In 2020, J. B. Stump and Chad Meister edit a volume expressing five views of Original Sin and the Fall. The book is published by Intervarsity Press (Downers Grove, Illinois).
Five theologians contribute to this remarkable volume. Why remarkable? The essays are written before a dawning awareness of the first singularity. They are written before many start to admit that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. They are written during a time when modernists still imagine that the human niche must be a composite of material and instrumental proximate niches. At this moment in human history, no one is aware that human evolution comes with a twist.
Consequently, these comments initiate a reconfiguration of long-held doctrines. If Adam and Eve are fairy tales figures, then what is the fairy tale about? The hypothesis of the first singularity proposes a model explaining phenomena that modernists cannot admit, because the positivist intellect rules out metaphysics. Once we admit that these phenomena can be modeled, then we cannot help but admit that there is a corresponding noumenon. This noumenon cannot be objectified by the phenomena of the first singularity. This noumenon entails a breath-taking transition from constrained to unconstrained social complexity.
How to we begin to appreciate this noumenon?
Ah, here is where five views of Original Sin and the Fall come in. The Bible opens with a story about two fairy-tale figures, Adam and Eve, who seem to be as real as you or me. Indeed, they are more real, because Augustine fashions them as the parents of all humanity. Today, Augustine's speculation comes under the myth-busting eye of evolutionary scientists, claiming that human genetics does not support the idea. Well, maybe the logic of genealogies will suffice. Maybe it won't.
Well, then, if Adam and Eve are fairy tale figures, what is the fairy tale about?
It is about a noumenon, the thing itself, that cannot be objectified by the phenomena of the first singularity.
It is about Original Sin and the Fall.
