Fall (Hastings' Dictionary)

In the sense of happen, ' fall ' is both a Heb. and an Eng. idiom. It occurs Ru 3" ' Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall ' ; and 2 Es 13'' ' such things as fall in their seasons.' Cf. Mt 18", Wye. ' if it fall that he find it,' and Shaks. Jul. Cobs. III. i. 243 — * I Icnow not what may fall ; I like it not.' Fall away is used in two senses. 1. To lose a position of goodness or of grace. Tlie Greek is either di^io-n/^i.

Sir 16' ' the old giants who fell away in the strength of their fooli.sliness ' (RV ' revolted '), Lk 8'^ ' in time of temptation fall away ' ; or rapairiirro which occurs in the LXX of Est 6'», Wis 69 123, E^k 14" \5» 18-« 20« 22, and 2 Mac 10 [A], and once in NT, He 6" ' it is im- possible for those who were once enlightened . .

if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance,' wliere the meaning is more tlian is found in the LXX, not merely falling into grievous sin, but renouncing the faith of Christ wholly (see Da\-idson, in loc). 'A falling away' (RV 'the falling away ') is the Eng. tr. of rj dirorraala, 2 Th 2, on which see Man of Sin. 2. To 'fall away to,' varied with ' fall to,' or ' fall unto ' (2 K 7 'let us fall unto the host of the Syrians'), is to desert to an enemy. It is again botli a Heb.

and an Eng. idiom. See 2 K 2.-." = Jer 52", 1 Ch 12""'', Jer 21 37"- '* 38'" 39», as well as 1 S 29», wliere tlie Heb. (if ''jH or '^v 's added after LXX jrp6s fic) la the same, always some part of "75; to fall. For the Eng. cf. Shaks. Henry VIII. II. i. 129— • Where you are liberal of your loves and counsels, Be sure you lie not loose ; for those you make friends. And give your hearts to, when they once perceive The least rub in your fortunes, fall away Like water from ye."

Again, Ilenry VIII. III. iii. 200— ' And as for Clarence, fta my letters tell me, He's very likely now to fall from him.' J. Hastings. FALL (TopdiiTw/ia, a word used of Adam's trans- gression in Wis 10', though not restricted to this anywhere in OT or NT). — Few chapters of the Bible have atrected religious speculation more continuously and more deeply than the chapter which records the temptation and the weakness of primeval man.

It would be out of place here to discuss all the topics which arise out of Gn 3, as to do so would be to wTite a treatise on Christian Theology. We can only consider — (i.) the cliaracter of the record, and its relation to other accounts of man's primitive state, which have come down to ns from early times ; (ii.) the influence of the story of Paradise and the Fall upon Hebrew belief as to man's destiny and his condition in the sight of God ; (iii.)

the inferences drawn by the NT writers, and notably by St. Paul, from the story of Adam's ein, read in the light of Christ's redemption. It will be impossible to give more than the briefest sammary (iv.) of the interpretations of St Paul's doctrine of the Fall winch have most widely affected Christian thought ; but something must be said, in conclusion, (v.)

of tlie bearing of modern theories of the origin and development of man npon the general doctrine of the Fall explained in Scripture and received by the Church. 1. W e briefly recapitulate tlie leading points of the narrative in Gn 2*-3, which forms the first nection in Gn incorporated from the source de- scribed by critics as the Prophetical Code (J).

Adam ana Eve, the parents of the human family, are represented as living in innocence and peace m a fair garden where sin had not entered, and where death liad no power, for in its midst stood the Tree of Life, of wiiicli they were ijerinitted freely to eat. Tlie fruit of one tree alone, the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was forbidden to them ; and death was declared to be the penalty of disobedience.

But their hai]|)y condition of parity and of fellowship with God did not remain undisturbed. The serpent seduced the woman to disobey the divine command ; she, in turn, tempted her husband to his fall. And tlien came upon the guilty pair the consciousness of sin and the fear of the divine wrath, which tliey vainly tried to evade by excuses for their fault.

The voice of God is heard, pronouncing a curse apon the serpent, and declaring a iierpetual strife between it an<l mankind ; the man an(r the woman, for their sin, are for ever subjected to pain in the fulfilment of their destiny, the woman in her childbearing, the man in his daily labour for daily bread. They are both expelled from Eden, and the Cherubim guard its gates against them, lest, eating of the tree of life, they should live for ever.

The picture, however, is lightened by one ray of hope ; for the seed of the serpent shall not finally prevail over the seed of the woman. ' It shall bruise thy head,' though ' thou shalt bruise his heel.' Traditions of a state of primeval innocence, of man's fall from his pristine purity, and of the conseiiiicnl entrance of (loiilli into tlie world, liave, it is said, been gathered by travellers from races far removed from Hebrew literature or its sources.

Striking parallels to Gn 3 are to be found in the Zoroastrian legends as to the beginning of man's career. Yima, the first man, is said to have passed his days in a primeval paradise. But after a time he committed sin, was cast out of Paradise, and delivered up to the serpent (identified with an evil ipirit), who finally brought about his death. A See Baring aoiild's Legmdt (if OT CharacUri, I. 28-39, and the rcferet ces there given.

later version of tlie story is told in connexion with the first pair Masha and Mashyana. Tlia lying spirit grew bold, and, presenting himself a second time, brought them fruits, which they ate. As a punishment, of the hundred privileges they formerly enjoyed only one was left to them.* Few of the parallel stories that are adduced are, however, so exactly recorded as these ; and we are inclined to believe that the similarities to the Bible narrative are often overstated.

The fact that many people in many lands have sought to explain the existing disorders in the world as the consequence of man's lapse from a higher condition is deeply significant, and we shall return to it again. But the details of the legends in which such belief is embodied are not, as a rule, interest- ing save to the curious student of folk-lore, and they throw little light upon Scripture. It is to Assyria and the East that we naturally look for illumination.

And it has been pointed out that the mythology of Babylonia and Assyria presents some curious parallels to the story of the serpent in the garden of which we read in Gn 3. On Assyrian inscriptions are found the names Diglnt = Hiddekel, and i}Mra = Euphrates, in connexion with the word Idinu or ' field, which is identified with Eden. Coniferous sacred trees appear frequently on Assyr. bas-reliefs and Bab. representations of a mythological character. On a Bab.

stone cylin- der, now in the British Museum, two human figures arr depicted with a serpent behind them, having thtir hands stretched out towards the fruit that hangs from a neighbouring tree.t And the serpent figure is conspicuous in the legend of the Chaldiean tablets in which the evil serpent, Tiamat, is over- thrown by Merodach. (See Cosmogony, p. 505.)

If the third Creation Tablet were not so ex- tremely dilticult to decipher as it is reported to be (partly in consequence of its fragmentary condition), it is probable that we should be able to trace in the story which it lecords even more striking similarities to the Scripture narrative.

But Oriental scholars are not as yet entirely in agreement as to the translation of some of the more interesting portions of it ; and tlie inferences that may be derived from the i)assage now to be cited must therefore be regarded as somewhat uncertain.

The following is the rendering of Boscawen t : — • In sin one with the other in compact Joins, The command woa established in the garden of the God, The Asnan (fniit) they ate, they broke in two ; Ita stalk thej; destroyed ; The sweet Juice which injures the body. Great is their sin. Themselves they exalted ; To Merodach their Redeemer he appointed their fate.

* If this translation be trustworthy, we have here something very like the biblical story of the forbidden fruit ; hut the rendering given by Pinches dill'ers in some .significant particulars. Wo recall, for our warning, that an inscription inter- preted by Geo. Smith as a Bab. version of the story of the Fall turned out, when clo.sely examined by (Jppert, to be a hymn to the Creator.§ M.

iking all line allowances, however, for uncertainty of translation, it seems probable, when we bear in mind the afiinity of the earlier Creation Tablets to Gu 1, as well as the other i>oints of contact witli ■ Compare Lcnomiant, Uixtoire Ancimne tU ^Orient, \. 30 IT. t There is a photograjih of this In Boscawcn's BiMt and tht Monuments, p. 80. It is to be borne In mind that there is nothintf to su^'^'L-st that the fl^nires aro not both mates. And, as Hchrader (UAT'p.

37) points out, a specific feature of thii Bible narrative, vit that the woman pivo the fruit to the man, is not indicated. : Ilal'i/lnnian and Oriental Rteord, Iv. 2(11. Another trans- lation by Pinches is ifiven at p. 32. See also Sayce, Anci/-nt MnnujnmtK, Ofi, 104 ; and Davis, GenfitU and Semitic Traftition, p. C.'

i, who questions the accuracy of Boscawen's rendering, and urges that we have hero no true parallel to the Genesis narrative I See, for original, Delltzsch, Asiyritclu Laatiitkft, p. »1. the Btory of Eden to which we have adverted, that a legend of the fall of man, resembling in external features the account of Gn 3, was widely spread in Mesopotamia.

Indeed, in another pas- sage cited by Boscawen we are inevitably reminded of the victory over the serpent of Gn 3" — * Tiamat, whom be had bound, then turned backward : 80 Bel trampled on the bully of Tiamat ; With his club unalung he smote her brain. He broke it, and caused her blood to flow ; The north wind bore it away to secret placet.'

* There is nothing to surprise reason or to embarrass faith in the fact — if it be a fact — that traditional beliefs about the origins of human history should have been utilized in a purified form by the com- piler of the Pent, or taken up into the Prophetical Code. It must be remembered that the period with which we are dealing is strictly prehistoric, and also that legendary history is not necessarily false or misleading.

The truly remarkable cir- cumstance is, that the early narratives in Gn are free from the extravagant and grotesque mytho- logical accretions which generally gather round ancient beliefs among primitive peoples ; and that every touch in these narratives as we have them conveys a deep religious truth.

The ' inspiration of selection ' is a phenomenon which every candid student of Scripture must recognize ; and nowhere is its presence more instructive than in the first pages of or, which present the early history of man in a form that can be understood by the simplest, and yet may be studied with spiritual benefit by the wisest of mankind.

We believe, then, that we have in the biblical record of the Fall a purified form of legendary narrative concerning man's early history which had wide currency among Semitic peoples. In an un- critical age it was interpreted literally, and it has been counted historical for many generations by the majority of those, whether Jews or Christians, who accept the authority of the OT. But another method of interpretation, viz. the allegorical, has had many adherents.

Thus, of the account of the Fall, PhilO asserts : t(m Si ravra ov TrXiafjiara f^i-Buv, 0?$ rb ToiTtTiKhv Ka.1 ffotptjTtKiv x^^P^- 7^'os, dXXA Seiy^ara T&trwv ir' dWTjyopiav TrapaKaXovvTwv Kara tAs Si vtrovoi<jv iTroS6(7eis (De mundi (ipifcio, § 56), i.e. ' These things are not mere fabulous myths, but rather types shadowin" forth some allegorical trutli.' And, accordingly, he explains that Adam represents the rational and Eve the sensuous part of man, the serpent being the symbol of pleasure.

