Sin and Natural Theology: An Augustinian Framework Beyond Barth

NZSTh 2015; 57(1): 14–31 Paul L. Allen Sin and Natural Theology: An Augustinian Framework Beyond Barth Summary: This article focuses on the question of sin in the context of natural theology‚ in light of the Barth/Brunner debate. A contemporary notion of sin would benefit from Barth’s approach, but without his strict doctrine of sin as nothingness (‘Nichtiges’). Brunner holds to the Augustinian tradition’s claim that sin is a paradox by distinguishing between the formal and material in the imago dei. On such a basis, we are able to claim that sin is at least wrongdoing, anthropologically speaking. A natural theology of sin complements the doctrines of creation, election and reconciliation while correlating with findings from the natural sciences. Zusammenfassung: Dieser Artikel konzentriert sich auf die Frage der Sünde im Kontext der natürlichen Theologie, im Licht der Barth/Brunner Debatte. Eine zeitgenössische Vorstellung von Sünde wäre von Barths Ansatz profitieren, aber ohne seine strenge Lehre von der Sünde als das Nichts (»Nichtiges«). Brunner hält an der Augustiner-Tradition den Anspruch, dass die Sünde ist ein Paradox, durch die Unterscheidung zwischen der formalen und Material in der imago dei. Auf dieser Grundlage können wir behaupten, dass die Sünde ist mindestens Fehlverhalten, anthropologisch gesprochen. Eine natürliche Theologie der Sün- de ergänzt die Lehren der Schöpfung, Wahl und Versöhnung, während die Kor- relation mit den Ergebnissen aus den Naturwissenschaften. DOI 10.1515/nzsth-2015-0002 Modern theology is still characterized by a chasm between those sympathetic to natural theology and those who resist it. New movements and schools of thought (e.g.: analytic theology‚ postliberalism) tend to exacerbate this metho- dological binary in systematic theology. The touchstone for this longstanding division remains the famous ‘No’ uttered by Karl Barth to Emil Brunner in re- sponse to Brunner’s 1934 advocacy of natural theology. Barth famously thun- ders:  Paul L. Allen: Associate Professor, Department of Theological Studies, Concordia University, 1455 boul. de Maisonneuve ouest, Montreal, CANADA H3G 1M8, E-Mail: [email protected]  Sin and Natural Theology  15 “‘natural theology’ does not exist as an entity capable of becoming a separate subject within what I consider to be real theology … If you really reject natural theology you do not stare at the serpent, with the result that it stares back at you, hypnotises you, and is ultimately certain to bite you, but you hit it and kill it as soon as you see it!”1 What appears to be forgotten by many commentators is that sin is what sparked this episode. The German theological kulturkampf was certainly the backdrop, but it was not the occasion for the drawn out dispute that Barth and Brunner engaged in, as their correspondence shows.2 Thus, the most pressing question to emerge from this is not the general one of methodological bias but rather the more specific question of how sin should best be understood. Therefore, this paper explores the contrasting conceptions of sin in Barth and Augustine in or- der to show that the latter best accounts for the natural predispositions to evil that come to light in the contemporary natural sciences. I Introduction Following Calvin and Augustine particularly, Barth affirms that the human con- dition is marked by a certain depravity, and it is the whole of human nature that requires Christ’s redemption. Deprived of being created in the full image and likeness of God after Adam, Barth warns against any anthropology that might attempt to minimize the gulf that exists between human creatures and God.3 For Barth, the uniquenness of Christ suggests that the human imago dei  1 Karl BARTH, “No!” in Natural Theology, transl. by Peter FRAENKEL (London: The Centenary Press, 1946), 75–6. 2 John W. HART, “The Barth-Brunner Correspondence,” in For the Sake of the World: Karl Barth and the Future of Ecclesial Theology, ed. by George HUNSINGER (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004), 19–43. 3 “… any tenable distinction between man as created by God and the sinful determination of his being is possible only if his sinful nature, his perversion and corruption, is minimised. But if we consider man truly and seriously in the light of the Word of God, this is just what may not be done. His corruption is radical and total.” Karl BARTH, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. in 13 pts. (hereafter: CD referred to in text) Vol. III, pt. 2: The Doctrine of Creation, trans. By G. W. BROMILEY and R. J. EHRLICH (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2010), 28. Certain analysts of Barth insist that Barth did not mean that humanity has in fact lost the capacity to image God. This remains unclear. What is generally accepted is that for Barth, humanity’s imaging of God is not a capacity per se, but rather a covenant gift bestowed to a dependent humanity who is a coun- terpart of God’s. But only the person of Christ guarantees this relationship. Qualified in this way, Barth is read as affirming the imago dei doctrine. See CD III/ 1, 178, 183 ff. For more on this issue, see Daniel PRICE, Karl Barth’s Anthropology in Light of Modern Thought (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002). 