Volume 65 (2008): 368-381

Theology Today

RACHEL SOPHIA BAARD

Responding to the Kairos of HIV/AIDS

Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to contribute to the development of a framework for thinking theologically about the kairos of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic by critically retrieving elements of Augustine's hamartiology. Despite a tendency to associate sin too easily with sexuality, Augustine's hamartiology can provide helpful theological resources for responding to HIV/AIDS, for two reasons: it transcends moral individualism by locating individual choices in a broader reality of corporate moral responsibility, and it never understands sin without the "higher" reality of divine grace. As such, an Augustinian-type doctrine of sin, adapted to allow for greater structural focus than might be encountered in a classical world-negating form of Augustinianism, may help to shape a moral vision that can counter a judgmental moralism and ground the church's moral responses to HIV/AIDS. The crisis of forty million people living with HTV and eight thousand people dying of AIDS every day constitutes a new kairos moment for the church, globally and particularly in the Majority World.1 The concept of kairos indicates an awareness that a particular moment in time is filled with revelatory meaning in which the church is called to reexamine its theology and praxis. Not to respond to the kairos of HIV/AIDS would simply be irresponsible and would, as South African theologian Tinyiko Maluleke remarks, be a missed opportunity.2 There

Rachel Sophia Baard teaches in the Center for Liberal Education at Villanova University and is a research associate in the Department of Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa (SUSTEN). Her current research project focuses on the problems and possibilities inherent in Christian notions of sin as it relates to HIV/AIDS. 1. For the most recent statistics on HIV/AIDS, see the UNAIDS reports at http://www .unaids.org. 2. Tinyiko Maluleke, "Towards an fflV/AIDS-Sensitive Curriculum," in HIV/AIDS and the Curriculum: Methods of Integrating HIV/AIDS in Theological Programmes, ed. Musa W. Dube (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2003), 64.

368

|HEE

Responding to the Kairos of HIV/AIDS

369

have been significant efforts from practical theologians and biblical scholars to respond to this kairos but a relative scarcity of efforts to mine the classical doctrinal heritage for insights that can feed the church's response to HIV/AIDS. Thefieldof systematic theology, too, is therefore challenged by New Testament scholar Musa Dube's question: What does it mean to do scholarship in an HIVpositive world?3 What follows is one attempt at doing systematic theology in and for the kairos of HIV/AIDS, with a specific focus on classical doctrinal perspectives on sin. The doctrine of sin has been particularly troublesome with regard to HIV/ AIDS, often taking the form of .moralizing about promiscuity and muttering about just punishment of sinners. In reaction, those Christians who are less inclined to moralize have found it impossible to talk about sin and AIDS at all, thus leaving a gap where a moral vision should be. In short, it is clear that we need to counter the judgmental attitude of some fundamentalist groups, who describe AIDS as God's punishment of sinful people, and instead ground our active responses to HIV/AIDS in a thoughtful, responsible moral vision that goes beyond moralism. My thesis is that such a moral vision may be found in the classical insights of Augustine, despite the associations between sin and sexuality one often encounters in Augustine's writings, primarily because Augustine's thought on sin is grounded in a broad vision of human solidarity and a deep awareness of divine grace. After lifting out a few key elements of the kairos of AIDS, I will attempt not so much a historically accurate interpretation of Augustine's thought as, rather, an effort to put forth an understanding of moral agency largely inspired by Augustine.4

The Kairos of HIV/AIDS

Kairos theology is never content with a faith that is abstract or only concerned with "eternity." Rather, it is deeply concerned about the concrete situation of people and the question of how and where God speaks to and through the people of God in this situation. When South African theologians such as Tinyiko Maluleke and Denise Ackerman speak of HIV/AIDS as a kairos moment facing the church, they are calling the church to do theology in an engaged manner,
3. Verbal communication at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Washington, D.C. 4. For a similar approach to the interpretation of Augustine, see James Wetzel, "The Recovery of Free Agency in the Theology of St. Augustine," Harvard Theological Review 80, no. 1 (1987): 101-25.

370

Rachel Sophia Baard

HBfflffl^i

which means including situational analysis as part of (and not background to) theological analysis, thereby allowing the situation of people to challenge theological assumptions. Some of the key elements of the kairos of HIV/AIDS that challenge theology-as-usual are poverty, racism, gender discrimination, and the stigmatization of HIV-positive individuals. While HIV/AIDS is a worldwide phenomenon that impacts people from all countries, cultures, and socioeconomic classes, it has reached truly epidemic proportions in poorer communities and countries. According to UNAIDS, nearly one-third of the world's HIV-infected people live in countries that pay more in debt and interest than they receive in foreign aid or can spend on public health. Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer, who has extensive experience with the practical realities of HIV/AIDS in the Majority World, argues that poverty is the single most important factor determining outcomes of AIDS treatment. He warns against an overemphasis on personal and cultural factors in the treatment of AIDS (especially when understood in terms of cultural and psychological barriers that result in noncompliance with treatment) and believes that people often opt for traditional cultural remedies because poverty bars them from access to effective medical treatment.5 Furthermore, poverty is also an underlying cause of people's susceptibility to contracting HIV in the first place. This is generally recognized by international agencies such as UNAIDS and the World Health Organization, but according to economist Eileen Stillwagon, this recognition does not necessarily translate into structural responses.6 Instead, she detects a tendency to focus on behavioral changes and a correspondingly insufficient tendency to focus on the issue of poverty as a causal factor in the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In support of her argument for a greater focus on poverty, she points to statistics that indicate that the presence of HIV/AIDS is correlated more with inadequate nutrition and the presence of parasitic diseases that damage the immune system than with levels of sexual promiscuity, which are in fact more or less the same in African societies as in Western societies. Stillwagon's argument is not that of junk science: she does not deny that AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus or that behavior makes a difference, but she simply points out

5. Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the War on the Poor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 149. In coming to this conclusion, Farmer is not disrespectful of local cultural beliefs. His experience with Haitians indicates a complex and fluid way of thinking about disease, in which traditional and Western medical views are not necessarily mutually exclusive (150-51). 6. See Eileen Stillwagon, AIDS and the Ecology of Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), esp. 10-14, 170-97.

Jl^^pbdy]

Responding to the Kairos of HIV/AIDS

371

that the proportionally larger presence of HIV/AIDS in Africa and other poverty-stricken regions of the world despite similar behavioral patterns, calls for a broader response aimed at combating underlying factors such as hunger, illiteracy, and diseases such as malaria. Stillwagon also suggests that international agencies' tendency to focus on the sexual behavior of individuals rather than structural issues might be partially rooted in a stereotypical perspective on African people as sexually promiscuous. She notes a metaphor evocative of nineteenth-century racial science found in the influential work of cultural anthropologists John and Pat Caldwell: the idea of Africans as homo ancestralis, humans presumably focused on lineage rather than spousal bonds and thus prone to a higher rate of sexual partner change. Although this racist metaphor is not repeated in all the works that cite the Caldwells, their conclusions are frequently (and uncritically) cited in other scholarly works that are, in turn, used to support official responses to HIV/AIDS, thus carrying a set of unexamined assumptions into Western responses. Stillwagon writes: The works contain too many broad, unsupported assertions that draw attention to presumed differences in behavior that resonate with Western stereotypes of Africans. They draw attention away from the glaring differences between rich and poor countries in nutrition, clean water, waste disposal, and access to health care that are important factors in disease transmission but are less sexy and lack the culturally confirming ring of racial stereotypes.7 Racist undertones were present in Western perspectives on HIV/AIDS since the onset of the pandemic, as was strikingly illustrated by some early news broadcasts that pictured nearly naked black figures dancing frenetically around fires when purported links between HIV/AIDS and Haiti were discussed.8 Alongside the stereotyping of gays in the West, the stereotyping of peoples of color in the Majority World creates a logic of distancing from the problem of HIV/AIDS. Moreover, as Stillwagon's analysis indicates, even where there is a willingness to do something about HIV/AIDS, stereotypical thinking may subtly shift the focus to measures that do not adequately address the root causes of HIV/AIDS and may in actual fact amount to little more than moralizing. Farmer's and Stillwagon's focus on global structures of inequity and prejudice does not mean that cultural factors should not be taken into account at all as

7. Ibid., 154-55. 8. Paul Farmer, "Haiti and the Geography of Blame," in Culture and AIDS, ed. Douglas A. Feldman (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1990), 69.

