In Session 1, Dr. Paul Allen proposes that insights from evolutionary psychology—especially research on addiction—offer a contemporary framework for understanding Paul’s language of “slavery to sin” in Romans 5–7. Allen notes (via Habermas) that modern secular discourse has thinned the moral vocabulary needed to name sin; by comparing addiction’s mix of predisposition and agency with Paul’s account of sin, flesh, and the conflicted “I,” he argues we can recover a way to speak about bondage that still preserves responsibility. The analogy helps illuminate why people persist in self-destructive patterns even when they “know better,” and it reframes grace as genuinely liberative rather than merely therapeutic.
Chris Lilley responds appreciatively but cautiously, probing the limits of mapping clinical addiction onto Paul. He asks whether the analogy risks reductionism, how it handles the exegetical debates over the “I” of Romans 7, and whether evolutionary accounts of predisposition can coexist with Pauline moral accountability without collapsing into determinism. Lilley also presses the pastoral and ecclesial implications: if sin is like addiction, then communal practices (confession, mutual aid, sacrament) function like treatment—yet the theological distinctiveness of grace must remain irreducible to psychology.
Timestamps
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Opening & introductions 00:00
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Paper begins (Allen) 02:35
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Habermas and the loss of “sin” language ~05:00
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Evolutionary psychology & addiction as an analogy for bondage ~12:00
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Romans 5–7: sin, flesh, and the conflicted “I” ~22:00
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Predisposition vs. responsibility (agency/disease tension) ~33:00
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Theological/pastoral implications of grace and liberation ~42:00
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Response (Chris Lilley) ~52:00
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Audience Q&A ~1:02:00
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