One of the major objections to theistic evolution, is the idea that the non-historicity of the Adamic fall negates the need for Christ's sacrifice. In other words, if mankind had not literally fallen from grace through an act of disobedience, does this mean that Christ died for a symbolic sin?
Only if you think all our own sins are symbolic too. The bible never says Jesus died for Adam's sin, he died for ours. Adam if he was a historical individual would be covered by the heading
for the sins of the whole world 1John 2:2, but there is no reference to Jesus dealing specifically with Original Sin. There is no reference to Original Sin either for that matter.
I think we have two things here and Creationists confuse them when they say evolution negates the need for the cross. We needed Jesus to die for us because we are sinners. However you understand Genesis, this fact remains, all of have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. What we have with Original Sin is an explanation of why we sin in the first place, we sin because humanity is fallen since Adam and Eve sinned. The problem is that this isn't stated anywhere in scripture and it doesn't really explain why A&E sinned in the first place. This doctrine of Original Sin dates back to Augustine and his fight against Pelagius, it became in one version or another part of Catholic doctrine, and it also got incorporated into protestantism through Calvin and Luther who were heavily influenced by Augustine.
Henri Blocher, in his book Original Sin, argues that although Genesis cannot be read as an historical or scientific textbook, the essential historicity of the fall is something that must be upheld. He maintains that: "The affirmation of the disobedience in Eden as a real event or occurrence at a specific moment in time has been part of the church dogma from the start; this could hardly be disputed. I submit that it is an essential part, which we would be wise to maintain."
In his view therefore, the Garden of Eden story is a mythological description of a genuinely historical fall of our first human ancestors from their grace with God. Science can neither affirm nor refute such a claim, but the question I put to you is, does this seem like a reasonable compromise?
I think what evolution does is give us an opportunity to reevaluate how we understand the book of Genesis and by doctrines we tie up with Genesis like Original Sin. We should be reevaluating traditional interpretations anyway and seeing if tradition really measure up to scripture, but evolution certainly give us a reason to go back and look again.
Remember, Original Sin is not just the fact someone was the first to commit a sin, but the doctrine that we share the guilt of this first sin (in the earliest version of the doctrine, Augustine said we were physically in Adam loins when he ate the fruit so we were participating in his sin too) and that the result of the first sin was that human nature was corrupted and became sinful as a result. That is nowhere stated in Genesis so if you have to have the doctrine of Original Sin, I do not see a problem for any new reading of Genesis to incorporate the same doctrine. Perhaps not Augustine's idea of being in Adam's loins, but certainly the idea that the effects of that sin were passed through the whole human race.
Blocher's idea that Genesis 3 is a metaphor for that first sin, would certainly work just as well, you can still have the effects of Original Sin if the story of that sin is told in metaphor. Other TEs hold that A&E were literal human beings even if their creation from clay is a metaphor and that the effects of their sin was passed on through the whole human race, even those who were also alive at the time, because Adam was the Federal Head of the human race, when he sinned the rest of the human race fell with him.
I think the reexamination of Genesis should be a lot more radical. the doctrine of Original Sin isn't found in Genesis, but it isn't found anywhere else in scripture either. Augustine based his doctrine on a Latin mistranslation of Romans saying we all sinned in Adam.
Rom 5:12 (Douay Rheims/Latin Vulgate)
Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world and by sin death: and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned, when the verse actually says
death spread to all men because all sinned. It is our sins that are the problem, we share in everything Genesis describes (whether literally or metaphorically) as the result of Adam's sin because we sin too.