The Chris- tian teachers of Alexandria, Clement and Origen, favoured this allegorical mode of interpretation ; but Tertullian and Irenaeus defended the literal truth of the narrative, as also did Au_gustine, who did not, however, reject the typical significance of OT history ; and through the schola.stic philo- sophy it passed into the dogmatic theology of the Reformation. But the opinion that, however the story was intended to be taken by the compiler of tne Bk.

of Genesis, it mi^ht be interprete<l as a parable of spiritual truth, has been defended by great names in every age of the Church, t There are, then, these several methods of inter- pretation— (1) that the narrative of the Fall is literal history ; (2) that it is a legend, which con- veys truth under mythological disguise ; (3) that it is, and was only intended to be, an allegory.

The first and third can hardly be adopted in the present condition of exegesis, and it is probable that the second view of the narrative is that which is now most generally accepted by those who have studied the subject. That the biblical form of tlie legend should represent the facts as they actually • BibU and the Alonumentt, p. 90. t See an mtereat'.og note Ln Colerid^'a Aidt to BefiectUm, p. ^71 (ed. Bohn).

took place more closely than the parallel stories which have been collected from the literature of the ancient world, is not surprising to any believer in the unique character of Scripture ; but it is not to be forgotten that it is the great religious tmtha which underlie the narrative that are of real im- portance, and these are brought out in the Bk. of Genesis in a quite unique fashion. ii. The allusions in OT to the story of Gn 3 are few and uncertain.

If the rendering of the RV may be pressed, there are indeed two undoubted references to the Fall, viz., 'If like Adam I covered my transgressions ' (Job 31"), and, ' But they like Adam have transgressed the covenant' (Hos 6'). But it seems that, at least in the former passage, DiK? should be rendered ' after the manner of men,' and this rendering would also be admissible in Hos 6' ; so that we have to look elsewhere for allusions to the Paradise narrative on which stress may be laid.

The ' garden of Eden ' is mentioned several times by the prophets of the Captivity (Ezk 28" 31«, Is 51', cf. Jl 2^) ; and the Bk. of Proverbs occasionally mentions a ' tree of life ' (see esp. Pr 3' 1 1*). Ps 90' and Ec 12" have been supposed to take up the language of Gn 3''.

It is possible also that we have a reminiscence of the curse upon the serpent (Gn 3") in Mic 7" ' They shall lick the dust like a serpent,' and in Is 65^ ' Dust shall be the serpent's meat,' though the latter passage may be derived from Micah.

The conception of a personal tempter of mankind appears m the story of Job and also in 1 Ch 21' (see also Zee 3') ; but it is not untU a later period that we come upon any explicit identification of 'Satan' or the 'Adversary' with the ' serpent,' the first trace of such bein<; Wis 2". Cf. also Rev 12« and Ro 16-" ' The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly,' which manifestly has reference to Gn 3'°.

* So far, then, as the language of OT is con- cerned, we have not convincing evidence that the story of the Fall as given in Gn 3 was much in the thoughts of the sacred writers. But were we to conclude, therefore, that the doctrine of a Fall formed no part of their religious beliefs, we should be seriously mistaken. If there is one idea which is throughout conspicuous in OT, it is the idea of sin.

No other nation of antiquity was possessed with so intense a consciousness of the wickedness of man- kind, and of the sin of man as an offence against God. ' Behold, I was shapen in iniquity ; and in sin did my mother conceive me' (Ps 51'). 'There is none that doeth good, no, not one ' (Ps 14"). These and many similar passages express the abiding sense of the Hebrew race, that man, as he is, is not in the condition which his Creator purposed for him.

The contrast between such a conception of man and that, e.g., present to the mind of a Greek, who viewed man as in his normal, healthy state, is only to be accounted for by a belief such as that which is presupposed and taught in the story of the Fall. That this belief was, as a matter of fact, defi- nitely, if not consistently, connected with the Paradi.

se narrative in the later ages of Hebrew national life, is proved by the testimony of the books called Apocrypha and the literature of the Roman period. This testimony is so important that it will be well to present it in some detail. (a) It is unnecessary to multiply passages which speak of the deprarity of human nature ; but 2 Es 4" ' How can he that is already worn out with the corrupted world understand incorruption? ' is significant. Cf. also 2 Es 7'^.

(b) This depravity was traced to Adam's fall. The classical passage is 2 Es 3'-'- ^. The seer ha« • It may be ob9er\'ed that the temptation of the Second Adan by the devil (.Mt 4. Lk 4) exr'ains beyond doubt who was u ider stood by the serpent which 'tempted the first Adam. FALL FALL 841 been speakin;^ of the creation of Adam, his d-nell- Ing in Paradise, the one coiiiinandment wliich he transgressed, and the coiiso<iuent entrance of death into the world.

He pes on : ' For the first Adam, bearing a wicked heart, transgressed, and was overcome ; and not he only, but all they also that are bom of him. Thus disease was made permanent ; and the law was in the heart of the people along with the wickedness of the root ; bo the good departed away, and that whicli was wicked abode still.' Again: 'A grain of evil seed was sown in the heart of Adam from the beginning, and how mu«h wickedness hath it brought forth unto this time I ' (2 Ks 4*').

And once more : ' O thou Adam, what hast thou done ? for though it was thou that sinned, the evil is not fallen on thee alone, but upon all of us that come of thee' (2 Ea 7'"*). In this late book are recog- nized the moral consequences of Adam's sin ; in the much earlier work of Ben-Sira there is an allusion to the curse of Gn 3" ' Great travail is created for every man, and a heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam ' (Sir 40').

