Christians, Our Doctrines Of Original Sin And Redemption Are Evolving

Only 30 percent of Americans consider evolution to be a scientific fact. Many of those who refuse to accept evolution do so on religious grounds. They consider the myths in the Book of Genesis to be factual accounts of creation. They are afraid to accept a non-literal interpretation because they fear that to do so would undermine the doctrines of original sin and redemption. As I understand it, their analysis goes something like this: Adam and Eve were the first human beings. They sinned and fell from paradise. This condition of being fallen has been passed on to their children and their children’s children all the way down to you and me. If we were to let go of the idea that Adam and Eve committed the “original sin,” we would have no need for a redeemer—Jesus. Jesus is the redeemer because through his suffering and death, he paid the price God demanded for Adam and Eve’s sin, thus opening the gates of heaven for all believers.

This particular understanding of original sin and redemption is problematic. It is very popular among Christians. It even found its way into C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Please recall that Aslan had to substitute himself for Edmund to “save” Edmund and that in doing so, he utilized the deeper magic that raised him from the dead and then overcame evil. Although this understanding is popular, it is very flawed. The Protestant theologian Dorothee Soelle has even called it a form of divine child abuse: an angry God demanding someone’s death for human sin whose anger is appeased by the torture and death of his own son. What kind of a God would be satisfied by that? The God of love wants no human being to suffer, especially not his own son.

A more loving and thus more Christian understanding of redemption would be as follows: Jesus empowers human beings to identify and act on their most authentic, most human desires and feelings. Our deepest desires are to be at peace with all of creation and, in the specific circumstances of our lives, to co-create with God through acts of charity. The resurrection of Jesus reveals that the divine power at work in and through Jesus has no limits: it can even transform the murder of an innocent into a life-giving event. Moreover, in his death and resurrection, Jesus enters into every aspect of humanity. In his suffering, Jesus is our companion in our suffering. In his resurrection, Jesus reveals our deepest reality: we are not beings defined by death. We are beings defined by and destined for eternal life. God does not demand the death of Jesus. Rather, God the Father allows Jesus to die, to reveal the depth of his compassion for us, and to set the stage for the historical, cultural, and personal transformation that is the resurrection.

Having offered a more humane and thus more divine understanding of redemption, I will now return to original sin. We are beings blessed with faith and reason. As a Catholic, I understand that there can never truly be any conflict between faith and reason. There may be temporary misunderstandings due to human fear and limitations, but in essence, since God is the author of faith and reason, faith and reason will support each other. We find this harmony in the writings of Rene Girard, James Alison and Gil Bailie. Girard, a literary scholar who noticed a certain pattern to desire in various writings, turned to cultural anthropology to further understand desire. He then developed an astounding theory concerning the development of culture and religion. What Girard uncovered about desire is that it is mimetic: it is unconsciously copied. There are countless examples of mimetic desire. In Violence Unveiled, Gil Bailie, one of Girard’s students, points out that we see the mimetic nature of desire in the nursery. Consider the following: one child sits in the middle of a nursery, inattentively holding a toy. He then leaves the toy and moves to a corner of the room. A second child enters the room and begins to play with the toy that the first child has abandoned. We all know what happens next: the first child suddenly wants what the second child has—the toy he had previously shown no interest in. He wants the toy simply because the other child has it. His desire for it is mimetic, imitative. The first child reaches for the toy. The second child pulls the toy away from the first child. A conflict ensues and if an adult does not intervene, the children will hit each other.

We see mimesis in pre-teen and teenage fashion. When I was in high school, one kid came to school with a polo shirt. Then a second kid did the same. Soon everyone, myself included, had to have polo shirts. A contemporary example would be the current fascination with silly bandz. My kids want them because everyone else has them. What a silly band actually does for a person I do not know, but kids want them and they want them because they are unconsciously copying their classmates. How dangerous mimesis amongst the young can be was demonstrated in the 80s and 90s when a few teenagers threatened to kill others because they mimetically desired their gym shoes.

