Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.
—G. K. CHESTERTON1
John Collins, a leading fundamentalist theologian and champion of the historical Adam, ends his book Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? with a list of reasons why we should believe in the historicity of the original sinner. I once found these reasons compelling: it saves us from blaming God for sin; it preserves the importance of the atoning death of Jesus; Adamic ancestry “affirms the common dignity of all people”; a literal Adam preserves the authority of the Bible. But missing from Collins’s list is any indication that it matters whether or not the evidence suggests that Adam existed. In fact, Collins is quite clear that evidence, at least of the scientific sort, doesn’t matter to him.
Collins’s arguments—and indeed most of the arguments for the historicity of Adam—ultimately turn out to be wishful thinking. My sense is that most people identify with this tendency to some degree. Do we not all wish for a world that makes sense, as it once made sense before Copernicus uprooted the earth and before the poet John Donne declared that the “new philosophy casts all in doubt” to such a degree that a once-cozy cosmos was “now in pieces, all coherence gone.”2 If we project our longings and fears onto the cosmos, then we have to admit that it would be more comforting if the earth were fixed at the center of the universe, if the earth and all its inhabitants were created about the same time as humans, if the stars were not unimaginably far away, forever out of our reach. It would be comforting if humans were more distinct from animals, if there was a convenient explanation for suffering and death, if we could know that good would ultimately triumph over evil. Setting aside the question of whether medieval Christianity actually provided a truly comforting worldview, we can certainly acknowledge that science has raised troubling questions about who we are, how we should live, why we are here, and where we came from.
In a volume titled Four Views on the Historical Adam, young-earth creationist William Barrick concludes, in the same vein of wishful thinking as Collins, that “Denial of the historicity of Adam . . . destroys the foundations of the Christian Faith.”3 I will not weigh in on this claim, other than to note that many traditional Christians have made peace with the extinction of Adam. It does seem to me, however, that we must always be prepared for new knowledge to overturn ancient ideas. No received wisdom from the past—in sacred texts, confessions, creeds, statements of faith, or anywhere else—is immune to challenge from the advancing knowledge of the present. Christianity emerged in a different time and must be prepared to evolve like everything else.
I want to conclude this discussion of the first man, however, on a different note—one of concern. As Adam fades from our conversations about the human condition, something else disappears also: the recognition that our species is deeply troubled.
In the Christian tradition, humanity’s problem is referred to as sin, blamed on Adam, and said to be present in us all through the inheritance of original sin. I have argued in this book that such a viewpoint is no longer tenable, and we must learn to get along without it. There is no original sin and there was no original sinner. But we must not forget that the Christian tradition’s long conversation about sin was primarily about what was wrong with us and only secondarily about how we got to be that way. Augustine was more interested in his own sin than that of Adam. Regardless of how it originated, or whether it even had an origin, something appropriately called sin remains a deeply rooted part of human nature and, given that we are born this way, original sin is not a bad name for it. G. K. Chesterton calls original sin “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” I worry that wishful thinking may once again be at work in those who, having abandoned Adam, would now abandon the associated notion that humans are sinful creatures. This, of course, is not an exclusively Christian conversation, as all religious traditions—and indeed all of history—acknowledge human limitations and tendencies toward wrongdoing.
The Nobel laureate in physiology Christian de Duve, a nonbeliever with no investment in Christian doctrine, nevertheless tips his hat to the sacred writers who “perceived the presence in human nature of a fatal flaw.”4 He is quick to dismiss the Christian concept of original sin as the flaw but quite insistent that the flaw is real, serious, and threatening to our species. The culprit is not Adam but the process of natural selection that has shaped our species over the long course of evolution. This selection process, unfortunately, privileged gene traits that were “immediately favorable to the survival and proliferation of our ancestors . . . with no regard for later consequences.”5 Such traits include “selfishness, greed, cunning, aggressiveness, and any other property that ensured immediate personal gain, regardless of later cost to oneself or to others.”6
Most of the serious problems we face today arise from this deeply rooted and ineradicable part of our evolved human nature. And yet, we propose to solve these problems with trivial rearrangements of the social order. As I write these words the world is recovering from the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression. Major banks are paying billion-dollar fines for their role in the collapse of the economy. And yet one listens in vain for any suggestion that uncontrollable greed on the part of bankers may have caused the collapse. The news is filled with unhappy stories about growing wealth inequality, but nobody seems to think that greedy self-interest might be part of the problem. In the Middle East ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) is slaughtering innocent civilians and publically beheading Western noncombatants. The intensity of their campaign is rooted in the ancient tribalism that took up residence in our genes when defending one’s tribe had survival value. We forget that Western Christians waged similar campaigns a few short centuries ago and that it was only in the last century that Hitler was exterminating the Jews. Setting aside tribal differences requires more effort than economic sanctions or high-brow political conversations at Camp David.
Jimmy Carter has written passionately about the global exploitation of women that occurs in every nation, a natural consequence of social structures where powerful men are in control.7 In the United States young girls develop eating disorders as they strive to look like artificially enhanced versions of what men find attractive. Evolution has programmed men with unhealthy attitudes toward women and, when not checked, these attitudes express themselves in tragic ways.
Climate scientists are trying in vain to awaken the world to gradual changes that are ruining the planet. Natural resources are being used up. But we are programmed by natural selection to care only about the short term. Thinking about people who will be born in the next century seems like a fantasy. How can we possibly owe them anything? Why should we restrain our lifestyles to enhance theirs?
For centuries those of us from the Christian tradition have understood ourselves as fallen, sinful creatures—an understanding that served as a caution by illuminating our dark behaviors. At its best, it checked our worst impulses. Now we understand ourselves as evolved creatures, shaped by natural selection, but unaware of what that means and how hard we will have to work to transcend those limitations.
We are a troubled species, seemingly destined to obliterate ourselves and puzzled about why that is so. Everyone from the fundamentalist Christian to the crusading atheist knows we need some kind of salvation, although we are certainly looking in different places for it. Perhaps that will come from a transformed Christianity, a reenvisioned science, or from another source. It certainly won’t come by denying science. But it won’t come from pretending that when Adam vanished he took original sin with him.