Brown on Sin and Salvation

This is the first of two week four discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

What insights from this week’s readings (Stone and Duke, Ch 6, "The Human Condition" and Brown, Chs 6, "Sin" and 7 "Salvation") were most helpful or inspiring for you? What aspects, if any, where troubling or challenging for you?

I found Brown's discussion of sin to be very useful and on target with my experiences. He points out pride is "excessive self-regard in relation to others" and taking more than your fair share. "Sensuality" is not about taking excessive joy in things of the body, but rather thinking less of yourself than yourself than you should. Traditional definitions of sensuality mean that you have to do some fancy footwork somewhere to draw a line between appreciating God's good creation with our bodies and senses and viewing sensuality as a sin, the fact that this avoids that problem is a mark in its favor that doesn't depend on the fact that defining sin in this way might make me personally less of a sinner. (One of my Bible school professors taught than when you read something and it feels difficult and you just want to dismiss it, you should sit with that idea for a while and think about whether it's wrong or you're wrong; but I think it's just as or more important to sit with things that just sound good and align with our prejudices for a while too.) While it is easy to come up with examples of people who harm others because they think they deserve more, I was also reminded of kids I saw in the 90's who had been taught that their self-esteem was so important they had trouble doing any self-reflection that wasn't positive because they hadn't had that experience. This isn't to say that they'd never been told they were bad or wrong, but they had only been taught to look at what in their life they were doing well, never what they could improve or were unhappy with. (That's also setting kids up for failure.) And I certainly know plenty of people who never ask for what they need and always give to others. As I think about this, I'm having trouble thinking of examples of things that don't fit this framework, which I think is a good sign. Most of us, of course, fall in the middle, sometimes taking too much, sometimes not taking enough. I have previously heard the definition that sin is "falling short" and I like that definition, but I think this one has more depth.

I wanted to write about the discussion in Brown about the problem of our not doing what we should, which is similar to "falling short", but mostly, I've sat with the fact that I need to think about that more for almost a week now and don't actually have anything to verbalize. I've finally settled on putting a note on my calendar to read it again in month, because I feel like there is more there for me.

I also have some concern with Brown's discussion of salvation. I very much like it. I tend to want to agree with it, but I have reservations because it is very rational and I think we lose something important about Christianity when we ignore the transcendent too much. (This definitely goes the other way too, we lose something important when we forget the practical parts of Christianity.)