In his Systematic Theology Wolfhart Pannenberg has suggested looking for the root of sin in the desire for identity—the instinctive will to be oneself—that is written into the very structure of our selves (Pannenberg 1991, 2:260f.). Though essentially healthy, the will to be oneself carries within it the germ of its own illness. Pannenberg describes the germ as the tendency of the self “in fact [to] become the infinite basis and reference point for all objects, thus usurping the place of God” (261).
