Original Sin: A Cultural History

by Alan Jacobs

Essayist and biographer Alan Jacobs introduces us to the world of original sin, which he describes as not only a profound idea but a necessary one. As G. K. Chesterton explains, "Only with original sin can we at once pity the beggar and distrust the king."

Do we arrive in this world predisposed to evil? St. Augustine passionately argued that we do; his opponents thought the notion was an insult to a good God. Ever since Augustine, the church has taught the doctrine of original sin, which is the idea that we are not born innocent, but as babes we are corrupt, guilty, and worthy of condemnation. Thus started a debate that has raged for centuries and done much to shape Western civilization.

Perhaps no Christian doctrine is more controversial; perhaps none is more consequential. Blaise Pascal claimed that "but for this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we remain incomprehensible to ourselves." Chesterton affirmed it as the only provable Christian doctrine. Modern scholars assail the idea as baleful and pernicious. But whether or not we believe in original sin, the idea has shaped our most fundamental institutions—our political structures, how we teach and raise our young, and, perhaps most pervasively of all, how we understand ourselves. In Original Sin, Alan Jacobs takes readers on a sweeping tour of the idea of original sin, its origins, its history, and its proponents and opponents. And he leaves us better prepared to answer one of the most important questions of Are we really, all of us, bad to the bone?

Genres: Theology, History, Religion, Christianity, Nonfiction, Cultural, Christian

306 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Alan Jacobs is a scholar of English literature, literary critic, and distinguished professor of the humanities at Baylor University. Previously, he held the Clyde S. Kilby Chair of English at Wheaton College until 2012. His academic career has been marked by a deep engagement with literature, theology, and intellectual history.
Jacobs has written extensively on reading, thinking, and culture, contributing to publications such as The Atlantic, First Things, and The New Atlantis. His books explore diverse topics, from the intellectual legacy of Christian humanism (The Year of Our Lord 1943) to the challenges of modern discourse (How to Think). He has also examined literary figures like C. S. Lewis (The Narnian) and W. H. Auden. His work often bridges literature and philosophy, with books such as A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love reflecting on the ethical dimensions of interpretation.
An evangelical Anglican, Jacobs continues to influence discussions on faith, literature, and the role of reading in contemporary life.

Reviews

[Esteban del Mal · Rating 1 out of 5]

Three guys lay sun-blistered on the shore of a desert island. Something shiny washes up and one of the guys notices it glinting in the waves. He rubs the sand from it and out bursts a genie, to much sensory fanfare.

“As reward for releasing me from centuries of captivity, I grant each of you a wish,” booms the genie (but the genie probably communicates this in their heads, telepathic-like, because I don’t think anyone or anything, magical or otherwise, that has been isolated from humanity for centuries would speak in the modern vernacular; this goes for Jesus too).

The three guys stare slack jawed and the genie quickly apprehends that it isn’t dealing with the sharpest knives in the drawer, so it doesn’t go into the rules of wish granting, like one can’t wish for more wishes, or wish oneself a genie, that sort of thing.

The first guy thinks a minute and says, “My greatest wish is to be back home with my family.”

POOF!

He disappears in a cloud of B-movie smoke.

The second guy looks to where the first guy had been, thinks a minute longer and says, “I don’t have a family, so I wish to be the wealthiest man in the world.”

POOF!

He likewise disappears in a cloud of B-movie smoke, presumably to Santa Barbara or Hong Kong.

The third guy averts his eyes from the genie and cries out, “Oh wicked spirit! God was punishing us for our sins! My wish from thee is that the other two were back here with me! Of their own free will! And in accordance with the Law of Moses! Also, if you’ve got a minute, I’d like to talk to you about accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior.”

Can you guess which of these three individuals is the author of Original Sin, Alan Jacobs?

*****

Does it come as a great surprise to you that you’re an asshole? I don’t mean to be judgmental here, because I’m an asshole too. So are your loved ones, neighbors, therapist, everyone that has anything to do with delivering books to your doorstep, your favorite musician, Gandhi, the casts and crews of every sitcom you’ve watched, the president of the United States, whoever discovered the wheel, that woman you saw drop money in some panhandler’s jar, the panhandler himself, your favorite teacher, and any and everybody you, I, or anyone else have ever known or will ever know -- as well as everyone they’ve ever known, or ever will know -- to time immemorial, so on and so forth, ad infinitum.

Assholes, one and all.

Sure, there are varying degrees of assholism and we can argue its origins, but let’s leave it to the philosophers to tease out the nuances. For now, it’s only necessary to accept and understand the basic premise that our species is victim to this unfortunate and immutable condition.

Fine. Alan Jacobs agrees, but he is fixated. He must have thought himself quite special at some time or other because assholism is a fetish for him. And what does he do? Well, he does what every fetishist who wishes to gain acceptance in larger society does -- he rationalizes himself blue in the face. He tells us that it’s liberating to discover you’re an asshole because it’s democratizing! Thieving bureaucrats who condemn innocents to prison? Assholes! Corporatists who swindle us and can’t think past a 90-day financial quarter? Assholes! But so is everybody, so what’s the big deal? We all suffer the same fate.

Alpha assholes are no worse than us middling assholes, when you take the Jacobs-long view: let them store up riches where moth and rust decay, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, all that rot. No need to worry about the here and now because the problem is too big for any of us to get our pathetic asshole arms around. Let it be. Don’t buy into that “social progress” kerfluffle, because it’s just dressed up as “scientific progress,” itself code for LIBERAL. Besides, anything humanity proposes to improve things is doomed to failure because, well, we’re all assholes. Better to trust in tradition. Unquestioningly.

