Fall
Fall
It is now generally recognized by scholars that the story of the Fall in Genesis is to be regarded neither as literal history, as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Augustine taught, nor as allegory, as Clement and Origen, following Philo, held; but as a myth, common to the Semitic group of religions, in which an attempt is made to explain the origin of the evils from which mankind suffers. This myth has, however, been transformed to bring it into accord with the ethical monotheism or the Hebrew religion. For the present purpose, the exposition of the apostolic (in this case exclusively the Pauline) doctrine, it is not necessary to examine any alleged similar myth in other religions, to cite any of the supposed Babylonian parallels, to enter into the details of the narrative in Genesis, or to exhibit the truth under the mythological form, which expositors have found in the story (For all these particulars the articles in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) i. 839, Hastings Single-vol. Dictionary of the Bible p. 257, and Dict. of Christ and the Gospels i. 571 may be consulted).
There is no evidence that the teaching of the OT as a whole on the subject of sin was in the slightest degree affected by the narrative in fin 3, as the instances cited to the contrary disappear on closer scrutiny; but the universality of mans sinfulness is asserted as a fact, although no reason for it is offered. It is only when we come to the apocryphal Jewish literature that the story is given the significance of doctrine. Although, as the evidence from this source shows, Jewish theology in the time of Jesus had taken up the question of the origin of sin and death, yet in the teaching of Jesus there is not the faintest echo of Jewish thought upon the subject. His standpoint is that of the OT, although His revelation of Gods Father-hood and mans sonship gives to the sin which separates God and man a more tragic import. St. Paul, however, has given a place in his theology to this contemporary Jewish doctrine, and, on account of the light it throws upon his teaching, it will be necessary to examine it more closely.
1. The connexion of St. Pauls doctrine with Jewish teaching.-(a) While in the OT we have the beginnings, but only the beginnings, of the later doctrine of Satan (Job 1:9-12; Job 2:1-6, the unbeliever in, and slanderer of, mans goodness and godliness Zec 3:1, the adversary of man to hinder Gods grace; 1Ch 21:1, the tempter; cf. 2Sa 24:1, where it is the Lord who moves David to number the people), yet it is not till we come to Wis 2:24 that he is identified with the serpent who tempted Eve: But by the envy of the devil death entered into the world, and they that are of his portion mate trial thereof. This identification is assumed in Rom 16:20 and Rev 12:9; Rev 20:2 and is also implied in Joh 8:44 (cf. 1Jn 3:8; 1Jn 3:12).
(b) Womans share in this tragedy for the race is mentioned in Sir 25:24 : From a woman was the beginning of sin; and because of her we all die. Of this detail of the narrative St. Paul also makes use by way of warning: But I fear, leer by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ (2Co 11:3). It is not impossible that in this allusion St. Paul has in view the opinion of apocalyptic and Rabbinic writers that the temptation was to unchastity.
The thought which pervades this passage is that of conjugal loyalty and fidelity to one husband, and it is difficult to resist the conclusion to which Everling (Die Paulinische Angelologie u. Dmonologie, 51-57) comes in his able discussion of the passage, that the mention of Eve in this connexion in a clause introduced by , makes it necessary to understand the sin into which she was betrayed as similar to that into which the Corinthian Church is, figuratively speaking, in danger of falling, namely, unchastity and infidelity to her husband (H. St. J. Thackeray, The Relation of St. Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought, 1900, p. 52; cf. Tennant, The Fall and Original Sin, 1903, p. 251).
If this was St. Pauls belief, it adds force to his argument for womans subordination in 1Ti 2:14 Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression. Here again St. Paul is either echoing, or in accord with, Jewish thought, for in the Slavonic Secrets of Enoch, xxxi. 6, we read: And on this account he [Satan] conceived designs against Adam; in such a manner he entered [into Paradise] and deceived Eve. But he did not touch Adam (cf. Thackeray, op. cit. pp. 51, 52). Such an opinion would explain the harshness of his tone and the hardness of his dealing with women.
(c) These are, however, subordinate features of the narrative; but St. Paul is, in his assertion of human depravity, not only in accord with some of the sayings in the OT, but with such explicit teaching as is found in 2Ezr 4:11 How can he that is already worn out with the corrupted world understand incorruption, and 2Ezr 7:68 For all that are born are defiled with iniquities, and are full of sins and laden with offences. But such a view does not seem to have been universal, for Edersheim says expressly of the teaching of the Talmud: So far as their opinions can be gathered from their writings, the great doctrines of Original Sin, and of the sinfulness of our whole nature, were not held by the ancient Rabbis (LT [Note: T Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Edersheim).] 4, 1887, i. 165; cf. Sanday-Headlam, Romans 5 [International Critical Commentary , 1902], p. 137).
(d) Mans present racial condition is traced back to Adams fall (; Wis 10:1 Wisdom guarded to the end the first formed father of the world, that was created alone, and delivered him out of his own transgression). The teaching in Rom 5:12-21 is very fully anticipated in 2Es 3:21-22 : For the first Adam bearing a wicked heart transgressed, and was overcome; and not he only, but all they also that are born of him. Thus disease was made permanent; and the law was in the heart of the people along with the wickedness of the root; so the good departed away, and that which was wicked abode still; 2Es 4:30 For a grain of evil seed was sown in the heart of Adam from the beginning, and how much wickedness hath it brought forth unto this time! and how much shall it yet bring forth until the time of threshing come!; 7:118 O thou Adam, what hast thou done? for though it was thou that sinned, the evil is not fallen on thee alone, but upon all of us that come of thee. While it is generally assumed that in these passages mans moral corruption in the sense of inherited depravity is traced to Adams transgression as its cause, yet Tennant maintains that the available evidence does not support the view.
The only parallels adduced by Sanday and Headlam from approximately contemporary literature are the passages of 4 Ezra [the passages given above] relating to the cor malignum. But the cor malignum is certainly the yezer hara of the Rabbis, regarded by Pseudo-Ezra, as well as by talmudic writers, as inherent in Adam from the first, and as the cause, not the consequence, of his fall. St. Paul, curiously enough, nowhere appears to make use of the current doctrine of the evil yezer; certainly not in connexion with the Fall. There would seem to be no evidence that St. Paul held, even in germ, the doctrine of an inherited corruption derived from Adam (op. cit. p. 264f.).
To the explicit challenge of a common understanding of St. Pauls doctrine we must return when dealing with it in detail in the next section; but meanwhile it may be made clear that it is not the assertion of a connexion between Adams fall and mans sinfulness which is denied in these passages, but the inference from them that Adams fall is regarded as the cause of moral depravity, and not merely as its first instance.
Support is given to this interpretation of the evidence by Webers summary of the teaching of the Talmud (Altsyn. Theol. p. 216, quoted by Sanday-Headlam, op. cit. p. 137): By the Fall man came under a curse, is guilty of death, and his right relation to God is rendered difficult. More than this cannot be said. Sin, to which the bent and leaning had already been planted in man by creation, had become a fact; the evil impulse (= cor malignum) gained the mastery over mankind, who can only resist it by the greatest efforts; before the Fall it had had power over him, but no such ascendancy (Uebermacht). After this quotation Sanday-Headlam continue the discussion in the words: Hence when the writer says a little further on that according to the Rabbis there is such a thing as transmission of guilt, but not such a thing as transmission of sin (Es gibt eine Erbschuld, aber keine Erbsnde), the negative proposition is due chiefly to the clearness with which the Rabbis (like Apoc. Baruch) insist upon free-will and direct individual responsibility (op. cit. p. 137f.).
The conclusion to which one is led is that a common doctrine cannot be confidently affirmed; and that if St. Paul does teach that mans moral nature was changed for the worse by the Fall, he is not following a clearly expressed and generally accepted Jewish doctrine on the subject. The bearing of his distinctive doctrine of the flesh on, and the meaning of, 1Co 15:47-48 in relation to the Jewish doctrine of the cor malignum must be reserved for subsequent discussion, while the feature referred to in the above quotation may here be illustrated.
(e) There can be no doubt of the distinctness and emphasis with which Jewish thought insists on mans individual responsibility, sometimes even, it would seem, in opposition to the view of a moral solidarity of the race, as the following passages show: 2Es 3:26 In all things doing even as Adam and all his generation had done: for they also bare a wicked heart; 8:59, 60 The Most High willed not that man should come to nought: but they which be created have themselves defiled the name of him that made them, and were unthankful unto him which prepared life for them; 9:11, 12 As many as have scorned my law, while they had yet liberty, and, when as yet place of repentance was open unto them, understood not, but despised it; the same must know it after death by torment. The strongest assertion of the exclusion of the derivation of any guilt from Adam is found, however, in Apoc. Bar. liv. 15, 19: For though Adam first sinned and brought untimely death upon all, yet of those who were born from him each one of them has prepared for his own soul torment to come, and again each of them has chosen for himself glories to come. Adam is therefore not the cause, save only of his own soul, but each one of us has been the Adam of his own soul (Charless translation in Apoc. and Pseudepig. of the OT, 1913, ii. 511f.). While St. Paul is constant in his assertion of individual liberty, yet he does not think of opposing it to, or trying to harmonize it with, the common sin of the race, sprung from Adam. Either he was not conscious of any contradiction, or regarded it as a problem insoluble by mans wisdom.
(f) On the connexion between Adams sin and the introduction of death there is no such uncertainty in the evidence. The curse that rests on man since the Fall is mentioned in Sir 40:1 : Great travail is created for many men, and a heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam. The connexion between death and the womans sin stated in 25:24 and between death and the devils envy affirmed in Wis 2:24 has already been referred to. More explicit is the reference to the narrative of Genesis in 2 Ezr 3:7 : And unto him thou gavest thy one commandment: which he transgressed, and immediately thou appointedst death for him and in his generation. So also the Apoc. Bar. xvii. 3: Adam brought death and cut off the years of those who were born from him (cf. xxiii. 4). There are two passages, however, that seem to teach that man was by nature mortal, and that the Fall only hastened the process; Adam first sinned and brought untimely death (mortem immaturam) upon all (liv. 15); and Owing to his transgression untimely death (mors quae non erat tempore eius) came into being (lvi. 6). Apart from the two classical passages in St. Pauls letter on the relation of Christ and Adam in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, which must be discussed in detail, death is connected with sin as its penalty in Rom 6:23 The wages of sin is death, and in Jam 1:15 Sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death. We must now pass to the discussion of St. Pauls doctrine of the Fall.
2. St. Pauls doctrine of the Fall.-Although the classical passage on the subject is Rom 5:12-21, yet there are references to Adam in 1Co 15:21-22; 1Co 15:45; 1Co 15:49 which may be briefly examined in so far as they present doctrine supplementary to that in Romans 5.
(a) 1Co 15:21-22 states the same doctrine. The contrast is emphasized in 1Co 15:45 by the description of the first Adam, in accordance with the account of his creation in Gen 2:7, as living soul, while Christ, the last Adam, is a life-giving spirit. Adam was given life by the breath or spirit of God, but could not impart any; Christ not only has life, but gives it. The psychic order of the first Adam necessarily preceded the pneumatic order of the last (1Co 15:46): so far there is no moral censure of the first Adam implied, and the Apostles statement corrects an error into which theological speculation on mans primitive condition often fell. The Apostle, says Godet (ad loc.), does not share the notion, long regarded as orthodox, that humanity was created in a state of moral and physical perfection. Independently of the Fall, there must have been progress from an inferior state, the psychic, which he posits as mans point of departure, to a superior state, the spiritual, foreseen and determined as mans goal from the first (quoted by Findlay, Expositors Greek Testament , 1 Cor., 1900, p. 938). This inferior state did not include for St. Paul the cor malignum, which Jewish thought assigned to Adam. It is not so certain that the next statement, The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is of heaven (1Co 15:47), refers only to physical origin, and does not indicate moral character.
, as Php 3:19, Col 3:2 suggest, seems to have a moral connotation. But even if this be so, it does not make certain that St. Paul assigned the yezer hara to the unfallen Adam, as, since the reference in the second man from heaven is not to the pre-existent Word, but to the Risen Lord, the contrast is between Adam fallen as the source of death to mankind and Christ risen as the fountain of its eternal life. If v. 49 be not merely a prediction, but an exhortation, as many ancient authorities attest (see Revised Version margin), this moral reference becomes certain. This whole passage, accordingly, does disprove the view that mans primitive condition was one of such perfection that there was no need of progress; but it offers no support to the assumption that St. Paul regarded Adams position as so inferior morally that the Fall would to him appear as inevitable. As Rom 5:14 shows, he assigns to Adam a greater moral culpability than to his descendants before the Law was given, for he transgressed a definite commandment of God. Nor does St. Pauls doctrine of the flesh (q.v. [Note: quod vide, which see.] ) justify any such assumption about the moral defect of mans state before the Fall, as it is not a physical, but an ethical, conception, and relates to mankind as it is for mans present experience, not to any previous state of man. If we cannot, therefore, identify the flesh with the yezer hara of unfallen man, unless we leave in St. Pauls system the antinomy of a two-fold origin of sinfulness, one individual, the other racial, we are forced to conclude that in some way he did connect the presence of the flesh in sinful mankind with the entrance of sin at the Fall.
