Sin--No More? A Feminist Re-Visioning
of a Christian Theology of Sin

There is a largely unquestioned consensus in North Atlantic feminist Christian theology against speaking of sin either as a ruptured relationship or refusal of a transcendent God’s will for humankind. In contrast, this article explores what a feminist theology of sin might look like, if it is rooted in humanity’s dynamic relationship to a radically transcendent gift-giving God. In what follows, Daphne Hampson’s “After Christianity” exemplifies the position that Christianity’s classical symbolic order is incompatible with feminist views of selfhood and equitable gender relations. Second, Hampson’s claims are contested by the view that a radically transcendent God can be a source of human empowerment, as shown in Kathryn Tanner’s theology in “Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity.” Finally, the author demonstrates how Tanner’s concept of sin as “blockage” or “blindness” to God’s gift-giving, once “rhetorically re-dressed” in feminist terms, can overcome the gender troubles with the classical Protestant paradigm of sin as pride.