Original sin is the filthy and gnarled thread of redemption, suitable for self-flagellation.

At this point, things get existential, and Mr. Jacobs refers his readers to the nearest altar call, lest they go insane like poor Jonathan Swift who, sadly, went nuts because he recognized the Fall but couldn’t bring himself to accept the Grace. (It's not nearly as sad, but sad nevertheless, that Mr. Jacobs could stand a little of the secular crazy himself because his prose is guilty of the sin of plodding.)

So. Where does this leave us? Still assholes, certainly. Just some of us have trouble accepting the fact; we can’t take a hit, psychologically-speaking. These are the scariest assholes of all. They take the germ of a disease and magnify it to monstrous proportions, until it’s bigger than us all and we forget that we’re more than just assholes, we’re human beings trying to extricate ourselves from the medieval morass of a history guided largely by people like Alan Jacobs.

[Terzah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last week I was riding home from work on the bus. Just after it started lurching down Canyon Blvd. away from the Edenic mountains on Boulder’s west side, a girl in the seat behind me stood and, gripping the back of my seat and the one across the aisle, asked with no prelude, “Can I have a dollar?”

I didn’t meet her eyes, but I remember that she was a thin girl, not much older than my 13-year-old twins. In the split second between her question and my answer, I felt a reaching for what that answer would be. Maybe you are familiar with this reaching. You can also characterize it as the algebra you do when you are faced with a moral choice, when what you know you should do confronts what you want to do: the “x” (my character) plus “y” (the choice before me) equals +/- some action taken or not taken.

“No,“ I said, having added it all up to zero and feeling affronted that she had broken what is definitely a bus rule and perhaps a law by soliciting money. The person across the aisle likewise refused. The girl didn’t react. She moved down the aisle to the next people, who also didn’t give her a thing, and finally to the bus driver. She must have worked something out with him because she came back to her seat and didn’t leave the bus before I did, nearly 20 miles down the highway.

My feeling of annoyance was followed by guilt and shame almost as soon as she passed. Another day, I would have unzipped my wallet and pulled out that dollar. On still another day, I might have given more than she asked for. What was the difference? Her appearance? The fact that I’d been working all day at the library and was tired?

The truth is, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I did the ungenerous thing. And that choice wasn’t forced on me by anyone or anything else. All on my own, I found an invisible glass shard of evil to toss at someone else—and I tossed it.

Where does this wrongdoing come from? This is the question that Alan Jacobs wants to answer and explain in this book.

I picked up “Original Sin” as part of my study of racism and anti-racism in this country because racism has been called the USA’s original sin, whether outright (here’s a BBC article that has it in the headline) or tacitly (“Between the World and Me” and “White Fragility”). Raised Roman Catholic, I thought I knew what “original sin” means, but given this new-to-me context, I wanted to make sure my understanding was true, and examine the concept’s applicability to this moment of national reckoning.

Jacobs answered my question and more. He discusses where the idea came from (St. Paul and St. Augustine, generally) and how it has been invoked and condemned and used and abused over the ages, right up until now (Rousseau and Dawkins, among others, come up as players in this drama, along with a host of lesser-known but equally fascinating people). His explanations start with stories. You might know some of them, including the one where King David of ancient Israel sends Uriah, one of his own soldiers, to his death so he, the king, can steal Uriah’s wife.

Jacobs also defines the idea of original sin: it is “sin that’s already inside us, dwelling in us at our origin, at our very conception.” It means we are all flawed at the core, prone to choose selfishly, prone to do evil in large and small ways. This is true even of the nicest people we all know. And if you look at world history, at crime, and, yes, at your own life, you see its consequences everywhere. I saw it in myself on that bus. To repeat: It’s not that I didn’t know what the generous—the good--choice was in that situation. It’s that I did know it—and I willfully, knowingly made the other choice. There is something in me that makes total generosity impossible, that made what happened on the bus inevitable. It’s not a lack of choice or ability to do good. It’s the fact that I will sin in this and other ways because it’s who I am.

Jacobs writes, “…the doctrine of original sin works with the feeling that most of us have, at least some of the time, of being divided against ourselves, falling short of the mark, inexplicably screwing up when we ought to know better. It takes relatively little imagination to look at another person and think that, though that person might not be all that he or she might be, neither am I.”

Over the years, many have argued against the concept of original sin by saying, well, yes, no one’s perfect. But isn’t it important to note that people can and do choose generously sometimes too? Why believe our evil acts prove we all have an evil core, but not that good acts prove a good core? Jacobs’ argument, and that of many thinkers before him, is that only original sin can explain our inability to always choose the good. It’s why all utopian communities ultimately fail. It’s why too many people are still abjectly poor. It’s why war still occurs. One such thinker was the mathematician Blaise Pascal, who Jacobs quotes: “Certainly nothing jolts more rudely than this doctrine, and yet but for this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we remain incomprehensible to ourselves.”

How else can you explain the persistence of evil?

I’m Christian, so it’s not too hard for me to accept this doctrine. But I didn’t pick up the book to be affirmed in something I already believe. I picked it up to see if what’s quickly becoming the metaphor of my generation, Christian or not—slavery and racism as an entire nation’s original sin—makes any sense in the context of what original sin actually is.

