Before I tentatively dropped my ballot paper in the box, I feared that making the jump from being a Labour voter to being a Tory one was going to mess with my head far more than it actually has. I expected disorientation, a sense of not knowing my way about.
But, so far at least, the reverse is true. Indeed, some of the landmarks of this new ideological architecture are so familiar, it feels like something of a homecoming.
Among the most familiar and welcome of these landmarks is the presence of the Christian notion of original sin. Theorists of Conservativism don’t always use this language; they are more likely to speak of a suspicion of human perfectibility. But it amounts to pretty much the same thing. The Left believes itself to be participating in some grand project of human improvement, an ambitious endeavour that points towards a comprehensive moral transformation of society. Conservatives don’t believe in this because they have a much more heightened sense of human fallibility.
Original sin has developed a bad reputation. It sounds, to secular ears, like a disparagement of the human — overly associated with the church’s tedious obsession with sex. It is certainly true that St Augustine, the great theorist of original sin, was sex obsessed, and so he saw human brokenness through that particular lens. “God grant me continence – but not yet”, has to be one of the wittier intercessions to have been offered up to the divine by a saint of the church.
But properly understood, original sin was simply a very particular way of speaking about human brokenness, and an understanding that this brokenness was deep in the marrow of human life.
Perhaps the best way of recognising original sin as a kind and generous doctrine is to examine the views of those who opposed it, and in particular those of the British monk Pelagius. Like the liberal Left of today, Pelagius believed in human perfectibility. “Be ye perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” was his big sermon idea. God has given us the moral rules, and he wouldn’t expect from us something we are unable to achieve, so there can be no excuses. Moral improvement is the only way to heaven.
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SubscribeThis is an absolutely brilliant article. Not just good, but ‘Douglas Murray’ good. Thank you for writing it.