What is the meaning the uniquely held notion in Christianity of the fall of man? We analyze the passages from Genesis pertaining to this.

The Wonder of the Metaphor of the Fall

Of the many things that I find impressive about the Bible, it might surprise the gentle reader to hear that the story of the Fall of Man from the earthly Paradise is one that impresses me among the most. In this article I will simply try to justify my grandiose claim. The story of the Fall in just a few unassuming words of arcane narrative sets out to describe “how” we fall from grace and “that” it is when we separate our wills from the will of God. It is incredible that the ancient template described with respect to Adam and Even and their Fall is readily applicable, as we shall see, to every human soul in their own acquiescence to sin in their lives.

I find it simply stunning that the cause of evil in the world, which the greatest philosophers have no answer to nor solution for, is the thinly veiled implication of the incredible metaphor of the Fall. The wonder of this occurrence is only increased by the fact that it is written by an ancient author, seemingly the identity of whom might be lost to obscurity, and even the source for whose material is shrouded in seemingly mythical beginnings. That something so powerful can survive through such seemingly impossible circumstances of its origination never ceases to amaze me, and each time I dwell on it and it causes my heart to swell with pride, I freely admit.

What is this “Tree of Morality”?

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”” (v.1)

Eve appraises the serpent of the situation with the tree. The serpent knows exactly what that situation is, of course, but he’s obviously leading Eve on. This is that situation- Adam and Eve are in an Earthly Paradise, with access to every beautiful thing their hearts might desire. They want for nothing, except for reasons they do not understand, they are not to eat of a certain “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”.

If the metaphor of the Tree is translated here immediately- God has told Adam and Eve that it is He decides what constitutes good and evil, not them. “Eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is simply translated as staking the claim to be the arbiter of morality, hence “knowledge” in the title of the Tree pertains to possessing the Divine prerogative of being the arbiter of moral matters. We could say in a sense that only God “eats of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”, that is, we would expect this “knowledge” to be the sole prerogative of God. This is an important feature of the interpretation of this passage, because the term “knowledge” in the title of the Tree is often missed. We could further elaborate on why this is important- one does not even enter a human court of law with the assertion that one has “eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”- the judge is that person, the constitution and its interpretation, sometimes in tandem with a jury.

This can be seen as akin to the expression used of “smoking the peace pipe” or “eating the covenant meal” where a ritual act signifies a larger reality for which it is named. That is to say, the “peace pipe” does not itself bring peace in its being smoked any more than the apple itself contains is a date storage device. Rather, the opposing parties smoking the pipe undertake in that ritual to commit to working towards peace, just as the parties eating the apple undertake to usurp the role of God. Again, a covenant meal is not itself a blessing, rather those eating it are blessed by God. The eating of the fruit signifies the breaking of the simple relationship of obedience to God, and the only “knowledge” it brings is the knowledge of one’s own self-referentiality in moral matters.

The Consequence of Usurping God’s Role is Death

Adam and Eve comprehend that they are disobeying, as is shown in their fear after the act. In fact they have been told that it is death to disobey the incomprehensible command, and therefore they, and we can infer that life is in obedience to it:

“The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” (vv.2,3)

The Knowledge of a Personal Moral Standard Instead

The serpent’s advice is the exact opposite- that they can indeed become moral arbiters themselves, have their eyes “open”, rather than “blindly” following God’s advice. Indeed whyever must be follow anyone’s advice “blindly”, are we not capable of reasoning? Are we not ourselves like God? Consider that every atheist is like their own God, although that is not the term that they use. But the definition of a person who is your moral arbiter, the centre of your Universe, and to whom your existence is tied, is indeed God. The atheist therefore fulfils all the functions of God for himself temporally, in the time that they live according to a theistic subjective definition.

And what of atheist morality? Let us concede that a “good” atheist has their own perception of “goodness”, and for this he/she also has the perception of personally possessing a mental “volume knob”, say one that goes from 1 to 10. What the number 10 on the dial represents depends on whatever their own maximal perception of goodness is. So if an atheist believes he is “perfect”, which every atheist who does not believe they require to become a better person does believe, then that “perfection” lines up with that personal “10”, which is a goodness higher than which they have not envisioned and therefore a greater goodness does not exist for them. An atheist that believes they are less than perfect “I don’t say that I’m perfect” believes that they have not matched up to their personal perception of “10”.

