The Fall (Part 4): Three gods and the problem of hell.

Symbolically one of the major consequences of the Fall was this: reality became split up. In the first place, the relationship between man and God was broken. In the second place, the relationship between man and reality was broken. In the third place, and most notably for the subject at hand, the relationships between man and his conceptions of God were distorted and left in ruins.

Some Christians talk of God being a God of justice. And if God is just, all of us can rest easily in our beds, because a just God will ensure that all wrongs get righted and that in the end even the Fall won't stop his justice from being executed. I like this view of God. And so do the ScripturesBut then, insert the traditional evangelicalist view of hell as eternal conscious torment into the picture and God's justice becomes highly questionable:

How can a finite human being commit so much evil that s/he could deserve (because deserving is central to our understanding of justice) forever and ever in eternal conscious torment? Put another way, if a person leads a relatively good life, messes up fairly often and then makes the heinous mistake of not accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, how is year after year, millennium after millennium and billions of billions of years of eternal conscious torment just?

Try and justify getting chucked into the flames forever and ever by a perfectly just God.

Some Christians talk of God being a God of love. I like it. In fact, the Biblical view is that God is in his very nature love. This means God is not loving one day and not-loving the next. He is always love, even when he is angry. His wrath is simply his love in the face of contradiction. Hell, then, must be an expression of God's nature, which is love.

Right. So, then if hell is eternal conscious torment, how can God be love?

1,000,000,000,000,000 x 1000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 doesn't come close to giving us a picture of eternity. Eternal conscious torment at the hands of a God who is in his very nature love doesn't, philosophically make any sense.

Unless love includes a picture of God as an abusive Father. If that is love, then I'm lost.

Then, there are those who say God is sovereign. This means he gets what he wants in the end. But, the proviso is this: God has given us free will, which leaves his sovereignty and our human responsibility in permanent tension. Now, with the definition of hell as eternal conscious torment, chosen by many billions of human beings, what do you do with an understanding of God as being sovereign? And the answer is: you assume that God wanted it so. Double-predestination, we have a winner! God chooses some to get into heaven and some to go to hell.

Calvinists have to conclude this because to suggest that in the end people get what they want is to place human free will above the free will of the Divine.

So, my point is, when you insert hell as eternal conscious torment into all three of these descriptors of the nature of God, what you end up with is the Devil.

Take time out of the equation and you end up with a serpent in a Garden who instigates the Fall. Take reason out of the equation and you end up with a God who is irrationally just: i.e. his justice isn't quite perfect; a God who is irrationally loving, only when it pleases him; and a God who chooses that some people get to spend the rest of time (which has no end) consciously suffering in the flames.

I wish I could go into the details of how to sort out and reconcile these different views of God with the idea of hell. The long answer is found in the thoroughly scholarly Gregory McDonnald's "The evangelical universalist" and the shorter answer is:

The traditional conception of hell as eternal conscious torment is wrong. I have yet to meet someone who can defend the doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment without falling into the first trap of the fall: the splitness of reality and understanding. It's not only unbiblical, but it is philosophically ludicrous. I don't buy it. I never have. Does that make me a universalist?
Maybe. It doesn't matter really, I think. The main point is, if God is just, loving and sovereign, then Biblically rooted, critically engaged universalism isn't necessarily a poor way to solve these conundrums. I have yet to make up my mind about whether I truly believe any of this in the first place.

The Fall (Part 3)

I often think about what Adam must have felt like when he saw that Eve had eaten from that tree. I wonder what he saw in her. I wonder if he recognized that she had changed. Maybe she seemed the same, enough of the same to convince Adam that eating from that tree wasn't that bad of an idea. But then, I wonder if there was a tree at all.

For Eve, the tree may just have been a symbol for power. Maybe the thing she wanted to know was what it was like to be powerful. And the knowledge of power was just as good as the knowledge of evil, for to desire power is to be corrupted by it. And for Adam, the tree may have been a metaphor for his desire to reconfigure his knowledge of his own wife, Eve. Maybe he wanted to control her and tame her. Maybe he wanted to know her as his possession rather than as his wife. Maybe the point isn't knowledge as such, but a kind of knowledge and a way of knowing.

