The Fall of Man: Cause, Consequence, and Cure
Apart from two chapters in Genesis, the entire Bible is directly or tangentially related to the Fall. Apart from a firm grasp, then, of the singular significance of this event, the balance of Scripture is denuded of its ultimate relevance. Further, apart from a biblically consistent understanding of the Fall, the reality of present suffering and evil in the world is inexplicable. Finally, apart from the Fall, there is no justification for a hope of a better world; for what is not fallen need not be restored or changed; and what need not be changed will be subject to a metaphysical version of Newton’s first law of motion; that is, “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.” This “external force,” biblically, is understood in terms of God’s response to the Fall. This paper will address three questions: what was the cause of the Fall? What were/are its consequences? And, finally, what is its cure?
When one begins to consider the narrative in Genesis 3, it is quickly apparent that “[t]he doctrine of the fall is notoriously troublesome.” There is simply not an abundance of information provided in the text to answer the fundamental questions: “How could a holy man fall, and what was the true cause of his fall?” Though there is by no means a universal consensus of ideas, a number of suggestions have been offered. A brief survey of three of the more significant of these may be of help.
Augustine has often been mischaracterized as believing the Fall came about as a result of sexual sin, or lust. A closer examination of his work, however, reveals an entirely different emphasis:
[W]e cannot believe that Adam was deceived, and supposed the devil’s word to be truth, and therefore transgressed God’s law, but that he by the drawings of kindred yielded to the woman, the husband to the wife, the one human being to the only other human being… the woman accepted as true what the serpent told her, but the man could not bear to be severed from his only companion, even though this involved a partnership in sin.
Thus it is love – misapplied love, but love nonetheless – and not lust that Augustine impugns for introducing sin into the world. The specific term he employed was concupiscence, which may be understood as “a quality which might be good or evil, but which was normally employed in an unfavorable sense.” It is “essentially a sin of the heart and the will which may (or may not) give birth to outward sins.”
Finally, Augustine cautions that this motive is not efficient (i.e., positive, or present), but defective (i.e., negative, or absent). He concludes that “to seek to discover the causes of these defections,—causes, as I have said, not efficient, but deficient,—is as if someone sought to see darkness, or hear silence.”
Luther sought to “see darkness,” as it were, and dug a bit deeper into the causes of Adam’s motivation to sin. He argued that Adam sinned out of disbelief; that is, he simply did not believe God when He said that to eat from the tree of good and evil would surely bring death (Genesis 2:17). While some consider this to be a significant departure from the view of Augustine, it is not necessarily so. Luther, in attributing the Fall to disbelief may well be building upon the Augustinian exposition; that is, that which, to Augustine, was deficient and manifested itself as misplaced love was, to Luther, a deficient belief in the word and decrees of God. The sin, for Luther, was “the refusal to listen to God and his mandate” and, perhaps, to lose sight of God’s authority. As Lester Kuyper notes, “The attractiveness of this independence from all restraints caught the fancy of the human pair and they arrogated to themselves that authority which only Yahweh has and exercises.”
Eminent theologian Jonathan Edwards moved the discussion of the Fall back from the material event of the eating of the forbidden fruit, all the way to the mind and the will of God. Taking more of a philosophical approach, Edwards wrote:
It has been a matter attended with much difficulty and perplexity, how sin came into the world, which way came it into a creation that God created very good. If any spirit had at first been created sinful, the world would not have been created very good. And if the world had been created so, things placed in such order, the wheels so contrived and so set in motion, that in the process of things sin would unavoidably come out, how can the world be said to be created good?
While careful to avoid indicting God with the sin of Adam, Edwards nevertheless finds in the Fall a demonstration of the sovereignty of God:
[I]f by ‘the author of sin,’ is meant the permitter, or not a hinderer of sin; and at the same time, a disposer of the state of events, in such a manner, for wise, holy and most excellent ends and purposes, that sin, if it be permitted or not hindered, will most certainly and infallibly follow: I say, if this be all that is meant, by being the author of sin, I don’t deny that God is the author of sin (though I dislike and reject the phrase, as that which by use and custom is apt to carry another sense), it is no reproach for the most High to be thus the author of sin.
The “ends and purposes” Edwards attributes to this activity of God are the “glorious exercise of the infinite excellency of his nature,” and the redemptive plan of God, saying: “God permitted the fall that his elect people might know good and evil.”
Showing affinity with Augustine’s perception of Adam’s concupiscence, Edwards argued that Adam was endowed with “sufficient grace” that enabled him to choose not to sin, but was not endowed with “confirming grace” that would have ensured his choosing not to sin:
If it be inquired how man came to sin, seeing he had no sinful inclinations in him, except God took away his grace from him that he had been wont to give him and so let him fall, I answer, there was no need of that; there was no need of taking away any that had been given him, but he sinned under that temptation because God did not give him more.
