CHAPTER 11

SAINTS OR SINNERS? TOWARDS A SPIRITUALITY OF GROWTH OUT OF SIN

The first two sections of this chapter are an edited version of part of my article, Sin, Spirituality and the Secular, in The Way, 1992, 13-22. The third section is mainly new material and the fourth section incorporates an edited version of part of my article, The Changing Paradigms of Sin in New Blackfriars, 1989, 489-497. Another attempt to grapple with the topic of sin in a way which might be pastorally helpful at a practical level is found in The inhumanity of sin and the humanity of forgiveness which is chapter 7 in my New Directions in Moral Theology: The Challenge of Being Human.

Christian spirituality is about answering the call of Jesus. However, Jesus has

said very categorically: "I have come to call not the just but sinners". Therefore, it looks as

though in some way or other there is an essential linkage between spirituality and our being

sinners.

Sometimes spirituality is presented as though it had nothing whatsoever to do with sin. At our

Baptism we have renounced sin and so it is presumed that sin should play no further part in

our lives. Sin is viewed as a regression. It is something we "fall into". This suggests that we

are falling below what is seen as an acceptable standard for Christian and human life. It is

hard to reconcile this perfectionist approach with Jesus saying that he has come to call

sinners. Calling sinners suggests our being called out from our sinfulness, rather than our

attempting to live some kind of perfect life free from sin. This would seem to imply that our

sinfulness is actually the starting point for our spirituality. In this chapter I would like to

approach the linkage between Christian spirituality and our sinfulness from three converging

directions. I would like to look at Christian spirituality first of all in terms of its being a life-long

growth-process out of our being 'victims of sin', and secondly in terms of its being a life-long

growth process out of our being 'agents of sin'. Thirdly, I would like to grapple with the

objection that the notion of 'growth out of sin' seems to imply too negative a starting point for

Christian spirituality. Finally, I look at the social and ecological implications of such a

spirituality.

(1) Christian spirituality as a person's life-long process of growth out of being a 'victim of sin'.

If spirituality is to be viewed as a life-long process of growth out of being a 'victim of sin', the

question immediately arises: where does each person find his or her particular agenda for

this growth? In other words, how am I to discern what Christ is asking of me, victim of sin that

I am?

There is a tendency to answer that question along very individualist lines. Each of us is

unique. We are not mass-produced on an assembly-line. Consequently, Christ calls each of

us as unique persons. Each of us has his or her unique personal vocation. Following out this

approach, we try to discern in what special ways each of us is a victim of sin, since it is there

that we will discover our own personal woundedness and so our own unique need for

healing.

That is fine as far as it goes. However, it does not go nearly far enough. To focus on what is

unique about me is to take a very partial and impoverished view of myself as a human

person. An absolutely essential dimension of my being a human person is the fact that I am,

always have been and always will be bound up in a whole series of relationships of

interdependence with other human beings. This has enormous implications for me if I am to

arrive at a full diagnosis of where my personal woundedness lies. It means, for instance, that

my personal woundedness will be connected to the woundedness of other people.

Obviously, this does not mean that we are all wounded in exactly the same way.

Nevertheless, it does mean that my personal woundedness will be linked to the

woundedness of all the significant others in my life.

Moreover, these significant others in my life will be found within an ever-widening series of

concentric circles - my parents, family, educators, friends, neighbours etc. Their

woundedness is likely to have an impact on me in the various dimensions of my being a

human person. For example, how I develop as a sexual and relational being will be affected

by the woundedness of the people who are close to me as I am passing through the key

developmental stages of my life. A U.S. theologian, Beverly Hildung Harrison, has brought

this out very powerfully in speaking of what she calls the "formidable power" of nurturing:

“... we have the power through acts of love or lovelessness literally to create one another... Because we

do not understand love as the power to act-each-other-into-well-being, we also do not understand the

depth of our power to thwart life and to maim each other. That fateful choice is ours, either to set free

the power of God's love in the world or to deprive each other of the very basis of personhood and

community...

