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I use it in a proper, if not a narrow, sense, when I contrast it with "self-understanding," or "existence," or use it synonymously with "life-praxis" (as I do, for instance, in Doing Theology Today: 116, 144, 148).

But I also use it – -- or clearly imply I would use it – -- in a broad sense. This is evident simply from my talk of "actualizing" (or, occasionally, "enacting") self-understanding, or of self-understanding "actualizing existence" in the emphatic sense of human existence, or existence that understands (see, e.g., 111, 145). But it becomes explicitly clear in the summary of my view in Notebooks, 13 November 1993, where I define "the broadly moral" as "having to do with human action in relation to, or in the context of, reality," and then go on to say that my further distinction between "the categorial" and "the transcendental" applies to "the broadly moral" as well as to "the broadly natural," because "life-praxis" refers to the categoriallevel of human action, even as "self-understanding" refers to its transcendental level.

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Self-understanding is also action – -- specifically, transcendental action; and it necessarily implies belief – -- including specifically existential-transcendental belief and, therefore, ethical- as well as metaphysical-transcendental belief.

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Sin is a properly moral concept only in the broad sense that refers to anything involving distinctively moral freedom at either the categorial level of life-praxis or – -- as is true of sin – -- the transcendental level of self-understanding. Thus sin has to do, in the first instance, with who we are or how we exist, i.e., how we understand ourselves in relation to self, others, and the strictly ultimate whole of reality called "God," as distinct from how we otherwise act and what we do in leading our lives. As such, sin is properly understood as the negative counterpart to, because it is the lack or privation of, righteousness, in the sense of the right relation to ourselves, others, and God.

Because sin, properly understood, is a moral concept at the transcendental level of moral freedom, one's thoughts, words, and deeds at the categorial level may be actual sins "before God" even if they are judged to be morally right, either relatively or absolutely, "before human beings or before the world." Even thoughts, words, and deeds that are morally right, not merely relatively, but absolutely, can at the same time be sinful – -- namely, because or insofar as they are done out of sin as the faithless, idolatrous, prideful, and self-loving desire to secure the ultimate meaning of one's life, instead of out of obedient trust in God's love alone and loyalty to its cause that all things shall be and become themselves. The importance of this point, given the common identification of sin as simply moral transgression at the categorial level of action, is hard to exaggerate.

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