Formed sin

In his classic Patterns in Comparative Religion , Mircea Eliade notes the doubleness of water symbolism across religions.  The natural properties of water provide the basis for the view that water is both deadly dangerous and life-giving: “In whatever religious framework it appears, the function of water is shown to be the same; it disintegrates, abolishes forms, ‘washes away sins’ – at once purifying and giving new life.”

“Abolishing form” and “washing away sins” – it’s an arresting juxtaposition.  Sin apparently takes form , and the reason water cleanses is because it dismantles and dissolves the form that sin has taken, so that a new form can emerge.

Two lines of thought suggest themselves: First, it seems obvious that sin has form, often an empirically accessible one; adultery is evident in sights, sounds, smells, etc.  (Sins of the mind don’t have empirical form, of course.)  But how is that compatible with a rigidly privatio view of evil.  If evil is ontologically nothing, how does it take form?

Second, Eliade’s comment highlights the structural and institutional dimensions of Christian baptism.  Baptism doesn’t just wash away surface dirt, but unforms a sinful form of life, dissolving it in the grave of Christ, so that a new life can be formed by the Spirit who hovers over the waters.  But it also points to the wider import of the gospel, which confronts and subverts principalities and powers and brings them into captivity to Christ.  To baptize, it seems, is to recognize the reality of structural evil.