Church which fought to defend a Biblical misinterpretation that the sun and stars revolved around the earth.  Science has played an invaluable role in helping us understand how nature works, and has given us new ways to think about God ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’.

2)  Why is the natural world plagued with catastrophic events? 

Anglicans do not imagine God as an old man with a beard sitting on a throne in the sky dispensing blessings and curses; causing tsunamis in his wrath and finding parking spots in his mercy. 

Anglicans do not teach the Augustinian/Calvinist connection between the Fall in Eden and the origin of all evil, suffering and death in the world. Natural catastrophes are tragic but they are not evil. In some cases we are the authors of our own misfortune by building in areas at risk of earthquakes or flooding.  We also have to take responsibility for affecting climate change and extreme weather. ‘Natural evil’ is not a major issue for Anglicans, but ‘systemic’ evil in politics and social structures is a real problem that needs to be addressed.

3)  Do human beings exist for a purpose? If so, what is it?

We are intelligent beings with freedom of will. The important question is: What do we do with our freedom?  Modern western culture has engaged in the pursuit of happiness, focussed on personal pleasure and material possession.  This individualism is in sharp contrast to the Old Testament which described society devoted to the common good, where the community came first.  Jesus, in the New Testament, taught community-centered service which was the opposite of self-centered freedom.   

One of the problems with ‘religion’ is that it is good for the ‘in group’ but can be harmful to those who are outside that group. Jesus, born a Jew, stretched the boundaries of who is in and who is out to include everyone from diseased lepers and ostracized sinners to heretical Samaritans and uncircumcised gentiles. When Jesus said ‘love your neighbour’ it was without conditions.

Christianity has been very much focussed on individual sin, salvation and whether or not we’re going to go to heaven.  Christians have not been so much concerned about the environment, the economy, war and peace.  These are pressing problems of our times and the Church’s failure to address them is one of the reasons that many young people would rather attend a protest rally than a church service.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of eternal life being now. It is not something we wait for. The present moment is what we have. The past is only neuron memory and we can’t know for sure what the future holds, so the present moment is the eternal now.  The Irish poet John O’Donohue wrote, ‘Each of us is like an artist. We all have a creative gift, as God is creative. We all leave a mark on the world. What kind of mark will that be?’

If we do not cooperate, look out for one another, and care for the vulnerable (widows, orphans, the incapacitated) we are just caring for ourselves. All Old Testament prophets warned about the consequences of selfishness and injustice which we have seen reiterated recently in the Occupy movements around the world. 

4)  Why did a God of perfect goodness create - or permit - evil?    

The modern Anglican Church is not dogmatic about attributing all evil to the Fall of Adam and Eve. The story of Eden can also be interpreted to describe the competing choices that confront us all.  Many Anglicans use the world ‘evil’ to categorize those actions which destroy the creatures of God.  The capacity to do good or evil is part of our human nature.

The Anglican Church asks candidates for baptism, "Do you renounce evil, and its power in the world, which defies God’s righteousness and love?" Many people are uncomfortable with the idea of ‘evil’ and picture a devil with a pitchfork who is constantly at war with God. It is not helpful to blame Satan or other outside evil forces. It evades our responsibility for our own actions. 

Note that the Thirty Nine Articles, which were the guiding Anglican document of the Reformation, are quite Augustinian/Calvinist in their views.  

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 Greek, p¢vnæa sapk¢s, (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.

X. Of Free-Will.
The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith; and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.

5)  Why does human nature appear to be a mixture of good and evil?   

Anglicans emphasise personal choice and responsibility rather than Reformation doctrine of total depravity. It is dangerous to label people as ‘evil’ because we are all a mixture of good and bad.  We are bombarded by many voices urging us in different directions, but we choose which ones to heed. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness but said ‘no’ three times.   This is a model for us in respect to the ‘evil’ voices which tempt us.   Satan – whether a literal being or a symbol of evil – is merely one voice. The final choice always remains with us.

The Bible shows us that we don’t always choose well. We cause suffering and we contribute to destroying the planet. But when we make destructive choices which cause suffering, forgiveness and reconciliation are available.  We can get back into harmony with the Creator.

6)  What form of religion was known to ancient cavemen, such as Neanderthals? How did they know it?

Most Anglicans have no problem accepting ancient dates for early humans because they interpret the story of Eden as an allegory rather than literal history which occurred in 4,000 BC or thereabouts.  Anglicans are comfortable with Darwinism and the idea that the species has evolved and changed over a long period of time.