16  Paul L. Allen cannot be understood apart from his humanity. And, Barth derives his under- standing of human nature without a theology of original sin, something which distinguishes him sharply from Augustine. It is widely assumed that Barth and Brunner’s positions on sin are irrecon- cilable‚ but the main tenets of Barth’s theological anthropology may be compa- tible with a credible natural theology, provided that something like Brunner’s appeal to the knowledge of sin be taken into account. Brunner is very clear that sin has not deprived us of the capacity to be faithful and to know about the created order. In fact, I claim that the contemporary natural sciences provide us with a great opportunity to follow up on the promise of Brunner’s claim. The enigmatic aspect of this dispute centers on Barth’s notion of sin as ‘nothing- ness’, an evasiveness about sin that does not feature in Augustine’s anthropol- ogy, a contrast I want to explore further. To the extent that Barth’s anthropology is genuinely coherent with the Augustinian position as I believe it is, then a major obstacle that currently stands in the way between Barthian theology and natural theology may be removed. There are three steps in the argument. First‚ I will consider the essential aspects of Brunner’s challenge to Barth on the question of sin. Second, the cog- nate relationship between the anthropologies of Karl Barth and Augustine is reconsidered. Barth’s doctrine of sin as nothingness (das ‘Nichtiges’) would cer- tainly require considerable qualification if the Bishop of Hippo’s deft explana- tion of original sin as transmitted guilt is at all correct. If sin and evil are priva- tions as Augustine suggests‚ there is more proximity between this view and the portrait of human behaviour in evolutionary science than to Barth’s anthropol- ogy. This discrepancy needs to be addressed in a way that is sympathetic to Barth’s broad aims.4 The doctrine of reconciliation, even of a Barthian sort, should not have to depend upon the view that sin is strictly nothingness. More plausibly, Augustine’s claim that sin possesses causal conditions, which is spelled out in Confessions and in his anti-Pelagian writings, means sin is more of a paradoxical state than a strict privation of the good. And indeed, Barth’s own division of hamartiological types in his Church Dogmatics as pride and sloth constitute the kind of Augustinian claim that supports a limited natural theology, the very thing Barth apparently dreaded. Third‚ the contemporary sciences of human nature, which align with an Au- gustinian idea of inherited sin undoubtedly claim natural inclinations to human  4 Barth’s own account (CD IV/3: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, 177) is that he himself came up with the term ‘nothingness’ to describe sin and evil’s ontological status. I contend that this is difficult to conceive of this on an Augustinian influence and given his own extensive discus- sion of sin as the ’form’ of pride and sloth in CD IV/1 and IV/2 .  Sin and Natural Theology  17 wrongdoing. So, contrary to the usual view that Barth and the sciences of nat- ure have no point of contact, I take it that the contemporary evolutionary anthro- pology is reconcilable to a strong view of sin, although not to ‘nothingness’. The place of sin in a Christian narrative of human existence is essential for an account of Christ and his atoning work, regardless of whether that narrative precedes or follows on from that which concerns revelation.5 Anyway, T.F. Tor- rance’s sage assessment is that it is not the rational character but the alleged independence of natural theology that most bothered Barth.6 His emphasis on the judgment of God does not entail foreclosing on the ability of the sciences to say something truthful about humanity, despite the fact that Barth himself re- fused to allow for a theological rhetoric of natural data bearing on humanity’s created character. II Brunner and the Augustinian Barth As is well known, Emil Brunner claims that a natural theology is possible as a consequence of there being two revelations, a general (natural) revelation and that of Christ. For Brunner, the possibility of a natural theology exists so long as it is conceived neither as a philosophical enterprise nor as a more fundamen- tal basis on which the special revelation of Christ is subsequently built. Echoing historic Protestant tradition, Brunner claims that our preservation through God’s grace is possible because our ability to image God is still maintained in a formal way, whilst we have lost our capacity to image God in a material sense.7 We will return to this matter/form distinction a bit later, because on it much depends. The specific aspect of Brunner’s theological anthropology to which Barth objects in their initial exchange is the proposition that the human being is a point of ongoing contact between God and the world. According to Brunner, this issue of point of contact or „human capacity“ is essential for ethics. We need to explain how God’s created world contains a first and vital grace if we  5 This arises from a reading of Wolf KRÖTKE, “The humanity of the human person in Karl Barth’s anthropology” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. by John WEBSTER (Cam- bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006), 159–176, especially 159–60. 6 T. F. TORRANCE, “The Problem of Natural Theology in the Thought of Karl Barth,” in Religious Studies 6 (1970), 121–135, here 128. 7 See the narrative of Brunner and Barth’s debate in Andrew MOORE, “Theological Critiques of Natural Theology” in The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, ed. by Russell Re MANNING (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 227–244. 18  Paul L. Allen are to be taken seriously in making moral claims.8 The other point, which Barth brushes aside, is the pedagogical value of natural theology. Brunner justifies his position through well known references, such as the one concerning Calvin’s equating of the lex naturae with the order of creation (Brunner, 37) and Paul’s own assertion in Rom. 1–2 – originating with Old Tes- tament Judaism – that God’s glory is evident in his works (Brunner, 61). Of more importance is Brunner’s assertion that “Barth’s Dogmatics, like all others, are of course based on the idea of analogy, even though he does not acknowledge this … the formal imago Dei, which he so much dislikes, i.e. … the doctrine that man as we know him, sinful man, is the only legitimate analogy to God, be- cause he is always a rational being, a subject, a person.” (54). Brunner later claimed that there was little space between his account of the ‘point of contact’ and Barth’s account. He cited Barth’s writing from 1948 and which appeared in vol. III, 2 of Barth’s Church Dogmatics.9 Yet, Barth himself still held for a serious difference – on both it and on the related question of a gener- al revelation in a short yet pointed section of the later Church Dogmatics III,2: “that man can sin does not seem to be for Brunner a possibility alien to his true crea- turely being, but one