## 1. Approaching Sin within a Religious Tradition


### 1.1 Religion-Neutral Value Theory and Sin



Most contemporary philosophy of religion assumes either a framework of
generic theism or the framework of Christianity. (While the present
treatment largely reflects this focus from the literature on which it
draws, it should be noted that this focus has been criticized on a
number of fronts. (See, for instance, Knepper 2014, Draper &
Nichols 2013, Schilbrack 2014, Simmons 2019a, and Timpe & Hereth
2019).) Discussions that assume the framework of generic theism often
proceed along the lines of what Marilyn McCord Adams calls "a
religion-neutral value theory". Religion-neutral value theories
seek both to avoid dependence on values specific to a particular
religious tradition and to include only such value assumptions as
would also be acceptable to an atheologian (M. Adams 1988: 127; for a
criticism of such an approach, see Moser 2019). Philosophers who have
adopted such theories have tended



> 
> 
> not to speak of sin, but of moral agency and responsibility, of moral
> goodness or turpitude. (M. Adams 1991: 1)
> 
> 
> 



McCord Adams herself thinks this assumption of neutrality is
unjustified, however, citing the significant difference in ontological
commitment between theists and atheologians, and the implications this
difference has for their moral theorizing:



> 
> 
> Different ontological commitments with their different stores of
> valuables widen or narrow the range of options for defeating evils
> with goods. Secular value theories can offer only packages of immanent
> goods; some religious theories posit an infinite transcendent goodness
> and invite relationship to it; while Christianity believes the
> infinite good to be personal, and locates the happiness of finite
> persons in loving personal intimacy with the divine persons. (M. Adams
> 1988: 129; see also Plantinga 1985: 36)
> 
> 
> 



In short, the degree to which a belief system can make sense of a
particular claim or theory depends on the resources within that belief
system (see Hasker 2008: 17-19, 120).



A religion-value neutral approach to sin, in particular, would be
constrained by the relatively small number of shared values between
theists and atheologians regarding the core concepts at stake,
including the nature of the harms involved and the opportunities for
reparation. As suggested by Plantinga 2000, M. Adams 1988, and Stump
2010, the simple fact that different religious traditions have
different constraints to work with and different resources to draw on
doesn't weigh for or against the plausibility of those
traditions. In this case, contemporary Christianity sets the value
system within which conceptions of sin will be examined.


### 1.2 Sin in Relation to Other Christian Doctrines



Within the Christian tradition, sin is typically seen as a privation,
in line with the general privation view of evil (Mann 2001, Stump
2003, and Couenhoven 2013). Otherwise, sin and evil become reified. If
sin were a positively existing entity in its own right, then insofar
as God is the creator and sustainer of all things, God would be
responsible for creating and sustaining sin. Yet as Copan notes, such
a position cuts directly against the fundamental goodness of
God's creating act:



> 
> 
> We do a disservice to the Christian doctrine of anthropology by
> emphasizing human wickedness to such a degree that we obscure the
> goodness of God's creation.... While Christian philosophers
> ought not ignore the painfully obvious fact of human depravity, they
> must set this against the backdrop of the goodness of God's
> creation. (Copan 2003: 522; see also Hasker 2008: 75; and Sweeney
> 2018, 366)
> 
> 
> 



This example demonstrates how Christian doctrines of sin can't
be fully understood in isolation from other related theological
doctrines (see Timpe forthcoming, for methodological criticisms of
Christian analytic theology). Rather, conceptions of sin should be
understood in the context of human life and creation as a whole,



> 
> 
> in relation to God's original intentions for humanity at
> creation and the effects of God's mercy, cleansing and
> forgiveness. (Johnson & Lauber 2016b: xi)
> 
> 
> 



A full exploration of the theological doctrine of sin, or
*hamartiology*, in the Christian tradition would thus require
extended engagement not only with particular biblical texts, but also
with other core Christian doctrines to which the doctrine of sin is
closely linked, such as creation, Christology, anthropology,
atonement, the sacraments, redemption, and eschatology (Bauerschmidt
2016: 199).



The New Testament, like the Hebrew Scriptures, uses a wide range of
terms for sin (the literature here is immense; See McCall 2019:
chapter 1; Green 2017; and the essays in Johnson & Lauber 2016a),
as well as employing a number of metaphors drawn from the earlier
Jewish tradition. Most prominent among those metaphors is the idea of
sin as a stain, a burden, or a debt. These metaphors help establish
the contours in which a Christian hamartiology must be worked out, but
none of them fully encapsulates the Scriptures' teaching on sin
(Bashevkin 2019: 6). As these metaphors differ, what appears to be the
proper response to sin also differs. Stains need to be cleansed.
Burdens need to be lifted. Debts need to be paid or otherwise
discharged. (See Anderson's *Sin: A History* for a
description of the different uses of these metaphors and how the
dominant metaphor shifts over the course of various Biblical texts.)
Metaphors used to describe sin thus have a large impact on its
philosophical treatment in the Christian tradition.


## 2. Sin as Action



One of the most common ways in which sinful actions have been
characterized is as actions in conflict with the behaviors and
patterns of life to which God calls humanity. The term
"actions" should here be broadly construed to include
omissions as well as commissions: we sin when we fail to love our
neighbors as ourselves, for instance, even if we do not actively harm
them. Sinful actions are, in short, actions that fail to live up to
the will or commands of God (see Stump 2018).



Many sinful actions will be deliberately chosen or intentional. In
fact, it is common in some parts of the Christian tradition to take
"sin properly so called" to be a willful transgression of
a known law of God. Ruth Groenhout, for instance, describes sin as



> 
> 
> the deliberate choice of a lesser good in preference to a greater,
> chosen in spite of and against the loving, creative, and wholly good
> will of God. (Groenhout 2006: 135)
> 
> 
> 



Groenhout here is drawing on a tradition that goes back at least to
Augustine, according to which sin necessarily involves inordinate
desire for a lesser good. Augustine held the privation view of sin,
according to which--insofar as evil is the absence of
good--sinful actions involve "not a desire for naturally
evil things, but an abandonment of better things" (as quoted in
Mann 2001: 45; see also Augustine *On Free Choice of the
Will*).



We sin, then, if we knowingly do that which we know we ought not, and
if we knowingly do not do that which we know we ought. According to
many views, we also sin when we internally endorse a sinful action,
whether or not we carry through with that endorsement and perform the
action. These views often appeal to the following passage from the
Sermon on the Mount:



> 
> 
> You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, "You
> shall not murder"; and "whoever murders shall be liable to
> judgment". But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother
> or sister, you will be liable to judgment....You have heard that
> it was said, "You shall not commit adultery". But I say to
> you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed
> adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:21-22 and
> 27-28, New Revised Standard Version)
> 
> 
> 



On some views, Christianity also countenances involuntary or
unintentional sins, holding that some emotions and desires can be
sinful even if they're not directly under our voluntary control.
According to Robert Adams, for instance, failing to take
responsibility for our emotions and motives is both self-alienating
and blameworthy even when those emotions and motives are involuntary,
although the appropriate response to involuntary sins differs from
that for voluntary sins and voluntariness can affect the degree of
wrongness (R. Adams 1985). William Wainwright also defends the view
that we can sometimes be blameworthy for involuntary actions, broadly
construed to include desires and beliefs (see Wainwright 1988:
40).



Furthermore, some philosophers think that there are sinful actions
that don't violate any normative restrictions. Here, Richard
Swinburne's distinction between "objective" and
"subjective" sins can be helpful. Objective sins occur
when a person does what is objectively wrong, whether they realize
that it's wrong or not. Subjective sins occur when a person does
what they believe to be wrong, acting against their conception of the
good (Swinburne 1989: 124). On this differentiation, it's
possible for an action to be both objectively and subjectively sinful,
objectively but not subjectively sinful (as in the case of people who
sin believing they are acting in the right), and subjectively but not
objectively sinful (as in the case of a person who acts against an
erring conscience). According to Philip Quinn,



> 
> 
> Theists who believe that erring conscience binds will want to allow
> for cases in which, on account of a mistaken belief about the moral
> wrongness of an action, a person does what is subjectively but not
> objectively wrong and so sins subjectively but not objectively. (Quinn
> 1986: 542; see also Stump 2003: 90)
> 
> 
> 



However, one could also think that what is sinful about
"subjective sins" is that one is acting against
one's conscience, and thus "objectively" sinning
insofar as one is not following one's conscience, even when
one's conscience is in error. Even on this interpretation,
however, the class of sins is broader than "willful
transgressions of a known law of God".