Anglicans do not claim to know when or how cavemen began to have some consciousness of God or religion.            

7)  How did a God of perfect justice reveal Laws and Commandments to all the peoples of the earth? 

NB Prior to Jesus (0 AD) there was no New Testament. Prior to Moses (1500 BC) there was no Old Testament.  Multitudes of people had access only to parts of the Bible or none of it.

The Jews conceived themselves as a light to the nations to be shared with their neighbours.  They did not think that ‘uncircumcised gentiles’ were condemned by God for living in the darkness.  Early Christianity – at its best – was also about sharing the light. Jesus spoke of salt, light and leaven in the world. Problems began when the Christian Church was married to the Roman Empire. Then it became a bully.  It was no longer a light in the world but a sledgehammer!  Christianity became a political mechanism to rule the Empire.  In the modern world we have seen ‘Empires’ in Europe and the USA try to rule the world via political, economic and military power.

Abraham, Moses and Jesus were trying to do something different. When Jesus spoke about ‘the Kingdom of God’ it was not power over the people, but power to serve ‘the least of these, my brethren.’  Jesus set us a model by saying, ‘This is my body broken for you, and my blood shed for you’ so that we would remember and do the same with our own lives. We find our life by losing it in a very different kind of kingdom.  Unfortunately every good thing can become twisted and perverted.

8)  Did Laws and Commandments reconcile believers to God and cause them to live righteously?   

Luther saw the impossibility of living a perfectly righteous life.  He was combating the idea that we can be purified of sin by the sacrament of the mass or that we could buy forgiveness with Indulgences to get out of Purgatory.  Luther argued that believers should not be enslaved to the Church and beholden to priests. God alone provides salvation, by faith alone. Luther was right to remind us that salvation is a free gift that cannot be earned.  Luther’s ideas about the bondage of original sin, the dominance of evil, total depravity, and predestination are problematic, but Anglicans have never embraced these Reformation ideas.

After the believer accepts the free gift of grace and enters into the fold of Christ, his or her life should be changed. We should become more generous and more loving. It is not because the laws exist, or because we understand the laws better that we become more Christ-like, but because something in our nature begins to change. 

9) What is required for salvation to occur?    

First we have to ask:  What is salvation? Traditional Christianity taught that sinners were saved by baptism or grace and then went to heaven.  Unsaved sinners went to hell. In the modern world, people who do not attend church are not concerned about sin. They do not fear for their salvation. They focus on this life, which can be a good thing. This life is important.  And it is good. We should not see only the suffering of this world and pray to get out as soon as possible. This life provides infinite opportunities to put our faith into practices.  We should do good for its own sake, not to earn our salvation.

What does the life of Jesus tell us?  God came into our world in the form of human flesh. The Incarnation is vitally important to our understanding of God and our nature. God values the flesh.  This is very different than the Manichean/Augustinian belief that the flesh is evil and that only the disincarnate spirit is good. We should not constantly diminish this life by viewing it as a spring board to the eternal. There are many parables about the eternal consequences of our actions – the weeping and gnashing of teeth – but these stories serve to motivate us to be more active in this life and make better use of our opportunities.

Fundamentalist Christians believe in a God of wrath who draws a thick line between the saved and unsaved.  We can also look at the cross as good overcoming sin and death. In death there is hope – for everyone.  Anglicans do not hold the Calvinist view that atonement was limited to the predestined elect. God’s grace is much larger than that. 

10) Who is saved?   

Our understanding of salvation rests on a three legged stool.  Scripture is a guiding light, but in places scriptures suggests that Jesus died for all and in other places suggests that only an elect few will be saved. Christian Tradition helps us interpret scripture but traditions have changed over the centuries and some traditions conflict with others.  We try to make sense of these complications via Reason, which is enhanced by our experiences as we live our faith.

Anglicans are not dogmatic about who is saved. Many Anglicans believe that a good and just God will be wide in his grace rather than narrow, so that God’s plan of salvation is not limited to Christians. The Universalist position - that all will be saved and none condemned - is not unknown with the Anglican confession.

Note that the Thirty Nine Articles, which were the guiding Anglican document of the Reformation, are quite Augustinian/Calvinist in their views.  

XVIII. Of obtaining eternal Salvation only by the Name of Christ.
They also are to be had accursed that presume to say, That every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the light of Nature. For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved.

11) Does divine love and justice ensure that salvation is available to all?  

