The question of sin is a question which is quite comically gargantuan, but for the sake of necessarily short-breathed explanations of Sodean theology, I’m going to state from the start that this by no means comprehensive and is certainly not a stone-walled defense of Sodean theology with regards to sin.
The first question when discussing the concept of sin is inevitably how one should approach defining it. The first of these questions in order of precedence over the others is simple: can “sin” be distinguished from “vice” in any meaningful theological manner? This question is particularly important in Christian theology where the idea of original sin is essential to itself. Can original sin be said to be a vice? Because if so, then the word vice seems to lose all meaning, and indeed even by the Socratic definition of sin — that it is ignorance — one is immediately struck by the realization that to conflate this with vice would seemingly fail the collective notion of what vice is. Even if there is no definite, precise, legal definition of vice, one tends to think of vices as deliberate actions of sensual decadence or petty crime. Certainly, a vice appears to be a deliberate thing, whereas both in the Christian case and the Socratic case, sin can (and by an honest reading of these definitions, must) easily be indeliberate.
I will henceforth for the most part discard the idea of vice, as it is nebulous and in most cases an object of great linguistic variance, but this is a question which is often disputed and I have now answered it in our case. I will write on the topic in future, but should I write on every concept that is presented in this piece, it will not end (at least not in the eyes of any sane reader, who would quickly tire of such an affair).
It therefore quite easily follows that sin is not the same as vice, but the issue again returns to the definitions of these words. I think therefore that in order to solve this, one must return to the question of whether or not sin has to necessarily be voluntary to be sinful. The Sodean answer to this is necessarily that sin does not in fact have to be voluntary, as our core teaching is that man should accept his fallen nature in order to bring him closer to God. A sod is one who possesses a divine soul but a temporal body, and indeed necessarily must continue to possess this body in order to perform the duties of life which have been bestowed upon them by God. Furthermore, all prior Sodean writing on any topic gives the very strong impression that the Socratic form of sin is surely inaccurate, as the church sees nothing evil in genuine ignorance of faith — though it has declared institutional and deliberate ignorance of faith as a thing which is directly oppositional to the Church. However, this necessity is not without its baggage, and we quickly find ourselves at yet another question — that of consequentialism.
This is, perhaps, the core question of the study of “ethics”, and some may consider this question a prerequisite to the question which has just been discussed. However, the first question in this case is answered by something axiomatic to the faith itself, and so it must be addressed and answered first before this question can be discussed. Indeed, it is easy to answer a question which is axiomatic to your faith!
And I will preempt this question which I have just introduced, because a final answer is requisite for the middle part, and that is of our forgiveness. All men are fallen by design, yet are called unto God by their ensoulment. Life is fundamentally a good thing, something to be celebrated and thankful for as without it, even in heaven we would be without selves. And so while sin can be indeliberate, it is generally not. We know our own conditions and thusly often know what is better, there are many basic emotions we feel that violently lash out at us when we consider doing immoral things. This emotion however is highly unstable and very vulnerable to perversion. Fortunately, this can be stabilized by our turning towards God, and indeed our collective turning towards him. If we claim to understand what is asked of us by our birth, then we are to be judged by the metaphysical consequences of our actions, as well as the material intentions of our actions. Should we be lost or indeed ignorant, this is almost reversed as God cannot righteously expect of us what we have been physically unable to hear, though ultimately the metaphysical consequences are far more pertinent than the intentions. Should we create great and horrible tragedy unto the souls of others, an unpoetic action, then we have failed without question. Life is to be celebrated above all, even if it is to be celebrated with all of its chaos as a virtue.
What could cause such a seemingly arbitrary mechanism? We could be judged in any number of ways, so I suppose the question is of whether this has just been pulled out of a hat or not. This is perhaps the essential message, however, of the codex sodalium… unfortunately this book has not been released yet, as it still has to be collated and indeed verified by the other high priests early this new year. So, this (rightly) must be justified in a manner which is independent from our own movement while also being completely canonical. Thus, I will attempt to demonstrate how this can be — without resorting to some form of hand waving.
Firstly, we can agree on one thing: the absence of sin is not what makes a man good — it is instead what makes a man innocent, and innocence is easily lost even in the best of men. Thus, to sin less than another is not the mark of goodness, but instead a mark of relative innocence. Innocence can be violence, as innocence can be maintained even in the face of brutal ideology. This is very often the state of somebody who may not have much awareness for morality, but is otherwise ensouled and human. It must also be stated that I maintain that there is a point at which violence and misdeed becomes imminently obvious to even the most naïve of people. That said, we can see how innocence can be maintained in the man who enlists for an unjust war, for example — though what he may see or do while there will either manifest great awareness of God or indeed shatter his soul so completely that he may be “desouled” by his own evil and thusly subjected to total spiritual, material, and poetic annihilation upon their death (though true desoulment is thought to be extraordinarily uncommon and the mere possibility of such a thing is still a matter of debate within the Church — luckily, its not important for my explanation here).
This person made no sin by enlisting in such an unjust war, but will have indeed sinned in any unjust actions they take, especially should those actions begin to stir awareness of soul in that person. Rather gracefully, we have begun to arrive at our answer in the case of a person who is “ignorant”.
For those who have claimed to turn unto God, and who believe they have achieved such poetic harmony as to understand what actions are to be malicious or cupidous (cupidus) then should they act unjustly with this knowledge — they have indeed sinned in duplicate as their own pride has now befallen them. Thus, their actions are weighted differently through additional sin and misjudgment in the face of ab-ignorance.
Having made some quiet proof with my initial claim, we can then use this claim to discern and judge our own actions. As we progress through life, especially given a routing through poesis, our intuition for the nature of God’s judgement becomes more clear — though in the process we often make mistakes and thusly lose innocence. However, we were not born perfectly innocent and we certainly shall not die as such, and even in sin — times where we have erred even by our own knowledge whether natural or theurgic — we are to be forgiven through God’s love: should our hearts be open enough and our souls coherent enough to receive it.
There is a distinction between venial sin and more serious sin in Sodeanism, and this distinction is at the point I have now described wherein even the most ignorant of the ensouled can feel their soul almost fighting back against them. This is a feeling which we should avoid at all costs, and it is vastly different from the sin which arises from the knowledge that certain actions are spiritually stupid and/or devoid of holiness or poesis. As such, I will not delineate such sins as of yet as it is a fool’s errand and one which is not needed. If you have a soul, you will know exactly when you’ve fucked up really bad, and in the face of this you should seek to maintain the coherency of your soul and mind through prayer and awareness of all that is sublime and holy — if you can truly feel natural love from God again, then you are saved. This is not to say that God does not love you at all times, but instead that your communion with God the Mother and God the Father can easily be lost should your soul begin to lose coherency by great misdeed.
I apologize for the circumlocution of this article, and thank you for taking the time to get this far. I chose such a route when discussing this topic so as to answer such a large question quite honestly yet concisely — and some degree of chaos is a prerequisite for any degree of truth. I believe this to be true in its utmost, elsewise I would surely not be so convinced of my faith.
Gratias tibi amore ago,
ARCUS