Jacobs addresses the question directly in Chapter Nine, called “The Confraternity of the Human Type.” That language comes from a letter written by a Swiss naturalist, Louis Agassiz, reacting to seeing people of African origin for the first time: “I can scarcely express to you the painful impression that I received, especially since the feeling inspired in me is contrary to all our ideas about the confraternity of the human type and the unique origin of species.”

Despite the “pain” he felt stemming from this reaction, Agassiz ended up becoming a staunch white supremacist and apologist for institutional racism. He, therefore, Jacobs states, should be remembered not for being a creationist or a “scientist,” but for his role in coming up with the ideas underlying so-called “scientific racism.” This is the now-debunked but still insidious 19th-century theory that justified slavery on the grounds that there is not one human race, but many “races,” and that those races must be distinguished from one another, ranked according to purported differences in intellectual capacity and then used to set up a social order reflected in law and policy.

So, what does a false biological distinction like race have to do with original sin? Original sin, Jacobs avers, is the one thing that serves as a “binding agent,” an actual mark that indicates, despite differences in appearance and talent and character, the truth that all human beings are in fact a “confraternity.” Again, he goes on, for many, this raises the question of why a uniting idea of innate goodness couldn’t bind us together. Doesn’t the also-very-Christian idea that we are all made in God’s image “serve equally well, or even better, to bind us as members of a single family?”

Here is Jacobs himself in response:

The answer is that is should do so, but usually does not. Working against the force of that doctrine [of innate good] is the force of familiarity, of prevalent cultural norms of behavior and even appearance. A genuine commitment to the belief that we are all created equally in the image of God requires a certain imagination—imagination that Agassiz, try as he might, could not summon…..Instinctive revulsion against the alien will trump doctrinal commitments almost every time. Black people did not feel human to him, and this feeling he had no power to resist….

Just as I had no power to overcome my selfish impulse on the bus, Agassiz--a creationist who SHOULD have believed in the unity of the human race in its descent from Adam and, at least at the time of his letter, nominally did believe it--couldn’t overcome his racism.

Nor could the Founding Fathers of this country and their early precursors. Again, Jacobs:

The rhetoric of American freedom, of this continent as a place to leave behind the corruption of the Old World and start over, is tainted, or poisoned, at its origin by the practice of slavery….In this new Garden of Eden there seems to have been no prelapsarian period at all…Is there a more sobering detail in American history than the fact that the first slaves came to this country, to Jamestown, in 1619?....The whole American experiment can be seen—and indeed has been seen by many—as a kind of referendum on the doctrine of original sin or a test case for its universal applicability. And it is the preexisting practice of slavery that, depending on your point of view, either makes a true test impossible or abundantly confirms the darkest Augustinian imaginings of our moral condition.

Is it a good metaphor to call racism America's original sin? I say after finishing this book YES, it is, though racism is a specific sin while the concept of individual original sin is more general. I would also qualify my acceptance of the metaphor by adding that if you are going to claim the idea of original sin, even one original sin, for an entire nation, you need to be ready to claim a similar idea of redemption—or there is no hope of ever improving the situation or of justifying any point-of-view but a nihilism that will lead at best to apathy and despair and at worst to an embrace of intentional selfishness and a giving over of oneself to one’s pet sins. You’ve decided your innate nature is flawed, after all, and you’ve also decided there is nothing that can be done to ameliorate that. Why not be a glutton, an egomaniac, even a racist, a rapist or a dictator?

That’s not a road that anyone with a conscience, religious or not, should resign themselves to. For secular thinkers who can’t accept the idea of an explicitly Christian redemption, Jacobs’ argument that recognizing original sin, whether the individual variety or the national kind, as a flaw that everyone shares might, at least some of the time, help us regard one another with sympathy and forgiveness rather than judgment. This jives somewhat with Ibram Kendi’s argument in “How to Be An Anti-Racist” that even people of color are themselves often racist against their “own” people and need to re-frame their outlook.

Jacobs manages to conclude on a hopeful note, likening all of us in our self-importance to the denizens of a Shakespearean farce: “The truest excellence is to know that you deserve the ‘comic exposure’—to know that you need forgiveness….If there is a proper response, a truly wise response, to the narrative of this book, it surely begins with the recognition that if everyone is bad to the bone—if all of us strut and fret our hour upon the stage, filled with the consciousness of our injured merit, fairly glowing with self-praise—then our condition is, first and above all else, comical.”

God, grant me humility and a sense of humor. God, free me from judgment of others. God, set me and this country free from our sins. And God, help me to give that girl on the bus a dollar the next time. Maybe she doesn’t deserve it, but neither do I.

[Joseph Leake]

A thoroughly enjoyable and interesting examination of the topic. Jacobs’ approach is not a argumentative and doctrinal examination for or against the idea of original sin, but—as the subtitle, A Cultural History, indicates—an exploration of that doctrine from various angles, looking at it through examples drawn throughout Christian history. Speaking personally, this is exactly my kind of thing: I would always rather explore an idea, philosophy, or doctrine through tangible examples rooted in history and literature than consider it in the abstract. I want to see what the debates have been, who’s talked about it and in what writings—I want to see what’s been at stake with the issue, and how it’s all played out over time and within culture.

This is partly a matter of personal preference (I find it more enjoyable), but also a matter of learning: I tend to come to understandings and reach conclusions better when the issue at hand is considered concretely (within history and literature) than when it is explored in the abstract.

I also think, in any case, that the tendency to think about ideas overwhelmingly in the abstract is a dangerous and pernicious habit; so any writer who takes us out of abstractions and into real human history, real human culture, is doing good work. And Jacobs’ characteristically clear and engaging style make the book a pleasure to read. He’s a great guide through the subject matter.

[Mike Knox · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the introduction, Jacob notes that of all religious beliefs, none provokes more criticism and repulsion than the doctrine of original sin. Original sin is irreparable, irreversible, and unpredictable (x-xi). It is the belief that every human being is born with sin already in them. That we all inherit sin, and are culpable. The history of original sin is a history of resistance to it. So why, over the centuries, have so many stubbornly believed it? Well, as Chesterton noted, original sin has enormous empirical evidence (“it is the only doctrine of the Christian faith that is empirically provable” [x])! But the main reason it has been adopted by some of the greatest thinkers in the history of the world is its vast explanatory power. All other explanations for human evil and selfishness fall short.

Original Sin is, in Jacob’s words, “an exemplary history” (as opposed to an exhaustive one), and “a specifically cultural history” (as opposed to a theological history). Thus Jacobs mines the literature of centuries and turns up story after story of people who either fought or defended the doctrine of original sin. The stories range from the ancient past (King David and Bathsheba) to the more recent dawn of eugenics and genetics. Those who are resistant to belief in “a divided self” will need to overcome a barrage of fire to maintain their skepticism by the final page.

One thing that stands out in Jacob’s brilliant treatment is the theme of original sin’s positive contributions to history and life. He introduces us to Pascal, who realized that only the fear of God that comes from being corrupt sinners in the sight of God enables us to have proper wonder at God’s love (116). The power of original sin to bind humans together in a “confraternity” is seen throughout the book, but especially in the chapter on American slavery. Original sin is a brake that can slow and restrain the course of evil (209-10).

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet prisoner who was brought to faith by being persuaded of the truthfulness of original sin. How he was persuaded of original sin is most interesting. As he watched a habitually-brutal prison guard, he realized over time that

given the same power in the same circumstances, he himself would surely have behaved with equal cruelty. “In the intoxication of youthful successes” he had believed himself “infallible”; it was the Gulag that taught him that he was “a murderer, and an oppressor.” It was the Gulag that taught him that everyone has the capacity to become a Stalin and that therefore “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but through every human heart.” (224)

Jacobs mines Rebecca West’s work, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (which he believes to be “the greatest book of the twentieth century” [283]), to provide us a vivid illustration of the human heart. West visited a biological museum and sees a two-headed calf. One head was lovely, the other hideous. The owners had fed the beautiful head milk, but the ugly head would spit the milk out, preventing the food from reaching the calf’s stomach. According to the custodian, the calf would have been “alive today had it not been for its nature” (223).

I found the stories where original sin intersected with science to be very interesting. The final chapter features this intersection the most because it deals with genetics. But it also appears in the chapter on American slavery. Interestingly, it is science, not the religious belief of original sin, which gets the bad rap. Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz was

a progenitor of “scientific racism”—the view that, setting aside any biblical narratives or doctrines that support the unity and common origin of human beings, there is no such thing as the human race; rather, there are several races that, carelessly and unscientifically, have been lumped in a single category. It was the task of science to disentangle the confused strands, to establish clear distinctions among races, to rank them according to intellectual capacity, and to insist that those rankings be reflected in law and public policy. And so the superstitions of biblical literalism would be set aside in the name of scientific progress, which is also, of course, social progress. (203)

Few questions can be more important than what is wrong with us. An incredible journey awaits anyone willing to pick up this book. I highly recommend it.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would call this pop theology, not cultural history. Still, it is engaging and persuasive pop theology.

The Western imagination, as Jacobs illustrates, has been preoccupied for millennia with the suspicion that we humans have somehow inherited a condition of pervasive moral corruption. Christian theologians are only one part of this tradition. The theologians' uniqueness, Jacobs insinuates, is in suggesting a way out of the corruption without denying that it is an essential part of our nature.

The most interesting part of Jacobs' narrative is his claim that the doctrine of original sin has a strong democratic tendency. The doctrine holds that no one can claim exemption from the evil within us all -- that there is no moral or spiritual elite, at least among the living. Thus, we must bear with each other, pray for each other, support each other in our common weakness. Ultimately, therefore, the doctrine of original sin can be a source of inner peace. If we recognize that we can never be perfect, then it will be easier to go about the business of being tolerable -- with God's help and each other's.

[Sheens · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️ pro tip: read the afterword for a succinct summary. Read the book in its entirety especially if you have a love for the classics and history

[Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed Alan's episodic tour of original sin (if that's actually allowed). His readable and oft insightful work wanders among various players who have pondered this great question of humanity's flawed moral character (or at least it wandered with me while I bounced between Moscow, Nashville, Cookeville, Chattanooga and back again last week). I found his treatment of Rousseau and the radical romantics, who keep hoping against irrational hope that we are essentially "innocent" from birth, particularly helpful. What he reveals is the tragic irony that those who promote human native innocence (such as the "enlightened" French Revolutionaries, racially pure Nazis, classless Marxists, et al.) almost always end up being those who take top honors for perpetrating the greatest evils in history. For those looking for a theological treatment of the question, they'll need to look elsewhere. For those wanting a fine guided cultural history tour, Alan is your man, your 'adam'.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Jacobs is one of the most erudite, yet accessible, Christian scholars writing at the moment. This enormously enjoyable cultural and intellectual history tracing Augustine's emphasis on original sin reveals a wealth and breadth of knowledge and insight. The central thesis is a probing examination of why humans seem to struggle with such an innate desire to do evil, even though thinkers throughout history have urgently sought to downplay and otherwise dismiss these tendencies. Jacobs is just as comfortable exploring the tension between Whitefield, Wesley, and Bunyan's views of innate, universal sin as he is in referencing Guillermo del Toro's "Hellboy" or the blues music of Robert and Tommy Johnson.