It is within the power of human love to build up dignity and self-respect in each other or to tear each

other down... Through acts of love directed to us, we become self-respecting and other-regarding

persons, and we cannot be one without the other.” The Power of Anger in the Work of Love, in Carol

Robb (edit), Making the Connections:Essays in Feminist Social Ethics, Boston, Beacon Press, 1985,

p.11-12

My woundedness will also be influenced by the woundedness of the institutions which form

part of my social existence - including the Church. Furthermore, it will also be marked, to a

greater or lesser extent, by various forms of social woundedness such as patriarchy, racial

prejudice, national and cultural deficiencies, homophobia, ecological insensitivity, my

belonging to a developed world whose affluence seems to be irretrievably linked to structures

of exploitation, etc.

If some or all of these factors go to make up the way I, as a human person, am a victim of

sin, by that same token they should also feature on my personal agenda for 'growth out of

being a victim of sin'. In other words, they will constitute the complex medium through which

the sinner that I am hears the call of Christ. This means that they will form an essential part

of the agenda for my personal spirituality in my ordinary, everyday life.

If all this is true, it means that my growth out of sin cannot be something that I can achieve

on my own. Nor, in fact, can it be a growth that takes place in me alone. For instance, where

my woundedness is relational, the growth in healing must necessarily be relational too.

Likewise, where my woundedness goes back to structural roots, growth towards healing may

well demand of me some kind of personal involvement in working for structural reform.

Theologically, as I point out in the final section of this chapter, this is a strong argument in

favour of the communal celebration of reconciliation. It does not argue from convenience -

lack of opportunity for individual confession due to excessive numbers or paucity of

confessors. It is based on the essential social dimension of our being sinners and the

corresponding social dimension of our healing and reconciliation.

Moreover, as human persons we are 'historical' beings. We are the product of history, we live

in the midst of history and we ourselves play our own unique part in fashioning history.

History is full of ambiguity. Some opportunities are seized, other are lost. Nevertheless,

although Christians do not believe in inevitable progress, they do believe that God's Spirit is

present and active wherever true human progress occurs in history. (cf. The Church in the

World of Today, n.26) This belief in the Spirit active within history should make us sensitive

to "the signs of the times". These signs of the times constitute part of the call of Christ to the

historical sinful persons that we are. Through them we discern some of the growth out of sin

that we are called to be part of in our contemporary world. It is significant that, when Council

Fathers at Vatican II turned their attention to what was implied in being a Christian in the

world of today, the very first thing they did was to try to interpret the signs of the times. (cf.

The Church in the World of Today, nn.4-10) I am convinced that a spirituality cannot be truly

Christian today if, for instance, it turns a deaf ear to what the Spirit seems to be saying to us

through the voices of so many committed women who are articulating the deep sufferings

and injustices inflicted on their sisters by patriarchal institutions, including the Church. The

same would seem to be true of the voices of those calling us to a greater ecological

awareness and responsibility.

(2) Christian spirituality seen as a life-long growth process out of our being an 'agent of sin'.

In saying that we are all in our different ways 'victims of sin' I have been using the word 'sin'

to denote the evil which is done or brought about by us as human agents. In other words, the

evil done or brought about by other human persons has had its effect on us.

When sin is used in this sense, the only place where it can be located is in our ordinary

everyday lives in the world. In fact, it could be argued that a constant error the Christian

Church is in danger of falling into is to remove what lies at the heart of sin from everyday life

and turn it into something purely religious. This would make it some kind of direct offence

against God rather than an offence against the creatures whom God loves. This would play

right into the hands of those who are violating the human persons and the world we live in

through their injustice and oppression. To reduce sin to the religious sphere is to leave our

world and its peoples defenceless before all kinds of predators. It is within the everyday

world that we live out our relationship with God. As Aquinas has reminded us: "God is not

offended by us except insofar as we harm ourselves or each other." (my own paraphrase of

contra Gentiles, III, n.122)

The way we human beings bring about evil is not just to do with the consequences of our

actions. It also has to do with ourselves as the agents of these actions. We cannot

repeatedly act in an unloving way without becoming unloving persons. This would seem to

be where the tragic linkage between being victims and agents of sin is located. If our

capacity to act lovingly and justly has been seriously wounded, then that is likely to show in

the way we behave towards others. In fact, experience seems to indicate that it is a very

short step from being a victim of sin to becoming an agent of sin. This is very

understandable. After all, part of the evil of sin in this sense is that it can injure and deform us

as persons. That is why healing is such an urgent priority and this healing involves some sort

of growth out of the woundedness inflicted on us by sin.

It would seem, therefore, that our growth out of being an 'agent of sin' is necessarily linked to

our growth out of being a 'victim of sin'. I believe that is a truth which can have far-reaching

implications for pastoral practice. For instance, it implies that Christian spirituality needs to

lay much more emphasis on the root causes of why we cause some of the harm that we do.

It need to recognize the inadequacy and unreality of demanding a massive act of naked will-

power ('a firm purpose of amendment') through which we are immediately expected to be

able to cease from the wrong-doing we are involved in. Because we are so interdependent, it

may well be that, for the present and while other factors remain as they are, it is morally

impossible for a person to break free completely from the wrong-doing he or she is involved

in. In reality, this is a fact of human life which has always been acknowledged and allowed

for by wise confessors, even though they did not have the benefit of our current

understanding of just how multi-dimensional and far-reaching our interdependence on each

other actually is.

Commenting on the fact that many Christian are experiencing a "shift to an awareness of

collective responsibility for individual sins, and individual responsibility for the collective sin",

Monika Hellwig notes that:

“Sin and conversion for these Christians are seen in a new light. The question of imputing guilt,

calculating the degrees of culpability of freedom and knowledge, simply does not arise in the

consciousness of such Christians. They are concerned with discerning patterns of disorientation in their

society and in their own lives, without reference to the question of whom to blame. Instead their focus

is on who can make a difference in the sinful situation, how, why, when and where...

They feel a certain impatience...with a spirituality much preoccupied with the quest for perfection in an

introspective fashion. They have an urgent sense that the real agenda of continuing redemption is

written on a far larger canvas, and that endless preoccupation with perfecting oneself and eliminating

personal faults is petty and irresponsible in face of the terrible and unnecessary sufferings of vast

masses of our times..." Theological Trends: Sin and Sacramental Reconciliation, I. Contemporary

Reflection on Sin, in The Way, 1984, pp.221-222)

I would interpret Hellwig as saying that it is not for us to judge the culpability or otherwise of

people who are involved what we consider to be wrong-doing. We do not know how minimal

may be the personal resources individual people have for coping with the extreme pressures

they may be under. Hence, it is not for us to set ourselves up as 'sinless' and demand that

these 'sinners' overcome these pressures by an act of will which, for all we know, might be

completely outside their personal capacity. Rather, the credibility of our opposition to the

wrong-doing these people are involved in will depend, to a large extent, on how far we are

committed to identifying and combatting the social pressures which might be part of the 'sin'

of which these people are 'victims'. Moreover, recognizing ourselves to be linked in

interdependence with these fellow 'victims of sin', we should perhaps be on the look out for

ways in which our own interests might be bound up with the maintenance of these social

pressures which result in these people 'sinning' in this way. Any such complicity on our part

would reveal our shared 'agency' in their sinning. Maybe the words of Jesus to the accusers

of the woman taken in adultery are relevant here: "Let the one who is without sin cast the first

stone." An example of a pastoral strategy which would seem contrary to this sobering

pastoral principle might be the aggressive targetting by some sections of the pro-life

movement in the United States of women entering abortion clinics. It is significant that many

of the women who attended Archbishop Weakland's 'listening sessions' on abortion focussed

on a wide variety of social factors which resulted in many women experiencing enormous

pressures to resort to abortion. Among these pressures the Archbishop's report instanced

"economic pressures, increased violence, feminization of poverty, consumerism, a continued

male dominated society" and it noted that these pressures weigh most heavily on the

increasing numbers of women caught in the poverty trap. (Full report in Milwaukee Catholic

Herald, 24/5/90)

(3) Does 'growth out of sin' imply too negative a starting point for Christian spirituality?

We have seen how we can only hear Christ's call to us to the extent that we accept ourselves

as 'sinners'. This means acknowledging that we are both 'victims of sin' and 'agents of sin'.

We have also looked at how these two ways in which we are 'sinners' play an important part

in setting the agenda for our personal 'spirituality'. This agenda is about our life-long process

of growth out of sin.

