RE: [asa] Nakedness and the Fall of Man

Phil said:
"If the author was trying to answer practical questions important to the Hebrews, he didn't do a very complete job. But if he was using symbolic elements to tell about our relationship to God and one another, then it is a very elegant piece of work."

You said that as if you intended those two sentences to be mutually exclusive, but they overlap. By explaining why people wear clothes and hate snakes and why we worship on the Sabbath, you can also talk and teach about God and sin. Or put another way, you can teach about God and sin and answer some other questions of life while you're at it.

Why do we wear clothes, but not the animals? No one knows. Along comes Moses and explains it is because our eyes were opened when Adam ate a piece of forbidden fruit. Oh- I get it. I don't see an immediate need to start asking more questions, like what kind of fruit it was, etc. Even look at all the questions in typical modern Christianity that people don't even think about. For example, the trinity... once hotly debated in history (even rejected for a time by the church at large), but now just assumed... believe it or you are a heretic.

...Bernie

________________________________
From: philtill@aol.com [mailto:philtill@aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 7:45 PM
To: Dehler, Bernie; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Nakedness and the Fall of Man

Hi Bernie,

I need to clarify one point before answering your bigger question. First, when I say "in Christ", I do recognize that the Hebrews of that day didn't have the full understanding of Christ. What I mean by "Christ" in that context is the presence of God interacting with his world. God created the world through Christ ("through Him all things were made..."). He is the firstborn of creation, the mediator between Creator and created, the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Christ has a special relationship with the creation. It can be appropriate for us to speak of Christ in this passage, as it is His Office as Christ that we refer to, even if the Hebrews didn't know that yet.

As to the bigger question, I don't know Paul Seeley but I would guess I'm reading it closer to how he would, since I'm taking into account that ANE stories of this category aren't focused on teaching trivia or history. They are intended to tell very focused messages. Some weaknesses in interpreting the text too literally (failing to give proper due to the symbols) include:

A. The sampling of "useful" trivia supposedly taught in this chapter, such as "why do people hate snakes" is truly trivial and inadequate to be considered the author's intent. For every question supposedly answered, there ar e 10,000 more not answered. For example,

 * "why do people hate roaches, bats and spiders (not just snakes)?"
 * "Why do we have to go to sleep every 24 hours?
 * "Why do monkeys look like little people?"
 * "Why does fermented drink make me feel good and do things I regret?"

B. Rather than answer questions, It actually raises new questions,such as,

 * "If snakes talked in the garden, why don't they talk any more?"
 * "How can eating food make you literally become like God?"
 * "Is the garden with the angels guarding it still there, or were they eventually taken away, and if so then why weren't they simply taken away in the first place?"
 * "If a bird ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, how would it be affected?"
 * "Why did God plant that deadly tree in the garden, anyhow, if we weren't supposed to eat it?"
 * How can Adam be made out of dust since our bodies are 65% water but dust contains negligible water?
 * How can Eve be made out of a rib of Adam unless she was very, very tiny, approximately the size of a rib? Or else Adam must have started out almost twice as big so that an entire woman could be carved out of his side. (Or maybe the Bible didn't tell what else Eve was made out of, which would have been the majority of her body. In other words, it doesn't seem to really be answering practical questions, but rather just telling about relationships and theology through the use of symbolic things and actions, like making Eve out of Adam's side -- very symbolic but not very useful to explain how God actually made Eve.)

C. It also includes things we know to be false (if taken literally), such as,

 * A snake can't really vocalize because it has no vocal cords, inadequate lung capacity, the wrong shaped tongue, no lips, soft pallet, or teeth to form consonants, and no speech center in the brain (having a merely reptilian brain).
 * Snakes are not really the craftiest beasts of the field. Raccoons, monkeys, and crows are far more crafty than snakes.
 * Someone migh t reply that the serpent is really the devil in a snake's body. But the text never says that -- we figure out that the devil is somehow involved by recognizing the clear symbolism. (It literally says the serpent is the craftiest beast of the field, and it never mentions the devil at all.) If we are really to accept that it was speaking symbolically when it said the serpent is the craftiest beast of the field, then why not accept that other symbols as well?
If the author was trying to answer practical questions important to the Hebrews, he didn't do a very complete job. But if he was using symbolic elements to tell about our relationship to God and one another, then it is a very elegant piece of work.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
To: asa@calvin.edu <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 2:43 pm
Subject: RE: [asa] Nakedness and the Fall of Man
Phil said:
"I've been re-thinking the Fall of Man, and I've concluded that the author intentionally does not introduce the category of "sin" in the story, and we've been mistakenly inserting it there. Instead, the author's principle categories for the Fall of Man are "nakedness" and "knowing good from evil." IMO, this distinction (nakedness, not sin, as the essence of the Fall) has profound theological and Christological importance, including our understanding of man's origins and its relationship to science."