“But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”” (vv.4,5)

Rationalizing Evil

The woman convinces herself of the reasons that the fruit is good for her- it is a good health choice, it is itself beautiful, and it should supposedly make one wise. She has convinced herself that the good of the fruit that she can comprehend supersedes the evil of it that God can comprehend. I would strongly suggest that in this, the woman ignores the spiritual meaning of “you will die” and is happy to roll with the literal meaning, as though she were merely avoiding a poisonous mushroom. She is effectively being a “reductionist”, with the question we often hear around us today swift upon her lips “what’s the harm?” That the harm in any of the sins of the flesh is spiritual death is completely ignored and not even explored.

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. (v.6)” 

We note that Adam is right there with her. It would seem that he sees the whole thing and cannot therefore absolve himself o culpability in the act, although he later denies any. Being Eve’s protector, one might say that he should really have thwarted the threat of the snake itself. I do not think that Adam must so easily be “let off the hook” here. How many of us would let our own spouses speak to a shady salesperson selling miraculous cures for long?

And What did they See?

Now when Adam and Eve’s eyes are “opened”, they can truly see a lot of things that were previously alien to them. This is the genius of the story. To use a modernism which is incredibly apt, they become “woke”. And what they see is not what they expected to see.

They see shame:

“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. (v.7)”

They see fear and guilt:

“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (vv.8-11)” 

And they see fault in the other, and isolation from them:

“The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” (vv.12,13)

What is the shame that they feel?

This is one of the most profound insights of the Garden story, and certainly the most visual- naked humans for the first time decide that life cannot be a nudist colony- why ever not!

The narrative says simply: “they knew that they were naked”. When God asks Adam “who told you that you were naked?” he knows that no one has told them. But God is indicating that “nakedness” was not a thing in the Garden, until it was felt subjectively. That is to say, Adam and Eve are not naked human beings in Paradise, rather they are just human beings in Paradise. They feel exposed to sin only when they reject the righteousness of God themselves. It is to sin that they feel naked against, and to the sin of lust that Adam and Eve feel exposed and vulnerable, therefore desiring protection in the form of clothes. “Who told you were naked human beings?”, God is asking. “I did not create naked human beings, I just created human beings”.

Clothes provide warmth in certain climates, but very little protection against attack. We do not wear hard hats over our delicates. The narrative in Genesis does not, in any case denote a realization in the first humans of the need for protection from the elements or from injury in any case. We only find a cryptic reference “they knew”.

A friend asked me in this regard whether it was not normal that a man should feel a sexual desire should he view a naked member of the opposite sex, and why this was sinful. So I gave the following example:

Say a good Christian man is faced with a 100 naked women. The man is acutely aware that he can, of all the women in the world, choose only one as his life partner and no more. He will love that one person and give himself to them, and so also he will receive her, body and soul. There is no sin in desiring her “body and soul”, since he too if fully given to her, his life is sacrificed for her in the setting of the family home. To desire the body of any other woman is then a selfish act because he cannot give her a home, nor be received into hers.

Bequeathing oneself to a single person enables one to pursue sexual fulfilment in the context of family rather than for self. The virtue of devoting oneself to a single person is analogous to our relation to God himself, so that just as it is not desirable that one’s attentions are not diverted in prayer, so also on cultivates in one’s closest relationship the virtue of sacrifice and compromise that cannot be diverted or assuaged by other interests- all is directed to the happiness of one. This does not preclude self-sacrifice to others or to the world at large, but balancing with one’s responsibility to one’s family of whom the man is the protector. Needless to say, the exclusivity of marriage goes hand in hand with its indissolubility, without which none of the above would apply. But a fuller discussion of committed monogamy is in my article Christian Marriage.

