I was a teenage fundamentalist - part five

“Dream on, brave dreamers” Barry Gittins looks at Doctrine #5

‘You might know of the original sin … And you might know how to play with fire.
But did you know of the murder committed … In the name of love – yeah
You thought what a pity.’ (INXS)

Complete with mullet manes, truckers and Harleys, the boys brooded through TV screens as they sang of black boys/girls and white girls/boys. The ambiguous lyrics suggested that inter-racial unions and sexuality (two areas of discussion that the church is much more enlightened about these days, thank God) had something to do with a theological concept that was decidedly out of vogue, even back then.

Original sin, as The Salvation Army understands and professes in its fifth doctrine, comes down to our belief that ‘our first parents were created in a state of innocency, but by their disobedience they lost their purity and happiness, and that in consequence of their fall all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God’.

It was some years later, working for the Army in its mission development department (which later morphed into a corps program department), that a wiser head than mine put it into perspective. We are all made in the image of God; ‘a little lower than the angels’, my head of department taught. Treasured, loved, capable of much goodness. We aspire to reach out to God but we step all over our fellow creatures in our love of self and pursuit of pleasure and power. It’s the  classic Paulian lament recorded in Romans: ‘I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.’ (The modern psych term ‘conflicted’ lies at the core of humanity’s spiritual truth.)

The fatal flaw in our humanity, which the church knows as original sin, is the ignoring of others’ woes and pain and hence the ignoring of God.

Whether Christians believe in a literal or a poetic/symbolic reading of Genesis – whether you see it as inspired and inspiring, or owed the due homage of a sanctioned historical textbook reworked by fundamentalists as a science treatise – common ground emerges in the need for rescue from our own ‘fallen’ nature.

The blood that fell to earth from slain Abel. The gunslinger mentality of Lamech (Genesis chapter four). The wiles of Jacob and the self-righteous fury of Esau. The means deployed being excused by the ends delivered.

These are a few of the numerous evocations of humanity’s less than angelic side. These are the pinpricks that accumulated throughout human history. The tentative taps to the face of the nails that crucified Christ.

We needed to be redeemed by grace and saved from ourselves.

The Army’s international headquarters website, again based on a literal belief in Adam and Eve’s fall from grace, helpfully puts it like this in a simplified form: ‘We believe that God’s creation of the universe was perfect but when man first deliberately disobeyed God, sin and suffering entered the world. As a result, man’s relationship with God has been spoiled.’

If we are the children of God, if humanity is the pinnacle of God’s good gifts to the earth – now that’s an optimistic view of the cosmos! – then the question arises, how do we expect God to treat a spoiled child? Do you ignore them, put them in the naughty chair (or send them to the isolation of ‘Coventry’)? Do you pull their pants down and whack them until they ‘repent’?

The way the interpreters (prophets and priests) and writers (scribes) of Jewish scriptures go about it, God tried a few different disciplining methods, including genocide, exile, corporal and capital punishment. God protect us from our monstrous views of God; the ways people of faith have tried to justify atrocities over the centuries is the pivotal reason why so many Christians reject fundamentalism and why so many secular human beings reject the religious views of the fellows.

I believe, along with my fellow ‘Salvos’ and Christians, that human beings are flawed and in need of God’s grace. The Army’s IHQ website is again helpful: it points to the possibility of rescue, or salvation, through turning around our way of living (repenting) and trusting ‘Christ as Saviour’…the work of grace which God accomplishes [results in God] forgiving sin, giving meaning and new direction to life, and strength to live as God desires.

‘The deeper experience of this grace, known as holiness or sanctification, is the outcome of wholehearted commitment to God and enables the living of a Christlike life.’

Amen.

All good in theory; as the apostle Paul suggested, it’s worked out in fear and trembling in practice (Philippians chapter two). Our wrestling with the angels and demons of human nature is a lifelong bout, umpired by the Holy Spirit.

Those funky lyrics and inferences from INXS, surprisingly, weren’t that far off the mark when it comes to the idea of original sin. The doctrinal links to sexuality are long and tenacious.

When we consider the syncretism of the church movers and shakers of the second and third centuries A.D., who adopted stuff from their own prevailing cultures and worldviews, it’s no wonder the Church is divided in how we view our fellow human beings (‘made in God’s image’ or ‘totally depraved’ and worthy of hellfire).

Some theologians gave way to the cheap grace that says, ‘whatever floats yer boat is fine’. Others got so uptight about being human that they ended up hating the very bodies that sustained their lives.

Tertullian drew on Stoic philosophy to see the human soul as a physical component of the body we inherited when our parents had sex (no anatomy classes back then). In other words, we’re all dirty because we are produced by two people having sex.

Equating sex with sin was hardly an original thought in the old world; but that primitive worldview, I believe, is how we got the concept of original sin. I’d add that I believe it’s the main obsession of many Christians today and is proving to be the Achilles heel of the universal church.

