One Priest’s Wondering Beliefs. John E. Bowers

in order to regain sufficient purity that the tribe will qualify, become again pure enough, to be in relation with YHWH.

      Consequences, Not Intent

      I find neither the tribal code nor the holiness code much concerned about intent12; but I do find both concerned with act and consequence. The underlying attitude seems to me, why you did it is of little consequence, but that you did it, and that so-and-so was injured by your so doing is of consequence, to me, YHWH, because it harms the well-being of the tribe. In order to redeem the sin some fair, equitable restitution must be made, and then the impurity erased. This seems to me a reasonable stance. Contrariwise I perceive the judging of intent in our culture to be a most precarious undertaking.

      Focus is Community, more than Individual

      But in the cases of both the tribal law and the holiness code I deem that the focus is on the tribal community much more than the individual. It is the community which is at risk. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, it is the sins of the nation which are of greater concern and are put on the head of the scapegoat and carried out into the Wilderness of Zsin to be taken away. By focusing our Christian attentions regarding sin on the individual, we have lost that national focus entirely.

      The Shift from Community to Individual Focus

      And then one more final notion while I’m still loitering in the Hebrew yard. I noted above that the two core concerns of the Mosaic law were the maintenance of tribal coherence and harmony, and the tribal purity (acceptability to YHWH). In the earliest historical period as the tribes unified, the tribal issues morphed into concern for the nation. But in the latter portions of the Hebrew Scriptures, and thence throughout the Christian writings the emphasis turns away from the nation and the larger community and onto the individual. And my probing mind will not leave it alone; how comes this shift from the national to the individual? There are two defining events in Hebrew history, the exodus and the exile. We Christians recognize the exodus and play with it within our own Christian traditions, but we do nothing with the exile. We ignore it almost completely. Yet it is as central as the exodus to Judaism. What are we missing? As I watched (setting aside the special case of Gen 1–11) the Hebrew Scriptures pass in front of my eyes in Jack Miles’s God: A Biography I found myself watching YHWH morph from the private chaplain and benefactor to Abram’s lineage into the ruthless, furious, relentless warrior of the exodus vying for the faithfulness of the twelve tribes and then of the earlier kings, then flip-flopping into a bi-polar sanctioner of the post-Solomonic apostate kings, finally retreating into internationality and delivering his chosen people into exile, and then gradually withdrawing, until in the closing books of the Tanach he has become remote, increasingly absent and finally gone altogether, and in his place we discover individual heroes who are the saviors of the nation (but don’t really save, only rescue). And as that exilic and post-exilic period evolves, under the influence of first Babylonian and then Hellenistic cultures, I detect a shift from concern for the nation, which literally no longer exists for the Jews, into concern for and focus upon the individual, so that the post-exilic writings focus primarily on the behavior and piety of the individual rather than on the cohesiveness and purity of the nation. In Jesus we see, I think, a confusion of the two strains, social concerns for justice and mercy toward all people, but with a semi-Pharisaic fixation on individual behavior and piety. So two strains. And the first Christians appear to pick up the individual focus, but, being themselves a dispossessed people under the heel of Rome, do nothing with the national concerns. And because of this focus Christianity successfully appeals to the oppressed, the disenfranchised of the empire.

      Summary

      I find no consistent, tight definition of sin throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. The Eighth-century prophets assume sin is a moral offense against God, that God requires of us a moral life, and that repentance alone for offenses is not sufficient; sin contaminates, which contamination must be removed/covered over with sacrifice. Sin in various books of the Tanach is described as defiance of God, imputed (moral) offense, rebellion against God, infidelity, apostasy, social injustice, profaneness, and blindness. It may be transgression of a regulation, unwitting or willful non-obedience. The root seems to be “to miss the mark,” which for me implies being less than or different than ought to be, and the referent for that oughtness is YHWH. It appears to me that in the earlier portions of those Scriptures sin is mostly concerned with tribal, or later national, cohesiveness and harmony, but in the post-exilic portions focuses more on individual piety and behavior. While shame may well be associated with sin throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, I am fairly convinced that emotional guilt (vis-a-vis moral guilt) was no part of sin in the Hebrew Scriptures.

      Early Christian History

      Now I turn the page to take a very quick look at the first Christians, though my deeper concern is with Augustine at the very end of the fourth century.

      The Gospels

      The curtain rises on John, baptizing in the Jordan wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance (i.e., change of mind) for the remission (i.e., sending away) of sins. When John is jailed Jesus comes striding onto the scene preaching the “. . . Good news of the kingdom of God: the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye, and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15). I note that their separate messages are roughly similar. Both speak of repentance (changing of mind) and where John’s referent is remission (sending back) of sin, Jesus’ is the kingdom of God (purity). Neither speaks much of the Father’s love; both are heavy on judgment for offenses and endtime stuff. And I note in passing that in John’s gospel sin is itself abstracted into the failure to recognize God’s presence in Jesus.

      The Pauline Letters

      Saul, renamed Paul after his mystical conversion on the road to Damascus, is a character interesting to me (though I do not much like him or most of his interpretation of the message). A zealous, anti-Christian, fire-breathing Pharisee on his way to arrest some Christians, he is struck blind by a light from heaven which claims to be the Christ. My irrelevant fascination with Paul is simply this, that the man I see after his mystical experience and conversion is exactly the same man I had seen before the life-changing road-to-Damascus event; the same zealous, fire-breathing, driven man, only now pro-Christian instead of anti-Christian. But unchanged.

      Paul brings two geniuses to the movement: his ability to organize and shape communities, and his reframing of Jesus’ message into a language of love and community life. Sin seems to me not so central a part of his message as a tool for managing community life. But in him, the first Christian writer, son-of-God notions and why the necessity of his death are already starting to take shape in his letters. The prophetic teacher and healer Jesus is in the process of being elevated to something super-human.

      The Apostolic Fathers