The Fall of Humanity

After reading Doug Chaplin's excellent blog post (No Adam, No Fall? Wrestling with Sin and Science) reflecting on the idea of the fall of man earlier today, I find myself reflecting more and more on the idea of the fall and sin. Chaplin has jogged my thinking, making me realize just how prevalent the notion of falleness is throughout the Old Testament, and questioning the "privileged" position we give to the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the creation narrative. Chaplin makes a number of great points about what the fall might mean in light of our modern biological understandings about human origins, but I won't focus on them here.

I think Chaplin makes an excellent point when he postulates that Paul's use of Adam as a prototype of human sinfulness is done out of a need to find a suitable counterpoint to the saving work of Jesus. This is an important point to keep in mind in general when we think of the apostolic use of the Old Testament in the writings of the New Testament. As has been pointed out by many, the writers of the New Testament were not using the Old Testament to mine for details of Jesus' life (contra those who would want to claim that the events in the life of Jesus recorded in the Gospels were made up by writers mining the Old Testament for messianic passages), but instead were reading the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus Christ. Peter Enns in particular stresses this point in his book Incarnation and Inspiration.

The centrality of Jesus can never be overlooked when we look at the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament (and, I would add, should never be overlooked in general). Those who were radically transformed by their encounter with Jesus and His followers read the Hebrew scriptures through the lens of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, looking for ways in which they could find parallels to it. I think we too often read the flow thought in the wrong direction, assuming that a belief in Adam as the source of sin necessitated a belief in Christ covering over this sin, but it seems that it is actually the reverse. It is Christ's covering of our sin that motivated Paul and others to find an appropriate parallel in the scriptures of Israel that could help encapsulate this important revelation. In doing so, he was looking for resources from within the Jewish tradition that could help frame the salvific work of Jesus.

The story in Genesis is clearly a story of man's fallenness, but to move beyond this and claim that it is THE FALL of mankind overlooks why Paul was using Adam in his discussion of Christ's salvation and the repeated theme of fallenness that runs throughout the Old Testament. Gary A. Anderson sheds important insights into viewing the concept of fallenness in the Old Testament. In his article "Biblical Origins and the Problem of the Fall," Anderson notes that the creation of the tabernacle strongly parallels the creation account of Genesis, and suggests that we see the creation of the tabernacle, and Yahweh's coming to dwell with the people of Israel, as the climax of the creation story. Israel's subsequent disobedience of God results in their punishment and exile from a land of paradise, a striking parallel with the story of Adam and Eve.

As Anderson notes, throughout the Old Testament we find God placing before Israel the promise of life and fulfillment if they only follow His commands, only to have the Israelites disobey almost immediately. Because of this

Indeed, "immediacy" may be the best way to define "original sin" in its Old Testament context. As soon as Israel receives the benefaction of her election, she offers not praise and gratitude but rebellion. This pattern defines not only the narrative of Israel's election but also other founding moments in the Hebrew Scriptures.(26)

As such, the story of Adam and Eve can be read as the story of Israel's later history in a microcosm:

Indeed it is difficult not to see the influence of a theology very similar to that of Deuteronomy; in that book God sets life and death before the Israelites and says the choice is theirs. Obey my Torah and you shall have life in the land, disobey it and you shall die in exile. Eden is Torah in miniature. (28)

In light of this, perhaps we should see the fall as not one single event that forever sets the course for humanity and covers all future generations, but as a series of events in which humans have again and again turned away from God's promises of life and blessing to embrace things that only lead to sorrow, pain, and death. This is the story that is recorded time and again in the Old Testament, of which the story of Adam and Eve is but one incident. And just as St. Paul did, we can look to Jesus Christ as the source of freedom and new beginning from a cycle of disobedience and the sorrow that inevitably results from this.