Taking Soundings

Abstract

Abstract This chapter introduces themes that are important throughout this work. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin continues to hold sway for many theologians and the chapter briefly discusses recent works that have taken his thinking seriously in the light of evolution. The chapter also begins to map the relationships between sin, evil, natural evil, and moral evil. This blurring between natural and moral evil represents the most recent example of why an adequate understanding of sin that takes account of humanity’s embedded relationship with the natural world is so important. The chapter begins with a very brief discussion of shame, conscience, and evolutionary explanations of religion in early human societies. Following this is a brief review of Western theological explanations for the persistence of evil through a review of current literature on original sin. The chapter then argues, following traditional sources, that sin is worth exploring in order to understand virtue; in other words, an exploration of vices helps to elucidate the meaning of virtues. The chapter then comments on the common dichotomy between natural and moral evil and argues for a much greater blurring of that boundary in thinking through the biocultural origins of sin and guilt. J.M. Coetze’s novel Disgrace captures the complex and ambiguous interlacing of human sin and animality. The rest of the present volume intends to show more clearly what that blurring signifies as well as the distinctive nature of human sin and its symbolic character, which has semiotic properties amounting to a grossly distorted form of wisdom, shadow sophia.