When the Homily is about Immunology

The Beloved Atheist and Sin

Long time readers will recall my beloved atheist. Recently we had another lengthy theological discussion and the issue of sinning in ignorance came up. The beloved Atheist just could not fathom how I could say you could enter into sin while being totally ignorant of the fact that what you were doing was a sin. Our conversation ended prematurely and what follows is an email I sent recently...


I wanted to offer a few quick words to further explain the concept of sin, which I feel we did not fully engage in while you were here. It is not surprising that any of us tend to view sin and salvation in legal terms (e.g. sin is the breaking of laws set up by God and salvation is accomplished by God’s Son willingly taking upon Himself the punishment for our sins). This, in our Eastern Orthodox opinion, is really only a sort of analogy of what is truly happening.

Sin, as I noted is more accurately understood as sickness which leads eventually to death itself. A good specific disease analogy might be lung cancer as caused by smoking. God is Life. His very nature (who and what He is) is summed up by the term Holy. In sticking with our disease analogy we might translate Holy as healthy. In God, are we to find health, the health, which we were intended to have from the beginning…much like a newborn baby does not have lung cancer.

Taking this analogy, I hope you can see how we can “sin” in ignorance. Much like how a smoker can smoke – not having the slightest idea that he may get lung cancer – and then get lung cancer. The “laws” that we see handed down are simply health guidelines. They teach us how to return to that pristine state of complete health – holiness.

But our condition is terminal…we have all passed the stage of gaining any help from chemotherapy. We will all taste the “wages of sin”, which is death. The real and most critical work of God’s Son was not to suffer under God’s wrath for our sake (how terrible…who could love such a God???) but to first become one of us. As any quality doctor must do, He steps out of His sterile room and enters into the infectious and disease-ridden room of the patient. By this act, He shows compassion and love and prescribes a process of treatment (such as living the beatitudes). But this, He knows, cannot be perfectly administered or followed by us diseased patients. And so the doctor initiates the second real and critical work on our behalf: He takes upon himself the very disease that we are dying from and He Himself dies.

The essence of Life dies? Impossible, and thus we have that wonderful third day in which the doctor overcomes the disease and death. He is perfectly immune. He returns to us patients – who are still suffering and dying – and offers to us the fruit of his labor. Anti-bodies (to keep our analogy alive) which when coupled with His previously prescribed treatment will heal us completely from the disease.

He Himself is the means by which a vaccine (or anti-serum) is generated. We receive this medicine through many means: Faith, the Sacraments, Prayer, Fasting, etc. Basically any way in which we join our life to His – like a blood transfusion – we participate in His healing work.

Anyway, this – like all analogies may not be perfect – but I hope it helps you to understand why I say that we can sin in ignorance.