With regard to the origin of this sinful nature which is common to the
race, and which is the occasion of all actual transgressions, reason
affords no light. The Scriptures, however, refer the origin of this nature
to that free act of our first parents by which they turned away from God,
corrupted themselves, and brought themselves under the penalties of the
law.
Chandler, Spirit of Man, 76—“It is vain to attempt to sever the
moral life of Christianity from the historical fact in which it is
rooted. We may cordially assent to the assertion that the whole
value of historical events is in their ideal significance. But in
many cases, part of that which the idea signifies is the fact that
it has been exhibited in history. The value and interest of the
conquest of Greece over Persia lie in the significant idea of
freedom and intelligence triumphing over despotic force; but
surely a part, and a very important part, of the idea, is the fact
that this triumph was won in a historical past, and the
encouragement for the present which rests upon that fact. So too,
the value of Christ’s resurrection lies in its immense moral
significance as a principle of life; but an essential part of that
very significance is the fact that the principle was actually
realized by One in whom mankind was summed up and expressed, and
by whom, therefore, the power of realizing it is conferred on all
who receive him.”
As it is important for us to know that redemption is not only
ideal but actual, so it is important for us to know that sin is
not an inevitable accompaniment of human nature, but that it had a
historical beginning. Yet no _a priori_ theory should prejudice
our examination of the facts. We would preface our consideration
of the Scriptural account, therefore, by stating that our view of
inspiration would permit us to regard that account as inspired,
even if it were mythical or allegorical. As God can use all
methods of literary composition, so he can use all methods of
instructing mankind that are consistent with essential truth.
George Adam Smith observes that the myths and legends of primitive
folk-lore are the intellectual equivalents of later philosophies
and theories of the universe, and that “at no time has revelation
refused to employ such human conceptions for the investiture and
conveyance of the higher spiritual truths.” Sylvester Burnham:
“Fiction and myth have not yet lost their value for the moral and
religious teacher. What a knowledge of his own nature has shown
man to be good for his own use, God surely may also have found to
be good for his use. Nor would it of necessity affect the value of
the Bible if the writer, in using for his purpose myth or fiction,
supposed that he was using history. Only when the value of the
truth of the teaching depends upon the historicity of the alleged
fact, does it become impossible to use myth or fiction for the
purpose of teaching.” See vol. 1, page 241 of this work, with
quotations from Denney, Studies in Theology, 218, and Gore, in Lux
Mundi, 356. Euripides: “Thou God of all! infuse light into the
souls of men, whereby they may be enabled to know what is the root
from which all their evils spring, and by what means they may
avoid them!”
I. The Scriptural Account of the Temptation and Fall in Genesis 3:1-7.
1. Its general, character not mythical or allegorical, but historical.
We adopt this view for the following reasons:—(_a_) There is no intimation
in the account itself that it is not historical. (_b_) As a part of a
historical book, the presumption is that it is itself historical. (_c_)
The later Scripture writers refer to it as a veritable history even in its
details. (_d_) Particular features of the narrative, such as the placing
of our first parents in a garden and the speaking of the tempter through a
serpent-form, are incidents suitable to man’s condition of innocent but
untried childhood. (_e_) This view that the narrative is historical does
not forbid our assuming that the trees of life and of knowledge were
symbols of spiritual truths, while at the same time they were outward
realities.
See _John 8:44_—“_Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts
of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the
beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no
truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for
he is a liar and the father thereof_”; _2 Cor. 11:3_—“_the serpent
beguiled Eve in his craftiness_”; _Rev. 20:2_—“_the dragon, the
old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan._” H. B. Smith, System,
261—“If Christ’s temptation and victory over Satan were historical
events, there seems to be no ground for supposing that the first
temptation was not a historical event.” We believe in the unity
and sufficiency of Scripture. We moreover regard the testimony of
Christ and the apostles as conclusive with regard to the
historicity of the account in Genesis. We assume a divine
superintendence in the choice of material by its author, and the
fulfilment to the apostles of Christ’s promise that they should be
guided into the truth. Paul’s doctrine of sin is so manifestly
based upon the historical character of the Genesis story, that the
denial of the one must naturally lead to the denial of the other.
John Milton writes, in his Areopagitica: “It was from out of the
rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as
two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And
perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into, that is to say, of
knowing good by evil.” He should have learned to know evil as God
knows it—as a thing possible, hateful, and forever rejected. He
actually learned to know evil as Satan knows it—by making it
actual and matter of bitter experience.
Infantile and innocent man found his fit place and work in a
garden. The language of appearances is doubtless used. Satan might
enter into a brute-form, and might appear to speak through it. In
all languages, the stories of brutes speaking show that such a
temptation is congruous with the condition of early man. Asiatic
myths agree in representing the serpent as the emblem of the
spirit of evil. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the
symbol of God’s right of eminent domain, and indicated that all
belonged to him. It is not necessary to suppose that it was known
by this name before the Fall. By means of it man came to know
good, by the loss of it; to know evil, by bitter experience; C. H.
M.: “To know good, without the power to do it; to know evil,
without the power to avoid it.” Bible Com., 1:40—The tree of life
was symbol of the fact that “life is to be sought, not from
within, from himself, in his own powers or faculties; but from
that which is without him, even from him who hath life in
himself.”
