Friday, September 10

Two Categories of Sin?

In light of a conversation I had with a student recently, I began pondering two different major kinds of sin – ontological and functional.

Functional sin would be those infractions that we commit.  When we do something wrong, it is functional sin.  This is how the typical Christian thinks of sin, I imagine.

Ontological sin would be that sin which is carried within us in a way.  It has a sort of substance to it.  It includes original sin and the sin (problems) that we carry due to the functional sins of others.  If that which is not according to God’s design or will is sin, then we carry ontological sin in us insofar as we are not the way we are supposed to be (as opposed to doing what we are supposed to do?).

Is this a useful distinction?  (If these are useful, they do strike me as having different implications for the spiritual life.)
Are there different ways in which God deals with or treats each kind of sin?

Comments

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Kyle Strobel's picture

Sin

Staying on a pretty broad level, I wonder if corporate sin is another category that is helpful? Our "membership" in a certain community would then implicate us in some real way, whether or not we had a functional role in creating it. I also wonder, on similar lines, if functional could be split up into acts of intellect and acts of will (this is probably not the best way to put it). Acts of intellect could be cultural sin that influences our vision of life, and acts of will could be seen as specific actions of functional sin. That is probably not a helpful way to delineate those, but something like that might be good.

I also wonder about the "ontological" category, and its implications concerning evil. Giving sin substance could push hard against the tradition which has wanted to avoid giving sin this much credit, as it were, and only explicating sin/evil in negative terms (e.g. privation).

Anyway, just some thoughts.

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