The serpent speaking is an obvious symbol in Jewish thought of something horribly wrong in the world. The serpent was probably not a literal serpent, but a symbol of the ways that Eve and Adam had allowed their own thinking to be skewed. I don't know. The whole thing seems pretty weird to me. I know I can't read the story as literally true, but I'm not sure just how far to take the symbolism without corrupting the essence of what the story is trying to say.

Taking all of my doubts into account, so far I'm convinced of this: that the story didn't just happen to two people at a particular time, but is something that happens to all of us all the time. Maybe it started with two people – I can live with that. But the story isn't just about them. It's about you and me and everyone else.

I'm also convinced that the Fall isn't just a one-off, but a daily thing that happens in ways that shock us and bring us to tears. I'm certain that whatever the Fall is, it means that we are more vulnerable to having our knowledge corrupted and our faith eroded. It means that we feel further from God more often than is right.

Whatever the Fall means, it means that we are in need of redemption.

The Fall (Part 2)

And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge you shall not eat, for when you eat of it you shall die." Adam, fulfilling his priestly duty, relayed this information to Eve; and for a time all was well.

But the forbidden tree was never far from their minds.

"Did God tell you where the tree is," asked Eve one night as the happy couple was lying awake. "I have never seen it."
"No," said Adam. "All He said was not to eat of it."
"We should go and look for it, just to make sure we know where it is. That way we can tell our children where not to go looking."
"That's an excellent idea," said Adam, who, not having eaten of the tree of knowledge, didn't know very much at all.

It took years for Adam and Eve to find the forbidden tree. All the while, they had neglected their other duties in the garden. They were not tilling the land they were given. But when they found the tree, they discovered that it was nearly impossible to get to. There were high walls set in layer upon layer, razor-wired fences and, finally, at the top of a high hill, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was behind a cage.

"We should figure out how to get in," said Adam. "You know, just so that we can tell our children what not to do."
"I like the way you think," said Eve.

Again, it was only after many years – while they neglected their other work – that they finally did find a way to the cage. Adam and Eve had learned how to make strong tools as blacksmiths do, and had forced their way to the tree by building ladders, climbing walls and cutting through the razor wire.

"We're here," said Eve.
"I know," said Adam. "It's hard to believe."
"Should we go inside?"
"I don't see why not. We've come all this way." You see, Adam had not yet eaten of the tree of knowledge, and so his ability to understand was terribly limited, and so was Eve's.
"How do we get in?"

Adam looked around for a way in. And much to his surprise he discovered that the gate to the cage where the tree was kept was open.

"Ladies first," said Adam.

Eve walked in and looked at the fruit on the tree. It was like nothing she had ever seen. It was large and succulent, and very pleasing to the eye.

"What did God say about dying?" said Eve to her husband.
"He said the tree would cause death," said Adam.
"So, He didn't say that the tree was poisonous?"
"Nope."
"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out."

Eve took a huge bite from the fruit. It tasted very good. Adam looked at his wife and saw the fire in her eyes and he desired that fire for himself. So he too ate of the fruit. Then, the door to the cage surrounding the tree of knowledge slammed shut.

In a frenzy, Adam and Eve tried to find a way out, but their tools were all out of reach.

"Where has he been all these years," asked Adam.
"Who?" asked Eve.
"God."
"Who's that?"
"The one who made this tree, and this cage, and this garden and this land and that sky. I see his work everywhere, but I can't find him anywhere. I've been searching so hard for this tree that I forgot to look for him. Now, I fear, I will never find him again, now that we are trapped in this cage."
"Adam," said Eve. "Stop whining will you? It's making me sick."

The Fall (Part 1)

Allow me a little thought experiment.