Growth is a term frequently used in discussions about human development. However, to talk

of 'growth out of sin' might jar on some ears. It seems to assume a negative starting-point.

That hardly seems in tune with how we envisage the normal processes of human growth.

However, if we go back to the etymology of the Greek word for 'sin', ‘hamartia’, which means

'missing the mark or the target', we might be able to interpret 'growth out of sin' in a way

which is more in keeping with the normal processes of human growth. The word ‘hamartia’

suggests that sin involve missing the point of life. It might help to explore that idea further.

Religious people are often tempted to think in terms of an original paradise from which we

are expelled through our sin. That goes back to an interpretation of the ‘Garden of Eden’

story in Chapter Three of Genesis which would see this as a real, though picturesque,

description, telling how sin entered into the world through our first parents. This overlooks the

fact that this story is a myth which deals not with the past but with the present. The origin of

sin, as people experience today and in every age, is not to be found in God but in ourselves

as God’s creatures. However, Christianity does not look to the Book of Genesis for the heart

of its belief. Christianity is essentially a faith centred on the person of Christ in whom the

fullness of God's unfolding revelation to us is made made flesh. This means that the 'point of

life' has only been fully revealed to us in and through Christ. And Christ reveals to us that the

'point of life' is the Kingdom of God. What this Kingdom means is a 'mystery' in the fullest

sense of the word. In other words, it is something with such a rich abundance of meaning

that we will never exhaust this meaning, either in the present age or in the age to come. The

Kingdom is something we can have some experience of but which we can never fully

comprehend. At times we may be able to say "This is what the Kingdom of God is like"; but

we will never be able to say "Now I know what the Kingdom of God is all about". The Good

News of the Kingdom challenges us with the promise that being human has within it the

potential for living a life far richer than we would ever have imagined possible. Jesus speaks

of this abundance of life in the language of knowing and loving, our highest and most

personal modes of human experience. In fact, the Bible are often uses these two modes of

human experience interchangably. Put in simple Gospel terms, the point of human life is

found in being known and loved by God and each other and in knowing and loving God and

each other.

That is not the original state from which our first ancestors fell. Nevertheless, it is a dream of

which our earliest ancestors seem to have some inkling. However, the struggle to survive

and gradually come to terms with the emergence of communal and social living meant that

this dream was little more than a back-cloth of hope in the midst of the harsh realities of

everyday survival. Yet it was a dream would not die. The process of evolution into

humanness entailed this process of opening out to the transcendent. In God's providence

this gave humankind a growing capacity to be open to God's self-revelation. Without such a

capacity we would not have been 'human', we would not have been able to grasp the 'point

of life' and the Word and Love of God could not have been made flesh among us.

I have been fumbling for words in the above paragraph. That is what happens when one tries

to express the inexpressible. Neverheless, if what I have been trying to say is basically true,

however inadequately it is expressed, it throws a totally different light on the expression

'growth out of sin'. No longer does it imply that the starting point of this growth is some God-

forsaken place, some kind of morass of evil into which humankind has regressed. It

suggests, rather, that the 'point of life' is something towards which humankind as a whole is

growing in a life-long process of interdependence - and the expression 'life-long' here refers

to the life of the whole human family, not just to the life of single individuals.

Of course, this is not meant to imply a deterministic view of human history. An essential

factor in being human is that we are persons with the capacity to make free decisions.

Consequently, part of the 'mystery' which constitutes the 'point of human life' is that God’s

providential designs are and can only be achieved through the instrumentality of human

freedom. However much people may believe in God, it pales into insignificance compared to

the belief God has in people! In a recent theological discussion about how we should

respond to the Millennium event, the Irish theologian, Enda McDonagh, spoke of the “risk of

God”. His use of that phrase was pregnant with meaning. Part of it was touching on the risk

taken by God in the whole process of creation and incarnation and on how that risk follows

through into our human and ecclesial task of building the Kingdom of God here on earth and

not simply postponing its coming to the end of time.

