The Fall, Part 3: Adam to Michael

This is my final post to complete the three-part series on the Fall of Adam and Eve. In my previous two posts I discussed the history of Original Sin and a metaphorical understanding of the Fall. I want to continue in the metaphorical understanding as I move from the Fall to the Redemption through Christ and his Atonement.

The word “atonement” is something of a neologism. It was created by William Tyndale in the sixteenth century as he was preparing an English translation of the Bible. He wanted to use a word that correctly matched the biblical Hebraic concept and found no word satisfactory. He created the word “atonement” to describe a unification or reconciliation, an “at-onement”. The Atonement of Christ is designed to bring mortal man, Adam, to be made “at-one” with God. This process is not one of physical proximity but of personal development.

In the Garden of Eden man was with God but at the same time far from him. All the perfection and happiness of immortality was given to him but he could not comprehend it. Adam was in the Garden of Eden but he was never qualified to be there. He lacked knowledge and understanding. He was meant not just to be with God but to be like God. It is appropriate that in Mormon doctrine Adam is understood to be the same being as Michael (Doctrine and Covenants 27:11). The name Adam is Hebrew meaning "mankind". The name Michael is also Hebrew and means “who is like God”. If we are to liken this unto ourselves we all have a dual nature: our mortality in “Adam” and our divinity in “Michael”.

So how are we to be transformed from Adam to Michael? It is a giant leap considering the vast differences between mortal man and divine beings. Adam was formed from the ground, the “adamah”. Our mortal man will die and decay. Our bodies and our minds will fail. Our capabilities, though significant, are ultimately limited and terminable. God is immortal and will not die or suffer the afflictions of mortal bodies. He can be understood to exceed all our capacities and has power likely beyond comprehension. How is Adam transformed into Michael “who is like God?” The answer is through the atonement of Jesus Christ. The atonement makes us “at-one” with God, like unto God, “Mi-Cha-El”.

The purpose of our life is to develop as sons and daughters of God. Just as children must leave home to develop, Adam must leave Eden to grow. He has gained knowledge of good and evil. He must now acquire wisdom to choose the good over the evil. He must see that Eden is not the natural condition of things in the universe but that without sustained care, the world around us begins to decay. As children leave the home they come to realize that the gas tank will empty, the bank account depletes and that work is required to sustain order. Just as entropy drives a system to a state of disorder without an input of work, life will fall into disarray without action to put things in order. Eden was creation made by God and more importantly sustained by God. But when God left man alone the earth brought forth noxious weeds and thistles. Plants needed to be cultivated and food had to be earned by the sweat of the brow.

It might seem cruel for God to leave Adam and Eve alone to suffer. Corianton thought so and Alma explained the parable to him. The story is fitting because Corianton himself had to pass through his own affliction and fight his own demons as he faced the burden of sin.

Alma said to his son: “Ye do try to suppose that it is injustice that the sinner should be consigned to a state of misery. Now behold, my son, I will explain this thing unto thee. For behold, after the Lord God sent our first parents forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground, from whence they were taken—yea, he drew out the man, and he placed at the east end of the garden of Eden, cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the tree of life—Now, we see that the man had become as God, knowing good and evil; and lest he should put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever, the Lord God placed cherubim and the flaming sword, that he should not partake of the fruit—And thus we see, that there was a time granted unto man to repent, yea, a probationary time, a time to repent and serve God. For behold, if Adam had put forth his hand immediately, and partaken of the tree of life, he would have lived forever, according to the word of God, having no space for repentance; yea, and also the word of God would have been void, and the great plan of salvation would have been frustrated.” (Alma 42:1-5)

Adam and Eve were not ready to be in Eden, they were not yet as God and they were not prepared for immortality. They were still immature. They were given time to prepare. And what was this preparation? They were to “repent and serve God”. There are two words in Hebrew for the verb “repent”. One is “nicham” which literally means to sigh and by implication to feel sorry. The other is “shuv” which literally means to turn. This life is a time to prepare to meet God (Alma 34:32), to serve him, to feel after him and to turn to him. The “Way” to God is Christ.

