This may come out sounding a bit Eastern, but I don't see any real distinction between sin and selfishness. I don't believe something is a sin because the Church says it is. Such as gay relationships or remarriage after divorce, depending on the individual selflessness in each relationship. Sin is when we violate the golden rule. Ibn John 14.20 Jesus days "On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." The two simple words "Our Father" at the start of the Lord's Prayer say the same, that we are all equal children under the Fatherhood of God.
We sin because of the separate selfish ego that loses sight of the underlying unity of all Being. The Fall is nothing other than a fall into the dualistic consciousness that fails to see that the harm we do to others, we do to the Whole. I see religion and spirituality as the progressive transcending of the ego consciousness into which we're all born slaves, to realising our total interdependence under the Lordship of our Creator.
It's no failure. It's perfectly evolved genetically hard wired natural. The brutality of the Church included. When do we gain sight of the underlying unity of all Being to be able to lose it? What is dualistic consciousness? How could it succeed to see that the harm we do to others, we do to the Whole. Why would that stop it being harmful to others? The development of my morality is full of dreadful realisations, often at the time, of the harm I do. It's got nothing to do with any sense of a Whole. Religion and spirituality certainly covers a multitude of sins. A distraction from social justice being the largest.
@Martin54 I completely agree that spirituality should never be a diversion from social justice, and that sin/selfishness is hardwired into our DNA. But there have been some rare beings in history, who have seen through this duality, to the unity of all creation. People sometimes get a small glimpse of this with hallucinogens like DMT. Mystics arrive there from a life of devotion to all that is Holy. It's no surprise that mystics in the Christian tradition are almost always universalists, and that includes such diverse characters as George Macdonald and Adrienne Von Speyr.
There's no better place to look for this than in the teachings and example of Jesus. He told people that to follow him they had to deny self and take up their cross. That they had to deny attachments, even to family. And that they had to love one another as He loves them. This is the radical path to ego transcendence whereby God's will can be done on earth as in heaven, and the kingdom of God realised among us.
I know nothing but it feels like the concept of "sin" is associated with offending the deity. So surely by definition unbelievers in the deity also do not accept the concept.
I know nothing but it feels like the concept of "sin" is associated with offending the deity. So surely by definition unbelievers in the deity also do not accept the concept.
I think this is actually an important thing. I think for a lot of people "sin" is defined as doing something God doesn’t like - a bit like breaking the school rules - "neither shalt thou enter the Biology wing via the Physics department; thou shalt walk around to the Biology door, yea, even though it pisseth down with rain and the Physics corridor leadeth directly thence. For the wrath of the Head of Physics shall burn against those who useth his corridor other than in order that they find his classrooms; lo he cometh with an oscilloscope in his right hand and detention slips in his left".
Whether what "God doesn't like" is grounded in anything is secondary in this view, and cannot be guessed at. You need the book of rules (and presumably the half-assed smiles).
Jesus (who isn't the kind you have to wind up on Sunday) however does seem to imply there's some rhyme and reason behind good and evil, between virtue and vice. We have a couple of formulations - Love God, love your neighbour and the Golden Rule. The first of these are said to underlie every other set of rules.
In the traditional narrative we're created in and for a paradise, and mess it up. I'm going to have to unapologetically say we now know that isn't the case. There was no Eden. There was an evolutionary process over millions of years during which our species emerged, in a world in which survival didn't always favour virtue. Some selfishness and self-preservation (and the Devil take the hindmost) is wired into us. However, I don’t think that is fatal (as the Creationists do) - it leaves us in the same situation - prone to selfishness and failure to love our neighbour or apply the Golden Rule, and that being an innate part of our human nature.
Salvation is to my mind the process of rising above those animalistic - traditionally Fallen - natural instincts. We have the capacity to recognise and give moral values to actions.
When a male lion replaces an existing dominant male in a Pride, he kills all the cubs, because they will have been fathered by the previous dominant male. This is not sin or evil because that would be a category error; it is lions being lions. They do not have the capacity to reflect on their actions and assign moral value.
@Martin54 I completely agree that spirituality should never be a diversion from social justice, and that sin/selfishness is hardwired into our DNA. But there have been some rare beings in history, who have seen through this duality, to the unity of all creation. People sometimes get a small glimpse of this with hallucinogens like DMT. Mystics arrive there from a life of devotion to all that is Holy. It's no surprise that mystics in the Christian tradition are almost always universalists, and that includes such diverse characters as George Macdonald and Adrienne Von Speyr.
