In Chapter 6, Wiley covered “Original Sin in a Contemporary Context”.

After modern thinkers rejected what medieval and patristic writers assumed, rejected the historicity of Genesis 2.4 on, and offered their own alternative “formulations” of humankind’s sins, Christians were left to either cling to their old (discredited) illusions or forge a new synthesis.

Is there anything valid about what the medieval and patristic writers imagined about fallen human nature?  How should Christians situate the Genesis text in light of the lack of historicity? Is there another way to conceptualize Original Sin?

Of course, An Archaeology of the Fall addresses these questions, in 2012, by proposing an answer to the question: Why civilization?

Wiley presented three thinkers who wrote 50 years prior, in the 1960s.  The next few blogs look at these thinkers.