Journal of Unification Studies Vol. 20, 2019 - Pages 57-112

 
The traditional Christian doctrine of the fall as a whole has two different components: 1) the doctrine of Adam’s fall and 2) the doctrine of original sin proper. The reason is that Adam’s fall as his primal sinful act is usually distinguished from original sin proper, which is considered to be a sinful condition subsequently given to him and his offspring as a punishment for his primal sin.[1]

It is to be pointed out at the outset that these two components of the traditional Christian doctrine of the fall seem to be inconsistent with each other because their approaches are inconsistent: Whereas the former component has an atomistic, individualist approach, the latter, in talking about the transmission of original sin, has a relational and even sexual approach.

In other words, according to the former component in its atomistic, individualist approach, the three figures of Adam, Eve and Lucifer (originally a good angel)[2] individually fell because each of them, with free will given as a gift of God, severally made the wrong choice of disobeying God’s commandment that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil not be eaten. Even before Lucifer’s temptation to Eve and her temptation to Adam were able to make any appeal to the real act of eating the fruit, each of them had already fallen because of disobedience through free will. Thus the fall was basically an individual matter. In contrast to this, however, the latter component in its relational, sexual approach affirms the close relationship of all members of the human race, saying that original sin has been transmitted from one generation to another through the sexual union of parents for procreation at each generation since the time of Adam and Eve under the influence of Satan.

This apparent inconsistency can be explained by the historical situation at the time of St. Augustine, largely by whom the traditional Christian doctrine of the fall as a whole was established. In his earlier years as a Christian leader he was involved in the Manichaean controversy and came up with a rather libertarian doctrine of the fall of Adam based on the notion of free will against the Manichaean determinism. In his later years, however, he involved himself in the Pelagian controversy and developed a basically pessimistic doctrine of original sin against Pelagianism’s optimism, by paying more attention to the reality of the shared fallenness of humankind. This shift of emphasis apparently resulted in the inconsistency in question.

This inconsistency actually means that whereas the latter component in its relational, sexual approach clearly presupposes the inheritance of original sin, the historicity of Adam and the existence of Satan, the former in its atomistic, individualist approach does not need to, as it amounts to believing that one’s sin is basically caused only by one’s own free will and not by the influence of anyone else. Like it or not, therefore, this inconsistency has given rise to three quite serious problems of theological ambiguity: 1) that the inheritance of original sin is affirmed, on the one hand, but obscured, on the other; 2) that the historicity of Adam is regarded as a necessary component, on the one hand, but deemed not absolutely needed, on the other; and 3) that the existence of Satan is required, on the one hand, but not necessarily required, on the other.

These three problems of theological ambiguity were made more serious and unsolved historically by the emergences of modern liberal theology under the influence of the Enlightenment and of evolutionary theology under the influence of Darwinism, which explicitly denied the inheritance of original sin, the historicity of Adam and the existence of Satan. They argued that original sin is merely a figurative expression of the very universal fact that everybody sins because of imperfect and even fallen human nature, or animal nature, which everybody has from the beginning, and not because of the fall of a first human ancestor nor because of a Satan. Currently, therefore, the three problems are far from being settled, involving never-ending debates. Thus, a Catholic writer confesses that the whole question about original sin, for example, is “far from being a theologically settled question.”[3]

How about the Unification doctrine of the fall? It adopts a relational, sexual approach consistently both on the fall of Adam and on the transmission of original sin. The fall involved two consecutive sexual relationships of illicit love: 1) a spiritual sexual relationship of illicit love in which Lucifer seduced Eve; and 2) a physical sexual relationship of illicit love in which Eve seduced Adam. The act of eating the fruit meant having an illicit sexual relationship, although Adam and Eve, according to the Divine Principle, were supposed to eventually eat the fruit as husband and wife in their God-given blessed marriage after reaching a point of individual maturity. Freedom on the part of each was not the cause of the fall; rather, freedom was “lost” by the fall as it was overwhelmed by “the stronger power of unprincipled love.”[4] As for the transmission of original sin, the Divine Principle teaches that because Adam and Eve through their sexual fall “bound themselves in blood ties with Lucifer” and gave birth to sinful children, forming “a four position foundation yoked to Satan,”[5] all the human descendants have been born with original sin in the lineage of sexual relations centering on Satan.

In the present paper, the first and second sections will respectively discuss the traditional Christian and Unification doctrines of the fall. The third section will, in more detail, deal with how the three problems of theological ambiguity, which resulted from the inconsistency of the traditional Christian doctrine of the fall, were made more serious and unsolved by modern liberal theology and evolutionary theology. The fourth, final section will show that the Unification doctrine of the fall does not have these problems at all, as it has its relational, sexual approach consistently both on the fall of Adam and on the transmission of original sin. The final section will also show that Unification doctrine of Adam’s fall in its relational, sexual approach has several allies in the Judeo-Christian tradition: some writers in Jewish pseudepigrapha and rabbinical literature and early Church Fathers such as St. Clement of Alexandria and St. Ambrose, all of whom sexually interpreted Adam’s fall. A certain historical-critical approach to Genesis 3 will be shown as another ally, as it asserts that Genesis 3 was a Yahwist critique of the Canaanite sex cults of fertility. The historicity of Adam and Eve will also be argued for from the nature of the Divine Principle as a systematic theology and from “Unification evolutionary creationism” which involves modern paleoanthropology.

The Traditional Christian Doctrine of the Fall

Although prior to the time of Augustine (354-430) there had been a basic Christian understanding on Adam’s fall and its great influence on his offspring, the traditional Christian doctrine regarding these was systematized and established largely by him. Let us see how he came up with his teachings on these.

1. Augustine’s Doctrine of Adam’s Fall

Before his conversion to Christianity in Milan in 386, Augustine was involved with Manichaeism in Carthage for some nine years and then with Neo-Platonism in Milan for about two years. It was natural, then, that he as a Christian utilized his own past experiences of Manichaeism and Neo-Platonism to address the problem of evil and thereby formulate his doctrine of Adam’s fall during the Manichaean controversy, although the Bible was the primary source for him.
Augustine used to be much drawn to Manichaeism, because its cosmic dualism of God and Satan, making God a finite and limited God, offered what he thought to be a good explanation of the virulent evil he himself was going through as a young man, and also because its determinism, making substantial evil necessary, freed immoral human beings such as him from any responsibility for evildoing. But he, now as a responsible Christian, critiqued Manichaeism, and in doing so, he used Neo-Platonism to say that there is only one God, who is good, infinite and supreme, that all being (esse) in the world, coming from such a God, is good, and that evil is therefore just “non-being” (non esse).

a. Creation out of nothing

Augustine, however, was not simply a Neo-Platonist but a Christian Neo-Platonist. So he abandoned the Neo-Platonic theory of emanation in favor of the Christian doctrine of “creation out of nothing” (creatio ex nihilo), which had been gradually developed since the second century.[6] By “creation out of nothing,” Augustine meant that the transcendent and omnipotent God of Christianity does not use his own substance nor any preexisting independent material to create the world, as he creates it only “by word and command.”[7] Therefore, whereas for the Neo-Platonists there is a monistic continuity between God and the world, for Augustine there is a deep gap between God and the created world.

This gap means that while God is supreme and unchangeable, all created beings, as long as they are created out of nothing and thereby participate in nothing, are changeable.[8] This changeability or mutability of created beings, in turn, means that it is possible for them to fall away from their own given natural places to lower ones, thus being able to corrupt, although originally they, whether great or small, are all good creatures of God in and of themselves, with each of them given its proper “measure, form, and order” of goodness in the hierarchy of being in the entire world.[9] This possible “falling away” from, or “corruption” of, the properly given measure, form, or order of any creature is none other than “evil” for Augustine.[10] Evil is therefore a privation, a diminution, a loss, or a lack of the goodness proper to any created being. Augustine’s most well-known definition of evil is “a privation of good” (privatio boni)[11]. At least three things about this anti-Manichaean definition of evil are to be noted here. First, evil thus defined is non-substantial; it is “not a substance.”[12] Second, evil is only possible and not necessary; creatures are only “liable to hurt through falling away.”[13] Third, “God is not the author of evil,” as he is none other than “the author of all natures and substances.”[14]

What is the relevance of all this to Augustine’s doctrine of the fall of Adam? When he applies this privative conception of evil to moral evil which possibly emerges from free will as sin, the relevance becomes clear.

b. Free will

According to Augustine, the “free will” (liberum arbitrium) of each of the rational creatures (angels and humans) is also a mutable thing which God created out of nothing; so it is possible for free will to fall away from its proper and natural state, resulting in moral evil. Thus free will contains the possibility of moral evil, and not its necessity. Moral evil in this regard is “not… forced” but “voluntary.”[15] Free will in its proper state is expected to adhere to God as its end, but moral evil possibly occurs when it falls away, by choosing to prefer the material to the spiritual, the temporal to the eternal, and creatures to the Creator.[16] Needless to say, for Augustine, God is not the author of moral evil or sin: “Sin [is] not from God, but from the will of those sinning.”[17]

How, then, did the fall of Adam take place, according to Augustine? To begin with, an originally good angel fell and became the devil or Satan by his own free will: “it was by his own perverse will that the devil himself, after being a good angel, became a devil”[18]; “the devil [was]… good by God’s creation, wicked by his own will.”[19] There were also some other angels who fell in the same way as the first fall of the devil, their chief, although the angels other than all of them apparently did not fall. The difference between the fallen and unfallen angels arose “not from a difference in their nature and origin… but from a difference in their wills and desires.”[20]

How did the first human ancestors fall, then? According to Augustine, they were not fallen yet, when the devil fell on his own. So their “unfallen condition provoked him [i.e., the devil] to envy now that himself was fallen,” and out of his envy of them he used the serpent, a real animal, as his mouthpiece to “insinuate his persuasive guile into the mind of [Adam and Eve],”[21] so that they might eat the forbidden fruit. The devil first tried to deceive Eve because she was “the weaker part of that human alliance,” and then tried to deceive Adam through Eve because Adam would more easily “yield to the error of the woman,” who was “his only companion,” than to the direct deception of the devil himself.[22]

Eve and Adam actually ended up eating the fruit in fine. But what is important in Augustine’s thought is that, strictly speaking, the devil’s temptation did not cause Eve to fall, nor did Eve’s enticement cause Adam to fall. After all, their free wills caused them to fall. For it was of their own accord that they chose to yield to the temptations they respectively received from outside. In this scenario, one “yields, of his own will, to evil persuasion from outside.”[23] Hence the fundamental libertarianism of Augustine. This means that the notion of satanic temptation is ignorable because the final determining factor of one’s act is one’s own free will.

If, therefore, Eve and Adam had willed not to fall, the devil’s temptation would have had no impact on them at all: “if the will had remained steadfast in the love of [God]… the woman would not have believed the serpent spoke the truth, nor would the man have preferred the request of his wife to the command of God”;[24] “The devil, then, would not have ensnared man in the open and manifest sin of doing what God had forbidden, had man not already begun to live for himself.”[25]

Here the Bishop of Hippo makes a distinction between the internal dimension of free will and the external dimension of act, arguing that the former is more essential and important than the latter because the latter does not happen without the direction of the former which precedes it: “Our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they were secretly corrupted [in their free wills]; for the evil act had never been done had not an evil will preceded it”;[26] “The wicked deed, then—that is to say, the transgression of eating the forbidden fruit—was committed by persons who were already wicked [in their free wills].”[27]

Augustine has a further explanation of why the temptation from the devil was ignorable. According to him, while God was the “originator” of the movement of Adam’s free will toward good, it cannot be said that the devil was the originator or efficient cause of Adam’s evil will, for it was “[Adam’s] own will [that] was the originator of its evil.”[28] Thus his evil will had no efficient cause whatsoever except his own free will itself: “Let no one… look for an efficient cause of the evil will; for it is not efficient, but deficient, as the will itself is not an effecting of something, but a defect,” when it falls away from God.[29] Hence the Augustinian doctrine of deficient causation regarding the evil will. This is why the evil will of Adam, as well as that of Eve, was not caused by the devil. Augustine confesses that the cause of the evil will is unknowable, as long as it is deficient: “Let no one, then, seek to know from me what I know that I do not know.”[30]

But, although the evil will had no efficient cause, there was certainly a motive within Adam and Eve which led them each to willfully choose to fall away. This motive as the origin of the evil will was nothing other than “pride” according to Augustine, and he defines it as “the craving for undue [self-]exaltation,” which emerges when “the soul willfully abandons Him [i.e., God] to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes an end to itself,”[31] by thinking of becoming like God to the neglect of its own creaturely status. The devil, too, willfully chose to abandon the truth of God by his “pride.”[32] It is to be noted, however, that pride is not an efficient cause of the evil will; it might rather be just a potential desire inherent within free will.

2. Augustine’s Doctrine of Original Sin

In his later years, Augustine had to deal with the new heresy of Pelagianism. The Pelagians, named after Pelagius (c. 360-418), a Christian moralist from Britain, stressed the unfailing ability of free will so much that they thought little of the reality of human sinfulness and ignored the need for God’s grace. Naturally, this extreme version of libertarianism in Pelagianism was not acceptable to Augustine and the Church.

In order to address this problem of Pelagianism, therefore, Augustine had to affirm at least the three following points: 1) that all the descendants of Adam have received original sin as a punishment for his fall; 2) that original sin is transmitted from one generation to another through procreation; and 2) that the free will of any descendant of Adam is so weakened that it needs the help of God’s grace. As he was incorporating these points, Augustine even went beyond his initial atomistic, individualist approach of libertarianism in his doctrine of the fall of Adam in favor of a relational, sexual approach to deal with the post-fall situation of human beings.

a. Original sin

In his earlier years as a Christian leader when he was involved in the Manichaean controversy, Augustine was already (in 395, for example)[33] aware of the importance of the Christian idea of what would later be called “original sin” inherited from Adam. But when he actually coined the term “original sin” (peccatum originale) in 397, he meant by it the primal sin or fall of Adam.[34] It was only in his later years that he meant by it a resultant, sinful condition which God imposed on Adam and his descendants as a punishment for his primal sin: “the voluntary transgression of the first man is the cause of original sin”;[35] “Owing, indeed, to God’s justice, who punishes… men are born with the fault of original sin.”[36] To be terminologically precise, original sin in this latter sense is peccatum originale originatum (“originated” original sin), while the primal sin of Adam may well be called peccatum originale originans (“originating” original sin).[37]

Augustine referred to physical death as a punishment for Adam’s primal sin, but he did not regard it as part of original sin. So let us focus on what Augustine understood to be two elements of original sin: 1) guilt (reatus), and 2) corrupted human nature, which means carnal concupi¬scence (carnalis concupiscentia).[38] Guilt, a first element, means that because of a just punishment of God all the descendants of Adam as well as Adam himself have been made guilty of his primal sin, thus becoming his “condemned stock”[39] or the “mass of perdition.”[40] This is the case because all of them, who were seminally “present in his [i.e., Adam’s] loins,”[41] are considered to have fallen when Adam fell. Augustine’s own reading of Romans 5:12 is, therefore, that “all men are understood to have sinned in that first ‘man,’ because all men were in him when he sinned.”[42]

Corrupted human nature as carnal concupiscence, on the other hand, is the disordering of the whole person of Adam or any of his descendants in which the flesh disobeys the soul—a disordering which has come about as still another just punishment of God for Adam’s disorderly fall in which his soul disobeyed the law of God: “When the first man [in his soul] transgressed the law of God, he began to have another law in his [fleshly] members which was repugnant to the law of his mind, and he felt the evil of his own disobedience when he experienced in the disobedience of his flesh a most righteous retribution recoiling on himself”;[43] “God… condemns man because of the fault [i.e., the fall] wherewithal his nature is disgraced.”[44] This disgraced state of our nature is a “corruption,” a “wound,” a “pollution” of that human nature which otherwise “came from him [i.e., God]” originally.[45] Augustine calls this corrupted human nature “carnal concupiscence”[46] or simply “concupiscence.”[47] He even calls it the “lust of the flesh.”[48]

As for the regenerate people, however, this “concupiscence is not itself sin any longer, whenever they do not consent to it for illicit works,”[49] and even “a concupiscence of the spirit which craves wisdom”[50] is considered to exist. This shows that Augustine is aware of the original state of human nature in which the body would unite with the soul, which in turn would unite with God. Nevertheless, his primary awareness is of the fallen state of concupiscence in the above sense of disordering.

