Abstract
A number of Christian theologians and philosophers have been critical of overly moralizing approaches to the doctrine of sin, but nearly all Christian thinkers maintain that moral fault is necessary or sufficient for sin to obtain. Call this the “Moral Consensus.” I begin by clarifying the relevance of impurities to the biblical cataloguing of sins. I then present four extensional problems for the Moral Consensus on sin, based on the biblical catalogue of sins: (1) moral over-demandingness, (2) agential unfairness, (3) moral repugnance, and (4) moral atrocity. Next, I survey several partial solutions to these problems, suggested by the recent philosophical literature. Then I evaluate two largely unexplored solutions: (a) genuine sin dilemmas and (b) defeasible sinfulness. I argue that (a) creates more problems than it solves and that, while (b) is well-motivated and solves or eases each of the above problems, (b) leaves many biblical ordinances about sin morally misleading, creating (5) a pedagogical problem of evil. I conclude by arguing that (5) places hefty explanatory burdens on those who would appeal to (b) to resolve the four extensional problems discussed in this paper. So Christian thinkers may need to consider a more radical separation of sin and moral fault.
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Notes
I rely on the New Revised Standard Version translation of the bible and employ Society of Biblical Literature abbreviations for biblical texts, though some quoted material contains other abbreviations.
For example, Quinn (1978, p. 136).
Dalferth, Attfield’s co-symposiast on sin in Religious Studies 20 (2), observes that Sub-Moralism is not even contemplated by their lead symposiast, Basil Mitchell, “and for obvious reasons: it is difficult to see how it could be held” (177). Attfield cites Tennant (1912) as the basis for his analysis.
See Niebuhr (1935, p. 275); van der Leeuw (1938, p. 517 and 527); Niebuhr (1943, I.212), and Otto (1958, IV.1 and VIII). For helpful discussion of Niebuhr, see Couenhoven (2009, 566, 568–569) (Couenhoven also cites K. P. R. Niebuhr). For helpful discussion of Otto, see Lewis (1983, pp 144–145) (Lewis also cites van der Leeuw) and especially Adams (1991, 3–7).
Rawls (2002, 1942, pp 201–202).
Couenhoven professes agnosticism, but questions only Moral Necessity in discussing sin’s limits (573–574).
Roberts argues that “Paul’s use of hamartia and its cognates in 1 Cor aligns neither with the modern [Sub-Moralist] understanding that sin is a willful offense against God that often comes with soteriological consequences nor with the [Anti-Moralist] idea that sin is a congenital angst that bears itself out as the kind of guilt that only Christ can fix” (361; cf. 346).
ἁμαρτία (hamartia); see Strong’s Greek entry 266; cf. dictionary entries for its classical Greek predecessors here.
Schroeder affirms neutrality between Equi-Moralism, Super-Moralism, and Sub-Moralism (3).
For example, Gavin (1928, p 9).
My thanks to an anonymous referee at Religious Studies for pressing this objection to a previous version of this paper.
Concerns for ritual purity are broadly understood to reflect a Priestly textual tradition incorporated within the Torah (including Lev 1–7 and 11–15; see Nihan (2012, 313)); moral purity is associated with a later textual tradition in the Torah, known as the Holiness Code. In place of “ritual,” some prefer “bodily,” “physical,” “levitical,” “cultic,” “priestly,” or “ceremonial” impurity. In place of “moral,” some prefer “spiritual” impurity. The latter is caused by certain “sins,” “offenses,” and “unethical” or “wrongful” acts. In addition to those listed above in footnote 20, scholars who favor such a distinction include Hoffman (1905, 303–304); Büchler (1928, ix); Frymer-Kensky (1983, 399); Maccoby (1999, 202–203); Regev (2004, 385); Hayes (2007, 746–749); Konkel (2012, 452); Nihan (2012, 338); and Raushe (2012, 467–468). In the teachings of Jesus, Kazen (2010) argues it becomes a matter of “outer” vs. “inner” purity; see 222. Klawans says Hoffman’s seminal work in this area was informed “by talmudic and medieval rabbinic literature. But more important, Hoffmann and the medieval Jewish exegetes were preceded by Philo and the early rabbinic sages (the tannaim), who very clearly distinguished between ritual, bodily impurities on the one hand, and the defilement that results from sin on the other” (2000, 6).