Some Anglicans – such as Mathew Fox who wrote a book called ‘Original Blessings’ in opposition to Original Sin  – are exploring less traditional, more inclusive visions of Christianity.  Celtic Spirituality focuses on love of nature and a passion for the wild and elemental as a reminder of God's gift, respect for art and poetry, a sense of closeness and immanence between the natural and supernatural, and equality of men and women. 

Most Anglicans find it difficult to believe salvation is determined by anything so narrow as the sacrament of baptism, obedience to specific (Christian) scriptures, or by uttering a sinner’s prayer.  Salvation is the beginning of process of sanctification. The Holy Spirit blows where it will, therefore forgiveness and reconciliation are available to all. The opportunity to engage in acts of loving service is available to all. Believers can join hands with others inside and outside Christianity.

12) What role does human freewill play in salvation?   

Anglicans believe that freewill and personal responsibility are vitally important to salvation. Reformation teachings on predestination and total depravity of the will were never part of Anglican theology.  A God of infinite love and justice would have provided people in all times and places throughout history a means to attain salvation.  The impossibility of saying exactly how this happens is the reason that Anglicans do not emphasize the final separation between heaven and hell.

Note that the Thirty Nine Articles, which were the guiding Anglican document of the Reformation, are quite Augustinian/Calvinist in their views.  

XVII. Of Predestination and Election.
Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God, be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.

As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.

13) How does salvation bring an end to sin, suffering and death?  

Salvation really means full sanctification – overcoming the sinful nature. This is made possible by the gifts of grace.  There is abundant evidence of grace’s power to produce transformation. The end of sin, suffering and death will only occur when the human nature has been fully transformed.  How this process is completed – to what extent it depends on divine power or human will – remains a mystery.

14) Does supernatural power intervene in the natural world to answer prayer?

Does God hear our prayers? Does God heal? Is God outside us, answering prayer directly, or do our prayers send out good energy that combines with the good energy of others to make things happen?   We can’t be sure, but we continue to pray for people who are sick.  Not everyone is cured. Not every prayer is answered, at least not in the manner and time period we expect.

The Lord’s Prayer teaches us how to pray and what to pray for.  It begins by asking that God’s will be done and for his kingdom to come down to earth. This tells us that heaven begins on earth. We should not expect God to cater to our material desires beyond providing our daily bread. Forgiveness is important to the kingdom of God and we pray for our own forgiveness as well as the grace to forgive others.  We also pray to overcome temptation and to be delivered from evil.  This is the essence of salvation and sanctification. These are the things believers are to pray for.

15) What is the eternal state?

The idea of a soul leaving the body and going directly to God seems to come from Greek culture rather than scripture or Hebrew tradition. The Bible speaks more about falling asleep until a general resurrection of the dead.  What form that will take is not clear

Simplistic old ideas that divided the world into good and evil, saved and unsaved, heaven and hell, are unsatisfying in the modern world.  Anglicans are not dogmatic about what heaven might look like. Whatever hell is, it contains fewer people than in past centuries when Anglicans believed that those of other faiths would not share the same eternal state as Christians.  These questions are too complex and difficult for simple black and white answers.  

    

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For a more formal statement of Anglican beliefs see the following documents.

The beliefs of Anglicans can be considered quite diverse. The official standard is the Book of Common Prayer but some parts of that book are more clearly doctrinal than others.

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/

The Catechism of the Episcopal Church USA summarizes the faith in question-and-answer format.

http://anglicansonline.org/basics/catechism.html

The Thirty Nine Articles were important at the Reformation, but are less so today.

http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty-nine_articles.html

Why Does Original Sin Matter?

 February 4

Original Sin is the most misunderstood doctrine in the history of religion.  Augustine established the concept, Luther and Calvin revived it, and the modern Church is deeply divided between defenders and deniers. But do really think the majority of Christians want to remove this ugly piece of theology from ‘the books’?

DS

copywrite The Believer's Dilemma 2011 (http://www.believers-dilemma.org/)

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Dear DS

You are absolutely right that Original Sin is widely misunderstood. For the past few weeks I have been interviewing representatives from different denominations about Original Sin and its consequences.  It is not a subject that is regularly studied in seminary or Bible School. Original Sin is not preached in sermons.  It is seemingly absent from Christian thought and therefore questions about Augustine, infant damnation, Luther, predestination, Calvin and total depravity seem irrelevant.

 While discussing Original Sin with men and women who devote themselves to full-time ministry I have been consistently surprised by their mystification at my line of questioning.  Why does it matter what cavemen might have thought about God?   Who can know the mind of God or how he revealed himself to people in remote times and places?  The consistent response has been: We live here and now. This is the time and place that matters to us. Let us ‘rescue the perishing and care for the dying’ while we may.

