Many modern/postmodern people are reluctant to talk about sin. Part of the reason is because of the sick theology from much of the church regarding that subject. Emphases on original sin, trivial sins, threats of hell, exclusive claims regarding salvation, and a judgmental, punishing God are a turnoff for people with sense and sensitivity. Too often, good news becomes bad news when the church forgets that unconditional love is the unchanging essence of God.
However, sin is real. A tour of the Holocaust Museum or the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, will reveal the horrors and long history of sin in the human story. Anyone who has counseled those who have suffered from childhood abuse is hauntingly aware of the reality of evil in this world. Victims of war, persecution, bigotry, oppression, and the ravages of poverty and hunger in a world which can feed its population several times over experience the consequences of sin every single day on this planet. Sin and evil are real. Injustice is ubiquitous. All is not well on earth, and it would appear that God is not in heaven on a throne ruling over a harmonious and just world.
Augustine’s idea of original sin as interpreted by Western Christianity has not been helpful in dealing with the reality of sin. Augustine was a genius and had many profound insights into the human psyche. However, in his later years, Augustine seemed to depart from what we might call today a “healthy spirituality.” His concept of original sin is complex and beyond the scope of this article to fully explicate. What I would like to do is address the essence of the concept and consider its relevance for today’s church.
The church, based on Paul’s letters, understood that sin and death entered the world because of the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. As a result of that sin, Augustine maintained that all humans inherit the guilt and consequences of that primeval couple. We are born sinners. Words like “corrupt” and “totally depraved” described the nature of humans. At one point in history, even newborn babies were believed to be guilty, depraved, and destined to suffer the eternal torture of the fires of hell if they were not baptized. (Later, the church developed the idea of limbo where unbaptized babies escaped torture but were kept in an arrested state of development as infants and were never allowed to mature. Evangelicals developed the concept of the “age of accountability” with the reasoning that those who died before that age automatically “went to heaven.” Of course, one wonders at what point we reach that critical stage in life. For years, twelve seemed to be the determining age. I was raised in a Christian home and was told from birth that God loved me. Then one day I heard in a revival that if I didn’t come forward and “get saved,” I would burn in the fires of hell forever. I was confused. I hadn’t changed. God must have changed. Why did God stop loving me?)
So, according to the doctrine of original sin, we are all doomed to hell from the womb. Along with this pernicious doctrine came ideas of atonement which essentially said that God was so disgusted and angry with us that his (such a god was always a “he’) holiness required his wrath to be poured out on us forever. Jesus (who was born without sin via the virgin birth) came to die in our place, taking our punishment upon himself to assuage the wrath of God. In other words, Jesus came to save us from God his Father. We are saved by child abuse!
Jesus came not to change God’s mind and heart about us. He came to change our minds and hearts about God.
This theory of atonement (which didn’t develop until over a thousand years after Christ and was intensified by John Calvin and his followers) never made sense to me. I call it “whipping boy theology.” The Bible never gives credence to such a theory. From beginning to end, it is God who loves and saves us from ourselves. The cross reveals the depths of God’s love for the whole cosmos, not a Plan B attempt to rescue a few souls from the fires of hell. In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus reveals the solidarity of God with us in every aspect of our being and the depths to which God will go out of Her vulnerable love for each and all. God identifies with us so deeply and completely that She experiences Her creation from the inside out and takes all into Her divine being for healing and transformation through self-giving love. Jesus came not to change God’s mind and heart about us. He came to change our minds and hearts about God. Whipping Boy theology is the opposite of the good news of the New Testament.
While all this lunacy was happening in the West, reason prevailed in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In that part of Christianity (from which we could learn so much), theologians viewed sin primarily as a spiritual sickness requiring a Great Physician. These profound thinkers taught that although we may inherit the consequences of “ancestral sin,” we do not inherit the guilt of such sin. (Roman Catholicism and many Protestant churches taught that we bear both the consequences and the guilt of Adam and Eve.)
These Eastern theologians took seriously the reality of sin but understand its nature in ways which are more helpful and healthy. Because Greek was their native language (Augustine couldn’t read Greek. He was dependent on the Latin version of the Bible.), they understood that the primary Greek word for sin (amartia) means “miss” as in missing the mark and thus not reaching one’s full potential and goal as a human created in the image of God. Sin is viewed as a terminal spiritual sickness, not a state of guilt. Such an illness distorts humans in every aspect of their being and mars the image of God diminishing the divine likeness. Such sickness disorients our understanding and value of each other and the world. It keeps us from reaching our full and natural potential to experience union with God. (In such union, we never become God and never lose our own individual identities. We are enabled to become the unique persons God created us to be in the communion of the Holy Trinity.)
Western Christianity, for the most part, has taken the juridical approach to sin. We have sinned by breaking God’s law and must be punished for our violations. Punishment is the only path to “make us right with God.” Someone must be punished. Christ volunteers and allows God to punish him for our sins. God is satisfied and becomes willing to forgive.
Eastern Christianity, for the most part, has taken the medical approach to sin and has viewed sin as a serious spiritual disease needing the healing hand of a Great Physician. Such disease is self-perpetuating, invasive, and destructive. “Healing, remedial, and restorative” are the adjectives used to describe the salvation brought by God through Christ (“to save” in the Greek New Testament primarily means “to heal”). Such healing allows for us to enter fully into communion with God where we shall eternally progress from horizon to horizon in the expanding experiences of love, joy, beauty, and shalom. I much prefer the vision of the Eastern Church. We in the West should rediscover the good news those in the East have never forgotten.
(Those who want to read more about an understanding of atonement which is not penal and substitutionary will find the book Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ edited by Brad Jersak and Michael Hardin helpful. This book contains 527 pages of articles by a wide diversity of biblical scholars and theologians who offer theologically sound and healthy approaches to the cross and atonement.)