Tertullian was hardly a lone voice. Origen drew on gnosticism and neo-Platonism, believing that our souls pre-exist before we leave our mothers’ bodies, and that all of have fallen from grace in a previous life. Sound kinda kooky to modern Christians?

Origen was big on the idea of purgatory and taught that this planet was God’s way of slapping us around for naughty stuff we did before we were born. His view of sex, like Tertullian, was that it involved a pollution of the soul and a passing on of Adam’s inherent vileness.

Is it any wonder that women have copped such a hiding from the church? If you subconsciously view your mother and father as the passers-on of wickedness, if you view your spouse as your co-conspirator in polluting the world, then you’ve got some bizarre issues when it comes to sexual expression.

Then there’s poor old Augustine, a neo-Platonist and a former Manichean (gnostic Christians who thought every tangible aspect of matter was evil, and that Jesus was not really human). To Augustine, sexual desire (not the expression of that desire, but the God-given desire itself) was sin. His belief, which doesn’t have much to do with scripture, is that the desire that fires our loins literally pumps sin into the next generation.

Sexual intimacy, even in a loving, committed marriage, was viewed by Augustine as just plain wrong. This is the whacky, life- and God-denying amniotic fluid in which the doctrine of original sin was formed.

Augustine’s influence and views – ‘our nature sinned in Adam….we should be born animal and carnal…our nature [begets] sinners…no one is exempt, not even new-born children…Unconscious infants dying without baptism are damned by virtue of their inherited guilt…Children are infected by parents’ sins as well as Adam’s and the “actual” sins of the parents impose guilt upon the children’ – are hysterical and deplorable.

I wish today’s theologians universally reject this view of God’s creation. It ain’t the case. In fact, most of the various protestant church pinups are just as down on God’s gift of sexuality.

Martin Luther, who got so much right when it came to faith vs works, wrote that ‘even children dying unbaptised are lost’.

John Calvin ranted that ‘Original sin is the hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature…which first makes us subject to the wrath of God, and then produces in us works which the Scriptures call works of the flesh.’

Sexuality isn’t a free ticket to God. As the ancients note, we’ve always had problems acting ethically, especially around issues of sexuality. ‘The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth’ (Genesis 8:21) is tangibly evidenced, as is Paul’s admonition that ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23).

As I write these words, on Friday, 27 November, there is yet another international revelation of sexual misconduct among clergy, in this instance the sordid cover up of sexual offences by priests in Ireland. Victims and survivors were disbelieved, vilified, ignored, condemned, to avoid any possible fall out to the church’s good name. Good God, save us from ourselves.

The rejection of the doctrine of original sin is the great un-noted, un-called-for challenge to the church and to The Salvation Army; it doesn’t tell the whole story. It doesn’t take into account the love of God, who formed us and created us in his own image. Who so loved the world that he gave us his only son, Jesus, as the antidote to our selfish lusts and perverse actions.

The fact is, the world around us has largely rejected the doctrine of original sin, throwing out the ‘babies’ of God’s grace and the gift of life to dispel the bathwater of judgmentalism, hypocrisy and perverse, life-negating old superstitions.

If you don’t believe you need to be saved, if you reject the idea of original sin because of its weird antecedents and its refusal to see God in his creation, then why listen to Salvationists?

And if you do believe you need to be saved, in the face of overwhelming evidence of broken relationships with God, humanity and our fellow creatures on this planet, will you find a prophetic voice calling you to the sacrificial love of Christ?

Or will you find a human institution – a church that seeks to control, to disparage, to limit, to discriminate and condemn?

The Salvation Army currently has more than 17,000 ministers of religion (officers) at work worldwide. How many of those folks teach that we are made in the image of a loving God? How many preach that we are damned from the moment of birth?

NOTE ON SCHOLARS:

Tertullian (160 – 220 A.D.)

Origen (185 - 232 or 254 A.D.)

Augustine (354 - 430 A.D.)

4 Comments to I was a teenage fundamentalist - part five

1. Best one yet Barry - keep ‘em coming…!

   JD-K
Jason Davies-Kildea on December 2nd, 2009

2. This article has the most disturbing use of the word ‘pumps’ I have ever read.

   And maybe I missed the point entirely, but the small paragraph near the end that begins with “sexuality isn’t a free ticket to God,” seems to me, out of place.

   If I’ve ever talked to anyone about babies dying, I reckon there has always been a mutual understanding that they just end up in Heaven.

   I’m the most sexually awkward guy around, but the stuff you’re describing here: the beliefs of men who I can’t even touch they’re so high above me in capacity, is downright nonsense. Freaky. Obviously wrong. Made up. Not even in the Bible.

