Born Bad: Original Sin and the Making of the Western World, by James Boyce
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Born Bad: Original Sin and the Making of the Western World, by James Boyce
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"Original sin is the Western world's creation story."According to the Christian doctrine of original sin, humans are born inherently bad, and only through God's grace can they achieve salvation. In this captivating and controversial book, acclaimed historian James Boyce explores how this centuries-old concept has shaped the Western view of human nature right up to the present. Boyce traces a history of original sin from Adam and Eve, St. Augustine, and Martin Luther to Adam Smith, Sigmund Freud, and Richard Dawkins, and explores how each has contributed to shaping our conception of original sin.Boyce argues that despite the marked decline in church attendance in recent years, religious ideas of morality still very much underpin our modern secular society, regardless of our often being unaware of their origins. If today the specific doctrine has all but disappeared (even from churches), what remains is the distinctive discontent of Western people—the feelings of guilt and inadequacy associated not with doing wrong, but with being wrong. In addition to offering an innovative history of Christianity, Boyce offers new insights in to the creation of the West.Born Bad is the sweeping story of a controversial idea and the remarkable influence it still wields.
Born Bad: Original Sin and the Making of the Western World, by James Boyce- Amazon Sales Rank: #976302 in Books
- Brand: Boyce, James
- Published on: 2015-06-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.10" w x 6.10" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 208 pages
Review "Boyce provides a solid, albeit complex, description of the presence of original sin concepts . . . the book has tremendous merit in its presentation of a nearly 2,000-year history of a major aspect of the Western intellectual tradition."—Choice"Born Bad is one of the best books on the history of the evolution of Christianity and its ideology. It is beautifully written and very well argued. This book is a necessary read for all those who are interested in Christianity, its evolution, and its history."—Washington Book Review"James Boyce has...written a brilliant and exhilarating work of popular scholarship." —The Washington Post "[Born Bad] makes a compelling argument...an engrossing study...Boyce leads us into new understandings of some of the central figures in Western culture....This is an exceptional, highly recommended work, innovative and creative in surprising ways."—Publisher's Weekly Starred Review"Boyce covers a lot of ground and explores a number of authors in this wide-ranging treatment, and the result is impressive. Readable and comprehensive, the book provides worthwhile food for thought. Boyce successfully illustrates the ability of original sin to dominate Western culture for nearly two millennia."—Kirkus"Born Bad is one of the best books on the history of the evolution of Christianity and its ideology. It is beautifully written and very well argued. This book is a necessary read for all those who are interested in Christianity, its evolution, and its history." —The Washington Book ReviewPraise for the Australian Edition “This highly original, readable book shows how the Christian idea that we are all somehow fundamentally warped has helped to shape democratic politics, free markets, sexual anxieties and even debates about whether dead babies go to heaven.” — Marion Maddox, author of God Under Howard and Taking God to School“An imaginative and utterly unpredictable book. Alleluia.” - The Australian“Boyce finds fascinating marks of the idea of original sin in the big liberal ideas of free-market economics, Darwinian evolution and psychological analysis, but no compensating marks equivalent to the Christian idea of sanctifying grace.” - The Monthly"James Boyce is the best kind of historian of ideas. He does not reduce the complexity of his subject to a few easy lessons. He opens up the history of the idea of original sin rather than narrowing it down...there is an unblinking regard for the efforts the human race has made to understand itself."- The AgePraise for Van Diemen's Land:"The most significant colonial history since The Fatal Shore. In re-imagining Australia's past, it invents a new future." —Richard Flanagan"Like the best history, Van Diemen's Land is not an artfully constructed narrative with the (inevitably inadequate) evidence banished to endnotes, but a dialogue between historian and reader as they explore the fragile sources, and the silences, together." —Inga Clendinnen"The publication of Van Diemen's Land signals an entirely fresh approach to Australian history-writing . . . this is a brilliant publication." — Alan AtkinsonPraise for 1835:"Anyone who calls Melbourne home – in fact anyone who calls Australia home – should read this book." —Peter Mares"A first-class piece of historical writing. Boyce is a graceful and robust stylist and a fine storyteller." —Sunday Age
About the Author James Boyce is the multiple award-winning author of 1835 and Van Diemen’s Land. He has a PhD from the University of Tasmania, where he is an honorary research associate of the School of Geography and Environmental Studies.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. IntroductionWhat is wrong with me? This question has haunted the West for fifteen hundred years, but until recently it came with an answer – which was called original sin. Western people believed they were ‘born bad’ because they had inherited the sin of the first humans. Their understanding of themselves was shaped, as it has been in almost all cultures, by an overarching story of creation. Adam and Eve is an ancient myth whose origins are lost in the campfires of prehistory, making the Western interpretation of the story a comparatively recent innovation. The West shared the same primal parents as now vanished tribes, Jews, Muslims and Eastern (Orthodox) Christians, but it stood alone in seeing the eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden as the original sin – not only the first sin of human history, but also one that subsequently became innate to the human condition. Only in this version of creation did a decision to disobey God in Paradise become a sin that was inherited by all.The articulation of original sin and the making of the Western world were enmeshed. The doctrine, like the West itself, was a product of the tumultuous breakup of the Latin-speaking part of the Roman Empire. It underpinned the distinctive religion formulated by the Catholic Church as a Christian culture was built out of the imperial ruins. The creation story was the spiritual foundation on which the Western world was made, directing how people understood the divine, each other, the natural world and, above all, themselves.Original sin is not part of the wider Judeo-Christian tradition. For Jews and Eastern Christians, the doctrine’s divorce of sin from morality was incomprehensible. It was not just the modern mind that found it difficult to imagine how Adam’s sin could become everyone’s, or to conceive of a God who would condemn otherwise innocent people to hell because of it. In no other religion were people understood to be born bad; in no other were they conceived with a permanently corrupted nature that faced the wrath and judgment of God. The deity of the West is unique in judging people before they commit a moral act. Those who first fought against the doctrine, in the fifth century, argued that a newborn baby could not be regarded as a sinner. They lost the debate.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful. In Adam's Fall, Sinned We All? By Rob Hardy The possibility that people are born with original sin which they caught from Adam and Eve does not interest me much. I think of that creation story as a legend. Although many of my fellow citizens feel it to be literally true, it’s pretty easy for me simply to subscribe to the views of science that the world has existed not for thousands, but for millions, of years, and that there evolved a human species, not two individuals created in a perfect garden. That so many people believe contrary to my own beliefs is, however, of some interest. It was not until I read _Born Bad: Original Sin and the Making of the Western World_ (Counterpoint) by James Boyce that I realized that, legend or not, the original sin story has had pervasive effects on society, effects that continue even into our own scientific age. This is a concise though wide-ranging story, and Boyce has brightly covered the origins of the doctrine and its surprising influence on all subsequent ages, including our own.The concept of original sin is not in the Bible. In neither of the creation stories in Genesis is the word “sin” used. It was Saint Augustine who began to teach about the fall of Adam and Eve and the subsequent transmission of sin upon all their offspring. How this sin was transmitted to all of Adam’s successors was a confusion that would never be resolved, but Augustine preached that it was injected at coitus within the semen. This had the advantage of tying it to the bugbear of sex, and of emphasizing how different and free of seminal contamination Jesus was, being born by “infused immaculate seed” into Mary’s womb. Augustine suggested that God, being good, would ensure that babies who died early would gain salvation, but he wrote that he could give parents no guarantee of this. Luther, Calvin, and others taught that people were inherently sinful and liable to just hellfire. Calvin went further to say that it was a treacherous doctrine to think that people could do any act that would save themselves. Boyce makes a compelling case that with all the centuries of thinking that original sin was factual, it has cast its shadow through the Enlightenment and into our own times. The second half of his book is devoted to many famous thinkers like Bacon, Hobbes, Adam Smith, Hume, and Kant. Even the ones who were thinking only of secular subjects, or were outright atheists, Boyce shows, saw humanity at least in ways analogous to the story of the fall from Eden. Even Richard Dawkins is here; the selfish gene is analogous to original sin, and culture (and memes) have potential for breaking us out to altruism.Boyce explains that popular preachers like Billy Graham ascribed evil to Satan more than to any inherent nature, and this has been one reason the concept of original sin is not now so influential. It is also irrelevant to the Pentecostal feeling of ecstatic salvation; if you dwell on the fate of inherent sinners, you can’t have much of an upbeat church. Increasing secularism, too, has eroded the doctrine. But also, Boyce admits that although evil might be pervasive in human history, the documentary sources for history are going to focus on big actions from the rich and powerful. “There are relatively few records of the ‘small’ acts of kindness, compassion and self-sacrifice which, almost by definition, seek no recognition but keep children, communities and cultures alive.” Humans commit heinous acts, to be sure, and always have. But look at those around you, your family, your friends, those with whom you work. Is it actually realistic to say that they are, every one, born bad? Let us continue to let go of the doctrine of original sin.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Original sin is alive and, well ... By histprof Several epigrams about the nature of history come to mind when I consider this excellent volume: "The more things change the more they stay the same" is one; another is "What goes round comes round." James Boyce has taken a seemingly old-fashioned idea from a less-than-popular public field (theology) and made it not only comprehensible and relevant (related to us here and now) but also engaging and downright interesting. Anyone who has studied the history of theology is aware that there is little new under that sun; as a friend of mind once said, "We haven't been able to invent theologies that weren't known two thousand years ago by the early Christians." Well, Boyce argues a bit with that, but it is fascinating how sophisticated "modern" culture replicates so closely the ideological warfare of the first centuries of Christianity's life. But more than that, we are so arrogant in our cleverness that we fall into intellectual traps without being aware that we're caught like a bug in a venus flytrap. Stephen Hawkings ends up agreeing with St. Augustine, the creator and developer of the doctrine of original sin, and secularists assume the same attitude about human nature as Augustine without being aware of how "theistic" they are being. We might be happy to join them in their skepticism if it weren't for the hopelessness implicit in their world view. If they think humanity all on its own can bring about the golden age some of them like to envision, they are blind to the same capacity for depravity of which they accuse theists throughout history. The difference between Augustine and Hawkings is that the saint proffers redemption without placing the burden for it on a humanity that is unqualified to bring it about while our most popular contemporary skeptics abandon us to a universe that is just as brutal in some ways as Augustine's with no potential for escape from its harsh potentialities. This is an excellent study not only of theology but of the emptiness of much of contemporary intellectualism.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. This is a fresh and hugely intelligent overview of the origins and effect of the western ... By Paul Nelson This is a fresh and hugely intelligent overview of the origins and effect of the western Christian doctrine of "Original Sin". The author shows how this belief emerged, against considerable opposition, and how it has played out in western Christian history. He shows how in more recent times Christians have tended to disown this doctrine; but for me the really original and interesting part of the book is his exposition of how the doctrine continues to be re-imagined and to find new life today in non-religious thought-forms, in other words, how it continues to permeate our whole sense of who we (in the west) are. The book is written in a non-opinionated, non-shouty style, and the author seems able to understand and sympathize with motivations behind beliefs that he does not himself share...i.e, he writes with wisdom and respect. I found this a beautiful, insightful and hugely enjoyable book, a real page-turner.
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