Christ the Ophthalmologist

That which causes the great divide between God and Man, and that which is in need of the reconciliation wrought by Him who is both God and Man, is the unfortunate reality which the Church calls original sin. The substance of this teaching is most clearly expressed by the Apostle Paul: "Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned...one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men" (Rm 5:12,18).

To escape the charge that this teaching is outdated by attributing the transmission of a spiritual reality in the same manner as that of a biological one, as if one man's guilt can be passed on to his subsequent offspring as if he were passing on a gene, it may be helpful to look at original sin from a different perspective by evaluating another dimension of its reality. For, in remaining consistent with the Council of Trent's teaching that Adam lost "the holiness and justice [he had] received from God," and that he was "stained by the sin of disobedience [which] he transmitted to all mankind" (canon 2), the question is still often perceived as unanswerable in our day as to why Adam's eating of the fruit affects us in such a real way. How and why is his guilt applied to our souls? What semantics are to be used in order to give a fitting, meaningful explanation of this doctrine to those who have trouble accepting it?

The first thing to be considered in attempting to discover original sin in a sharper light is to ask the question: what exactly did Adam do? Was it a mere individual, autonomous act he mistakenly executed or an intentional act prompted by an underlying, rebellious influence?

Adam's action in the Garden of Eden must be viewed in light of the Lord's direction to "eat of every tree of the garden, but of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die"(Gn 2:16-17). Once Adam acquiesced to the prompting of his wife to eat of this tree he is seen as objectively disobeying God. He is no longer innocent of that charge.

Next to be examined is the Tree itself. This particular tree was not intrinsically evil, for it was good insofar as it too was created by God, hence evil had no monopoly on its crop. However, in eating from it, Adam was consciously going against the will of God, and the result of his ignoring the divine command is what brought about the effects of his sin in us.

Perhaps this begs the next question long ago asked by Socrates: "Whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods?" (Plato, Euthyphro). Indeed, was Adam wrong in reaching for this Tree's fruit simply because God commanded him not to do so or was he wrong because he was endangering himself by consuming something poisonous to himself?

That question goes beyond the scope of this reflection, but it is worth noting that Christian tradition adheres to the belief that God, as Goodness Itself, loves good things because they are intrinsically good. C.S. Lewis adds the helpful caveat that one thing that is intrinsically good is for a rational creature to freely obey its Creator (c.f. The Problem of Pain), but here it is sufficient to say that God does not arbitrarily judge some things good and some things evil according to a whimsical will. He has made things good and only a distortion of their innate goodness is what makes a thing evil.

If He commanded Adam to not eat of a certain tree it is because that tree's fruit was objectively not good for the man to eat. It is not merely Adam's disobedience that is bad, although that certainly destroyed his relationship with God (and this destruction is at the core of the doctrine of original sin). The Tree's fruit had a certain toxicity to it which is why it was designated as nonedible for the man and woman to begin with.

But, the incredulous still asks, could the eating of it really bring about the loss of spiritual and physical life?

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil can be seen as a symbol for the limits of Man's domain in Eden. This tree delineated the boundaries to which Man's existence was extended. As a rational, free creature, Man could choose to remain within those boundaries or move beyond them. When Adam "ate" of it he chose to step beyond those limits established for his well-being and in so doing subverted the authority of the One who creates, judges, and orders. He grasped at the role of God Himself.

When Christ would eventually come, He would expose the horror of such a grasping by demonstrating its opposite: "Though He was in the form of God, He did not deem equality with God, a thing to be grasped" (Ph 2:6). By not grasping at the sovereignty of the Father as Adam had done before, Christ instead chose to empty Himself in obedience (c.f. Ph 2:7) thus holding up Adam as the negative image of the true Son who is the original. Adam had fallen below his intended purpose as a trusting son, thus the first sin was committed.

But what prompted such a missing of the mark on the part of Adam? Where did this rebellion come from? Whence came such a distaste for the rest of the fruit in the Garden which led to the tasting of the one forbidden fruit?

"You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gn 3:4-5). It was the Serpent who had cunningly planted a destructive seed in the hearts of Adam and Eve. The Serpent is not to be seen as a fictional, literary myth that points to a more real and concrete impetus in Adam and Eve's sin. By including the Serpent in this story, the Hebrew author was doing more than borrowing the idea of a snake from other ancient Middle Eastern cultures such as in the famed story of Gilgamesh. Satan is indeed a true myth that points to a real sinister being who acts counter to the intended design of God's will, in the life of Man and in the life of the World itself.

The seed that the Serpent planted was destructive because it would prove to destroy Man's relationship with God by causing our first parents to not trust the governance and care of God for them. When that seed of distrust was planted, an existential chasm was formed between the Creator and His Creation. Competition was introduced between the two in which the needs of the creature were seen vis-à-vis the apparent needs of the Creator. The origin of Adam's sin is to be found in this new perception of God and Man's relationship. No longer is God a Father to him, instead He is a Master prohibiting freedom to be had by his inferiors. By the implantation of the Serpent's seed, Adam had adopted this novel outlook and, as a result, the order of the Cosmos had been upended even before our first parents opened their mouths to the fruit.

