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ORIGINAL SIN

 


In the late 4th century, as the immense Roman Empire was collapsing, the leading philosopher of the age, St. Augustine, became deeply interested in possible explanations for the evident tragic disorder of the human world. One central idea he developed was what he legendarily termed Peccatum Originale: original sin. Augustine proposed that human nature is inherently damaged and tainted because, in the Garden of Eden, Eve, the mother of all people, sinned against God by eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Her guilt was then passed down to her descendants and now all earthly human endeavours are bound to fail because they are the work of a corrupt and faulty human spirit. This odd idea might not be literally true, of course. However, as a metaphor for why the world is in a mess, it has a beguiling poetic truth, as relevant to atheists as believers. We should perhaps not expect too much from the human race, Augustine implies. We have been somewhat doomed from the outset. And that can, in certain moods, be a highly redemptive thought to keep in mind.


This article is from the school of life 

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