Original Sin or Original Sinfulness?

4: Restoring Roots

One of the unfortunate consequences of Augustine's interpretation of Genesis has been the loss to the later Christian tradition of the image of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the image of the tree of life. It would, I think, be fair to say that these two images have not appeared to hold great significance for Christians. It is true that the tree of knowledge has featured in many artistic depictions of Adam and Eve in the garden, but they have usually been depictions of what the artists, operating within the Augustinian tradition, believed to be the moment of ‘original sin’, where the tree is usually presented as an apple tree and is accompanied by the snake! There is hardly any acknowledgement that the tree is a tree of knowledge of good and evil and, as for the tree of life, that sadly has rarely featured in Christian art.¹ Yet there are good grounds for claiming that both of these images have strong positive associations in both the OT and the NT. Christians have been alive to the theme of wisdom in both testaments and to the notion of the spirit of God being associated with truth and life. But they have tended not to link these themes to the two trees mentioned in Genesis or indeed to other biblical references to these two trees. And this has been a considerable loss. When an interpretation of a foundational biblical concept, event or image goes awry, then the loss to the tradition is bound to be both considerable and unfortunate. In this article I shall attempt to reconnect several themes or ideas found in later “salvation history” to their roots in chapter 3 of Genesis.

Augustine, because he saw the major significance of the incident in Genesis 3 as consisting of Man's sinful disobedience of God's command and the fall that followed from this, interpreted the image of the tree of knowledge in a reductive manner. For him the knowledge our first parents achieved did not refer to any power inherent in the tree, but was the knowledge that resulted from the sinful act, the post-factum knowledge that they had done wrong. It did not refer to any knowledge or power deriving from the tree or to any property the tree might be thought to possess. The reference in Genesis to the couple's eyes being opened once they had eaten from the tree was likewise reduced to an association with the act of wrongdoing – the couple's eyes were opened to the shame of their sinful action. He never entertains the possibility that the couple might have gained something, acquired some new powers; he has thoughts only for what he believes they have lost. Augustine's unsatisfactory interpretation of the significance of the two trees is of a piece with his unsatisfactory understanding of the divine command that the human couple should not eat from the tree of knowledge. For Augustine, the divine prohibition is simply authoritarian, the inculcation of the message that the human couple owed a duty of obedience to God.² Augustine is quite blind to the “primitive mentality” view that the prohibition was related to the fact that knowledge and life were attributes of God, divine prerogatives that lay beyond the rightful reach of the human couple.

If Augustine's interpretation of Genesis 3 is accepted then a good part of revelation in scripture might be expected to be concerned with the action taken by God in association with his Chosen People to undo the sin of Adam and put the Hebrew race – and through it the human race – back on the right track. In short, it would have been action aimed, first, at countering or undoing and, then, at redirecting. But this is not the picture that emerges in the biblical narrative. Rather, what we find in scripture is a picture of God's action – once the initial impulse to wipe Man out has been reversed – aimed at perfecting the divine asset of knowledge of good and evil that our first parents acquired; and of doing so for the reason that such knowledge is the pathway to eternal life with Yahweh. That is the significance of the Flood: God decides to start all over again and to fashion a new relationship with Man – the covenant – through which Man will learn to cope with his new powers. Not for the last time, God converts a negative into a positive. In both Testaments, the emphasis is on refining and fine-tuning Man's grasp of what is right and what is wrong; of developing what came to be called Wisdom; and, through Wisdom, of bringing Man closer to God. The biblical theme or movement known as the “Wisdom Tradition” is the first of the ideas in salvation history I wish to reconnect to Genesis 3.

A: Wisdom

The association of the words used in Genesis 3: 22, “knowing good and evil”, with wisdom and good judgment is well brought out in a number of passages in the Old Testament. Several commentators have noted the close similarity of the words used in Genesis with the words used by Barzillai in 2 Samuel 19: 34. Barzillai was an old man of eighty who went to meet King David at the river Jordan after David's army had suppressed the rebellion instigated by Absalom, David's son. In an earlier episode Barzillai had fed David and his followers after they had fled from Absalom, so he was someone the King looked on with favour. Invited by King David to cross the river and join him at court in Jerusalem, Barzillai excuses himself on the grounds of his advanced years, saying he has lost the power of telling the difference between good and evil, using a form of words reminiscent of Genesis. Bible commentator Pauline Viviano draws the reasonable conclusion that Barzillai is being invited by the King to come to court as a trusted adviser or counsellor. In making his excuses, the aged Barzillai in fact is referring to the loss of his ability to make wise judgments. Viviano ably supports this interpretation by referring to other biblical texts, such as 1 Kings 3:9 and 2 Samuel 14: 17, where the meaning of the phrase “knowing good and evil” is linked to the ruler's ability to make wise and honest judgments on behalf of the people. 1 Kings 3:9 refers to the wisdom of Solomon, which became legendary among the Hebrews. In this text the young King Solomon is asked in a dream what he would like God to give him, and replies: “Give thy servant therefore an understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil.” In 2 Samuel 14, King David is petitioned by a “wise woman” and is challenged to make a complicated judgment, and the woman says of the king that he is “like the angel of God to discern good and evil.” A few verses later, she says of David, “my lord has wisdom like the wisdom of the angel of God … ”– the phrase “to discern good and evil” is taken as synonymous with “having wisdom.” What is more, in Deuteronomy 1: 39 and Isaiah 7: 15, the phrase “knowing good and evil” can be seen to refer to knowledge of an adult kind, not possessed by children, knowledge that has been acquired over time through experience. In summary, the phrase “knowing good and evil” refers to the ability to make wise judgments in an independent, adult way, without requiring the permission of some higher personage.³

These Old Testament texts confirm the association between the words used in Genesis about the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the emerging emphasis in the bible on the need for rulers and kings to exercise wisdom, and to dispose of the arguments of those who are inclined to interpret the Genesis words as referring to the dawning of sexual awareness manifested in the human couple's consciousness of their nakedness.⁴ Rather than referring to the dawning of sexual awareness, the phrase “knowing good and evil” or “discerning good and evil” as used in these passages clearly refers to the attainment of knowledge, judgment and powers of discernment of a mature, adult kind – in a word, to the attainment of wisdom. So highly prized did wisdom become in the culture of the ancient Hebrews that a whole literature grew up not only to communicate it but to sing its praises: Wisdom became the object of deep veneration and unstinting praise, recognised as the secret of a good life. The reason for this, again consistent with the interpretation of Genesis 3 being put forward in these articles, was that Wisdom was one of Yahweh's greatest attributes. Only Yahweh was truly wise and it was he who granted wisdom to humans: because the Nephilim, the giants of old, were denied wisdom, they perished through their folly (Bar. 3: 26–28). The height of wisdom is understanding the judgments of Yahweh and it is said that “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10; Job 28:28) In Deuteronomy there appears the notion of wisdom that is to dominate all later ideas: that wisdom is the observation of the Law (Dt 4:6).

However, even in the Old Testament the limitations of wisdom, its inability to answer all of life's questions, are explored. Both Ecclesiastes and the Book of Job question the somewhat complacent belief that a life dedicated to wisdom and observance of the Law will inevitably be rewarded with happiness and prosperity. These two books in particular reflect on the injustices in the world and on the human suffering and misery that are experienced even by very good people, revealing the limitations of human reason and of the wisdom tradition itself. While both Job and Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, are ultimately resigned to the mystery of suffering and submit to the inscrutable will of Yahweh, they nevertheless point up the limitations of Hebrew wisdom and suggest that the riddle of human existence requires as a solution something deeper and greater than mere wisdom. Notwithstanding this subversive element within the wisdom tradition itself, however, wisdom continues to be prized and even Qoheleth never quite abandons his belief that “wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness.” (Ecclesiastes 2: 13)⁵

In several of the books of the OT Wisdom is personified, depicted as a female creature created by God before all other things: see Sirach 1:4–10 and Proverbs 8:22–24, for example. Proverbs goes on to speak of how wisdom was with God when he created the earth: “then was I beside him, like a master workman.” (Proverbs 8:30) It is in this way that Sophia, the wisdom of the Old Testament, acts as the template for the Logos (meaning both Word and Reason) mentioned in the Prologue of St John's gospel. It would be hard to think of a closer tie between the Old and the New Testaments.⁶ And indeed the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament is something that acts as a backdrop to a good deal of St Paul's reflections on the significance of Jesus's life and death within the context of Jewish religious history. Before moving on to a consideration of the general cast and shape of Paul's thinking, however, let me mention one other New Testament passage where a clear link is made between wisdom and the action of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.

