original sin?
Note: This started life over on wordpress.com in 2020 while I was studying for a course through work, a course for which I had to do a research project on a topic of my own choosing. I've given it a little light editing here.
The trouble with ideas like Original Sin is that they seem to get lost in the wash of lazy cultural assumptions. It’s Just There. It’s been generally accepted as somewhat truthy for so long it’s almost a reflex. Ask anybody raised in the Church where the idea of Original Sin comes from and they’ll say “Duh! The Bible!”
But really?
And where does one begin with this question?
Fortunately modernity has brought us the internet, which has brought us Wikipedia, which is a useful starting point, in that it distils an awful lot of writing about topics into one easy to digest (if somewhat dodgy) article. And Wikipedia seems to pin this particular idea on Augustine of Hippo. Well, not quite. As always, there’s a mixture of ideas, some from non-Christian sources, some varying interpretations of scriptures, contesting ideas….
Bertrand Russell, in his The History of Western Philosophy, sums up Augustine’s argument thusly1:
Saint Augustine taught that Adam, before the Fall, had had free will, and could have abstained from sin. But as he and Eve ate the apple, corruption entered into them, and descended to all their posterity, none of whom can, of their own power, abstain from sin. Only God’s grace enables men to be virtuous. Since we all inherit Adam’s sin, we all deserve eternal damnation. All who die unbaptized, even infants, will go to hell and suffer unending torment. We have no reason to complain of this, since we are all wicked. (In the Confessions, the Saint enumerates the crimes of which he was guilty in the cradle.) But by God’s free grace, certain people, amoong those who have been baptized, are chosen to go to heaven because they are good; these are the elect. They do not go to heaven because they are good; we are all totally depraved, except in so far as God’s grace, which is only bestowed on the elect, enables us to be otherwise. No reason can be given why some are saved and the rest damned; this is due to God’s unmotived choice. Damnaton proves God’s justice; salvation His mercy. Both equally display His goodness.
Russell then notes that this doctrine was revived by Calvin, but since then has not been held by the Catholic Church.
So now we have a situation in which Augustine’s more extreme view of original sin, rejected by the Catholic church, but retained by Luther and Calvin. To me this is reminiscent of the split in the Confucian tradition between Mencius and Xunzi.
The Three Character Classic opens with:
人之初，性本善。性相近，习相远。
Men at their birth are naturally good. Their natures are much the same; their habits become widely different.
The Mencian idea being that people are naturally good. Whether they turn out good or bad depends on their environment and education.
Xunzi took the opposite view. As Fung Yu-Lan explains, quoting chapter 23 of the Xunzi2:
Human nature, too, should be cultured, for, from Hsun Tzu’s view, the very fact that it is uncultured means that it cannot be good. Hsun Tzu’s thesis is that “the nautre of man is evil; his goodness is acquired training.”
This sets up an interesting parallel. In both Western Christian and Chinese Confucian traditions, we have a mainstream view of people being by nature not so bad. The Christian tradition still insists on humanity’s tendency to sin, of course, while the Confucian tradition holds that our nature is good. Then we have the extreme splinter group, represented by Augustine, Luther, and Calvin in the Christian tradition, insisting that all humans, even newborn babies, are sinful creatures deserving of eternal damnation; and in the Confucian tradition by Xunzi with his insistence that human nature is evil. The difference, of course, lies in the means of salvation – by the grace of God in the Christian tradition; by education and culture in the Confucian tradition.
But rather than stumble into some attempt at comparative theology, my question is to what degree Augustine’s and Xunzi’s ideas persist in popular understandings of the world, and how these ideas have affected our understanding of criminality and justice. I would argue that although the mainstreams of both traditions have taken a more moderate line, the extremes represented by Augustine and Xunzi have persisted in the popular consciousness.
Whether derived from Augustine or Xunzi, the assumption that people are evil by nature and automatically deserving of severe punishments seems simplistic and inflexible. People commit crime because they are evil. What should we do with them? Punish them! Can people become good? Well, kind of, through either the grace of God (Augustine) or culture (Xunzi), but the fundamental evil of human nature remains and must be reined in.
It also seems to me that the attraction of these views lies in their simplicity. There is a simple answer to why crime happens – people are evil. There is a simple answer to what to do with criminals – punish them. There is a simple answer to why some are criminals while others are not – those who are not criminals are those who have managed to stick to the rules handed down by society that define correct, non-criminal behaviour. There is even the possibility of redemption held out – that criminals at the end of their punishment may be reintegrated into society, though, of course, they always carrry that stain of past criminality, and it is commonly assumed that they will soon revert to their criminal ways.
But is this Justice?