(b) The further discussion of this topic brings us to the closer consideration of Rom 5:12-21. () The purpose of the passage must be clearly kept in view. St. Paul is not proving mans universal sinfulness-he has done that by an empirical proof, a historical induction, in chs. 1-3; nor is he concerned to explain the origin of sin. He assumes as not needing any proof that mans sinfulness is the result of Adams fall. From that fact he deduces the conclusion that one person can be so related to the race as to be the author to it of both sin and death. If that be so in the case of Adam, it can be and is so in the case of Christ as the Author of righteousness and life, and even so much more as Christ is superior to Adam. The purpose of the passage is to show that Christ can and does bring more blessing to man than Adam has brought curse. We go beyond what St. Pauls own intention warrants in asserting that his doctrine of salvation in Christ rests on, and falls to the ground without, his teaching on the Fall. As his proof of the sinfulness of mankind is empirical, so his certainty of salvation in Christ is rooted in his experience, and not in tins opinions he shared with his contemporaries regarding the origin of sin. It is important at the outset of this discussion to assert this consideration, as it will relieve us of the painful anxiety, which many exponents of this passage hitherto have felt and shown, to justify in some sense or another this story of the fall, in spite of the origin criticism now assigns to it, as an essential constituent of Christian theology.
() In Rom 5:12 St. Paul affirms the entrance of sin into the world, and death as its penalty, as the result of Adams transgression, and the diffusion of death among mankind in consequence either of Adams sin alone, or of the spread of sin among all his descendants. There is this ambiguity about the meaning in the clause for that all sinned, which is not only grammatically irregular, but seems even to be logically inconsistent. To fix his meaning we must examine his language very closely. The connective phrase has been variously interpreted. It is improbable that is masculine and the antecedent either Adam or death; taking it as neuter, the rendering because is more probable than in like manner as or in so far as. In what sense did all sin ( )?
(1) The Greek commentators take the obvious sense of the words, regarded apart from the context: all as a matter of fact by their own choice committed sin. To this interpretation two objections from the context may be urged. Firstly, if individual death is the penalty of individual sin, Adam is not responsible for the sin or the death, and so there is no parallelism with Christ as the source of righteousness and life to all; but the purpose of the whole argument is to prove a connexion between Adam and the race similar to that between Christ and redeemed humanity. Secondly, in the next verse St. Paul goes on to show that till the time of Moses, in the absence of law, the descendants of Adam could not be held as blameworthy as Adam himself was; while sin was in the world it could not be imputed as personal guilt, incurring of itself, apart from the connexion with Adam, the penalty of death.
(2) Some connexion with Adam must be asserted; but of what kind? An explanation accepted by many commentators, while on grammatical grounds not rendering in whom but because, yet treats the sentence as convening the equivalent meaning. Bengel presents this view in its classical expression: omnes peccarunt, Adamo peccante. If St. Paul had meant this, why did he not supply the words? it is often asked. But when we observe the irregularity of the structure of the very sentence, introducing such ambiguity into St. Pauls meaning, we do not seem entitled to expect him to express himself with such logical precision. On this ground alone we must not set aside the explanation. But even if we accept it, what sense are we to attach to the statement that in Adams sin all sinned?
(i.) Firstly, there is the realistic explanation: that as Adam was the ancestor of the race, so all his descendants were physically included in him, even as Levi is represented to have paid tithes to Melchizedek in the loins of Abraham (Heb 7:9-10). But such a physical explanation only increases the difficulty of understanding the connexion.
(ii.) Secondly, there is the legal explanation, so prominent in the federal theology of the Reformed Church. Adam acted, not for himself alone, but as representative of the race, and so the race shares the responsibility of his act. But to this explanation there is the obvious objection that a representative must be chosen by those for whom he acts, if they are to be in any sense responsible for his acts; and the race had no voice in the choice of its first ancestor. If the objection is met by appealing to a Divine appointment, the plea of injustice is not answered, but the will of God is represented as overriding the rights of man. In a Calvinistic theology alone could such an explanation carry conviction.
(iii.) Thirdly, the explanation more generally accepted is that from Adam all mankind has inherited a tendency to evil, which, while not abolishing individual liberty and responsibility so as to make individual transgression inevitable, yet as a fact of experience has resulted in the universal sinfulness of the race. This is the view of Sanday-Headlam (op. cit. p. 134), and they support it with the references to Jewish literature already noted. The writer of this article in his Commentary on Romans (Century Bible, 1901) accepted this conclusion. Without expressly stating it, Paul assumes the doctrine of original sin in the sense of an inherited tendency to sin, for what he affirms beyond all doubt here is that both the sin and the death of the human race are the effects of Adams transgression (p. 154). A further study of the problem has led him, however, to recognize at least the possibility of another explanation. Tennant, who of modern writers has made this subject specially his own, in his three books, The Origin and Propagation of Sin (1902), The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin (1903), and The Concept of Sin (1912), has not only contended against the doctrine of such an inherited tendency, but has also maintained that this idea is not present in St. Pauls mind in this passage. Referring to Sanday-Headlams objection to Bengals explanation that the words in Adam would have been given had St. Paul intended that meaning, he presses a similar objection to their view.
That suggested by Dr. Sanday and Mr. Headlam, from whose weighty opinion it is here ventured to diverge, is an equally important element to be supplied. Indeed, it may be asked whether the idea of inherited sinfulness, as the cause of death to all who come between Adam and Moses, does not call at least as loudly for explicit mention, if St. Pauls full meaning be expressible in terms of it, as that signified by Bengels addition of in Adam? Would it not be equally novel to the reader, so far as our knowledge of the thought of that age goes, and more remote from the actual language of the verse and its context? (The Fall and Original Sin, p. 261).
Reserving for subsequent treatment the wider issue of whether this is or is not an inherited tendency to evil, we must meanwhile look at the explanation Tennant himself alters of this verse.
(iv.) Though he rejects the realistic explanation in any form, either as already mentioned or as presented in Augustines theory which makes human nature a certain quantum of being and treats descent from Adam as a division of this mass of human nature into parts (Stevens, The Pauline Theology, 1892, p. 136f.), he accepts the following explanation:
Much more probable, in the opinion or the present writer, is the suggestion that, in his identification of the race and Adam, St. Paul was using a form of thought occurring by no means exclusively in the particular verse of his writings with which we are here concerned. Stevens has appropriately named it mystical realism. It is characteristic at Pauls mind, says this writer, to conceive religious truth under forms which are determined by personal relationship. These relations, especially the two just specified (that of unregenerate humanity to Adam, and of spiritual humanity to Christ), may be termed mystical in the sense of being unique, vital, and inscrutable; they are real in the sense that sinful humanity is conceived as being actually present and participant in Adams sin (op. cit. p. 32f., and elsewhere). This mystical realism is a style of thought, a rhetorical mode; it is not a philosophy; the realism is only figurative. St. Paul identifies the race, as sinners, with Adam in the same sense that he identifies the believer with Christ. The moral defilement of man is represented as contracted in and with the sin of Adam (op. cit. p. 37). This attractive interpretation of St. Pauls meaning has the great virtue of explaining his words, which involve so many difficulties when taken, as they generally have been, with too much literalness, as only a particular case of a mode of speech which is characteristic of the apostle. And so long as it is not so far pressed as to lose sight of the undeniable connexion between the apostles teaching and the somewhat indefinite belief which he inherited from Jewish doctors as to the connexion between the Fall and human sin and death, it would seem to supply the best key to the thought of this difficult passage (The Fall and original Sin, pp. 262-3).
If it be the case that, as Tennant maintains, Jewish thought assigned the cor malignum or the yezer hara to Adam even before his Fall as well as to his descendants, and so did not teach a moral corruption of mans action of a result of the Fall (see op. cit. pp. 264-5), it does appear more likely that St. Paul did not hold the doctrine, and that accordingly it cannot be here introduced to explain his meaning. If this alternative must be excluded, although the writer is not finally convinced that it must, the explanation Tennant accepts does appear the most probable among all the others already mentioned. It must be frankly admitted that we cannot reach certainty on this matter, and it does not seem at all necessary for a modern reconstruction of Christian doctrine that we should. Whatever St. Pauls view of the Fall and its consequences may have been, seeing that it rests ultimately on a narrative which modern scholarship compels us to regard as a myth, however purified and elevated in the new context given to it in the record of the Divine revelation, and is influenced directly by contemporary Jewish thought, it cannot be regarded as authoritative for our Christian faith, however great may be its historical interest as an instance of the endeavour of a great mind to find a solution for a great problem.
3. The doctrine of the Fall and modern Christian thought.-Although the writer holds the conviction that it is not necessary for the Christian theologian to try and save as much as he dare of the wreckage of the doctrine of the Fall, after the storm of literary and historical criticism has passed over it, a few sentences may be added in closing this article as to the relation of modern Christian thought to the doctrine.
(a) What has already been urged must be repeated: that the teaching of the OT regarding sin and salvation does not rest at all on the narrative in Genesis 3, but on the reality of human experience and the testimony of human conscience; that the teaching of Jesus about man as the child of God, though lost, has not this doctrine as its foundation, but comes from the moral insight and spiritual discernment of the sinless Son of God and Brother of men; that, apart from a few casual allusions in the rest of the NT, the two passages which have been considered in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 are the only express statements of the connexion of sin and death with the Fall; and that when we look more closely at the mode in which the classical passage in Romans 5 is introduced we find that its primary intention is not to prove either mans sinfulness or to offer an explanation of its origin, but to demonstrate the greater efficacy of Christs obedience than of Adams transgression in their consequences for the race. These are surely weighty reasons why modern Christian thought should no longer assign to the doctrine of the Fall the prominence hitherto accorded to it.
(b) It is with the presence, guilt, and power of sin in individual experience and racial history, as the human need which the Divine grace in Christ meets, that Christian theology is alone concerned, and all other questions of the origin of sin or death are speculative, and not practical, and should be assigned the secondary place that properly belongs to them.
(c) Guided by these two considerations, we may lastly ask the question, How much remains of this doctrine for our modern Christian thought? (1) While the unity of the human race has not been demonstrated by science, this theory is not at all improbable, and so descent from one pair of ancestors is not incredible. (2) While death as physical dissolution is proved by science to have been antecedent to mans appearance on earth, and while death seems a natural necessity for man as a physical organism, we need not try to justify St. Paul by assuming either that God, anticipating human sin, introduced death as its penalty into the very structure of the world at the Creation, or that, had man not sinned, he would so have developed morally and spiritually as to have transcended the natural necessity of death, and have attained immortality (because these speculations have no contact with experience). But we may recognize that for him death was not physical dissolution merely, but death in its totality as it is for the human consciousness, and may press the question, Can it be denied that the terror and darkness of death for the mind and heart of man are due in large measure to his sense of guilt, and the effects of sin on his reason, conscience, and spirit? Between death as such an experience and sin we can even to-day admit that there is a connexion. (3) While the common assumption that the savage represents primitive man is unwarranted, and we may infer that, since mans mental, moral, and spiritual development in history proves the great distinction between him in his natural endowments and all the lower animals, man was even at the earliest stage of that development already far removed from the brute, yet all speculation as to what he originally was is precarious, as it rests on no solid foundation of assured knowledge. (4) While the dispute as regards the inheritance of acquired characters does not directly affect Christian thought (as it has yet to be proved that the laws of physical and mental or moral inheritance must be identical), yet the Christian theologian is bound to admit that the resemblances we do find between parents and children may be explained by social as much as by physical heredity, by the influence of the moral environment in youth as much as by the inheritance at birth of the moral characteristics of parents. While the writer is not convinced that Tennant has proved his contention, that the appetites and impulses of the child are entirely natural, and that the factor of heredity may be excluded from the origin of sin in the individual, he has at least compelled a reconsideration of the whole question. The sin in the race does affect the development of each member of it whether by social or by physical heredity; but when, where, or how sin first entered we do not know, for that neither can man discover nor has God revealed.
Literature.-In addition to the authorities cited throughout the article , see J. S. Candlish, The Biblical Doctrine of Sin, 1893; J. Laidlaw, The Bible Doctrine of Man, new ed., 1895; H. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Doctrine of Man, 1911; J. Orr, Gods Image in Man and its Defacement in the Light of Modern Denials, 1905; W. E. Orchard, Modern Theories of Sin, 1909; F. J. Hall, Evolution and the Fall, 1910.
Alfred E. Garvie.
Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
FALL
See SIN.
Fuente: Bridgeway Bible Dictionary
Fall
FALL.The various questions suggested in regard to the relation of the Fall to Jesus Christ may be treated under the following heads:
i.The Messianic element in the story of the Fall.
ii.The Fall in its bearing on the work of Christ in (1) the Incarnation, (2) its redemptive aspects.
iii.The Fall in its bearing on the Person of Christ.
iv.Our Lords own teaching (or that of the Gospels) on the Fall.
i. The Messianic element in the story of the fall.It is not within the scope of this Dictionary to discuss the general character of the OT narrative of the Fall. We may here simply assume as accepted the view that in Genesis 3 we have an account, cast in the pictorial form characteristic of the period to which it belongs, of the beginning of human sin, with its attendant evils of suffering and death. Whatever opinion may be held as to the literary materials and composition of the narrative, it commends itself as in all essential features a unique and authoritative record of great fundamental facts of human life and history; and its Divine inspiration is sufficiently attested by the profound truthfulness and significance of its moral and religious teaching.
In the midst of this story of sin and judgment we find the first promise of restoration, and thus the Divine purpose of redemption is brought into association with the very beginnings of human evil. I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel (Gen 3:15). That this utterance contains the germ of Messianic prophecy cannot be doubted; but care must be taken to make neither too much nor too little of this element in it, and to interpret the passage in accordance with sound principles of historical exegesis, with due reference to the context, and to the general characteristics of OT prophecy. The embodiment of this Protevangelium in the primitive religious tradition, and in the inspired record of it, is a testimony to the fact that the Divine purpose of redemption is coeval with the existence of human sin. From the time when the consciousness of guilt and corruption first dawned in the human heart, there was also present the hope of restoration, and of mans ultimate triumph over those powers of evil by which he had been temporarily vanquished. This is the germ of which all the redemptive promise and prophecy of the OT are the development. Three progressive ideas may be traced in the teaching of the passage. (1) Under the symbolism of the repulsion with which the serpent species is regarded, there is conveyed the truth that there would be continual and deadly conflict between the human race and the powers of evil, each seeking to destroy the other. (2) The hopeful element in the struggle is indicated, and mans final victory suggested, by the specific way in which the conflict is describedIt shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (3) There underlies the statement with regard to mankind in general the remoter and deeper significance applicable to the representative Man, in and through whom the warfare was to be brought to a crisis and a victorious issue.
The order of these points may also be taken as indicating the line along which the full meaning of the saying would unfold itself. It is one of those pregnant utterances of revelation whose content is gradually realized and defined by the progress of events. The Messianic ideas contained in it are as yet vague and general, yet real; rudimentary, but fundamental; implicit rather than explicit; yet enough to keep a spark of hope alive, and to inspire faith and effort till clearer light came in the providential unfolding of Gods redemptive plan.
ii. The Fall in relation to the work of Christ.The fact of mans fallen condition, of which the narrative of Genesis 3 is the historical explanation, is the raison dtre of redemption, and thus the Fall is very closely related to the whole work of Christ at every point. But it is with the effects rather than with the manner or history of the Fall that the gospel is supremely concerned, and after the story has once for all been given at the beginning of revelation, it is thereafter but little referred to in Scripture, and is scarcely ever brought into direct relation with redemption, except in two classical passages in the writings of St. Paul, viz. in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. Our attention will here be confined to those points in which the Fall comes into more direct relation with the work of Christ, or in which the fall of man in Adam and his restoration in Christ serve to illuminate each other.
1. The relation of the Fall to the Incarnation.The question here raised is between the two views expressed respectively by the words of Augustine, Si homo non pecasset, filius Dei non esset incarnatus, and of Andreas Osiander, Etiamsi homo non pecasset, Deus tamen incarnatus esset licet non crucifixus. The common belief has hitherto been that the whole mission and work of Christ were solely conditioned by the Fall. But the other view with regard to the Incarnation, maintained by the Scotists in the Middle Ages and by other distinguished thinkers, has of late gained fresh currency, especially in connexion with modern evolutionary philosophy. The relation of the Fall to the Incarnation determines the place of the latter in the plan of redemption, and opens up the question whether the Incarnation was subsidiary to the Atonement, or the Atonement a development and modification of the Incarnation.
(i.) The view that an Incarnation was, independently of sin, the consummation of Gods purpose in relation to mankind, has been supported by arguments which can here only be briefly mentioned.
(a) The metaphysical argument that a possibility of becoming man must have existed eternally in the being of God, otherwise no incarnation could have taken place. In other words, there was in God a self-disposition for incarnation, a necessity (ethical, not metaphysical) for God, who is love, to make a perfect self-communication to His moral and spiritual creatures.
(b) The very conception of the Mediator in redemption implies a necessary and eternal relation both to God and to man, which, even apart from sin, would have found its issue in incarnation. The Mediator is necessary for the perfecting of the world no less than for its redemption, and has a cosmical significance wider and deeper than His work as Redeemer.
(c) As Christ is necessary for the worlds perfection, the incarnation may be held to be involved in the eternal idea of the world. This is the counterpart of the preceding arguments, and is as old as Irenaeus. It means that man has in his very nature a need and a capacity for Christ, corresponding to Gods self-communicating love, and this quite apart from sin.
(d) To base the incarnation solely on the need of redemption, is to make Christ a means and not an end in Himself, or, in more modern language, to reduce the most glorious manifestation of God for the perfecting of humanity to an expedient contingent upon the untoward incident of sin. In Christ alone, as the centre and end, is the highest possible for man realized; if this were dependent on the Fall, then sin would be a felix culpa in the most emphatic sense.
(e) These somewhat speculative lines of reasoning are not without Scripture warrant. In such passages as Col 1:15 ff. and Eph 1:9-10 f. we have at least a suggestion of a grand Christo-centric plan for the universe, antecedent to, and occupying a plane quite above, the contingency of human sin. Christ is here presented in relation to the Universe as the firstborn of all creation, in whom and unto whom all things were created, in whom all things hold together, and who becomes also the head of the body, the Church, and the firstborn from the dead. It was Gods eternal purpose to sum up all things in Christ, in whom also we were made a heritage (cf. also Joh 1:3, Heb 1:2, 1Co 8:6, Rev 3:14 etc.). Redemption is here presented as something which forms a harmonious part of a larger plan. Christ is at once the Alpha and the Omega, the medium and the end of creation, the beginning and the consummation of Gods eternal purpose.
(ii.) The commonly received view that the Incarnation is simply a necessary part of the work of redemption, is supported by the prima facie teaching of Scripture. The Son of man came to seek and to save (Luk 19:10); God sent forth his Son that he might redeem (Gal 4:4 f.). These are examples of innumerable passages which represent the mission of Christ in this light. But to this it may be answered that, though historically and actually the Incarnation has taken this redemptive aspect, and is naturally and properly so presented in the Gospel, another view of it, under different conditions, is not excluded, of which, as we have seen, we are in fact permitted brief glimpses in a wider field of vision.
(iii.) Both the foregoing views may be united and harmonized in what is really the truest and deepest conception, viz. that Gods purpose is an eternal and unchangeable unity, and every part of it, as wrought out in history, must be regarded as having its proper place in relation to the whole. It is by a misunderstanding of the absolute being and counsels of God that we discuss at all questions as to what might have been done under other conditions. The view of the question before us which is most worthy of a true conception of God, and which at the same time agrees with the broad teaching of Scripture, is that in the infinite counsels of Him who sees the end from the beginning, Redemption is wrought into the very fabric of Gods eternal purpose, all parts of whichCreation, Redemption, Incarnation, Atonement, the Final Consummation,hang together harmoniously as integral and correlated elements in one homogeneous, perfect, and unchangeable unity. The question as to the relation of the Fall to the Incarnation thus resolves itself into that of the place of the Fall in Gods plan of the world; and we need not hold with hyper-Calvinists that sin was foreordained, in order to believe that the Fall, foreseen and permitted, enters into an intimate and essential relation to the whole of the Divine plan. In this plan Incarnation holds a central place, and its redemptive significance is one aspect of a wider relation to the world, as the means for perfecting as well as for redeeming the human race. This view preserves the place of Redemption in the foreground of Gods revealed plan, avoids the necessity of conceiving any change in the Divine purpose contingent upon sin, and at the same time gives the Incarnation that cosmical significance worthy of its transcendent character. Thus Christ is central and supreme, and the whole scheme of Redemption is presented in a true perspective, more in harmony with the requirements of modern thought.
2. The relation of the Fall to the redemptive work of Christ.In the distinctively soteriological aspects of Christs work, we are brought at once into close relation to the Fall. We have here to consider (i.) the reality and general nature of the Fall, as seen in the light of Redemption; and (ii.) the main points of detail in which the Fall and the redeeming work of Christ explain and illustrate each other.
