The Bible Commentaries and Others: Fall

Fall

FALL The Fall traditionally refers to the first human transgression of the divine command. The biblical narrative gives an account of this transgression, including the events leading up to it and its immediate consequences. Doctrinally the narrative is usually interpreted as describing the cause and nature of humanity’s wickedness, suffering, and estrangement from God. In turn, the doctrine influences how the narrative is read or rewritten. But stories of the Fall and doctrines of the Fall are not necessarily interdependent, and should be distinguished.

The story of the Fall is told in Gen. 2–3: the Lord God, having created man (Adam), placed him in the Garden of Eden and commanded him not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17). After woman was created, the serpent spoke to her, contradicting God’s warning about the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit and ascribing to God a jealous motive for his interdiction: “God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods” (Gen. 3:5). The woman then tasted the fruit and gave some to her husband, who likewise ate. Immediately they knew themselves to be naked (Gen. 3:7), and hid themselves. God responded to their transgression by pronouncing a threefold curse: the serpent will crawl on its belly and eat dust; the woman will experience sorrow in bearing children and be dominated by her husband; and the man will sorrow and sweat to obtain food from the ground (Gen. 3:14–19).

Some critics have viewed this story “as a straightforward aetiological myth, designed to explain why a man cleaves to his wife and why he is the senior partner in the union, why he has to labor in the fields and she in childbirth, why we wear clothes, why we dislike snakes, and why they crawl on their bellies” (Evans, 9). The Fall also, notably, affords an explanation of human mortality.

The rest of the OT makes no clear mention of the story of Adam and Eve (but cf. Job 31:33; Ezek. 28:12–15; see also 4 Ezra 3:5–8; 7:11–13). According to various apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, such as 2 Enoch, Satan (Sotona, or Satomail) attacks humanity by means of an actual seduction of Eve: “He conceived thought against Adam, in such form he entered and seduced Eve, but did not touch Adam” (31:6; cf. also The Life of Adam and Eve; see Williams, 118-22; Evans, 28-34). But the familiar biblical interpretation of the Fall is given in the NT by St. Paul (Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Cor. 15:21–22), who treats the story as authoritative and archetypal. Paul focuses principally on the sin of Adam as being, in its nature and consequences, significant for the entire human race, and symmetrical with the sinlessness and life-giving acts of Jesus Christ, whom he calls “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45): “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:21–22). Similarly in Romans, Paul declares, “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (5:19). In this way, he amplifies and universalizes the significance of Adam and of his transgression by making them the backdrop against which Christ’s redeeming acts are to be read. (References such as 4 Ezra [2 Esdr.] 3:5–8, 21; 7:11–13 suggest that the idea that Adam’s sin had universally baleful effects was held in ancient Jewish circles as well as in early Christianity.)

Typological interpretation also links the serpent in the Fall-story to Satan himself. For if the second Adam was tempted by Satan (Mark 1:13), must it not also have been Satan who tempted the first Adam? In Revelation, John makes the identification explicit, referring to the overthrow of “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan” (Rev. 12:9). The same identification is supported by the words of Jesus: “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:18–19; see also Rom. 16:20).

The Bible nowhere uses the term Fall in connection with the story of Adam and Eve. Once the story is read as involving the agency of Satan, however, the first transgression of Adam is plausibly paralleled with the first transgression of Satan. The latter is suggestively described in terms of a “fall from heaven” by Christ in Luke 10, and traditional interpretation of Isa. 14 sees the fall of the proud king of Babylon as post-figuring that of Satan: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! … For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven … will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell” (14:12–15).

How one conceives the Fall theologically depends on what humanity is thought to have fallen from and to. N. P. Williams thus distinguishes the early Church Fathers according to whether their Fall-teachings are “minimizing” or “maximizing” (Williams, 189-91), the latter typified by St. Augustine, the former by St. Irenaeus. Augustine’s tendency to exalt Adam’s original perfection and righteousness in Eden (see De civ. Dei 14.26) maximizes the physical and spiritual consequences of Adam’s sin. Furthermore, Augustine extends the Pauline teaching that all die in Adam (1 Cor. 15:22), claiming that all sin in Adam. Hence Augustine’s maximizing doctrine of original sin, which is based on Rom. 5:12—“and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned”—but which mistranslates Gk. ἐφ ο ̔ by Lat. “in quo,” thus construing the text as saying “in whom [i.e., in Adam] all sin” (Contra duas epistolas Pelagianorum, 4.7 [NPNF 5.419]; see also Williams, 307-10).

By contrast, Irenaeus, writing much earlier and in a hellenistic rather than a Latin milieu, teaches that God made Adam and Eve in a childlike state, as yet “unaccustomed to, and unexercised in, perfect discipline” (ANF 1.455, 521). Irenaeus’s Fall-teaching accordingly “minimizes” the guilt of Adam and Eve and also renders more narratively explicable how they might have succumbed to the temptations of the serpent (see Williams, 189-99). He even suggests that experience of “both the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience” may be a necessary component of humanity’s “instruction in that which is good” (ANF 1.522; cf. Lactantius, ANF 7.142).