Much of the philosophical work engaging sinful actions in contemporary
philosophy of religion has been in connection with the problem of
evil, understood as a family of related arguments that take among
their premises facts about evil and seek to conclude either that God
(understood as having a particular nature) does not exist or that it
is irrational to believe that such a being exists. Sinful acts and
moral evil are often taken to be either co-extensive or nearly so (see
Hasker 2008: 160), and so versions of the problem of evil that focus
on the problem of moral evil also often talk about sin. The main
thrust of most of the versions is that an all-powerful, all-knowing,
all-good God would not allow human beings to perpetuate or suffer
horrendous evils. Because human beings do both perpetuate and suffer
horrendous evils, either God must not be all-powerful, all-knowing,
and/or all-good, or God must not exist. The question of sin is not,
however, limited to discussions of the logical problem of moral evil;
it also comes up in discussions of evidential versions of the problem
of evil and even the problem of natural evils (see, for instance,
Swinburne 2009 and 1978); van Inwagen 2006: lecture 7; and
O'Connor 1991).



One of the most famous responses to this version of the problem of
evil is what Alvin Plantinga has termed "The Free Will
Defense". According to this response, God's creating human
beings with free will (and refraining from tampering with the freedom
of that will) makes the existence of moral evils/sinful actions at
least possible - and perhaps even likely:



> 
> 
> For any free creature God creates, this falling into sin is clearly a
> possibility; God can't create significantly free creatures
> [i.e., a person who is free with respect to a morally significant
> action it would be morally wrong for them to perform and morally right
> to refrain from, or vice versa] who cannot fall into sin. And perhaps
> a high probability of such a fall attaches to free creatures
> (creatures with an area of autonomy) who are created in the image of
> God. God sets out to create beings in his own image: they resemble him
> in having will and intellect, and they recognize the lustrous beauty,
> glory, and desirability of God's position. God is himself the
> center of the universe; his creatures see the splendor and wonderful
> desirability of that condition. Perhaps, insofar as one is free, and
> sees both the glory of this position and its enormous desirability,
> there is a powerful tendency to desire it for oneself. Perhaps there
> is a high probability that beings created in the image of God will
> also wind up resembling him in this: that they want to see and do see
> themselves as the center of the universe. Perhaps a substantial
> probability of falling into this condition is built into the very
> nature of free creatures who have knowledge of God's glorious
> status and do see it as indeed glorious and desirable. (Plantinga
> 2000: 212f; see also Plantinga 1974, Plantinga 1977, and M. Adams
> 1999)
> 
> 
> 



As this argument makes clear, one's view about the nature of
sinful act will be closely related to one's view about the
nature of human freedom (see McFadyen 2016, Timpe 2014a, and
Couenhoven 2013). Plantinga here assumes a libertarian, and hence
incompatibilist, understanding of free will. While all Christian views
have to explain how God is not complicit in sin given the doctrines of
conservation and concurrence (Kvanvig 2009; Vander Laan 2017; and
McCall 2019: chapter 7), the question of God's relation to
sinful human acts is especially pressing for compatibilist views,
which hold that God could have caused human agents to never freely
sin, and theological determinist views, which hold that God causes all
events (see McCall 2019: chapter 3; Bignon 2018: part 2; White 2016;
Bruce 2016; McCall 2016; Rogers 2008; McCann 2005; and Crisp 2005,
particularly chapter 3).



Account of the nature of sinful acts are closely related to accounts
of the theological need for forgiveness, redemption, and atonement.
While some philosophers claim that the correct understanding of these
doctrines comes as a package (see Copan 2003: 525f), there is
significant disagreement about how best to understand them, both
individually and in relation to each other. (There is, for instance, a
wide range of views about how best to understand the atonement; see,
among others, Stump 2018, S. Porter 2004, Swinburne 1989 and 1988,
Lewis 1997, and Quinn 1986. For a discussion directly of how sin
relates to atonement, see Crisp 2009.)


### 2.1 Primal Sin



Among individual acts of sin, special importance attaches to the
temporally first sin, which is referred to as the "primal
sin". (Most take this to be the temporally first sin regardless
of whether it was committed by an angelic or human being, although
some take it to be the first human sin committed.) Scott MacDonald
describes the primal sin as follows:



> 
> 
> The fall of the angels constitutes the paradigm case [of
> evil-originating free choice] since, unlike Adam's and
> Eve's sin in the garden, the first angelic sin is entirely
> unprecedented. We can think of that first evil free choice as
> constituting primal sin. The first sin deserves to be called primal,
> however, not just because it is temporally first but also because it
> is something radically new in creation: the first evil appears against
> a backdrop of utter goodness. All things created by God, including the
> rational creatures whose free choices are the original evils, are
> wholly good and without flaw....There can be no context of defect
> or corruption into which the first sin fits. Good creatures with good
> wills voluntarily introduce evil into a world where there was none
> before. Primal sin is not only unprecedented but also seemingly
> unprepared for and unprompted. (MacDonald 1998: 110-1; see also
> Rogers 2008 and Couenhoven 2013: chapter 1)
> 
> 
> 



The very notion of a primal sin implies that there was a time when
creation was without sin. While a temporally first sin would seem to
be required by a finite past, discussions of the primal sin often
presuppose that there was a time of perfect creation prior to a fall,
which is more contentious. As Craig A. Boyd argues, given that it
conflicts with contemporary science,



> 
> 
> the claim that creation was originally perfect in every
> respect--the idea that an idyllic paradise existed without death,
> disease, poison or weeds before the first human [or angelic]
> sin--is especially problematic. (Boyd 2009: 111)
> 
> 
> 



But one need not take the story of the fall literally to think that
there was a primal sin. (For a discussion of the historicity of the
fall as it relates to sin, see McLeod-Harrison 2019; Smith 2017; and
McCall 2019, appendix.) Even if one rejects the notion of a historical
fall, Christianity nevertheless traditionally holds that all that God
creates is good. But if both humans and angels are created good, how
is it that at least some of them do evil? (This is what John Hick
refers to as the problem of the "*origin of evil ex
nihilo*"; see Hick 1968: 595.) The answer to this question,
of course, is that an agent does evil because it *wills* to do
evil. But this answer immediately raises another question: where does
will for evil originate in free agents? This question is especially
pressing given that many Christian traditions have held that free
agents were created able both to sin and to refrain from sinning, a
state sometimes called the *status integritatis*. While a
creature's having free will in the *status integritatis*
might account for the possibility of evil, it isn't sufficient
to explain why that possibility was actualized by an otherwise morally
untarnished creature. The primal sin can thus be seen as a specific
instance of what Peter Kivy calls "the secular problem of
evil": "cases of evil [action] in which the perpetrator
appears to pursue no real or apparent good" (Kivy 1980). One
might say that the initial choice to sin involved a perceived good,
perhaps the assertion of one's own independence from God in an
act of pride, self-love, or envy. What is perplexing is how that sin
could come about in a non-sinful being--why is it that a
non-sinful agent would wrongly but culpably conceive of such as act as
good? How could a non-sinful agent be drawn to a sinful action in the
first place?



In general, two different approaches to explaining the primal sin have
been offered. Because the philosophical work on the primal sin is
conducted largely in dialogue with medieval figures, drawing on a
complex moral psychology in which the faculties of the intellect and
will play an essential role, I also discuss these two approaches in
those terms. Put simply, there can be no sin without the involvement
of the intellect and will (see McCluskey 2017: 21 and 100); the
difference between the two approaches is whether they locate that sin
primarily in the will or in the intellect. Voluntarists, on the one
hand, hold that human beings act freely primarily in virtue of the
faculty of the will, and thus explain the primal sin primarily in the
misuse of that faculty. (Robert Brown notes that in the history of
Christian theology, voluntarism is the dominant view; see Brown 1978).
Intellectualism, on the other hand, holds that human beings act freely
primarily in virtue of the role of the intellect, and thus that the
primal sin must be explained primarily in intellectual terms.



In what follows, I focus on two of the most developed extant accounts
of primal sin in the contemporary literature: Katherin Rogers's
account of Anselm's voluntarist view and Scott MacDonald's
account of Augustine's intellectualism. Leaving aside the
question of whether Rogers's and MacDonald's
interpretations of their historical subjects are accurate, both of
these interpretations present libertarian accounts insofar as they
presuppose that the truth of theological determinism would render the
devil unfree, and thus not responsible, in his fall. (It is worth
noting that while Anselm is widely regarded as a libertarian [see
Visser & Williams 2008 and Rogers 2008], there is disagreement
about how best to interpret Augustine's view of free will
[compare Stump 2001 and Couenhoven 2017].)



On Rogers's account, Anselm holds that a free will involves two
inclinations (or *affectiones*): the desire for benefit and the
desire for justice. The desire for benefit is the desire for things
the possession of which one thinks will lead to their happiness. The
desire for justice, in contrast, is



> 
> 
> a desire for "rightness of will preserved for its own
> sake". It is therefore a second order desire that one's
> first order desires should be properly ordered, should be as they
> ought to be. (Rogers 2008: 67)
> 
> 
> 



Anselm doesn't think anyone wills injustice, or any other sin,
for its own sake; rather, they will it under the description of
something beneficial. Why would one choose the lower good of benefit
over the higher good of justice? Anselm's answer cannot be
"ignorance" but simply "because that is how the
agent formed their volition". Is such a choice explicable?
According to Rogers, in one sense it isn't:



> 
> 
> "But why did he will what he ought not?" asks the student.
> "No cause preceded this will, unless it was that he was able to
> will". But this ability per se is not really the cause, since
> the good angels were equally able to desert justice. "Why then
> did he will?" 'The teacher responds, "Only because
> he willed. For this choice had no other cause by which it was by any
> means impelled or drawn, but it was its own efficient cause, and
> effect, if such a thing can be said". Here we have
> libertarianism of the self-causation variety stated with brutal
> clarity and with no attempt to downplay its core problem....
> Anselm does not go on and try to mitigate the problem of
> intelligibility. (Rogers 2008: 97)
> 
> 
> 



On this sort of view, any attempt to fully understand the primal sin
falls short and must ultimately remain



> 
> 
> mysterious and irrational. Those who were made to love God should not
> have found the prospect of defying God attractive, and pride should
> not have come naturally to them. (Couenhoven 2016: 189)
> 
> 
> 



On MacDonald's interpretation of Augustine, by contrast, the
primal sin involves the agent's will, but that act of will is
preceded by an act of the intellect. As MacDonald describes the
situation:



> 
> 
> What could primal sinners have done to guard against sinning? I think
> the answer must be that they failed to pay attention to the reason
> they had for loving God above all things, namely, their knowledge that
> God is the highest good.... Had they attended to the reasons they
> possessed, they would have seen that rationality required them to love
> God above all things.... Primal sinners, then, must have made
> their evil choices in some sense without thinking, without
> deliberating sufficiently, without taking account of relevant
> information that was nevertheless in their possession. (MacDonald
> 1998: 120-1)
> 
> 
> 



In other words, the intellect's failing to properly grasp or
weigh the normative reasons in the first place is the primary cause of
the primal sin. The will's volition in the primal sin thus
isn't a will to act contrary to what the agent knows ought not
be done, but results rather from ignorance or failure to give the
right reasons the right weight (for more, see Timpe 2014a: chapter
3).



Aquinas's intellectualism builds on but differs from
Augustine's (see Stump 2001). Jonathan Edwards appears to have a
different sort of intellectualist account. On Edwards's view,
the will must follow its strongest motivation (Crisp 2005: 41), which
is an output of the intellect. And more recently, Alvin Plantinga also
endorses an intellectualist account. He suggests that while primal sin
involves both affective and intellectual elements, it must originate
with "an *intellectual* defect; it must be by way of
somehow acquiring a false belief" (Plantinga 2000: 211). In
other words, there must be a "prior intellectual fault"
(Plantinga 2000: 212) before any affective failure.


### 2.2 Sin as Action, the Problem of Evil, and *O Felix Culpa*



As mentioned above, acts of sin relate closely to those versions of
the problem of evil that focus on moral evils, where one tries to
explain free creatures doing what is wrong. It is common in these
discussions to differentiate a defense from a theodicy. Alvin
Plantinga describes a theodicy as "the attempt to specify
God's reason for permitting evil", while a defense is the
attempt to specify not what God's reason *is* but what it
"*might possibly be*" (Plantinga 1977: 27f; see
also van Inwagen 2006). Versions of free will theodicy argue that the
existence of free will *is* the good that justifies God's
permitting evil, while free will defenses argue that the existence of
free will *might be* such a reason. Both free will theodicies
and defenses typically presuppose libertarian understandings of free
will, and thus the possibility of moral evil, although they need not
(see, for instance, Almeida 2016 and Turner 2013). Given the focus
here on sin, one particular response to the problem of moral evil is
worth extended attention: a response known as "*O Felix
Culpa*", according to which God not only allows but even
desires evil insofar as it furthers his plans.



While John Hick (1966) and Paul Helm (1994) both discuss *O Felix
Culpa* theodicies, Alvin Plantinga's work has been
especially influential in contemporary philosophical discussions, and
so I will focus on Plantinga. In earlier work (see Plantinga 1977 and
1985), Plantinga was interested in only giving a defense, explicitly
rejecting theodicies. In fact, at one point he claimed that



> 
> 
> most attempts to explain why God permits evil--theodicies, as we
> may call them--strike me as tepid, shallow, and ultimately
> frivolous. (Plantinga 1985: 35)
> 
> 
> 



His later 2000 *Warrant and Christian Belief* is an extended
response to defeaters to Christian belief, but it also contains the
elements of his later *O Felix Culpa* theodicy. As Kevin Diller
comments,



> 
> 
> this argument is a new species from Plantinga in the genus of
> responses to the problem of evil. This is a theodicy, not merely a
> defense, not merely a defeater defeater, but an explanation for why
> God allows evil--a reason for evil, that does not remove all the
> perplexity, but at a general level gives us an understanding for why
> it exists. (Diller 2008: 90)
> 
> 
> 



He continues:



> 
> 
> Unlike a free will theodicy, in a [*O*] *Felix Culpa*
> theodicy God *desires* evil [perhaps not for its own sake but]
> as a means to his good purposes. This move has a dangerously
> distorting moral and theological impact. We can no longer condemn evil
> and injustice as wholly antithetical to what is good. Evil is
> ultimately the will of God.... In a free will theodicy it is the
> *permission* of evil that is essential to the greater good that
> God intends, in the *Felix Culpa* theodicy it is the *evil
> itself* that is essential to the greater good. Evil is made
> reasonable as a functional good. (Diller 2008: 96)
> 
> 
> 



On this view,



> 
> 
> there is also a contingent good-making characteristic of our
> world--one that isn't present in all worlds--that
> towers enormously above all the rest of the contingent states of
> affairs included in our world: the unthinkably great good of divine
> incarnation and atonement. (Plantinga 2004: 7)
> 
> 
> 



Given his other commitments, including what Marilyn McCord Adams calls
the "swamping effect" of God's goodness (M. Adams
2008: 126), Plantinga thinks that every possible world is a very good
world. God's existence is not only necessary but also infinitely
good, God's existence outweighs any evil, and every possible
world is thus one that is infinitely good. But not all infinities are
equal. In some worlds, there are additional goods that outweigh the
evil of sin, namely the goods of incarnation and atonement. Since the
incarnation and atonement, on Plantinga's view, follow only
after sin, which is contingent, the (infinite) good of the incarnation
and atonement is also contingent. God's willing the incarnation
and atonement is logically prior to God's decisions to permit
sin, and thus sin becomes the means to that justifying good. Such a
position is called "supralapsarianism". The way Plantinga
understands the supralapsarianism,



> 
> 
> the [divine] decree to save [at least] some of the fallen [via the
> incarnation and atonement] precedes the decree to permit sin.
> (Plantinga 2004: 1)
> 
> 
> 



(Diller objects to Plantinga characterizing the
supralapsarian/infralapsarian debate in this way; see Diller 2008:
94).



Plantinga gives three different versions of the argument, each based
on a different assumption about value. Since Plantinga endorses the
strongest of these, which Hud Hudson calls "*the Strong Value
Assumption*" (Hudson 2019: 269), I'll focus on this
version. (It's worth noting that Plantinga thinks that only the
weakest of the three value assumptions is needed for the *O Felix
Culpa* theodicy, although Hudson 2019 argues otherwise.) *The
Strong Value Assumption* is as follows:



> 
> 
> Any world with incarnation and atonement is a better world than any
> without it--or at any rate better than any world in which God
> does nothing comparable to incarnation and atonement. (Plantinga 2004:
> 1)
> 
> 
> 



More fully:



> 
> 
> No matter how much sin and suffering and evil [world] *W*
> contains, it is vastly outweighed by the goodness of God, so that
> *W* is a good world, and indeed a very good world. It follows,
> once more, that every possible world is a very good world. But that
> doesn't mean that none are more valuable than others. The fact
> is: some possible worlds are much better than others. For there is a
> feature to be found only in some and not all possible worlds. This is
> the towering and magnificent good of divine incarnation and
> atonement....No matter how much evil, how much sin and suffering
> a world contains, the aggregated badness would be outweighed by the
> goodness of incarnation and atonement, outweighed in such a way that
> the world in question is very good. In this sense, therefore, any
> world with incarnation and atonement is of infinite value by virtue of
> containing two goods of infinite value: the existence of God, and
> incarnation and atonement. (Plantinga 2004: 9f)
> 
> 
> 



Plantinga thinks that since all possible worlds containing the goods
of incarnation and atonement also contain moral evil, the introduction
of sin into the world is justified by those goods. (For concerns about
how Plantinga's *O Felix Culpa* theodicy might conflict
with his defense to the logical problem of evil, see Davis &
Franks 2018 and M. Adams 2008.)



There are a number of objections to Plantinga's *O Felix
Culpa* theodicy. The first involves Plantinga's treating the
incarnation and atonement together as a package contained in all the
best worlds. While he considers the possibility that there may be
other worlds not involving incarnation and atonement that are equally
good, he says that it's hard to imagine those worlds and
suggests we ignore them. But there are reasons to think that the set
of worlds containing the incarnation and the set of worlds containing
the atonement are not identical. Marilyn McCord Adams, for instance,
writes,



> 
> 
> In fact, as the great medieval theologians recognized, Incarnation and
> atonement are logically independent: all agreed, it would have been
> metaphysically or logically possible for God to become Incarnate, even
> if creatures had never sinned; and Incarnation without atonement would
> still have been cosmic excellence enhancing. (M. Adams 2008: 131)
> 
> 
> 



Anselm seems to have thought that God couldn't have reconciled
with us in any other way, thereby making the incarnation not only
fitting (*Cur Deus Homo* I.1, in Anselm BW; see also the
discussions in Flint 2009 and M. Adams 2004) but also conditionally
necessary on human sinfulness (*Cur Deus Homo* II.6-7, in
Anselm BW; see also Williams forthcoming). But numerous other
theologians after him in the medieval period thought he was just wrong
about this, including Alexander of Hale, Bonaventure, and Aquinas.
Bonaventure, for instance, believes that the ability of God to bring
about the atonement without becoming incarnate follows from divine
power. And according to Thomas Williams, the non-necessity of the
incarnation for atonement was "the dominant medieval view"
(Williams forthcoming).



The incarnation and the atonement can come apart in the other
direction as well: God could have become incarnate even in the absence
of sin. Scholastic philosopher and theologian Robert Grosseteste lists
no fewer than nineteen reasons why God might have become incarnate
even without sin (see M. Adams 2004: 143). Aquinas held (*Summa
theologiae* III.1.3) that while God *could* have become
incarnate even had there been no sin, God would not have chosen to do
so. (It's worth noting that other notable theologians, such as
Augustine and Pope Leo, disagreed; see M. Adams 2004: 147). Duns
Scotus also thought sin wasn't required for God's decision
to become incarnate.



As Kevin Diller understands Plantinga's *O Felix Culpa*
theodicy, the incarnation and atonement play different roles:



> 
> 
> Suffering is not just a necessary byproduct of the plan to effectuate
> incarnation and atonement, but it also allows us to have a kind of
> intimacy and solidarity with Christ that would not otherwise have been
> possible. (Diller 2008: 90)
> 
> 
> 



Diller argues that intimacy and solidarity are made possible by the
incarnation. But these goods could be achieved even without sin and
the need for atonement:



> 
> 
> the incarnation alone does not require suffering and evil, so neither
> then is evil required for enhancing the intimacy of human relationship
> with God. If it is not an enhancement in our relationship with God
> that necessitates evil, then Plantinga's argument stands solely
> on the first claim: that the value of the atonement, which outweighs
> the required evil and suffering, is its being an, otherwise
> impossible, towering display of God's love. (Diller 2008:
> 96)
> 
> 
> 



For his theodicy to work, Plantinga would need to argue that it is the
good of the atonement in particular that assures the relevant
goodness, thereby revising *the Strong Value Assumption* to
something like



> 
> 
> any world with atonement is a better world than any without
> it--or at any rate better than any world in which God does
> nothing comparable to atonement
> 
> 
> 



(see also Hudson 2019: 282).



Furthermore, regarding the value of the atonement, Diller suggests
that it is not the actual atonement that is required for the good, but
rather God's disposition or willingness to engage in the
atonement:



> 
> 
> Even in worlds without sin--if such worlds are indeed
> possible--the counterfactuals of God's love are the same.
> Perhaps Plantinga's view is not that there would be anything
> lacking in God's love for us without atonement, but that there
> would be something lacking in our perception of that love. It is
> reasonable to think that it is part of God's loving purposes
> that the beloved would understand how loved they are. The argument, in
> this case, would be that the enactment of God's love in
> redemption gives us a view of the nature of that love which we would
> not otherwise have had. But how could we know what God's
> limitations are with respect to communicating to us a knowledge of the
> depth of his love? The weight of the theodicy rests on this
> assumption, but we are not given a good reason to accept it. (Diller
> 2008: 92; citations omitted)
> 
> 
> 



Marilyn McCord Adams rejects the entire framework of the instrumental
value of evils that the *O Felix Culpa* theodicy assumes. For
her, "horrors" are defined as



> 
> 
> evils the participation in (the doing or suffering of) which
> constitutes *prima facie* reason to doubt whether the
> participant's life could (given their inclusion in it) have
> positive meaning for him/her on the whole. (M. Adams 2006: 32)
> 
> 
> 



She elaborates elsewhere:



> 
> 
> My own conclusion is that means/end connections between greater goods
> and the worst evils (the ones I have identified as horrors) do not
> help the project of Christian theodicy. There need to be meaningful
> connections of another kind. Where horrors are concerned, it
> won't be enough to suggest--as Plantinga does--that
> the greater good outweighs the evil either. For precisely because
> horrors threaten to take away the possibility of positive personal
> meaning, they require recontextualizing to confer some positive
> meaning upon them. (M. Adams 2008: 137)
> 
> 
> 



Horrors, in Adams' view, need to be defeated rather than simply
balanced out or outweighed. And defeat must happen in the life of the
person who has suffered or perpetrated the horror, not someone else;
that is, we must restrict defeat to the agent involved in the horror.
Without this agent-centered restriction, it isn't possible for
Plantinga to argue that



> 
> 
> not only are perfect love and mercy compatible with requiring the
> suffering of a person for ends that are unconnected to her own good
> but that these traits are also compatible with that suffering extended
> to being wrecked and ruined, damnable and (maybe in some cases)
> damned. (Hudson 2019: 283)
> 
> 
> 



Diller picks up the same thread:



> 
> 
> For Plantinga's theodicy to be successful, he must hold that a
> world including all of the same people would be better off with a fall
> than without a fall, even though it could not be better for those who
> suffer eternally broken relationship with God. The good of having
> participated in making the world a better place would not individually
> offset the quite personal cost of entering hell or even being
> annihilated. Barring a commitment to universalism, it seems once
> again, from this angle, that on the Felix Culpa view the value of the
> extravagance of God's sacrifice is made to be more valuable than
> the right relationship with God that the sacrifice is meant to
> restore. (Diller 2008: 94)
> 
> 
> 



McCord Adams argues that it is actually worse than Diller thinks.
Plantinga doesn't clearly endorse the double predestination that
is sometimes paired with supralapsarianism. But, given his rejection
of universalism, God does knowingly choose to create some free
creatures who will be damned:



> 
> 
> Plantinga's "Felix Culpa" Supralapsarianism has God
> decide on what careers incompatibilist free creatures will have prior
> in the order of explanation to their existence. Once again, for
> Plantinga, incompatibilist free creatures, considered as merely
> possible, are not "truth-makers" for the counterfactuals
> of freedom about them. (M. Adams 2008: 134)
> 
> 
> 



The culprit here is actually Plantinga's Molinism, however, not
necessarily the *O Felix Culpa*. (For concerns about Molinism
on this point, see Perszyk 2011a: 8f; Wierenga 2011: 131-135;
and Timpe 2018. For a rejection of this concern, see Merricks 2011:
66).



William Hasker thinks that the most serious objection to
Plantinga's *O Felix Culpa* theodicy is that



> 
> 
> God in this theodicy is *using* his creatures, treating them as
> means and not as ends in themselves, by placing them in great peril in
> order to get the glory of saving them. (Hasker 2008: 168f)
> 
> 
> 



But that glory might not even be for saving those individuals that
sin, since Plantinga thinks that not all who sin are saved. This
benefit of the atonement might extend only to some of those who
suffer, again raising Adam's agent-centered constraint. As
Hasker notes, God's using or instrumentalizing people in this
way for the sake of some other good seems to run afoul of Romans 3:8,
which explicitly rejects the thinking that we should do evil
"that good may come".



Finally, Hud Hudson raises another objection to Plantinga's
theodicy that he thinks is decisive as an objection to theodicy in
general. Plantinga writes that



> 
> 
> any world with incarnation and atonement is better than any world with
> it--or at any rate better than any world in which God does
> nothing comparable to incarnation and atonement. It is hard to imagine
> what God could do that is in fact comparable to incarnation and
> atonement; but perhaps this is just a limitation of our imagination.
> But since this is so hard to imagine, I propose that we ignore those
> possible worlds, if there are any, in which God does not arrange for
> incarnation and atonement, but does something else of comparable
> excellence. (Plantinga 2004: 10)
> 
> 
> 



Hudson thinks this line of argument fails because it's a
"simple and straightforward noseeum inference" where
absence of evidence doesn't amount to evidence of absence
(Hudson 2019: 285). And Hudson thinks we have no reason to endorse
such an inference in this case. (For another criticism of Plantinga on
this point, see also Hasker 2008.)


## 3. Sin as Disposition



In addition to being a category of action, sin can also be understood
as an inclination or disposition to engage in sinful action. As
Plantinga puts in,



> 
> 
> sin is also and perhaps primarily an *affective* disorder or
> malfunction. Our affections are skewed, directed to the wrong objects;
> we love and hate the wrong things. Instead of seeking first the
> kingdom of God, I am inclined to seek first my own personal
> glorification and aggrandizement, bending all of my efforts toward
> making myself look good. Instead of loving God above all and my
> neighbor as myself, I am inclined to love myself above all and,
> indeed, to hate God and my neighbor. (Plantinga 2000: 208)
> 
> 
> 



The relation between sinful acts and sinful dispositions is complex.
Having a sinful disposition can certainly make it easier to commit a
particular kind of sin (e.g., being gluttonous makes it easier for me
to drink another coffee beyond what I should), but a sinful
disposition is neither necessary nor sufficient for committing a
sinful act. It can't be necessary, given that the primal sin
isn't explained by the presence of a sinful disposition. And it
can't be sufficient, since we don't do all the sinful
actions that a vice disposes us towards.



As is also the case for examining individual acts of sin, a full
account of sinful dispositions will depend on one's larger
normative framework. Sinful dispositions understood as inclinations
towards certain kinds of sinful acts can be understood as disordered
dispositions to not follow the natural law or divine comments, or
within the framework of a Kantian-inspired deontological account. It
is, however, perhaps most natural to think of such dispositions within
the general normative framework of virtue ethics as vices (J. Porter
1997: 466; McCluskey 2017: 7). The vices, on this approach, are habits
of the soul that are contrary to individuals' flourishing and
are opposed to, or involve the privation of, a particular virtue.
According to Colleen McCluskey (2017), Thomas Aquinas holds that only
actions can be sinful, strictly speaking, while vices are bad habits
without those dispositions being themselves sinful. There is long
tradition within Christianity, however, of treating sin in terms of
dispositions as well as actions. Today, in part because of the
influence of ethicists such as Anscombe, Foot, Murdoch and MacIntyre,
many contemporary Christian philosophers and theologians draw on the
medieval virtue ethics tradition and its portrayal of vices as sinful
dispositions.



Much of the relevant work on sinful dispositions focuses either on
particular categories of vice (e.g., vices opposed to the cardinal
virtues, or the seven capital vices) or on individual vices. (For
examples, see DeYoung 2020, Sweeney 2018, and McCluskey 2017.) As
Rebecca DeYoung notes, a common Christian response to vice is to
concentrate on sanctification, which is the change or transformation
of character required to remove sinful dispositions (DeYoung 2020:
viii; for different models of the nature of sanctification, see Alston
1988, S. Porter & Rickabaugh 2018, and Yeo 2014.) Sanctification
importantly includes spiritual disciplines in the process of virtue
formation (see DeYoung 2020 and Smith 2016).


## 4. Sin as State


### 4.1 Sin as Uncleanness



In addition to thinking of sin in terms of action and/or dispositions,
parts of the Christian tradition also think of sin as in terms of an
ontological state. Marilyn McCord Adams, for instance, thinks of sin,
at its most basic level, as ontological "uncleanness". On
this view, sin is fundamentally an



> 
> 
> impropriety in the relation between God and created person....
> Sin is uncleanness arising from the incommensuration of Divine and
> created natures, in the incapacity of any finite being to do or to be
> anything, naturally or intrinsically, worthy of God. (M. Adams 1991:
> 20f)
> 
> 
> 



This incommensuration is



> 
> 
> a metaphysically necessary consequence of what God and creatures are,
> not the outcome of the free and contingent exercise of anyone's
> agency. (M. Adams 1991: 21)
> 
> 
> 



Elsewhere, McCord Adams describes it as an outgrowth of "the
metaphysical gap" between humans and God, in virtue of
differences in their natures:



> 
> 
> We have no more rightful place in God's household than worms and
> maggots do in our ours (Job 24:4-6); nothing we could naturally
> be or do would make us suitable for Divine company. Because Divine and
> created natures are incommensurate, God will be unclassifiable
> relative to any merely human order (social, political, international)
> or to any human perception of natural order. Since we are unable to
> fit Him into any of our categories, we experience God as ...
> wholly other, and therefore as utterly unpredictable. (M. Adams 1999:
> 94)
> 
> 
> 



This state of uncleanness, on her view, isn't a result of sinful
actions but is instead simply a function of the radical limitation and
finitude of created natures in comparison with God.



> 
> 
> Because of the size gap nothing we could be or do could
> count--simply by virtue of what it is--as an appropriate
> move in relation to God. (M. Adams 1999: 95)
> 
> 
> 



Because sin is primarily a function of our created state rather than a
result of human actions, this view doesn't portray human freedom
or forgiveness as playing a key role overcoming the state of sin.
Rather, the gap is straddled by covenant and, ultimately,
incarnation.


### 4.2 Original Sin



The Christian doctrine of original sin can also be understood as a
kind of state or "condition" (see Mann 2001: 47). While,
as discussed in
 section 2.1,
 primal sin refers to the temporally first sin, original sin is
original in the sense that "it is an evil at the origins of
human agency, and from which human agency flows" (Couenhoven
2016: 193). Original sin is sometimes referred to as human beings
possessing a "sinful nature". This view leads to certain
Christological worries, however: if the Second Person of the Trinity
becomes incarnate and assumes a human nature, then if human nature is
somehow itself sinful, Christ would also be sinful. But all Christian
theories hold that the Incarnate Christ is fully human as well as
fully divine, and yet without original sin. (For discussions of the
relationship between Christ's divine nature and the human nature
assumed in the Incarnation, see Pawl 2019 and 2016). Some Christian
traditions also hold that Mary the mother of Jesus also was free from
sin via the immaculate conception. Because such language about human
nature itself becoming sinful can be misleading (see Copan 2003: 523)
and also potentially in conflict with the conviction that all things
created by God are good, original sin is perhaps better described in
terms of human nature's being distorted. In virtue of its
distorting effects, original sin thus "becomes the origin of
actual sins" (Blocher 1997: 19), and perhaps even a condition
that almost inevitably leads to sinful actions (see Franks 2012:
3).



While the doctrine of original sin isn't explicitly taught in
the Christian scriptures, it "was developed from scriptural
warrants" (Green 2017: 115). It also is a distinctively
Christian doctrine (Quinn 1997: 541), rejected by both Judaism and
Islam. Augustine played a central role in the historical development
of the doctrine of original sin. In contrast to Pelagius and
Caelestius who denied that humans inherit original sin via the fall
(see Timpe 2014a: chapter 4 and Couenhoven 2013), Augustine maintained
that through Adam's sin, the whole human race is now



> 
> 
> bound by the chain of death and justly condemned, ...lead by a
> succession of miseries from its depraved origin, as from a corrupt
> root. (Augustine *City of God*, XIII.14)
> 
> 
> 



Augustine's view in this debate was codified by the Councils of
Carthage (418) and Orange (529), with Pelagius' view being
declared heresy in the West, and thus the components of this view
deserves a closer look. (For a discussion of the history of the
doctrine, see Vanneste 1971.)