(c) That sin came through the woman is ex- plicitly stated in Sir 25-" ' From a woman was the beginning of sin, and because of her we all die.' (rf) That man's seduction was due to the serpent, now for the first time in Jewish literature identi- fied with Satan, is alluded to in Wis 2-" ' By the envy of the devil death entered into the world.'

(e) The connexion between death and sin is not so clearly conceived, and there was, apparently, no consistent doctrine on the subject ; * but the generally prevailing view seems to have been that of 2 Es 3' ' Unto him thou gavest thy one com- mandment : which he transgressed, and imme- diately thou appointedst doatli for him and in hiB generations.' Cf. also Wis 2^, Sir 25". Tlie same view is found in tlie Apocalypse of Bnruch (xvii. 3, xxiii. 4) and in the Book of Enoch (xcviii. 4).

(/) Side by side with passages such as these we have others not less significant, which assert the personal rcsponsiltility of the sinner. E.g. ' They that inhabited the city did evil, in all things doing as Adam and all his generations had done : for they also bare a wicked heart ' (2 Es 3'^). Cf . also 2 Es 8" and 9", and, above all, Apoc. Baruch liv. 19 : ' Non est ergo Adam causa, nisi animie suie tantum ; nos uero unusquisque fuit aniime Buoe Adam.'

It might be urged that 2 Es ia a very late book, perhaps belonging to Christian times ; but, at all events, that the author of the chapters from which our quotations are drawn was a non-Christian Jew is toleralily certain. And tlius we may use the book in support of our conclusion that the Jews, at least from the Captivity onward, conceived of the sin of Adam as having left a permanent trace from the etl'ecta of which all mankind were suH'er- in^ and to suffer. lii.

When we come to the NT, and especially to the Paulino Epistles, we find that this doctrine of the effects of Adam's fall receives at once ex]>lana- Sion and relief in the facts of the Incarnation and the Atonement. If we take the points in the order followed in the last section, wo see (a) that the universal depravity of mankind ia everywhere presupposed, and is the basis of the argument of the Ep. to the Komans.

To (i) we shall return again, and only cite licre 1 Co ir>^ ' As in Adam all die, so also in Christ sliall all be made alive.' (c) finds illustration in two pa.ssagc8 : ' the serpent beguiled Kve in his craftiness (2 Co 11"), and ' Adam was first formed, then Eve ; and Adam * 8e« Edenheim, IAif4 and Tima of Jaut (A< Uetgiah, I. 166 IT. was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression' (ITi 2'''). (d) St.

Paul refers to the ' bruisin" of Satan ' in Ro 16^ ; and the devil is spoken of as ' a murderer from the beginning' in Jn 8". Cf. also 1 Jn 3*-^. We then come to (e), as to which the classical passage in NT is Ro 5""". A commentary on these ditfi- cult verses cannot be written liere ; but certain broad principles laid down by St. Paul, who is undouht"<lly following and interpreting the narra- tive in Gn 3, can hardly be mistaken.

* Tliat through one man sin entered into the world is his startinij-point. Death came through sui (cf. Ro 6^ and Ja 1") ; and hence death is tlie conniiun lot of man, first, because of his own personal sin ; and, secondly, because it is part of the inheritance which Adam has transmitted to his descendants. At the same time, St. Paul is careful to insist (/) that man's personal responsibility for his own acts, and for his own acts alone, remains unim- paired.

He does not supplj' any theory by wliich the two complementary truths of man's inherited tendency to evil and man's free will may be recon- ciled ; but he lea\ es them side by side as equally parts of the doctrine wliich it has been given him to teach. And he goes on to show that the dis- tinctive feature of the gospel is that ' if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of tlie one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many.'

Thus the tlieology of St. Paul is inextricably bound up with the doctrine of the Fall. The whole point of the C(.mparison and contrast of the lirst and second Adam is lost, if the destinies of the human race were not deeply affected by a backward step at the beginnings of human history, if it be not true that man's growth in holiness may be described as a recovery effected through grace. iv. Tlie interpretations of St.

Paul's language which have from time to time been accepted by Cliristians are various ; and they depend in part on tlie view that is taken as to the state of un- fallen man, and the divine intention for him. It would be agreed by most theologians that, to use the language of the Church, the ' original right- eousness' of which Adam was deprived, was, al- though in part natural, yet in part supernatural.

That is to say, he is represented as divinely en- dowed with a virtuous character, without any such bias towards evil as we experience in our- selves. Tliis is what constituted the unique per- versity and hoinousncss of the first sin, and it is because of this that his sin is counted a ' fall' from a higlior sjiiritual condition.

His sin had a disturbing iiilhience on the whole future devclop- iiiL-nt of the race, but the character of the dis- turbance has been differently estimated in dillerent schools of tliouglit. Speaking broadly, the Greek view was simply that the 'original righteousness' of the race was lost ; the effect of Adam's sin was a privatin, an iinpoverislimcnt of human nature wliich yet left the jiower of the will unimpaired.

But the Latin writers who followed Augustine took a darker view of the consciiucnecs of the Fall. It is, for thorn, a depravalio nnturw ; the human will is disabled ; there ia left a bias to- wards evil which can be conquered only by grace. And this is, undoubtedly, nearer to the language of Scriiiture than the former mode of representing the facts ; but it was not always remembered, e contra, in August iiiian theology that the 'iiUMge of God' remained in man even after the I'all (Gn U').

It is therefore contrary to Scripture to represent man as wholly corrupt. And a deep • For St. Puul's ar^inient, aa also for the witness of th« Apoc.rt/pha to the doctririo of man's corruption, see Sanday Ucodluni, liomaju fcti. v.j. 542 FALL FALL ind serious question arises here as to the relation between tlie Fall and the Incarnation.

It ma^ well be, as the Scotists taught, that it is unjustih- able to represent the hi^h destiny which man may find in Christ as an after-thought in the divine counsels. The Incarnation may have been, for anything we can tell, the predestined climax of humanity, independently of human sin. Bearing these considerations in mind we return to Ro 5'^"-', and the various theories which have been proposed in explanation. They may be classified thus^* (a) It is urged that St.

Paul's language requires ns to conceive of the human race as in Adam potentially, in the same sense as the oak is in the acorn. Hence, for what he did, we may be counted responsible. The race, not the individual, is the true unit ; it is with this unit that God deals. Thus, e.g., David sinned in numbering Israel, but his people were the sufferers from the divine punishment.

The words of our Lord in Lk 13*"^ suggest to us that there is such a thing as Tiational responsibility, apart from the guilt of individuals. Most apposite of all, Levi is said to have paid tithes ' through Abraham ' (He !'■ '"). And in this conception of the solidarity of mankind there is, beyond question, a profound trutli which is becomin" more intelligently and sincerely ac- cepted as the social teaching of the Incarnation is beings opened out.

' As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive' (1 Co 15, ), are words which point to the unity of the human race as the root of the universality both of sin and of redemption. But we must be careful not to state this so as to do violence to our God-given sense of justice. This is the fault, e.g., of teaching like that of Jonathan Edwards, who spoke of a psychological no less than a physical unity be- tween Adam and his posterity.

Ultimately based, as in Augustine, on a mistranslation of Ro 5'^ (in quo as the rendering of iif> i) and on the adoption in the Vulg. of the word imputare, familiar from its use in the courts of Roman law, this teacliing may readily become either ultra-mystical or ultra- rationalistic. It becomes ultra-mystical, if the unity of the human race be so spoken of as to conceal the all important fact that it is only for a person that morality has any intelligible mean- ing.

It becomes ultra, rationalistic, wlien the [ihrases ' imputation of sin ' and the correlative ■ imputation of righteousness ' are used as if sin and righteousness were transferable from one per- son to another. Sin is predicable only of a person, not of human nature ; and the warning of Ezekiel, 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die,' needs to be ever kept in view. St.

Paul does not teach that we are accomplices in Adam's sin or partakers of his guilt without a cooperation of our own will, although it be at the same time awfully true that we inherit from him a degraded nature. The abiding truth in tlie interpretation given by Augustine of St. Paul's teaching as to the Fall, is the truth of the unity of mankind. In this Adam is rinroi ToO y.4\\ovTOi.

[h) Again, the effect of Adam's fall upon his posterity has been explained by speaking of Adam a,a representative of the race. ''The covenant was male with Adam as a public person, not with himself only, but for his posterity.' But the ques- tion arises. How could Adam, in justice, bind his posterity to a covenant of which they were not cognizant? A federal compact of this sort could only bind us, if we had empowered Adam to act on our behalf.

And if it be urged that in Adam's case we should have done the same as he, and therefore may justly be punished for what he did, it may be replied that this is a gratuitous assump- * See for a fuller claosiflcatiOD, 6oh&ff in Lange's Rrnnana (Eng. tr. p. 191). tion, which goes perilously near to depriving th« original transgression of moral blame by repre- senting it as inevitable. Here is an important consideration which must not be overlooked.

All profitable speculation on the subject of the Fall must recognize frankly its voluntary character. Adam was not necessitated to act as he did ; otherwise his action would not involve moral responsibility. (c) We come, then, to the view which is at once most widely accepted and most consonant to all the facts. It is, substantially, the view expounded by John of Damascus.

We inherit from our first parents a degraded nature, so de- graded that it is for us much liarder to overcome sin tlian it was for Adam. For this inherited depravity of nature we are not responsible ; we have inherited it in spite of ourselves. Hence the world is in a ' state of ruin,' and can be reme- died only through grace.

But we are not, there- fore, guilty ; guilt is incurred ordy when the evil is voluntarily embraced, when we take up Adam's sin by repeating it, as it were, in our own persons. The rule of Augustine, Peccatum poena peccati, continually receives verification. Coleridge has pressed this view somewhat further. ' It belongs," he says, ' to the very essence of the doctrine that in respect of original sin every man is the adequate representative of all men' {Aids to Reflection, p. 194).

And he holds that Adam's fall is a typical experience repeated afresh in every son of Adam. Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. The cor- ruption, he urges, ' must be self-originated.' There is an important sense in which this is true ; but it is not the whole truth. It is deficient in recog- nition of the far-reaching character of the first sin. We are not at all in the same spiritual condition as that of tlie first man ; we do not enter on the conflict with e^dl on the same terms.

Our whole attitude to God is different from that of Adam, although we be still 'sons of God.' As the schoolmen put it, in the case of Adam the person corrupted the nature ; with us it is the nature which corrupts the person. Man is still free, but man is sick with a sickness which is dis- pleasing to the All-pure ; and for healin" of this sickness only a supernatural remedy will suffice. As our Lord taught in the Sermon on the Mount (cf.

also Mt 15'"), the real seat of sin is ■«'ithin, the heart is the seat of the moral life (cf. Ps 78', Pr 4'-'^), although the translation of thought into act involves a fresh and distinct step in responsi- bility. The advocates of the more rigorous Au^stinian doctrine have been accustomed to designate this view as serai-Pelagianism ; but it is free from the essential fault of the teaching of Pelagius, on which we say a final word.

