Sin's Purpose (Christian Theology)

Kristin Smith quotes Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, suggesting that sin is simply "an element in the human education, through which we struggle to a higher and purer state than we could otherwise have attained." The word"sin" is usually used in the sense of "bad deed," but it might better be thought of as a condition of weakness. The question of course becomes how a perfect creator can create a flawed humanity. One possible answer rests in an argument to which I was exposed at QU: The Incarnation was not a response to an original sin, but rather a necessary part of the plan of creation from the very beginning. Humanity's "sin" is thus by design, for reasons possibly linked to the importance of free will to perfection, again possibly linked to the need for an understanding of what is being overcome.

This isn't much of an answer. I haven't paid much attention to these sorts of questions in years, but they are sort of interesting. I think in order to understand what we mean by sin, we first have to understand the goal. And that, of course, is one of the major questions inherent in any religion.