This dual granting of sufficient grace and withholding of confirming grace are assigned to the overarching sovereignty of God.
While each of these analyses represents different foci, they are not necessarily saying wholly different things. In the end, however, while there may be any number of speculations, the reader who is convinced of the veracity of Scripture and its affirmations of God’s character must finally acquiesce to the wisdom and justice of God regarding the motivating factor(s) behind the Fall. Perhaps Turretin’s words best acknowledge the apparent tensions, while asserting what Scripture and reason attest:
Let it be sufficient to hold together these two things: that this most dreadful fall did not happen without the providence of God (but to its causality, it contributed nothing); and that man alone, moved by the temptation of Satan, was its true and proper cause.
Thus, while the Bible does not address the cause of the Fall specifically, it does inform the reader sufficiently concerning the nature and character of God as to exempt Him from any charge of causality and to lay full blame at the foot of man.
We find ourselves on much surer ground when considering the consequences of the Fall than when considering its cause. Our perceptions and experiences aptly confirm the reality of evil and suffering in the world, and the Bible offers a well-developed understanding for why that is so. Indeed, as Calvin noted when considering a denial of the doctrines of the Fall and of original sin: “an error so gross is plainly refuted, not only by solid testimonies of Scripture, but also by experience itself.” While many examples from experience could doubtless be introduced to prove the ongoing consequences of the Fall, the biblical record alone makes ample allusions to its reality. The Old Testament provides definitive and severe examples of the consequences of the Fall, while hinting at the theological implications. The New Testament, in turn, acknowledges the material consequences of the Fall, yet additionally offers a wealth of information concerning the ideas of original sin, federal representation, and spiritual death. Both are essential in developing a fully-orbed possible doctrine of the Fall.
The first exposition of the consequences of the Fall are spoken by God, shortly after the first couple sinned. However, the first effect of the Fall occurred instantly: the eyes of both of them were opened. And, far from being “opened” to the knowledge promised by the serpent, “ironically, their opened eyes bring them shame.” Their nakedness immediately caused them to be humiliated and to have “an awareness of guilt and a loss of innocence.”
Soon, God comes walking in the garden, and “models judgment” with the investigatory questions: Where? Who? What? His questions lead them to confession, though woven throughout with aspersions. Adam blames Eve, and even evidences a remarkable arrogance in seeming to transfer at least some of the burden of guilt to God, saying, “the woman whom You gave me.” Eve, “after the example of her husband, transfers the charge to another,” and quickly passes the blame to the serpent. In the midst of such rank displays of guilt and sinful shame, God pronounces judgment all around.
To the serpent, God curses him and declares that there will be enmity between his offspring and the woman’s. On one level, there is likely to be understood a conflict involving the serpent literally. Also, however, there appears to be a deeper implication that the enmity will involve the embodying power of the serpent, namely, Satan. God then declares that, while the serpent may bruise the heel of the woman’s offspring (i.e., humanity), his head will, in turn, be bruised. Many commentators understand this to be a prophetic allusion to the crushing of Satan by Christ.
Turning to the woman, God declares that there will, henceforth, be pain in childbirth, the implication being that there would not have been otherwise. She then learns that she will have a psychosexual desire for her husband and yet he will rule over her. Wenham suggests that “the chiastic structure of the phrase” indicates that “her desire will be to dominate,” yet this desire will be frustrated.
Finally, to Adam, God calls to remembrance the creative act that brought Adam from the dust of the ground, and then solemnly declares that he shall return there. The earth that Adam was to have dominion over now “resists and eventually swallows him.” Meanwhile, Adam must draw sustenance from the ground in what will now be painful toil, compounded by thorns and thistles, as the very ground is cursed.
As the Genesis story continues beyond the banishment of the first couple from the Garden of Eden, more and more consequences of their actions begin to unfold. From envy and murder (Cain) to wanton unrighteousness (in the days of Noah and of Lot). The beauty of the created order is becoming increasingly unraveled. God created mankind with natural desires but sin has “twisted these into inordinate and disordered desires.” These “disordered desires” affect every sphere of life after the Fall. Indeed, Augustine wrote that as a result of the Fall we are ruled by concupiscence. Fallen humanity is, as he put it, under a “cruel necessity of sinning.”