I remember first encountering the fascinating history of modern Europe's rejection of the idea of original sin throughout the Enlightenment and Romantic eras in Jacobs' fine essay, "The Only Honest Man," in which he focused on the eccentric viewpoints of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. What a pleasure to be gifted with a book-length study of the subject. Each chapter reads like a self-contained essay, and you'll find yourself compulsively researching some of the names and titles Jacobs presents (Robert Owen and his social experiment at New Lanark, the bizarre metaphor of the "two-headed calf" in Rebecca West's monumental "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon," and the tragic, nearly Oedipal, conflict between Augustine and Julian of Eclanum). One of Jacobs' more interesting and provocative arguments is that, contrary to expectation, an emphasis on the universal scope of original sin has actually served to repudiate dehumanizing practices. In his chapter on "the Confraternity of the Human Type," it was original sin, not the doctrine of the "imago dei" that served "in the American South at least, [as] a brake of a different kind: a restraint on those who wished to see black people as utterly alien, as having nothing to do with the rest of us." For it pointed to the biblical insistence on common origins and not the racially inflected pseudo-science of polygeny. Overall, very highly recommended!

[Marshall Janzen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Augustine’s theory with its heart ripped out

A somewhat tardy list in the Afterword gives five necessary beliefs for the form of original sin this book commends:

[1] You must believe that everyone behaves in ways that we usually describe as selfish, cruel, arrogant, and so on. [2] You must believe that we are hard-wired to behave in those ways and do not do so simply because of the bad examples of others. [3] You must believe that such behavior is properly called wrong or sinful, whether it’s evolutionarily adaptive or not. [4] You must believe that it was not originally in our nature to behave in such a way, but that we have fallen from a primal innocence. [5] And you must believe that only supernatural intervention, in the form of what Christians call grace, is sufficient to drag us up out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves.

You may spot a tension between points 2 and 5. The “pit we’ve dug for ourselves” seems at odds with being “hard-wired to behave in those ways.” But no, this is instead the bullet Alan Jacobs implores us to bite: God holds us responsible for digging a pit that someone else (Adam? Satan? God?) hard-wired us to dig. You don’t face this bullet from points 1–3 alone. It’s triggered by 4 and the reframing of responsibility in 5. It’s tough to swallow responsibility shorn of ability, but Jacobs aims to try.

But not try too hard, it seems, since the book largely sticks to demonstrating points 1–3 as if this forced 4 be true and hopefully 5 as well. Jacobs exhibits all sorts of people acting badly, whether learned eugenicists, slaveholders, Indigenous tribes or the infamous Stanford college students. He draws our attention to all sorts of writers who discern evil in these acts and the hearts they sprang from. The stories are lively, varied, witty and surely well researched. Evil is shown to be, if not universal, at least pervasive – and perhaps other circumstances would have drawn it even from those who seem free of it.

The case for pervasive bad behaviour is so conclusive that point 4 seems like nonsense. Surely Adam and Eve shared this fault with us. Even before tasting the fruit, they scorned the words of their Creator and preferred the self-stroking logic of another creature. Circumstantial evidence convicts them of being tainted by original sin as surely as all the evidence Jacobs summons against everyone since. He shows Milton’s limp wrestling with this puzzle, yet offers no fix that salvages a human starting point for evil. But if humans behaved badly even before the fall, is original sin the right term?

Older takes on the Genesis stories used a different term: humanity’s “evil inclination.” The Eden story doesn’t divulge where that inclination comes from. Perhaps it wasn’t written to tell us who to blame, but to show us ourselves. This take explains the copious evidence for points 1–3 just as well, but it transforms point 4 so we dodge the bullet.

I may seem to have left off reviewing to yammer on, but this idea, or one quite like it, happens to be central to Augustine’s formation of original sin. Given that Jacobs’ favourite adjective for his view is “Augustinian,” it’s perplexing to never find this idea in his book, aside from a brief mention that offloads it to those un-Augustinian Greek fathers of the East.

Jacobs mentions some of Augustine’s hard views, smirking at his weird take on male arousal being always sinful and shuddering at his insistence that unbaptized infants face damnation for having original sin. But he leaves out Augustine’s Realism: his belief that every human being was really, truly, physically present in Adam when he sinned.

I can see why someone who claims to follow Augustine’s anthropology might want to leave this out. Augustine located us all in Adam’s loins in seed form, tying his doctrine to a sexist view of procreation that aged … poorly. But our real presence, sinning in Adam, is one leg of Augustine’s formulation alongside being conceived in sin (the male arousal bit) and inheriting from Adam. Jacobs reduces Augustine’s view to inheritance alone without recognizing that the amputated Realism leg served a purpose.

For Augustine, it made the bullet a blank. Because we were there and even participated in some mysterious way as Adam sinned, we were all in the room when it happened, when humanity was rewired. Even if one doesn’t buy that we could possibly participate, we were at least present to be damaged by Adam when he sinned. His sin corrupted his whole body, including us in his loins. This removes the need for separate vindictive acts of God to pass Adam’s corruption on to each new person, each new soul.

