Sin is not being overcome throughout Christianity. Theologies create other purposes for the religion.

In Catholicism, authorities supposedly inherit the divine influence, first through the Vicars of Christ (popes), and then it diffuses down through prelates and priests. The Protestant authorities go about it more like the scientists—acquiring a superior knowledge. In Paul's instance, being struck by lightning did it. For Thomas Aquinas, it was rediscovering Greek logic.

Their basic error is in not realizing that there is no such thing a authority over reality. Proper authority can only apply to actions, not realities.

Christ spoke with authority, but it was authority over his listeners, not authority over reality. That difference might appear to be too subtle to be relevant. But it shows up in how a subject is handled. Christ handled all realities as instructions saying people should try to understand them. Human authorities obstruct the reasoning process trying to prevent anyone from questioning their reality.

Catholics create official authority over theology calling it an infallible "Magisterium." Protestants do not make their theology quite so official; but does anyone dare oppose atonement?

This of course applies to the human input. The most significant examples are Thomas Aquinas in Catholicism and atonement in Protestantism.

The other major problem with theologies (as human constructions) is that they are falsehoods. They are in conflict with the objective realities which are evident in life as well as God's teaching. They are created in the corners of peoples' minds where realities are not well understood. Then they are refined by working around criticisms. But awareness increases over time, and the falsehoods of theologies become more apparent.

Thomas Aquinas had lost credibility by the time Vatican II was convened in 1963. His use of Greek logic for authority was ridiculous by modern standards of objectivity as developed through science. Instead of using two or three premises as a basis for points, all evidence must be considered.

There were apparently two concerns in the minds of Catholic bishops which caused them to produce the results of Vatican II: One, Thomas Aquinas was no longer a credible theology; and two, the claim that only Catholics get saved was indefensible. Attempts were made to correct those problems at Vatican II, but unexpected consequences buried the original concerns.

Pope John Paul II started out quite restrained, even somewhat liberal, in his own analysis; but the extreme conservatives bombarded him relentlessly with Thomistic theology demanding that he uphold centuries of "established" doctrine. He gradually moved in that direction culminating in Veritatis Splendor, where he used Thomism as an outlet for his frustrations carrying it to new extremes and adding absurdities which were unheard of in theology.

The significance of Thomism is that it claims moral awareness was implanted in minds by God and therefore is not objective. The significance of atonement is that it claims killing Christ was pleasing to God, which reverses the moral truth of the crucifixion.

If those absurdities had no authority with them, they would be ignored and replaced with credible analysis. But as theologies, they are imposed in defiance of truth, and they have had an extreme stifling effect upon the development of moral awareness.

God is not a source of morality, contrary to theology. If he said murder were virtue, it would not be virtue.

If God could change moral laws, so could satan. Every corrupted person tries to change moral laws, and they think they can intimidate others into accepting their sin as virtue. But it cannot be done. If they could actually succeed, then the sin would be virtue; but their war against life demonstrates that there is a lot of sin remaining after they get through converting it into virtue.

Perhaps the most basic error of theology is the portraying of morality as being arbitrarily created by God. If God created morality, there would be no reactions involved, and morality would be the joke that corrupted persons assume it to be. But the reactions of sin destroy the perpetrators, and those reactions define morality in objective terms.

Both Catholic and Protestant theology (the human construct) was designed to shift the purpose of Christianity away from overcoming sin and toward a creation of human authority which could dominate the religion. The resulting theology has numerous technical corruptions which are hinge points for that purpose.

First, a goal of getting somewhere—from sinful to moral—had to be removed as the purpose of the religion, because it would require a logical analysis of objective realities which produce that result. Logic and objective reality would remove the source of authority from their own hands and replace it with universal truth which is the same for everyone. In other words, the hippies would be proving them wrong.

So material life had to be a static without a purpose. God supposedly created a Garden of Eden to entertain himself, but satan tripped over a vine and added sin to it.

To erase the purpose of life, spiritual beings were supposedly created at the time their bodies were created, and a spiritual being only lives one life-time in the material world. The fact is, spirits move back and forth between the human society and animal world continually, though some persons spend more time in the grave than others, because it is a resting place when they are not highly corrupted. Other religions develop this subject, and even worldly researchers at the universities are finding proofs that a lot of persons enter bodies more than once.

Theology is then based on God doing everything—through atonement, the Eucharist, etc.—while humans are passive recipients. The human activities are then arbitrary, and as such, they are arbitrated by authorities as rationalized by traditions or documents. There is nothing universal or objective to the human activities by criteria that can be evaluated by nonauthorities.

In that manner, theologians and church authorities make themselves dominating exploiters of the religion, as they did in Christ's time. Christ said they set aside God's law for the sake of their tradition. (Mat 15:6)

There was no brilliant scheme that unfolded through history. Such corruptions develop as reactions to counter-forces, while there is almost no understanding of the significance by the perpetrators. As opponents argued moral issues, the corrupters reverted to arguments which justified their authority.