New Witnesses for God (Volume 3 of 3)

by B. H. Roberts

"Adam fell that men might be."

I think it cannot be doubted when the whole story of man's fall is taken into account that in some way—however hidden it may be under allegory—his fall was closely associated with the propagation of the race. Before the fall we are told that Adam and Eve were in a state of innocence;^[[8]] but after the fall "The eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons,"^[[9]] and also hid from the presence of the Lord.

In an incidental way Paul gives us to understand that Adam in the matter of the first transgression "was not deceived," but that the woman was.^[[10]] It therefore follows that Adam must have sinned knowingly, and perhaps deliberately; making choice of obedience between two laws pressing upon him. With his spouse, Eve, he had received a commandment from God to be fruitful, to perpetuate his race in the earth. He had also been told not to partake of a certain fruit of the Garden of Eden; but according to the story of Genesis, as also according to the assertion of Paul, Eve, who with Adam received the commandment to multiply in the earth, was deceived, and by the persuasion of Lucifer induced to partake of the forbidden fruit. She, therefore, was in transgression, and subject to the penalty of that law which from the scriptures we learn included banishment from Eden, banishment from the presence of God, and also the death of the body. This meant, if Eve were permitted to stand alone in her transgression, that she must be alone also in suffering the penalty. In that event she would have been separated from Adam, which necessarily would have prevented obedience to the commandment given to them conjointly to multiply in the earth. In the presence of this situation, therefore, it is to be believed that Adam was not deceived, either by the cunning of Lucifer or the blandishments of the woman, deliberately, and with a full knowledge of his act and its consequences, and in order to carry out the purpose of God in the existence of man in the earth, shared alike the woman's transgression and its effects, and this in order that the first great commandment he had received from God, viz.—"Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it"—might not fail of fulfillment. Hence "Adam fell that man might be."

The effect of this doctrine upon the ideas of men concerning the great Patriarch of our race will be revolutionary. It seems to be the fashion of those who assume to teach the Christian religion to denounce Adam in unmeasured terms; as if the fall of man had surprised, if, indeed, it did altogether thwart, the original plan of God respecting the existence of man in the earth. The creeds of the churches generally fail to consider the "fall" as part of God's purpose regarding this world, and, in its way, as essential to the accomplishment of that purpose as the "redemption" through Jesus Christ. Certainly there would have been no occasion for the "redemption" had there been no "fall;" and hence no occasion for the display of all that wealth of grace and mercy and justice and love—all that richness of experience involved in the gospel of Jesus Christ, had there been no "fall." It cannot be but that it was part of God's purpose to display these qualities in their true relation, for the benefit and blessing and experience and enlargement and ultimate uplifting of man; and since there would have been no occasion for displaying them but for the "fall," it logically follows that the "fall," no less than the "redemption," must have been part of God's original plan respecting the earth-probation of man. The "fall," undoubtedly was a fact as much present to the fore-knowledge of God as was the "redemption;" and the act which encompassed it must be regarded as more praise-worthy than blame-worthy, since it was essential to the accomplishment of the divine purpose. Yet, as I say, those who assume to teach Christianity roundly denounce Adam for his transgression. An accepted teacher of Catholic doctrine says:

The Catholic Church teaches that Adam, by his sin, has not only caused harm to himself, but to the whole human race; that by it he lost the supernatural justice and holiness which he received gratuitously from God, and lost it, not only for himself, but also for all of us; and that he, having stained himself with the sin of disobedience, has transmitted not only death and other bodily pains and infirmities to the whole human race, but also sin, which is the death of the soul.^[[11]]

And again:

Unhappily, Adam, by his sin of disobedience, which was also a sin of pride, disbelief, and ambition, forfeited, or, more properly speaking, rejected that original justice; and we, as members of the human family, of which he was the head, are also implicated in that guilt of self-spoliation, or rejection and deprivation of those supernatural gifts; not, indeed, on account of our having willed it with our personal will, but by having willed it with the will of our first parent, to whom we are linked by nature as members to their head.^[[12]]

Still again, and this from the Catholic Douay Catechism:

Q. How did we lose original justice?

A. By Adam's disobedience to God in eating the forbidden fruit.

Q. How do you prove that?

A. Out of Rom. v: 12, "By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death; and so into all men death did pass, in whom all have sinned."

Q. Had man ever died if he had never sinned?

A. He would not, but would live in a state of justice and at length would be translated alive to the fellowship of the angels.^[[13]]

From a Protestant source I quote the following:

In the fall of man we may observe: (1) The greatest infidelity. (2) Prodigious pride. (3) Horrid ingratitude. (4) Visible contempt of God's majesty and justice. (5) Unaccountable folly. (6) A cruelty to himself and to all his posterity.^[[14]]

Another Protestant authority says:

The tree of knowledge of good and evil revealed to those who ate its fruit secrets of which they had better have remained ignorant; for the purity of man's happiness consisted in doing and loving good without even knowing evil.^[[15]]

From these several passages as also indeed from the whole tenor of Christian writings upon this subject, the fall of Adam is quite generally deplored and upon him is laid a very heavy burden of responsibility. It was he, they complain, who,

Brought death into the world, and all our woe.

One great division of Christendom in its creed, it is true, in dealing with the fall, concedes that "God was pleased according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit [the fall] having purposed to order it to his own glory."^[[16]]

And in an authoritative explanation of this section they say, "That this sin [the fall] was permissively embraced in the sovereign purpose of God." And still further in explanation:

Its purpose [i. e., of the fall] being God's general plan, and one eminently wise and righteous, to introduce all the new created subjects of moral government into a state of probation for a time in which he makes their permanent character and destiny depend upon their own action.

Still, this sin, described as being permissively embraced in the sovereign purpose of Deity, God designed "to order it to his own glory;" but it nowhere appears according to this confession of faith that the results of the fall are to be of any benefit to man. The only thing consulted in the theory of this creed seems to be the manifestation of the glory of God—a thing which represents God as a most selfish being—but just how the glory of God can be manifested by the "fall" which, according to this creed, results in the eternal damnation of the overwhelming majority of his "creatures," is not quite apparent.

Those who made this Westminister Confession, as also the large following which accept it, concede that their theory involves them at least in two difficulties which they confess it is impossible for them to overcome. These are, respectively: First, "How could sinful desires or volitions originate in the soul of mortal agents created holy like Adam and Eve;" and, second, "how can sin be permissively embraced in the eternal purpose of God and not involve him as responsible for the sin?" "If it be asked," say they, "why God, who abhors sin, and who benevolently desires the excellence and happiness of his creatures, should sovereignly determine to permit such a fountain of pollution, degradation, and misery to be opened, we can only say, with profound reverence, 'Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight."'^[[17]]

These difficulties, however, are the creed's and those who accept it, not ours, and do not further concern our discussion at this point.

Infidels—under which general term (and I do not use it offensively) I mean all those who do not accept the Christian creeds, nor believe the Bible to be a revelation—infidels, I say, quite generally deride the fall of man as represented both in the creeds of Christendom and in the Bible. They regard the tremendous consequences attendant upon eating the forbidden fruit as altogether out of proportion with the act itself, and universally hold that a moral economy which would either design or permit such a calamity as the fall is generally supposed to be, as altogether unworthy of an all-merciful and just Deity. Thomas Paine referring to it says:

"Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity, or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his power, than this story is.^[[18]]

In their contentions against the story of Genesis, no less than in their war upon "the fall" and "original sin" in the men made creeds of Christendom, infidels have denounced God in most blasphemous terms as the author of all the evil in this world by permitting, through not preventing, the fall; and they as soundly ridicule and abuse Adam for the part he took in the affair. He has been held up by them as weak and cowardly, because he referred his partaking of the forbidden fruit to the fact that the woman gave to him and he did eat; a circumstance into which they read an effort on the part of the man to escape censure, perhaps punishment, and to cast the blame for his transgression upon the woman. These scoffers proclaim their preference for the variations of this story of a "fall of man" as found in the mythologies of various peoples, say those of Greece or India.^[[19]] But all this aside. The truth is that nothing could be more courageous, sympathetic, or nobly honorable than the course of our world's great Patriarch in his relations to his wife Eve and the "fall." The woman by deception is led into transgression, and stands under the penalty of a broken law. Banishment from the presence of God; banishment from the presence of her husband, if he partakes not with her in the transgression; dissolution of spirit and body—physical death—all await her! Thereupon, the man, not deceived, but knowingly (as we are assured by Paul), also transgresses. Why? In one aspect of the case in order that he might share the woman's banishment from the dear presence of God, and with her die—than which no higher proof of love could be given—no nobler act of chivalry performed. But primarily he transgressed that "Man might be." He transgressed a less important law that he might comply with one more important, if one may so speak of any of God's laws. The facts are, as we shall presently see, that the conditions which confronted Adam in his earth-life were afore time known to him; that of his own volition he accepted them, and came to earth to meet them.