Three out of the five blurbs on the back cover of Original Sin manage to import some wariness over the book's content into their glowing recommendation of the book's execution. Ron Hansen acknowledges that the "even-tempered" Jacobs gives "even the most disagreeable voices their say." Publishers Weekly gives the "brilliant" book a starred review but manages to damn its subject despite this high praise: "In [Jacobs's] hands these abstruse theological disputes are utterly engrossing." And, my favourite comments, given pride of place as the first lines of the top review, are Alan Wolfe's "I do not believe in original sin. I do believe in Alan Jacobs." These reviewers, particularly the latter two, seem to be saying: any book by Alan Jacobs is worth buying, but that Jacobs's latest book is on original sin is perhaps unfortunate. The top of the back cover seems to agree, trumpeting: "How the World's Most Repugnant Idea Became the Cornerstone of Our Self-Understanding." HarperOne seems to have decided on the marketing ploy: Buy Alan Jacobs, If You Can See Past What He Writes About! Or, If You Hold Your Nose, It'll Be Good For You! We're not entirely sure why you would want to buy (or write) a book about original sin from its inception (St. Paul? Augustine? Further back?) throughout its tendentious and chequered history (the Kabbala, Pascal, John Wesley, Richard Dawkins, etc.) to its current unpopularity, but if you must, it's fortunate that you'll buy a book written by Alan Jacobs, so brilliant and humane a writer that he practically disproves his own thesis.
To be fair, Jacobs's own foreword introduces his topic by acknowledging its near-universal vilification. The East has never seen anthropology in these terms, and the West, since the Enlightenment, has attempted to mount a vigorous moral refutation of this particular aspect of its own moral foundation. But Jacobs is not writing merely to enjoy his own prose. He believes that the notion of original sin is useful for us to consider, now, probably one of the reasons that he wrote the book. One of its consistent tactics is provide a biographical context into which we can fit the sometimes repugnant-sounding theorists of human wretchedness, so that when we get to what Augustine of Hippo and Jonathan Edwards actually say, we can hear them, with an ear even for how we might transfer useful insights to our present situation without being immediately impeded by a moral gag reflex. This is a courageous thing to do: to dignify by historiography, and in some cases to stand up for, ideas which everyone seems to think are unpleasant. If you happen to think this book's subject unpleasant, then its author, publisher, and reviewers agree that you are its intended audience.
Jacobs has become an excellent writer, cultural critic. Barring some unforeseen change of circumstance, I plan to read every book he writes from here on out. His style is clear. He says smart things simply. This is not a book written for scholars, but tremendous scholarly weight must lie behind generalisations like (to pick one almost at random): "This sense of the Christian life as a drama arose early in the history of the faith, and the conviction of being infected, afflicted, by the inherited curse of sin was its motive engine." A history covering this much time must inevitably resort to such generalizations often, but they are often startling or counterintuitive, generated by the reading that he has done but does not force you to do (even, in the case of the Jansenists and others, warns you against). He has an eye for the telling, even the humourous, example or anecdote: my favourite is the one about the Scotsman who missed the voices in his head after they had fallen silent. Jacobs is charitable, even-tempered; he interprets authors with more clarity, precision, and compassion than they warrant or could have mustered of themselves. Buy the book, yes, because Alan Jacobs wrote it.
But buy it also because, if you can manage to hold your nose, it just might be good for you.
