interesting…i guess those verses can alternately threaten other schools of thought if taken “too literally”. whatever that means!
it’s strange when there is (i’m pretty sure) talk of us being washed clean by God, and then in other places talk of presenting ourselves without blemish…well that’s impossible, Mr Apostle Man! i depend on God’s righteousness, as the best i can offer is rubbish (“our righteousness is as filthy rags”; “who is righteous? no one! not one!” paraphrased slightly).
i think that 10-1000 year reference is great, as it’s basically saying “i’ll wait as long as it takes to save you” and i think works nicely with the father in the Prodigal Son parable.
I do not believe everything people do is filthy rags. I think that keeps being taken grossly out of context. I think it’s a discussion of works-based salvation specifically (similarly to the “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due”). I.e., doing things to gain salvation. Paul makes the point that those won’t work (I would argue because they do not come from the heart. There’s a big emphasis on “freely given” in the Bible).
On the other hand, whenever a person did something out of the goodness of their heart, Jesus commended them (the Samaritan, the confused sheep at judgment). There’s nothing wrong with good works, “against such things there is no law”, but if you do them out of a selfish interest only, it won’t do anything because it doesn’t change you and it’s not God working. Yet “he who does the will of my father is my mother and my sister and my brother”.
This is, of course, a very thin line to walk. For me, adopting Christianity was a very strong mental shift, and much of it was “I should do this because I should”. And in big part, many things are “fake it until you make it”. But I very early tried to throw salvation out the window. It makes one very selfish and clouds a lot of issue - you always think in terms of what will save YOU or what will damn YOU. It breeds a lot of that legalism. And all the Christians I speak to seem obsessed with the idea. When one mentions something negative they do, instead of worrying about its effect, they say “thank God for grace”. One of the reasons I like Universalism because it kinda does throw that out the window. You are free to serve God because you want to, not because you feel cornered or blackmailed. And prior to Universalism, because I held Jesus’s teachings to be true, right, worthy of following, I lived via something similar to Paidon’s “better to be damned doing God’s will than saved doing nothing”. To me, that’s really the Universalist manifesto. On this issue, I cardinally disagree with Origen/MacDonald. If one requires ETC to be compelled to follow God, show them the door.
true, but i’d argue alot (certainly not all!) of what we as humans do is self-motivated in some way. this may or may not be the sin of selfishness, but more of a behavioural pattern that we’re born into. i think God urges us to break free of that pattern, and He promises to give us the strength to.
my point in bringing that up is that even when we do the right thing, quite often it backfires, and we miss the mark. missing the mark doesn’t make you a horrible person (relative to other people), but God wants us to grow up into perfection. this perfection can only be realised when God is all in all, i would say. hence the urge to work at it, and to do our best to have the purest motives. but we also need to realise that we need God’s help for this, we can’t do it on our own.
i agree that UR frees us from the blackmail, and the ultimately selfish motives of trying to keep yourself on the road to salvation by doing good. it allows us to realise what Jesus meant about finding our lives once losing them.
as you say, it is a narrow road. it’s very, very hard. but i think that the perseverence Paul talks about is the fruit of this. it’s like physical strength. yeah, we could be born immensely strong, but if we have to work at it, it produces all other kinds of fruit. and we can take some ownership of it as well, not in a proud way as if we owe it all to ourselves, but also not in a spoiled way as if we’d just been given everything by our rich Daddie.
perhaps this helps answer a tiny portion of the problem of evil as well.
What a great conversation There is so much to think about and I don’t want to say anything until I’ve pondered all that has been said today. I know I’ve taken it upon myself to keep this one going, even though Bird, Anthony and Jeff all played a huge role in getting the thread off the ground - but no one has complained. Therefore I would like to draw all of the threads together in the current conversation with a couple of posts now and allow space for further comment on anything else raised by my comments (but do keep posting in the meantime).