Maximizing and minimizing versions of the Fall should, however, be seen as diverging tendencies rather than as antithetical. Irenaeus, e.g., in no way denies the seriousness of the Fall and makes much of the Pauline doctrine of the two Adams, explicitly asserting that Adam, “who was so deeply injured by the enemy,” was also “rescued by Him who conquered the enemy” (ANF 1.456), and underlining the symmetry of Adam’s transgression and Christ’s sinlessness. In Christ’s resisting the devil’s temptation to turn stones into bread, “the corruption of man … which occurred in paradise by both [our first parents] eating, was done away with by [the Lord’s] want of food” (ANF 1.549). And yet the Augustinian tendency, magnifying original righteousness and original sin, predominated in orthodoxy from Augustine’s time on, whether manifested in literal or in allegorical psychological readings.

In English literature the Fall-story is sometimes retold or treated thematically in analogues and echoes of that story, and doctrinally in literary interpretations of evil and of the human condition. Milton’s Paradise Lost, which is the most influential treatment of the Fall in English, comprehends both the story of Adam and Eve and its main predecessor and analogue, the fall of Satan, and has much to say also about the condition of fallen humanity—“death … and all our woe” (PL 1.3). Milton combines maximizing and minimizing interpretations, emphasizing Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian glories and the profound consequences of their sin, but also depicting the prelapsarian conditions for their further sinless growth and development, including work, storytelling, instruction, mutual deliberation and understanding, and what Milton refers to as “the triall of vertue” (Areopagitica, 1644; in Complete Prose Works [1953-82], 2.528; see also Evans, 242-71; Lewalski passim; Danielson, 164-201).

Other notable English treaments of the Fall-story are found in the OE Genesis B, in the ME mystery plays, and in Cursor Mundi. Spenser’s Faerie Queene (bk. 1) recounts how Una’s parents, Adam and Eve, after long exclusion from their native land (Eden) by a dragon (Satan), are restored to it by the Redcrosse Knight (Holiness). Other notable Renaissance retellings, in addition to Milton’s, include those of Du Bartas, Grotius, and Vondel (for English translations of these and other versions and analogues, see Kirkconnell). Sidney incorporates “the accursed fall of Adam” into his poetics early in the Apology. Dryden’s The State of Innocence and Fall of Man (1712), based on Paradise Lost, begins to blur, perhaps unintentionally, the distinction between pre- and postlapsarian existence. In An Essay on Man, Alexander Pope presents a naturalistic version of the prelapsarian “state of Nature,” which becomes undermined by a general outbreak of unenlightened self-love (3.147-282).

In America, Nathaniel Hawthorne memorably explores the nature of fallen humanity and the mystery of sin in The Marble Faun and The House of the Seven Gables and in his short stories “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and “Young Goodman Brown.” Still other writers, such as Archibald MacLeish (Songs for Eve), revise the story altogether in order to portray the Fall as actually desirable for the evolution of human consciousness, a view with antecedents in 1st- and 2nd-cent. gnostic writings.

Such diverse poets as Thomas Traherne and William Wordsworth present pictures of the paradise of childhood followed by a “fall” into adulthood, Traherne in fact recurring to the minimizing views of Irenaeus (see Grant, 170-97; and on the Romantic poets, Smith, 137-62; cf. also Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Spring and Fall,” Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill,” and e. e. cummings’s “in Just spring”).

Different writers use the Fall-story for very different doctrinal ends. Godfrey Goodwin in The Fall of Man (1616) paints a pessimistic view of human nature and history based on a thoroughly maximizing view of the Fall; but George Hakewill, in An Apologie for the Power and Providence of God (1627), without at all rejecting the story of the Fall, opposes Goodman’s gloomy conclusions regarding its consequences by postulating a correspondingly high view of the grace and power of God in mitigating those consequences. Or, again, a writer like Thomas Hobbes, who does not use the Fall narrative at all, in fact creates his own etiological myth of the “natural condition of mankind” against the backdrop of the orthodox Fall-story and raises parallel questions concerning human nature, human misery, and the relief of human misery (see Leviathan, 1.13).

In thought and literature since the Romantic period, as suggested in the example of MacLeish, the tendency increasingly has been to revise both the story and the doctrine of the Fall. For centuries Christian interpreters have wondered whether the Fall, if it occasioned the advent and work of Christ, could ultimately be regretted; hence the paradoxical view of the “felix culpa” (see Danielson, 202-27). But Shelley openly assumed a view of the fall of Satan as Promethean and progressive (see the preface to Prometheus Unbound). What Shelley did for Satan, the evolutionism of the later 19th cent. did for humankind, so that “Fall” was radically reinterpreted as “Progress.”

And yet modern literature by no means sustains an optimistic view of human nature or the trajectory of civilization. The story of the Fall, what Terry Otten has called “this most elemental of myths,” thus appears “woven into the texture” of modern literature (Otten, 7). It can be seen as either undergirding or background, e.g., in the fiction of William Golding (The Inheritors, Free Fall, Lord of the Flies), Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness), and Albert Camus (La Chute); in the fantasy of Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass), C. S. Lewis (Perelandra), J. R. R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings), and Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey); and in the drama of Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). For even in its most basic form, in Gen. 2–3, the story of the Fall not only speaks of the first man and the first woman naked before each other and God, thus engaging the reader’s sense of entanglement in the complex web of progenitor and progeny, of genesis and generation. It also faces the mystery of the perverse will that listens to the voice of the beast rather than the voice of God, and chooses death rather than life.

See also adam; eden; eve; felix culpa; original sin; second adam .

Bibliography. Brandes, R. P. “The Myth of the Fall in the Poetry of D. H. Lawrence and Ted Hughes.” DAI 46 (1986), 2697A; Canfield, D. “The Fate of the Fall in Pope’s Essay on Man.” In The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 23 (1982), 134-50; Danielson, D. R. Milton’s Good God: A Study in Literary Theodicy (1982); Evans, J. M. Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition (1968); Grant, P. The Transformation of Sin: Studies in Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Traherne (1974); Kirkconnell, W. The Celestial Cycle: The Theme of Paradise Lost in World Literature with Translations of the Major Analogues (1952); Lewalski, B. K. “Innocence and Experience in Milton’s Eden.” In New Essays on Paradise Lost. Ed. T. Kranidas (1974); Murdoch, O. The Fall of Man in the Early Middle High German Biblical Epic (1972); The Recapitulated Fall: A Comparative Study in Medieval Literature (1974); Otten, T. After Innocence: Versions of the Fall in Modern Literature (1982); Smith, E. Some Versions of the Fall: The Myth of the Fall of Man in English Literature (1973); Tennant, F. R. The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin (1903); Werge, T. “Mark Twain and the Fall of Adam.” Mark Twain Journal 15 (1970), 5-13; Williams, N. P. The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin (1927).

Dennis Danielson

Jeffrey, D. L. (1992). A Dictionary of biblical tradition in English literature. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.

Fall of man — an expression probably borrowed from the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom, to express the fact of the revolt of our first parents from God, and the consequent sin and misery in which they and all their posterity were involved.

The history of the Fall is recorded in Gen. 2 and 3. That history is to be literally interpreted. It records facts which underlie the whole system of revealed truth. It is referred to by our Lord and his apostles not only as being true, but as furnishing the ground of all God’s subsequent dispensations and dealings with the children of men. The record of Adam’s temptation and fall must be taken as a true historical account, if we are to understand the Bible at all as a revelation of God’s purpose of mercy.

The effects of this first sin upon our first parents themselves were (1) “shame, a sense of degradation and pollution; (2) dread of the displeasure of God, or a sense of guilt, and the consequent desire to hide from his presence. These effects were unavoidable. They prove the loss not only of innocence but of original righteousness, and, with it, of the favour and fellowship of God. The state therefore to which Adam was reduced by his disobedience, so far as his subjective condition is concerned, was analogous to that of the fallen angels. He was entirely and absolutely ruined” (Hodge’s Theology).

But the unbelief and disobedience of our first parents brought not only on themselves this misery and ruin, it entailed also the same sad consequences on all their descendants. (1.) The guilt, i.e., liability to punishment, of that sin comes by imputation upon all men, because all were represented by Adam in the covenant of works (q.v.). (See IMPUTATION.)

(2.) Hence, also, all his descendants inherit a corrupt nature. In all by nature there is an inherent and prevailing tendency to sin. This universal depravity is taught by universal experience. All men sin as soon as they are capable of moral actions. The testimony of the Scriptures to the same effect is most abundant (Rom. 1; 2; 3:1–19, etc.).

(3.) This innate depravity is total: we are by nature “dead in trespasses and sins,” and must be “born again” before we can enter into the kingdom (John 3:7, etc.).

(4.) Resulting from this “corruption of our whole nature” is our absolute moral inability to change our nature or to obey the law of God.

Commenting on John 9:3, Ryle well remarks: “A deep and instructive principle lies in these words. They surely throw some light on that great question, the origin of evil. God has thought fit to allow evil to exist in order that he may have a platform for showing his mercy, grace, and compassion. If man had never fallen there would have been no opportunity of showing divine mercy. But by permitting evil, mysterious as it seems, God’s works of grace, mercy, and wisdom in saving sinners have been wonderfully manifested to all his creatures. The redeeming of the church of elect sinners is the means of ‘showing to principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of God’ (Eph. 3:10). Without the Fall we should have known nothing of the Cross and the Gospel.”

On the monuments of Egypt are found representations of a deity in human form, piercing with a spear the head of a serpent. This is regarded as an illustration of the wide dissemination of the tradition of the Fall. The story of the “golden age,” which gives place to the “iron age”, the age of purity and innocence, which is followed by a time when man becomes a prey to sin and misery, as represented in the mythology of Greece and Rome, has also been regarded as a tradition of the Fall.

Easton, M. (1996, c1897). Easton's Bible dictionary. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

FALL OF MAN* Transition from a condition of moral innocence and favor with God to a condition of being condemned to death, which occurred in the history of humankind with Adam’s eating of the forbidden fruit.

Biblical Evidence The narrative of Creation in Genesis 1 and 2 affirms the distinctiveness of both man’s nature and task. Man (used in this article as a generic term for male and female human beings) was created in the image of God for the purpose of communion and fellowship with God. As God’s representative, he was given dominion on the earth to cultivate and use its resources for the glory of God.

In addition to the cultural mandate, man also received a specific command. He was authorized to use the vegetation of the Garden of Eden for food, but he was expressly forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The purpose of this command was to introduce into the human consciousness the radical antithesis between good and evil and to confirm man in the service of the Creator. As a faithful and loyal servant, man was to enjoy all the blessings bestowed by his Father in heaven and at last be led into the fullness of eternal life with God.

Man was made a living creature, as were the animals, but the core of his life was to be union and communion with God. Fellowship with God was to become Adam’s conscious possession, in contrast to the animals that know neither the possibility of sin nor conscious communion with God. In full awareness of the evil of the alternative, man was to serve God willingly and lovingly. His life before God was therefore to be religious rather than instinctive.

The purpose of God in giving the command not to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was to establish humans in the ways of righteousness and faith, but Satan used the command as an occasion to tempt man to rebel against God. Although there was no evil for man in being tempted, it was evil for Satan to tempt man to sin. This means that there was evil in the universe prior to the fall of man. It was the apparent purpose of Satan to subject man to himself, and through man to extend his kingdom of darkness over the earth. The fall of man and the subsequent program of redemption must be understood in the context of the cosmic conflict between God and Satan, in which the ultimate triumph of God is assured. Satan approached Adam by way of Eve, using the serpent as his instrument to entice them to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The difference between good and evil was not concealed from man prior to the fall, though man’s experiential knowledge was only of the good. Adam was to receive instruction concerning the nature of this distinction and the consequences of eating or not eating only from God. As he had received life in the beginning from his Creator, so now he was to live in obedience to every word that proceeded from the mouth of God. The purpose of the temptation was to urge independence from God. Satan called into question the truth of God and challenged his authority. He led man to think that he could determine for himself the difference between good and evil and that he could control the consequences to his own advantage. It was the temptation for man to be a god to himself.

Adam fell when he yielded to the temptation of Satan and, together with his wife, ate of the forbidden fruit. The act of rebellion was an act of disobedience, disloyalty, faithlessness, and unbelief. As the command not to eat summarized and brought to a focus all that was involved in righteousness before God, so the transgression epitomized radical apostasy from God. Undivided obedience to God gave way to whole-souled rebellion and complete revolt: the authority of God was repudiated; the goodness of God was doubted; the wisdom of God was disputed; and the truth of God was contradicted. A whole new complex of affections and emotions took possession of the heart and mind of man.

Effects of the Fall The immediate effects of the fall are visible in the loss of boldness and joy in the presence of God and the emergence of fear and shame. They are visible also in the alienation of Adam and Eve from God. This is exemplified in the curse in relation to man, but more pointedly in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden. The Garden was the dwelling place of righteousness, the sphere of union and communion between man and God. Expulsion was inevitable once the communion was severed by unrighteousness. As God had warned, the consequence of sin was death. Since death intervenes at every point where there is life, it works itself out also in the dissolution of the body in the grave.

The consequences of the fall are not limited to Adam and Eve but extend to all those descended from the first pair by natural generation, because there is a unique relation of solidarity existing between Adam and the rest of the race. Some theologians accent the generic connection between Adam and his descendants, while others focus on the covenant relationship of Adam as the head and representative of his posterity. The consequences of Adam’s transgression for the human race are the imputation of his sin to all his descendants, their consequent liability to death, and their inheritance of a depraved nature.

Contemporary understanding of the fall

Within contemporary theology of all confessional varieties, there is widespread denial of the historicity of the biblical account of the fall. It may be granted that the Genesis account is told as history continuous with subsequent history and that within the worldview of the writers of the Bible the account is alluded to as history. But it is argued that moderns can receive the story of the fall only as myth. This view has its source in the development of an evolutionary view of human origins coupled with a negatively critical evaluation of the literary history of the Genesis account.

Although the historicity of Adam is often abandoned, there is usually an attempt to appreciate the “truth” conveyed by the myth. For example, it is said that every person is Adam, and that everyone living is a sinner as far back as he or she can remember. Others see in the myth not a fall but an ascent to conscious and independent responsibility. Sin is thought of as necessary to religious maturity in the same way that exposure to competition from opponents strengthens the prowess of an athlete.

Because of the way the Bible parallels Adam and Christ (Rom 5:12–19; 1 Cor 15:22), a mythological understanding of Adam leads to a mythological understanding of Christ. As Adam becomes a symbol for the universality of sin and death, so Christ becomes simply a symbol for the inherent righteousness and redemption of all men.

The modern isolation of the message from the history of Genesis 1—3 violates the integrity of the account without offering a valid explanation for the universality of sin and death. Christian doctrine holds that sin entered the world through a specific man, Adam, and was overcome by Jesus Christ, another man, by his death and resurrection.

The results of the fall are also manifest in the cosmos as the curse works itself out in the resistance offered to the accomplishment of the original cultural mandate. Only with the pain and danger attendant upon childbirth is the world populated, and only with arduous, toilsome labor are the food, clothing, and shelter necessary to sustain life provided.

However, the fact that death does not descend immediately upon man after the fall as final judgment is indicative of God’s saving purpose for man. Adam does not hear the curse of death pronounced until he has heard the promise of a Savior (Gn 3:15).

After Genesis 3, the Bible only infrequently refers to the fall of man, but this historical event is the indispensable presupposition of all that follows. The thrust of the Bible is toward the future—the widening effects of sin and the unfolding of God’s remedy.

See also Adam (Person); Death; Sin.

Elwell, W. A., & Comfort, P. W. (2001). Tyndale Bible dictionary. Tyndale reference library (473). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.

FALL OF MAN. A term of theology that is not found in Scripture, though the essential fact is a matter of Scripture record and of clear though not frequent reference. The particular account is in Gen. 3. The most explicit NT references are Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Cor. 15:21–22, 45–47; 2 Cor. 11:3.

The character of the primitive record in Genesis has been the subject of much discussion. Some have contended that the account is purely literal; others, that it is figurative, poetic, or allegorical; still others, rationalistic or semirationalistic, relegate the whole matter to the realm of the mythical. This last view, of course, cannot be consistently held by anyone who accepts the Scriptures as of divine authority.

It must be admitted that the account leaves room for many questions both as to its form and its meaning in relation to incidental details. But still, the great underlying, essential facts are sufficiently clear, especially when the account is taken in connection with other Scriptures. They are as follows:

Bible Doctrine. The Fall of our first ancestors was an epoch or turning point in the moral history of the race. It was in itself an epoch of great and sad significance and of far-reaching results.

Man at his creation was in a state of moral purity. In connection with his freedom there was of necessity the possibility of sin. But still there was no evil tendency in his nature. God pronounced him, with other objects of His creation, “good.” He was made in the image and likeness of God.

As a moral being man was placed by God in a state of probation. His freedom was to be exercised and tested by his being under divine law. Of every tree in the garden he might freely eat, except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. At one point there must be restraint, self-denial for the sake of obedience. “For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul?” (Matt. 16:26).

The temptation to disobedience came from an evil source outside himself. In Genesis only the serpent is mentioned. In the NT the tempter is identified as Satan, who employed the serpent as his instrument (1 Cor. 11:3, 14; Rom. 16:20; Rev. 12:9).

The temptation came in the form of an appeal to man’s intellect and to the senses. The forbidden fruit was presented as “good for food” and “desirable to make one wise.” Thus the allurement was in the direction of sensual gratification and intellectual pride.

At the beginning of the sin lay unbelief. The tempted ones doubted or disbelieved God and believed the tempter. And thus, under the strong desire awakened by the temptation, they disobeyed the divine command.

By this act of disobedience “sin entered into the world, and death through sin.” Shame and alienation from God were the first visible consequences. The image of God, which contained among its features “righteousness and holiness of the truth,” was marred and broken, though not completely lost. (See Image of God.) Expulsion from Eden followed. The ground was cursed on account of sin. Sorrow and toil and struggle with the evil in human nature became the lot of mankind.

Theological Views. The theological treatment of this topic should be particularly noted:

A favorite view of rationalistic or evolutionist theologians is that the Fall was a necessary incident in man’s moral development. The Fall is sometimes, therefore, spoken of as “a fall upward.” It was a step forward from the savage or animal state to the practical knowledge of good and evil and thus, through the experience of sin, toward the goal of developed moral purity. But this view ignores the essential evil of sin. It makes sin only an imperfect or disguised good and is, for that reason and others, opposed to the plain teaching of Scripture.

The Calvinistic types of theology regard the Fall in two ways: (1) the supralapsarian, or most rigid view, includes the Fall under the divine decree; (2) the sublapsarian, the less rigid but less logically consistent view, represents the divine decree as relating to the condition produced by the Fall. Out from the race fallen in Adam God elected a certain number to salvation.

The Arminian theology regards the Fall not as predetermined by a divine decree but as foreseen and provided against by divine grace. It asserts that, but for the redemptive purpose of God in Christ, the race of fallen descendants of Adam would not have been permitted to come into existence. When man fell he did not “fall upward,” but he fell into the arms of redeeming mercy. Probation is still the condition of mankind. For though man is fallen and therefore under the bondage of sin, through Christ (the second Adam) man has his moral freedom restored to such an extent that he can avail himself of the provisions God has made for his salvation.

The Fall and Archaeology. The so-called Myth of Adapa has often been adduced as offering a parallel to the Bible account of the Fall of man. This claim, however, is ill-founded. There is not the slightest reason to look for the Fall in the literature of the Babylonians, as such a concept is contrary to their whole system of polytheistic speculation. In Genesis man is created in the image of a holy God. But the Babylonians, like other ancient pagan peoples (notably the Greeks and the Romans), fashioned their gods, good and bad, in the image of man. Such deities schemed, hated, fought, and killed one another. They were of such dubious moral character, it was impossible that they be thought of as creating anything morally perfect. Neither could man formed out of the blood of such deities (the Babylonian notion) possess anything but an evil nature. No fall was possible because man was created evil and in heathenistic thought had no state of innocence from which to fall. Nevertheless, further features of the legend of Adapa are interesting by way of similarity or contrast. The “food of life” corresponds to “fruit” of the “tree of life” (Gen. 3:3, 22). The two accounts are in agreement that eternal life could be obtained by eating a certain kind of food. Adam, however, forfeited immortality for himself because of the sinful desire to be “like God” (3:5). Consequently, he was exiled from the garden lest he should “take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” (3:22). Adapa was already endued with wisdom by the gods. He failed to become immortal not because of disobedience or presumption, like Adam, but because he was obedient to his creator, Ea, who deceived him. The Babylonian tale, like the biblical narrative, deals with the perplexing question of why man must suffer and die. In contrast, the answer is not that man fell from his moral integrity and that sin into which he fell involved death, but that man forfeited his opportunity to gain eternal life in consequence of being deceived by one of the gods. The origin of human sin is not at all in view in the Adapa story. This is basic in the theologically pivotal third chapter of Genesis. The two narratives, the biblical and the Babylonian, are poles apart despite superficial resemblances. e.mcc.; m.f.u.

bibliography: J. Murray, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (1959); E. E. Sauer, The King of the Earth (1962); J. G. Machen, The Christian View of Man (1965); J. Daane, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1982), 2:247–79; D. MacDonald, The Biblical Doctrine of Creation and the Fall (1984).

Unger, M. F., Harrison, R. K., Vos, H. F., Barber, C. J., & Unger, M. F. (1988). The new Unger's Bible dictionary. Revision of: Unger's Bible dictionary. 3rd ed. c1966. (Rev. and updated ed.). Chicago: Moody Press.

FALL.

I. The biblical account

The story of the Fall of man, given in Gn. 3, describes how mankind’s first parents, when tempted by the serpent, disobeyed God’s express command by eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The essence of all sin is displayed in this first sin: having been tempted to doubt God’s word (‘Did God say … ?‘), man is led on to disbelieve it (‘You will not die’), and then to disobey it (they ‘ate’). Sin is man’s rebellion against the authority of God, and pride in his own supposed self-adequacy (‘You will be like God’). The consequences of sin are twofold: first, awareness of guilt and immediate separation from God (they ‘hid themselves’), with whom hitherto there had been unimpaired daily fellowship; and secondly, the sentence of the curse, decreeing toil, sorrow and death for man himself, and in addition inevitably involving the whole of the created order, of which man is the crown.

II. The effect on man

Man henceforth is a perverted creature. In revolting against the purpose of his being, which is to live and act entirely to the glory of his sovereign and beneficent Creator and to fulfil his will, he ceases to be truly man. His true manhood consists in conformity to the image of God in which he was created. This image of God is manifested in man’s original capacity for communion with his Creator; in his enjoyment exclusively of what is good; in his rationality which makes it possible for him alone of all creatures to hear and respond to the Word of God; in his knowledge of the truth and in the freedom which that knowledge ensures; and in government, as the head of God’s creation, in obedience to the mandate to have dominion over every living thing and to subdue the earth.

Yet, rebel as he will against the image of God with which he has been stamped, man cannot efface it, because it is part of his very constitution as man. It is evident, for example, in his pursuit of scientific knowledge, in his harnessing of the forces of nature and in his development of culture, art and civilization. But at the same time the efforts of fallen man are cursed with frustration. This frustration is itself a proof of the perversity of the human heart. Thus history shows that the very discoveries and advances which have promised most good to mankind have through misuse brought great evils in their train. The man who does not love God does not love his fellow men. He is driven by selfish motives. The image of Satan, the great hater of God and man, is superimposed upon him. The result of the Fall is that man now knows good and evil.

The psychological and ethical effects of the Fall are nowhere more graphically described than by Paul in Rom. 1:18ff. All men, however ungodly and unrighteous they may be, know the truth about God and themselves; but they wickedly suppress this truth (v. 18). It is, however, an inescapable truth, for the fact of the ‘eternal power and Godhead’ of the Creator is both manifested within them, by their very constitution as God’s creatures made in his image, and also manifested all around them in the whole created order of the universe which bears eloquent testimony to its origin as God’s handiwork (vv. 19f.; cf. Ps. 19:1ff.). Basically, therefore, man’s state is not one of ignorance but of knowledge. His condemnation is that he loves darkness rather than light. His refusal to glorify God as God and his ingratitude lead him into intellectual vanity and futility. Arrogantly professing himself to be wise, he in fact becomes a fool (Rom. 1:21f.). Having willfully cut himself adrift from the Creator in whom alone the meaning of his existence is to be found, he must seek that meaning elsewhere, for his creaturely finitude makes it impossible for him to cease from being a religious creature. And his search becomes ever more foolish and degrading. It carries him into the gross irrationality of superstition and idolatry, into vileness and unnatural vice, and into all those evils, social and international, which give rise to the hatreds and miseries that disfigure our world. The Fall has, in brief, overthrown the true dignity of man (Rom. 1:23ff.).

III. The biblical doctrine

It will be seen that the scriptural doctrine of the Fall altogether contradicts the popular modern view of man as a being who, by a slow evolutionary development, has succeeded in rising from the primeval fear and groping ignorance of a humble origin to proud heights of religious sensitivity and insight. The Bible does not portray man as risen, but as fallen, and in the most desperate of situations. It is only against this background that God’s saving action in Christ takes on its proper significance. Through the grateful appropriation by faith of Christ’s atoning work, what was forfeited by the fall is restored to man: his true and intended dignity is recovered, the purpose of life recaptured, the image of God restored, and the way into the paradise of intimate communion with God reopened.

IV. Its historical development

In the history of the church the classic controversy concerning the nature of the Fall and its effects is that waged by Augustine at the beginning of the 5th century against the advocates of the Pelagian heresy. The latter taught that Adam’s sin affected only himself and not the human race as a whole, that every individual is born free from sin and capable in his own power of living a sinless life, and that there had even been persons who had succeeded in doing so. The controversy and its implications may be studied with profit in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings. Pelagianism, with its affirmation of the total ability of man, came to the fore again in the Socinianism of the 16th and 17th centuries, and continues under the guise of modern humanistic religion.

A halfway position is taken by the Roman Catholic Church, which teaches that what man lost through the Fall was a supernatural gift of original righteousness that did not belong properly to his being as man but was something extra added by God (donum superadditum), with the consequence that the Fall left man in his natural state as created (in puris naturalibus): he has suffered a negative rather than a positive evil; deprivation rather than depravation. This teaching opens the door for the affirmation of the ability and indeed necessity of unregenerate man to contribute by his works towards the achievement of his salvation (semi-Pelagianism, synergism), which is characteristic of the Roman Catholic theology of man and grace. For a Roman Catholic view see H. J. Richards, ‘The Creation and Fall’, in Scripture 8, 1956, pp. 109–115.

Although retaining the conception of man as a fallen being, contemporary liberal theology denies the historicity of the event of the Fall. Every man it is said, is his own Adam. Similarly, certain forms of modern existentialist philosophy, which is essentially a repudiation of historical objectivism, are willing to make use of the term ‘fallenness’ to describe the subjective state in which man pessimistically finds himself. A floating concept, however, which is unrelated to historical event explains nothing. But the NT certainly understands the Fall as a definite event in human history—an event, moreover, of such critical consequences for the whole human race that it stands side by side with and explains the other great crucial event of history, namely the coming of Christ to save the world (see Rom. 5:12ff.; 1 Cor. 15:21f.). Mankind, together with the rest of the created order, awaits a third and conclusive event of history, namely the second advent of Christ at the end of this age, when the effects of the Fall will be finally abolished, unbelievers eternally judged, and the renewed creation, the new heavens and new earth wherein righteousness dwells, be established in accordance with almighty God’s immutable purposes (see Acts 3:20f.; Rom. 8:19ff.; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21–22). Thus by God’s grace all that was lost in Adam, and much more than that, is restored in Christ. (*Sin.)

Bibliography. N. P. Williams, The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin, 1927; J. G. Machen, The Christian View of Man, 1937, ch. 14; J. Murray, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin, 1959. p.e.h.

Wood, D. R. W., Wood, D. R. W., & Marshall, I. H. (1996, c1982, c1962). New Bible Dictionary. Includes index. (electronic ed. of 3rd ed.) (360). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Fall, the, the original disobedience of Adam and Eve and the results of this disobedience, as depicted in Genesis 3. There are two different accounts of creation in Genesis 1-3. The second, found in 2:4b-3:24, is the older of the two and is considered part of an ancient history of Israel known as the Yahwistic history (dating from perhaps as far back as 950 b.c.). This history, designated ‘J,’ was one of the various collections of traditions later combined and edited to form the Torah or Pentateuch. The J creation story depicts God forming a male human being, placing him in a garden, and eventually creating a suitable mate for him. The subsequent disobedience of this human pair and their expulsion from the garden is usually designated as ‘the Fall.’

