Annals of Eden

Original Sin

A Cultural History

by Alan Jacobs

HarperOne, 304 pp., $24.95

As St. Paul told the Romans: "Sin came into the world through one man; many died through one man's trespass; the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation; because of one man's trespass, death reigned; one trespass led to condemnation; by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners."

Well, actually, that's not quite all Paul said. It's what you get if you take the Letter to the Romans and remove all mention of Christ, leaving just the fallen world that Adam made for us. Alan Jacobs gives this stripped-down passage from Paul in his new book, Original Sin--and rightly so, for Jacobs, who teaches English at Wheaton College, has set out to explore how the concept of original sin is key to understanding ourselves.

The Book of Genesis is clear enough about what happened that fateful day in the Garden, but the Jewish tradition developed no doctrine of original sin. For that, we needed Paul, with his description of man's alienation from God and his discussion of the fallen nature it produced: "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate."

Jacobs walks through the historical controversies surrounding these passages' interpretation, especially the battles with Pelagius in which St. Augustine emphasized the existential reality of the soul's bondage to sin. To Pelagius, that seemed an excuse; even in this life we can follow Christ's command to "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Fortunately, Pelagius's spiritual elitism (he wanted everyone to be a monk) was rejected by the Church. It proved to be Augustine's recognition of our fettering that left room for our liberation by grace.