We are to be perfect like our Father in Heaven (Matthew 5:48). But how are we to know the way, how do we know the Father? Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Christ and God the Father are one and we are to be one with them (John 17:11). We are to put away are old life and die with Christ so that we may be resurrected with him into a new life, a life with God (Romans 6:3-8). The Atonement of Christ cleanses us from sin but it also does much, much more. It is through the Atonement that we share an inheritance with Christ. We become “joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together” (Romans 8:17).

Christ’s Atonement has the power to take mortal, finite, temporal creature and transform it into an immortal, infinite, eternal being. It is the infinite Atonement. This body that was formed from the raw materials of the earth can be cast into the likeness of the Father. We are tried and proven through experience of mortality. We come to see how the world works. We see that it is a difficult universe filled with complexity and awesome destructive power. But through an understanding of the operative laws in our universe we can return to Eden. We are always facing eastward toward Eden striving to return once again. But this time we will be prepared to be there. This time we will be permitted to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life. We will become divine beings, returning not only to be with God but to be like God. We will be transformed from Adam to Michael.

The Fall, Part 1: A History of Original Sin

I am moving right along in my reading of the Old Testament but I want to come back to talk about the story of Adam and Eve. Yesterday my ward’s Gospel Doctrine class was about the Fall of Adam and Eve. As I was sitting in sacrament meeting I was thinking about the story and realized what a important story it is. I thought of several applications the drama of the Garden of Eden could have depending the particular angle you take to analyze it. I want to dedicate a series of posts on Adam and Eve in addition to the few posts I have already done. I hope not to bury the subject too much but I think there is a lot here to investigate. I would like to review in this first post the history of the theological understanding of The Fall. In subsequent posts I will lay out some possible, symbolic interpretations (I think there are many, many viable interpretations).

The earliest history of the story begins of course in Hebrew culture but I would like to begin with the early Christian understanding of the Fall of Adam and Eve—the idea of original sin. To say this was the early Christian view is not entirely accurate. The first three centuries of the Christian era saw little treatment of the idea. It was Saint Ambrose (337-397) and his pupil Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) in particular who first formulated the doctrine of Original Sin.

The idea was not conceived in a social vacuum but was a response to the contemporaneous political and ecclesiastical atmosphere. The time of Ambrose and Augustine was a time of the disintegration of the Roman Empire. Barbarian forces were invading from Europe and the fall of Rome influenced Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin [1]. Augustine’s writings were also in a large measure directed in response to another theologian, the British monk Pelagius. Pelagius (354-420) denied both original sin and the doctrine of salvation by grace. His doctrine, now known as the heresy of Pelagianism, affirmed the idea of salvation by merit.

Said Pelagius: “Everything good and everything evil, in respect of which we are either worthy of praise or of blame, is done by us, not born with us. We are born in our full development, but with a capacity for good and evil; we are begotten as well without virtue as without vice, and before the activity of our own personal will there is nothing in man but what God has stored in him.” [2]

The teachings of Pelagius were condemned by the Council of Carthage in 416. He was excommunicated by Pope Innocent I in 417. In the end it was Augustine who would exert the greatest influence on Christian teachings. Augustine taught that God was justified to damn the whole of humanity for the sin of Adam, the father of humanity. He understood that the guilt of Adam was passed down from one generation to the next through the sexual act and that all are thus conceived in sin. This depravity through sexuality he called “concupiscence” [1].

Augustine said: “Banished after his sin, Adam bound his offspring also with the penalty of death and damnation, that offspring which by sinning he had corrupted in himself, as in a root; so that whatever progeny was born (through carnal concupiscence, by which a fitting retribution for his disobedience was bestowed upon him) from himself and his spouse—who was the cause of his sin and the companion of his damnation—would drag through the ages the burden of Original Sin...” [3]

Augustine’s understanding of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden was, at the time, unique and different from that of Jews or Greek Orthodox Christians [4]. The other faiths had never taken such a negative view of the entirety of mankind in such unflinching totality.

Since the time of Augustine, several concepts have held sway regarding original sin. It is important to understand that not all theological positions of Original Sin claim that mankind is actually guilty for the sin of Adam (though that is one view). Most modern Christians ascribe to the idea that Adam and Eve simply caused mankind to become naturally sinful while we are not actually guilty of something done thousands of years ago. LDS philosopher Blake Ostler lists the historical theories of vicarious guilt as follows:

1. Calvinism: “We are guilty of Adam’s sin because we were ‘in’ him as ‘seed’ at the time he sinned and/or because he acted as our ‘federal head’ or representative in his sinful acts.”
2. Arminianism: “We would be guilty of Adam’s sin except that our guilt has been removed through prevenient grace as a result of Christ’s atonement...however, our nature is so corrupted that we inevitably sin, thus endorsing Adam’s sin, thus becoming guilty of it ourselves.”
3. Semi-Pelagianism: “We are guilty only for our own acts... Inevitably, we become guilty of our own sins.”
4. Pelagianism: “We are not guilty for Adam’s sin but only for our own acts. In principle, we could live perfect lives.”
5. Anselmianism: As a result of the sin of Adam, we have all lost the supernatural gift of grace that would have made it possible for us to appropriately order our inclinations... As a result, it is impossible for us to refrain from sin.” [5]

Both Semi-Pelagianism and Pelagianism deny the idea of any guilt on our own part for Adam’s sin. Calvinism and, in essence, Arminiansim assert a certain guilt born by the descendants of Adam for the sins of their ancestor. Anselmianism does not claim that humanity shares any of Adam’s guilt, but that we are affected by it in such a way that we are led to sin. The Calvinistic view involves the idea of traducianism, which is to say that the soul of an individual is generated by the souls of his parents (a topic for another post). All these ideas have had influence in Christianity, but what scriptural basis do they have?

Most of the Biblical support for the idea was taken from the epistles of Paul. The passage most important for Saint Augustine was the Epistle to the Romans: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned... For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification... 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.” (Romans 5:12-19)

It can be seen here that the understanding of man’s sinful nature is tied to the understanding of salvation by grace. The doctrine that man must be saved from sin through the grace of Christ is accepted by most Christian religions (including Mormonism) to one degree or another. But it is the severity of man’s depravity that determines the extent to which he depends on grace. In Calvinism and Arminianism, man is so base and evil that he is liable to be damned unless God, by his grace, selects an individual to be saved and enables him to become righteous. Such an extreme view stands in direct opposition to Pelagianism. Taken to its logical conclusion it is a doctrine of predestination. This is the view that we can do nothing to even seek the grace of Christ; we must be chosen and can do nothing about it for ourselves.

It is quite possible and evident that Augustine relied upon the Ambrosiaster mistranslation of Romans 5:12. The verse, again, states: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned”. In Greek, the text reads “So death passed to all men in that (heth ho) all sin.” However, in the old Latin translation which Augustine read the text read “in whom (in quo) all sinned.” [6] The difference is critical. In Greek, it means that all men sin. In Latin, it means that all men sin in the person Adam.

There are several other doctrines which easily follow from the doctrine of Original Sin. One is the doctrine of Predestination. If we are so naturally evil that we cannot even do good of our own free will then God has already chosen who will be saved and who will be damned, independently of our own participation. Carried further this may entail the idea of Determinism. This is that we have no free will to choose our own fate but everything we do is determined by our nature. Essentially, all the particles that make up the universe are organized and set in motion in a particular way that everything is perfectly predictable and inalterable.

Other implications are more striking. Augustine believed that humanity's guilt for the sin of Adam extended even to children. Thus, he believed infants who died before they were baptized would be consigned to Hell. This, he felt, was supported by numerous Biblical passages: Psalms 50:10; Job 14:4-5; John 3:5; Romans 5:12; Ephesians 2:3. [7] I defer comment to The Book of Mormon: “And their little children need no repentance, neither baptism... little children are alive in Christ, even from the foundation of the world; if not so, God is a partial God, and also a changeable God, and a respecter to persons; for how many little children have died without baptism!... And he that saith that little children need baptism denieth the mercies of Christ, and setteth at naught the atonement of him and the power of his redemption... But it is mockery before God, denying the mercies of Christ, and the power of his Holy Spirit, and putting trust in dead works.” (Moroni 8:11-23)

In such a short space I have hardly been able to give these theologies fair assessment and I in no way mean to disparage the ideas developed during hundreds of years of Christianity. Nor have I scratched the surface of the history. But I think the logical and ethical problems brought about by the idea of Original Sin stem from an overemphasis on the literal understanding of the story of Adam and Eve. In other words, the entire point of the story is lost—the point being embedded in the symbolism.