There's no better place to look for this than in the teachings and example of Jesus. He told people that to follow him they had to deny self and take up their cross. That they had to deny attachments, even to family. And that they had to love one another as He loves them. This is the radical path to ego transcendence whereby God's will can be done on earth as in heaven, and the kingdom of God realised among us.
Aye @pablito1954. I turn 70 in July, you? The three sigma rarities are part of our normal distribution of morality. Jesus was seven sigmata but still natural. Thank God for them!
@Martin54 I was 70 on Easter Sunday. Don't worry, you won't feel any different the morning after!!! @KarlLB I don't think anyone could have put it better than your definition of sin and salvation.
I know nothing but it feels like the concept of "sin" is associated with offending the deity. So surely by definition unbelievers in the deity also do not accept the concept.
I agree that nonbelievers aren’t likely to think in terms of “sin.” But it seems to me Jesus thought of it more expansively than just offending God. I mean, he did teach his disciples to pray (depending on Matthew’s or Luke’s versions, and translation used):
Forgive us our debts/trespasses/sins,
as we forgive our debtors/those who trespass against us/those who sin against us.
Then there’s Matthew 18:15: “If your brother sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”
This understand of sinning against other people is, of course, rooted in the fundamental affirmation that human beings bear the image of God, such that sinning against others is sinning against God. But I don’t think Jesus considered the offense to be just against God.
I think it's true that secular discourse doesn't use the word 'sin' and therefore it's meaning is primarily religious.
The meaning of the word does I think go a bit beyond just moral wrongdoing with religious connotations. It does imply separation from God. I rather think there are analogues in non-religious thought: when the nineteenth century atheist Clifford wrote that refusing to expose one's beliefs to questioning was a sin against mankind I think his use of the word 'sin' was appropriate given his overall ethics. Being rational really did occupy the place in his thought - and in the thought of his modern intellectual cobelievers - that being in right relation to God occupies in religious thought.
I’ve realised something - you guys are talking as if loving God (and others, for that matter) is a choice. But it’s not, at least not for me. I have no idea how to make myself feel something I just don’t feel.
My understanding of it is that, in this sense, it is not an emotion but an act of the will. When we are loving our neighbor, or perhaps especially our enemy, it is not feeling a certain way, but choosing their good, even or especially when we don't feel like it. Lewis talks about it in many places, including The Four Loves.
Oh, yeah, the other thing that gets my goat - every time I get the fear that God is an utter bastard out of my head, someone *always* comes along to argue that he is.
So perhaps he is, and he's sending them to tell me. If so, he can still fuck off.
If it's helpful, I don't believe He is at all. Sending hugs.
The idea that we act morally to avoid hell is one I find repugnant. I know precisely nobody who is motivated by that.
*waves*
Why “repugnant”?
Just returned.
It assumes that people will not do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. I think most people are better than that.
Oh my sweet summer child. Have you actually met many humans?
Of course.
I think both of you make the mistake of assuming that most people are like you. Of course, lots will be so plenty of opportunity for cognitive bias there.
Oh, yeah, the other thing that gets my goat - every time I get the fear that God is an utter bastard out of my head, someone *always* comes along to argue that he is.
So perhaps he is, and he's sending them to tell me. If so, he can still fuck off.
If it's helpful, I don't believe He is at all. Sending hugs.
I don't think many people would tick "God is a bastard" on their "things I believe" list. It's more people claiming he's not but then ascribing attitudes, actions and intentions to him that shout loud and clear that he is.
I've seen people in tears claiming on the one hand that God is the perfect loving father and on the other that they think their parents aren't of the predestined elect and will burn in Hell for eternity. That's bastardry right there.
The idea that we act morally to avoid hell is one I find repugnant. I know precisely nobody who is motivated by that.
*waves*
Why “repugnant”?
Just returned.
It assumes that people will not do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. I think most people are better than that.
Oh my sweet summer child. Have you actually met many humans?
Of course.
I think both of you make the mistake of assuming that most people are like you. Of course, lots will be so plenty of opportunity for cognitive bias there.
I will admit to thinking that most people have a conscience.
What? They need to get their minds right? Reconcile Him not being a bastard to having attitudes, actions and intentions that shout loud and clear - from The Book - that He is? A sort of and/or thing? A mystery?
Oh, yeah, the other thing that gets my goat - every time I get the fear that God is an utter bastard out of my head, someone *always* comes along to argue that he is.
So perhaps he is, and he's sending them to tell me. If so, he can still fuck off.
If it's helpful, I don't believe He is at all. Sending hugs.