In chapter 5 of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the author, usually considered to have been an educated Jewish convert to Christianity with a Hellenistic intellectual background who wrote some time after Paul had completed his last epistle, makes the distinction between those who, like children, live on milk and are “unskilled in the word of righteousness” and “the mature” who are capable of eating solid food because their faculties have been “trained by practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5: 13–14). This is yet another passage, this time from a relatively late period in the NT writings, where a clear equivalence is made between wisdom, the fruit of experience, and the ability to distinguish between good and evil. Like the passages quoted from the OT, it suggests that in eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil our first parents gained something positive, acquired something precious, a divine asset whose cultivation would bring them closer to God. On reflection, this is hardly surprising since “the woman” in the story of Genesis 3 saw that the tree “was to be desired to make one wise”. (Gen 3:6)

B: Paul

In his writings, St Paul presents Jesus as the final revelation of God's wisdom. At the beginning of his letter to the Ephesians, he speaks of how God has “made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (Eph. 1: 9–10) In 1 Corinthians Paul makes a still bolder claim when he defines Christian wisdom as Christ nailed to the cross, which confounds the wisdom of this world but is the revelation of God's hidden wisdom and secret purpose, his plan of salvation for humankind (1 Cor 1:18 and 2: 7–10). Defying the somewhat complacent link between wisdom and human prosperity frequently proclaimed in the wisdom tradition of the Jews, he goes on to say that the wise of this world must become fools to acquire the true wisdom of God: “For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.” Christ is presented as the fulfilment of the wisdom of God, as the means of salvation who has superseded the law of the Old Testament. It is in this way that Christ is related to the first mention in the bible of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is surely not too fanciful to see the tree of knowledge of good and evil being transformed in the Christian era into the tree of the cross, since in Acts and the epistles the cross is frequently referred to as a tree⁷– that the knowledge Man took from God now finds its completion in the cross, understood as the great symbol of loving self-giving; and that the human quest for knowledge of good and evil, for wisdom, finds its answer in the commandment to love God above all things and our neighbour as ourselves. And just as the tree of knowledge of good and evil is presented in Genesis as the gateway to the tree of life, so the cross of Christ is the gateway to the resurrection and a sharing in the eternal life of Yahweh. And just as God raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 8: 11) so will he raise from the dead those who have put on Christ Jesus; and in this way the barrier that Yahweh placed on the way to the tree of life (Genesis 3: 24) will be definitively removed. Deprived of this association with the images of the two trees in the Garden of Eden, our appreciation of the saving actions of Christ and God, as set out in Paul's writings, is greatly impoverished. It is hard to believe that Paul, with his references to time and “the hidden wisdom of God”, did not grasp these associations and intend his readers to grasp them also.

However, Augustine provides a different interpretation of Paul's writings. As is well known, he found in Paul, and in particular in his references to Adam and Christ in the Epistle to the Romans, further confirmation for his doctrine of original sin. It is in Ad Simplicianum ⁸ that Augustine first uses the term peccatum originale (original sin) and supports his understanding of it by reference to 1 Timothy 2: 14 and Romans 5: 14. In a later work, De natura et gratia ⁹, he again quotes from Romans 5, this time citing verse 12 against Pelagius, claiming that “death passed to all men” through Adam, “in whom all have sinned.” This is a famous mis-translation in the Latin Vulgate bible of the Greek eph ho pantes hemarton which reads in the Latin as in quo omnes peccaverunt – in whom all have sinned. The correct translation should rather be in as much as all have sinned. The mistake made by Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate edition whose prowess as a translator Augustine greatly admired, was to translate eph ho as if it were en ho – in whom. It is a major mistake that Augustine inherited from Jerome (and defended against his own critics) and no doubt underpinned the supreme confidence Augustine had in his understanding of original sin, since the verse appears to state clearly that all of us have sinned in Adam and must, logically, share in his guilt.

Notwithstanding this error, a defender of Augustine might well claim to find in Romans 5 sufficient evidence to support Augustine on original sin. For the passage draws a clear parallel between Adam and Christ, claiming that Adam brought sin into the world and, through sin, death, which spread to all men; and goes on to add that “if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many … Then as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5: 12–19) A neat schematic summary of Romans 5 would look like this:

Adam – Christ

Disobedience – Obedience

Sin – Grace

Condemnation – Justification

Death – Life.

From this powerful passage in Romans 5, some theologians have drawn several conclusions: first, that just as Christ is a real person, so Adam must be understood as a real person; second, that Paul clearly sees Adam's action of eating from the forbidden tree as an original trespass or sin, in which all of us are implicated, which is responsible for all subsequent moral evil; and third, that as a consequence of these two, the incident described in Genesis 3 must be interpreted as a fall from a higher to a lower state since it has called forth Christ's saving act of redemption aimed at restoring us to something approaching our former status.

In answer to these arguments, I would say, first, that to understand Christ's role in deliberate contrast to Adam's is not thereby to grant historical status to Adam. One of the functions of myth in Genesis is to provide mythical prototypes which are the pattern of the historical figures or incidents written about later. So when Paul speaks of Adam as “a type of the one who was to come” (5: 14), there is no necessity either to believe that Paul understood Adam to be an historical person (though he may well have done) or for us to understand Adam as an historical person. The significance of Christ's action, which it is Paul's main aim to convey, is just as adequately served by the notion that Adam was a type of Christ – a model or image or pattern – in a purely figurative sense. The antithesis between Adam and Christ drawn by Paul can be understood, therefore, as nothing more than a literary device.

The same can be said about Paul's reference to “one man's trespass”– this need not be interpreted with a realism compelling the judgment that Adam's action, as described in Genesis 3, was anything more than a literary illustration of the nature of sin (and temptation as an integral element of sinning), as was argued in the previous article. If, as seems likely, Paul's main intention is not to interpret Adam by reference to Christ but rather to interpret Christ by reference to Adam, it would be a mistake to understand his intention as being to provide a commentary on Adam's misdeed; rather Paul is clearly intent on drawing out the universality of Christ's action by drawing a parallel between Christ and Adam (as opposed to a more strictly “Jewish” figure such as Abraham or Moses), and this intention can be achieved just as well even if Adam is regarded as a non-historical mythical man. Historical realism is not required for the significance of Christ's action to be grasped. The answer to the third argument follows from the answers to the first two. There is no reason to see Christ's act of redemption as a restoration of Man to some former higher state. Indeed, Paul makes no comparison between Man's new status and the condition of Man before the “Fall”, nor does he for that matter ever speak of a “Fall”.¹⁰

If we move beyond Romans chapter 5 to consider the line of reasoning to be found in the epistle as a whole, it is remarkable how the epistle appears to be a trenchant commentary on chapter 3 of Genesis, as we have interpreted it here. For the Epistle to the Romans takes up and amplifies the theme that is central in Genesis 3, the theme of the relationship between knowledge and life. Paul brings out vividly the fact that knowledge – in this case knowledge of the law, whether that be the law “written on their hearts” which the Gentiles know (2: 15) or the law of Moses which the Jews know (2: 17f) – does not translate into life, that knowledge by itself cannot confer life, in that peculiar biblical understanding whereby life is associated with God, freedom and righteousness and death is associated with sin and slavery. The condition of Man under the law of Moses, Paul may be understood as saying, is not such an advance as Jews like to think on the condition of Man depicted in Genesis. In fact, Paul goes further and sees knowledge as positively dangerous, since it makes sin possible while failing to provide an effective antidote. This again mirrors the picture that emerges in Genesis, where Man achieves knowledge but this fails to lead on to living righteously but rather creates the conditions needed for sin. The Epistle to the Romans, I would suggest, is the best Christian commentary we have on the first book of the bible, and is clearly written with Genesis in mind.

First there is Paul's startling comment: “For no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” (3:20) This is clarified by the extensive comments on the law and sin in 7: 7–25:

“What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin … Apart from the law sin lies dead. It was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died; the very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me.” (7: 7–11)

An interesting distinction is made here by Paul between the law, which is good, and the sin which knowledge of the law makes possible. The parallel with Genesis 3 is fairly clear: the achievement of knowledge is not in itself a sin but it opens the way for sin, it creates the preconditions for sin. What Paul – a Jew brought up in the Mosaic covenant with a thorough familiarity with the law – wishes here to emphasise is that in the face of sin's power, mere knowledge is puny:

“For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do … For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.” (7: 18–20)

Contrasting with the feebleness of the law when confronted by sin's power is the power that comes from Christ's victory over death:

“But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God really dwells in you … If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you.” (8: 9–11)

Here then is the final answer to the riddle of human existence, the incompleteness of Man exposed in Genesis. Man's separation from God has been partially overcome through God's initiation of the covenant with Moses. But the Mosaic covenant, and the system of Law that developed within and through it, have not been able effectively to bridge the gap between God and Man; they have provided knowledge but not life. In many ways, Paul is saying, the gulf between God and Man remains, the law does not provide true union with God; rather in a sense it simply serves to taunt us, to tease and torment us by showing how far from such union we are. In some ways Paul is pointing up the ultimate bankruptcy of the wisdom tradition since the knowledge provided by the law is not efficacious. Paul introduces a new element into salvation history, affirming that Christ replaces the law with the Spirit of God and that it is the Spirit that makes knowledge efficacious, for to live the life of the Spirit is to achieve true union with God.

