The Process of Sin

The understandings of the human condition offered by the Roman Catholic Church, the dominant voice of Christianity for most of its history, have been heavily informed by the writings of Augustine.  Much has changed since the fourth and fifth centuries, when Augustine wrote about sin and humanity.  The hard sciences inform much of what we know about humanity and its place in the world and beyond.  Theologians like Catherine Keller have sought to bring our religious understandings of humanity and sin into the 21st century.

In this paper I will demonstrate why Augustine’s concepts of humanity and sin are problematic and should be rethought in ways that are more in line with contemporary scientific understandings of humanity and orient people toward a way of living that is concerned with justice and relationships.  I submit that Catherine Keller’s imaginings of humanity and sin are more appropriate in the face of scientific knowledge and more helpful in supporting movements for justice and human flourishing.  We will begin by considering Augustine and Keller’s definitions of sin and proceed to consider how these understandings influence each theologian’s concept of humanity and human nature.    

Augustine says that “abandon[ing] the Creator in pursuit of some created good” is to live in a way that is displeasing to God and thus to sin.(1)  Sin is pridefully obeying one’s own will without relying on the grace of God.(2)  It is poor use of free will.  He says that free will “is a good thing divinely bestowed, and that those are to be condemned who make a bad use of it…”(3) This understanding of sin is directly related to God.  Sinful things are things that displease God and are against God’s will.  Sinning, in this understanding, is about a relationship to God, not necessarily about our relationships to each other or creation.  According to Augustine, sin begins with pride, which is when “the soul cuts itself off from the very source to which it should keep close and somehow makes itself and becomes an end to itself” (taking pleasure in itself, away from God).(4)  I believe this focus on the individual relationship with God can lead to a focus on oneself that has potential to neglect relationship to others.  

Keller suggests considering sin to be a “rebellion against God…abstracts our relation to God from our relationships to the community and to the creation… [and] distorts biblical attempts to protect us from each other.”(5)  Thus, to imagine sin as an act against the fellow inhabitants of the world (creation) as opposed to an act against the will of God, we emphasize our responsibility for justice.  Focusing on how our acts affect other people can both motivate one to work for justice and keep one from acting in inconsiderate ways.  This idea of sin asks us to consider how our actions affect other people, animals, and the environment, since each is a part of creation.  This thinking can be very helpful in a world facing Global Climate Change, systematic injustice, and limited resources.  Sin does not begin with pride, in Keller’s understanding, but a “hardness of the heart” that begins with “too much privilege, too much violence, or just too much habit.  It dissociates from the complex multiplicity of its interdependence.”(6)  Keller would suggest, and I would agree, that defining sin as an act against creation that begins with a disassociation with relatedness, (as opposed to against God and beginning with pride), “restores the prophetic emphasis on justice for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor.”(7)  Now that we understand how each theologian approaches sin, we can consider the human and its relationship to sin.

The origins of humanity, according to Augustine, begin with Adam and Eve.  He argues that Adam and Eve are the first parents of humanity and first sinners, and are thus the reason that humans die.  Furthermore, he believes that the mortality of all human bodies was a “just punishment” for the disobedience of Adam and Eve.(8)  The modern, scientifically-minded person sees how this is at odds with the Theory of Evolution.  Since we now know that humanity is descended from apes, a suggestion that there was a “first couple” created from dust seems archaic and ignorant of what we now know to be true.  Augustine’s conclusion that humans die because of Adam and Eve is as at odds with science as it is with our individual identities.  Additionally, while Augustine sees mortality as a just punishment, I do not believe a just God would not punish an entire species for the disobedience of an individual, although I can see in this suggestion the inkling of an idea that as a species, we are “in this together.”  This idea will be supported by Catherine Keller later.

