Abstract

I have argued elsewhere that the traditional Augustinian account of the fall is conceptually defective. It offers causal explanations for the first instance of willing evil which violate affirmations of divine goodness and justice integral to Christian thought. Augustine is the most influential spokesperson for the conviction that the first human pair initiated fallenness on the earth by decisions and actions they took within time though indeed very near to time’s beginning. A supporting account, embellished imaginatively by the tradition, enlarges the context to embrace a prior choice of evil by Satan early in his angelic career. The narrative structure of the Genesis tale of Adam and Eve, mistakenly read as a kind of history, converts easily into a doctrine of the fall as an event in time preceded and precipitated by other events in time regarded as its causes. The allure of this causal explanation arises from our natural wish to “understand” how the fall could occur. But by attributing the first sin to angelic or human pride, or collaterally to a supposed imperfection in the first humans as created, Augustine unwittingly shifts the ultimate responsibility for moral evil onto God. This makes creaturely freedom and responsibility into empty notions, thereby subverting the intentionality of the religious belief in fallenness.