On Kierkegaard and Original Sin
This piece was originally a piece I wrote for an independent reading I took on Kierkegaard during my doctoral program, so that’s the reason it seems a bit more formal than a lot of the other blog posts I do.
The 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species radically shifted the way that human beings thought about themselves in relation to the rest of the natural word. Such a theory posed a particular problem to the Christian doctrine of sin by challenging the traditional reading of creation and fall in Genesis, which accepted that both the present state of creation and sin in human beings were consequences of Adam’s first sin. This is not to say that the historical veracity of the Genesis account went unchallenged prior to Darwin. For instance, the emergence of historical consciousness and the study of scripture that began in the 18th century called into question the historical nature of many biblical events that had in the pre-critical world simply been accepted as something like historical fact. However, Darwin’s theory represented a qualitatively different, and far more pressing, challenge to Christian orthodoxy insofar as it called into question the view that the current state of the world could have resulted from some primordial human action.
Whereas Christians in the late 19th century and early 20th still had the possibility of questioning the scientific validity of evolutionary theory (insofar as it remained uncertain within the scientific community), we in the early 21stcentury do not. Some evolutionary account of the history of life has become a nearly unquestionable axiom of biology, and one that has ample support in the fields of genetics, astrophysics, geology, and paleontology. The question becomes whether one can maintain a connection with historical Christian orthodoxy, or count on the biblical testimony as providing some normative account of human origins and the fall, within the context of what seems to be a nearly incontrovertible understanding of natural history.
I propose in this paper that Søren Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the Genesis story provides at least one possible account that manages to maintain a robust doctrine of sin founded upon the Genesis narrative while also remaining compatible with an evolutionary account of the origin of human existence. In order to show this comparison, I will begin by sketching the traditional strands of Christian thinking on human creation and fall and how evolutionary theory deeply challenges the credibility of these accounts. I will then spend the majority of this paper describing Kierkegaard’s reading of the Genesis narrative as found in The Concept of Anxiety (through the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis) in order to show his opposition to the traditional accounts while attempting to salvage their central insights. I will conclude by presenting the ways in which Kierkegaard’s account can be understood as compatible with an evolutionary account of the natural world.
By way of a disclaimer, I should make clear that this paper is not meant to be a constructive theological project that makes use of some of Kierkegaard’s insights. Rather, the mood of this paper will be one of exegesis of Kierkegaard’s position. It will therefore also not be a critical paper insofar as this paper will not be principally concerned with arguing for the validity or coherence of Kierkegaard’s views.[1]
It is necessary to begin with a broad overview of the traditional readings of the Genesis narrative and the problem posed by the theory of evolution in order to frame Kierkegaard’s work. While the particulars between the “Catholic,” “Orthodox,” and “Protestant” (broadly construed) understandings of the fall differ, all hold to a central, common narrative: The whole cosmos was created in the form that it exists in now with human beings as fully formed adults standing in right relationship with God. Through improper exercise of free will, these humans lost their proper relationship with God and both human nature and the natural world became corrupted. This corrupted nature was then passed on to all subsequent human beings. In terms of their differences, both the “Catholic” and “Orthodox” views generally affirm that original human innocence was meant to yield in a higher state of perfection, whereas the “Protestant” view generally posits that the original state was one of perfection. Likewise, both the “Protestant” and “Catholic” views tend to emphasize that original sin incurred guilt before God in addition to corruption, whereas the “Orthodox” view tends to focus simply on corruption being transmitted, with guilt being reserved for individual sins committed because of this corrupted state. Nevertheless, all these account assume, first, that human beings were created fully formed and in a different state than human beings now exist; second, the perceived ambiguity or negative aspects of the human and created order are the result of a corruption both of human and non-human nature as a result of original sin and the fall.
