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Chapter Two: The Second Creation Story

As we move into the second creation and the story of the fall, we delve into a treasure trove of images that have fueled the Christian imagination for two millennia: Adam and Eve, the tree of knowledge, the cunning snake, and the banishment from Eden, to name but a few. Through these powerful and enduring images Christians have understood, among other things, the power of temptation, the relationship between men and women, and the painful riddle of disease and death. Our first thinker, Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335–ca. 395), links our present discussion with the preceding chapter’s discussion of creation. His older brother Basil ended his Hexameron before discussing the creation of humanity (Gen 1:26). Shortly after his brother’s death, Gregory took up the mantle and devoted his energies to a treatise traditionally entitled, On the Making of Man38 dealing with the creation of humanity in the first creation story as well as the creation of Adam and Eve and their fall. The complex dynamic in Christian thought between humans’ exalted status as beings created in the image and likeness of God and their lowly status as fallen sinners informed the autobiographical reflections of our second thinker, the great Puritan sage John Bunyan (1628–88) in his Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. We conclude with a ground-breaking reading of the second creation story in the seminal 1973 piece, “Eve and Adam: Genesis 2–3 Reread” by the feminist biblical scholar Phyllis Trible. Trible’s reading of the Eve and Adam story challenged the centuries-old use of the story as a legitimation of gender discrimination.

Gregory of Nyssa’s Interpretation of the Creation Stories

On the Making of Man falls neatly into two parts: in the first (chapters 1–15), Gregory beautifully describes the spiritual resemblance that exists between the nature of humans and the nature of God as a result of humans’ unique status as beings created in the image of God; in the second part (chapters 16–27), the tone turns more somber as Gregory contrasts humanity’s present state of instability and conflict with its original prelapsarian state of blessedness.39 One of the most distinctive features of Gregory’s theology of the human person appears in the first half of Making. His theory of a “double creation” relies upon the presence of two creation stories in Genesis. In the first story, “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27) while in the second story God first creates Adam and then Eve. “Thus the creation of our nature is in a sense twofold: one made like to God, one divided according to this distinction: for something like this the passage darkly conveys by its arrangement, where it first says, ‘God created man, in the image of God created He him,’ and then, adding to what has been said, ‘male and female created He them,’—a thing which is alien to our conceptions of God” (XVI, 8). Gregory further clarifies what this “double creation” means later in Making. “I take up then once more in my argument our first text:—God says, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and God created man, in the image of God created He him.’ Accordingly, the Image of God, which we behold in universal humanity, had its consummation, but Adam as yet was not . . . ” (XXII, 3). The image of God in which humans (“universal humanity”) were created is not gendered. It is incorporeal and the capacities that it imparts to humans apply equally to men and women (XVI, 17).

Royal imagery pervades Gregory’s description of human nature in the opening chapters of Making. Human nature “by its likeness to the King of all” has “a royal and exalted character.” Rather than donning purple robes, humans are “clothed in virtue, which is in truth the most royal of all raiment, and in place of the sceptre, leaning on the bliss of immortality, and instead of the royal diadem, [they are] decked with the crown of righteousness” (Making, IV, 1). This “dignity of royalty” (IV, 1) accords humans a privileged status in God’s created order. To be sure, humans, like all other living things, take in nutrients and grow and, like other animals, have senses that allow them to be keenly aware of their environment, but according to Gregory humans alone have the gift of reason. Along with reason, humans possess the gift of free will, “for the soul immediately shows its royal and exalted character . . . [in that it is] self-governed, swayed autocratically by its own will” (IV, 1). Rationality and freedom, two hallmarks of the soul’s status as bearing the image of God, play a critical role in Gregory’s theology, but so too does love. “Again, God is love, and the fount of love: for this the great John declares, that ‘love is of God,’ and ‘God is love’: the Fashioner of our nature has made this to be our feature too” (V, 2).

