Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Is Sin a Hardware Problem, a Software Problem, or Both?

Is Sin a Hardware Problem, a Software Problem, or Both?

Last updated on: October 14, 2011 at 11:10 am by James F. McGrath

Is Sin a Hardware Problem, a Software Problem, or Both? 2011-10-14T11:10:37-04:00 James F. McGrath

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

One skill all educators need to cultivate is the ability to segue from where a conversation may be to where you need it to go. In my Sunday school class last Sunday, we were up to Romans 7, and the casual conversation before we began was about a computer in the church that had stopped working (the motherboard had gone bad).

As the conversation progressed, I saw an opportunity to segue, by putting the interpretation of Paul’s terminology in the way I did in the title of this post: is sin a hardware problem, a software problem, or both?

Christian thinking about this topic in relation both to the Bible and the perspectives of contemporary biology is notoriously fuzzy and vague. Many Christians in fact talk about sin as a problem inherited from parents, as though it were something genetic. I’ve even heard people suggest that this was the reason for the virginal conception: sin is passed on by the father. Obviously this viewpoint is an attempt by women to associate sin with the Y chromosome, which they lack, and thus assert their own impeccability.

At any rate, few people when pressed on the details are eager to maintain a viewpoint of this sort. But the very fact that it exists at all is an indication of something important: many modern Christians are aware of the need to relate their traditional views to contemporary science, but don’t know how.

What Paul referred to as the “flesh” and the NIV renders “the sinful nature” is easily misunderstood, and even if understood in a manner that Paul intended, may well need to be rethought or even abandoned in light of the progress we have made in understanding our own natures.

Nevertheless, I doubt that anyone would find themselves thoroughly unable to relate to the experience Paul describes in chapter 7 of Romans – of finding ourselves believing something is right and yet doing something else, or believing something is wrong or unhelpful and doing it anyway. And however secularized, most people find they cannot do without classic terminology such as “evil” as a way of describing at least some of the things that human beings do some of the time. And so even if one thinks about the categories in very different ways, the human predicament traditionally referred to by terms such as “sin” does not evaporate with our progress in understanding human biology, psychology and morality.

One key aspect of the matter that seems crucial to change among Christians is the tendency to depict natural instincts as inherently sinful. Even some ancient rabbis recognized that what they referred to as “the evil impulse” was not something inherently evil in and of itself, but in fact a set of instincts and drives without which we could not survive, but which, if allowed to dominate and control us, get us into trouble.

There, of course, we arrive at the heart of the matter: we have instincts the following of which would not be “evil” or “sinful” in any meaningful sense were it not for the fact that we human beings have the capacity to reflect on our actions and their effect on others. And that development should not be downplayed or dismissed. It is part of what makes us human. Ignoring either the biological impulses that we share with other higher organisms on this planet, or our distinctive (although probably not entirely unique) ability to choose not to follow them and to contemplate what effect our actions may have in the future, are having in the present, or did have in the past, would be to deny part of who we are.

The way some Christians talk about sex, for instance, makes it sound as though the hormones that flow through us were placed there by Satan. I doubt that many Christians would be happy to go that far, when pressed. But what often results in Christian thinking is a contradiction between the assertion that God made human beings good and a very negative view of some things that are part of our biological inheritance. And what also results is often either the demonization of one’s own instincts or a very negative view of one’s own nature. Surely neither is healthy.

By bringing evolutionary biology into the picture, we can actually hope to make progress in thinking more clearly and in more appropriate ways about some of these topics. We an understand that the impulses the following of which we may regret are “hard-wired” into us by evolution for a good reason: our own survival. Yet we can also as a result understand how those instincts often might move us towards self-destruction in our contemporary way of life, in which an endless supply of goodies made with refined sugars hijack instincts that evolved to cope with scarcity, so as to make us not only fat but sick and eventually dead. That “sin” leads to death is perhaps not a notion we need to discard entirely.