Moving past the Fall narrative itself, Tennant contends that “there is certainly no didactic use made of the subject-matter of the Fall-story with regard to human sinfulness and its origins.” Though he admits that in Job, “the question of the source of human sinfulness once or twice suggests itself,” he argues that this would appear to be an excellent point for a didactic explanation for the presence and prevalence of sin. From this, he goes on to conclude that the Fall-story was “arrived at independently of Genesis” and was actually later “read back into” the composition of the Pentateuch. While there may not be references to the Fall in places where they might seem appropriate, it does not necessarily follow that it is proper to conclude that the absence of such references implies an ignorance of the broader idea of the Fall.
Mayes writes that “The Old Testament understanding of sin is… based on the covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel. Sin is a breach of the covenant.” Thus, while the remainder of the Old Testament does not deal extensively with the Fall, per se, there is throughout this thread of a covenant breached by the sins of the characters along the historical narrative. Ecclesiastes 7:29 points to this: “Behold, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices.” There are, in fact, a number of passages that explicitly acknowledge the universal sinfulness of man, and thus implicitly acknowledge its inherent quality in human nature. There are also allusions to a general understanding of the Fall in ancient Jewish sources, such as that found in Esdras:
O Adam, what have you done? / For though it was you who sinned,
the fall was not yours alone, / but ours also who are your descendants.
Thus, it may reasonably be concluded that the general idea of the Fall and its universal consequences for all humanity were, to some degree, underlying the religious thought of Israel before the advent of Christ.
Turning to the New Testament, the Bible becomes much more didactic regarding the theology of the Fall, particularly the breadth of its impact (universal: “all have sinned”) and the depth of its impact (rendering man lost and helpless before God). Perhaps nowhere is this topic more fully explored than in ten verses in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Romans 5:12-21 has been the subject of intense study and debate since the earliest times of the church, and provides a critical factor in the foundation of orthodox Christian theology, and is the essential biblical basis for the doctrine of original sin, as espoused by Augustine, who is arguably its greatest proponent.
In this passage, Paul equates the appearance of sin into the world with the fall of Adam. He begins with a protological argument that seems to readily admit the historicity of Adam and the Genesis narrative, and then he reinforces the covenant idea of federal representation: “by the transgression of the one the many died” (5:,15); “by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one” (5:17); “through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men” (5:18); and, finally, “through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners” (5:19). Thus, the disobedience of Adam results in not only his “fall,” but in the subsequent fall of all humanity. Earlier in the letter, Paul quotes from Isaiah to reiterate that:
There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one (3:10-12).
Countless other allusions are made throughout the New Testament that testify to the consequence of the Fall. 2 Corinthians 4:4 indicates that humanity’s minds are blinded; that is, the reasoning faculties and process are defective. In John 8:34, Jesus pronounces that “everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” Thus, the human will is now in bondage, for all, having fallen in Adam, do in fact sin. We learn in 1 Corinthians 2:14 that the result of the Fall is an inability to receive the things of God, and instead find them to be folly. And, most condemningly, Ephesians 2:1, 5 and Colossians 2:16 judge humanity to be spiritually dead apart from Christ.
This is, undoubtedly, the most crucial element in the consequence of the Fall: the introduction of death into the world. In light of Genesis 2:17 and the realization that Adam and Eve do not die physically “in the day” that they eat the forbidden fruit, one must reevaluate what was meant to be understood in that verse. If not physical death, then what? As Paul indicates in the above-referenced passages, humanity is alive, yet dead. The death thus alluded to in 2:17 was not only physical death (though this, too, entered the world though Adam), but spiritual and judicial death, as well. Each of the three (physical, judicial, and spiritual) “evidences in a different manner the essential quality of death as separation from God, which renders life meaningless, wretched, and miserable.” Physical death is self-evident. Everyone dies. Judicial death “means that we are under the wrath and curse of God.” Finally, spiritual death means that humanity has “become incapable of restoring and renewing their inner conformity to the will of God.” Taken together, the condition placed upon man in 2:17 becomes vivid and absolute.
This death – in all three manifestations - is presented in Scripture as something foreign to the original design of creation. This idea was central to the Pelagian debates in the early church. As the principle (and prevailing) voice in that debate, Augustine held that God had created Adam to be immortal and that the Fall not only wrought Adam’s spiritual death, but his physical death, as well. He wrote,
But in addition to the passage where God in punishment said, “Dust thou art, unto dust shalt thou return,”—a passage which I cannot understand how anyone can apply except to the death of the body,—there are other testimonies likewise, from which it most fully appears that by reason of sin the human race has brought upon itself not spiritual death merely, but the death of the body also.[34]
Augustine looked back to the earlier fathers and commented: “In the work which the saintly Ambrose wrote, Concerning the Resurrection, he says: “I fell in Adam, in Adam was I expelled from Paradise, in Adam I died. This, then, is the essence of the consequence of the Fall. In addition to the myriad material trials, hardships, fractured relationships, and the sense of emptiness and incompleteness, in Adam we died. Yet “death creeps into our perceptive powers like leprosy,” for we live in a fallen world where death – spiritual and physical – are what we experience naturally. We cannot even imagine a world where they do not. Yet we are reminded from Genesis 3:15 onward that the Fall and all it entails is not the end of God’s dealings with humanity. Death need not be the final chapter. Indeed, “In banishing His rebellious creatures from His presence in paradise, God still extends His grace.” And that grace provides the cure for all the consequences of the Fall.
