h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Someone asked a while back about hell. Alan Bernstein has written an excellent book called "The History of Hell". He's a historian, but his insight is really wonderful, and he does a nice job elucidating the finer points of theological struggle.

My reading of Original Sin is not the same as St Augustine's (and hence the RC church). All (of the mainstream - East and West) churches agree that there is a thing called original sin and that everybody did it.

Augustine wanted everybody to be sinful without choice. He also (for a good while at least) only wanted people to be saved without their choice. Then he argued that we were saved by God's grace alone and not by works i.e. choosing to do something. His position was so theologically doubtful, it nearly got his entire collection of works burnt.

Instead the Eastern church argued that we are born without sin. We all, inevitably, at some point in our early life make a choice that leads us away from a fuller relationship with God in favour of some perceived advantage to ourselves. That failed choice is Original Sin. If you read the GofE story without the headings telling you about the "fall of man", the story permits some quite positive readings (as was pointed out to me last year)!

This reading means there is no theological need for Adam and Eve to have been alone.

Regarding original sin... Yes it is critical to religions other than RC. I follow a protestant Christian doctrine and to me evolution and the concept of original sin are incompatible. Either we evolved, there were many more people than just Adam and Eve, and sin and death have just always been a fact of life (and therefore why is it wrong? It's the way we are.) Or we were created perfect and we messed up by choosing disobedience - original sin. Romans clearly argues the importance of original sin. It's not just an OT concept.

I know we weren't talking about evolution but the idea of multiple humans/families is an evolutionary one. The idea of a single set of parents is founded in the major religions (some would also argue that it is founded in science as well).

PT - just read your post. How do you gel the idea of sinless birth with 1 Corinthians 15:22?

Protestant denominations have an "age of accountability" concept in their doctrine as well. They teach that all are born sinful, but that God forgives them their sin until they reach a point of rejection. I can't see clear proof of this in scripture anywhere. Some teach that David's statement that he would see his dead baby in heaven is proof of the theory. I would like to believe that. It seems cruel and un-God-like to think that God would condemn those who could not understand but it really isn't spelled-out.

Perhaps PT is referring to the typically Pauline notion that the Passion of Christ and the forgiveness of sins contained in it, have superceded the covenant of the Old Testament, ergo original sin is no longer valid?

woah ur name is montana? that is my name!
>8^B

I agree that there is a real tension between being born into sin and sin being a choice,. Similarly the tension between being saved by works and grace is real. The Western church, which includes the Roman Catholics and the western protestant movements, has really struggled with this becuase they base so much of their theology on St. Augustine.

I can't recall Augustine's view that sex and birth being explicitly espoused in the NT. That said, the boy was not a fool, and there will be support for his ideas in places like Paul's letters. I agree wtih the reality of original sin, I just don't agree it is congenital. I don't see a rationale for God making any person evil before they have a chance to take their first breath.

I see that everybody is created in the image of God, but in making their first choice to reject God they thereby embrace sin. That this first act of embracing of sin is the original sin seems to me to answer more questions than it raises. Everybody makes that choice very early in life and so everybody is guilty of original sin and they must turn again to God to re-embrace goodness.

This is far more positive, active and hopeful. It reflects the sort of God I see in the gospels rather than the God Augustine may have seen in the approaching collapse of the Roman Empire.

Calc Nerd, my name is descriptive. I'm a redhead from Montana. Hence the name.

PT, I see your point. Augustine's exegesis of Genesis includes a rather lengthy discussion of original sin, but says that we are able to get out of it (i.e., redeem ourselves) through a combination of faith and works. Faith, of course, is a given in Augustine's work, so the way we get God's attention (simplistically put, but accurate) is to do works, thus allowing for God to examine our souls more closely.

I have to say that I don't hold much with either Augustine or the scholastics, myself. I'm more of an Ignatian. The heck with the trappings, work on yourself and realize who you are in the great chain of being (an abcess, sadly) and meditate on how to improve through imitation of Christ. Perhaps this is because, unlike most medieval/reformation theologians, Loyola doesn't try to justify his own work by decontextualizing Paul.

Can you expand on Loyola? I'm curious.

