What Is Sin, and What Can We Do About It?

I. "She took of its fruit and ate": What Is Sin (if 'anything')?
Sin is moral evil (e.g., murder), which differs from 'natural evil' (e.g., earthquakes).

Jesus distinguishes the two (Luke 13:4-5). Much casual Christian discourse about 'evil' confuses them anyway.

Sin is widely understood in terms of guilt, but that is only one of its dimensions!

Others are prominent in both scripture and global worldviews, including shame and power.

The Eden story describes sin as humanity's epic failure: to image God fruitfully through trusting, loving, abiding, and obeying (Gen 3, but also Gen 6:1-8, 11:1-9)—all our course DNA.

As contradiction, sin doesn't start with God, but is against God.

As negation, privation, or disordering of good, sin is not a thing in itself but absence (Augustine, C.S. Lewis).

As irresponsibility and abuse, sin exploits God's good gifts for others' purposes.
As darkness, foolishness, and lie, sin is ignorant, absurd, insane, and self-deceptive.

People commonly treat "the fall" as human beings exercising their God-given free will, but Gen 2:16-17 commands obedience rather than presenting choices!

The common interpretation shifts blame toward God and away from ourselves. Does it manifest the interpreters' own fallenness? Cf. Rom 1:18-22.

So sin enslaves 'that which is' to 'that which is not' (Theodore Dalrymple, "Choosing to Fail).

Thus sin cannot ever make sense.

Jesus' example of humanity lived truly proves sin to be unnatural, a falling short or missing the mark (Rom 3:23, John 1:17).

II. "She gave some ... and he ate": Sin Multiplies
As a condition, sin brings more sin. But how? Tradition offers two accounts:

Original sin: Adam's sin and guilt are inherited: legally, like the national debt, or biologically through reproduction (so Augustine on Ps 51 and Rom 5:12; Catholicism, Protestantism). In Adam we too are broken, "depraved," and share responsibility.
Ancestral sin: Adam's guilt is his own. We inherit fallen conditions and an inclination to sin. Actual sin spreads socially and virally, like the common cold (Cappadocian Fathers, John Cassian; Eastern Orthodoxy).

Must these accounts be mutually exclusive, or does each offer helpful insight?

Carl Trueman: Modern 'individual expressivism' (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) contradicts both,

treating human nature as intrinsically good, and corrupted entirely through external social influences. So goodness comes from 'being authentic' to one's true 'inner self.'
(Jesus' wary reaction to 'belief' at a Passover feast in John 2:23-24 perceives darkness 'in' all.)

III. "The man and his wife hid": Sin Manifests Socially and Cosmically
As rebellion and alienation, sin dominates humanity's social and official faculties and breaks our constitutive relationships with God, one another, and the rest of creation:

As structural, sin disorders social ways of life.
As shameful and condemning, sin separates all humanity from God and estranges us from one another.
As powerful, sin is clever, demonic, tenacious, and oppressive.
As satanic, sin constructs "the world" (John 12:31) and its ruler (Luke 10:17-20, Rev 12:9).
Sin's impact on humanity's official faculties can turn even religion into unbelief that opposes God (John 8:37-59, 11:47-53, Acts 5:1-3, Rom 7:10-20, James 1:26-27).
As corruption, sin threatens the undoing of humanity and all creation (Athanasius).

IV. "I ate": Sin Manifests Personally
Sin commandeers and darkens humanity's personal faculties (Rom 1:21, Eph 4:17-20) and thus each person's relationship with self:

Sin's powerful reign (Rom 7:25) turns us into sinners, people whose whole lives and being are characterized by sin (Gal 5:17-21) and its personal consequences of shame and guilt.

Augustine: as inordinate love, personal sin is unbelief, pride, rebellion, idolatry, sloth, etc.
Feminist and liberation theology: as self-effacement or self-loathing, sin is also pride's disordered opposite, denigrating our own imago dei.

In all these forms, sin is human self-centeredness and self-destruction.

Tim Keller, Prodigal God: Luke 15:11-32's two sons both embody self-made alienation.
Jesus goes on to point the way for sinners back to fellowship (Luke 16:1-15): sacrifice what passes away to make friends welcoming us to God's eternal dwelling (see Acts 15:11-18).

V. "Dust you are and to dust you will return": Sin Leads to Its End
As curse, sin earns condemnation and consequences (Rom 6:23, Isa 66:24, Matt 25:41 & 46, Jude 4, Masacchio's Expulsion from Eden).
Where does sin's course lead? Scripture's most common and influential images are

power: the inevitable death of the mortal in Sheol (Eccl 9:5-10, cf. John 3:15, Jude 9) or hades (Luke 16:23-31, Rev 1:18, cf. Jude 13);
shame: the regretful disposal or casting off of the fruitless in gehenna (Matt 10:28, Mark 9:43-48, cf. Jude 11) or outer darkness (Matt 8:12, 22:13, 25:30, Jude 13);
guilt: the 'wrathful' punishment/repossession of transgressors in cherem (Isa 43:28 (!), anathema in Josh 6:17-19 LXX and Gal 1:8-9) or a 'lake of fire' (Jude 7, Rev 19:20, 20:10-15).
Doctrines of hell and annihilationism try to synthesize these very different images, but one image dominates the others.

(While these negative images don't cohere, the positive goods of life, fruitfulness, and glory do—in Jesus who embodies them and in his disciples; cf. Tolstoy on happy and unhappy families.)

Do these three anticipate, respectively, atonement theories of Christus Victor, moral influence, and reparation?

Later Christian tradition develops doctrines of sin and grace in terms of

sins' distinct forms and consequences (Dante's Divine Comedy), and sins' comparative gravity (mortal and venial sins).

VI. "If he should stretch out his hand": What Can We Do About Sin?
What is, and is not, compromised by sin?

Pelagius and Augustine dispute two visions of human will, fallenness, grace, and salvation:
(see Alister McGrath, Christian Theology, 2d ed., 428ff)

	Pelagius	Augustine
freedom of the human will	intact and able to choose either good or evil	incapacitated through sin, but not destroyed
nature of sin	merely willful acts against God	also a disease, a power, disability, addiction, guilt
nature of grace	intact human capacity to avoid sin and choose grace; one-time forgiveness for past sins at baptism; enlightenment given by Christ's example	unmerited favor, given even in producing the original choice to repent
basis of salvation	personal holiness gained from forgiveness, fulfilling God's obligations, and Christ's example	gracious promises of God, received through faith

Pelagius (anticipating Rousseau?): With free will we can still choose good over evil.
Augustine (On Free Will): Sin corrupts everything, including the mind.

Thus through free will, people always choose evil.

Outcome: The councils of Ephesus (431) and Orange (529) reject Pelagianism.

Eastern Orthodoxy teaches synergy of divine and human cooperation.
Western Christianity teaches total depravity and prevenient grace.

Lesson: Where sin is trivialized, grace is trivialized (cf. Rom. 5:20).

VII. "To guard the way to the tree of life": What Then?
Athanasius and Anselm both pose sin's dilemma for God:

Mercy compromises God's justice.
Yet justly destroying creation is an unjust concession to evil.
sacrifically ("God made garments of skins and clothed them").
Jesus is both the measure of sin and its solution.

The dilemma's solution: God comes, with 'merciful justice.'

Hebrews 11 summarizes the story after Genesis 3:

"My righteous one, by faith, will live" (Habakkuk 2:4 in Heb 10:38, Rom 1:17).