Of course Augustine’s view is nonsense biology. But he used that nonsense to craft an original sin that didn’t uncouple ability from responsibility – that didn’t hold us accountable for doing what someone else forced us to do. His science hasn’t held up, but his theological instincts were more sound than his heirs who claim his doctrine while gutting its heart.

Surely there are better ways to appropriate Augustine into our own age. Jacobs’ account of how we can be ruled by our amygdala hints that sin didn’t start fresh with Adam. We could catalogue the horrors done by chimps as well, or spiders, or any creature that passed on its urge to live and/or mate at all costs. Perhaps we have an inheritance there too, explaining why “noble savages” and Rousseau’s rosy view of nature fall short, and perhaps why Adam and Eve could fall too.

With a longer view of inheritance, it becomes easier to see plausible views of real presence. We really are like Adam and Eve, facing serpents of temptation both beastly and devilish. We really do, like them, seem to have a bent for bad. We really do, like them, blame others for our wrongs. Maybe it’s not for nothing that ‘adam’ is a Hebrew word for humanity.

In one sermon, Augustine affirmed the long tradition that “Adam was one man, and is yet the whole human race.” While he came to imagine that in a literal way, it’s possible to leave off the tiny humans in Adam’s privates and see the bigger picture. Like David confronted by Nathan we can catch the twist as we hear about the exalted, bumbling humans in Eden.

Them’s us.

It’s a more nuanced point 4, but perhaps a surer road to point 5.

[Kenny Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a banger

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really excellent. This has been on my shelves for years, and I don't know why i haven't read it sooner. Jacobs is very widely read, but not at the cost of depth.

[Brian Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book takes a look at the teaching of Original Sin; specifically, the theory that suggests sin is something passed down from Adam by some hereditary means. The author is not focused on detailing this idea of hereditary sin as much as he is attempting to observe the cultural reactions toward it. Those reactions include cultures coming to similar ideas on their own, cultures trying to assimilate the idea into their understanding and practices, or cultures opposing the idea. As such, this book serves as an interesting look into the widespread influence that the hereditary sin theory has on people’s understanding and behavior. It also gives some insight on the different reasons why people might want to, or not want to, believe such an idea.
The author is admittedly biased, that is, he favors the idea of hereditary sin. So this is not an objective journey; he is openly trying to make a case for this theory. Yet, being that it is not a theological treatise, he contends for the teaching mildly at best (I personally thinks he ends up effectively demonstrating significant weaknesses in the hereditary sin theory). When Jacobs makes arguments for ‘Original Sin’ or against its dissenters his points are often starkly fallacious. Perhaps the most frequent fallacy he employs is to conflate the idea of the universality of human sinfulness with the definition of ‘Original Sin’. (But the fact that everybody sins is not unique to OS theory, and an argument that supports both sides of a debate proves neither.) So I am not rating the book as if it were an attempt to investigate the validity of OS but as a collection of cultural reactions to OS (Jacob’s own reactions being among the specimens that interested me).

The negative:
The author often takes tangential roads while developing his point, and the histories he chooses do not always connect very well to his conclusions about them. His favoritism toward the theory of Original Sin frequently colors his conclusions in ways that, to me, seem forced.

The positive:
There is a lot of interesting history to peruse here. Overall, he is able to present an engaging journey into his own perspective of the cultural trail of this theory. This book is not intended to be a theological study but an anecdotal one; but such fascinating anecdotes! It is quite a collection of the variety in attitude and experimentation that individuals and societies have had around all things regarding the causes of human sinfulness. It gives a sweeping sketch of the human drama in which we try to reconcile with who we really are: our failures vs our ideals, our blindnesses competing against our knowledge, how we try to find the line between our superstitions and reality, between our traditions and our needs, etc. This is a worthwhile collection of histories all related to the human investigation of a single question, “why do we all sin?”

[Gundopush · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Original Sin" starts with an interesting, though ineffectual chapter dealing with wrongdoing throughout various cultures. It is an eclectic stroll which doesn't really lead anywhere and is only tangentially referenced in later parts of the book. This, unfortunately remains the format for most of what follows. Many different figures throughout time and space are referenced in a vaguely chronological order that leaves the reader with snippets of history, philosophy, and theology which never come together to allow for an understanding of the complex ebb and flow of original sin in Christian thought. The only exception to this is his good covering of Augustine and his various conflicts with other early Christian thinkers.

Throughout the book the author takes pains to talk about the universality of original sin and how it is the bedrock upon which the wickedness of man is built. Instead of trying to delve deeper into what should therefore be a global problem for religions he deals exclusively with Christian though, with the exception of a ten page diversion concerning mid-17th century Dutch Judaism.

Jacobs' assumptions and biases end up crowding out anyone who disagrees with him by the end of the book. He states that progressives who disagree will likely quit partly through the book. (I have always figured these type of statements to be signs of an author either too arrogant/ignorant to effectively talk and understand those outside their group, or too belligerent to be bothered to.) The majority of non-clerical scientists mentioned are peddling either eugenics or scientific racism. Non-believers are generally cast as enlightened despots or dunderheads too inept to understand their own hypocrisy. For those non-believers who do believe that people are inherently wicked, he writes these two wonderful sentences. "But there is also that curious group of people...who share Augustinian anthropology, but who cannot bring themselves to believe in the accompanying theology...those people live in a dark dark place. Many who have seen the world in this way...have been driven by it to, or over the brink of madness-which is where R.D.Lang thinks they should be." pg. 267-268.
Speaking as one of those cynical non-believers...seriously...what...the...fuck...

