real sin itself must have arisen at some point at which "natural appetite passed into that stage of its prog- ress when, as St. James says, lust has conceived, and at which the sin thus conceived has quickened into mental transgression. This point, lost in the mj'stery which envelopes every beginning of existence, mental or materia], of thought, act, or substance, was the real fall, and is better represented by the mystical symbol of the participation of forbidden fruit than by a histor- ical narrative that should only specify the overt act in words to be taken in their literal acceptation." After answering Hengstenberg's objections to the symboli- cal interpretation (especiallj- the objections drawn from those passages of the N. T. in which the history of the fall is taken as actual historj^, 2 Cor. xi, 3; 1 Tim. ii, 13,14; Eom. V, 12), he concludes with the general statement that " enough of the historical facts are pa- tent to suffice for all the moral and religious uses of such a narrative, the creation and the fall being un- questionable verities ;" but "nothing is told merelj' to gratify curiosity ; the details that could only serve this end are withdrawn behind the veil of a mystical mods of representation" (p. 155). See also Knsi\>]), Christian Tlieology, § 75.
Heathen Traditions. — There are manj' heathen tra- ditions concerning the creation and the fall, some of which have marked points of resemblance to the Bible account. In seme mythologies the serpent is an ob- ject of worship, while in others "mythology repre- sents that reptile as tramjiled under the feet of a might}' deliverer. In a coin of Antoninus Pius 'Her- cules is represented as plucking apples from a tree round the trunk of which a serpent is entwined.' Among the Goths, the Persians, and the Hindoos, tra- ditions of a serpent of various kinds are found. Stil- lingfleet ingeniouslj- observes that from this origin has come the use of serpents to so great an extent in divi- nation, Satan appearing 'ambitious to have the world think that the knowledge of good and evil was to come by the serpent still.' The Hebrew Avord for serpent signifies at the same time to divine, and the Greek word olwviL,ia6at has the same derivation frrm oiw- vvc, a serpent ; ' thus we see how careful the devil was to advance his honor in the world under that form wherein he had deceived mankind into so much folly and misery'" (Wardlaw, Systematic Thcohriy, ii, bb sc).). It has been the fiishion to deny that the tradi- tions of the various peoples, analogous to the Mosaic account, are at all confirmations of that account. But the harmony of these traditions has never been ration- all}' explained apart from the theory that regards them as springing from common reminiscences of an actual occurrence. Auberlen remarks that "these oldest tra- ditions of the human race confirm the historical credi- bility of the Mosaic narrative, down to its details, just as much as thej' do the inner purity and elevation of them, compared with the myths of heathenism. In regard to this latter view, it is especially seen how Israel alone, along with the fact, retains the deep, di- vine idea of it. The heathen, while they preserve with great fidelity the outward circumstances, clothe them in fantastic and national vesture. The differ- ence is the same in kind as that between the canonical and apocryphal gospels." He cites also Herder, con- cerning the narration in Genesis, as follows; "Its sound has gone out into all the earth, and its very words into all lands ! "Whence is it that the remotest nations ha^•e their knowledge of it.' How comes it that they built on it religions and mythologies ; that it is, in fact, the simplest foundation of all their arts, institutions, and sciences .' If from it things vnuy be made plain and clear as sunlight that are as chaos and dark as night when it is denied, or when men prate of their hypotheses ; if from this a whole antiquity may be reduced to order, and a line of light be drawn through the most confused events of the early history of nations — light which, like that in Correggio's pic-
FALL OF MAN
473
FALL OF MAN
ture, shines from the cradle of the race — what then have }'e to say, ye manufacturers of myths, ye who would profanethe revelation of God?" (Herder, adt. Urkunde der Menschengeschlechts ; Werke, Carlsruhc, 1827, V, 187 ; vi, 4).
II. Doctrinal Import of (lie Narrative. — "Whatever views are held as to the nature of the narrative in Gen. ii, iii, all who believe it to be a record of divine revelation lind in it the following points of doctrine : 1. That God, after creating man, placed him in a state of probation ; 2. that the test of his probation was obe- dience to tlie divine law; 3. that the temptation to disobedience came from an evil power outside of man ; 4. that the temptation appealed both to the intellect and to the senses, leading first to unbelief in God, sec- ondlv to putting "self" in place of God, and thereby to the beginning of evil lust; 5. that in tlie exercise of free will man yielded and sinned ; 6. that the con- sequences of the sin were kno\vledge of good and evil, separation from God, and death, tlie curse lighting upon man and upon nature also. Auberlen, referring to the three constituents of the first sin named above, viz. unbelief, self-love, and lust, remarks as fallows : " That those three parts of the idea of sin are not acci- dental, but substantially express it and exhaust it, is shown not onl}' in the fact that all sin that comes be- fore us in life may be referred to them, but also in the fact that they correspond to the three fundamental el- ements of man's being and consciousness — spirit, soul, body — the God-consciousness, self-consciousness, and Avorld-consciousness. These have all become corrupt- ed and perverted. They have become, respectively, alienation from God, selfishness, love of the world. The first and highest element of human nature — the spiritual — is negatived, obscured, made powerless ; the two others — the lower — are pushed into extreme but imhealthy prominence and activity. Man lias become jjhysical and fleshly. Unbelief is the negative, the union of self-seeking and the lust of the senses is the positive element in the idea of sin. J\Ian no longer wishes for God ; he is bent on having tlie creature in both ways, the mental and natural, the subjective and objective ; he will have his own Ego and the world too. According to Gen. iii, 5, C, the selfishness is, as it were, the soul ; sensuousness, the body of sin : the first is the deep, invisilde root ; the second, the exter- nal manifestation. The Ego, separated from God, seeks in the world the elements on which it lives. Genesis thus comprehends tlie various opposing theo- ries of men on the nature of sin, the theor}^ of selfish- ness, which in recent times is represented by Julius MiillBr, and that of the senses by Schleiermacher and Eothe. It leads both ethical theories back to a relig- ious basis, and in that matter modern thought has a great deal to learn" (^Divine Revelation, Edinb. 1867, p. 184).