Eden and Evolution, or Moses, Darwin and Augustine

When I first accepted the theory of evolution, albeit loosely, I understood right away that it created a hemeneutical crisis for me (and Christianity). I think I was in third year, conversing with my roommate Mark, an Atlantic Baptist who held to evolution. Mark didn't see the crisis that I did, and I suspected this was because Mark was more cultured then I was. What I saw was that original sin was predicated on a temporal event that caused a condition. We have the condition as evidence of a temporal event in the past, which is accounted for in scripture. If then I tried to splice the evolutionary story together with the Eden lapse, the later morphed from a historico-mythical foundation into a psychological-existential etiology. This converted the Eden narrative form the historiography and linear temporality of the Hebrews to the functional psychology of the Greeks. Theologians had always been reading the Eden narrative as the Greeks might, but they had recourse to the Hebraic foundation (at least until the 19th century). What occurred to me was that if the Greek hermeneutic won out the post-lapsarian curse which results in the condition of sin was unfounded (in history at least). Where and when did the rebellion occur? Were some animals, the earlier version of humanity, immune from the curse? This seemed unlikely, as they were likely more limited then we are. How then is the Eden narrative to be understood? Do we have to opt for the progressivist reading of history and say that the Eden narrative is a mistaken document of lesser worth? In short, accepting evolution pushed me into a afoundational reading of sin. This bothered me for a while, as I could not reconcile the problem of original sin with the condition of sin. The itch, however, had been forgotten until I began to do more reading on Augustine for the first chapter of my dissertation.

While I do not have a solution, here is how I cope with the problem. Since we are trapped in afoundational narratives wherever we look, this includes evolution, evolution has no more essential believability then Eden. I now hold belief in the ability to reconcile variations of the two narratives. Furthermore, I find the ethic that Eden gives me, and the livability in this narrative framework, of much more value then what evolution provides. Eden explains much more about my soul, mind and body, then evolution has been able to. Evolution, for instance, would explain guilt as a function of sociability - in that if I didn't have a strong sense of guilt when I harmed the social I wouldn't have recourse to the goods of the social. Augustine has a much richer analysis of guilt in that his version can include the political realism of the evolutionary narrative while also accounting for the metaphysical aspect of guilt that is, for me (and countless others), the most penetrating element, the idea that I have sinned against God, and also wronged my community. This for me is the only suitable explanation for the otherworldly power that sometimes sits on my chest and humbles me to the point of confession. But what a blessing it is. Thus, I still give primacy to the Eden narrative, even while I think about the purely physical temporality of creation through the lens of evolution (albeit evolution with a primary cause and continued sustenance in the not-God of God - to use David Hart's formula).

By the way, this is my 100th posting.