Everyone knows the word “sin”, “sin”, “sinner”. Everyone knows that this means something bad, unworthy, deserving of condemnation. But if you ask a person to give an exact definition of the concept of "sin", it turns out that very few people can do it. Intuitively, many understand that such and such an act is good, and such and such is bad, but why some of the actions or properties of people are considered “sinful” remains unclear.
For the most part, people want to live well, correctly, to behave in such a way that later there will be no feeling of shame and no pangs of conscience. And this is impossible if a person feels that he has committed a sin. So what is sin? Where does the concept of sin come from, what does it include and what is true and what is false here? I propose to work together to figure out where this concept came from, which behavior is sinful and which is righteous, and whether it is possible for a person himself to choose for himself what he can consider a sin and what is not.
Some of the people say, “The concept of 'sin' is given in the Bible. Therefore, there is no need to invent anything - read the holy books and do as it is written there."
It would be nice if everything was that simple. But … first, all peoples have their own sacred books. What is recognized as the foundations of Christianity is considered heresy among the Jews, what Muslims worship is not a shrine among Buddhists. But even if we take only one Christianity, then we are faced with a paradox: in the sacred books of this religion, one can find contradictory indications of the "correct" way of life.
Suppose you offended on the street, or even worse - hit by some bully. How will you lead? You look in the Bible, see the call for revenge: “Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” and hit back your offender. Then at home, in order to make sure of the correctness of your behavior, you open the Bible again, find yourself on another page and in the Gospel of Matthew you see exactly the opposite advice: “You have heard what is said: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you: do not resist the evil one. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him. You start to doubt that you did the right thing.
Was it really necessary to forgive the impudent bully for his insults, and even give him his property? In confusion you take another Gospel - from Luke, and there you see: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who offend you. To the one who smacked you on the cheek, substitute the other, and to the one who takes away your outer clothing, do not prevent him from taking a shirt. It turns out, like, acting righteously according to what was written in the Old Testament, you actually sinned against the New Testament.
So what is sin?
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Sin is an act that violates the Covenants of God, his prescriptions given in the sacred books or the interpretations of his priests. From a non-religious point of view, this concept can also designate human actions that violate social traditions and ethical norms of behavior established in this society.
Committing a sinful act creates a person's guilt and entails retribution (in the form of one or another punishment). Sin does not necessarily manifest itself in an act. It can manifest itself in inaction (where a person was supposed to act according to the laws of God) or in a desire to ignore God's orders. That is, a person can sin mentally, without doing anything wrong in real life. But, according to religious beliefs, God does not like this, and he will still punish a person for such a "virtual sin", even if the person's thoughts did not lead to undesirable consequences.
According to the Evangelist Matthew, this is exactly how Jesus Christ taught the apostles during the Sermon on the Mount, condemning not only sexual acts, but also sexual thoughts: “But I tell you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
The punishment for this kind of sinful thoughts should be so terrible that the good Christ, according to Matthew), suggested that people lose a part of their body rather than sin:
“If your right eye tempts you, pluck it out and throw it away from you, for it is better for you that one of your members should perish, and not your whole body was cast into Gehenna.
And if your right hand tempts you, cut it off and throw it away from you, for it is better for you that one of your members perish, and not your whole body was thrown into hell."
The word “sin” has not always carried such a negative and fatal connotation. Initially, in Russian, this term corresponded to the concept of "error" (close words - "error", "flaw"). Among the Greeks, literally translated, the word "adosrtsh" meant "blunder, error, offense", and among the Jews, the word "hat" meant "unintentional sin" or "slip." Only later, as the religious rules were tightened, sin became a more serious phenomenon, for which one could lose life (in this world) or be doomed to eternal torment (in the Subtle World).
In Christianity, sin is not just an accident or mistake, but something more. After all, sin is contrary to human nature (since God created people in his own image and likeness). Accordingly, the ministers of the church believe that a normal, healthy person cannot sin, and if he does this, it means that he is at the mercy of an illness or human enemy - Satan, and the task of the church is to heal him from a spiritual illness. The "treatment" of sins at different times took place in different ways - by prayer, fasting, and at one time by fire and torture. It happened that the patient gave his soul to God, but this was considered better than if the person remained to live, and the Devil took over the soul.
A person himself can be cured of sin if he repent - that is, he admits his guilt, and will strive to atone for his sin. Therefore, in many versions of Christianity, confession was widely practiced, during which a person could receive the forgiveness of sins from God himself (with the participation and mediation of a priest). A person who repented of his sins must further avoid a sinful life for which he receives forgiveness.
