First Commentary On Sin and Primal Violence; on the Language of Atonement and the Restoration of Fellowship in the Resurrection; on Time as the Generator of Meaning, Action and Motive; on Divinity Revealed in the Human Face

We begin with primal violence as the critical marker of the ways of an unredeemed world and of the distance between Christianity and ‘the grain’ of that world. Anthropologists have recently unearthed a skull roughly dated from well over 400,000 years ago that provides evidence of violence between humans. The story of Cain and Abel is a mythical representation of primal violence and it reminds us that violence is often the consequence of fraternal rivalry. Those united by blood turn on each other in bloody rivalry. Warriors band together in fictive ties of blood brotherhood to shed the blood of their rivals and secure the scarce ‘goods’ that generate their rivalry. And scarcity never ends, even when we can satisfy our immediate needs: desire comprises an ever-expanding universe.