Scientific Enlightenment, Div. One Book 2: Human Enlightenment of the First Axial 2.A. A Genealogy of Testamental Religions Chapter 4: Heidegger's concept of guilt, its universal structure, and Paul's concept of sin ACADEMY | previous section | Table of Content | next section | GALLERY

copyright © 1998, 2004, 2006 by L. C. Chin.

Heidegger has an explication, in accordance with his ontology contained in Being and Time, of the origin of the human sense of guilt which could be imagined to result in sacrificial praxis in the religious context with which to compensate for this guilt. Here we will summarize his view, but then we will examine if the true experiential origin of sacrificial religiosity as unearthed in the thermodynamic genealogy of sacrifice is in fact compatible with his conception. Finally we will examine experiential origins for the New Testament concept of "sin" as found in Paul's Roman Letter.

(A) For Heidegger, feeling guilty is part of the very structure of human existence. How is Dasein always already guilty, i.e. structurally a guilty being? ("Wie is es im Grunde seines Seins schuldig?" Sein und Zeit, p. 284)

A.1. Because Geworfensein ("thrownness" as the being of Dasein) contains Nichtigkeit ("not-ness", i.e. nothingness) as an essential component of itself. The structure of Dasein, of human existence, is such that "[n]icht durch es selbst, sondern an es selbst entlassen aus dem Grunde, um als dieser zu sein. Das Dasein ist nicht insofern selbst der Grund seines Seins, als dieser aus eigenem Entwurf erst entspringt, wohl aber ist es als Selbstsein das Sein des Grundes." (Ibid., p. 285. "... not through itself, but to itself has [Dasein] been released from its ground [i.e. basis], so as to be as this ground. Dasein is not itself this ground of its Being, since this ground first arises only from its own projection, rather, as Being-its-self, it is the Being of this ground.") In other words, what a human being is at bottom (its ground, basis) is not determined by some fixed nature of its, but arises from its own interpretation of itself (as a farmer, a teacher, a doctor...) through its activities (its projections). Hence to be what it is itself, the human being itself determines its basis. This is the positive side of the story: human freedom. But this also implies that a human being can never fully conquer its Being, fully become itself, since there is never a fixed human nature by which to judge that a human being has indeed become all that it can be through whatever profession or whatever activities it has chosen to interpret itself. "Grund-sein, aber des eigensten Seins von Grund aus nie mächtig zu sein." ("Ground-being", or "to-be-its-own-ground, but out of its ground -- as a matter of its very structure -- [Dasein can] never overpower its innermost Being.") From this experience of the very structure of human existence we derive our primordial notion of "lack" or "nothingness", and the experience of ourselves as lacking, incomplete, failing to live up to our-selves, our own potentials: guilty. This is the negative side of the story: the price for this freedom.

A 2. Geworfenheit, as Grundsein, means "sich aus Möglichkeiten zu verstehen", "to understand itself in terms of possibilities", i.e. to interpret itself, to "make its Being", through the available roles given by the tradition of the society, e.g. teacher, farmer, actor, etc. But such Entwurf, as "Wahl der einen", the choosing of one possibility or one role, means "Nichtauchwählenkönnen der anderen", the inability to choose the other. Choosing, necessarily the taking up of one choice to the exclusion of others, reveals the fundamental problem or defect of (temporal and spatial) existence which (together with the never-completeness associated with Grundsein) has motivated human search for salvation: one can only be oneself here and now and not every other person at the same time. From this other experience of the structure of human existence we derive again our primordial notion of nothingness and experience of ourselves as fundamentally flawed. This is the problem of finitude in our thermodynamic framework: of the three characteristics enumerated previously, this refers to the first, the temporal and spatial delimitation (spatial: only able to choose one but not the other; temporal: unable to un-do the choices already made [and choose another one instead] later on).

Conclusion: "Der Entwurf ist nicht nur als je geworfener durch die Nichtigkeit des Grundsein [A1] bestimmt, sondern als Entwurf selbst wesenhaft nichtig [A2]." (Ibid., p. 285; "Not only is projection, as one thrown, determined by the 'not-ness' of Being-ground, but as projection it is itself essentially 'not' [or nothing].") Hence Dasein's Being (Sorge, geworfener Entwurf) is "(nichtige) Grund-sein [A1] einer Nichtigkeit [A2]", which is "Schuldigsein". Guilty feeling came from the feeling of lack. This primordial double Nichtigkeit (the primordial Guilt-as-lack) is the condition of possibility of experiencing oneself as "uneigentlich", and of the experience of any sort of "privatio boni", of any sort of evil, and consequently of any sort of guilt. Such is Heidegger's explication in accordance with his framework.

The primordial guilt (debt: Schuld) in our thermodynamic framework has been existence itself and moreover the existence of order itself, which, because of necessary conservation (first law), has to be "borrowed", and, because of the entropic constitution of space-time (second law), has to incur debt, respectively. Our existence (first of all) as order (second of all) is not "real" in the sense of our having it to ourselves. It has to be constantly bought and eventually paid back altogether: our existence is debt, i.e. Schuld.

With Heidegger, however, the debt seems to be owed to oneself -- necessary failure to complete oneself. But for us, it is owed to the Source: to the cosmos, to the Ancestral Ghost (for the primitives). Heidegger's version (indebtedness to oneself) is in fact for the purpose of the secularization of traditional religious salvation (secular salvation), with some additional modifications owing to the change in life style since modernity. In other words, he tries to extract the salvational structure from all concerns with God or the posthumous bliss of the soul (the "generalization" with the concept of Entschlossenheit) and takes account of the modern condition of non-existent fear for starvation due to the plentifulness of food around. In this context, the meaning of "guilt" has decisively changed.

