Original Sin

Starred review from April 28, 2008
In this brilliant account, Wheaton College literature professor Jacobs (The Narnian) traces the idea of original sin from the Bible to the present day. The doctrine has inspired fierce debate for the last two millennia. In every generation, it seems, someone defends the doctrine, pointing to all manner of evidence that people are (as Jacobs, in one of his rare stylistic lapses, too cutely puts it) \x93bad to the bone.\x94 Their opponents in turn ridicule the notion, noting the unfettered \x93greatness of human potential.\x94 Thus Augustine tangles with Julian of Eclanum, and John Wesley clashes with Rousseau. It is a compliment to Jacobs that in his hands these abstruse theological disputes are utterly engrossing. Jacobs makes clear that he has a dog in this fight\x97he thinks original sin is the most persuasive explanation of the world he lives in (though he dissents, irenically and charitably, from some classic Christian formulations, such as Augustine's view on infant damnation). Jacobs hazards some quirky and intriguing ideas, such as the notion that the kind of \x93kinship\x94 created by a universal doctrine of original sin is perhaps as good a basis as any for a brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity, in which no one lords it over anyone else. This book is truly sui generis.

May 1, 2008
No other Christian doctrine, Jacobs says, excites as much hostility, including among Christians, as the teaching that human sinfulness is inherentindeed, inheritable. Jacobs tells the story of how the struggles to understand original sin have affected culture. He proceeds by means of examples, beginning with six stories from cultures ancient and modern, sophisticated and primitive, and Chinese, Nigerian, and New Guinean as well as Western. All six attest the recognition of original sin, even by non-Christians. Subsequent chapters range from St. Augustines formulation of the doctrine out of the epistles of St. Paul to contemporary psychologists experiments that seem to verify it, and through the struggles of great writers, philosophers, preachers, and socialists to overthrow it. Major movementsthe Reformation, the Great Awakening, the French Enlightenment, communitarian socialism (as in Robert Owens planned industrial towns in Scotland and Indiana), eugenics, and ideological totalitarianismfractured and even foundered trying to deny original sin. Its latest antagonists are antireligion polemicists who deny the existence of eviland good, too. A brilliantly illuminating, deeply thought-provoking intellectual journey.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2008
Jacobs (literature, Wheaton Coll.; "The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis") here tackles the intellectual challenge laid down by St. Augustine's (354430 C.E.) formulation of the doctrine of original sin and its reverberations throughout human history. Using a cultural history methodology, he examines various human expressions about and understandings of original sin as exemplified in ancient non-Christian sources (e.g., Homer's "The Iliad") and modern-day writings (e.g., of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins). In 11 chapters, he compares and contrasts cultural manifestations of differing human reactionsboth favorable and less soto Augustinian anthropology (e.g., mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal and Jansenism's negative outlook on human behavior vs. Christian writer/preacher John Bunyan and Quakerism's more positive approaches). Replete with examples drawn from a number of different cultural expressions, including literature, film, and philosophy, the narrative is intended to introduce a broad general audience to the complexity of explaining how human beings act evilly toward one another by examining the various cultural manifestations of Augustine's notion of original sin. Recommended for a wide general audience.Charles Murray, Boston Univ. Sch. of Theology Lib.

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