S OBORNICITY
self-contradiction that manifests itself in unjust and
oppressive relationships among genders, races, or
classes of society. Sin is defined primarily in social
terms, but individuals commit sin by participating in
rather than resisting oppressive structures and social
systems. While liberationist accounts of sin prophetic-
ally disclose and critique structures of oppression, they
also strain human solidarity in sin; in so doing, they
risk demonizing one portion of humankind while too
easily exonerating others.
A third strategy for reconstructing sin locates the
doctrine within Christology. K. BARTH pioneered this
path, by defining Jesus Christ as the ontological basis
of human beings. According to Barth, human beings
discover the true nature of sin by looking at the mirror
of Jesus Christ, in whom sin is exposed, judged, and
overcome. Here one discovers sins essence as the
fateful attempt to live for oneself rather than for God
and for one another. For Barth, sin is an impossible
possibility in so far as it has been already vanquished
in Christ. Nonetheless, sin is real, since humanity seeks
again and again to negate its total dependence on God.
Barth rejects the notion of inherited original sin, on the
grounds that it undercuts personal responsibility and
guilt for ones actions. Nonetheless, he affirms univer-
sal human solidarity in sin; we are all in Adam in so far
as Gods judgement against this first man falls equally
upon all of us. While Barths Christological approach
highlights well the theological dimension of sin as
opposition to God, his analysis can at the same time
appear as too abstract and remote from actual human
existence to capture the existential realism of sin.
In the wake of these diverse efforts to reconstruct
the doctrine of sin, little consensus exists today in
Christian theology about the future direction of the
doctrine. Some theologians continue to defend human-
kinds universal bondage to sin, by focusing on the
social reproduction of sin through culturallinguistic
structures that human beings inherit and perpetuate
through their own agency. Others advocate jettisoning
the traditional fall narrative altogether in favour of a
process or tragic view of creation, in which vulnerabil-
ity to sin and evil is built into the matrix of creation.
Still others focus on exposing a host of actual sins, be
they forms of political, economic, or ecological exploit-
ation and violence. For those who seek to defend the
doctrine of original sin today, the perennial task
remains: how to maintain the realism of humankinds
bondage to sin, while also retaining a sense of human
agency and moral responsibility. Even more, the chal-
lenge remains to construe sin as a grace-dependent
concept, that is, one which leads not to despair but
rather to greater hope and trust in the universal salvific
will of God in Christ.
See also FREE WILL.
K. Barth, Church Dogmatics (T&T Clark, 19568),
IV/12.
475
S. Jones, Feminist Theory and Christian Theology:
Cartographies of Grace (Fortress Press, 2000).
D. H. Kelsey, Whatever Happened to the Doctrine of
Sin?, Theology Today 50:2 (1993), 16978.
A. McFadyen, Bound to Sin: Abuse, Holocaust and the
Christian Doctrine of Sin (Cambridge University Press,
2000).
I. McFarland, The Fall and Sin in The Oxford Handbook
of Systematic Theology, ed. J. Webster, K. Tanner, and
I. Torrance (Oxford University Press, 2007), 14059.
R. Williams, Sin and Evil in Christian Theology: An
Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks, ed. P. C. Hodg-
son and R. H. King, updated edn (Fortress Press,
1994), 16895.
J OY A N N M C D O U G A L L
S OBORNICITY Sobornicity comes from the Russian noun
sobornost (adjective sobornyj), which means co-
operation or togetherness. The concept was intro-
duced to ECCLESIOLOGY by Russian poet and theologian
A. Khomyakov (180460). In Khomyakovs view, sobor-
nyj is the correct Slavic translation of the Greek word
Catholic in the NICENE CREED, and it connotes universal
not in the geographic, territorial sense, but as a perfect,
organic fellowship of redeemed people united by faith
and love. In Khomyakovs words, The unity of the
church follows of necessity from the unity of God; for
the church is not a multitude of people in their separ-
ated individualities, but the oneness of a divine grace
indwelling in reasonable creatures who freely submit
themselves thereto (Church II.3). Khomyakov does not
narrowly believe that sobornicity is experienced in the
historical reality of the Orthodox Church, but rather as
belonging to the image of the Church which is compre-
hensible to the mind.
Khomyakovs ecclesiology was influenced by the
German Catholic theologian J. A. Mohlers Unity in
the Church (1825). In turn, Mohler (17961838) him-
self responded to and was influenced by Protestant
theologian F. SCHLEIERMACHER. Khomyakovs and Moh-
lers views have influenced todays ecclesiology of com-
munion, an ecclesiology with a proven potential to
foster the ecumenical dialogue not only among Cath-
olics and Orthodox but with Protestants as well. Sobor-
nyj also made its way into the Romanian Orthodox
translations of the Nicene Creed (as soborniceasca) to
express the catholicity of the Church. Romanian Ortho-
dox theologian D. STANILOAE took the theology of sobor-
nost one step further when in 1971 he introduced the
concept of open sobornicity as a tool meant to foster
ECUMENISM.
Reflecting the patristic tradition, Staniloae believed
that during PENTECOST the HOLY SPIRIT infuses a common
way of thinking in those who come to believe, making
them understand one another despite all the differ-
ences of expression which may exist among them. This
common way of thinking symbolizes the unity in diver-
sity that the Church should reflect, because those who
S OCIAL G OSPEL
have received the same understanding preserved their
distinctive languages. In his concept of open soborni-
city, Staniloae combined three elements: (1) Khomya-
kovs sobornost as a communion of persons and a unity
in diversity, (2) the Pauline idea (1 Cor. 12:1920) that
the variety of gifts in the Church complement one
another in order to satisfy every spiritual need of
the faithful and of the entire Church, and (3) spiritual
intercommunion a practice promoting common
prayer, study, and action (but not Eucharistic hospital-
ity) among the Orthodox and other Christians.
In open sobornicity every theological system is
welcomed as offering some valid theological insight
and contributing to a better understanding of the
whole revealed divine reality and of the whole human
reality. New ways to express the divine reality appear as
complementary rather than contradictory. Through
openness to others, ones understanding is enriched,
and a more symphonic, although not uniform, under-
standing of the divine reality is achieved. Nevertheless,
the weaknesses of each system must be criticized,
because no system is capable of comprehending the
entire divine reality.
D. Staniloae, The Holy Spirit and the Sobornicity of the
Church in Theology and the Church (St Vladimirs
Seminary Press, 1980), 4572.
L. Turcescu, Eucharistic Ecclesiology or Open Soborni-
city? in Dumitru Staniloae: Tradition and Modernity
in Theology, ed. L. Turcescu (Center for Romanian
Studies, 2002), 83103.
L U C I A N T U RC E S C U
S OCIAL G OSPEL In the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, movements for Christian Socialism arose
and thrived in England, Germany, Switzerland, and
several other industrializing nations. The American
version arose in the early 1880s; it generally favoured
decentralized economic democracy instead of State
socialism; and it came to be called the Social Gospel.
For thirty years this movement was usually called
applied Christianity or social Christianity. It created
key ecumenical organizations in the mid-1880s, swept
into leading seminaries and several denominations in
the 1890s, and became a dominant religious movement
in the first decade of the twentieth century. From 1897
to 1900, a radical Christian community in Muscogee
County, Georgia, called the Christian Commonwealth
Colony published a magazine named The Social
Gospel. By 1910 this term was used to designate the
movement for social Christianity as a whole, which was
then at the height of its influence and expectation.
The Social Gospel was not novel for its promotion of
social causes, as the USA was the site of numerous
anti-war, anti-slavery, temperance, and other Christian
reform movements before the Progressive Era. What
made the Social Gospel novel was its theology of social
salvation, which depended on the idea of social
structure, which was itself a product of the distinct
social consciousness of the Progressive Era.
Only with the Social Gospel movement did Churches
in the USA begin to say they had a mission to trans-
form the structures of society in the direction of social
justice. If there was such a thing as social structure,
salvation had to have a social dimension. Not coinci-
dentally, the Social Gospel, social salvation, social
ethics, socialism, sociology, social Darwinism, and
the term social justice all arose at the same time,
along with trade unionism, urbanization, corporate
capitalism, and the ecumenical movement (see ECUMEN-
ISM). Theologically, the Social Gospel was based on the
idea that personal salvation and social salvation were
inextricably interlinked. In the Social Gospel, society
became the subject of redemption; Christianity had a
mission to transform society as a whole.
The Social Gospel was fed by the wellsprings of eight-
eenth-century ENLIGHTENMENT humanism, the nineteenth-
century Home Missions movement, and the post-Civil
War activism of the evangelical and liberal anti-slavery
movements. Most of its early leaders were products of
the evangelical Home Missions movement, which
sought to extend and deepen the Protestant character
of the United States. A few were spiritual descendants of
the anti-slavery abolitionists of the 1840s and 1850s.
The Social Gospel took root as a response to the corrup-
tion of the Gilded Age and the rise of industrialization
and urbanization, goaded by reformist writers such as
E. Bellamy (185098), S. Colwell (180072), H. George
(183997), and H. Lloyd (18471903). It took inspir-
ation from the Christian Socialist movement in England
and rode on the back of a rising sociological conscious-
ness and literature.
Above all, the Social Gospel was a response to a
burgeoning labour movement, which blasted the
Churches for doing nothing for poor and working-
class people. Christian leaders judged that it was point-
less to defend Christianity if labour leaders were right
about the indifference of modern Churches to the
struggles of working people.
The Social Gospel and LIBERAL-THEOLOGY movements
were not identical, as some theological conservatives
supported the Social Gospel and some theological lib-
erals did not. In the south of the United States the Social
Gospel tended to be conservative theologically. But the
two movements rose to prominence at the same time in
the north, where they were usually deeply intertwined.
The founders of the Social Gospel were W. Gladden
(18361918), a Columbus, Ohio, Congregational
pastor; R. Ely (18541943), an Episcopalian and Johns
Hopkins University political scientist who co-founded
the American Economic Association in 1885; W. Bliss
(18561926), a Boston Episcopal priest who founded
the Society of Christian Socialists in 1889; F. Peabody
(18471936), a Unitarian and Harvard University pro-
fessor who founded the discipline of social ethics; and
476