[Dialogue] 3/17/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XIII – “Original Sin” Pre-Darwinian Mythology: Post Darwinian Nonsense (Continued)

Thu Mar 17 19:04:06 PDT 2016

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Charting a New Reformation,
Part XIII – “Original Sin” Pre-Darwinian Mythology: Post Darwinian Nonsense (Continued)
The perfection of God’s world was described again and again in the text of this Genesis story. We read in Genesis 2 that the world was a fertile garden, but it lay fallow without a person to till it. To overcome this problem, Adam was created. Then we are told that “every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for food” began to grow in that garden, but the reader is then warned that all of these regular trees grew in the company of two special and unique trees. One was called “the tree of life;” the other, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Four rivers provided water for this garden, known as the Garden of Eden. Two of them were named the Tigris and the Euphrates, which would tend to locate them in what came to be known as Mesopotamia. This garden was also said to possess gold, bdellium and onyx. The man, Adam, was given the power to rule over all things. In this world there was no such thing as evil.
When the woman was created out of the man’s rib, Adam’s ability to rule over all things was compromised just a little. The woman, we are led to understand, was human like Adam, but she was designed to be dependent, the male “helpmeet.” So his authority over her was not as complete as it was over the members of the animal kingdom. For example, though Adam had “named” her, as he did all the other creatures, her status as a human being gave her a freedom and a power that no other creature possessed. The stage was thus set for evil to enter Eden through this presumably “weak link” in creation. It was still a very patriarchal world!
This was a story full of fantasy and wondrous elements. Snakes that could walk on two feet and speak understandable human words to a human being, were in the cast of characters. Human deception and the ability to cast blame, to say nothing of those human capacities to engage in both rationalization and projection, were portrayed. Fascinating explanations were offered for things that ancient people obviously observed, but could not otherwise explain. Why do snakes slither on the ground, eating dirt in the process? Why do women endure pain in childbirth? Why does the man struggle to eke his living out of the apparently hostile ground? Why anyone ever tried to make these details literally true then becomes a lingering question.
The contest and tension in this chapter is between the wily serpent and the woman. The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” was forbidden to the two human beings. “Forbidden fruit,” we all recognize, exercises a particular attraction. Why was it forbidden? How would it taste? Its fruit was apparently so appealing that the woman allowed it to enter her fantasies. She circled this tree daily, looking at it from every angle. A fixation was clearly developing.
The serpent, we are told, was, at this time, more “astute than any other wild creature that God had made,” so the serpent noticed the attraction between the woman and the fruit of this tree and began to move in on Eve, the snake’s target. Was this serpent a phallic symbol, depicting sexual desire and fear simultaneously? A case could certainly be built for this supposition.
The conversation began with the serpent reminding the woman of the prohibition. “Did not God say that you may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree standing in the midst of the garden? Did not God say that if you so much as touch this forbidden tree, you shall surely die?” That was the snake’s opening.
Indeed, that did seem to Eve to be a rather harsh punishment for so minor a misdeed. From then on the snake began to toy with Eve, as a cat might do with its prey. “You will not die, Eve,” the snake said. There must be some other divine reason for this prohibition. Then the serpent offered this possibility. “God knows that if you eat of this tree, you will become like God, knowing good and evil.” God wants no such competition, the snake assured Eve. It was a subtle and an appealing stab into the weakness of the snake’s subject and it landed squarely on its target.
The woman, the text tells us, saw that this fruit was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes and now she believed that it might make her wise. The temptation was too much to resist and so she picked and ate it. Disobedience had entered God’s perfect world! Not willing to be alone in her act of disobedience, she gave some of the fruit to her husband and he also ate.
The result? The narrative tells us that their eyes were opened and that they felt shame; they knew that they were naked. A sexual theme is always close to the surface. They then proceeded to cover their shame with fig leaf aprons and immediately, we are told, they heard the rustling of leaves in the garden. God had come down in “the cool of the evening” to take God’s daily walk with God’s friends, Adam and Eve. Before this moment, God had always been a welcome presence. Now, however, things had changed. God was now perceived as a punishing judge. So Adam and Eve hid themselves from this judgmental deity in the bushes of Eden. In this primitive myth, the all-seeing God’s supernatural power was portrayed as deficient, being unable to find Adam and Eve. So God called out, “Adam where are you?” In the game “Hide and Seek” one hides so as not to be found. This, however, was the first time this game had been played in human history and Adam apparently did not understand the rules, so he called out to God saying: “Here I am Lord, hiding in the bushes.” God responded by saying, “What are you doing in the bushes?” Adam explained: “I was ashamed of my nakedness. I did not want you to see me, so I ran away and hid.” It was a new level of human understanding. God picked up on it immediately. “Who told you that you were naked?” Presumably Adam and Eve had been naked from the moment of their creation, but they had never noticed. From where does this self-awareness, this shame, this sense of inadequacy come? Then it dawned on God just what this behavior meant. “Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man was trapped. The deeply human quest for survival set in. Finger pointing, guilt, excuses and rationalization appeared for the first time. “It was that woman,” Adam said, “You know, God, the one that you made. She gave me the fruit and yes, I ate it.” God turned to the woman, but she also had a scapegoat. “It was the serpent that beguiled me and I ate.”
At that moment for the first time, a self-conscious creature had to take responsibility for his or her deeds, so divine punishment was handed out. The serpent was cursed to be hated above all creatures and was condemned to crawl forever on its belly. Enmity would always exist between the serpent’s offspring and the woman’s offspring. Once again the sexual overtones are overt. The woman’s punishment was that she must forever bear pain in childbirth. The man would have to eke out a living from the ground, which was destined by God to bring forth more briars and thistles than good food to eat. The ultimate punishment, however, was that all living things would have to die. Since death was universal, the sin that caused death had to be universal.
God proceeded to clothe the man and the woman with fig leaves, and then God banished them from the garden. Now that they knew good from evil, it was deemed imperative that they not be allowed to eat from the tree of life and escape mortality. Adam and Eve could never again live in Eden, inside God’s presence. Our destiny as human beings was to live somewhere “East of Eden,” forever separated from oneness with god. An angel with a drawn sword was placed at Eden’s gate, forever guarding it from human “re-entry.” Fallen human life was destined to die.
That is the story. Augustine saw this story as the literal account in which sin and evil entered the world. Interestingly, the Jewish readers of this Jewish myth never saw it in moralistic terms. For them, this was the story of human beings growing into self-awareness, learning to discern between good and evil, ceasing to be children dependent upon the heavenly parent for all things and finally having to gain maturity and self-responsibility.
For Augustine, however, the perfection of God’s perfect world had now been destroyed. The source of evil had been identified. Human life had fallen into sin. The “word of God” had described it in Genesis.
In terms of that moralistic world of judgment the entire biblical story would now be cast. Guilt would become the coin of the religious realm. God was not so much the source of life and love as the focus of judgment. Human beings were defined as fallen, corrupted and evil. No one could escape this indelible reality. We were doomed to be punished with death. Our only hope was to throw ourselves onto the mercy of God. The ramifications of this definition abounded.
Baptism was developed symbolically to wash from the newborn human life the stain of Adam’s original sin. If an unbaptized child died in the sin of Adam that child was said to be bound for hell. The Eucharist became the foretaste of the heavenly banquet, the sign of our salvation. The deepest human yearning was now for rescue from this inescapable “original sin,” to find a way to avoid the punishment due us. So it was that Jesus came to be understood as the savior, the rescuer, and the redeemer. Atonement theology had taken over for the Jesus “who came that they might have life and have it abundantly.” Human potential was trumped by guilt and behavior control. So we created hymns like “throw out the lifeline,” “I was sinking deep in sin when love lifted me” and “O Savior, precious Savior.” We sang of that “Old Rugged Cross” on which Jesus “for a world of lost sinners was slain.” This was the template against which Christians would tell the Jesus story. It was also the backdrop against which all liturgy would be developed. It is this kind of Christianity that is dying today, but is this really Christianity? Stay tuned we have only begun to scratch the surface.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.

Question & Answer
Ruth Coggin from the Republic of South Africa writes:

Question:
I love your recent columns introducing your new series on “Charting a New Reformation.” So much of it resonates with me. I am reading Paulo Coelho’s book, The Witch of Portobello and finding so much in it that speaks to me. Especially loved the idea in your column that one can be a non-theist and, at the same time, a committed Christian. That very much describes me. As a young adult, I went on a silent church retreat in which we were urged to listen for God’s voice. The only voice I could hear was the sound of the wind, the rustling of the leaves, the call of the doves and the quietness of the South African countryside. I felt terribly inadequate and ended up helping the cook with the food in the kitchen! It was only years later when I started to read the writings of Richard Rohr that I realized that God had been there all the time, in those sounds and also in the music that I love so much! What a wonderful discovery to make. God bless you in your ministry.

Answer:
Dear Ruth,
Thank you for your letter. I too appreciate the writing of Richard Rohr and I think your insight into where the presence of God is experienced is, as the English would say, “spot on.” It was in the 4th century that Christianity, under pressure from the Emperor Constantine and inits new position of legitimacy in the Roman Empire, that the church decided that the time had come to force this faith tradition into the format of creeds. The people who framed the Nicene Creed, produced by the Council of Nicaea that met in 325 CE, were not aware that they were part of a culture that looked at life dualistically. This was their heritage derived from the thinking of Plato and the Neo-Platonists. That generation in the Mediterranean world breathed dualism without being conscious of it. So the Nicene Creed is deeply dualistic. God and the world are separated into two different realms. The categories of heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, body and soul, God and human, reflected this dualism. The result was that that God was defined theistically as a “being, external to this world, separated in power,” who had to enter this world by invading it. To talk of Jesus as the “incarnation” of God into human form expressed one aspect of that dualism. This is also why you and I were taught in the church not to look for or to listen to God in the sounds of the wind, the rustle of the leaves, the cooing of the doves or in the quietness of the South African countryside.
The political revolution led by Nelson Mandela in South Africa was in many ways a revolution against defining God as separate from this world. Removing the yoke of oppression and creating a new sense of what it means to be human is surly nothing other than the activity of God at work in history. I regard Mandela as one of the great figures of Western history. I am pleased that the man who served as the “chaplain to that revolution” was Desmond Tutu, a bishop in my church.
I have been to South Africa twice. On the first visit, I joined with eight other bishops to lay our hands on the head of the Dean of the Anglican Cathedral of St. Mary in Johannesburg to consecrate him as a bishop in the Church of God. His name was Desmond Tutu. On the second visit, I lectured and led a seminar at the University of South Africa in Johannesburg and met some extraordinary professors and clergy who were transforming Christianity there. I think of Zakkie and Dina Spangenberg and Hansie and Hestor Wolmarans in particular. I also think of a distant relative of mine, named Bernard Spong and his wife Rykie. Bernard was the executive secretary of the Congregational Churches of South Africa prior to his retirement. All of these people bore witness to a God, who was discovered not beyond the sky but in the battle to end apartheid.
I mention these things, Ruth, to tell you that you are not alone in that great country. There are others like you who understand what it means to be “non-theistic” and a committed Christian simultaneously. They constitute what Jesus called the yeast in the loaf, the salt in the soup and the light in the darkness.
Live well!
John Shelby Spong

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