The January 14 Believer’s Dilemmas Q+A (http://www.believers-dilemma.org/publicpages/answers/32 ) outlined the destructive impact of Original Sin in Augustinian, Lutheran and Calvinist theologies.  January 28’s Q+A ( http://www.believers-dilemma.org/publicpages/answers/34) outlined the radically different concept of sin and salvation held by the Early Church.  Original Sin is absent from the consciousness of modern Christianity yet its fallout is everywhere evident, as if a city has been rebuilt after a nuclear holocaust so that every sign of destruction was removed from the landscape while the streets are filled with damaged human beings who have forgotten the bombs and never think about the war that provoked the lethal assault.  

Original Sin has created two damaged mutations of Christianity.  One form struggles to defend Augustine’s innovation while the other struggles to deny it. Both fail. This observation raises hackles.  It shouldn’t. It is not an attack on faith and not an assault on Christianity.  It is a call to find a better remedy.    

Those who struggle to defend Original Sin are often referred to as Fundamentalists.  This is a pejorative term that is unhelpful.  They do not think of themselves as disciples of Wrath or opponents to the Gospel of Love that was taught by Jesus. They call themselves Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Charismatics.  They believe that sin is real and salvation matters, that Jesus offers salvation to the entire human race. This is the good news of the Gospel. They also believe that Jesus is the one and only path to salvation. This is where the Augustinian influence begins to turn ugly.    

If we are all sinners and Jesus is the only means of salvation, what does that mean for people who are not saved in the name of Jesus?   No one in the modern world agrees with Augustine that unbaptized babies remain condemned for eternity.  Yet the condemnation of infants was not an unfortunate error in Augustine’s theology.   It was essential to the inherent logic of Original Sin.  Luther understood that Augustine’s theology required total depravity of human nature subsequent to the Fall in Eden so that human ‘freewill’ became hopelessly corrupted.  Therefore only an elect few would be saved by predestined divine election.  Why would God predestine a few to eternal salvation and countless multitudes to eternal damnation?  Calvin could not make sense of this ‘horrible doctrine’ but declared that God had arranged it all ‘for His own pleasure.’

Modern defenders of Original Sin disagree with Luther and Calvin that we are helpless pawns whose fates are predestined.  The modern world believes in freewill and personal responsibility to choose between good and evil.   Augustine’s theology was ugly but logical.  The theology of Luther and Calvin was even uglier but rigorously logical.  Every soul was born totally depraved due to the inherited corruption of Adam; therefore God was fully just in condemning all sinners to eternal damnation.  Luther argued forcefully that justice required universal damnation and that not a single person had the slightest grounds to complain of injustice.  This ugliness of inherited condemnation was counterbalanced by unmerited salvation. God’s infinite love was demonstrated by extending unlimited grace to the undeserving elect.  Calvinist theology was soundly logical and thoroughly Biblical.  But the Jesus of Augustine, Luther and Calvin could not be the Saviour of all.  Calvinism made his atonement limited to the sins of the elect.

Limited atonement on the part of Jesus and the total depravity of human nature are not widely accepted by modern defenders of Original Sin. Those regrettable doctrines have been filed away with infant damnation and double predestination as theological aberrations from the distant past.  Salvation is now available to all. We are all free to choose Jesus as our personal Saviour and responsible for choosing... or not choosing.    But who is choosing? Choosing what?  And when?

 Modern defenders of Original Sin agree with Augustine, Luther and Calvin that our eternal fate is determined in this lifetime. Some people will spend eternity in heaven. Others will spend eternity in hell.  But who?  And on what basis?   This is where the question of the caveman becomes important.  If salvation depends on knowing Jesus or obeying the Scriptures, then how could a caveman have been saved?  How could someone who never saw a Bible be saved? Similarly, how would the eternal fate of a deceased child be determined?  Augustine, Luther and Calvin provided answers to these questions that were ugly but clear and simple.

Modern mutations of Original Sin produce a theology that is the opposite of clear and simple.  Its defenders are obliged to warn sinners that they must choose Jesus as their personal Saviour, yet they remain convinced that God in his infinite love and justice will not condemn anyone unjustly.  But how would this work? By what unknown ‘rules’ could cavemen be saved or condemned? By what ‘rules’ could infants be saved or condemned? A multitude of problematic exceptions arise if salvation is a free choice which must be made during this short lifetime.  Augustine, Luther and Calvin would have condemned this modern mutation of Original Sin for creating theological chaos by pandering to human notions of justice and freedom.   

