Rev Donald Macdonald
(3.) The Fall and what was involved.
The period since the Enlightenment, which began in the late seventeenth century, has seen the advance of rationalism and unbelieving Biblical criticism. The whole Genesis account of creation, a historical Adam and the effects of his sin on the whole of humanity have not only been called into question but rejected in many circles, including large sections of the visible Church. Although such concepts as the Fall and original sin are not specifically mentioned by name in Scripture, yet Adam’s sin is clearly brought out in God’s revelation. Although the early Church Fathers refer to Adam’s Fall, it was in the time of Augustine that we find an extended attempt to define clearly the doctrine of the Fall in theological terms, as involving Adam’s sin and guilt, and the sin and guilt of the rest of humanity. This was no doubt to counteract the heresy of Pelagius, who denied that Adam’s guilt and pollution were transmitted to the human race. No true Christian who believes the Word of God, and is truly taught of the Lord, will reject the Genesis account (3:1-7).
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 The Westminster Confession of Faith: “By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body”.
Robert Shaw expounds this section: It “sums up the consequences of the sin of our first parents in regard to themselves. ‘They fell from their original righteousness’ and became wholly corrupted in all the faculties of their souls and members of their bodies. The understanding, once a lamp of light, was now overwhelmed in darkness. The will, once faithful for God, and regulated by His will, now became perverse and rebellious. The affections, once pure and regular, now became vitiated and disordered. The body too was corrupted, and its members became instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. Our first parents likewise lost the happiness which they had formerly possessed. They were expelled from that pleasant and delightful abode in which God had placed them. But this was the least part of the misery into which they fell. They lost communion with God, the chief good; they forfeited His favour and incurred His righteous displeasure. They became dead in sin – obnoxious to that death which is the wages of sin, and which had been threatened as the penalty of their disobedience.”22
This involved the following:
(a) A change from a state of perfect holiness to a state of sin. Man was brought into a state of disobedience through the temptation of Satan. We must consider the steps which led up to that first sin, yet not forgetting the terms of the covenant God made with him (Gen 2:17). We know that sin existed before it entered into the world and into man’s experience. Already a portion of the spirit world had been cast out of their original abode. Yet how sin entered into the experience of angels remains a mystery.
Satan made use of the serpent to tempt man to disobedience (Gen 3:1). He first entered into dialogue with the woman, the weaker vessel (we are not told whether Adam was present or not). It all began with the word of God being questioned: “Yea, hath God said?” Then it lead to a denial of God’s authority: “Ye shall not surely die” (Gen 3:4,5). This led to the woman desiring the fruit, which looked so good; after eating it herself, she gave to her husband. Satan’s temptation did not involve coercion or force, but subtlety. “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor 11:3).
(b) What led to this fatal step of apostasy? First there was dialogue with the tempter, whom the Saviour described as a liar and a murderer from the beginning. Eve in reality dallied not only with the tempter but also with the temptation, which led her to disbelieve God and to question the threatened judgement. Unbelief and pride were the main ingredients in their falling away from God. In further examining this point we must comment on the origin and rise of sin in man, which led to his apostasy; clearly it involved his will and desire.
W G T Shedd comments that Adam’s sin was twofold: internal and external. “The internal part of it was the originating and starting of a wrong inclination. Adam first inclined to self instead of God as the ultimate end. . . . Then, in order to gratify this new inclination, he reached forth his hand and ate of the forbidden fruit.” According to Shedd, “the internal part of Adam’s first sin was the principal part of it. It was the real commencement of sin in man. It was the origination from nothing of a sinful disposition in the human will. There was no previous sinful disposition to prompt it or to produce it. When Adam inclined away from God to the creature, he exercised an act of pure self-determination.”23
22Shaw, Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith, on chapter 6, section 2.
23Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, P & R Publishing reprint, pp 169-70.
1The first two sections of this Theological Conference paper were printed last month: (1.) What position did man fall from? (2.) How could a perfectly-holy being sin? The third section appears here.
However, the rise of this sinful desire began with Eve’s listening, debating, and disbelieving, that had such an influence on her will. “The woman saw that the fruit was good for food” (v 6); it was not just a natural desire for food and an object that had a natural beauty. As Shedd says, there was an “unnatural and self-originated desire for it, as yielding a kind of knowledge which God forbad man to have. This was not true knowledge.” Paul states that “Adam was not deceived [by Satan], but the woman being deceived [by Satan] was in the transgression” (1 Tim 2:14). Again, Shedd writes, this implies that “Adam did not believe the tempter’s assertion that a good would follow the eating of the forbidden fruit and that death would not be the consequence. According to Paul, Adam was seduced by his affection for Eve rather than being deceived by the lie of Satan. He fell with his eyes wide open to the fact that, if he ate, he would die. But in loving his wife more than God, he worshipped and served the creature instead of the Creator.”44
The Larger Catechism teaches, “The sinfulness of that estate wherein man fell, consisteth in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of that righteousness wherein he was created, and the corruption of his nature, whereby he is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite unto all that is spiritually good, and wholly inclined to all evil, and that continually; which is commonly called original sin, and from which do proceed all actual transgressions” (Ans 25).