I don't think many people would tick "God is a bastard" on their "things I believe…”
Well, you’d mentioned having a fear of it being something you’d had to try to get out of your head, so just in case you were worried or hurting because of those fears, I thought I’d say something. ❤️
Oh, yeah, the other thing that gets my goat - every time I get the fear that God is an utter bastard out of my head, someone *always* comes along to argue that he is.
So perhaps he is, and he's sending them to tell me. If so, he can still fuck off.
If it's helpful, I don't believe He is at all. Sending hugs.
I don't think many people would tick "God is a bastard" on their "things I believe…”
Well, you’d mentioned having a fear of it being something you’d had to try to get out of your head, so just in case you were worried or hurting because of those fears, I thought I’d say something. ❤️
Well, the fear I have is that the Evangelical God who sends most people to Hell and who I think is a bastard but the people who believe in him don't is actually real.
People don't feed that fear by saying "God is a bastard". They feed it by suggesting God is like that and somehow corkscrew a logic into God not thereby being a bastard.
Me, I see four fingers, and two plus two continues to equal four, no matter how much The Party I mean the advocates of the condemning to Hell God tell me it's five.
If there is a 'sending to hell' doesn't it happen at the end of time? And according to Revelation, at the end of time hell gets thrown in to the lake of fire with the Beast or something. Resulting in no hell for anyone to be thrown into. Just a new heaven and a new earth.
Works for me...!
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
I find this interesting but difficult to understand. Why are good and bad not the same as sin and righteousness?
Your sentence " Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior" gives me difficulty, because your agent (religion) is in fact an abstract noun and not a person, so cannot have a motive. I presume you mean "human beings who are hiding behind a facade of religion in order to control other human beings?"
I mean, you MIGHT be referring to a divine personage, but it sounds unlike you.
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
This is such a laughably sophomoric account of the development of the concept of original sin that I feel like you haven’t actually read a single damn thing from the early church grappling with the theology and philosophy behind sin.
Also, you can certainly have sin without good and bad, and those categories are themselves invented. They only mean something within a broader philosophical framework.
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
This is such a laughably sophomoric account of the development of the concept of original sin that I feel like you haven’t actually read a single damn thing from the early church grappling with the theology and philosophy behind sin.
To be fair, I doubt many people have. I know I haven't. This isn't a university theology department.
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
I find this interesting but difficult to understand. Why are good and bad not the same as sin and righteousness?
Your sentence " Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior" gives me difficulty, because your agent (religion) is in fact an abstract noun and not a person, so cannot have a motive. I presume you mean "human beings who are hiding behind a facade of religion in order to control other human beings?"
I mean, you MIGHT be referring to a divine personage, but it sounds unlike you.
I can't speak for anyone else but there are circumstances where abstract nouns are commonly given forethought in a kind of shorthand. For example in biology we might say that a species has evolved in a particular way because they "want" to do something. I've heard mathematicians explain complicated ideas in a similar kind of way. Of course there's a (very real) sense that this is nonsense. Genes and species don't have consciousness and cannot want. Numbers have no will to arrange themselves in any particular way.
However it certainly feels that way sometimes and humans use these verbal shortcuts to highlight other things.
Anyway, it strikes me that @The_Riv is using a similar shortcut to ascribe something to "religion". Of course we all know that religion itself has no intelligence or personality. And yet there does appear to be a way to explain the prominence of certain ideas within human beings that lends itself to being described as if there was a plan and intelligence behind it whilst at the same time denying it.
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
This is such a laughably sophomoric account of the development of the concept of original sin that I feel like you haven’t actually read a single damn thing from the early church grappling with the theology and philosophy behind sin.
Also, you can certainly have sin without good and bad, and those categories are themselves invented. They only mean something within a broader philosophical framework.
It's a bit weird to read your comment alongside the neighbouring one from @Lamb Chopped. It seems like it is actually you two who need to thrash this out rather than anyone else in the discussion.
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
This is such a laughably sophomoric account of the development of the concept of original sin that I feel like you haven’t actually read a single damn thing from the early church grappling with the theology and philosophy behind sin.
Also, you can certainly have sin without good and bad, and those categories are themselves invented. They only mean something within a broader philosophical framework.
In no way did I attempt to write an account of the development of the concept of original sin. Big words, broad categories -- those are the shallow waters I'm treading in here. And there's no need to get into the historical minutiae about it. At least I don't think so. I also don't think humans are born tainted -- that's some straight bullshit.
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
This is such a laughably sophomoric account of the development of the concept of original sin that I feel like you haven’t actually read a single damn thing from the early church grappling with the theology and philosophy behind sin.
To be fair, I doubt many people have. I know I haven't. This isn't a university theology department.
