Original Sin and the Supreme Court

Miguel A. De La Torre is an acquaintance with whom I have had delightful personal conversations and whose written work is always thought-provoking as well as (to me) questionable. “Rejecting Original Sin,” his article posted on Good Faith Media (here) on May 13, is no exception.*¹ 

“We must reject the heresy known as ‘original sin’.” Upon reading those opening words of De La Torre’s brief essay, I decided to write this blog article about it, but last week I altered considerably the content of what I planned to say in the envisioned article.

What Miguel rejects is primarily the traditional interpretation of original sin by Augustine in the early part of the fifth century and then by the Protestant reformer John Calvin in the sixteenth century. Both believed in the historicity of a literal Adam and Eve and the biological transmission of sin.

I agree with Miguel’s rejection of original sin as propounded by Augustine and Calvin. However, he did not deal with the neo-orthodox theologians such as Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr. They affirmed original sin but rejected the idea that it is a hereditary trait passed down from Adam.

Niebuhr emphasized the paradox of human nature, where humans are both created in the image of God and yet profoundly flawed. This duality explains why humans are capable of great good and great evil. I think that is a correct assessment—and it may not be so different from Miguel's point.

“I argue not for human depravity but simply for their stupidity.” Those are the striking words with which De La Torre ends his essay. Upon reading that, I wrote in the margin of my printed copy, Is he replacing original sin with original stupidity?

Perhaps we humans are not born sinful as declared by traditional Catholic and Calvinist theology nor born “righteous” (basically good) as asserted by much contemporary liberal theology. Maybe we humans are just born stupid.

Just as original sin doesn’t mean that all humans are equally sinful in how they manifest their sinfulness, neither does acknowledging “original stupidity” mean that all humans are equally stupid. Rather, we are all prone to think, say, and do stupid things.

And that is what led me to think seriously about the U.S. Supreme Court. Back on April 30, my blog post began with the adage called Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” I conjectured that many of Trump’s followers may not be guilty of either.

But in analyzing the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, perhaps they were made not because of malice stemming from “original sin” but because of stupidity.

A “dangerous political heresy” were the words used by the new Republican Party regarding the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision issued in March 1857. That ruling by Chief Justice Roger Taney is widely regarded as the worst Supreme Court opinion ever.

In recent years, though, the Supreme Court has made a series of “stupid” decisions, beginning with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010). Jimmy Carter called that ruling “the most stupid decision that the Supreme Court ever made.”

Back in November 2022, the eminent Robert Reich posted a Substack article titled ”Why I still think John Roberts is the worst Chief Justice since Roger Taney.”*² He says that Roberts was “the moving force” behind Citizen’s United.*³

Last month, on June 28, the Supreme Court issued an opinion that overturns Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. That same day, environmental journalist Jameson Dow (here) wrote, “Among many incredibly stupid opinions the court has issued recently, this is among the stupidest.”

But just three days later, Donald J. Trump v. United States, a stupider decision was handed down, and especially because of that ruling, Roberts may well replace Taney as the worst Supreme Court Justice ever.

Decided by a 6-3 vote on July 1, Roberts wrote the majority opinion, holding that presidents could expect absolute immunity for acts related to key powers granted under the Constitution.

If because of the desire for power (an aspect of Eve’s “original sin”) of political agencies, domestic and foreign, and because of the ignorance of the voting public (“original stupidity”) of U.S. citizens, Trump is re-elected President, the nation will most likely soon see the disastrous effects of the Court’s ruling.

May it not be so!

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*¹ For biographical information about De La Torre, see this helpful Wikipedia article. As noted there, Miguel completed his Ph.D. at Temple University in 1999. My daughter Karen was also doing graduate work in religious studies at Temple at that time and received her Ph.D. the following year. It was through her that I first became acquainted with him.

In a December 2018 blog post, I was somewhat critical of De La Torre's emphasis on hopelessness. I was intrigued, then, by Brian McLaren’s quite positive reference to De La Torre’s ideas about hope/hopelessness in “Hope Is Complicated,” the fifth chapter of Life After Doom, which I wrote about in my June 29 blog post.

*² Reich (b. 1946) worked in the administrations of presidents Ford and Carter and was a Cabinet member of presidents Clinton and Obama. In 2008, Time magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century. His Substack post can be found here.

*³ In 2013, Roberts wrote for the court’s conservative majority in Shelby County v. Holder, gutting the Voting Rights Act’s requirement of prior federal approval for voting changes in states with a history of discrimination. For those of us who believe that voter rights should be protected for all, that also was a “stupid” decision. 

Walking Up “The Road Less Traveled”

Most of my blog posts are about religion/theology, social ethics, and political issues, areas in which I have studied and read about extensively. But even though I haven’t studied psychology so much, this post is about a book by M. Scott Peck, a psychotherapist who died on September 25, 2005.

M. Scott Peck was born in May 1936. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Harvard University in 1958 and then earned a medical degree in 1963 from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Peck was a psychiatrist in the United States Army for nearly 10 years, and then was the director of a mental health clinic and had a private psychiatric practice in Connecticut.  

He is said to have been among the founding fathers of the self-help genre of books. His first and most widely-read book is The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology Of Love, Traditional Values, And Spiritual Growth (1978; 25^th anniversary ed., 2002). It has sold over 7,000,000 copies!

Peck’s The Road Less Traveled is a self-help book, but it is far different from the get happy quick emphasis of so many books of that genre. The opening sentence is, “Life is difficult.” The way to overcome life’s difficulties is also hard. Since most people prefer easy ways, it is the road less traveled.

Section I of Peck’s book is titled "Discipline.” He writes, “Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing” (p. 15). The necessary discipline tools are delaying gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing.

The latter refers to achieving the delicate balance between conflicting needs, goals, duties, responsibilities, and directions that gives us the flexibility required for successful living in all spheres of activity.

The second section of Peck’s book is “Love.” His definition of love is, “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” And he asserts, “Love is as love does” (pp. 81, 83).

Section III is “Growth and Religion.” Peck states that people tend to define religion too narrowly, but he believes that everyone has a religion. Everyone has a worldview, he says, and a person’s worldview is that person’s religion whether he/she recognizes that fact or not.

Following the road less traveled, it is possible, Peck declares, “to mature into a belief in God” (p. 223). In his case, his own journey of spiritual growth led him to affirm the Christian faith. In his second book, People of the Lie (1983; 2^nd ed., 1998), he wrote,

After many years of vague identification with Buddhist and Islamic mysticism, I ultimately made a firm Christian commitment—signified by my non-denominational baptism on the ninth of March 1980 (p. 11).

The fourth section of Peck’s book is “Grace.” On the opening page of that section, he begins with four verses of “Amazing Grace,” which he calls an “early American evangelical hymn.”**

In this section Peck asserts, “Spiritual growth is the evolution of an individual,” and “God is the goal of evolution.” Further, God is also “the source of the evolutionary force” (pp. 263, 270). God wants us to grow into mature, loving people—and assists us in that process. That is God’s grace.

But sadly, humans often resist grace. Peck says that the reason for that resistance is laziness, which, interestingly, he says is the “original sin” of us humans.

The last subsection of the book is “The Welcoming of Grace,” and there Peck avers that “our human growth is of the utmost importance to something greater than ourselves. This something we call God” (p. 311).

Jesus sadly said, “the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matt. 7:14). 

Yet those who walk up the road less traveled, welcoming grace rather than resisting it, experience a joyful, meaningful life for themselves and a life of loving service to others. How amazing is God’s grace!

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** On Sept. 12, Christianity Today posted an informative/inspirational article titled “We’ve Sung ‘Amazing Grace’ for 250 Years. We’ve Only Just Begun.” 

Self-Contradiction in the U.S. Constitution: The Influence of John Locke

Constitution Day, a U.S. “federal observance” (holiday) on September 17, was established in 2004. I am planning to post a blog article about that on Sept. 15, but this post provides background information and is largely about philosopher John Locke—with a little about “original sin.”   

John Locke was born in England on August 29, 1632, and died in 1704 at the age of 72. Although he never traveled to what more than 70 years after his death became the United States of America, he had considerable influence upon the new nation formed by rebellion against England.

Just last month, University of Chicago Press published America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life by historian Claire Rydell Arcenas.

Locke, who was born into a Puritan home, became the author of hundreds of essays, tracts, and letters, many of which opposed political tyranny and religious persecution. His philosophical, religious, and political thought bolstered the North American British colonists’ fight for freedom.

Although the framers of the United States Constitution, drafted in 1787, were influenced by many different persons, John Locke’s ideas were the most influential factor. (See this instructive website.)

In his seminal work “Second Treatise of Government” (1690), Locke put forward the concept that the power of government originates from the consent of the governed, writing,

Men being . . . by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.

At the same time, however, Locke condoned slavery, denied women full inclusion in civil society, and, ultimately, excluded atheists and Catholics from his calls for toleration. To a large extent, his self-contradictory ideas were accepted by those who wrote and approved the U.S. Constitution.

Heather Cox Richardson introduces John Locke in “The Roots of Paradox,” the first chapter of her intriguing book How the South Won the Civil War (2020).*

In “Introduction,” Richardson states: “America began with a great paradox: the same men who came up with the radical idea of constructing a nation on the principle of equality also owned slaves, thought Indians were savages, and considered women inferior” (p. xv).

She asserts that the “self-evident” truths that Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence were “cribbed” from John Locke. Based on Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, Jefferson agreed with Locke’s Enlightenment idea of government as a social compact, saying that

the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitled the colonists to create a separate government equal to that of England (Richardson, p. 12).

But Locke, and Jefferson, also held the view that some people—particularly white, moneyed men—were superior to others, especially women as well as indigenous and enslaved people.

So in spite of my deep appreciation for Richardson, she is misleading on calling Locke’s/Jefferson’s position “the American paradox.”

A real paradox expresses truth in statements that just seem to be self-contradictory. However, the stance of Locke and Jefferson was, in reality, self-contradictory.

John Locke’s name also appears repeatedly in Mark Ellingsen’s thought-provoking book Blessed are the Cynical: How Original Sin Can Make America a Better Place (2003), mostly in his second chapter, “Augustinian Realism and the American Constitutional System.”**

Locke was one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers, and as Ellingsen points out, the “Enlightenment’s optimistic view of human nature seems embedded in both the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence” (p. 56).

But along with their embracing that optimistic view, Ellingsen argues that “founding fathers” such as James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and even Benjamin Franklin also maintained “Augustinian convictions,” that is, a view of the reality of “original sin” that can be traced back to Augustine.

The paradox of the Constitution is seen in this juxtaposition of the Enlightenment view and the Augustinian view of human nature.

There are many deficient ways that the doctrine of original sin has been explained, and some of Augustine’s basic assertions are problematic.

But I think Ellingsen’s ideas about original sin are correct and agree with his conclusion: “Vigilance about the low sides of human nature, a healthy cynicism, improves civic life.”

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* Richardson (b. 1962) is an outstanding historian/history professor who daily posts “Letters from an American.” Early every morning I read her latest “letter” and always find them very informative. Here is the link to her blogsite.

** Ellingsen (b. 1949), an Augustinian scholar with a Ph.D. from Yale, is an ordained Lutheran (ELCA) pastor and a church history professor at the Interdenominational Theological Seminary in Atlanta. This link should take you to my 2011 review of his book on Goodreads (scroll down). 

Whatever Became of Sin?

Chapter Eight of my book The Limits of Liberalism is titled “The Limits of Liberals’ Views about Sin,” and this blog post is based on that chapter, which I have updated and slightly revised this month. In it, I make reference to psychiatrist Karl Menninger’s 1973 book published under the same title as this blog article. 

Defective Conservative Views of Sin

As is true with other matters that I have previously discussed in my book, the liberal ideas that I have often found defective are reactions to defective ideas that are prevalent in fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism.

For example, in the popular mind, sin is basically thought of as bad deeds, and sinners are thought to be bad people. That popular idea reflects the religiosity of the Puritans, whose ideas were rooted in Calvinism. They identified many “sins” they thought faithful Christians should shun.

In addition to the obvious sins of breaking the Ten Commandments, until the middle of the twentieth century, and even later, evangelical Christianity that was based on Puritanism commonly condemned “sins” such as drinking alcoholic beverages, smoking, social dancing, playing cards, going to the movies, and the like.

That trivialization and narrowness of sin among conservative evangelicals led progressive Christians to cease talking about sin. Several years ago, I heard a long-time professor at William Jewell College publicly state that he rejected the use of the word sin, saying that it no longer signified anything meaningful.

Defective Liberal Views of Sin

On the other side of the theological spectrum, some liberals began to talk about human goodness and potentiality and to neglect ideas about human sinfulness.

Many liberal Christians of the past and present regard(ed) sin primarily as imperfection, ignorance, maladjustment, and immaturity.

What was popularly called sin was, they thought/think, largely a vestige of the animal nature of human beings that could be, and is being, overcome by Christian education, moral instruction, and spiritual striving. Some “sins” were, perhaps, problematic, but they could be overcome by human endeavor.

That is why Menninger (1893~1990) contended in his book that sin “was once a strong word, an ominous and serious word. . . . But the word went away. It has almost disappeared—the word, along with the notion” (p. 14).

Chris Hedges is the author of a book titled I Don’t Believe in Atheists (2008). A sub-theme of that hard-hitting book is the pervasiveness of sin and flawed human nature. Here is one of his most striking statements in this regard:

We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgment that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest (p. 13).

Between the Extremes

As I emphasize in the tenth and final chapter of my book, in Christianity there badly needs to be a broad and heavily populated position between the extremes of conservative evangelicalism and liberalism. Fortunately, there are now some indications of that sort of position with regard to sin.

For decades, progressive evangelicals have been emphasizing the importance of combatting social sins, not just personal sins as is prevalent in conservative evangelicalism.

For example, back in 1992 Jim Wallis and a colleague published "America’s original sin: A study guide on white racism." That publication has been updated and expanded several times and was last published in 2015 as America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America (with Wallis listed as the sole author).

There is also, significantly, at least some recognition of the reality of social sin by those who are not evangelicals. Recently, there have been references in the “liberal” media to America’s “original sin,” and mentions of “the sin of racism.”

Speaking in Kenosha, Wisconsin, earlier this month, Joe Biden declared that “we’re going to address the original sin in this country . . . slavery, and all the vestiges of it.”

So now, perhaps, sin is being more widely recognized than it was 50 years ago when Menninger was working on his book. I hope so.

Sin: Doing What Seems Good

People don’t talk or think much about sin anymore, it seems—except for the notable exception of many evangelical Christians. Even more than forty years ago the noted psychiatrist Karl Menninger wrote a book titled Whatever Became of Sin? (1973). 

That is also the title of a subsection in my book The Limits of Liberalism (2010), just before a longer section on the widely misunderstood and misinterpreted doctrine of “original sin.” In “polite company” the word “sin” is seldom mentioned—and “original sin” is usually mentioned only in derision.  

What has been called the doctrine of original sin was based, of course, on the third chapter of Genesis. In that theological/mythical story, the serpent said the following to Eve about the forbidden fruit: “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:6 goes on to report, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.”

Note that Eve didn’t take the forbidden fruit because she thought it was bad or sinful or wrong to do so. She took and ate it because she thought it was good, delightful, desirable.

That is the way most sin is. We commit sin because at the time such actions seem desirable, delightful, and good—at least for us (and who else do we usually think about?).

I started thinking again about this matter after reading Thinking Friend Fred Heeren’s recent comment: “How could we be honorable in our war killing unless these people deserved to die? . . . We need to know these were ‘bad’ people and be ‘glad they were killed’ in order to justify our wars.”

Yes, in war “the enemy” always has to be demonized, for how else would soldiers be able to kill them? Probably few Americans realize, though, that to those the U.S. engages in war, Americans are the enemy. 

While it is easy, and probably correct, to label Hitler or Tojo as evil or extremely sinful, what about those who fought under their command? Most of them were conscripted into service—or volunteered in response to the propaganda (brainwashing) they were subjected to. 

Also, Japan and Germany were both under severe economic pressures during the 1930s. In addition, Germans were still chafing under harsh treaties from the end of WWI and many Japanese were greatly irritated by what they considered racial and/or cultural affronts. 

And what about the people of the South in the U.S. in the 1860s? Most of the whites there were simply trying to maintain their way of life and economic stability. In resisting the demands of the North, they were mostly doing what they thought was good, right, necessary. 

What most of us call the Civil War has long been called something different in the South. For example, in 2012, the year before he became president of the NRA, Jim Porter referred to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression.`

In the book I introduced in my previous blog article, Bartoletti states that The Clansman (1905), a novel by Baptist minister Thomas Dixon, portrayed the Klan as noble white-robed knights who saved white civilization from racial violence in the South (p. 147).

Yes, all who are “sinners” do things that they think are good, right, and necessary. So maybe we should act with “malice toward none, with charity for all.”

“Blessed Are the Cynical”

Mark Ellingsen is a professor of church history at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. He is also the author of many books, including one that I will be using as a text for the first time this fall in the course I teach at Rockhurst University.

Dr. Ellingsen (b. 1949) is a Lutheran pastor, but he is also an Augustinian scholar with a Ph.D. from Yale University. Last week I finished reading his intriguing book, based partly on Augustinian ideas, Blessed Are the Cynical: How Original Sin Can Make America a Better Place (2003).

Since Ellingsen uses a lot of statistics about the current American (and world) context, the book already seems a bit dated. However, more up-to-date statistics concerning most of what he writes about would strengthen his arguments, not weaken them.

“Whatever Happened to Original Sin?” is the subtitle Ellingsen uses for the introduction to his book. Here is his conclusion:

This book will show, paradoxically, that when we realize our limits and our insidious motives, we are more likely to be tolerant of our neighbor’s agendas, and more likely to get in the trenches and work to make things better, more likely to appreciate ourselves and the direction of our nation. The more the doctrine of original sin permeates our thinking, the better (though by no means perfect) life in America is likely to be (p. 32).

Ellingsen continually makes references to the American political scene. He contends, for example, that “an Augustinian view of human nature is realistically cynical enough to appreciate that politics is ultimately about power and that you get things done by means of tradeoffs and coalitions in which you engage to get power” (p. 70).

And he ends his book with these words: “Vigilance about the low sides of human nature, a healthy cynicism, improves civic life.”

I have never been much of an enthusiast of cynicism. Just the other day I saw where someone quipped, “to the cynic it doesn’t matter whether the glass is half full (like the optimist says) or half empty (like the pessimist says), for he thinks it is probably polluted anyway.”

But Ellingsen makes an important point: it is wise not to be gullible and even to be on guard against the self-centered bias lurking in the words and deeds of other people—as well as in what we say and do. Being somewhat cynical keeps us from expecting too much from others. Further, a healthy cynicism engenders realism, freeing us from the overly-optimistic Enlightenment viewpoint prevalent today, at least in some circles.

I highly recommend Dr. Ellingsen’s engaging book Blessed are the Cynical.