Man the Sinner

Niebuhr, H. Richard

doi:10.1086/481622

Cited by 6 publications

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“…America as "experiment in constructive Protestantism" was by definition doomed to fail. Finally, even though "the kingdom of Christ" located divine activity in the depths of human subjectivity, the overwhelming view of God as absolute otherness confronting "man the sinner" (Niebuhr, 1935a) lacked a properly theological point of contact with the world.…”

Section: The Kingdom Of God In Americamentioning

confidence: 99%

Writing the Kingdom of God in South Africa

Martin¹

2020

STJ

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John de Gruchy’s The Church Struggle in South Africa was a bold attempt to write the story of the kingdom of God in his native land. While it stood toward the beginning of his written work, the themes laid down in it have followed De Gruchy’s writings up to the present. They have also sketched the story of South Africa from the climax of the struggle to end Apartheid to the present travails to realize its promise. This article takes up the final chapter in that work, comparing it to another great theological attempt to write the kingdom of God: H. Richard Niebuhr’s The Kingdom of God in America. It follows that chapter through its disappearance in the third edition of The Church Struggle, to its re-emergence in The End is Not Yet. The article is especially interested in De Gruchy’s eschatological retrieval of Bonhoeffer’s tension between the ultimate and the penultimate, and in the question of God’s trinitarian reality shaping the world – and us as community of anticipation.

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Section: The Kingdom Of God In Americamentioning

confidence: 99%

Writing the Kingdom of God in South Africa

Martin¹

2020

STJ

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“…26 And though his concept of sin is not as radically focused on ontic incommensurability, Niebuhr may well agree with Adams's views concerning sin and moral responsibility: "Christianity is not primarily concerned with the question of assessing blame but with the fact [of disloyalty to God] and the cure." 27 A sense of guilt, Niebuhr writes, "has become a barrier to the modern man's understanding of the gospel." 28 Alistair McFadyen, who both worries about sin moralism and seems to want to retain the traditional belief that sin necessarily involves guilt, follows Niebuhr in marginalizing the relationship between sin and culpability.…”

Section: Anti-moralistic Views Of Sinmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Sin Is: A Differential Analysis

Couenhoven

2009

Modern Theology

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Sin is clearly evil, but what differentiates sin from evil? The idea that sin is moral evil is widely held, but important theological arguments have been posed against it. Theologians who reject sin moralism have, however, found it hard to distinguish sin from evil—partially because they share hidden assumptions with sin moralists. Helped by a philosophical theology of deep responsibility, I propound sin responsibilism: sin is culpable evil. This analysis of sin is open to multiple accounts of sin's relation to morality or theories of responsibility, and thus of sin's scope—but I defend a non‐moralistic, compatibilist sin responsibilism.

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Five problems for the moral consensus about sins

Ashfield

2021

Int J Philos Relig

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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 overdemandingness, (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 wellmotivated 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.Ingolf Dalferth (1984) distinguishes the ontological question 'what is sin?' from the criteriological question 'what is sinful?'. Much theological discourse on the doctrine of sin concerns the ontological question of sin's nature or essence, but recent philosophical discussions of sin have often grappled with the criteriological issue of which acts, attitudes, or states of affairs should count as sinful or fall under sin's extension, whatever sin turns out to be. In this paper, I identify problems that emerge from answers to the criteriological question of how sins are extensionally related to moral faults. My primary aim is to engage critically with recent relevant Englishspeaking philosophical scholarship, so I will not attempt an in-depth historical study of how theologians or philosophers have answered this question throughout the ages, and I will not address cognate theological topics, like soteriology. However, in setting up the problems I discuss, 1 I will refer primarily to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, because these are the primary authoritative canons of texts informing the religious traditions, in which recent English-speaking philosophical discussion of sin has taken place, and because the Christian traditions and their roots in Jewish traditions are the ones I know best.(237), but "sinful acts" is the narrower category, because it includes only conscious, voluntary, blameworthy offences that are objectively against God.Super-Moralists, in contrast, retain Moral Sufficiency while rejecting Moral Necessity, arguing that while all moral faults are sins, some sins are not moral faults. This combination of commitments seems to have been espoused by several prominent theologians. For example, Emil Brunner writes: "It is perfectly possi...

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Man the Sinner

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Writing the Kingdom of God in South Africa

Writing the Kingdom of God in South Africa

What Sin Is: A Differential Analysis

Five problems for the moral consensus about sins

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