Sin
Challenge accepted, Abonilox. I’ll take a few stabs, at least.
A good topic to start with is the evolution of the concept of sin. How encumbered is our culture with the biblical concept of sin? I don’t know. I’m curious about it.
It seems to me that our culture is stuck somewhere in a mushy middle between a faithfully biblical concept of sin, and an honestly atheistic one. The way I read the Bible, it presents sin as the biggest of big deals. Sin is not some paltry list of things to avoid, such as perhaps cursing, drinking, and sex outside of marriage. Or even add in sins of omission, and therefore avoid failure to go to church, and perhaps failure to tithe money. I bet that Jesus would either laugh or weep at such an emaciated Christianity. Peter might draw his sword.
Biblical sin is instead a concept sunk all the way to the heart of cosmic purpose, and human purpose. God didn’t show up here, and ask man to add some religion to his busy schedule. God created the whole fucking universe, and human existence within it, precisely as He pleased. Biblically, the whole God thing, or the whole religion thing, is not some extracurricular activity added in to life. It is life. Working or eating or sleeping are no less religious than praying or proselytizing.
Which is to say that all of life is amenable to analysis using the concept of sin, and its related concepts of righteousness, obedience, faithfulness, etc. All of life, then, is a journey, a quest, a striving to move away from sin and toward holiness; to grow in maturity and faithfulness; to follow Jesus.
This biblical concept of sin does not lead to the sorts of lives lived by those in our culture who babble about the Bible or sin. They pare down the biblical concept to something much more manageable, and much more marketable.
On the other side are moralizing atheists. (I came across a comment somewhere that New Atheism might as well be called New Christianity—ha!) Such atheists are obviously not trying to espouse a full biblical morality, but they are in fact espousing moral positions that can only be adequately grounded in the sort of supernatural beliefs that they reject.
Here’s how I see the big picture. We are social animals, and evolution has hard-wired us with certain moral inclinations. In addition, we’ve ended up smart enough to reflect on those inclinations, to question them, to justify them, etc. On the one hand, we can give them a sound justification based upon a theistic God, for one. On the other hand, we can bite the bullet and admit that they have no justification. They are just evolved inclinations. They are just one set of instincts among others, in one sort of animal among others.
But regardless, we still have the underlying inclinations. Very few Christians will go substantially beyond evolved gut feelings to actually follow the teachings of Jesus. And few atheists will intellectually question evolved gut feelings and accept nihilism, let alone act in ways that it uniquely permits.
Is our culture encumbered with the biblical concept of sin? Probably all cultures have moral concepts that could be adequately grounded in the Bible, but not in philosophical naturalism. I expect this to continue to be the case for our culture indefinitely, no matter how professed faith in the Bible might wane. But at the same time, no cultures go whole hog on biblical morality.
Great start on this topic.
You said, “The way I read the Bible, it presents sin as the biggest of big deals.” I agree that this is accurate from a Christian perspective. But is that how you read it in the Old Testament? The concept of sin seems to have evolved from a tribalist obsession with ritualized behavior to the later sweeping view of sin from a cosmic perspective. How much of that perspective is now superimposed upon the Bible in the light of so-called Christian orthodoxy? (Specifically, Augustinian theology as expressed through modern protestant evangelicalism–not Catholic or Eastern Orthodox theology). The emphasis on inner vs. outer behavior is a radical innovation that has been mostly abandoned by the vast majority of Christian believers worldwide. And it makes sense. Morality is instructive and useful only in its relational context. How can a merely internal, hidden phenomenon be moral or immoral? Frankly, I think this is where Christianity is failing most spectacularly.
OK, so back to the Big Deal. You have original sin (another Pauline/Augustinian innovation). So from the moment of conception, every human being is worthy of damnation. Most sensible people would consider this simply absurd. Not that that makes it false, but its morally repugnant which is why the big churches monopolize the sacraments and literally sell sacramental grace through baptism to get rid of that messy little original sin problem. Protestant evangelicals aren’t so lucky. If you are one of them, and you really take this seriously, you will be in a perpetual state of anxiety. (See Kierkegaard) Fortunately, most of them don’t take it so seriously and the internal formulation gets replaced with cultural legalism–an outward expression of one’s Godliness through ritualized singing, fellowship, potlucks, memorized bible verses, political positions and even public displays of worship at football games (e.g. Mr. Tebow).
As to the New Atheists, all I can do is chuckle. The real ideology behind this is not atheism, per se, but Scientism (maybe that’s the same thing as what you called philosophical naturalism). Now this has the potential to evolve into some kind of religion, along the lines of pantheism. This is the tack I think that keeps them away from nihilism.
To be honest, I’ve really only read the Bible from a Christian perspective. Now, I thought that this entailed reading the whole thing, and reading it carefully, so I wasn’t just some some chump in the pews, or some proof-texting loudmouth. But neither was I (or am I) very literate in things like historical-critical biblical scholarship. I’ve read and thought very little about them. I trust that there are many good things to learn there—but you’ll have to educate me!
So yes, that is how I read sin in the Old Testament. But I read the Old Testament through a Christian lense at least inasmuch as I had the New Testament in mind. Moreover, I approached the whole book with a faith in its divine inspiration, and therefore a determination to see how it could fit together as a coherent whole. Although I could be wrong, I don’t think this entailed doing any great violence to the texts. But at the same time, I’m not contending that it resulted in the same picture one might get from the Old Testament alone. And reaching further still to look at possible evolution within the Old Testament, or between the Testaments, again, I’ve got nothing.
As for superimposition upon the Bible in the light of Christian orthodoxy, yeah, this definitely happens. And I think you pick a compelling example of it with the doctrine of original sin. As for the barer sketch that I made, though, I don’t think it was substantially influenced by Christian orthodoxy outside the Bible. I would acknowledge influence by some practical or existential realities, though. Namely, one is always acting, and choosing, and living; the Bible puts a big emphasis on action; and the Bible contains lots of particular commands. So in light of these things, I suppose I was talking about the biblical concept sin as it exists in the context of other biblical concepts, especially in the life and mind of a Christian trying to affirm and enact all of them together—and I was not so much trying to represent what the Bible says directly and explicitly about sin. This could at least affect the flavor or spin.
Wow, so was that long-winded enough?
What you wrote about cultural legalism and ritual definitely rings true. Perhaps this involves a focus on identity and a shift from being concerned about doing what Christianity says, to being concerned about doing what Christians do—i.e. simply what those who also identify as Christians do. Meaning that the operative concern is not a spiritual or theological concern with one’s relation to God, but merely a sociological concern with one’s status in the group. But hey, I suppose that what we’re wired for. Our evolutionary ancestors were saved by works, many of them social—and not by faith.
Lastly, by philosophical naturalism I meant metaphysical naturalism, as contrasted to any form of supernaturalism. The repudiated supernaturalisms include, but are not limited to, belief in a God. I jumped to the term naturalism rather than atheism because many moral concepts could be grounded in some sort of supernatural view other than theism.
I went off on a tangent there. My apologies. I really want to do justice to the topic. We reject revelation because we have lost faith. It’s as simple as that. There are others who never had faith to begin with. Their situation is different.
I have selected a section from the Bible to begin the discussion in my most recent post. I failed to discuss the peculiarity of the passage inasmuch as it references righteousness in the absence of law (pre-Moses). This ties in to the original issue of “sin”.
What is left of our concept of sin? To what extent is our culture infected by this relic of religion? What are the effects of this relic of our religious heritage on our culture? If they are negative, how do we overcome them?
True!True!