372

Rachel Sophia Baard

B H f ^ ^ "

an important element of the kairos of HIV/AIDSjust that they should not be interpreted without reference to economic factors. Without a doubt the most important cultural factor that needs attention is the issue of gender roles. It is not by chance that in sub-Saharan Africa, home to 63 percent of the world's HIVpositive people, about 59 percent of adults living with HTV are women. Globally, gender role expectations render women poorer than men, as well as sexually and physically vulnerable. In Majority World contexts, where poverty is rampant, this vulnerability translates into greater rates of HTV contraction. As even a male theologian such as Tinyiko Maluleke observes, "If we ever doubted the relevance of a whole range of women's theologiesfeminist, womanist and African women'sthe HIV/AIDS epidemic should rouse usfromour slumber."9 A final key element of the kairos of HIV/AIDS that needs mentioning here is the stigmatization of AIDS and of those living with HIV. Stigmatization not only is destructive of community life but also contributes to the silence around, and hence the spread of, the disease. Jaco Dreyer notes that it is useful to distinguish between instrumental and symbolic reasons for HIV/AIDSrelated stigmatization.10 Instrumental reasons refer to issues primarily related to the illness itself, such as its severity, how contagious it is, its prognosis, and the availability of treatment. These instrumental reasons alone would already make AIDS a highly stigmatized disease, especially in the Majority World, where treatment is often unavailable and prognoses are poor. The stigma of HIV/AIDS is further exacerbated by symbolic reasons, in other words, the meanings attached to this disease. This is where the destructiveness of moralism can be seen most clearly. Dreyer notes: Symbolic reasons for HIV/AIDS related stigmatization seem to be particularly important owing to the association of this disease with sexual behavior, the disease's association with homosexuality and drug use, the fact that people living with HIV/AIDS are seen to be responsible for contracting the disease, and moral and religious beliefs that imply that having HIV/AIDS is the result of moral failure and therefore, the HIV/AIDS sufferer deserves his or her punishment.11 In early church documents on HIV/AIDS, the kind of sin-talk one would hear mainly consisted of a focus on sexual morality, laments about "permissive9. Maluleke, 'Towards an HTV/AIDS-Sensitive Curriculum," 67. 10. J. S. Dreyer, "Justice for the Oppressed: The HTV/AIDS Challenge," in Divine JusticeHuman Justice (Pretoria, South Africa: Research Institute for Theology and Religion, UNISA, 2002), 97. 11. Ibid., 98; italics mine.

^^^[Tody]

Responding to the Kairos of HIV/AIDS

373

ness" in society, and even the idea that HIV/AIDS is "God's answer to man's disregard for his moral law," as the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops' Conference put it in 1987.12 Although today such judgmental accounts of HIV/AIDS have to a large extent been replaced by calls for compassion, even these compassionate responses often seem to operate with an easy delineation between guilty and innocent. Sentiments such as those encountered in a document of the July 2005 workshop of the Reformed Ecumenical Council on HIV/AIDS, that "many of those who are today HIV-positive got the virus innocently," or even that "a person's HIV status, whether it is positive or negative, gives no indication of that person's moral choices," while seemingly compassionate, in actual fact reflect an impoverished moral vision.13 The problem is that such responses seem to presuppose that some individuals contract the virus "guiltily" in a way that exonerates the HIV-negative population from a truly compassionate response rooted in human solidarity. Thus, while calls for compassion are undoubtedly important, I do not believe that an individualist hamartiology can ground a very deep-seated compassion. We need a broader, and deeper, moral vision if we are to overcome moralism, address racism and sexism, and analyze structural poverty from a theological perspective.

Moral Possibilities beyond Moralism

In what follows, I briefly introduce the central perspective in the Augustinian moral vision, which provides a helpful counterargument to problematic hamartiological responses to HIV/AIDS. This is then compared and contrasted with a similar perspective found in liberation theology. Finally, the breadth and depth that are present in an Augustinian moral vision are sketched as backdrop to the conclusion that there is much in this vision that can help the church think constructively about its calling as the body of Christ in a world where human beings' bodies are ravaged by HIV/AIDS. Original Sin It might seem strange to turn to Augustine at this point. In the minds of many he is the theologian of sexual shame and body-negating dualism, and this is not an entirely unfair judgment. His view that "the lust that excites the
12. See Michael Czerny, SJ, ed., Catholic Bishops ofAfrica and Madagascar Speak Out on HIV and AIDS (Nairobi, Kenya: Paulines Publications Africa, 2004), 14. 13. Reformed Ecumenical Council, Towards a Theology of Hope in a Time of HTV/AIDS (Workshops of the Reformed Ecumenical Council, Utrecht, Netherlands, July 12-25, 2005), 2, available at http://rec.gospelcom.net.

374

Rachel Sophia Baard

iJBKUHBlToci a y

indecent parts of the body disturbs the whole man," his frequent references to concupiscence as sexuality, and his attribution of the need for sexual privacy to a sense of shame all contributed to an association of shame, sin, and sexuality m much Christian thought14 To the extent that Augustinian sin-talk participates m body-negating thinking that can contribute to moralistic (rather than moral) perspectives on sexuality, its harmful effects on the church's reaction to HIV/AIDS should be recognized However, such a quick verdict does not do justice to the possibilities inherent m the Augustinian perspective on sin Augustine's dualism differed in many respects from the Neoplatonic and especially the Mamchean dualisms of his day, as is illustrated by his statement that "the corruption of the body, which weighs down the soul, is not the cause of the first sin, but its punishment "15 Indeed, he insisted that the attitude that sees the body as sinful is "prompted by human folly, not by divine truth " l6 More important, it is helpful to keep in mind that when it comes to thinking about sin, the classical alternative to Augustine was the stringent moralism of Pelagius and his followers Pelagius held that our condition is still that of Adamnamely, one of neutrality, of having a free and entirely undetermined will, since Adam's fall into sin injured no one but himself17 Sin, in Pelagius's thought, consists not of wrong affections or desires but only of separate acts of the will, depending m each case on the voluntary choice of the person To the modern ear, Pelagius's view might sound perfectly rational and fair unlike Augustine's, his model of moral agency does not place guilt upon anyone based on some fall from grace by mythical ancestors More important, in the Pelagian model and its reincarnation m modernity's perspective on moral autonomy, one is held to account only for one's individual free acts However, I submit that this model is both philosophically suspect and ethically problematic It is philosophically suspect because it is premised upon a view of the self as an isolated individual who has a free will in the sense of being able to choose between the moral and the immoral, as if from a menu Various critics, from Freud to Foucault to feminist theorists, have indicated that such a view of the self is a highly problematic notion, since moral agents are both psychologically opaque to themselves and "constituted within and by regimes, dis-

14 Augustine, The City of God (New York Penguin, 2003), 577 (14 16), 579 (14 18) 15 Ibid, 551 (14 3) 16 Ibid , 554 (14 5) 17 Augustine, The Deeds of Pelagius, in Answer to the Pelagians, vol 1/23 ed John E Rotelle, OSA (Hyde Park, NY New City, 1997), 377 (35 65)

IBIIBlT^da^

Responding to the Kairos of H1V/A1DS

375

courses, and micro practices of power."18 These critiques need not be understood as suggesting a new form of determinism but simply as recognition that whatever agency we exhibit always takes place within a broader reality. Moral agency is therefore not just a matter of individual willing. Apart from being philosophically suspect, the Pelagian model is also ethically problematic because its individual moralism, which leaves the individual "isolated with total and undivided responsibility for what one has done," lends itself all too easily to a blaming metaphor.19 As noted in connection with the stigmatization of HIV/AIDS, such moralism and the resultant blame game constitute a very problematic response to HIV/AIDS. It is not that Augustine did not also recognize individual responsibility for sin: like other Christian theologians before him, Augustine responded to the manifold fatalistic philosophies of his time, in particular Manicheism, with an emphasis on human responsibility for sin. However, in the changed polemical context created by the moralism of Pelagius, and prompted by a variety of factors such as insights drawn from his own life experiences, certain church practices, as well as (sometimes problematic) interpretations of Scripture, Augustine developed a more nuanced vision of moral agency, in which the individual's responsibility is sketched against the larger canvas of corporate human responsibility. A similar, albeit not identical, emphasis on corporate human responsibility can be found in the concept of structural sin espoused by liberation theologies. This concept both adds to and challenges classical Augustinian hamartiology. Structural Sin Archbishop Oscar Romero defined structural sin as "the crystallization of individual egoisms in permanent structures which maintain this sin and exert its power over the great majorities."20 Liberation theology here shares a certain logic with Augustine in that it points to sin as larger than the actions of individuals. Indeed, as Jos Ignacio Gonzlez Faus argues, if it is theologically legitimate to speak of original sin, it is also legitimate to speak of structural
18. Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar, "Introduction: Autonomy Refigured," in Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self, ed. Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 10-11. On a Freudian reading of original sin, see Stephen J. Duffy, "Our Hearts of Darkness: Original Sin Revisited," Theological Studies 49 (1988): 597-622. 19. Alistair McFadyen, Bound to Sin: Abuse, Holocaust, and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 33. 20. Oscar A. Romero, Voice of the Voiceless: The Four Pastoral Letters and Other Statements, trans. Michael J. Walsh (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985), 68; italics mine.

376

Rachel Sophia Baard

WKNW*~

sin. The latter, like the former, "enables us to explain how personal evil is both active and masked at the same timer21 The concept of structural sin goes a long way toward an understanding of moral agency that transcends the individualist categories that merely point fingers at individuals who are deemed less socially desirable. There are important differences between the classical and liberation approaches, although I submit that these differences need not make them mutually exclusive options. As a matter of fact, these differences can be mutually enriching and can contribute to the kind of broad moral vision we need in order to address the kairos of HIV/AIDS. The kairos of HIV/AIDS challenges theology to take a hard look at economics, at often-unexamined assumptions about peoples of color, and at the cultural and structural oppression of women. The kairos of HIV/ AIDS thus demands that serious attention be paid to the structural and cultural concerns of liberation theologies. This demand for a concrete focus provides a potentially enriching challenge to Augustine's world-negating tendencies.22 In an HIV-positive world, a focus on structures helps us to name economic, political, and cultural forces that foster whole populations' susceptibility to HIV/AIDS as "sin" and thus as antidivine realities. On the other hand, Augustine's moral vision can add both depth and breadth to a theology focused on speaking in and to the kairos of HIV/AIDS. Liberation theologiesrisklosing the theological depth of sin-talk if they depict the broken relationship between humanity and God as the result of broken human relationships, as Faus seems to do when he argues that "the notion of structural sin means we are saying that the relationship of all humanity with God has been degraded, precisely because of the degradation in the relationships of human beings to one another."23 While this view undoubtedly contains an important theological insight, it should not be espoused in isolation from the classical insistence that the primary human pathology (from which

21. Jos Ignacio Gonzales Faus, "Sin," in Mysterium Liberations, ed. Ignacio Ellacura and Jon Sobrino (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 536. 22. Since the telos of human life for Augustine is the beatific vision, which can be fully experienced only after life in this world, his theology is not primarily aimed at addressing social ills. However, a case could be made for a secondary political concern within Augustine's theology, in particular with reference to his view that earthly goods are indeed good and not evil and should be usedrightlythatis, in proper relationship to the highest good that is God (City of God, 872 [19.13])and also with reference to his idea that the City of God "makes use o f the earthly peace of the City of the World (876 [19.16]). However, it is not easy to pinpoint a specific political program in Augustine's thought. In any case, my purpose here is not to find an explicitly Augustinian politics but to indicate that Augustine's moral vision can be an inspiration for an ethical, theological, and, yes, political theology that engages the suffering of an HIV-positive world. 23. Faus, "Sin," 538.

^J^Joday

Responding to the Kairos of HIV/AIDS

377

broken human relationships spring) is a fundamental disorientation away from the divine (idolatry) and toward a hungry grabbing of the goods of the world (concupiscence). Interestingly enough, the latter emphasis resonates well with the concerns of liberation theologians.24 More importantly, Augustine's moral vision might actually go further than that of (some) liberation theologies in transcending a moralistic paradigm. Despite its own rejection of focusing primarily on the sins of the individual, liberation theology, rooted as it often is in modernist perspectives on agency, tends to trace sinful structures back to a "crystallization of individual egoisms" (Romero) rather than to a fundamental human problem. As Alistair McFadyen notes, while liberation theology takes structuresand thus the social pressures on individualsseriously, sin nevertheless "remains here correlated with notions of personal responsibility construed in moralistic terms: as the free (that is, as self-determined, rather than socially or structurally determined) acts of moral agents."25 McFadyen's concern is worth noting. To the extent that some forms of liberation theology remain locked in the Western paradigm of construing the social in terms of a group of individuals, instead of locating the individual within the social, the notion of structural sin will ultimately be a moralistic construct that seeks the origin of the problem in a group of individuals. This risks a binary opposition between the oppressor and the oppressed, between those who are to blame and those who are victims. Despite the importance of clearly identifying oppressive agency and thus distinguishing between oppressors and victims, a simplistic oppressor/oppressed dichotomy and the ultimate reduction of human pathology to individual free willing are inadequate for an exploration of the question of moral responsibility in relation to concrete pathologies such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic. So yes, in focusing on structural sin, Christian sin-talk should recognize how different levels of power, as well as actions of intent within those structures, require moral differentiation between those who are victimized and those who participate in victimization in various ways. At the same time, however, theology needs to be sensitive to the fact that sinful structures do not just create victims but also shape various types of individual sinful agency, whether the sinful
24. Augustine viewed sin as "perversity and lack of order, that is, a turning away from the Creator who is more excellent, and a turning to the creatures who are inferior to him" (To Simplicianon Various Questions 1.2.18, in Augustine: Earlier Writings, ed. John Bailie, John T. McNeill, and Henry P. Van Dusen [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979], 400). It is very unfortunate that he largely developed the concept of concupiscence in terms of sexual desire, instead of keeping his focus on a broad understanding of the misuse of earthly goods as sinful. 25. McFadyen, Bound to Sin, 36-38; italics mine.

378

Rachel Sophia Baard

H[BMffl Toclav

agency typical of the powerful or the agency typical of the powerless. Such an awareness is indeed present in some liberationist approaches, as can be seen particularly in feminist discourses on sin. Feminist sin-talk is characterized by a holistic focus on the structural sin of sexism and on how the latter leads to both sins against women and particular kinds of sin to which women are prone. As such, feminist sin-talk shows an awareness of the need to speak of moral agency on multiple levels. Feminist theologians have therefore transcended a moralisticframeworkand have, ironically, upheld a generally Augustinian moral vision even in the midst of their rejection of Augustine's androcentrism.26 This is a moral vision that recognizes the complexity of human agency yet goes beyond structures to present us with a broad and expansive perspective drenched in the idea of grace.
Augustine's Moral Vision

