Human cussedness

Alan Jacobs, who wrote a superb biography of C.S. Lewis, The Narnian, has a couple of new books, one of which is titled Original Sin: A Cultural History. Amazon quotes Frederick Buechner: "With extraordinary erudition and just enough lightness of touch to leaven the lump, Alan Jacobs traces the tangled ways that we have tried to think about human cussedness."

Jacobs himself was interviewed by Publishers Weekly:

RBL: Why a book about original sin?

Jacobs: Some years ago I was doing some research for an essay about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and I was re-reading his philosophical novel called Émile, which is about education. I stumbled across a sermon by John Wesley on the education of children. He said children are natural atheists, their inclinations are vile. Those two pieces of writing were written about the same time, and you couldn't have had two more dramatically different ideas. And it was all based on the fact that John Wesley believes in original sin and Rousseau doesn't. There are cultural consequences to how we think about our fellow human beings.

RBL: In St. Augustine's argument for original sin, a corollary is that infants who die unbaptized are eternally condemned. Can we accept original sin without that repugnant clause?

Jacobs: Augustine thought that consistency required that. He didn't think that God could be merciful to people except through the sacraments. It's baptism that pulls the kids out of the fire. I don't think it is necessary for God to be merciful only through the sacraments. I don't see any way that you could call God just if he was in the business of damning infants.

RBL: You conclude that original sin can be viewed comically. Explain more.

Jacobs: A lot of the resistance people have to the idea of original sin is that it's an insult to their dignity. But we also do silly things, foolish things. Nothing is more helpful to our own self-understanding than an ability to laugh at ourselves.

It has seemed to me that an awareness of original sin — human fallibility, "the worm in the apple," the regard for self rather than God — especially one's own, leads to both higher moral aspirations and lower expectations. And with respect to human relationships, in the church and in society, it is profoundly anti-utopian.

I've ordered the book.

Alan Jacobs: An Original Defense of Sin - 2/13/2008 - Publishers Weekly