Fall of man
The fall of man, the fall of Adam, or simply the Fall, is a term used in Christianity to describe the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience. The doctrine of the Fall comes from a biblical interpretation of Genesis, chapters 1–3. At first, Adam and Eve lived with God in the Garden of Eden, but the serpent tempted them into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God had forbidden. After doing so, they became ashamed of their nakedness and God expelled them from the Garden to prevent them from eating the fruit of the tree of life and becoming immortal.
In Nicene Christianity, the doctrine of the Fall is closely related to that of original sin or ancestral sin. Nicene Christians believe that the Fall brought sin into the world, corrupting the entire natural world, including human nature, causing all humans to be born into original sin, a state from which they cannot attain eternal life without the grace of God. The Eastern Orthodox Church accepts the concept of the Fall but rejects the idea that the guilt of original sin is passed down through generations, based in part on the passage Ezekiel 18:20, which says a son is not guilty of the sins of his father.
Reformed Protestants believe that Jesus gave his life as a sacrifice for the elect, that they may be redeemed from their sin. Lapsarianism, understanding the logical order of God's decrees in relation to the Fall, is divided into two categories: supralapsarian and infralapsarian.
The narrative of the Garden of Eden and the fall of humanity constitute a mythological tradition shared by all the Abrahamic religions, with a presentation more or less symbolic of Judeo-Christian morals and religious beliefs, which had an overwhelming impact on human sexuality, gender roles, and sex differences both in the Western and Islamic civilizations. Unlike Christianity, the other major Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam, do not have a concept of "original sin", and instead have developed varying other interpretations of the Eden narrative.
Etymology
The phrase fall of man does not appear in Jewish scripture. According to Easton's Bible Dictionary, the term probably originates from the Book of Wisdom, a Greek work generally dated to the mid-first century BC, or to the reign of Caligula.Genesis 3
The doctrine of the fall of man is extrapolated from the traditional Christian exegesis of Genesis 3. According to the biblical narrative, God created Adam and Eve, the first man and woman in the chronology of the Bible. God placed them in the Garden of Eden and forbade them to eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Questioning God's command against eating the fruit, the serpent tempted Eve to eat fruit from the forbidden tree, which she shared with Adam, and they immediately became ashamed of their nakedness. Subsequently, God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, condemned Adam to work in order to get what he needed to live and condemned Eve to give birth in pain, and placed cherubim to guard the entrance, so that Adam and Eve would never eat from the "tree of life".The Book of Jubilees, an apocryphal Jewish work written during the Second Temple period, gives time frames for the events that led to the fall of man by stating that the serpent convinced Eve to eat the fruit on the 17th day, of the 2nd month, in the 8th year after Adam's creation. It also states that they were removed from the Garden on the new moon of the 4th month of that year.
Traditional interpretations
Immortality
of Genesis 2:17, have applied the day-year principle to explain how Adam died within a day. Psalms 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8, and Jubilees 4:40 explain that, to God, one day is equivalent to a thousand years and thus Adam died within that same "day". The Greek Septuagint, on the other hand, has "day" translated into the Greek word for a twenty-four-hour period.According to Meredith Kline, the death threatened in Genesis 2:17 is "not physical death but eternal perdition." This is because, in covenant theology, the "curse" aspect of the commandment to life is balanced by its blessing, which is "glorified eternal life", symbolised by the tree of life and the Sabbath.
According to the Genesis narrative, during the antediluvian age, human longevity approached a millennium, such as the case of Adam who lived 930 years. Thus, to "die" has been interpreted as to become mortal. However, the grammar does not support this reading, nor does the narrative: Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden lest they eat of the second tree, the tree of life, and gain immortality.
Original sin
Roman Catholicism
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: "The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents." St Bede and others, especially Thomas Aquinas, said that the fall of Adam and Eve brought "four wounds" to human nature. They are original sin, concupiscence, physical frailty and death, and darkened intellect and ignorance. These negated or diminished the gifts of God to Adam and Eve of original justice or sanctifying grace, integrity, immortality and infused knowledge. This first sin was "transmitted" by Adam and Eve to all of their descendants as original sin, causing humans to be "subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin."In light of modern scripture scholarship, the future Pope Benedict XVI stated in 1986 that: "In the Genesis story sin is not spoken of in general as an abstract possibility but as a deed, as the sin of a particular person, Adam, who stands at the origin of humankind and with whom the history of sin begins. The account tells us that sin begets sin, and that therefore all the sins of history are interlinked. Theology refers to this state of affairs by the certainly misleading and imprecise term 'original sin.'" Although the state of corruption, inherited by humans after the primaeval event of original sin, is clearly called guilt or sin, it is understood as a sin acquired by the unity of all humans in Adam rather than a personal responsibility of humanity. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, even children partake in the effects of the sin of Adam, but not in the responsibility of original sin, as sin is always a personal act. Baptism is considered to erase original sin, though the effects on human nature remain, and for this reason, the Catholic Church baptizes even infants who have not committed any personal sin.
Protestantism
In Covenant theology, the first man, Adam, is said to have failed to fulfill the commandment to life and the Covenant of Works, which is summarized in. In verse 15, humanity is to "dress" and "keep" the Garden of Eden, or to "work it" and "take care of it". In verse 17, God gives the "focal probationary proscription", that Adam must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and a curse is attached if the proscription is transgressed, which is spiritual death. The Covenant required 'perfect and personal obedience', but Adam freely and willfully transgressed the commandment by accepting Satan's lie in, demonstrating pride and a rejection of God's authority as Creator, preferring his own will to God's, leading to a corruption of his whole nature, which extended to his progeny, as is described in Article 14 of the Belgic Confession.We believe that God created man out of the dust of the earth, and made and formed him after his own image and likeness, good, righteous, and holy, capable in all things to will, agreeably to the will of God. But being in honour, he understood it not, neither knew his excellency, but wilfully subjected himself to sin, and consequently to death, and the curse, giving ear to the words of the devil. For the commandment of life, which he had received, he transgressed: and by sin separated himself from God, who was his true life, having corrupted his whole nature; whereby he made himself liable to corporal and spiritual death. And being thus become wicked, perverse, and corrupt in all his ways, he hath lost all his excellent gifts, which he had received from God, and only retained a few remains thereof, which, however, are sufficient to leave man without excuse; for all the light which is in us is changed into darkness, as the scriptures teach us, saying: The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not: where St. John calleth men darkness.
File:Cole Thomas Expulsion from the Garden of Eden 1828.jpg|thumb|275x275px|Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1828 oil-on-canvas painting by Thomas Cole, now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, United States.
By the inverse to the concept of imputed righteousness, Adam, as the federal head of humanity, brought condemnation and death to all by his violation of the commandment to life. Kline justifies this interpretation by referencing, in which it says "For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ." Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." In saying that, as a result of the Fall, man has become "wicked, perverse, and corrupt in all his ways," the Confession expresses the doctrine of total depravity, which means that man is completely helpless and unable to rescue himself from sin, and "cannot inherit the kingdom of God" but must be rescued by the second Adam, Jesus Christ, who is from heaven, as it says in, "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
Indeed, , known as the protevangelium, is interpreted as a gracious declaration of the Covenant of Grace, in which God effects reconciliation with humanity and vanquishes the devil through Christ's atonement, which delivers from sin. This covenant is symbolically sealed when it is said that God "clothed" Adam and Eve's nakedness, due to which they were ashamed. However, man was defiled and had to be expelled from the Garden of Eden, with the earth "cursed" for his sake, in an overthrow of man's previous "dominion" over the earth which was gifted to him in. In, "cherubim" and "a flaming sword" guard the tree of life, access to which is only restored when Christ "vicariously suffered the sword of judgment on the tree of death and so reopened the way to the tree of life."