At this point, it would be pertinent to know Augustine’s under-standing of why a God of goodness punishes us by imposing original sin on us. But first, we have to know that as early as during the period of the Manichaean controversy, Augustine was already speaking of natural evil in all things as God’s “penalty of sin,” saying that all things in the world, which were originally supposed to “serve” us if we also “had willed to serve God,” have now become “adverse” to us because of our refusal to serve God, and that this natural evil has occurred because “He is just in taking vengeance on sin” as a God who originally had “all things… ordered in the best possible way.”[51] This penalty from God is “an appointed distribution of things and times” by which we “are called to return” and also the “corrupted” things are to be “restored,” so that we may “have consolations mingled with punishments” and “take refuge in Him when tried by experience of evils.”[52] By applying this basic principle of retribution, Augustine was also saying even during the Manichaean controversy that the undesirable corruption of the human nature of rational beings, too, is God’s “punishment” of justice for their own willful sins of disobedience.[53] When the Pelagian controversy started, Augustine now said the same thing about the occurrence of original sin, which is guilt as well as carnal concupiscence was God’s punishment for Adam’s first sin, as was seen above.

It can be said as a point of difference between guilt and carnal concupiscence that while guilt is qualitative and objective, as it is forensic, carnal concupiscence is quantitative and subjective, as it concerns the inner human nature of each person. While the former is all or nothing, therefore, the latter is measurable, being able to increase or decrease. So, while the former can be taken away all at once by regeneration through baptism, the latter remains even after baptism until the body passes away to be physically resurrected eventually: “Although its guilt is taken away, it [i.e., carnal concupiscence] still remains until our entire infirmity be healed by the advancing renewal of our inner man, day by day, when at last our outward man shall be clothed with incorruption.”[54] Therefore, even if it can still be said that carnal concupiscence “is remitted, indeed, in baptism,” it does not really mean that “it is put out of existence” but only that “it is not to be imputed for sin” in the regenerate; it actually still remains “just as languor does after recovery from disease,” and it therefore can still be “increasing” if we yield a wicked service to it, and can be “lessened” if we stay in continence or get older age-wise.[55]

b. The transmission of original sin

Given this persistent nature of carnal concupiscence, we can now look into Augustine’s understanding of how it has been instrumental in transmitting original sin from one generation to another since the time of Adam and Eve. Fallen Adam and Eve were not regenerate yet, nor was anyone else in the Old Testament age regenerate yet, for Christ was not available yet. Suppose, however, that there are a regenerate man and woman in the Christian era who are married to each other in holy matrimony. Even their children will be born with original sin, according to Augustine. For when the regenerate parents have a sexual intercourse for procreation, even they cannot stop the noticeable activation of carnal concupiscence which is otherwise inactive in them: “the connubial intercourse and lust [i.e., carnal concupiscence] are at the same time in action,”[56] bringing forth “a certain amount of bestial motion, which puts human nature to the blush.”[57] The reason is that concupiscence still somehow remains in them even after baptism, as was seen above. It is this activation of concupiscence in the sexual union even of the regenerate parents that is indeed instrumental in transmitting original sin from them to their infants: “infants, although incapable of sinning, are yet not born without the contagion of [original] sin… on account of that which is unseemly [i.e., carnal concupiscence]”;[58] “Now from this concupiscence whatever comes into being by natural birth is bound by original sin.”[59]

When original sin is transmitted this way, it is not only concupiscence but also guilt that is transmitted. Both are transmitted together because they are interconnected with each other, in that carnal concupiscence makes us feel guilty, experiencing the “guilt of this concupiscence.”[60] Although the regenerate themselves may be cleansed of Adam’s guilt by virtue of baptism, they have no choice but bequeathing it to their children through carnal concupiscence. This is why Augustine can also say that all of us “who were in his [i.e., Adam’s] loins and were destined to enter this world through concupiscence of the flesh were condemned at the same time.”[61]

Hence even children of regenerate parents in holy matrimony are born with original sin, and they stay with it until they themselves are regenerated through baptism. Does this mean that marriage is evil according to Augustine? His answer is in the negative. He believes that marriage is still good in that it involves three gifts of God: offspring (procreation), chastity (fidelity), and sacramental bond (no separation).[62] So the conjugal intercourse for procreation, even if it unavoidably involves the evil of carnal concupiscence, is not sinful in itself, as long as it is for a good purpose of procreation: “the [sexual] embrace is not after all a sin in itself, when reason applies the concupiscence to a good end [of procreation].”[63] Augustine, therefore, distinguishes between “the good of marriage” and “the evil of carnal concupiscence from which man who is born therefrom contracts original sin.”[64] By the way, Augustine says, quoting 1 Corinthians 7:3-6, that the conjugal intercourse which is not for procreation but merely “for the pleasure of concupiscence” involves “some amount of sin,” but that it is still “permissible” as a venial sin because it can avoid “damnable sins” such as fornications and adulteries.[65]

What is important in Augustine’s doctrine of the transmission of original sin is that the devil is involved in it as the dominator over all of us: “of whatever kind of parents they are born, they are still under the dominion of the devil”;[66] the devil “was able to hold all men in his grasp through one [i.e., Adam].”[67] Of course, the fall of the devil, Eve and Adam, as volitional disobedience to God’s commandment on the part of each of them, was neither relational nor sexual in nature; so, strictly speaking, the devil would have no dominion whatsoever over Adam and Eve. But, when God afterwards imposed original sin on Adam, Eve and all their descendants as his just punishment for the first sin committed, it actually means that God permitted the devil to encroach on them. This must be the reason why Augustine now said during the Pelagian controversy that the devil who “approached the man [i.e., Adam] through the woman [i.e., Eve]” actually “holds” their descendants.[68] The devil holds them especially through their wounded carnal concupiscence, as it is instrumental in transmitting original sin. So Augustine states: “This wound which the devil has inflicted on the human race compels everything which has its birth in consequence of it to be under the devil’s power.”[69]

Here we can see quite a modification of his original libertarianism. Instead of his earlier idea that Adam alone was responsible for his own fall, he now says that it was the devil who deceived as well as Adam who consented that led to the fall: “of the [first] sin the author is the subtlety of the devil who deceives, and the will of the man who consents.”[70] It should be understood, however, that this modified, more relational view of the primal fallen act of Adam on the part of the later Augustine is still far from sexual, involving no sexual act, while his relational view of the transmission of original sin is definitely sexual.

c. Free will and grace

According to Augustine, Adam before his fall in the Garden of Eden had free will by which he was “able not to sin” (posse non peccare), although it was not yet the perfect, much better freedom of “not to be able to sin” (non posse peccare).[71] The posse non peccare which Adam had was such that if he had willed not to sin, he would not have fallen. He, however, fell actually. This means that his original free will contained both the ability not to sin (posse non peccare) and the alternative possibility of sinning, which was the ability to sin (posse peccare): “man should be at first so created, as to have it in his power both to will what was right and to will what was wrong.”[72] And, while the posse non peccare was lost after the fall, the posse peccare still remained. Free will in the latter sense, therefore, did not perish even after the fall: “free will in the sinner up to this extent did not perish,—that by it all sin, especially they who sin with delight and with love of sin.”[73] This is how Augustine was at least theoretically able to address Julian the Pelagian’s criticism to the effect that the Bishop of Hippo and his fellow believers in the Church were erroneously believing, like the Manichaeans, that after the fall free will completely “perished.”[74]

In actuality, however, Julian the Pelagian’s criticism may not have been entirely wrong. For Augustine admits that free will in the sense of being the posse peccare alone after the fall always ends up sinning, unless it is aided by the grace of God: “it [i.e., the posse peccare] avails for sinning in men subjected to the devil; while it is not of avail for good and pious living, unless the will itself of man should be made free by God’s grace, and assisted to every good movement of action, of speech, of thought.”[75] Hence Augustine admits of “a certain necessary tendency to sin” on the part of fallen human beings,[76] who are therefore “unable to avoid sin” (non posse non peccare).[77] Throughout his anti-Pelagian writings, therefore, Augustine asserts that we cannot escape from this evil necessity except with the assistance of God’s grace. This way he criticized the Pelagian exaltation of free will and emphasized the need for our absolute dependence on God’s grace.

What, then, is the relationship between free will and grace according to Augustine? After the fall, free will is incapacitated and weakened in that the posse non peccare is lost, although the posse peccare remains. In this situation, there is nothing in us to merit the grace of God. So the divine grace “is not rendered for any merits [of us], but is given gratis [i.e., gratuitously or freely], on account of which it is also called grace.”[78] At this initial stage, the grace of God unmeritedly operates to heal our incapacitated will by restoring the posse non peccare for us. At the next stage, however, the divine grace works co-operatively with our now healed and strengthened will to fulfill the law of God. Regarding these two distinctive yet successive stages of the work of God’s grace, Augustine says: “He [i.e., God] operates… without us, in order that we may will; but when we will, and so will that we may act, He co-operates with us.”[79] And, the initial grace of “operation” and the subsequent grace of “co-operation” correspond, respectively, to our initial “small and weak” will, which is “unable,” and our subsequent “great and robust” will, which has become “able.”[80] In both stages, we need the grace of God: “We can… ourselves do nothing to effect good works of piety without Him either working that we may will, or co-working when we will.”[81]

When Augustine maintains that we can do nothing good without the grace of God, whether it is gratuitously operating to heal our incapacitated will at the initial stage or co-operatively working with our healed and strengthened will at the next stage, his anti-Pelagian idea of free will in this regard is far less libertarian and far more deterministic than his earlier, anti-Manichaean idea of free will that only free will decides outcomes. Thus there seems to be a theological inconsistency between his earlier and later years, i.e., between his anti-Manichaean and anti-Pelagian years.

In order to explain this inconsistency away, Augustine in his Retractations, written near the end of his life, said that the incapacitated will, a certain necessary tendency to sin, is the penalty of the sin committed freely. Nevertheless, Albert H. Newman, in his translation of Augustine’s “On Two Souls, against the Manichaeans,” observes that Augustine’s “efforts to show the consistency of his earlier with his later models of thought” in his Retractations “are to be pronounced only partially successful.”[82]

3. Later Developments of the Doctrine of Original Sin

Augustine’s doctrine of original sin became the official position of the Church through the Council of Carthage (418) and the Second Council of Orange (529). Since then, however, it actually went through a few stages of noticeable modification and development in the history of Christianity, while his doctrine of the fall of Adam per se was generally accepted without any real modification. In the present subsection, therefore, let us see the later developments of his doctrine of original sin.

Augustine’s doctrine of original sin appeared to be in favor of the traducianist idea that human souls, being tainted, are generated together with physical bodies at the time of conception by fallen parents. And he himself admitted of it: “the practice of infant baptism gives greater weight to the opinion of those [i.e., traducianists] who hold that souls are generated by parents.”[83]

This apparently caused a problem, however, because traducianism, originally coming from Tertullian (c. 155-c. 240), carried with itself materialist overtones. Augustine, who believed the soul not to be material at all, could therefore not really accept traducianism.[84] Additionally, creationism, which believes that human souls are directly created by God, was generally more popular than traducianism in the Church, and especially in the Eastern Church. Therefore, Augustine himself in his earlier years was leaning toward creationism, although in his later years he was more open, if reluctantly, to traducianism. In the end, he could not choose between creationism and traducianism, and honestly confessed to be “ignorant” of the origin of the soul, saying that only God can teach it eventually.[85]

a. Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas

This is why the new development made by St. Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033-1109) was significant. Although he was Augustinian in many ways, Anselm subtly reoriented the doctrine of original sin in favor of creationism. He newly defined original sin as the “deprivation of due justice,”[86] and considered it to be transmitted without the involvement of concupiscence. He stopped talking about concupiscence altogether.

According to him, humans were originally given “justice” (justitia) as a supernatural gift added to their human nature (reason and will) in the natural order in which the soul is a direct creature of God. This original justice constitutes the “rectitude of the [human] will” to conform with the will of God.[87] But its deprivation (original sin) occurred due to Adam’s primal sin of disobedience to God, and as a result human nature became somewhat impoverished and wounded. This straightforwardly applied to the human nature of all the descendants of Adam. It is in this sense and in this sense alone that Adam’s sin passed over into them all as original sin:

Thus in Adam the person despoiled the [human] nature of the [supernatural] good of justice, and the [human] nature, once impoverished, makes every person it engenders from itself sinful and unjust by virtue of that same poverty. In this way the personal sin of Adam passes over into all those who are naturally propagated from him, and becomes original or natural in them.[88]

Note that Anselm seems not to have made a clear distinction between Adam’s sin and original sin. Note also that human nature impoverished by Adam’s sin, being instrumental for the transmission of original sin, was not called “concupiscence” by Anselm yet, although it was later so called at the Council of Trent in 1546[89] and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992.[90] If so, it can be said that even though Anslem stopped talking about concupiscence as the vehicle for the transmission of original sin, he virtually did not stop doing so. By the way, original sin, as understood by Anselm, seems not to involve the inheritance of Adam’s guilt.

