Adverb or Noun
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23 ESV
Sinned – Adverb: a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb or a word group, expressing a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, cause, degree, etc., that is, an addition to a verb.
Noun: a word (other than a pronoun) used to identify any of a class of people, places, or things (common noun), or to name a particular one of these (proper noun), that is, something existing in and of itself.
Sin: “In the original sense of New Testament Greek, ‘sin’ is a failure in missing the mark, primarily in spear throwing. Hebrew hata ‘sin’ originates in archery and literally refers to missing the ‘gold’ at the center of a target, but hitting the target. Relating to the Christian definition, the gold center of the target could be seen as God’s commandment for righteousness. To sin is to miss our mark of living in a virtuous manner, not only failing to meet God’s commandment but acting against our own interests by engaging the world in an immoral manner. To sin is to fall short of our potential, missing the mark of our highest self and best quality of life.”[1]
Is sin a noun or an adverb? The answer is not trivial. “There is an awareness in many religions of a blindly working guilt, of sin as a situation in which man is begotten, of sin which is involved in man’s very being and stands far above the ability of the individual man. Sin is not conceived as something that happens, but as something that is and obtains regardless of man’s relationship to the gods. ‘Since we are what we ought not to be, we also necessarily do what we ought not to do. Therefore we need a complete transformation of our mind and nature. That is the new birth.’”[2]
When religious believers speak of being born again, they may unconsciously employ the idea that there is something wrong with their original existence in the creation. They need to be fixed, to be reconstituted as something else. Their “natural” state of being must be remade into a “spiritual” state so that they can live according to God’s instructions. This, however, is not how the prophets viewed the problem. “ . . To the prophets, sin is not an ultimate, irreducible or independent condition, but rather a disturbance in the relationship between God and man; it is an adverb not a noun, a condition that can be surmounted by man’s return and God’s forgiveness.”[3]
If you are a “sinner,” does that mean you were born with a broken relationship to the Creator? Is Pedro Calderón de la Barc, the Spanish playwright, correct, when he wrote “Man’s greatest sin is being born”? My friend, Giorgia, says, “Every Italian knows he is guilty. He was born guilty. He just doesn’t know why.” Do you suppose Pedro and Giorgia think sin is a noun, something that exists independently of any action? Do you? Are your sins hanging out there in divine space, entries in God’s accounting book, plus and minus integers? Do they exist apart from your present relation? Or is sin an adverb, a qualifier of an action, whether for good or ill, so that apart from your present action, the adverbial “sin” doesn’t exist? Do you need to be “born again” in the sense of having a new nature, or do you need the relationship with God repaired because you and God do something about it? Is sin static or dynamic?
For a long, long time Western religion has taught that sin is a noun. It is a state of existence, a condition either of inheritance or propensity. But if Heschel is right, this idea is unknown in prophetic tradition. What matters is the currentrelationship. If it’s broken, it needs repair. If it’s not broken, it should be celebrated. “All have sinned” is a declaration of relationship disturbance, not birth defects.
Topical Index: sin, noun, adverb, relationship, Pedro Calderón de la Barc, Romans 3:23
[1] https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/bible-study/what-is-sin-5-things-that-may-surprise-you.html
[2] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol. 2, pp. 8-9.
[3] Ibid., p. 9.