(d) Pelagius is represented as having held that the infant enters on life crippled in no appreciable degree by any inherited infirmity or waywardness of the will. He begins the world with powers sufficient to cope with tlie machinations of the evil one. And thus, in so far as he does ■«Tong, it is his own fault ; in so far as he does right, he is deserving of approbation.

It would seem that Pelagius and his disciples seriously underestimated the influence of Adam's fall on human nature at large. That this nature as corrupt and the seat of sin must be of itself and when nnregenerate displeasing to the All-holy, they did not perceive with clearness. And though men, happily, do not always push their opinions to their logical con- clusions, the result of such teaching as this would be the denial of any need of grace or of redemp- tion, t V.

We pass on to the question. How far is the * Sec Hort'8 Lift and Lettert, ii. 330 f. ; see atao L 78 ♦ See Neander'8 Church Uittcti/. iv. 331 ff. doctrine of the Fall all'ected by modern theories S8 to the evolution of the human species from lower and less developed types?

It has been too often hastily assumed that the belief in the con- tinuity of animal forms is inconsistent with belief in any special prerogative of man, and is still more Incompatible wiih a doctrine which represents his history as having been retrogressive at one point. But neither of these positions can be established. The doctrine of the evolution of species is not yet to be counted as more than an extremely probable hypothesis, by which the phenomena of life and growth become intelligible.

Many details are, as yet, very obscure, and the laws of inheritance have not by any means been clearly and full^ expounded. See HEREDITY. And the api)lication or this doctrine to the descent of man is beset with peculiar difficulties, which cannot be said, as yet, to have been solved. But we are, nevertheless, content in this article to tre.at of the subject of man's early history in the light of this wonderful law.

Evolution may not be the final word of science as to the laws of growth ; but it expresses well the results to which investi- gation has 80 far attained. We conceive, then, of primeval man as a creature descended from brute ancestors, some of whom he closely resembled in instinct and habit as well as in structure. But there was one marked dill'erence.

In him there was present the faculty of self-consciousness ; he was conscious of a rea-son which can make pro- vision for a foreseen future, and of a will which is not neco.ssarily determined by the strongest physical desire. Man is made m the image of God, although his bodily lineage be that of the ape-like creatures whom he sees round him. If R» may illu.

stnite the facts of his growth by a mathematical illustration, we shall say that the curve of his progress is a continuous curve, u])on which he has come to a critical point. At this critical point the curvature seems to change its character ; in other words, the man finds himself possessed of faculties which are not, so far as he can judge, the direct product of his former history. They are, to use at once the simplest and the truest words, the gift of God.

There may be, jicrhaps, absolute and visible continuity between the bodily form of the man and of the higher apes; but continuity cannot be so exactly traced in his mental development. There luis been a ficrd^aait tii a\Xo yifoi, however it h.is come about. Hence- forth he is not only an animal, but a man. If it be sivid that it is not scientific to postulate a S'lltus of this kind, it may be asked, Why not?

The law of continuity is not a fetish before which we are called to prostrate ourselves ; it is nothing more than a convenient working hypothesis, which we find it necessary to desert in this instance, as in others where it will not serve our purpose. And, indeed, it is by no means certain that to the Supreme Mind there is here apparent any breach of continuity whatever. The law may be obeyed, in fact, though the sequence may not be within our observation.

A creature thus emerging from a lower animal condition, even though endowed with the divine gifts of self-conscious reason and free will, would not, indeed, be perfect. He would be, at the earliest stage of a new period of growth, already raised atwve the ape, but still far removed from the civilized European of modern life, lint then we remark that the narrative of Genesis nowhere describes the first man as perfect.

When South Baid that 'Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Para- dise,'* ho was not drawing his picture from Scrip- ture. Neither UT nor NT speak of Adam as • Sermon on On 1^. perfect, though they speak of him as innocent and pure (cf. Ec 7-'). And this was perceived by early Christian commentators. Theophilus ^f Antioch says that God placed Adam in Paradise 5i5oi>s aiVc^ d{popfj.rjv wpoKOTTiis Situs av^dyaii' Kal T^Xeios yeyd/icvo-i, n.T.X. {Ad Autiil. ii.

24); and Clement of Alex- andria states (Strom, vi. 12. 96) that Adam ' was not made perfect in respect of his constitution, but in a fit condition to receive virtue.' * This relation to God has been well described as not a state of perfection or a mere disposition, but 'a living commencement which contained within itself the possibility of a progressive development and a fulfilment of the vocation of man.'

t Such a state of things is so far removed from anything of which we have experience that we find ourselves continually at fault in the effort to imagine or to describe it. But we must, at least, suppose it to have been a condition in whicli man obeyed freely the law of that nature to which he had attained ; the ideas ' right ' and ' wron^ ' hardly presented themselves to his mind with fiill meaning, for ' the knowledge of good and evil ' was not yet his.

It may well have been that the image of God was a gift only germinally bestowed and gradually realized. Man did not come all at once into his splendid inheritance. In the Para- dise narrative he is depicted as still at an early sta^e in his history. He is represented as living a life of communion Avith God, conscious, as it would seem, th.

at he ' ought ' to obey the laws of God, which, as yet, were presented in the simplest and most elementary form ; but the consciousness of moral obligation could only be half realized where the knowledge of evU was not present. So far there is nothing in the story which would conflict with tlio teaching of science, whether phy.sical or mental. In his primitive condition man would have been able to recognize only the simplest moral commands.

He was forbidden to taste of the fruit of ' the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ' : for so perilous an experienc'c he was not prepared. And, in the absence of tempta- tion from without, it was iierhaps possible that this state of purity should have continued. The man's nature, though not developed to perfection, though not stronj; with the discipline which time and experience bring, was perfectly balanced ; and in obe3'ing its dictates he would obey the dictates of his Creator.