Maccoby distinguishes between rules binding only on Jews (lex judaica) and rules binding on all of humanity (lex gentium), which he insists is basic in biblical and rabbinic Judaism: “[ritual] elements are intended to be subordinate and limited; they are not a coded philosophy, but just what they purport to be, rules for the conduct of a priestly society [applying only to Jews, converts, and residents of the Holy Land], in which a sense of constant attendance on God demands a protocol which in no way supersedes the demands of ordinary [moral] duties to neighbours, family and strangers” (1999, 195).
As Klawans says, in introducing the question of Jesus’ relationship to the Law:
Matthew’s Jesus declares unambiguously, toward the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, that “not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Matt. 5:18). On the other hand, Mark would have us understand that Jesus declared all foods pure (Mark 7:19b), thus abrogating the food laws of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. As we will see, Mark 7:19b is widely recognized to be a secondary gloss. And the Sermon on the Mount contains all sorts of adaptations, interpretations, and other modifications of the law that Matthew’s Jesus claims to have fully upheld (2000, 143; see 146–150).
See Kazen (2010) for a book-length treatment of this question.
Klawans arrives at similar conclusions about John the Baptist’s views on purity:
John insisted that in order to atone for sin, one had to undergo a baptism—a rite whose practice ancient Jews were more likely to associate with ritual purification … [So] he clearly did not compartmentalize ritual impurity and sin. But because he did not apparently view sin as a source of ritual defilement, he did not merge the conceptions of ritual impurity and sin. As far as we can tell, John did not consider sinners to be ritually defiling and thus probably did not conceive of his baptism as purificatory in the ritual sense. … [So it seems] that John’s baptism worked as a ritual of moral purification, effecting atonement by purifying individuals from moral defilement (2000, 143).
John appears to have been primarily concerned with sin and moral impurity, but what evidence we have suggests he did not completely divorce those concerns from matters of ritual purity.
See also Newton (1985, 97).
See also Hayes (2002, 96 and 254 nn. 16, 17).
See e.g., Matt 7:15–23; 13:24–30, 36–43; 25:41–46.
Cf. Job 21:14.
See Mark 13:5–6; Matt 24:4–5; Luke 21:8; Eph 5:6; Col 2:8; 2 Thess 2:3; 1 Tim 6:20–21.
However, for arguments that cognitive attitudes can be morally impermissible and can morally wrong others, see e.g., Basu (2018) and Basu and Schroeder (2019). For arguments that they can wrong God, see Schroeder (2020). For a defense of moral responsibility for, and the sinfulness of, certain nonvoluntary cognitive attitudes see Adams (1985).
See Matt 5:21–22; see Jas 1:19–20.
For a defense of moral responsibility for, and the sinfulness of, certain conative attitudes see Adams (1985).
Lev 5:2; 11:1–8; Deut 14:1–8.
Couenhoven concurs that leprosy, for example, was considered ritually impure but not sinful; see 2009, 565 and 576.
See Strong’s Hebrew entry 2930.
See Strong’s Hebrew entry 2490.
תּוֹעֵבַה (toebah); see Strong’s Hebrew entry 8441.
Stoning is thought to have been the standard method of judicial execution in Biblical times, but Talmudic jurists later developed a more humane substitute to stoning, by which the danger of mutilation was considerably reduced and death accelerated. See Cohn et al. (2008, 446); cf. Lev 24:23; Num 15:36; 1 Kgs 21:13; 2 Chr 24:21.
In contrast, burning someone alive is reported as a non-Jewish Babylonian punishment in Dan 3:6.
תּוֹעֵבַה (toebah); see footnote 43 above.
