Responding to the Kairos of HIV/AIDS

The purpose of this essay is to contribute to the development of a framework for thinking theologically about the kairos of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic by critically retrieving elements of Augustine's hamartiology. Despite a tendency to associate sin too easily with sexuality, Augustine's hamartiology can provide helpful theological resources for responding to HIV/AIDS, for two reasons: it transcends moral individualism by locating individual choices in a broader reality of corporate moral responsibility, and it never understands sin without the “higher” reality of divine grace. As such, an Augustinian-type doctrine of sin, adapted to allow for greater structural focus than might be encountered in a classical world-negating form of Augustinianism, may help to shape a moral vision that can counter a judgmental moralism and ground the church's moral responses to HIV/AIDS.