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| “The fall of Man” by Cornelis Van Haarlem, 1592 |
Following the creation of mankind in sacred scripture we
find almost immediately that, in giving his favorite creation free will, God opened the door to bad choices. In the
third chapter of the Book of Genesis (Genesis 3:1-10) we find the
account of “the Fall.”
Now the snake was the most
cunning of all the wild animals that the LORD God had made. He asked the woman,
“Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?”
The woman answered the snake: “We
may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of
the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or
even touch it, or else you will die.’”
But the snake said to the woman:
“You certainly will not die!
God knows well that when you eat
of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and
evil.” The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes,
and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit
and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate
it.
Then the eyes of both of them
were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves
together and made loincloths for themselves.
When they heard the sound of the
LORD God walking about in the garden at the breezy time of the day, the man and
his wife hid themselves from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. The
LORD God then called to the man and asked him: Where are you?
He answered, “I heard you in the
garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.”
Then God asked: Who told you that
you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I had forbidden you to
eat?
The man replied, “The woman whom
you put here with me—she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it.”
The LORD God then asked the
woman: What is this you have done? The woman answered, “The snake tricked me,
so I ate it.”
That event opened the door to sin and death and spoiled the
innocent creation that was man and woman. The Fall closed the gates of our
eternal home with the Father. Our
adoption by him was forfeit. This fallen
state continued until, at long last, God was pleased to send his Only Begotten
Son, Jesus the Christ, into the world and the Gates were once more reopened.
We consider for a moment a deeper warning contained within
this story which uses figurative terms to describe a primeval event (CCC 390).
God created mankind with his own intellect which includes a keen sense of
curiosity. From earliest times, we have
sought to understand God’s creation, over which he gave us dominion (Genesis 1:28-31).
The problem arises when curiosity is de-coupled from
faith. Over the past five hundred years,
especially in the Western World, intellectual pursuits have taken center stage
in the development of human society. The
idea of innocent faith has been disparaged on an increasing level by those
whose basic formation omitted the development of a firm and lively faith. It was as if, for a majority of those
studying the natural world, there was no interest in the metaphysical, the
things of God. There were only problems
to be solved and mysteries to be uncovered.
And always in the ear of these eager and gifted explorers was the voice
of the serpent; “you will be like gods. “
With no voice of God to hold them accountable and no
knowledge of God to provide a moral road map, the wonder of God’s creation was
relegated to simply a series of natural laws and random chaotic acts of
nature. No one warned them that pursuit
of wisdom without appreciation for the foundational faith in God would lead
them also to the ultimate realization also found in the story of the Fall;
shame, strife, suffering, and most damning, separation from God. In their pursuit of pure knowledge, they have
forgotten the author of all knowledge and have embarked on their own fall. This crushing failure of human intellect is
most visible in the halls of academia, most especially in the hard sciences;
physics, math, biology, and chemistry.
But it is also epidemic in the social sciences as well.
The real problem comes when those who would be like gods are
responsible for educating children over generations who have likewise not be
given a deep and lively faith by their first teachers, their parents. Coming into these halls of learning they are immediately,
in more subtle terms told “you will be like gods.“ And if they cannot hear the message and
recognize its origin, they too will forget the Creator and look only at the
mystery of the created.
God certainly inspired the authors who penned sacred scripture
all those millennia ago. His message was
both obvious and hidden (as St. Augustine said “The New Testament is hidden in
the Old, and the Old Testament is revealed in the New.”). The deeper biblical truth in the story of the
Fall is that there is a danger in the pursuit of knowledge, but only if we
forget the source of all knowledge who is God.
Pax