(i.) The doctrine of the Fall is vital to the Christian system; the reality and general nature of the Fall, as a great downward and retrograde step in the history of mankind, are confirmed and illustrated by the redemptive work of Christ. This aspect of Christs work, which occupies in Scripture the foremost place, is everywhere represented as rendered necessary by something grievously abnormal in the condition of the human race. The Scripture doctrine of sin as absolute evil; mans universal sinfulness, helplessness, and state of spiritual death, which form the very basis of Redemption; the representation of mankind as lost, alienated from God, and yet capable and worthy of being redeemed and restored;all this, as so abundantly presented and emphasized in connexion with the atoning work of Christ, affords the strongest confirmation of the doctrine that man has fallen from a higher condition. Whatever may be said as to the Incarnation (see 1, above), it is clear that the great outstanding fact of the Atonement, with all the suffering and sacrifice which it involved, can only be accounted for at once by the dignity and the degradation of man,in other words, by the Fall.
(ii.) This is borne out by the more specific teaching in regard to the Fall in its relation to the work of Christ in Rom 5:12-21 and 1Co 15:21-22; 1Co 15:45-49. The general and clear line of argument in the former passage brings out the following points:
Adams act of disobedience involved all men in (a) Sin, and (b) Death. By sin is here meant both actual sinfulness (for that all sinned, Rom 5:12), and a condition of liability to penalty even apart from personal transgression (Rom 5:14). This latter, however, is not to be held in any sense as personal participation in or responsibility for Adams offence, though it is the transmitted effect of it (see below). Death here apparently means physical death in the first place (as in Rom 5:14), but most probably includes also spiritual death. On the other hand, though the analogy is not fully expressed, it is clearly implied that in the same way Christs act of obedience brings (a) Justification and (b) Life; and in view of the emphatic reiteration, in various forms, of the surpassing fulness of Redemption in Rom 5:15-17, we may include under these terms: negatively, deliverance from guilt, from sin itself, and from death; and positively, the bestowment of judicial and actual righteousness, and of spiritual and eternal life.
Another question raised in this connexion is concerned with the precise moral relationship between Adam and his posterity on the one hand, and between Christ and His people on the other. Adam and Christ (the second Adam) are represented as standing in an analogous relation to mankind, forming the basis in the one case of universal sin and death, and in the other of restoration for believers. In regard to Adam it has been variously held (1) that the relation between him and his posterity was virtually one of identity; mankind sinned in him and therefore share his guilt; (2) that the relation is representative or federal, Adam acting on behalf of his descendants; and (3) that the relation is natural, the evil effects of Adams fall being communicated to the race through the ordinary channels of heredity. The third view preserves any elements of truth in the other two, while it best explains the facts in harmony with true ethical principles. The transmitted effect of Adams sin consists mainly of the loss of moral balance, an inborn tendency of heart and will towards evil, a disability, though not a total inability, for goodness. Though men are not personally implicated in the guilt of Adams transgression, their condition involves demerit and necessitates redemption.* [Note: Note in Rom 5:19 and , in vv. 14, 15, 18; see Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, p. 312.] Turning to the other side, though we are not warranted in carrying the analogy too far, we find on the part of Christ (1) a relation of identity with the race through the Incarnation; (2) a representative or covenant relation with His people (see 2Co 5:21 etc.), based on the one side on Gods free grace, and on the other on believers voluntary acceptance of it (Rom 5:17); and (3) a vital union between Christ and believers by which new life is imparted and the evil effects of the Fall counteracted (Joh 15:1-6 etc.).
Christ is thus a new beginning for the fallen race, a fountain of life and righteousness, as Adam was of death and sin. Adam was a true figure of him that was to come, a type based not on mere analogy, but on deep and real correspondences between his relation as psychical parent to his natural descendants, and Christs relation to His people as the second Adam, the spiritual originator of a regenerated race. [Note: See full and suggestive drawing out of the analogy in Fairbairns Christ in Modern Theology, pp. 311313.]
iii. The Fall in relation to the Person of Christ.The Fall of Adam, as we have seen, introduced into the nature of all descended from him a fatal taint of sin, an insuperable moral disability. The question now before us is, How did Jesus Christ, the new Adam, as a true member of the fallen race, escape this evil influence? That Christ in His nature and Person was absolutely free from sin, is one of the clearest and most generally admitted as well as most vital facts of the gospel. Born into the world in the line of human descent, sharing human nature otherwise in its fulness, how was Jesus alone unaffected by the common heritage of sin?
The full answer to this question lies hidden in the mystery of the Incarnation; but an indication of the line in which the solution lies is given in the great fact of the Virgin Birth of our lord. The historical reality of this part of the Gospel narrative has been assailed by modern criticism, but the doctrine still retains its place in the best philosophy of the Incarnation, and the truth has been rather confirmed than otherwise by impartial study of the records. As a fact, the birth of Jesus in a supernatural manner commends itself as peculiarly in keeping with the whole scheme of redemption. (1) It indicates a new departure, a fresh beginning, the introduction into the human race of a new element, and marks a break in the normal and fatal continuity of spiritual helplessness and decay. (2) It suggests, though it does not fully explain, means by which Christ could become true man and yet be preserved from the hereditary effects of the Fall. The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God (Luk 1:35). Those who deny the Virgin Birth have still to explain the equally miraculous fact of the appearance of this single exception to the universal sinfulness of mankind. The manner of Christs birth, as recorded in the Gospels of Mt. and Lk., is so fully in harmony with His unique personality and character, that, though we cannot fully understand, we may at least be satisfied that all form parts of one Divine plan, and thus the moral miracle and the physical mutually support one another. See art. Virgin Birth.
iv. The Teaching of Christ and of the Gospels on the Fall.Our Lord makes no reference to the story of the Fall in all His recorded teaching, His only allusion to our first parents at all being the general statement in connexion with marriage (Mat 19:4, Mar 10:6). But the doctrine of the Fall underlies the whole teaching of Christ on sin and redemption, and is particularly confirmed and illustrated in the following points:
(1) The universal sinfulness of man. This is taken for granted. If ye then, being evil, know, etc. (Mat 7:11, Luk 11:13). This truth is involved in the whole character of our Lords mission and teaching. See also Joh 1:29; Joh 8:7. (2) The inwardness of sin. Out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, etc. These are the things which defile the man (Mat 15:19-20 and ||). Cf. also Mat 5:21-28, Mar 10:5, Luk 6:45. (3) The deep radical character of human evil. Ye must be born anew (Joh 3:7 and Joh 3:3). (4) The hereditary disability of human nature. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, etc. (Joh 3:6; cf. Joh 1:13). (5) Jesus everywhere indicates clearly His view as to the original dignity and value of man. What shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? (Mat 16:26). Cf. Luk 15:10, Mat 12:12, etc.; and the general teaching of Jesus as to the Fatherhood of God. (6) The Fall may be said to be pictured for us more specifically in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luk 15:11 ff.), and the corresponding parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Piece of Money in the same chapter. (7) Generally the whole mission of Christ to ransom men (Mar 10:45), to save (Mat 1:21, Luk 19:10 etc.), and to restore to Divine Sonship (Joh 1:12), is founded upon the doctrine of the Fall and the state of ruin resulting from it, combined with splendid possibilities of restoration through grace.
