(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.")

A New Interpretation of Original Sin: Major Points

• The only compelling theological reason to postulate a literal Adam was in order to account for the universality of sin—because, given their conception of the universe as static, Christians had no other way to account for it.



• The selfish human acts that we call sinful do share a genealogical unity (the common origin of all life), but their sinfulness arises from a development that is logically and temporally separate from their common genealogical origin, and much more recent. This explicit logical differentiation—the radical historical decoupling of the source of original sin's universality (the common origin of life) from the source of its moral character (human free will)—is the key to the problem.



• Here, consistent with the Christian tradition, 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: evolutionary selfishness.



• Evolutionary selfishness is a necessary and sufficient explanation of the sinful social structures on which the "cultural-transmission" school of theological thought blames our individual sinfulness.



• It clarifies things, and removes some difficulties, to speak of original "sin" as original selfishness.



• There was no "Fall" of humanity from a prior state of perfection. God could not have considered the sins of the first humans more momentous than those of any subsequent people. Rather, God knew that humanity, like children, would need moral training to transcend what selfish evolution could do for them.



• God invites us to help in building the Kingdom of God, and has given us the example of Jesus to help us cope with the tension between our selfish nature and our call to altruistic love.



• The world as it came from the hand of the Creator was both good and "fallen" at the same time: imperfect, but perfectible through grace.



• The ultimate horror we face is not suffering or death, but futility: the lack of purpose. But God promises that once God's Reign is established, the creation will no longer remember its pain.



• God's decision to create a material world could only be a decision to create breakable (and ultimately broken) things. The physical "evil" of animal suffering is inseparable in principle from even a good creation, just as the real (moral) evil of sin is inseparable from a creation in which intelligent creatures have free will.



• Banishing evil from an autonomous world would involve a contradiction, and is therefore impossible, even for God; whereas a non-autonomous world, even one without evil, would not be worth creating.



• There is thus a continuity, a connection, between the simple breakability of physical things on the one hand, and our own intelligence and free will on the other.



• If you start with low expectations of matter, and with the assumption that spirit, especially God's Spirit, can overcome any limitation of mere matter, then all options seem open, even the pristine perfection of Eden. But the powers and limitations of matter must be taken seriously, even by God.