According to the story, the serpent (not Satan or the devil, as assumed by later interpreters) deceived the woman into eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, that is, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she, in turn, gave the fruit to the man. The meaning of ‘knowing good and evil’ may indicate the ability to make moral judgments, as some interpret it, but it more likely carries the connotation of ‘knowing everything.’ The central idea, however, is that human sin is rooted in the desire to ‘be like God,’ to usurp God’s rightful place as Creator, and for humans to have life revolve around themselves and their own desires.

Because of the Fall, the positive relationship the humans had with God was broken, and all evil and tragedy in the created order were explained as a result of this rebellion and disobedience. The Fall resulted in humanity being trapped in its sinful state, which issued in death, not simply (or primarily) physical death but rather spiritual separation from God.

The doctrine of the Fall is never worked out in any systematic manner in the ot, but, in the nt, Paul alludes to the story, setting up a parallel between ‘the first Adam’ and Christ as ‘the last Adam’ (Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:21-22, 45-49). In later Christian theology, the doctrine of the Fall is developed in great detail. See also Adam; Atonement; Creation; Death; Devil; Eden; Eve; J; Redemption; Salvation; Satan; Serpent; Sin; Sources of the Pentateuch. J.M.E.

Achtemeier, P. J., Harper & Row, P., & Society of Biblical Literature. (1985). Harper's Bible dictionary. Includes index. (1st ed.) (301). San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Fall, the

The fall from innocence and paradise of the primeval couple, Adam and Eve, through their temptation and disobedience (Gen. 3). Although the Genesis narrative does not refer to the couple’s wrongdoing as a fall, some NT writings characterize humanity’s choice to sin as a “fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Tim. 3:6) and a “fall under condemnation” (Jas. 5:12). Later Christian interpreters like Augustine, Dante, and John Milton develop the Genesis account of Adam and Eve’s disobedience into a doctrine of the Fall in great detail.

The story of Adam and Eve is embedded in the second Creation account (Gen. 2:4b–4:1). Likely written ca. 950 b.c.e. as part of the Yahwistic history of Israel, this account is the older of the two Creation stories. In this story, God creates a male human being and a female “helper” and sets them in a lush and paradisiacal garden where all of their needs are met. God instructs the man not to eat “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” lest he die. The serpent, a fellow creature described as subtle and crafty, convinces the woman that the fruit of that tree is good and she will not die. When the two eat the fruit, they recognize immediately the consequences of their actions. God punishes them for their misdeeds and expels them from the garden (3:8–24). In its mythic elements the story also offers explanations for why serpents crawl on the ground (v. 14), why enmity exists between humans and serpents (v. 15), the paradox of sexual pleasure and the pain of childbearing (v. 16), and the continual conflict between humans and nature (vv. 17–19).

The Genesis account owes its rich literary symbolism to a number of other ancient Near Eastern myths. In the Babylonian Adapa myth, the wise man Adapa, having taken the advice of the jealous god Ea, rejects Anu’s offer of the bread and water of life and thus loses immortality for himself and mankind. In the Sumerian Gilgamesh Epic, the hero fails to win immortality when a serpent steals from him the plant of eternal youth.

In the NT writings of Paul, the Fall takes on a universal dimension, introducing sin and mortality into the lives of all humanity. Paul acknowledges that “as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, so death spread to all because all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). In Paradise Lost, Milton depicts Sin and Death, Satan’s children, as building a bridge to this world so that they may now move more easily between their kingdom and the new world which Satan has just conquered in the Fall.

In contrast to other Near Eastern myths where humans are the victims of jealous gods, Genesis depicts the man and woman as responsible creatures acting according to their own wills. Their disobedience is often depicted then as rebellion against God’s commands. Although there is no doctrine of original sin in the Genesis story, Augustine used it to promulgate an interpretation which held that the first couple’s sin was transmitted to every successive generation and thus all humans were infected with sin. While Augustine held the couple acted freely according to their will, he stated clearly that their evil act introduced corruption into God’s good creation. Irenaeus used the story to demonstrate that God is a loving Father who helps his children recognize their mistakes and learn from them. Many of the Greek church fathers (e.g., Theodore of Mopsuestia) emphasize the universality of human sin.

While many commentators, from Tertullian to Milton, placed the blame for the Fall on the woman, recent feminist criticism has rejected those claims and argues that the woman acted far more rationally than the man, actually conversing with the serpent, posing questions, and making a thoughtful decision. The man, on the other hand, acted merely from appetite in taking the fruit from the woman, without question, and eating it.

Bibliography. P. Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. OBT 2 (Philadelphia, 1978).

Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.

Freedman, D. N., Myers, A. C., & Beck, A. B. (2000). Eerdmans dictionary of the Bible (454). Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.