The human capacity to reason soundly, to act freely, and to love purely are for Gregory reflective of the royal status that humans enjoy by virtue of their creation in the image of God, but this alone does not give us the full picture of the human condition. The key is found in the sequence in which the first creation story unfolds. About the same time that Gregory was composing Making, he also composed a short work dedicated to a discussion of the soul and the future resurrected state. In this dialogue between himself and his dying sister Macrina, Gregory plays the part of the disciple seeking the wisdom of the elder spiritual guide. In the midst of their discussion of the emotions (or impulses), Macrina explains, “The holy word tells how the Divine proceeded by a certain route and orderly sequence to the creation of mankind. For when the universe had taken shape, as the narrative says, man did not immediately come onto the earth, but the nature of irrational animal preceded him, and plants preceded the animals.”40 Coming last in the order, humans carry within themselves the appetites for sustenance and the perception of what would contribute to or threaten their overall well-being. When we read that we are to subdue the earth and have dominion over its creatures, Macrina states, we should take that to mean that our rationality should direct our passions and intentions to their proper end. “Therefore if reason, which is the distinctive property of our nature, should gain dominance over those traits which are added to us from outside (the word of the Scripture has also revealed this as if in a riddle, bidding mankind to rule over all the irrational creatures) [Gen 1:28] none of these impulses would work in us for servitude to evil, but fear would produce obedience in us, anger courage, cowardice caution, and the desiring impulse would mediate to us the divine and immortal pleasure.”41 The emotions or impulses, in other words, are not necessarily vices, but they have the potential to become them if they are not directed to the true, the good, and the beautiful.42

Gregory believes that the two creation stories convey “to us a great and lofty doctrine” (XVI, 9), namely, that humans are the mean, the midpoint, or the juncture between the height of divinity and the depth of brutality. “While two natures—the Divine and incorporeal nature, and the irrational life of brutes—are separated from each other as extremes, human nature is the mean between them: for in the compound nature of man we may behold a part of each of the natures I have mentioned,—of the Divine, the rational and intelligent element, which does not admit the distinction of male and female; of the irrational, our bodily form and structure, divided into male and female: for each of these elements is certainly to be found in all that partakes of human life” (XVI, 9). The dynamism inherent in the soul calls to mind the graceful motion of trapeze artists soaring high above the crowd. Their energy and exertion propel them in a graceful movement high above the net. Their exchanges require intense focus, but when successfully completed, their act appears effortless. In a similar way, Gregory speaks of the heights the soul can reach when reason holds sway over the emotions and the power of love desires what is truly beautiful: “we find that every such motion, when elevated by the loftiness of mind, is conformed to the beauty of the Divine image” (XVIII, 5). In terms of his analysis of the human condition, Pascal echoes Gregory’s insight when he observes, “Man is neither angel nor beast; and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.”43

What happens, then, if our attention is diverted from what is most beautiful? Like the trapeze artists who mistime their movements, the soul falls to what is below. The tendency of sin “is heavy and downward” and “our soul is more inclined to be dragged downwards by the weight of the irrational nature than is the heavy and earthly element to be exalted by the loftiness of the intellect; hence the misery that encompasses us often causes the Divine gift to be forgotten, and spreads the passions of the flesh, like some ugly mask, over the beauty of the image” (XVIII, 6). We exchange the highest good for a lesser good.44 To ask why we would make such a turn is to enter directly into the mystery that stands at the center of the creation stories. As Gregory writes in his Great Catechism, “No growth of evil had its beginning in the Divine will. Vice would have been blameless were it inscribed with the name of God as its maker and father. But the evil is, in some way or other, engendered from within, springing up in the will at that moment when there is a retrocession of the soul from the beautiful” (V).45 Theologically, God can not be the cause of evil, but why there is a “retrocession” of the soul at all is one of the mysteries of the human condition that the creation stories acknowledge, but do not explain.

For Gregory, what was lost in the fall is regained at the final resurrection. For while Gregory does not mention the “garments of skins” (Gen 3:21) with which God clothed Adam and Eve after the fall in Making, in On the Soul and the Resurrection he lists the features of human life that these garments of skins symbolize. “These are the things which we have received from the irrational skin: sexual intercourse, conception, childbearing, dirt, lactation, nourishment, evacuation, gradual growth to maturity, the prime of life, old age, disease, and death.”46 In the resurrection, the human life will “be set free as it were from the reins, and revert once more, released and free, to the life of blessedness and impassibility” (XXII, 2) In On the Soul and the Resurrection Gregory writes, “Incorruptibility, glory, honor, and power, which are agreed to be characteristic of the divine nature, formerly belonged to the one made in God’s image, and are expected to be ours again. The first ear [1 Cor 15:35–38] was the first man, Adam. Since at the entrance of evil our nature was split up into a multitude like the kernels in the ear, each of us, denuded of the form of that first ear and mixed with the earth, at the resurrection will spring up again in the archetypal beauty.”47 Just as humans are the midpoint between divinity and brutality, we also stand in a symbolic midpoint in history between creation and redemption.

