The concept of sin is one of the most critical elements of Christian theology. God cannot abide sin, Jesus died to forgive it, and we must be free of it to partake in the relationship with God that ultimately saves us. But for all its significance, we rarely stop to take a close look at sin on a conceptual level. Somehow, we are told, sin entered God's formerly perfect world, but we never consider sin's actual origin. Having pondered this for quite some time, I've come up with two drastically different possibilities, each of which has similarly drastic implications upon our understanding and practice.
Thirteenth-century Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas composed a series of five logical and observational arguments for the existence of God. Three of these are very similar, and are best represented by the Proof for an Efficient Cause. The argument goes as follows: Everything in existence must be caused either by itself or by something else. Since everything we can observe is caused by something else, logic dictates that there must be something that is self-causing and is the root cause of everything else, namely, God. I've heard arguments against this proof that can be discussed at length another night, but the case in point is that Christians generally agree with the idea that all of observable existence is created by God.
When exploring the origin of sin, this concept leaves us with few options. If sin is caused by anything in observable existence, then sin is, in effect, created by God. Even if sin is created by Lucifer (which is a rather shallow idea,) Lucifer himself was created by God. The idea that God created sin would be considered heretical by most Christians, because it flies in the face of firmly held beliefs about the character of God. But based on the idea that God created everything, it's a concept we must nevertheless explore. Besides it, the only other possibility is that sin, like God, is a self-causing phenomenon whose existence precedes creation.
The implications of the latter view aren't nearly as drastic as those of the former, but they are worthy of mention nonetheless. The idea that sin is a self-causing force essentially means that it is a preexisting condition of the universe God has created. This condition, which I'll term "entropy" here, is an outside influence on God's creation that God cannot, or chooses not to, circumvent. It's the metaphysical equivalent of gravity; God can build whatever he wants, but entropy will always be pulling at it. If God simply cannot find a way to exclude sin from his creation, we must question the omnipotence that mainstream Christianity attributes to him; if he could make a sinless world, but chooses not to, the reason for his decision is worth exploring. The Biblical narrative seems to present that God intended to create a perfect world, which was then infected by sin against his will, but that simply cannot be if his will is immutable. In his extensive Christian Theology, Millard Erickson writes: "...God's will is never frustrated. What he chooses to do, he accomplishes, for he has the ability to do it." If this is true and God is in fact all-powerful, then it was by his own will that sin entered his creation.
Which brings us to the other possibility. If God is in fact the origin of sin, then the sin must first exist within his own being. This would mean one (or both) of two things: That God's will is not totally pure, and/or that his ability to enact that will is not absolute. The imperfection of God is one of the core tenants of Gnosticism, a movement against which the Judeo-Christian spectrum of faith has struggled for millennia. Taken literally, the Biblical passages that establish God as a pure and infinite being are legion. These superlative statements could be considered poetry, descriptions of a being so much more powerful than we that we must imagine him to be infinite. Or, to adopt a more hostile approach, they could be the claims of a being who wants us to believe him to be greater than he truly is. Perhaps God tried to create a perfect world and was simply unable, and the whole process of redemption is an attempt to expunge us of the imperfections he never intended us to have.
Clearly, painting a picture of an imperfect God requires a leap outside the bounds of moderate theology and into speculation. But I believe that once a question has been posed, every possible answer should be explored until a suitable one is produced. Personally, I'm not inclined to believe that sin or imperfection originated within God. I think the entropy theory is far more likely, but then the question remains: is God unable to build a universe untouched by entropy, or does he intentionally choose to let sin enter his creation? I'll be working on an answer to that question in the near future, as well as discussing the theology of St. Augustine and Georg Hegel and how their different ideas the origin of sin fit into the two major streams of thought I've outlined above. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
-Evan
---
Isaiah said: "Your iniquities have seperated you from your God."