I mean the books are all readily available, especially the ancient stuff which can be had through any of a myriad of websites. If you’re genuinely interested in the subject then doing actual reading will probably solve many of your difficulties.
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
This is such a laughably sophomoric account of the development of the concept of original sin that I feel like you haven’t actually read a single damn thing from the early church grappling with the theology and philosophy behind sin.
Also, you can certainly have sin without good and bad, and those categories are themselves invented. They only mean something within a broader philosophical framework.
It's a bit weird to read your comment alongside the neighbouring one from @Lamb Chopped. It seems like it is actually you two who need to thrash this out rather than anyone else in the discussion.
Why would we need to “thrash it out” rather than anyone else? For one, LC is a Lutheran and I’m an Anglican so we already have different ideas about all this. For another, we’re not the authority on what Christians everywhere think. And I was disagreeing with what you said, not her.
Actually you weren't. You used one set of words and LC used the opposite. Rather than getting annoyed with people who don't believe any of it, wouldn't it be better to examine why the two of you have used equal and opposite words?
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
I find this interesting but difficult to understand. Why are good and bad not the same as sin and righteousness?
Your sentence " Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior" gives me difficulty, because your agent (religion) is in fact an abstract noun and not a person, so cannot have a motive. I presume you mean "human beings who are hiding behind a facade of religion in order to control other human beings?"
I mean, you MIGHT be referring to a divine personage, but it sounds unlike you.
I can't speak for anyone else but there are circumstances where abstract nouns are commonly given forethought in a kind of shorthand. For example in biology we might say that a species has evolved in a particular way because they "want" to do something. I've heard mathematicians explain complicated ideas in a similar kind of way. Of course there's a (very real) sense that this is nonsense. Genes and species don't have consciousness and cannot want. Numbers have no will to arrange themselves in any particular way.
However it certainly feels that way sometimes and humans use these verbal shortcuts to highlight other things.
Anyway, it strikes me that @The_Riv is using a similar shortcut to ascribe something to "religion". Of course we all know that religion itself has no intelligence or personality. And yet there does appear to be a way to explain the prominence of certain ideas within human beings that lends itself to being described as if there was a plan and intelligence behind it whilst at the same time denying it.
Yes, I'm aware of the phenomenon. I'm also aware of the fact that it's super easy to fall into this sort of personification without thinking through the actual reality of what we're trying to describe--in this case, presumably that human beings are using religious categories to control others. And if that is in fact what The_Riv meant by equating badness and goodness with sin and righteousness, I'd have to disagree. I mean, I'd ask who precisely the human beings were that he suspects of masterminding this, and their successors today, and what are they getting out of it? And the conversation would go on...
Me, I think of them as pretty much the same thing (good/righteousness) and (bad/sin), just with a religious "flavor" on the general concept. The second terms imply that there is someone or something to which we may have to give an account of our behavior. That's all, IMHO.
Good and bad are the paradigmatic thin concepts.
(Roughly, a thick concept is one that as well as being evaluative also carries significant descriptive weight and is founded in a scheme of values or a way of life. A thin concept has no meaningful descriptive weight. So, elegant while still thinnish is thicker than beautiful. Generous is thickish; altruistic is thin.)
Sin is a pretty thin concept but it does imply some offence against something felt to be morally motivating and numinous.
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
This is such a laughably sophomoric account of the development of the concept of original sin that I feel like you haven’t actually read a single damn thing from the early church grappling with the theology and philosophy behind sin.
To be fair, I doubt many people have. I know I haven't. This isn't a university theology department.
I mean the books are all readily available, especially the ancient stuff which can be had through any of a myriad of websites. If you’re genuinely interested in the subject then doing actual reading will probably solve many of your difficulties.
Good and bad are the paradigmatic thin concepts.
(Roughly, a thick concept is one that as well as being evaluative also carries significant descriptive weight and is founded in a scheme of values or a way of life. A thin concept has no meaningful descriptive weight. So, elegant while still thinnish is thicker than beautiful. Generous is thickish; altruistic is thin.)
Sin is a pretty thin concept but it does imply some offence against something felt to be morally motivating and numinous.
Doesn't this also depend on the view of sin you have - so that sin as "rule-breaking" would be thinner than sin as "going one's own selfish way" or "rebellion against God"?
Believe and you shall sin. It grabs the pre-Enlightenment mind by the balls doesn't it? This comes to mind.
It's a better mousetrap (Emerson). In selling. A brilliant fatalistic trap. Sell the need, the assuaging of guilt. By overselling, overstating it. It's more addictive than nicotine.
Filthy, indelible STAINS?! Never mind, in your weekly (daily is even BETTER!) wash, use new, improved BOC!