Statistics show that scare tactics used by Christians to try to keep young people from having sex are not in fact effective. I wonder whether explaining in a scientifically-informed way about these matters, and about ways in which one human impulse – the sex drive – has the potential, left unchecked by other considerations, to lead one to act in ways that can be at odds with other human impulses, such as the desire to genuinely connect with one other person, and to experience the intimacy that fidelity makes possible.

Thinking of “the sinful nature” or “the flesh” in a manner that is uninformed by our understanding of biology and psychology is problematic. But I wonder how often people simply rebel against any idea of restraint because they consider it quaint, old fashioned, or perhaps permanently tainted by the legacy of certain forms of religiosity.

When it comes to the tensions between the various facets of our human existence, I wonder how many things Christians open to input from the natural sciences could agree on with other perspectives.

Let me conclude by returning to Paul. His language of “flesh” and “soul,” however much it may be used in conversation with Greek thought, still seems to be fundamentally Jewish in character. These do not seem to be, for Paul, separate substances from which human beings are composed, one of which is excellent and one of which is base, crude and defective. “Body” and “mind” are all aspects of human existence, what we today would call a psychosomatic unity. The desire to do what is right, and the temptation to do what is wrong, connect across such divisions, and today we know that the mind is intrinsically connected with things that go on in the brain – which is part of our bodies, despite our tendency to talk as though things were otherwise. Whether we use older terms like “sin” or not, I think we all find what we are persuaded that we ought to do to be at odds with other deep-seated impulses within us.

Perhaps Paul’s thought is neither as incomprehensible nor as irrelevant from the perspective today’s thinking as might be assumed.

Previous Post

October 14, 2011

Torchwood: They Keep Killing Suzie (Resurrection Days Are Over)

Next Post

October 14, 2011 Pete Enns on the Inconsistent Literalism of alleged "Biblical Literalists"

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 1 Corinthians 1 John 1 Peter 1 Samuel 1 Thessalonians 1 Timothy 2 Corinthians 2 Kings 2 Peter 2 Samuel 2 Thessalonians 2 Timothy academia Acts of the Apostles afterlife Akhaten Alcatraz American Academy of Religion Amos Anglican Arabic Aramaic archaeology art artificial intelligence astronomy atheism atonement Babylon 5 Baptists Battlestar Galactica Bible Biblical Studies Carnival biblioblogging Black Mirror Blade Runner Book of Job book review Buddhism Call for Papers China Christianity Christmas Christology Chronicles Coptic creation Daniel Deuteronomy Doctor Who Dune Easter Ecclesiastes economics education Eldad Keynan Enoch Seminar Ephesians eschatology Esther Evangelicals evolution Exodus Expanse Ezekiel Ezra fantasy Fringe fundamentalism Galatians games Ge'ez genealogy Genesis Gnosticism Gospel of Jesus' Wife Gospel of John Gospel of Judas Gospel of Luke Gospel of Mark Gospel of Matthew Gospel of Peter Gospel of Thomas Greek Harry Potter Hebrew Hebrews Hinduism historical Jesus history Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Holidays horror Hosea humor incarnation India inerrancy information literacy inspirational Intelligent Design Ireland Isaiah Islam Israel Italy James Jeremiah John the Baptist Jonah Joshua Judaism Jude Judges Judith Lamentations languages Latin Leviticus libraries literature Lord of the Rings LOST Mandaeans Mandaic memes Methodism Micah monotheism morality Mormons movies music mythicism NASSCAL Nehemiah new perspective New Testament news Numbers Orthodox paganism panentheism pantheism Patheos Paul and his letters Pentecostals Philippians Philippians 2:6-11 philosophy physics Planet of the Apes podcast politics Progressive Christianity Protestantism Proverbs Psalms pseudoscience racism religion Revelation Roman Catholicism Romania Romans Ruth scams science science fiction Secret Gospel of Mark Society of Biblical Literature Song of Songs Star Trek Star Wars Stargate Swahili Syriac Taoism technology Terminator The Handmaid's Tale The Hobbit The Matrix theodicy theology theory Timeless Titus tomb Torchwood travel TRON Uncategorized United Kingdom Westworld X-Files young-earth creationism Zechariah

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 February 2007 January 2001

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz