Most theologians, Christian and Jewish, would agree with Lehi that the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden serves as an origin story for human suffering. The text of Genesis 3 itself describes the introduction of at least three challenging aspects of the human experience: pain in childbirth, the necessity of labor, and the inevitability of death. But Lehi’s other assertion, that the event expanded human agency, might be more controversial. Interpretations of this event have proliferated over many years, creating layers of commentary about human nature and decision-making.
It’s instructive to notice what’s absent from the account, particularly details that are easy to read into the text because of entrenched cultural assumptions. First, the devil is nowhere to be found. Many readers naturally identify the serpent with the devil as Lehi did, but the Genesis account speaks only of a talking serpent. Second, there is no indication that Adam and Eve become sinful as a consequence of their decision. Their bodies become mortal, the world becomes less accommodating, and the tree of life becomes inaccessible, but nothing in the account indicates a change in their fundamental nature. Third, there is no prediction of rescue. This is their new life; the text is silent about their future.
Noticing these silences does not invalidate subsequent interpretations; it simply clarifies the distinction between the Genesis account and theological developments built on it. It can also help to explain how different religious traditions have arrived at different conclusions from the same foundational text.
For the apostle Paul, though, this story establishes the conditions for salvation through Jesus Christ. In two of his epistles, Paul pairs Adam with Jesus as complementary contributors to God’s plan for all people:
Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
1 Corinthians 15:21-22
If through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
Romans 5:15
Early Christian writers accepted Paul’s pairing of Adam with Christ but differed as to whether the transgression in the garden moved humanity forward or backward. Irenaeus, who served as bishop in Lyons a little more than a century after Paul wrote those epistles, considered Eve’s and Adam’s transgression to be predictable because of their immaturity. He equated it with the opportunity for growth and identified it as an important step in the progression of humanity toward God:
It was possible for God Himself to have made man perfect from the first, but man could not receive this, being as yet an infant. …
Now it was necessary that man should in the first instance be created; and having been created, should receive growth; and having received growth, should be strengthened; and having been strengthened, should abound; and having abounded, should recover; and having recovered, should be glorified; and being glorified, should see his Lord
Against Heresies IV.38.1, 3
About 250 years later, Augustine of Hippo advanced a much more pessimistic interpretation. Taking literally Paul’s assertion that “through the offense of one many be dead,” Augustine held that all people not only commit their own sins, but they also inherit Adam’s sin. This concept, which he called original sin as contrasted with actual sin, signifies that each person is born guilty and must have that guilt removed by Christ. He also asserted that Adam’s nature changed as a result of his transgression and that his descendants inherited from him a propensity to sin.
Man’s nature, indeed, was created at first faultless and without any sin; but that nature of man in which every one is born from Adam, now wants the Physician, because it is not sound. All good qualities, no doubt, which it still possesses in its make, life, senses, intellect, it has of the Most High God, its Creator and Maker. But the flaw, which darkens and weakens all those natural goods, so that it has need of illumination and healing, it has not contracted from its blameless Creator — but from that original sin.
On Nature and Grace 3.3
Through a series of church councils and creeds, Augustine’s interpretation became the predominant view in Western Christianity. The concept of original sin, corrupting humans from infancy, was adopted by both Catholics and most Protestant churches. Eastern Orthodox churches teach a variation of this principle which they call ancestral sin, which signifies that humanity inherited death and a corrupt nature from Adam and Eve, but that they do not inherit guilt.
In traditional Jewish thought, humans inherited neither guilt nor a changed nature from Adam and Eve. Instead, God created humans with a dual nature: yetzer hatov (יצר הטוב), the “good inclination” and yetzer hara‘ (יצר הרע), the “evil inclination.” These two inclinations existed from the Creation. It is up to each person to tame their evil inclinations and to magnify their good ones through the use of their free will. (See “YEẒER HA-RA’,” Jewish Encyclopedia.)
These interpretations demonstrate the richness of the Eden narrative. The plain text as it appears in Genesis 3 speaks of mortality, hardship, and separation from the tree of life. Interpreters of the text from multiple religious traditions have drawn far-reaching conclusions from the story about human nature, the origin of sin, and the need for redemption. With this interpretive backdrop in place, we are better prepared to examine how subsequent Book of Mormon prophets, beginning with King Benjamin, engage with the story of Adam and Eve’s transgression and its implications for humanity.
Today, I will read scripture more carefully, with a greater awareness of the assumptions I bring to the experience, so that I can more fully and purely hear God’s voice.
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