After this phase of the conversation is over I think there’s plenty of other territory to cover before we are through -
Very importantly we need to look at the idea of structural sin. Whereas The Augustinian Original Sin tradition is all about a privatised religion of ‘personal salvation’ - and can make people feel so passive in their wretchedness that they fail to question unjust social structures - the ancient traditions of Christianity speak more often of sin as something we are oppressed by collectively in the shape of ‘Powers and Principalities’. I’ve already had a chat with James ‘corpselight’ – who has contributed some really good thoughts above - about this elsewhere and we both feel that one problem with the Christus Victor over the Powers and Principalities theme is that it reminds us too much of ‘Spiritual Warfare Theology’ that stresses a personal devil as much as a personal saviour (and therefore can all too easily see evil personalised in individuals or groups). However, this need not be the case. Take a look at the Rebel God website if you wish -which Paidion first recommended and now Rev Drew has stamped with approval - and see how Christus Victor in, its right balance, takes on a very different and truly liberationist perspective which is all about human solidarity. The discussion of social/structural sin could be very interesting and raise plenty of issues (most of which I’m sure I haven’t a clue about yet).
But I suggest that we don’t proceed directly to discuss Structural Sin. We could all get glum with all the emphasis on sin rather than blessing (and give Augustine too much cause for grim delight - whihc we must not do! ). So I suggest that after concluding on the current issues we proceed first to consider themes of Wisdom in the Bible and in theology that run directly counter to Augustine’s exaggerated concept of Original Sin. I commended the Wisdom tradition to you – not least because our friend Cindy’s faith, while recognisably evangelical, seems very much informed with the practical and trusting/joyful good sense of Wisdom thinking. (You can poke a virtual tongue out at me if I’ve embarrassed you there Cindy )
After we’ve covered first the Wisdom then the Powers territory - which could take a few weeks - I suggest we round up with some historical stuff about Augustine and the Manichean Heresy (which Anthony knows all about), the ECT tradition in Eastern Theology (in case we are tempted to get too rosy about the East) and - something I’m keen on - a look at what is important about Augustine (he said a few good things to keep, as well as many bad things to reject). And finally look at how it would be wrong to label any specific Christina tradition as totally formed by the bad bits in Augustine (history is messier than this - and the influence of Wisdom is often found in some seemingly Augustinian traditions and writings). This may just prove to be the dog end of an interesting discussion but I would like us to cover the whole territory. And who knows – the last part may throw up some hot issues.
Wow, what a profound discussion! I don’t think I can take all of it in in one session - so much to digest, as you say Sobornost.
But a couple of thoughts (probably not all that original, sorry) occur to me:
I don’t understand original sin, but I know I am a sinner. It’s one of the very few bits of theology I am sure about.
Far too much of religion - Christianity - is about ‘personal salvation’, escaping punishment in the afterlife for supposedly bad behaviour on earth. Bird nails that sentiment:
Interestingly, CS Lewis was a theist for a number of years before becoming a Christian, and did not believe in any sort of afterlife, thinking if far too mercenary for a religion which was all supposed to be about unselfishness, about dying to self and all that good stuff.
Evolution ‘programmes’ us to behave in a certain way. Some - including many Christians - would view that way as sin.
Guess that’s basically what you’re saying here, James? The question which perplexes me is why, if God urges us to break ‘free of the pattern’, we are programmed that way in the first place. I guess because the process *of *breaking free is beneficial to us, even necessary? (Which I think is Talbott’s view.)
As always, I defer to my master, George MacDonald, for some wisdom on this subject:
“If sin must be kept alive, then hell must be kept alive; but while I regard the smallest sin as infinitely loathsome, I do not believe that any being, never good enough to see the essential ugliness of sin, could sin so as to deserve such punishment [ECT, basically]. I am not now, however, dealing with the question of the duration of punishment, but with the idea of punishment itself; and would only say in passing, that the notion that a creature born imperfect, nay, born with impulses to evil not of his own generating, and which he could not help having, a creature to whom the true face of God was never presented, and by whom it never could have been seen, should be thus condemned, is as loathsome a lie against God as could find place in heart too undeveloped to understand what justice is, and too low to look up into the face of Jesus. It never in truth found place in any heart, though in many a pettifogging brain.”