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
This is such a laughably sophomoric account of the development of the concept of original sin that I feel like you haven’t actually read a single damn thing from the early church grappling with the theology and philosophy behind sin.
To be fair, I doubt many people have. I know I haven't. This isn't a university theology department.
I mean the books are all readily available, especially the ancient stuff which can be had through any of a myriad of websites. If you’re genuinely interested in the subject then doing actual reading will probably solve many of your difficulties.
Do you have any particular recommendations?
I do! There's a whole lineage of thought that gradually develops the idea that there's something wrong with the human condition that Christ came to redeem / fix. Athanasius' On the Incarnation is quite important in this respect, as there's a striking similarity between what Athanasius understands the fallenness of the human condition to be and how Augustine comes to articulate original sin. Prior to Athanasius, there's Cyril of Jerusalem's Lectures on the Christian Sacraments, which is quite important for revealing how the early church was developing its understanding of sin generally. Cyril doesn't get as much into anything like original sin, but its still good for seeing how the early church thought about sin, which is quite different from how we think about sin.
Augustine, of course, is your man for original sin and is the first great articulator of the idea. It's kind of everywhere in his works, but I think the easiest place to see it and not get overwhelmed by all he says is in his Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love. That work is also sometimes called his Handbook. It's a great book overall and kind of establishes, in my mind, the format for later small handbooks on the faith that would be used by theologians like Karl Barth and Joseph Ratzinger, to name only two. To see a later development of the idea, Anselm is your man. His work On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin is straightforward, being on the early early cusp of Scholasticism, and is quite in line with the Augustinian framework although he does modify it in important ways.
All of those works are available online in one form or another, albeit in translations that are in various degrees of 'datedness,' but they're still perfectly readable.
For modern scholarly works, Stump and Meiser's Original Sin and the Fall: Five Views published by IVP Academic is good but very protestant. Paula Fredricksen's Sin: The Early History of an Idea published by Oxford is excellent and not especially academic or technical. There are plenty of scholarly works on the concept in Augustine, John Rist's Augustine published by Cambridge is a good book on him and good on original sin.
Sin is a disease that needs healing. Any 'punishment' must be restorative. If that makes me a universalist, fine.
Sin is a theological category of human action. It doesn't exist for the atheist, except as jargon.
Not true, because it's a psychological phenomenon fundamentally - especially the subspecies called original sin. It's a way of explaining why human beings do bad things - and in the latter case why we do them in spite of our intentions. The association with the divine is indeed theological, but sin itself, to my mind, is fundamentally human. As is goodness, of course.
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
This is such a laughably sophomoric account of the development of the concept of original sin that I feel like you haven’t actually read a single damn thing from the early church grappling with the theology and philosophy behind sin.
To be fair, I doubt many people have. I know I haven't. This isn't a university theology department.
I mean the books are all readily available, especially the ancient stuff which can be had through any of a myriad of websites. If you’re genuinely interested in the subject then doing actual reading will probably solve many of your difficulties.
Do you have any particular recommendations?
I do! There's a whole lineage of thought that gradually develops the idea that there's something wrong with the human condition that Christ came to redeem / fix. Athanasius' On the Incarnation is quite important in this respect, as there's a striking similarity between what Athanasius understands the fallenness of the human condition to be and how Augustine comes to articulate original sin. Prior to Athanasius, there's Cyril of Jerusalem's Lectures on the Christian Sacraments, which is quite important for revealing how the early church was developing its understanding of sin generally. Cyril doesn't get as much into anything like original sin, but its still good for seeing how the early church thought about sin, which is quite different from how we think about sin.
Augustine, of course, is your man for original sin and is the first great articulator of the idea. It's kind of everywhere in his works, but I think the easiest place to see it and not get overwhelmed by all he says is in his Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love. That work is also sometimes called his Handbook. It's a great book overall and kind of establishes, in my mind, the format for later small handbooks on the faith that would be used by theologians like Karl Barth and Joseph Ratzinger, to name only two. To see a later development of the idea, Anselm is your man. His work On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin is straightforward, being on the early early cusp of Scholasticism, and is quite in line with the Augustinian framework although he does modify it in important ways.
All of those works are available online in one form or another, albeit in translations that are in various degrees of 'datedness,' but they're still perfectly readable.
For modern scholarly works, Stump and Meiser's Original Sin and the Fall: Five Views published by IVP Academic is good but very protestant. Paula Fredricksen's Sin: The Early History of an Idea published by Oxford is excellent and not especially academic or technical. There are plenty of scholarly works on the concept in Augustine, John Rist's Augustine published by Cambridge is a good book on him and good on original sin.
Very pertinent links, many thanks @Thomas Rowans . I really like Paula Fredriksen.
As with most branches of Christianity apart from the most fundamentalist, there are a range of views within Orthodoxy on this one. As there is in Roman Catholicism, various strands of Protestantism and I daresay among the Copts too.
It ain't going to satisfy you but Elder - now Saint - Sophrony had the balance of the scales tipped in favour of mercy in a fresco of the Last Judgement at the monastery he founded in Essex.
Best read in your local hospital’s maternity ward, I should think.
The point us, though, not all Christians have the concept of Original Sin in the way you've characterised it.
The Orthodox don't. Judaism doesn't either it would seem.
I'm not following this conversation at all. If there are sizable number of Christians who don't believe it, then why would atheists engage with the idea?
Best read in your local hospital’s maternity ward, I should think.
The point us, though, not all Christians have the concept of Original Sin in the way you've characterised it.
The Orthodox don't. Judaism doesn't either it would seem.
I'm not following this conversation at all. If there are sizable number of Christians who don't believe it, then why would atheists engage with the idea?
Because the loudest Christians do believe in it and build their theology on it.
Best read in your local hospital’s maternity ward, I should think.
The point us, though, not all Christians have the concept of Original Sin in the way you've characterised it.
The Orthodox don't. Judaism doesn't either it would seem.
I'm not following this conversation at all. If there are sizable number of Christians who don't believe it, then why would atheists engage with the idea?
Perhaps because atheists are engaging with the predominant views where they are; thanks to Augustine, original sin in one form or another is a commonly held (and often misunderstood) belief of Western—Roman Catholic and Protestant—Christianity. Or perhaps because those in the West, including Western Christians, are on the whole relatively ignorant of Eastern Orthodoxy.
Or in some cases, because those atheists don’t t understand Christianity or Judaism or other religions as well as they think they do. (And yes, it can work the other way, too.)
Comments
We sin because of the separate selfish ego that loses sight of the underlying unity of all Being. The Fall is nothing other than a fall into the dualistic consciousness that fails to see that the harm we do to others, we do to the Whole. I see religion and spirituality as the progressive transcending of the ego consciousness into which we're all born slaves, to realising our total interdependence under the Lordship of our Creator.
There's no better place to look for this than in the teachings and example of Jesus. He told people that to follow him they had to deny self and take up their cross. That they had to deny attachments, even to family. And that they had to love one another as He loves them. This is the radical path to ego transcendence whereby God's will can be done on earth as in heaven, and the kingdom of God realised among us.
I think this is actually an important thing. I think for a lot of people "sin" is defined as doing something God doesn’t like - a bit like breaking the school rules - "neither shalt thou enter the Biology wing via the Physics department; thou shalt walk around to the Biology door, yea, even though it pisseth down with rain and the Physics corridor leadeth directly thence. For the wrath of the Head of Physics shall burn against those who useth his corridor other than in order that they find his classrooms; lo he cometh with an oscilloscope in his right hand and detention slips in his left".
Whether what "God doesn't like" is grounded in anything is secondary in this view, and cannot be guessed at. You need the book of rules (and presumably the half-assed smiles).
Jesus (who isn't the kind you have to wind up on Sunday) however does seem to imply there's some rhyme and reason behind good and evil, between virtue and vice. We have a couple of formulations - Love God, love your neighbour and the Golden Rule. The first of these are said to underlie every other set of rules.
In the traditional narrative we're created in and for a paradise, and mess it up. I'm going to have to unapologetically say we now know that isn't the case. There was no Eden. There was an evolutionary process over millions of years during which our species emerged, in a world in which survival didn't always favour virtue. Some selfishness and self-preservation (and the Devil take the hindmost) is wired into us. However, I don’t think that is fatal (as the Creationists do) - it leaves us in the same situation - prone to selfishness and failure to love our neighbour or apply the Golden Rule, and that being an innate part of our human nature.
Salvation is to my mind the process of rising above those animalistic - traditionally Fallen - natural instincts. We have the capacity to recognise and give moral values to actions.
When a male lion replaces an existing dominant male in a Pride, he kills all the cubs, because they will have been fathered by the previous dominant male. This is not sin or evil because that would be a category error; it is lions being lions. They do not have the capacity to reflect on their actions and assign moral value.
We do, we can, and we should.
Aye @pablito1954. I turn 70 in July, you? The three sigma rarities are part of our normal distribution of morality. Jesus was seven sigmata but still natural. Thank God for them!
@KarlLB I don't think anyone could have put it better than your definition of sin and salvation.
Don't ask me what that looks like.
Yes, I was focusing on the human theosis element rather than wider creation. I really have little idea about that part.
Forgive us our debts/trespasses/sins,
as we forgive our debtors/those who trespass against us/those who sin against us.
Then there’s Matthew 18:15: “If your brother sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”
This understand of sinning against other people is, of course, rooted in the fundamental affirmation that human beings bear the image of God, such that sinning against others is sinning against God. But I don’t think Jesus considered the offense to be just against God.
The meaning of the word does I think go a bit beyond just moral wrongdoing with religious connotations. It does imply separation from God. I rather think there are analogues in non-religious thought: when the nineteenth century atheist Clifford wrote that refusing to expose one's beliefs to questioning was a sin against mankind I think his use of the word 'sin' was appropriate given his overall ethics. Being rational really did occupy the place in his thought - and in the thought of his modern intellectual cobelievers - that being in right relation to God occupies in religious thought.
Just returned.
It assumes that people will not do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. I think most people are better than that.
Oh my sweet summer child. Have you actually met many humans?
My understanding of it is that, in this sense, it is not an emotion but an act of the will. When we are loving our neighbor, or perhaps especially our enemy, it is not feeling a certain way, but choosing their good, even or especially when we don't feel like it. Lewis talks about it in many places, including The Four Loves.
Here is Lewis in Mere Christianity talking about loving our enemies.
If it's helpful, I don't believe He is at all. Sending hugs.
Of course.
I think both of you make the mistake of assuming that most people are like you. Of course, lots will be so plenty of opportunity for cognitive bias there.
I don't think many people would tick "God is a bastard" on their "things I believe" list. It's more people claiming he's not but then ascribing attitudes, actions and intentions to him that shout loud and clear that he is.
I've seen people in tears claiming on the one hand that God is the perfect loving father and on the other that they think their parents aren't of the predestined elect and will burn in Hell for eternity. That's bastardry right there.
I will admit to thinking that most people have a conscience.
Well, you’d mentioned having a fear of it being something you’d had to try to get out of your head, so just in case you were worried or hurting because of those fears, I thought I’d say something. ❤️
Well, the fear I have is that the Evangelical God who sends most people to Hell and who I think is a bastard but the people who believe in him don't is actually real.
People don't feed that fear by saying "God is a bastard". They feed it by suggesting God is like that and somehow corkscrew a logic into God not thereby being a bastard.
Me, I see four fingers, and two plus two continues to equal four, no matter how much The Party I mean the advocates of the condemning to Hell God tell me it's five.
Works for me...!
You seem to be mixing categories. Good and Bad are not the same as Sin and Righteousness. You can have the former without the latter, but not the other way around. Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior. If sin is a disease, well, then, the pathogen is God.
I find this interesting but difficult to understand. Why are good and bad not the same as sin and righteousness?
Your sentence " Original Sin was placed into the psyche by religion to be able to talk about (read: control) human behavior" gives me difficulty, because your agent (religion) is in fact an abstract noun and not a person, so cannot have a motive. I presume you mean "human beings who are hiding behind a facade of religion in order to control other human beings?"
I mean, you MIGHT be referring to a divine personage, but it sounds unlike you.
This is such a laughably sophomoric account of the development of the concept of original sin that I feel like you haven’t actually read a single damn thing from the early church grappling with the theology and philosophy behind sin.
Also, you can certainly have sin without good and bad, and those categories are themselves invented. They only mean something within a broader philosophical framework.
To be fair, I doubt many people have. I know I haven't. This isn't a university theology department.
I can't speak for anyone else but there are circumstances where abstract nouns are commonly given forethought in a kind of shorthand. For example in biology we might say that a species has evolved in a particular way because they "want" to do something. I've heard mathematicians explain complicated ideas in a similar kind of way. Of course there's a (very real) sense that this is nonsense. Genes and species don't have consciousness and cannot want. Numbers have no will to arrange themselves in any particular way.
However it certainly feels that way sometimes and humans use these verbal shortcuts to highlight other things.
Anyway, it strikes me that @The_Riv is using a similar shortcut to ascribe something to "religion". Of course we all know that religion itself has no intelligence or personality. And yet there does appear to be a way to explain the prominence of certain ideas within human beings that lends itself to being described as if there was a plan and intelligence behind it whilst at the same time denying it.
It's a bit weird to read your comment alongside the neighbouring one from @Lamb Chopped. It seems like it is actually you two who need to thrash this out rather than anyone else in the discussion.