An evolutionary account of nature challenges these two common elements of the traditional Christian account of human creation and fall. One does not necessarily run into such an issue simply by questioning the literal historicity of the Genesis account. One could assume that these two central elements derived from the Genesis account could still obtain regardless of when they happened. However, the evolutionary view of the world necessitates jettisoning both of these presuppositions. Whereas the traditional Christian creation account posits the creation of static types of life, the evolutionary account requires constant flux in the natural world: plants and animals are constantly transforming into different and distinct forms in order to survive changing environmental conditions. Secondly, and probably more challenging to the traditional account, anatomically modern human beings have existed for no more than the last 200,000 of the cosmos’ approximately 13 billion year existence. Problematically, many of the perceived distortions or corruptions of the cosmos that have traditionally been seen as punishment for or a consequence of the original sin (e.g., pain in childbirth, disease, predation, and death) seem to have been intrinsic to the order of the cosmos for the entire history of life prior to human existence. Considering these features of existence as consequent to human sin therefore seems next to impossible to maintain. If these features cannot be maintained, does this mean that Christians must reject the primordial narrative in Genesis in understanding sin?
I will argue that the answer to this question is no and that Kierkegaard, through his pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis in The Concept of Anxiety, provides a reading of Genesis as foundational for an understanding of human sin that is also compatible with evolutionary accounts of the natural world. This exposition will attempt to trace and clarify the steps that Kierkegaard makes in putting forward his reading: I will attempt to show how Kierkegaard argues that Adam does not exist in a qualitatively different state from the rest of humanity and how this places all humans in essentially the same relationship to sin. This discussion will provide the foundation for Kierkegaard’s reading of the Genesis description of creation and fall, in which he attempts to provide a picture of the human being for whom the fall into sin is a possibility.
Vigilius’[2] wants to interpret the story of Adam’s fall in the Genesis narrative as the prototype for how humans enter a state of sin. He arrives at this position by critiquing the traditional ways of reading the Genesis narrative as found in both Catholicism and Protestantism. Both of these traditions have attempted to describe a state of sinfulness (hereditary sin) in all human beings and have attempted to do this by placing Adam within a qualitatively different state than the rest of humanity. So for Catholicism Adam in his prelapsarian state existed with a “donum divinitus datum supernaturale et admirable [a supernatural and wonderful gift bestowed by God].”[3] When Adam sinned, he lost this supernatural gift both for himself and for the rest of humanity. According to the traditional Protestant view, Adam existed as “a plenipotentiary for the whole human race” (CA 25; hereafter how I cite The Concept of Anxiety in text). When Adam sinned and fell into a state of sin, as representative for all subsequent humanity, all of humanity was also affected by sin.
This qualitative distinction between Adam and the rest of humanity is first of all problematic for Vigilius because it would seem to place Adam outside of Christ’s atoning power. He points out that “it is taught that Christ has made satisfaction for hereditary sin” (CA 28). However, Adam is precisely the one who brings hereditary sin into the world by his actual sin. Any positing of hereditary sin in Adam could then not mean the same thing for him as it does for all subsequent humanity, because “in that case, the concept is canceled” (CA 28). Thus for Vigilius, insofar as Christ’s work is meant to atone for hereditary sin, “Adam is so fantastically placed outside of history that he is the only one who is excluded from the Atonement” (CA 28).
While placing Adam outside of the atoning work of Christ may stand as an unpleasant result of placing him in a qualitatively different state than the rest of humanity, this is in and of itself not enough to necessarily invalidate the presupposition of a qualitative difference. However, Vigilius’ understanding of how human individuals relate to the whole of humanity does make the possibility that Adam exists in a qualitatively different state incoherent. Vigilius points out that this attempt to account for hereditary sin through recourse to Adam’s originally existing in a qualitatively different state than the rest of humanity has the effect of placing Adam outside of human existence, giving him “the well-meant honor of being more than the whole race or the ambiguous honor of standing outside of the race” (CA 28). However, if Adam is placed outside of the humanity that he is supposed to be the beginning of, this means that humanity “would have had a beginning outside of itself, something that is contrary to every concept” (CA 30). Vigilius thus concludes that Adam could not have existed in a state qualitatively different from any subsequent human being.
