Pause for thought
By Rev’d Robert Parrish
In his best-selling book The God Delusion Professor Richard Dawkins strongly criticised traditional Christian teaching. “Original sin comes from the myth of Adam and Eve. Their sin – eating the fruit of a forbidden tree was enough to turn them into the mother and father of all sin. They and all their descendants were banished forever from the Garden of Eden and deprived of the gift of eternal life. The sin of Adam and Eve is thought to have passed down the male line (to their descendants). (But) God incarnated himself as a man, Jesus, in order that he should be tortured and executed in atonement for the hereditary sin of Adam and Eve. We should dismiss (this doctrine) as barking. If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them.’ (pages 284-287).
How should one respond to Professor Dawkins? Obviously it is pointless quoting the Bible, as he doesn’t accept its authority. So let us begin with what scholars tell us:
The story of Adam and Eve is an ‘aetiological saga’, that is, a story composed in ancient times, prior to the development of modern science, to explain why the world is at it is. All the woes in the world were attributed to a first couple who had offended God by their disobedience.
Another such myth is the ancient Greek story of Pandora’s box. Pandora was given a box and warned not to open it, for it would release miseries on the world. So, what did she do? Open it, of course! (Notice that in both stories a woman gets the blame for the troubles of the world. See Genesis 3 v12).
As Professor Dawkins would point out, if there was no sinful first couple (Adam and Eve) who brought a curse on their descendants by their behaviour, then what did Jesus die for? And even if there had been such a couple, what sort of a loving God would require his Son to be beaten to a bloody pulp and killed before he was prepared to forgive us for their disobedience? Aren’t we told to forgive, and not to look for revenge?
In fact, modern atheists were not the first to spot this problem! Way back in the Middle Ages Peter Abelard pointed out that Jesus had forgiven people their sins before his death. “My son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2 v5), not ‘your sins will be forgiven when I die’. (Sins are those deliberate, selfish actions of ours that we shouldn’t try to pin on mythical ancestors!)
Abelard believed that Jesus came to demonstrate the loving nature of God by his life of service to others. In effect he was saying: ‘God loves you like this’. And by the manner of his death on the cross (which was planned by men not God) Jesus made visible the forgiving nature of God. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”.
In other words, Jesus didn’t come to alter God’s attitude to us – which was always one of love, he came to alter our attitude to God. And seeing God’s love made visible in Jesus, argued Abelard, people would respond with love. “Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be” (S Crossman).
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