If you have an interest in disjointed original sin related trivia, this book is likely the one for you. All others can almost certainly do better elsewhere.

[Glen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is not often that I rate a book five stars when its conclusions are somewhat tentative in the final analysis. Yet, the worth of this book is found in the majestic scope it brings to a cardinal belief of orthodox Christianity - a scope that encapsulates an honest pursuit of truth without the need for fundamentalist bantering. Sin is complex and this book eschews the pedantic or simplistic renderings that often characterize discussions on the origins of our sinful nature. Our world is marred indelibly by the inability to rise about those inclinations that bring evil and suffering to the human enterprise. Thus, as complex as the topic may be, it is incumbent on us to engage the conversation (imo).

So why five stars? For starters, Alan Jacobs is an intellectual whose writing is not stuffy nor filled with vain-glory prose as if he needs us to know the range of his mental prowess. Secondly, he brings his literary knowledge in a unique way to the conversation on original sin. This work probes the writings of anthropologists, novelists, luminaries such as Solzhenitsyn and Shakespeare or Augustine and Pelagius, philosophers, psychologists, scientists...in others words, the range is impressive and thoroughly rooted in the context of the modern debate.

Thirdly, Jacobs kindly holds to an evangelical viewpoint on our fallen nature without demonizing those who cannot embrace what seems to them to be an immoral interpretation of human nature. Fourthly, to read Jacobs is to read good writing. I increasingly find myself more inclined to read sure quality over investing time in unknown writers. I have never walked away from Alan Jacobs' work with a sense of disappointment. Even if I disagree at points it is with an appreciation for the depth he brought to my thinking.

Original sin is the most comprehensive explanation I have found for the undeniable reality that our world is broken. I have always esteemed Pauline texts and writers such as Augustine or Calvin to be theological sound on this issue. That said, I am not a Calvinist. My leanings are more to the middle on this debate but I firmly believe that every human being embarks on a hazardous moral journey at birth and that only God's grace as found in Jesus Christ can assure us of an eventual resting place filled with eternal bliss. This book helped reinforce these convictions without the need to scream at detractors. Thank goodness that there are such books still being published in our age of rage.

[J. J.]

Excellent. As usual, Jacobs has what Douglas Wilson calls "copiousness". He displays depth and breadth of insight into the history of this deeply offensive idea that we all unavoidably inherit moral evil. He's a good missiologist as well in the way that he avoids in-house language and winsomely invites skeptics to doubt their own doubts on this idea.

[Phil Cotnoir · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can we explain ourselves to ourselves? This book explores the history of one of humanity's most surprising but compelling answers: Original sin.

I first came across Alan Jacobs through his more recent book "How to Think" which is actually far better than the title suggests. What I mean is, it isn't a How-To book at all. Anyways, I picked this up not long ago as I was interested to read Jacobs deal with this fascinating topic.

This is not a technical, Biblical, theological treatise of the subject. It is, as he calls it, a cultural history. "What is a cultural history?" you may ask. Jacobs presents his book in the introduction as an "exemplary history," - it traces the history of the idea of original sin through specific historical examples. He also presents it as a cultural history as opposed to a history of theology. Basically this means that the book is a somewhat loosely (but legitimately) connected series of essays / historical anecdotes and stories. He delves deeper into a few key thinkers along the way.

I personally enjoy this kind of format and in general enjoy Jacobs' writing so the book was only made better by the fact that I enjoyed learning about well-known (Augustine) and lesser-known historical figures. Some made it into the book for their thinking and teaching on the subject, and others because their lives served as manifestations of the various ways we understand ourselves. I had a hard time putting it down, and learned a lot, so there: 5 stars.

[Joel Wentz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wide-ranging, erudite and compelling (even funny at times, which is surprising considering the topic at hand). Jacob's takes the reader through an impressive scope of history, pulling on threads in the writings of philosophers, theologians, playwrights, novelists, psychologist, scientists and others. AT the core of all their work is the question, "Are humans, essentially, good? Or evil?" The implications of how all these thinkers answer these questions are teased out, and Jacobs does a wonderful job of contextualizing every argument he summarizes - and one definitely gets a sense of a "pendulum swing" throughout history, for every influential writer who asserted the core evil of humanity, an influential writer would inevitably respond arguing for our core "goodness."

Overall, it's a fascinating read, which gave me a greater appreciation for the scope at which we humans have wrestled with the notion of our inherited "sinfulness" through the generations. This is an easy recommendation for anyone who loves history, theology, philosophy, or some combination of the 3. I'm impressed by Jacob's wide range of sources, and his clear, funny writing style. Oh, how I wish there were more voices like his in the academy.

[Rebekah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve managed to read two books titled “Original Sin” this year, somehow. This one was far better than the other (a disappointing mystery novel).
There were many interesting threads woven in here and Jacobs brought it all together wonderfully in the Afterword.