What this conclusion means is that Adam stands in the same relation to sin as every other human being. This shifts the emphasis that is placed upon the notion of “original” or “first” sin. In the traditional understanding of Adam’s relationship to the rest of humanity, there is a qualitative difference between Adam’s first sin and every other individuals first sin: “Adam’s sin condition’s sinfulness as a consequence, the other first sin presupposes sinfulness as a state” (CA 30). However, the nature of a “first sin” for Vigilius is such that this sort of distinction is made impossible. Vigilius understands that the movement from a state of not-sin to a state of sin requires a qualitative change. As with all qualitative changes, this transition cannot be accounted for in terms of a previous state and can only be explained in terms of a “leap” on the part of the individual. While one might be able to give reasons for the probability or improbability of this leap, ultimately it becomes something that cannot be explained exhaustively through any preceding state. The notion of the “first sin,” insofar as it is that in which the qualitative leap occurs, therefore “differs from a sin (i.e., a sin like many others), something different from one sin (i.e., no. 1 in relation to no. 2)” (CA 30).[4]
This understanding of the “first sin” as always coming about only through the qualitative leap ultimately means that the first sin of any individual after Adam cannot be thought of as qualitatively different from Adam’s first sin. In other words, Adam’s first sin came about as the result of a qualitative leap, but so did the first sin of every subsequent individual. What this ultimately means is that the attempt to posit a state of sinfulness after Adam as a way of providing an sufficient explanation for all post-Adamic first sins proves fruitless; all subsequent first sins prove ultimately to be as inexplicable as Adam’s. Thus, while it is completely correct to say “through the first sin, sin came into the world,” it should be more precisely understood to mean “by the first sin, sin came into Adam” (CA 31; 33). To say that sin came into the world through Adam only means that sin came into someone who was in the world—it was now present in the world in this individual—not that sin came into the rest of humanity. It is likewise correct to say that it is not through any subsequent individual that sin first comes into the world insofar as there are other individuals through whom sin has already come into the world. However, to make this distinction is almost a triviality for Vigilius: “That it [sin] was not in the world before Adam’s sin is, in relation to sin itself, something entirely accidental and irrelevant. It is of no significance and cannot justify making Adam’s sin greater or the first sin of every other individual lesser” (CA 31).
Demonstrating that Adam could not have existed in a qualitatively different orginary state from any other human being and that Adam’s first sin was not qualitatively different from any individual’s subsequent first sin does not, however, mean that Adam becomes inconsequential for an understanding of sin in human beings. By nature of being the first human being, Adam exists as a prototype for how human beings exist prior to and after sin, meaning the Genesis account does not become irrelevant. However, before turning to how Vigilius understands the Genesis narrative to provide such an account, it is first necessary to turn to another of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms—Anti-Climacus in The Sickness Unto Death—in order to find a more fully developed notion of how Kierkegaard understands the nature of the human being.
In the first chapter of The Sickness Unto Death, Anti-Climacus explains that the human being as self is composed of three elements: the physical (the finite, the temporal, and necessity); the psychical (the infinite, the eternal, and freedom); and a third element—spirit—which represents the synthesis of the two opposing poles.[5] However, the self is not simply the static relation between the two poles, or what Anti-Climacus calls a “negative synthesis” (SUD 13). “Considered in this way, the human being is still not a self” (SUD 13). Rather, the synthesis must be a positive synthesis, which is to say that the relation between the psychical and the physical must actively relate itself to itself. Anti-Climacus goes on to assert that this relation must have either established itself or have been established by another. Should it have established itself, then the self would simply consist in the activity of relating the relation to itself. However, Anti-Climacus goes on to assert that this relation that relates itself to itself was actually established by something beside itself and this having been established constitutes another relation. Therefore, in addition to the act of relating to the relation, there must be a relating to that which established the relation in order for there to be a self. Thus, the human being is not innately a self even by being a relation between the psychical and the physical. Rather, “being” a self is actually an act of relating itself to itself in such a way that it also relates itself to the other that established it (SUD 13-14). Anti-Climacus will later expound upon how this other that posits the relation is God (SUD 79). Therefore, a human being becomes a self by actively relating itself to itself by relating properly to God who posited the relation.