This double primordial Nichtigkeit (or the double thermodynamic debt in our framework) inherent in the structure of human existence usually slips from the unreflective everyday and primitive mind, and "evil" (Nichtigkeit) is instead identified with the derivatives, evil suffered and evil done. Evil suffered, in Heidegger's modern version, would include all the misfortunes, and ultimately death, which Nature may confer on humans to frustrate their "projects", i.e. their attempts to interpret themselves as what they project themselves to be: a person may fail to be a teacher which s/he experiences as his or her calling because of uncontrollable circumstances of life, and death eventually cuts in to terminate the effort altogether. The greatest concern of a modern person is with the "meaning of life", for the sake of which s/he consequently interprets him- or herself. The "projects" of the primitives (whose life is too precarious to allow them to worry about the "meaning of life") are, on the other hand, no more than successful perpetuation of life through the ease in food-procurement, finding a suitable habitat, smooth reproduction, relationship with other tribes on terms beneficial for these. These may be summarized as a successful, i.e. harmonious blending into the cosmos as its integral part. For the individuals the "self-interpretations" or possibilities are then good hunters, reproducers, good chief, brave warriors, etc. Evils suffered include primarily the need to eat and to die, the natural circumstances that cut one's chance to eat and live, and the evil things others have done to oneself with the same effect of interruption. Evils done are what oneself has done to interrupt one's own chance to eat and live, or what the tribe has done to itself to cut short its continuation in the cosmos. The difference between the ancients and the moderns is then this, that while death is experienced by both as the ultimate evil suffered, the organismic dissipative functions figure greatly in the primitive conception of "possibilities" -- all the primitives' social roles revolve around food provision and the protection of the tribe -- while these figure hardly at all in the modern social roles (teacher, artist, motivational speaker; and the primary purpose of money-making is not to provide food, but to satisfy noosphere consumption). So, in the contemporary mode of das Man, evils done are the bad decisions made in the past that cause one to not live up to one's potential as an artist, not those that cause one to starve to death. Furthermore, evils done in the form of wrongdoings toward others which cut short their self-interpretation generate for the primitives disequilibrium whose levelling ("retributions" by them or by Nature) will then cut short one's own ("karma"). For the moderns, wrongdoings toward others cause one to get entangled not with Nature, not with tribal feuds, not with gods, but with the justice system, which is weaker than these previous. Note however that evils done (to one's own Being or others') due to bad decisions in the past is irremediable in both ancient and modern times because of the inability to change the past, and this is the consequence of temporal existence, and so belongs to the primordial Nichtigkeit (ultimately, of course, the origin of this is the thermodynamic irreversibility, the thermodynamic arrow of time as a consequence of the second law); that attempts to minimize or even out their effects in the present and future, in all times, only expose the fundamental defect of temporal existence but which exposure the ordinary (immature) mind avoids, as Heidegger is to criticize (below) as mere "Verrechnung der Verstösse" and "Ausgleichung" these ordinary self-deceptive attempts; and that if one were eternal like God or the ancestral ghosts, i.e. did not exist as temporal and spatial, then one could exist as everything at the same time, one would need neither to eat (in the case of the primitives) nor any self-projection to complete oneself (in the case of the moderns), and one would not worry about whether the limitation of the means of projection to singular mutually exclusive choices would result in evils done that would turn out to shorten one's chances to eat and live or be un-productive for one's self-interpretation and would always be irremediable. (In the case of the primitives, on the thermodynamic level, one would not have to borrow one's existence nor borrow for one's order.)

Heidegger's analysis of Nichtigkeit therefore does not apply to the primitives, and is not as "primordial" as he thinks it to be. In the case of the primitives, the necessity of eating (which is the debt we owe to our order and which requires the destruction of more order) stands next to death as the exemplary evils suffered (and moreover done!), and necessary, unlike natural disasters and life-circumstances which could be imagined to never occur. (This is the second characteristic of finitude.) The source of the most primordial Nichtigkeit is therefore not the inability to complete oneself and choose everything, but hunger, and the need to kill and destroy to satisfy hunger. The disengagement from the thermodynamic limitation of existence as temporal and spatial would also mean an invulnerability before natural disasters and life circumstances. Hence salvation universally means such disengagement through the union with the Eternal, either God in the first mode or the Eternal Self (as in Atman = Brahman) in the second. But before the emergence of the testamental religions and philosophies the primitives simply offer sacrifices to the ancestral ghosts, as means to pre-empt evil suffered (which would result from the evil done such as during eating), i.e. to minimize interruptions ("retributions by Nature") -- which, however, does not take care of the root cause of the problem. (This may seem, at this stage, not entirely futile, since presumably after death one would become the ancestral ghost oneself.) Then there is the third, craving (tanha), which so often makes one do things disruptive to one's (and others') self-interpretation (doing evils out of greed) or traps one into bad choices. But this only reaches the level of explicit recognition with the onset of civilization, when noosphere consumption has begun in earnest. The last two characteristics of finitude passed over by Heidegger (having to consume -- which itself constitutes a source of necessary evil-done, i.e. the destruction of order, or in mythical terms: taking food from the Ancestor results in guilt [indebtedness, Schuld] -- and die, and craving for consumption which is frequently though not exclusively the cause of more evils done) must have additionally contributed to the sense of guilt (indebtedness) inherent in human existence, the sense of self-as-inadequate.