This quote from the Afterword summarizes things pretty nicely:
“As far as I can tell, then, you must hold five distinct beliefs in order to affirm [original sin]. You must believe that everyone behaves in ways that we usually describe as selfish, cruel, arrogant, and so on. You must believe that we are hard-wired to behave in those ways and do not do so simply because of the bad examples of others. You must believe that such behavior is properly called wrong or sinful, whether it’s evolutionarily adaptive or not. You must believe that it was not originally in our nature to behave in such a way, but that we have fallen from a primal innocence. And you must believe that only supernatural intervention, in the form of what Christians call grace, is sufficient to drag us up out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish that my mind worked like Jacobs's, that it could hold as much in it and together at one time as his seems to. This is a fantastically interesting read, tracing varied responses to the idea of the doctrine of original sin across space and time, demonstrating both continuity and disjunction between different places and generations and how human beings have varied in their responses to the reality of evil in our world. The journey here is a wild one, spanning centuries and thinkers both famous and obscure, making for a really delightful kind of travelogue centered on, of course, the most pressing and vile question about our ostensibly common humanity. My only wish with the book is that it had a clearer argument, an explication of where Jacobs stands and why; parts get close to that, but his perspective feels mostly hinted at rather than stated, and I just find his intellect intriguing enough that I wish for a more explicit statement of his own convictions and ideas.

[Pat O'Keeffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

At one point, referencing CS Lewis’s novel Perelandra, Jacobs writes,

“What is especially interesting here is Lewis’s suggestion that before the rational mind can be convinced by argument, the imagination must be shaped and formed so that the person responds in a certain way — with certain feelings — to an argument. Only after he had told many, many stories does the tempter return to direct persuasion.”

Ironically, Jacobs tells many, many stories in this book in order to shape the imagination and feelings of his readers in order to make his case for original sin. This was a highly enjoyable and, to me, totally compelling approach to the topic.

The most striking point to me was Jacobs’ observation that the doctrine of sin, paired with an accompanying doctrine of divine grace, is paradoxically liberating and surprisingly democratic.

I would highly recommend this book.

[Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jacobs offers an extensive history focusing on the necessary conversation surrounding the idea of original sin. For those who enjoy historical accounts of theological discussions this is a good read. Focusing on foundations of Augustine and Pelagius, Jacobs addresses this conversation in a scholarly and chronological manner. Pulling from Christian and non-christian sources, the author does a fine job of addressing the wide spectrum from humanity's indwelling flaw of selfishness and desire for control to the atheist belief that there is no such thing as original sin and evolution makes all people relatively good. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to gain a historical understanding of how our ideas of original sin have been shaped over the centuries.

[Ricky Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jacobs traces the theological battle between Pelagius and Augustine throughout history, and he does it pretty well. It seems one of the major propelling issues from time immemorial is the human endeavour to understand whether we are fundamentally good or evil, and this hasn’t just played out in the marbled halls of academia, it’s affected everything from politics to economics and so much more.

Just for reader awareness, the brush strokes are broad, the analysis quite often left to the side in interest of telling the story of the influence, or lack thereof, of a belief in original sin.

If you’ve ever wrestled with this concept, this ancient doctrine, not only will Jacobs history get you thinking, he’ll expand and focus your reading list.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reflects the work of a remarkable intellect, richly informed by literature and the broad sweep of Western cultural history. While it does not offer a comprehensive exegesis of the biblical texts concerning Original Sin—though these are thoughtfully referenced and discussed—it instead embarks on an insightful journey through the various currents of thought and culture that have either affirmed an innate human inclination toward evil or attributed such tendencies primarily to environmental influences. This may sound like a heavy read. It's not. Jacobs is a great storyteller and in this book he has created an informative and entertaining read.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've enjoyed reading this book and it's approach to the subject. It doesn't allow for your mind to wander due to the density of the information, or the complexity of the ideas. The latter can also be related to my limited knowledge of literature and western history. The first chapters of the book I was under the impression that the author had the historical voices speak for themselves and have the reader discern the validity of their position. Though further along in the book the author was adding more and more evaluative remarks which did not help my understanding as I often found them too superficial.

[Moses · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read on Kindle, started about two years ago, finished on a plane. I had forgotten most everything that went on in the first half when I picked it up again, but the book was impressive enough to hook me again. Jacobs writes with a scholarly but friendly voice that is immediately appealing. The resources he has marshaled here (with interesting studies of such fascinating people as Robert Owen and Rebecca West) make for a surprisingly wide-ranging survey of original sin in Christianity, in other religions, and in secular thought.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was required reading for my Theology II class: The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. We flew through this book, but it was pretty interesting. The book spans the course of Christianity and how the view of Original Sin changes over time. We see the view of its staunch defenders like Augustine, and its critics like Pelagius. It's interesting that the book focused less on the Fall of Adam and Ever and more on our own corrupt nature. Each of us is born with original sin and our only hope for redemption is baptism.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing account of how people throughout history have viewed (or discounted) the concept of "original sin". Very readable with insights from a lot of people and incidents throughout time. The author analyzes everything from the Locrians (after the Trojan war when the Greeks destroyed Troy) to the Stanford Prison Experiment. Fascinating to read and clearly demonstrates that as G.K. Chesterton affirmed original sin is the only doctrine of the Christian faith that is empirically provable.

[Josh Sieders · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Jacobs, it probably wouldn't have been my first pick, but alas, the all-powerful Kindle deal... I struggled with it at times, partly because of my circumstances (nasty cold) but on the whole, I appreciated the cultural-literary overview of this important doctrine compared to the usual theological approach. He writes well and will remain on my list of authors to watch and read.

[Caleb M. Powers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried to like it, I really did. There were nuggets of value here and there, but the writer has no idea how to tie anything together and it felt like I was reading a hundred different essays with no conclusions.

[Yuri · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this historical-cultural survey, Jacobs maintains incredible expansiveness, clarity, grasp, and charity.