Original Sin, Racism, and Epistemologies of Ignorance: with Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt, “Introduction to the Symposium on Evolution, Original Sin, and the Fall”; Paul A. Macdonald, Jr., “In Defense of Aquinas's Adam: Original Justice, the Fall, and Evolution”; Julie Loveland Swanstrom, “Aquinas on Sin, Essence, and Change: Applying the Reasoning on Women to Evolution in Aquinas”; Hans Madueme, “The Theological Problem with Evolution”; Austin M. Freeman, “The Author of the Epic: Tolkien, Evolution, and God's Story”; and Jack Mulder, Jr., “Original Sin, Racism, and Epistemologies of Ignorance.”

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-1-2021

Publication Source

Zygon

Volume Number

56

Issue Number

2

First Page

517

Last Page

532

ISSN

05912385

E-ISSN

14679744

Abstract

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it explores and shows ways in which one important view of racism parallels the Christian doctrine of original sin. Second, it argues that this comparison helps to close the gap between the two main strands of Christian thinking about original sin. Philosophers and theologians are often asked to decide between Augustinian or Irenaean theories of original sin. An epistemology of ignorance, especially as applied in discussions of racism, helps us to see how this dichotomy may be short-sighted. For virtually no one, in an epistemology of ignorance, matures into being a racist. Nevertheless, as Charles W. Mills famously argues, the epistemology of ignorance he terms the Racial Contract has a historical inception, namely, the period around the beginning of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. I close the article by discussing whether a model of original sin similar to an epistemology of racist ignorance might satisfy the dogmatic constraints of the Catholic tradition.

Keywords

epistemologies of ignorance, monogenism, original sin, polygenism, racism, white ignorance

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