By understanding this gulf between God and Man which has now been formed, one can better evaluate the punishment that ensues when the couple disobeys. The Lord multiplied their pains in childbearing, He cursed the ground with thorns and thistles, He decreed Man's new destiny to depart from the Garden and return to the dust from which he had been taken. This indeed is a great mystery.

The seemingly isolated act of Adam has ramifications in every aspect of his co-existence with the world. All things are interconnected at a deeper level than is apparent. There is no such thing as an isolated act, for Creation's design is interwoven in such a way that one thread is hardly decipherable in view of the complete fabric. The particulars enhance or subtract from the universal, they can never remain neutral. It is thus that Adam's sin is passed onto subsequent generations to follow, for in the words of the poet John Donne: "No man is an island entire of itself." Though we are all related physically as humans, we are even more closely related in an enigmatic way in our metaphysical connection to each other.

With this established, now these questions ought to be asked: could not one man stop this punishment of Adam's sin by an apology? If one man's sin has such lasting effect, and all men are so closely connected, could not any man's regret of it have similar effect? Could not any man's sorrow be sufficient to reconcile us back to God? Could contrition possibly remake that which had been unmade? Could an apology maybe reorder the disharmony of the Cosmos even though Creation's high point, Man himself, had called its very harmony into question?

It would seem that the problem of sin does not have such an easy solution. As the Arbiter of right and wrong, the Judge of good and evil, the Source of existence in the void of non-existence is cast aside as unnecessary, a mere apology cannot make things right again. The will of Adam in choosing to not need God's commands is reflected throughout Man's subsequent history. It was the French polymath Laplace who would tell Napoleon in the 19th century he had no need of God in his hypothesis of the origin of the Universe. Adam had set the stage, not only for Laplace's wanton dismissal of the idea of God, but for all Mankind's indifference towards Him by the eating of the fruit.

In Bethlehem, Christ would have to enter the disorder caused by Adam's mistrust in order to empower a man's heartfelt apology with such substantial reconciliatory affect. But until the true obedience of Bethlehem's Offspring is tapped into, the Garden remains shut, the chasm too wide to cross. An apology cannot alter reality.

Still, if Adam and Eve were sorry for their disobedience and, humbly accepting their punishment left the Garden, does not God's lasting judgment on Man seem a bit harsh? If God the Father loved His children, why does not an apology at least soften the effects of sin? The answer might be found within the written account of the Fall or, more accurately, the lack of something written there.

It is telling the author of Genesis did not tell of our parents' reaction to receiving their sentence of exile. What are we to make of such silence? How are we to evaluate the lack of a description of such a crucial element in the story? We assume that they were sorry after the fact, but perhaps they were not completely so. Perhaps that seed of mistrust the Serpent had planted in their hearts, though stunted in its germination by the shock of being found clad with dead leaves by the Lord who had created them naked, still lied dormant and ready to awake at the right moment. Perhaps that seed had continued to color their perception of their Creator in a darker light. Perhaps still, He was not perceived as a Father, but only as the Expeller who hoarded unlimited freedom. The only response could be for them to turn their backs on Him and leave.

What great folly was this! Did they fail to notice God's heart recoiling within Him (c.f. Hos 8:11) as He pronounced inevitable judgment on the world! Far from causing the pain that comes from Adam's sin, the Lord can only sadly say farewell to that primordial relationship He shared with His Creation as its Father because that Creation had now hidden itself from His sight.

Yet, is this not the risk He took in making Man free? Unlike Odin whose "hand can only make slaves"(Richard Wagner, The Ring of the Nibelung), God ventured into the realm of uncompelled love, hoping against hope that His love would be returned. Alas, sometimes, as is the case with Adam, it is not.

This unfortunate situation can be likened to a child telling its first lie to his parent. When he is eventually outed three things happen.

The first is the revocation of privileges. He is grounded. That freedom which he previously enjoyed is taken from him to teach him that the telling of the truth matters more than anything that could be gained by a lie.

This sort of punishment Adam and Eve were conspicuously aware of. The Cherubim and the Flaming Sword are posted to guard the way back to the Tree of Life (Gn 3:24). Freedom was lost as they were driven out of the Garden where they were previously not enslaved by their passions. There is no longer the privileged mastery of Man's will over his spirit, no longer the clarity of his intellect in the light of truth. A war has broken out and Man's heart is the battlefield in which he has lost command of his own forces. As Flannery O'Connor put it "free will is not one will, but many wills conflicting in one man" (Wise Blood, Author's Note). This explains the Apostle's words: "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do...Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me" (Rm 7:15,19,24).

The second result of a child's lie to his parent is that the child becomes "enlightened" to the awareness that he is not bound to the truth and can live in a world apart from his parent by the telling of a lie. Like in the children's story Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, the lying child can be like the mischievous boy Max. He is able to escape reality, go to his room and thence to the imaginary island of wild beasts, there to be enthroned as king. He is not bound to the same world as others. He can create another world himself. The reality in which he now dwells is different than that of his parent and so he can now do what he wants. But, like the fictional Max, the lying child will begin to long for home and the way things were when he lived in the truth. The parent who had been the primary means through which he had encountered life and love in the world has now been separated from him and, as a result, helplessness, dislocation, and loneliness become his lot.

