ABSTRACT
Sin and salvation are central concepts in many, though not all, of the major religions of the world. They have gured especially prominently in Judeo-Christianity, with the result that the development of doctrines relating to them has been a notable feature of theological re ection in that tradition. By contrast, there has been relatively little strictly philosophical re ection on sin and salvation. Of major philosophers in the modern period, only Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) gives the subject of sin sustained attention, and even then not in one of his major works (Kant 1998). On the other hand, since the most in uential theological doctrines deploy alternative (though not necessarily contradictory) conceptions of sin and salvation, the philosophical analysis and clari cation of these can offer a valuable and distinctive way of understanding them. Sin and salvation may be said to be interrelated in the following way. Salvation is the remedy for sin, and sin is the cause of our need for salvation. However, we can distinguish three broad conceptions of sin – sin as wrongdoing, sin as bondage, and sin as alienation – to which there are three corresponding conceptions of salvation: salvation as pardon, salvation as rescue, and salvation as reconciliation. These conceptions are often interrelated, but for the purposes of analysis it is useful to distinguish them in this way. The clari cation that results may offer a better understanding of how the relation between sin and salvation is best understood.