As Girard explains, in the evolutionary process, before the founding of cultural institutions like chieftains, monarchies and judicial systems, hominids lived in a chaotic way. Their lives were ruled by mimesis. There was no language or cultural institution to resolve differences. We had evolved beyond the animal dominance-submission mechanism which maintains order in many mammalian systems (for non-human mammals, when a conflict arises, it is resolved in a forceful but basically non-violent way). How then did culture develop from this chaotic state? To answer this question, I propose the following story which is informed by Girard’s analysis: imagine one pre-linguistic hominid (a “nearly” human being, one of our immediate evolutionary ancestors). Let’s call him “Ug.” Ug has found something useful in a field. Let’s say that it is an animal tooth which he then starts to use as a tool. He walks around, fascinated by his find, until he happens to walk across the path of “Oog,” another pre-linguistic hominid. Because of the power of acquisitive mimesis, Oog immediately begins to imitate Ug. That is, he unconsciously imitates the gesture of holding the tooth, which means that he reaches out for the tooth that Ug is holding. Because Ug wants to continue using the tooth in his hands, when Oog reaches for it, Ug pulls it back toward himself. Oog then copies this gesture, like the child in the nursery. That is, he attempts to hold the tooth and pull it toward himself. Ug will not allow him to take the tooth from him so the two begin to wrestle. One eventually strikes the other. That act of hitting is then copied by the other and the two continue mimetically attacking each other like the three stooges mimetically slap each other.

This conflict continues and then spreads because the other pre-linguistic hominids who happen to be walking by begin to imitate the two fighting hominids. They are not interested in the tooth; they just unconsciously copy the fight the way young people walking by a snowball fight feel the urge to imitate and begin throwing snowballs themselves. We can also liken the antagonistic mimesis of this scene to a bar room brawl. One person insults another near him. The insulted man throws a punch. The two begin to fight. Suddenly someone on the other side of the bar, seeing the fight, inexplicably hits the man next to him. Soon the entire bar is chaos.

These contemporary examples prove the validity of Girard’s theory: if mimesis can generate conflict now, it certainly did so in the pre-historic past. However, the story does not end there. If evolution did not generate a mechanism for channeling the mimetic chaos into order, humanity would never have come into existence. The mechanism that channeled mimetic conflict into order was the first building block of culture, what eventually turned the pre-linguistic hominids into homo sapiens—what Rene Girard has called the “victimage mechanism.” The term victimage mechanism is a scientific term for scapegoating.

Let’s continue our story. Ug and Oog began to mimetically fight. The conflict spreads through mimesis. Now, in the midst of total chaos, one of the hominids is wounded and becomes extremely disgruntled about it. He or she then makes an extremely hysterical, grunting accusation at the one who has wounded him or her. It is so loud that it immediately grabs the attention of the other hominids. Because of their mimetic character, they copy the accusation toward the one who wounded the first grunting accuser. At this point, we now have 20 or so hominids violently screaming at one hominid. The rage spills over and all of their vehemence is vented on the one. Whether through stoning or beating, the crowd kills the accused. They now stand before the corpse of their victim, strangely awed by what they have just accomplished. They are simultaneously repelled by the consequence of their violent act and awed by what it has accomplished. They notice that there is no longer chaos. No one is pelting them with stones. There is a strange “peace” (though not a real peace). The act of collective murder has brought about a form of social solidarity, the first society. It is not a pretty truth, certainly not something to celebrate, but our primitive ancestors were awed by it because they had never experienced widespread social solidarity before. They had had some kind of solidarity with their mates and their offspring, but never had they been able to act in such unison. Because of all of the mimetic conflict that had preceded the unifying act, the unifying act stood out.

The crowd takes notice of the benefits of this act—social solidarity and the end to chaotic mimesis. From time to time, social order would break down again and the crowd would once again assemble to repeat the founding social act. The first form of religious sacrifice, human sacrifice, was born. Now, what evidence do we have to support this thesis? Well, first of all, we have plenty of evidence in our own society. Consider what happens at prisons where the death penalty is carried out: crowds of people gather to hurl accusations at the convicted and to cheer as he is murdered by the state. Consider what Hitler did to the Jewish community: he falsely accused them, united much of Germany against them, and murdered many of them. Consider international relations: one nation claims a piece of territory, another mimetically copies the act. Each nation forms social solidarity against the other then there is a mimetic escalation of the conflict. Finally, there is violence.

