Sin Without Eden

Rev. James B. Miller, Ph.D.

February 10, 2008

Presbyterian Church in Sudbury

Genesis 2.15-17, 3.1-7

^2.15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. ¹⁶And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; ¹⁷but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’

^3.1Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ ²The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; ³but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” ’ ⁴But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; ⁵for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, ‘knowing good and evil.’ ⁶So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. ⁷Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Romans 5.12-19

^5.12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— ¹³sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. ¹⁴Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.

¹⁵ But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. ¹⁶And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. ¹⁷If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

¹⁸ Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. ¹⁹For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

Matthew 4.1-11

^4.1Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ²He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. ³The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ ⁴But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’

⁵ Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you”, and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”’ 
⁷Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’

⁸ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; ⁹and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ ¹⁰Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”’ 
¹¹Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

In 1966 Charles Merrill Smith, Methodist minister, wrote a book entitled, How to Be a Bishop Without Being Religious. This was very humorous presentation of many of the foibles, of greater and lesser extent, that effect church leadership. In one section he discusses preaching about sin. He notes that there are two criteria for a good sermon on sin: first, that the sins be colorful for entertainment value, and second, that none of them apply to the congregation. I suspect I may fail to meet both of those standards this morning.

Another book on my shelf was written in 1973 by the psychiatrist, Karl Menninger. It’s entitled, Whatever Became of Sin? In an age of permissiveness, in the Seventies, an age of “I’m OK, You’re OK,” in an age of the medicalization of all behavior whereby there are no sinners only persons suffering from dysfunctions, a book with this title, by a noted psychiatrist, no less, seemed especially poignant.

But on reading Menninger’s book you might wonder whether he himself fully appreciates the depth of the Christian understanding of sin, not only its prevalence but its apparently inescapable persistence. As Reinhold Niebuhr once quipped, “the doctrine of original sin is the only empirically verifiable Christian doctrine.”

This morning I would like us to think about how we understand sin, its source, its persistence and its remedy. And in particular how we can understand these things in the midst of an evolving creation.

For our Old Testament text this morning we read the classic account of what our tradition has called the “Fall of Man.” Subsequent to the events that we read about, God judges the Man and Woman, introduces them (and all of the rest of creation as well) to Death, requires that they work for their daily bread, makes it so childbirth is a form of hard labor, insures lust on the part of men so that women will have to experience this labor, and establishes a particular enmity between humans and snakes.

Now, in light of our current understanding of natural history, are there problems with this story?

First, it does not make any sense to try to identify the “first human.” What we see in natural history is a lineage of parents and children; biological continuity and innovation; pre-human, like A. africanus, and early Hominids, like H. erectus, whom we do not identify as ourselves, and more recent ones, Cro-magnon, whom we do identify as virtually like ourselves. But there is no clear line of demarcation between pre-human and early human and modern human. All along the way there are just parents and children.

In addition, death is not a new reality in creation appearing only with the advent of humankind. Whole species (the great dinosaurs, for example) became extinct long before any Hominid walked the face of the Earth. And as the fossil record indicates death has been present on Earth since the beginning of life, 3.8 billion years ago or so. Metaphorically, we even owe our existence to the “death” of the early stars, which in their thermonuclear furnaces cooked into existence the heavier elements of Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Calcium, Phosphorous, and Iron to name some of the biologically important ones. Without these we would not exist. In the death-throes of those stars, the novas and supernovas, these elements were scattered into the universe eventually becoming us. We are literally made of stardust. Death is not new in the universe and it is closely related to the origin and diversification of life.

The struggle for existence, the need to work for a living, also pre-dates humans. All organisms struggle for existence. All have to work for their daily bread. In the history of life there are no free lunches.

Sexual reproduction is about a billion years old. It is a major contributor to the emergence of the diversity of life because it increases genetic variation in offspring. And do you think that males of any species have to be forced to seek reproductive partners or that female primates have just a rosy-old-time in childbirth?

And are snakes the only critters about which humans have phobias. When was the last time you sat down with a friendly spider?

And then there is the question of a place called Eden as the site of human origins. Traditionally, it has been understood to be located somewhere in the Tigris and Euphrates watershed and Armenia has been a proposed location. But it is sub-Saharan Africa that is the geographical location for the emergence of all Hominid species including Homo sapiens.

Now other than issues of biblical interpretation, why should we care about whether there was an Eden of not, whether there was a first human or not, or whether there was a First Sin?

In our Epistle reading from Romans, Paul draws on the Genesis account to make his point that Christ Jesus comes to overcome the failure of the First Human to obey God. From Paul’s perspective the consequence of Adam’s disobedience is not only his death but the death of all his heirs, namely us. Augustine understood the Fall of Adam to have created a genetic-like flaw that was then passed from generation to generation through sexual reproduction.

But for Paul through the obedience of Christ Jesus, the cycle of sin is broken, our trespasses are absolved, righteousness is imputed to us through faith, and we are restored to life.

But if there was no First Human who disobeyed God by misbehavior in a primordial Garden, then where does sin come from and how can Jesus save us from sin?

What I would like to suggest this morning is that the source of sin, or at least the conditions necessary for it are to be found in the divine creative requirement that we make our own lives and the divine grant of freedom as we do so. God calls us to fullness of life and provides us the means to live such lives but does not require that we choose to live such lives. Here I think our Gospel reading is instructive. Perhaps you noticed that the Gospel account of Jesus temptation makes no reference to Adam, Eden or a First Sin.

What is Jesus’ first temptation? It is to slate his hunger. It is to act to fulfill one of the basic necessities of life, nourishment. We should not focus on the apparently miraculous act, turning stones to bread, that the Tempter is trying to elicit from Jesus. It is the function of the act not its mode that is at issue. Jesus’ fasting in the wilderness is a rite of purification prior to the beginning of his ministry. Jesus’ response points to the fact that while humans are animals requiring sustenance, we are more than animals in that we serve ends that are beyond our mere survival. Human life is more than eating and breeding. Human life is lived most fully in joyful response to God’s calling Word.

The second temptation may sound grand and miraculous as well but we have to think about it in Jesus terms. The Tempter having been first thwarted with a biblical quote seeks to use the Hebrew scriptures to justify the temptation. Here the temptation is to a self-indulgent manifestation of special privileges.

It may not be appropriate to claim that humankind is the pinnacle of creation, but it is without doubt the case that we are remarkable creatures vested through God’s creating with gifts of intellect and imagination. These gifts have not only allowed us to adapt to virtually every environment on Earth (and some beyond the Earth) but where we could not adapt to the environment we have changed the environment to better suit our needs. We tend to take our powers in the creation for granted, as our due. We seem to forget the biblical injunction the to whom much is given much is expected. There are those who even seem to hold that given our possession of these gifts we are immune to the consequences of our callous use of them in nature; that we can do with the world as we please but God will surely save us from any resulting environmental devastation due to our privileged state in creation. Jesus’ word to the Tempter is also a warning to us, “Do not test God.”

The third temptation is the will to power for the sake of self-aggrandizement. It is the Faustian bargain for power without the obligation of service to God, which is the worship of God. Today we understand that human power is less about political might and more about the power of knowledge. To a large degree political power is sustained through the control of knowledge. The true worship of God is to place all of our power, especially our knowledge, in service to the call of God. And not just the knowledge we possess but the knowledge that we can acquire. A twentieth century philosopher has said that, “… duty arises from our potential control over the course of events and where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice.” (A.N. Whitehead, Aims of Education, p. 12). Or in a more positive tone, Copernicus is attributed as having said, “To know the mighty works of God, comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power, to appreciate in degree the wonderful working of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High to whom ignorance can not be more grateful than knowledge.”

I suggest that the source of human sin is not some primordial event, it is the fact that in God’s creation we must ourselves exercise genuine freedom to respond to God’s creative call. God calls us but does not coerce our response. We must commit ourselves to fulfill God’s call to us. Our temptation is to use our powers to serve our interests rather than making God’s aims our aims, we worship ourselves rather than God.

We cannot escape our freedom. We cannot escape our obligation to decide and act. We cannot escape the call of God. But in our freedom we can fail to heed God’s call and fail to act on it. It is in the conjunction of freedom and action that sin arises, not necessarily but inevitably.

Jesus is savior, not through some form of magic. Jesus is savior because through our faith in him we see demonstrated what it means to be fully obedient to God’s call. Jesus reveals to us the grace of God, that the past underdetermines the present. We are not bound by our past sin. Genuine repentance frees us not only to be able to redress past sin but to embrace God’s creative call into the future. In Christ Jesus we see both that we are sinners and that we need not be.

As Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery that he saved from being stoned: “Your sins are forgiven, go and sin no more.”

Back to Top

Back to our Home Page

For questions/comments on this page, please click to e-mail: PCISwebmaster.

The contents of this site are copyright © 2008, Presbyterian Church in Sudbury. All Rights Reserved.