No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. (John Donne, Meditation XVII)
I confess that I have not felt much like blogging this last week. Mainly I have been feeling rather sad and tired. What can I add productively to the debate? My general thoughts are very much those of so many others. What in God’s name is wrong with our society that these sorts of things happen over and over again? Why is it that Americans are so obsessed with guns and that, in my local paper this morning, there is yet one more letter saying that their easy availability has nothing to do with the case? Why are things so polarized that we simply cannot bridge the divide?
As it happens, there is one thing that I have been thinking about recently that does seem relevant. That is the Christian notion of original sin. As I have said many times in my pieces, I am not a Christian or indeed a subscriber to any kind of religious belief. I am an agnostic or skeptic and to be candid pretty atheistic about the claims of major religions—virgin birth, resurrection, eternal life, and that sort of thing. I am not about to change now, even though the perceptive author of Job saw truly that great afflictions tend to turn people towards belief rather than away.
But I do think that the great religions grasp important truths about human nature and about existence generally, and original sin is one of them. The classic analysis is due to Saint Augustine (around 400 A.D.) who argued (and he knew from personal experience) that we all have a propensity to sin—to be unkind or unfeeling and more. How could this be if we are the creation of a good god? Augustine replied that it goes back to Adam and to his act of deliberate disobedience in the face of God’s explicit commands. Ever thereafter, we (the descendents of Adam) are in a sense tainted. We have a propensity to do wrong and by God we do do wrong. As Saint Paul presciently said: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” (Romans 7:19)
I realize that this is a religious or theological claim rather than a scientific—psychological or sociological—claim, but it does seem to capture much about human beings. For someone like me, born at the beginning of the Second World War (in 1940) and thus growing up as the full horrors of the Nazi regime were revealed, original sin makes much sense. The tragedy was not just that the Germans behaved in the way that they did, but that it was the Germans who behaved this way. Not some vile crowd of heathens, but the apotheosis of European culture—the country of Beethoven and Goethe and Kant and the great scientists. They fell so far and in such a vulgar and despicable way. They truly were tainted.
But also there was the realization that we should all be very careful about casting stones. The story of the country of my birth, Great Britain, in the 19th century often makes chilling telling. Just think of the Opium Wars, when Britain used its might to force on the Chinese the importation of opium, for the sake of the profits of hard-minded Scottish businessmen at the expense of the health and wealth of many, many Chinese. In the Second World War, the bombing of Dresden is something of which I shall be ashamed until the day I die.
So I don’t think it wrong or stupid to think of America—not just this last week, but again and again when crazy, evil people kill with such easily available firearms—in terms of original sin. There is something tainted and wrong about our society. And, without having any final confident answers about the apportioning of blame, I am simply not going to take an answer that simply puts all guilt on the actual perpetrators. The individuals are to blame for their evil acts. Many or most are deeply disturbed psychologically, but that does not absolve them. However, I refuse to believe that a society that makes guns so readily available and that uses such heated rhetoric in debate has nothing to answer for. We humans are not isolated individuals. We are all part of a society. A superorganism if you like. And as such we are all in it together and we are all guilty.
Of course, the tough-minded will point out that the whole story of Adam and Eve is pure fiction, and I agree. In important ways we have to take the notion of original sin metaphorically. But that is no big deal. Most of science is metaphor—force, work, charm, attraction, repulsion, genetic code, natural selection, arms race, selfish gene, Oedipus complex.
I myself have long thought that original sin fits beautifully into an evolutionary analysis. We humans have evolved with an interesting and complex mélange of selfishness and propensity to cooperation, or what biologists call altruism. We had to be selfish to survive the struggle for existence, but at the same time (like wolves) we have taken the route of working together and so we have biological inclinations this way too. Humans are good (as the Christian says) but we are tainted also (as the Christian also says).
As it happens, there is an alternative strand of thought in Christian theology that endorses something along these lines in contrast to Augustine. Although not put in an evolutionary context, this is very much the thinking of Irenaeus of Lyons (around 200 A.D.). He was worried that putting everything down to Adam’s sin made the Christian story of the Incarnation and Resurrection very much a story of a response to an unfortunate (but not determined) act of disobedience. The Christian story therefore seems to be the emergency pickup response: “Plan B.” Irenaeus saw original sin as part of the original human condition—something one expects from immature beings like humans. God made us in some kind of developmental way, knowing from the first that He would have to intervene to save us. Although Irenaeus no doubt thought in terms of a literal Adam and Eve, he made it possible for the modern Christian not to think so.
My aim here is not to delve into Christian theology. Rather it is to say that I, a non-believer, find original sin an incredibly insightful idea when thinking about the events of the last week. Also, to stress that it is only one part of the story. We humans have a propensity to good as well. And this was surely shown, both in itself and in its message, by our President in his healing speech that he gave in Arizona. That is why, as a very new American, I now share the shame. But also why I don’t want to opt out either.
(The take on original sin, using Irenaeus to formulate an evolutionary interpretation, is what has got John Schneider and his colleague Daniel Harlow into hot water with their very Augustinian president at Calvin College. They are still being bullied. I will report on events as they develop.)