As the water of baptism and the bread of the Lord’s supper, though
themselves common things, are symbolic of the greatest truths, so
the tree of knowledge and the tree of life were sacramental.
McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 99-141—“The two trees
represented good and evil. The prohibition of the latter was a
declaration that man of himself could not distinguish between good
and evil, and must trust divine guidance. Satan urged man to
discern between good and evil by his own wisdom, and so become
independent of God. Sin is the attempt of the creature to exercise
God’s attribute of discerning and choosing between good and evil
by his own wisdom. It is therefore self-conceit, self-trust,
self-assertion, the preference of his own wisdom and will to the
wisdom and will of God.” McIlvaine refers to Lord Bacon, Works,
1:82, 162. See also Pope, Theology, 2:10, 11; Boston Lectures for
1871:80, 81.
Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 142, on the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil—“When for the first time man stood face
to face with definite conscious temptation to do that which he
knew to be wrong, he held in his hand the fruit of that tree, and
his destiny as a moral being hung trembling in the balance. And
when for the first time he succumbed to temptation and faint
dawnings of remorse visited his heart, at that moment he was
banished from the Eden of innocence, in which his nature had
hitherto dwelt, and he was driven forth from the presence of the
Lord.” With the first sin, was started another and a downward
course of development. For the mythical or allegorical explanation
of the narrative, see also Hase, Hutterus Redivivus, 164, 165, and
Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, 218.
2. The course of the temptation, and the resulting fall.
The stages of the temptation appear to have been as follows:
(_a_) An appeal on the part of Satan to innocent appetites, together with
an implied suggestion that God was arbitrarily withholding the means of
their gratification (Gen. 3:1). The first sin was in Eve’s isolating
herself and choosing to seek her own pleasure without regard to God’s
will. This initial selfishness it was, which led her to listen to the
tempter instead of rebuking him or flying from him, and to exaggerate the
divine command in her response (Gen. 3:3).
_Gen. 3:1_—“_Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of
the garden?_” Satan emphasizes the _limitation_, but is silent
with regard to the generous _permission_—“_Of every tree of the
garden_ [but one] _thou mayest freely eat_” (_2:16_). C. H. M.,
_in loco_: “To admit the question ‘_hath God said?_’ is already
positive infidelity. To add to God’s word is as bad as to take
from it. ‘_Hath God said?_’ is quickly followed by ‘_Ye shall not
surely die._’ Questioning whether God has spoken, results in open
contradiction of what God has said. Eve suffered God’s word to be
contradicted by a creature, only because she had abjured its
authority over her conscience and heart.” The command was simply:
“_thou shalt not eat of it_” (_Gen. 2:17_). In her rising dislike
to the authority she had renounced, she exaggerates the command
into: “_Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it_” (_Gen.
3:3_). Here is already self-isolation, instead of love. Matheson,
Messages of the Old Religions, 318—“Ere ever the human soul
disobeyed, it had learned to distrust.... Before it violated the
existing law, it had come to think of the Lawgiver as one who was
jealous of his creatures.” Dr. C. H. Parkhurst: “The first
question ever asked in human history was asked by the devil, and
the interrogation point still has in it the trail of the serpent.”
(_b_) A denial of the veracity of God, on the part of the tempter, with a
charge against the Almighty of jealousy and fraud in keeping his creatures
in a position of ignorance and dependence (Gen. 3:4, 5). This was
followed, on the part of the woman, by positive unbelief, and by a
conscious and presumptuous cherishing of desire for the forbidden fruit,
as a means of independence and knowledge. Thus unbelief, pride, and lust
all sprang from the self-isolating, self-seeking spirit, and fastened upon
the means of gratifying it (Gen. 3:6).
_Gen. 3:4, 5_—“_And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not
surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then
your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good
and evil_”; _3:6_—“_And 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 the fruit thereof,
and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he
did eat_”—so “taking the word of a Professor of Lying, that he
does not lie” (John Henry Newman). Hooker, Eccl. Polity, book
I—“To live by one man’s will became the cause of all men’s
misery.” Godet on _John 1:4_—“In the words ‘_life_’ and ‘_light_’
it is natural to see an allusion to the tree of life and to that
of knowledge. After having eaten of the former, man would have
been called to feed on the second. John initiates us into the real
essence of these primordial and mysterious facts and gives us in
this verse, as it were, the philosophy of Paradise.” Obedience is
the way to knowledge, and the sin of Paradise was the seeking of
light without life; _cf._ _John 7:17_—“_If any man willeth to do
his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or
whether I speak from myself._”
(_c_) The tempter needed no longer to urge his suit. Having poisoned the
fountain, the stream would naturally be evil. Since the heart and its
desires had become corrupt, the inward disposition manifested itself in
act (Gen. 3:6—“did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her” = who
had been with her, and had shared her choice and longing). Thus man fell
inwardly, before the outward act of eating the forbidden fruit,—fell in
that one fundamental determination whereby he made supreme choice of self
instead of God. This sin of the inmost nature gave rise to sins of the
desires, and sins of the desires led to the outward act of transgression
(James 1:15).