which is integral to and foreseen and prepared in it … As I see it, it is impossible to maintain at one and the same time the concept of man constituted by the Word of God and the idea of a neutral capacity in man.”10 Sin is only rebellion for Barth and cannot in any way be a part of creaturehood. This tension is not a paradox (as I will show it to be for Augustine) but is in- stead a metaphysical chasm. Barth dissociates the ‘phenomena of man’ with what he terms ‘real Man’, leaving no doubt that he thinks Brunner’s qualifica- tions on human nature means that the phenomena of man is a weak conceptual terrain from which to do a proper theological anthropology: “it is at least an open question whether even in Brunner’s anthropology we are within the limits within which we can finally know not merely the phenomena of the human but real man himself.”11 Here is where we see the first serious problem with Barth’s treatment of sin. The philosophical distinction between ‘phenomenal’ and ‘real’ in Barth’s  8 “[T]he theologian’s attitude to theologia naturalis decides the character of his ethics.” Emil BRUNNER, “Nature and Grace” in Natural Theology, 51. 9 Emil BRUNNER, “The New Barth: Observations on Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Man,” in Scottish Journal of Theology vol. 4, n.2 (June, 1951), 123–135. Cf. BRUNNER, Man in Revolt (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1947). 10 Ibid, 131. 11 Ibid, 132.  Sin and Natural Theology  19 anthropological dogma is a dominant feature of the Church Dogmatics. It is fair to speculate that Kantian transcendentalism has been smuggled in at this point to keep theological discourse pure from philosophical taint, but in rendering this service, the real/phenomenal distinction manages to conceptualize human reality in a thoroughly philosophical framework, ironically. In fact, Barth breaks his own rule. Of course, Barth’s aim is to equate the real Man with Jesus, who is the measure of man. Therefore, there is an additional critical question on this real/phenomenal distinction that must be addressed. Perfect humanity and cre- ated humanity are the two sides of the distinction that Barth is trying to uphold, and for good reason, since in opposition to liberal Protestantism, Barth seeks to remedy the smug self-satisfaction that is implied in a concept of humanity that does not recognize the primacy of grace and redemption from sin. Nevertheless, Barth goes too far in equating the essence of the humanum with the one perfect human. It is not clear why the theological desideratum of humanity’s created stature before God remain bereft of those understandings that lies apart from its pure theological conception. I want to claim that Barth collapses the understanding of humanity into a judgment about humanity. This conflation rests on a kind of category mistake, a theological determinism of the real over the apparent. It is one thing to under- stand human nature, with all of its tensions and contradictions, and it is an- other thing entirely to judge human nature in the light of the grace of Jesus Christ. And I think it is simply the case that Barth was overly anxious to present the latter at the expense of the former. As with so much theological dialectics, the question of emphasis can be taken via dialectic to be a rhetoric of exclusion of certain insights or concepts about which one would not otherwise be op- posed. It is one thing to assert the need for a single Christian theological frame- work as Barth did. It is another thing altogether to assume that data from the natural world or from the social sciences is always destined to be irrelevant to it. And it is strange too, since Barth does not need this methodological step in order to claim the real man Jesus as the criterion for the judgment of humanity’s sinfulness. Barth may even retain the language of sin’s diabolical character without negating the causes and explanations for sin that might reasonably be ascertained from within the created order. Within the Church Dogmatics, Barth takes up sin within the parameters of his doctrine of reconciliation. The stage is set earlier in his treatment of the doctrine of creation in CD III,1 where Barth opens up a distinction between Schleiermacher and Augustine on the created self. Here, he draws a contrast between Schleiermacher’s knowledge of creation on the basis of self with Au- gustine’s rather different notion of sheer dependence, articulated in Confessions. This contrast is one of several important steps along the way to his rejection of 20  Paul L. Allen Brunner’s overtures in III,2.12 The bifurcation that Barth critiques in Brunner is foreshadowed in his lashing of Schleiermacher’s acceptance of the creation dog- ma on the basis of a projection of the self’s dependence upon God. The contrast between Augustinian and Schleiermacherian notions of dependence, two en- tirely distinct anthropologies, provides a vivid distinction of different anthropo- logical impulses in the Christian church. Barth’s portrait of sin places a great emphasis on its Augustinian character: “Sin is … not merely an evil, but a breach of the covenant which as such contra- dicts God … Sin is man’s denial of himself in face of the grace of His creator.”13 Barth likens the understanding of human nature without Christ to the situation of a novice swimmer who, having been saved from drowning by a strong swim- mer, thinks that his being human instead of being a “lump of lead”, explains his salvation.14 Pride, alongside sloth, are the major themes in Barth’s devel- opment of a notion of sin in the Church Dogmatics. Barth’s willingness to de- scribe sin is telling however. The conclusion one might draw even at this preli- minary juncture is to claim that he clings to an Augustinian sense of paradox. With Augustine, Barth believes sin to be an “impossible possibility.” But, the Barthian paradox allows for no truly anthropological dimension: “there is no law and commandment of God inherent in the creatureliness of man as such, or written and revealed in the stars as a law of the cosmos, so that the transgres- sion of it makes man a sinner.”15 Against Augustine then, sin is not a violation of a natural law. It is not a logical outcome of a human inclination that we might deduce from the norm of any given set of potencies in human nature. Barth stretches Augustine’s paradox to a breaking point by pushing his dis- cussion of sin as nothingness‚ in which sin perdures as a ‘real correspondence’ to God’s ‘No”. It is allowed by God to continue, yet it is conquered by the one perfect man, Jesus.16 Hunsinger summarizes Barth thus: “Sin (and sinful human beings) existed in a netherworld of unreality. Sin’s origin was inexplicable, its status was deeply conflicted, and its destiny was to vanish. Meanwhile, it was actually there and had somehow to be taken into account, but (being essentially absurd) it could only be described in paradoxical terms.”17  12 CD III/1, 8–10. 13 CD IV/1, 140. 14 Ibid, 79. 15 Ibid. 16 CD III/3, 352 and 360ff. 17 George HUNSINGER, How to Read Barth: The Shape of His Theology (Oxford University Press, 1991), 39. As unreal, sin’s provenance and its power are non-existent to the point where we are right to question how we may understand the reasons for our salvation.  Sin and Natural Theology  21 Barth comments elsewhere that “to try to find a reason for it is simply to show that we do not realize that we are talking of the evil that is really evil.”18 Cer- tainly, Barth’s interpretation of sin parallels the privatio boni view of sin and evil, a scepticism toward giving sin any ontological status whatsoever is consis- tent with Augustine and Paul. However, I think this consistency is undermined by the fact that reasons can still be given for sinful actions. Barth’s paradoxical portrait of human nat- ure establishes sin as an abstraction in contrast to the concrete expression of God’s Word in Christ. This impression is solidified through his distinction be- tween the phenomenal man and the real Man in III, 2, the very point at which he fixes his glare on Brunner’s anthropology in order to undermine it through a series of relentless questions (“Is there in the Word of God, in Jesus Christ, an indecisiveness which enables man to use his freedom otherwise than in grateful obedience to God’s gracious action?” etc.19) Barth’s challenge to Brunner’s position lies in his difficulty with the idea that despite sin, we are still made in the image of God, however imperfectly. Barth appears to accept this idea, but it may be a nominal sort of affirmation. Perhaps a stronger imago dei would be seen to compete with the perfect Man, Christ. On the other hand lies Augustine’s traducian understanding of a biolo- gical inheritance, a material cause in nature which, however clumsily from our perspective, powerfully undermines a human nature that God has created as a reflection of himself. Barth’s portrait of human nature under judgment is precisely an issue of how our human nature – as we understand it – is to be judged. It is not another kind of understanding. Barth’s response seems almost designed to ensure that he will talk past Brunner, which is what Brunner reports to have taken place in fact. The main reason for this miscommunication, I be- lieve, is that Barth refuses to understand human nature as a matter for human understanding. The methodological rationale for his denial of Brunner’s natural theology is a motivating factor, but it undermines Barth’s commitment to the imago dei. In the background is the distinction between noetic reason and ontic reason, a dis- tinction that specifically divides human knowledge (of ourselves) from that which is true about human beings as such.20 But lingering questions raise doubts  18 HUNSINGER, 133. Cf. BARTH, CD IV/2 415–416. 19 CD III/2, 130. 20 Karl BARTH, Anselm: Fides Quarens Intellectum; Anselm’s proof of the Existence of God in the context of his thelogical scheme (London, SCM Press, 1960). See the illuminating discussion of the noetic/ontic distinction in Hans Urs VON BALTHASAR, The Theology of Karl Barth (San Fran- cisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 156–161. 22  Paul L. Allen over Barth’s rush to judgment. Has Urs von Balthasar raises several points in his great study of Barth, two of which are relevant here: the continuity of our identity even subsequent to our re-birth in Christ and the tacit acknowledge- ment that sin has not destroyed whatever it is that undergoes momentous change in the act of faith because these are not two different persons in the end. Theology, as the science of that which measures humanity, is even analo- gous to the other sciences in this regard as well – to measure something is not an a priori act, since it assumes some basic knowledge of the features of that which is being measured. In cordoning human nature within the methodological fixity of a theology of revelation, Barth misses the basic human contradiction as a contradiction ly- ing within our created nature. The problem is the misfit of matter and form to which the solution of grace should not imply an erasure of the problem in its particulars. As both Paul and Augustine attest so ably, sin remains as a form of slavery in opposition to Christian freedom (cf. Gal. 5), but the moral, anthropo- logical dimensions of this tension are heightened not abstracted by this dy- namic. And this is why Barth’s rendering of sin, especially within a Kantian metaphysic of human identity, in response to Brunner’s outline of natural theol- ogy – as it is conducive to a serious reading of salvation history – is so proble- matic. III An Augustinian Alternative Here, Augustine can aid us in moving beyond Barth’s hasty rejection of natural theology.21 It is sometimes forgotten that Augustine’s formulation of original sin is partly an explanation for the unmerited suffering of innocent persons. It is, of course, designed to show that natural evil is but an effect of the sin of Adam, which has infected not only our bodies but the entire natural order. The status of the sin in the disputation between Augustine and his Pelagian oppo- nents, especially Augustine’s correspondence with Julian, bishop of Eclanum is instructive. For Augustine, the fall translates into the spread of natural evil throughout the cosmos, with the positive implication that God cannot be blamed for natural evil. Against Augustine, Julian argues “If sin, then, is natural, it is not voluntary, it is not inborn. These two definitions are as contrary to each  21 For a superb analysis of Augustine’s understanding of sin in his various works, see Ian A. MCFARLAND, In Adam’s Fall: A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin (Malden, Mass.: Wiley Blackwell, 2010).  Sin and Natural Theology  23 other as necessity and will are contrary …”22 For Julian, sin is something com- mitted through an exercise of the human will. It can neither be naturally inher- ited nor seen as a condition for the possibility of sin within the workings of the human body. Julian sets out a thoroughly subjective view of sin (and suffering) against Augustine’s ‘objective’ account. And against the doctrine of original sin, Julian hypothesizes that the fall of Genesis 3 is a narrative that projects human loss and the feeling of being cursed onto nature. By extension, children cannot sin, since they do not possess a full human will. Augustine, on the contrary, insists that there are sinful causes of suffering in the world. The guilt we feel as a con- sequence of sinning is also God’s punishment for Adam’s sin. Sin, both in terms of its originating cause and its material causes is inordinate desire. It is the evil of seeking a good in disproportionate terms. This is what Augustine suggests through the use of the term concupiscence. It is coated with the sweetness of life’s solaces: “Human friendship also is endeared with a sweet tie, by reason of the unity of many souls. Upon occasion of all these and the like, is sin committed, while through an immoderate inclination towards these goods of the lowest order, the higher and better are forsaken, – Thou our Lord God … When then we ask why a crime was done, we believe it not unless it appear that there might have been some desire of obtaining some of those which we called lower goods, or a fear of losing them.”23 And, partly because desire for lower goods expresses itself from such an early age, Augustine’s theology of baptism is infamous for considering a human baby to be in a calamitous state of sin. But, Augustine’s claim that sin causes both suffering and death is interesting for the way in which he expresses this reality as something that comes about, at least initially, as a desire for a good. Sin, then, is not exclusively to be seen as a demonic effect of an evil power upon us, but rather as something that is also an emergent presence of a privation that arises from wanting too much of the goods of this life. To reduce the latter to the former seems to me to miss an important distinction between sinful beha- viour and sinful behaviour that participates in spiritual evil. In satisfying the body’s otherwise good desire (for food or sex), we can en- gage in gluttony or lust. Such disproportionate loves are effects of proximate cultural or genetic causes, and while some might disagree over the moral impli-  22 AUGUSTINE, Answer to the Pelagians III: Unfinished Work in Answer To Julian, ed. by John E. ROTELLE, O.S.A. (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1999) Pt. I, vol. 25, Book 4, 458. Cf. the discussion in Elaine PAGELS, Adam, Eve and the Serpent (Random House, 1989). 23 AUGUSTINE, The Confessions (New York: Touchstone, 1997) Book II, 5: 31. 24  Paul L. Allen cations attached to either, assent to the presence of natural causes for the kind of behaviour that such words denote would not surprise a modern person. To participate in evil is to move beyond the inordinate desires for the good toward active hostility to all of that which is good. But as Augustine himself allows, involuntary impulses that bind the human will in concupiscence do not negate human freedom. The tension that arises between virtue and vice is a classical Augustinian theme, and its significance here lies in defeating the view of sin as an overly abstract privation of the human will, which we see in Karl Barth. Let’s place this argument in fifth century terms. My argument is that we can concede to Julian the goodness of creation, while we ought to concede to Au- gustine an absence (or privation) of good in the world. We are correct to sym- pathize with Augustine more than Julian due to the apparent natural, evolution- ary inclinations behind vice and misbehaviour. We should not concede to Julian the naive, Pelagian view of sin as mere social imitation as contemporary theological liberalism is wont to do. Yet, we ought to be extremely cautious of doing anything more than corre- lating suffering and death with God’s punishment for original sin. That is, if we claim that God punishes human kind by establishing proximate causes for their sin seems, prima facie, to be extremely problematic. Leaving aside the question of divine punishment, Augustine certainly maintained that original sin’s effects are themselves natural evils that cause sin. We could interpret such a claim to cover instances of genetic/hormonal predispositions to aggression, sexual pro- miscuity or slothfulness. So, if, instead of ascribing such a thing to God, we escape the traps of that argument by simply saying that there are predisposi- tions to vice in human nature. However, such predispositions, while causal and necessary for many sins to occur, are nevertheless insufficient causes of sin. Thus, we retrieve Augustine’s sense of the involuntary elements of sin and God is not invoked as a direct or even an indirect cause of natural evil. We avoid the sharp Pelagian discrepancy between human nature and the will, which we know to be false on philosophical and on scientific grounds. We also avoid the Barth/Kant distinction between the phenomenal (natural) and Real Man, since our nature – and the moral deliberation that goes with it – is as real as the judgment that God will issue against human sin if and when we fail at moral deliberation.  Sin and Natural Theology  25 IV Contemporary Support for Augustinian Natural Theology If Augustine’s alternative model of human sin, albeit with amendments, is to gain a foothold in contrast to that of Barth’s, one element in its favour is the traction it gains among the natural sciences. Correlation with the natural sciences is not a proof or even a necessary desideratum for an adequate notion of sin, and for reasons of theology’s integrity as a way of reflecting on faith on its own terms, it is important to say so. Yet without an account of sin that sug- gests something like wrongdoing, the mission of the Christian church will be found wanting. And we need to reject as well the idea that any knowledge of the etiology of sin automatically excludes dealing with sin as a problem of the will. An Augustinian framework would be strengthened in its response to Barth’s notion of sin, but such strengthening depends in large part on not fall- ing into the trap of avoiding the problem of sin by examining its origins. Barth seems to have believed that there is a choice to be made on this point. However, in the science-theology dialogue, human sin is not as widely examined as the more generic themes of evil, suffering and theodicy. To the extent it has been treated, a popular option has propounded the easy but entirely false idea that we should “replace the doctrine of original sin with a scientific understanding of human nature.”24 Other similar scholarship in the science-theology dialogue tends to specialize on questions of ethics that take for granted the seriousness of evolution without the requisite seriousness being devoted to how sin could be a fundamentally distinct concept from that of wrongdoing. These kinds of developments are based largely on the yet more voluminous scholarship which tends to take evolution as a grand narrative for constructing a portrait of human nature without any references to God or sin. Let us look briefly at a couple of examples of these problems, for they de- monstrate analogous difficulties which bind Barth’s interpretation of sin and anthropology. First, within the field of primatology, the work of Frans de Waal stands out. De Waal argues strongly against what he terms the “veneer theory” model of human nature, according to which the immoral core of human nature is surrounded by a façade of moral goodness. He argues instead for the essen- tial goodness of human nature that is especially evident in acts of cooperation. There is also an important continuity of this human goodness with non-human  24 See Patricia WILLIAMS, Doing Without Adam and Eve: Sociobiology and Original Sin (Min- neapolis, Minn: Fortress Press, 2001), 142. Cf. Stephen R. L. CLARK, Biology and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 26  Paul L. Allen mammals, especially the bonobo chimpanzees with whom we share a relatively larger genetic inheritance. He cites the ability of bonobo chimps to adopt the viewpoint of other chimps and even individuals of other species. His research, as with others in fields such as evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, deals with behaviours known as kin selection and reciprocal altruism. These terms identify what can be thought of as proto-virtuous behaviours, naturally prompted cooperative behaviour toward those who share genetic lineage or those whose potential to return our favour is present.25 There are weaknesses to inferring to human behaviour patterns on the basis of animal behaviour patterns of course. As Mary Midgley puts it, “everyone knows that animals are as incapable of vice as they are of virtue.”26 Notwith- standing basic species differences, De Waal seems to suggest that altruism and pro-social behaviour are natural dispositions because they are analogously pre- sent in other animals. According to him, sinful behaviour (or wrongdoing, since de Waal does not introduce a theological interpretation to his own work) is cul- turally triggered. In a vivid sense, this kind of interpretation seems to be noth- ing more than a resuscitation of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s noble savage with the addition of a primatological perspective. But, for all his talk of empathy and citations of Humean moral sentiment, I think de Waal means to convey an idea that is fatally simplistic. His research does show that kindness is not something that is utterly unique to our species. And, morality is derived from the passions, not cold, dispassionate reason, or at least not exclusively the reason that we associate with higher order functions of the neocortex. What I do not think de Waal’s research has demonstrated however, is that such pro-social inclinations form the exclusive core of human nature. Again, the problem lies in projecting a tension between some core and periphery in human nature, rather along the lines of Kant’s/Barth’s real/phenomenal distinction. While sharing none of the contents of the separation between the phenomenal and real human, de Waal and Barth share the basic idea that humans are ontologically divided.  25 “[E]volution favors animals that assist each other if by doing so they achieve long-term benefits of greater value than the benefits derived from going it alone and competing with others. Unlike cooperation resting on simultaneous benefits to all parties involved (known as mutualism), reciprocity involves exchanged acts that, while beneficial to the recipient, are costly to the performer. This cost, which is generated because there is a time lag between giv- ing and receiving, is eliminated as soon as a favour of equal value is returned to the perfor- mer.” Frans DE WAAL, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (Oxford/Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 13. These terms are associated with the work of evolutionary theorists W. D. Hamilton and Robert Trivers. 26 Mary MIDGLEY, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature, (London: Routledge, 1995), 31.  Sin and Natural Theology  27 While there would seem to be a great deal of genetically prompted potential toward altruistic behaviour‚ caution is in order over what is meant by altruism. There is the potential for an unchecked bias among researchers such as de Waal (notably in their efforts to express the meaning of their scientific work to a wider public) that supports a view of behaviour that supports the modern belief in human perfectibility. Perhaps this is a political bias in seeing evolution’s happy consequences.27 Perhaps there is a cultural disinclination to consider the unhappy consequences of kin selection and reciprocal altruism. Namely, there is an inevitability toward vices in situations where favour is invariably, dispro- portionately shown toward related kin in place of others. Not coincidentally, the tribalism that this natural tendency to favour one’s own ‘type’ of human is, when taken to extreme lengths, precisely the root evil that Barth’s refusal of Nazism signifies. It is‚ however, more than a stretch to allege a relation between common acts of cooperation and despotic racism. Nevertheless, troubling questions haunt standard social psychology because of the evolutionary etiology of distinct kinds of behaviour from similar material causes. Evolutionary psychologist Ri- chard Alexander asks: “Is cooperation always a form of competition? Is gener- osity and congeniality always but one side of the ‘coin‚’ the other side being competition between groups that are congenial within themselves?”28 Doesn’t “within-group amity” tend to be “between-group enmity”?29 There cannot be strict altruism. One of the difficulties in discussing altruism is the tendency by some to forget that it is human behaviour that is being described. Human be- haviour cannot be reduced to being an effect of a single genetic or cultural cause. It is invariably motivated by a mixture of causes. The human phenotype includes culture within a statistically recurrent gene-culture relationship across populations. In the past, nature/nurture debates tended to perpetuate a false, misleading understanding of core and periphery in human nature. There is no nature/nurture divide as recent interpretations of Darwinian evolution have clarified – gene/environment communication is operative to a very low level of molecular biology. The metaphor of the ‘selfish gene’ coined by Richard Daw-  27 See the discussion of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ morality‚ and an assessment of de Waal’s position on the latter in James BLACHOCICZ, “The Beginning and End of Negative Morality: An Evolutionary Perspective” in The Philosophical Forum (2008), 21–51. 28 Richard ALEXANDER, “The Challenge of Human Social Behaviour” in Evolutionary Psychology 2006 n.4, 1–32. [http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep04132.pdf] First accessed May 5, 2010. 29 Attributed to Alexander by Robert WRIGHT, “Ethics for Extraterrestrials” in The New York Times May 4, 2010. [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/the-moral-alien/?_php= true&_type=blogs&_r=0 ] First accessed May 4, 2010. 28  Paul L. Allen kins is both as true as the metaphor of the sharing gene. But it is more impor- tant to affirm that no gene is selfish if by that term we ascribe agency to it. As I suggested earlier, the philosophical distinction that might untie the Gordion knot is the matter/form distinction. It is essentially a corrective to de Waal and others who view human nature as a binary of core and peripheral predispositions. And by extrapolation, the provision of the matter/form distinc- tion to human nature is certainly a correction that is relevant to Barth’s binary anthropology too. It is here then that we must point specifically to Brunner’s own use of the distinction between matter and form as the natural theology im- plied by the imago dei doctrine that does not violate the theology of revelation and election that Barth upholds. According to my analysis, Barth’s real/phe- nomenal alterative is as dualist as a naturalist anthropology as de Waal’s or other naturalist views that hold out the independence of moral agency. One other illustration from the world of evolutionary psychology will suffice to draw forth the importance of the matter/form distinction within a natural theology. Some new research into theft, rape and other criminal activity sug- gests that whatever selection pressures lead to cooperation, there is “significant selection pressure for the evolution of strategies to best others in contexts of conflict over scarce resources, including competition for attractive mates and territories.” These pressures have in turn led to numerous, sometimes compet- ing adaptations between individuals who are engaged in “cost-infliction and defenses against victimization locked in a perpetual, antagonistic, coevolution- ary arms race across generations …”30 Violence, therefore, can be seen as not merely learnt, but also naturally prompted. Claims that link violence with genet- ic predisposition are important to assess, even though it is true that genetic cau- sation is never direct but rather mediated through a large-scale interaction of many genes, morphological capacities and environmentally triggered bodily re- sponses. Regardless of the trajectory of these forces, it is understandable why moral philosophers turn to virtue theory to fill out a natural law account of mor- ality.31 It is less easy to see the theological benefit of such evaluations of moral-  30 Joshua D. DUNTLEY and Todd K. SHACKLEFORD, “Darwinian foundations of crime and law” in Aggression and Violent Behavior 13 (2008) 373–382, here 374. For a summary of the evidence for genetic predispositions to criminal and other immoral behaviour, as well as that of human free- dom to countervail these predispositions, see Ted PETERS, Playing God: Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom (Routledge, 1997), chap. 3. 31 See Craig BOYD, A Shared Morality: A Narrative Defense of Natural Law Ethics (Grand Ra- pids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2007). Natural law theory has grappled with evolution in an increas- ingly sophisticated way and Larry Arnhart, a non-theist, is a leader in this way of thinking. See ARNHART, Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1998).  Sin and Natural Theology  29 ity, if the imago dei concept has been abstracted a priori beyond the form of the human in tension with material causes for sin. It is tempting, although false, to take away from empirical research into either the cooperative good or the com- petitive evil, a simple affirmation or negation of the imago dei. Neither of these options are suitable theological interpretations of our natural predisposition, unless that interpretation be situated within an adequate anthropological frame- work that is inherently open to God’s revelation. And it is nothing less than this stance that Brunner was trying to uphold. V Conclusion I want to suggest therefore that Barth could have articulated a natural theol- ogy of sin – in the way that Brunner suggested – within an account of God’s grace without sacrificing the sharp difference that revelation was intended to protect. This claim might seem audacious, since some of Barth’s defenders be- lieve that he did not forsake his earlier repudiation of natural theology in his later thought.32 However, I read Barth through the lens of von Balthasar, Tor- rance and others, as a view that can allow for the potential of a natural theol- ogy that takes seriously the reality of nature.33 However, by forbidding natural theology, Barth prevents a full picture of human nature to emerge, for which his depiction of divine grace is a nevertheless ringing, true answer. In this light, I think Barth’s theology of sin could have been further revised, or at least reframed, in order to emphasize what Augustine understands in his concept of sin. That concept recognizes the power of sin’s material causes that do not eliminate the good of human nature, which retains its formal capacity to reflect the goodness of God as an image of God. There are material conditions for the possibility of sin. The causal pathways between elements that are traditionally understood as strictly natural and those that stem from the social environment are complex yet they pertain to the real person‚ not a phenomenal approximation of the real person. The caveat to this claim is the sinlessness of Christ, a claim that is made more plausible in the light of the matter/form distinction. With only an abstraction (i.e.: ‘nothing-  32 See Keith JOHNSON, Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis. (London: T & T Clark, 2010). 33 In a letter dated May 7, 1968, Barth reportedly speaks of nature as “a proof for God.” See Geoffrey Bromiley, trans., A Late Friendship: The Letters of Karl Barth and Carl Zuckmayer (Grand Rapids, Mich., Eerdmans, 1982), 42. The letter is dated May 7, 1968. Cf. Eugene ROGERS, Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 7 and 217. 30  Paul L. Allen ness’) to denote that which Christ avoided, his human nature is not satisfacto- rily described as the struggle which the gospels do, in fact, describe. And while my argument for a natural component of sin echoes G. K. Chesterton’s and Rein- hold Niebuhr’s claim that Original Sin is the most empirical doctrine of the Christian tradition, it does not entail that additional claim. In his exchange with Barth‚ Brunner states: “Without knowledge of God, there can be no sin.”34 It is common and correct to cite sin as a breakdown in the vertical relationship between ourselves and God. While no revision of this claim is foreseen here, nevertheless if we take seriously the ramifications of a natural notion of sin, then we can say two things. First, the material causes of sin contain a breakdown in horizontal personal relations. Barth’s ‘nothingness’ adds only a little to the loss that such breakdowns entail. What is also clear is that an understanding of the etiology of sin does not imply a lack of willingness to combat it, which is the fateful inference that Barth makes in his stress on God’s grace in the triumph over the nothingness of evil.35 Second, but more controversially, sin is to be understood as a prolegomena of despair to the knowledge that faith brings. This follows from the fact that many types of sin, whether particular acts or general vices such as sloth and pride possess an etiology. But, those vices, misdeeds and wrongdoing in gener- al only become sin once the true remedy to their existence is known. Again, with Barth and the whole tradition, it is necessary to have recourse to God’s saving plan when a remedy to sin is sought, as indeed it must be. The paradox of human nature is that we sin whilst remaining a creation in the image of God. Significantly, human paradox is self-contradiction, as Barth reiterates himself.36 But it does no good to suppose, as Barth does in his reflec- tion on nothingness in CD III/3, that “any theoretical synthesis we contemplate between creaturely existence and genuine nothingness can only be a descrip- tion of its triumph over creaturely existence …”.37 In his rush to suppress a nat- ural theology synthesis, he misperceives any attempt to account for sin as a smuggled liberalism. By replacing Augustine’s sense of privation and inner paradox with nothingness as his own synthetic concept, he misses an opportu- nity to broaden the scope of the self-contradiction he cites. And this is why it is important to try to interpret Barth’s thinking in line with Augustine. This is a risk that must be adopted if we take seriously the witness of biblical authorities,  34 BRUNNERS, “Nature and Grace”, 32. 35 CD III/3, 349–368. 36 CD IV/2, 409: “The man who contradicts God and therefore contradicts and hopelessly jeo- pardises himself.” 37 Ibid, 303.  Sin and Natural Theology  31 Augustine and the testimony of contemporary biological science into account in our theological method. In conclusion, theological accounts of sin and purely philosophical ac- counts of wrongdoing cannot be separate accounts. Nor should they be mu- tually exclusive accounts. For those inclined toward natural theology, Barth’s warning of academic pride is a welcome message of due humility before the singular act of redemption Christ wins in defeating sin and death. Inasmuch as we are actually able to understand ourselves as agents of sin as contemporary science inclines us to hold, we may say that Barth’s dismissal of any philoso- phical tool that enlightens this aspect of human nature is mistaken. To push sin into the realm of the absurd or into an unthinkable abyss does nothing to enrich the Christian message of salvation from sin. Sin is not absurd, it is often highly rational and evil is parasitical through material causes. In Darwinian terms, it can even be predicated on the unintended twin goals of survival and reproduc- tion. And these kinds of considerations ought not to be abstracted from view at a moment in our civilization when their role in human behaviour is ever more present in our collective consciousness.