Before we proceed to how Catherine Keller might re-imagine the human experience, it is important to understand how Augustine sees the human species and its nature.  He explains that children are “identical” to their parents in nature, since parents make their children (as opposed to the first humans, who were made from dust).(9)  Because Adam and Eve sinned, it is now human nature to sin.  Augustine believes God wanted all humanity to be derived from one couple so that the nature of humanity would be unified and peaceful (arguing that “blood kinship” would lead humans to live harmoniously).(10)  While this understanding of human nature as inherently connected is beautiful and in line with our scientific understanding of genetic relatedness, the idea of relatedness does not inform Augustine’s idea of sin as much as Keller relates sin to relatedness.  Furthermore, Augustine’s understanding of human nature as prone to sin by virtue of the actions of Adam and Eve is at odds with our understandings of science (Adam and Eve were not progenitors of our species).

While Augustine understands humanity to be prone to sin, he suggests that “…by the law comes the knowledge of sin; by faith comes the obtaining of grace against sin…and grace heals the will whereby righteousness may freely be loved.”(11)  Again, Augustine focuses sin (and our tendency toward it) as tied to God.  Our only escape from sinfulness is through relationship to the divine.  This is an individualistic sense of humanity in which one’s prime focus is on oneself and one’s relationship to God.  While Augustine sees humanity as connected through Adam and Eve, this idea of connection does not approach the focus on the interrelatedness of humanity that Keller offers.

In contrast to Augustine’s concept of sin as descended from Adam and Eve, Keller would suggest that while we are “not to blame for the sins that precede [us] Academically, … [we are] responsible to recognize the collective structures of injustice, to recycle [our] legacy for the better, to resist what wastes life and to take part in what saves.”(12)  For Keller, sin is about responsibility to the world.  We are not sinful because of our ancestors, but we have responsibility for the ripple effects of all sin.  Again, this understanding is understood in terms of relatedness and justice.  Sin is action against creation.  We are responsible not only for our individual sins, but to act against systemic sin (Keller’s “collective structures of injustice”) and protect its victims (“take part in what saves”).   While Keller does not address human nature in terms as direct as Augustine, she suggests (through the ideas of Hadewijch) that “only in Love… do we actualize our potentiality as humans…”(13)  God lures us into Love like a “poet of the world, with tender patience leading it.”(14)  In contrast to Augustine’s idea of the necessity for God’s grace in resisting sin, Keller suggests that God brings forth love in people in a way that is not resistant, but unfolds in concert with the continuously creating creation.(15) Additionally, this view continues Keller’s understanding of relatedness as primary to our understandings of humanity and creation.  Augustine’s conception of sin as inherent to our species does not allow the the kind of positive orientation toward justice we find in Keller’s understanding of humanity as a species unfolding in love and relatedness to all creation, in concert with God.  

In conclusion, it is time for religious understandings of sin and human nature to take into account information from the sciences.  The views put forth by Augustine early in church history are no longer adequate for modern minds and are too individualistic for a world facing Climate Change, limited resources, and systematic injustice.  To conceptualize human nature through the story of Adam and Eve (as presented by Augustine) is problematic in the eyes of modern science.  Catherine Keller offers an alternative understanding of humans and our relationship to sin that focuses less on the individual.  She does this by emphasizing the interconnectedness of creation.  To sin, for Keller, is to act against creation.  This understanding leads to an emphasis on justice that can have practical application in our world.  To see ourselves in relationship and to consider how our actions positively affect other beings can help us to imagine a world where we are more considerate to all.  

1. Augustine in Hodgson, King, p. 150
2. Hodgson/King, p. 176
3. Augustin in Hodgson/King, p. 177
4. Augustine in Hodgson/King, p. 151
5. Keller, p. 80
6. Keller, p. 97.
7. Keller, p. 80.
8. Augustine in Hodgson/King, p. 150
9. Augustine in Hodgson/King, p. 147-148
10. Augustine in Hodgson/King, p. 150
11. Augustine in Hodgson/King, p. 179-180
12. Keller, p. 82
13. Keller, p. 93.
14. Keller, p. 100.
15. Keller, p. 100.

Keller, Catherine. On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008.

King, Robert H., and Peter C. Hodgson, eds. Readings in Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985.