The other modern mutation of Christianity is a much stronger reaction against Augustine’s Gospel of Wrath.  Moderate Christianity does not believe that human nature is totally depraved or that atonement is limited to an elect few. The question of the caveman is a stand-in for all the questions raised by the narrow God of Original Sin. How could salvation depend on Jesus if multitudes never heard of him? How could salvation depend on Scripture if multitudes never read a Bible?  A universal God should have had the same relationship with all peoples at all times and places in history.  But what was that relationship?  Did cavemen go to heaven or hell when they died?  Do infants go to heaven or hell?  How do they exercise their freewill?  These questions cannot be answered categorically and so the moderate Church leaves them open.  If it is impossible to know who is saved, why be dogmatic? If it impossible to know who goes to heaven or hell, why make empty threats or promises?

Christianity that struggles to deny Original Sin is condemned by defenders of Original Sin as a liberal, compromising, vacillating Church. Many ‘liberal’ Christians do not believe the Bible should be read literally. Does it matter if Jonah did not spend three days in the belly of a literal whale?  Does it matter if the story of Noah is not about a literal global flood? Does it matter if the waters of the Red Sea did not literally part for Moses to cross? Does it matter if the universe was not created in six literal days? Does it matter if Adam and Eve were not literally tempted by a talking serpent?  Once this kind of question is permitted, some free-thinkers will ask: Does it matter if Jesus was born of a virgin?  Does it matter if Jesus was literally raised from the dead?  Does it even matter if Jesus literally existed?

For modern defenders of Original Sin, these are dangerous and heretical ideas, not sane and healthy responses to the ugliness of Augustine, Luther and Calvin.  These ideas are seen as an attack on the fundamental beliefs of Christianity.  Hence modern Fundamentalists defend literal Bible interpretation.  As we saw a few weeks ago, while examining William Dembski’s book about Young Earth Creationism and the Fall of the Human Race, modern defenders of Original Sin require that all sin, suffering, evil and death originated in Eden.  Defenders of Original Sin such as William Dembski acknowledge the role of freewill and personal responsibility in salvation; they do not teach that every baby is born totally depraved, but they do speak about the ‘transmission’ of sin and depravity as an inherited evil.   Inherited from whom?  And what are the consequences? 

Modern defenders of Original Sin and modern deniers of Original Sin are united in their rejection of infant baptism, predestination, total depravity and limited atonement. They are united in their belief that God is both loving and just and that grace is a free gift that is freely accepted or rejected. Tragically, they are deeply divided over how to resolve the apparent contradictions and explain how all can exercise their will and be judged in some meaningful way.

Nowhere is this deep divide better illustrated than in the writings of Matthew Fox, a lightning rod for controversy.   Matthew Fox was a Catholic Priest who in 1983 wrote a book called ‘Original Blessings’   which directly contravened the theology of Original Sin.  In 1988, Fox wrote a public letter to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) entitled "Is the Catholic Church Today a Dysfunctional Family?" Fox was subsequently expelled from the Dominican order and joined the Episcopal Church (Anglican communion) in California.

Fox has written 30 books that question fundamental Christian beliefs which have been influenced by Original Sin.  The issue is far from irrelevant or dead. It goes to the heart of what Christianity is and what Christians believe.   

Matthew Fox is an inspiration for  many moderate Christians, by daring to imagine a God who is not narrow, wrathful, exclusive, Patriarchal, sexist and homophobic.  For staunchly conservative Christians, Matthew Fox encapsulates all that is New Age, neo-Pagan, occultist, goddess worshipping, environmentalist, spiritualist, universalist and cosmic lunacy.   

 The provocative tone of Fox’s critics can be seen in the following articles

Mathew Fox is still alive and is still an idiot.

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/05/matthew-fox-is-still-alive-and-is-still-an-idiot/

What has everyone’s favorite non-Christian-Roman-Catholic-turned-Episcopagan-goofball been up to lately?

http://themcj.com/?p=11357

Original Sin might be off the radar for most Christians but it is an invisible cancer busily eating away at Christianity and engendering deep animosity between sincere believers.  Last week’s Q+A examined what Christianity looked like before Augustine inflicted it with Original Sin.  Over the coming months The Believer’s Dilemma will examine how modern denominations struggle to defend or deny Original Sin.

Questions or Comments?

Tags:   William Dembski, Matthew Fox, Original Blessings, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI.