Original Sin and the Fall

Five Views

J. B. Stump, Chad Meister, J. B. Stump, Chad Meister

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780830853939
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

"What is this that you have done?"Throughout the church's history, Christians have largely agreed that God's good creation of humanity was marred by humanity's sinful rebellion, resulting in our separation from God and requiring divine intervention in the saving work of Christ.But Christians have disagreed over many particular questions surrounding humanity's fall, including the extent of original sin, the nature of the fall, the question of guilt, how to interpret the narratives from Genesis, and how these questions relate to our understanding of human origins and modern science.This Spectrum Multiview book presents five views on these questions: Augustinian-Reformed, Moderate Reformed, Wesleyan, Eastern Orthodox, and a Reconceived view. Each contributor offers both an articulation of their own view and responses to the other views in question. The result is a robust reflection on one of the most central—and controversial—tenets of the faith.Views and Contributors: - An Augustinian-Reformed View (Hans Madueme, Covenant College)- A Moderate Reformed View (Oliver Crisp, The University of St. Andrews)- A Wesleyan View (Joel B. Green, Fuller Theological Seminary)- An Eastern Orthodox View (Andrew Louth, Durham University)- A Reconceived View (Tatha Wiley, University of St. Thomas)Spectrum Multiview Books offer a range of viewpoints on contested topics within Christianity, giving contributors the opportunity to present their position and also respond to others in this dynamic publishing format.

An Augustinian-Reformed View

HANS MADUEME

Once upon a time, the doctrine of the fall enjoyed virtual canonical status. This Augustinian doctrine played a vital role in the development of modern culture and thought. Seventeenth-century natural philosophers, for example, widely believed that the first disobedience left humanity not only morally depraved but cognitively impaired. Those theological assumptions inspired doubt in the ability of human minds to fathom the inner workings of nature, which led them to explore God’s creation directly, thus giving rise to empirical science.1 In early modern medicine, the healing ministrations of physicians were thought to relieve suffering caused by the fall.2 So too with pioneers of technology who saw themselves as restoring the glory lost by humanity after Adam’s trespass.3 This script replayed itself in other areas of Western thought.4

But in many Christian academic settings today, Augustine’s hamartiology has fallen out of favor.5 In an ironic twist, natural science disowned its erstwhile parents when it jettisoned the fall. Even prior to Darwin and the more recent scientific challenges, people were already asking questions about Genesis 3. How could Adam and Eve, created holy, ever choose to sin? How was sin even possible in the blissful presence of God? And how did one peccadillo trigger such devastating consequences? Skeptics who asked such questions had lost faith in the received tradition.

Similar burdens bedevil the doctrine of original sin. In Roman Catholic tradition, during the Pelagian controversy, the Augustinian doctrine of original sin became official church dogma at the Councils of Carthage (411–418) and Orange (529); subsequent developments of the doctrine were only variations on Augustine. That tradition was equally dominant among the Reformers and was enshrined in later confessional statements. By the following century, however, people questioned the viability of original sin, some decrying the rationality of “inherited” guilt, others convinced that original sin undermines divine justice. Thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) reinterpreted original sin in light of modernity. Over the same period on the American scene, original sin faced similar pressures.6 Soon after, Darwin drove the nail in the coffin.

In the present chapter, I argue that these radical moves away from the Augustinian tradition are premature and in fact wrong-headed. I make a case for the doctrine of the fall and a Reformed understanding of original sin, with an eye to recent scientific challenges.7 Although these doctrines are often maligned as intellectually obsolete, I believe they are indispensable for a right understanding of the gospel and the human condition.

THE ORIGIN OF SIN

James Barr famously claimed that Genesis 3 “had a different style and purport altogether, and the ‘origin of sin’ was only marginal to it.”8 According to Barr, Paul invented the fall by drawing on noncanonical Jewish tradition rather than the Hebrew Bible.9 W. Sibley Towner argued similarly that “there is no Fall in scripture. . . . There is no account of the origin of evil and no primeval encounter with Satan.”10 In Towner’s view, “the rise of historical-critical biblical studies accounts for much of the relief from the heavy hand of dogma about the Fall.”11 Such assumptions are familiar in academic circles, but similar conclusions are increasingly common among evangelicals and their allies.12

