(Note: the blue horizontal menu bar directly above lists the subsections of "A New Interpretation of Original Sin." Beginning with "Original Sin and its Evolutionary Roots in Animal Behavior," be sure to read each of these subsections before moving on to the "Appendix.")

Advantages of the "Evolutionary Selfishness" Interpretation over the "Cultural Transmission" and Other Interpretations

This concept of original sin does not exclude those of Schoonenberg and most other post-Vatican II Catholic theologians, who (as outlined above) tend to equate original sin with the sinful situations or structures into which each person is born. However, the concept of original sin proposed here significantly broadens and deepens this "cultural-transmission" model of original sin to include the environmental, social, and behavioral situation into which humanity itself was born—"the society before (human) society" that was molding our ancestors' behavior (both learned and genetically determined) for millions of years before they became human.

This addresses a central weakness in the "cultural-transmission" model: its failure to explain where the sinfulness of human society came from. What previous human sins were there to condition the situation of the first human beings? The "cultural-transmission" school does not even ask this obvious question, even though it claims to be in harmony with evolution. Instead, it has redefined the problem, restricting it to how original sin is now transmitted to each of us. This is admittedly the more practically relevant question, and the one at the heart of the doctrine of original sin, properly understood. On this point these theologians have contributed valid and valuable insights. But without returning to the question of origins, no complete solution to the problem is possible.

As argued above, the substance of original sin is partly the genetically inherited and partly the culturally inherited legacy of prehuman selfish behavior. The corrupting influence that greeted the first humans ever born, when no human culture yet existed, was obviously the prehuman culture that included our genetic heritage of selfishness (which is also the ultimate source of culturally learned selfish behavior).¹⁴

Just as important, our concept retains an ingredient that is central to the traditional understanding of original sin but is missing from the cultural-transmission model: original sin is identified with some definite trait that is passed on by "propagation" or "generation" as part of our human nature, and not merely by imitation. I have identified this trait as the biological "selfishness" (the instinct for self-perpetuation) that is literally programmed into the genes of all living things. In no way do I discount the insidious effects of a sinful social milieu on the young, nor do I deny that culture can be thought of as integral to "human nature" and hence that its transmission can in a sense be considered integral to "human generation."

But I give greater concreteness to the concept of original sin by connecting it with a known biological phenomenon, and incidentally bringing it back into agreement with the traditional understanding of original sin as something literally transmitted by human propagation.¹⁵ Our inclination to sin, or "concupiscence," is propagated together with all other aspects of our humanity: it is integral to and inseparable from our human nature itself, because of how our human nature was brought into being. In short, evolutionary selfishness is a necessary and sufficient explanation of the sinful social structures on which the "cultural-transmission" school blames our individual sinfulness.

Evolutionary selfishness and harmful acts. The Council of Trent declared in 1546 that concupiscence remains after justification by grace, but original sin does not. My decoupling of the (genealogical) universality of original sin from its moral character offers a different way to distinguish between (1) that which is passed on by generation and can be attributed even to animals ("evolutionary selfishness," the inclination to act selfishly), and (2) that which can be attributed only to humans (the inherited inclination to commit sin in the strict sense: culpable choice by a moral agent to act on selfish desires that are harmful, resulting in actual sin and guilt).

Only the combination of these two elements constitutes what we term "original sin" (or better: "original selfishness") and calls for grace and salvation. Both elements remain in us, however, even after Baptism, so we should not say that Baptism "removes" original sin, but that Baptism and other sources of grace simply enable us to transcend our original selfishness. Grace builds on and perfects nature, rather than replacing it.

Handicapped by inheritance. This view thus preserves the traditional insight that our real individual situations are different from the mythic Adam's—that we do not start our moral lives with a clean slate, but are in some way handicapped by inheritance: the inheritance of a proneness to sin. The literal "Adam" himself, however, must be seen in retrospect as only a literary device to explain, in the context of the Genesis narrative and its static worldview, the ultimate source of this inheritance, for which a more concrete explanation now presents itself.

The great virtue of the "cultural-transmission" approach is its focus on the practical meaning of original sin for our everyday lives. The Schoonenberg school rightly recognizes Eden as an etiological myth (an ancient attempt to explain how we got into our present fix) that is secondary in importance to confronting the practical problems at hand. But we human creatures, embedded in history as we are, still need etiological myths, even in the twenty-first century—only now we demand of them not only mythic power but historical concreteness as well.

Our era, the era of historical geology and evolutionary science, is the first in human existence to have acquired means of exploring deep time and of discovering something of our true origins. Nothing less will do anymore. We want not just etiological myths but literal etiology, a story of our origins based on actual scientific data that places real value on our actual past as well as on our present and future. The great virtue of Christianity is that it can support and encompass this kind of etiology that is not only myth but fact.

14. It is not necessary to specify exactly who, what, when, where, or how many the "first humans" were; nor to say that the boundary between nonhuman and human was either sharp or fuzzy, or that it was crossed by only one group, of whatever size; or if by more than one group then simultaneously by all. These things we do not know, and probably never will, especially if we define "humans" by such an intangible trait as moral responsibility. The essential point is that at one time there were no humans, however they may be defined, whereas at a later time there were; hence somewhere, in some sense, there must have been "first humans," however suddenly or gradually they attained that state.



15. This explanation does not, however, suffer from the misguided tendency, often attributed to St. Augustine, to place the blame on sexuality. The "stain" lies not in the mode of propagation but in the genetically and culturally programmed, selfish behavioral tendencies that are propagated.