Anselm’s view of original sin as the deprivation of the supernatural gift of original justice from human nature was accepted by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the best-known of the medieval schoolmen, who too was in favor of creationism on the origin of the soul. But Aquinas was also aware of Augustine’s significant view of concupiscence as part of original sin; so he synthesized Anselm and Augustine, by saying, based on the Aristotelian notions of form and matter, that while the deprivation of original justice, as understood by Anselm, is the “formal element” of original sin, concupiscence, as understood by Augustine, is the “material element” of original sin,[91] the “effect” of original sin.[92]

So, while talking, like Anselm, about the transmission of original sin just in terms of all mankind’s sharing of “one common nature” with Adam,[93] Aquinas also mentioned about it in terms of physical procreation more explicitly than Anselm: “Original sin is caused by the semen as instrumental cause.”[94] This Thomistic position in the name of a synthesis may look somewhat obscure, but it now became an important part of the Catholic tradition.

b. Martin Luther

Martin Luther (1483-1546) believed that the scholastic theologians’ definition of original sin as the deprivation of the supernatural gift of original justice is lukewarm, in that it does not take the corruption of human nature seriously: “to think that original sin is merely the lack of righteousness in the will is merely to give occasion for lukewarmness and a breakdown of the whole concept of penitence.”[95] He even criticized them for being Pelagian because he thought they believed that “the Law can be fulfilled by our powers” without the grace of God.[96]

Unlike the scholastic theologians, therefore, Luther considered original justice not to be a supernatural gift added to human nature but rather an integral part of human nature itself in the natural order. For him, then, original sin as the loss of original justice due to the fall of Adam means the total corruption of human nature, by reason of which we cannot help sinning. Thus original sin is “a total lack of uprightness and of the power of all faculties both of body and soul and of the whole inner and outer man.”[97] He went on to say that original sin is “a propensity toward evil,” “a nausea toward the good,” “a loathing of light and wisdom,” etc., calling it “universal concupiscence.”[98] Hence concupiscence is the essence of original sin, although Luther did not forget that the inheritance of Adam’s “guilt” is also part of original sin.[99]

Luther, who experienced his own sinfulness, was attracted to the existential approach of Augustine, and in order to talk about the seriousness of concupiscence, he appealed to the authority of the Bishop of Hippo’s thesis that concupiscence persistently remains even after baptism, although it is not imputed to those who call upon God and cry out for deliverance.[100]

The Reformer, however, went even further than Augustine, in that while Augustine said that concupiscence remains only as something like languor after baptism, Luther stated that it still remains as real sin even after baptism.[101] (Needless to say, guilt is removed by baptism, according to Luther, who followed Augustine in this regard.[102] ) Therefore, while Augustine could not decide between creationism and traducianism, Luther was clearly in favor of traducianism.[103]

c. The Council of Trent

In reaction to Luther, the Catholic Church held the Council of Trent from 1545 to 1563, announcing a decree concerning original sin in 1546. The Council disagreed with Luther on the seriousness of concupiscence; it held that concupiscence is itself not sin,[104] whereas the Reformer considered it to be sin. Trent rather agreed with Augustine, by saying that “in the baptized there remains concupiscence… which [however]… cannot injure those who consent not, but resist manfully by the grace of Jesus Christ.”[105] Trent also followed Anselm in formerly defining original sin as the deprivation of supernatural justice and holiness as well.[106] This means that the Council of Trent followed both Augustine and Anselm like Aquinas did.

Also, in order to address Luther’s criticism of the Catholic tradition for being Pelagian, Trent clearly made the following anti-Pelagian statement: “this sin of Adam” is “transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation,” nor is it “taken away… by the power of human nature.”[107] Original sin is only taken away by the grace of Christ conferred in baptism.[108]

From above, it can be observed that the seriousness of original sin, as understood by Augustine, was toned down by Anselm’s new approach, but that it was somewhat reappreciated by Aquinas when he synthesized Anselm with Augustine. Luther took original sin even more seriously than Augustine, and critiqued the scholastic theologians for being lukewarm. But the Council of Trent countered Luther’s criticism and reaffirmed the position of Aquinas. Trent’s decree on original sin now became a dogma of the Catholic Church.

d. Assessment

Many people quite often say, as a point of difference between the Catholic tradition and Luther’s position regarding original sin, that the former separated concupiscence from original sin, referring to concupiscence merely as an effect of original sin, while the latter collapsed the two to identify concupiscence with original sin.[109] Anselm’s position is usually considered to have been a good example of this Catholic separation of concupiscence from original sin, because he newly defined original sin as the deprivation of original justice, thinking little of concupiscence. Even Aquinas’ synthesis of Augustine and Anselm, which had a little more understanding of concupiscence, is considered to have been another example of this Catholic separation of concupiscence from original sin, because it still regarded concupiscence as an effect of original sin. Trent is also considered to have been still another example of the Catholic separation, because it held that concupiscence is itself not sin. This Catholic separation is usually quite sharply contrasted with Luther’s identification of concupiscence with original sin.

In the opinion of the present writer, however, this is a misconceived exaggeration resulting from the confusion between Adam’s primal sin (peccatum originale originans) and original sin (peccatum originale originatum)—a confusion that happens commonly. We should not confuse Adam’s primal sin with original sin. As Augustine said in his later years, original sin is not identical with Adam’s primal sin or fall in the garden of Eden; it is rather a resultant condition which God imposed on Adam and his descendants as a punishment for his primal sin. If so, original sin, which is thus a resultant condition, and concupiscence, which is also resultant, cannot be as separate as one would think. In fact, Augustine believed that concupiscence is part of original sin, while guilt is another part of original sin. Therefore Luther’s identification of concupiscence with original sin is not as strange as one would think.

Perhaps we should read Anselm, Aquinas, Luther and Trent from the viewpoint of Augustine to avoid any unnecessary sharp contrast between the Catholic tradition and Luther regarding original sin. The difference between the Catholic tradition and Luther seems to be just the difference of degrees to which concupiscence, which is part of original sin according to Augustine, is emphasized: Anselm with the least emphasis on it; Aquinas and Trent with a little more emphasis on it; and Luther with the most emphasis on it, even going beyond Augustine.

The Unification Doctrine of the Fall

The Unification doctrine of the fall can be learned mainly from Exposition of the Divine Principle and the words of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification movement. And like the Christian doctrine, it has two different components: 1) a doctrine of Adam’s fall, and 2) a doctrine of original sin proper. It consistently treats both components by the same relational, sexual approach. In the present section, the Unification doctrine of the fall will be discussed in occasional comparison to the Christian doctrine.

1. The Unification Doctrine of Adam’s Fall

a. Sexual fall

The Divine Principle, which is Rev. Moon’s new interpretation of the Bible,[110] teaches that Adam and Eve sexually fell because of illicit love centered on Archangel Lucifer.[111] Michael Breen reports that “Moon’s search for the [Divine] Principle… lasted for nine years from his encounter with Jesus in 1935,” and that “at the end of this period” he was able to finally discover the sexual nature of the fall, by “confront[ing] Lucifer” and also by being tested by God, who initially “denied” Moon’s interpretation.[112] In spite of God’s initial denial, says Breen, Moon with his “monumental conviction and determination” insisted on the rightness of his own interpretation, and only thereafter did God approve it as the truth, so that Moon might able to claim his ownership of the truth, avoid being accused by Satan, and heal the broken heart of God who had suffered rejection from fallen humanity.[113]

In the short history of Christianity in Korea, Sun Myung Moon was actually not the first to say that the fall of Adam and Eve was sexual. Moon acknowledges that Seong Do Kim, female founder of a new spiritual Christian group called the Holy Lord Church, was “the first person who understood the root of sin [to be sexual],” and that she thus made a great preparation “for the Messiah [of the Second Advent] to appear.”[114] Her understanding of the sexual fall of Adam and Eve was revealed about twenty years earlier than Rev. Moon’s, although hers was just “an approximate outline” which was “not detailed,” according to him.[115]

The Divine Principle teaches that Lucifer, symbolized by a serpent, “was the channel of God’s love to the angelic world” and “virtually monopolized the love of God,” but that after God created Adam and Eve as his children, Lucifer as God’s servant realized that God loved them “many times more than” him.[116] So Lucifer, “feeling as though he were receiving less love than he deserved, wanted to grasp the same central position in human society as he enjoyed in the angelic world.”[117] At that point, Eve as the beloved daughter of God looked so beautiful that he wanted to grasp her by seducing her. In her initial response to his temptation, she “wanted to open her eyes and become like God before the time was ripe.”[118] This led him to feel even a stronger stimulation of love from her. This way the two “formed a common base and began give and take action. The power of the unprincipled love generated by their give and take led them to consummate an illicit sexual relationship on the spiritual plane.”[119] This was the spiritual fall between Lucifer and Eve.

It is to be noted that this understanding of the spiritual fall between Lucifer and Eve by the Divine Principle is quite different from Augustine’s understanding. The Divine Principle maintains that Lucifer, who tempted Eve out of his jealousy of the children of God, and Eve, who responded to his temptation, spiritually fell together simultaneously through a reciprocal relationship of illicit love, which was symbolized by the act of eating the fruit. According to Augustine, by contrast, Lucifer first fell by himself through his own free will, becoming the devil or Satan, and then, out of his envy of the unfallen condition of Adam and Eve, tried to tempt Eve through the serpent, a real animal, to eat the fruit, although in actuality she, by herself, decided to eat it through her own free will. The Divine Principle’s approach is relational and sexual, whereas Augustine’s is atomistic and individualist, without being sexual.

As for Eve’s next fall that was her physical fall with Adam, the Divine Principle holds that Eve, through her spiritual fall with Lucifer, received from him “feelings of dread arising from the pangs of a guilty conscience” and “a new wisdom that her originally intended spouse was not the Archangel but Adam.”[120] At that point, Adam who was not fallen yet looked beautiful to her. So she, who now stood in the position of Lucifer towards Adam, “seduced Adam with the hope that by uniting with him, her intended spouse, she could rid herself of the dread and once again stand before God.”[121] Adam responded to it. The two, then, “formed a common base” and “began give and take action with each other,” with the result that the “power of the unprincipled love generated in their relationship induced Adam to abandon his original position and brought them together in an illicit physical relationship of sexual love.”[122] This was the physical fall between Eve and Adam, although it should be pointed out at this juncture that after the time was ripe without the fall, they were supposed to marry each other to have sexual relations, “joining as true husband and wife and bearing and raising [sinless] children in God’s love.”[123]

Again, this Divine Principle view of the physical fall between Eve and Adam is relational and sexual, being quite different from Augustine’s atomistic and individualist view, according to which Adam decided to eat the fruit by himself through his own free will, not directly influenced by Eve’s temptation. The Divine Principle, therefore, teaches that eating the fruit in the garden of Eden meant having a sexual relationship of illicit love, and that the fruit signified the “love of Eve”[124] or, more specifically, her “reproductive organ.”[125]

Consequently, Lucifer, using the power of illicit love, first dominated Eve sexually and became Satan, and then dominated Adam sexually through her who was in the position of Satan to him. Thus “Adam and Eve formed a family through the husband and wife relationship centered on Satan rather than God.”[126] This was how Satan was able to claim Adam and Eve and all their descendants as his “children” in “the lineage of Satan, not the lineage of God.”[127] To support this point on the lineage of Satan, the Divine Principle uses biblical passages such as John 8:44, which reads: “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.”[128]

The Divine Principle gives further reasons why the fall of Adam and Eve was sexual and not from literally eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: 1) because something you eat would not cause a sin which can be transmitted to your descendants;[129] 2) because the fruit, instead of being a food, must have been “something so extraordinarily stimulating that even the fear of death did not deter them [i.e., Adam and Eve] from grasping it”;[130] 3) because Adam and Eve, after the fall, became ashamed of their lower parts, covering them by fig leaves;[131] 4) because fornication has been regarded as a cardinal sin by religions in pursuit of purity;[132] and 5) because “no one can prevent the plague of sexual promiscuity,” although we may be able to eradicate all other evils by moral codes, education, and betterment of socio-economic systems.[133] Rev. Moon says that this sexual interpretation is therefore “more logical”[134] and “much more plausible”[135] than the traditional, non-sexual and literal interpretation.

By the way, when the Divine Principle says that “the fear of death” did not deter Adam and Eve from sexually falling, the death which is mentioned in Genesis 2:17 (“in the day that you eat of it you shall die”) does not mean physical death but spiritual death. Physical death is not a punishment for the fall. According to the Divine Principle, regardless of the fall, human beings are all supposed to physically die, then going to the spirit world to live there forever: “When we shed our physical bodies after our life in the physical world, we enter the spirit world as spirits and live there for eternity.”[136]

b. Free will

One might ask if the Divine Principle talks about free will at all, given its relational and sexual interpretation of the fall, which seriously considers the role of temptation. The traditional atomistic and individualist interpretation emphasizes the role of free will (free choice of the will) in the fall, even to the virtual neglect of temptation, as was seen previously. But does the Divine Principle acknowledge any role of free will? This question should be answered in the affirmative.

In fact, the Divine Principle believes that the “free will” of an original, sinless person is “an expression of the mind” which “cannot operate outside of God’s Word, that is, the Principle,” and that this free will, therefore, never generates “free action” apart from the Principle.[137] Also, in order to realize God’s purpose of creation, this free will of a sinless person ceaselessly pursues, through free action, the fulfillment of responsibility and concrete results which bring joy to God.[138] So, if “freedom” means a harmonious combination of free will as “internal nature” and free action as “external form,” as the Divine Principle defines it,[139] then, there is no freedom without the Principle, nor any freedom without responsibility, nor any freedom without good results.[140]

If this is the case, then freedom or free will, to begin with, never causes the fall: “it cannot be that freedom caused the human Fall.”[141] This is unlike the traditional Augustinian thesis that free will caused the fall. Here we see a fundamental difference between the Divine Principle view and the Augustinian view on free will. The former believes that the free will of an original, sinless person always results in good choices, whereas the latter holds that the free will of Adam and Eve before their fall was no more than the ability not to sin (posse non peccare), which necessarily included the ability to sin (posse peccare) as well, i.e., that it had both possibilities of good and bad choices from the very beginning. Therefore the former maintains that the fall was only “caused by the stronger power of unprincipled love, which overwhelmed the freedom of the original mind,”[142] suggesting that Lucifer the tempter was behind that power of unprincipled love, whereas the latter asserts that it was not Satan’s temptation but the free will of Adam and Eve itself that caused their fall.

Both the Divine Principle and the traditional Augustinian position, of course, admit of the possibility of the fall of Adam and Eve. But they do so in two very different ways. The former says that if the power of love, which is “stronger than” the power of the Principle (on which the free will of Adam and Eve was based), collides with it “from a different direction and with an unprincipled purpose,” then it can overwhelm their free will and freedom, inducing them to fall.[143] As a result, they can lose their freedom, and actually they “lost” it.[144] The latter, by contrast, holds that Adam and Eve before the fall already had the possibility of falling (posse peccare) within their free will itself.

Thus the Divine Principle teaches that Adam and Eve fell because their free will or freedom did not fully and perfectly function, as they were still in the process of growth in the growing period, during which they were therefore supposed to obey God’s commandment of not eating the fruit, in order to avoid falling.[145]

By the way, the Divine Principle explains the reason why God made the power of love stronger than that of the Principle, even though it made room for the possibility of the fall. The reason is as follows. God’s love is “truly the source and wellspring of our life and happiness,” because without it there is no establishment of the true “four position foundation,” in which our love also functions centered on God; so, “in order for love to fulfill its proper role, its power must be stronger than the power of the Principle.”[146]

If Adam and Eve had become perfect and created an ideal family under the direct governance of God’s absolute love, therefore, “their conjugal love would have become absolute,” and “No person, no power in the universe could ever break that bond of love.”[147] And there would have been no fall.

2. The Unification Doctrine of Original Sin

a. Original sin distinct from the fall

The Divine Principle takes original sin seriously. But what needs to be clarified is whether or not original sin is to be differentiated from the primal sin of Adam and Eve, i.e., whether or not it is to be considered as a resultant condition imposed on all humanity as a punishment for the fall of the first human ancestors. There is a passage from a speech of Rev. Moon which initially appears to differentiate between the original sin of human beings and the fall of their first ancestors itself, as it says that “we human beings came to have original sin through the fall of the first human ancestors”; but almost immediately thereafter it seems to equate the two with each other, as it references “this original sin which Adam and Eve committed.”[148] In a couple of other places as well, we can receive the impression that the two are to be equated with each other: “The original sin of the first human ancestors was that Adam and Eve broke God’s commandment and engaged in an illicit sexual relationship”;[149] “the root of sin,” another name of original sin in the Divine Principle, “was… that they had an illicit sexual relationship with an angel.”[150]

But if we read the Unification materials more carefully, we can find many, many more passages which differentiate between original sin as a resultant state and the fall of Adam and Eve as its cause: “Since the fall was an accident related to blood lineage, it resulted in the original sin which has been passed on until today”;[151] “The Fall began from a motivation denying the lineage. Therefore, people have inherited the consequences of the Fall as the original sin until the present day”;[152] “The ancestors of humankind, Adam and Eve, fell with the wrong kind of love… In this way, by establishing the love relationship not permitted by God, what happened to humankind was that the original sin came about”;[153] “the first human ancestors fell and acquired the original sin.”[154]

In case of Augustine, while initially equating original sin with the fall of Adam in the year 397, he later distinguished between the two, saying that original sin is a resultant punishment of God for the primal sin of Adam. It is considered to have been a good move on his part. As was previously mentioned,[155] the present writer suggests that Anselm, Aquinas, Luther and the Council of Trent should be read from the viewpoint of Augustine’s later distinction between original sin and Adam’s fall, in order to avoid any unnecessary sharp contrast between the Catholic tradition and Luther regarding the relationship of original sin and concupiscence.

In the same way, the present writer would like to suggest concerning Unificationism as well, that in order for it to avoid any confusion, original sin should be differentiated from the fall of Adam and Eve itself to be its resultant condition. There is much textual evidence to support this, although there also are some passages which seem to equate or confuse the two with each other. Another merit of this distinction would be that it can make it easier for Unificationism to have dialogue with the Augustinian doctrine of original sin which has been very influential in the Christian tradition. But the real merit of distinguishing original sin from the fall of Adam and Eve in Unificationism is that the definition of original sin becomes clearer than otherwise, as will be seen immediately below.

b. Original sin

What, then, does original sin really mean, as differentiated from the fall of Adam and Eve in the Divine Principle? It means that after their sexual fall in illicit love centered on Satan, they and their descendants were now put in the state in which they were linked to the lineage of Satan: “What is original sin? We have inherited the enemy’s blood lineage”;[156] “What is the original sin? It is love gone wrong. Our love should have been connected to God’s love, life and lineage. Instead, it was connected to satanic love, life and lineage.”[157] Original sin thus means that “due to the Fall of the first human ancestors, human beings are of the lineage of Satan,”[158] and that “all humanity became the children of Satan” based on the “four position foundation yoked to Satan,”[159] i.e., the Satan-centered four position foundation of: 1) Satan, 2) fallen Adam and Eve, and 3) children.

Original sin, therefore, also means that “Satan came to dominate human beings” based on the four position foundation “under the sovereignty of Satan.”[160] It, then, also means the state in which if we try to get away from Satan’s dominion, he claims us, by attacking or invading us: “A fallen person with original sin is stained with the condition through which Satan can attack him”;[161] “the conditions by which Satan can attack us… stem from the original sin.”[162]

In this situation, Satan has always been “accusing” Adam, Eve and all their descendants in front of God, saying: “This is my society, my world. These people are immoral, selfish, and changing so they are my property. Where are Your people, God?”[163] Original sin, therefore, also means that we are in the state of being always accused by Satan in front of God: “Satan is constantly accusing all people before God… in order to drag them into hell.”[164]

Now we have understood that according to the Divine Principle original sin means that we, including Adam and Eve, are of the lineage of Satan, under the domination of Satan, and in the state of being attacked, invaded and accused by Satan. We carry this original sin because we are guilty of the primal sin of Adam and Eve, of which the first ancestors themselves, too, are guilty. Original sin, therefore, actually means our guilt in this regard.

Rev. Moon quite often talks about “guilt”: “we will not be able to help but repent taking on ourselves the sinful guilt of humankind”; we “cannot help but repent for our historical guilt, and we cannot help but repent for the guilt of the present age”; “having him [i.e., the precious son of heaven] be able to atone for the suffering and guilt of history.”[165] The word “guilt,” used by Moon here, shows something which all humankind has, which has historically existed and still exists now, and which is to be atoned for by the son of heaven; so it must be original sin. Although the Korean word for “guilt” here is found to be 죄상, which can also be translated simply as “sin” or “crime,” it is to be differentiated from the primal “sin” or “crime” of Adam and Eve, as our guilt here means that we are guilty of the primal sin of the first human ancestors.

Also, if we are guilty of the primal sin of Adam and Eve, we are also responsible for it. For we are guilty of their failure to fulfill their portion of responsibility at their fall. Hence Rev. Moon says:

Adam and Eve were unable to fulfill their portion of responsibility. Nevertheless, the fact that they could not fulfill this did not just end with them. Adam and Eve became the root and all the descendants became the trunk, branches and leaves, and as a consequence all human beings were unable to fulfill their responsibility.[166]

Augustine spoke about original sin in terms of guilt (as well as concupiscence). It is interesting to observe that both the Augustinian tradition and the Divine Principle understand original sin as the state in which we are guilty of the primal sin of Adam and Eve. This is certainly the case, although both understand the content of guilt in two different ways: in the Augustinian tradition we are guilty of the literal act of individually eating the fruit in disobedience, whereas according to the Divine Principle we are guilty of the relational, sexual crime of illicit love.

c. The transmission of original sin

How is original sin transmitted from one generation to another? According to the Divine Principle, when sinful parents in the Satan-centered four position foundation of: 1) Satan, 2) sinful parents, and 3) children, give birth to and multiply children, these children are already automatically within the lineage of Satan. Thus they immediately inherit the original sin of guilt from their parents. So the transmission of original sin naturally occurs through the sexual relationship of sinful parents for procreation centered on Satan, and it started from the very first human parents, Adam and Eve.

This sexual interpretation of the transmission of original sin is quite similar to Augustine’s, according to which original sin is transmitted through the agency of concupiscence which unavoidably awakens to emerge in the sexual union of parents for procreation under the dominion of Satan, whether or not the parents are regenerate through baptism. But there seem to be at least two points of difference between the Divine Principle and Augustine. First, whereas the Divine Principle explicitly talks about the lineage of Satan, Augustine fell short of doing so, only talking about the dominion of Satan in general, perhaps for the reason that he did not believe that the primal sin or fall of Adam, Eve and Lucifer was sexual.

A second point of difference between the Divine Principle and Augustine is that whereas the Divine Principle believes that those parents who have received “rebirth both spiritually and physically” from “True Parents” (perfected Adam and Eve),[167] thus having no original sin at all, do not transmit original sin to their children, Augustine taught that those parents who are regenerate through baptism, thus being with no guilt (one element of original sin) but with concupiscence (another element of original sin) remaining, transmit the entirety of original sin to their children through the agency of concupiscence unavoidable in their sexual relationship for procreation. By the way, according to the Divine Principle it is possible that those parents who are cleansed of original sin through True Parents still have what the Divine Principle calls “fallen nature.” (“Fallen nature” will be discussed a little later as something which is different from original sin in the Divine Principle but which is equivalent to concupiscence in Augustine.) If so, do they transmit their fallen nature to their children? The right answer would be that they do, although they do not transmit original sin, which they do not have, to their children.

Given the Divine Principle’s sexual interpretation of the transmission of original sin, which talks about the lineage of Satan, the question is: Is the Divine Principle traducianist regarding the origin of the soul? No, it isn’t. It is creationist instead, as it rather clearly holds that “while in the womb, the child does not have a spiritual body; God imparts the spirit with the first breath.”[168] If so, how is the child’s new soul going to be contaminated with the original sin of its sinful parents? To answer the question, it would be safe to say that the moment at which the soul is imparted by God with the first breath, it cannot help getting contaminated with original sin by virtue of the Satan-centered four position foundation of: 1) Satan, 2) the sinful parents, and 3) the new soul.

d. Removing original sin

How can we remove original sin? If original sin means that we as children of Satan are linked to the satanic lineage based on the Satan-centered four position foundation of: 1) Satan, 2) fallen Adam and Eve, and 3) children, then removing it means that we cut off our linkage to the satanic lineage and receive “rebirth” to become children of God by being engrafted with the lineage of God based on the God-centered four position foundation of: 1) God, 2) “True Parents” (perfected Adam and Eve), and 3) children.[169] This is done through the rite of the Blessing officiated by True Parents or any officiators who represent them, and it involves drinking the Holy Wine and sprinkling the Holy Water. We are to receive the Blessing either as a newly married couple or as an already married couple. Either way, the bridegroom and bride as a couple are to receive the Blessing together in order to remove their inherited guilt of the sexually fallen couple of Adam and Eve.

The Blessing in the Unification movement is equivalent to baptism in Christianity because Christian baptism, too, removes the element of guilt in original sin according to Augustine and Luther. (In the later Catholic tradition, original sin does not mean guilt but the deprivation of original justice, but original sin in this sense, too, is considered to be removed through baptism in that tradition.) The Blessing in the Unification movement, however, is different from Christian baptism in two ways. First, the Blessing is given to couples, as was mentioned above, while Christian baptism is given to individuals because Christianity understands the fall of Adam and Eve to be individual and atomistic. Second, through the Blessing from True Parents “we must be cleansed of original sin by being born again both spiritually and physically,” while through Christian baptism we are cleansed of original sin only by receiving “spiritual rebirth” from “spiritual True Parents” (Jesus and the Holy Spirit).[170]

This second point is the reason why in spite of the Christian claim that baptism cleanses original sin, the Divine Principle holds that through baptism, strictly speaking, Christians are not cleansed of original sin: “Even the most devout Christian still has the original sin and gives birth to children who also carry the original sin.”[171] Spiritual rebirth through baptism alone is not enough according to the Divine Principle. We have to be reborn “both spiritually and physically.” That is the reason why Jesus and the Holy Spirit as spiritual True Parents must return to earth to become substantial True Parents who can give both spiritual and physical rebirth.

e. Fallen nature

The Divine Principle has a doctrine of “fallen nature.” Fallen nature is not original sin. It rather signifies “all the proclivities incidental to” the fall of Adam and Eve centered on Lucifer, and it has been “inherited” to all humanity.[172] The fundamental motivation which engendered this fallen nature was the “envy” which Lucifer felt towards Adam and Eve, the beloved children of God; so, fallen nature has the following “four types” of primary characteristics: 1) “failing to take God’s position” in loving others, thus being jealous and self-centered; 2) “leaving one’s proper position” with an excessive desire; 3) “reversing dominion” with arrogance; and 4) “multiplying the criminal act,” shifting responsibilities to others.[173]

In order to investigate the real meaning of fallen nature, however, let us see what the Divine Principle calls “original nature,” which is opposite to fallen nature. Original nature is our “original God-given nature” in which we can “cultivate a give and take relationship with God.”[174] But our give and take relationship with God is realized, when our “mind and body become one through give and take action with God as their center,” reaching the “perfection of individual character.”[175] Original nature, therefore, is our original human nature in which our mind and body are united centered on God. Fallen nature, then, should refer to the fallen state of our human nature which experiences “the struggle between mind and body.”[176] In this state, “Your mind and body struggle because of the Fall,” having a “rebellion against God.”[177]

This is actually very similar to Augustine’s notion of “concupiscence,” which, as was seen previously, means the disordering of human nature in which the flesh disobeys the soul—a disordering which occurred as a result of the fall, which was the disobedience of Adam’s soul to God. Interestingly, therefore, fallen nature in the Divine Principle is equivalent to the notion of concupiscence in Augustine. It is also equivalent to the notion of concupiscence in the Council of Trent and the Catechism of the Catholic Church and, of course, to Luther’s idea of concupiscence.

In spite of this great similarity between fallen nature in the Divine Principle and concupiscence in Christianity, however, there is a noticeable difference. It is that the Divine Principle does not regard fallen nature as part of original sin, while Augustine and Luther regarded concupiscence as part of original sin. The divine Principle, therefore, resembles the later Catholic tradition which did not include concupiscence as part of original sin.

According to the Divine Principle, fallen nature, being just “incidental” to the fall, may not be as serious as original sin, which is our quilt of Adam’s serious sexual fall which made our linkage to the lineage of Satan. This may be why the Divine Principle does not include fallen nature in original sin. By contrast, for Augustine and Luther, who had no sexual interpretation of the fall, our guilt of Adam’s non-sexual sin of disobedience may be no more serious than concupiscence, and furthermore Augustine and Luther personally experienced the seriousness of concupiscence in their own lives. This may be the reason why Augustine and Luther included concupiscence as well as guilt in original sin.

Is fallen nature, which is different from original sin itself, transmitted from one generation to another like original sin? It is transmitted to later generations, whenever original sin is transmitted to them. The reason is that fallen nature, which is our mind-body disunity as well as our disunity with God, always accompanies original sin, which is our guilt of the primal sexual sin of Adam and Eve that brought forth our mind-body disunity as well as our disunity with God.

How can we remove fallen nature? While we can remove original sin instantaneously at the moment of being engrafted with the lineage of God through the Blessing, we cannot remove fallen nature in the same way. It is not to be removed through the Blessing. (This is similar to the traditional Christian teaching that while original sin can be removed through baptism, concupiscence cannot.) Instead, fallen nature can only gradually be removed in the somewhat lengthy “process” of the growth of the “spirit self,” called “resurrection,”[178] which can be done by believing and practicing God’s Word on this earth.[179] Believing and practicing God’s Word to gradually remove fallen nature usually involves establishing the so-called “foundation of substance,” in which a Cain figure loves, unites with, and submits to an Abel figure for reconciliation to overcome their struggle.[180] This reconciliation actually begins with the individual level at which the body (Cain) submits to the mind (Abel), and even expands to various social levels at which Esau (Cain), for example, submits to Jacob (Abel). Therefore the Divine Principle says:

In relationships at every level of society—from those between individuals to those at the level of families, communities, societies, nations and the world—we find that one party is in the role of Abel and the other is in the role of Cain. In order to restore society at each level to the state originally envisioned by God, those in the Cain position should respect and obey those in the Abel position.[181]

The Divine Principle idea that fallen nature cannot be removed through the Blessing but through a long process of spiritual growth echoes the general Christian assertion that concupiscence cannot be removed through baptism but through a process of the regenerate’s striving not to consent to it.

Three Problems of the Christian Doctrine of the Fall

The first section dealt with the traditional Christian doctrine of the fall, formulated largely by Augustine. We saw that the two components of the Christian doctrine of the fall, which are the doctrine of Adam’s fall and the doctrine of original sin proper, are inconsistent with each other because they have two inconsistent approaches. The former component has an atomistic, individualist approach, believing that Adam, Eve and Lucifer individually fell because each of them, with free will, severally made the wrong choice of disobeying God’s commandment; so it already implies that you alone are responsible for the sin you commit, and that you need no one else, neither a first human ancestor nor a Satan, in order for you to commit your own sin. By contrast, the latter component has a relational, sexual approach, affirming the solidarity of all members of the human race to say that original sin has been transmitted from one generation to another through the sexual union of parents for procreation with the involvement of Satan after the fall of Adam and Eve; so it affirms the hereditary nature of original sin, the historicity of Adam and the existence of Satan.

It is in this basic inconsistency between the two components of the doctrine of the fall in their inconsistent approaches that we can find at least three quite serious problems of theological ambiguity: 1) that the inheritance of original sin is affirmed on the one hand, but obscured on the other; 2) that the historicity of Adam is regarded as a necessary component on the one hand, but deemed not absolutely needed on the other; and 3) that the existence of Satan is required on the one hand, but not necessarily required on the other.

The present section will see how modern liberal theology and evolutionary theology, which emerged respectively under the influence of the Enlightenment and Darwinism, explicitly denied the inheritance of original sin, the historicity of Adam and the existence of Satan, thus making the above three problems more serious and unsolved.

1. Denial of the Inheritance of Original Sin

Although the inheritance of original sin has long been unquestionably believed to be true, its denial was already implicitly hinted at by the atomistic, individualist approach on the fall of Adam and Eve in traditional Christianity. And this denial was reinforced by liberal theology and evolutionary theology which emerged in modern times.

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), the father of modern theology, attempted a theological reconstruction in the beginning of the nineteenth century (even before the emergence of evolutionism) by integrating traditional Christianity with the Enlightenment tradition. In this context, he reinterpreted original sin, denying its biological inheritance.

His view of sin was psychological, as he understood it within the framework of the relationship between the spiritual and the sensual functions of human beings, i.e., between the “higher self-consciousness” (the God-consciousness) and the “sensible self-consciousness” (the world-consciousness): Sin freely occurs when the sensual functions gain power before the spiritual.[182] Sin, as understood this way, always exists in human nature as “innate sinfulness”[183] or “prior sinfulness”[184] regardless of the fall of Adam and Eve: “human nature in the first pair was the same before the first sin as it appears subsequently alike in them and in their posterity,” and “we cannot say that human nature was changed as a result of the first sin.”[185] So there was no golden age of innocence for Adam and Eve before their fall. For Schleiermacher, this timeless innate sin in human nature is what is original sin in Christianity, and it as “an incapacity for good” is “the universal state of men” before and after the fall of Adam and Eve.[186]

This modern reinterpretation of original sin by Schleiermacher was adopted by many other prominent, liberal modern theologians such as Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889) and Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918). Interestingly, however, even the conservative theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968), who started the school of neo-orthodoxy as a staunch critic of Schleiermacher, had quite a similar idea of the universality of sin. He was apparently somewhat influenced by the Schleiermachian tradition in that regard, because he initially received liberal theological education within that tradition before becoming a conservative critic of it. According to Barth, sin essentially as “pride” always exists in human nature: “Pride goes before a fall.”[187] Thus there never was a point in time in which human beings were unfallen: “There never was a golden age. There is no point in looking back to one.”[188]

But Barth’s reason for saying so was unique. For according to him the occurrences of the creation, fall and redemption of human beings are all to be attributed to God’s eternal plan, as God in his absolute freedom decided from eternity to elect Jesus Christ (who is eternally one with him in the unity of the Godhead) for the creation of the world[189] and the salvation of sinful human beings.[190] This Christocentric, predestinarian approach of Barth logically necessitates the fall and redemption of all human beings. So there needs to be no moment of “fall” within time. The fall of Adam does not have to be a historical event; it is rather a “saga” (Geschichte in German) which, using “intuition and imagination,” points to how all human beings generally and equally sin.[191] In God’s Word “all men are continually as the first man Adam, for what God continually sees them do is what Adam first did [in the saga].”[192] In this idea of the solidarity of the human race, the “hereditary” transmission of original sin is rejected,[193] and thus the notion of individual “responsibility” on the part of each human being is maintained.[194]

Reinhold Niebuhr (1882-1971) was another prominent conservative theologian in the twentieth century who denied original sin, as traditionally understood, although he took it very seriously in his own way. According to him, sin can be occasioned by “anxiety” or “insecurity” which arises from the “tension” or “paradox” between the dual characteristics of “spirit” (self-transcendence) and “nature” (natural creatureliness) which every human being has as the God-given human composition.[195] While this anxiety itself is not sin yet, it is definitely “the precondition of sin,” or else “the basis of all human creativity.”[196] If we in the midst of this anxiety humbly accept our situation and find security in God, we can stay as creative humans who do not sin; but if we do not find security in God, we will sin in two different ways: 1) by finding security in the exaltation of our finite, natural creatureliness to the level of infinite significance (the sin of “pride”); or 2) by finding security in the escape from our infinite possibilities of spirit towards finite creatureliness (the sin of “sensuality”).[197]

Sin thus understood is “not necessary,” although it may be “inevitable,”[198] thus being able to be called original sin. If so, we are not entirely exempt from responsibility for sinning. Sin is, therefore, not a hereditary taint from the fall of Adam, but rather something which inevitably exists in our human nature from the very beginning. So there is no golden age of innocence or perfection before the fall.[199] The fall of Adam, then, is not an event in history but rather “a symbol of an aspect of every historical moment in the life of man.”[200] Again, the fall of Adam, not being historical, is simply “representative” of the sinful condition of all humans at all times.[201] Here again, some influence from Schleiermacher can be seen.

Let us now proceed to evolutionary theology, which was developed within Christianity under the influence of Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) theory of evolution expressed in his books, On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871). His idea of evolution that the human species originated through a very long process of random mutation and natural selection apart from God was a serious challenge to traditional Christianity. But it became so widespread that many Christian theologians with a more liberal bent tried to integrate it into theology. Hence evolutionary theology. Also called “evolutionary creationism” or “theistic evolutionism,”[202] it believed that “God used the process of evolution to create living things, including humans.”[203] There have been various versions of evolutionary creationism, ranging from a deistic, polygenistic one, through a monotheistic, polygenistic one, to a more conservative, monogenistic one, the last one of which is a minority position among evolutionary creationists.

The first major attempt to integrate evolution into theology to come up with evolutionary creationism or theistic evolutionism on the Protestant side was made by the Anglican theologian F. R. Tennant (1866-1957) in his The Origin and Propagation of Sin (1902).[204] He argued that our capacity to sin, which consists of “instincts, appetites and impulses” in our common human nature, came from our animal ancestors in the process of evolution under God, and that while it by itself is the morally neutral “raw material for the production of sin,”[205] from it “sin, as the activity of the individual will, is produced” as moral consciousness awakens in the same evolutionary process.[206] This is original sin for him. So he denied the historicity of the primal fall of a first human ancestor.

His reinterpretation of original sin from the viewpoint of evolution has been followed and further developed by many other Protestant evolutionary creationists such as Francis S. Collins (1950- ),[207] founder of BioLogos whose mission is “to present an evolutionary understanding of God’s creation”;[208] Denis O. Lamoureux (1954- ),[209] a professor of science and religion at St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta; and Peter Enns (1961- ),[210] a former professor at Westminster Theological Seminary. Enns had to resign from the seminary because his 2005 book criticized the traditional evangelical doctrine of biblical inerrancy.[211]

Within Catholicism, the French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was the first to take evolution seriously. Although he did not have any extensive treatment of original sin itself, he generally saw sin as an inevitable result of the finite nature of all creation, including free will, in the evolutionary process: “Original sin, taken in its widest sense, is not a malady specific to the earth, nor is it bound up with human generation. It simply symbolizes the inevitable chance of evil… which accompanies the existence of all participated being.”[212] Teilhard was censured by the Catholic Church for this sort of view in the mid-1920s.

Afterwards, Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis (1950) showed a bit of openness to evolution, by cautiously saying that any research of it by competent persons is not forbidden, as long as it does not infringe upon the Catholic faith in God’s immediate creation of the human soul[213] and also in monogenism.[214] But the Dutch Jesuit theologian Piet Shoonenberg (1911-1999) had a much more open appreciation of evolution in the spirit of Teilhard. According to Schoonenberg, we have to pay attention to “the slow development of order [in the evolutionary process] and all the travail involved in it” from the beginning as the basis of original sin.[215] So there was no paradise at the beginning: “Paradise lies not at the beginning, but at the end.”[216] This sin, which is already there in the process of evolution, naturally occurs in each and every human being, and it has three manifestations: punishment, the inability to love, and the inclination to evil.[217] Thus this sin as original sin is not transmitted from a primeval fall of a first man. There is a situation of the world in which human sins are accumulated by socially affecting one another—a situation which John 1:29 calls “the sin of the world.”[218] This is the meaning of the transmission of sin: “Man possesses a situated freedom; every human choice is conditioned by past decisions and restricts future possibilities.”[219]

Karl Rahner (1904-1984), Schoonenberg’s fellow Jesuit theologian from Germany, stood for the gradual creation of the human soul in the evolutionary process centered on God rather than for its immediate creation by God which had been affirmed by Pius XII’s Humani Generis.[220] His understanding of original sin was very similar to Schoonenberg’s, as he believed that original sin does not refer to something which has been transmitted from some primeval act of sin to all subsequent generations but rather refers to the fact that we are situated in a sinful world. Original sin thus means the undeniable fact that “the guilt of others is a permanent factor in the situation and realm of the individual’s freedom,”[221] although this guilt felt is also always accompanied with “grace” due to what Rahner called “the supernatural existential.”[222]

Since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), many other influential Catholic thinkers such as the Dutch Augustinian theologian Ansfried Hulsbosch (1912-1973),[223] the Loyola University professor Stephen J. Duffy (1931-2007),[224] the Scottish Jesuit theologian Jack Mahoney (1931 ),[225] and the Catholic systematic theologian John F. Haught (1942 )[226] showed much interest in the modern synthesis of evolution and creation and thus denied deny the traditional notion of the inheritance of original sin. Even so, Pope Paul VI’s Credo of the People of God (1968) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) reaffirmed the traditional doctrine of original sin.[227]

2. Denial of the Historicity of Adam

The atomistic, individualist approach on the fall of Adam and Eve in traditional Christianity already implied that we do not necessarily need a first human ancestor from whom to receive a sinful influence, if we can all sin individually anywhere and anytime. This implication was made explicit by modern theology and evolutionary theology, which denied the historicity of Adam.

Friedrich Schleiermacher was not interested in the question of whether or not Adam and Eve historically existed, although he may have believed in their historicity. He believed that sin has always existed in human nature as “innate sinfulness” regardless of their fall. For him, therefore, their fall was a trivial event: “the first appearance of sin in the first pair… was in itself a single and trivial event.”[228] And our dogmatics “cannot be expected to determine how the said record [of the fall including the existence of Adam and Eve] is to be interpreted, and whether it purports to be history or allegory.”[229] We can only use the story of Adam and Eve “in illustration of the universal process of the rise of sin as something always and everywhere the same.”[230] So Schleiermacher in effect denied the historicity of Adam, if not positively. It goes without saying that many other modern theologians in the tradition of Schleiermacher, too, denied the historicity of Adam in the same way.

Karl Barth maintained that “the coming into being of Adam and his corresponding individual existence” is “not history but only saga,” and that “if we try to read and understand it as history,” we “miss the unprecedented and incomparable thing which the Genesis passages tell us.”[231] This unprecedented and incomparable thing is none other than “prophetic witness to what has taken place by virtue of the Word of God in the (historical or pre-historical) sphere where there can be no historical proof,”[232] and it cannot be comprehended with a historical approach. Adam simply “denotes the being and essence of all other men.”[233] This is related to Barth’s other idea that sin always exists in human nature.

Reinhold Niebuhr believed that because sin inevitably occurs from the very beginning due to “anxiety” arising from the tension between “spirit” and “nature” in human beings, there is no golden age of perfection before the fall. So it is a “literalistic error” to insist on the fall “as an historical event.”[234] Thus the historicity of Adam is to be denied.

Most evolutionary theologians (theistic evolutionists), too, basically denied the historicity of Adam. There are two reasons: 1) because they held that there was no paradise of innocence which preceded a primal fall in the evolutionary process, as was seen above; and 2) because they accepted the very compelling evidence of genomics about ancestral population sizes that modern human beings were descended from a population of at least several thousand individuals and not from a single ancestral couple like Adam and Eve.[235] They thus have considered Adam not to be a historical individual person but rather a symbolic name representing multiple people or even all humankind. In fact, as is well known, “Adam” is translated as “persons” in Num. 31:28, 30, 35, 40 in the Old Testament.

Here we will not go through many evolutionary theologians to show how they have denied the historicity of Adam. Only a few examples will suffice. On the Protestant side, Francis Collins denied Adam’s historicity, when saying: “Many sacred texts do indeed carry the clear marks of eyewitness history... Others, such as the stories of Job and Jonah, and of Adam and Eve, frankly do not carry the same historical ring.”[236] Denis Lamoureux explicitly denied Adam’s historicity: “Adam never actually existed.”[237] So did Peter Enns: “The symbolic nature of the garden story would be even clearer if we see Adam as a proto-Israel figure, not the first human.”[238]

On the Catholic side, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin questioned the historicity of Adam, when he said: “if we accept the hypothesis of a single, perfect being [i.e., Adam] put to the test on only one occasion, the likelihood of the Fall is so slight that one can only regard the Creator as having been extremely unlucky.”[239] For Piet Schoonenberg and Karl Rahner as well, the historicity of Adam is not important. Schoonenberg even remarked that the Council of Trent was not officially teaching monogenism, as it only took it for granted.[240] In case of Rahner, although he as an evolutionary theologian was still in favor of monogenism in 1954 when he wrote on the subject,[241] nevertheless in a later article published in 1967 he shifted his position from monogenism to polygenism, saying that if monogenism in the context of evolution allows for the creation of the first couple of Adam and Eve without the body of Eve being derived from Adam, then the creation of many more than the two, which would mean polygenism, is also possible; and that polygenism does not necessarily have a conflict with original sin.[242] Jack Mahoney and John Haught, too, denied the historicity of Adam.[243]

3. Denial of the Existence of Satan

The atomistic, individualist approach on the fall of Adam and Eve in traditional Christianity already implied that we do not necessarily need a Satan in order for us to sin, as we can all sin individually anywhere and anytime through our own free will. This implication was made explicit by modern theology and evolutionary theology, which denied the existence of Satan.

Already in the eighteenth century, the denial of the existence of Satan was made by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire (1694-1778) and Denis Diderot (1713-1784).[244] In the beginning of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Schleiermacher, not interested in the historicity of the fall of Adam, denied the existence of Satan, saying that explaining our sin by tracing it back to the temptation of Satan is “no explanation at all.”[245] According to him, the biblical idea of the devil was not “acquired through Divine revelation” but only “drawn from the common life of the period just as it is still present more or less in all our minds in spite of our utter ignorance as to the existence of such a being,” and “the question as to his existence is not one for Christian Theology but for Cosmology.”[246]

Karl Barth had a very unique notion of Satan. Satan is not a fallen angel. Demons including Satan are not fallen angels, nor are they any kind of creatures of God. Indeed, demons’ “origin and nature lie in nothingness (Das Nichtige).”[247] According to Barth, this “nothingness” is that which God chose not to create, while all other things are what God chose to create: “Nothingness is that from which God separates Himself and exerts His positive will,” and therefore it “has no existence and cannot be known except as the object of God’s activity as always a holy activity.”[248] This nothingness, even if it has no existence, can function as the devil with his legions, however. Our correct response, therefore, must be that we have “resolute unbelief” in Satan and demons.[249] This was how Barth was trying to deny the existence of Satan.

We can recall Reinhold Niebuhr’s thesis that human beings sin inevitably, if not by necessity, due to “anxiety” which arises from the tension between “spirit” and “nature” in their God-given human situation. If they in the midst of this anxiety humbly accept their situation and find security in God, they will not sin. But if they misinterpret their God-given situation and try to find security outside of God on their own, they will sin. According to Niebuhr, therefore, this tendency of human beings to misinterpret their situation and find security and transcendence on their own is already there in their situation, before they sin; and it can be called the devil. The devil is therefore “a principle or force of evil antecedent to any evil human action.”[250] This devil is not what the Bible literally describes as a personality who is actively evil. It is merely an impersonal principle or force of evil.

What about evolutionary theologians? They naturally denied the literal existence of Satan. According to a member of BioLogos, Satan merely represents “those inclinations [within us]—such as selfishness, the need for control, and the like—that often tempt us to do evil.”[251] Piet Schoonenberg, too, showed his great skepticism about the existence of demons including Satan, saying that it is not a dogmatic necessity.[252] In a similar vein, Karl Rahner stated that “it would be untheological levity to look on Satan and his devils as a sort of ‘hobgoblins knocking about the world,’” and went on to say: “rather it may be assumed that they are the powers of the world in so far as this world is a denial of God and a temptation to man.”[253]

The Catholic Church today officially believes in the literal existence of Satan, as is indicated in its Catechism.[254] Recently, therefore, a controversy was stirred within the Church, when Arturo Sosa, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, regarded Satan as a symbolic figure, as can be seen in his expression of “symbolic figures such as the devil,” in his 2017 interview with a Spanish newspaper.[255] This only means that in spite of the official doctrine, Catholics including leaders such as Sosa cast doubt on the existence of Satan today.

The Unification Doctrine of the Fall Not Having the Three Problems

1. Consistency of the Unification Doctrine of the Fall

a. Consistent use of a relational, sexual approach

The Unification doctrine of the fall consistently uses a relational, sexual approach both on the fall of Adam and on the transmission of original sin.

According to this relational, sexual approach by the Unification doctrine, the fall of Adam involved two consecutive sexual relationships of illicit love: 1) a spiritual sexual relationship of illicit love in which Lucifer seduced Eve; and 2) a physical sexual relationship of illicit love in which Eve in the position of Lucifer (now Satan) seduced Adam. The act of eating the fruit meant having an illicit sexual relationship. Freedom on the part of each was not the cause of the fall; rather, freedom was “lost” by the fall as it was overwhelmed by the power of unprincipled love even stronger than that of freedom.

As for the transmission of original sin as well, the Unification doctrine uses the same relational, sexual approach, holding that because Adam and Eve through their sexual fall centering on Satan bound themselves with the satanic lineage based on the Satan-centered four position foundation, they could not help giving birth to sinful descendants under the sovereignty of Satan, and that the descendants have been repeating the same kind of sexual relationship for procreation in the lineage of Satan, thus transmitting original sin from one generation to another.

b. Free from the three problems of ambiguity

It is because of its consistent use of a relational, sexual approach both on the fall of Adam and on the transmission of original sin that the Unification doctrine of the fall, having no atomistic, individualist approach on the fall of Adam, is free from the above-mentioned three problems of theological ambiguity. Thus it can unequivocally believe in the inheritance of original sin, the historicity of Adam and the existence of Satan, even in face of the challenges coming from modern theology and evolutionary theology which denied these three points.

First, that the Unification doctrine of the fall takes the inheritance of original sin very seriously because of its consistent use of a relational, sexual approach can be seen in many words of Rev. Moon such as what follows:

What does it mean that Adam and Eve fell as a family? Nothing other than love could have made Adam and Eve fall as a family. What kind of fruit would make thousands of future generations become sinners? This is a blood relationship. If a root of sin is planted in the blood lineage, it would continue eternally according to the law of inheritance. Only the problem of love could make this happen.[256]

Second, the Unification doctrine of the fall affirms the historicity of Adam, because it holds that the inheritance of original sin through procreation does not start without the real existence of Adam who fell. Moon evidently has the historicity of Adam in mind, when he talks about how God actually created Adam and Eve as “babies” and not as adults, meaning that they were supposed to go through the growing period towards maturity: “God created them [i.e., Adam and Eve] as babies, in the formation stage, with the destiny to grow into perfection.”[257] According to the Divine Principle, Adam and Eve unfortunately “fell during their growing period, when they were still immature.”[258]

Third, the Unification doctrine of the fall affirms the existence of Satan, as it believes that the inheritance of original sin can best be understood through the sexual fall of Adam and Eve which involved Satan. Rev. Moon is very clear about the existence of Satan, therefore, when he states: “The Unification Church is clearly making a declaration about the existence of both God and Satan.”[259] He even deplores the fact that many people especially in the West do not understand the existence of Satan as “an entity.”[260] Needless to say, however, the Divine Principle denies cosmic dualism’s assertion of the independent preexistence of Satan: “the spiritual being represented by the serpent was originally created with a good purpose, but later fell and became Satan.”[261]

2. Allies of the Relational, Sexual Approach on the Fall of Adam

Although Christianity especially after Augustine has not accepted the consistent use of a relational, sexual approach, using it only on the transmission of original sin and not on the fall of Adam, nevertheless if we carefully look at the longer and wider, Judeo-Christian history, we can find several writers or theologians who consistently used a relational, sexual approach on the fall of Adam as well, like Unificationism does. They can thus be allies of Unificationism and can join together to unhesitatingly believe in the inheritance of original sin, the historicity of Adam and the existence of Satan

a. Jewish pseudepigrapha and rabbinical literature

The Second Book of Enoch, also known as the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, is a Jewish pseudepigraphic text written in the first century A.D., and interestingly it said that Satan “conceived thought against Adam,” and that “in such form he entered and seduced Eva (Eve), but did not touch Adam.”[262] This would definitely mean that when Satan seduced Eve, he touched her sexually. It meant a sexual fall between Satan and Eve. This is confirmed by F. R. Tennant, who, in spite of being an evolutionary theologian, did a substantive research on the doctrines of the fall and original sin in Judeo-Christian history before Augustine: “We have, in fact, in this passage another example of the association of the Fall with the sin of unchastity, and an allusion to the tradition that Satan seduced Eve, in the narrower sense of that word.”[263]

Tennant also reports that rabbinical literature commonly held that Satan envied Adam on account of Eve, whom he therefore desired to possess. For example, according to Tractate Sotah, a part of the Talmud, Satan said: “I will kill Adam and marry Eve; but now, I will put enmity between thee [i.e., God] and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.”[264] Tennant therefore observes that this sexual interpretation of the fall of Adam and Eve centering on Satan was “both widespread and ancient among the Jews,” and that “this is rather the sense in which… the Fall is associated in rabbinical writings with evil concupiscence.”[265]

Robert Gordis (1908-1992), an American conservative rabbi, suggests that “the knowledge of good and evil [as part of the name of the tree whose fruit was eaten at the fall] is ‘sexual consciousness,’” adding that notable Jewish scholars such as Abraham ibn Ezra (1089-c.1167), Arnold Ehrlich (1848-1919) and Ludwig Levy (1854-1907) had the same assertion.[266]

b. Clement of Alexandria and Ambrose

Among the Church Fathers, St. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) and St. Ambrose (c. 340-397) are known to have had a sexual interpretation of the fall, although the difference between the two was that while the former was pro-marriage, the latter was basically against marriage, emphasizing the importance of pure virginity.

Clement of Alexandria, referring to all humans as “lovers of pleasure,” said: “the first man of our race did not bide his time, desired the favor of marriage before the proper hour, and fell into sin by not waiting for the time of God’s will; ‘for everyone who looks upon a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her.’”[267] The irony, however, is that Clement hardly developed a doctrine of the inheritance of original sin, given the nature of his own days in Alexandria in which the seriousness of sin was not understood yet. Thus his sexual interpretation of the fall might not be as useful for our purpose. But it still seems worth mentioning.

Ambrose’s sexual interpretation was based on Philo’s psychologi-cal reading of the serpent, Eve and Adam: “The serpent is a type of the pleasures of the body. The woman stands for our senses and the man, for our minds. Pleasure stirs the senses, which, in turn, have their effect on the mind. Pleasure, therefore, is the primary source of sin.”[268] Ambrose as the godfather of Augustine strongly influenced Augustine regarding the inheritance of original sin, although unfortunately Augustine, unlike Ambrose, did not use a relational, sexual approach on the fall of Adam and Eve itself.

The idea of the sexual fall by both Clement of Alexandria and Ambrose is rejected by Ludwig Ott (1906-1985) in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, a standard reference work on Catholic dogmatics.[269]

c. The historical-critical approach

A historical-critical understanding of the Genesis account of the fall was proposed by scholars such as the Belgian priest J. Coppens (1896-1970)[270] and the Italian biblical scholar J. Alberto Soggin (1926-2010),[271] and it has been fairly widespread and received among biblical scholars. It argues that Genesis 3 was a polemic of the Yahwist against the Canaanite fertility cult which worshipped the serpent god as the deity of sexual ecstasy, procreation, health and immortality. Thus Soggin, finding in the story of the fall sexual motifs such as “the meaning of the verb [‘to know’]; the fruit, so easily susceptible to aphrodisiac implications; the fig leaf, which is normally connected with sexual (religious) orgies; [and] the shame flooding the couple after the act,”[272] concluded that:

The only reasonable explanation for these [sexual] elements [found in the Genesis story of the fall] is the assumption that an original Canaanite account disclosing the rites of fertility was taken over by Israel and turned completely around as a direst polemic against those same rites, accusing them of producing not life and fertility, but death and sterility.[273]

He therefore wanted to argue that the fall of Adam and Eve was sexual.[274] Unification theologians such as Young Oon Kim and Andrew Wilson appreciatively acknowledge this historical-critical approach.[275] This approach is credible, although some scholars such as John Day (1948- ), Old Testament Professor at Oxford, may be cautious about it, thinking that the Canaanite fertility cult was quite unrelated to the theme of the knowledge of good and evil.[276]

3. The Historicity of Adam and Eve

There are at least two more ways to argue for the historicity of Adam and Eve: 1) from the perspective of the nature of the Divine Principle as a systematic theology, and 2) from evolutionary creationism as accepted by Unificationism, involving modern paleoanthropology.

a. From the Divine Principle as a systematic theology

All the contents of the Divine Principle are naturally consistent with one another, because it as a systematic theology is like “a seamless garment.”[277] The Divine Principle view of the fall of Adam and Eve, therefore, must be consistent with its soteriology, for example. This means that it is because Adam and Even historically existed and sexually fell centering on Satan to give birth to sinful children with original sin in the lineage of Satan that True Parents must come as perfected Adam and Eve to give rebirth to humankind and free them from original sin in the lineage of Satan. Hence in the words of Rev. Moon, “Since human beings began from false parents [Adam and Eve, who sexually fell], they must go back and make a new beginning from the True Parents.”[278]

The argument here is that given the fact that True Parents, who restore fallen humankind to the lineage of God, actually emerged, it would be consistent to maintain that Adam and Eve historically existed and sexually fell at the beginning of human history. Rejecting the historicity of Adam and Eve and their sexual fall would mean rejecting the whole point about the mission of True Parents.

Christian theology, too, similarly argues from the consistent nature of systematic theology for the historicity of Adam and his fall and the inheritance of original sin: “if we are to be theologically consistent, rejecting a historical Adam and original sin would leave us without a recognizable Christian gospel”;[279] “The doctrine of original sin directly affects what it means to say that Jesus is Savior.”[280] This is the case with traditional Christianity, although traditional Christianity, unlike Unificationism, has not even used a relational, sexual interpretation on the fall of Adam itself.

As was seen above, however, many modern theologians and evolutionary theologians have denied the historicity of Adam and his fall, regarding Adam merely as what figuratively denotes all humankind that is imperfect and even sinful from the very beginning. Without recognizing a historical Adam and a historical first fall, then, they have not looked to Adam but to Christ “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45) for the benchmark by which to determine what sin is and also what sinless perfection is. It is thus not Adam but Christ who is the original standard. In this case, one should not talk about the Adam-Christ parallel but rather about the Christ-Adam parallel in which Christ is the original and Adam merely a figurative indication of all imperfect humankind.[281]

This Christological focus has been accepted to a lot of modern theologians such as Schleiermacher, Barth and Niebuhr. For example, Niebuhr, denying the historicity of Adam and the golden age of pre-fall innocence, said: “it is not possible to define the lost perfection of Adam, the ideal possibilities of human life, except in terms drawn from the perfection of Christ.”[282] This Christological focus has also been accepted to many evolutionary theologians. Thus Jerry D. Korsmeyer (1930-2015), an evolutionary Catholic theologian himself, says:

The concept of “original sin” needs to be understood from the perspective of our redemption in Jesus Christ, not the other way around. The Father did not send the Son to patch up some broken divine plan for humanity. God’s self-communication in love points us toward the kingdom ahead, not a paradise lost.[283]

This way of reversing the Adam-Christ parallel to come up with the Christ-Adam parallel is very popular these days. But is it legitimate? The answer should be in the negative. For if the historicity of Adam and his fall is rejected in favor of the timeless innate sinfulness of human nature, then God as the Creator should be ultimately responsible for this innate human sinfulness, and that scenario would not be acceptable:

If we remove a historical Adam and fall from the theological picture, then sin becomes a side effect of evolution, a part of natural ontology of created human beings. [And]… human sinfulness is no longer contingent but emerges from the very structure of the material world… The creator God is rendered ultimately responsible for sin.[284]

In order to uphold the goodness of God, therefore, we have to assert that Adam and Eve were created to historically exist for a good purpose of God, but that they unfortunately fell in spite of that good purpose. This means the contingency of sin. So the Divine Principle talks about the possibility of Adam and Eve not falling but having a great result: “If Adam and Eve had not fallen, but had… become the True Parents who could multiply good children, their descendants would have also become good husbands and wives with God as the center of their lives.”[285] Christ, then, would not have been needed: “If our [first] ancestors had not fallen, there would have been no necessity for the savior.”[286] This means that the Adam-Christ parallel rather than the Christ-Adam parallel is to be maintained, although one may be “tempted” to favor the Christ-Adam parallel under the influence of modern theology and evolutionary theology, and although “There has been no temptation through the centuries to which theology has been more exposed than this temptation.”[287] We have to overcome this powerful temptation.

b. Evolutionary creationism as accepted by Unificationism

The Divine Principle follows modern science to say that “The age of the earth is calculated to be several billion years,” and that the biblical period of six days of creation, instead of being literal six days, “symbolizes six ordered periods of [long] time in the creation process.”[288] And while not accepting the atheistic theory of evolution itself, it does accept the aspect of progression in the theory and combines it with God’s creation, holding that the stage-by-stage progression from low-level to more complex, higher-level creatures with the culmination of human beings happens through the purposeful input of God’s energy. Hence Rev. Moon says:

The theory of evolution seems to be logical, but the process of the stage-by-stage progression of all things can never convincingly be explained through the theory of random mutation. Without outside energy added [from God], this progression into more valuable and higher dimensions is absolutely impossible. The evolution of all animals has culminated in man, and we can say that man is the ultimate purpose of the first causal being [i.e., God].[289]

This position is in line with so-called “evolutionary creationism” or “theistic evolutionism,” which believes that God creates through evolution. Hence comes what can be called “Unification evolutionary creationism.”

But unlike most evolutionary creationists (such as F. R. Tennant, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Francis Collins), who deny the historicity of Adam and Eve in favor of polygenism, Unification evolutionary creationism accepts the historicity of Adam and Eve in favor of monogenism. It holds that Adam and Eve were born as the first human babies from their physical parents that were not human beings but previously existent hominids, i.e., that when they were born as babies, God infused human spirits into them, while their physical parents as their surrogate parents without spirits provided only physical bodies to them. This is not an unusual idea; it can actually be found as one of the various views of evolutionary creationism or theistic evolutionism,[290] although it is just a minor position among them.

This position is supported by the following words of Rev. Moon: “Adam and Eve were produced by exactly the same process as we produce a child. By strong love and energy of father and mother, a child is conceived and grows, first within the womb, then outside of it.”[291] In this scenario, God’s infusion of human spirits occurred as a result of what Rev. Moon refers to as “outside energy added” from God. The Unification theologian/biologist Jonathan Wells accepts this scenario, identifies the “surrogate parents” of Adam and Eve as “animals with features that were intermediate between apes and humans—such as those found in the fossil record,” and adds that they “nourished and protected the babies until the latter were able to fend for themselves, and then that species went extinct.”[292]

Adam and Eve, then, are supposed to be the first ancestors of our own species, Homo sapiens, also described as “anatomically modern humans.” Their surrogate parents perhaps belonged to the previous yet now extinct species of Homo heidelbergensis, whose fossils were found in Africa as well as in Heidelberg, Germany. In modern paleoanthropology, the fossils of Homo sapiens from Kibish, Ethiopia are deemed the earliest ones, being dated to about 200,000 years ago.[293] It is likely, then, that Adam and Eve were born in East Africa about 200,000 years ago (although it does not match the fairly popular idea that the Garden of Eden was located in Mesopotamia).

Most evolutionary creationists would have much difficulty in accepting this monogenistic scenario, because they, as was previously mentioned, adhere to polygenism based on the compelling evidence from genomics that modern humans were descended from a population of at least several thousand individuals and not from a single ancestral couple like Adam and Eve, i.e., that the extreme population bottleneck of just a single ancestral couple is impossible. Interestingly, however, Professor Kenneth W. Kemp of the University of St. Thomas has addressed this issue in favor of monogenism, by proposing that the first couple of Adam and Eve emerged from “a population of 5,000 hominids, beings which are in many respects like human beings, but which lack the capacity for intellectual thought,” and that because their descendants can be considered to “continue, to some extent, to interbreed with the non-intellectual hominids among whom they live,” all modern humans born this way with the endowment of human spirits would have both the hominids and the first human couple among their ancestors, with the result that they “would be descended from a single original human couple (in the sense of having that human couple among their ancestors) without there ever having been a population bottleneck in the human species.”[294] Here the key is interbreeding, and with the initial population of 5,000 hominids included this way, the problem of the population bottleneck of only a single ancestral couple can be evaded.

By the way, according to the “Out of Africa” theory, which is well received among paleoanthropologists today, the species of Homo sapiens originated in Africa, whether polygenistically or monogenistically,[295] and all non-African modern humans are descendants of those members of that species who got out of Africa in a few different waves of dispersal starting from around 120,000 years ago to migrate to the other parts of the world.[296] This theory, as long as it is interpreted monogenistically, is acceptable to Unification evolutionary creationism, which stands for monogenism.

The exposition of Unification evolutionary creationism here, however, does not mean to argue with absolute certainty for the historicity of Adam and Eve. Rather, it means to say that the historicity of Adam and Eve is not contradictory to the science of paleoanthropology which presupposes evolution. In the words of Wells, “God’s creation of Adam and Eve is inconsistent with materialistic ‘science,’ but (I would argue) it is not contrary to evidence-based science.”[297]

In conclusion, in spite of the challenging emergences of liberal theology after the Enlightenment and of evolutionary theology after Darwinism, the Unification doctrine of the fall, which consistently uses its relational, sexual approach both on Adam’s fall and on the transmission of original sin, can effectively defend the inheritance of original sin, the historicity of Adam and the existence of Satan. By contrast, it is considerably difficult for the traditional Christian doctrine of the fall to defend them in face of the challenges of liberal theology and evolutionary theology in modern times, because of its inconsistent use of two different approaches: an atomistic, individualist approach on Adam’s fall and a relational, sexual approach on the transmission of original sin. The Unification doctrine of the fall is not alone, however, in having its relational, sexual approach on Adam’s fall as well as well as on the transmission of original sin; it has some good allies regarding this in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The historicity of Adam and Eve can also be argued for from the nature of the Divine Principle as a systematic theology and from the Unification version of evolutionary creationism which involves modern paleoanthropology.

Notes

[1] Augustine coined the term “original sin” (peccatum originale) in his early treatise of 397, “Miscellany of Questions in Response to Simplician,” 1:1:10; see The Writings of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part I, vol. 12: Responses to Miscellaneous Questions, ed. Raymond Canning, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 2008), p. 179. At that time, he actually meant by it the primal sin of Adam. As will be shown later, however, he in his later years distinguished this primal sin of Adam from original sin proper, saying that original sin proper is now a sinful condition subsequently imposed upon Adam and his offspring as a punishment for his primal sin. Original sin in this latter sense which Augustine used later has become what the term, original sin, usually signifies. More precisely, it is peccatum originale originatum (“originated” original sin), while the primal sin of Adam may well be called peccatum originale originans (“originating” original sin). Augustine was aware of this distinction, although there is a confusion of the two quite often among many people.

[2] Strictly speaking, there is no biblical evidence that there was a good angel or archangel called Lucifer, who fell to become a fallen angel. “Lucifer” in the Bible only refers to the King of Babylon (Is. 14:12 in KJV). Even in the days of Augustine, therefore, Lucifer was not yet a common name for the devil or Satan, the chief of the fallen angels. But St. Jerome (d. 420) and some other Fathers started to identify Lucifer with Satan, by taking Is 14:12 (“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!”) in conjunction with Luke 10:18 (“I saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven”). This identification later became customary in the history of Christianity. Part of the custom is also to say that Lucifer as the chief of the fallen angels was an archangel.

[3] Ralph J. Lawrence, “Creation,” in Principles of Catholic Theology: A Synthesis of Dogma and Morals, ed. Edward J. Gratsch (New York: Alba House, 1981), p. 81.

[4] Exposition of the Divine Principle (Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 1996), p. 75. Henceforth abbreviated as EDP.

[5] EDP, p. 68.

[6] James Noel Hubler reports that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo “was a position taken by the apologists of the late second century, Tatian and Theophilus, and developed by various ecclesiastical writers thereafter, by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen”; see his “Creatio ex Nihilo: Matter, Creation, and the Body in Classical and Christian Philosophy Through Aquinas” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1995), p. 102.

[7] Augustine, “Concerning the Nature of Good, against the Manichaeans,” 26, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 4, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1974 [1887]), pp. 356-57.

[8] Ibid., 1, p. 351.

[9] Ibid., 3, p. 352.

[10] Ibid., 4, p. 352

[11] See, for example, Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. Rex Warner (New York: New American Library), 3:7, p. 60.

[12] Augustine, “On the Morals of the Manichaeans,” 8:11, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 4, p. 72.

[13] Ibid., 4:6, p. 71

[14] Ibid., 2:3, p. 70

[15] Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, trans. Anna S. Benjamin and L. H. Hackstaff (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1964), 3:1, p. 87.

[16] Augustine, The Confessions, 2:5, p. 46.

[17] Augustine, “Concerning the Nature of Good,” 28, p. 357.

[18] Augustine, The Confessions, 7:3, p, 139.

[19] Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: The Modern Library, 1993), 11:17, p. 361. The fall of Adam is described by Augustine in more detail in his The City of God, which was written later during the period of the Pelagian controversy, than in his earlier, anti-Manichaean writings. But his atomistic, individualist, libertarian and non-sexual approach to the fall of Adam basically stayed without any substantial change even during this later period. 

[20] Ibid., 12:1, p. 380.

[21] Ibid., 14:11, p. 458.

[22] Ibid., pp. 458-59.

[23] Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, 3:10, p. 111. Italics added.

[24] Augustine, The City of God, 14:13, p. 460.

[25] Ibid., 14:13, p. 461.

[26] Ibid., 14:13, p. 460.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid., 13:15, p. 423.

[29] Ibid., 12:7, p. 387. Italics added.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid., 14:13, p. 460.

[32] Ibid., 11:15, p. 359.

[33] Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, 3:19, pp. 129-30.

[34] See note 1.

[35] Augustine, “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” 2:26:43, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975 [1887]), p. 300.

[36] Augustine, “On the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin,” 2:39:46, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5, p. 254.

[37] Tatha Wiley, Original Sin: Origins, Developments, Contemporary Meanings (New York: Paulist Press, 2002), pp. 5, 56, 72.

[38] That Augustine believed original sin to consist in these two elements is what people such as Jesse Couenhoven suggest. See his treatment of what Augustine understands to be the “two forms” of original sin in his “St. Augustine’s Doctrine of Original Sin,” Augustinian Studies 36:2 (2005): 363, 369-72, 376-79. Many Catholic thinkers, however, would disagree, as they usually would believe concupiscence to be separate from original sin.

[39] Augustine, “On the Grace of Christ, and Original Sin,” 2:38:43, p. 252.

[40] Ibid., 2:31:36, p. 250.

[41] Augustine, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, vol. I/25: Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian (Answer to the Pelagians, III), ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Roland J. Teske (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 1999), 1:48, p. 75.

[42] Augustine, “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” 4:4:7, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5, p. 419. This reading of Romans 5:12 by Augustine was based on its key phrase “because in him [i.e., Adam] all men sinned” in the then available Latin text, although the original Greek text simply reads “because all men sinned,” without referring to Adam.

[43] Augustine, “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” 1:6:7, p. 266.

[44] Augustine, “On the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin,” 2:39:46, p. 254.

[45] Augustine, “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” 1:23:26, p. 274.

[46] Ibid., 1:1:1, p. 264; 1:17:19, p. 271; 1:18:20, p. 272, for example

[47] Ibid., 1:23:25, p. 274, for example.

[48] Augustine, “On the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin,” 2:37:42, p. 252; “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” 1:19:21, p. 272.

[49] Augustine, “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” 1:23:25, p. 274.

[50] Ibid., 2:30:52, p. 304.

[51] Augustine, “Acts or Disputation against Fortunatus the Manichaean,” 15, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 4, p. 116.

[52] Augustine, “Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental,” 37:43, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 4, p. 148.

[53] Augustine, “Concerning the Nature of Good, against the Manichaeans,” 7, p. 352.

[54] Augustine, “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” 1:25:28, p. 275.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Augustine, “On the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin,” 2:37:42, p. 252.

[57] Ibid., 2:38:43, p. 253.

[58] Ibid., 2:37:42, p. 252.

[59] Augustine, “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” 1:24:27, p. 275.

[60] Ibid., 1:19:21, p. 272.

[61] Augustine, Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian, 6:22, p. 660.

[62] Augustine, “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” 1:10:11, p. 268; 1:11:13, p. 269; 1:17:19, p. p. 271

[63] Augustine, “On the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin,” 2:38:43, p. 253

[64] Augustine, “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” 1:1:1, p. 264

[65] Ibid., 1:14:16, p. 270

[66] Ibid., 1:1:1, p. 263

[67] Augustine, “On the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin,” 2:39:45, p. 253

[68] Ibid.

[69] Augustine, “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” 1:23:26, p. 274.

[70] Augustine, “On the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin,” 2:37:42, p. 252.

[71] Augustine, “On Rebuke and Grace,” 12:33, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5, p. 485.

[72] Augustine, “The Enchiridion,” 105, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 3, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1974 [1887]), p. 271.

[73] Augustine, “Against Two Letter of the Pelagians,” 1:2:5, p. 378.

[74] Ibid., 1:2:4, p. 378.

[75] Ibid., 2:5:9, p. 395.

[76] Augustine, “On Nature and Grace,” 66:79, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5, p. 149.

[77] Ibid., 49:57, p. 140.

[78] Ibid., 4:4, p. 122.

[79] Augustine, “On Grace and Free will,” 17:33, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5, p. 458.

[80] Ibid., 17:33, p. 457.

[81] Ibid., 17:33, p. 458.

[82] Augustine, “On Two Souls, against the Manichaeans,” trans. Albert H. Newman, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 4, p. 102, no. 1.

[83] Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans. John Hammond Taylor (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1982), vol. 2, 10:23:39, p.127.

[84] Ibid., 10:24:40-25:41.

[85] Augustine, “On the Soul and Its Origin,” 4:4:5, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5, p. 355.

[86] Anselm, “The Virgin Conception and Original Sin (Selections),” 27, in A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, ed. and trans. Eugene R. Fairweather (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), p. 199

[87] Ibid., 3, p. 187.

[88] Ibid., 23, pp. 197-98.

[89] The Council of Trent, the Fifth Session, “Decree Concerning Original Sin,” Canon 5. https://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct05.html

[90] Catechism of the Catholic Church (English translation, 1994) 405. http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c1p7.htm#405

[91] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q.82, art. 3. http://www.newadvent.org /summa/2082.htm#article3

[92] Ibid., I-II, q. 85, art. 3. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2085.htm#article3

[93] Ibid., I-II, q. 81, art. 1.

[94] Ibid., I-II, q. 83, art. 1, reply to obj. 2. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2083. htm#article1.

[95] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 25: Lectures on Romans, ed. Hilton C. Osward (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1972), p.300.

[96] Ibid., p. 262.

[97] Ibid., p. 299.

[98] Ibid.

[99] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 37: Word and Sacrament III, ed. Robert H. Fischer (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961), p. 362.

[100] Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 25: Lectures on Romans, p. 261, cf. pp. 259-61.

[101] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 32: Career of the Reformer II, ed. George W. Forell (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1958), pp. 19-31.

[102] Ibid., p. 27.

[103] David Albert Jones, The Soul of the Embryo: An Enquiry into the Status of the Human Embryo in the Christian Tradition (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 143.

[104] The Council of Trent, the Fifth Session, “Decree Concerning Original Sin,” Canon 5. https://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct05.html.

[105] Ibid., canon 5.

[106] Ibid., canons 1 and 2.

[107] Ibid., canon 3.

[108] Ibid., canon 5.

[109] See, for example, Wiley, Original Sin, pp. 90, 95-96.

[110] On the Divine Principle as Rev. Moon’s interpretation of the Bible, see Theodore Shimmyo, “Sun Myung Moon’s Approach to the Bible,” Journal of Unification Studies 14 (2013): 1-22.

[111] The Divine Principle just follows the Christian custom to regard Lucifer as an archangel, although there is no biblical evidence to support it. See note 2.

[112] Michael Breen, Sun Myung Moon: The Early Years 1920-53 (Hurstpierpoint, U.K.: Refuge Books, 1997), pp. 36-37.

[113] Ibid., p. 37.

[114] Su Wong Chung, “Seung Do Kim, the Holy Lord Church and My Life as a 36 Couple.” https://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks1/Chung/Chung-860400.htm. Su Wong Chung is a grandson of Sung Do Kim.

[115] Sun Myung Moon, The Life Course of True Parents, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kogensha, 2000), pp. 37-38. Published in Japanese as Makotono Gofubosama no Shogai Rotei ②.

[116] EDP, p. 63.

[117] EDP, p. 64.

[118] Ibid.

[119] Ibid. 

[120] EDP, p. 65

[121] Ibid.

[122] Ibid.

[123] EDP, p. 67

[124] EDP, p. 60

[125] Cheon Seong Gyeong, The Holy Scripture of Cheon Il Guk (Seoul, Korea: Seonghwa Publications, 2014), p. 408.

[126] Sun Myung Moon, “Blessing and Ideal Family,” in Blessed Family and the Ideal Kingdom (New York: HSA-UWC, 2000), p.234.

[127] EDP, p. 60.

[128] EDP, p. 59

[129] EDP, p. 54

[130] Ibid.

[131] EDP, p. 59

[132] EDP, p. 61

[133] Ibid.

[134] Sun Myung Moon, Way of Unification, part 1 (Washington, D.C.: Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, 1998), p. 4.

[135] Moon, “Blessing and Ideal Family,” p. 232.

[136] EDP, p. 46.

[137] EDP, p. 74.

[138] Ibid.

[139] Ibid.

[140] EDP, pp. 74-75.

[141] EDP, pp. 75.

[142] Ibid.

[143] EDP, pp. 66.

[144] EDP, pp. 75.

[145] EDP, pp. 66-67.

[146] EDP, pp. 66.

[147] EDP, pp. 67.

[148] Sun Myung Moon, Learning the Divine Principle from the Words of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, part 1 (Tokyo: Kogensha, 2012), p.182. Published in Japanese as Bun Senmei Sensei no Mikotoba ni Manabu Touitsu Genri.

[149] Sun Myung Moon, “Becoming the Leaders in Building A World of Peace,” August 24, 1992, Little Angels Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea. https://www.tparents.org/ Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon92/SM920825.HTM

[150] EDP, p. 61. The “root of sin” is another name of “original sin” in the Divine Principle (EDP, p. 72).

[151] Moon, Way of Unification, part 1, p.5. Italics added

[152] Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, Cheon Seong Gyeong: Selections from the Speeches of True Parents (Seoul, Korea: Sunghwa Publishing Company, 2006), p. 1139. Italics added

[153] Moon, “Blessing and Ideal Family,” p. 408. Italics added

[154] EDP, p. 181. Italics added

[155] See subsection 3 of the preceding section

[156] Sun Myung Moon, “70 Points to Live By,” July 2001, 12-Day Seminar in Hawaii. https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon01/SunMyungMoon-010700.htm

[157] Cheon Seong Gyeong (2006), p. 135

[158] EDP, p. 68

[159] Ibid.

[160] Ibid.

[161] EDP, p. 168

[162] EDP, p. 118

[163] Sun Myung Moon, “Heaven’s Side and Satan’s Side,” February 20, 1983, Belvedere, Tarrytown, New York.  https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon83/ 830220.htm.

[164] EDP, pp. 68-69

[165] All the three passages are found in “Sun Myung Moon, Prayers: A Lifetime of Conversation with Our Heavenly Father.” https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Books/Prayers/Prayers.pdf

[166] Cheon Seong Gyeong (2006), p. 1117

[167] EDP, p. 172

[168] Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, Tradition, book 1 (New York: The Rose of Sharon Press, 1985), p. 163

[169] EDP, p. 172

[170] EDP, p. 171

[171] EDP, p. 118

[172] EDP, p. 72

[173] EDP, pp. 72-74

[174] EDP, p. 23

[175] EDP, p. 33-34

[176] Sun Myung Moon, “Declaring the Era of the Peace Kingdom,” March 23, 2004, Address to the United States Congress, Washington, D.C.  https://www.tparents.org/ Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon04/SM040323.htm.

[177] Sun Myung Moon, The Way for Young People (Seoul, Korea: Family Federation for World Peace and Unification International, 1998), p. 37

[178] EDP, p. 136

[179] EDP, p. 138

[180] EDP, pp. 192-94

[181] EDP, p. 194

[182] Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, English trans. of 2nd ed., ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), p.293

[183] Ibid., p. 295

[184] Ibid., p. 294

[185] Ibid., p. 296

[186] Ibid., p. 301

[187] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 (Edinburg: T. & T. Clark, 1956), p. 478

[188] Ibid. IV/1, p. 508

[189] Ibid. II/2, p. 94

[190] Ibid. II/2, p. 116

[191] Ibid. IV/1, p. 508

[192] Ibid. IV/1, p. 509

[193] Ibid. IV/1, p. 511

[194] Karl Barth, Christ and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5, trans. T. A. Smail (New York: Collier Book, 1962), p. 113

[195] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, vol. I, Human Nature (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964), p. 179-82

[196] Ibid., pp. 182-83

[197] Ibid., pp. 185-86

[198] Ibid., pp. 150, 263

[199] Ibid., p. 268

[200] Ibid., p. 269

[201] Ibid., p. 261

[202] The terms “evolutionary creationism” and “theistic evolutionism” are usually interchangeable. But the emphasis of the former is on “creationism” with “evolutionary” merely as an adjective, and that of the latter is on “evolutionism” with “theistic” merely as an adjective. So the former may sound slightly less liberal than the latter.

[203] Ted Davis, “Theistic Evolution: History and Beliefs.” https://biologos.org/articles/ theistic-evolution-history-and-beliefs

[204] This book was published after his Hulsean Lectures at the University of Cambridge in 1901-1902

[205] F. R. Tennant, The Origin and Propagation of Sin, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1906), p. 95

[206] Ibid., p. 75

[207] Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006).

[208] https://biologos.org/about-us#our-mission

[209] Denis O. Lamoureux, Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008).

[210] Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brozos Press, 2012).

[211] Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005).

[212] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity and Evolution: Reflections on Science and Religion, trans. René Hague (New York: A Harvest Book, 1969), p. 40. Italics added

[213] Humani Generis, 36. http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12human.htm

[214] Ibid., 37

[215] Piet Schoonenberg, Man and Sin: A theological View, tr. Joseph Donceel (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965), p. 193

[216] Ibid., p. 194.

[217] Ibid., pp. 63-80

[218] Ibid., p. 101

[219] Piet Schoonenberg, “Original Sin and Man’s Situation,” Theology Digest 15 (1967): 2.

[220] Karl Rahner, Hominisation: The Evolutionary Origin of Man as a Theological Problem, trans. W. J. O’Hara (Freiburg: Herder, 1958; London: Burns & Oates, 1965), pp. 108f

[221] Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dyck (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), p. 109

[222] Ibid., p. 114

[223] Ansfried Hulsbosch, God in Creation and Evolution, trans. Martin Versfeld (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965).

[224] Stephen J. Duffy, “Our Hearts of Darkness: Original Sin Revisited,” Theological Studies 49 (1988): 597-622. Also see his “Genes, Original Sin and the Human Proclivity to Evil,” Horizons 32, no. 2 (2005): 210-34.

[225] Jack Mahoney, Christianity in Evolution: An Exploration (Washington, D.C.: George-town University Press, 2011).

[226] John F. Haught, God after Darwin: A Theology of Evolution, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 2000); Ernst M. Conradie, “John Haught on Original Sin: A Conversation,” HTS Theological Studies 72, no. 4 (2016):1-10

[227] Credo of the People of God 16. http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/motu_proprio/ documents/hf_p-vi_motu-proprio_19680630_credo.html. Catechism of the Catholic Church 402-405

[228] Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 302

[229] Ibid., p. 302. Italics added

[230] Ibid., p. 303

[231] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, p. 508

[232] Ibid., IV/1, p. 508

[233] Ibid., IV/1, pp. 507-8

[234] Niebuhr, Human Nature, pp. 267-68

[235] Dennis Venema and Darrel Falk, “Does Genetics Point to a Single Primal Couple?” https://biologos.org/articles/does-genetics-point-to-a-single-primal-couple

[236] Collins, The Language of God, p. 209

[237] Lamoureux, Evolutionary Creation, p. 315

[238] Enns, The Evolution of Adam, P. 119

[239] Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity and Evolution, p. 193. Italics original

[240] Wiley, Original Sin, p. 124

[241] Karl Rahner, “Theological Reflections on Monogenism,” in Theological Investigations, vol. I (Baltimore, Md.: Helicon Press, 1965), pp. 229-96

[242] Karl Rahner, “Evolution and Original Sin,” in The Evolving World and Theology, ed. Johannes Metz (N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1967), pp. 61-73

[243] Mahoney, Christianity in Revolution, p. x; Haught, God after Darwin, p. 137

[244] W. Scott Poole, Satan in America: The Devil We Know (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), p. 10.

[245] Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, pp. 162-63

[246] Ibid., p. 167.

[247] Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3, ibid., p. 522

[248] Ibid., p. 351

[249] Ibid., p. 530.

[250] Niebuhr, Human Nature, p. 180

[251] Ted Davis, “Evolution and Original Sin: The Historical/Ideal View.” https://biologos.org/ articles/evolution-and-original-sin-the-historical-ideal-view

[252] Piet Schoonenberg, God’s World in the Making (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), pp. 8-9

[253] Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, ed. Cornelius Ernst, trans. Richard Strachan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), p. 127

[254] Catechism of the Catholic Church 391

[255] “Satan Seen Increasingly as a Myth, Even within the Church Itself.” http://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/satan-seen-increasingly-myth-even-within-church-itself-30605

[256] Moon, “Blessing and Ideal Family,” p. 232

[257] Sun Myung Moon, “The Day of All Things 1982.” Speech at Belvedere, Tarrytown, NY, June 21, 1982. https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon82/820621. htm

[258] EDP, p. 42

[259] Sun Myung Moon, “Heaven’s Side and Satan’s Side.” Speech at Belvedere, Tarrytown, NY, February 20, 1983. https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon83/ 830220.htm

[260] Sun Myung Moon, “Leaders Conference - April 8, 1989.” https://www.tparents.org/ Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon89/SM890408.htm

[261] EDP, p. 57

[262] The Book of the Secrets of Enoch 31:5. http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/pseudepigrapha/ enochs2.htm#Ch31

[263] F. R. Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), p. 209. Italics original

[264] Sotah 9b. https://halakhah.com/sotah/sotah_9.html

[265] Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin, p. 156

[266] Robert Gordis, The Word and the Book: Studies in Biblical Language and Literature (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1976), p.79

[267] Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis III.14.94; see John Ernest Leonard Oulton and Henry Chadwick, eds., Alexandrian Christianity: Selected Translations of Clement and Origen (London: SCM Press, 1954), p. 84

[268] Ambrose, De Paradiso 15.73; see his Hexameron, Paradise, and Cain and Abel, trans. John J. Savage (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1961), pp. 351-52

[269] Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, trans. Patrick Lynch, ed. James Canon Bastible (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books and Publishers, 1974), p. 107

[270] J. Coppens, La connaissance du bien et du mal et le péché du Paradis (Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1948).

[271] J. Alberto Soggin, Old Testament and Oriental Studies (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1975).

[272] Ibid., p. 101

[273] Ibid., pp. 107-8

[274] Soggin refers to those scholars who have the sexual interpretation around the middle of the twentieth century and those who are against it; see ibid., p. 102, note 35

[275] Young Oon Kim, Unification Theology, revised (New York: HSA-UWC, 1987), pp. 98-100. Andrew Wilson, “The Sexual Interpretation of the Human Fall,” Unification Theology in Comparative Perspectives, ed. Anthony Guerra (Barrytown, N.Y.: Unification Theological Seminary, 1988), pp. 51-70

[276] John Day says that “The knowledge of good and evil which the serpent tempts the first humans to acquire is quite unrelated to the fertility cult,” and that the fertility cult is not depicted as an important concern of the Yahwist source elsewhere”; see his “The Serpent in the Garden of Eden and its Background,” adapted and expanded from his From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11 (London: T&T Clark, 2013), pp. 35-37. https://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2015/04/day398028.shtml

[277] This expression is from Michael Reeves and Hans Madueme, “Threads in a Seamless Garment: Original Sin in Systematic Theology,” in Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin, ed. Hans Madueme and Michael Reeves (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), pp. 209-24.

[278] Cheon Seong Gyeong (2006), p. 1162

[279] Reeves and Madueme, “Threads in a Seamless Garment,” p. 210

[280] Ibid., p. 223

[281] See, for example, Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, pp. 512-13

[282] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, vol. II, Human Destiny (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964), p. 77

[283] Jerry D. Korsmeyer, Evolution and Eden: Balancing Original Sin and Contemporary Science (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), pp. 54-55.

[284] Reeves and Madueme, “Threads in a Seamless Garment,” pp. 210-11

[285] EDP, p. 172

[286] Sun Myung Moon, “The New Messiah, and the Formula of God in History,” Lisner Auditorium, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., February 21, 1972. https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon72/SM720221.htm

[287] Carl R. Trueman, “Original Sin and Modern Theology,” in Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin, ed. Hans Madueme and Michael Reeves (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2014), p. 186.

[288] EDP, p. 40

[289] Sun Myung Moon, “The Search for Absolute Values: Harmony Among the Sciences,” Founder’s Address at The Fifth International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, Washington, D.C., November 25-28, 1976. https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/ SunMyungMoon76/SunMyungMoon-761125.htm

[290] Thomas J. Centrella shows that within evolutionary creationism or theistic evolutionism there are six different views: 1) “total atheistic or pantheistic evolution,” 2) “deistic evolution,” 3) “polygenistic theistic evolution,” 4) “monogenistic theistic evolution; broad natural transformism,” 5) “monogenistic theistic evolution: natural transformation for Adam only,” and 6) “monogenistic theistic evolution: special transformation.” See “Is Theistic Evolution Truly Plausible?” http://kolbecenter.org/is-theistic-evolution-truly-plausible/. Unification evolutionary creationism would belong to the fourth view, while most evolutionary creationists, denying monogenism, belong to the third view. By the way, Centrella himself adheres to none of the six, saying that evolutionary creationism is not truly plausible.

[291] Sun Myung Moon, “The Master Speaks on Creation,” March and April 1965. https://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon65/SunMyungMoon-650404.htm

[292] Jonathan Wells, “God’s Creation of Adam and Eve,” December 11, 2013. https://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Wells/Wells-131211.pdf

[293] This is shown by Ian McDougall, Francis H. Brown, and John G. Fleagle, “Stratigraphic Placement and Age of Modern Humans from Kibish, Ethiopia,” Nature 433 (2005): 733-36. Although the fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco considered to be those of Homo sapiens are dated to as early as about 300,000 years ago, their classification as Homo sapiens is still questioned due to the lack of genomic evidence.

[294] Kenneth W. Kemp, “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 85, no. 2 (2011): 231-32

[295] The “Out of Africa” theory, which is uniregionalism, is not necessarily monogenistic, still it quite strongly leans towards polygenism, whereas multiregionalism, which holds that the species of Homo sapiens arose in different multiple regions, is inherently polygenistic. See Kemp, “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis”: 221-23

[296] See, for example, David W. Cameron and Colin P. Groves, Bones, Stones and Molecules: “Out of Africa” and Human Origins (Burlington, Mass.: Elsevier Academic Press, 2004)

[297] Wells, “God’s Creation of Adam and Eve.” Italics added