How into such a world could evil enter? That is the (question which has vexed philosophy from generation to generation. It is a micstion to which no final or complete answer has been given. But the record of revelation at le.ast puts the dilliculty one step further back ; it points to the region where the solution is to he sought. In the Bible the fall of the angels precedes the fall of man (.Fude'). Temptation came into human life through the machination of a spirit of evil distinct from man.

The invitation to sin came from the serpent in the garden, and it took the form of a suggested violation of the command known to bo divine. Sin is not an indigenous product, but is brought in iib extra, somewhat as it has been suggested that life was first brought to the earth in a meteoric stone. According to the Itihle, the origin of evil is to be sought outside human nature. We are not now in a region where science has .anything to (ell us.

We have only the brief phrases of Scrijiture as our guide. And it will bo ob.served that we cannot say positively that the tcniptntion would not have been self-suggested, as the man grew in faculty and in strength, had there been no malign influence external to himself. • See (libson, Thirty-yiiif Artir^trg, p. Mfl. t MarteUHen, Christian Doijtmilicii, g 78. We do not know, and cannot know. What is told IS this.

The man was in a state of innocence and purity, and the suggestion to sin came, as a matter of fact, in tlie first instance from a personal agency of evil outside the domain of his own will. Here, then, is ignorance of evil dispelled, which- ever course the man adopted. For the conscious refusal of evil, no less than its acceptance, would in a measure involve a knowledge of evil.

An apostolic writer speaks of the WXeiot, or perfect man, as one 'who by reason of use has his senses exercised to discern good and evil ' (He 5'^). True, there would be no personal realization of evil were it not consciously embraced. But its existence must henceforward be delinitely con- ceived. And we may notice that whether man yielded to the temptation or overcame it, in any case he would have advanced a step in knowledge.

To yield was a spiritual fall ; to resist would have been a spiritual rise. But in any case the new experience would be an intellectual rise. This is a principle which has formed the starting-point of some remarkable speculations as to the Fall both in mediaeval and modern times. The philosopher Erigena seems to have had a confused perception of this truth when he taught that sin was relatively necessary for the development of human nature.

Schiller, again, interpreted the Fall as the necessary transition of reason from the state of nature to that of culture. The necessity of evil is a pro- minent feature in the Hegelian philosophy, accord- ing to which the life of the world is conceived as inevitably developing itself through antagonism and conflict. This is the Divina Commedia of human history, the perpetual tragedy of life.

And theologians have pointed out that in Scrip- ture itself the origin of the arts of civilization and of peace is traced to fallen and not to unfallen man. Tubal-cain, 'the forger of every cutting in- strument in brass and iron,' and .Tubal the father of musicians, are the de.scendants of Cain (Gn 4^'- ^).

The truth which seems to underlie speculations Huch as these is that man would not begin to process rapidly, in an intellectual point of view, until he became conscious of the resistance to his energies which evil presents. But this conscious- ness would not have been less intense had he over- come the temptation which assailed him instead of yielding to it.

It is only the man who has successfully battled with evil that is conscious of its full strength, for upon him alone has it spent all its powers. And thus to assert that «n was relatively necessary for the development of human nature, is to confuse the yielding to temptation with the experience of it. Had primeval man been strong when evil presented itself, we know not to what heights of intellectual, as of spiritual excellence, the race might not have now attained.

In this view only is it true that the first tempta- tion marks the ' beginning and the foundation of the development of mind, the birth of man's intellectual nature.' • We find, then, that the doctrine of the Fall, when subjected to examination, is in no way inconsistent with the theory of the evolution of man from lower types, and his growth ' from strength to strength ' as the centuries have gone by. There has l>een a continuous intellectual development.

When the pre- Adamite ancestor of the human familj' was fitted to receive the divine gift of reason, it was granted to him. Like Christ, Adam came in the fulness of time, when all things were ready. Up to this point the evolution had been unconscious ; henceforward it was to be con- scious, and partly assisted by voluntary effort. • See Matheson, Can ths Old Faith Utfe with the New, p 219 O., where the argument of this paragraph ia deretoped at engtb.

And the first experience of eWl, explicitly re- cognized as evil, would atiord a fresh starting- point for his growth. For such experience of evil, as has been said, would in any event — whether it was conquered or the conqueror — involve a rise in the intellectual scale. Had it been overcome, as it might have been overcome (for the act of Adam is represented as one of free choice), there would have been a rise in the spiritual scale as well.

But in the event there was intellectual growth, accompanied by a descent to a lower spiritual level, from which it would be impossible for man to rise without the aid of diWne grace. And so the Incarnation and the Atonement mark in the history of mankind a crisis as real, and introduce a force as potent, as when God created man in His own image. Such a view of man's progress is in the strictest harmony alike with the Bible and with the teach- ing of modem science.

For it is to be remembered that what science teaches us is that the history of man has been a history of development, but it does not and could not teach that this development has proceeded along the best conceivable lines.* It is no postulate of modern philosophy that this is the best of all possible worlds.

And the Christian doctrine, that man as he presents himself to us in history and in life, though his education through the centuries has been divinely ordered, is not in the condition which was the divine intention for him, is a doctrine which receives verification from daily observation. The divine will has been thwarted, so to speak, by the perversity of the human will. And this has been recognized as the key to the problem of evil by men of all races and creeds.

For what is the spectacle which the world of men presents? Newman has described it well in a splendid passage of his Apologia (ch. v.)

