7 - Power and participation: feminist theologies of sin

Summary

The criteria and standards of judgment afforded by moral frames of reference suggest that we participate and engage in sin personally only where we have sufficient freedom for self-determination in action. Freedom is here closely correlated with power. In the context of the standards of moral judgment, freedom means a freedom from the determining influences of internal impulses and external pressures. It denotes the power to retain self-direction and control and to resist being overpowered by: psychological drives; biological instincts; other people; the social, economic, ideological and cultural forces operating in our general situation. Freedom is here taken to be synonymous with autonomy, involving a positive differential in power between myself (construed as an independent centre of power) and all the other forces exerting an influence on me. Put negatively, it indicates my capacity to resist determination by other forces. More positively, it is the power to implement my will (independently derived and self-directed) in action, regardless of resistance. Construed within the limits of the interests of moral judgment, then, freedom as autonomy means the power to instantiate alternative courses of action which are neither coerced nor determined: the power to implement one's self-determined will in action.

Where I enjoy this freedom from determination and coercion, then, it is supposed that I live and act essentially in my own power – that I am self-determining, both in my action and in the basic orientation of my life-intentionality. That means that I have sufficient power to effect my will. But it also means that my will is itself in my own power; that, in my willing, I am in possession of myself, rather than possessed by some alien, controlling power.