Selfishness, greed, ignorance and sin — Christianity

What the specification asks for

Paper 1, Section 1, 1.3 (Christianity). Assessed on AO1 (knowledge and understanding) and AO2 (analysis and evaluation), weighted equally. Incandio is aligned to this specification. It is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson, and it reproduces none of Pearson's indicative content — the point numbers are given so you can check every unit against your own copy.

1 · Understand it

People do things they know are wrong. Not out of confusion, and not because nobody explained it to them — they knew, and did it anyway. Every tradition on this course has to account for that, and Christianity's answer is the least flattering of the six: it says the trouble is not only what people do but what they are.

What it means

Sin in Christian usage is two things at once, and the specification asks about the nature of sin, so the double meaning is the content rather than the background. It is an act that offends God, and it is also a state — a turning away from God that is there before any particular wrong choice is made.

The state is what original sin names. The claim is that human nature is turned away from God from birth, so that wrongdoing is a symptom of a condition rather than only a series of decisions. It rests on Genesis 3, the narrative of the Fall, in which disobedience lets sin into the world.

Because the problem is a state, the solution cannot be effort. Grace — God's undeserved love and help — is what repairs what a person cannot repair themselves, and repentance is the turning back: recognising the wrong, being sorry, and changing. Catholic teaching adds a distinction the examiners credit: mortal sin destroys the relationship with God, venial sin damages it.

The traditions disagree about how badly the damage runs, and the disagreement is real. Catholic teaching says human nature is wounded but not destroyed, so it retains genuine freedom and can cooperate with grace. Reformed Protestant traditions emphasise that no part of human nature is untouched. Orthodox teaching says what is inherited is the consequences of the Fall — mortality and corruption — rather than guilt for somebody else's act.

Why believers hold it

The doctrine exists because the cheerful account looked false. If wrongdoing were ignorance, then better education should have produced better behaviour, and Christian thinkers from Augustine onwards concluded that it had not. Naming the problem as a state explains two things the optimistic account struggles with: why people who know better keep doing worse, and why the answer would have to come from outside the person.

That is also why Christianity offers forgiveness rather than instruction. A religion that thought the problem was ignorance would run classes. This one runs confession — and the reasoning behind letting the one without sin throw the first stone is the same: if the condition is shared, nobody is in a position to look down on anybody.

Two objections are worth having ready, because both are strong. Judaism and Islam read the same narrative and do not conclude that human nature is corrupted — Jewish teaching speaks of two inclinations that can be mastered, and Islam holds that people are born in a natural state of goodness. That shows original sin is a reading of the text rather than a conclusion forced by it, which is fair and is not a refutation.

The second is that calling wrongdoing sin can obscure its causes, since much of it is produced by poverty and circumstance. Christian social teaching has an extensive account of structural sin, so the tradition already makes that point in its own vocabulary — which means the argument is about emphasis rather than about whether conditions matter.

Where it comes from

• The Lord's Prayer — Matthew 6:9–13; Luke 11:2–4 (translated)

  Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

  The prayer Jesus taught, said by Christians of every tradition. Its forgiveness clause makes receiving forgiveness conditional on giving it.

  What it is doing here: Puts forgiveness at the centre of the prayer every tradition says, and makes receiving it conditional on giving it — which is the doctrine turned into a daily habit.

• The Bible, New Testament — Mark 12:31 (also Matthew 22:39, Leviticus 19:18) (translated)

  Love your neighbour as yourself.

  The second of the two great commandments. Jesus makes love of neighbour inseparable from love of God.

  What it is doing here: Sets the standard the doctrine says nobody manages, which is why the account of the problem and the account of the remedy have to be joined.

Where it bites

It shapes how Christians treat wrongdoers, including themselves. Because the condition is shared, no Christian is in a position to look down on another, and the practice that follows is confession and reconciliation rather than correction. The Catholic sacrament of reconciliation exists for exactly this, and the Protestant emphasis on justification by faith answers the same problem by another route.

It also explains a tone. Christian teaching about wrongdoing tends to be simultaneously severe about the diagnosis and gentle about the person — which looks inconsistent from outside and follows directly from the doctrine, since the person is the patient rather than the disease.

What people get wrong

People think: Christians think everyone is evil.

Actually: The tradition holds human nature to be good and damaged, which is a different claim. What is denied is that people can repair the relationship by their own effort; what is affirmed is that they were made in God's image and are worth repairing.

People think: All Christians believe babies are born guilty.

Actually: That is the strong Augustinian reading, and Orthodox teaching explicitly rejects it — what is inherited there is the consequences of the Fall rather than guilt for somebody else's act. Presenting inherited guilt as universal Christian teaching is a recorded error.

People think: Sin just means breaking God's rules.

Actually: It is a broken relationship as well as a broken rule, and that is why the remedy is forgiveness rather than correction. An answer that gives only the rule-breaking sense has described the act and left out the state, which is what the specification actually asks about.

What the examiner expects you to understand

• The specification asks about the nature of sin, so the act-and-state distinction is the content and not a preliminary to it.
• Mortal and venial sin with examples is explicitly credited in recent reports, so it is worth having ready for the four-mark question.
• Never write that Buddhism teaches sin without qualification; there is no deity there to sin against, and the shared heading invites the error.
• For a statement that humans will always sin, use the doctrine on the 'always' side and then press the traditions that read the same narrative differently — that is an argument rather than a list.
• Do not present the strong Augustinian version as the whole tradition; the internal disagreement about guilt and condition is examinable content.

2 · Grade 9 Notes

Core belief / issue

Christianity's answer to why people do wrong is unusual among the six religions: it says the problem is not only what people do but what they are. Sin is an act and also a state — a turning away from God that precedes any particular wrong choice. That is the doctrine of original sin, and it explains why Christianity's solution is not primarily effort but grace. The specification asks about the NATURE of sin, so the state/act distinction is the content, not background.

Key terminology

Incandio's mark schemes credit the religion's own vocabulary; spelling variants are accepted, a vague paraphrase is not.

Sin

An act that offends God and separates a person from him; also the state of being turned away from God.

Original sin

The teaching that human nature is turned away from God from birth, so that everyone needs grace.

The Fall

The narrative in Genesis 3 in which Adam and Eve disobey God, understood as the entry of sin into the world.

Grace

God's undeserved love and help, which repairs what human effort cannot.

Mortal and venial sin

Catholic distinction between sin that destroys the relationship with God and sin that damages it.

Repentance

Turning back to God: recognising the wrong, being sorry, and changing.

What Christianity teaches

• shared — Sin is not only breaking a rule; it is a broken relationship with God, which is why forgiveness rather than mere correction is what Christianity offers.
• shared — Human beings cannot repair the relationship by their own effort. Salvation comes through God's grace.
• common — Human nature is affected from birth by original sin, so wrongdoing is a symptom of a condition rather than only a series of decisions.
  • Roman Catholic — Human nature is wounded but retains real freedom and can cooperate with grace.
  • Orthodox — The consequences of the Fall are inherited — mortality and corruption — rather than inherited guilt.
• divided — How badly the Fall damaged human capacity to choose the good.
  • Roman Catholic — Wounded, not destroyed: grace heals a nature that can still respond.
  • Protestant — Reformed traditions emphasise total depravity — no part of human nature is untouched — while others are closer to the Catholic account.

Why it teaches this

The doctrine exists because the optimistic account looked false. If people simply need teaching, then better education should have produced better behaviour, and Christian thinkers from Augustine onwards concluded that it had not. Naming the problem as a state rather than a set of acts explains both the persistence of wrongdoing in people who know better and the Christian conviction that the answer has to come from outside the person.

Sources of authority

• The Lord's Prayer — Matthew 6:9–13; Luke 11:2–4 (translated)

  Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

  The prayer Jesus taught, said by Christians of every tradition. Its forgiveness clause makes receiving forgiveness conditional on giving it.

  How to use it: It is the clearest example of a set prayer doing doctrinal work: a Christian cannot say it without committing to forgive.

  What it does not settle: Being universally said, it distinguishes no tradition from another.

• The Bible, New Testament — Mark 12:31 (also Matthew 22:39, Leviticus 19:18) (translated)

  Love your neighbour as yourself.

  The second of the two great commandments. Jesus makes love of neighbour inseparable from love of God.

  How to use it: It converts a belief into an obligation towards a specific person, which is why it can be used on almost any ethical topic — but the work is in saying WHO the neighbour is in this case and what love requires of them here.

  What it does not settle: It does not tell you what love requires. It has been used to argue for and against euthanasia, for and against same-sex relationships, and for and against pacifism.

Different interpretations

• Original sin as inherited guilt: everyone shares in Adam's offence. The strong Augustinian reading, and the one most often criticised.
• Original sin as inherited condition: what is passed on is a damaged situation and a tendency, not guilt for someone else's act. This is closer to Orthodox teaching and to much modern Catholic and Protestant theology.
• The Fall as a narrative about every human being rather than a report about two: Genesis 3 describes what happens whenever a person prefers themselves to God.

Differences within Christianity

All Christians hold that human beings sin and need grace. They differ about whether what is inherited is guilt or condition, and about how far human freedom survives.

• Roman Catholic — Nature wounded; mortal and venial sin distinguished; the sacrament of reconciliation restores.
• Orthodox — Inherited consequences rather than inherited guilt; sin as sickness to be healed rather than crime to be punished.
• Protestant — Justification by faith; Reformed traditions emphasise the depth of the damage most strongly.

Application to the issue

It shapes how Christians treat wrongdoers, including themselves. Because sin is a shared condition, no Christian is in a position to look down on another — which is the reasoning behind 'let him who is without sin cast the first stone'. It also grounds the emphasis on confession and reconciliation: a religion that thought wrongdoing was merely ignorance would offer teaching, and Christianity offers forgiveness.

