A Definition of Sin

I came across a definition of sin (actually a definition of sinner, but one extends from the other) a while back that I've been mulling over for quite some time, and I want to hear what people think of it. It was long enough ago that I don't remember what book it was from, but I'm almost positive the author was Gerhard Forde. It went something like this: "a sinner, in the final analysis, is someone who fails to receive from God." So, I've been thinking of sin as failure to receive from God. Seems pretty straightforward.

The more I've thought about this definition of sin, the more I've come to like it. At first it seemed overly simplistic, or at least incomplete. It seemed to exclude a lot of things that I considered to be sin.

First, let's look at what is obviously included in this definition. In the section that this "quote" appears (as I remember it, anyway), Forde is talking about salvation as God's gift to us, and our tendency to refuse that gift and insist on doing it ourselves, or at least helping. This insistence on making salvation depend on something that we do* rather than what God has done is the essence of sin according to this definition. This seems strange when you really consider it, because the manifestations of this insistence (see footnote) are often exactly what we would list if we were asked to describe "holiness." It seems that sin is indistinguishable from holiness, at least from the outside.

But what about the inside? Can we at least make the distinction that these "good works" are sin when done with an ulterior motive, and holiness when done with pure motives? Well, what exactly would a pure motive be? Take tithing as an example. Obviously we would consider doing it for glory or influence to be an impure motive. What about doing it for the reward in heaven? Doesn't seem much different than doing it for a reward on earth. How about doing it to better the church which we attend? Well, that's also fairly self-centered, who's to say that my church is more deserving than another church? What about doing it to please God? That depends, what am I hoping to get out of it? If I'm hoping to gain favor or something, then I am really trying to manipulate God, which isn't much different than performing a ritual to coerce the spirits to my purposes. What about just doing it because I am told? Well, again, what do I hope to gain from my obedience? How about the satisfaction of knowing I did something good? Once again, I'm doing it ultimately for my own benefit. Even assuming we could agree on a pure motive, do you honestly believe that you could ever be completely free of any other motivation? My point in saying all this is that we almost never do anything altruistically. In fact, it may be that the only time we do anything with 100% pure motive is when we don't even know we're doing it. Perhaps the only time we ever actually do anything good is when we do it mindlessly, or better yet, when God does it through us while we aren't looking. Perhaps good works themselves are a gift from God.

So this definition covers all of our good works and classifies them as sin... what about our bad works? At first, I didn't think this definition included those things such as lying, adultery, and murder, but now I think that it may. The gift of eternal life isn't all that we receive from God, there is also scripture. Even though the law may be of little use when it comes to getting into heaven, and in fact may be worse than worthless, it still has plenty of use when it comes to the here and now. Scripture has been given to us, and failure to give heed to scripture is in fact a failure to receive a gift from God.

Still though, I think the most important part of this definition, especially for those of us who consider ourselves to be religious, is that part which deals with our "good" works. So, maybe instead of focusing so much on not doing bad things and trying to do more good things, we should be trying to receive all that God is giving us.

What do you think? What are you refusing to receive from God?

*such as: living a moral life, "making Jesus the Lord of my life" (as if he isn't already), being circumcised, making my "decision for Jesus" (as though there is just one decision to be made), voting Republican, asking Jesus into my heart, doing volunteer work, having "a personal relationship" with Jesus, charity, fasting, tithing, not watching rated R movies, joining a monastery, looking the "right" way, trying my darnedest, etc.

God Hidden and Revealed

In the course of my (relatively) short foray into Lutheran Theology (which, by the way, is teaching me just why it is that theologians peak in the latter part of their lives), the doctrine that I have struggled the most with is that of the hidden God and the revealed God.

Let me start by attempting to summarize the relevant parts of Lutheran Theology as I understand it now. One of the primary, if not the primary, distinctions in Lutheran theology is that of Law vs. Gospel. Law is defined functionally rather than ontologically (not sure if that's the right word). In other words, Law is defined by what it does rather than what it is. When Luther says Law, he doesn't necessarily mean the Mosaic Law or some abstract moral law, although he could, but he means anything that does Law to us. Luther talks about two functions of the Law: the pedagogical (from Paul's use of παιδαγωγός [paidagogos] in Galatians 3:24-25) and the civil. The civil use (function) of the Law refers to keeping order here on Earth in our day-to-day lives. This could mean Mosaic Law, but it could also mean the laws of our government and society. The pedagogical use is that which shows us our separation from God, that which shows us our sin. This can refer to anything, from Jesus' greatest commandments to Romans 3:23 (for all have fallen short) to a nagging conscience. One of my favorite images Luther uses is that of leaves rustling in the wind on a dark night in the woods. Anything that causes fear in you, anything that reminds you of your own mortality̶̶̶̶-- this is fulfilling the pedagogical function of the law.

Obviously we find the pedagogical use of the law to be... unpleasant, and we are willing to do anything to silence that voice. We look for solutions and schemes which will bring us closer to God and make us worthy of him. At the same time, we are terrified of God and are bound (like, with chains) to reject him. I know that, for those of us brought up in the Church, it can be hard to really understand that kind of fear of God. We, at least in the tradition I grew up in, are much more likely to talk about being buddies with God than subjects of him. Imagine for a moment what we know about God on our own apart from what has been directly revealed to us. We end up with the "God of the philosophers," as Pascal calls him in Pensées. We end up with an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God. This God is the creator/source of all there is (good and bad) and yet we want to say that he is all-loving as well. This God is so big as to be incomprehensible to us and he is the one in charge of our destinies. Luther refers to this God of natural theology as the "Hidden God." This is God in himself. This is a God that, ultimately, is hidden from us. In his book Where God Meets Man, Gerhard Forde puts it this way:

...general concepts and ideas such as almightiness, immutability and even predestination do not in the first instance reveal God to us so much as they hide him from us. They do not at first comfort or console us so much as they frighten or even repel us...But the point in saying that God is hidden is to lead us to recognize that this is exactly the way God intends it to be. He does not want to be known as he is "in heaven," in his mere "almightiness" or even merely as "the God of predestination."

Note that we are not denying that this is how God is, but we are saying that we can never really know God in this way. This God, the Hidden God, is just too big and too frightening for us to know. We are never sure if he is for us or against us. We're never quite comfortable saying what he is or isn't doing. Luther says that the Hidden God is often indistinguishable from Satan. Who's responsible for Hurricane Katrina? What about the earthquake in Haiti? 9/11? Many said that this was God punishing us while others would say that it was the act of Satan, if they gave it a supernatural cause. The fact is that we have no idea what the Hidden God is doing or not doing, nor do we know why. So how can we know God? I'll continue Forde's quote:

He wants to be known as the God in the manger or at his mother's breasts, the God who suffered and died and rose again. His almightiness, his unchangeability, the threat of predestination- all these things are "masks" which God wears, so to speak, to drive us to look elsewhere, to look away from heaven and down to earth, to the manger and the cross, to preaching and the sacraments.

God is hidden in the abstract so that he can be revealed in the concrete, in his history with humanity culminating in Jesus Christ. This God, the Revealed God, is the source of Gospel. This is the good news that we have: God is indeed for us and not against us and has worked everything out for our good.

So here's my issue: what does it mean for God to be both Hidden and Revealed? How can we say that the Revealed God is the same as the Hidden God, who is so hidden as to be easily confused with Satan? How do we know that the promises made to us by the Revealed God will be upheld by the Hidden God? I have some beginnings of ideas, but for now I'll let the questions stand.