The Fall (Chapters 2 and 3)
There are a good many interesting things in the story of the "fall" but the things most interesting to me in the past have been what I mentioned yesterday
The nature of the "death" that Adam and Eve suffer as a result of their disobedience?
The "fallen" nature of our lives on this earth, and do we continue to live in that fallen world/nature?
What Christians and especially early Quakers understood about what you might call God's "Ur-Promise" [original/first promise made] in verse 3:15?
But first, I just want to point out something I think most writers have missed - the fact that there is a whole lot of "irony" and sophistication in the story. First of all, the serpent says to Eve, that the creator God has lied to them. God has told them if they eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they will "die." But the serpent says, "You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (2:4-5). And then when they both eat of the fruit, the text tells us "the eyes of both of them were opened." They see that they are naked and they feel ashamed. But God is not trying to keep them from being like gods; he has created them specifically to be like Him - the one and only God. And when the text tells us that their eyes were "opened" I think we should see this as irony. They have by their disobedience become less like Him and less able to see and less alive. Their fallen condition will be one of spiritual death, spiritual blindness and spiritual debasement. I think early Friends saw that these results of the fall were all internal. They have separated themselves from the divine nature God planted in them.
But then comes the promise (also called by early Latin speaking Christians the "protoevangelium" [original "good news"] - mysterious and embedded in the punishments God imposes - and this needs to be presented in one of the older translations to be appreciated in the Quaker context I am trying to present: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (KJ Version). This promise that someday a descendant of Eve - her "seed" - would defeat the serpent. Early Christians took this to be a prophesy of Christ's victory over sin. Christ was to be the second Adam, and his victory over the seed of the serpent (evil/sin/the fallen condition of man) would permit things to revert to the original intention God had for us - to be His presence on earth, to be faithful in all things to Him. Fox's famous quote -
“And when I myself was in the deep, under all shut up, I could not believe that I should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows, and my temptations were so great, that I thought many times I should have despaired, I was so tempted. But when Christ opened to me how he was tempted by the same Devil, and had overcome him and bruised his head, and that through him and his power, light, grace and spirit, I should overcome also, I had confidence in him.” (12)
It is because of Christ's victory over the serpent that Friends believed spiritual "perfection" could be achieved, the spiritual "death" could become life once more in us and the earth restored to become God's "kingdom" again. The testimonies of Friends are all elements of faithfulness that can only be achieved through overcoming of our fallen condition: the equality of man and woman as it was meant to be (see Genesis 1), the peaceable kingdom, our ability to walk day to day with God as our guide.
It is challenging trying to keep up with all the good comments that are made by people, and I am having a little bit of a hard time figuring out how to get to the latest comment and negotiating the site, so I am going to put my posts (same ones as I make here) on my own little blog http://catholicquaker.blogspot.com/ so if anyone wants to just go there to follow along, it might be a little simpler there. I was a little surprised that the "Second Adam" part of the Fall story - the first "good news" to be proclaimed in the scripture narrative - did not draw a little more attention. It was such a key part of the scriptures for Fox and early Friends. It is interesting that it is also the only "promise" in the Old Testament part of the Bible that did not get much attention in later books. It was seen by Christians as really important in understanding Christ's role in the unfolding drama of God's "creation" for there is a sense in which the creation God starts here in Genesis is not fully accomplished. His intention with respect to our creation is not fulfilled here.
There were some comments on how important the statement was that we were created in God's image (1:27). A few thought perhaps the word "image" here was meant to be taken with a grain of salt - that images were idols in OT thinking. But some Bibles use the term "likeness" and that's a little less loaded, but it conveys the same idea that we were actually intended to be "like" God. Another thought I've had on it is that in some ways our likeness to God in chapter 1 is similar to Eve's "likeness" to Adam - being taken from his body. In chapter 2, we see Adam, created first this time, but he is lonely and so God creates all the animals that will populate the earth, but none of them is a suitable companion for Adam. So Eve is created, not out of the ground, like all the other animals, but out of Adam's rib or side. And when she is presented to Adam, he recognizes her as part of his own flesh. It is my sense that this creation of woman from Adam is meant to echo the first creation of "man" in chapter 1. But there the lonely one is God. After all He created, He still wanted something in the creation that reflected His image and likeness, to be "bone of His bone" if you will. And His answer was man. As the unity of Adam and Eve finds its pinnacle in the coming together as "one flesh," so the redemption of mankind will take shape as a great eschatological wedding and banquet. But that will come later.
Another thing which a few people said or implied was that the "fallen" condition of man was not necessarily an issue, but I don't agree. It was critically important to early Christians and to early Friends that the fall be overcome and to in fact celebrate that it had in fact been overcome by Christ. But it isn't a simple fact. It is a process that happens as we somehow go through, experience personally, the different "ministrations" or parts of the salvation narrative. Fox struggled with it for some years before he felt it born in him:
“Again I heard a voice which did say, ‘Thou Serpent, thou dost seek to destroy the life but canst not, for the sword which keepeth the tree of life shall destroy thee.’ So Christ, the Word of God, that bruised the head of the Serpent the destroyer, preserved me, my inward mind being joined to his good Seed, that bruised the head of this Serpent the destroyer. And this inward life did spring up in me, to answer all the opposing professors and priests, and did bring in Scriptures to my memory to refute them with” (13).
This Second Adam thing is fascinating to me. Very recently I also learned another aspect of it I had never known. Apparently the Ur-promise of Genesis 3:15 is an important part of the "Mary" focus (the Mariology) so prevalent in the Catholic Church. The reason for this is that the translation of Gen. 3:15 the early church "fathers" used translated the Hebrew pronoun (which is not gender or number specific) as "she" (in Greek), so that it read to them that "she" bruised the serpent's head - so interesting. It is seem as a victory for the Seed of the Woman - Mary and her Seed, Jesus.
Anyway, there is more - much more - I could talk about, but enough for now.
Questions to Ponder:
Genesis 2
- What is “man’s” place in the creation?
- How do you interpret the part that talks about the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit?
- Why does God create Eve?
Genesis 3
- How does the serpent convince Eve to eat the fruit? How can you interpret this?
- Do you see any irony in what happens in this story?
- How does your bible translate verse 15?
- What is the “death” that we suffer as a result of the disobedience we read of in this story?
- What do these first chapters teach us about the relationship of men and women in this creation?
No comments:
Post a Comment