What is sin? I mean besides missing the mark, which we all recall from our more impressionable years! Is sin an attitude, an action, simply an issue of bad-timing, a false dichotomy, perhaps an ingestation of those favorite apples of fall? My continuing studies in Genesis 1-3 have generated and explored many a hypothesis concerning the nature of Adam's choice and subsequent fall as well as the necessity of my entailment in said choice. After contemplating Jonathan's thorough and, as always, lucid exposition concering epistomology, knowledge and our relationship to them, I found myself, yet again, stewing the cauldron of enchanted trees, serpents, and silent actions of profound consequence. Fall is upon us, and by us I mean Jenna and I, full of its eerie spirit that moves trees and even the wind to howl. The subject of Man's sin is a bit like the fall (no pun intended!) in that one cannot truly experience the reality of it without hearing the howling of the wind and the whispers of the trees, and without, of course, taking a bite from those most enchanted atomic apples, not to be confused with adamic apples, of course! In what follows I offer my own musings concerning these events not to contrast Jonathan's excellent enquiry, Epistemology, Innocence, and the Spiritual Development of Humanity (An Essay), but rather to complete the stew with a few of the remaining ingredients. If you do not feel like the fall I recommend reading a recent work of mine on the subject entitled Autumn. Consider it an incantation of sorts to open your eyes, as it were... Jonathan clarifed several issues in his essay not least of which the neutrality of knowledge. Furthermore, as Krista has commented, getting reinserted into the matrix is not an option. We, like Neo, must accept the jagged little pill we have swallowed and proceed. But I would like to pause and reflect upon the gravity of the situation to which we are referring. Our understanding of the fall profoundly effects our understanding of salvation. As Dallas says, "What salvation is depends upon what is being saved." Thus, how we read the accounts in Genesis determine, in large measure, how we will read the rest of Scripture. If coherence between the accounts recorded in Genesis and the rest of Scripture is important to us, I believe asking a question Francis Schaeffer asked when approaching the accounts in Genesis is critical: What is the least that the accounts in Genesis are communicating in order for the rest of the biblical witness to make sense? Whatever else we believe about the accounts found in Genesis, we must affirm that our parents had a vibrant and dynamic relationship with the Lord, one in which communication played a defining role. If Adam's choice and subsequent fall was simply the evolution of free choice, as Kant would have it, coherency with the rest of the biblical witness goes out the window. Kant comments, "Even so, this was a sufficient occasion for reason to do violence to the voice of nature and, its protest notwithstanding, to make the first attempt at a free choice; an attempt which, being the first, probably did not have the expected result. But however insignificant the damage done, it sufficed to open man's eyes. He discovered in himself a power of choosing for himself a way of life, of not being bound without alternative to a single way, like the animals." I submit from the start, then, that exegesis of these biblical passages that does not ground itself in vibrant relationship between God and humanity cannot affirm coherency between it and the rest of the biblical witness. But what does this all mean for Adam's choice and subsequent fall? To begin, it means that this choice was not acted out in isolation, it was not a hypothesis in search of experimental data, nor was it simply bad-timing. Adam's decision constituted disobedience precisely because Adam was given specific instructions to the contrary. Less important than affirming or denying whether Adam stood face to face with the Lord when this exchange occured is the profession that God communicated with Adam in such a way that Adam received these instructions and knew there agent of origin, God. Already we hear the rustling of leaves as something supernatural is rendered in such an archaic myth. So what was the content of this interaction? Consider a scenario we have all experienced: your parents communicate to you that if you eat the entire bag of skittles you will get a stomach ache. But let's say this is more than a simple conditional clause. They command you, "you must not eat the entire bag of skittles for when you eat of it you will surely get a stomach ache." Upon emptying the bag into your mouth, tasting the rainbow, you experience an aching stomach. Now, whatever your reasoning, processing etc. was, the pertinent question is what exactly this action entailed? To be sure, it was a poorly timed decision. Had you been ten years older perhaps such an infusion of glucose would not have had the same effect on you. But I believe there is more to this story than poor-timing, and I believe our parents would agree! Our action constituted distrust and disobedience with respect to our parents. We did not believe, or at least did not care to believe, that our parents were good for their word. This is the essence of distrust. Our action also broke the command we were