Sin and crime. It’s quite a perplexing topic. For example: some of...
Ben Myers@_BenMyers_
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Jun 16, 2024
~2 min read
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Sin and crime. It’s quite a perplexing topic. For example: some of the worst sins are not crimes; some of the worst crimes are not sins; some of the worst contemporary sins+crimes were neither sins nor crimes in other periods of history
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It’s obvious that crime is socially conditioned. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that sin is socially conditioned too; in which case, how can “sin” be understood as an offense against God?
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Or is conscience the missing link here? Conscience is obviously conditioned entirely by culture, yet it’s also some kind of link to the divine. So maybe a sin against conscience (I.e. against one’s social norms) is also obliquely a sin against God?
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But what about when the social norms are bad? Conscience doesn’t make sense unless there’s some possibility of appealing to a higher transcendent norm
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And no account of sin & crime would be adequate if it didn’t leave open the category of crimes that are committed against the social order on behalf of higher transcendent norm. Again conscience seems necessary here as the mediating point between the divine and human
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Another problem: the distinction between sin & crime is fundamental for all western societies. But does that distinction exist at all in the OT? If not, where can Christians today find the theological tools for understanding “sin”?
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Another thing that makes it hard for Christians to think clearly about this: the founder of our faith was technically a criminal, and the NT authors see imprisonment as a badge of honour
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One distinction would be to say that sin relates to the person as such (or the person in relation to God) while crime relates to society. But there are many counter-examples of crimes that are essentially victimless and sins that are essentially social
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@cnridings @screagar Those definitions sound fine until you start to consider the complex mutual conditioning of “sin” and “crime” throughout history. Does the sinner transgress against God *because* he transgresses against social norms? If not, why does sin change so much depending on culture?