The Fall of Man
Jewish and Orthodox Christian Perspectives
In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh. During the first six, He created light, day, and night, the waters, creatures of the sea, air and land. On the sixth day He created man. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of heaven, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that moves on the earth.’ So God made man; in the image of God. He made him; male and female He made them.” Genesis 1:26 & 27. God placed Adam in the garden of Eden, and gave him a helpmate created from Adam’s rib, woman. God gave them one commandment, “You may eat food from every tree in the garden; but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil you may not eat; for in whatever day you eat from it, you shall die by death.” Genesis 2:16. The serpent, the Devil, would soon seduce Eve into eating from the Forbidden Tree, the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. “ Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You shall not die by death. For God knows in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:4 & 5. She then gave the fruit for her husband, Adam to eat. Adam and Eve at this point began to hide themselves from the presence of the Lord. Several consequences are stated by God, the cursing of the serpent and its seed, pain of birth giving and subjection to the husband for the women, and “...Because you heeded the voice of your wife, and ate from the one tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground in your labors. In toil you shall eat from it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground from which you were taken. Earth you are, and to earth you shall return.” Genesis 3:17-20. Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of Paradise, Eden, which would be guarded by the cherubim and fiery sword. From henceforth mankind would be born outside of paradise. Rabbinic Jews and Orthodox Christians both accept this creation account from Genesis. However, they have different perspectives regarding the meaning of man’s disobedience and expulsion from Paradise is quite different.
For most Rabbinical Jews, the consequence of Adam and Eve’s disobedience was exile from the Garden of Eden, the fate of potential death, and no longer having every need provided directly by God. Man must labor, women must bear children in pain, and be subject to her husband’s domination. Some Rabbis even speculate that it was a necessary stage of growth in the development of man. Shlomo Bardin used the following parable, “Imagine, that a young woman marries a young man whose father is president of a large company. After the marriage, the father makes the son a vice-president and gives him a large salary, but because he has no work experience, the father gives him no responsibilities. Every week, the young man draws a large check, but he has nothing to do. His wife soon realizes that she is not married to a man but to a boy, and that as long as her husband stays in his father’s firm, he will always be a boy. So she forces him to quit his job, give up his security, go to another city, and start out on his own. That is the reason Eve ate from the tree.”
One of the more prominent books used in the United States for Jewish learning, almost like a Catechism, is called Jewish Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. It’s actually the most thorough English text available on the subject of Judaism, covering 348 different subjects. It will be used as a reference and starting point for an Orthodox Christian response to all of those topics. Commenting on his perception of Christian theology he states, “In Christian theology this story of disobedience became the Original Sin with which all of mankind was permanently stained. But Jews have never regarded it with the same seriousness. It was an act of defiance, to be sure, and because it transgressed God’s command, it was a sin. But the idea that every child is born damned for that sin is alien to Jewish thought.” Judaism takes a more external and surface level perspective, but this Rabbi’s critique of “Christianity” is more so of Roman Catholic and Protestant ideas.
That certainly is not a fair and accurate description of the Orthodox Churches teaching regarding the consequence of the Fall. Man was created in the image and likeness of God. When man first sinned, the nature of man was changed. Men are created in the Image of God because unlike other creatures, they have a Nous, which has also been described as the “Eye of the Soul.” It is the nourisher of a man’s soul. Just as God has both essence and energy, so the soul has essence and energy. That is the image of God. When mankind disobeyed God’s commandment and brought sin into the World, the nous was blackened, darkened, and became sick by the fall. By becoming that way, the nature of man was changed, and the likeness of God in man was lost.
The Law was given to God’s people Israel before the coming of Christ as a sort of icon of the sensory, and bodily asceticism. Jesus Christ the Messiah, the incarnate Son of God, as the New Adam would come to conquer death by death, giving man the means to heal the nous and restore the likeness of God. Man can now begin the process of restoring the Nous through repentance, and participation in the Sacraments of The Orthodox Church, traversing through the three stages of spiritual life, purification, illumination, and deification.
Citations
The Orthodox Study Bible. (2008). . Thomas Nelson.
Sysoev, D. (2016). The Law Of God. Daniel Sysoev Inc.
Telushkin, J. (2008). Jewish literacy: The most important things to know about the Jewish religion, its people, and its history. William Morrow.
Vlachos, H., & Williams, E. (2017). Orthodox psychotherapy: (The science of the fathers). Birth of the Theotokos Monastery.