This is an introduction to the Symposium on “Evolution, Original Sin, and the Fall,” which has been designed as a thematic section for Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. The Symposium investigates the enduring question of whether hamartiology (the theological study of sin) is compatible with evolutionary theory. We trace the origins of this question to the debate between Modernists and Traditionalists at the turn of the previous century. Our contributors make headway in these discussions by delving into details, namely (...) by asking whether the hamartiological views of particular theologians, such as Augustine or Aquinas, can be reconciled with specific aspects of evolutionary theory. They also extend hamartiology in novel directions through the application of critical race theory and literary science to shed new light on the origin and transmission of original sin. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it explores and shows ways in which one important view of racism parallels the Christian doctrine of original sin. Second, it argues that this comparison helps to close the gap between the two main strands of Christian thinking about original sin. Philosophers and theologians are often asked to decide between Augustinian or Irenaean theories of original sin. An epistemology of ignorance, especially as applied in discussions of racism, helps us to see how (...) this dichotomy may be short‐sighted. For virtually no one, in an epistemology of ignorance, matures into being a racist. Nevertheless, as Charles W. Mills famously argues, the epistemology of ignorance he terms the Racial Contract has a historical inception, namely, the period around the beginning of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. I close the article by discussing whether a model of original sin similar to an epistemology of racist ignorance might satisfy the dogmatic constraints of the Catholic tradition. (shrink)

In this article, I show how traditional Thomistic claims about the creation and fall of the first human beings—or “Adam”—are compatible with the claims of evolutionary science concerning human origins. Aquinas claims that God created Adam in a state or condition of original justice, wholly subject to God and so fully virtuous, as well as internally immune to bodily corruption, suffering, and natural death. In defense of “Aquinas's Adam,” I first argue that affirming that the prelapsarian Adam was internally immune (...) to suffering and death does not require denying that these things predated his emergence within evolutionary history, or that he would have faced real challenges posed to him by his natural environment. Next, I rebut the claim that Adam must have been spiritually and morally fragile, given the traits he inherited from his evolutionary ancestors. Finally, I dispute the claim that Adam only could have fallen if he existed in a spiritually and morally fragile state. (shrink)

This article considers the imago Dei from the perspective of paleoanthropology. We identify structural, functional, and relational elements of the imago Dei that emerged mosaically during human evolution. Humans are unique in their ability to relate to each other and to God, and in their membership of cultural communities where shared attention, the transmission of moral norms, and symbolic behavior are important elements. We discuss similarities between our approach and the concept of theosis adopted in the Eastern Orthodox Church.