[asa] sin or Sin?

    I have spoken in the past - & fairly recently here - about the need for creatures to have become "moral agents" before it's possible to speak about them "sinning." I.e., our primate ancestors would to some extent have deceived, stolen from, been sexually promiscuous with, and killed other members of their same species but we would not say that in so doing they would have "sinned." It is only when they had a sense of right & wrong that that term would be appropriate.

    I've realized that that kind of language is inadequate. The first criterion for a creature to be able to sin is for it to be aware in some way of God and God's will, so that that creature can intentionally give something other than God 1st place in its life. I.e., it has to be able to violate the substance of the 1st Commandment. That is the fundamental sin, as Paul argues in Romans 1. There "worshipping the creature rather than the creator" is Sin with a capital S, & all the consequences that Paul lists - sexual immorality &c - are sins with a small s. Those are the things we usually describe as "moral failings."

    I actually made this point in the 2006 PSCF that I referenced in my post to Moorad yesterday, but by continuing the "moral agents" language may have clouded the issue. The point is not simply "morality" in the usual sense of the term but "religion" as "ultimate concern. This means that in order for some group of hominids to be capable of sin, they would somehow have to have become aware of God and God's will for them, however murkily that may have been.

    This has a number of consequences. E.g., there has been a good deal of discussion of the evolution of morality, some of which has been used to discredit claims that the existence of a moral sense in humans is an argument for religion. (Dawkins, e.g.) How the evolution of morality is connected with the emergence of religious awareness is something that needs to be explored, but the distinction is significant.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

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Received on Wed Feb 20 11:56:46 2008