Second, we have evidence from archaeology and religious studies: the Canaanites and the Phoenicians performed human sacrifice. We have uncovered mass graves in northern Africa where the Phoenicians lived. We have evidence from the Bible: the prophets constantly remind the Hebrew people not to imitate the child sacrifices of the Canaanites. Abraham thinks he hears God telling him to kill his son and then at the last moment, God tells him to substitute a ram. The story of Abraham is prophetic for it reminds us of the existence of the victimage mechanism but it shows that the true God does not want it. Human beings had formed human society using mimesis and scapegoating, but God speaks to Abraham to reveal a new form of social order. The Hebrew people were the first people of the Near East to reject human sacrifice. Eventually, the prophets begin to condemn the religious formalism of the Temple animal sacrifices. As a Christian, I see the definitive form of Hebrew prophecy in the acts of Jesus who condemns animal sacrifices in the Temple and reveals a new sacramental understanding of human ritual. He also reveals the total path out of scapegoating—love of enemy.

Now, all of this analysis was to call attention to an evolving understanding of original sin and redemption. Given Girard’s analysis, we can better understand what “original” sin is. It is the sin of the origin: disordered mimesis leading to collective violence. Consider how the ten commandments operate: worship only the true God, not the gods of the nations who glorify collective violence. Worship only the God who creates peacefully, by his word. Do not kill. Do not commit adultery, which is the result of losing track of the authentic desire for your own spouse and copying the insubstantial desire of another. Do not steal which is the result of wanting something that another has. Pay special attention to the last two commandments: do not covet. Do not want what another has in such a way that you become obsessed by that desire. The obsession, what Buddhists know leads to suffering, is the product of disordered copying.

The whole doctrine of original sin is not found in the Bible. It evolved out of St. Augustine’s reflecting on his experience and the stories of the Bible. You will not find the words “original sin” in the Biblical text, but it is quite a liberating doctrine. Augustine knew that there was something about our psychological and social structure that tended toward attachment, mimesis, chaos and violence. What he was discussing in his time is what Girardians call “disordered mimesis”: envy, jealousy, greed, lust, pugnacity, and violence. The Good News of the Biblical tradition is that not all mimesis is disordered. We can and must imitate God in God’s creativity. We are called to love as Jesus loves. We can and must imitate God in God’s agapic and charitable love. If we truly want joy and fulfillment, we must, as Ignatius Loyola discovered, in our freedom, accept and surrender to the real desires that God mysteriously infuses into our hearts. As George Ganns notes in a footnote to the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius, these authentic desires always tend toward charity and justice.

Now, why the extended analysis of desire, sin and redemption? Because it makes a critical difference in the way we act in the world. If we accept the substitutionary theory of redemption, in which Jesus is paying for our original sin to appease an angry God, then we will mimetically copy this image of an angry God. We will join in the chorus celebrating the murder of a prisoner on death row. We will unify with others over against our enemies and hurl angry accusations at them. We will make outlandish accusations at our political opponents, demonizing them, calling them depraved and hoping for their humiliation. We see all of this in our contemporary America. From time to time, we are seized by spasms of psychic and actual violence. We see others as infidels to be excluded, rather than as human brothers and sisters to be embraced. We will bond with our fellow scapegoaters (and I mean our—I sin as well), ignoring our own sins, focusing on the sins of others, and treating them mercilessly.