“When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (8: 15–17)

The last sentence is significant. We are to live lives that are like Christ's – certain moral imperatives follow from our status as sons and heirs of Christ of the glory that is to come, in which we set our hope (see 8: 23–25). The moral imperatives are set down in chapters 12–15, and are a filling out of Christ's command that if anyone would come after him they should take up their cross daily and follow him. They are Paul's realisation that in this life the tree of the cross is the route to the tree of life, that the way to the tree of life is the via crucis. We are empowered to follow this way “because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (5:5) Being filled with the Spirit of God or living the life of the Spirit is the final and conclusive manifestation of the process of “divinisation” which was begun when Man ate from the tree of knowledge. It is the state of being in love with God, the gift of the Spirit, that reveals itself in acts of kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5: 22) The action of the Spirit in us causes us to overcome our natural egotism, to allow God's spirit to take command of our spiritual faculties, and to grow as human beings by bridging the gap between knowledge and life. What is most illuminating in Paul, and it is a point of the utmost importance grasped by the Reformers, is that it is by being absorbed in the Divine Life and purposes through faith that human beings become capable of sustained good works.¹¹ Just as sin enters the world as a consequence of Man's state of estrangement from God – and not as the result of a single wrong action – so good works are the fruit of those who live the life of God in faith. In both Genesis and Romans esse precedes agere, ontology comes before action. What comes first in both accounts is the relationship between God and humankind; actions are grounded in this relationship. It is because we are as we are that we act as we do.

The Epistle to the Romans is the most mature and comprehensive statement of Paul's understanding of redemption as an act of atonement initiated by God the Father and completed by his son, the man Jesus, with the power of the Holy Spirit. In his reflections Paul is clearly addressing what was for him a contemporary issue: what was it that Christianity added to Judaism, the religion of his fathers? Why was Christ needed to complete the revelation to the Jews? In presenting his answer, Paul penetrates to what he considers to be the major fault line of Judaism: that it taught adherence to the Law but that the Law was insufficient of itself to deliver the life of unity with God that humankind needed and most desired. This is a contemporary issue for Paul but, in diagnosing it, it is likely that Paul recognises that behind it stands one of the oldest truths in scripture: the inadequacy of the law mirrors the inadequacy of mere wisdom, of mere knowledge of good and evil, for the attainment of life. In addressing this issue Paul is surely aware of the fact that he is reaching back into the first book of the bible and addressing the basic human fault line which was revealed in the story, telling of how Man ate from one tree but was prevented from eating from the other, thereby causing a fissure to open up in the human heart: Man wishes for union with God but cannot command it nor can he effect it by his own actions. It must come as a gift from God. There is good evidence for thinking that Genesis 3 provides the template for one of the major arguments put forward by Paul in Romans. Paul would not have spoken of Christ and the Spirit as he did, would not have addressed the issue of redemption in the manner that he did, had he not grasped the significance of knowledge that falls short of achieving life, where ‘life’ implies union with God.

Other Pauline Writings

It would be a mistake to think that these views of Paul on the limitations of the law are confined to the epistle to the Romans. The futility of the law and of mere wisdom when compared with the power of God's Spirit is a theme that is developed in chapters 2 and 3 of 1 Corinthians, and much of Paul's epistle to the Galatians concerns the inability of the law to deliver salvation or bring justification. In Galatians Paul reaches heights of eloquence on this theme that are surpassed only in Romans:

“Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith … . And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying ‘Abba! Father!’.” (Gal 3: 23–26; 4:6)

In these passages in Galatians Paul might be understood as saying that “we”– Jews like him – were de-centred from God, despite the best endeavours of the Law; but now “we” have become, through the power of the Spirit of Christ that is given to us, truly and lastingly centred on God our Father, just as Christ is; that through the power of Christ the “compass needle” of our conscious being has found its true direction, and we have become Father-centred; and that this has brought us a wholeness and completeness, a human integrity, that the Law could not provide.

C: St John's Gospel

Although it has become fashionable in some quarters to claim that Paul “invented” Christianity, a little reflection reveals that what he has to say is the result of his reflections on the Jewish religious tradition in the light of Christ's earthly mission; and while Paul wrote before the gospels were written down, his reflections can be seen to be developments of themes and ideas that we find in the accounts of Christ's mission in the gospels. For the sake of brevity, I shall confine myself to a consideration of the interpretation of that mission that is presented in the gospel of John, but a similar understanding could also be obtained from a consideration of any of the synoptic gospels.

What is remarkable about John's gospel is how time and again we encounter two major themes: first, that Jesus is the climax and conclusion of Jewish salvation history; and second, that Jesus is presented as the bringer of new life, as the source of life in accordance with the Father's will and in association with the mission of the Spirit. My purposes will be served by a series of quotations – my commentary on their connection with Genesis 3, as I have interpreted it, will follow.

In one of his long altercations with “the Jews”, Jesus says, “You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life … Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; it is Moses who accuses you, on whom you set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me.” (Jn 5: 39–46)

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Lord, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” (Jn 6: 32–35)

“For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life.” (Jn 6: 40)

“It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (Jn 6:63)

On the last day of the feast (of Tabernacles), the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (Jn 7:37–39)

“Truly, truly, I say to you, if any one keeps my word, he will never see death.” (Jn 8: 51)

“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad … Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (Jn 8: 56 – 58)

In his farewell discourses with his disciples, Jesus tells them that “he who has seen me has seen the Father … Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” (Jn 14: 9–10)

He assures them that he will not leave them desolate. “The Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (Jn 14: 26)

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers.” (Jn 15 5–6)

I could go on, but there is no need. The case is clearly made: Jesus is the completion of God's revelation, the climax of Jewish salvation history, the bringer of new life, the one who reveals the Father to mankind and acts as the mediator between God and Man. The Spirit will be sent to those who believe in Jesus after his resurrection from the dead, and will lead believers to the truth. It can surely not be doubted that Jesus is the source of that life, the life of union with God, that God himself prevented humankind from acquiring by blocking the way to the tree of life in Genesis 3: ‘“and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever”– therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from Eden … ’ (Genesis 3: 22–23) That act of prevention was not the end of the story but the beginning. As the whole thrust of John's gospel makes clear, through the associations it creates between knowledge of the truth, eating and drinking and living forever, the mission of the Spirit who will lead the disciples to the truth, and the Father whose will it is Jesus's mission to fulfil, on the one hand, and life, coming alive in God, eternal life that overcomes death, on the other, the movement of divine revelation, as seen from the perspective of the Christian gospels, is a movement towards the attainment of life – and hence the attainment of that which God denied humankind in Genesis. What emerges here is that it is God's plan not to deny humankind access to such life forever but rather to enable women and men to attain to such life but in accordance with his own plan, and not Man's, and, so to speak, in his own time, when he decides that the time is ripe. Augustine's interpretation has the effect of severing the work of salvation, as revealed in the gospels, from its roots in Genesis 3, and such severance amounts to a great impoverishment of salvation history.

D: The Book of Revelation

The Apocalypse or Book of Revelation, the final book of the Christian bible, is basically an eschatological vision graphically depicted in terms of symbols and allegories, which contains many echoes of the Book of Genesis. Its allegorical nature and its concern with the last things – the eschata – has made it a favourite text with the prophets of doom commentators who love to interpret its images as clues to the actual historical events – mostly lurid catastrophic events – that will occur in the run up to the end of the world. A more sober and scholarly approach would tend to agree with the Catholic theologian, Yves Congar, that what we find in scripture is not a literal account of events but a theological interpretation of the meaning of history.¹² In this last book of the bible, the significance of human history is illumined by a theological reflection on the last days, on what it will mean for us when time itself runs out and the world we know ceases to be. Understood in this light, we can see how the book, while allegorising certain events in Jewish and Christian history, is basically a meditation on salvation history that builds on and responds to themes first developed in Genesis.

The author of Revelation recounts a vision of the final things in which he is shown around or directed by an angel, rather in the way that Dante in the Inferno is shown around by Virgil. The last chapter of the book follows on a vivid and detailed description of the splendours of the heavenly Jerusalem, described as coming down to earth to become the home of all those who are saved. The arrival of the heavenly Jerusalem on earth is the final arrival of the Kingdom of God, which Jesus taught his disciples to pray for and to which he makes many references in the gospels. Having described the city in some detail, the author opens the last chapter of the book with these words:

“Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (22:1–1).¹³

A little later we read:

“Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates” (22: 14).

The picture presented here is nothing less than the completion of the story begun in Genesis. Described in Genesis as being driven out from paradise and barred from access to the tree of life, the human species – or at least that portion of it who have washed their robes, the fornicators and idolaters and murderers being kept outside along with the dogs and the sorcerers (22: 15) – now finds itself having the right to enter through the gates of the city and to be empowered to eat the fruit of the tree of life. The emphasis throughout is on life, on abundant and plentiful life, as the water of life from its source in the throne of God flows right through the middle of the city watering the tree of life growing on either side. The tree of life is no longer confined to the middle of the garden, as it was in Eden, but is now on either side of the river, publicly and freely available, and “its leaves are for the healing of the nations,” for the healing of the forces that cause humankind to make war and commit acts of violence.¹⁴

The image of the tree of life frames the Judaeo-Christian narrative: in Genesis the tree of life is denied Man but in Revelation it is revealed as our eschatological hope and as shaping the whole direction and meaning of salvation history. Between them, Genesis and Revelation establish the protological-eschatological framework within which the history of salvation is to be understood; and they do so principally by revealing the tree of life as the goal of Man's deepest desires and the “inspiration” of God's saving action. Everything else flows from this.

One of the startling features of the heavenly Jerusalem come down to earth is that it has no temple (“I saw no temple in the city,” 21:22) – there is no need for a temple for there is no need for Man to worship God in faith any more, since God is now finally and immediately present. All the covenants are superseded, the faith relationships are over, for the human journey is complete as humankind at last finds union with God. And the heavenly Jerusalem comes down to earth. As one commentator puts it: “Think of the vision at the end of Revelation. It isn't about humans being snatched up from earth to heaven. The holy city, new Jerusalem, comes down from heaven to earth. God's space and ours are finally married, integrated at last.”¹⁵ The human journey is not towards some other, non-earthly destination; its completion occurs on this earth with the complete penetration by God of human history and society; union with God is not some replacement of human nature with something else, but the bringing of that nature to its true fulfilment and perfection. It is on this earth that union with God is finally to be achieved. Man and God will share the same space because Man will be holy as God is holy – whole and complete. Man will be divine.

Conclusion

In this, the last of four articles, I have sought to restore the link between later movements, events or discourses in the Bible and the story recounted near its beginning, in chapter 3 of Genesis. The themes I hope to have reconnected to Genesis 3 are those of Wisdom (in both Old and New Testaments), Paul's theology of redemption, the account of Jesus's mission presented in the Gospel of John, and what the Book of Revelation tells us about the last things. I hope that by now it is abundantly clear that Augustine's interpretation of the story told in Genesis 3 amounts to an impoverishment of the tale and stands in the way of its being recognised for what it is – the beginnings of a truly wonderful and generous history of salvation that gradually but visibly is played out over long periods of time and comes to its final fruition in the mission and teaching of Jesus. The fact that Augustine's interpretation has endured for so long is testimony to his authority and greatness: for only the interpretation of a genius of the stature of Augustine could have had a chance of standing in the way of what must surely (I trust) be recognised as a more theologically fruitful understanding of the meaning of Genesis 3.

In these articles I have been able merely to hint at the fruits of the interpretation of Genesis 3 that I have argued for; I have focused on the grounds for accepting the interpretation rather than on what I believe to be some of the beneficial consequences that flow from it. By way of completing what I have begun, let me list just some of these beneficial consequences:

The interpretation is compatible with the scientific theory of evolution – any incompatibility is not between Genesis 3 and the theory of evolution so much as between Augustine's interpretation and the scientific theory.

The interpretation has profound implications for the Christian understanding of the notion of redemption, for Christology and Christian anthropology, for the theological virtues and Christian spirituality generally, and for our understanding of the biblical contrast between ‘spirit’ and ‘flesh’.

Clearly also the interpretation goes along with recent Catholic thinking on the notion of limbo, a concept that it renders totally redundant.

Finally, the interpretation gets over some of the unfortunate consequences of the doctrine of original sin, most of which are linked in one way or another to Augustine's contention that the default setting for humanity is damnation.