In the Beginning: from the

The Fall of Humanity (Genesis 2 and 3)

He Qi (Chinese), Losing Paradise, 2004 Genesis 2 and 3

2 5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Man became a living creature. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there He put man whom He had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…. 15 The Lord God took man and put him in the to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the that you eat of it you shall surely die.” 3 1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” 16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” 17 And to he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” 20 The man called his wife's name , [“life”] because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. 22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever— ” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Reflection

“Man is what he eats.” With that statement the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach sought to define human nature not on any idealized conception of humanity, but instead to base it in humanity’s materiality. He thought, in reducing human beings to their basic material function— eating—he could do away with any appeal to God or the supernatural once and for all. In fact, however, he was expressing, without knowing it, the most religious idea of humanity. For, long before Feuerbach, the same definition of humanity was given by the .

In the biblical story of creation in Genesis, man is presented, first of all, as a hungry creature, and the whole world as his food. According to the second chapter of Genesis, God’s first concern for the newly created man is to provide for his sustenance: “out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” Also, God’s first words to the man are instructions concerning what to eat. We are reminded here that, like other creatures, we humans must eat in order to live; we must take the world into our body and transform it into ourselves, into our flesh and blood. We are indeed what we eat, and, as omnivores with the most diverse diet of all animals, the whole world is for us one all-inclusive banquet table. Indeed, this image of the banquet runs throughout the whole Bible the central image of life. It is the image of life here at its creation and also the image of life at its end and fulfillment, when the righteous in Christ are invited to “the marriage feast of the Lamb” (Revelation 19).

We can then enthusiastically support Feuerbach’s claim, “Man is what he eats." Yet what does he eat and why? To Feuerbach such inquiries were irrelevant. But in the biblical worldview those questions go to the very center of who we are as humans, in relation to creation and to God. For, in the Bible the food that we eat, the world of which we must partake in order to live, is something which is given to us by God, and it is given as communion with God. This is to say, the world as our food is not simply “material,” something that we engage with in its purely material functions, to satiate our bodily hunger. All that exists is God's gift to us, and it all exists for one overarching purpose—to make God known to us, to make our very life communion with God. It is divine love made food, made life for us. As the Son of God, makes this explicit: “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh.” (John 6:51)

Human beings are indeed hungry creatures. But what we are most hungry for, we recognize, is God. Behind all the hunger of our life is God. All desire is in the end a desire for Him. To be sure, we are not the only hungry creatures. Every living thing lives by “eating.” The whole creation depends on food. But what sets us apart from all the rest of creation is that we alone is to bless God for the food and the life we receive from Him. We alone are to respond to God's blessing with our blessing.

We see this again in Genesis 2, where the man is given the task of naming things. As soon as God creates animals to keep Adam company, God brings them to him to see what he will call them. “And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was its name.” Now, in the Bible a name is not just the means by which one thing is distinguished from another. It reveals the very essence of a thing, or rather its essence as God's gift. To name a thing is to acknowledge and express the meaning and value God gave it, to know it as coming from God and to know its place and function within the universe created by God. To name a thing, in other words, is to bless God for it and in it. In the Bible, to bless God is not a distinctly “religious” act, set apart from everything else in life. It is instead the very way of life. In Genesis 1, God blessed the world, blessed humanity, blessed the seventh day (that is, time), and this means that He filled creation with His love and goodness, declaring it—making it—all “very good.” God gave this blessed and sanctified world to human beings to enjoy and care for it, and the only natural reaction for us humans is to bless God in return, to thank Him, to see the world as God sees it and, in gratitude and love, to know, name and receive the world.

