The Bible is an antique volume
Emily Dickinson's Doctrine of Original Sin
In Critical companion to Emily Dickinson, Sharon Leiter says Dickinson uses the device of irony to object to
the vision of a wrathful God who punishes an essentially sinful humanity
in The Bible is an antique volume. This vision, according to Leiter, is in the Bible and the Calvinist religion of Dickinson. The version of original sin Dickinson objects to is the one in which
human beings (are) more sinned against than sinning.
But is there another version in which the reverse is the case?
Dickinson sent this poem in a letter to Edward her nephew who had left college to recuperate at home. Leiter thinks Edward might have been in the same situation as Dickinson was in Holyoke where Christ and human sinfulness were preached to students. The style of preaching, the last lines of the poem imply, might be the reason why some boys believed and some didn't. Dickinson, through this poem, advocates what Oliver Crisp, a professor of analytic theology, calls a moderate Reformed view of original sin.
Among Reformed theologians, there is an uncontroversial theological claim that human beings are born with a condition of moral vitiation. This condition, often called original sin, is different from actual sin committed by moral individuals. According to some Reformed theologians, original sin and with it the idea that humans are born guilty for Adam's actual sin. This imputed culpability, a claim some theologians disagree with, is often called original guilt.
There is plausibility in the idea that humans are born with a morally vitiated condition or nature, a nature that predisposes humans to commit actual sins. A theologian used the analogies of inheritable physical conditions, an addict passing on her addiction to her infant and an ancestor who, having sold himself into slavery, generates his offspring in the state of slavery, a state such offspring is not responsible for. This original sin can be said to be passed down from parent to offspring by human inheritance not by imitator divine imputation.
This obvious lack of agency on the offspring's part should lead to Crisp's third theological claim of a moderate reformed view of sin.
Fallen humans are not culpable for being generated with this morally vitiated condition.
Lacking the required agency, the infant or offspring in the previous analogy is not culpable for his condition of slavery or addiction.
Theologians who argue that humans are guilty of the sin of Adam often base their claim on two ideas. The first is the idea of representation. A parliamentarian represents a group of people and a diplomat a particular country. Their actions are mandated by and binding on those they represent. However, it is through this idea of representationalism that their theological claim falls. Adam was never mandated by humans to represent them. The second is the idea of Adam's metaphysical union with Adam. This, the theologians argue, makes human beings culpable for Adam's sin. Describing this idea, Crisp uses another analogy. Adam is the acorn seed who introduced a contagion into himself. The acorn at its different stages of growth shares the condition and culpability of the acorn seed because it is the same life it still has - roots, branches, leaves and fruits. In this idea, often called Augustinian realism and Roman 5:12-19 (a Bible passage often cited as a defense of original guilt), Crisp sees no justification for inherited guilt.
Crisp defends a moderate reform view of sin which doesn't admit original guilt by citing evidence in Confessions. The Westminster Confessions attests to both original sin and original guilt.
They [our first parents] being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation (6.3).
However, earlier Reformed confessions (the Scots Confession, the Belgic Confession, and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion) deny original guilt in their doctrine of original sin. According to Crisp,
neither Huldrych Zwingli nor John Calvin (whom he calls “the two Continental fountainheads of Reformed theology”) endorse it.
The last and seventh claim in Crisp's outline of a moderate Reformed view of original sin states that
possession of original sin leads to death and separation from God irrespective of actual sin.
Infants who never reached the age where they can discern between right and wrong and the mentally retarded belong in another class of humans. These are those
the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ (Eph 3:18)
would exclude from the requirement of faith in Christ. This means that without exercising their faith in the atonement provided by Christ people in this class can be saved by God. Why? Because they cannot exercise the faith required of others with original sin.
The moderate Reform view does not stand without objections. Despite these objections, a measure of truth stands still. It is this truth that Dickinson eloquently conveys by putting Bethlehem at the top of the list of biblical subjects. Yes, humans have fallen because of their morally vitiated condition. Yes,
possession of original sin leads to death and separation from God irrespective of actual sin.
However, Christ was born in Bethlehem. It was in Jerusalem that the God human beings were separated from by original sin came down to men while they were yet sinners. The message angels brought to the shepherds at Christ's birth in Jerusalem was not one of condemnation. The good news is what they called it. And it is for all men.