From Bondage to Liberty in Religion: A Spiritual Autobiography

by George T. Ashley

Take the other horn of the dilemma. Then angels and the devil are created beings, creatures of God, and not eternal. Then God must have made the devil. If He created him a holy angel, yea, an archangel, as is claimed, God certainly knew in advance that this archangel would sometime lead a rebellion in heaven and lead one-third of the angels into the conspiracy! Would an all-wise, a just and good God create such beings, knowing in advance what they would do and what the consequences of it would be? This forced God to create a hell in which to put and punish these rebellious angels whom He knew before He created them would rebel against him and thus have to be punished. If God needed angels to glorify him was it not just as easy to create good ones, that would not rebel against him! He created some that way, why not all? And if rebellious angels had to be punished why not do it by annihilation instead of making this burning hell for them? If annihilation be considered too merciful and this hell the only adequate punishment, all very well for rebellious and sinful angels; but why should this yawning gulf of eternal woe open its throat to receive the future being to be made in God's own image and called man?

We are told that hell was not created for man, but for the devil and his angels. Nevertheless, if the story of Eden and the doctrines of modern orthodoxy be true, it is now and will ultimately become the eternal abode of about ninety-eight per cent of the entire human race. I could never again reconcile the old views of hell with any rational conception of a just and merciful God. The story of Eden itself I took up for analysis. Man was alleged to have been framed up out of dust, yet made "in the image and likeness" of God,—and consequently perfect. At least this is the universal teaching. He was alone. A companion was made for him from a rib. They are happy in a garden. God walks and talks with them like a man. Everything is going smoothly until one day God comes in and points out a certain tree, hitherto unnoticed and unknown, and informs Adam that he must not eat of the fruit of this particular tree on penalty of death. Then comes the serpent, talking like a man, and tells the woman that what God said was not true; but if they would eat of the fruit of that tree they would "be as Gods, knowing good and evil." "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." Gen. iii, 6.

Now, was the first sin that eternally damned the whole human race a mere matter of eating from a forbidden tree? It seems so from the natural import of the language used. "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food ..." Could a just God inflict such an awful punishment as orthodox Christianity teaches, not only upon this simple, ignorant couple, but upon the entire human race for all time and eternity for such a trifling incident? I trow not. Besides, I have often thought that if that particular tree had not been specifically pointed out and forbidden, probably neither Adam nor Eve would ever have had any desire to eat of it. It is the forbidden that always draws the strongest.

Let us examine this story closely and see whether the serpent or God told the truth. Don't be alarmed and accuse me of blasphemy or sacrilege. We set out in search of truth; let us try to find it. God is alleged to have said, "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Gen. ii, 17. But he did not die, according to the subsequent story, for over nine hundred years thereafter. The fact that the penalty: "For dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return," was pronounced after the transgression, does not fulfill the statement "in the day thou eatest thereof." But we shall refer to this again.

The serpent is alleged to have said: "Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." Gen. iii, 4, 5. And verse 7 says: "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked." And verse 22 says: "And Jehovah God said, 'Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.'" Does not this confirm that what the serpent said was true?

The temptation is very great here to digress far enough to offer a rational interpretation of this beautiful poetic allegory of the "Fall of Man." But it is outside the scope and purpose of this work, and I leave it with the simple question: Was not that which we call the first sin only the expression of man's natural aspirations onward and upward, in search of knowledge and a higher and better and broader and larger life, that always entails its penalties of trial, suffering, toil, and more or less disappointment?

When God comes to call them to account, Adam puts the blame on his wife, and she shifts it to the serpent. Note what follows: The serpent is cursed to crawl upon his belly, just as we see him now. Did he walk uprightly before, and did he have legs and feet? "And dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." What did he eat before? As a matter of fact, serpents do not eat dust now. Remember, this sentence was pronounced to the serpent himself: "And Jehovah God said unto the serpent,"—not to Adam and Eve. We shall have occasion to recall this again.

"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children..." This was the penalty pronounced upon Eve for her part in the tragedy. The question arises: Was Eve never to be a mother but for this transaction? This, if not the only, is at least the most natural inference. Then how was the race to be propagated? or was it to be propagated at all?

Adam for his part was condemned to hard labor, and altho creation was supposed to have been finished and complete, the ground was cursed so as to make it produce thorns and thistles to annoy and tantalize him and increase his labor. Were none of these things on the earth before? Were the rose bushes in the Garden of Eden "thornless"? "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground: for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Several questions arise here. Was Adam to be immortal in the flesh if he had not eaten of the forbidden fruit? Did death enter the world, as we have always been taught, because of this sin? And if Adam had not sinned would he and Eve still be living in the Garden of Eden, without the knowledge of good and evil, naked and unashamed to this day? If Eve was never to become a mother if she had not sinned, would she and Adam still be there alone, with nothing but the animal world about them for companions?