From the Editor
Early in my experience as a theologian at a graduate school focusing on the intersection of theology and psychology, I turned to the aesthetic theology of Arvo Pärt. His tintinnabuli compositions provided a musically embodied language for sin, grace, and the call into the goodness of the life of God. Theologian, Kathryn Tanner, articulates this invitation well,
Because we have been created to have such a close relationship with the very goodness of God, with a nature that requires attachment to God to what it is supposed to be, grace is necessary to complete our nature, to add to it what it requires for its own excellent operations and well-being. Receiving God’s grace becomes a requirement for simply being a human being fully alive and flourishing (Christ the Key, 60).
This is a beautiful vision of the Christian life to teach and embrace, yet I realized early on that the doctrine of sin, in particular, was inherently complicated because it had often been misused and misconstrued, causing emotional harm to many of my students. As theologian Alistair McFadyen argues, sin language has often been discounted, trivialized, or ridiculed in part because many believe “that sin is a language of blame and condemnation (encouraged by its flourishing in religious enclaves where it is used to whip up artificial and disproportionate senses of personal guilt and shame…)” (Bound to Sin, 3). McFadyen fears that if sin language is ignored Christians will not be able develop a robust language for sin or grace in our spiritual lives, and as a result will not be able to nurture and engage the baptismal directive to resist and stand up to evil and injustice in the world. For theologians, such as Tanner and McFadyen, to misunderstand or ignore the relationship between sin and grace undermines not only Christian worship, but also the call of the gospel to live justly, mercifully, and humbly with God and neighbor.
With this in mind, I now begin my lectures on sin with Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (for Cello and Piano, 1978), a musical icon of how God’s grace holds us in enduring love even when we wander far from our home in God. This music invites each one of us into participation in God’s goodness and life, and as the great Christmas hymn proclaims, “His law is love and his gospel is peace. / Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother, / And in his name all oppression shall cease.”
Blessings in this season and in 2021!
Chelle Stearns
Chelle Stearns is Associate Professor of Theology at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.