After considering the Fall’s cause and consequence, it is both necessary and expedient to consider its cure. Scripture provides compelling testimony to the reality of that cure, as well as its availability and efficacy. From the earliest verses after the actual Fall narrative to the final pages of the Revelation, there are many references to this cure. Indeed, “[r]edemptive history starts right after the Fall,” as many see in Genesis 3:15 the “protoevangelium,” the first presentation of the Gospel: the Seed of Eve (Christ) will be victorious. The redemptive history continues to unfold as God deals progressively with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then the nation of Israel. It is, however, when Christ appears on earth that the plan of God to redeem a people is finally and fully revealed. Yet even then, many do not understand. A doctrinal exposition of the Fall, and of God’s plan to restore what was lost, would finally be explained by Paul.
More than any other biblical author, the apostle Paul addressed both the consequences of the Fall and the cure for it. In a tale of two “Adams,” Paul shifts to a study of contrasts between Adam and Christ (the “last Adam”). Paul presents an “antithetic typology,” denoting Adam as “a pattern of the one to come” (Rom. 5:14). In the process, he offers a series of analogies between the first and last Adams: Adam’s trespass made “the many” sinners, Christ’s obedience makes “the many” righteous; Adam's trespass brought condemnation, Christ’s obedience brings justification; Adam’s trespass brought death, Christ’s obedience brings life.
Paul, then, finally puts the pieces of the puzzle together: what was lost by Adam can be restored by faith in the Person of Jesus Christ.
In the Fall narrative, we find that “Man had taken to himself a right which is God’s. God had delegated to man his realm of dominion, the created world. Man broke the confines of his realm to enter the dominion of God.” What motivated him to do so remains somewhat of a mystery, but reasonable hypotheses have been put forward that do no violence to the text and, in fact, fit well with what Scripture and reason imply. What can be known unequivocally is that the consequence of the Fall was monumental in scope and devastating in severity. Fallen man stands justly condemned before God. However, God, in His grace, condescended in the form of another Adam who fulfilled the requirements the first Adam did not. “The life of Jesus was a repetition of the great drama of creation and temptation; only this time …there was no fall.
Paradise is not lost after all. Through Jesus Christ it will come again. That is the hope and comfort for all those who suffer in this in-between time. Paradise will one day be restored on earth, through the work of the Second Adam, Jesus Christ.
Augustine. City of God. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, volume 3. New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892.
--------. On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sin. NPNF 1-05, IV.
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Bell, Theo M. M. A. C. “Man is a Microcosmos: Adam and Eve in Luther’s Lectures on Genesis (1535-1545).” Concordia Theological Journal 69:2 (April, 2005) 159-184.
Calvin, John. Commentary on Genesis. Accessed via http://www.ccel.org.
Edwards, Jonathan. Miscellanies 209. Accessed via http://edwards.yale.edu.
Greidanus, Sidney. “Preaching Christ from the Narrative of the Fall.” Bibliotheca Sacra 161 (July-September 2004) 259-273.
Henderson, Edward Hugh. “Faith and Inquiry.” Anglican Theological Review 58:1 (1976) 43-59.
Kuyper, Lester J. “To Know Good and Evil,” Interpretation 1:4 (1947) 490-492.
Lane, Anthony N. S. “Lust: The Human Person as Affected by Disordered Desires.” Evangelical Quarterly 78.1 (2006) 21-35.
Mayes, Andrew. “The Nature of Sin and its Origin in the Old Testament.” The Irish Theological Quarterly 40 (1973) 250-263.
Nassif, Bradley L. “Toward a ‘Catholic’ Understanding of St. Augustine’s View of Original Sin.” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 39:4 (1984) 287-299.
Scullion, John J. “New Thinking on Creation and Sin in Genesis 1-11.” Australian Biblical Review 22 (1974), 1-10.
Shuster, Marguerite. The Fall and Sin: What We Have Become as Sinners. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.
Tennant, F. R. The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin. Cambridge University Press: 1903.
Turretin, Francis. Institutes of Elenctic Theology, volume one, trans. by George M. Giger, ed. by James T. Dennison, Jr. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1992.
Wenham, Gordon J. Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary. Waco, TX: Word, 1987.