Sin and the Social World

Abstract

AbstractDaniel Lee Hill and Ty Kieser critique accounts of “supra‐personal sin” by asking whether such accounts violate the doctrine of the sinlessness of Christ. Their description of discourse about sinful social structures that relies on analysis from critical realist sociology in current Christian ethics is largely accurate but adds a mistaken assumption that such discourse is an attempt to account for “social sin.” On the contrary, this understanding of sinful social structures accounts for the presence of sin in the social world by understanding that persons, not structures, commit sins, but that social structures are accurately described as sinful when they present persons within them with incentives that encourage sinful decisions. Those who endorse a notion of social sin may wish to respond to the criticisms of Hill and Kieser, but with a focus on sinful social structures, there is no need for talk of “social sin,” “structural sin,” or “supra‐personal sin.”1