While I use The Sickness Unto Death in order to expound a view of the self put forward by Kierkegaard, I do not mean to indicate that one can simply collapse the perspective of Anti-Climacus into that of Vigilius Hofniensis. However, Vigilius and Anti-Climacus share a similar view of the self. Vigilius will assert that “man is a synthesis of psyche and body” and that furthermore one can “speak of a synthesis only when spirit is posited” (CA 85). The reason for bringing the perspective of Anti-Climacus into the discussion is that Anti-Climacus brings yet another factor, viz., that the spirit does not posit itself but rather is posited by God. Vigilius is unable in The Concept of Anxiety to speak about God as the positing factor precisely because of the nature of his project. The Concept of Anxiety is not meant to be a dogmatic treatment of the concept of sin, but rather “has set as its task the psychological treatment of the concept of ‘anxiety’” (CA 14). While he does not explicitly state it, it would seem that discussion of God does not properly belong to the discipline of psychology, which is concerned only with the persistent observation of human states. Rather (and again Vigilius does not explicitly state this) it would seem that God properly belongs in dogmatics. However, it would also seem that Vigilius is not hostile to dogmatic discussion since his psychological deliberation on anxiety is meant to provide a description of the concrete possibility of sin in such a way that it can be in the service of dogmatics (CA 23). Thus, it would not seem inappropriate to use Anti-Climacus’ more fleshed out account of the self in order to clarify the one proposed by Vigilius.
This discussion of the relationship between Vigilius and Anti-Climacus brings us back to Vigilius’ engagement with the Genesis narrative, which, as said above, is to provide an account of the real possibility of sin in human beings. In other words, while Vigilius believes it is impossible to show either the necessity of the transition from not-sin to sin in a human or to exhaustively explain the qualitative leap, he does believe that it is possible and necessary to provide an account of the human being in a way that demonstrates the concrete possibility in which this leap could be possible. It is to the Genesis account that he turns in order to demonstrate what this possibility looks like.
For Vigilius, Adam’s original state was not that of some qualitatively different “perfection” that no other human being has since existed in, but rather is a state of innocence. He rejects the Hegelian equation of innocence and immediacy, because for Hegel immediacy stands as a something “whose quality is to be annulled” (CA 36). If innocence existed as something whose quality to be annulled, then the transition out of innocence would be necessitated. However, if innocence is annulled by necessity, it could not really be innocence because innocence is only annulled through guilt (CA 35). Vigilius does not provide a thorough explanation of exactly what this means, but it would seem that guilt implies both a change of qualitative state and the concept of responsibility, which in turn implies the concept of a free act. These two things together require the concept of the qualitative leap, and this leap can never be necessitated by a preceding state.