I often wonder about the time that passed between the moment Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the time that Adam showed up. I wonder what Eve was thinking as she tasted the bitter-sweetness of the forbidden. I wonder if her stomach ached the way stomachs ache when they are filled with remorse and fear. And what about Adam? What was he doing? What was he pondering as he was out alone in the garden? Was he looking for Eve?

I also wonder about the exchange that might have taken place between the once-happy couple. I wonder about what Adam felt like when he realized what Eve had done, and how Eve ended up convincing Adam to give the fruit a try. Did Eve know what she had done. Had this new knowledge sunk in properly?

Part of me wants to think that Adam got this terrible sinking feeling the moment he found his wife. He might have felt a little like she'd cheated on him by listening to that damn serpent instead of to him. Did he ask her, "How could you?" Did she smirk as he wept for what she had done? And did she reply, "Oh, come on, babe, it's not that bad. Do you want some?"

But then, maybe Adam knew that he would have done the same; he would have eaten that fruit. So maybe that's why he ended up taking a bite.

Maybe he didn't want Eve to be alone. I don't know exactly what happened. The text is full of holes and I guess there will always be more questions than answers in this world. The spaces between meanings are huge, awful, majestic, terrifying, liberating. So, if it's okay with you, I'll keep wondering, because as I ponder the fall of Adam and Eve, I am forced to contemplate my own fall. As I fly between the words of these unfortunate people, I find that they are like me and I, like them. And if God can choose, after this terrible doing, to cover their sins with blood and clothing, then maybe he will cover mine too so that I do not have to go to out into the world feeling ashamed.

On reading Genesis literally

I don't think I could ever be one of those people who takes the story of the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden literally. In any case, I don't think the writer of Genesis (if there was only one writer – a number of scholars seem to be a little unclear on this) took the story literally either. Adam may have been one man or a million. Eve probably wasn't just one woman either. Adam and Eve may have arrived on the scene ex nihilo or out of some weird evolutionary process. Whatever happened, no one is exactly sure, so it would be both stupid and arrogant to act is if you are sure. Are you absolutely sure that an actual serpent spoke? I can't be. My faith is too small. It makes a mustard seed look like Jupiter.

When I think about it (which isn't that often), I am truly amazed that there are people out there who do take Genesis so very literally, because an exact literal interpretation is precisely the sort of thing that has to end with the abolition of faith. If you're not convinced, I don't mind, but this is why I say that ...

A literal interpretation treats the text as a concrete, substantial entity-on-its-own; something to be known but not believed in. And, lest we forget, that kind of a perspective denies something crucial to how we understand the world. Nothing is an entity-on-its-own. Yes, if you, like Descartes and a myriad famous thinkers after him, follow a basic substance ontology then things can exist on their own terms. But if you're a thinking Christian (and there aren't too many of those out there as far as I can tell) this is the very ontology that you cannot accept. Not even Genesis exists in isolation. Why, for pity's sake, do people treat it as if it does?

Scientists, when at work, can consider the nature of substances, but then scientists are dealing with empiricist interrogations of substances as entities-on-their-own and/or within-systems of substances. But theologians, historians, artists, philosophers and poets (all in their respective fields of inquiry) do not and in fact cannot see the world in such concrete terms. Everything is connected. A rock is not a just rock but a symbol of stability. A sky is not a just sky but a field where hope plays. A suit is not a just suit but a symbol of the dignity of man.

In an exactly literal interpretation there would have been no room for doubt, and thus no room for faith. In other words, there would be no room for any human being, including the scientist who thinks about life after he has finished questioning the rocks, skies and fabrics of reality. There would be no room for me.

I still think (in amidst my doubting) that the opening chapters of Genesis are filled-to-overflowing with life-sized and larger-than-life truth. Much of my understanding of human nature comes from Genesis and that's something I'm not going to apologise for. But to read Genesis and especially the story of Adam and Eve as if it were an empirical tract would be to abolish the need for grappling properly with the text and would, consequently, result in your being excommunicated from the Garden long before Adam and Eve are.