The doctrine of sin in a post-everything world

Abstract

Kärkkäinen describes our world as a “post-” world. He asserts it is postmodern, postfoundationalist, poststructuralist, postcolonial, postpropositional, postliberal, postconservative, postsecular, and post-Christian. Conducting theology in a “post-” world presents significant challenges. Theologians must engage with diverse cultural traditions, address the questioning of absolute truth and the rejection of foundationalism, and respond to critiques of propositionalism, which tends to frame everything in black-and-white dichotomous propositional statements. Therefore, this essay explores a constructive and contemporary Lutheran approach to the doctrine of sin, employing metaphor to accommodate polyphonic truth and engage the imagination. This is a postfoundationalist and postpropositional approach. The work identifies and examines the various metaphors the Lutheran Confessions used to define and understand original sin, including those found in the Augsburg Confession, Apology, and Formula. It is observed that the Confessors primarily draw metaphors from semantic domains such as the human body and person (including birth, health, and sexual attraction), social behaviour (notably the court of law, authority, and conflict), orientation and direction (including down, deep, and turned away), and the quantity and quality of substances (such as lack, impurity, and size). The use of these semantic domains appears to have overemphasised themes of personalised guilt and punishment, as reflected in the current language of the Australian Lutheran liturgy. Scripture offers many other metaphors for sin that may resonate more clearly in our “post-” world. These alternative metaphors draw upon semantic domains related to the earth and creation (such as weather events, drowning, and being trapped in a pit), work and daily life (such as clothes and finances), and additional aspects of social relationships (such as being far away and lost). Recommendations for liturgical renewal are made based on these observations.