The fall of Adam and Eve. These shifts reflect a modern tendency to doubt the historical reliability of Genesis 1–11, as if “real” history in the Bible begins with Abraham in Genesis 12. However, later passages in the Old Testament assume the historicity of the Eden narratives (e.g., Ezek 28:11-19; Hos 6:7; Eccles 7:29; 1 Chr 1:1; Lk 3:38; Jude 14).13 The New Testament apostolic witness is unambiguous; consider Paul’s claims about women in the church (1 Cor 11:3-12; 1 Tim 2:13-14), his polemic against false apostles (2 Cor 11:1-3), and his Adam-Christ typology (Rom 5:12-21; 1 Cor 15:21-22)—at every point he draws historically on very particular details in Genesis 1–3 (along similar lines, see also Mt 19:4; Jn 8:44; Acts 17:26; Rev 12:9; 20:2).14 Skeptical claims about Genesis 1–11 are subverted by the apostolic sense of those passages.15

Genesis 1 and 2 are the backdrop to the events in Genesis 3:1-6. God created everything, including the land, sea, plants, animals, and humanity; in doing so he repeatedly calls each ingredient “good” (Gen 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25), even “very good” (Gen 1:31). By implication the original created order was free from sin. Sometimes it is suggested that good (tov) in Genesis 1 is merely aesthetic, not moral.16 In my view, original creation is both aesthetically and morally good, especially in light of God’s revealed character as the thrice Holy One (Is 6:1-7).

God’s only stipulation to Adam and Eve was not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen 2:17). Alas, they disobeyed (Gen 3:1-6). The text never mentions “the fall” explicitly, but the unfolding story chronicles the spread of sin in the wake of their rebellion, culminating in the global flood. Even after the flood, sin permeates the life of Israel and the Gentiles, moving the Lord to extend grace through the call of Abraham; Israel’s election; the era of the judges, priests, kings, and prophets; and climaxing in the incarnation (Jn 1:14). The movement of the story itself presses the question, Why do all sin and die? Guided by Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, we rightly identify Genesis 3 as the origin of sin in the human experience.

But sin has an even deeper origin. Tradition interpreted Lucifer as a holy archangel cast out of heaven after revolting against Yahweh (e.g., Is 14:12-15; Ezek 28:12-19; 2 Pet 2:4; Jude 6).17 The classic proof texts are not decisive, but the tempter’s malice and the prophecy in Genesis 3:15 taken up by later biblical testimony identify the serpent as a surrogate for the devil (e.g., Jn 8:44; Rom 16:20; Rev 12:1-17; 13:1-3; 16:13; 20:2). Since the devil is not a second deity or a manifestation of God, the only option left is that he is one of God’s creatures, a holy angel who corrupted himself irredeemably. The ultimate origin of sin, then, is Satan’s fall, its proximate origin the fall of Adam.

Does this picture make any sense? If our first parents were created sinless, unimaginably happy, enjoying the very presence of God, what could possibly motivate them to disobey? This question of intelligibility intensifies with Satan, who was tempted by no one. It seems inexplicable that any of them chose to sin.18 Even if we were to find a causal explanation within the internal constitution of Adam or Lucifer, we would succeed only in rationalizing sin’s origin by blaming some element within creation, thus implicating the Creator.19 We should not apologize here for invoking mystery, for some things are beyond our ken (Deut 29:29). We can confess what we do know: “Adam was created sinless but not impeccable, uncorrupted but not incorruptible.”20

Physical death resulted from the fall, although it was delayed (Gen 2:17; 3:19); at any rate, it was symptomatic of a deeper and far more serious spiritual death (see Eph 2:1; Col 2:13), a harbinger of hell, the “second” death (Rev 20:6, 14; 21:8). The promise of a Redeemer was the only hope (Gen 3:15). Some have buckled under pressure from the sciences, reinterpreting Paul as saying that Adam’s sin introduced spiritual, not physical, death.21 However, such rescue moves crash against the pillars of Romans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:21, in which Paul confirms the sin-death nexus; as one theologian explains, “The primary point is the death of the body, since its antithesis is the resurrection of the body.”22 Spiritual and physical death are therefore both in view.