Original innocence is then that state in which one is able to view only that one woman in the room with unconditional love and sexual desire , and desiring nothing of the rest. That person should be able to be seated at a dinner table with 10 other naked women and his wife should be able to trust completely that he is not aroused by any. In a state of Original Innocence, the reason that those women were naked is not that they were intentionally attempting to entice him, rather because they are innocent too, and innocence prevails in the world. Such a state is of course, purely hypothetical. At time that there were more women in the world, they were clothed.

The Loss of Trust

The amazing thing about the metaphor (I don’t imply by this that it is necessarily solely metaphor) of the Garden story is it’s eternal explanatory power with respect to the the brokenness in human sexuality and relationships in the present time. Adam and Eve have perfect enjoyment and perfect mutual trust when God is the centre of their lives, which means that they obey him, although they do not understand him. This does not mean that they are relinquishing the use of their reason rather it is completely reasonable to arrive at the conclusion that they might not comprehend God. Further, when they know that the other is in communion with the command of God that they are able to trust them too, as they trust God.

On the other hand, when one is in communion with the snake, the situation becomes tenuous. At this point Adam is not only blaming Eve he is also blaming God “the woman which you gave to me, she made me eat it”. Competition between persons arises in the midst of plenty, where the appropriate attitude need simply have been gratitude: “thank you for her, she completes me, being the stronger, I am her protector and together we will keep watch against dangers and temptations”. Having fallen however, Adam does not even know to repent, at least not at this stage. It seems unreasonable to hold from a faith perspective that Eve was solely at fault for the passage states that Adam was there with her, he could hardly have missed the conversation with the serpent. Further, St. Paul accords all the fault to him as we will address in the article on Original Sin (see link below).

The Nature of Sin

Not long After, God tells us just what the nature of sin is. This is even before Kane has fallen to it:

“The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (4:6,7)

We are tasked to master the evil inclination (the technical term the Church uses for this is “concupiscence”). What’s more, there are spiritual forces that desire that we fall to it. This is a tremendously profound insight to be made so early in the text “its desire is for you”.

וְאֵלֶ֙יךָ֙ תְּשׁ֣וּקָת֔וֹ (wə-’ê-le-ḵā tə-šū-qā-ṯōw) teshuqah, the Hebrew word used for “desire, longing” is only seen thrice in the whole Bible, the other places being once in the Song of Songs as the husband’s desire for his bride and the other, Eve’s desire which is to be for he husband in Gen 3:16.

Conclusion: So who Lied about Death?

God’s exact words “you shall die” and the serpents promise “you will not die”. The serpent is obviously right if indeed God was merely warning Adam and Eve of chemical toxins in the fruit of the Tree. God however is obviously not wrong in his own story! Disobedience is the notion that one knows better than one’s superior, it is a challenge to hierarchy. While such challenges might be dignified in cases of exploitation among humans, in the case of God he is superior by definition. When God speaks of “you will die if you eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”, just like “smoking the Peace Pipe” means taking on the prerogative to establish peace among one’s subjects, it means taking on moral prerogative for oneself. God is simply saying “if you take on the moral prerogative (eat of the fruit of the Tree of etc.) from me, this will be the spiritual death of you”, which is obvious, disobedience to God is the death of spirituality by definition. This spiritual death does come upon them, and indeed upon the whole human race, who are no longer in the direct communion with God that Adam and Eve once enjoyed in the Garden. St Paul speaks of this spiritual death eloquently in the letter to the Romans.

The Puzzle that the Fall Presents

There is also at the same time that in the Fall that is vexing, which seems to the manner of its interpretation by Paul and held to dogmatically by the Catholic Church and others. This is that the Fall is at least in some sense causative relationship of sin in the world, as though if not for it, the world would be without any sin. This seems incredible and difficult to accept, nor do I pretend to give a satisfactory answer to the dilemma. It is not an unreasonable interpretation, given that there must be some significance of human beings being “banned from Paradise”. The Church believes that the inevitability of the individual’s continued downward spiral into sin is washed away at Baptism. The unbaptized are separated from that Life of Grace until such a time as they do choose to be baptized into it. I address this difficult issue here The Fall of Man and Original Sin