Disclaimer: this is a long blog, full of my own wandering thoughts and personal beliefs, so read at your own risk. I promise my next blog will be more Afrocentric and less cerebral.

2008-02-06
Well, in this blogpost I’d like to report some of the goings-on in my classroom, and I also need to respond to some of the ideas that currently pass for truth in Christian circles. These mostly erroneous and pervasive ideas are represented by students’ comments made both in and outside of my English and History classes.
As I was teaching the other day, I made the casual remark that we are all born sinners and are in need of the grace of God. And, yes, I even emphasized that small children were saturated with the corrupting effects of fallibility. Some students felt that this position was overly harsh (because I said that infants were inherently selfish and manifest similar tendencies towards self-absorption as much older humans, and not merely because they cry), but I made this comment to drive home the truth that none of us is righteous and that no one can achieve salvation apart from God’s grace. I know it sounds unfair that God would charge these seemingly innocent infants with being sinful and worthy of condemnation, but we must remember that God’s justice is incomprehensible to our human standards of equity. Our entire concept of salvation is founded on God’s specific grace for those he loves, so it seems unfair that people living in cultures without access to the Gospel or that those who lived before Christ should be damned. But God does not share his entire plan with us and does not find it necessary to justify Himself to man.
It may be that there is an “age of accountability” for infants, unborn children, or even older minors, but both the mystery of God’s sovereignty and also the lack of a clear indicator in Scripture preclude a satisfying answer to this question of infant condemnation/salvation. We cannot impose our civil concepts—such as minors or juveniles being held to a lower legal standard—on God’s demand for righteousness, just as we can’t offer civil righteousness (good works: think Mahatma Gandhi, Plato, Virgil, a UN Human rights worker, or anyone who helps a little old lady across the street) to God as propitiation for our sins. The perfect life of Christ and his atoning sacrifice are the only means of salvation. It may be that he grants mercy to those who lack cognizance, i.e. the young, but the burden of proof lies on the person espousing this doctrine. Anyway, my main bone of contention lies not with this purported doctrine of accountability; I’m primarily concerned with the universal nature of sinfulness.
I’m not alone in my belief that sin covers all and that everyone is in need of God’s grace. Both St. Paul and St. Augustine, the two foremost interpreters and writers of Christian theology, articulate a consistent understanding of original sin. In Romans 3, Paul assembles a battery of Old Testament passages to build a fully realized presentation of man’s sinfulness. When he states, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (verses 10-12), he stresses the universality of man’s condition and leaves no room for any human goodness which can justify us in God’s sight. He ends by saying, “by the works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin” (verse 20), which may cause some to argue again that we must possess the gifts of cognition and volition to be eligible for God’s punishment. But in chapter 2 of Romans Paul carefully explains that there is no litmus test such as circumcision (a ritual given on the eighth day in order to assimilate Jewish infants into their own faith and initiate their union with God) which can suffice to save us. I’ll also add that I’m assiduously attempting to refrain from proof-texting here so that none can say I’m ripping verses out of context to fulfill my own agenda for the Bible.
Moreover, in Augustine’s Confessions, the most famous extra-biblical interpreter of Scripture begins his theology-drenched autobiography by commenting on the wickedness of small children who lack a clear will or developed brain functions. He clearly propounds the doctrine of original sin, starting in infancy, when he writes:
When I did not get my way, either because I was not understood or lest it be harmful to me, I used to be indignant with my seniors for their disobedience, and with free people who were not slaves to my interests; and I would revenge myself upon them by weeping, That is the way of infants I have learned from those I have been able to watch. That is what I was like myself and, although they have not been aware of it, they have taught me more than my nurses with all their knowledge of how they behaved. (I.8)
Augustine spares no pity even for these young children who know no better than to seek their own interests. Their knowing no better is in fact precisely my point. We all seek our own interests and are utterly depraved from the start. This is sin nature. Although we may not even know how to differentiate right from wrong, our natural inclination is to selfishness (not just self-interestedness, which would cause an infant to stop crying after receiving food, but infants cry “to revenge” themselves on those not serving them in every capacity). Babies physically need the touch and care of their mothers or at least a guardian (as numerous psychologists’ and neurobiologists’ studies demonstrate), but this says nothing of the spiritual sickness which is already firmly entrenched. Sin nature begins at birth and plagues us continually until the cross shows us a different way to live, and even then sin still besets us. This sin nature, this restlessness, is ultimately what causes man to seek the rest he desperately needs in Christ’s outstretched arms.
Besides the universality of sinfulness, I would also like to refute as well as repudiate this entirely fallacious argument for original sin: that sexual intercourse, since it connects all of us back to our first fallen parents Adam and Eve, inoculates each of us with a healthy dosage of sinful nature. This argument has been completely disavowed by most thinking Christians, almost all reputable theologians, and probably most importantly John Milton, because he has thought more cogently and more exhaustively in Paradise Lost (everyone needs to read it at least once and probably multiple times to understand the Bible as literature and to also to learn to question commonly held biblical beliefs that are culturally inculcated) than anyone else on the subject of man’s fall and the proper role of sex in marriage. The fact is that sex existed in the Garden of Eden—whether you believe in a figurative or literal interpretation of Genesis is completely irrelevant here, as the theological principle remains unchanged either way—in its most exalted and most unmitigated form. Childbirth, not sex, is what is specifically made corrupt through pain after the fall. In a post-lapsarian world, sex is riddled with the same problems as every other human institution, but sexuality itself is not a source of evil. Thus, Jesus could have been birthed through intercourse and it would have no bearing on whether or not he was sinful (the miracle of his conception through the Spirit proves his divinity, not his lack of sin--a distinction which needs to be made). Sexual intercourse is thus beneficial for humankind and is not intrinsically corrupt; we humans are the corrupt ones, not sexuality.
Lastly, I’d like to address the historical origins of the idea that we are born without sin. The Enlightenment, as most people with the slightest knowledge of intellectual history know, was the source of the scientific method (if you count Bacon as kick-starting the Enlightenment way back almost in Shakespeare’s day), Cartesian skepticism, and Lockean individualism. But following John Locke’s belief in tabula rasa (which means blank slate, or the idea that man is just an unwritten tablet waiting to be imprinted by good and bad influences), Jean-Jacques Rousseau perpetrated one of the most attractive and destructive lies which has ever been unleashed on the human race. His idea is that “man is born free but everywhere is in chains.” Rousseau reiterates this throughout his major works, which include The Social Contract and Emile (which I’ve read) and another work entitled Confessions (which, regrettably, I have not read). My friend Joel could probably do a much better job explaining Rousseau than I can, but succinctly his belief is that society, not an inherent nature, enslaves man to evil. Therefore, a noble savage—someone separated from the corrupting elements of society—or else someone elevated by education beyond the petty, bickering, fickle natures of men who are conditioned by society, could attain to a virtuous and enlightened nature. This belief, however, was variously tested throughout the 18th and 19th century and found seriously wanting. Utopian projects where reason instead of doctrine or Christian humanism reigned, Paul Gaugin’s artistic search for noble savages on isolated islands, and attempts to flee decadent European society all failed and led to the same conclusion: man is an inconsistent animal driven to evil by his own nature, not by society. These misguided attempts usually ended up in disillusionment for the seekers of earthly perfection because man’s nature always reverted to selfishness and communal dissension.
Any classical or medieval philosopher, or really any philosopher up to Hobbes, would at least agree that man is inherently sinful, but the 18th century saw a drastic change of direction in man’s conception of himself. No longer did he need grace and Christ’s salvation to alleviate the effects of sin; now reason could raise him to heights formerly unforeseen. Despite this unhealthy attachment to reason, we are capable of goodness, charity and enlightenment outside of God’s salvific plan, but these gifts come through common grace, which can be the intelligence and beneficence which God grants men apart from His spiritual workings (these would include Gandhi's morality, Plato's philosophy, Shakespeare's dramatic genius, or the examples mentioned previously in the blog).
Unfortunately, this early Enlightenment view didn’t just die out. It transmuted into the widespread American belief in humanistic and narcissistic deism. Basically it runs that there is a God in the universe (His handiwork is made clear through the structure and order of the world) but that He would never willingly condemn anyone, especially a person who is basically good (read: BORN GOOD), to hell because no one deserves hell unless, you know, like you’ve done something totally bad, like raping or murdering someone or stealing someone’s ipod out of their locker. So there is no longer any need for Jesus because there is no such thing as sin. Jesus is just the loving extension of God, who used to send people to hell but knows better now that the intelligentsia of the world have informed Him that people are basically good creatures.
Anyway, it’s late and I should probably stop typing. I just wanted to give a sense of how the trajectory of false doctrine (rejecting sin) can lead you to eliminate the need for Christ. If you don’t believe the Bible, then you don’t have to accept the fact that man is sinful and that you need forgiveness, but then of course, you have to find a way to explain Rwanda and the current situation in Kenya and motorbike robberies and rape and gang violence and drug use and incest and abortion and genocide….