: ' To consider the world in its length and its breadtli, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts ; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship ; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long- standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the greatness and little- ness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short dura- tion, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfidly yet exactly described in the apostle's words, "having no nope and without God in the world," — all this is a vision to dizzy and appal ; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solu- tion.

What shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason-bewildering fact? I can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence.' The ' outcast man ' is, in short, the Great Excep- tion. While every other living thing is striving for its good, man alone is found choosing what he knows to be for his hurt. And so to the believer in God his own experience confirms the eternal truth of the doctrine of the Fall.

As Pascal says, ' De sorte que I'homme est plus incon- • See Gore, Lux Jfundiio, pp. 635. 636. and the pasp^e there cited from Aubrey Moore's Eoolutxon and Chrigtianify ; "the change which took place at the Fall was a chanj^'e in the moral re^on ; but it could not be without \t» efToct elsewhere. Even the knowledge of nature becomes confused withf ut the yovern- in-r tr'th of the relation of man to God.' oevable sang ce mystf^re, que ce mj-stbre n'est inconcevable k Ihomme.'

Tliat doctrine is indeed a (latum of revelation ; but it harmonizes well with what we know of ourselves and of others. There has been somewhere a backward step in the history of man, who was at the first created 'very good.' And the teacliing of St. Paul about sin, stated in terms of the story of Gn 3, but based on the broad f round of observation and experience, gives, as we ave seen, the rationale of this fact, and brings it into line with tlie revelation of the gospel.

There are two points on which it is necessary to add a few concluding remarks. (1) St. Paul, following Gn 2" and 3»», states that death came through sin (Ro 5'""). It is tolerably plain that by ' death ' he means physical death, aJthough it has been interpreted of the death of the soul (see Sanday, in luc). And he here seems to come into collision with natural science, which teaches that death must have been known upon the earth long before the human species appeared.

For ages before the creation or evolution of man, death in the case of the lower animals must have been a necessary concomitant and condition of life. It is not apparent, however, that this touches St. Paul's argument ; for he is speaking of the death of Tnan. And in the case oi man it may well be that had he remained faithful to the law of his being, as communicated to him by his Creator, death would have had no dominion over him.

As has been said already, of the condition of primeval man we have little information j it was so utterly nnlike anything of which we have e.xperience that confident statements would be out of place. But, at all events, the death of a being made in the image of God is a phenomenon of an order entirely diirerent from the death of a beast. Death is the portion of the latter ; it is part of the divine intention for him. Not so, lor man. For him there is a further destiny in store.

And his sin, as it involves alienation from God, involves the withdrawal of that higher life which has been the assurance of immortality. We do not assert of Adam the non posse mori, but the posse non mori, as long as his fellowship ^vith God, the source of life, was unbroken. But sin reduced him to the state of a lower animal, and thus man became the prey of death.

It may well be that, as has been surmised by many of the profoundest of Christian philosophers, there is some intimate connexion be- tween moral evil and physical decay for a composite being such as Scripture represents man to be. And in the I'all of Adam his whole race were thus involved ; death passed upon them, not indeed as a punishment for something which a remote an- cestor had done, but as the inevitable consequence of the sin of the head of the race.

Thev inherit a degraded nature, which is subject to the laws of Shysical dissolution as is the nature of a beast, iut ' man's^normal condition, according to the OT, is not mortality, with the possibility of attaining immortality by a later gift ; but life in God's fellow- ship, with the possibility of losing it and falling into a condition of an existence which is not life.' It is not by any means clear that it is within the power of natural science to negative this view.

(2) What may prove a more serious ditliculty arises in connexion with the origin of the human race from a single pair, which seems to be jircsup- po.-ied in St. Paul's exposition of the panillelisni between Adam and Christ. True, the unity of the race is not disproved by science ; and it is believed by many on purely scientific grounds to l>e more Srobable than the hj-pothe.sis that mankind are escended from several pairs.

But if the latter doctrine should comiiianil at any time the assent of the scientific world, it would be necessary to * Salmond, Chrittian Doctrine af ImmorUUity, p. 220. modify in gome degree what has been gaid. Thi.'i article has been written on the a.ssumption that there is nothing contradictory to science in the doctrine of the unity of the human race an descended from common parents. This is cer- tainly the doctrine expounded by St. Paul.

But it is a matter which comes \s'ithin the province of science; and should it ever be disproved, it would be necessary to admit that the apostle was n.sing an illustration not scientifically apt in all respects. It must be observed, however, that in essentials nothing would have to be changed. The great truths, that sin began with the beginning oF our race, that its baneful influence has been trans- mitted from generation to generation, that it is a.

s widespread as mankind itself, that it cannot be eradicated without a gift of grace, are unallected whether ' Adam ' be taken as the name of a single individual, or as a term descriptive of the fore f.ithers of the human species. The universality of sin is a sufficient indication that human nature has been corrupted at its base, whether by the fall of one or ot several ; and it would still remain true that ' as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.'

So much it has been deemed necessary to say, although at present the balance cf evidence seems distinctly to favour the doctrine that mankind are descended from one common stock, and so to confirm the analogy drawn out by St. Paul. See also Adam, Atonement, Justifi- cation, Heredity, Paradise, Sacrifice, Sin. LiTERATtTUB.

— In addition to the books already mentioned, the following may be consulted with proflt : Ryle, Earty Narratives of Genesis; Orr, Chrittian yieui of God and the World ; Laidlaw, The Bible Doctrine of Man : MiiUer, Christian Doctrine of Sin. The subject il discussed m all treatises on systematic Theology. J. H. BERNARD.