The Fall Revisited

Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness. Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) 397

Let's start with the background. God has created the universe and everything in it ex nihilo (out of nothing), and has pronounced it good - including snakes (Genesis 1:1-25). As the crown of His creation He forms man - male and female - in His own image and likeness and breaths His very life into him (Gen. 1:26-27, 2:7). The man and the woman are given dominion over all creation and placed in the garden of Eden. God gives Adam a command to "till and keep" the garden (Gen. 2:15). This is not merely an instruction to be a good steward of the land - this is a priestly commission. The Hebrew words used here are 'abodah (till) and shamar (keep or, more literally, guard). The only other time these words are used together in the Pentateuch they refer to the priestly duties of the Levites in Israel.

So God has given Adam the task of tilling and guarding the garden. Tilling makes sense - a garden needs to be taken care of. But guarding? To be told to guard this place means that there is something from which it needs to be guarded - something which might try to get into the garden.

That "something" is called in Genesis 3 nahash, a Hebrew word which is translated here as serpent. We often have the image - in fact we are given the image in children's Bibles or storybooks - of a medium-sized snake wrapped around a tree talking to Eve. But nahash in Isaiah 27:1 refers to a dragon and in Job 26:13 a sea monster. So this word carries with it the connotation of something dreadful and deadly.

This deadly nahash gets into the garden. What happened to Adam's job to shamar the garden? The serpent was never supposed to be in the garden in the first place. But once there he confronts Eve:

"Did God say, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'? And the woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in th emidst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'' But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not die.'" (Gen. 3:1).

And where is Adam? Right next to Eve. The serpent uses the second person plural while he is talking to Eve, which we lose in our English translation ("y'all" just doesn't look right in Genesis).

Satan refers to God as Elohim - Master. In the previous chapter as we read about God creating and blessing man He is called Yahweh Elohim - a personal, intimate God. To illustrate the difference in naming God another way it could be compared to the difference between Abba (Daddy) and Allah (Master). Both are true, but Master is a lesser title than Father. Satan is driving a wedge between God's love and His law.

Let's look at that law:

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." Gen. 2:16-17

At first glance this may seem somewhat arbitrary of God - give Adam everything except this one tree over here and kill him if he eats of it? Why have the deadly tree at all? Is God just testing Adam to see if he will behave?

Yes and no.

God is good. He does not make laws arbitrarily or whimsically, He makes them for our good and ultimately our happiness (think user's manual rather than rulebook). We see from the creation narrative before and the gift of Eve after that God obviously has Adam's best interests at heart. He is a loving Father and we must look at His law in light of His nature. It wasn't so much a test as an opportunity.

Adam and Eve (and each one of us) were created in the "image, after [the] likeness" of God (Gen. 1:26). In this verse God uses the first person plural: "Let us create man in our image..." This language implies the Trinity, meaning we are created in the image not of some vague idea of God, and not only in the sense that we can know and love, but in the very image of the Trinity. God is love, and the Trinity is that mysterious (beyond the power of our reason, not against reason) inner life of God, the Father giving Himself eternally in love to the Son, the Son giving Himself eternally back to the Father, and the Spirit that living bond of love between Father and Son. We are created for exactly this kind of love - an ultimate gift of self. As finite humans this love manifests in our lives as sacrifice. Adam is created to offer himself in sacrifice, and this is his opportunity. With no law, there can be no obedience (C.S. Lewis explores this beautifully - if verbosely - in Perelandra). God gave a law, asking Adam to give up one good for the sake of a greater good, thereby fully becoming who he was created to be. Without sacrifical love man cannot fully enter into the relationship with God - that inner life of the Trinity - for which he was created. By denying that opportunity, breaking that law, Adam and Eve do indeed die.

The Hebrew language doesn't have superlatives - it uses repetition to denote comparison (i.e. tall tall for taller, holy holy holy for holiest). The Hebrew phrase at the end of Gen. 2:17 might be literally translated "you shall die die." How can there be a death beyond death? The ancient rabbis took this to mean a death of the soul, something worse than physical death. So in a way, the serpent got it right - Adam and Eve ate the fruit, and they didn't die an immediate, physical death (which one might assume the deadly nahash was implying they would die, if they didn't cooperate). Instead they died a spiritual death, being separated from God by their rejection of Him and His law.

So Adam and Eve messed up. Got it. But what's with original sin - why do I get punished for their mistake? I didn't eat the forbidden fruit (by the way, nowhere in Genesis is it referred to as "an apple") - it wasn't my sin.

The Catholic Church teaches that "original sin" is called sin only as an analogy. It is not the guilt of a personal sin which we inherit, but the result of that sin. Before the Fall Adam and Eve enjoyed the gifts of original holiness and original justice. Original holiness refers to a share in God's life and original justice refers to three things: harmony with oneself (seeing the truth clearly, passions and emotions subject to the will subject to the intellect, etc.), harmony between man and woman, and harmony between man and all of creation. Before the fall, man was in right relationship with his Creator, himself, his neighbor, and all of creation. The Fall destroyed these relationships. As indicated by the very name we give this event, human nature had fallen. Adam and Eve as parents were only able to pass on what they had, therefore their children (we) inherited a fallen nature. Original sin refers to this inheritance deprived of original holiness and justice.

So original sin is not all of humankind being punished for the sin of Adam. It is a deprivation of gifts which he was unable to pass on because he lost them.

That was a whole lot longer than I meant it to be... and there is still so much more that I could be said that didn't seem to fit in :) Much inspiration and insight from Dr. Scott Hahn's First Comes Love.

My heart overflows with a goodly theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. Psalm 45:1

in Christ,
~ash