In what follows, I will follow Jesse Couenhoven, who argues that
Augustine's doctrine of original sin has five parts and
distinguishes between them as follows:


1. the primal sin;
2. the participation of the rest of the human race (except Jesus and,
in some traditions, Mary) in that sin because of their solidarity with
those who committed the first human sin;
3. involuntary and inherited common guilt that all humans (again
except Jesus and, in some traditions, Mary) are subject to because of
that solidarity;
4. penalty to human nature because of the primal sin; and
5. the transmission of inherited sin and its penalty. (Couenhoven
2013: 46; for slightly different categorizations, see Blocher 1997 and
Crisp 2019: chapter 7)



Of these, (1) has already been dealt with above in
 section 2.1.
 (2) is a claim about the scope of those who are affected by original
sin, and in what follows I will assume the restriction that excludes
Jesus and, in Catholicism and parts of the Orthodox tradition, his
mother Mary. I address claims (3) and (4) respectively in
 section 4.3
 and
 section 4.4.
 Other than noting that there are a range of options regarding how
original sin (which is sometimes referred to as hereditary sin, or
*erbsunde* in Germanic languages) is transmitted, ranging
from Augustine's view that this transmission occurs via semen as
part of sexual intercourse to its occurring through participation in
sinful human community (see Couenhoven 2013: chapter 7), I will not
focus on claim (5) either in what follows.


### 4.3 Constitutional Fault and Original Guilt



Couenhoven describes the third component of the doctrine of original
sin as its conceptual center, with the other parts of the doctrine
providing "a background that assists us in understanding the
center of the doctrine" (Couenhoven 2013: 47). This third
component is itself the conjunction of two claims: the first being
about constitutional fault, which Couenhoven also sometimes calls
"original sin itself" (Couenhoven 2013: 23), and the
second being that one is morally blameworthy or suffers from original
guilt in virtue of that constitutional fault. While Couenhoven may be
correct that much of the historical reflection on original sin
involves both of these elements, the second of these claims is
controversial in contemporary philosophical work on original sin.



Couenhoven describes constitutional fault as a kind of moral
"improper functioning *qua* human being"
(Couenhoven 2013: 12) that involves "an inherited state of
disordered desire and ignorance" (Couenhoven 2013: 30). This
element has also been described as a disordering of human desires such
that they "are now congenitally turned away from God" and
in bondage to sin (McFarland 2016: 308). There are two main ways of
understanding the distortion or corruption involved in constitutional
fault. The first is as a loss of original righteousness or "a
deprivation of original holiness and justice" (*Catechism of
the Catholic Church* 2003, part I, section 2, paragraph 7, 405).
The second is as an actual perversion of the moral nature of humanity
(see McCall 2019: 159).



Original guilt, on the other hand, is defended by very few
philosophers, although William Wainwright suggests that original guilt
is essential to the doctrine of original sin (Wainright 1988: 31).
Thomas McCall refers to those views that reject original guilt as
"corruption-only doctrines" (McCall 2019: 156). The denial
of original guilt is found in the Catholic tradition (see
*Catechism of the Catholic Church* 2003, part I, section 2,
paragraph 7, 405) and many of the Orthodox traditions (see Louth
2020). Among contemporary philosophers, corruption-only views are
endorsed by Crisp 2020a, McFarland 2016, McFadyen 2016, Hudson 2014,
Wyma 2004, Plantinga 2000, Quinn 1997, Morris 1992, and Swinburne
1989.



According to Michael C. Rea (2007), much of the opposition to the idea
of original guilt comes from its *prima facie* conflict with
the following "principle of possible prevention":



(MR)
A person *P* is morally responsible for the obtaining of a
state of affairs *S* only if *S* obtains (or obtained) and
*P* could have prevented *S* from obtaining.


Rea argues that no part of the doctrine of original sin, including
original guilt, contradicts (MR). Rather, one gets a contradiction
when the doctrine of original sin is conjoined with the following
plausible assumption:



(A1)
No human being born after Adam's first sin could have done
anything to prevent Adam's first sin; and no human who is born
corrupt could have done anything to prevent her own corruption.


Rea then develops two different theories of original guilt that are
inconsistent with (A1), one drawing on realism and perdurantism
(roughly, the view that ordinary objects like humans persist through
time in virtue of having temporal parts) and the other drawing on
Molinist assumptions. (For criticisms of Rea's proposals, see
Hudson 2014: chapter 4.)


### 4.4 Just Penalty



Closely connected with the concept of constitutional fault is the idea
of just punishment for that fault. According to those views which
reject original guilt, we are justly punished only for our actual
sinful actions and dispositions. For those views which affirm original
guilt, a question arises concerning where this guilt comes from, given
that it doesn't seem that the post-Adam person in question
committed the sin to which the original guilt attaches. There are two
main families of views that seek to address this issue: federalism and
realism. According to federalism, which is sometimes also referred to
as representationalism, we are held to be guilty for original sin and
for our constitutional fault in virtue of Adam (or Adam and Eve) being
our "federal" or "representative" head. In
short,



> 
> 
> we are condemned because Adam stood in for us as the representative of
> the whole human race; due to his relationship to us as our
> "federal head" or "legally appointed
> representative", his guilt thus counts as our guilt. (McCall
> 2019: 162)
> 
> 
> 



Federalism involves a "treating as if", or a "legal
fiction", where guilt is imputed via taking Adam to be a
representative of the human race (see Madueme 2020; for a criticism of
such imputation, see Crisp 2009).



In contrast, realism holds that there is a real unity between all who
are justly punished for original guilt and Adam (or, again, Adam and
Eve). As Augustine puts it,



> 
> 
> The first human beings ... having become the first sinners, were
> then punished by death in such a way that whatsoever sprang from their
> stock should also be subject to the same penalty. For nothing could be
> born of them which was not what they themselves had been ...so
> that what arose as a punishment in the first human beings who sinned
> also follows as a natural consequence in the rest who are born of
> them. (Augustine *City of God*, XIII.iii)
> 
> 
> 



Because of our common human nature, all humans have an organic unity
in virtue of which the punishment for original sin is just (for a
discussion and criticism, see Crisp 2020b). However, Augustine
"never really explains how all did exist and act in Adam,
leaving the matter rather mysterious" (Couenhoven 2013: 27).



The realist view perhaps best known is that of Jonathan Edwards, who
held that all humans are one simply because as God declares us to
be:



> 
> 
> there is no identity or oneness [that does not] depend on the
> *arbitrary* constitution of the Creator.... *Divine
> constitution* [God's treating all humans as one entity] is
> the thing which *makes truth*. (Edwards 1758: part 4, ch. III
> [1970: 404])
> 
> 
> 



Influenced by Jonathan Edwards, a number of philosophers have
suggested that the theory of perdurantism might provide a basis for
realism. (See the discussions in Wainwright 1988, Wyma 2004, Crisp
2005 and 2009, Rea 2007, and Hudson 2014.)


### 4.5 Inevitability of Sinful Actions



Even the rejection of original guilt doesn't solve all the
concerns related to the third component of the doctrine of original
sin: constitutional fault also faces philosophical and theological
challenges. While some argue that constitutional fault merely inclines
one to commit sinful acts (see Swinburne 1989: 138), most have held
that acts of sin are inevitable given the state of original sin (Crisp
2019: 150). As Paul Copan puts it,



> 
> 
> though we do not sin necessarily (that is, it is not assured that we
> must commit this or that particular sin), we sin inevitably (that is,
> in addition to our propensity to sin, given the vast array of
> opportunities to sin, we eventually do sin at some point. (Copan 2003:
> 531)
> 
> 
> 



Paul Franks raises the following problem for views like Copan's
(and Plantinga's and Wyma's), which affirm the
inevitability of sin without original guilt. On these views, the
following claim is true:



> 
> 
> (1)
> Necessarily in a world tainted by original sin, (a) every human
> subsequent to Adam and Eve [where those names are understood to refer
> to whoever the first sinners happen to be in whatever world is tainted
> by sin] is born in a condition such that it is inevitable that she sin
> (given that she performs at least one morally significant action), but
> (b) it is not inevitable that she sin on any given occasion. (Franks
> 2012, 6f; citations omitted)
> 
> 



(This claim would seem to entail that every world tainted by original
sin includes sinners who give birth to other creatures capable of
sinning. That looks to be false if there's a world where the
first sinners are annihilated immediately afterwards and new human
beings are created, but Franks doesn't consider this
possibility.) Now consider a possible world in which a human performs
only one morally significant action in their lifetime. This would mean
that:



> 
> 
> (2)
> Possibly, some human performs only one morally significant action
> in her lifetime. (Franks 2012: 7)
> 
> 



Franks thinks that the truth of (2) "seems assured" and
finds "no reason one could give for thinking it to be
false" (Franks 2012: 7 and 11). However, according to (1a)
above, it is true of the human in question that they inevitably sin in
that particular action. That is, it follows from (1a) and (2) that



> 
> 
> (3)
> If some human performs only one morally significant action in
> [their] lifetime, then that action is inevitably sinful. (Franks 2012:
> 7)
> 
> 



However, from (1b) it follows that:



> 
> 
> (4)
> If some human performs only one morally significant action in
> [their] lifetime, then that action is not inevitably sinful. (Franks
> 2012: 7)
> 
> 



(3) and (4) together entail a contradiction.