Given K (◇ ≡ ¬□¬), if it is not permissible to not φ(¬◇¬φ), because it is morally faulty or wrong to not φ, then (¬¬□¬¬φ). Double-negation elimination yields (¬¬□¬¬φ → □¬¬φ) and (□¬¬φ → □φ), so it is obligatory to φ(□φ).
For example, Jesus says he is not abolishing even the least demand of the Law, “until all is accomplished” (Matt 5:17–18), suggesting that the sinfulness of (iv) ritual impurities could be abolished when Christ’s High Priestly ministry is completed with his crucifixion (see Heb 1–10), fulfilling all requirements of holiness in the Law and freeing God’s people from its constraints (see John 19:30; Acts 10; Rom 3; 7:6; Gal 3; Phil 3). Alternatively, or in addition, one might try to argue that the most draconian prohibitions related to moral impurity narrowly address the idolatrous excesses of Israel’s neighbors, which sometimes involved child sacrifice. On this proposal, these prohibitions were more specifically targeted at acts like consensual homosexual acts of idol worship, and had no wider intended moral or social import (see e.g., Lein 2015). Meanwhile, the Jewish Sanhedrin decided its competence to inflict capital punishment ceased with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, because “at a time when there is no priest, there is no judgment of capital cases” (Sanh. 52b, Ketub. 30a; cf. Sanh. 41a). And though Jewish courts continued to execute death sentences where they had the power, it is not clear that capital punishments for offenses of moral impurity continued to be enforced (see Cohn et al., 2008, 447). At best, however, each of these proposals only restricts the problems of moral repugnance or atrocity to smaller historical segments of the normative states of affairs—they do not solve the problems.
Adams contends that we are directly responsible for states of mind with intentional objects, “responding, consciously or unconsciously, to data that are rich enough to permit a fairly adequate ethical appreciation of the state’s intentional object and of the object’s place in the fabric of personal relationship;” we are not accountable for “simple feelings of hunger and thirst, insofar as they are primitive responses to physical stimuli” (1987, 26); nonvoluntary bodily states clearly resemble the latter more closely than the former. Elsewhere, however, Adams suggests that a divine command theorist might “theorize that the objectively disgusting is what disgusts God” (1987, 262), leaving room for impure states to have normative, if not ethical, significance. For recent arguments that cognitive attitudes can morally wrong others, see e.g., Basu (2018) and Basu and Schroeder (2019); for arguments that they can wrong God, see Schroeder (2020).
Since the eighteenth century liberals have often placed a high value upon sincerity and a comparatively lower value on being right. Attfield’s Sub-Moralism falls within this liberal tradition, but he acknowledges that in matters of fundamental social morality, like the wrongness of Nazism or genocide, we dare not recognize sincere “invincible ignorance” of moral standards or egregious moral error as excuses from moral blame, in otherwise responsible agents. In this respect, Attfield departs from an earlier liberal tradition, associated with Pierre Bayle and some Jesuits, according to which there is no sin, properly speaking, unless we know that we are sinning, which implies that if the Nazi acts in accordance with their warped conscience they do not sin. See Attfield (1984, 234–235); Kilcullen (1983).
Attfield deliberately avoids “the more pastoral aspects of the idea of sin that concern confessors. [He neglects] the original biblical concept to a large extent and the usage of the underlying Hebrew and Greek terms” (227). He also explicitly excludes discussion of dispositional or original sinfulness, though he says that the latter is “a notion important for any doctrine of man as a moral being” (227). So while he asserts that sin is parasitic on morality, and characterizes this as his “main thesis,” it is more accurately characterized as the Procrustean bed on which sin is laid for his analysis. Moreover, Attfield says that “sin is an offence against God and all infractions of God’s law are equally contrary to the divine will and offensive in his eyes. There are no mitigating circumstances with sin. … the gravity of sin does not concern men, who can leave adjudication upon this to the judgment-seat of God” (236–237; cf. Jas 2:10–11). If this is so, demands of the divine law cannot simply be cut away, because they seem over-demanding, make impossible demands upon our being rather than our agency, are repugnant, or are atrocious by our (liberal) moral lights. So he says much to undermine his own position.