Philosophers argue over what distinguishes us humans from other creatures, be it our capacity to reason, to create, to use language and to love. Yet, all the rational, artistic, spiritual and other qualities we possess have their focus and ultimate fulfillment in this capacity to bless God, to know and communicate the meaning of the thirst and hunger that constitutes our life. As a species, humans are known as “homo sapiens" (wise man) and as "homo faber" (maker-man). Yes, but before that, we are "homo adorans" (worshipping man). The first, the basic definition of human being is that of “priest.” By this, I don’t mean that we all have been set aside for a “religious” or “cultic” role, to stand up in church and say prays and offer sacrifices. No, I mean that we were created by God to speak on behalf of creation, to give creation voice and to bless God for God’s blessings. Humanity stands in the center of the world and unifies it in our act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it up to God in thanksgiving. Humanity, in its essence, is to offer eucharist (literally, “thanksgiving”).

This is at the core of what it means to be human, this is what it means to live fully. For, by filling the world with this eucharist, we transform our life, the one that we receive from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him. The world was created to be the “matter,” the material elements of one all-embracing eucharist, and humanity was created as the priest to celebrate this cosmic “sacrament.” The priest who officiates over Holy Communion in worship is but a reminder, or symbol of what we are all created to be. To use a fancy word from English class, the priest that stands before the congregation is a metonymy, part of something that represents the whole, the example that reminds us all of our shared purpose.

Given the central place food has in the biblical understanding of humanity, it should not surprise us that the biblical story of the Fall is centered on eating. Our primordial parents ate the . The fruit of that one tree, whatever else it may signify, was the one thing that was not offered as a gift. It was not given, not blessed by God. To eat it would bring communion not with God, but only with the thing itself. In this, the fruit represents the world loved for itself, and eating it represents life pursued as an end in itself, without reference to or relationship to God. And that is the way of living (if we call it that) that introduced into the world when they partook of the forbidden fruit.

God gave the whole of creation as an act of love, but humanity has chosen not to return God's love. We have loved the world as an end in itself and not as a gift from God, something transparent to its Creator and Giver. So engrained has this view become, especially in the modern era, that it seems natural for us to experience the world as opaque, rather than shot through with the presence of God. It seems natural not to live a life of thanksgiving for God's gift of a world, but to treat creation as a collection of things, objects to use as we like. This is the nature of the Fall. The world is a fallen world because it has fallen away from the awareness that God is all in all. The accumulation of this disregard of God is the “” that blights the world. All the evils of the world can be traced back to this—the failure to acknowledge and bless God in the world.

Our natural dependence on the world was intended to be transformed continuously into communion with God. But in the fallen world our dependence on the world becomes a “closed circuit,” and our love has become disordered, deviated from its true direction. We still love, we are still hungry, we know we are dependent on something beyond us. But our understanding of love and dependence is fixed on the world in itself. We forget that the world, its air or its food, cannot by themselves give us life, but only as they are received and accepted in God, as bearers of the divine gift of life. By themselves they can produce only the appearance of life. When we see the world as an end in itself, everything becomes itself a commodity, a value, and in so doing, it loses all value, because only in God is found the meaning (value) of everything, and the world is meaningful only when it is the “sacrament” of God's presence, the material means by which we relate to God.

Things treated merely as things in themselves destroy themselves because only in God do they have any life. The world of nature, cut off from the source of life, is a dying world. When we see food itself as the source of life, eating is communion with the dying world, it is communion with death. We eat our bread in a way that simply returns us to the ground from which both we and the bread had been taken: “For you are dust and in dust you shall return.” In the Fall, humanity lost the eucharistic life; we lost the Life of life itself, the power to transform the world into Life, life with God. We ceased to be the priest of the world and became its slave.

In the story of the Garden of Eden, the fall took place in the cool of the day, that is, at . And when Adam and Eve left the Garden, they led the whole world, as it were, into darkness. In artistic interpretations of the Fall, Adam is often portrayed as sitting outside, facing Paradise, weeping. It is the image of humanity itself, an image of us.

*Note: This reflection is heavily dependent on the ideas of Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann in his For the Life of the World (St. Vladimirs Press, 1982) Artistic Illumination

Michangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti (Italian, 1475-1564), Creation of Adam, , 1512

Of all the marvelous images that crowd the immense complex of the Sistine Ceiling, of Adam is undoubtedly the one which has most deeply impressed posterity. No wonder, for here we are given a single overwhelming vision of the sublimity of God and the potential nobility of man unprecedented and unrivaled in the entire history of visual art. No longer standing upon earth with closed eyes and mantle, as in other panels in the Chapel, here the Lord floats through the heavens, His mantle widespread and bursting with angelic forms, and His calm gaze accompanying and reinforcing the movement of His mighty arm. He extends His forefinger, about to touch that of Adam, who reclines on the barren coast of earth, barely able as yet to lift his hand. The divine form is explosive yet paternal; the human receptive, and conspicuously impotent. The incipient contact about to take place between the two extended fingers has often been described as a spark or a current, a modern electrical metaphor doubtless foreign to the sixteenth century, but appropriate enough considering the river of life which seems about to flow into the waiting body. The story of the creation of man is never illustrated literally in . Usually, the Creator stands on earth and blesses the already formed body of Adam, read together with the ground, since his name in Hebrew means “earth.” Michelangelo's completely new image seems to symbolize a still further idea - the instillation of divine power in humanity, which took place at creation. Edwin Lester (American), Day On: Creation of Man, contemporary In contrast to Genesis 1, where God is picture as a conductor of a cosmic symphony, creation in Genesis 2 is more intimate, more hands-on, as depicted here, where godly hands mold the first man, Adam, from the earth.

Jack Baumgartner (American), Go On, Adam, 2013

In this etching, the artist captures the moment when God breathed into the man the breath of life. Edwin Lester (American, ), Day One - Creation of Woman, contemporary by

William Blake (British, 1757-1827), The of the Divine Presence Bringing Eve to Adam, 1803

Here God acts as a divine match-maker for Adam and Eve, bringing the woman He created to the man. Alexander Smirnov (Russian, 1947-), Creation of the World

In this depiction of the creation of woman, the act is portrayed as a collective effort of divine beings, or at least as an act witnessed by a heavenly audience. The scene itself is reminiscent of a dream, as if what is seen here is in fact the perception of Adam in his deep sleep. “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes…”

J Kirk Richards (American), Eve and the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, 2016

Context is everything, as we are reminded by Richard’s Eve. Initially celebrated for breaking racial boundaries in the world of Mormon art by depicting Eve as an African woman, Richards has been subsequently attacked by Black feminists who pointed to "exoticized" figure as a painful reminder of slavery, when black women were without power in relation to white men. Richards, however, defends his painting and approach, while apologizing for any offense, however unintended. "Whether a literal person or a representation of our earliest ancestors, I'm convinced Eve was black," the artist says. "Depicting her as a blond Caucasian would, in my mind, perpetuate a racial myth and stereotype."

Edward Knippers (American, 1946-), Eve, 2014

When a Baptist congregation in Alexandria, Va., hosted an exhibition of Edward Knippers’ paintings, it had to cover the works during worship services of the congregation that shares its space. Why? Not because of the violence portrayed in the biblical stories, but because the characters in Knippers’ dramatic depictions typically are , whether viewed from front or back. The pastor of the host congregation objected, “We have bodies our entire lives. We rely on them,” he said. “Shouldn’t that be a part of what we talk about?” So how do we approach in art?

Michelangelo Buonarrati (Italian, 1475-1564),”'The ,” Sistine Chapel

Interestingly, the artist depicts the tempting serpent as a half-snake, half-woman creature, and that Adam seems to be pointing beyond the Tempter either to God.

Jan Bruegel the Elder and , Adam and Eve in Paradise, c.1610-15

Note here how the visual splendor of Eden, representing the goodness of the original harmony is about to destroyed by the fateful action of the first man and woman.

Lucien Levy-Dhurmer (French, 1865-1953), Eve Tempted, 1896

Titian (Italian, 1490-1576), , c1550 In the picture, Adam is looking up at the face of Eve while seated. In the tree at the centre of the picture, there is a cherubic Tempter. The cherub appears to be encouraging Eve to take the forbidden fruit which she has her hand around, while, remarkably, Adam tries to restrain her. The response to Eve’s tempting is curiously left out of the Genesis story, leaving us to speculation—Was he there when the Serpent Tempted Eve? Was he there when she ate the fruit? Did he try to stop her? Or was he entirely passive? Or absent? Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-69), Adam and Eve , 1638

Rembrandt’s etching of Adam and Eve depicts the story of the first Man and Woman with descriptive, wiry lines that create an evocative atmosphere. Shown at the moment of temptation, the coup le is surrounded by light that seems about to be blotted out by the dark tree branch and leering serpent (the devil) stretching ominously above them. With their fleshy bodies and ordinary faces, Rembrandt’s Adam and Eve are easy to identify with; their confusion, temptation, and choice become ours.

William Blake (English, 1757–1827), The Temptation and Fall of Eve, 1808

In Blake’s illustration of Milton’s , Satan, in the form of a snake, appears glossy and resplendent. He is victorious, having used cunning and flattery to convince Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. In the scenes leading up to this one, the serpent told her the reason he was so intelligent, beautiful and able to speak was that he had tasted of this forbidden fruit. He sways Eve into doing the same, and finally wins her over (fairly easily, actually) by saying that the reason God had set this one rule in Paradise was to test her, and to defy Him would prove her superiority and independence, and through doing so she could be like God. In the painting, Blake has the snake feed Eve from his mouth, she literally, willingly, swallows his words. His mental grip over Eve is strengthened physically in the way he coils himself around her body. She lifts his head up to hers and holds him to her waist in a distinctly erotic way. With her body gracefully posed, Eve’s beautiful face is frozen in an expression of that recognizable line between ecstasy and dread. It is at this moment that the spell is broken, she becomes ‘conscious,’ a veil is lifted and she realizes her sin against God. Her wide eyes and open mouth are mirrored by the snake, but while he is clearly smiling she is not. The landscape also reacts to Eve’s fall, Milton said ‘Earth felt the wound’, and in the very instant when she is in alliance with Satan, Nature stirs, lightning breaks from the sky, dividing the heavens from Earth. The tree’s great thorny pillar of a trunk divides the composition, its drooping, heavy fruit-laden branches creating a canopy overhead. To the left we see Adam from behind, his face turned towards the apocalyptic red sky. He is unaware of what Eve has done, what he is capable and willing to do for her, and the fate that awaits them both.

Cornelis Cornelisz (Dutch, 1562-1638), The Fall of Man, 1592

It is the details that make this painting so interesting. Here, Adam and Eve stand front and center, clad in their fig leaves and sharing the . The human-serpent combination tries to hand Eve yet another forbidden fruit. But, perched in the tree of knowledge of good and evil, beside the serpent, is the wise owl; a white butterfly clings to the left side of the tree trunk. On the left side, in the background, a cloud-like God gestures to a second, smaller Adam and Eve, warning them not to eat from that tree. A proud peacock stands at a distance from a crane, porcupine, turkey, and sheep. On the ground at the base of the tree, a frightened monkey and cat embrace each other, aware that Paradise is over. The symbolism here is clear and strong. The monkey represents man, the cat represents woman, and they’re both scared of what comes next, and that they’ve been lowered to the same level as the creepy crawlies depicted around them. A spiky hedgehog next to Eve’s right foot suggests the pain she’s about to feel in childbirth; the rock at her left foot can be interpreted as signifying a rough road ahead. The right side of the painting, darker now that man has fallen, harbors an angry lion in the shadows, ready to maraud through what had been a utopian land. Consequences of the Fall

In both of these early Christian portrayals of the story of the Fall, eth focus is on Adam and Eve’s shame at their nakedness (the exposure of their sin).

Early Christian depiction of Adam and Eve in the Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter, c300

Adam and Eve and the Serpent, 3rd century Jean Gautherin (French, 1840-90), The Lost Paradise (Le Paradis perdu), 2007

Gauthein’s sculpture shows our primordial parent wrestling with gravity of what they have done. They yet cling to each in desperation and in the awareness of the guilt they share.

Carl Roder (German, 1852-1922), Adam and Eve Statue, 19th Cent

Roder’s piece depicts another consequence of the Fall— the estrangement of man and woman. This is the result of Eve’s involvement of Adam in her sin and Adam’s recrimination before God. Here, the first man and woman cannot even look at each other. Andrei Nikolaevich Miranov, Adam and Eve, 2012

Miranov and Cayle, similarly, portray the estrangement of Adam and Eve, which sadly characterizes the relationships of many married couples.

F. Cayle, Adam and Eve Despair Learning That They are to be Expelled from Eden

Masaccio, The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1426-27), Florence, Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine

Masaccio's rendition of the story makes the viewer immediately aware of the shame and pain Adam and Eve suffered while being banished from Eden. The painting is striking and brutal in its portrayal of the abashment of the couple as they walk out of the Garden of Eden into the wilderness, leaving everything they knew behind.

Domenico Zampieri (Domenichino) The Rebuke of Adam and Eve, 1626

Zampieri here captures that fateful moment when God is ticked off for the first time. The oil painting is both a straight-forward narrative and an unintentionally amusing work of art. Chubby cherubim carry God into the scene, apparently straight from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He reprimands Adam for breaking the only rule He gave him: Do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But Adam begins the blame game, affecting a contrite expression, with his head tilted and shoulders slightly raised as he gestures with both arms and hands toward Eve, as if to say, “I’m sorry, God, but it really wasn’t my fault. You should yell at her.” Eve, sporting a fig-leaf bikini, shoots Adam a look of contemptuous disbelief (“How dare you blame me, you coward!”) but nevertheless passes the blame herself off to the serpent, pointing at the slithering creature in the lower left-hand corner of the painting and trying to make it the scapegoat. The serpent, for its part, looks at Eve, as if to say, “You’ve got to be kidding. You’re the weak-willed woman who surrendered to temptation and brought all this about.” It’s the moment when everything changes in Eden, and no one seems to know it better than the lion at the lower right-hand corner. A lamb has turned its head to the humans to see what the ruckus is, but it’s the lion lying next to it that’s a step ahead, his eyes turning a voracious orange as he no longer considers his fluffy mate a friend but rather a delicious dinner with mint sauce, putting an end to peace and harmony. Edward Knippers (American, 1946-), The Expulsion from the Garden, 2002

Eugene Francis Savage (American, 1883 –1978), The Expulsion from Eden

Thomas Cole (American, 1801-48), Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1828

In Cole’s painting, the central drama, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, are overwhelmed in the vastness of the landscape. Yet, the landscape itself tells the story—the light and lushness of Paradise to the right contrasts strongly with the darker, stormy world east of Eden.

Detail, showing Adam and Eve leaving Eden George Segal (American, 1924-2000), The Expulsion, 1986-7

Misha Brusilovsky, Expulsion From Eden, 2001

Dom Gregory de Wit, OSB, Protoevangelium, 1946–55. Refectory wall mural, Saint Joseph Abbey, St. Benedict, Louisiana.

In his “protoevangelium,” the first glimmer of the gospel we receive in scripture, de Wit’s visual interpretation juxtaposes Adam and Eve holding with the Virgin Mary (the “New Eve”) adoring the newborn Christ (the “New Adam”). The ancestral couple looks haggard, sin-weary and groaning for redemption beside a barren tree. That redemption comes in the foreground, signified by blooming flowers and the haloed Christ-child, who cradles something in his hands that’s difficult to identify but that could be flowers, his heart, or a pomegranate, the fruit of life. The text that frames the figures is taken from two 6th-century hymns by Venantius Fortunatus, from right to left: “Pange, lingua” (Sing, My Tongue) and “O Gloriosa Domina” (O Heaven’s Glorious Mistress):

Pomi noxialis morsu in mortem corruit. “The harmful fruit having been bitten, he [Adam] fell into death.”

Quod Heva tristis abstulit, Tu reddis almo germine. “What man had lost in hapless Eve, Thy [Mary’s] sacred womb to man restores.”

In this, we see the redemption of—God’s answer to—the Fall of humanity—Jesus Christ.