In no way did I attempt to write an account of the development of the concept of original sin. Big words, broad categories -- those are the shallow waters I'm treading in here. And there's no need to get into the historical minutiae about it. At least I don't think so. I also don't think humans are born tainted -- that's some straight bullshit.
I mean the books are all readily available, especially the ancient stuff which can be had through any of a myriad of websites. If you’re genuinely interested in the subject then doing actual reading will probably solve many of your difficulties.
Why would we need to “thrash it out” rather than anyone else? For one, LC is a Lutheran and I’m an Anglican so we already have different ideas about all this. For another, we’re not the authority on what Christians everywhere think. And I was disagreeing with what you said, not her.
Yes, I'm aware of the phenomenon. I'm also aware of the fact that it's super easy to fall into this sort of personification without thinking through the actual reality of what we're trying to describe--in this case, presumably that human beings are using religious categories to control others. And if that is in fact what The_Riv meant by equating badness and goodness with sin and righteousness, I'd have to disagree. I mean, I'd ask who precisely the human beings were that he suspects of masterminding this, and their successors today, and what are they getting out of it? And the conversation would go on...
Me, I think of them as pretty much the same thing (good/righteousness) and (bad/sin), just with a religious "flavor" on the general concept. The second terms imply that there is someone or something to which we may have to give an account of our behavior. That's all, IMHO.
(Roughly, a thick concept is one that as well as being evaluative also carries significant descriptive weight and is founded in a scheme of values or a way of life. A thin concept has no meaningful descriptive weight. So, elegant while still thinnish is thicker than beautiful. Generous is thickish; altruistic is thin.)
Sin is a pretty thin concept but it does imply some offence against something felt to be morally motivating and numinous.
Do you have any particular recommendations?
It's a better mousetrap (Emerson). In selling. A brilliant fatalistic trap. Sell the need, the assuaging of guilt. By overselling, overstating it. It's more addictive than nicotine.
Filthy, indelible STAINS?! Never mind, in your weekly (daily is even BETTER!) wash, use new, improved BOC!
I do! There's a whole lineage of thought that gradually develops the idea that there's something wrong with the human condition that Christ came to redeem / fix. Athanasius' On the Incarnation is quite important in this respect, as there's a striking similarity between what Athanasius understands the fallenness of the human condition to be and how Augustine comes to articulate original sin. Prior to Athanasius, there's Cyril of Jerusalem's Lectures on the Christian Sacraments, which is quite important for revealing how the early church was developing its understanding of sin generally. Cyril doesn't get as much into anything like original sin, but its still good for seeing how the early church thought about sin, which is quite different from how we think about sin.
Augustine, of course, is your man for original sin and is the first great articulator of the idea. It's kind of everywhere in his works, but I think the easiest place to see it and not get overwhelmed by all he says is in his Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love. That work is also sometimes called his Handbook. It's a great book overall and kind of establishes, in my mind, the format for later small handbooks on the faith that would be used by theologians like Karl Barth and Joseph Ratzinger, to name only two. To see a later development of the idea, Anselm is your man. His work On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin is straightforward, being on the early early cusp of Scholasticism, and is quite in line with the Augustinian framework although he does modify it in important ways.
All of those works are available online in one form or another, albeit in translations that are in various degrees of 'datedness,' but they're still perfectly readable.
For modern scholarly works, Stump and Meiser's Original Sin and the Fall: Five Views published by IVP Academic is good but very protestant. Paula Fredricksen's Sin: The Early History of an Idea published by Oxford is excellent and not especially academic or technical. There are plenty of scholarly works on the concept in Augustine, John Rist's Augustine published by Cambridge is a good book on him and good on original sin.
Very pertinent links, many thanks @Thomas Rowans . I really like Paula Fredriksen.
The point us, though, not all Christians have the concept of Original Sin in the way you've characterised it.
The Orthodox don't. Judaism doesn't either it would seem.
But damnation is Orthodox.
As with most branches of Christianity apart from the most fundamentalist, there are a range of views within Orthodoxy on this one. As there is in Roman Catholicism, various strands of Protestantism and I daresay among the Copts too.
It ain't going to satisfy you but Elder - now Saint - Sophrony had the balance of the scales tipped in favour of mercy in a fresco of the Last Judgement at the monastery he founded in Essex.
I'm not following this conversation at all. If there are sizable number of Christians who don't believe it, then why would atheists engage with the idea?
Because the loudest Christians do believe in it and build their theology on it.
Or in some cases, because those atheists don’t t understand Christianity or Judaism or other religions as well as they think they do. (And yes, it can work the other way, too.)
Well, the loudest Christians in places likely to have posters on the Ship.