The good George condemns pointless retributive punishment - inflicting suffering on sinners for no reason other than the satisfaction of justice - in no uncertain terms.
Anybody read, or seen the movie of, ‘A Clockwork Orange’? Anthony Burgess, a lapsed Catholic, was a believer in original sin, and he seems to be saying that the child-like central character, Alex, who drinks milk like a baby, is a sinner by nature, from birth, pretty much. Science - religion? - monkeys with his brain to try and make him be good, but it all ends in tears. Personally I’ve always found it a very interesting take on this whole subject.
That’s a great post Johnny , and the quotation from George Macdonald is splendid (I’ve only ever read brief extracts from MacDonald they radiate goodness and good sense - they are modern(ish) Wisdom Literature). All of your points - 1-4 - are very relevant and well out and pick up on very interesting things that Bird and James have said recently (and originality is no big deal - nothing really is - and even sin that is original gets tedious through affecting us all in the same way). Sin being built into the evolutionary process, the fall into sin as being for our ultimate benefit (from the perspective of last things) – we can pick these up and discuss them to our profit.
Funny what you say about this thread being profound but difficult to absorb in one sitting. On reflection I think that the thread is indeed rather dense in the many difficult issues it raises all at once. The reason for this is the thread is completely relevant to the concerns of this site but, understandably in a UR site, to date the many other equally profound threads have focussed more on last things than first things: and so this discussion of first things, being the first real one on this site, has all of the feel of being over full and busting at the seams (for which I accept complete responsibility). Perhaps we need to take this conversation more slowly - and perhaps rather than doing all the discussing on one thread in sequence we need to start some other sub-threads under Soteriology on what we’ve already done
Original Sin versus Ancestral sin - the traditions compared and contrasted (and perhaps this is already covered quite thoroughly here)
In what sense are we, and especially children, ‘sinners’ (but this one certainly needs to stay an open ended conversation)
and on what we are going to cover
Wisdom and Sin - in scripture and tradition
Structural sin and personal sin
Historical perspectives on Augustine and Original Sin
If this was done all discussions could remain open ended rather than being closed down when taken in sequence.
Any ideas gratefully accepted from all regular, not so regular, and prospective contributors. Any feedback from people who simply like to read this thread would be most useful too. Please do let me know and I’ll feedback to Drew (one of the site moderators who is also a valuable contributor to this thread).
All the best
Dick
Final thoughts Johnny – yes I do know about Anthony Burgess and ‘A Clockwork Orange’ – it is a profound and very disturbing novel (although I think Lord of the Flies has more insight into whatever we mean by sin in children). I remember Burgess’ voice well, listening to him on radio and the TV some years ago. Well he was very arrogant, and although lapsed himself from his faith took great delight in lecturing the rest of us on human depravity (and when he held forth with great confidence about Christian history – which he often confidently did - he often got his very confident facts wrong; apart from that, lovely bloke ).
That Alec drinks milk all of the time in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ is a clear reference to Augustine. Augustine wrote a famous spiritual autobiography – ‘The Confessions’ – that contains an episode where he says he remembers gulping in milk from his mother’s breast as a baby and being filled with carnal greed (I used to think that he was either lying, weaned very late, or had an extraordinarily good memory ). It also contains one episode where he sins dreadfully as a child when scrumping/stealing apples from a neighbours’ orchard, and another episode where he is momentarily disturbed by sexual desire when disrobing with others in a public bath. People used to take this all literally – but current thinking very sensibly suggests (in my view) that his book is actually only part biography – to complement this it is also part invented allegory. The greed of the baby at its mother’s breast is an allegory of Original Sin, the scrumping/apple stealing episode is an allegory of the Fall from Eden, and the episode in the public bath is an allegory of baptism as the old Adam is cast off for the new. Well I found this interesting – but then I like history.
Perhaps this conversation is a little to full of ideas and busting at the seams. Perhaps we need to take it more slowly. And perhaps rather than doing all the discussing on one thread in sequence – moving from one theme to another - we need to start some other sub-threads under Soteriology so that all theme discussions can remain open ended.