The 'mystery' which is the 'point of human life', operates at both the macro and the micro

level. The macro level is the total history of humankind. The micro level consists in the

stories of our own unique personal lives. Here too this 'mystery' perspective enables us to

see our 'growth out of sin' in a much more positive perspective. The 'sin' out of which we are

growing need not be seen as a mass of unredeemed evil which we have inherited. It is rather

the shadow side of our human family's fluctuating struggle to make the dream of the

Kingdom a reality in our world.

This struggle is a story of partial success and partial failure, a mixture of heroic self-

sacrificing love and narrow-minded self-seeking. It is full of the necessary human conflict

involved in trying to make allowance for the conflicting claims of different individuals or

groups. Each of us comes on the scene at a particular point in this on-going story which is so

full of ambivalence. Such is the complexity of our interdependence, each of us is affected by

both the ebb and flow movements in the different dimensions of our being human persons. In

some of these dimensions we may be predominantly 'inheritors of grace'; in others, 'victims

of sin' might be a more accurate description of our situation.

This admixture provides the raw material out of which we have to construct our lives. Christ

calls us as 'sinners' to receive the gift of this raw material and to live our lives as fully as

possible out of this bundle of light and shade. Growth out of sin is merely another way of

describing our life-long task of playing our minor but necessary and unique part in the on-

going story of humankind as it continues its struggle to give living shape and substance to

the 'point of life' revealed to us in Christ.

This interpretation of spirituality has no room for a perfectionist ethic. It is too solidly based in

God-given reality of the everyday world. There is no perfect human being which we are all

called to be. In a sense, morality for each of us is a personal affair. That does not mean that

it is individualistic, or relative, or something we make up to suit our own convenience. Rather

it is personal in the sense that it flows from the person each of us is, 'integrally and

adequately considered'. Christ's call to me is myself, the person I am, considered in all the

different dimensions of human personhood. Whether my response to this invitation is one of

acceptance or rejection will be revealed in my life. The way I live my life constitutes my faith-

response to God. That is true of every person who has ever lived.

This spirituality takes on board the fact that as we gradually come to self-awareness, we

discover that the person we are growing into, due to the influence of others and our own

reaction to their influence, is not as fully human as we might like. The dawning of this self-

understanding can offer us the opportunity for entering into the life-long process of personal

healing. Accepting as gift the wounded person we discover ourselves to be, we can try to live

as fully as we can within our limitations. In trying, however haltingly, to live positively in this

way we are casting our vote in favour of life. The conversion process is beginning to take

shape in us. This is beginning to believe in myself, the person God has given me to become.

God wants us to be as fully human as we can. I was almost going to add 'within our own

personal and unique limitations' but that would merely be stating the obvious. There is no

other way any of us can be fully human except within our own personal and unique

limitations. Some women theologians these days are helping us become more conscious

that our limitations are actually our opportunities. They provide the raw material with which, in

God's providence, each of us has to work. This even implies that the precise way I am a

'victim of sin' will affect the way in which I grow into being more human. For instance, it

should give me a sensitivity and compassion for those who are victims of sin in a similar way

to myself and it should also make me appreciate the suffering caused by the inhumanity of

sin in this particular dimension of human living.

Dorothy Sölle somewhere makes the comment: "I have noticed that people with faith all walk

round with a limp"! In other words, the scars of our healed woundedness will show. Each of

us will bear our own unique scars. Like the glorious wounds of Jesus they will enhance our

individual humanity. There is a kind of paradox at play here. The very experience of my

woundedness and the inhumanity it brings into my life and that of others is the very stuff out

of which repentance and healing is fashioned. It is a classic example of 'felix culpa'. To

experience my need for healing and forgiveness is an inescapable stage in the process of

being healed and forgiven. Jesus said he did not come to call the just but sinners. He

insisted that it was the sick, not the healthy, who need a doctor. If we are to believe in a

Saviour, we need to experience our own need of salvation.

