Rev Donald Macdonald
The Fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve, was that act of disobedience which had such fearful consequences for mankind and the world. We must begin with the book of beginnings, the Book of Genesis. Genesis 1: 26-31 gives an account of man’s creation. We find his creation as flesh and spirit in 2:7, the providence of God towards man in 2:8, the covenant and its precept in 2:15-17, the creation of the woman in 2:18,21-23, the sequence of events leading up to his fall in chapter 3.
One of our secondary sources, The Westminster Confession of Faith, states: “It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good.
“After God had made all other creatures, He created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after His own image; having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfil it; and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of his own will, which was subject unto change. Beside this law written in their hearts, they received a command, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which while they kept, they were happy in their communion with God, and had dominion over the creatures” (4:1,2).
The Fall is the name given to Adam’s first transgression, and his immediate descent into a state of guilt and condemnation before God. The Shorter Catechism states: “Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created, by sinning against God (Ans 13). And John Brown thus defines the Fall in his Dictionary: “Metaphorically taken, [it] imports, to become guilty of sin, or be subject to misery: in this way, persons, nations, or cities lose their height of glory and happiness. Man beginning to disobey his Maker, and so losing his favour and image and becoming sinful and miserable, is called his Fall.”
1. What position did Man fall from?
We will comment on his creation, and his original state as he came forth from the hand of the Creator. Robert Shaw makes the following observations: “Man was formed after God had made all other creatures; and this strongly marks the dignity of his character, and the exuberant bounty of his Creator. Before he was brought into existence, the earth, which was designed for his temporary residence, was completely prepared, and amply furnished for his reception. . . . Man is a compound existence, made up of two great parts, a soul and a body. His body, though formed of mean materials, is a piece of exquisite workmanship; but his soul is the noblest part of his nature. By his soul he is allied to God and angels; by his body, to the beasts that perish and to the dust under his feet.”
“Man was originally created after the image of God. This could not consist in a participation in the divine essence, for that is incommunicable to any creature. Neither did it consist in his external form; for God, having no bodily parts, could not be represented by any material resemblance. The image of God consisted partly in the spirituality of the soul of man. God is a spirit – an immaterial and immortal being. The soul of man also is a spirit, though infinitely inferior to the Father of spirits. Thus, in immateriality and immortality the soul of man bears a resemblance to God. The image of God in man likewise consisted in the dominion assigned to him over the creatures, in respect of which he was the representative and vicegerent^2 of God upon earth. . . .
“But the image of God in man principally consisted in his conformity to the moral perfections of God, or in the complete rectitude of his nature. From two passages in the New Testament, it appears that the image of God, after which man was at first created, and to which he is restored by the Holy Spirit, consists in knowledge, righteousness and holiness (Eph 4:24, Col 3:10). Man had knowledge in his understanding, righteousness in his will, and holiness in his affections. His understanding was illuminated with all necessary knowledge. He knew God and His will; he knew himself, his relations to God, his duty to Him, and his dependence upon Him. His will was in conformity to the will of God. As he knew his duty, so he was fully disposed to the performance of it. And his affections were holy and pure; they were placed upon proper objects, and exercised in a regular manner. There was then no need that the moral law should be written on tables of stone, for it was engraved on the heart of man in fair and legible characters. He had likewise sufficient ability to fulfill it; but his will was entirely free to act according to his original light and holy inclinations, or to turn aside to evil.”^3
The starting point of Thomas Boston’s Fourfold State is: God made man upright in his creation. God created man in complete conformity to his Maker; he was a stranger to disease and death, as to his body. In his soul he was completely holy and happy in his intellect and will, in his understanding and affections, in all his faculties. The moral law was perfectly written on his heart. However, his chief happiness lay in the favour of God and the blessedness of fellowship with Him. It is to be remembered that, in this state of perfection, he was both a moral and a dependent creature. But he fell from that favour he enjoyed as having dominion over the creation and all creatures. He fell from communion with his Maker; he lost his original righteousness; his understanding became darkened; his will no longer submitted to the will of his Creator. He lost the original holiness that he had in his creation.
2. How could a perfectly-holy being sin?
Universal experience and observation testify to the fact that man is now in a very corrupt and sinful state. That he was not originally formed in this degraded state might be inferred from the character of his Maker, and the Scriptures explicitly affirm that he was at first created in the image of God, in a state of perfect rectitude.
We know that moral evil intruded into the world of angels. The question then arises: How was it introduced into the world? To this important question, reason can give no satisfactory answer. Pagan philosophers could not fail to observe the degeneracy of human nature; mournful experience taught them that evil had come into the world. But to identify the source of evil was knowledge too wonderful for them. Numerous were their conjectures, but they were all remote from the truth.
Divine revelation, however, sets this matter in a clear and certain light; and the Westminster Confession, in accordance with the inspired record, traces the entrance of sin to the seduction and disobedience of our first parents. They “sinned in eating the forbidden fruit”. This question takes us into the area of the human will and free agency. The Confession states, “God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined to good or evil” (9:1).
On this section, Shaw comments: “The decision of most of the points in controversy between Calvinists and Arminians, as Jonathan Edwards has observed,^4 depends on the determination of the question: Wherein consists that freedom of will which is requisite to moral agency? According to Arminians three things belong to the freedom of the will: (1.) That the will has a self-determining power, or a certain sovereignty over itself and its own acts, whereby it determines its own volitions. (2.) A state of indifference, or that equilibrium whereby the will is without all antecedent bias and left entirely free from any prepossessing inclination to one side or the other. (3.) That the volitions, or acts of the will, are contingent^5, not only as opposed to all constraint, but to all necessity, or any fixed and certain connection with some previous ground or reason of their existence.
“Calvinists, on the other hand, contend that a power in the will to determine its own determinations, is either unmeaning, or supposes, contrary to the first principles of philosophy, something to arise without a cause; that the idea of the soul exerting an act of choice or preference, while, at the same time, the will is in a perfect equilibrium, or state of indifference, is full of absurdity and self-contradiction; and that, as nothing can ever come to pass without a cause, the acts of the will are never contingent or without necessity – understanding by necessity . . . an infallible connection with something foregoing. According to Calvinists, the liberty of a moral agent consists in the power of acting according to a choice; and those actions are free which are performed without any external compulsion or restraint, in consequence of the determinations of his own mind. ‘The necessity of man’s willing and acting in conformity to his apprehensions and disposition’ is ‘fully consistent with all the liberty which can belong to a rational nature.’”^6
The Confession continues: “Man, in his state of innocence, had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet mutably, so that he might fall from it” (9:2).
And Shaw here comments: “The human will is not a distinct agent, but only a power of the rational soul. It is essential to a soul to have a moral disposition, good or bad, or a mixture of both; and, according to what is the prevailing moral disposition of the soul, [so] must be the moral actings of the will. Hence there is a great difference in regard to the freedom of the will in the different states of man. In the state of innocence, the natural inclination of man’s will was only to good; but it was liable to change through the power of temptation, and therefore free to choose evil.”
However the question about man in a state of innocence remains: How can a man’s will which is only towards the good choose what was forbidden? John Murray brings out several points on the subject, involving both action and will. The section is too long to quote in its entirety, but I will touch on some of what he says on what the Confession calls natural liberty:
- The reality of human action. The thought hereby expressed is that man is endowed to perform certain actions within the realm of his created and dependent existence. . . .
- The responsibility of human action. Man’s actions are worthy of blame or approval. Moral law, law of obligation, applies to him. His acts are within the sphere of ought and ought not. This obtains because he is made in the image of God . . . . The law that prescribes action or forbids it is the transcript of God’s perfection, the perfection of God coming to expression for the regulation of conduct consonant with it.
- Freedom of human action. This is volition. The responsibility referred to above rests upon the fact that the action is the result of volition. Man wills or chooses to act. . . .
- The determinant of volition. . . . Two men have power to earn a livelihood. One does it by honourable labour, the other resorts to theft. What explains the difference?” It is not the power of will because both have it. This has to do with character. There is a radical difference of character; the character is the habit of the person. The whole complex of desires, of motives and principles.”^7
Professor Murray also discusses here the inclusiveness of freedom. He says, “This freedom is not restricted to the sphere of volition and action. It applies to the heart, the dispositional complex. The heart of man is his own. Man is depraved, but this depravity is his and he is responsible for it.”
What I particularly want to look at is what he says about the power of contrary choice. It is not the essence of free agency. “In dealing with this proposition it is necessary to distinguish between contrary choice and alternative choice. Contrary choice is the ability to choose between alternatives that are morally antithetical, between good and bad regarded, not relatively but absolutely, in terms of God’s judgement. Alternative choice, on the other hand, is a choice between alternatives that are ethically of the same character, that are both good or both bad. The proposition applies only to contrary choice.”^8
Satan was the occasion of the temptation which resulted in man’s Fall, through the woman, but no external power or influence can cause a rational being to sin. Adam’s sin was a movement of defection and apostasy and transgression in his heart and mind and will, says Professor Murray. While allowing for Satan’s involvement and guilt, Adam alone was responsible.
“God gave to man the power of contrary choice. Man of his own will, by no external compulsion or determination, used that power in the commission of sin. There was no necessity arising from his physical condition, nor from his moral nature, nor from the nature of his environment, why he should sin. It was a free movement within man’s own spirit. . . .
“The outward act of transgression, like all overt acts, was determined by inclination, propension^9, character. Since the character that produced the act cannot be different as to its moral character from the act itself, we must conclude that the inclination, disposition or character of Adam changed from holiness to unholiness. It was that change of moral character that alone can explain the overt act of sin. The inward change was signalised or manifested by the overt act of disobedience.”^10 I think that, in this analysis, Murray goes some way to answering the question: How could a perfectly-holy man sin?
The Biblical account is to be found in Genesis 2:15-17: “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
Andrew Symington says in his Elements of Divine Truth: “Man by special revelation was brought under a positive precept to prove his subjection to the moral authority of God”. He was first created; then God placed him in the Garden of Eden to keep it. Although created a perfect man, he was created mutable, liable to fall, Only God is immutable. It was within the power of man’s created will to obey or disobey, to choose good or evil.
The positive precept given by special revelation in these verses points to the Covenant of Works. In the Garden of Eden which the Lord had planted, everything was provided for his happiness. He had access to everything except one tree: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He would receive good if he obeyed, evil if he disobeyed. This was to be the time of Adam’s probation, when his continued relationship to the Creator would be tested. He had dominion over all God’s creatures and power to fulfill God’s will, he was left to the freedom of his own will to perform the creation mandate.
Symington says further on this covenant relationship: “(1.) There is a moral relationship between God and man, implying the necessary moral, legislative superiority of God, and man’s necessary moral subjection. (2.) The rule of the moral subjection of man to God is the moral law promulgated in him. (3.) This moral subjection implies a capacity of obedience and disobedience, in respect of physical, intellectual and moral faculties. (4.) It implies moral freedom, or a liberty of choice and a freedom of action to do what is willed. This moral freedom does not consist of indifference, nor is it necessary – like the operation of fire and water – but a freedom of choice, under the influence of view and motive, and the removal of all external hindrance. (5.) This moral subjection implies responsibility to God and is liable to the natural, moral, and legal, or penal, effects of disobedience.”^11
Man chose death rather than life; hence the sad reality that the first man fell from a state of perfect holiness to a state of sin. And all his posterity fell with him, as he was the root of the whole human race – all were in his loins. There is no valid reason for enquiring: What kind of tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? But it was a clear sign to man, setting before Adam good and evil – good in obedience, and evil in disobedience. It was a sign addressed to the eye, setting before man the blessing and the curse, life and death, the necessity of obeying the whole law, the good of that obedience, and the evil of the contrary.^12
That first covenant with man is still in force while he is in a state of nature. This is irrespective of his inability to recover himself; the authoritative precept has not been removed. As Scripture says, “The law is not of faith: but the man that doeth them shall live in them” (Gal 3:12). The Shorter Catechism states: When God had created man, He entered into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of perfect obedience; forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon the pain of death” (Ans 12).
^1This is the first part of a paper given at the Theological Conference in 2011. The paper has five sections: (1.) What position did man fall from? (2.) How could a perfectly-holy being sin? (3.) The Fall itself and what was involved. (4.) The consequences for the human race. (5.) Conclusion. The first two sections are printed here.
^2One who has delegated authority.
^3Shaw, Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith, on chapter 4, section 2.
^4See Edwards on Freedom of Will.
^5Dependent on an uncertain event, rather than on the purpose of God.
^6In the last sentence, Shaw is quoting from Adam Gib, “A Discourse on Liberty and Necessity”, in Sacred Contemplations, Edinburgh, 1786, p 484.
^7Murray, Collected Writings, vol 2, Banner of Truth, 1977, pp 60-61.
^8Collected Writings, vol 2, pp 63,64.
^9Propensity.
^10Collected Writings, vol 2, p 69.
^11Symington, Elements of Divine Truth, Edinburgh, 1854, p 121.
^12See Symington, Elements of Divine Truth, p 130.