An example of reasoning based on a mistaken view of humanity’s original state, from:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thechristianworldreview/2023/02/what-is-sin/
Nobody Understands Sin, by David Guill, February 26, 2023
“. . . Aquinas claimed that God created the world to
function in a certain way and in accordance to certain principles. These
principles are understood intuitively and can be further explored using our
God-given ability to reason.
“A quick example could be our need for companionship. We are
social creatures designed to live in large or small communities. From that
starting point, we can logically conclude that murder and theft are wrong.
After all, those actions inhibit our ability to live in social groups.”
This is incorrect.
Humanity was not designed as a collection of social creatures, or as
individuals meant to be social creatures. Humanity was meant to be in communion with God—the
perfect Other—and in light of the incomprehensible otherness of God can be
found no simple application of a “social” relationship.
What was offered to Adam is difficult—perhaps impossible—for
us to understand. What we can
understand, however, is the moral importance of reckoning our present status as
“social creatures” to be problematic, not merely in our failed fulfillment of
our obligations, but also in our latent tendencies to minimize our obligations
overall. To maintain, as Guill does, that
we are “designed to live in large or small communities” is to give the game away,
since the concepts of exclusion and alienation are implicit in the very concept
of “community.”
From the “starting point” of our “need for companionship,”
Guill says, “we can logically conclude that murder and theft are wrong.” As though we humans did not routinely
slaughter in our “tribal” (read: corollary of “community”) enterprises, and as
though we humans did not routinely expropriate goods and services in innumerable
schemes of ownership and privilege. We
call certain types of killing “murder,” because we are going to approve other
types of killing. We call certain types
of appropriation “theft” because we are going to approve others—such approval,
of course, being ratified for us by the communal structures in which we live.
If it is a matter of sorting out how to deal with our social
entanglements (which God would have, apparently, spared Adam had Adam not
displayed the need to not “be alone”), we must note that Jesus does not provide
what we would conventionally call “help.”
Inflicting harsh behavior on a brother or sister would be called by
Jesus “killing,” and Jesus solves any questions about ownership by requiring us
to give everything away, either on our own initiative or at the request of
those who would beg or borrow. Good luck
forging a communal order on those principles.
We were never meant, however, to live in communal
order. Adam was given Eve because he
could not find community with the animals, and prior to that he was given the
animals because he could not find community among the creations of Eden. At this point—proceeding backward in the
narrative—our access to explicit descriptions of Adam’s state fall away. He was created by God. No mortal can say why Adam would have not been
created perfect, or would not have stayed perfect. For us to wait until the “Fall” to pounce on
some notion of “why” humanity is imperfect is just a craven game—as though the “rule”
of a perfect God being expected to author perfect creations is at the “Fall”
inexplicably lifted.
If there is any true application of the idea of humans as “social
creatures,” then that application must be truly unyielding. Our “society” as ordained by God must include
all humans, and all creatures (offered, presumably, in good faith by God as
suitable companions for us), and—in a progression of inescapable logic—all of
the universe. At this point of analysis,
of course, we can realize that describing ourselves as rightly being “social
creatures designed to live in large or small communities” has been rendered all
but meaningless.
We were meant to be in society (for lack of a better word) with God. We were never meant to forget that, and we were never meant to reckon that our moral requirements are any less than universal.
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