Creation Estranged: Sin and Sin's Consequences

"She took of its fruit and ate": What Is Sin (if 'anything')?
As moral evil (e.g., murder), sin differs from natural evil (e.g., earthquakes, wild animals, stormy seas).: Much Christian discourse confuses them (cf. Luke 13:4-5).
Natural evil is a matter of human response but not responsibility (Job 40-41).
Sin is popularly understood as guilt, but that is only one dimension! "The fall" describes sin as humanity's epic failure (Gen 3).
Sin is contradiction that starts against God rather than coming from God.
Sin is negation or privation of good: not a thing in itself but absence (Augustine, C.S. Lewis):: specifically, unrighteousness or wrong relationships.
Sin is irresponsibility, exploiting God's good gifts for others' purposes. Sin is darkness, foolishness, and lie: ignorant, absurd, insane, and self-deceptive,: enslaving 'that which is' to 'that which is not'.
So sin cannot ever make sense, or be made sense of.
Jesus' counterexample truly shows sin as unnatural, as falling short (Rom 3:23, John 1:17).

"The man and his wife hid": Sin's Social Manifestations
Sin is rebellion and alienation that breaks humanity's constitutive relationships:: Sin is structural, disordering social ways of life.
Sin is demonic: powerful, clever, tenacious, and oppressive.
Sin is satanic in constructing "the world" (John 12:31) and its ruler (Luke 10:17-20, Rev 12:9).
Sin is corruption that threatens the undoing of humanity and all creation (Athanasius).
Sin is a condition that causes more sin. How? Two accounts:: Original sin: Adam's sin and guilt are inherited legally or biologically (Augustine on Ps 51 and Rom 5:12; Catholicism, Protestantism).
Ancestral sin: Adam's sin is transmitted socially (Cappadocian Fathers, John Cassian; Eastern Orthodoxy).


"I ate": Sin's Personal Manifestations
As personal, sin turns us into sinners, people characterized by sin.
Sin hardens into habitual vices such as 'the seven deadly sins':: pride, greed, envy, wrath, sloth, lust, and gluttony.
Augustine: personal sin is inordinate love of good things.: Feminist and liberation theology: as self-effacement or self-loathing, sin is also pride's disordered opposite.
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.

"Dust you are and to dust you will return": Sin's 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).: Creation suffers and groans (Rom 8:19-22).
Where does sin's course lead? Influential images:: death rather than life: Sheol (Eccl 9:5-10, cf. John 3:15, Jude 9), hades (Luke 16:23-31, Rev 1:18, cf. Jude 13);
disposal rather than fruitfulness: gehenna (Matt 10:28, Mark 9:43-48, cf. Jude 11), outer darkness (Matt 8:12, 22:13, 25:30, Jude 13);
punishment/shame rather than exaltation: a 'lake of fire' (Rev. 19:20, 20:10-15, cf. Jude 7).
These consequences anticipate distinct aspects of atonement.

"If he should stretch out his hand": What Can We Do About Sin?
What is, and is not, compromised by sin?: Pelagius: 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) repudiate Pelagianism. This finding respects apocalyptic's convictions that: creation is helpless in the face of evil, and that
God comes as creation's deliverer from evil.
Eastern Orthodoxy stresses synergy of divine and human cooperation. Western Christianity stresses total depravity and prevenient grace.

"To guard the way to the tree of life": How Can God Deliver?
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.
The dilemma's solution: God comes, with 'merciful justice',: sacrifically ("God made garments of skins and clothed them").
Jesus is both the (indirect) measure of sin and its (direct) solution.
Hebrews 11 summarizes the story following Genesis 3:: "My righteous one, by faith, will live" (Habakkuk 2:4 in Heb 10:38, Rom 1:17).