We’ve already done -
Original Sin versus Ancestral sin - the traditions compared and contrasted (and perhaps this is already covered quite thoroughly here)
We’ve also already done
In what sense are we, and especially children, ‘sinners’? (but this one certainly needs to stay an open ended conversation – and we neither need nor can expect complete resolution – so I reckon it needs a separate thread)
We are going to cover -
Wisdom and Sin - in scripture and tradition
Structural sin and personal sin
Historical perspectives on Augustine and Original Sin
[size=150]Any ideas gratefully accepted from all regular, and not so regular, and prospective contributors. Any feedback from people who simply like to read this thread would be most useful too. Please do let me know and I’ll feedback to Drew (one of the site moderators who is also a valuable contributor to this thread).[/size]
A footnote - I promise in future that if any of my posts contain a lot of historical detail, along with other essential stuff, I’ll put the historical detail in italics so that anyone who finds it’s ‘not for them’ can skip it.
Thanks very much to you - and to all the other participants in this thread - for raising some *really *interesting and challenging ideas. But I do agree with your suggestion that this thread be broken down into its ‘component parts’ as it were. It is already long, and covers *a lot *of ground, so I suspect anybody coming to it for the first time, like me yesterday, might find it a bit of a challenge to ‘catch up’. (Or maybe I’m just slow! )
What’s so interesting, though, is the way one area of theology links with another, and you can easily find yourself being launched down an unexpected tributary of the river you thought you were navigating. For example, cogitating on the notion of structural sin vs personal sin has set me thinking about the existence and function of Satan, which Is a subject I personally am very interested in and keen to explore (perhaps that’s integral to the notion of structural sin anyway - please forgive my ignorance on that score; as I’ve said, this dense thread has left my brain spinning a little, even after a second read-through).
So yes, Dick, more of this, please, but in handier size chunks if possible. And in passing, I would suggest that if possible we should keep all the various strands of the discussion going. I for one don’t feel that I understand the nuances of Original vs Ancestral Sin very well at all, and yet they are *so *germane to UR, and to other things I’m interested in (predestination, for example), I would love to get into them in more depth.
In closing for now, I would just touch on your thoughts on ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘Lord of the Flies’. I haven’t read Burgess widely, although I have read some of his autobiography and I do know he was both a fearsome polymath and not backward about coming forward with an opinion! The original sin theme in ‘Orange’ is a fairly obvious one. I have read Burgess telling how Alex’s attempted suicidal leap from a high window under torture is supposed to represent the Fall - which would seem, rather paradoxically, to suggest that even in his prelapsarian state he - and by extension mankind? - was already a violent thug?
But I wasn’t aware of the allusion to Augustine, and to his autobiographical invented allegories. I must re-read the novel. (Gosh Augustine was an interesting, challenging, brilliant, frustrating character wasn’t he?)
Golding I have read a little more widely, and clearly Christian themes are prominent in much of his work, not just ‘Lord of the Flies’ (eg ‘The Inheritors’, ‘The Spire’, ‘Darkness Visible’, the latter two of which I studied at school; but that was a long time ago!). Perhaps we could start a thread on original sin as explored in literature? Reckon those two books alone would fuel it for a while!
Anyway, thanks again to all for getting me thinking so hard.
Thanks Johnny - I think you are absolutely right; and I just await a little more feedback before setting the process in motion of beginning separate threads. The current thread is a sort of brainstorm - as you have so rightly and helpfully pointed out.
Yes Augustine was fascinating and passionate and complex, although his influence has been far too great. He wrote some beautiful mystical poetry – and I guess we must not misunderstand people who thrill to the odd phrase from Augustine and quote him with love (they almost certainly don’t approve of the ‘full works’). He wrote, ‘Too late have I loved thee…Our soul’s are restless until they find rest in thee’, for example.