As said, spatial and temporal existence is the consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, which prescribes that one must eat (and otherwise consume) in order to exist (the principal concern of the primitives) and be not free to simply be as one chooses (the principal concern of the moderns). Moderns' principal concern with self-interpretation is due to the same thermodynamic delimitation that frustrates the primitives. The thermodynamic condition of existence is the cause of the existential condition of Dasein as explicated by Heidegger, the double Nichtigkeit, which really is just the modern existential articulation of the first characteristic of finitude as defined in our framework (Introduction), and of which the primitives and the unreflected das Man are only specifically conscious of the effects, the derivative evils done and suffered. The rise of salvational consciousness in the first millennium before Christ in various centers of civilization means the beginning consciousness of the root cause of evil done and suffered.

Note that salvation -- union with the Eternal -- fixes the root cause; salvation -- testamental religions or philosophies -- is not needed, but morality and ethics, perhaps in combination with technology, are enough, to combat (although never eradicate) just the effects, the derivative evils, even if, ultimately, death should remain un-conquerable. This we have called "pre-salvation"; its ancient example is the exilir, and its modern forms are technology, medicine, biotechnology, etc.

Daniel Guerrière in "How does God enter into philosophy?" (The Thomas, April, 1984, p. 165. C.f. especially "The specificity of religion", p. 178) has adopted Heidegger's version and then applied it back to religious salvation, but in the modern context. The human existential condition, he analyzes, involves a fundamental feeling of powerlessness and lack, in that a human being can never be himself completely (because he cannot be his past and cannot predictably become his future) and cannot be free to be anything he wants to be (because he cannot be something other than himself). Why can't human being just be what he wants to be according to his wish? Why can't he be allowed to complete his self-interpretation? Why can't human being be co-extensive with the Eternal and Omnipresent which will negate his un-freedom and incompleteness? These are too the signs of the limitation imposed by spatiality and temporality, the effects of the limited constitution as a temporary order, what is properly known as "finitude". This lack of freedom-to-be and completeness constitutes the primordial Guilt-as-Lack. The cure then is coextensiveness (reunion) with the Source -- which is Eternity properly differentiated, the Eternal which is to-be-all-of-itself-all-at-once, the negation of spatiality and temporality: i.e. God. Again, this analysis applies only to the moderns who worry not so much about food and starvation as about the meaning of life, about "being complete", about being a good father, a good lawyer, a good professor....

(B) "Aber welche Erfahrung spricht für dieses ursprüngliche Schuldigsein des Daseins?" (SZ, p. 286; "But which experience speaks for this primordial Being-guilty of Dasein?") Die Erfahrung des Rufs des Gewissen. (The experience of the Call of Conscience.) This is the moment of secular salvation, of secular metanoian (repentance: below).

Before the call, Dasein is not conscious (or misses the consciousness) of its Nichtigkeit -- the mode of das Man. After the call, in Unheimlichkeit, it is conscious of its Nichtigkeit: "[Die Unheimlichkeit] bringt dieses Seiende vor seine unverstellte Nichtigkeit, die zur Möglichkeit seines eigensten Seinkönnen gehört" (which is however still "Wählen", i.e. "Nichtauchwählenkönnen der anderen", p. 287). ("The 'Not-at-home-ness' brings this being before its undisguised nothingness, which belongs to the possibility of its ownmost Ability-to-be".) But conscious of its (double) Nichtigkeit, it is hence conscious of its Wählenkönnen, i.e. its Seinkönnen.

Hence "Anrufen zum eigensten Seinkönnen" ("Calling to its ownmost Ability-to-be") means "Anrufen zum eigensten Nichtigkeit" ("calling to its ownmost nothingness") which means "Anrufen zum Schuldigsein" ("calling to its Being-guilty") or "Schuldenhaben für einen Nichtigkeit" ("Having-guilt for a nothingness/ lack"). "Dann bedeutet aber das Anrufen zum Schuldigsein ein Vorrufen auf das Seinkönnen, das ich je schon als Dasein bin." (p. 287; "Then the calling to Being-guilty means a calling-forth to that Ability-to-be which in each case I as Dasein am already.") This is the condition of resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) already explicated.

Schuldigsein's meaning is not to be based on the derivative sense of Schuld, i.e. "die durch eine Tat oder Unterlassung entstandenen Verschuldung" ("a becoming-guilty or -indebted through an act or an omission/ failure"). This again refers to evil done. (Heidegger seems to be passing over evil suffered.) An act may be experienced as engendering guilt (i.e. evil-done as having removed Being, i.e. some Good, from where it should have been) only if the "category", so to speak, of Nicht has already been produced in the primordial experience of Nichtigkeit, that is, in Geworfenheit and Wählen (i.e. Nichtauchwählenkönnen). This has been sufficiently dwelt upon.

Hence: "Das rechte Hören des Anrufs" ("the right [correct] hearing of the calling") is "Sichentwerfen auf das eigenste eigentliche Schuldigwerdenkönnen" ("self-projection onto the ownmost authentic Ability-to-become-guilty") which is "Sich-selbst-gewählt-haben" ("having-chosen-oneself" which means not-having-chosen-another-self); "Das Rufverstehen ist das Wählen" ("The understanding-of-the-call is Choosing") or "Gewählt wird das Gewissen-haben als Freisein für das eigenste Schuldigsein..." ("Chosen is having-conscience as Being-free for ownmost Being-guilty".) "Anrufverstehen" ("The understanding-of-the-call") is "Gewissen-haben-wollen" ("wanting to have conscience"; p. 288).