In our primitive understanding of original sin and redemption, we will fail in our great calling to imitate Jesus the Christ, who felt the creativity of the Father when he told the angry mob not to throw a stone at the adulterous person unless they were without sin. We will not discern as Christ discerned when he felt great love for, and made himself the friend of, sinners and outcasts. A non-evolutionary understanding of original sin and redemption interferes with that most important relationship a Christian has—our personal relationship with Jesus the Christ. Once we understand that original sin and all forms of sin flow from disordered imitation, we then understand why we must spend time with Jesus everyday. We must sit with Jesus as we pray over the Biblical text so that we might imitate him. The pulls and tugs that try to draw us away from Christ do so through disordered mimesis, what has been called concupiscence. As we feel driven to lust, to copy insubstantial desires, to envy and hate the one we envy, we feel a countervailing drawing (not a drivenness, but a gentle draw) to just be with Jesus. We feel the gentle invitation to use our imagination and enter into a scene from the Gospel. We watch Jesus and see how he reacts to others and how others react to him. We ask for the grace to feel the great freedom in the heart of Christ and ask him for the consoling grace to internalize that freedom and act on it ourselves. We walk with Jesus through our developing lives. We evolve. We grow in grace, stumble at times, ask for and accept forgiveness, try again, grow some more and accept Christ as the Lord of our personal history and of all evolving history.

Not only is it important for us personally to understand that the doctrine of original sin has evolved, it is important for us politically. An understanding of original sin as just the spiritual (biological?) stain that we inherit from Adam and Eve and that separates us from God leads to a particular politics. A substitutionary understanding of redemption does so as well. As I mentioned before, it leads to violent attitudes because we imitate the violent angry God who demands the death of his son.

The non-evolving, literal interpretation of Adam and Eve’s sin as original sin, coupled with a penal substitutionary theory of redemption, sees Christendom as the realm of God’s faithful and everything outside of Christendom as not being saved by the cleansing waters of Christian baptism. As such, it fails to see the gifts of all great religions. An understanding of original sin as the theological code phrase for disordered mimesis and an understanding of the redeemer as the one who empowers us to act on our most authentic, most human desires empowers Christians to see the wisdom of the great traditions as they liberate their adherents from disordered mimesis. Every great religious tradition—Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Jainism—has rituals, literature, and reflective activities which liberate their adherents from slavery to disordered mimesis. If the non-evolving interpretation of original sin and the substitutionary theory of redemption were true, then the Dalai Lama and Rabbi Heschel never would have been able to practice and teach about social justice as they have done. Moreover, the social scientific methods which led to Rene Girard’s breakthrough would never have taken place. If a literal understanding of the Biblical tradition is the only source of truth, then the helpful methods of psycho-therapy never would have developed.

A literal interpretation of Genesis 2-3 (the texts for the story of Adam and Eve) coupled with a substitutionary theory of redemption leads to an us versus them mentality. There are the saved and there are those who are not saved. The United States is “the Christian nation,” led at times by the saved, who must go it alone in order to conserve what is good in this world. Our acts of violence are different from others because we are the saved (now I am not denying that the Church has a just war tradition and that the US has engaged in just wars; I am just examining how an attitude about sin and redemption can even inform foreign policy).

Christian believers need not be threatened by evolution. As Rene Girard and others (including Teilhard) have demonstrated, evolution supports Christian doctrine and helps us understand it in a truly rational way. Specifically, evolutionary analysis within the social sciences has given us helpful understandings of original sin and redemption. It has given us tools for understanding how sin operates in our own personal and collective lives. It helps us understand why imitating Jesus counters the imitation of sinful structures in our world and reveals the path of freedom.
As I conclude this essay, I would like to draw attention to a recent essay written by President George W. Bush. He writes about our need to progress in our battle against the AIDS virus. Another word for progress is evolution. If even a conservative president can write about progress, then progress, though not inevitable, is extremely possible. To embrace the need for progress, we must have authentic understandings of redemption and original sin, understandings which flow from each person’s personal relationship with Jesus and which unite faith and reason. Rene Girard has given us a very rational and hopeful understanding of our social order, one informed by Christian faith.


In short, original sin and redemption are evolving doctrines, the real natures of which are totally in harmony with the scientific fact of evolution. Original sin, redemption and all Christian doctrines are in the process of evolving because they are living doctrines. They are living doctrines because their truths flow from the reality of our living Lord. We are not called to merely recite Christian doctrines. We are called to live them. Because our understandings of original sin and redemption are evolving, we can do just that. We can live them and give life to the world as we do so.