Vigilius describes this state of innocence as a state of dreaming spirit which stands between spirit being fully asleep and spirit being awake. In other words, the human being in a state of innocence has not posited the relation that constitutes the self, but at the same time the self does exist as a future possibility: “Awake, the difference between myself and my other is posited; asleep, it is suspended; dreaming, it is an intimated nothing” (CA 41-2). As was shown above, the self (spirit) can only be properly understood as the relation that relates itself to itself by relating to its other which is God. Vigilius affirms the Genesis description of innocence as ignorance, meaning that the individual in innocence knows of no other outside of itself. The “intimated nothing” of spirit is to be understood as pure possibility, and as pure possibility exists as no-thing. In this state in which spirit exists only a pure potentiality, it is viewed both as a hostile and friendly power. It is that which both disturbs the synthesis between body and soul because it is only through spirit as actuality that this relation is truly actualized, and yet it is also perceived as desirable because it is precisely through spirit that this disturbing can cease (CA 44). The state of innocence in relationship to the nothingness of spirit’s possibility can therefore not be qualified as pure attraction, but neither can it be qualified as fear, insofar as fear is purely a repulsive state. Vigilius thus describes this ambiguous state as anxiety, with anxiety being “a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy” (CA 42).[6]
Vigilius resumes the interpretation of the Genesis narrative by looking at God’s prohibition as the moment of the awakening of freedom’s possibility within Adam. Because innocence was ignorance, Adam would not have known about good, evil, or death, so the threat of punishment could not have stood as a deterrent. Likewise, Vigilius rejects the notion that the prohibition could have been that which awakened desire for the forbidden, and that it was precisely this desire for the forbidden that caused Adam’s fall (CA 43-45). This notion that the desire for the forbidden caused Adam to fall cannot be entertained because such would be the attempt to describe the qualitative leap in terms of a previous state, which, as was shown above, cannot provide the desired explanation. Rather, the prohibition represents when “anxiety has, as it were, caught its first prey” (CA 44). The prohibition stands as the concrete instance of freedom’s pure being able.
The jump from innocence into guilt then occurs “when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its possibility,” it lays “hold of finiteness to support itself” (CA 61). In The Concept of Anxiety, Vigilius does not give a thorough exposition of what this means, but it seems based on the description of the proper constitution of the self given by Anti-Climacus one can give a likely description of what happened. Instead of finding its other in God who has established the self, the human being seeks its other somewhere in the finitude of creation.
Before turning to the compatibility of this account with evolutionary theory, it will be helpful to provide a summary of the shape of the argument. Kierkegaard, through Vigilius, begins by rejecting the traditional Christian interpretations of the Genesis narrative that place Adam in a qualitatively different state than the rest of humanity, the loss of which can seen as the cause of sin in subsequent humans, because he sees it as effectively placing Adam outside of humanity. He then goes on to describe how the concept of the “first sin” is not something that was actual in Adam and in which all subsequent humans participate through their relation to Adam; rather, he understands “first sin” to describe every individual human’s qualitative leap into sin. This ground clearing allowed for Vigilius’ interpretation of Genesis as describing the original state of innocence that characterizes the beginning of all human life, in which the human exists only potentially as a self. This innocence is characterized by a state anxiety, which provides the possibility of freedom and the qualitative leap from innocence into guilt.
It is now possible to show how his view does not pose the same problems in the face of evolutionary theory that the traditional views do. As was seen in the initial exploration, probably the greatest challenge posed by evolutionary theory was that it called into question the possibility that the current state of the universe has resulted from the consequences of the fall. This sort of view rests upon the presupposition that Adam and Eve existed in an original, qualitatively different (perfect/specially graced) state not shared by any subsequent human beings. Vigilius rejects just such a presupposition in order to affirm that every individual inters into sin in essentially the same way that Adam did. Because the world does not exist in a qualitatively different way after Adam’s fall, one does not need to blame human beings for the current qualitative state of the cosmos. Thus, there is no difficulty in holding that human beings have come into existence only very recently in the history of the universe.
Furthermore, Vigilius does not account for the qualitative similarity of all human beings with Adam by attempting to do away with the notion that Adam sinned. Rather, Adam becomes the prototype for how all subsequent humans sin. Additionally, it would seem that all humans move from a state of innocence to guilt by failing to properly enter into a relationship with God. Thus, this account of sin does not come at the expense of lessening the severity of sin or making it a necessary movement within creation.