Will ponder a little longer on the threads. Of course another important theme that has been broached here is the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. For me the holocaust has to be a sign for us to attend to. Before this Judaism was largely misunderstood and misrepresented by Christians becuase of their interpreting the Torah in the light of Original Sin. I think the right understanding is certainly not given by Christian Zionism (I don’t know too much about Messianic Jews, so can’t really comment on them). I think we can do better to look at the writings of, say, Etty Hillesum for pointers- she was the Jewish Christian woman who strove with all her might and all her young heart in response to God’s grace to model God’s love in the death camps, without rejecting her People. She should be a much loved saint of Christian Universalism.
I reckon that a look at Lord of the Flies could clarify discussion of childhood ‘evil’. Perhaps it would be best placed in the context of looking at child development (johnny if its apporpriat ecould you write a breif plot synopsis - I knwo its all about the scapegoating mechanism). There is something that Bird has said that I didn’t pick up on
quote=“BirdOfTheEgg”]
Sobornost wrote:Children are indeed sinners – if you’ve been a parent or worked with young children you will know this all too well.
Tbh, I’m largely not going to accept this. I do not, will not, view children (in the basic sense) as active sinners. Developmental processes do not make them sinners, because they do not control their own development, so saying a child is a sinner because they are going through an ego-centric phase is really not smart. I guess I’ll make a thread on my view on sin sometime to explain. Child corruption is a special topic of mine and if you are going to call children sinners I assure you we are all doomed because we can barely get even there. There’s a reason Jesus said that to children belongs the Kingdom of Heaven, because they’re not sinners, and put in a proper environment, they would be fine. I believe children will stumble a lot, and not resist corruption very well, and that is their ancestral sin. But not the fact that they think the world disappears when they close their eyes, that’s a developmental phase.
No proper study has been conducted on the topic of very, very young children and nature vs nurture, because such a study would be unethical. Yet, a child can be very strongly affected by parental response in the first few weeks. The vast majority of the children you will see are raised on the cry-give formula, and are therefore reasonably spoiled, hence resulting in evil children.
This is a pattern you do not really see, and nobody will want to tell you it’s there. And nobody wants to hear it, because nobody likes being told they made their children evil.
Children are born innocent and pure in the sense that they can discern a lot of things correctly if you let them. How many times I’ve seen a child make a completely logical request and a parent shut them up. This breeds sin, and destroys faith. Parents raise them in their crooked way, and parents actually make most of their children very, very evil, because they give them false information, and lying creates evil. Lying to children is not cute. Then you have this evil kid who becomes an evil teenager and you have to have society whine about them and fix them.
That’s the majority of kids out there. Go to a Ukrainian school and you’d see it all for yourself. That is what Lord of the Flies works with. It’s a generated evil, not innate. Every evil child I’ve seen there was a foolish parent behind it.
There’s a reason the Orthodox venerate the Theotokos, I guess. Raising the Son of Man wasn’t all him, I guess.
Richard Beck, who has recently joined our board, has an excellent series in his blog about how (specifically) the fear of death induces us to sin; and how that all ties in to Christus Victor theology.
I think the view in general is similar to Stephen Jones’ view; that it is actually the state of being mortal that has passed on the propensity to sin, sort of like a generational curse or genetic disease that is passed down. We are enslaved by the fear of death, and it is only the resurrection provided to us that can free us from that.
That’s very interesting and chimes with seomthing I half remembered early in the thread that an Orthodox theologian had written. (I only joined the site last November and have missed Richard Beck’s thread on the site homepage - in case anybody else is as dumb as me. Yes he’s got seriously interesting things to say that relate to first things as well as last things).
All the best
Dick (and I hear that you are a fan of Gerrard Hughes)
Yes, Gerry Hughes has some very keen insights, especially for a Catholic Jesuit priest; particularly for the time period of his writing. He was clearly hearing from God and was ahead of his time in many ways. I also appreciate the fact that he felt that he could effect change from within the institution, rather than feeling forced to separate himself from it.