Attfield says that anything “not under the direct control of the will … cannot be a wrong and so a sin” (228–229); “for sin to be possible, there must be a choice before the agent between two lines of conduct” (235). So if one morally ought not-φ, it must be the case that one can choose (by directly controlled act of will) between φ and some other line of conduct ψ.
McCord Adams says that Moral Necessitarians or “Plain Moralists with the courage of their convictions dismiss (iv) uncleanness as a primitive category deservedly supplanted by the ethical” (1991, 2). But a similar retreat from (iv) uncleanness is neither attractive nor available to her. Retreating depends on first drawing a distinction between genuine moral norms and norms of purity or uncleanness, and her efforts to maintain such a distinction do not square well with her other metaethical commitments. According to her naturalist-conventionalist picture, morality is a kind of social technology innovated to facilitate cooperation. But it is difficult to see why the draconian ordinances in Leviticus are not part of the best framework of constraints ancient Israel was able to master and apply large-scale to curtail what they understood (wrongly, in several cases) to be antisocial behaviors and attitudes. Indeed, she would later argue that they proved useful to maintaining social order and stability (see 1999, 192). So even if Marilyn Adams could be tempted to reject the sinfulness of statutory uncleanness, her metaethical commitments cannot sustain a principled distinction between genuine normative distinction in kind between moral failings and offenses of uncleanness.
Rogers 2002 notes that there is reason to be cautious in ascribing this view to Marilyn Adams; see 75–76, 81–83. However, Rogers may not appreciate Adams’s theistic constructivism about sin or how it can explain the latter’s acceptance of human-minds-independent, categorical, authoritative, normative, knowable facts about the indignity of things like slavery; cf. Adams (1999, 196). Mitchell’s Super-Moralism prefigures Adams’s account in several important ways, and Dalferth similarly criticizes Mitchell’s moral relativism; see Mitchell (1984, 172); Dalferth (1984, 180).
She says “the logically appropriate feeling response for creatures is not [moral] guilt (which befits a rebellious use of free agency) but a sense of taint and shame” (1991, 21).
For Marilyn Adams, this ratification seems to be constrained by “what is good or bad for individuals at the symbolic level” (1999, 196); cf. Rogers (2002, 75).
She distinguishes between “what other people have a right to blame us for” and “what we should be ready to confess as a sin to God” (1991, 24, n. 11), and later argues that “our personal capacities are too limited in relation to Divine powers of thought and will for it to make sense for God to hold us responsible to God for what we do, any more than it makes sense for a mother to hold her infant responsible to her for dirty diapers” (1999, 191, original emphasis; cf. 1988, 232–233). Human beings lack the requisite level of agency to merit moral accountability before God, and they lack the requisite value to command God’s love. Instead, their value is conferred by divine love and their agency enabled by God’s motherly care; see M. M. Adams (1991, 21; 1999, 103–104); cf. Kellenberger (1995, 326) and Rogers (2002, 74).
For a discussion of norms of etiquette as mere formalities, see Wodak (2019).
I am grateful to Ralph Wedgwood for suggesting these responses on Marilyn Adams’s behalf and discussion of their merits.
For a recent overview and defense of normative authority, see Wodak (2019).
See Adams (1991, 21), for her discussion of how statutory sin serves this symbolic purpose.
In order to avoid the problem of deontic logical inconsistency, which arises for moral dilemmas (see McConnell 2018, §§4–5), Lemmon (1962) and Trigg (1971) argue that the existence of moral dilemmas provide counterexamples to the M-OIC principle. As we saw in §3.2, maintaining Moral Necessity, about the sinfulness of nonvoluntary (ii) cognitive, (iii) conative, or (iv) bodily states, represents a prima facie challenge to the M-OIC principle. One way to meet this challenge is to say that these sins provide (additional) counterexamples to this principle. So Moral Necessitarians about the sinfulness of nonvoluntary states have independent reason to reject a wholly general M-OIC principle. If they are prepared to do so, they can also readily accept the existence of moral dilemmas, while avoiding deontic logical inconsistency in the way that Lemmon and Trigg recommend.
For a helpful introductory discussion and defense of God’s moral standing to blame, see Todd (2018).
As we learned in §4.3, Marilyn Adams thinks God elevates human evaluative systems into criteria of statutory sin, thereby involving humans in the determination of what counts as sinful, and she also argues that God does not hold us morally responsible through the practice of blame; see footnote 59 above. So worries about God’s standing to hold us accountable for sin need more work to get off the ground. But it is difficult to see why one should be ready to confess as sin one’s violations of conflicting requirements of morality and uncleanness (among others, perhaps), if neither one’s culture nor oneself, recognizes all of the relevant evaluative systems as legitimate. For if neither oneself or one’s culture recognize all of the relevant evaluative systems as legitimate, it cannot be said that the measure you or even your moral community gives is the measure you are getting from God, pace Matt 7:2. So even if God’s moral standing to blame is not at issue in Adams’s understanding, God’s standing to receive confession for sin still looks to be undermined for the same kinds of reasons as those outlined above.
Naturally, Christians must also ask whether Christ could live a sinless life under such conflicting normative requirements (2 Cor 5:21; John 8:46; Heb 4:15, 7:26; 1 Pet 2:22; 1 John 3:5). John 8:1–11 suggests he could. Wanting to trap Jesus between the Levitical requirement of capital punishment for the grave sin of adultery and Roman law, which generally retained for itself the right of life and death, particularly against lynch mobs (Corley 1992, 850–851), some of his religious opponents presented him with a woman caught in adultery. They challenged him: “the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” In response, “Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground [the sins of each of them].” The trap defeated, his opponents departed, and Jesus asked her: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”.
Though the text of John 8:1–11 is of dubious provenance and likely a later addition to John’s gospel, Christian tradition has long credited the story as though it were non-apocryphal. It is also consistent with concerns for hypocrisy ascribed to Jesus in the other canonical gospels (see Mark 7:6; Matt 6:2–16, 7:1–5, 15:7, 22:18, 23:13–29, 24:51; Luke 6:37–42, 12:56, 13:15; cf. Ps 26:4; Sir 1:29, 32:15, 33:2), as well as John’s earlier statement that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17; see also Matt 9:6).
On the Christian understanding of Jesus’ divinity, he appears to invoke his divine authority and mission to forgive sins, rather than condemn them, offering only correction and a challenge to repent. On some theories of divine forgiveness, God’s forbearance to mete out (deserved) penalty just is God’s forgiveness (e.g., Londey (1986), Brien (1989), or Geuras (1992); see also Warmke (2017, 6–7) of 9). But should the proper normative conditions for forgiveness, like an apology, repentance, or a change of heart, not obtain, Jesus might alternatively exercise his divine authority to condemn the sin at a later date, promising a future reckoning (e.g., Matt 11:20, 12:41–42; Luke 10:13–15). Thus, by exercising his authority to forgive sins or delay God’s judgment, Jesus could dissolve any hamartiological dilemma he might encounter, while remaining sinlessly obedient to norm(s) of sin he chose to leave intact.
Shea (2018) briefly considers this possibility but sets it aside, because it conflicts with his reconstruction of Aquinas’s attempt to Recover God’s Larger Moral Purpose in commanding the Israelites to “plunder” the Egyptians during the Exodus, as Aquinas views the prohibition against theft as a moral absolute; see Shea (2018, pp 282–283).
