Tag Archives: Hamartiology

Niebuhrian Quote

Posted on June 7, 2009 | Leave a comment

Book Review 15

Recently i have been working through H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic Christ & Culture.  Although opinion of this work has taken some hits  over the years, it is if nothing else a great read due to Niebuhr’s chops as a writer.  Some quotes are especially good, like this one on sin from his chapter “Christ & Culture In Paradox”

When man cannot any longer assure himself that he is the master of his physical fate, he turns to the things he believes are really under his control, such things as sincerity and integrity, and tries to shelter himself under his honesty; in this domain, at least, he thinks he can get along without grace, an independent good man, needing nothing he cannot himself supply (155). 

I am hoping to finish the book this weekend, but i doubt i can review it until the week after next b/c i am spending an intense week in ministry with our middle school version of VBS.  Should be a great time.  Until then, hopefully you can enjoy some more quotes from this classic work.

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Greg Boyd on Barth & Augustine’s View of Evil and Sin

Posted on May 31, 2008 | Leave a comment

In his book Satan and the Problem of Evil, Greg Boyd points to what he views as a deficiency in Augustine’s conception of sin.  In discussing Barth’s conception of das Nichtige, he argues it is inadequate b/c it lacks the actual reality of a free morally responsible agent.  He writes that

Only when ‘the nothingness’ is chosen and incarnated in an agent as real does it become real evil.  Now it is no longer a mere ‘absence.’  It becomes a concrete embodied presence.

It is this basic conviction that we must speak of the actuality of evil over the potentiality of evil that leads Boyd to make this passing comment on Augustine’s view of sin:

I would submit that this is the missing element in the traditional Augustinian definition of evil as ‘the absence of good.’  The definition describes the potentiality of evil but not the actuality of evil.  Evil becomes actualized when it is chosen by an actual agent.  This is also why I argue that evil can never be properly discussed in the abstract.  We must always have concrete instances of evil before us if our discussion is truly to be about evil and not just the potential for evil.

I think that Boyd’s thoughts here are worth some reflection.  While i’m not an expert on Barth, from what i know of him i have a hard time thinking that Boyd is giving him a fair reading here.  Folks who are deeply engaged in Barth’s work, your thoughts are requested here. 

However, when it comes to Boyd’s thesis on Augustine, his argument seems compelling to me, since it requires that theological thinking about evil happen in the concrete reality of evil, rather than in mere speculation about a deficiency.  There seems to be a resistance to the common modern dualism between faith and practice.  

Thoughts? 

 

 

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Are Calvinists the Worst Sinners?

Posted on October 17, 2007 | 8 comments

sinner-2.jpg

Hello fellow bloggers.  I’ve been pretty absent lately, b/c life is nuts right now.     Despite all the tasks to do, i thought i would sneek a quick post in.

In Thomas A. Smail’s work, The Forgotten Father, he approvingly cites Anselm’s belief that “our Christology is not determined primarily by our philosophy, but by our estimation of our plight and what it took to cope with it – quantum ponderis peccatum (how mighty was our sin).

This reminded of a thought i have often had about Calvinism.  Most people think that Calvinism focuses on the mystery or sovereignty of God, and the rest of their beliefs follow from that.  I sometimes think that what is actaully foundational for Calvinist beliefs is a particular conception of sin – total depravity.

Cornelius Plantinga has desribed Calvinists as “the guardians of sin” or something close to that.  If he, and Anselm are right, does that mean that Calvinists are the worst sinners? 

(Note: Read the above as a light-hearted way to stimulate genuine reflection over the implications of one’s understanding of sin)

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Sin and the Image of God

Posted on December 19, 2006 | 9 comments

I have been thinking alot about the nature of sin lately.  It seems to me that this is a much unexplored area of theology (for obvious reasons!).  This is such an important concept to wrestle with despite its personal difficulties b/c i am beginning to believe that our understanding of sin, particularly the fall, has dramatic implications for the rest of how we understand the Christian faith.

Here is tonight’s (this morning?) thought on sin.  I was reading a textbook for an upcoming class when i came upon this quote: “Created in the image of God, man has a natural capacity for receiving and appreciating the self-revelation of God (22).”

 I find this quote so interesting b/c it was my impression that Berkof, the author, was a staunch Reformed thinker.  If this is so, then the Imago Dei was completely destroyed in the fall.  The above quote doesn’t seem to jive with the rest of his thought.

I have been thinking on this, and i don’t believe i can recall Scripture addressing the Image of God (@ least in those terms) after the first few chapters of Genesis. 

Can anyone think of any references?  A better understanding of how the image was tainted/corrupted/lost would have a dramatic effect on one’s understanding of sin. 

A specific question i have regarding this issue: Did Adam & Eve quit believing in Yahweh after sin?  If not, then total depravity might be difficult to hold onto.  Has anyone pursued this line of thought before.

That’s enough late night questions for tonight.

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Sin Disproves Total Depravity?

Posted on December 10, 2006 | 5 comments

I recently picked up a Stanley Hauerwas anthology (click here to view).

 As i was thumbing through its pages, a footnote at the end of an entry caught my eye.  I thought i would post it to see what everyone thought about it.

The footnote (on page 220) is a quote from Reinhold Niebuhr’s (anyone know much about him?  Haven’t read up on him yet.) book entitled The nature and Destiny of Man:

“Man loves himself inordinately.  Since his determinate existence does not deserve the devotion lavished upon it, it is obviously necessary to practice some deception in order to justify such excessive devotion.  While such deception is constantly directed against competing wills,seeking to secure their acceptance and validation of the self’s too generous opinion of itself, its primary purpose is to deceive, not others, but the self.  The self must at any rate deceive itself first.  Its deception of others is partly an effort to convince itself against itself.  The fact that this necessity exists is an important indication of the vestige of truth which abides with the self in all its confusion and which it must placate before it can act.  The dishonesty of man is thus an interesting refutation of the doctrine of man’s total depravity (emphasis mine).”

 Niebuhr’s point is basically that man’s attempt to deceive himself of being sinful presupposes that somewhere in his soul he knows that he isn’t living out who he was created to be and that he disobeying God.  Such an understanding, even it if is subconscious/intuitive shows that he is not totally depraved in the Calvinistic sense.

 I think that Niebuhr is on to something, especially if one considers this to be the way a person operates who never receives Christ, as this would require that either God’s call isn’t irresistible.  However, having a natural inclination to strongly resist deterministic theology, i freely admit that i might be jumping the gun here.

 Any thoughts on this?  Hopefully the more philosophically precise can help me out here.

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To Hell With Sin

Posted on June 11, 2006 | Leave a comment


A Thinker’s Progress #2: To hell with sin

Recently i was trying to work through an extreme bout of spiritual apathy. What has been interesting to me has been that during a lot of this time i had not really been doing a whole lot “wrong.” I had tried to love my fiance, eat well, and work hard at my job, and i would say that for the most part i have been able to do that (my fiance might disagree). Despite my actions, i felt dead inside. I found myself distraught.

That began to change this past weekend when i went with my fiance to visit a friend of mine and visit the pastor who is to marry us. As we were making the roughly two hour trek up to my friend’s house a sermon came on the radio. I normally dislike listening to sermons in the car (i have no idea why), but she wanted to and i agreed.

The pastor began to preach over Psalm 6. For those of you who don’t know, that is one of several Psalms categorized as the “penitential psalms.” These Psalms have traditionally been used by the church as texts to call itself to repentance of sin (see also Psalms 32 & 51). I immediately began to dislike what i was hearing, because i thought that it was stupid for Christians to spend their time flooding their bed with weeping and drenching their couches with tears (Ps 6:6). “Yes we sin” i thought, but get up and get moving again! I thought that this focus on sin was counterproductive at best, morbid at worst.

After a weekend to think about this, i see now how foolish my initial impressions were. Being a Christian is’t about efficiency; it is about pleasing God. Sometimes we need to feel bad, b/c it moves to a place where God can give us true happiness! The Bible never asks us to only weep, but it also never says we will never be sad. God’s grace can be implanted in our hearts only as deeply as we allow him to dig and remove our sin to make room for it. Sadly it seems that He can dig deeper than we ever thought He could (or wanted Him to). It is scary to realize that until we allow God’s ever-present heavy hand of holiness to spur us on to acknowledge our sin and beg for him to remove it from us, our souls are sapped of strength (Ps 32:3-5). Once that is the case, we are merely trying to look busy by what we do. We are wasting our time and God’s offering Him filthy rags.

This has really been an interesting time of “relearning.” I am discovering that while the actions are the same, i am starting to notice the Lord again. The pain was worth it, but i hope that i don’t have to “relearn” it again.

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Posted in Personal, Theology & Doctrine

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