Literature.On OT narrative and Messianic elements: Ryles Early Narratives of Genesis; all good Commentaries, such as those of Dillmann, Gunkel, and Driver.
On Fall and Incarnation: Dorner, Person of Christ, vol. iii. pp. 361369, vol. v. pp. 236248, also the same authors Christian Doctrine, vol. iii. pp. 283299; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, pp. 258263; Orr, Christian View of God, etc., pp. 319327; Westcott, The Gospel of Creation.
On Adam and Christ: Relative sections of treatises on Systematic Theology, such as Dorner, Hodge; Orrs Christian View; Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology; also Sanday-Headlam, Romans (on 5:1221), and other good Commentaries; Beyschlag, NT Theology, vol. ii.
On Virgin Birth and Sinlessness of Christ: Sanday, Bampton Lectures; Gore, Bampton Lectures: all critical Lives of Christ: Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ; and for trustworthiness of Lukes narrative, Ramsay, Was Christ born at Bethlehem?
On Christs teaching: all good treatises, such as Wendts; and works on NT Theology, as those of Weiss and Beyschlag.
J. E. MOuat.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Fall
FALL.The story of the Fall in Gen 3:1-24 is the immediate sequel to the account of mans creation with which the Jahwistic document opens (see Creation). It tells how the first man and woman, living in childlike innocence and happiness in the Garden of Eden, were tempted by the subtle serpent to doubt the goodness of their Creator, and aim at the possession of forbidden knowledge by tasting the fruit of the one tree of which they had been expressly charged not to eat. Their transgression was speedily followed by detection and punishment; on the serpent was laid the curse of perpetual enmity between it and mankind; the woman was doomed to the pains of child-bearing: and the man to unremitting toil in the cultivation of the ground, which was cursed on account of his sin. Finally, lest the man should use his newly-acquired insight to secure the boon of immortality by partaking of the tree of life, he was expelled from the garden, which appears to be conceived as still existing, though barred to human approach by the cherubim and the flaming sword.
It is right to point out that certain incongruities of representation suggest that two slightly varying narratives have been combined in the source from which the passage is taken (J [Note: Jahwist.] ). The chief difficulty arises in connexion with the two trees on which the destiny of mankind is made to turn. In Gen 2:9 the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil grow together in the midst of the garden; in Gen 2:17 the second alone is made the test of mans obedience. But ch. 3 (down to Gen 2:22) knows of only one central tree, and that obviously (though it is never so named) the tree of knowledge. The tree of life plays no real part in the story except in Gen 3:22; Gen 3:24; and its introduction there creates embarrassment; for if this tree also was forbidden, the writers silence regarding the prohibition is inexplicable, and if it was not forbidden, can we suppose that the Divine prerogative of immortality was placed within mans reach during the period of his probation? The hypothesis of a twofold recension of the Paradise story, while relieving this difficulty, would be of interest as showing that the narrative had undergone a development in Hebrew literature; but it does not materially aid the exegesis of the passage. The main narrative, which is complete, is that which speaks of the tree of knowledge; the other, if it be present at all, is too fragmentary to throw light on the fundamental ideas embodied in the story.
That this profoundly suggestive narrative is a literal record of a historic occurrence is an opinion now generally abandoned even by conservative theologians; and the view which tends to prevail amongst modern expositors is that the imagery is derived from the store of mythological traditions common to the Semitic peoples. It is true that no complete Babylonian parallel has yet been discovered; the utmost that can be claimed is that particular elements or motives of the Biblical story seem to be reflected in some of the Babylonian legends, and still more in the religious symbolism displayed on the monuments (tree of life, serpent, cherubim, etc.). These coincidences are sufficiently striking to suggest the inference that a mythical account of mans original condition and his fall existed in Babylonia, and had obtained wide currency in the East. It is a reasonable conjecture that such a legend, stripped of its primitive polytheism, and retaining only faint traces of what was probably its original mythological character, formed the material setting which was adapted by the [Biblical] narrator for the purpose of exhibiting, under a striking and vivid imaginative form, the deep spiritual truths which he was inspired to discern (Driver). These spiritual truths, in which the real significance of the narrative lies, we must endeavour very briefly to indicate.
(1) The story offers, on the face of it, an explanation of the outstanding ills that flesh is heir to: the hard, toilsome lot of the husbandman, the travail of the woman and her subjection to man, the universal fate of death. These evils, it is taught, are inconsistent with the ideal of human life, and contrary to the intention of a good God. Man, as originally created, was exempt from them; and to the question, Whence came they? the answer is that they are the effect of a Divine curse to which the race is subject; though it is to be noted that no curse is pronounced on the first pair, but only on the serpent as the organ of temptation, and the ground which is cursed for mans sake.
(2) The consequences of the curse are the penalty of a single sin, by which man incurred the just anger of God. The authors conception of sin may be considered from two points of view. Formally, it is the transgression of a Divine commandment, involving distrust of the wisdom and goodness of the Almighty, and breaking the harmony which had subsisted between man and his Maker. The process by which these evil thoughts are insinuated into the mind of the woman is described with a masterly insight into the psychology of temptation which is unsurpassed in literature. But it is a mistake to suppose that the essence of the sin consists in the merely formal disobedience to a command arbitrarily imposed as a test of fidelity. There was a reason for the Divine injunction, and a reason for mans transgression of it; and the reasons are unambiguously indicated. To eat of the tree would make man like God, knowing good and evil; and God does not wish man to be like Himself. The essence of the sin is therefore presumption,an overstepping of the limits of creaturehood, and an encroachment on the prerogatives of Deity.
(3) What, then, is meant by the knowledge of good and evil, which was acquired by eating of the tree? Does it mean simply an enlargement of experience such as the transition from childhood to maturity naturally brings with it, and of which the feeling of shame (Gen 3:7) is the significant index? Or is it, as has generally been held, the experimental knowledge of moral distinctions, the awaking of the conscience, the faculty of discerning between right and wrong? It is very difficult to say which of these interpretations expresses the thought in the mind of the writer. It is in accordance with Hebrew idiom to hold that knowledge of good and evil is equivalent to knowledge in general; though it is of course not certain that that is the sense in which the phrase is here used. On the other hand, there is nothing to show that it refers to the moral sense; and the fact that neither of the ways in which the newly acquired faculty manifests itself (the perception of sex, and insight into the mystic virtue of the tree of life, Gen 3:22) is a distinctively ethical cognition, rather favours the opinion that the knowledge referred to is the power to discern the secret meanings of things and utilize them for human ends, regardless of the will and purpose of Godthe knowledge, in short, which is the principle of a godless civilization. The idea may be that succinctly expressed by the writer of Ecclesiastes: God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions (Ecc 7:29).
