Theological Tidbits

As God permitted the sin of Adam and Eve, so He permits their descendants to sin. For the most part, the people of the Old Testament sinned because they had a tendency towards sin, a lack of grace and a spark of sin. This spark of sin is a lack of integration, one of the effects of original sin. As God allowed Adam and Eve—and through them their descendants—to experience some of the effects of original sin, so He allows the descendants of Adam and Eve to experience some of the effects of their own personal sins. In other words, as God allowed Adam and Eve to suffer the destructive force of original sin, so He allowed their descendants to suffer the self-inflicted wounds of their own sins. As a good parent, God taught the ancient Israelites to take responsibility for their actions by allowing them to experience the effects of their sinful actions.

Although God permitted the people of the Old Testament to sin and to experience some consequences of their sins, He saved them from some of their sins and, more often, from the effects of their sins. Experiencing God’s love for them, the people of the Old Testament were often grateful to God—i.e., they often loved Him more. In other words, God was drawing good from the evil of sin. He was allowing the Old Testament people to experience merciful love. Thus, God was gradually preparing them to receive the promised Redeemer, the ultimate expression of God’s merciful love.

If God loves Adam and Eve and their descendants enough to save them from evil, why does He allow them to do evil in the first place? Certainly God has the power to prevent sin. Instead of exercising this power, God chose to permit sin and then to deal with its horrendous consequences. Would it not have been easier for God to have prevented the original sin in the beginning? As a conscious and free act, original sin was a choice. The only possible way for God to have prevented the sin of Adam and Eve would have been for Him to have eliminated their capacities of knowing and freely choosing. In other words, if God had wanted to prevent the original sin, He would either have had to create Adam and Eve without minds and free wills or He would have had to inhibit the functioning of these powers, at least at the time of temptation. Clearly, without the capacities for knowing and freely choosing, Adam and Eve would have been little better than the animals. They would not have been images of God—i.e., persons. If God had inhibited the powers of thinking and freely choosing, Adam and Eve would have been like robots operated by God.

When God created man and woman, He wanted neither another animal species nor robots. By creating Adam and Eve and their descendants as persons—in His own image, God willed that they should imitate Him by loving. God willed that there be love in the world and since true love is possible only on the basis of freedom, God was willing to risk the horrendous evil of sin in order that true love would exist. Human love was more important to God than the possibility that human persons might misuse freedom—i.e., that they might sin.

God also created the angels as free beings so that they might love. Thus, with the angels as well as with man, God risked the horrendous evil of sin for the sake of love.

Even while telling Adam and Eve the effects of their action, God gives them hope that He would conquer the evil they had brought upon themselves. For God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15). In these words, God is promising a Redeemer, Who, born of a woman, will crush the serpent–i.e., Satan. God will overcome the evil that entered the world through the surrender of our first parents to Satan’s temptation. God’s infinite and unbounding love for Adam and Eve and their descendents is quite clear from His promise to overcome the evil they had brought on themselves. Even though they had rejected God, God did not abandon them.

God’s love for Adam and Eve and their descendents, even after sin, is a continuation of the divine judgment made at the dawn of history that God’s creation of Adam and Eve was “very good” (Gen 1:31). In other words, God’s judgment on His own creative handiwork is not altered by sin. God’s creation cannot be overcome by evil. Even sin cannot ultimately thwart God’s infinite love as expressed in the creation of the human species. As a loving, infinite, almighty Father, God is able to draw from sin “the definitive good of the whole created cosmos” (John Paul II). Of course, it is true that sin is the cause of much evil, but it cannot block the construction of the kingdom of God.

The sin of Adam and Eve in a certain sense contains the original “model” of every sin of which man is capable. We oppose God everyday as Adam and Eve did. God gives us the commandments for our own good just as He had asked Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit for their own good. When we act against the commandments, we deny that the commandments are good for us just as Adam and Eve denied that God’s commandment was good for them. For example, when we steal, we believe that our own best interests are served not through avoiding this act—but by doing it. At least implicitly, there is a belief that God told us not to steal not for our own good—but rather to keep us as His slaves. In effect, we deny God’s love for us. We implicitly claim that God has given us the commandments not to benefit us—but to benefit Himself. We reject God because we deny the truth of what He has told us. Therefore, we determine that we know better than God. In effect, we claim to know good and evil as God knows good and evil.

Since we have all inherited original sin, we are all affected by Satan’s lies. We have a distorted view of who God is because we do not properly comprehend Him as a loving and caring Creator. With this false view of God accepted, man loses sight of himself because as images of God, we do not know who we are unless we know who God is.

Even though Adam and Eve did not reject God as totally as the fallen angels had—still, their sin was in a certain sense a reflection and the consequence of the sin that had already occurred in the world of invisible beings. Satan and his followers turned away from God because they wanted to be truth as God is Truth. The fallen angels were the first to seek to “know good and evil like God” (Gen 3:5). In the guise of a serpent, Satan suggested to Adam and Eve that they, creatures though they were, should fulfill themselves by knowing good and evil like God. However, Satan did not actually want Adam and Eve to be gods. He was actually seeking followers. He wanted Adam and Eve—and through them the entire human race—to join in the same rebellion he and his angelic followers had already begun. Man, by yielding to the suggestion of the tempter, became the slave and accomplice of the rebellious spirits.

In sinning, Adam and Eve did not reject God as completely and totally as the angels did when they sinned. First of all, the powerful, angelic intellects had comprehended God and themselves much more clearly than Adam and Eve had comprehended God and themselves. Consequently, it was simply not possible for Adam and Eve to reject God as completely as the angels had. Secondly, since Adam and Eve were at first seeking to fulfill themselves—i.e., to become more like God, their sin was not a total rejection of God. At first, Adam and Eve did not recognize the devil’s lies for what they were. At this point, Adam and Eve were willing their own self-fulfillment as images of God. However, later, Adam and Eve must have perceived that the devil had lied. Nevertheless, they accepted and acted on the lies. At that point, they sinned. Still, since the initial motive of Adam and Eve was their own self-fulfillment, their sin was not a total and complete rejection of God. Thirdly, Adam and Eve at first accepted the devil’s lies as the truth. The angels would never have accepted lies as truth. Some angels did reject truth—but they recognized truth as truth and lies as lies. There is a difference between rejecting truth—what the angels did—and not recognizing truth—what Adam and Eve did at first. To reject truth, one has to recognize it for what it is. The angels recognized it and rejected it. At first, Adam and Eve did not recognize it and therefore could not reject it. Fourth, Adam and Eve had the “help” of Satan while Satan and his followers sinned on their own. Humanity was not brought to its tragic downfall by itself. Without the temptation of the serpent, Adam and Eve might never have sinned. It was only through the temptation of the devil that they opposed the Creator. In other words, God created human persons in His own image with such goodness that it took someone from the outside, an angel, to entice man to sin. For all these reasons, the sin of our first parents was not as complete and as total a rejection of God as the angelic sin was.

“The serpent said to the woman, ‘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’” (Gen 3:4-5). Satan suggests that God had forbidden Adam and Eve to fulfill themselves by becoming more God-like by knowing good and evil. In other words, the devil suggests that God had forbidden what was good for Adam and Eve—i.e., their self-fulfillment as images of God. Why would God do such a thing? The obvious answer is that God did not want anyone, any creature, to be like Him, even though it is good for some of His creatures to be like Him—i.e., those made in His image and likeness. In this false view, God is a mean-spirited, jealous being, Who, as a tyrant, will strive to maintain His own unique position against anyone and anybody. Once Adam and Eve believe that God is a jealous being Who cares only about maintaining His own position, they also logically conclude that when God claimed to love and care for them (Gen 1:26-31, 2:16, 18), He was lying. Further, they begin to look for an alternate god and the devil presents them with one—i.e., himself.