One way to reject (1b) is to accept a compatibilist view on which at
least some human free actions, namely those in which one sins, are
determined by God. But those with libertarian commitments seem to be
committed to (1b). Since Franks is a libertarian, he rejects that the
constitutional fault of original sin necessitates sinful actions:
"we are influenced by a fallen world to sin, but are free at any
point to refrain from sinning" (Franks 2012: 370). As mentioned
above, Swinburne also rejects the inevitability of sin on the basis of
original sin:



> 
> 
> Adam's responsibility for our sinfulness is confined to a
> responsibility for beginning the social transmission of morality (as
> such a good thing) which made sin possible, but a morality which, as a
> result of his own sinful example and perhaps false moral beliefs, was
> no doubt a corrupt morality and so made it easier for our genetically
> inherited proneness to sin to work in Adam's successors.
> (Swinburne 1989: 143)
> 
> 
> 



According to Swinburne, sinful acts are "almost
unavoidable" but not inevitable. Those incompatibilists who want
to hold that committing at least one sinful action is inevitable while
avoiding the inevitability (and thus non-responsibility) of each
particular sinful action need to provide an account of what ensures
sinful action.


## 5. Noetic Effects of Sin



The depravity brought about by sin is held to affect all parts of
human nature. In addition to sin as act, disposition, and fallen
state, Christian philosophers have also done significant work on the
noetic effects of sin, including but not limited specifically to its
epistemic effects. The Reformed tradition in particular emphasizes the
effects of sin not just on the will but on the human intellect. Alvin
Plantinga, for instance, states that "Original sin involves both
intellect and will; it is both cognitive and affective"
(Plantinga 2000: 207). On Plantinga's view, the affective
dimension of sin--particularly the skewing of affections toward
the sin of pride--is perhaps "the deepest root of the condition
of sin", but a full accounting of sin must also include its
impact on our epistemic faculties:



> 
> 
> One the one hand, [sin] carries with it a sort of *blindness*,
> a sort of imperceptiveness, dullness, stupidity. This is a cognitive
> limitation that first of all prevents its victim from proper knowledge
> of God and his beauty, glory, and love; it also prevents him from
> seeing what is worth loving and what worth hating, what should be
> sought and what eschewed. It therefore comprises both knowledge of
> fact and knowledge of value. (Plantinga 2000: 207)
> 
> 
> 



Plantinga develops an influential view of warrant which he calls the
extended Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model. Though an account of warrant in
general, it was developed specifically to show how religious beliefs
could be justified (both internally and externally); rational; and, if
these beliefs are true, could have warrant.



> 
> 
> The central feature of this model is the stipulation that God has
> created us human beings with a belief-producing process or source of
> belief, the *sensus divinitatis*; this source works under
> various conditions to produce beliefs about God, including, of course,
> beliefs that immediately entail his existence. (Plantinga 2000:
> 199)
> 
> 
> 



For Plantinga, religious belief can be immediate and basic; a
religious belief can be warranted even if it is not held on the basis
of argument, so long as it is reliably produced by the *sensus
divinitatis*. The A/C model is explicitly constructed to be able
to account for the noetic effects of sin:



> 
> 
> Our fall into sin has had cataclysmic consequences, both affective and
> cognitive. As to affective consequences, our affections are skewed and
> our hearts now harbor deep and radical evil: we love ourselves above
> all, rather than God. There were also ruinous *cognitive*
> consequences. Our original knowledge of God and of his marvelous
> beauty, glory, and loveliness has been severely compromised; in this
> way the narrow image of God in us was destroyed and the broad image
> damaged, distorted. In particular, the *sensus divinitatis* has
> been damaged and deformed; because of the fall, we no longer know God
> in the same natural and unproblematic way in which we know each other
> and the world around us. Still further, sin induces in us a
> *resistance* to the deliverances of the *sensus
> divinitatis*, muted as they are by the first factor; we
> don't *want* to pay attention to its deliverances. We are
> unable by our own efforts to extricate ourselves from this quagmire.
> (Plantinga 2000: 205)
> 
> 
> 



Plantinga thinks that "the most serious noetic effects of
sin" (Plantinga 2000: 214) are the deleterious effects sin has
on our knowledge of God:



> 
> 
> Our original knowledge of God and his glory is muffled and impaired;
> it has been replaced (by virtue of sin) by stupidity, dullness,
> blindness, inability to perceive God or to perceive him in his
> handiwork. Our knowledge of his character and his love toward us can
> be smothered: it can even be transformed into a resentful thought that
> God is to be feared and mistrusted; we may see him as indifferent or
> even malignant.... The most important cognitive consequence of
> sin, therefore, is failure to know God. And this failure can have
> further cognitive consequences.... If we don't know there
> is such a person as God, we don't know the first thing (the most
> important thing) about ourselves, each other, and the world.
> (Plantinga 2000: 215 and 217)
> 
> 
> 



The noetic effects of sin aren't limited simply to knowledge of
God, however. They extend to our knowledge of the moral demands on our
lives given our relationship with God, our emotions, imagination and
even non-epistemic mental functions (see McMartin 2016).



Despite sin's epistemic effects, Plantinga thinks that knowledge
of God is still possible in two ways. First, knowledge of God is
possible via natural theology (see Walls & Dougherty 2018).
Second, knowledge of God is possible despite the noetic effects of sin
given the role of the Holy Spirit in bringing about faith. Faith, for
Plantinga, has both affective and cognitive elements. Central to the
cognitive dimension of faith is "a firm and certain knowledge of
God" (Plantinga 2000: 206; see also Diller 2014) and knowledge
of other central aspects of Christian belief. The *sensus
divinitatis* is repaired by the working of the Holy Spirit.
"Without some special activity on the part of the Lord, we
wouldn't believe" (Plantinga 2000: 269). While sin has
damaged the *sensus divinitatis*, the Holy Spirit can
regenerates it, allowing it to again function properly and remove
defeaters from warranted religion belief.



Merold Westphal is another contemporary Christian philosopher who
explores sin's noetic effects. Westphal claims that to take St.
Paul seriously is to take seriously the universality of sin (Westphal
1990; see also Westphal 1993), including sin's effects on how we
think about God. Westphal worries that much philosophical theology is
too optimistic about human reason, ignoring the impact of sin on our
epistemic capacities and functioning. By "sin", Westphal
has in mind both sinful acts and the general disposition to commit
sinful acts, and he maintains that both acts and dispositions can be
individual and communal. Following Augustine, Westphal also sees sin
as best described in terms of pride,



> 
> 
> the self-assertion which usurps a role in life not proper to me,
> depriving God and neighbor of their rightful places as, respectively,
> my absolute superior and my equal. (Westphal 1990: 200)
> 
> 
> 



Ultimately, sin isn't weakness but rather idolatry.
Westphal's "Law of Inverse Rationality" holds
that



> 
> 
> the ability of human thought to be undistorted by sinful desire is
> inversely proportional to the existential import of the subject
> matter. (Westphal 1990: 205; see also Timpe 2014b)
> 
> 
> 



This worry about the noetic effects of sin is one of the major
motivations for Westphal's criticism of Reformed epistemology,
for we can't be sure that our epistemic faculties, including the
*sensus divinitatis*, are functioning properly if they're
distorted by sin.



William Abraham suggest that Westphal's approach insufficiently
appreciates the role grace places as a remedy to sin:



> 
> 
> If the *sensus divinitatis* is damaged all the way down without
> repair, it is hard to see how we would even know anything that really
> counted about God or about ourselves. Merold Westphal runs this risk
> is his very insightful essay. We need to remember that epistemically
> as well as spiritually, where sin abounds, grace amounts all the more.
> (Abraham 2006: 111 n. 17)
> 
> 
> 



Abraham suggests a



> 
> 
> more robust vision of [human] cognitive capacities and practices, like
> intuition, percept, reason, memory, testimony, and the like
> 
> 
> 



on the basis of the recognition that these capacities and practices,
even while affected by sin, are "underwritten by the power and
goodness of God" (Abraham 2006: 121).



Discussions of the noetic effects of sin aren't limited to the
ones mentioned here, nor to these topics. For a discussion of the
compatibility of the noetic effects of sin with evolutionary
epistemology, for instance, particularly with an eye toward the
cognitive science of religion, see De Cruz and Smedt 2013 and Barrett
2009. Peter Harrison also argues that sin's noetic effects
helped shape the experimental method in science (Harrison 2007).


## 6. Structural Sin



The discussions of sin in the previous sections all have social
implications insofar as sin *qua* action, disposition, state,
and epistemic factor can all harm human community. A sinful action can
not only harm others but also spark retaliatory sinful actions by the
one originally sinned against. The noetic effects of sin impact social
learning and instruction, with those effects being passed from
individuals and groups to others. The doctrine of original sin also
clearly has social implications: if all human beings suffer from
original sin, then their social interactions will be impacted by it.
Even Swinburne, who rejects that humans suffer from original sin in a
way that makes sin inevitable to us, holds that we contribute to the
proneness of our communities to sin such that we are involved in the
sins of our communities (Swinburne 1989: 145). These forms of sin
affect our relationships, not just between individuals and other
individuals, but between individuals and groups and between groups and
other groups. In short, sin corrupts the moral imaginations of not
just individuals, but of entire communities.



We can also think of sin, however, not just in terms of individual
acts and attitudes, but in terms of social structures. In this case,
there is a further "sociability" of sin that's not
captured by the previous discussions. The sixth century Byzantine monk
and theologian Maximus the Confessor, for instance, held that sin
leads to a breakdown in community, leading to individualism and social
fragmentation. He went so far as to compare this state to a kind of
bestiality (Deane-Drummond 2017: 38). Henri de Lubac interprets
Maximus as understanding



> 
> 
> original sin as a separation, an individualization it might be called
> in the depreciatory sense of the word. (de Lubac 1988: 33)
> 
> 
> 



If this is correct, then thinking of sin solely in individual terms is
itself a result of sin.



It has seemed plausible to many others as well that sin can be
embedded within social structures such that it is committed by groups
and not just individuals. Writing within the Reformed tradition, Ruth
Groenhout suggests we can think of "total depravity" as
the conviction that



> 
> 
> the corruption of sin is not limited to smallish pockets of existence
> but instead runs through every aspect of creation that we encounter as
> a fracture that affects every part of our human reality. (Groenhout
> 2006: 134)
> 
> 
> 



Sin thus impacts not just individuals or groups, but the very nature
of our social systems themselves:



> 
> 
> When sins such as pride, greed, and covetousness infect those who
> legislate for society, as they almost always do, the legislation and
> resulting social structures are themselves corrupt, and will produce
> often predictable pathologies in society: poverty, racial segregation,
> destruction of lives and relationships in the name of profit.
> (Groenhout 2006: 138)
> 
> 
> 



On this view, human structures and systems as well as human nature are
marred or distorted by sin. Parallel to structural accounts of
injustices, structural approaches to sin hold that it "creates
and exists within structures that shape the material reality of our
planet and all life on it" (Ray 2016: 417). This approach to sin
is often found in liberation theologies (see McCall 2019: 259ff).



Consider, for instance, racism. McCluskey 2017, chapter 6 contains a
discussion of racism as involving not only bad actions but also bad
habits:



> 
> 
> A common habit among whites is to check that their car doors are
> locked whenever they see an African-American walking on the street
> while they are driving. Seeing a white person walking does not trigger
> the same response. Underlying this habit is the unacknowledged
> judgement by the privileged (white) group prevalent in a racist
> society that blacks, especially young black men, are criminals and
> therefore to be feared. Racial profiling by the police leads to
> stopping persons of color on a habitual basis simply because of their
> skin color and is also grounded in the explicit or implicit belief
> that members of these groups are more likely to commit crimes.
> (McCluskey 2017: 176; citations omitted)
> 
> 
> 



Those instances of racism that are caused by willful ignorance or
resistance to self-scrutiny will also reflect the epistemic dimension
of sin. But beyond this, it may be that racism is an example of an
irreducibly structural sin, as Stephen Ray argues. Racism, like race
itself, on his view, is socially constructed. If racism isn't
just habits of individuals (made more likely, surely, by the habits
and actions prevalent in their community or society) but something
structural itself, it may also be helpful to think of some sin as
structural along similar lines. This holds for two important reasons,
one of which regards the existence of oppressive structures and the
second about how their existence is masked:



> 
> 
> First, ... is the realization that sin becomes apparent in
> structures through the material consequence of their
> operation.... The second reason is that, because the evidence of
> sin's presence is usually undeniable, it effectively shields
> itself from scrutiny and intervention by constructing ideological
> formations that take the presence of ill-being and death as simply the
> natural order of things. (Ray 2016: 424)
> 
> 
> 



This latter is what he means by saying that structural sin is
"mundane".



Katie Walker Grimes argues that a response to racism framed primarily
in terms of "white privilege" rather than white supremacy
or antiblackness is insufficient because such an approach is overly
individualistic and doesn't take the social nature of sin
sufficiently seriously (see Grimes 2016: xxi). Grimes develops an
account of anti-blackness built on "corporate virtue
theory", which focuses on the relationship between habits and
character of social bodies rather than individuals. The forces that
result in antiblackness are inherently social (e.g., economics,
segregated space), and so antiblack racism should be seen as
inherently social as well. A number of theologians also explore
victim-oriented soteriologies that focus primarily on the plight of
individuals who are victims of institutional oppression and injustice,
trying to articulate what reconciliation looks like in those settings
(see Hunsinger 2016 and Hieb 2013).



A number of feminist scholars have also argued that sexism can be
understood along the lines of structural sin. Elisabeth
Schuseller Fiorenza, for instance, characterizes sexism as



> 
> 
> the dehumanizing trends, injustices, and discrimination of
> institutions, the theology and symbol system that legitimate these
> institutions, and the collective and personal "false
> consciousness" created by sexist institutions and ideologies and
> internalized in socialization and education. This "false
> consciousness" permits oppressed people and groups to accept
> their oppression and to internalize the values of the oppressor. This
> understanding of patriarchal sexism as structural sin and evil power
> institutionalized in society and ecclesial oppressive structures is
> akin to [Saint] Paul's understanding of sin as transpersonal,
> destructive power whose ultimate expression is the life-destroying
> power of death. (Schuseller Fiorenza 1993: 140)
> 
> 
> 



Many of these scholars see traditional approaches to sin as
individualistic action or disposition to be problematic and harmful to
women (see, for instance, the work of Saiving 1992, Plaskow 1980, and
Dunfee 1982 for historically influential examples). Rachel Sophia
Baard's work is one example of this line of criticism. Baard
argues that sin-talk contributes to communal praxis, shaping where and
how our practices reproduce themselves. As she puts it, our language
and understanding of sin creates a script that people perform; for
instance, if sin is simply understood as individual actions, then it
would encourage us not to see the social structures involved in
patriarchy as sinful, thereby making it more likely that those
structures continue rather than addressing them as problematic.
Traditional understandings of sin rooted in pride, she continues,
which lie at the heart of many Christian institutions, and cultural
beliefs and practices,



> 
> 
> create a social climate in which gender violence is not only
> imaginable but tolerated or accepted as "normal", indeed,
> as simply part of the human condition. (Baard 2019: 49; see also Jones
> 2000)
> 
> 
> 



If all sin is ultimately rooted in pride and self-exertion, the proper
response to sin is found in humility and self-sacrifice. But in
situations of oppression and gender-based violence, such a response
encourages further harm and a denial of proper agency:



> 
> 
> by and large, female pathology is typically not rooted in the
> elevation of the self but in the negation of the self--hence,
> calling for the shattering of the self or the humility that
> "regards others as better than ourselves" will end up
> aggravating, rather than addressing, women's sin. (Baard 2019:
> 61)
> 
> 
> 



This can be seen historically in how women have been blamed for sin,
and that blame then used to deny opportunities for or justify violence
against women. Baard argues that a shift to a rhetoric of the systemic
nature of oppression rather than pride is often called for, shifting
focus away from the purported moral failing of the individual to the
androcentric rhetoric and practices that perpetuates structures that
oppress.



In addition to racism and sexism, other social forms of oppression can
also be understood as examples of structural sins. Leigh Vicens
suggests that we can understand implicit bias as a kind of socially
based structural sin (Vicens 2018; for a recent discussion of the
state of research on implicit bias, see Brownstein, Madva, and
Gawronski 2020). Marjorie Suchocki argues that sin is



> 
> 
> participation through intent or action in unnecessary violence that
> contributes to the ill-being of any aspect of earth or its
> inhabitants. (Suchocki 1994: 12)
> 
> 
> 



where that participation is part of our inheritance thorough social
solidarity with other sinful humans. Sin is "individual only
insofar as we participate in the whole society" (Suchocki 1994:
157). She uses this account to illuminate oppression, economic
systems, and homophobia. Patriarchy can perhaps be understood in a
similar way (see Baard 2019 and Ruether 1993). And Ruth Groenhout
explores the relationship between systemic sin and contemporary
healthcare systems (Grouenhout 2006).