Overview

We can have a sense that when we try to do right by one another, we aren't merely striving against ourselves. The feeling is that we are struggling against something--someone-else. As if there's a force-a person- that wishes us ill. In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul describes just such a person: Sin, a cosmic tyrant who constrains our moral freedom, confuses our moral judgment, and condemns us to slavery and to death. Commentators have long argued about whether Paul literally means to say Sin is a person or is simply indulging in literary personification, but regardless of Paul's intentions, for modern readers it would seem clear enough: there is no such thing as a cosmic tyrant. Surely it is more reasonable to suppose Sin is merely a colorful way of describing individual misdeeds or, at most, a way of evoking the intractability of our social ills. In The Emergence of Sin, Matthew Croasmun suggests we take another look. The vision of Sin he offers is at once scientific and theological, social and individual, corporeal and mythological. He argues both that the cosmic power Sin is nothing more than an emergent feature of a vast human network of transgression and that this power is nevertheless real, personal, and one whom we had better be ready to resist. Ultimately, what is on offer here is an account of the world re-mythologized at the hands of chemists, evolutionary biologists, sociologists, and entomologists. In this world, Paul's text is not a relic of a forgotten mythical past, but a field manual for modern living.

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9780190277987

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-'Sin emerges'--both scripture and experience attest to it. Yet no scholar has yet worked out an emergent hamartiology in so rigorous and convincing a fashion. Croasmun brilliantly summarizes recent theories of emergent selves and systems, drawing on science, anthropology, and political theory. Drawing then on a close reading of Paul on sin and justification, he offers a compelling account of the effects of sin--on individuals, relations, and social structures.---Philip Clayton, author of Mind and Emergence-Written with verve, clarity, and erudition, this book is a breath of fresh air for the guild of Pauline studies. Arguing that a fresh engagement with Paul's language about sin requires an interdisciplinary approach, Croasmun points the way to urgently needed new ways of reading Paul's letters in a twenty-first century context. Required reading for serious interpreters of Paul.---Susan Eastman, Associate Research Professor of New Testament, Duke Divinity School

'Sin emerges'--both scripture and experience attest to it. Yet no scholar has yet worked out an emergent hamartiology in so rigorous and convincing a fashion. Croasmun brilliantly summarizes recent theories of emergent selves and systems, drawing on science, anthropology, and political theory. Drawing then on a close reading of Paul on sin and justification, he offers a compelling account of the effects of sin--on individuals, relations, and social structures. --Philip Clayton, author of Mind and Emergence Written with verve, clarity, and erudition, this book is a breath of fresh air for the guild of Pauline studies. Arguing that a fresh engagement with Paul's language about sin requires an interdisciplinary approach, Croasmun points the way to urgently needed new ways of reading Paul's letters in a twenty-first century context. Required reading for serious interpreters of Paul. --Susan Eastman, Associate Research Professor of New Testament, Duke Divinity School -'Sin emerges'--both scripture and experience attest to it. Yet no scholar has yet worked out an emergent hamartiology in so rigorous and convincing a fashion. Croasmun brilliantly summarizes recent theories of emergent selves and systems, drawing on science, anthropology, and political theory. Drawing then on a close reading of Paul on sin and justification, he offers a compelling account of the effects of sin--on individuals, relations, and social structures.---Philip Clayton, author of Mind and Emergence-Written with verve, clarity, and erudition, this book is a breath of fresh air for the guild of Pauline studies. Arguing that a fresh engagement with Paul's language about sin requires an interdisciplinary approach, Croasmun points the way to urgently needed new ways of reading Paul's letters in a twenty-first century context. Required reading for serious interpreters of Paul.---Susan Eastman, Associate Research Professor of New Testament, Duke Divinity School

Author Information

Matthew Croasmun is Associate Research Scholar and Director of the Life Worth Living Program at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and Lecturer of Divinity and Humanities at Yale University. He completed his Ph.D. in Religious Studies (New Testament) at Yale in 2014 and was a recipient of the 2015 Manfred Lautenschlager Award for Theological Promise for his dissertation, The Body of Sin: An Emergent Account of Sin as a Cosmic Power in Romans 5-8.

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