Our old friend Jeff Hodges of Gypsy Scholar e-mails:
I liked the interesting argument that the consequences of belief and nonbelief in original sin are both bad and thus evidence of our fallen natures. But I do wonder what either original sin or fallenness mean in a Darwinian world . . .
Jeff has posed an excellent question which I must try to answer.
1. I begin with what it can't mean. It cannot mean that our present fallen condition is one we inherited from Adam and Eve if these names refer to the original parents of the human race. And this for two reasons.
A. The first is that nothing imputable to a person, nothing for which he is morally responsible, can be inherited. For what I inherit I receive ab extra by causal mechanisms not in my control. (It doesn't matter whether these mechanisms are deterministic or merely probabilistic.) That which is imputable to me, however, is only that which I freely bring about. It is a clear deliverance of our ordinary moral sense that a person is morally responsible only for what he does and leaves undone, not for what others do or leave undone. This deliverance is surely more credible than any theory that entails its negation. So one cannot inherit sinfulness, guilt, or desert of punishment. Therefore the actual sins of past persons cannot induce in me a state of sinfulness or guilt or desert of punishment. And that includes the actual sins of our first parents if there were any.
This amounts to a denial of originated original sin. It does not amount to a denial of originating original sin. The distinction is explained in greater detail here. So there can still be original sin even if sinfulness, guilt, and desert of punishment cannot be inherited.
As I said elsewhere, we must distinguish between the putative fact of original sin and the various theories one can have of it. Refuting a particular theory does not amount to refuting the fact.
B. The second reason is that there were in actual historical fact no original parents of the human race who came into existence wthout animal progenitors. We know this from evolutionary biology which is more credible — more worthy of belief — than the stories of Genesis interpreted literally. In any conflict between the Bible so interpreted and natural science, the latter will win — every time. So if one takes both Bible and science seriously, the Bible must be read in such a way that it does not conflict with our best science.
2. To take this whole original sin problematic seriously one must of course assume that in some sense or other 'Man is a fallen being.' I warmly recommend the study of history to those who adhere to such delusions of the Left as that of human perfectibility or the inherent goodness of humanity. Once you disembarrass yourself of those illusions you will be open to something like human fallenness or Kant's radical evil. I am not saying that the horrors of history by themselves entail man's fallenness. Our fallenness is certainly not a plain empirical fact as G. K. Chesterton and others have foolishly and tendentiously suggested. Chesterton's "plain as potatoes" remark was silly bluster. It is rather that a doctrine of the fall is reasonably introuduced, by a sort of inference to the best explanation, to account for man's universal wretchedness and inability to substantially improve his lot. The details of the inferential move from what could count as plain facts to a doctrine of a fall is not my present topic.
3. Now to Jeff's question. If the Genesis stories cannot be read as literally true accounts of actual historical facts, if we accept the findings and theories of evolutionary biology as regards the genesis of human animals, then what can human fallenness mean? There are various possibilities. I will mention just one, which derives from Kant.
What we need is a theory that allows us to embrace all of the following propositions without contradicting any deliverance of natural science or any deliverance of our ordinary sound moral sense:
a. There is a universal propensity to moral evil in human beings which is radical in that it is at the root of every specific act of wrong-doing.
b. This propensity to evil is the best explanation of the fathomless horrors of the human condition.
c. The radical propensity to moral evil is innate in that it not acquired at any time in a moral agent's life, but is present at every time precisely as the predisposition to specific evil acts.
d. The propensity is imputable.
e. The propensity is not inherited.
f. Imputable actions and states are free and unconditioned.
Here is a quick and dirty sketch of Kant's theory, a theory which allows one to affirm each of the six propositions above.
Man enjoys dual citzenship. As a physical being, and thus as an animal, he he is a member of the phenomenal world, the world of space-time-matter. In this realm determinism reigns: everything that happens is necessitated by the laws of nature plus the initial conditions. But man knows himself to be morally responsible, and so knows himself to be libertarianly free. Since everything phenomenal is determined, and nothing free, man as moral agent is a noumenal being who 'stands apart from the causal nexus.'
Kant sees with blinding clarity that nothing imputable to an agent can be caused by factors external to the agent: only that which the agent does or leaves undone freely and by his own agency is imputable to the agent. It follows that sinfulness, guilt, and desert of punishment cannot be inherited: there is no originated original sin. For what is inherited is caused to be by factors external to the agent. So (e) is true. But the predisposition to moral evil is nonetheless innate in the sense that it is not conditioned by events in time. It is logically prior to every action of the agent in the time-order.
How is the predisposition imputable? It is imputable because it is the result of a free noumenal choice. And so there is originating original sin. Each of us by an atemporal noumenal choice is the origin of the radical evil which is at the root of each specific evil act. So (d) is true.
Kant's theory has its problems which I have no desire to paper over. But it does provide an answer to Jeff's question. His question, in effect, was what original sin or human fallenness could mean if Darwinism is true. Kant's theory counts as an answer to that question. For on Kant's theory there is no need to contradict evolutionary biology by positing two original parents of the human race, nor any need to accept the notion that moral qualities such as guilt are biologically transmissible, or the morally unacceptable notion that such qualities are in any way (biologically, socio-culturally) inheritable.