The fall is midwife to the gospel. The original goodness of creation is a truth brimming with hope, for it means that sin began in time; it is contingent, not intrinsic to creation. Creation’s original goodness not only safeguards God’s holiness but also renders sin an accidental, not essential, feature of human nature. If redemption from sin is a real possibility, then the gospel is truly good news: “Human beings can again become sinless without ceasing to be human.”23 Without the fall, all of that is threatened; even eschatology becomes baseless, wishful thinking. The Christian conviction that suffering, sin, and death will disappear at the eschaton hinges on the same divine revelation that affirms the goodness of prelapsarian creation. If we deny the latter, on what grounds can we hope for the former? As Michael Lloyd notes, “We cannot look forward to any golden age in the future, because we cannot now look back to any golden age in the past.”24 Just so. Adam’s fall is integral to the very shape of Christian doctrine.25

The cosmic fall. The divine curse targeted the serpent, Eve, and Adam, and was followed by expulsion from Eden (Gen 3:14-24). In particular, the third curse sentenced Adam to toilsome labor and subjected “the ground” (v. 17)—by synecdoche, the entire cosmos—to futility and decay. This doctrine of a cosmic fall is scorned by many as the benighted mantra of fringe creationists. It was the norm in premodern theology, but by the eighteenth century geologists were defending earth’s antiquity; they inferred animal predation and death eons before the dawn of humanity. Evolution revolutionized biology a century later.

As the doctrine of a cosmic fall was being eclipsed, there were attempts to refurbish it for the strange new world. Some, like C. I. Scofield and C. S. Lewis, speculated that an angelic fall ruined an earlier creation, triggering millions of years of pre-Adamic animal suffering and death (the “gap” between Gen 1:1 and 1:2).26 Others resurrected Origen’s ghost by imagining a pretemporal fall in which each of us preexisted as disembodied souls who sinned against God and were then sentenced to embodiment in this earthly life.27 A third proposal hypothesized that pre-Adamic predation and death were caused by Adam’s fall but only retroactively, much like Christ’s atonement was “retroactively” effective for Old Testament believers.28 Each of these speculative moves falls short, however, by erasing the causal nexus between Adam’s sin and death, or their redemptive-historical, temporal ordering.

In any event the new consensus among theologians rejects a cosmic fall entirely. Evolutionary creationists instead reimagine suffering and death not as a lapsarian affliction but as the necessary cost of the freedom God gave creation to be itself; or, as some put it, this vale of tears was the only way for God to secure the beauty, complexity, and diversity of nature.29 The new theodicy attempts to justify God in the face of untold animal death and suffering in evolutionary history.30 Such evolutionary hamartiologies render natural evil (and possibly moral evil) intrinsic to divine creation, or alternatively, evil becomes a dualistic reality existing alongside God and intruding itself into his creation. I do not doubt that God brings good out of evil, as Scripture attests repeatedly (e.g., Gen 50:20; Acts 2:23-24), but the notion that the Creator originates evil to bring about good violates his holy self-revelation in Scripture.

Perhaps, then, the cosmic fall should be reenlisted, especially given its robust exegetical warrant (assertions to the contrary are misleading).31 Paul’s allusion to Genesis 3:17-19 (and 5:29) in Romans 8:19-22 confirms that the cosmic fall was God’s curse on the ground. God subjected creation “to futility,” in “bondage to decay” (Rom 8:20, 21). Creation (ktisis) is the entirety of “sub-human nature both animate and inanimate”—that is, the whole cosmos minus angels and humans.32 God held creation “in bondage to corruption, decay, and death . . . a state of futility with hope.”33 Isaiah’s picture of the new heaven and new earth (Is 11:6-9; 65:17, 25), when the cosmic fall will be annulled, arguably includes the absence of animal predation—for example, “the lion shall eat straw like the ox” (Is 65:25). In light of biblical eschatology (e.g., 2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1-2), I take these passages to imply the absence of animal predation and death in the prefallen world (admittedly, my argument is inferential since Scripture is not explicit).34

For those who reject the cosmic fall, their position is saddled with eschatological instability. Many proponents of this view believe that humans and animals will not experience pain or death in the new heaven and new earth.35 But this hope sits awkwardly with the denial of a cosmic fall. Scriptural eschatology points to a future reality of finitude without mortality, which suggests that mortality is not a creaturely given.36 The notion that creation’s God-given “freedom to be itself” is an intrinsic good leaves open the possibility that tornadoes, earthquakes, diseases, and the like will be present in the eschaton.

Some evolutionary and old-earth creationists...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction - J. B. Stump and Chad Meister
• Part One: Perspectives on Original Sin and the Fall
• Part Two: Responses
• List of Contributors
• General Index
• Scripture Index
• Notes
• Praise for Original Sin and the Fall
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright