2000 Penance in the Ancient Church 1. Different ways of thinking about sin, and thus about penance. There are also mixed systems in which intention and performance are balanced in various ways in determining responsibility. This can be a divine or a human legislative system. A divine legislation might require human enforcement at the price of the entire group losing its relationship to the divine.
Intention can be more difficult, as insanity defenses in the courts indicate.
A community has to step in where the consequences of individual misdeeds are social. Jewish scriptures brought a notion of sin as violation of performance code based on positive, divine legislation. It endangered the individual and social relationship with God. Liberation from sin or pollution was accomplished by the performance of sacrificial and other rituals, whose function was to restore the relationship with the legislator. In practice, the sacrificial practices also corrected the social consequences of the violation and restored order to the society.