How Could It Happen? Part 2

We can draw from the confessions that man as created was:

very good, with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness after his own image, having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it; and yet under a possibility of transgressing, upright, perfect, righteous, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject to change, and in communion with God.

Let's take a look:
1. very good: there was no imperfection in man
2. reasonable: perfect reasoning, that is, rational capabilities
3. immortal: perfect state of being
4. knowledge: perfect objective truth
5. righteousness: perfect actions
6. holiness: perfect innocence
7. will: perfectly natural and free
8. communion: perfect fellowship with God

So how could it happen that a perfect man able to act upon his environment would break communion with God? According to the confessions, man, righteous and holy, by the liberty of their own will chose to disobey a direct commandment of which man had perfect knowledge including the consequences for doing so.
Adam and Eve's acts prior to their sinning were righteous simply. They were virtuous, without sinful action. The were also without sin- they were holy. The first refers to their relationship to each other and to God. The second, their essential being, having within no evil as man created in the image of God.

Often the fall is stated as man's stretching out his hand from some inner motive which he naturally possessed. One way of looking at this is to say that the desire was naturally good. Another is to say that man had within him concupiscence. The latter we can dismiss for it has to do with inordinate desire and from the description of man in his primal state, created in the image of God, there was nothing in man but perfect good. The former, then, is the only basis upon which we can say for certain that man acted. But if it was a right desire, created in perfect goodness, then how did man act upon that and break the commandment that he knew perfectly with true knowledge, was rebellion against God and that it would cause his death?

The confessions say that he was deceived. But that begs the question that if man was perfect in knowledge, holy, and with a rational mind and as the understanding goes, the highest perfection of all God's creatures, created in His image, how did that happen?

We might at this point want to reflect upon Jude:

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

Genesis three tells us that the Devil, in the form of a serpent, deceived Eve and that she then turned and did likewise and gave to her husband. The power of the Devil is not to be taken lightly. We see in him an ability that we only vaguely understand. He deceived the angels who beheld God in Glory and are mightier than man. Despite the miraculous exodus experiences, he persuaded many against the Lord who had freed them from bondage. We see further wondrous powers when in the temptation of Christ he translates the Lord, in what can only be described as a supernatural event, to a high place and shows him the kingdoms of the world.
With this in view and knowing what we know of man can we rightly say that man of the liberty of his own will without any kind of compulsion willingly chose death over life? There are terms we have to explore.

If by liberty of their own will we mean that man without any influence from outside him chose to rebel, where does the rebellion come from? We are immediately thrown upon the waves of confusion if we say that man from within rebelled without any compelling influence from without, for we have the description of man; he was created in perfect goodness, thoroughly. There was nothing in him that he should rebel. Not knowingly, anyway. We are left then to define compulsion.

What must be meant by that is that man was not forced against his willingness to act upon what he knew to be true. Then why did he act? He was perfect in rational thinking, full of knowledge and holy. Then what compelled him? Compulsion, then, may be by means of what is not forced but by what is presented. But that leaves us again at the first step of Adam's perfection. He was able to discern good and knew of the evil that was to be rejected. How then does that evil become to him a thing compelling?

We find that Scripture says Eve saw the fruit as good for food and for attaining knowledge. Indeed, it essentially was good, for it was the knowledge of God, albeit forbidden for man to attain. The question is how does she come to see it as such to be desired for attaining? As something good, she could have merely acted upon her natural proclivities, compelled by them as it were, she does as she was created to do. But, she would do so in direct contradiction to her better knowledge. What then changes that her natural desire becomes unnatural, that the ordinate desire becomes concupiscence?