Moral Sufficiency’s problems arise from entailing the moral permissibility of (sinlessly) sanctioning morally faultless sins. Suppose A has some pro tanto reason to not-φ, but A is all-things-considered justified in φ-ing, and φ-ing involves seriously wronging someone. Some argue we are still required to (sinlessly) sanction A for φ-ing (see e.g., de Wijze 2013 and Corvino 2015; cf. Roadevin 2019). In such cases, the plausibility of sanctioning A depends on the seriousness of the wronging involved in φ-ing. For where φ-ing involves a less serious wronging, the plausibility of sanctioning A is in doubt, and the specific problems posed above for Moral Sufficiency do not arise. On the other hand, where φ-ing involves a serious moral wronging, φ-ing is not a morally faultless sin, but a morally serious wronging whose sinfulness ex hypothesi is outweighed or defeated, and again the specific problems discussed above do not arise. Yet, if the sinfulness of a morally serious, sanctionable wronging can be outweighed or defeated, it presents a prima facie counterexample to Moral Sufficiency. So Moral Sufficientarians must either explain how serious, sanctionable wrongings can be morally faultless in such cases (so as not to be sufficient for sin) or deny the possibility of such cases (e.g., by insisting that hamartiological norms against the relevant kinds of serious wrongs are absolute, not defeasible). My thanks to Jonathan Quong for pressing me on this point.
A purely theoretical interpretation of the ordinance of capital punishment for a stubborn and rebellious son (Deut 21:18 –21) is similarly contemplated in the Talmud, where it is stated that “It never happened and it never will happen” and that the law was given merely “that you may study it and receive reward” (i.e., for pure study; Tosef., Sanh. 11:6; Sanh. 71a). The Mishnah (Mak. 1:10; Mak. 7a) also says that a Sanhedrin court that orders the death penalty once in seven years (or once in seventy years, according to Rabbi Eleazer b. Azariah) is considered murderous or bloody, while Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel opines that one passing no death sentences at all would only multiply murderers in Israel. See Cohn et al., (2008, 447).
Morriston includes several representative statements from biblical scholars in a footnote; see Morriston 2012, 119, n. 7.
As Panchuk explains in a footnote: “Although this case is fictional, it is inspired by a narrative offered anonymously at Homeschoolers Anonymous. Being personally acquainted with the author, I can speak for the veracity of the story and have gotten permission to use an adaptation of it in this context” (see Mary 2013). Panchuk (2019) reports similar experiences of her own: “Mine were the vain attempts to find joy in submitting to abuse inflicted in the name of God, the name of the cross, the name of the atoning Christ. When the cross is what you deserve, anything short of that is “grace.” So I listen to defenses of penal substitution and vicarious punishment with shaking hands, racing heart, and tears welling in my eyes” (69).
My thanks to Kenny Pearce and especially Michelle Panchuk for their very helpful discussion of this point.
Morriston assumes here that moral intuition can reliably inform our judgments about what really is or is not sinful, but for anyone who rejects Moral Necessity, this is not a safe assumption. To adapt Morriston’s argument, absent the assumption of Moral Necessity, one must identify suitable analogues to moral intuition (themselves also partly formed by reflection on scripture), including, perhaps, aesthetic intuition; see especially chapter 7 of Adams (1999).
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Ralph Wedgwood, Jonathan Quong, an anonymous referee for Religious Studies, and an anonymous referee for the Journal of Analytic Theology for their extensive comments on earlier versions of this paper. I am also grateful to Mark Schroeder, Michelle Panchuk, Kenny Pearce, Alida Liberman, Erik Encarnacion, Leigh Vicens, Lorraine Street, Maegan Fairchild, and Renee Jorgensen for helpful conversations and suggestions along the way. Finally, I want to thank the participants of the 2019 SLU Graduate Student Conference, especially my commentator, James Dominic Rooney, as well as the participants of the 4th Theistic Ethics Workshop, the 2018 meeting of the Canadian Society of Christian Philosophers, and the 2017 meeting of the Atlantic Region Philosophers’ Association, for their comments and discussions of earlier related work.
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Ashfield, M. Five problems for the moral consensus about sins. Int J Philos Relig 90, 157–189 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-021-09795-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-021-09795-x