Review of Forsaking the Fall: Original Sin and the Possibility of a Nonlapsarian Christianity

Spencer, Daniel H. Forsaking the Fall: Original Sin and the Possibility of a Nonlapsarian Christianity. New York: Routledge, 2023. 203 pp. $43.99 paperback.

In sum, Forsaking the Fall is a stimulating thought experiment. However, I am still not convinced that nonlapsarian Christianity can ever be compatible with Scripture or the catholic tradition.

Forsaking the Fall is the published version of Daniel Spencer’s PhD dissertation from the University of St. Andrews (co-supervised by Oliver Crisp and Joshua Cockayne). It is a “thought experiment” (p. 1), a hypothetical argument that he doesn’t necessarily take to be true. He was initially interested in writing an extended dialogue between the doctrine of sin and evolutionary biology, but he ultimately landed on a related, more foundational idea “about the Fall, Original Sin, and the very feasibility of an orthodox nonlapsarian project” (p. viii). Spencer’s thesis is that Christians can reject the doctrines of the fall and original sin while remaining fully orthodox. In his words: “I shall attempt to demonstrate along exegetical, philosophical, and above all theological lines that it is reasonable to conclude the essence of the traditional Christian faith can remain unperturbed in the absence of the doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin” (p. 1).

Full disclosure: I’m not an evolutionist. I recognize the scientific evidence in its favor, but by my lights evolutionary theory undermines central doctrines that are rooted in Scripture and enshrined in classical creeds and confessions (among those doctrines are the fall and original sin). In seven tightly argued chapters, Spencer is trying to accomplish what I see as theologically impossible. If he pulls it off, I will happily stand corrected.

But let’s first recap his argument. After a historical overview of the doctrine of original sin (chap. 1), the second chapter argues against reading Genesis 2–3 as the history of two sinless people whose disobedience introduced sin, suffering, and death into the world. Rather, Spencer argues, Adam and Eve were mortal from the beginning, and their sin had no ontological impact on the natural order. In chapter 3, Spencer concedes that original sin is supported by the NT (Rom. 5:12–21), but since Paul’s main point concerns Christology and soteriology, Spencer suggests that his views on sin’s origin may therefore be “largely irrelevant” (p. 68).

In chapter 4, Spencer draws on OT and NT texts to define sin as “resistance to the purposes of God and what he desires one to be” (p. 94). He concludes that the doctrines of the fall and original sin are unnecessary for explaining the phenomenon of sin. What then is the origin of sin? Spencer discusses the possibility that we inherit our sinfulness from the biological instincts of our evolutionary ancestors (chap. 5).

In the final two chapters, Spencer addresses soteriology (chap. 6) and orthodoxy (chap. 7). On soteriology, he argues that a nonlapsarian account does not fall afoul of the Christian doctrine of salvation so long as we adopt a participatory account of the atonement (i.e., theosis). On orthodoxy, he gives an analytically precise definition of orthodoxy and then argues that his nonlapsarian account passes muster.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this bracing book. Written in the style of analytic theology, the argument is always easy to follow and nuanced in many interesting ways. Spencer’s knowledge of the relevant doctrinal history is also impressive (especially chap. 1). Despite a torrent of publications on this topic over the past twenty years or so, Forsaking the Fall is a fresh contribution. Yet the book did not convince me.

Spencer’s thesis is that Christians can reject the doctrines of the fall and original sin while remaining fully orthodox. In his words: “I shall attempt to demonstrate along exegetical, philosophical, and above all theological lines that it is reasonable to conclude the essence of the traditional Christian faith can remain unperturbed in the absence of the doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin” (p. 1).

First, Spencer adopts a doctrinal minimalism that is question-begging and, in my opinion, solely designed to sideline the fall and original sin. Thus, a recurring theme in the book is how little doctrine is necessary to remain orthodox. Granted, church fathers from the second and third century, for example, were doctrinally minimalist; they lacked the doctrinal substance and precision that the church developed later in her understanding of the faith (e.g., compare the writings of the Apostolic Fathers to 16th and 17th-century Protestant confessions). But they were still orthodox! However, my concern with Spencer’s doctrinal minimalism is that it effectively cherry picks Scripture and undoes centuries of ecclesial doctrinal development.

Stated differently, suppose I develop an analytic, pared-down notion of what it means to be reconciled to God. I then announce, “But to explain the existence of this phenomenon does not seem prima facie to require the doctrines of Christ’s impeccability, his baptism by John, or his heavenly session.” Logically, that may be true, but so what? This strategy ends up artificially and prejudicially limiting the scope of Christian belief. Rather than this minimalism, Scripture calls us to submit to everything God has revealed (cf. Matt. 4:4; 2 Tim. 3:16).

Similarly, Spencer’s doctrinal minimalism leads him to a participatory view of salvation in chapter 6. In my judgment, that’s by design because his approach is methodologically post-Darwinian and thus favors constructs that do not require the fall or original sin. Thus, I worry that Spencer’s theology is not driven by Scripture or even tradition but by conformity to evolutionary anthropology. In a telling moment, Spencer recognizes that the Eastern Orthodox tradition would reject how he appropriates their soteriology: “While this is no doubt correct, my objective here is not to present a vision of the Christian faith which conforms to the standards of a prevailing orthodoxy (clearly), but rather to argue that a historically unorthodox theological system—viz. nonlapsarianism—can, in the appropriate circumstances, be brought under the umbrella of orthodox Christian expression. In so doing, I isolate one aspect of Eastern Orthodoxy, in this case the concept of theosis, and employ it to help substantiate my broader thesis” (p. 146). I fear that Spencer’s ad hoc theological moves leave him with a ragtag, patchwork theology that would be unrecognizable to any mainstream Christian tradition.

Second, in chapter 2, Spencer does not spend enough time listening to the classical position that he seeks to tear down. It’s not enough to find one or two apparent inconsistencies in the traditional understanding of Genesis 2–3 and then declare victory. For example, when he dismisses the idea that Adam and Eve were originally immortal, albeit conditionally so, Spencer doesn’t consider Genesis 2:17 and how it might inform the meaning of death in Genesis 3:19. Nor does he wrestle with the fact that in Romans 5:12–21 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 Paul assumes that death only becomes a reality after Adam sinned. Granted, Spencer interacts with Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 in chapter 3 when discussing original sin—my point, however, is that those texts are relevant to the argument in chapter 2.

Third, Spencer’s own position on original sin collapses under scrutiny. For one thing, though Spencer agrees that Paul believes in Adam (Rom. 5:12–21), that’s apparently beside the point: “belief in a certain idea hardly entails it is actively being promoted or asserted; on the contrary, in the present case it would be far more accurate to say that Paul is merely employing the doctrine of Original Sin in order to advance a more central and fundamental claim about Christ” (p. 77). This argument is reminiscent of James Dunn’s claim “that Paul’s theological point here [does not depend] on Adam being a ‘historical’ individual or on his disobedience being a historical event as such. Such an implication does not necessarily follow from the fact that a parallel is drawn with Christ’s single act: an act in mythic history can be paralleled to an act in living history without the point of comparison being lost” (Romans 1–8 [Word, 1988], p. 289; see also William Lane Craig, In Quest of the Historical Adam [Eerdmans, 2021], pp. 198–237, where he distinguishes NT citations as “illustrative” vs. “assertoric”). Such moves create a canon within a canon where a passage’s “main point” is the only part of Scripture with authority; anything textually indirect (whether by implication or otherwise) is not binding. But no biblical author interpreted Scripture this way. Instead, they believed that everything God says is equally authoritative, including minor historical, grammatical, and doctrinal details assumed in the Old Testament (e.g., see Matt. 12:31–32; Gal. 3:16; 1 Cor. 15:12–34; Heb. 7:1–10; etc.). Moreover, this ill-conceived approach radically truncates the warrant we have for all kinds of core doctrines (e.g., most of the biblical warrant for the Trinity is indirect!).

Spencer anticipates my concerns when he formulates his hermeneutical principle (H) with more precision (p. 79):

(H) When, in a given scriptural passage P, a source external to P is employed in the service of a more fundamental theological point (i.e., used as an illustration), the propositional content of this illustration need not be believed if both of the following conditions are met:

• (H¹) Where another passage from scripture serves as the illustration’s source, other reasonable understandings of the source text are available;
• (H²) The theological point can be true (and have the same meaning) in the absence of the illustration.

However, in Romans 5:12–21, Paul is not using Adam illustratively but typologically. Biblical typology presupposes that the “type” and “anti-type” are real historical persons, institutions, or events revealed in Scripture. Consider all the OT types that correspond to Christ in the NT, including Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joseph, David, and Elijah: all these types are real, historical persons who did specific things in redemptive history. So is Adam. Therefore, Spencer’s hermeneutical principle ignores Adam’s typological significance. Furthermore, the possibility that “other reasonable understandings of the source text are available” is irrelevant given that the biblical author was inspired by the Spirit—his interpretation just is God’s interpretation. Spencer thinks this position “would lead, if not to absurdities, then to some conclusions which must strike us as prima facie bizarre” (p. 78). But if the apostolic interpretation of OT passages is not inviolable, then isn’t Spencer effectively saying that post-canonical readers can be more hermeneutically reliable than the Holy Spirit? Actually, no. Spencer has a weaker view of biblical inspiration such that Paul’s interpretation of Genesis is not necessarily God’s interpretation (e.g., see pp. 169–70). But this cure is worse than the disease.

Interestingly, Spencer contests the traditional theodicy that God becomes responsible for sin if there is no historical fall. He points out that classical Arminian and Reformed traditions face the same theodicy problem as his nonlapsarian account. After all, for any theological tradition that conceives of God as exhaustively sovereign—whether that is parsed in terms of foreknowledge or foreordination—God knew infallibly that Adam and Eve would sin when he placed them in the Garden. If God is exhaustively sovereign, then he is morally responsible for sin.What’s good for the goose is good for the gander!

Spencer’s point is well taken. Yet while it is true that the relationship between God’s sovereignty and evil has long vexed Reformed and Arminian traditions, both have always and explicitly denied that God is morally responsible for sin. The problem with Spencer’s nonlapsarianism is in what it states explicitly. In this view, humanity has always been sinful: “due to the overwhelming power of instinctual, inborn obedience to the animal appetites, [this condition] almost inexorably manifests itself in actual sin once conscience emerges” (p. 116). God creates via an evolutionary process, and the propensity (or indeed inevitability)to sin arises from evolution. The challenge here is not evolution on its ownbut evolution without a historical fall; sin collapses into creation, and Christianity reduces to an incoherent story about God redeeming what he himself instigated.

In sum, Forsaking the Fall is a stimulating thought experiment. However, I am still not convinced that nonlapsarian Christianity can ever be compatible with Scripture or the catholic tradition. I thus remain, for good or ill, an old-school creationist.