Sin, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation

Christian and Muslim Perspectives

Lucinda Mosher, David Marshall, Lucinda Mosher, David Marshall

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781626162846
• eBook ISBN: 9781626162853
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religioni comparate

Sin, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation: Christian and Muslim Perspectives is a collection of essays and scripture passages studied at the 2014 Building Bridges seminar.

Thoughtful and provocative, the book begins with the complete texts of the opening lectures by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen and Jonathan A. C. Brown and contains essays by Christoph Schwöbel, Ayman Shabana, Susan Eastman, Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Philip Sheldrake, and Asma Afsaruddin. Peppered throughout with relevant scripture passages and commentary, the text concludes with an extensive account of the informal conversations at the seminar that conveys the lively and respectful dialogue that is the hallmark of this meeting.

PART I

Overviews

Sin, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation

A Christian Perspective

VELI-MATTI KÄRKKÄINEN

LET ME BEGIN with three observations as an orientation to sin and the Fall in Christian theology.¹ First, while all Abrahamic traditions believe that there is something wrong with us and the world because of sin, these sister faiths do not envision sin’s origin and results in the same way. Whereas Christian theological tradition speaks of “original sin” (and even “total depravity”), Islamic tradition rejects such an interpretation of the Adam and Eve story. Second, even the Jewish and Christian interpretations of the same scriptural materials yield widely differing theologies of sin. In Jewish theology the “fallen” state of humanity is understood as being driven by either evil or good inclinations, and unlike in the New Testament–based Christian exegesis, Adam plays virtually no role.² Third, against common intuitions, within the Christian tradition there are widely differing ways of conceiving the results of the Fall and sinfulness. To oversimplify a complex issue, we can describe the two main Christian traditions in the following manner:

1. The less “negative” interpretation is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church, in which the Fall narrative is depicted as a “stumbling” of yet-immature children (Adam and Eve). While of course a sad experience, the Fall did not bring about original sin and certainly did not bring about divine judgment. Rather, judgment comes only as a result of wrong choices and acts. The effects of the Fall are understood more as a wound inflicted in our nature.

2. The more “negative” interpretation is present in the traditions of the Christian West, which include Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant churches. Following St. Augustine’s theology, they speak of original sin as the result of Adam’s disobedience; this sinfulness, which results in divine judgment, is “inherited” from generation to generation. That said, there is a divergence within the Christian West between the two main families. As will be discussed in the following, Augustinian thought develops somewhat differently in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant traditions.

An important corollary issue behind theologies of sin and the Fall is the question of the freedom of the will. Whereas in the Christian East freedom of the will was not negated by Adam’s disobedience, the Christian West, following Augustine, denies the power of choice apart from divine restorative grace (except for freedom to choose wrongly!). Before the Fall the human being was capable of not sinning, but that capacity was totally lost thereafter. Protestant and Anglican churches continued affirming this Augustinian denial of freedom of the will (apart from grace), whereas in Roman Catholicism, mainly owing to St. Thomas Aquinas, a somewhat less negative account of the will developed.³ Recall Luther’s work The Bondage of the Will (1525) in rebuttal of the Catholic humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam’s The Freedom of the Will (1524).⁴ Anglican and Protestant traditions also derived from Augustine the idea of “double predestination,” that is, from all eternity God has decided to save some and lead others to eternal damnation. The Eastern Church vehemently rejects that theory, and Roman Catholicism does not teach it (despite all its indebtedness to Augustine).⁵

As mentioned, the figure of Adam (and Eve) plays a critical role in Christian theology of sin not only because of the Genesis 3 narrative but especially because of St. Paul’s discussion in Romans 5. It is widely agreed in contemporary Christian theology that even if in Pauline theology the universality of sin is traced back to Adam (Rom. 5:12), there is not yet an idea of sin “as a fated universal legacy that proliferates generation after generation like a congenital disease.”⁶ And although Paul teaches the universal occurrence of death (Rom. 5:12, an idea familiar also to Jewish tradition), he does not speak of inheritance of sin in any technical sense. Eastern Orthodox theology followed that tradition in understanding the example and sin of Adam as representing the whole race instead of linking this notion to the idea of inheritance of sin. It is highly significant that patristic theology (theology of the church fathers) for centuries did not have a developed doctrine of sin (other than a deep intuition of the fallen and sinful nature of humanity). Only with St. Augustine at the turn of the fifth century was a technical doctrine of original sin worked out.⁷ The basic idea is that when Adam sinned, we participated in it. This interpretation was supported by the faulty Vulgate translation of Romans 5:12, which translated the Greek eph ho as “in whom,” that is, when Adam transgressed, we, the human race, participated in his sin, and we inherit this fallen nature from our parents.⁸ We are guilty and condemned as a result.⁹

In the Christian East the human was regarded as mortal even before the Fall and hence death per se cannot be punishment for the Fall. Human nature is intact even after the Fall and is good by virtue of existing as the image of God, and free will is not destroyed by the Fall. In this interpretation, we do not inherit sin but rather its consequences, particularly corruption and mortality. In other words, the East followed the Hebrew mind-set in which even the concept of original sin is not a standard term. While the universality of sin is affirmed, in Eastern theology, as mentioned, it is often described in terms of woundedness or sickness.

Having now described the differences of interpretations of sin and the Fall in Christian tradition, I should add the following remarks lest I be misunderstood. Notwithstanding many disagreements among the Christian traditions concerning the hermeneutics of “fall” and “original sin,” there is no denying the simple fact that (quoting the late Reformed theologian Paul Jewett) while “no religious vision has ever esteemed humankind more highly than the Christian vision,” no other tradition has also “judged it more severely.”¹⁰ Similarly, the great ethicist-theologian of the past generation R. Niebuhr reminds us, “A theology which fails to come to grips with this tragic factor of sin is heretical both from the standpoint of the gospel and in terms of its blindness to obvious facts of human experience in every realm and on every level of moral goodness.”¹¹ In sum, all Christian traditions believe that something is wrong with us and the world to the point that unless God in his grace and mercy stoops down to our level and forgives us, we are without hope. To that gracious divine offering of forgiveness and reconciliation we turn next. But before that, an important additional note concerning the huge challenges brought about by modernity and the Enlightenment.

As a result of the dramatic changes in our worldview thanks to scientific breakthroughs, including the acceptance among mainline Christian traditions of evolution and the account of the emergence of the cosmos in light of contemporary physical sciences, Christian theology of sin has to revise some key assumptions—without in any way softening the fact of our sinfulness. The traditional assumptions in need of revision include the historicity of Adam and Eve, the “innocence of the Paradise,” the linking of sin with our physical death, and the “timing” of the Fall. Very briefly put, this means that “universal” sinfulness can be affirmed in the context of evolutionary theory’s view of the slow emergence of humanity. Rather than being historical, the Genesis 3 narrative of Adam and Eve is understood as a myth that nevertheless contains an important religious truth; as a result, the idea of innocence of Paradise is neither directly taught in the Bible nor reasonable in light of evolutionary emergence. Finally, physical death cannot be made the function of the Fall. Death and decay has been in place for billions and billions of years before the emergence of humanity and simply characterizes the finite life of the creature. These revisions have already been made among Christian churches (apart from most traditional and conservative communities)—as they were in mainline Jewish traditions. I would be interested to hear from Muslim participants their sense of how contemporary Muslim thought has dealt with these same challenges.

Divine Forgiveness and Reconciliation

All Abrahamic traditions anchor the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation in God; indeed, “in forgiveness, the grace of God is ultimately at work.”¹² Using their own terminology, both Judeo-Christian and Islamic scriptures extol the merciful and gracious nature of God. Even the different diagnoses of the sinfulness of humanity do not make these foundational theological statements obsolete. The distinctively Christian teaching is the linking of forgiveness and reconciliation in the atonement theology: God became human in Jesus Christ (incarnation), suffered and died for our sins, and in his glorious resurrection gained victory over judgment and death. This kind of atonement theology is of course not part of either Jewish or Islamic theology and is strongly ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Previously Published Records of Building Bridges Seminars
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Participants
• Introduction
• Part I: Overviews
• Part II: Sin
• Part III: Forgiveness
• Part IV: Reconciliation
• Part V: Reflection
• Index
• About the Editors