[1] Armstrong, Karen. A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. 1993. p. 123

[2] Pelagius, Pro Libero Arbitrio, quoted by St. Augustine in On Original Sin, chap XIV.

[3] Enchyridion 26.27.

[4] Armstrong, 124

[5] Ostler, Blake. Exploring Mormon Thought: The Problems of Theism and the Love of God. 2006. p. 123-124.

[6] Ibid., 128

[7] Ibid., 127

Where Art Thou?

Rabbi Schneur Zalman, The Rav of Northern White Russia (died 1813), was put in jail in Petersbutf, because the mitnagdim had denounced his principles and his way of living to the government. He was awaiting trial when the chief of the gendarmes entered his cell. The majestic and quiet face of the rav, who was so deep in meditation that he did not at first notice his visitor, suggested to the chief, a thoughtful person, what manner of man he had before him. He began to converse with his prisoner and brought up a number of questions which had occurred to him in reading the Scriptures. Finally, he asked: “How are we to understand that God, the all-knowing, said to Adam: ‘Where art thou?’”

“Do you believe,” answered the rav, “that the Scriptures are eternal and that every era, every generation and every man is included in them?”

“I believe this,” said the other.

“Well then,” said the zaddik, “in every era, God calls to every man: ‘Where are you in your world? So many years and days of those allotted to you have passed, and how far have you gotten in your world?’ God says something like this: ‘You have lived forty-six years. How far along are you?”

When the chief of the gendarmes heard his age mentioned, he pulled himself together, laid his hand on the rav’s shoulder, and cried: “Bravo!” But his heart trembled.

-Martin Buber, The Way of Man (9-10)

As I mentioned in my last post, the seemingly simple can be quite powerful when understood for its underlying symbolism. The name “Adam” is Hebrew, meaning “mankind”. While on one level the Biblical text tells the story of a particular individual, it also tells the story of all mankind, as well as the story of every individual. We are to understand the story as we stand in Adam’s place and imagine God speaking to us. God has given us commandments and the violation of these commandments brings us into opposition with God, for he “cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:31).

I quote again from Buber. God says to Adam: “Where art thou?”

In so asking, God does not expect to learn something he does not know; what he wants is to produce an effect in man which can only be produced by just such a question, provided that it reaches man’s heart—that man allows it to reach his heart.

Adam hides himself to avoid rendering accounts, to escape responsibility for his way of living. Every man hides for this purpose, for every man is Adam and finds himself in Adam’s situation...

Everything now depends on whether man faces the question. Of course every man’s heart, like that of the chief in the story, will tremble when he hears it. But his system of hideouts will help him to overcome this emotion. For the voice does not come in a thunderstorm which threatens man’s very existence; it is a “still small voice”, and easy to drown... Adam faces the Voice, perceives his enmeshment, and avows: “I hid myself”; this is the beginning of man’s way. The decisive heart-searching is the beginning of the way in man’s life; it is, again and again, the beginning of a human way. (pages 12-13)

Everyone must take this step and face the Voice. Until Adam takes responsibility for his action he does not progress. Hiding from God provides only a false solace. It is like trying to solve problems by forgetting about them. Forgetting may bring relief but it does not actually change anything—the problems are still there. The reason God calls after Adam is not to find him but to help Adam to find himself. When Adam understands where he is he can decide where he must go.

Adam and Eve are made to face the consequences of their action: pain and death. Because the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance they are banished from his presence. As Adam, mankind, we face a similar, personal fall from favor with God by sin. We are cut off from the presence of God and suffer sorrow and spiritual death. The objective now is to return to Eden. This is the “teshuvah”, the returning to God. This is what is meant by repentance, to return. The Lord still cannot allow sin, but Adam can return to the presence of God through covenant.

By sinning, Adam has become “natural man” and is in effect “an enemy to God... and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19). Adam can become “kadosh”, or holy once again, through the atonement of Christ to be brought back “at-one” with God.

So Adam, where art thou? “Have ye been spiritually born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts? Do ye exercise faith in the redemption of him who created you? Do you look forward with an eye of faith, and view his mortal body raised in immortality, and this corruption raised in incorruption, to stand before God to be judged according to the deeds which have been done in the mortal body?” (Alma 5:14-15).

“Behold, he sendeth an invitation unto all men, for the arms of mercy are extended towards them, and he saith: Repent, and I will receive you” (Alma 5:33).