Loyola wrote a work called the Spritual Exercises. Basically, it's a 30 day program, in which the exercitant (how's that for a word) focuses on two things...a daily examination of one's soul and extended meditations on the life of Christ.

The examinations are personal, and actually, quite "new age". What you do is focus on a particular sin, or temptation, or problem, and note in what I call a "sin journal" each time you have these feelings. The hope is that by calling attention to your problem, you will become more aware of it as it is happening, and thus, be able to snip it in the bud, and eventually eliminate it entirely. Many self-help programs today use a similar method. Weight Watchers, for an example.

The meditations, on the other hand, ask the exercitant to focus on specific moments in Christ's life (such as the overturning of the tables in the temple, or the Garden of Gethsemane), and to experience them as fully as possible. Mentally taste the food, the air. Feel the heat, the cold, the rain, etc. Touch Jesus' robes. Hear what everyone is saying. See what they are doing. Feel their emotions (this is particularly important for the 3 day period between the burial and resurrection). In this way, the exercitant is given a way to carry the bible around in their head, and recall these moments of Christ's life in their own moments of emotional need.

Another nice thing Loyola has is the three methods of prayer. The first is a bit outdated, but the second and third are extended meditations on the words of a particular prayer. The second asks you to meditate on each word mentally, while the third suggests saying one world of a prayer with each exhale. I really like this one, because it reminds you that sacredness can be found anywhere, even doing the dishes. It's something I think most people forget.

I saw a couple of copies of his Spiritual Exercises in a bookshop a month or two ago so they are very much in print. They looked very interesting and they are very short. They also looked tricky. The intro recommended that you would need a good spiritual director to help you get the most out of them.

The spiritualist and mystical Christian tradition is out there, but it is swamped by all this other stuff. And it is NOT about putting a pebble in your shoe and walking for an hour while thinking happy thoughts of Jeeezus (as an acquaintance of mine talked about doing a few weeks ago)...

I will admit that there a parts of Loyola that aren't particularly appealing, like the suggestion for bodily penance, such as wearing a hairshirt or flagellation. But for the most part, the Exercises are accessible. I am thinking about signing up for a retreat based on them, actually.

flaggelation doesn't sound like much fun, but there is a long history of people starving / injuring themselves in the name of enlightenment

He also had a big thing for discipline (if that helps to make you think of him as more balanced).

>No incest necessary; Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain >left home and married a wife (Gen 4.16) before Adam and Eve had >their next child, Seth;

This is not correct. Gen 4:16 is the beginning of a Genealogy to tell us the the generations that followed Cain. Gen 4:25 then goes back in time to Adam and Eve to follow the generations of their son Seth.

>The story if read this way ties in fine with modern evolutionary >theory,

Which is totally wrong.

> though in the modern version Adam never met Eve;

You mean modern Perversion.

does that mean you are saying incest was neccesary?

Yes, what are you saying? I didn't follow it either.

In one version of the Adam and Eve story Adam was already married, to Lilith (which means serpent or something similar), when Eve came along and tempted him; shortly afterwards the two of them were thrown out of their home and went off to settle somewhere else.

Perhaps they *had* to leave Eden because Adam's abandonment of Lilith, at Eve's instigation, made it necessary? The rest of the tribe wouldn't have been too happy, especially if Eve wasn't one of them, as seems to have been the case. And the place they left would certainly have seemed like Paradise in comparison to the life they had to carve out for themselves without the support of their tribe.

The story as it now stands was written by Eve's descendants, so you can't necessarily take their word for it that the 'serpent' caused the whole problem.

In my (catholic) view, Original Sin means the potential for sin that is inherent in all human beings, from conception.

I have read this story (in a modern form) - do you know where it came from? Is it a medieval tale or is it an ancient Jewish text that didn't make it into the cannonical bible? There is already more than one creation tale in Genisis (i.e. God created heaven and the earth in 7 days, and the Garden of Eden). Surely there is no problem with the Jews having had more still.

In any case, quite clearly paradise would be ended the moment one's wonderful two way partnership ended up in a antaginistic three-way relationship!

Im very happy this thread has sprung to life

The only story i know (as a lapsed catholic) is adam and eve being the first 2 humans - given the old testament is Jewish i didn't realise there was another version of events.