FALL, THE, refers to that event recorded in Genesis 3 (cf. Rom 5:12; 1 Tim 2:14) according to which our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell from the estate of integrity in which God had created them.
1. The occasion. Adam and Eve did not themselves originate the thought that came to fruition in their disobedience to God’s commandment. They were subjected to suggestion and solicitation in the form of temptation. The direct instrument of this temptation was the serpent (Gen 3:1). The narrative indicates that the serpent was of such a kind that he could be compared with the other beasts of the field and within that category. The presence and agency of a literal serpent may not be denied. Futhermore, the curse pronounced (Gen 3:14) implies a being to which its terms could apply. Behind the serpent was the activity of Satan (cf. John 8:44; Rom 16:20; 2 Cor 11:3; 1 John 3:8; Rev 12:9; 20:2). The data given in Genesis 3 is not complete and must be supplemented by subsequent revelation. The later revelation confirms the earlier and assures us that from the beginning of man’s fallen history there was the sinister craft and power of the archenemy.
The focus of the temptation was direct assault upon the veracity and integrity of God (Gen 3:4, 5). It was not an impeachment of God’s knowledge nor merely a denial of His power. The tempter accused God of deception and deliberate falsehood. God, it was alleged, perpetrated a lie in order to preserve His own exclusive possession of the knowledge of good and evil. Herein lies the diabolical character of the allegation. The design was the destruction of man’s integrity by the breakdown of man’s belief in the integrity of God. The way of integrity is unreserved and unrelenting trust in God and the giving to Him of the sovereignty and finality that are exclusively His.
2. The cause. Temptation was the occasion; it was not the cause. To be subjected to temptation is not sinful for the tempted. Embrace and acquiescence constitute sin. So it was with our first parents. Eve succumbed to the solicitation of the tempter and Adam to that of Eve.
The strategy of the tempter was to direct his solicitations to the woman. The silence of Scripture compels reserve concerning the reason. In the case of Eve, however, one is justified in tracing the process by which she came to the point of overt disobedience to the divine prohibition. Acquiescence in the allegation of the serpent and defection from God’s Word cannot be postponed beyond the point when she “saw that the tree...was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen 3:6 ASV) This demonstrates that the tempter had gained her trust; she accepted as true what was a blasphemous assault upon the veracity of God and came to regard the tree as desirable in the direction that contravened the divine prohibition. She served the creature rather than the Creator. Her failure to recoil with revulsion from the tempter’s “You will not die” (Gen 3:4) is evidence that defection had already taken place and that she exemplified the invariable psychology of sin that overt action proceeds from the inward disposition of heart (cf. Prov 23:7; Mark 7:21-23; James 1:14, 15). The eating of the forbidden fruit was the expression of an inward movement of apostasy at the instance of satanic beguilement. In the case of Adam there was a difference; he was not deceived (1 Tim 2:14). What the movement of his thought was cannot be defined. But the same principle must hold that the actual volition cannot be divorced from precedent disposition of mind and heart.
The prohibition imposed upon Adam and Eve (Gen 2:17) was for the purpose of proving the ultimate criterion of faith in God, unquestioning obedience to God’s commandment. In the prohibition were epitomized the sovereignty, authority, wisdom, goodness, justice, holiness, and truth of God. Transgression was no trivial offense; it was assault upon God’s majesty, repudiation of His sovereignty, doubt of His goodness, dispute with His wisdom, contradiction of His veracity. All along the line of God’s perfections it was what all sin is, the contradiction of God. Hence its gravity and the corresponding liabilities.
3. The consequences
a. Subjective. Man’s dispositional complex was radically altered. The pivot on which this revolution turned was the changed attitude to God (3:7-10). Man was made for the presence and fellowship of God and in the presence of God would have found his supreme delight. Now he flees from God’s face; shame and fear took possession of his heart. “For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved” (John 3:20 ASV).
b. Objective. God changed His relation to man. The reason for the rupture between God and man was man’s sin, but the rupture was not onesided. After Genesis 3:9 an aspect of God’s character is disclosed that previously was threatened to be in exercise (Gen 2:17) but had not been manifested and it appears in reproof, condemnation, curse, and retribution (Gen 3:14-19, 23, 24), the echoes of divine wrath. At the outset is the lesson that sin not only involves our changed attitude to God but also His changed attitude to us, not only our estrangement from God but also His alienation from us.
c. Cosmic. The Fall was an event in the spirit of man. It did not consist in physical disturbance or maladjustment, but it drastically affected the physical and non-spiritual. “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Gen 3:17). “The creation was subjected to vanity” (Rom 8:20 ASV). Man was the crown of creation and with his fall came the bondage of corruption for all over which he was to exercise dominion. Only with the consummation of redemption will the cosmos be released from the curse incident to man’s sin (cf. Rom 8:19-23; 2 Pet 3:13).
d. Racial. The sequel to the fall of Adam and Eve is the catalogue of sins in the unfolding history of mankind—envy, malice, murder, polygamy, violence. The result was cumulative and “the wickedness of man was great in the earth” (Gen 6:5) and it was “filled with violence” (6:13). History shows that Adam’s fall was not an isolated event but affected the whole race. Scripture reveals the reason and specifies the kind of solidarity existing between Adam and posterity explanatory of this consequence. Adam was not only the father of all mankind but he was also by divine institution the representative head. “Through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation...through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Rom 5:18, 19 ASV). As all died in Adam (1 Cor 15:22), so all sinned in Adam; “for the judgment came of one unto condemnation” (Rom 5:16 ASV; cf. 5:12, 15). All mankind is reckoned as participating with Adam in his sin and therefore in the depravity which his sin entailed. This is the Biblical explanation of universal sin, condemnation, and death and no other validation of racial involvement in sin is necessary or justifiable.
e. Death. The threat pronounced upon eating of the forbidden fruit was: “thou shalt surely die” (Gen 2:17 ASV). The fulfillment of this threat is eloquently stated in Genesis 5 in the repeated formula: “and he died.” Notwithstanding the longevity of patriarchal man, he cannot escape this appointment (cf. Heb 9:27). The disintegration following in the wake of the Fall, exemplified in the respects specified above, enters also into the constitution of man and separates the elements of his being (cf. Gen 3:19; Eccl 12:7). The Biblical witness is unequivocal that death took its origin from the trespass of Adam, that it is the wages of sin and not the debt of nature (Gen 2:17; 3:19; Rom 5:12; 6:23; 1 Cor 15:22).
4. The historicity. Much has been written in support of the thesis that Genesis 3 is myth or legend, not history but story, portraying what happens to all men but not an account of a unique, once-for-all series of events at the beginning of human history. Adam, it is alleged, is every man. We all sin as Adam sinned.
This might appear to be an acceptable and effective way of maintaining the Biblical doctrine that all have sinned, but the position is fraught with fallacies.
a. It is not true that all sin as Adam. There is a radical difference between Adam and posterity. We all come to be as sinners; Adam and Eve did not. The beginning of our sinfulness was not by voluntary defection and transgression as in the case of our first parents, but by divinely constituted solidarity with Adam in his sin. As a consequence we are shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin (cf. Ps. 51:5); we are “by nature the children of wrath” (Eph 2:3). We are dead in trespasses and sins not by acquisition but by imputation to us of Adam’s sin and by generation. So the position in question fails to correspond with the total witness of Scripture and to assess the human situation in sin and misery.
b. If we are all Adam, then the uniqueness of Adam as the first man is denied. The parallel between Adam and Christ (Rom 5:12-19; 1 Cor 15:21, 22, 45-49) belongs to the way of salvation and to the integrity of the Gospel. This parallel provides the antithesis between the way in which sin, condemnation, and death came to reign and the way righteousness, justification, and life come to bear upon men. The former was by Adam, the latter is by Christ. Therefore Adam and Christ sustain unique and incomparable relations to men. The preservation of both parallel and antithesis requires that Adam should be as real and unique in his historical identity as was Christ. To aver that Genesis 3 is story but not history, that we are all Adam and sin as Adam, destroys the particularity of Adam and undermines what belongs to our history in sin and redemption.
c. NT allusions assume the historicity of Genesis 2 and 3. In Matthew 19:5, 6; Mark 10:7, 8 reference is made to Genesis 2:24 and the actual terms of the latter are quoted. The reference to the transgression of Adam (Rom 5:14) clearly indicates that the one man mentioned in v. 12 is none other than Adam and the one trespass of the one man (cf. vv. 15-19) is the first sin of Adam. In 1 Corinthians 15:45, 47, 49 there is distinct allusion to Genesis 2:7. In 1 Timothy 2:13 there is reiteration of the principle stated in Genesis 2:20-23 and in v. 14 there is explicit appeal to Genesis 3:1-6, 13. These examples suffice to show that in the esteem of our Lord and of the Apostle Paul the accounts given in Genesis could be appealed to for what they purported to be. We cannot dissociate the doctrine set forth in such passages from the premises on which the inspired teachers proceeded in enunciating the doctrine. Not only is the historical character of the early chs. of Genesis involved in the question but also the authenticity and relevance of the NT allusions and appeals to them.
Bibliography J. Murray, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (1959); G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God (1962), 119-193; P. E. Hughes, “Fall” in NBD (1962); G. Kittel ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, E-T (1963), I, 281-286; J. G. Machen, The Christian View of Man (1965), 161-172, 208-219.