Sin and the Vulnerability of Embodied Life

Towards a Catholic Theology of Social Sin

Charlotte Bray

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9780567714893
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

This book explores how Catholics should speak about sin and grace in a world where structural injustice holds sway causing violence and harm. Bray brings diverse voices into creative dialogue to explore why unjust social situations can properly be called sin from a Catholic theological perspective, and how this sin can be understood to impact one's agency, freedom, and historical condition vis-à-vis God. Discussing disparate thinkers such as John Paul II, Judith Butler, Thomas Aquinas, and key Latin American liberation theologians, Bray deepens and constructively develops the Catholic understanding of social sin. She argues that the language of social sin presents us with an idea more theologically profound than just the identification of structural injustice; it depicts the power of collective human sinfulness to shape our lives and environments in ways which harm our relations with God, one another, and the rest of the created world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Social Sin in the Thought of Pope John Paul II
• 2 Liberation Theology: Contributions from the Margins
• 3 Continuing the Conversation: Insights from Thomas Aquinas and the Council of Trent
• 4 Human Vulnerability and the ‘Constitutive Sociality of the Self’: Rethinking Social Sin in Dialogue with Judith Butler
• Conclusion
• Index
• Copyright Page