Whatever compelled Adam then looms even greater in his case, for he knew the command also, and the penalty for breaching it. Perhaps that he saw the woman not die? We can only speculate as to what Eve said to Adam, just as we can only speculate as to the whole conversation that preceded her eating the fruit. Yet even if we knew what she taught him it would not answer our question. Again, Adam was perfect, with a rational mind, righteous, holy, and full of knowledge and knew the consequences as Eve also knew. Even seeing Eve alive, he, having communion with God, that is, face to face knowledge of Him, though challenged, does not answer just how it is that he reasons contrary to the holiness within or against the perfect knowledge he has of God without and also acquires a desire not natural to him. Death has been threatened, but death does not occur to Eve. However, even we in our fallenness would seek to reconcile the facts, wouldn’t we? Adam doesn't, he seeks no answers from another counselor, he makes no attempts at defense of what he surely knows, unlike Eve, or at least it is not recorded. Though he knows to do these things, he doesn't. Why? What overriding compulsion has entered into him?

So we are stopped at this: what man of rational mind knowing what would happen if he ate would eat? How is it that he believes the lie if indeed in his perfect knowledge he knew better? Seeing that there is nothing natural in him that can bring forth such rebellion, though we have the testimony of Scripture that he does act with culpability, how is it that he chooses against all he knows to be true? Some might say that the Devil and Eve caused doubt to arise. Ah, but how so? From where? Adam was created in the image of God and had a rational mind, able to discern good from evil, he knew the consequence, he was in communion with God. If doubt enters in, then it cannot be said that it was without compulsion in that Adam would not have chosen to allow doubt in, would he? As we can observe, doubt is not natural to the perfection which was in the image of God. So, from where would doubt arise?

Questions, questions, questions... the only answer seems to be some form of compulsion, mysterious though it is.

Compulsion in the sense of forcing against ones will can be eliminated. Adam is held culpable. A compulsion which has spiritual affect by powers unknown could effect it, though. We must be warned again: the ability of the enemy is not to be slighted. Something happened to Adam, and Eve, as God permitted, inflicted by the Devil, which caused their natural abilities to be impaired or they would not have sinned.

Then by that we know another thing. And it is the natural ability of the will. Adam was not forced and God's holding him accountable is the testimony to that, yet Adam cannot be rightly said to have had a choice, either. Choice, to be real, has to be grounded in truth. Deception is not a form of truth. It is the presentation of what truth is not.

Johnathan Edwards has deftly said that the will is simply the mind choosing its own highest good. Adam we know was created with a perfect mind, rational, with knowledge and given a commandment to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How then do we explain that a good mind, perfect in all its faculties, would choose against itself unless prior to the eating of the fruit Adam's mind was corrupted by something without? The temptation in the Garden is beyond simple reckoning. It could not have been merely the exercise of debate raising doubt as some speculate, or even the manipulation of objects in the environment by illusion. There was something which happened more deeply considered. And we find some clues in the NT, again.

The devil and his demons can effect change in the natural world in ways that we cannot begin to understand:

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.

In this I am not saying that Adam and Eve were demon possessed. I am saying that the powers of darkness are above and beyond what we naturally think and those powers were practically greater in the Garden only having been diminished by the curse upon the Devil. As with the story of Job, where the power is given over natural events and even a person's body, the Devil can be empowered beyond the common reckoning. It is supernaturalism. In that I think is a clue to what might have happened in the Garden. The snake allurement should not be slighted as being less than what it is, a supernatural event which should clue us into a deeper reality of what the deception was all about.

Compulsion doesn't require force. It may simply be the presentation of false choice. In the case of the fall, no choice was given Adam and Eve by God. The choice was presented by the Devil. By some power he was able to make the tree appear not merely pleasing to the eye for food. That is only half the story. It was also made desirable for the attainment of wisdom and knowledge. No fruit was given by God for that, and Eve well knew that to be true. Neither the tree for food or for wisdom were choices presented by the fiat of God's creation. The tree's fruit had been forbidden as food and God had given man perfect knowledge for all matters concerning life. The pair lacked nothing. How then does a desire which previously had no basis in reality come into existence for something unneeded? Whatever happened to Adam and Eve was in addition to, or perhaps a subtracting from, what naturally occurred within or without them.