In Alan Jacobs’ Original Sin, he poses the eternal question: Can we use powers of reason and behavior modification to free ourselves from our self-destruction or are we too helpless and depraved and therefore at the mercy of divine intervention to change our ways? Jacobs chronicles the philosophical and theological struggle between the “Depravity Party” and Human Potential Party. Identifying with St. Paul’s inner conflicts elaborated in Romans, Jacobs nods on the side of the doctrine of human depravity: We are helpless and need God’s help. In this context, Hell can be seen not so much as a place where we are sentenced as a judgment but as the demonic self-will of anger, self-pity, entitlement, and other unruly passions overtaking and consuming us we become imprisoned by our diseased self. We become the very hell we fear. “I am hell.” This is the final consequence of original sin unattended.
One area, however, Jacobs doesn’t explore is that there are demonic interpretations of religion that create a divinity even more depraved than the diagnosis of human depravity. Certain forms of Calvinism come to mind. Or we can look at Augustine whose views on innate depravity have a huge influence on the church’s position on original sin. Augustine, Jacobs points, out stubbornly claimed that unbaptized babies justifiably suffered eternal damnation. Is not such a God who does this to babies more depraved than the humans he created? In these cases, the person submitting to God to become free from sin is engaging in humiliation and self-abasement without dignity and love, a dynamic explained in Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom.
Jacobs is persuasive about our need to acknowledge our tendency toward self-destruction, the contagion or “virus” of original sin that is baked into our beings.
But there are areas that I felt needed to be addressed. For one, I can’t wrap my brain around Augustine for obsessing over sin and innate depravity and beseeching the human race to love God with all heart, mind, and soul, yet he argued that God puts unbaptized babies in eternal torment thereby undercutting his whole enterprise. How does such a God cure us of our depravity? Rather it seems such a God exacerbates it. Perhaps Jacobs could have explored that the God Augustine worshipped (sending babies to hell) had some depravity as well. Jacobs quotes Augustine a great deal but doesn’t address the unsavory nature of Augustine's God.
But all in all, the book is engaging. For those of us who suffer from compulsive and addictive behavior, tendencies that appear too unruly to be tamed with the powers of reason and therefore we seek divine guidance, Jacobs’ book will be of special interest.
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