Augustine's moral vision contains both a horizontal and a vertical dimension that can enable us to understand more clearly human agency in relation to the kairos of HIV/AIDS. In thefirstplace, Augustine saw individual sinful agency as always rooted in a broader problem. He understood that, ultimately, the locus of sin is not the act itself; the act is, rather, an expression of how this particular individual participates in humanity's corporate disunity with the divine and as such constitutes a fundamental distortion of the conditions of sociality through which we are "called into personhood."27 Yes, modern science and critical readings of the Bible make some of Augustine's premises obsolete. Nevertheless, they cannot erase the existential truths contained in his perspective: that we are fundamentally opaque to ourselves, that our decisions are shaped by our participation in the corporate reality of humanity (and, by implication, the social structures created by the human race), but that we nevertheless have a measure of free will and are not merely victims of fate.28 An Augustine-inspired moral vision allows for a perspective on sinful structures in terms of flawed humans who themselves are part of a greater web yet who participate in that web in ways that are harmful to themselves or othersand

26. On feminist adaptations of the concept of original sin, see, inter alia, Mary McClintock Fulkerson, "Sexism as Original Sin: Developing a Theacentric Discourse," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59, no. 4 (1991): 653-75. 27. McFadyen, Bound to Sin, 17. 28. Paul Rigby argues persuasively that the doctrine of original sin was to a large extent derived from Augustine's personal experience of sin and salvation and was thus a matter of existential, not merely dogmatic or exegetical, insight (Rigby, Original Sin in Augustine's Confessions [Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1987], 7).

|j[||||^Tori^

Responding to the Kairos of H1V/A1DS

379

as such enact evil, sometimes out of an explicit will to harm, sometimes due to the sheer complexity of life that makes us blind to the sufferings of others. In other words, the Augustinian moral vision urges us not to seek moral responsibility only within the confines of the overtly evil will of particular individuals. Indeed, as Elie Wiesel has often said, indifference is often more complicit in structures of sin than an overtly evil will. We need to take seriously the greater human web in which we live if we are to think constructively about individual responsibility, about the role, big or small, each of us plays in shaping the structures within which we and others live and that shape all our moral choices in turn. Such a moral vision is not about letting oppressors off the hook. On the contrary, it is a call to look into oneself and see one's own complicity in the structures of oppression, even when and where one is not intentional about it. It is a call to responsibilitya call to take responsibility for our own complicity in oppressive structures, a call to act responsibly for those who suffer, and a call to recognize and respect the moral agency and thus the responsibility of victims with due consideration of the structural pressures upon them. Within such a moral vision, going on with your own life as if everything is fine while others dieand worse, finding moralistic reasons for such distancingis not a morally neutral option. Precisely because our guilt is a corporate one, based on a fundamental human solidarity in sin before God, we are called to be responsible for the other. Pointing fingers, the Pelagian mode of sin-talk, is thus exposed as moral laziness that only pretends to focus on human responsibility for sin. What it is in fact is the negation of responsibilityour own responsibility to be for the other. Apart from this "horizontally" broad perspective on human agency, Augustine's moral vision also has "vertical" depth and height. Just as one cannot understand the Augustinian view on actual sins of individuals without reference to the broader reality of a universal human predicament and guilt, so one in turn cannot understand original sin without reference to the higher reality of God's grace. This higher reality is simultaneously a deeper reality, as the transcendent God in God's immanence embraces us in and through grace. Sin is per definition a theocentric notiona deeply theological concept that goes beyond mere taboo but functions in reference to God. Augustine's insistence on the primacy of God's grace firmly embeds all talk of sin not only in the reality of God in an abstract sense (in esse) but very particularly in the experience of God's mercy (pro nobis). As such, the doctrine of sin can be seen as an area not only of theological anthropology but also of soteriology. It is thus a theological perspective on human nature (keeping in mind that in Augustinian

380

Rachel Sophia Baard

B^B^WToday

thought sin is a distortion and not an expression of human nature), but it can berightlyunderstood only in light of the pure good of God's nature. Sin is the missing of the mark of this good; it is anguishing misdirection. Sin's word of judgment is not a moralistic judgment but a moral utterance on the loss of human integrity, made in conjunction with the divine word of grace. Thus, a hamartiological response to HIV/AIDS that would be truly Christianthat is, one that would be a naming of this human pathology in relation to the Christian Godwould be one that does not lose sight of grace.
Responding to the Kairos of HIV/AIDS