In the original religious context, this is like, e.g., choosing Christ as one's Savior (swthroV), in explicit consciousness of the fact that one is fundamentally, i.e. structurally and irremediably (by temporal means) incomplete, guilty, sinful, i.e. not like God. (This human condition of being trapped in finitude is the original meaning of (original) "sin", on which the New Testament writers were not always clear due to the sloppiness of their thinking.) The phylogenic equivalent to this ontogenic eruption of conscience is the rise of salvational consciousness in the first and second mode, as expected. There the Eternal is no longer confused with the (indefinite extension of the) temporal, which became explicitly recognized as structurally and irremediably flawed, the irremediable gap recognized as the metaxu (in-between). In such explicit consciousness of the fundamental defect of the temporal world such means for fixing the derivatives as sacrifices become inauthentic and eliminated by command; c.f. Christ and the great philosophers.

Such, then, is the structure of guilt and fault:

evil done | evil suffered     derivative Schuld
-------------------------     ----------------
primordial Nichtigkeit (in    the condition of
Geworfenheit & Wählen); or     possibility
thermodynamic delimitation

The immature mind of tribal peoples does not differentiate between these three divisions; for them, evil done and evil suffered are both considered evil and, as said, confused with primordial guiltiness, that fundamental defect of spatial and temporal existence, that fundamental "evil". Today, das Man does not differentiate at least between evil done and the original Nichtigkeit. (That is, people nowadays tend to see the misfortunes that happen to befall on them, through nature or through the actions of others, as not their fault, not indicative of their guilt or evil. This, thanks to the "enlightening" effect of modern humanitarian ideologies. American women travelling to India are teaching women there who were burnt by their husbands because their father failed at dowry-payments, that it is not their fault, but the fault, guilt, and evil, Nichtigkeit of their husbands.) Hence, both, experiencing Nichtigkeit (guilt, fault), can do no more than try to compensate. "Die verständigkeit des Man kennt nur Genügen und Ungenügen hinsichtlich der handlichen Regel und öffentlichen Norm. Verstösse dagegen verrechnet es und sucht Ausgleiche. Vom eigensten Schuldigsein hat es sich fortgeschliessen, um desto lauter Fehler zu bereden" (p. 288; "The common-sense of the One ["the They"] knows only the satisfying or un-satisfying of manipulatable rules and public norms. It reckons up infractions and seeks to balance them off. It has fore-closed itself off from its ownmost Being-guilty [primordial indebtedness], so as to talk louder of making mistakes"; in the case of the primitives, making sacrifice to the gods or ancestral ghosts). This, the missing by everyday and primitive consciousness of the primordial, is related to the fact that, in metaphysical parlance, ordinary and primitive persons cannot think Being except in terms of beings or being-processes; they cannot understand the ontological but only the ontic; there are only "things" for them, so the primordial lack in the very structure of human existence escapes them, who are only able to express the anxiety associated with it through the derivative regrets over things they have done wrong, which they then try to quench by amendings, like doing goods for others, repairing damages. (In thermodynamic parlance: most people are not explicitly aware that the essential meaning of their life is as dissipative structure, hence they have to consume and defecate -- which in the modern context has become noosphere consumption and defecation -- and have desires which make them at times do evil; they are only explicitly aware of the consequences: the worries about not making enough money, or some explicit instances of doing wrongs out of greed.) But these, while good for wrong things one has done, are not going to fix the primordial lack that rests with the very structure of human existence by which mistakes (evil done) or even evil suffered are made possible in the first place. This is the result of the undifferentiated mode, as said. In the case of the primitive men: the necessity of eating (an evil suffered) creating disequilibrium and destroying order (evil done) requires them to make sacrifices to restore equilibrium and reverse entropy, but they have yet, before the rise of salvational traditions, to come to grip with the underlying cause (i.e. thermodynamic finitude, or the constitution as localized, open dissipative structure) once and for all. Both the primitive man and das Man are caught up in the never ending Aufsuchen faktischer Verschuldungen ("seeking out factical indebtedness [becoming-guilty]") and Befreiung von der Schuld ("liberation from guilt-debt") because amendment through doing things (the factical amendments) is never going to touch upon that ontological, existential, primordial guilt. In this sense, sacrifice is futile. The recognition of this futility is then implicitly expressed in the "lamentation" over human mortality, as common in myths. The only solution is salvation, the Befreiung von der Schuld once and for all, after which one no longer laments over mortality.

The differentiation between evil suffered, evil done, and the condition of possibility of these two corresponded with the rise of the salvational traditions around the first axial time during which humans at once came to grip with the root cause of guilt. A simple example of this new consciousness is the incidence concerning Buddha during his last days:

So far this looks like a miracle-working incident akin to Jesus' walking on water. But the story has a different moral.

The philosophic-religious answer to evil suffered (suffering, dukkha) and evil done (sin, hamartia) is not to fix these on the ontic level (like building a raft, etc.) but to pull out from under these once and for all the very foundation for these (crossing the river not in the temporo-spatial manner; but by-passing this manner altogether).

