One netfriend commented

Sin: Falling short of the glory of God.

Another responded:

Whatever that means.

My response:

Let us assume, that this aside is a serious one…

Yes, “sin = falling short of the glory of God” is something of a cliche, but behind it, according to classical Christian theology, is the essence of who God is, and who we humans are, and how we relate to one another.

With a bit of help from the great English theologian, H. C. G. Moule (see http://www.anglicanlibrary.org/moule_h/outlines/chrdoc08.htm ):

Humans, in the Genesis creation stories, are a special creation of God, with a special relationship to God. We are made “in the image, after the likeness,” of God. Humans do not ever cease to be “made in the image of God” (Genesis 9:6; James 3:9): the original template of humans in that image is a permanent reality for all humans. What does this mean? Theology 101 devotes a whole lecture to just that question. Let’s say that like God, we are moral, responsible beings, who have the capacity to “know God” as like knows like. God, the Archetype of all Personality, supremely self-conscious, self-acting, moral, has made us to be, in the remarkable words of the Apocrypha, “the image of His own peculiar nature” (Wisdom 2:23: eikona t ªs idias idiot ªtos).

This image stands apart from human’s “Original Righteousness.” The Righteousness we could and did lose. The Image we retain, whatever fatal disorder may have touched it; we are for ever personal, moral, responsible.

So humans are creatures (like God), and sinners (choosing evil). Scripture everywhere assumes that sin is an incalculably discordant and *unnatural* thing in humans. It is a terrible distortion, anomaly, and discord. We ought never to have been and never to be, a sinner. No theology true to Scripture can minimize the mystery and horror of the Fall, which is correlative to the essential glory of Human Nature.

Without getting into the Garden of Eden metaphor too deeply, what Genesis is saying is that humans, originally holy, were invaded by a personal Intelligence hating God. Humans (female), suspect a lack of love in God; and, (male), prefer the creature’s will to God’s (1 Timothy 2:14). God’s will is violated. Humans no longer love and obey God as the main aim of their lives. We “know good *and evil*” (Genesis 3:5, 22). We are now “like God,” but with a dramatic difference!

Scripture asserts everywhere, and with many metaphors/similes the reality of the “depravity” of humans, to their *distortion* (depravatio) universally (e.g., 1 Kings 8:46; Psalm 51:5, Jeremiah 17:9; Matthew 7:11; Romans 3:19, 20; Ephesians 2:1-3). There is the universal necessity of a “new birth… unless a person is born again, they cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3 cf. Romans 8: 5-8, with different imagery).

“It is the fundamental article of Christianity that I am a fallen creature. that an evil ground existed in my will, previously to any given act, or assignable moment of time, in my consciousness; I am born a child of wrath. This fearful mystery I pretend not to understand. I cannot even conceive the possibility of it; but I know that it is so . and what is real must be possible” (S. T. Coleridge, Omniana, at the end).

To return to the cliche: the ‘glory of God is humanity fully alive’ (Irenaeus) and God’s Spirit lovingly pursues us, wooing us, calling us to wholeness – which involves, historically, and amazingly, ‘the blood of God’s own Son’ Acts 20:28 – towards what we were by our creation, and away from who we are, in our fallenness, not only for our eternal benefit (which is certain and real) but also “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” (For the greater glory of God).

HTH

Rowland Croucher