_James 1:15_—“_Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth
sin._” Baird, Elohim Revealed, 888—“The law of God had already
been violated; man was fallen before the fruit had been plucked,
or the rebellion had been thus signalized. The law required not
only outward obedience but fealty of the heart, and this was
withdrawn before any outward token indicated the change.” Would he
part company with God, or with his wife? When the Indian asked the
missionary where his ancestors were, and was told that they were
in hell, he replied that he would go with his ancestors. He
preferred hell with his tribe to heaven with God. Sapphira, in
like manner, had opportunity given her to part company with her
husband, but she preferred him to God; _Acts 5:7-11_.
Philippi, Glaubenslehre: “So man became like God, a setter of law
to himself. Man’s self-elevation to godhood was his fall. God’s
self-humiliation to manhood was man’s restoration and
elevation.... _Gen. 3:22_—‘_The man has become as one of us_’ in
his condition of self-centered activity,—thereby losing all real
likeness to God, which consists in having the same aim with God
himself. _De te fabula narratur_; it is the condition, not of one
alone, but of all the race.” Sin once brought into being is
self-propagating; its seed is in itself: the centuries of misery
and crime that have followed have only shown what endless
possibilities of evil were wrapped up in that single sin. Keble:
“’Twas but a little drop of sin We saw this morning enter in, And
lo, at eventide a world is drowned!” Farrar, Fall of Man: “The
guilty wish of one woman has swollen into the irremediable
corruption of a world.” See Oehler, O.T. Theology, 1:231; Müller,
Doct. Sin, 2:381-385; Edwards, on Original Sin, part 4, chap. 2;
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:168-180.
II. Difficulties connected with the Fall considered as the personal Act of
Adam.
1. How could a holy being fall?
Here we must acknowledge that we cannot understand how the first unholy
emotion could have found lodgment in a mind that was set supremely upon
God, nor how temptation could have overcome a soul in which there were no
unholy propensities to which it could appeal. The mere power of choice
does not explain the fact of an unholy choice. The fact of natural desire
for sensuous and intellectual gratification does not explain how this
desire came to be inordinate. Nor does it throw light upon the matter, to
resolve this fall into a deception of our first parents by Satan. Their
yielding to such deception presupposes distrust of God and alienation from
him. Satan’s fall, moreover, since it must have been uncaused by
temptation from without, is more difficult to explain than Adam’s fall.
We may distinguish six incorrect explanations of the origin of
sin: 1. Emmons: Sin is due to God’s efficiency—God wrought the sin
in man’s heart. This is the “exercise system,” and is essentially
pantheistic. 2. Edwards: Sin is due to God’s providence—God caused
the sin indirectly by presenting motives. This explanation has all
the difficulties of determinism. 3. Augustine: Sin is the result
of God’s withdrawal from man’s soul. But inevitable sin is not
sin, and the blame of it rests on God who withdrew the grace
needed for obedience, 4. Pfleiderer: The fall results from man’s
already existing sinfulness. The fault then belongs, not to man,
but to God who made man sinful. 5. Hadley: Sin is due to man’s
moral insanity. But such concreated ethical defect would render
sin impossible. Insanity is the effect of sin, but not its cause.
6. Newman: Sin is due to man’s weakness. It is a negative, not a
positive, thing, an incident of finiteness. But conscience and
Scripture testify that it is positive as well as negative,
opposition to God as well as non-conformity to God.
Emmons was really a pantheist: “Since God,” he says, “works in all
men both to will and to do of his good pleasure, it is as easy to
account for the first offence of Adam as for any other sin....
There is no difficulty respecting the fall of Adam from his
original state of perfection and purity into a state of sin and
guilt, which is in any way peculiar.... It is as consistent with
the moral rectitude of the Deity to produce sinful as holy
exercises in the minds of men. He puts forth a positive influence
to make moral agents act, in every instance of their conduct, as
he pleases.... There is but one satisfactory answer to the
question _Whence came evil?_ and that is: It came from the great
first Cause of all things”; see Nathaniel Emmons, Works, 2:683.
Jonathan Edwards also denied power to the contrary even in Adam’s
first sin. God did not immediately cause that sin. But God was
active in the region of motives though his action was not seen.
Freedom of the Will, 161—“It was fitting that the transaction
should so take place that it might not appear to be from God as
the apparent fountain.” Yet “God may actually in his providence so
dispose and permit things that the event may be certainly and
infallibly connected with such disposal and permission”; see
Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 304. Encyc. Britannica, 7:690—“According
to Edwards, Adam had two principles,—natural and supernatural.
When Adam sinned, the supernatural or divine principle was
withdrawn from him, and thus his nature became corrupt without God
infusing any evil thing into it. His posterity came into being
entirely under the government of natural and inferior principles.
But this solves the difficulty of making God the author of sin
only at the expense of denying to sin any real existence, and also
destroys Edwards’s essential distinction between natural and moral
ability.” Edwards on Trinity, Fisher’s edition, 44—“The sun does
not cause darkness and cold, when these follow infallibly upon the
withdrawal of his beams. God’s disposing the result is not a
positive exertion on his part.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:50—“God did
not withdraw the common supporting grace of his Spirit from Adam
until after transgression.” To us Adam’s act was irrational, but
not impossible; to a determinist like Edwards, who held that men
simply act out their characters, Adam’s act should have been not
only irrational, but impossible. Edwards nowhere shows how,
according to his principles, a holy being could possibly fall.
Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 123—“The account of the fall is the first
appearance of an already existing sinfulness, and a typical
example of the way in which every individual becomes sinful.
Original sin is simply the universality and originality of sin.
There is no such thing as indeterminism. The will can lift itself
from natural unfreedom, the unfreedom of the natural impulses, to
real spiritual freedom, only by distinguishing itself from the law
which sets before it its true end of being. The opposition of
nature to the law reveals an original nature power which precedes
all free self-determination. Sin is the evil bent of lawless
self-willed selfishness.” Pfleiderer appears to make this
sinfulness concreated, and guiltless, because proceeding from God.
Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 288—“The wide discrepancy between
precept and practice gives rise to the theological conception of
_sin_, which, in low types of religion, is as often a violation of
some trivial prescription as it is of an ethical principle. The
presence of sin, contrasted with a state of innocence, occasions
the idea of a fall, or lapse from a sinless condition. This is not
incompatible with man’s derivation from an animal ancestry, which
prior to the rise of self-consciousness may be regarded as having
been in a state of moral _innocence_, the sense and reality of sin
being impossible to the animal.... The existence of sin, both as
an inherent disposition, and as a perverted form of action, may be
explained as a survival of animal propensity in human life.... Sin
is the disturbance of higher life by the intrusion of lower.”
Professor James Hadley: “Every man is more or less insane.” We
prefer to say: Every man, so far as he is apart from God, is
morally insane. But we must not make sin the result of insanity.
Insanity is the result of sin. Insanity, moreover, is a physical
disease,—sin is a perversion of the will. John Henry Newman, Idea
of a University, 60—“Evil has no substance of its own, but is only
the defect, excess, perversion or corruption of that which has
substance.” Augustine seems at times to favor this view. He
maintains that evil has no origin, inasmuch as it is negative, not
positive; that it is merely defect or failure. He illustrates it
by the damaged state of a discordant harp; see Moule, Outlines of
Theology, 171. So too A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 190, tells us
that Adam’s will was like a violin in tune, which through mere
inattention and neglect got out of tune at last. But here, too, we
must say with E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 124—“Sin explained
is sin defended.” All these explanations fail to explain, and
throw the blame of sin upon God, as directly or indirectly its
cause.
But sin is an existing fact. God cannot be its author, either by creating
man’s nature so that sin was a necessary incident of its development, or
by withdrawing a supernatural grace which was necessary to keep man holy.
Reason, therefore, has no other recourse than to accept the Scripture
doctrine that sin originated in man’s free act of revolt from God—the act
of a will which, though inclined toward God, was not yet confirmed in
virtue and was still capable of a contrary choice. The original possession
of such power to the contrary seems to be the necessary condition of
probation and moral development. Yet the exercise of this power in a
sinful direction can never be explained upon grounds of reason, since sin
is essentially unreason. It is an act of wicked arbitrariness, the only
motive of which is the desire to depart from God and to render self
supreme.
Sin is a “_mystery of lawlessness_” (_2 Thess. 2:7_), at the
beginning, as well as at the end. Neander, Planting and Training,
388—“Whoever explains sin nullifies it.” Man’s power at the
beginning to choose evil does not prove that, now that he has
fallen, he has equal power of himself permanently to choose good.
Because man has power to cast himself from the top of a precipice
to the bottom, it does not follow that he has equal power to
transport himself from the bottom to the top.
Man fell by wilful resistance to the inworking God. Christ is in
all men as he was in Adam, and all good impulses are due to him.
Since the Holy Spirit is the Christ within, all men are the
subjects of his striving. He does not withdraw from them except
upon, and in consequence of, their withdrawing from him. John
Milton makes the Almighty say of Adam’s sin: “Whose fault? Whose
but his own? Ingrate, he had of me All he could have; I made him
just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all the Etherial Powers, And Spirits, both them who
stood and them who failed; Freely they stood who stood, and fell
who failed.” The word “cussedness” has become an apt word here.
The Standard Dictionary defines it as “1. Cursedness, meanness,
perverseness; 2. resolute courage, endurance: ‘Jim Bludsoe’s voice
was heard, And they all had trust in his cussedness And knowed he
would keep his word.’ ” (John Hay, Jim Bludsoe, stanza 6). Not the
last, but the first, of these definitions best describes the first
sin. The most thorough and satisfactory treatment of the fall of
man in connection with the doctrine of evolution is found in
Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 73-240.
Hodge, Essays and Reviews, 30—“There is a broad difference between
the commencement of holiness and the commencement of sin, and more
is necessary for the former than for the latter. An act of
obedience, if it is performed under the mere impulse of self-love,
is virtually no act of obedience. It is not performed with any
intention to obey, for that is holy, and cannot, according to the
theory, precede the act. But an act of disobedience, performed
from the desire of happiness, is rebellion. The cases are surely
different. If, to please myself, I do what God commands, it is not
holiness; but if, to please myself, I do what he forbids, it is
sin. Besides, no creature is immutable. Though created holy, the
taste for holy enjoyments may be overcome by a temptation
sufficiently insidious and powerful, and a selfish motive or
feeling excited in the mind. Neither is a sinful character
immutable. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth may be
clearly presented and so effectually applied as to produce that
change which is called regeneration; that is, to call into
existence a taste for holiness, so that it is chosen for its own
sake, and not as a means of happiness.”