The Heideggerian ontology of Dasein (not thermodynamic!) would thus explicate the reason why primitive people engage in sacrifice (to the ancestral ghosts or gods) in this way. The primordial Nichtigkeit inherent in the structure of human (spatial and temporal) existence would prompt the primitives to look for union with the Salvational Power, for only in that way would that Lack be filled. Confusion of the three (the primordial, evil suffered and evil done), of the necessary primordial Lack or Nothingness and the temporal, accidental lack or nothingness, however, causes them to fill up (all three types of) lack with everyday, temporal means, i.e. amending, which amounts to sacrifices, i.e. giving up to the ancestor, feeding him, as apology, as the repairing of disequilibrium or the entropic state. Since the primordial Nichtigkeit can never be "amended" via temporal compensations, the cycle of the feeling-of-lack, amending, and then feeling-of-lack again is never ending, just like the never-ending cycle of needing to eat, eating to fullness, and needing to eat again, and the futility thus continues until the rise of the testamental religions, especially Christianity, to clear up the matter once and for all. So Jesus is the bread which we eat once and for all, after which we never have to eat again. In other words, temporal maintenance of the equilibrium of the ancestors is confused with the mending of the primordial lack which is only possible through union with the Salvational Power as Eternity.

To recapitulate the relationship between the Heideggerian genealogy of guilt and sacrifice and the thermodynamic: First, the thermodynamic genealogy has provided a foundation for Heidegger's analysis of Dasein. As said, Heidegger only touches on the first characteristic of finitude, temporo-spatial delimitation (the "localized" of "localized open dissipative structure"). Heidegger overlooks in his Dasein analytic the fact that Dasein has to eat first to maintain its physical constitution (order) and only then interprets itself. He does so because he is only thinking about the modern human condition. In the modern case, the experience of the incompleteness of the self as the necessary consequence of the very structure of existence is what produces in the first place the "category" (eidos), so to speak, of "lack", of "void", with which to notice that a void has been generated by one's bad works. But it is ultimately the thermodynamic framework which is the primordial and provides the ground for the Heideggerian, in that self-interpretation is derivative from survival and that the most primordial experience of Nichtigkeit consequently probably came from hunger rather than from choosing and the (in)completeness of self-interpretation. On the derivative level, too, the Ausgleichung of the infractions with which to also, for the confused, undifferentiated mind, fill up the primordial Nichtigkeit as well as the derivative disequilibriums covering it up, would not make sense except in view of the original human experience of the thermodynamic process of the Universe as necessary, that a lack, an infraction, will necessarily be evened out by Nature at the infractor's expense. Better the expense be made at one's own control with regard to form and timing: sacrifice as amending and as pre-emptive. But Heidegger's analysis complements the thermodynamic interpretation by illuminating some aspects of the motivating experience behind sacrifice: the primitives feel guilty fundamentally, as a matter of existence -- though they are not yet conscious of this -- and this guilty-feeling is tied up with the anxiety over the disequilibrium and disorder that their survival and existence necessarily cause and which demand pre-emptive repair on the derivative level (Ausgleichung) since salvation on the ontological level is not yet known. At the primordial level of the very structure of human existence, not only is it permeated with Nicthtigkeit (primordial self-indebtedness) but also by necessary dis-equilibrium (Nature has given up some in order for them to exist: the "primordial debt"; and moreover has given up some of its order for their order to be; in other words, the guilt from the failure to live up to one's potential complements the primordial indebtedness from the very fact of existence); at the derivative, factical level, not only is lack (evil) constantly though contingently generated by mistakes done (which irreversibly frustrate either one's own self-interpretation or that of others, which will reversely undermine one's own either as a matter of the equilibrium process or as a matter of human-made justice) and misfortunes suffered (the ordinary evils suffered), but disequilibrium or disorder is constantly caused by the consumption of natural resources for survival (the next exemplary evil suffered, the necessity of eating, which leads to evil done, which leads to evil suffered...).

(C) The schema finitude-evil suffered-evil done seems to provide a "total field" of which all the salvational traditions of the world (First Axial) can be either partial or holistic manifestations. Daoism, for example, is, in its muted manner peculiar to the Chinese, the negation of finitude (sage's identification with the Dao) and of both evil suffered and done (following Dao, going along with Nature). Plato seems to be exclusively concerned with the negation of finitude (salvation, return of the soul to the Source, through the study of eidoi: Phaedo), although his concentration on justice (Republic), i.e. on minor salvation, can be seen as dealing with evil done, which then leads to evil suffered (the unjust person is the least happiest). Buddhism seems to be concerned only with the negation of evil suffered (dukkha) through the negation of finitude (attainment of Nibbana), passing over evil done. Christianity, on the other hand, seems to have, though in a confusing and confused manner, a focus on negating both evil done and evil suffered (both are "sin", hamartia), but sometimes forgotten to say explicitly about the negation of finitude (especially with regard to evil done). But all this is only appearance. The aim of all salvational traditions, in a word, is the negation of evil suffered through the negation of finitude, because evil done is only a religious problem in that it causes suffering to the doer, disrupts his Being, and blocks the negation of finitude by destroying minor salvation (the order of the soul, which strictly speaking is a function only of the enlightened state of mind). If doing evil produces no negative effect on the self, but only on others, then, in the modern perspective, it is just a moral problem -- to which ethics suffices -- and, in the ancient perspective, for that matter, not much of a problem at all, since it's not a salvational problem, for which only religion/ philosophy is the "cure", and which is the ancients' sole concern, almost. The "sinner", in the Christian sense, is principally suffering and has no chance of obtaining eternal life with God because s/he is not "getting his or her life back in order" through accepting Christ into the heart. "Sin" in Christianity means both evil suffered (the necessary subjection to the fate of finitude and entropy process) and evil done. The first, as demonstrated, is the original meaning of "sin", while the second is the one that reflects the emergence of a legalistic meaning of "sin" due to the merger of primitive karmic thinking with the experience of the violation of the contractual (testamental, covenantal) mode that the Hebrews have introduced into the intraworldly religiosity.

The weakness of the Christian mode does not consist only in its being a first mode, but also in this that the "cure" (Jesus' sacrifice [and resurrection] and our acceptance of it) contains three kinds of confusion or obscurity. The first concerns the fusion of (four) different meanings of sacrifice, the second, the non-differentiation between the corresponding meanings of "sin", and the third, the weak distinction between, and conception of, the condition of possibility for evils suffered and done (finitude: constitution as a spatial and temporal material being: the ontological) and the evils suffered and done themselves (having to eat, defecate, desire, cause disorder [in oneself, foremost], and die: the ontic). As the meanings of Jesus' sacrifice can be roughly classed as "ergonic" (endergonic and exergonic) and "ransomic" (lutron: the cancellation of karmic retribution), the meanings of "sin" can correspondingly be either "entropic" (evil suffered: correlative of sacrifice as exergonic especially) or "karmic" (evil done: correlative of the legalistic conception of sacrifice as a ransom), while the defecative (scapegoat) type of sacrifice can be seen as an additional correlate of the entropic concept of sin (the entropic excess in ourselves, our "sin", being carried away by Jesus as the scapegoat). Paul's Roman Letter is used here to illustrate this "confusion" in regard to the meaning of "sin", or the simultaneous presence of the two meanings in his conception of it.

Make no mistake about it, the goal of Christianity is the attainment of eternal life, i.e. the negation of human finitude (temporo-spatial delimitation). toiV men kaq'upomonhn ergou agaqou doxan kai timhn kai afqarsian zhtousin zwhn aiwnion, "[God's righteousness, meaning: the eternally conserved order] to them who, by patient continuance in good work, seek glory [doxan] and honour and immortal, eternal life." (Roman, 2, 7) Good work (ergon agathon) here would correspond to minor salvation ("good works" refer to those contributing to the order of the soul, peace of mind) leading to major salvation (Eternity in the Source). Much of Paul's condemnatory list in Roman 1. 18 - 32 seem to consist in those afflicted with disorder in the soul -- they are not making proper preparation for the end (salvation after death or after history): homosexuality, unrighteousness, wickedness, vanity, etc., these are bad works and are regarded by him as signs of the disorder of the soul or of society (a-politea to use Plato's manner of speaking), i.e. of the absence of minor salvation which thus blocks the path to major salvation. Repentance would then be the restoration of minor salvation and the re-opening of the path toward major salvation.

The first problem is that, in Paul's legalistic conception of sin, through the negation correlative of it -- repentance as the acceptance of divine self-sacrifice which clears up "sin" (the disorder of the soul, "injustice" or un-righteousness [adikia]) -- there is a certain failure in distinguishing clearly between the condition of possibility for evils suffered and done and these evils themselves. (This hangs together with the fact that, amongst the second mode salvational traditions, the role of this "repentance" or "clearance of sin" is occupied by one's own achievement of "enlightenment" (vision of the Good, Nibbana, comprehension of the Dao) which is a more realistic manner of the negation of finitude and assurance of Eternity; and that, later in the first mode, this enlightenment can be given too through the Grace of an Other: the gnosis given, as in Christian gnosticism.) ...agnown oti to crhston tou qeou eiV metanoian se agei, "...not knowing that the goodness [chreston, usefulness?] of God leadeth thee to repentance [metanoian: change of mind]?" (Roman, 2, 4) Is salvation the negation of sin (evil done to disrupt order) or the negation of the condition of possibility for sin (finitude)? Of course the latter. But the use of "repentance" tends to create the impression that it is about the negation of evils done only (especially for the modern mind). Now this makes sense if the "sin" implied here is taken as meaning "original sin", i.e. a symbolization for finitude. But the manner of the clearance of this sin, sacrifice in the legalistic sense of ransom or compensation and the "change of mind" to accept it as one's own, and the countless imageries of interpersonal relationship ("God gets angry at the sinners who do not repent, i.e. accept Christ's sacrifice"; "God will punish them"), make it seem that the New Testament writers were confusing "original (ontological) sin" (finitude) with the ordinary, ontic offenses (ontic sin: "bad things" done that disrupt order; "bad karma"). Sacrifice then clears sin in the manner of evening out dis-equilibrium between excessive pleasures on one side and deficient pleasures on the other: the legalistic meaning of Jesus as ransom. God's judgment in Roman 2. 8, 2. 9, and 2. 16 reflects the confusion between the ontological condition of possibility and the ontic possibility. toiV de ex eriqeiaV kai apeiqousi thi alhqeiai peqoumenoiV de thi adikiai orgh kai qumoV, "[God's] anger and wrath unto them who are contentious, do not obey the truth, obey un-righteousness [adikia: things disrupting order]." (R. 2. 8) God's punishment (justice, revenge) as equilibrium-restoration. qliyiV kai stenocwria epi pasan yuchn anqropou tou katergazomenou to kakon, Ioudaiou te prwton kai EllhnoV, "Tribulation and anguish [stress?] upon all souls of human that doeth evil, first the Jews and then the Greeks." (R. 2. 9) This interpersonal imagery is of equilibrium-restoring, just like the transformation of Ancestral Ghost's anger from ergonic (He will eat us to negate His hunger) to legalistic ("revenging", "getting pay-back" on his own term if proper sacrifices were not made to even out the indebtedness to him). en hmerai ote krinei o qeoV ta krupta twn anqrwpwn kata to euaggelion mou dia Cristou Ihsou, "In the day when God judges the hidden things of humans according to my gospel through Jesus Christ." (R. 2. 16) Any debt un-accounted for (krupta, "hidden things, secrets") will be accounted for (evened out) in the last days. This legalistic meaning of sacrifice (ransom, compensation, precisely "Ausgleiche zu suchen") derives recently from the experience of (the violation of) the covenant and remotely from (the linearization of) the experience of karma.

In Paul there is also the transformation of the meaning of Law (e.g. ten commandments) into a legalistic sense. osa o nomoV legei toiV en twi nomwi lalei. ina pan stoma fraghi kai upodikoV [brought to trial] genhtai paV o kosmoV twi qewi. "what soever the law saith [it saith] to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole cosmos be brought to trial before God." (R. 3. 19) The law were originally pronounced, during the Sinaic Revelation, as the guide to keep order in the community/ soul. That was still the cosmological mode of maintaining harmonious relationship with the cosmos (existence in the present under God, corresponding to the Chinese existence in the present under Heaven, the Mandate of Heaven). But Paul is here only comprehending it in the ontic way, like ordinary laws of societal justice (mechanisms for maintaining social equilibrium/ order) so that the eschatological, salvational end of history becomes symbolized by the ontic ("thinghood" and anthropomorphic) imagery of a "judgment", a "trial" -- the maintenance of the order of cosmos-society is degraded to a "revenge by God." Hence also: mh adikoV o qeoV o epiferwn thn orghn, "Is God unjust who bringeth forth anger?" (R. 3. 5) God gets "angry" at us for not keeping order among ourselves. Salvation confusedly understood as obtainable by the negation of "sin" in the ontic sense of "bad work", the knowledge of the divine consequently becomes the "knowledge of sin", which the law helps to mediate for us: dia gar nomou epignwsiV amartiaV, "for through the law [there is] knowledge of sin" (R. 3. 20). Paul here therefore becomes unable to express the ontological (condition of possibility: order) save with the ontic (the means for the maintenance of order: a trial, suppression of conducts producing disorder).

But then Paul is able to express the second sense of "sin" based on the experience of entropy and its negation (through conservation, which is at once the conservation of material and of order: the undifferentiated type) and which corresponds to the exergonic meaning of Jesus' sacrifice, and he consequently successfully comprehends the ontological level, the condition of possibility for evils suffered and done: the constitution in materiality, as flesh. Body, or flesh, obviously belongs to the realm subject to entropic process: the realm of matter, of material bodies which are born and then disintegrate. Paul's conception of the spirit (pneuma), of the soul, of the spiritual life (the spiritual way of being) here, is of the same type as Plato's (in Phaedo): a way of being not subject to the process of genesis and destruction, of entropy. The coincidence is of course natural, the inevitable consequence of the dualistic view about the separability of "soul" (the compactification of consciousness-metabolism-breath into a functional entity) from the body that it animates, the view that issues naturally and structurally from a functional understanding of life. But whereas Plato is able to give a description of the nature of soul (psyche) such that it becomes intelligible why the soul is not subject to the entropic process to which things material are subjected -- i.e. the soul is a "form", like the laws of nature -- Paul does not provide one. He's not an eidetic philosopher-phenomenologist.

8.2. ο γαρ νομος του πνευματος της ζωης εν Χριστωι Ιησου ηλευθερωσεν με απο του νομου της αμαρτιας και του θανατου

"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath freed me from the law of sin and death."

Sin (hamartia) is that tendency in material being toward disorder, toward disintegration, hence toward death; and the law (nomos) of sin, of flesh, is the law of this tendency, what we know today as the second law of thermodynamics. (8.13. ει γαρ κατα σάρκα ζητε μέλλετε αποθνηισκειν, ει δε πνεύματι τας πραξεις του σωματος θανατουτε, ζήσεσθε. "For if ye live according to the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify [i.e. make dead] the deeds of the body, ye shall live.") God is of "spirit" only, not subject to this tendency, this law of entropy; He is pure conservation of order: hence:

8.7. το φρόνημα της σαρκος εχθρα εις θεον, τωι γαρ νομωι του θεου ουχ υποτάσσεται, ουδε γαρ δύναται

"Because the mind of flesh is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."

In a passage in the Galatians (5, 15 - 21), Paul expresses a view that is virtually identical to Plato's in Phaedo, that the indulgence in bodily pleasures results in the state of the disorder of the soul (or spirit), the state of its equilibrium with the body, which entails that it cannot be saved, that it cannot return to the realm of the spirit that is not subject to the entropic disintegration (death) which is the fate of all things material. This is the most manifest evidence for the root of the experience of "sin" in the experience of entropy.

I say, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would... Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, impurity, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, jealousy, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

λεγω δε πνευματι περιπατειτε και επιθυμιαν σαρκος ου μη τελέσητε. η γαρ σαρξ επιθυμει κατα του πνεύματος το δε πνευμα κατα της σαρκος, ταυτα δε αντικειται αλληλοις ινα μη α αν θέλητε ταυτα ποιητε. φανερα δε εστιν τα εργα της σαρκος ατινα εστιν, μοιχεια, πορνεια, ακαθαρσια, ασέλγεια, ειδωλολατρεια, φαρμακεια, εχθραι, ερεις, ζηλος, θυμοι, εριθειαι, διχοστασιαι, αιρέσεις, φθονοι, μεθαι, κωμοι και τα ομοια τουτοις, α προλέγω υμιν, καθως και προειπον οτι οι τα τοιαυτα πράσσοντες βασιλειαν θεου ου κληρονομήσουσιν.

So God saves us by sending us Jesus: "justice" (or "righteousness": dikaiosune) means order, but eternally conserved through God's nature: 8.4. ινα το δικαίωμα του νόμου πληρωθηι εν ημιν τοις μη κατα σάρκα περιπατουσιν αλλα κατα πνευμα "That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." Of course, our being saved depends on our continuous effort to maintain the salvational state: not caring for the material body whose order is subject to disintegration (not walking according to the body) but for the soul, whose order is now eternally conserved, after its transformation by (incorporation of) Jesus' spirit. That is, we need to practice asceticism, of which Paul's conception is in fact better developed in details by Plato (Phaedo). When you are saved, when you are in the salvational state, "God's spirit lives in you." 8. 9. υμεις δε ουκ εστε εν σαρκι αλλα εν πνευματι, ειπερ πνευμα θεου οικει εν υμιν. 8. 10. ει δε Χριστος εν υμιν, το μεν σωμα νεκρον δια αμαρτιαν το δε πνευμα ζωη δια δικαιοσύνην. "And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." This is salvation: you don't disintegrate along with your body (the order of your material body) in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, but conserve your order forever (in your soul) in accordance with "justice" or "righteousness" (that undifferentiated meaning of conservation as conservation of order). And Jesus' spirit as from God's spirit acts as that conservative force: in accordance with the exergonic meaning of Jesus' sacrifice. 8. 11. ει δε το πνευμα του εγειραντος τον Ιησουν εκ νεκρων οικει εν υμιν, ο εγειρας τον Χριστον εκ νεκρων ζωοποιησει και τα θνητα σώματα υμων δια του ενοικουντος αυτου πνεύματος εν υμιν. "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also make live your dead bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you."

Because Christianity is the first mode (salvation through Grace of an Other), the clearance of sin is only possible through the forgiving Grace ("gift") of God Himself. dikaiosumenoi dwrean thi autou cariti dia thV apolutrwsewV thV en Caristwi Ihsou "being made just freely (dorean, as a gift) by his grace through deliverance (apolutrosis, "loosening off", i.e. from "debt" [Schuld]) which is in Grace of Jesus." (R. 3. 24) The whole formula of Christianity is then encapsulated in R. 3. 25, where, however, all the different senses of sin and Jesus' sacrifice are confused together: on (whom -- Christ) proeqeto o qeoV ilasthrion (God put forth Christ [which is Himself] as propitiatory [i.e. sacrifice in the sense of endergony or ransom/ debt-paying, making possible order/ righteousness/ minor salvation or the karma-free state as the path toward major salvation) dia thV pistewV en twi autou aimati (through the belief in his blood; the restoration of righteousness or order within the soul is through the belief in, i.e. the acceptance of, the sacrificial blood of Christ) eiV endexin thV dikaiosunhV autou (toward the "index" of his righteousness: the blood of Christ is the "index" of God's righteousness/ eternally conserved order/ justice) dia thn paresin twn progegonotwn amarthmatwn (through the forgiveness of sins of the past: the index of God's righteousness is identical to forgiveness [paresis], i.e. clearance of past sin/ unrighteousness/ disorder: the cancellation of the karma mechanism). Since God's self-sacrifice is the restoration of order, the index of this order is identical with the long-suffering of God through which He clears our sin (R. 3. 26): en thi anochi tou qeou, proV thn endeixin thV dikaiosunhV autou, "in the long-suffering of God, for the showing (index) of his righteousness": the legalistic (karmic) meaning again.

(D) The evolution of the first mode seems more complicated than that of the second mode. The derivation of the legalistic aspect of the structure ("formula") of Christian salvation can be had on two different paths: one as the direct product of the Yahwist eschatology of the prophets, the other as via the "karmic thinking" within the Hellenic mystery religions but which was prevalent and could be present among all peoples as the thermodynamic structure of the cosmos came more into focus in human consciousness after the decline of tribal animism. Here the mystery religions could diverge into the Christian first mode or the Orphic second mode. In any case, the legalistic meaning of "sin" and Jesus' sacrifice seems like a merger of the experience of the covenant and that of karma. That much of this and the aforementioned thermodynamic root of the experience embodied in Christianity (the functional experience of entropy) does not seem to be present in the mind of contemporary Christians is due to the fact that the contemporary experience of Christianity has been so distorted away from its original experiential content -- and the latest, e.g. the Evangelical Protestantism, the farthest away. But when one seeks deeply into the reason why a contemporary Christian is a Christian -- other than the base motive of desiring to be "superior" to others, the usual reason of the overwhelming experience of loving Grace, of being forgiven for one's sin so as to be ensured of eternal life, and the consequent confidence in this life -- one can still find, buried in their unconscious, the idea of the necessary continuation of the "self" and the karmic fear of retribution for one's (necessary, unavoidable) moral faults that may take effect even on one's continued self after death. While the experience of entropic disintegration as related by Paul above has vanished, the other experience of the purpose of Christ's sacrifice as the cancellation of the karmic mechanism of (God's) retribution altogether, just as Nibbana, still remains.¹

Footnotes:

1. This analysis of the structure of Christianity is not complete, for, later, the study of Orphism in particular and Hellenic mystery religions in general will shed considerable light on the origin of this structure. Although the structure of Christianity can be derived entirely from the internal evolution of the Yahweh religiousness of Israel, it seems that this structure owes in actual historical circumstances its origination in part to the Hellenic milieu of mystery religions (including Orphism).