(c) The fatal breach in the covenant of works. We are not to think that the act of eating the fruit was the entire transgression; there was a definite process. We are to note James 1:13-15: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man: but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
According to Charles Hodge, “the first address of the tempter to Eve was designed to awaken distrust in the goodness of God and doubt as to the truth of the prohibition. ‘Hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’ . . . The next address was a direct assault upon her faith: ‘Ye shall not surely die’, but on the contrary become as God Himself in knowledge. To this temptation she yielded, and Adam joined in the transgression. From this account it appears that unbelief and pride were the principles involved in that fatal act of disobedience. Eve doubted God’s goodness; she disbelieved His threatening; she aspired after forbidden knowledge.”45
So human sin must have originated in the will of our first parents. As Boston says, “God left man to the freedom of his own will in this matter. He was not the cause of [man’s] fall; He moved him not, nor couldest He move him to it; “for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man” (Jas 1:13). Such is the holiness of His nature. He gave [man] a power to stand if he would, and He took not away from him any grace given; but, for his trial, left him to his freedom of will, with which he was created. God made him good and righteous, and the natural set of his will was to good only (Ecc 7:26). But it was liable to change, yet only to change by himself; he could only be made evil or sinful by his own choice”.6
Boston goes on to consider “how the covenant of works was broken”. He makes three main points:
“1. The command was violated. The covenant required (1) perfect obedience, but it was not given; (2) perpetual obedience, but man came to a stand in the course of obedience . . . .
“2. The right and title to the promised benefit by that covenant was undermined. The promised life was lost; man had no more any pretensions to it; he could no more plead the reward which was to be given him . . . .
“3. He fell under the penalty of the covenant, became liable to death in its utmost extent. As he had no more ado with the promise, the threatening now bound him to bear the wrath threatened for the satisfaction of divine justice. The blessing of the covenant being lost, the curse of it seized him, and he was bound with the cords of death . . . .
“(1.) The soul of man . . . died spiritually, losing the image of God and losing the favour of God. Man turning from God as his chief end, the image of God in his soul was defaced (Gen 5:1,3). His saving knowledge was lost: witness the cover of fig leaves which our first parents prepared for covering of their nakedness, and their pretending to hide themselves from the presence of God (Gen 3:7). The righteousness of his will was lost: witness their aversion to God, hiding themselves from Him, their excusing of their sin, transferring of their guilt, the man laying the blame on the woman, the woman on the serpent; nay, Adam not obscurely reflected on God Himself. The holiness and regularity of their affections went off; they were filled with disorder, confusion and shame. They lost God’s favour, were seized with horror of conscience (Gen 3:8), were driven out of paradise like a divorced woman out of the house of her husband, declared incapable of communion with God, and debarred from the tree of life, the seal of the covenant.
“(2.) The body of man became mortal, death working within it and without it; from that moment the covenant was broken. He was condemned to toil and weariness for life, and then to return to the dust at length, the frame and constitution of man’s body having become deadly from the moment of his breaking the covenant. And sorrow and pain in breeding and bringing forth of children was laid on the female sex, as a particular mark of displeasure with the first sin; and the ground was cursed for man’s sake, because of the dependance of the life of man upon it.
“(3.) Soul and body were subjected and bound over to eternal death in hell. For this was comprehended in the threatening of the covenant of works, as has been already shown.
“Thus was the covenant of works broken. Yet man was not, and could not thereby be freed from that covenant; still he was bound to obedience, according to the command of it; and to satisfaction, according to the threatening. Only God was no more obliged to fulfil His promise, since it was conditional and the condition was broken.”7
So man revolted by partaking of the forbidden fruit, for his will was corrupted and his affections altered. The eyes of both Adam and Eve were opened; the covenant of works was breached; so the penalty of the covenant became active, and they both died. Thus the consequences of disobedience became a reality. The terms of the covenant were: “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 (Gen 2:15-17).
(d) The consequences of this breach. We will first consider the consequences for Adam. As fallen he had a new experience of God which he not have in a state of innocence. Previously, as long as he remained obedient, he knew only God’s power and goodness. Now, as a result of disobedience, he discovered what it is to be morally and spiritually naked, through the loss of original righteousness. He was now afraid of God, who was previously his friend; so he tried to cover his nakedness with fig leaves. He now knew, in his experience, God’s anger and displeasure; he no longer delighted in the presence of God; he was cut off from communion and fellowship with God.
The Shorter Catechism teaches: “All mankind by the fall lost communion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell for ever (Ans 19). Thus the condition to which Adam was reduced by his disobedience corresponded to that of the fallen angels. He was entirely lost and absolutely ruined. This is important, for as a result of the Fall, man is beyond recovery – by his own resources. Hodge writes, “It is said that no man is depraved by one transgression. In one sense this is true. But one transgression, by incurring the wrath and curse of God, and the loss of fellowship with Him, as effectually involves spiritual death as one perforation of the heart causes the death of the body, or one puncture of the eyes involves perpetual darkness. The other forms of evil consequent on Adam’s disobedience were merely subordinate. They were the expressions of the divine displeasure and the consequences of that spiritual death in which the threatened penalty essentially consisted.88
44Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, p 554.
45Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Eerdmans reprint, 1977, vol 2, p 128.
6Thomas Boston, “A View of the Covenant of Works”, in Works, vol 12, 1855, p 229.
7Boston, Works, vol 12, p 230-31.
88Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol 2, p 129.