What if, instead of "nakedness" representing something in Christ, it instead meant something literal and helpful to the Hebrew readers of the day? Maybe Moses was simply explaining:

1. Why do humans wear clothes, but animals don't?
2. Why do guys have to work so had to live?
3. Why do women have overwhelming pain in childbirth?
4. Why do we hate snakes so much?
5. How come we know "good and evil" but the animals don't?
6. Why celebrate the Sabbath (6 days of creation and 1 day of rest)?

Maybe what I'm suggesting is the "Paul Seely reading method?" (I'm not sure if Paul would agree to this suggestion.)

...Bernie

________________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu<mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu> [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu<mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu?>] On Behalf Of philtill@aol.com<mailto:philtill@aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 10:31 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
Subject: [asa] Nakedness and the Fall of Man

George, this is especially for you becaue I'd like to know if you (or anyone else) has seen much theology written about this topic of Nakedness in the Fall of Man, and what it means to the theology of the Fall.

I've been re-thinking the Fall of Man, and I've concluded that the author intentionally does not introduce the category of "sin" in the story, and we've been mistakenly inserting it there. Instead, the author's principle categories for the Fall of Man are "nakedness" and "knowing good from evil." IMO, this distinction (nakedness, not sin, as the essence of the Fall) has profound theological and Christological importance, including our understanding of man's origins and its relationship to science. Here's the idea:

1. The imagery of Nakedness speaks of being not clothed with Christ (i.e., not having God's life in us mediated by Christ)
* It indicates our inadequacy to live as moral agents apart from God. As long as Adam had not gained the "knowledge of good & evil", then he had no moral inadequacy and so no sense of moral inadequacy (not "ashamed" of nakedness).. As soon as he gained moral knowledge, he recognized his nakedness and was ashamed. That is, he realized something was missing from himself which made him "not right." He needed something to be added to himself to be completed. What he20needed was Christ.
* Paul picks up on the same imagery in Rom. 13:14, "clothe yourselves in Christ", and in Gal.3:27, "all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." Surely Paul had the garden of Eden in mind when he thought being naked and being clothed was an important way to describe Christ.
* I think the case for this interpretation is made very strongly, below

2. God contrasts vegetation with animal sacrifice in both the account of the Fall and in the Abel & Cain account. This parallelism between Gen. 3 & Gen.4 is striking and should not be missed.
* Adam & Eve clothed themselves in vegetation, but God rejected that. Cain brought a sacrifice of vegetation, but God rejected that.
* God replaced Adam & Eve's vegetaion covering with a sacrificed animal's skin, which He accepted. Abel brought a sacrifice of an animal, which God accepted.
* The parallelism of rejecting vegetation versus accepting a killed animal indicates that the symbols have he same meaning in both accounts
3. The symbolism of vegetation (the fig leaf to cover nakedness and also Cain's crop offering) represents our "works", our reliance on our own efforts to span the gap between us & God
* Adam & family were gardeners, charged with growing plants. This appears in Gen.2:15 and again in the curse Gen.3:17-19 which is focused on the growth of crops as mankind's occupation, his "work", his "sweat". It appears again in the curse of Cain's work. Throughout this context, Adam's and Cain's "works" were the leaves they produced as farmers/gardeners.
* Using a fig leaf to cover your nakedness represents trying to save yourself by works, trying to make up with is missing from ourselves by something that we can find conveniently at hand.
3. In contrast, the symbol=2 0of animal sacrifice pictures Christ. It demonstrates faith in God's grace that He will provide a substitute so that we don't need to rely on our inadequate works. This is consistent with the theology of atonement and symbolism of blood sacrifice throughout the OT.

4. Since God solved our nakedness by clothing us with Christ (pictured by the sacrificed animal), then obviously the problem was that we needed Christ and didn't yet have him. I.e., if Christ was the solution, then being without Christ was the problem. This is a compelling argument that nakedness represents being without Christ.

5. But the text makes it clear that being without Christ was OK for Adam before he became a moral agent. Nakedness is not sin!!! It is OK for an animal that doesn't know good from evil to not be clothed with Christ. However, it is never OK for any moral being to not be clothed with Christ. Even un-fallen beings like angels, if they are moral agents, need Christ. It is a category mistake to think that any being can produce a moral life a part from Christ. God is the source of all goodness, so the category "being good" is undefinable apart from relationship with Christ who lives in us. So that is why God told Adam and Eve that they must not become moral agents (as they were, naked -- not clothed in Christ), lest they die. In this account, death is not a judicial pronouncement God w ould render for their disobedience; No! -- it is the natural outcome of becoming moral agents who do not yet have Christ.

6. As I read the text I see how it is all about nakedness rather than about sin. They were naked and unashamed. Then they ate of the tree and knew they were naked. (The text immediately goes to their nakedness as the all-important category at the moment they ate of that tree). Then they clothed their nakedness. They were ashamed of nakedness and that is why they hid. "I was afraid because I was naked." Then God discusses their nakedness. Then God un-clothes them and re-clothes them His own way. Then the symbols of the two kinds of clothing (vegetation and animal sacrifice) are repeated in the Cain/Abel story. So the Fall of Man is ALL about their nakedness. Nakedness is not a quaint little illustration of man becoming ashamed after he falls into sin. NO! Instead, it is the very essence of t he falling. (The other part of that essence is becoming one who knows good from evil.) Note also that it doesn't say Adam and Eve hid from God because they were ashamed because they had disobeyed and were feeling guilty, or they were ashamed because they sinned and knew they actually were guilty. No! None of these categories (sin, guilt, guilty feelings for sin) have been introduced by the author into the text. These are things that we wrongly read into the text because we are trying to jump ahead too quickly. Instead, Adam and Eve were ashamed simply because they were naked. That's they said, and that's the only thing the author considered to be important enough to tell us about their hiding. It really is a story about their nakedness, their inadequacy apart from Christ. Being without Christ (naked) is vastly more important than having guilty feelings for disobedience. We've been majoring on categories (gui l t & sin) that the author has not even introduced into the text, and we've been missing the importance of the one category (nakedness) that the author has been harping on over and over again all through the text.

7. This interpretation helps to make sense of the rest o f the story. Why did the author think it was important to have Adam name animals and Eve be made subsequent to Adam? Surely there are multiple reasons, but one reason that I think unifies the main themes of the text is that it is about human inadequacy and the need for relationships. Man is inadequate and so he is told to find a helper, and so he examines and names the animals but finds no helper. Animals are incapable of answering man's inadequacy. God then provides for man's inadeqacy by making him a helper. To be adequate in this world, man and woman need each other. Relationship solves inadequacy. But the author finds it important to say in the very next sentence that both man and woman are naked -- so the sexes "complete" one another in an important sense, but we do not "clothe" one another in the (symbolic) sense that we need relationship with God, too. Th e chapter is all about the relationships we need to be adequate.

8. The first time God introduces the category of sin is not in the Fall, but in the Abel/Cain account. Abel rightly continues trusting God to cover his nakedness (so to speak) as pictured by his offering of animal sacrifices. Cain represents the human tendency to slip back to trusting ourselves rath er than God, trying to cover our nakedness (so to speak) by vegetation offerings (our works). His offering is rejected, and he is angry. Now for the very first time in the Bible God mentions sin, that it is crouching at Cain's door (a picture of a lion about to pounce) and it's desire is for him (the lion wants to eat him). So the category of sin is introduced not as the quintessence of the Fall, but as merely a consequence of the Fall. The Fall was about our lack of relationship with Christ. Sin is the outcome of not having that relationship. This puts Christology at the center where it should be, and hamartiology in the second ary position. This is the importance of the Cain/Abel story and why the author included it in the Scriptures (something that was always a mystery to me until now). The author, having dealt with Christology in the Fall, now proceeds to hamartiology in the Cain/Abel account.

