Preliminary to engagement

Turning to testing

Does the language of sin hold explanatory and descriptive power in relation to the phenomenologies of abuse and the holocaust delineated over the previous two chapters? This chapter will begin opening up that question. Answering it requires the doctrine of sin to engage with the descriptions of concrete pathology in testing encounter. However, since it is neither immediately obvious what should be brought into the conversation from either side, nor what it should be about, some preliminary deliberations are necessary before we can know how best to proceed.

What is the site on which the encounter is to take place, the theme of the conversation, and how is that to be identified? The previous chapters' discussions of concrete pathologies show them to be multidimensional and complex, resistant to encapsulation without remainder under a single, synthesised, thematic heading. Yet there is too much specific detail and it is too varied for it easily to be engaged with simply as it presents itself. What is needed is a specific dimension of pathological dynamics that may be discussed without falsely systematising the individual pathologies or synthesising the two (if common to both). At the same time, this dimension must be significant – close to the heart of the pathology – so that, in discussing it, one is forced into consideration of the whole.

There are similar issues in relation to theology. There is more than one doctrine of sin to choose from, and any particular one is extant in a number of variations. Many have the same kind of complexity and multi-dimensionality in their account of sin.