Does this “word of grace” toward slavery (or other wrongs) then mean that restoration has been accomplished or that restoration is made possible but still needs to be carried forth by those bearing that grace?
Does this make restoration/debt absolvement one dimensional (emphasizing that all sin is soley against God instead of chiefly against God)?

One of the things i have always been taught is that sin is missing the mark. Jesus hit the mark. Humans cannot hit the mark in themselves and need another source for righteousness. Union with Christ involves being connected with a new source… think vine and branches. redemption/sanctification comes through the flow of that new source. Re new perspectives: I think what some of the new perspectives teach is that God gave humans a divine vocation… to image God, govern the earth, reflect God’s character, do justice… etc…but we were not able to do that because of our human nature. God made the Covenant with Abraham and God kept his side of the bargain but we did not… which is why the people of God were exiled. Sooo God came in human form, the word made flesh, and kept our side of the Covenant too. Now because we are united with Christ… we are sourced in the one who did keep the Covenant. Hidden in Christ, God is satisfied because the Covenant is not broken. my take on it all.

joanne, Anderson’s thesis is not about this union with Christ dimension of sin, though. He’s more into the connection of works and faith and how sin works into that. There is a big theme in this book about correlation of debts and merits, with it being very clear that Judaism (and earliest Christianity) had something like this at work but God was bountifully gracious and that the Christian gospel is not a zero-game balancing act.

Without discounting human pride and the desire to save ourselves via a variety of ways, I think the internalization of sin to solely pride is a dangerous reduction. Sin, while it has shades of internality and individual culpability, is primarily communal and relational. With sin as debt we can become navel-gazers, ignoring that as a people we have a purpose to fulfill within the Covenant toward outsiders. *That* was Israel’s sin…not living as God’s people for the sake of the Gentiles. So, I don’t think the new perspective is wrong in guiding us away from the hackneyed “works righteousness” formulated during the Reformation and read back into Galatians and the Gospels.

Scot,
With joanne, I’m wondering about the “missing the mark” picture as well as the (NT?) concept of sin as a power, without and within, that is active. I guess this concept of sin as an active power seeking to dominate is also present as early as the story of Cain (“sin is crouching at the dooor”), but is Anderson dealing with this at all or just dealing with it later?

John Frye’s concern that “sin as debt” leads to navel-gazing, sems not to take into account the Lord’s Prayer – “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Here we see debt-language also encompasses the horizontal (relational, communal) and not just the vertical or individual-and-God. Indeed, without the communal, there is no vertical.

LOL! Happy accidental typo. I was not (intentionally) trying to tell the Cain story as a spooooooky story about sin! Free new sunday school idea, folks.

T, Anderson’s book is interested in the two major ideas of sin in the OT: load and debt. The latter term is then traced through history. It is not a complete study of sin but of the metaphor of debt.
Yes, the point about the Lord’s Prayer is most significant: Jesus conceived of sin as debt-indebtedness to God, and he also emphasized “rewards” (the other side of debt).

Bill (#6),
Thanks for that push back. I wasn’t clear. I am not denying that the NT uses “debt” language. That is one of Anderson’s key observations according to Scot’s review, that is, the shift is from “load” (OT) to “debt” (NT). I am concerned with what the Reformers did with “debt” language in reaction to Catholicism’s entrenched “merit” theology. I agree with the NPP that the Reformers erred in reading back into the NT the issues they were fighting in the 16th century. Remember Luther’s entrenched navel gazing? I still think that Scot is onto something in observing that “sin” today is tied to a certain view of anthropology. I think Jesus’ life of grace as evidenced in his meal-time associations reveals not in the least a “book-keeping” God.

I do think something very important is lost when our concept of sin as a legal/accounting problem to fix (for a specific debt or crime) eclipses the functional concept (i.e., a load weighing us down, preventing us from fulfilling our intended purpose; a power that dominates; a thing that “entangles” runners).
The legal/accounting concept has a straightforward solution: payment/forgiveness, but that solution doesn’t really address the fact that we are still unable to fulfill our purpose as humans in this life. The “burden” of sin (in the OT and NT) includes but is much more than legal guilt or an accounting shortfall. It’s our inability to function properly. It is a mutation of our DNA that prevents proper human function in life. We can’t do what we want and need to do as humans. We need help in living properly, not just passing the audit down the road.

Scot,
I’m reading Roy Gane’s Cult and Character right now. You might find it interesting, if you haven’t already read it. Very interesting, and very detailed, look at Yom Kippur and the associated sacrifices in Leviticus.
James