( 4) The social and ecological implications of a spirituality of growth out of sin

I noted earlier how Aquinas, writing about sin in his Summa contra Gentiles, makes the

thought-provoking comment: “God is not offended by us except in so far as we harm ourselves

and others.” (III, c.133 - my own paraphrase) Not surprisingly, a similar understanding of sin is

found centuries later in his fellow Dominican, Albert Nolan. He writes: "Sin is an offence

against God precisely because it is an offence against people... There is no such thing as a sin

that does not do any harm to anyone... In the last analysis sin is not a transgression of law but

a transgression of love." (God in South Africa, London, Catholic Institute for International

Relations, 1988, p.38)

This approach to sin leads Nolan to make a statement which is at the heart of his whole

presentation: "Sin becomes visible in suffering." (pp.38) After repeating this statement a few

pages further on, he writes: "If one were to try to discern the new starting point for modern

theology and spirituality in most of the Christian world today, one would have to say that it is

suffering. The sufferings of so many millions of people on this planet are one of the most

fundamental signs of our times." (p.49) In other words, Nolan is saying that if we want to know

where to find sin in today's world, we need to look at where suffering is to be found. Although

he is speaking of suffering brought about by human agency, he is not excluding suffering

caused by structural or institutional factors or even, in some cases, suffering caused by so-

called accidents and natural disasters. Very often such tragedies have a strong ingredient of

human agency in them.

In exploring where God is to be met in today's world Nolan concludes that the voice of God can

be heard in the suffering of the oppressed. Their suffering reveals where the need for salvation

is most evident in today's world. Following through all the causal links to the very roots of their

suffering reveals to us where conversion is called for. This conversion will bring with it salvation

through a changing of the oppressive relationships causing these sufferings. Radical

conversion alone suffices and that entails a disowning of the oppressive system and

appropriate participation in the processes needed to dismantle the system. Applying this more

specifically to the apartheid situation in South Africa in 1988 (the era in which his book was

published), Nolan writes: "... unless we, both white and black, face the monstrous reality of evil

and suffering in South Africa, we shall not find God and we shall not hear his good news of

salvation from sin." (p.57)

P.T.McCormick, in his article, Human Sinfulness: Models for a Developing Moral Theology, in

Studia Moralia, 1988, pp.61-100, writes in a similar mode to Nolan when he explores the

notion of 'cooperative' or 'social' sin. Recognising that we are interdependent social beings,

McCormick argues that we need to develop "an anthropology which transcends the limits of

individualism and incorporates the insights of a growing body of evidence about the social

character of the human person." (p.92) He goes on to suggest what this anthropology might

look like:

Such an anthropology needs to recognize that experience and reality are transpersonal, reaching beyond

both individualism and a localized interpersonality. There must also be a recognition of the essential

intersubjectivity or communitarian character of human personhood, a character neither extrinsic nor

secondary to the experience of being a person. This means that human freedom is radically

interpersonal in its experience and expression. Personal freedom is contextualized and actualized within

the organism of the interpersonal human community. (pp.92-93)

Some structures which are found in the social dimension of human life can with justification be

labelled "sinful" - and this for two reasons. First of all, they are person-injuring. They destroy

relationships based on justice and freedom and replace them by "oppressive political and

economic systems, developing pervasive social attitudes or voices of greed, hostility,

indifference and narcissism." (p.93) The result is what McCormick calls "anti-communities

antithetical to the Kingdom of God". Secondly, these structures do not exist outside of human

persons willing to accept and maintain them and working cooperatively within them. It is the

actual cooperative effort of the individual members of the group or society which makes up the

structure itself. As McCormick writes: "Cooperation may take a number of forms and the

degree of participation or responsibility may differ widely from member to member. However,

systemic injustice and oppression depend upon a broad base of diverse sorts of cooperative

effort." (p.93) Moreover, part of their person-injuring character lies in the fact that they can

even affect a person's "core experiences of freedom and dignity". Consequently, these sinful

structures can be self-generating to the extent that people allow themselves to be conditioned

into accepting them as either normal or at least inevitable and unavoidable. "That's life", as the

fatalistic saying goes. McCormick puts this point well:

Members...respond to their weakened and contextualized freedom with learned patterns of behaviour

which support the ongoing relationships of injustice and/or contribute to the progressive disintegration

of the group. Such cycles are ongoing, incorporating new members and generations in structures of

oppressive and alienating injustice. (p.94)

It could even be argued that social sin is the prime analogue of sin. If this is true, then the

communal celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation should be seen as the most

fundamental form of the sacrament because it most clearly expresses this social nature of sin

and our coresponsibility for it. The liturgical directive that the fully communal Rite 3 can only be

used in an emergency when there is a shortage of confessors completely misses the point of

communal celebration. Because sin is primarily communal, our owning or confession of sin

should normally be communal, and likewise we should recognise that it needs cooperative

effort to undo or heal the harmful consequences of our sin. Such communal commitment to the

forgiveness of reality is a pre-requisite for our forgiveness. So our hope for and belief in

forgiveness also needs to be signified and accepted communally rather than individually.

