{"id":2725,"date":"2016-08-31T15:32:31","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T15:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/?p=2725"},"modified":"2016-10-21T21:07:37","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T21:07:37","slug":"origen-on-adam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2016\/08\/31\/origen-on-adam\/","title":{"rendered":"Origen on Adam"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"800px-origen-768x911\"This will begin a series of posts on how the 3rd Century theologian Origen<\/a> might help us think about “Adam.” \u00a0The question \u201cwho was Adam\u201d presents difficult issues for Christian theology.\u00a0 Following the lead of St. Augustine, \u201cWestern\u201d Christian theology historically has emphasized the implication of each human being in the primordial sin of Adam \u2013 that is, Western theological traditions tend toward robust versions of the doctrine of \u201coriginal sin.\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0 There are significant philosophical, critical, and scientific problems with this approach.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Philosophically, it is unclear why it is just for God to hold the rest of humanity accountable for Adam\u2019s actions. [3]<\/a>\u00a0 Critically, it is unclear that the Hebrew scriptures ever meant to suggest any doctrine of \u201coriginal sin\u201d or whether the locus classicus<\/em> for the doctrine in the Pauline New Testament literature was properly translated and understood by Augustine.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Scientifically, it is now clear from various lines of evidence that the population of anatomically modern humans evolved gradually over millions of years from a common ancestor shared with the great apes, and that the present human population could not have genetically derived from a single common ancestral pair.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 In other words, a flatly literal \u201cAdam and Eve,\u201d which seems to be required by the Augustinian view, is scientifically impossible.<\/p>\n

In response to these concerns, many contemporary theologians suggest that \u201cEastern\u201d traditions, which are less connected to the \u201cWestern\u201d \/ Augustinian view of original sin, can more easily manage these tensions.[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Some of these writers seek to bring Eastern views into conversation with modern liberal or neo-orthodox theology, which tends to emphasize the metaphorical nature of the Biblical creation accounts, and with the trend in recent theology towards social Trinitarianism, which can map onto a social (rather than Western \u201cindividualistic\u201d) ontology of what it means to be \u201chuman.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

These gestures towards \u201cEastern\u201d thought are helpful in the sense that they do highlight the \u201cmythic\u201d dimensions of the Biblical creation narratives and the irreducibly social construction of human identity.\u00a0 They tend, however, towards broad generalizations that often do not account for the more nuanced and complex philosophical matrix that informed many of the Eastern Church Fathers as they thought about creation, humanity, and the Fall.\u00a0 In this regard, Origen is an interesting figure to study because of the historic anathemas against his supposedly aberrant neo-Platonic views about the pre-existence of souls.[8]<\/a>\u00a0 As we shall see, Origen did indeed draw heavily on Platonism, but his views about Adam and the Fall were far more subtle than is often supposed.\u00a0 Indeed, I will argue that elements of Origen\u2019s views could be useful to a contemporary Christian theology of Adam and original sin.<\/p>\n

In my next post, I’ll examine some threshold problems in locating “Origen’s views” about Adam.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> For a good summary of the doctrine and its Augustinian roots, see Ian McFarland, \u201cThe Fall and Sin,\u201d in John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology<\/em> (Oxford:\u00a0 OUP 2007), 140-157.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> For a general discussion of contemporary objections to the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, see Alistair McFadyen, Bound to Sin:\u00a0 Abuse, Holocaust and the Doctrine of Sin<\/em> (Cambridge:\u00a0 CUP 2000), at pp. 40-41.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Concerning objections to the Augustinian doctrine, see McFarland, \u201cThe Fall and Sin.\u201d\u00a0 For a more in-depth discussion, see David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence:\u00a0 A Theological Anthropology, Vol. 1<\/em> (Louisville:\u00a0 Westminster John Knox 2009); Veli Matti Karkainnen, Creation and Humanity:\u00a0 A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World<\/em>, Vol. 3 (Grand Rapids:\u00a0 Eerdmans 2015), Chapter 15.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> See, e.g., <\/em>Peter Bouteneff, Beginnings:\u00a0 Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives<\/em> (Grand Rapids:\u00a0 Baker Academic 2008).<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> For a general overview of the evidences for human evolution, see Steve Jones, Robert Martin, and David Pilbeam, eds., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution<\/em> (Cambridge:\u00a0 CUP 1996).\u00a0 For a series of articles on why population genetics precludes a single genetic ancestor of all modern humanity, See Dennis Venema, BioLogos Forum,\u201d Letters to the Duchess,\u201d available at http:\/\/biologos.org\/blogs\/dennis-venema-letters-to-the-duchess\/series\/adam-eve-and-human-population-genetics.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> For a general discussion of the \u201cEastern\u201d view, see Peter Bouteneff, \u201cChrist and Salvation,\u201d in Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokrotoff, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology<\/em> (Cambridge:\u00a0 CUP 2008), 94; Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church<\/em> (New York:\u00a0 Penguin Books 1997), 222-225.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> See, e.g., <\/em>Kelsey, Eccentric Existence<\/em>; Karkainnen, Creation and Humanity<\/em>, Chapter 15.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> For a discussion of the historical disputes over Origenism, see Joseph Trigg Wilson, Origen<\/em> (London:\u00a0 Routledge 2002).<\/p>\n

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This will begin a series of posts on how the 3rd Century theologian Origen might help us think about “Adam.” \u00a0The question \u201cwho was Adam\u201d presents difficult issues for Christian theology.\u00a0 Following the lead of St. Augustine, \u201cWestern\u201d Christian theology historically has emphasized the implication of each human being in the primordial sin of Adam […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,78,70,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-theology","category-origen","category-patristics","category-science-and-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-HX","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2828,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2725\/revisions\/2828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}