If not immediately aware of this consequence, having lost their innocence, Adam and Eve were to quickly recognize it as they venture off on their own apart from God. Their pain of separation is enhanced by seeing the murder of one son at the hands of another (c.f. Gn 4:8), by struggling to attain their daily needs, and by the ruling of their passions over their sense of virtue. They quickly realize things are quite different East of Eden in the land which they have chosen to encamp. When the constant security of their Father is removed from their sight, they are left toiling in the sweat of their faces, trying to make sense of the world while simultaneously longing for former days in which they could make sense of it.

Now the third effect instigated by the child's lie does not actually affect the child at all, it is experienced by the parent. For so too must the parent now face the reality that the child whom he has loved from the beginning has chosen to live in a world apart from him. The lie is more than a deception or distortion of the truth for the parent. It is the child's declaration that there is a part of him where the parent is not a welcome guest, a part of him that hides "among the trees of the garden" at the sound of the parent's footsteps (c.f. Gn 3:8). The parent can do nothing but mourn the lost intimate relationship he had with the child.

Just as the pain of the parent does not belong to the child to experience, our first parents could not know the heartbreak they caused the Lord. They were never able to comprehend the immensity of hurt they afflicted on the Father by the eating of the fruit because they could never really comprehend the love that He had for them. The full force of their sin was hidden from their sight and, ever since, Man has not been able to live an existence that wholly perceives the hurt paternal heart of God.

And perhaps this can be seen as the original sin of our race: our ignorance of God's love for us and how deep is the hurt He experienced by our rejection of His eternal plan to be a Father to us. Maybe the love of God has now become a type of knowledge we must acquire- rather than intuitively know- because of Adam's sin. Maybe knowing the love of the Father was originally like knowing how to blink; but now it has become more like knowing our multiplication table. Similarly, as it takes work to know how to speak, so too it takes work to know the love of God. We could not be expected to know how to talk properly if we knew not the rules of grammar. So too, because of the original sin of our our first parents, we cannot be expected to know how to live according to God's will if we know not His love. His love is as consistent as arithmetic, His love is as structured as language. We are ordered to live in His love and the travesty of original sin is that we are incapable of doing that because we do not know Him, we must relearn the whole thing. He is a stranger to us, no longer a Father. Maybe Adam and Eve's vision has become our own and, our vision having become blurred, needs healing by His grace.

As light is sometimes observed to be a particle and sometimes as a wave, maybe original sin can be seen as a stain passed onto us by the weakening of our wills, as well as a state in which we are conceived that has dimmed our intellect.

Or to go in another direction, whereas man's original sin primarily resides in the intellect through the form of ignorance of truth, a man's actual sin primarily resides in the will through the form of a volitional movement away from the good. For a baby is not held accountable for his father's sins because they were never willed by the infant himself. Yet, the Church still does teach that the baby inherits its father's guilt apart from any actual sin it commits and is nonetheless still in need of redemption. St. Augustine formulated this important point with the words: "[The infant] has broken the covenant, because it has been broken in him although not by him" (City of God, Book 16, Chap. 27).

Could this not be because the condition of original sin is an existence into which the baby is conceived, an existence that cannot truly see God because its parents have obstructed its view by remaining hidden among the other trees of the world. Perhaps the Holy Spirit's mission to "convince the world of sin" (Jn 16:8) is not only to show man that he sins, but to show him what sin has actually done to God. Maybe His is the job to give a clear vision to the eyes of our souls.

Maybe Christ's words on the cross, "Father forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Lk 23:24) is in reference not solely to the actual sin of the soldiers nailing him to the tree of Calvary, but more universally to the original sin of the hands of Man, which, knowingly or unknowingly, have reached for the tree of Eden. Encompassed in the true Son's plea for forgiveness is the light that will heal the blindness caused by original sin, a light that will obliterate man's ignorance of the God who loves and cares for him as Father.

Like the smearing of the fish's gall in the eyes of the blind Tobit (c.f. Tob 11:8), the scales of original sin will be peeled away and man might again receive the spirit of adoptive Sonship (c.f. Gal 4:5) which enables him once again to cry out: "Abba, Father!"(c.f. Rm 8:15).

In order for original sin to be washed away at baptism, this familial and trusting relationship between Father and Son must be restored. The blindingly dark situation in which Man is conceived, this state of original sin which does not see God as love itself (c.f. 1 Jn 4:8) ), must be enlightened by Him who is the "Light of the World" (Jn 8:12) and, as the Early Church Fathers called Him, the "Lover of Men".

The chasm between God and Man must be crossed by the bridge Christ Himself constructs by His obedient trust in the Father. In the language of the ancient Holy Saturday sermon, the sword which pierced Christ's side will sheath the Flaming Sword blocking Man's path back to the Tree of Life. Let us no longer fail to see the ignorance, the darkness which Adam's sin has brought to our race. "For judgement I came into the world," says the new Adam, the Great Ophthalmologist, Jesus Christ, "that those who do not see may see"(Jn 9:39).