Augustine reminds us that our pathologies have deep roots that reach back to "Adam," that symbol of the unity of all humanity. Thus, while we do have individual moral agency, he argues that the true problem lies in the bigger picture. By giving priority to corporate humanity in his understanding of sin, Augustine challenges our modernist individualistic assumptions about guilt and innocence, about sin and grace, about "whose fault it is," and about who needs to take a stand. An Augustinian doctrine of sin provides us with a unified vision, in place of a fragmented one, of our moral standing before God. Therefore Augustine may just be able to help us transcend the logic of distancing ourselves from others' moral behavior. He does this first by showing us that sin does not lie within individual actions, but that individual actions flow from that human condition called sin, which we all share. Second, by giving us a vision of moral agency as shaped by broader realities, he implicitly leaves room for the recognition that individual moral agency should always be understood within the structural web in which we all participate and for which we are all responsible. This moral vision calls us to go beyond moralistic rhetoric that points only to either the sins of clearly identifiable oppressors (needed as that is at times) or to the "immoral behaviors" of those afflicted by the modern plague (even though it is necessary to recognize the moral agency of individuals). Augustine further reminds us that our pathologies must be understood in light of Christ, the human face of divine grace, who enables us to face our pathologies. In short, Augustine's moral vision cannot be divorced from the doctrine of grace. Sin is truly understood only from the vantage point of the human experience of grace and is effectively resisted only with the aid of divine grace. Moreover, the person who looks at sin from the perspective of grace can look at the sins of others with grace, because grace teaches us humility with regard to our own sins.

Responding to the Kairos of H1V/A1DS

381

This humility calls us to move beyond any sort of top-down approach to the social ills (or bodily illnesses) of others. Paul Farmer notes that there are three typical responses to the diseases of the poor. The first is charity, which ignores structural violence and sees victims as intrinsically inferior. The second is development, which does focus on structural issues but tends to regard progress as an almost natural process, thus often operating with the assumptions that victims suffer because they are too ignorant to make use of "the technological fruits of modernity." These two approaches view "the other" from above instead of from the perspective of human solidarity. The third is the social justice approach, which exhibits something of Augustine's far more nuanced moral vision, especially if the latter is, as I have argued above, understood in conjunction with liberation theology's structural focus. People who work for social justice, Farmer says, tend to see the world as deeply flawed. They "understand that they have been implicated, whether directly or indirectly, in the creation or maintenance of this structural violence. They then feel indignation, but also humility and penitence."29 Being "prophet-scholars of life in an age of massive death" requires a reprobing and rethinking of those aspects of our traditions that give us life, as well as a rejection of those aspects of our traditions that are death dealing.30 Theology in and for the kairos of HIV/AIDS needs to go beyond both an individualistic, blaming hamartiology and a compassion that dare not speak of sin, neither of which enables us to speak of this concrete pathology in relation to God. While Augustine's moral vision was marred by his own narrow conceptions of sexuality and his lack of concrete focus, the church recognized something important in his insistence that the individual's moral choices are never to be understood in isolation, that a simplistic blame game serves no purpose, and that sin needs always to be understood in light of grace. As Alistair McFadyen expresses it, a "language of blame fixes people in relation to a broken past but authentic sin-talk draws past damage into the liberating future."31

29. Farmer, Pathologies of Power, 157. 30. Musa W. Dube, "Towards Gender-Sensitive Multi-sectoral HIV/AIDS Readings," in Grant Me Justice!: HIV/AIDS & Gender Readings of the Bible, ed. Musa W. Dube and Musimbi R. A. Kanyoro (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2005), 20. 31. McFadyen, "Sin," 666.

^ s
Copyright and Use: As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the copyright holder(s)' express written permission. Any use, decompiling, reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a violation of copyright law. This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permission from the copyright holder(s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal typically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. However, for certain articles, the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article. Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specific work for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. For information regarding the copyright holder(s), please refer to the copyright information in the journal, if available, or contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s). About ATLAS: The ATLA Serials (ATLAS) collection contains electronic versions of previously published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the American Theological Library Association.