H. B. Smith, System, 262—“The state of the case, as far as we can
enter into Adam’s experience, is this: Before the command, there
was the state of love without the thought of the opposite: a
knowledge of good only, a yet unconscious goodness: there was also
the knowledge that the eating of the fruit was against the divine
command. The temptation aroused pride; the yielding to that was
the sin. The change was there. The change was not in the choice as
an executive act, nor in the result of that act—the eating; but in
the choice of supreme love to the world and self, rather than
supreme devotion to God. It was an immanent preference of the
world,—not a love of the world following the choice, but a love of
the world which is the choice itself.”
263—“We cannot account for Adam’s fall, psychologically. In saying
this we mean: It is inexplicable by anything outside itself. We
must receive the fact as ultimate, and rest there. Of course we do
not mean that it was not in accordance with the laws of moral
agency—that it was a violation of those laws: but only that we do
not see the mode, that we cannot construct it for ourselves in a
rational way. It differs from all other similar cases of ultimate
preference _which we know_; _viz._, the sinner’s immanent
preference of the world, where we know there is an antecedent
ground in the bias to sin, and the Christian’s regeneration, or
immanent preference of God, where we know there is an influence
from without, the working of the Holy Spirit.” 264—“We must leave
the whole question with the immanent preference standing forth as
the ultimate fact in the case, which is not to be constructed
philosophically, as far as the processes of Adam’s soul are
concerned: we must regard that immanent preference as both a
choice and an affection, not an affection the result of a choice,
not a choice which is the consequence of an affection, but both
together.”
In one particular, however, we must differ with H. B. Smith: Since
the power of voluntary internal movement is the power of the will,
we must regard the change from good to evil as primarily a choice,
and only secondarily a state of affection caused thereby. Only by
postulating a free and conscious act of transgression on the part
of Adam, an act which bears to evil affection the relation not of
effect but of cause, do we reach, at the beginning of human
development, a proper basis for the responsibility and guilt of
Adam and the race. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:148-167.
2. How could God justly permit Satanic temptation?
We see in this permission not justice but benevolence.
(_a_) Since Satan fell without external temptation, it is probable that
man’s trial would have been substantially the same, even though there had
been no Satan to tempt him.
Angels had no animal nature to obscure the vision; they could not
be influenced through sense; yet they were tempted and they fell.
As Satan and Adam sinned under the best possible circumstances, we
may conclude that the human race would have sinned with equal
certainty. The only question at the time of their creation,
therefore, was how to modify the conditions so as best to pave the
way for repentance and pardon. These conditions are: 1. a material
body—which means confinement, limitation, need of self-restraint;
2. infancy—which means development, deliberation, with no memory
of the first sin; 3. the parental relation—repressing the
wilfulness of the child, and teaching submission to authority.
(_b_) In this case, however, man’s fall would perhaps have been without
what now constitutes its single mitigating circumstance. Self-originated
sin would have made man himself a Satan.
_Mat. 13:28_—“_An enemy hath done this._” “God permitted Satan to
divide the guilt with man, so that man might be saved from
despair.” See Trench, Studies in the Gospels, 16-29. Mason, Faith
of the Gospel, 103—“Why was not the tree made outwardly repulsive?
Because only the abuse of that which was positively good and
desirable could have attractiveness for Adam or could constitute a
real temptation.”
(_c_) As, in the conflict with temptation, it is an advantage to objectify
evil under the image of corruptible flesh, so it is an advantage to meet
it as embodied in a personal and seducing spirit.
Man’s body, corruptible and perishable as it is, furnishes him
with an illustration and reminder of the condition of soul to
which sin has reduced him. The flesh, with its burdens and pains,
is thus, under God, a help to the distinct recognition and
overcoming of sin. So it was an advantage to man to have
temptation confined to a single external voice. We may say of the
influence of the tempter, as Birks, in his Difficulties of Belief,
101, says of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:
“Temptation did not depend upon the tree. Temptation was certain
in any event. The tree was a type into which God contracted the
possibilities of evil, so as to strip them of delusive vastness,
and connect them with definite and palpable warning,—to show man
that it was only one of the many possible activities of his spirit
which was forbidden, that God had right to all and could forbid
all.” The originality of sin was the most fascinating element in
it. It afforded boundless range for the imagination. Luther did
well to throw his inkstand at the devil. It was an advantage to
localize him. The concentration of the human powers upon a
definite offer of evil helps our understanding of the evil and
increases our disposition to resist it.
(_d_) Such temptation has in itself no tendency to lead the soul astray.
If the soul be holy, temptation may only confirm it in virtue. Only the
evil will, self-determined against God, can turn temptation into an
occasion of ruin.
As the sun’s heat has no tendency to wither the plant rooted in
deep and moist soil, but only causes it to send down its roots the
deeper and to fasten itself the more strongly, so temptation has
in itself no tendency to pervert the soul. It was only the seeds
that “_fell upon the rocky places, where they had not much earth_”
(_Mat. 13:5, 6_), that “_were scorched_” when “_the sun was
risen_”; and our Lord attributes their failure, not to the sun,
but to their lack of root and of soil: “_because they had no
root_,” “_because they had no deepness of earth._” The same
temptation which occasions the ruin of the false disciple
stimulates to sturdy growth the virtue of the true Christian.
Contrast with the temptation of Adam the temptation of Christ.
Adam had everything to plead for God, the garden and its delights,
while Christ had everything to plead against him, the wilderness
and its privations. But Adam had confidence in Satan, while Christ
had confidence in God; and the result was in the former case
defeat, in the latter victory. See Baird, Elohim Revealed,
385-396.
C. H. Spurgeon: “All the sea outside a ship can do it no damage
till the water enters and fills the hold. Hence, it is clear, our
greatest danger is within. All the devils in hell and tempters on
earth could do us no injury, if there were no corruption in our
own natures. The sparks will fly harmlessly, if there is no
tinder. Alas, our heart is our greatest enemy; this is the little
home-born thief. Lord, save me from that evil man, myself!”
Lyman Abbott: “The scorn of goody-goody is justified; for
goody-goody is innocence, not virtue; and the boy who never does
anything wrong because he never does anything at all is of no use
in the world.... Sin is not a help in development; it is a
hindrance. But temptation is a help; it is an indispensable
means.” E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 123—“Temptation in the
bad sense and a fall from innocence were no more necessary to the
perfection of the first man, than a marring of any one’s character
is now necessary to its completeness.” John Milton, Areopagitica:
“Many there be that complain of divine providence for suffering
Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues! When God gave him reason, he
gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had
been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the
motions” (puppet shows). Robert Browning, Ring and the Book, 204
(Pope, 1183)—“Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time! Why comes
temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath
his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph? Pray ‘Lead us into no
such temptations. Lord’? Yea, but, O thou whose servants are the
bold, Lead such temptations by the head and hair, Reluctant
dragons, up to who dares fight, That so he may do battle and have
praise!”
3. How could a penalty so great be justly connected with disobedience to
so slight a command?
To this question we may reply:
(_a_) So slight a command presented the best test of the spirit of
obedience.
Cicero: “Parva res est, at magna culpa.” The child’s persistent
disobedience in one single respect to the mother’s command shows
that in all his other acts of seeming obedience he does nothing
for his mother’s sake, but all for his own,—shows, in other words,
that he does not possess the spirit of obedience in a single act.
S. S. Times: “Trifles are trifles only to triflers. Awake to the
significance of the insignificant! for you are in a world that
belongs not alone to the God of the Infinite, but also to the God
of the infinitesimal.”
(_b_) The external command was not arbitrary or insignificant in its
substance. It was a concrete presentation to the human will of God’s claim
to eminent domain or absolute ownership.
John Hall, Lectures on the Religious rise of Property, 10—“It
sometimes happens that owners of land, meaning to give the use of
it to others, without alienating it, impose a nominal rent—a
quit-rent, the passing of which acknowledges the recipient as
owner and the occupier as tenant. This is understood in all lands.
In many an old English deed, ‘three barley-corns,’ ‘a fat capon,’
or ‘a shilling,’ is the consideration which permanently recognizes
the rights of lordship. God taught men by the forbidden tree that
he was owner, that man was occupier. He selected the matter of
property to be the test of man’s obedience, the outward and
sensible sign of a right state of heart toward God; and when man
put forth his hand and did eat, he denied God’s ownership and
asserted his own. Nothing remained but to eject him.”
(_c_) The sanction attached to the command shows that man was not left
ignorant of its meaning or importance.
_Gen. 2:17_—“_in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die._” _Cf._ _Gen. 3:3_—“_the tree which is in the midst of
the garden_”; and see Dodge, Christian Theology, 206, 207—“The
tree was central, as the commandment was central. The choice was
between the tree of life and the tree of death,—between self and
God. Taking the one was rejecting the other.”
(_d_) The act of disobedience was therefore the revelation of a will
thoroughly corrupted and alienated from God—a will given over to
ingratitude, unbelief, ambition, and rebellion.
The motive to disobedience was not appetite, but the ambition to
be as God. The outward act of eating the forbidden fruit was only
the thin edge of the wedge, behind which lay the whole mass—the
fundamental determination to isolate self and to seek personal
pleasure regardless of God and his law. So the man under
conviction for sin commonly clings to some single passion or plan,
only half-conscious of the fact that opposition to God in one
thing is opposition in all.
III. Consequences of the Fall, so far as respects Adam.
1. Death.
This death was twofold. It was partly:
A. Physical death, or the separation of the soul from the body.—The seeds
of death, naturally implanted in man’s constitution, began to develop
themselves the moment that access to the tree of life was denied him. Man
from that moment was a dying creature.
In a true sense death began at once. To it belonged the pains
which both man and woman should suffer in their appointed
callings. The fact that man’s earthly existence did not at once
end, was due to God’s counsel of redemption. “_The law of the
Spirit of life_” (_Rom. 8:2_) began to work even then, and grace
began to counteract the effects of the Fall. Christ has now
“_abolished death_” (_2 Tim. 1:10_) by taking its terrors away,
and by turning it into the portal of heaven. He will destroy it
utterly (_1 Cor. 15:26_) when by resurrection from the dead, the
bodies of the saints shall be made immortal. Dr. William A.