Jeff (the agnostic) and I are having a discussion about Gerry Hughe’s ‘God of Surprises’ over on a book thread that Jeff had already started as a result of touching base about it on this thread. I guess it’s relevant to Orignial Sin because on of the things Hughes is doing in this book is trying to detoxify our imaginations of the Augustinian legacy by drawing upon a richer, more forgiving, more life affirming, and more humane Catholic tradition (although the exercises are based on Ignatius of Loyola, the sentiments are more those of Thomas Aquinas - who was a very different kettle of fish to Augustine. Thomas wrote that we cannot offend God unless we act against our own best interests).
A clarifier - Jeff started the book thread some time ago, but Jeff and I have begun to discuss ‘God of Surprises’ as a result of having touched base on it together in this thread. Do join in if you fancy it.
I’ve quoted Johnny here just to keep his feedback in our attention. This very recent thread really has been a joint effort. I’ve been ‘guiding it’ to raise the issues that I’ve thought about in the past as relevant to the theme, but that’s all. The process of breaking down stuff into ‘component parts’ has already been suggested by Bird (she’s spoken of starting new threads on two separate occasions in the past week), and after I’d first wanted to move things on in one big discussion from topic to topic I’ve come round to completely agreeing with her proposals and Johnny’s confirmation of these (hard to let go when you’ve been in control for a bit sometimes).
So do keep posting and think about the proposal of starting new component threads (which of course Johnny, could include threads on Literature and Original Sin, and ideas of Chaos, Temptation, Evil in the Bible focussed on the figure of Satan, and on predestination and freedom (seen from the point of view of first things). Well get order out of chaos here, even if it does take a few weeks to sort everything out.
i think splitting topics could be useful, it does get a little complicated for my poor brain!
i’ve had to take it slowly.
Augustine, i am told, while being a pretty bad influence with his ECT, was apparently fairly liberal with his interpretation of Genesis? so definitely good and bad in all of us, and it’s wrong to simply consign him to the “bad” pile of church fathers because he had a few bad doctrines. not his fault they captured the (awful and barbaric) imagination of the church til now.
i agree, foolish parenting ruins kids. toddlers can be hard to deal with, but yeah it’s a stretch to say they’re “guilty”, though i’d say that the ignorance of how the world works and me-centricism of children, which is understandable, is an analogy of how humanity is. we are finally starting, as a species, to actually notice that other people and creatures share this planet with us, so i’d say we’re growing out of the toddler phase of humanity…though of course there’s an inconsistancy there if toddlers are pure…humanity before now was far from pure. but, it’s a picture; an analogy.
about the fear of death:
at Easter last year, i attended a Methodist service, and the pastor spoke about what Jesus saved us from…and her answer was the fear of death. she showed how the fear of death is possible to be linked to so much actual badness in the world. at the time, i wasn’t really ready for it, but i’m understanding more now as i come to realise that there are other models besides Penal Substitution. it sounds like she was arguing for Christus Victor. i will have to look into this more.
Good stuff James - so the idea of creating sub-threads is gathering momentum.
Yes I’d agree about Augustine - he didn’t insist on a literal reading of the creation stories in Genesis. He saw them as symbolic/allegorical. But the idea that scripture contains different levels of meaning – the literal/historical level, the moral level (the level that gives us practical lesson on how to live), and the allegorical/symbolic level - was the mainstream tradition of ‘exegesis’ in the early Church. I understand that our friend Origen was the first of the Fathers to set this method of exegesis out systematically. I also understand the weight given to each level of interpretation could be different for different portions of scripture. For example for the stories of the massacre of the Canaanites in the Book of Joshua some Fathers prioritised the moral level – the stories teach us of struggle against sin and we should not get hung up on the seemingly repugnant literal level of meaning. Likewise with the interpretation of the creation stories in Genesis – that even in the light of Hellenistic science known to the Church Fathers seemed farfetched on a literal level– the allegorical/symbolic level was prioritised. Much later even Calvin – from whom many in Fundamentalism’s fold derive authority today – spoke of the first two chapters of Genesis as ‘bablative’ – or baby talk if taken literally. (Calvin also mused that the person who undertakes a deep study of the Apocalypse of John is either mad to begin with, or certainly mad when they’ve finished!). And this too is relevant to our discussion (how are we to understand the stories in Genesis?).
I like what you have to say about Easter. It reminds me of something the great Universalist theologian Jurgen Moltmann once said: ‘Easter is the festal protest against death and all that deadens.
Some very interesting comments on Augustine. I knew he wasn’t a Biblical literalist, particularly in relation to Genesis - I recently read an excellent book on Genesis - *Genesis; The Movie *by the American Episcopalian priest and about-as-close-as-you-can-get-to-being-a-Universalist-without-actually-being-one Robert Farrar Capon, which draws heavily on Augustine - but I had no idea this approach to scripture was common among the very early church fathers, Dick. How refreshing to learn that! In fact, I think we could all do with a healthy dose of ‘primitive’ Christianity. Those men and women were in so many ways so much closer to Christ and the Apostles - chronologically (obviously!), spiritually and theologically, if you ask me - than all who have come after them.
Personally I do believe in the idea of progressive revelation, but I also think some of us, sometimes, give way too much credence to the thought of the so-called ‘great’ theologians - Luther, Calvin etc - in favour of Christ, his contemporaries and appointed ambassadors, and the early fathers, simply because we perceive that they have somehow correctly ‘worked out’ theology - doctrines that the Bible doesn’t make explicit (eg the atonement).
It’s odd, isn’t it, that in so many ways the broader ‘orthodox’ church is such a great respecter of tradition (eg in opposition to the doctrine of UR), but only a certain distance back in time. Were the church more willing to embrace the earlier traditions of those first Christians, we might not be in the pickle we are now over ECT.
Personally too, while I respect Augustine in many ways, I do think some of his ideas were truly terrible - bad hermeneutics, bad exegesis and eisegesis, bad philosophy, the works. His influence has been so malign - malignant even - and destructive on the gospel. And sadly, we’re still seeing it everywhere today. (Look no farther than Mark Driscoll and his neo-Calvinist brethren.) But of course, Augustine converted from paganism, in pagan times. We mustn’t forget that.
Calvin, of course, didn’t have that excuse for his horrible theology.
Dick, I will have a think about a thread on literature and Original Sin. Not sure if I’m quite up to synopsising Lord of the Flies, though, without reading it again. Which might be edifying anyhow.
Thanks Johnny - didn’t mean to put you on the spot there about Loed of the Flies
The allegorical method does have an interesting history - and I guess some of it is rooted in the Chistian traidition of typology - seeing symbolic prefiguration of the New Testament in the Old. I know one of the valid criticims of this method of the Fathers made by some of the Refomers is tha sometimes it was used so creatively as to completely lose sight of the literal sense (but I don’t believe this criticism is valid ofr, say, an interpretation of Genesis that view s th edays of creation as symbolising epochs of indeterminate length using the symbolic numbder seven to mean completion - and thus the ressurection happens on a Monday, the eighth day syumbolising a new beginning).
The allegorical method of interpretation was revived by the Catholic Reformer Erasmus from Origen in the sixteenth century. I think it influenced the scriptual exegesis of the Anabaptist Spirituals (and I’m still pondering this).
It would be good to discuss how we understand the symbols in the Creation Stories of Genesis at some point.
There is so much to think about and I don’t want to say anything until I’ve pondered all that has been said today. I know I’ve taken it upon myself to keep this one going, even though Bird, Anthony and Jeff all played a huge role in getting the thread off the ground - but no one has complained. Therefore I would like to draw all of the threads together in the current conversation with a couple of posts now and allow space for further comment on anything else raised by my comments (but do keep posting in the meantime).
). So I suggest that after concluding on the current issues we proceed first to consider themes of Wisdom in the Bible and in theology that run directly counter to Augustine’s exaggerated concept of Original Sin. I commended the Wisdom tradition to you – not least because our friend Cindy’s faith, while recognisably evangelical, seems very much informed with the practical and trusting/joyful good sense of Wisdom thinking. (You can poke a virtual tongue out at me if I’ve embarrassed you there Cindy 
)