   I never realised that our doctrine on depravity touched on this stuff. I thought it just meant that sin affected every part of human life - and I can see how it might lead down the path of flesh hating - but it isn’t a necessary conclusion, right? And if it isn’t a necessary conclusion, then the doctrine is still doing okay. Right?

   Interesting article/series. I like it. Easy to read too.

   Sean
Sean on December 2nd, 2009

3. Barry, thanks for the ongoing series. It’s good to see someone willing to tackle these big issues with such openness.

   I’m a bit confused, though…you seem to be playing off the idea of humans created in the image of God against the idea of total depravity. For example, “…it’s no wonder the Church is divided in how we view our fellow human beings (‘made in God’s image’ or ‘totally depraved’ and worthy of hellfire).”

   Am I reading you right?

   The two are not mutually exclusive. Mainstream Christian theology (this is not a fundamentalist idea) has maintained that both are true - humanity is created in God’s image, but the effects of the fall are such that the image has been distorted (here is where the variations come in - is the image distorted, defaced, or destroyed? And what precisely is the image - reason, the capacity for relationships, virtue, freedom, etc.?).

   Wesleyan theology in particular places a strong emphasis on both. You might be interested in looking into Wesley’s views on this if you haven’t already. He tried to downplay the “guilt” side of original sin and emphasized instead the corruption of the true humanity for which we were created. The language of disease is invoked here instead of legal language. The image has been partly lost as a result of the fall, and salvation is conceived then as the full restoration of the image through the healing work of Christ and the Spirit. The implications of maintaining that the image of God has not been totally lost are significant: all human beings therefore have inherent dignity and worth. The emphasis on disease/corruption also takes us away from the question of “guilt” (and the inevitable debate about babies) and focuses instead on the broken relationships with God, one another and fellow creatures, which you note above as something everyone can relate to.

   Maybe your issue is more with certain interpretations of this doctrine than with the doctrine itself. I think that the Calvinist tradition tends to go further in speaking of the destruction of the image of God by the fall, and that would lead to different implications about the dignity and worth of humanity.

   No doubt there are some bad views of total depravity out there, and it has surely been used in twisted ways. But I think the doctrine of original sin (if dealt with properly) is absolutely pivotal to the gospel. The point is not that all humans are really really really bad or really really really guilty. The point is that the disease of sin has affected every area of our lives (even our will and our best intentions), and therefore we are helpless to heal ourselves. We need a radical intervention of God’s grace. For me, that’s the bottom line of original sin.

   James
James on December 2nd, 2009

4. Hi guys, thanks for the feedback.

   I agree that we are all in need of grace; we are ‘fallen’ and we are not going to be able to make the journey back to God under our own steam. I like James’ phrase; we do need a radical intervention of God’s grace.

   That said, the doctrine of original sin as perpetuated by some ‘all stars saints’ (such as Augustine, who was near-obsessed with the involuntary functioning of his wobbly bits) and large sections of the church is a dud. (Curiously the orthodox church has probably avoided the doctrinal emphasising of original sin’s ‘depravity’ and the under-emphasising of being formed in God’s image).

   This doctrinal stance (emphasising our depravity, underplaying our status as beloved children of God, hating human sexuality) has led to the large-scale spiritual abuse and concurrent sexual, societal and physical abuse of many, many people. So I’m perfectly clear on this, let me state this again: I contend that the demonising of human beings and human sexuality, on the part of many Christians, is an ongoing example of spiritual abuse.

   I am not a theologian (I am happy to concede that point readily) and I would steer people concerned with this doctrinal examination to a more authoritative and reliable source; the work of Salvation Army officers Geoff and Kalie Webb in ‘Authentic “fair dinkum” holiness for ordinary Christians’ (see their coverage of original sin in various passages, such as pp 109 to 158 approx.). They’ve got a better handle on this stuff than I do or ever will.

   I’d also steer you to their chapters on ’shame management’, ‘enfleshed’ and ‘cleansed’ (pp 27 through to 56).

   I’d like to sign off with an excellent quote from their book (page 40) re doctrinally balancing these two aspects (’created in the imago Dei’ and ‘fallen from that state’ - my terms):

   ‘Sometimes in the history of the church…the body has often been viewed negatively. Body-hatred has been all too prevalent. While such an attitude toward the body may be correct in observing the power of sin over the body, the problem is that such an attitude equates evil with the body.

   ‘The body is not inherently sinful - after all, God created humanity and declared the body to be good. Jesus was born with a real human body, so that he could bring redemption and deliverance to our bodies. Our bodies are integral to our identity, and must be able to be part of the process of becoming Christ-like.

   ‘Unfortunately, the influence of the sin-nature results in our bodies being used for self-gratification and even a life of sensuality - or the development of body-hatred.’

   Barry G
Barry Gittins on December 2nd, 2009

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