SIN AND GRACE (1)

By Job Ayuba, 21^st December, 2016

The problem of evil is the fundamental problem of humanity seen from a theistic perspective. Evil is a reality and this poses a problem for faith in a benevolent God who is active in creation. It will be easier to resort to the idea of a God who is a blind watchmaker (Dawkin’s) or a creator of an automaton (Mechanistic).

Epicurus (300 BCE) summarizes the classical argument of the problem of evil this way in what is referred to as the Epicurean Paradox[i]:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able to? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

It is true that God will not be omnipotent if He is not able to prevent evil. And God could be said to be malevolent if He is able but not willing to prevent evil, even though that could be explain in other justifiable ways. If He is both able and willing, then why is there evil? This sharpens the question of the problem of evil. If he is neither able nor willing, then he is not God as we understood God from the classical theistic perspectives of philosophy and theology. The Epicurean Paradox only succeed in defining and delimiting the problem of evil.

Saint Augustine defined sin as the absence or negation of the good. Thus, evil is not a thing. It is the poverty and the abnegation of substance or material quality: when a fruit began to deteriorate we say it is spoilt; when life ceases we speak of death; when people without affection from others, we speak of lovelessness. Thus, we consider all phenomena that are abnormal as evil. Evil can be broadly classify into natural evil and moral evil. Natural evil are those abnormal phenomena that occur in the course of nature independently of direct and immediate human intervention. Moral evil on the other hand, are does ones which are link to human causality that is not too remote.

Of more practical interest to our topic is the human responsibility for evil. When free and rational human beings are responsible for bringing evil about it is called sin. These are human actions to which God will hold humans individually responsible. Human autonomy is not independent of God’s sovereignty superintendence. God holds autonomous human beings responsible for their free actions. It is only actions to which an individual has personal involvement with that he can be held responsible for. Responsibility implies the ability to answer for a thing or action. Also, it implies the burden to give personal response to actions carried out within one’s power or control. The idea of autonomy implies free choice and independent actions. To make our decisions means we can take pride in the good things we do and be blamed for the bad things we do. To argue from necessity, we can ask: without an all-knowing, all-powerful and transcendent Being that is called God, who or what will hold autonomous human beings responsible for their bad actions?

If evil is the negation of the good and sin is evil then sin has no place in a good creation. Sin is a negative (bad) and harmful action performed independently by an autonomous human being. A sinner is an autonomous human being whose independent action is devoid of the quality of goodness and who can be held responsible for such an action. The action is devoid of the quality of goodness because it harms creation and the creational order. The responsibility for the action lies with the individual human being who has personal involvement in occasioning the action unless the individual human being is released from bearing responsibility. A sinner is a human being that stands in need of grace. Grace releases the sinner from the culpability of sin. Grace is an act of release of the sinner by the self-determined kindness of a sovereign God. In grace alone is the hope of the sinner.

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[i] Thank you R. Scott LaMorte for bringing this paradox to my attention. I hope to do a more focused write-up on it subsequently.