(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: Summary and Conclusion

Christians who thought in terms of a static cosmos formulated the traditional doctrine of original sin to solve the otherwise intractable "problem of evil." But this "problem" is now seen to be no different from the objections raised in every grade-school catechism class whenever the topic of God's power comes up: "Can God make a square circle?" "Can God make a rock so big he can't lift it?" Or (we can now add) "Can God make a world in which bad things don't happen?" The answer, in each case, is: "No, because that would involve a logical contradiction." The real problem has been that before the discovery of evolution, we never realized that such an ideal world would involve contradictions.

These contradictions stem basically from two things: free will and the composite nature of matter. The role of free will is easily grasped: it has always been clear that moral evil, or sin, results from bad choices by people, and that God had to leave us room to make bad choices so that we would also be able to make good choices. Only slightly less obvious was the fact that physical evil (accident, disease, death) is in every case a result of things coming apart or breaking down in some physical, mechanical way. And since all material things, from subatomic particles to (especially) us, are made of separate, moving parts, they will inevitably come apart sooner or later.

What was not at all obvious, until we learned to see the world as a product of evolution, was this: there is 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. It is precisely matter's inherent tendency to breakdown and disorder (mutation in the genetic material, for example) that is used by Darwinian natural selection as a source of raw material to build ever more complex living things, and ultimately intelligent ones. The process takes an immensely long time and involves the deaths of immense numbers of living things, but the result is a world of living things that are (a) beautifully diverse, (b) authentically related to one another by real genealogical ties, and (c) capable (in us) of entering into a personal relationship with their Creator.

Is the gain worth the pain? Not if there was an easier way to do the job, but the alternative is an illusion. If God had created the universe all finished and ready-made, as we once believed, it would simply not work as we see it working today, for a host of physical and biological reasons. It would not even be a real, organically grown, dynamic universe such as we know, but only a static simulation of one, like a movie set. In particular, it would not be a world of real relationships among God and the other persons who inhabit this world—passionate relationships deeply felt (by both God and us) because deeply rooted in a history of change.

When we confront suffering and death, therefore, we can take some comfort in knowing that God is not incompetent or callous, but that there was simply no other way to make the sort of world God evidently wanted. When we are benumbed by the thought of billions of years of evolution needed to fashion us, we are assured by science that nature offers no quicker recipe. If there were a workable shortcut, I think we can be sure that God would have thought of it. But this is something we could never have grasped intellectually without knowing something of the actual history of our world and how it evolved.

If the key to the riddle of suffering and evil is as simple as the mere breakability of physical objects, why were the great thinkers of the past stumped by it? They knew well enough that things were made of parts, and could come apart, even before they knew about evolution. I suspect, however, that a major obstacle to this insight was the habit of thinking referred to as Gnosticism (in "Nature: the good, the bad, or the ugly?," a section in "The Selfish Behavior of Primates and Other Animals") which continues to subtly influence even orthodox Christians. If you start out 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, including the pristine perfection of Eden. If the world is now a mess, some creature must bear the blame, and Adam is a convenient Fall guy.

Instead of saying that matter is evil and spirit good, though, we must recognize that elements of what we tend to call "good" and "evil" are present in both. The material creation was pronounced good by the Creator, even though it includes physical "evil" as well as the instinctive selfishness that tempts us to commit acts of moral evil. Our spiritual faculties (including free will) make moral evil possible (it does not exist apart from them), but also make possible positive acts of virtue. Spiritual faculties are needed to morally transcend our natural (material) selfishness.

Authentic, incarnational Christianity is a perennial scandal to the Gnostic way of thinking. Christ's self-humbling, self-emptying embrace of our physical nature forces us to take seriously the significance of matter in the scheme of things—just as God took it seriously. The great artist does not hold his medium in contempt; his glory lies in being limited by it while managing to realize his vision in spite of its limitations.

To recapitulate the entire argument in a few words: Because God is selfless love, the world had to have its own autonomy, free of divine compulsion. For the world to be autonomous and capable of generating novelty, there had to be room for chance or accident. Because matter is made of parts, it is inherently breakable; this is the fundamental source of natural (physical) "evil." Because errors in copying genetic material (mutations) are consequently unavoidable, natural selection has variation on which to work. Because natural selection automatically favors traits that promote self-preservation and self-replication, all organisms are necessarily selfish. Because our inherited evolutionary selfishness (original selfishness or original "sin") inclines us to favor ourselves over others, we (using the free will conferred by our evolved intelligence) often choose to sin. Thus moral evil evolves out of physical "evil." Because perfect unselfishness cannot arise through this natural process, we are all in need of supernatural grace to build on our evolved nature. We need a supernatural example to help us transcend what natural, Darwinian evolution produces: we need salvation by Christ. This universal human need for salvation, arising out of our biological nature, is what the Christian tradition has defined as original "sin." Its evolutionary origins, and the inevitability of evil in a material creation, are now clear.

Some readers will no doubt be put off by my audacity here in giving such a cut-and-dried, analytical, "left-brain" answer to the age-old riddles of evil and original sin. Aren't these mysteries of faith, Deep Things of God, which are not to be reduced to facile, "scientific" explanations?

My reply is simply: No, they are not. Mystery, in the theological sense, is present wherever God is present, because God is infinite and our understanding is finite. There is still mystery aplenty in God's creation of this stupendous world, in God's unconditional love for us sinful mortals, and in God's response to the evil we create. But, by definition, God is not present in sin. The doctrine of original sin was never a statement about God. It was only an anthropological statement about human sinfulness and the natural (not divine!) origins of evil. Therefore it has never been a "mystery" in a strict theological sense, but only a problem—one lying wholly within the created order, and hence fair game for the natural scientist. In the end, this is what accounts for the fact, noted by Chesterton (1909), that original sin stands alone among classic Christian doctrines in being empirically verifiable. I have sought to show that it is not only verifiable but verified, and in what way. I offer this as a scientist's contribution to theology—if you will, a clearing of some scientific underbrush that has hindered theology's advance.