Nothing is more foundational to the traditional gospel than a ‘theory of sin’. But for most of us, it is a messy topic that we have not thought about enough. Hence Christianity has all too often suggested a dark anthropology that defines humanity as ‘totally depraved’ or incapable of ‘any good thing’. This is not exactly a good place to start an evangelistic conversation!
So we need a better model of what we mean by ‘sin’.
In this interview with Rob, Tony develops a different ‘theory of sin and evil’ - one that emerged years ago mainly in conversations with Mark Strom. Mark and Tony both were deeply dissatisfied with traditional models - but felt that the ball was in our court to develop and explain an ALTERNATIVE model of sin, not just critique the old evangelical models.
This talk is based on a paper that I (Tony) wrote years ago which we upload here.
The first 20 minutes seem to be a slow start. You could skip them - but the point I make there is quite helpful. The Gospel is an argument and the critical foundation of any argument is to find the deep structures of the problem. That is what I am doing in this talk, and the opening explains why that is so important.
