Crime And Original Sin.
Whether or not the Biblical story of original sin was a literal event or an allegory is not something that I care to dispute. Debating about weather not this event happened takes away from the symbolic importance of the story in that it symbolizes how people can be corrupted when they are given the opportunity to commit a crime or a sin.
People are inclined to act whenever they are given the opportunity to indulge in their desires. Adam and Eve were not blinded by a veil of ignorance(as Rawls puts it) because the paradise that they found themselves in was the result of them being born with the attributes of virtue, reason, logic, grace in what was a Divine holism. The water and the trees were not merely “pure” in the physical sense of the word, but were pure in that they were an expression of God’s simplicity as it relates to truth, beauty and goodness. We innately know what is beautiful regardless of weather it is an Oak tree or a modern Victorian lamp post. We know that kindness, reason and logic are good not merely because they are faculties of the mind but because they require the person to be of a good character before they are utilized. A person may use all three faculties to deceive others, but they must be to some extent good or else they could not exist at all(St. Augustine). We know that the positive effects of beauty and goodness are true in that they are able to satisfy the emotional and intellectual needs of the human being.
It is also true that human beings require nutritionally dense food to maintain good health, the paradise Adam and Eve inherited would have been an ideal place for eating foods that were pure in that they were untainted by the ethnic foods that post sin societies would go on to develop. Apples were not used to make English apple cider or apple pie, grains were not used to make Roman pizza, Potatoes and cabbage were not used to make the Russian Borscht soup and dairy was not used to make Greek yoghurt. Adam and Eve would have known that it would be unwise to waste scarce resources by eating a pizza in one sitting.
Adam and Eve also would have known, due to their advanced abilities, that the forces of the accursed would use the mundane and normative aspects of their environment (such as an apple tree) to lure them into eating a poisoned/sin laden apple. Apples are not sinister in of themselves, but Adam and Eve ate that particular apple because they assumed that all apples are infallible due to the fact that they are a universal symbol. Adam and Eve thus confused the symbol with the content of the apple. Symbolism is the result of analysis, and to analyze is to examine around the object whereas the essence of an apple can be inferred by way of pure reason and can therefore not be known through the senses. For instance, the form of an apple precedes is physical constitution.
We cannot know the essence of the forbidden apple, but we can infer that the apple symbolized ingratitude towards God in that Adam and Eve chose to believe the angel who did not know what he preached. The fallen angel fell because he tried to supersede something that could never be superseded as it was far beyond the grasp of any man or angel. The angel did not know the limits of his knowledge much like how addicts do not know the limits of their substance abuse. Adam and Eve, like the angel, also wanted to transcend a transcendental lifestyle(in the Emersonian sense of the word) by eating an apple that was sold to them as having arcane properties.
It turned out that the forbidden fruit was not forbidden because it had supernormal properties, but because the fruit symbolized a decline in virtue in that Adam and Eve would reject their higher selves(God) to follow and unnatural state of being which prefers to fulfil arbitrary desires as opposed to fulfilling virtue.
Adam and Eve broke a law, but they did not commit a crime which would result in them sitting idly in a prison cell. They would both suffer from the social stigma of losing face, losing their transcendental ways of living and having to now toil to make a mere loaf of bread while the world stares at them with facial expressions that are meant to show their disappointment.
It is thus the will-to-sin that imprisons the person before they commit an act of theft or assault in that will eventually be tormented by regret. The will-to-sin is internal whereas the opportunity to commit a crime is purely external in that it begets an opportunistic action. A person may have an urge to assault someone just to satisfy his or her violent urges, but if he or she lives in an environment where there are few alleyways or forest trails, then their lack of courage may outweigh their desire to harm someone.
The inclination to act, being the first habit of man, precedes evil habits in the external world as we are already spiritually corrupted by original sin(Aquinas). One can make the seemingly valid argument that the person who committed sexual assault or sheer battery inherited violent traits because he or she came from an abusive family or was sexually assaulted by a family member. This argument is fallacious because if violence towards strangers is caused by living in an abusive family, then the every family within the family tree must have been abusive-which is an absurd assumption to make.
Every person, regardless of what sensations or anxieties incline a man to behave in a way that is bad, apply their vices when they are inspired by ideas of wrongdoing that are entirely their own. A violent person could say that they were inspired do wrong because they saw a scary film, but the violent person must think of ways of committing that crime that best suit their capabilities. Execution differs from the methodological idea.
Adam and Eve, even though they were born uncorrupted by original sin, were still susceptible to persuasion in that they knew what they were doing was wrong but they could not resist the possibility of knowing the penultimate truth about God which they knew could never be comprehended by the human mind. Doubting that which could not be doubted caused the decline of Adam and Eve as they did the reverse of what Descartes found out when he attempted to doubt that he could think only to realize that doubting is thinking.
End.
