Genesis 3

mankind, exiting the garden

The tale of Adam and Eve eating forbidden fruit, for me, focusses on the problems with how we are to interpret and understand a tale told, retold, reimagined, reinterpreted and often misunderstood over several thousand years. It is such a simple tale, as are the accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 of creation and the interrelationship between Adam and Eve. But, there is no one agreed meaning behind the account of chapter 3. There are, however, three fundamental understandings of this story: first, the Jewish understanding; second, the Orthodox Christian understanding; and, third, the Western Christian understanding.

Let us begin with the Jewish understanding. This is the simplest and the oldest; after all, this is a tale they had gathered and made their own. This sees the account as akin to a parable. There is no need to discuss whether or not Adam and Eve are actual historical figures, in much the same way as Jesus’ parable of Lazaros and Dives (or, ‘the rich man’) the question of ‘were they real people?’ is null. For the point of the tale is to act solely as a parcel containing a moral lesson.

And, in a way, it does act like this for everyone. Indeed, the tale would work in other settings, once you know the moral of the story. The setting is a royal palace garden in the middle east: rivers flowing through it, beautiful trees, abundance of animals, birds, fish and reptiles. Adam and Eve are placed there as royal children, playing in innocence, watched by the king who also walks in his walled garden. Archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of many such gardens across the continents.

Then, there is the emotional rollercoaster of Adam and Eve. We read that they are naked but unembarrassed, then they are naked and ashamed, then they hide in the bushes, only to be discovered as the evening light falls, questioned, then clothed, then banished from the garden, departing into the darkness, possibly forever. The moral of the tale is about how hard it is to hold onto perfection, even to stick to obeying just one rule.

The woman is tempted, and replies to the talking-snake with an exaggeration. She breaks the rule, and enjoys it. She offers the same fruit (perhaps a fig as they cover their sexual parts with fig leaves; kinda reminds me of Jesus cursing the barren fig tree much later) to Adam, who eats it also. When he is questioned he says a variation of what is said to be the most common plea in law courts, ‘it wasn’t me; a big boy did it and ran away’. A Jewish commentator said that Eve was a typically gabby, pushy wife, and Adam was a wet, pushover husband. But, both knew that they were forbidden to eat this fruit, and that they had offended the king, and they were unrepentant. This is the last word in the Hebrew scriptures about Adam or Eve; there is, judaically, nothing further to add.

The next understanding grew out of the Eastern Church in Constantinople. In a way it also highlights how the Church in Rome and the one in New Rome (Constantinople) gradually drifted apart, divided by power plays and lack of comprehension of their opposite’s Latin or Greek literature and language. These new understandings grew entirely out of the new Christian Church, and drifted into two camps which remain stubbornly fixed.

The entire Church based its understanding of this tale of perfect children in a perfect garden on a short passage in the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (5.12-19). And here the split with the Jewish understanding is absolute, for Jewish scholars have long viewed Saul of Tarsus as a base heretic, whereas Christians consider him so exceptionally excellent that he is worthy of the simple title, ‘The Apostle’. But, what he explains about Genesis 3 must have been in the air at his time, for if Adam and Eve was a simple morality tale it wouldn’t have been so widely known that Paul could pluck it out and sermonise on it.

Paul tells us how the world was pure and sinless, until Adam broke the one law of Eden, bringing sin into the world, and causing death to become the human inevitability. He talks about the resultant state of the world from Adam’s sin to Moses’ law, and moves his tightly complex argument to show how mankind, wronged by the sin of Adam, can be more than righted by the grace of God from Jesus Christ. This act removes death from the sentence, to be replaced by rehabilitation, pardon and life for many.

I have merely reworded Paul’s words, hopefully leaving the clarity of the wonderful work of Christ to redeem the effect of the sin of Adam. It is in this passage we read the word ‘fall’ (v15). It is clear why Jews cannot accept this declaration, not being believers in Yeshua the Mashiax (Jesus Christ). But, when they do believe it then the bare tale of Genesis 3 becomes a fundamental background to the reality of the effectiveness of the grace of God by Jesus Christ.

So, as for much else in the New Testament, the Old Testament acts as a repository of information which is enlightened by the words in the NT. This example of how the Apostle Paul reworks the story of Adam and Eve and their disobedience in the garden, is no fanciful extrapolation, to illuminate scholars and baffle the hoi polloi. Paul’s exegesis is clear and must be accepted as being gospel truth.

But, there is a fly in the ointment (perhaps, even a snake in the grass!). For the great Latin Church Father, Saint Augustine of Hippo, took Paul’s words and went further. He postulated that,

“The entire human race that was to pass through woman into offspring was contained in the first man when that married couple received the divine sentence condemning them to punishment, and humanity produced what humanity became, not when it was created, but when having sinned, it was punished.”

He declared that Adam was the original sinner, that in eating the fruit he committed the original sin, and we all are now fundamentally infected by this sin. We are, in effect, born as sinners from day one. This is called the doctrine of original sin. This is the position of the Catholic and Protestant churches, but it is condemned by Jewish commentators and by Orthodox clergy.

The problem lies with how this dogma relates to the entirety of Ezekiel chapter 18, which apparently entirely condemns and contradicts the dogma. The chapter should be read, but I am not going to do so in its entirety here; feel free to take five minutes to read it. But, here are some extracts,

“The one who sins is the one who will die …

“... He [who] withholds his hand from doing wrong
   and judges fairly between two parties.
He follows my decrees
    and faithfully keeps my laws.
That man is righteous;
    he will surely live,
declares the Sovereign Lord …

“... He [who] does not return what he took in pledge.
He looks to the idols.
He does detestable things.
He lends at interest and takes a profit.

Will such a man live? He will not! Because he has done all these detestable things, he is to be put to death; his blood will be on his own head …

“... The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them.”

The defenders of the Doctrine of Original Sin declare that it is clearly the only dogma that is utterly irrefutable, for we can find sin everywhere. Be that as it may, this is not an inevitable conclusion to draw from Paul in Romans 5, as all Orthodox clergy will state clearly. The problem is partly caused by the fact that Augustine could not handle Greek (the language of the NT) well, and eastern scholars had poor access to his Latin works that became at the heart of Western theology.

One thing I do find interesting (if that is not a too light word) is that the C16th Reformers, who made strong approaches of reconciliation to the Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople, never made any effort to declaim the Catholic doctrine of original sin. It is strange how much was up for debate - the eucharist, the canon of scripture, the status of the Virgin Mary, priestly marriage, the role of Rome, etc. - but many other issues were not.

Personally, I am uncomfortable with ‘original sin’. First, it is a dogma, not a clear teaching of scripture, so belongs with such as the ‘immaculate conception’ and ‘transubstantiation’. Yes, it can be drawn directly from scripture, but it is not necessarily present. Such issues, like the trinity, nature of Christ, Christ’s descent into Hell, are best universally agreed and encapsulated in such as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. That way we are all agreed and can revert to the underlying documents for the reasoning which make these dogmas necessary.

Indeed, I have a rule of thumb: if it isn’t in the universal councils of the first millennium Church, and attested clearly in the Bible, then you can take it or leave it. The simple man’s logic behind this is that from the first years of the early Church every imaginable fundamental matter was exhaustively aired and debated, and then voted on and put to bed. None of the councils after the last fully ecumenical council, when the Western and Eastern churches split, are valid, for nothing after the eighth century was universally agreed. As the Doctrine of Universal SIn was not covered during the debates and conclusions of the seven church councils, then it is not universally binding.

      He calls you to discern his time and season.
     The sempiternal season of his mercy
     Lifts like the sun above your dark horizon.

     Expose your darkness, sing your miserere,
     His light will judge, and judging, heal your sin.

     'Sounding the Seasons', Malcolm Guite

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For reference, here are, IMHO, the binding councils:

Nicaea (325 AD): condemned the belief that Jesus was a created being rather than co-eternal with God; and formulated the original Nicene Creed, affirming Christ’s full divinity.

Constantinople (381 AD): Expanded the Nicene Creed to define the divinity of the Holy Spirit and solidify the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.

Ephesus (431 AD): Condemned the view that Christ was two separate persons; and affirmed that Jesus is one person with two natures, declaring (in order to defend the divine nature of Christ) the Virgin Mary as Theotokos (”God-bearer”).

Chalcedon (451 AD): Rejected Eutychianism (Monophysitism) by defining that Christ’s divine and human natures exist in one person “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”

Constantinople (553 AD): Reconfirmed the decisions of the earlier councils and clarified Christological teachings, specifically condemning the “Three Chapters” (writings deemed sympathetic to Nestorianism).

Constantinople (680–681 AD): Addressed the Monothelite controversy by affirming that Christ possessed both a divine will and a human will, acting in perfect harmony.

Nicaea (787 AD): Ended the first period of Iconoclasm by affirming the legitimacy of creating and venerating holy icons, distinguishing between the worship of God and the veneration of images.