The Bible’s first three chapters recount what Christian theology refers to as “the Fall of man – how a pure creation became contaminated by evil. The original ancestors of the human race, created positively good, yet free to choose, were given one simple prohibition: not to eat of one particular tree in the Garden of Eden. God warned of serious consequences in the event of disobedience to this one commandment: “The day you eat of it, you will die”. Adam and Eve chose to disobey. The New Testament comments: “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin” (Romans 5.12). Sin “came into” human existence; it was not there before. But now humans have become sinners, subject to all kinds of evil and death.

Because of this, Jesus describes human depravity in our inner being, when he says: “From within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (Mark 7.21-22). Quite the opposite of the first couple’s holiness before the Fall! A great tragedy – but one from which we humans can be saved and healed.

The New Testament adds, in Romans 5.19, “By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners”. In other words, sin entered as it were into the bloodstream of humanity, and we are all infected with it. Thus we are vestiges of the original glory, tarnished by inherent corruption. That is how we are to understand our human reality. That is the Maker’s diagnosis – the true facts about our condition. And the Maker subsequently set in motion the means of redemption, restoration, healing, and forgiveness – we will come to that in due course.

But I want to refer again to Pascal’s brilliant explanation of this – what theologians call “original sin”, and he calls “the mystery furthest from our ken” (§131/434). It is so dense, I will have to summarise and simplify it. He says:

As a result of the Fall, all humans are born with an inner disposition to evil. He acknowledges that this doctrine – that we should suffer from the effects of our ancestor’s disobedience – offends our proud sensibilities. “Nothing jolts us more rudely than this doctrine,” he says. Yet – get this: without this revealed explanation (that none of us likes nor could have invented, but which was there in the Bible from the first) we are unable to explain the essential duality of good and evil in our nature. “But for this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all”, he wrote, “we remain incomprehensible to ourselves”! Only by grasping this revealed truth which appears so contrary to proud human reason, he concludes, only then “can we really know ourselves.”

Profound!

He sums up therefore “two equally constant truths. One is that man in the state of his creation… is made like unto God; the other is that in the state of corruption and sin, he has fallen from that first estate and has become like the beasts”. But he alludes also to a third state, “the state of grace”. This refers to the restoration of sinful man by the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sinful men and women can be forgiven by God’s grace, through the Cross of their Saviour; and they can be made new by the converting power of the Holy Spirit, becoming beloved children of God, saved from the consequences of their sins, welcomed by God into a warm ,loving relationship with him, for which they were designed.

Clive Every-Clayton