One issue that may be raised at this point would be that Kierkegaard’s thinking would seem to necessitate the existence of Adam as a real, historical person. “Adam” cannot simply be a description of how every individual relates to sin. To reduce Adam to simply a type would be tantamount to again placing “Adam” outside of the race by making him into something other than an individual. However, the notion of a first person as a concrete individual should pose no problem even given evolutionary theory. It would seem completely correct to posit that at some point in evolutionary history there was some creature in whom this synthesis between the psychical and the physical became possible. Insofar as this represents a qualitative change from pure animal existence, the emergence of this feature could not be described in terms of a progressive development. One does not need to know when this happened—only that it must have happened at some point—and one then simply refers to this first individual as “Adam.”
Certainly, this essay has only presented the rough contours of a possible response to the relationship between evolution and (even Kierkegaard’s) Christian theology. Additionally, this essay is limited by the fact that it relies upon Kierkegaard’s very particular understanding of the human being. It remains to be seen whether this account can only work with that anthropology or whether it is open to alteration in order to fit with other theological perspectives. Both of these features mean that this essay should be seen as an initial step rather than anything resembling a final response to Christian grappling with evolution. Nevertheless, despite its limitations, it is my hope that this essay is able at least to show that while evolutionary theory certainly represents a distinctive challenge to traditional Christian belief that can not simply be accounted for by the acceptance of a non-literalist hermeneutic, it need not present an insurmountable challenge.
Notes
[1] Neither am I arguing that Kierkegaard’s position presents contemporary Christians with the only possible attempt to retain the insights of orthodox views of human sinfulness—certainly other positions are and have been posited. The relative merits in comparison with Kierkegaard’s view, and the ways in which these approaches may overlap, would certainly be worth pursuing. However, such work lies beyond the scope of this paper.
[2] The question of the relationship between Kierkegaard’s own views and those of his pseudonyms, along with his distinct purposes in using these various points of view, is both very important for understanding Kierkegaard’s larger project and at the same time far beyond the scope of this paper (and probably, if one is to be fair, beyond the length of any individual paper). Nevertheless, for this current project, which will draw primarily upon Vigilius’ perspective and to a lesser extent that of Anti-Climacus in The Sickness Unto Death, I assume that one can hold these views to be Kierkegaard’s own. I therefore believe that one can draw upon certain material presented in the one in order to elucidate obscurities in the other without doing injustice to the meaning that Kierkegaard means to express. Still, out of respect for Kierkegaard’s presentation of the material, I will use the pseudonyms in citing authorship of each work.
[3] Vigilius Haufniensis [Søren Kierkegaard], The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychological Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatics Issue of Hereditary Sin, trans. and ed. Reidar Thomte and Albert B. Anderson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 25.
[4] It would seem that Vigilius is not saying that the “first sin” is not also a sin like many others (that is that it is a particular act that is a sin) or the first of a series. Rather, it seems that he is arguing that the first sin would is also that which posits the qualitative change.
[5] Anti-Climacus [Søren Kierkegaard], The Sickness Unto Death, trans. and ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1980), 13. Hereafter cited in text as SUD.
[6] An important point must be made here regarding Adam’s state of innocence and the innocence of all subsequent human beings. While it is true that Adam and all subsequent individuals must exist in the same qualitative state (innocence) prior to sinning, Vigilius wants to affirm that there is an distinction between Adam and subsequent individuals. While Adam’s state of innocence was not characterized by a state of sinfulness, all subsequent individuals are born into a world in which sin has been posited and therefore into a world marked by sinfulness. To affirm that every individual comes into existence in exactly the same way as Adam did would be to negate Vigilius’ argument that the individual is the race and therefore impacted by the history of the race (CA 60-1). This subsequent increase in sinfulness means a quantitative increase in the intensity of anxiety. However, because sin must be posited by the qualitative leap that cannot be exhaustively explained in terms of a preceding state, this increased anxiety prior to an individual’s sin must still be understood as a state of innocence.
