Tower and Town, June 2015

  (view the full edition)

Interpreting The Fall

John Hick's singular gift to our generation in his Evil And The God Of Love (MacMillan 1966) is the fleshing out of an alternative Christian view of The Fall and the environment within which it took place; a view first suggested by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in the second century, pre-dating Augustine and providing a radically different perspective on the human condition from that of the dominant Augustinian tradition.

The crucial difference between Irenaeus and Augustine might be summarised as follows: starting from the words of Genesis 1 telling us that God looked at everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good, while the Augustinian tradition takes that to mean that mankind was created in full moral perfection and fell from perfection into perdition, Irenaeus suggests that 'very good', rather than signifying morally perfect, instead means perfect for God's purpose, namely, able to grow from innocence into a moral and spiritual maturity that is not ready-made at creation but won from hard choices and the long rough ride of experience, endlessly forgiven and continuously transformed by the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Here it is worth noting the fit of the Irenaean view with a universe now thought to be 13.8 billion years old, where homo sapiens emerges from the animal kingdom only very gradually – with the implication that our moral awareness also emerges only gradually.

Hence the story of The Fall represents, symbolically, mankind's first faltering step out of innocence on the road to spiritual maturity, not some sudden unmitigated cosmic disaster. And instead of seeing life's trials as a divine punishment for Adam's inexplicable, wilful adult sin, Irenaeus sees our world of mingled good and evil as an environment divinely appointed from the outset to entice man to step out of moral childhood and grow towards the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Hugh de Saram