Hammond, following a French scientist, declares that there is no
reason in a normal physical system why man should not live
forever.
That death is not a physical necessity is evident if we once
remember that life is, not fuel, but fire. Weismann, Heredity, 8,
24, 72, 159—“The organism must not be looked upon as a heap of
combustible material, which is completely reduced to ashes in a
certain time, the length of which is determined by its size and by
the rate at which it burns; but it should be compared to a fire,
to which fresh fuel can be continually added, and which, whether
it burns quickly or slowly, can be kept burning as long as
necessity demands.... Death is not a primary necessity, but it has
been acquired secondarily, as an adaptation.... Unicellular
organisms, increasing by means of fission, in a certain sense
possess immortality. No Amœba has ever lost an ancestor by
death.... Each individual now living is far older than mankind,
and is almost as old as life itself.... Death is not an essential
attribute of living matter.”
If we regard man as primarily spirit, the possibility of life
without death is plain. God lives on eternally, and the future
physical organism of the righteous will have in it no seed of
death. Man might have been created without being mortal. That he
is mortal is due to anticipated sin. Regard body as simply the
constant energizing of God, and we see that there is no inherent
necessity of death. Denney, Studies in Theology, 98—“Man, it is
said, must die because he is a natural being, and what belongs to
nature belongs to him. But we assert, on the contrary, that he was
created a supernatural being, with a primacy over nature, so
related to God as to be immortal. Death is an intrusion, and it is
finally to be abolished.” Chandler, The Spirit of Man, 45-47—“The
first stage in the fall was the disintegration of spirit into body
and mind; and the second was the enslavement of mind to body.”
Some recent writers, however, deny that death is a consequence of
the Fall, except in the sense that man’s fear of death results
from his sin. Newman Smyth, Place of Death in Evolution, 19-22,
indeed, asserts the value and propriety of death as an element of
the normal universe. He would oppose to the doctrine of Weismann
the conclusions of Maupas, the French biologist, who has followed
infusoria through 600 generations. Fission, says Maupas,
reproduces for many generations, but the unicellular germ
ultimately weakens and dies out. The asexual reproduction must be
supplemented by a higher conjugation, the meeting and partial
blending of the contents of two cells. This is only occasional,
but it is necessary to the permanence of the species. Isolation is
ultimate death. Newman Smyth adds that death and sex appear
together. When sex enters to enrich and diversify life, all that
will not take advantage of it dies out. Survival of the fittest is
accompanied by death of that which will not improve. Death is a
secondary thing—a consequence of life. A living form acquired the
power of giving up its life for another. It died in order that its
offspring might survive in a higher form. Death helps life on and
up. It does not put a stop to life. It became an advantage to life
as a whole that certain primitive forms should be left by the way
to perish. We owe our human birth to death in nature. The earth
before us has died that we might live. We are the living children
of a world that has died for us. Death is a means of life, of
increasing specialization of function. Some cells are born to give
up their life sacrificially for the organism to which they belong.
While we regard Newman Smyth’s view as an ingenious and valuable
explanation of the incidental results of death, we do not regard
it as an explanation of death’s origin. God has overruled death
for good, and we can assent to much of Dr. Smyth’s exposition. But
that this good could be gained only by death seems to us wholly
unproved and unprovable. Biology shows us that other methods of
reproduction are possible, and that death is an incident and not a
primary requisite to development. We regard Dr. Smyth’s theory as
incompatible with the Scripture representations of death as the
consequence of sin, as the sign of God’s displeasure, as a means
of discipline for the fallen, as destined to complete abolition
when sin itself has been done away. We reserve, however, the full
proof that physical death is part of the penalty of sin until we
discuss the Consequences of Sin to Adam’s Posterity.
But this death was also, and chiefly,
B. Spiritual death, or the separation of the soul from God.—In this are
included: (_a_) Negatively, the loss of man’s moral likeness to God, or
that underlying tendency of his whole nature toward God which constituted
his original righteousness. (_b_) Positively, the depraving of all those
powers which, in their united action with reference to moral and religious
truth, we call man’s moral and religious nature; or, in other words, the
blinding of his intellect, the corruption of his affections, and the
enslavement of his will.
Seeking to be a god, man became a slave; seeking independence, he
ceased to be master of himself. Once his intellect was pure,—he
was supremely conscious of God, and saw all things also in God’s
light. Now he was supremely conscious of self, and saw all things
as they affected self. This self-consciousness—how unlike the
objective life of the first apostles, of Christ and of every
loving soul! Once man’s affections were pure,—he loved God
supremely, and other things in subordination to God’s will. Now he
loved self supremely, and was ruled by inordinate affections
toward the creatures which could minister to his selfish
gratification. Now man could do nothing pleasing to God, because
he lacked the love which is necessary to all true obedience.
G. F. Wilkin, Control in Evolution, shows that the will may
initiate a counter-evolution which shall reverse the normal course
of man’s development. First comes an act, then a habit, of
surrender to animalism; then subversion of faith in the true and
the good; then active championship of evil; then transmission of
evil disposition and tendencies to posterity. This subversion of
the rational will by an evil choice took place very early, indeed
in the first man. All human history has been a conflict between
these two antagonistic evolutions, the upward and the downward.
Biological rather than moral phenomena predominate. No human being
escapes transgressing the law of his evolutionary nature. There is
a moral deadness and torpor resulting. The rational will must be
restored before man can go right again. Man must commit himself to
a true life; then to the restoration of other men to that same
life; then there must be coöperation of society; this work must
extend to the limits of the human species. But this will be
practicable and rational only as it is shown that the unfolding
plan of the universe has destined the righteous to a future
incomparably more desirable than that of the wicked; in other
words, immortality is necessary to evolution.
“If immortality be necessary to evolution, then immortality
becomes scientific. Jesus has the authority and omnipresence of
the power behind evolution. He imposes upon his followers the same
normal evolutionary mission that sent him into the world. He
organizes them into churches. He teaches a moral evolution of
society through the united voluntary efforts of his followers.
They are ‘_the good seed ... the sons of the kingdom_’ (_Mat.
13:38_). Theism makes a definite attempt to counteract the evil of
the counter-evolution, and the attempt justifies itself by its
results. Christianity is scientific (1) in that it satisfies the
conditions of _knowledge_: the persisting and comprehensive
harmony of phenomena, and the interpretation of all the facts; (2)
in its _aim_, the moral regeneration of the world; (3) in its
_methods_, adapting itself to man as an ethical being, capable of
endless progress; (4) in its conception of normal _society_, as of
sinners uniting together to help one another to depend on God and
conquer self, so recognizing the ethical bond as the most
essential. This doctrine harmonizes science and religion,
revealing the new species of control which marks the highest stage
of evolution; shows that the religion of the N. T. is essentially
scientific and its truths capable of practical verification; that
Christianity is not any particular church, but the teachings of
the Bible; that Christianity is the true system of ethics, and
should be taught in public institutions; that cosmic evolution
comes at last to depend on the wisdom and will of man, the
immanent God working in finite and redeemed humanity.”
In fine, man no longer made God the end of his life, but chose self
instead. While he retained the power of self-determination in subordinate
things, he lost that freedom which consisted in the power of choosing God
as his ultimate aim, and became fettered by a fundamental inclination of
his will toward evil. The intuitions of the reason were abnormally
obscured, since these intuitions, so far as they are concerned with moral
and religious truth, are conditioned upon a right state of the affections;
and—as a necessary result of this obscuring of reason—conscience, which,
as the normal judiciary of the soul, decides upon the basis of the law
given to it by reason, became perverse in its deliverances. Yet this
inability to judge or act aright, since it was a moral inability springing
ultimately from will, was itself hateful and condemnable.
See Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:61-73; Shedd, Sermons to the
Natural Man, 202-230, esp. 205—“Whatsoever springs from will we
are responsible for. Man’s inability to love God supremely results
from his intense self-will and self-love, and therefore his
impotence is a part and element of his sin, and not an excuse for
it.” And yet the question “_Adam, where art thou?_” (_Gen. 3:9_),
says C. J. Baldwin, “was, (1) a question, not as to Adam’s
physical locality, but as to his moral condition; (2) a question,
not of justice threatening, but of love inviting to repentance and
return; (3) a question, not to Adam as an individual only, but to
the whole humanity of which he was the representative.”
Dale, Ephesians, 40—“Christ is the eternal Son of God; and it was
the first, the primeval purpose of the divine grace that his life
and sonship should be shared by all mankind; that through Christ
all men should rise to a loftier rank than that which belonged to
them by their creation; should be ‘_partakers of the divine
nature_’ (_2 Pet. 1:4_), and share the divine righteousness and
joy. Or rather, the race was actually created in Christ; and it
was created that the whole race might in Christ inherit the life
and glory of God. The divine purpose has been thwarted and
obstructed and partially defeated by human sin. But it is being
fulfilled in all who are ‘_in Christ_’ (_Eph. 1:3_).”
2. Positive and formal exclusion from God’s presence.
This included:
(_a_) The cessation of man’s former familiar intercourse with God, and the
setting up of outward barriers between man and his Maker (cherubim and
sacrifice).
“In die Welt hinausgestossen, Steht der Mensch verlassen da.”
Though God punished Adam and Eve, he did not curse them as he did
the serpent. Their exclusion from the tree of life was a matter of
benevolence as well as of justice, for it prevented the
immortality of sin.
(_b_) Banishment from the garden, where God had specially manifested his
presence.—Eden was perhaps a spot reserved, as Adam’s body had been, to
show what a _sinless_ world would be. This positive exclusion from God’s
presence, with the sorrow and pain which it involved, may have been
intended to illustrate to man the nature of that eternal death from which
he now needed to seek deliverance.
At the gates of Eden, there seems to have been a manifestation of
God’s presence, in the cherubim, which constituted the place a
sanctuary. Both Cain and Abel brought offerings “_unto the Lord_”
(_Gen. 4:3, 4_), and when Cain fled, he is said to have gone out
“_from the presence of the Lord_” (_Gen. 4:16_). On the
consequences of the Fall to Adam, see Edwards, Works, 2:390-405;
Hopkins, Works, 1:206-246; Dwight, Theology, 1:393-434; Watson,
Institutes, 2:19-42; Martensen, Dogmatics, 155-173; Van Oosterzee,
Dogmatics, 402-412.