Drawing again upon the work of Plessner, Pannenberg insists that exocentricity creates a tension: this power can either be used to advance one’s egoist desires, or it can be used for the benefit of the species (and indeed all of creation). This tension lies at the foundation of the definition of sin: “the tension between this peculiarity of human activity, which comes with openness to the world, and the striving of the ego for pleasure this is now made responsible for the primary brokenness of human beings as compared with the existence of animals.”[32]