Sins are divided into universal and individual sins. Common mankind sins begin with the original sin that Adam and Eve committed, followed by many other people's sinful deeds. According to Christian views, Jesus Christ atoned for the sins of mankind with his torment and death, including the original sin of our mythical progenitors - Adam and Eve. Each person picks up individual sins in the course of his life, and he himself will pay for them in this life and after death. In accordance with the dogmas of the Christian Church, the retribution for individual sins occurs after the death of a person, in accordance with his deeds, thoughts and actions after death, a person goes either to heaven or hell.
Original sin is a Christian theological term first introduced into everyday life by Saint Augustine and means the first sin that was committed in Paradise by the forefathers of mankind, Adam and Eve. The concept of "original sin" in the Christian religion is understood in two senses - as one specific act (violation of God's commandment by the first people) and as a general sign of the corruption (sinfulness, depravity) of human nature, which has spread to all people on Earth.
The second meaning, as you can see, is a reflection of the principle of revenge that existed among the ancient Jews and does not coincide with the notions of justice that exist today. Indeed, according to this concept, a presumption of guilt arises, and babies being born today are doomed in advance to guilt for someone else's sin committed by other people thousands of years ago.
This view of the viciousness of human nature can be traced both in the writings of Christian theologians and presented in the holy books of Christians - the Bible. For example, the Psalter contains the following words of King David: "Behold, I was conceived in lawlessness, and in sin my mother gave birth to me." As a result of original sin, people have passed from a state of universal happiness and equanimous bliss to suffering and hardships of life in the physical world. They are prone to sickness and death, and their thoughts and deeds are saturated with sin and evil.
But not all theologians are of this opinion. In particular, back in the IV-V centuries. Pelagius came out with a refutation of this view of the universal sinfulness of people. He was a Celtic by birth, born in the British Isles, and at the beginning of the 5th century came to Rome. There he was struck by the moral licentiousness of both the laity and the priests, who were mired in a variety of vices, but easily put up with them, justifying their behavior by the weakness of human nature in front of the irresistible power of sin. It was a very comfortable position - "I sin not because I cannot restrain my bad thoughts, but because I received the seed of sin from Adam."
With this initial attitude, it was easy for Roman priests to indulge in debauchery, gluttony and anger, and besides this, there was always a reason to accuse the flock of sin, and then give people the opportunity to bring repentance (without forgetting about the gifts of the holy Church). Pelagius opposed this position, arguing that sin is not predetermined in advance, and everyone can (if he really wants to) avoid it.
He assured that a person is not at all sinful by nature, but rather good, and can, throughout his life, either adhere to a righteous lifestyle, or deviate from good in the direction of evil and sin. Pelagius said that when a person often commits bad deeds, he acquires the habit of sin, which becomes his “second nature”, but the original and fatal sinfulness of people does not exist. A person with free will can successfully fight against sin and live a righteous life.
Pelagius acknowledged original sin, but only as a bad example set by Adam and Eve, and not as a "seal of damnation" imposed on all countless generations of people. His position in relation to Jesus Christ was also far from canonical. He believed that Jesus Christ did not so much atone for the sins of all people as he showed by his example the way to a righteous life. According to Pelagius, a person is saved not with the help of church piety, but with the help of continuous inner work on his moral improvement. Man himself is saved, just as he sins himself.
Such a position of Pelagius could not but cause discontent among the church hierarchs of that era, especially since his disciple Celestius began to actively preach the teachings of his teacher and entered into open confrontation with African bishops. Celestius brought the teachings of Pelagius to its logical conclusion, and the conclusions he drew shocked the churchmen and were assessed by them as outright heresy.
Celestius assured that Adam was not originally immortal and would have died even if he had not sinned. That the sin of the first people is their own business and cannot be imputed to all people; that babies are born in a state of innocence and do not need atonement for sins and baptism to receive eternal bliss; that before Christ and after him there were people who were sinless, etc. Therefore, it is not surprising that in 430, at the Ecumenical Council in Ephesus, Pelagianism was condemned as a dangerous heresy.
Although, if you think about it, it is still not clear why newborns from the very beginning of life are guilty of what they did not do? The idea of Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas that God was so offended by the act of the ancestors that he decided to punish the whole human race in this way can be accepted only if we give God such purely human traits as irritability, resentment and vengefulness. If we consider God to be a supreme, wise and morally perfect being, then it is not clear how the Creator could treat the first and only (at that time) offense of his charges so “humanly”.
