Volume 35, Number 11 · June 30, 1988
The Triumph of Sin
By W.H.C. Frend
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent
by Elaine Pagels
Random House, 189 pp., $17.95
Few revolutions in this century have had so profound an effect on humanity as the revolution in social attitudes. Since 1900 the status of women and ideas of sexuality, marriage, and divorce have undergone changes as far-reaching as they are irreversible. Accompanying these has been the progressive but by now considerable alienation in the West from the once dominant theology of Augustine of Hippo regarding sexuality and the politics of religion. Original sin, once accepted on both sides of the Reformation divide as the justification of the repressive state and an equally repressive morality, is now receding from the collective consciousness of many Western Christians. The results so far, however, have not been reassuring. To an outside observer, 'the descent of man' might be the theme of the present century in politics, religion, morality, and the arts. The challenge to theologians today is how to replace a negative theology of sin by a more mature and better-founded theology based on human responsibility and freedom.
Review, 3661 words
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