In his book, Making Sense of the Christian Faith, David J. Lose writes,
That’s how theologians have talked about sin for centuries. It’s a sin of self-assertion. Recently though, a number of theologians, and especially female theologians who didn’ historically have the same power that men did, have asked whether it is also a sin when we surrender the identity God gives us and accept the identity someone else gives us, even forces on us. In that case, we’re also not finding or receiving our identity through our relationship with God. This time it’s a sin of self-submission, letting someone else call the shots.
…it’s a sin to try to be more than God creates us to be—God’s children—but it’s also a sin to be less than God created us to be, too!
Among the things in this quote that give me vague feelings of dis-ease, the phrase “even forces on us” is perhaps the most troubling.
I’m reading Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, by Pope Benedict XVI, and so I’ve been reflecting on those events.
Jesus’ decision to submit to the temporal authorities provided them with the opening to place their identification upon him. If Lose’s definition of sin is correct, how did Jesus not sin? Or did he, by this definition? So, either the definition breaks down, or, if it doesn’t, it leads to an intolerable result and a type of Christological heresy. These are the only two logical conclusions to draw from applying the definition to Jesus.
That leads me to believe the premise of the definition is false.