EXPERIENCE OF SIN: A SYNOPSIS

Dr. Roman Yereniuk Ethics 235

BRYAN GARAGAN
OCTOBER 20, 2016
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EXPERIENCE OF SIN

What follows is a synopsis of the subsection “Experience of sin” contained in chapter

four of Fr. Stanley Harakas’ book, Toward Transfigured Life, titled “Evil and Sin”.

The individual aspect of evil is very often depicted as sin. This truth is pervasively

evident in both the Old and New Testaments wherein the biblical authors are frequently

cognizant of sin’s “heinousness, culpability, and tragedy.” Moreover, sin is characterized as an

alienation from God, the sole source of our security and welfare. (77)i.

From an Orthodox ethical perspective, the effects of sin are numerous. Most significant is

the rupture of the relationship between the Creator and the creature, as well as the recalcitrant

transgression of God’s commandments. Culpability and guilt are also questions ethics must

consider, and in particular how they are connected to ancestral sin and committed sin. Linked to

guilt and responsibility are the ethical elements of shame that stem from the act of sinning which

is viewed as a “function of the conscience.” (Ibid).

The impression of sin in the life of the Christian has prompted a multiplicity of attempts

in proposing a working definition. In both Hebrew and Septuagint versions of the OT sin is

denoted as missing the mark. Other indications of sin are “straying from the right path,

distortion, as well as evil-doing.” The NT conceptualizes sin as a failure to fulfill the will of God.

The Johannine Gospel likens sin to darkness and death, which Harakas also views as

characteristic of “Eastern Christian liturgical piety.” Harakas then offers a sample of the Fathers,

regarding the meaning of sin. Clement of Alexandria views sin as a “perverse form of reality.”,

i
S.J. De Vries. “Sin Sinners.” P 361. As quoted by Harakas
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while Chrysostom perceives it as insult and ingratitude, a definition that was also adopted by

Anselm. (78)

While there remains a veritable plethora of adjectival illustrations, all definitions of sin,

Harakas insists, can be reduced to two fundamental approaches, that is, “in the mainstream of

Christian thinking.” There is the relational notion of sin, and the legal approach. The former

stresses the essence of sin as a break in the relationship between man and God and “also between

man and his fellow man.” Conversely, the latter viewpoint comprehends the inherent nature of

sin from a legal standpoint, or in the words of Harakas as “the disobedience of the law of God.”

The west favors the legal definition whereas the East has a tendency towards the relational. Our

author observes accordingly, that the Roman legal tradition embraced by the West that sees sin

as “a violation of the law of God as more appealing, does not surprise us.” However, the

“Eastern patristic tradition tended to see the character of sin in the fact that man was not sharing

in and responding to the action, activity, and energy of God on his behalf.” Iraneus in support of

the Eastern methodology writes “the glory of God is a living man and the life of man consists in

beholding God…but separation from God is spiritual death.”ii (78)

It is unnecessary to offer examples as it concerns the legal definition of sin, Harakas

maintains, since it is overtly expressed in the common catechetical practices of both the Roman

and protestant traditions. What is important, Harakas observes, is that we avoid the “reciprocal

danger of allowing one to be swallowed up by the other.” While exorbitances developed in both

approaches, he cites Joseph Fletcher’s work as one that distorts the Eastern relational

understanding of sin. Fletcher, Harakas comments, incorrectly employs a situationist ethic to

ii
As quoted by Harakas. The latter part of the quote Harakas attributes to Irenaeus’ commentators.
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affirm in certain instances, “right and good, those acts which by a scriptural and patristic

standard would be characterized as sinful.” (79)

Fr. Stanley’s solution is to juxtapose the two, thus precluding any collapsing of one

approach into the other. Any concept of evil presented by either extreme is in Harakas’ view

meonic,-it is inconsistent with reality. The course illuminated in the Orthodox tradition is in the

juxtaposition and affirmation of both approaches. Maximos the Confessor coveys this attitude

succinctly: “Just as it is the characteristic of disobedience to sin, so it is the characteristic of

obedience to act virtuously” and accompanied by sin is the “separation from” (God), and on the

other hand obedience to God is “unity with” Him. (79)

The very act of sinning infers responsibility on the part of the agent who commits the act.

This in turn affects the relationship of the sinner with God and his position as a member of the

Church. In the first scenario sin results in guilt and implicit in guilt is personal responsibility.

This model is clearly depicted in the penitential system of the early church which “is patterned

on the paradigmatic sin of apostasy” (and) “presupposes (the) objective nature of sin.” To put it

another way sin is not just a proclivity or a state of the psyche, it is a willful and informed

conscious act that “manifestly excludes (one) from the body of the faithful and identifies (one)

with the works of the Evil One.” (80)

The legalistic interpretation as illustrated in the penitential practice of the early Church

was tempered by the monastic tradition, whose propensity was dispositional, that is, its emphasis

was on the inner forum. It should come as no great surprise, then, that St. Basil laments that his

antecedents were “so pre-occupied with grave sins that they neglected others which they deemed

less serious: wrath, avarice and the like…” In the monastic view, therefore, sin is indeed an inner

disposition, “an inclination, a psychological state.” Furthermore, the practice of confessing sins
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of a dispositional nature, predominated the Byzantine horizon, thus compelling the Council of

Trullo to depict repentance using a medical analogy. In its 102nd Canon, it decreed that the

spiritual father is to apply the “science of spiritual medicine” to the spiritual aspirant by

considering “the disposition of him who has sinned” and to ascertain if the penitent has an

inclination towards spiritual health or has a tendency to provoke “his disease by his own

behavior.”iii (80)

Irrespective of the approach, Harakas asserts, personal responsibility vis-à-vis sin, is

presupposed. He substantiates his affirmation by citing several Greek fathers, but for the sake of

brevity it should suffice to include, in part, the citation from Mark the hermit: “It is necessary to

understand that we are made to act by sin through our own cause. Therefore, it is up to us who

listen to…the spirit, to walk according to the flesh or according to the spirit…Consequently,

neither is it Satan, nor is it the sin of Adam, but we ourselves who are to blame.”iv (81)

The above notwithstanding, Harakas does affirm, employing the thinking of John

Karavidopoulous that the patristic stress on personal culpability remains unbiased. In his treatise

Sin According to Saint Paul, Karavidopoulos demonstrates that among the Greek Fathers there

exists equally referenced support for a theological position that views sin as condition of

“incomplete, inauthentic, and corrupt existence.” The immediate implication of this sickness, the

author persists, is an aberrant world typified by “corruption, sin, and death” (Ibid).

Paradoxically, then, implicit in free will is the idea of full human responsibility. Ancestral

(Original) sin, though, as conceived by the Greek fathers, in an ostensible conflicting fashion

iii
Canon 102 of the Council of Trullo which was convened In 692 to formulate canons that were omitted during the
5th/6th Ecumenical councils. Canon 1 affirmed the first six councils as having Ecumenical status.
iv
As quoted by Harakas
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coveys a “pre-existing condition of sin” which encumbers humanity in an inevitable “network of

sin.” Accordingly, such a condition would by all appearances necessitate a view which absolves

human culpability. Humanity from this perspective, is victimized by sin, and peradventure an

object of pity, but nevertheless ought not to be “condemned as guilty.” (Ibid).

The conundrum, subsequently is that Eastern Orthodox Christians along with the Greek

Fathers avow both viewpoints concurrently. We are free and hence fully culpable; and we are

simultaneously subject to the dominion of the devil, sin, and death. Orthodoxy and the Greek

Fathers with them, ever fond of paradoxes, neither deny these, nor do they reduce one into the

other. Jaroslav Pelikan explicates the position in this way: “The Eastern Patristic tradition was

able to look seriously at the fact of human death and corruptibility without lapsing into the

determinism that is always lurking in Augustinian anthropology.”v (82)

How this is accomplished, is the question that necessarily follows. This requires, in the

estimation of Harakas a serious consideration of the New Testament teaching of Christ as

victorious over the demonic powers, thereby emancipating man from their dominion. While the

destruction of death, sin, and evil has had an ultimate impact of cosmic proportion, the personal

appropriation of His salvific work persists in the Church by the power of the Holy spirit “to

which each person must consent and with which each person must willingly cooperate.” It is this

patristic doctrine of ‘synergy’ that provides us with a cogent solution to the apparent dilemma.

To put it another way, Christ has vanquished the determining power of evil but its persuasive

power remains. The devil is still the tempter and the flesh still tends towards that which is evil.

To aver otherwise is a “reverse determinism”, rendering God as a cosmic rapist. (Ibid).

v
As quoted by Harakas
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In the synergistic paradigm, that includes the notion of autoexousion (self-determination)

to which the Eastern Fathers and Orthodoxy correctly attest, there exists a tension between the

influencing power of evil and human choice. Evil, in other words, is dependent on free will to

exert its power. Thus, when we sin we assume responsibility. The characteristic of responsibility,

however, is not in anyway that of an “independent” or “autonomous” agent. It consists in the

unconstrained choice of “aligning ourselves to God”, following the exhortation of St. Paul to

become δούλοι κυρίου (slaves to the Lord) and whereby we grant the Holy Spirit access to our

lives. (82)

What Harakas is unrelentingly stressing in this section, perhaps due to the prevailing

secular ideology, is that the Greek Fathers and the Orthodox for that matter, confirm that evil

does exist: “It is real and significant and truly a power, pervasive and insidious which

undermines authentic human exisistence”.At the same time, however, this fact in no way

exonerates willful human cooperation with evil. (83).

What is significant in the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of synergy is that, although it

emphasizes the culpability of the sinner when sin is committed, it strenuously rejects the

connection of guilt to individual sin. Harakas, in this regard, enlightens that the Greek fathers

“almost never speak of guilt either on an individual basis” or from a cosmic standpoint, with

respect to Ancestral (Original) sin. Thus, in Patristic literature the word responsibility most

always refers to the accountability for one’s actions, “a violation of one’s status” as a member of

the ecclesia, the context for which it was most often applied. (Ibid)

Harakas rejects the western psychiatric notion that responsibility is perceived as

something repressed within the psyche in favor of the Orthodox position that sees sin as an act

which places the sinner subject to public (ecclesial) judgement, and whereby the sinner
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experiences shame. Fr. Stanley cites Justin Matryrs avowal that Christ’s words “have in

themselves something of dreadful majesty, and are enough to put to shame those that” turn from

the right path. In furtherance the Johannine pericope encouraging believers to “abide in Him” so

that when “He appears” we may confidently not “shrink from Him in shame”, is also presented

as support for this viewpoint. (1 John 2:28) (83).

Granted that the Patristic understanding of man’s purpose is Theosis or Deification, the

sole purpose of shame is not to convict the transgressor of guilt. The objective, rather is to

consider shame as motivation to accomplish good and avoid sin. (84)

Harakas concludes this section of the chapter stressing once again, that the church while

acknowledging responsibility for sins committed, does not emphasize guilt. This does not mean

that sin is taken lightly but that culpability for sin, in the liturgical life of the Eastern Orthodox

Church, is ‘deliberately distinguished from guilt’. In some of our prayers and indeed the prayer

of absolution we (as does the priest) ask God to forgive us our sins both “voluntary and

involuntary.” Sins that are involuntary refer to our personal entanglement in circumstances that

are evil or have evil consequences, but in theses instances the evil is not a direct result from us

having exercised our volition. Strictly speaking, then, guilt cannot be imputed, yet as Harakas

sagaciously observes, “pastoral sensitivity demands” this category, in which prayers of

absolution are offered. (Ibid).

CONCLUSION

Our author in this section, Experience of sin, pedagogically and in detail examines sin

from two mainstream Christian approaches. While the West collapses the relational into the legal

approach, an exorbitance Harakas cautions against, on the other hand, the Greek Fathers with
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Orthodoxy, avoid such extremes, and affirm both simultaneously. He defends this approach,

illustrating that it employs theoprepeis logoivi ,thus considering carefully the Biblical and

Patristic texts, especially as it concerns Ancestral (Original) sin. An unfortunate consequence for

the West, in denigrating the relational approach to sin, has been illustrated above by Jaroslav

Pelikan which bears repeating, and with which we will conclude our synopsis: “The Eastern

patristic tradition was able to seriously look at the fact of human death and corruptibility without

lapsing into the determinism that is always lurking in Augustinian anthropology.” (82)

vi
Theoprepeis logoi is the ancient authentic approach to theology which Orthodox scholar Schmemann explains
succinctly: “Orthodoxy rejects such reduction(s) of theology, whose first and eternal tasks is to search for Truth,
not for relevance, for words “adequate to God” (theoprepeis logoi), not to man.”