given. This presupposes that our relationship to our parents was not one of equals but that they exercise authority over us. In such a relationship obedience is the appropriate response when given a command and disobedience is the refusal to accept this hierarchy of relationship. Thus, neither can one distrust while obeying, nor disobey while trusting. For if I distrust yet obey, my obedience is not with respect to the agent issuing the command, the thing upon which my obedience is contingent. On the contrary, if I trust that my parents are good for their word, it follows that their issuing a command is also an appropriate use of language and the relationship that such a command presupposes would also be appropriate such that my obedience is the natural outcome of my trust with respect to the authority over me. Or as Oswald Chambers writes, "If we are consciously aware that we are being mastered, that idea itself is proof that we have no master. If that is our attitude toward Jesus, we are far away from having the relationship He wants with us." To summarize thus far:
Now, where does this all lead? I believe we must always include in our understanding of the fall two sides of the same coin. We must affirm that Adam's choice and subsequent fall corresponded with reality. But we must also affirm that Adam's choice and subsequent fall corresponded with a specific relationship, namely a relationship with his creator. To collapse our understanding into the first category is to adopt panentheism. To collapse our understanding into the second category is to adopt a dualism of the worst variety. Much like the fall (read autumn), there exists a natural order that seems to radiate the supernatural. Without such an affirmation, I believe we are deficient in our understanding of the type of creatures we are and, hence, deficient in our understanding of the salvation we have been given. Part of our power and therefore responsibility is to engage in vibrant, dynamic, dare I say personal, relationship with our creator. As Nicholas Wolterstorff states, "We are also responsible to God for actions with respect to Himself as the creator." I believe we devalue ourselves when such a facet of our creaturehood is denied, or even disregarded. Wolterstorff comments that, "Dietrich Bonhoeffer, during his imprisonment explored for a while the possiblity of 'religionless Christianity.' Though he never succeeded in making clear what a religionless Christian life would be, it sometimes appears that what he had in mind is a life of obedience to God but devoid of any address to God, a life in which one keeps God always behind one's back and never turns to face Him." I believe we can affirm the effects of Adam's choice with respect to both the reality in which he is creature and steward as well as with respect to relationship in which he is creature and subject. I no more desire a salvation confined to my mind than I desire a salvation in relationship to a God that cannot and does not engage in a relationship suitable to my nature, a communicative one. This means that Adam's choice and subsequent fall was indeed an act of disobedience against his creator and that this act has real consequences in reality. We often read the Lord's command and curses in Genesis 2 and 3 as outside reality. This is not the case. God commanded Adam not to eat of the tree because such knowledge would in fact kill him. This is not because there necessarily existed a tree whose fruit was lethal for humans; rather, there was some action of which Adam was capable which could effect his death. Without knowledge of this specific action, we may still affirm that it found its source in the distrust of the giver of the command. Likewise, when the Lord curses Adam and Eve, these are not the actions of a warlock nor are they to be taken as mythical explanations without respect to reality. Instead, God is pronouncing the consequences of their actions with respect to reality. It appears that men and women were given a substantial amount of power over the rest of this created realm. This makes sense as we contemplate the imago dei and the nature of our commission as stewards of creation. In light of this, it appears that curses (and blessings for that matter) are not disconnected with reality as we so often imagine they are. A curse is that particular use of language that an agent uses when he or she articulates how one's actions will, in fact, play out in reality. In the case of Adam, his actions had profound and devastating effects upon the rest of creation as well as his relationship with his creator. Consequently, a blessing should not be seen as preferential treatment but simply an articulation of how one's action correspond with reality, their purchase in the real world. The cursings and blessings from God are not an act of wizardry, they are the all encompassing pronunciation of a being who could see clearly the effects of Adam's choice. So much for fall with its "other-worldy" spiritual appeal. The fall is, perhaps, that time of year when one can still experience the supremely unified nature of our otherwise disparate understanding of reality. Such a season as this requires an incantation in conclusion, though I dare not attempt to improve upon Shakespeare! Double double toil and trouble
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