Or maybe the question should be: Can we construct a symbolic order that will not destroy us?

How would Iranaeus’ perspective on Christ as the focal point – the “recapitulator” – of all Creation fit the synthesis in An Archaeology of the Fall?  Like a hand fits a glove.  Or like the body and blood of Christ fits the artifice of bread and wine.  Or, if you despise Jesus, like the animating spirit bringing Eve’s reified doubts to life.

Let us run with the latter similitude for a moment:  Why civilization?  Is Civilization not Nature’s way of recapitulating itself, of finding a “head” for its agency?  The moment that our genus came into being as the primate hominid that talked (in hand talk), Civilization was in the cards, because Civilization – as social order founded on unconstrained complexity – emerges from the purely symbolic (semiotic) nature of talk, and is potentiated through the adoption of the purely symbolic speech-alone talk.

It is as if Nature itself proposes the question that Christ himself asked:  Who am I?  You cannot answer the question without a symbolic order.

Chapter 12 of Zimmerman’s now traditional commentary concerns the views of St. Irenaeus (125 to 202 more or less) on the Story of the Fall.  At this point, his synthesis of the Story of Adam and Eve with the evolution of Homo sapiens and existence of the triune brain, recedes.

St. Irenaeus is so close to the time of Jesus that he can trace his mentors back to the apostles.  Born in Anatolia, he moved to Gaul where he eventually became Bishop of Lyons.  His most famous surviving work is Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies).

St. Irenaeus saw Christ’s role as the “re-capitulator” (“re”=”again”, “capit”=”head”, “-ulator”=”agent”) of the human race.  The Old Testament speaks of this agency.  The events that allowed the Old Testament to come into existence (that is, the play of all the nations dispersed since Adam) pay tribute to this agency.  The animal nature of the first man set the stage for this tribute.  The cosmos itself is the raw material that goes into the stage.

Zimmerman wrote that Irenaeus said: All lines of the cosmos focus on Christ.  Christ is not an afterthought conceived in response to the sin of Adam.  Christ is the Alpha and Omega in the first place.  Adam fits the cosmic plans as the strategic gateway through which Christ will enter it.  … Christ is the raison d’etre of all creation.

An Archeaology of the Fall never uses the words “Original Sin”, at least not intentionally.   Instead, the last half of the novel labors to show that the image of the semiotic transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk parallels the image of the mythic transition inherent in the text of Genesis 2:4 on.  The parallels are evocative and work both ways.

For example, the image of the serpent coming into existence as a projection of Eve’s own doubt (gelling, as it were, with a spiritual being) does not have a corresponding image in the semiotic transition.  Perhaps it should.

In a similar fashion, Zimmerman’s section on the “sin of the world” that thwarts God’s plan and is an unbroken continuation of the transgression of Adam and Eve has a corresponding image in regards to the semiotic transition in An Archaeology …, but one that is not developed as much as it could be developed.  We are all swimming in seas of symbolic orders.  All these symbolic orders are – to some degree – exclusive.  How do we describe our fractured treading?  How do we describe the individual’s and the institution’s perspectives?

Reading Chapter 11 of Zimmerman’s work (on the propagation of Original Sin), with An Archaeology of the Fall in mind, leaves me with the impression that Christians may be on the verge of discovering that the long-held traditional idea that “Baptism washes away Original Sin” contains insights never before imagined.  Pieces of a mosaic will suddenly fall into place.

Baptism is all about opportunity.

A complication comes by way of the sacraments, particularly, Baptism.

If Baptism removes a Sin transmitted through generation itself, then one can understand why a mother would be desperate to have her dying child baptized.  How can she allow her infant to die already stained by sin?

If Baptism re-establishes the opportunity for the child to become like Adam and Eve before the Fall, then a mother might not be so distraught.  Baptism speaks to a potential to avoid the same fate as Adam and Eve through the intervention of Jesus the Christ.

So why insist that infants and children get baptized well before their phenotypic developments are complete?  If you wait until children are developed, you might was well start with an exorcism.  Wait.  Baptism does start with an exorcism of sorts.  That must be for the parents and God-parents, who may have already become like Adam and Eve after the Fall.

Here, An Archaeology of the Fall may serve the theologian. Perhaps, Baptism is like innoculation against the dark principalities that reify the symbolic orders that we are immersed in.  Baptism could be like giving the little one a boat instead of leaving her to tread the choppy waters.  After all, even with Baptism, we often “eat the fruit” (now popularly replaced by, courtesy Jim Jones, with “drink the kool-aid” (see Ann Coulter’s book Demonic for seamy details).

In Chapter 11, Zimmerman dealt with the question of how Original Sin was propagated.  He started by admitting that even the Catechism of the Catholic Church has not figured this question out.

There seems to be a material substrate that depends on genetic traits: the triune brain.  Then there are phenotypic expressions with innate biases: concupiscence.  Finally there is an acquired aspect: whatever is necessary to interpellate pride, to define one’s own “reality” independent of connectedness, to enter into the madness described above.

Consequently, one cannot say that transmission is exclusively through generation (genetic & phenotypic) or contagion (acquired).

Pride(concupiscence(death)).  Wow.

Accuse me of over-interpretation.  Zimmerman actually does not present the thesis, aesthetic relation and question that I project upon his text.  At least I used the word “unwitting”.

Maybe I should have used the word “crypto-“, like “Zimmerman’s text supports a cryptothesis that becomes evident from the perspective gained in An Archaeology of the Fall.”

Accuse me of postmodernism.   What can be projected onto the text often turns out to be as relevant as the text itself.

Unwittingly, Zimmerman may have introduced to us a thesis that a certain type of madness is equivalent to the consequences of Original Sin.  The person who is crazy but has a perfectly functioning reptilian brain has the nested characteristics of the person fried on Original Sin: A sense of invulnerability, wayward members, shamelessness & pride(naiveté, concupiscence, dissociation from law, & addiction(maintenance of consciousness, physical performance & mood)) parallels neocortex(midbrain(brainstem)).

Even more unwittingly, this implied thesis presents the “reptilian brain” as the only intact feature, thus providing an aesthetic “concatenation” to the “serpent” in the Story of Adam and Eve.  In An Archaeology of the Fall, one of the characters put on the costume of the “serpent”, so that, when Eve spoke, her doubt came alive.  In a sense, the character acted as a reptilian brain supporting a human brain acting as a wayward member and exhibiting a sense of invulnerability, shamelessness & pride and playing on Eve’s mammalian brain’s naiveté, concupiscence, dissociation from law, and addictive thoughts.

Note the implied relation, using the terms of the triune brain: A neocortex without a midbrain interpellates the midbrain of the unprepared recipient, who then senses through her brainstem that some reasoning of her own neocortex has come alive (not all of it, mind you, but the reasoning that resonates with the interpellation), so she reacts to the originating neocortex as if it were a real entity, and adopts its point of view, thus bringing her midbrain and neocortex into alignment (some sort of positive feedback loop).

The alignment is then destroyed by its own beautiful, sublime and monstrous unintended consequences.

Or maybe we can put the implied relation in terms of Augustine and non-Augustine:  An entity, the serpent, exhibiting a sense of invulnerability, inappropriateness, shamelessness and pride appeals to the naiveté, concupiscence, dissociation from law, and addictive thoughts of Eve who (while maintaining consciousness, physical performance and mood) chooses to eat the fruit, as does Adam.

Then they feel the consequences: a sense of vulnerability, loss of control to the passions, shamefulness, and humiliation.   They realize that they are naked.

So we may ask: Is this implied relation one of the necessary features of Original Sin?

If so, then Original Sin – the propensity to “madness that entertains the possibility of rebellion from God” – is a nested relation that mimics the structure of the triune brain, neocortex(midbrain(brainstem)), and can be described as “whatever Augustine said”(“whatever those who did not agree with Augustine said”(the natural functionality of the human body)) or perhaps, pride(concupiscence(life)).

To envision one primordial image of Original Sin, imagine substituting the word “death” for “life” in the last nested heirarchy.  The consequences of Original Sin become apparent once the word “life” has been erased, at the moment that the word “death” is written.

I think that every great theologian must propose an idea that is so stupid that all opponents can dismiss her out of hand as a quack.  St. Augustine had an entire suite of such proposals.  The one that caught Zimmerman’s fancy was the idea that – before the Fall – Adam and Eve had motor control over their – later uncontrollable – members.

Chapter 10 is devoted to proofs of quackery.

First, St. Thomas quoted Aristotle on the relation between the reason and “the irascible and concupiscible”.  The latter was governed by reason, but could not be commanded by reason.

Next, modern neuroscientists have offered the concept of a triune brain to describe human cognition.  The brain is a nested organ: neocortex(midbrain or limbic system(basal ganglia or brainstem)).  Or, one can call it human(mammalian(reptilian)).  Our cognition is similarly nested: reason(emotions and concupiscence(maintenance of consciousness, physical performance and mood).  Our brain structure rules out the direct command of performance (brainstem activity) by reason (neocortex activity).

After these and other proofs of Augustine’s quackery, Zimmerman turned the question around and wrote about how behavior modifies neural connections.  Suddenly, St. Augustine makes sense, since we are back into his themes of a sense of invulnerability, wayward members, shamelessness and pride.  These are the consequences of behaviors modifying neural connections.

How do we get to those behaviors?  We get there through the non-Augustine images of naiveté, concupiscence, law, and addiction.

There seems to be a pattern here.  What does that imply?

If the Adam and Eve stories are true, then what the hell happened to us?   In Chapter 8, Zimmerman discusses the Council of Trent’s decrees on “concupiscence”.  This term points to an attraction to sin than neither destroys our free will nor displeases God.  Unless of course, attraction becomes deeds and deeds become addiction.

Needless to say, the term “concupiscence” is actually more slippery than that, because, at the Council of Trent, at least, some proposed that “concupiscence” is a feature, or consequence, of Original Sin.  At this point, “concupiscence” became more than an attractor. It became like a gravitational field.  Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.

These varying ways of looking at “concupiscence” was the fuel for drama, not on its own accord, but in regards to the concept of Baptism.  Baptism somehow washes away Original Sin.  But concupiscence is another matter.

In the end, the Council finally decided that concupiscence did not suddenly start with Original Sin and that the best way to think of it is: Spontaneous and vigorous natural drives.  These include all those tempting thoughts that passed through the mind of mythic Eve before she plucked the forbidden fruit.  Her free will was not hopelessly entangled in the irresistible onslaughts of concupiscence.

Instead, she was naïve.  In the Genesis Story, her naiveté was part and parcel of the idea that she and Adam were naked yet without shame (Chapter 9).  At this point, Zimmerman brings up St. Augustine with a cautionary note: Beware the 13^th chapter of the 13^th book of the City of God.  Here, Augustine proposed that, upon eating the fruit, Adam and Eve experienced a new motion in their flesh, in strict retribution of their own disobedience to God.  Any woman knows that men tend to experience “new motion” in their flesh.  Yet so few regard it as strict retribution of their own disobedience to God.

At the same time, any man knows that women tend to experience “new motion” in their flesh.  And how often do we regard it as strict retribution of our own disobedience to God?  What a difference.

Obviously, nakedness connotes vulnerability.  “Naked without shame” goes with feelings of invulnerability.  “Naked with shame” goes with feelings of vulnerability.

Augustine implied that Adam and Eve’s feelings of invulnerability were a condition that made their transgression possible.  We can describe those feelings of invulnerability as “pride”.

Yet “pride”, so conceived, does not seem to dovetail with Paul, in his letter to the Romans, who wrote:  I do not understand my own actions.  I do not do what I want.  I do what I hate.  What does that imply?  Because I admit that what I do is what I hate, and because I admit the law is good, I am willing to venture that the source of my unwanted actions, the one responsible for my unwanted actions, is the sin that dwells in me.

To me, that sounds like addiction, one of the end points of concupiscence, rather than pride.  Sin has dissociated Paul from the law and from his own actions.

Thus, at the end of chapter 9, Zimmerman has brought the reader through a traditional rendering of the Story of Adam and Eve, and how the Council of Trent dealt with issues concerning the interpretation of Genesis and other scriptures.  Zimmerman paints a multifaceted picture that is difficult to summarize because his synthesis focuses on what the Council focused on, points of disputation, where the Story of Adam and Eve were only part of anyone’s arguments.  I did my best.

So what are we left with?  On one hand, there is the St. Augustine side of the picture, containing images of invulnerability, wayward members, shamelessness and pride.  On the other hand, there is a non-St. Augustine side of the picture, containing images of naiveté, concupiscence, dissociation from law, and addiction.  Each side of the picture has a different theo-dramatic flavor.