9. This puts the theology of Genesis 3 at a very highly developed level, as high as what we find in the NT. It is identical to Paul's discussion of Law and grace. Paul says that a Law has not been given capable of communicating life to us. Instead, the law communicates death because it leaves us inadequate to keep its demands=2 0at the same time it makes them. It only shows us how we fall short. Life is found not in our efforts to keep the law, but as a gracous gift in Christ, through the indwelling Spirit. We need to be clothed in Christ. The author of Genesis was no theological slouch. He anticipated all this (inspired as he was) and told a story of early man becoming a free moral agent while not yet clothed in Christ. The law (the knowledge of good & evil) did not communicate the ability to keep its demands. It only allowed them to recognized their inadequacy as moral agents who were missing something important ( Christ). Man was ashamed at his inadequacy and relied on his own efforts to try to make up for it. But naked and not trusting God as he was, sin was crouching at his door and it consumed him. As Paul said, the law brought death, and spiritually dead people sin. The law stirred up in us all manner of covetousness.

This is freeing because I see no conflict with what we know from science with this kind of an understanding of the Fall of Man. We know that at some point man became different than other primates because he became a moral agent. We know that in this process he did not end up being clothed in Christ, a spiritual being whose every generation comes out of the womb singing Hosannah. Instead, he comes out relying on his own works to make up for his sense of moral and spiritual inadequacy. The inspired author of Genesis interprets this for us theologically. He connects the dots between these two common-sense observations about man's original state by explaining the causal relationships between them. He says that our becoming moral agents while yet naked (inadequate to the task of moral agency apart from Christ) made us inherently spiritually dead.

We also know as a common-sense observation that man ended up being consumed by sin. The author of Genesis connects this dot for us, too. He tells how the moral agent man (Cain), relying on his own works rather than Christ, fell short in his behavior and so mankind was consumed by sin. The causal relationships are:
* Naked (not in Christ) + Become Moral Agent --> Death
* Death + Rely on Self (not Christ) --> Sin rules us
This is different than what I was taught traditionally in church, as follows:
* Sin (disobey command to not eat from the tree) --> Death
* Death --> have guilty feelings illustrated by the quaint example of Adam not wanting people to see his privates
The traditional view fails because it treats the symbols in the text as trivial. It ignores the symbol of the tree making us into moral agents. It tries to say instead that man was already moral agent in his original estate, and hence capable of sinning (disobeying the command to not eat from the tree). It thus finds it necessary to make a strained re-interpretation of the tree as "knowing good and evil in our own way rather than God's way" rather than simply "knowing good and evil" as the text has it (and as God affirms in saying "man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil). The traditional view also trivializes the symbol of nakedness, which is the most important part of the whole story. The traditional view also fails because it tries to psychologize Adam's hiding (a guilt reaction to sin) rather than seeing it as a deep statement of Man's recogniation o f his inadequacy, being as he was apart from Christ. The traditional view simply makes a muddle out of the text.

The traditional view is also hard to interpret in light of science. Much of what we consider our "sinful nature" is the result of evolutionary inheritance. If Adam was originally a moral being while yet unfallen, then at least those parts of his "sinful nature" must have pre-existed his fall. He would have been a moral agent with biological urges to do morally unacceptable things and yet without any sin. While this is not a logical contradiction, we have to wonder how Adam pulled that off, and why he later failed to continue pulling that off when he fell. And how does that kind of Fall correlate to the symbols in the text, eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? The loss of Adam's (supposed) ability to perfectly resist biological urges does not correlate with "Man has become like one of us, knowing good from evil." Science just does not correlate with the text, read that way.

But taking the categories the author20uses, and steadfastly refusing to read into the text any categories that the author has not yet introduced, produces a picture that is completely consistent with evolution. Early man, prior to the Fall, would have had biological urges that must be resisted if he were to become a moral agent. So to avoid spiritual death, before he becomes a moral being he must put on Christ so that he will be able, through Christ, to resist those urges. But sadly, man became a moral being while yet "naked" and inadequate, being without Christ. Even without biological urges, being a moral being without Christ would have produced death. The evolutionary biological urges were not in any way causal to that death, although they help us to understand our need for Christ quite efficiently. In fact, we might conclude that God in his economy decided that man should have biological urges inherited by evolution because after his Fal l they would show us so well our inadequacy apart from Christ.

Phil

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Received on Fri Feb 27 11:56:54 2009