(4) One specific feature of the story remains to be considered, namely, the rle assigned to the serpent, and his character. The identification of the serpent with the devil appears first in the Apocryphal literature (Wis 2:24); in the narrative itself he is simply the most subtle of the creatures that God has made (Gen 3:1), and there is not the slightest reason to suppose that he is there regarded as the mouthpiece of the evil spirit. At the same time it is impossible to escape the impression that the serpent is conceived as a malevolent being, designedly insinuating suspicion of God into the minds of our first parents, and inciting them to an act which will frustrate the Divine purpose regarding mankind. There is thus a certain ambiguity in the representation of the serpent, which may have its source in some more primitive phase of the legend; but which also points the way, under the influence of a deeper apprehension of the nature of moral evil than had been attained in the time of the writer, to that identification of the serpent with the Evil One which we find in the NT (Rom 16:20, Rev 12:9; Rev 20:2). In the same way, and with the same justification, the reflexion of later ages read into the curse on the serpent (Gen 3:15) the promise of ultimate redemption from the power of evil through the coming of Christ. Strictly interpreted, the words imply nothing more than a perpetual antagonism between the human race and the repulsive reptiles which excite its instinctive antipathy. It is only the general scope of the passage that can be thought to warrant the inference that the victory is to be on the side of humanity; and it is a still higher flight of religious inspiration to conceive of that victory as culminating in the triumph of Him whose mission it was to destroy the works of the devil.
J. Skinner.
Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible
Fall
The fall of man is among the first of the portraits in the Bible on the great subject of redemption. When Adam came out of the hands of his gracious Creator, we are told, that he was created in the image of God. By which I apprehend, that he was formed in similitude to him who is “the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature.” “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Gen 1:26) What image? Not the image of JEHOVAH as JEHOVAH, for JEHOVAH is invisible; but, according to what the apostle Paul hath delivered to the church, by the authority and instruction of the Holy Ghost, in the image of him who before all worlds stood up, at the call of God, as the glorious Head of his body the church secretly, though not openly, the “first-born of every creature.” Let the reader read the whole passage. (Col 1:15, etc.) “Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature. For by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible; whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things were created by him and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the Head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence.” Now from hence it plainly appears that Christ as Christ, that is, God and man in one person, had a priority of existence to every other, and was, and is, he image of the invisible JEHOVAH, in whose likeness Adam, the first man, was made. It appears also, that by him, that is, God and man in one person, all things were created. God created all things, we are told, by Jesus Christ. (Eph 3:9)
And it farther appears, that all things were not only created by him, but for him. The whole cause for which JEHOVAH went forth in acts of creation, as relating to our world, was for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Yea, more than this; for the same Scripture saith, that he is not only before all things, but by him all things consist. As if this image of the invisible God became the only foundation for creation to rest upon, and the only power to preserve and keep the whole together. This image then of the invisible God was the Person in whose likeness, it should seem, Adam, the first man of the earth, was formed. And, therefore, in the holiness of that similitude, as well in mind as in body, our first parent came forth from the hands of his infinite and kind Creator.
By the fall he lost this resemblance, and all his faculties became ruined and defiled; yea, his whole nature virtually all sin. Hence the Scriptures, under the strongest expressions, speak of the mighty ruin. His understanding became darkened, so as to lose the knowledge of God. (Eph 4:18-19) His affections became carnal, sensual, and devilish. (Eph 2:1-3; Jam 3:15) His will stubborn, rebellious, proud, and disobedient. (1Pe 4:3) Yea, his whole mind enmity against God. (Rom 8:7) The Psalmist, and after him the apostle Paul, hath given some of the more striking features of fallen man, when he saith, “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand and seek after God.” But the result of the divine enquiry was, that “they were all gone aside, they were altogether become filthy, there was none that did good, no not one.” (Psa 14:2-3 with Rom 3:10-19) Such is the Scripture account of the fall.
Blessed be He that, by his great undertaking, hath restored our poor nature from the ruins of the fall, and by uniting his church, which is his body, to himself, hath given to us a better righteousness than man had before. The holiness of Adam was but the holiness of the creature, peaceable, capable of being lost; and was lost. The holiness of the Lord Jesus, in which all his redeemed are beheld and accepted before God, is the holiness of God-man, perfect, and incapable of being ever lost or lessened. How precious the thought! So then, our present fallen state is not the original state of man, neither is it the final state. In Jesus and his righteousness the injury sustained by the fall is more than repaired, and the everlasting welfare of the church, which is his body, eternally secured from all the possibility of loss from an union and oneness with him. Hail! thou glorious, gracious, holy one of God, “the Lord our righteousness.” (Jer 23:6)
Fuente: The Poor Mans Concordance and Dictionary to the Sacred Scriptures
Fall
fol (vb.): The idea of falling is most frequently expressed in Hebrew by , naphal, but also by many other words; in Greek by , ppto, and its compounds. The uses of the word in Scripture are very varied. There is the literal falling by descent; the falling of the countenance in sorrow, shame, anger, etc. (Gen 4:5, Gen 4:6); the falling in battle (Gen 14:10; Num 14:3, etc.); the falling into trouble, etc. (Pro 24:16, Pro 24:17); prostration in supplication and reverence (Gen 17:3; Num 14:5, etc.); falling of the Spirit of Yahweh (Eze 11:5; compare Eze 3:24; Eze 8:1); of apostasy (2Th 2:3; Heb 6:6; Jud 1:24), etc. the Revised Version (British and American) frequently changes fall of the King James Version into other words or phrases, as stumble (Lev 26:37; Psa 64:8; 2Pe 1:10, etc.), fade (Isa 33:4), etc.; in Acts 27, the Revised Version (British and American) reads be cast ashore on rocky ground for have fallen upon rocks (Act 27:29), perish for fall (Act 27:34), lighting upon for falling into (Act 27:41).
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Fall
Est 6:13 (a) This expression is used to describe the defeat of Haman at the hands of the Jews. He would be deposed from his high and exalted position in the kingdom. This of course took place soon. (See Psa 5:10; Psa 141:10).
Est 9:3 (a) The word is used to describe the great fear and apprehension that fell upon the people because of the power given to Mordecai, the Jew.
Pro 26:27 (a) This act is used to describe the conditions of that one who is caught in his own evil schemes and is injured by the plot which he intended for others.
Heb 6:6 (a) The action referred to in this passage has no reference whatever to a Christian. It refers to one who has attached himself to Christianity as glasses are attached to the face, or as earrings are attached to the ears. The ears never fall away, nor does the nose, for they are a part of the body. The Christian is a part of the body of JESUS CHRIST, as is described fully in Ephesians. Professing Christians are attached to the church, or the people of GOD, as Judas was, but they are not a part of that living group known as the Church of JESUS CHRIST, or the body of the Lord JESUS. There are those who profess to be saved but have never really been born again. They pretend to adhere to the doctrines of CHRIST, but under pressure and persecution they turn their backs on CHRIST and repudiate that which they pretended at one time to believe.