Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

I. The Scriptural Account of the Temptation and Fall in Genesis 3:1-7.

1. Its general, character not mythical or allegorical, but historical.

We adopt this view for the following reasons:—(a) There is no intimation in the account itself that it is not historical. (b) As a part of a [pg 583] historical book, the presumption is that it is itself historical. (c) The later Scripture writers refer to it as a veritable history even in its details. (d) Particular features of the narrative, such as the placing of our first parents in a garden and the speaking of the tempter through a serpent-form, are incidents suitable to man's condition of innocent but untried childhood. (e) This view that the narrative is historical does not forbid our assuming that the trees of life and of knowledge were symbols of spiritual truths, while at the same time they were outward realities.

See John 8:44—“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father thereof”; 2 Cor. 11:3—“the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness”; Rev. 20:2—“the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan.” H. B. Smith, System, 261—“If Christ's temptation and victory over Satan were historical events, there seems to be no ground for supposing that the first temptation was not a historical event.” We believe in the unity and sufficiency of Scripture. We moreover regard the testimony of Christ and the apostles as conclusive with regard to the historicity of the account in Genesis. We assume a divine superintendence in the choice of material by its author, and the fulfilment to the apostles of Christ's promise that they should be guided into the truth. Paul's doctrine of sin is so manifestly based upon the historical character of the Genesis story, that the denial of the one must naturally lead to the denial of the other. John Milton writes, in his Areopagitica: “It was from out of the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into, that is to say, of knowing good by evil.” He should have learned to know evil as God knows it—as a thing possible, hateful, and forever rejected. He actually learned to know evil as Satan knows it—by making it actual and matter of bitter experience.

Infantile and innocent man found his fit place and work in a garden. The language of appearances is doubtless used. Satan might enter into a brute-form, and might appear to speak through it. In all languages, the stories of brutes speaking show that such a temptation is congruous with the condition of early man. Asiatic myths agree in representing the serpent as the emblem of the spirit of evil. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the symbol of God's right of eminent domain, and indicated that all belonged to him. It is not necessary to suppose that it was known by this name before the Fall. By means of it man came to know good, by the loss of it; to know evil, by bitter experience; C. H. M.: “To know good, without the power to do it; to know evil, without the power to avoid it.” Bible Com., 1:40—The tree of life was symbol of the fact that “life is to be sought, not from within, from himself, in his own powers or faculties; but from that which is without him, even from him who hath life in himself.”

As the water of baptism and the bread of the Lord's supper, though themselves common things, are symbolic of the greatest truths, so the tree of knowledge and the tree of life were sacramental. McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 99-141—“The two trees represented good and evil. The prohibition of the latter was a declaration that man of himself could not distinguish between good and evil, and must trust divine guidance. Satan urged man to discern between good and evil by his own wisdom, and so become independent of God. Sin is the attempt of the creature to exercise God's attribute of discerning and choosing between good and evil by his own wisdom. It is therefore self-conceit, self-trust, self-assertion, the preference of his own wisdom and will to the wisdom and will of God.” McIlvaine refers to Lord Bacon, Works, 1:82, 162. See also Pope, Theology, 2:10, 11; Boston Lectures for 1871:80, 81.

Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 142, on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—“When for the first time man stood face to face with definite conscious temptation to do that which he knew to be wrong, he held in his hand the fruit of that tree, and his destiny as a moral being hung trembling in the balance. And when for the first time he succumbed to temptation and faint dawnings of remorse visited his heart, at that moment he was banished from the Eden of innocence, in which his nature had hitherto dwelt, and he was driven forth from the presence of the Lord.” With the first sin, was started another and a downward course of development. For the mythical or allegorical explanation of the narrative, see also Hase, Hutterus Redivivus, 164, 165, and Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, 218.