Original Sin

Do you think it would help us to know that we are not simply victims of someone else’s Original Sin, but are responsible for our own ‘Original Sin?’

As Genesis reveals, Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent, and the serpent blamed God. Who are we blaming?

Is it possible that we have no one to blame but ourselves? If so, why does Scripture not tell us so? Are we supposed to discover this about ourselves (not with self-negation, but with loving gratitude for the finite gift of being)?

Before his death, Sept. 16, 2014, my husband, Robert E. Joyce, who was a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Collegeville, MN, asked and tried to answer this question about a development of the doctrine of Original Sin.

I will attempt to briefly present his thesis. Robert proposes that all human persons (“a little less than the angels” Ps. 8:5) were created before this space-time pre-redemptive universe. In that state of being each one of us had the choice to receive immediately our finite being as given. Those who chose to say a grateful and loving ‘yes’ to God went to heaven. Others questioned their finite kind of being, and wondered why they could not be more like God than they were created to be (as Eve did and Adam followed). These humans did not say ‘no’ to God, but said a kind of ‘maybe’ after which they fell into a deep darkness. This was each person’s own ‘Original Sin.’ This was the choice they made before their soul was united with a temporary physical body for the purpose of making a final decision. This world of space, time, and physical energy expressed in matter was created for this redemptive purpose.

Genesis begins with this pre-redemptive creation which is not the true beginning. Where in the story is the pre-human creation of the angels and the fall of Lucifer before he appeared as a serpent in Paradise? Much is noticeably left unsaid. Why?

Also, the creation of Adam and Eve from dust and a bone in this fallen universe implies that they were created for a return to dust and bones, or for death as a result of sin. But they were not created for the possibility of sin, but for their free decision in Paradise. According to St. Dominic Savio, speaking from heaven to his former teacher, St. Don Bosco, Paradise is not heaven but is next to heaven. Paradise, in Robert Joyce’s view, would therefore be that pre-earthly world where they made their original decision.

We were there together in Paradise with Adam and Eve; we were more luminous and spiritual then, now more heavily material. Adam and Eve became our first parents in this redemptive spatial-temporal world (“very good,” according to Genesis, but not perfect).

We inherited the effects of their sin because of our own sin. Without our own Original Sin, we would have said, “yes” to God, instead of “maybe” and would have gone immediately to heaven.

It seems to me that accepting this thesis might lead to an increase in each person’s sense of responsibility for their own sins, something needed especially in our time.

There is still much to understand below the surface in the deep implications of Genesis 1:1-3, or “in the roots” of the two main trees in Paradise - the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Mary R. Joyce April 2019