Arguments supporting

• Wrongdoing runs deeper than ignorance. — People frequently do what they know to be wrong, which a purely educational account cannot explain. (shared)
  Answered by: Psychology explains akrasia — acting against one's own judgement — without needing a doctrine of inherited corruption.
• The Christian account explains why moral progress is so slow. — Every generation has expected to be better than the last, and the improvement has been partial at best. (shared)
  Answered by: Slavery, judicial torture and duelling were also thought permanent, and are gone — so the pessimism has a poor predictive record.

Arguments challenging

• Judaism and Islam read the same narrative and do not conclude that human nature is corrupted. — Jewish teaching speaks of two inclinations that can be mastered; Islam holds that humans are born in a natural state of goodness (fitrah). (shared)
  Answered by: That the same text produced different doctrines shows original sin is a reading rather than a reading forced by the text — which is a fair point and not a refutation.
• Calling it sin obscures the causes. — Much wrongdoing is produced by poverty, upbringing and circumstance, and moral language can distract from changing them. (non-religious)
  Answered by: Christian social teaching has an extensive account of structural sin, so the tradition already makes this point in its own terms.

Secular / non-religious perspective

Human beings are evolved animals with cooperative and competitive instincts and no inherited moral defect. Wrongdoing is best reduced by changing conditions — inequality, opportunity, institutions — rather than by changing hearts, and the historical evidence for that approach is considerably better than for moral exhortation. Humanists also object that telling children they are born flawed is harmful in itself.

Examinable throughout Paper 1. Nothing here earns a mark on Paper 2.

Evaluation

The hinge: Whether the problem is a FLAW to be forgiven or a MISTAKE to be corrected. Christianity answers the first, Buddhism the second, and everything about what counts as a solution follows.

Defensible conclusions

• The doctrine explains the persistence of wrongdoing better than the optimistic accounts, and it does so at the cost of a claim about newborns that many find hard to accept.
• The Orthodox version — inherited condition rather than inherited guilt — keeps the explanatory power without the moral difficulty, which makes it the strongest form of the doctrine.
• The secular structural account and the Christian doctrine of sin are not rivals: both say the problem is bigger than individual choices, and they disagree only about whether it can be fixed from inside.

Not defensible

• Writing that Christians think everyone is evil — the tradition holds human nature to be good and damaged, which is a different claim.
• Applying 'sin' to Buddhism without qualification; there is no deity to sin against, and the specification's own heading invites the error.

Exam use

• Identify · 3 marks — Three examples of selfishness, or three Christian beliefs about sin. Short — greed, pride, indifference to the poor.
• Outline · 4 marks — Two beliefs about sin, each developed. Mortal and venial sin with examples is a well-credited answer, and the 2025 report names it explicitly.
• Explain · 6 marks — Explain the nature of sin in Christianity: the act, the state, and why grace rather than effort is the answer. Then say what a Christian therefore does — confession, repentance, reliance on grace.
• Evaluate · 12 marks — 'Humans will always sin' is a set statement. The strongest answer uses the Christian doctrine on the 'always' side and then presses the counter-example of traditions that read Genesis differently — which is a genuine argument rather than a list.

Common mistakes

• Treating original sin as universal Christian teaching in the strong Augustinian form; Orthodoxy does not hold inherited guilt.
• Describing sin only as breaking rules, which misses the relational account and caps the answer.
• Answering with generic points about human nature and no Christian content.

“Christians believe divorce is always wrong.” — That is the Catholic position. Orthodox Christianity permits divorce in limited circumstances, and most Protestant churches permit divorce and remarriage.

Write instead: Name the tradition. 'Catholic teaching holds marriage indissoluble, so the Church annuls rather than divorces' is accurate and scores; 'Christians believe' on a divided question is not. Do not over-correct. Many claims genuinely ARE shared — the Trinity, the resurrection, the authority of the Bible — and hedging those makes an answer weaker, not more careful. (Named in the 2025 examiner report for Paper 1.)

“Buddhists believe sin is disobeying God.” — Buddhism has no creator God to disobey. Unskilful action (akusala) harms the person who does it and others through kamma; it is a mistake rooted in greed, hatred and delusion, not an offence against a deity.

Write instead: Buddhists speak of unskilful action rooted in the three poisons — greed, hatred and delusion — and of akusala kamma, which brings unwelcome results. The specification's own Buddhist wording for 1.3 names avijja, kilesa and the three poisons. The specification titles 1.3 'Selfishness, greed, ignorance and sin', which invites the error. A learner writing on Buddhism should use the tradition's own vocabulary and say why 'sin' does not fit.

Grade 9 insight

The doctrine of original sin is not a claim about babies; it is a claim about why moral effort keeps failing. Read as a report on newborns it is offensive and hard to defend. Read as an explanation of why people who know better still do worse — and why Christianity offers forgiveness rather than instruction — it is doing real work that the optimistic accounts have to do some other way. A learner who separates those two readings is arguing at Level 4.

Carry on through Christianity

• Previous unit: 1.2 · Human nature and the human condition
• Next unit: 1.4 · Free will, determinism and predestination
• Selfishness, greed, ignorance and sin in the other religions: Buddhism · Hinduism · Islam · Judaism · Sikhism
• All of Christianity · Incandio Religious Studies · The 4RS1 specification