There are a number of contradictions in the religious concept of sin that are not easy to overcome with the help of logic. The first question that can baffle anyone is something like this: "Who is to blame for the sin: the devil who tempts a person, or is he himself?" - that is, who bears the burden of a sinful act? If a person is weak, and the devil is sophisticated and cunning, then he can fool anyone's head, and this removes some of the guilt from the person. If a person has free will and the strength to fight the “enemy of humanity,” then, having sinned, he takes full responsibility for the sin upon himself and can no longer refer to the intrigues of evil spirits.
In the New Testament, this question sounds in a slightly different formulation: what are the sources of sin - internal or external? According to the founder of Christianity, any sin has an internal character, that is, it is born in the human soul.
“Further (Jesus) said: what comes out of a person defiles a person. Because from within, from the heart of a person, evil thoughts, adultery, murder, theft, covetousness, anger, treachery, lewdness, an envious eye, blasphemy, pride, madness emanate from within, all this evil comes from within and defiles a person."
If we take this position on faith, then we will inevitably come to the second contradiction, which will be more difficult to overcome: "If everything in this world was created by the Lord, then did he also create sins?" According to church teaching, God is the creator of everything on earth and in the entire universe, and the human soul is his special final creation. And if a person commits sinful acts at the behest of his soul, which the Lord God put into his mortal body, then it turns out that the latter bears a certain share of responsibility for his creations. Because if an aircraft designer creates a plane that is difficult to control, periodically falling into a tailspin, then he will probably have to take some of the blame for the deaths of the pilots.
But the Bible certainly removes this kind of suspicion from the Creator. The First Epistle of John says: "For all that is in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - is not from the Father, but from this world."
I would like to ask John: "Holy Father, and who created" this world "if not our Heavenly Father?" And how can an omnipotent and omniscient God create something contrary to him? It is much more logical to assume that while creating this world, God created sin for some reason that we do not understand. For what? - another question.
Such questions come to mind not only to me, a sinner, but also to many spiritual companions who pondered on this topic, trying to get out of such logical dead ends. For example, John Cassian the Roman came to the conclusion that the Lord implanted part of the passions (or sins) into the human soul for the benefit of man, and other similar sins enter the soul from the outside. Accordingly, there is a passion useful to the Lord, and sometimes it is disgusting.
In the seventh book of his writings, entitled “On the spirit of love of money,” John Cassian wrote: “For example, we see simple movements of the flesh not only in adolescents, in whom innocence precedes the distinction between good and evil, but also in babies feeding on milk. Although they do not have lust, they reveal in themselves the movements of the flesh by natural excitement. Similarly, we see the manifestation of anger in infants; before they know the virtue of patience, we see that they are irritated by offenses; also understand joke and swear words. And sometimes there is no strength, but the desire for revenge, excited by anger, is there.
I say this not to accuse nature in the present state, but to show that of those movements (lust and anger) that originate from us, some are planted in us for our benefit, and some come from outside from our negligence and evil arbitrariness. will. For the fleshly movements, which we mentioned above, by the order of the Creator, are profitably planted in our body for the birth of children and the spread of offspring, and not for the dishonorable deeds of fornication, adultery, which are condemned by the law.
Also, the excitement of anger is assigned to us for a salutary purpose, so that we, being angry at our vices and errors, with great zeal will exercise in virtues and spiritual exploits, showing all love for God and patience for our brothers. We also know the benefits of sadness, which counts among other vices, when we change our disposition. Because it is necessary for the fear of God, but it is disastrous when it happens to the world, as the apostle teaches, saying: for sorrow for God's sake produces unchanging repentance for salvation; but the sorrow of the world produces death."
Thus, John Cassian recognized that the instinct of reproduction, without which the continuation of the human race would have been impossible, was put into man by the Creator, but he believes that for some reason people use it for other purposes.
All people believe in different things.
And now let's give the floor to John Cassian the Roman again. In the fourth chapter of the seventh book, he removes from the Lord all suspicions about the passions embedded in a person:
“Without insulting the Creator, we can say that we have some natural vices. So, although these movements (of lust and anger) were invested in us by the Creator, He cannot be guilty when, abusing them, we want to grieve about fruitless, worldly gains, we wish to direct them to harmful deeds, and not for saving repentance and correction. vices; or when we are angry not with ourselves for our own benefit, but against the prohibition of the Lord - with our brothers.
Because if someone wanted to turn the iron given for the necessary, useful use to the murder of the innocent, then he cannot blame the Creator of the substance for this, when a person uses what was created by Him for the necessary use, for the convenience of a good life, for a harmful cause..
Yu Shcherbatykh
