THE DOCTRINE OF SIN AND EVIL 

When we approach the issue of sin, there are many questions surrounding it.  We may ask, "Just exactly what is sin?"  We may also ask, "What constitutes sin?" 

In the Christian community, the notion of "sin" varies from one segment of the Church to another.  Some churches believe that sin is the abrogation and violation of those rules and regulations found in Scripture.  Other churches believe that sin includes a violation of their doctrines, dogmas, and traditions, even if not directly alluded to in Scripture.  Some churches believe that to merely drop out of the community constitutes sin. Other churches believe that to have fellowship with other churches that don't subscribe to their doctrine is a sin.  And so the list goes on.  

We examine sin in the light of what it may have meant and was conceived of in the early Christian community, and also how it is conceived of today.  This is not, in any way, intended to promote the notion that we are free to discard ancient notions of sin and replace them with contemporary notions of sin, or that we are "free" to decide what is or what isn't sin.  

When we look at the issue of sin, we get into what may sound like a circular question.  For example, do we say that adultery is sin because the Bible says so, or does the Bible say so because it is a sin?  If our response is the latter, then we have to define what constituted such and such to be a sin prior to the writing of the Bible.  

The doctrine of sin and evil occupies a somewhat anomalous position in Christian doctrine.  On the one hand, there is no positively stated orthodox doctrine of sin comparable to the doctrines of the Trinity and of Christology.  The ancient church agreed with Augustine that certain views of sin and evil are incompatible with Christian faith.  Accordingly, the church condemned the Manichean heresy for its theological pessimism, and the Pelagian heresy for its anthropological optimism concerning evil.  But the church stopped short of officially adopting Augustine's own positive formulation of original sin.  Instead, it came closer to adopting his teachings concerning grace.  Yet the doctrines of redemption presuppose some concept of the human condition, including responsibility for evil.  There is, as Augustine well knew, a systematic connection between the concept of salvation and the concept of sin, so that neither concept can be formulated in complete separation from the other.  Consequently, while the church did not officially adopt Augustine's teaching concerning sin, his formulation of the doctrine of original sin has been highly influential-so much so that it can almost be said to have attained semiofficial standing (Robert R. Williams in "Sin and Evil." Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, p. 194)

One of the questions regarding sin is one that is related to the nature of humankind.  Are we, as a result of the sin of our first parents born in sin so that it is not possible not to sin, or are we capable of avoiding sin altogether?  Is the notion of original sin a heresy, or is it compatible with Scriptural revelation?  

In modern secular culture, moreover, the Christian concept of sin has been eclipsed and virtually displaced.  Secular culture perceives evil no longer as a theological problem but rather as a problem of human institutional and social arrangements.  Divine aid is felt to be either unnecessary or not among the real possibilities available to resolve the problem.  Instead, evil calls for intelligent human action.  There are present in modern culture, however, quite different views concerning the meaning and result of human actions. Some take a rather optimistic view in which the problem of evil is capable of human management and therefore amenable to control.  Science and technology are regarded as the instruments by means of which we eventually eliminate evil as a problem.  Whether evil is seen as a resistance of nature to human manipulation and exploitation or as a recalcitrance on the part of human beings to social planning and conditioning, it is at least viewed as a "problem" which will sooner or later yield to an appropriate technological "solution."  So runs the "myth of progress" (Williams, op. cit. p. !95). 

So, en fin, we ask the question as to whether the doctrine of sin should continue to be a concern of the church, tilling its own internal garden, or should we allow the sway of secularism to define what at one time may have been the domain of the church?  Do we subscribe to the philosophical notion of "sin" being our failure and refusal to live up to our potential?  Should we define "Sin in sociological terms whereas sin is a violation of a social contract, and a violation of the social consensus? 

As time move on, the church will be faced with the options to define for itself what is the nature of sin, or whether to allow society to define it for us.  The "give and take," and the "push and pull" between the church and the society will continue until the end of history as we know it. 

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: THE DOCTRINE OF HUMANKIND 

One of the areas of Christian thought focuses  on humankind, i.e. its origin and nature.  A theological view of humankind may or may not resonate with other views in other branches of human knowledge, especially the scientific branches.  Theology attempts to view humankind in terms of its relationship to God.  

Theology views humankind as a creation of God, and not merely a result of spontaneous or sporadic occurrences in nature.  Humankind is conceived (at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition) to have been made in "the image and likeness of God."  In some respects, humankind is deemed to be stewards of God on Earth.  At other points in human history, humankind is deemed to be an agent of God in history, i.e. carrying out God's intentions and will for the human race, and in some respects, the planet as whole.

As a distinct topic, "theological anthropology" is relatively new to the theologian's agenda.  It is a doctrine about "human nature" or what it is to be a "person."  Christian thinkers have always had things to say on that topic, of course, but for most of the history of Christian thought, they have said it in and with discussion of other topics. Thus they have always made claims about human beings as part of creation, about human beings' ability to know God, about the "fallenness" and "sin" of human beings, about the dynamics by which people are "redeemed" from that sin and made new beings, and about the ultimate destiny to which they are called.  Each of these was a theological topic in itself.  In the process of of discussing these matters, theologians traded on conceptual schemes designed to describe what it is to be a human being, what it is to be the sort of being of whom all those things concerning creation, revelation, sin, and so on, were claimed (David H. Kelsey, "Human Being," in Christian Theology: An Introduction to  It's Traditions and Tasks.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, p. 167).

Theological anthropology in the narrow or strict sense has tended to focus on either or both of two major guiding questions: (1) What is it about human beings that makes it possible for them in the finitude to know the infinite God? (2) What is it about human beings that makes fallenness possible in such a radical way as to require the redemption to which Christianity witnesses?  In the classical theological tradition, these questions were addressed not directly in and of themselves, but in the process of other topics.  Theological anthropology became a topic in its own right only in the modern period.  And perhaps not by accident, the basic conceptual scheme used to analyze humankind changed radically.  As we shall see, what had been in the classic tradition an often implicit discussion of "human nature, became in the modern period an explicit discussion of "subjectivity."  What is the significance of this shift is what we seek to explore in this essay (Ibid.).

A relevant question relative to theological anthropology is "Why do we need to distinguish humankind from the rest of creation?"   If according to science, we are part of the animal kingdom, why do we need to be differentiated from the rest of that kingdom?  If, we as human beings experience fallenness and redemption, does the rest of the animal kingdom also experience those?  If we, as human beings are made in "the image and likeness of God," can we claim the same for the rest of the animal kingdom?  If so, why do we apparently place greater value on the life of humankind than what we do with the rest of the animal kingdom?  

If the religious and theological view of humankind is different from the scientific view of humankind, does that then mean that one is right and the other is wrong?  Do we uphold one and discard the other, or can the two views coexist side by side?  Does either view need to be demythologized?  

I personally, as a theologian submit that the scientific views of humankind do not necessarily have to be regarded as an enemy of the theological perspective.  Since both scientific and theological views are human constructs, they both have elements of truth, and they both have their limitations.

The classic formulation of theological anthropology was largely based on the story of the creation and the fall of humankind in Genesis 1-3, interpreted, at times, through conceptual schemes borrowed from Greek philosophical traditions.  The focus was on Adam and Eve, who were understood in a double way. On the one hand, they were taken to be the historically first individual human beings.  On the other hand, they were taken, to be the scriptural ideal type or paradigm of "human nature" as such (after all, the Hebrew word from which "Adam" comes is the generic term for humankind).  It is not logically necessary that the first human beings should also be normative for what it is to be human.  The assumption that they are creates a problem: Ideal types are highly general.  Which features of the concrete Adam and Eve, as described in the Genesis story, are part of the ideal type that is normative for human nature. And, by what principle does one select them (Kelsey, op. cit., p. 168)?

The view of human nature generated by this story had two major themes: (1) A picture of the place that human nature has in the unchanging structure of the cosmos that God created and (2) a picture of humankind's unique capacity for communion with God-what has traditionally been called the "imago die (image of God)" (Ibid.).

If our view of humankind in its original, and subsequent fallen state, is based on the Genesis narrative, then we must ask if take a literalist approach to this narrative, or do we take into consideration the variety of literary genres that we encounter in Scripture.  Do we take the view of humankind in Scripture as allegory, history, legend, myth, or what?  Do we in essence, take the Scriptures to be a document of faith or a mere literary document?  

Theological anthropology may be able to deal with persons in their genuine concreteness  by a second "turn" from the person as patients or subjects of consciousness to persons as agents.  There are at least two different kinds of movements that may promise a new turn to the agents.  On one side, in Liberation Theology, and other political theologies, we find that the Marxist tradition lurking in the background, either informing and influencing Christian analyses of the human predicament and God's engagement in it, or being influenced in turn,  by these theological perspectives.  These movements have not yet perhaps fully articulated the conceptual schemes on which they rely. But it is already evident how much they depend on an analysis of personhood in which the concept "praxis" is central, a concept that focuses on persons as agents before they are are subjects of consciousness, taken precisely in their concrete material contexts.  Second, there is a revival in Anglo-American philosophical theology of a modest art of metaphysics that tries to sketch a conceptual scheme central to which is an analysis of "action" and of persons as "agents."  This too is a varied phenomenon, no single school of thought at all, and certainly not yet the fount of a highly articulated set of proposals.  But like the first movement, it promises to be fertile for new constructive proposals of better ways in which to elucidate the Christian witness to the liberating and humanizing effect of personal dependence on God (Kelsey, op. cit., p. 193). 

En fin, we are left with the question "Who has the right view of humankind?"  Even if we say that the theological view of humankind is more "correct" than the scientific view, we still have to contend with the variety of hermeneutical principles in Christian theology relative to human nature.  Each Christian community has its own biblical and theological hermeneutic which leads it to have its particular view of what and who is humankind.  Do we rely on the view that humankind is created in an original state of holiness and uprightness, and then fallen into sin?  Do we subscribe to the liberal view that human nature is intrinsically good? Do we buy into the notion of Christian realism that leads us to believe that by education, we can bring about the perfect society?  These, just like other questions of theological consideration, will be ongoing in the construction of theology.  Because we are not "seers," we cannot predict with precision whether or not there will ever be a consensus on the nature and destiny of humankind.  We continue to live with the questions.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION AND PROVIDENCE 

One of the main issues in Christian theology is that of the question of "how did it all begin?"  We could easily relate to the questions of "what happened" and "who were the key players in all of this?"

When I served as a professor of Latin American history and religion at Boricua College in Brooklyn, New York, one of the first questions that I would pose to my students when I met with them was the question of  "Como fue que comenzo el bochinche (How did the gossip begin)?"  In fact, that question was presented to me by one of my students from a country in Central America, a country whose history he knew much about.  He explained to me in his own words how we got to the present situation in Latin America.  He was very well-versed in the history of his own country, and that of Latin America as a whole as well.  It was a question that described the seeds of historical narrative.

We find the same thing in the Hebrew/Christian Scriptures regarding the origins of the earth and supposedly the beginning of human history.  I say "supposedly" because the Hindu Scriptures were written thousands of years before the Hebrew/Christian Scriptures, and they contained creation narratives of their own, albeit in a speculative manner.  

Both the author of Genesis and the writer of the Gospel according to John start with the words, "In the beginning."  They point to a certain point in time as to when all things came into being, though that particular point in time is not specifically spelled out.  

Jewish/Christian theology posits the person of God as being present "in the beginning," whenever that was. The Scriptures of both religion point to God as the originator of being, of life, and of history.  The narratives of Scripture correspond in some way to the notion of God as the "ground of being." 

Traditional Christian beliefs about the divine origin, governance, and final disposition of the world were for many centuries foundational components of the dominant world view in Christian culture. Residues of these beliefs can be found today in various places, in arguments advanced by the pro-life camp in the abortion controversy, for instance, and in such quasi-religious sentiments as "Life is a gift" and "Things tend to work out for good in the long run."  But the powerful convictions once expressed in traditional formulations of the doctrines of creation and providence do not now have a vivid and compelling life in the churches.  In secular thought the convictions and the doctrines have been in deep recession for centuries (Julian N. Hart, "Creation and Providence," in Christian Theology: An Introduction to its Traditions and Tasks.  Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King, eds. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, p. 141).

One cause of the inclusive decline is to be found in a tendency of the doctrines to distort or obscure the convictions and passions of the religious life.  But many important elements of doctrine and conviction have been powerfully challenged, if not overthrown, by views inspired by modern science.  The traditional teaching of the doctrine of creation is that the world as a whole had an absolute beginning: before creation nothing but God existed; everything begins when God said "Let there be."  Modern scientific theories concerning the origin of the physical universe have virtually nothing in common with traditional Christian teachings.  The life sciences offer explanations of the origin and development of human beings which are strictly incompatible with historic creation.  So also for the doctrine of providence.  The theological tradition holds the view that events great and small, cosmic and historical, faultlessly operate to serve a divine ordination.  This exaltation of purpose-controlling-indeed defining-every entity and every set of entities in the cosmic spread funds afoul of the decision made very early in the modern world, and powerfully reinforced at critical junctures thereafter, to drop the category of purpose altogether from scientific explanation.  So the conviction that God the Creator has oriented human beings toward a perfectly fulfilled good beyond nature and history, and makes all things conspire to this end, has fallen into a deep and persistent recession-but not simply because the facts, none of which is more appalling to than the Holocaust, ruinously assault the Christian view.  It is also because hardly any large and potent intellectual current in the modern world seems to support Christian teaching about providence (Ibid., pp. 141-142).

An issue which I sincerely and strongly believe is both apropos and relevant to this discourse is that of literary dependency.  So for example, we have those who believe that  the Babylonian account of Creation served as the basis for the Creation narrative in the book of Genesis.  So, the question could be, "Did the author of Genesis 'borrow from' or 'copy' from the Babylonian account of Creation (Enuma Elish) in order to compose the Genesis narrative of Creation?"  Was there literary dependency on the part of the Genesis author?  Because of the similarities in both narratives, the person who examines the Bible exclusively in its literary composition and not as an "inspired, inerrant, or infallible" document would tend to believe that there is indeed, literary dependency on the part of the Genesis author.  

As a theologian who is not a biblical "literalist," I would say that whether the biblical account of Creation is more authentic than the Babylonian account of Creation, or whether the writer of Genesis actually borrowed from the Babylonian account, the important thing is for us in this day and age to decipher both the meaning and of the value of the biblical account of Creation, and also what is the theological significance in the narrative.  Theology, in my humble, but informed view does not have to depend on a literal reading or exposition of the Scriptural narrative in order to convey a message of truth and value to its readers.  The truth of Scripture and theology do not hinge on biblical literalism.

To be continued. 

In the name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen! 

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Reformed Church in America 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

                                      ISSUES AND PROPOSALS REGARDING THE DOCTRINE 

                                      OF REVELATION 

In the first half of the twentieth century, the doctrine of revelation became such a prominent feature on the theological landscape that questions began to be raised as to whether modern theology did not suffer from an "inflation of revelation."  Questions were also raised about the intelligibility of the new interpretations of revelation.  If modern theologians emphasized revelation only in order to sidestep the critical questions of the Enlightenment and to affirm an objective basis for faith, then some critics questioned whether revelation could serve as a foundational principle and the basis for further theological reflection (Troup, op. cit., p.134).

Questions have also been raised as to whether the modern concepts of revelation have basis whatsoever in the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament.  Although most contemporary interpretations of revelation are concerned with what can be said about God, they are even more concerned with how it is possible to speak intelligibly of "God."  This may not have been an urgent problem for the writers of Scripture, but it is an urgent problem for theologians who recognize the historicity of human understanding and the cultural relativity of all human assertions. Most of the major proposals in contemporary theology concerning the interpretation of revelation include not only a foundation for knowledge about God, but also and most importantly, a hermeneutical description of how revelation takes place (Ibid.).

Because of the emphasis on hermeneutics in contemporary interpretations of revelation, it seems that future descriptions of revelation will focus on the historicity of human understanding and the role of Scripture and tradition in the Christian community as the locus for revelation.  If revelation were interpreted in this context, special attention would have to be given to the importance of history for an understanding of human identity and the crucial role of memory in the construction of personal identity. The life, language, and texts of the community would be seen as the medium for revelation, with the hermeneutical encounter occurring in the collision between personal identity and the language (or tradition) of the community.  The emerging discussion of narrative theology offers at least one proposal for how revelation might be interpreted in these terms (Ibid.).  

In narrative theology, revelation refers to that process in which the personal identities of individuals are reinterpreted and transformed by the means of the narratives which gave the Christian community its distinctive identity.  What might be called "Christian narrative" is the confessional narrative that results from the collision between an individuals's personal identity narrative and the narrative identity of the Christian community.  A narrative theology developed in this manner properly recognizes  that the identities of persons and communities cannot be separated from an interpretation of their respective histories, and that in most cases, it is the narrative identity of the community (articulated in its Scripture and traditions) which provides the context for the interpretation of personal identity (Ibid., pp. 134-135). 

In essence, what we have been encountering in this discourse is the issue of divine revelation and our response as humans to that revelation.  As pointed out several times, hermeneutics plays a large role in that response.  God reveals, humankind responds in a variety of ways.

Another issue is that of personal identity vs. communal identity.  We might respond to divine revelation individually by saying "I believe," or "I think." The historical creeds such as the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed begin with the words "I believe," and yet they are designed to express and reflect the beliefs of the Church as a communal entity.  

How do we integrate communal and individual identities in responding to divine revelation?  Do we make room for individuals running amok and expressing what they believe to be the right response to divine revelation, or do we assert the communal "take" on divine revelation to be the "binding" one?  If we overemphasize the individual narrative, we run the risk of having a variety of hermeneutical perspectives.  On the other hand, if we overemphasize the communal narrative, we run the risk of the individuals in that community becoming automatons, just parroting and regurgitating the "party line." 

The issue of divine revelation, just like the other doctrines of Christian theology have their challenges.  We continue to meet those challenges with candor and honesty.  We do not bury our heads in the sand, pretending that those challenges are not there.  We face them in the face of history, as we seek to decipher how we apply  and practice in our time "the faith once delivered to the saints."  

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

             HOW PEOPLE RESPOND TO NEW TRENDS 

It goes without saying that every time there is a new movement of thought, whether it be in the realm of philosophy or theology, that there are reactions and responses.  Thought trends always elicit responses, whether in the form of public outrage, or in quiescent meditation and reflection.

George Stroup the following:  

In the nineteenth century, several reinterpretations of revelation were offered in response to the impasse created by the Enlightenment.  Two appeared in the first third of the century and overshadowed subsequent discussions of revelation.  The first was the theology of Friedrich Schleirmacher, who argued in the Christian Faith that doctrines are reflections of the piety that emerges from the experience of redemption in the Christian community.  Christian piety articulates the experience of redemption as it is lived in the church and attributed to Jesus Christ, the founder of of the community.  By making the experience of redemption the basis for theological reflection, Schleirmacher  proposed a new foundation and method for the critical explication of the Christian faith.  Neither knowing nor doing but that form of feeling Christians refer to as "redemption" became the basis for theology.  Schleirmacher's turn to the experience of redemption created a new theological paradigm which escaped the the Kantian critique of classical metaphysics and theology, and also suggested a new interpretation of the meaning of revelation (Troup, p. 127).

In essence, what we have here is witnessing how new approaches to theology, and to revelation in particular, began to emerge.  The notion of an "unfiltered" divine revelation was called into question.

In the introduction to his major theological work, Schleirmacher denied that revelation has primarily to do with intellectual assent to revealed truths, since that would imply that revelation can be limited to the cognitive dimension of human existence. He readily acknowledged that revelation leads to the formulation of doctrines; nevertheless, he contended that that revelation refers primarily not to the apprehension of propositions but to the "originality of the fact which lies at the foundation of a religious communion."  This original fact shapes the life of the community and "cannot itself be explained by the historical chain which precedes it (Friedrich Schleirmacher, The Christian Faith, p. 50).

We stop at this point to ask the question as to whether revelation is something which is divinely initiated or humanly generated claiming to be "from God?"  All sectors of the Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant with all its variations) claim in one way or the other that revelation is divinely initiated, i.e. that God initiates the process of self-disclosure.  

Then we deal with the hermeneutical question, i.e. is our hermeneutics (interpretation) also divinely initiated?  Another way of posing this question would be to ask if our interpretation of divine revelation is the interpretation that God intended and wants us to have, or is hermeneutics a humanly generated response to the divinely generated self-disclosure?  

Given the fact that there are a variety of hermeneutical perspectives, we cannot make the claim or pretend that any one particular perspective is the "correct one."  Indeed, there are many who will claim that their particular hermeneutic was "revealed" to them by God as a way of shutting down all other hermeneutical perspectives.  

Insistence on the authority of a particular hermeneutical perspective reflects human arrogance and presumptuousness.  One can claim that the Catholic Church's Magisterium is the depository of the true hermeneutics, or that the Protestant churches, with their emphasis on "Sola Scriptura" have the "correct" hermeneutics, but in the final analysis, the claim to the inerrancy or infallibility of a particular hermeneutic is culturally-conditioned.  Theology is tentative and "in progress."  Revelation is absolute, authoritative, and final, but human response is always tentative.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary