A hopeful doctrine for the putz in all of us

One of the books I read on our just concluded vacation is Original Sin: A Cultural History by Alan Jacobs. This is a superb book by a superb writer and historian! Jacobs (an English prof at Wheaton) has also written a well-regarded biography of C.S. Lewis called The Narnian. Professor Jacobs takes the reader on a tour that begins in the Garden and concludes in the early years of our own century. Along the way we get illuminating portraits of some of the major theologians, philosophers and poets that have defended (Milton, Pascal, Wesley, etc.) or condemned (Pelagius, Rousseau, Finney, etc.) this enduring Christian doctrine, as well as minor figures like George "Bad to the Bone" Thorogood, and Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing who believed that the psychotics he studied were the "normal" people because they saw the world and themselves as they truly are. This is history in the vein of Paul Johnson -- scholarly, accessible, and always readable. Jacobs demonstrates that the history of ideas is often more fascinating than the history of nations.

Not surprisingly the figure that dominates Jacobs' narrative—appearing and reappearing—is the African bishop from Hippo. Augustine's epic battles with Pelagius (and others) framed the debate over original sin in ways that continue to echo for good and ill today. Here's a taste:

In the time of Pelagius and Augustine, Christianity had settled into its comfortable place as the official religion of the Roman Empire. In many parts of the Roman world Christianity had become as "normal" and "natural" as it is in America's Bible Belt today. No doubt the spiritual and moral standards for the Christian life had relaxed quite a bit since the days of persecution, when even the hint of Christian faith could cost a person his or her life; no doubt some restored tension, some call for a renewal of holiness, was surely needed. But Pelagianism, like many zealous movements of moral and spiritual reform, writes a recipe for profound anxiety. Its original word of encouragement ("You can do it!") immediately yields to the self-doubting question: "But am I doing it?" It makes a rigorous asceticism the only true Christian life—as Brown [Augustine biographer Peter Brown] points out, "Pelagius wanted every Christian to be a monk"—and condemns even the most determined ascetic to constant self-scrutiny, a kind of self-scrutiny that can never yield a clear acquittal. You might have missed something; and in any case you could sin in the next five minutes and watch your whole house of cards crash down.

By contrast, Augustine's emphasis on the universal depravity of human nature—seen by so many then and now as an insult to human dignity—is curiously liberating. . . . Pelagianism is a creed for heroes, but Augustine's emphasis on original sin and the consequent absolute dependence of every one of us on the grace of God gives hope to the waverer, the backslider, the slacker, the putz, the schlemiel. We're all in the same boat as Mister Holier-than-Thou over there, saved only by the grace that comes to us in Holy Baptism. Peter Brown once more: "Paradoxically, therefore, it is Augustine, with his harsh emphasis on baptism as the only way to salvation, who appears as the advocate of moral tolerance: for within the exclusive fold of the Catholic church he could find room for a whole spectrum of human failings." This will not be the last time that the dark word of our "primeval contagion" brings a paradoxical light. (pp. 53-54)