McCormick would go even further and suggest that clinging on to an individualist interpretation

of sin itself constitutes a form of 'social sinfulness' and can be compared to the corporate

blindness that Jesus challenged in the pharisees. (p.88) Moreover, an individualist

interpretation of sin can even be used by groups to "blind themselves from a sense of sin and

responsibility for the structures of injustice which they support."(p.96) Social sin, on the other

hand, "instead of positing the origin of evil in anonymous and impersonal structures, reveals

how groups of persons cooperate in projecting their responsibility for and participation in

systems of injustice on to such invisible and anonymous structures of violence and

oppression." (p.96)

Jon Sobrino lays great stress on what he calls "forgiveness of sinful reality". (Latin America:

Place of Sin and Place of Forgiveness, in Concilium n.184 - Special Issue on Forgiveness

pp.45-56 at p.46) By this he means the eradication of the structures of oppression and

violence and the building of new structures of justice. (p.48) He even puts this forgiveness of

reality before forgiveness of the sinner, though he should not be accused of thinking that a

change of structures alone can "forgive reality". As he puts it: "the forgiveness of reality is also

a matter of spirituality... Forgiving reality means loving, loving very much." (pp.48-49)

Finally, creation theology has been slowly bringing home to the church that there is another

dimension of sin that we need to grow out of. This is sometimes called ecological sin. In fact, it

opens our eyes to the disturbing truth that there is an ecological dimension in all sin. Humanity

is bound up in an intrinsic and essential relationship of inter-dependence with the rest of

creation. There are not two separate and independent ethical criteria operating in ecological

issues - what is good for humanity and what is good for creation as a whole. To consider

creation as a whole is to consider it as including humanity. It is to recognize humanity as

creation reaching a higher level of existence, the level of personal and social consciousness.

This level of existence does not constitute a breaking away from the rest of creation. Creational

health remains an integral element of the good of humanity, just as does bodily health. And

vice-versa. In other words, the health of the rest of creation is now dependent on humanity

conducting itself in a way which befits its place and responsibility within the whole of creation.

Humanity can be a cancerous growth within creation - and some 'deep ecologists' believe it is

such already. Or it can be creation reaching out to a yet higher level of life in which it can

articulate its hymn of praise and thanksgiving to its creator and reflect in its very way of living

the deeply personal and holistic life of its creator. For humanity to distance itself from the rest

of creation and lord it over it would be a form of alienation from an integral part of ourselves. At

the moment, I believe that we are struggling to find the right language in which to articulate this

ecological dimension of sin. It does not seem adequate to say that humanity is nothing more

than one part among many within creation, even primus inter pares. Yet to say that is not to

deny the fact that most of our ethical discourse tends to be too exclusively anthropocentric. It

fails to do justice to the oneness of the whole of creation which is being revealed to us through

the most recent discoveries in a whole range of scientific disciplines.

Conclusion

The words of Jesus, “I have come to call not the just but sinners” go hand in hand with his

other words, “I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly”. The title of

this chapter is ‘Saints or sinners? Towards a spirituality of growth out of sin’. I hope what I

have written above has been faithful to the Christian belief that we are both saints and

sinners and that a Christian spirituality needs to do justice to both these dimensions. I have

tried to show that the notion of ‘growth out of sin’ can be very helpful at a pastoral level.

Today people are fond of quoting the words of St Irenaeus, “The glory of God is the human

person fully alive”. Perhaps, that truth might be even better expressed through the language

of growth, “The glory of God is the human person becoming more fully alive”. A similar

adaptation might even be made to the traditional phrase “everlasting life”. A spirituality of

growth might prefer to speak of “becoming everlastingly more alive”.

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