22 September 2008

There was in antiquity an entire genre of literature devoted to commentaries on the Hexameron (the six days of creation), and almost as much attention was given to the story of “the fall.” That first sin was understood to be a clue, somehow, a window into the nature of sin itself—and so also a window into the nature of our current condition. The doctrines that developed from that reflection, however, are notoriously grand and hard to pin on the rather rustic text of Genesis 3. The problem is compounded by the fact that the status afforded to the sin of Adam and Eve seems to be original to St. Paul in Romans 5: nowhere in the Old Testament are those two understood to stand at “the beginning of all sin.”

In “Biblical Origins and the Problem of the Fall” (Pro Ecclesia 10.1 [Winter 2001]), Gary Anderson goes a great distance towards making sense of a “doctrine of original sin” in a genuinely Old Testament context. (If you don’t otherwise know his work, you should. His knack for holding together both Jewish and patristic readings of Old Testament texts is extraordinary.) He calls attention, first of all, to the way the creation narrative in Genesis 1 strains forward to a completion that doesn’t arrive until the end of Exodus and the beginning of Leviticus: the construction and indwelling of the tabernacle and the first offering of sacrifices, which all proceeds according to the same sevenfold pattern as does the story of creation. The priestly writer thereby signals that creation is consummated only with the fulfillment of God’s promise in Exodus 29:45, that “I will dwell among the Israelites, and I will be their God.” Such is the destiny of creation, which ought to usher in a golden age of peace and bliss, and it is finally accomplished with the first sacrifice being offered to God at the end of Lev 9.

But, “the foundational moment culminates not in perfection but in error.” In the very next verse, Nadab and Abihu offer “unholy fire before the LORD, such as he had not commanded them” and they are consumed by fire. And the final shapers of the OT canon, not content to leave Israel’s foundational sin all the way to the end, insert into the middle of the narrative about receiving the instructions for the tabernacle ch. 32 of Exodus: the story of the golden calf. “According to one rabbinic elaboration,” Anderson notes, “the thought of building such a calf was entertained within just moments of hearing the command that forbade it.” And so a pattern begins to emerge: “as soon as Israel receives the benefaction of her election, she offers not praise and gratitude but rebellion.” And it’s a pattern that repeats itself over and over again in the Old Testament, and in fact constitutes the basic shape of Israel’s entire history, deliverance and rebellion. “Original sin” within the Old Testament would be a matter of sin’s inexplicable immediacy.

In this light, the story of Adam and Eve makes much more sense. Against the backdrop of the majestic, priestly version of creation, we have an account wherein humanity’s first act is an act of disobedience. The “Edenic bliss” so often referred to is contained in a single verse—“And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed” (2:25)—before begins the account of the couple’s temptation and fall. And so the story broadens. It recasts the experience of Israel in universal terms. Eden becomes less an explanation of human sinfulness than a basic statement of its mysterious reality, and a foreshadowing of what’s to come. The story is not just about two people who disobeyed and so brought a curse on the world; it’s about the mystery of the human propensity to turn away from God’s offer of grace and goodness.

“The Hebrew Scripture has as its primary focus the nation of Israel. The proclivity toward sin is most profoundly illustrated in the rebellion of this elected nation at Mt. Sinai. But if the elected nation is so prone to sin and those sins continue to rebound across generations, then certainly it is not a great leap to extend this insight to humanity at large. If this is what happens to the nation so highly favored, what could one expect of those shown less consideration? What is revealed in microcosm through the nation Israel can be extended, in macrocosm, to all peoples. This, in fact, is the basic thrust of Karl Barth’s treatment of original sin in his Church Dogmatics. But a full development of that story must await another day.”

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Tags: Genesis,Karl Barth,Original Sin