Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin

Part 1, Grace is the Interpretation of History

In light of the advances of science, one of the most contested and confusing issues is how to read Genesis 1-3. How are we to think of the creation of the world and the Fall of Adam and Eve in light of modern cosmology and evolutionary biology? 

For this series we're going to focus on how to think about the fall of Adam and Eve, what some call "original sin," and how that relates to evolution. 

Now, I've explored some ideas on this subject before, linking the evolution of consciousness (the onset of our "knowledge of good and evil") to the start of our moral biography with God. I've also tied this view to the existential crisis death creates for finite, mortal creatures (death as enemy and curse).

But in this series we're going to explore a different perspective, a view that comes from the Catholic tradition. 

To start, most of us think about the story of creation and humanity as story going from past to present. We try to puzzle out a chain of cause and effect. So, we set down two timelines, the story in Genesis 1-3 against the timeline given to us by the cosmological and biological sciences. The Big Bang. Stars igniting. Planets coalescing. The emergence of life. The Cambrian explosion. The dinosaurs. The evolution of Homo sapiens. How does that timeline align with Genesis?

We tend to tell this story prospectively, from origins to the present day. But there's a different way to tell the story. We can come to see the story of the past in a different light. Sin, death and the fall only come into view retrospectively, in the wake of our experience of Jesus Christ. Phrased differently, sin, death and the fall are less events in a timeline than apocalyptic revelations as to the meaning of prior history.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Only the light of divine Revelation clarifies the reality of sin and particularly of the sin committed at mankind's origins. Without the knowledge Revelation gives of God we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure, etc. Only in the knowledge of God's plan for man can we grasp that sin is an abuse of the freedom that God gives to created persons so that they are capable of loving him and loving one another.

With the progress of Revelation, the reality of sin is also illuminated. Although to some extent the People of God in the Old Testament had tried to understand the pathos of the human condition in the light of the history of the fall narrated in Genesis, they could not grasp this story's ultimate meaning, which is revealed only in the light of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We must know Christ as the source of grace in order to know Adam as the source of sin.

The point here is that we don't really need to get the timelines of Genesis and science sorted out and synchronized. We're free to let the "facts" of prior history be told and revealed by science. But the meaning of that history only comes into view with the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. When we come to know the source of grace, Jesus Christ, we at the same time come to understand Adam as the source of sin. 

By that we don't mean going back in time to locate a historical person living at a particular geographical location called "the Garden of Eden." In the light of the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, we can simply look back upon history, retrospectively, where a story of wickedness and woe is revealed. In our encounter with grace our prior history is revealed to have been "in Adam," subject to the hostile powers of sin, death, and Satan. The meaning of Genesis 1-3 only comes into view in the experience of grace. 

Phrased differently, grace is an interpretation of history. We don't have to go back and reconcile two competing factual timelines in an attempt to determine which one is "true." What we're talking about is the meaning of history. 

For example, I'm sure you've been to natural history museums, like those in New York or Washington. Who doesn't love a great dinosaur exhibit? A staple in these museums is the Great Timeline of History, from Big Bang to the present day. It's this timeline that is being rebutted in creationist museums with their alternative "biblical" timeline. But the apocalypse of Jesus Christ isn't the adjudication between these timelines. It is, rather, the revelation of the meaning of the timeline. 

I can stand in awe at the Smithsonian exhibit looking at the Great Timeline of History, noting the big events in cosmological, geological, and biological history. And while awe-inspiring, a linear sequence of facts doesn't tell me what it all means. There is no story, no plot, no drama. A linear chain of cause and effect is meaningless. The Great Timeline of History is inherently nihilistic, devoid of any meaningful content or value. It's the apocalypse of Jesus Christ that reveals the meaning of the Great Timeline, that separated from the grace and life of God we exist "in Adam," living "in the flesh," weak and impotent against the powers holding us as moral and ontological captives. This is the meaning revealed to us by Jesus Christ in the story of Genesis 1-3. No historical timelines need reconciliation. Rather, the issue concerns the meaning and retroactive interpretation of history in the apocalypse of Jesus Christ.