John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

Where Gregory emphasized the inherent instability of the human soul and the way in which our thoughts and desires can fluctuate from the heights of divine contemplation to the basest emotions of jealousy and greed, John Bunyan (1628–88) provides a first-hand account of the anguish and uncertainty that can plague the human person. Though ostensibly Bunyan’s autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners defies precise classification.48 It is not the classic model of a conversion story—there is no parallel to the blinding light on the road to Damascus. Neither is it an academic work intended to advance a position on the relationship between nature and grace. It might best be seen as a mixture of Puritan theology and spiritual testimony—a stylized account of his life story as he understood it through his own reading of the biblical narrative. With his evocation of 1 Tim 1:15 in the title and his lacing of biblical allusions throughout his work, Bunyan’s Grace Abounding offers a profound reflection on human existence lived east of Eden.

The tumultuous British political and religious history of the seventeenth century provides the background for approaching Grace Abounding. The political battles between the king and the Parliament as well as the theological tensions between the Church of England and the Independent churches both impact the course of Bunyan’s life. During the Civil War (1642–51) Bunyan served in the Parliamentary army, but when his regiment was disbanded in 1649 he returned to his trade as a tinker.49 In 1653 Bunyan became a member of the Independent church in Bedford and a few years later began preaching in public. Following Oliver Cromwell’s death, the monarchy was restored under Charles II (1660) and public preaching by those not licensed to do so became a matter of importance to local magistrates. In November of 1660 Bunyan was arrested for preaching and sentenced to three months in prison. His release was contingent upon his assurance that he would not preach in public again. At the end of his initial sentence, Bunyan refused to offer this assurance and so he remained in prison for the next twelve years. In 1666 Bunyan published Grace Abounding. Granted a royal pardon in 1672, Bunyan was released from prison. That same year the congregation at Bedford called him to be their pastor. He was imprisoned again for six months in 1677, probably for refusing to attend the parish church, and in the following year The Pilgrim’s Progress first appeared in print. During a trip to London he fell ill and died in 1688.

The last work that Bunyan completed before serving his twelve-year prison sentence was The Doctrine of the Law and Grace Unfolded in which he expounded his “covenant theology,” an area of great interest among Puritan thinkers. A number of Puritan concerns clustered around the idea of covenant (e.g., election, assurance of salvation, justification by faith), but at the heart of the debate was the issue of the individual’s relationship to God. Bunyan himself speaks of a “covenant of works” and a “covenant of grace” (Heb 8:8–13). The covenant of works existed between God and Adam before the fall. The Lord commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge under punishment of death (Gen 2:16–17). The Ten Commandments, in Bunyan’s view, are identical in substance to the command given to Adam.50 With the fall, all of humanity falls under the punishment for Adam’s disobedience. In his work on Bunyan, Pieter de Vries describes the new condition created by the fall. “Bunyan regarded the fall as a radical breach between God and man. From a human perspective it may be said to constitute a severance forever, without any likelihood whatsoever to bridge the chasm between man and God. The gloomiest hues are hardly adequate to paint man’s predicament. He is dead in trespasses and sin.”51 The only escape for this bleak situation is a sharing in the covenant of grace established between the Father and the Son. This is established through faith, understood not as a human achievement but as a divine gift. In terms of the experience of the individual, a life lived under the covenant of works would produce a personality that is “sensitive of conscience to a diseased degree, beset by fears and insistent ideas” as well as one marked by a “fearful melancholy self-contempt and despair” as William James described Bunyan.52

The Bunyan scholar Michael Davies argues that the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace provides the key to understanding Grace Abounding. “Far from being a random sequence of unconnected experiences, impossible to fathom or to follow by convert and reader alike, Grace Abounding can be read according to a lucid process of salvation, charting the sinning believer’s journey from a guilt-ridden state of enslavement under the covenant of law and works (according to the terms of Bunyan’s covenant theology) to the liberty offered by a covenant of grace, faith in which brings blessed release for Bunyan from incarcerating fears and doubts.”53 As we discover, the blessed release is not a permanent state of being for Bunyan. In fact, the reader of Grace Abounding is struck by Bunyan’s on-going vacillation between the terror of a life under the covenant of works and the serenity of a life under the covenant of grace. “Thus, by the strange and unusual assaults of the tempter, was my soul, like a broken vessel, driven, as with the winds, and tossed sometimes headlong into despair; sometimes upon the covenant of works, and sometimes to wish that the new covenant, and the conditions thereof, might so far as I thought myself concerned, be turned another way, and changed.”54

Viewed from the perspective of the person living under the covenant of grace, Grace Abounding recalls Paul’s dichotomy between the old Adam and the new Adam. “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:18–19). Experiencing the covenant of works, Bunyan writes, “I was more loathsome in mine own eyes than was a toad, and I thought I was so in God’s eyes too: sin and corruption, I said, would as naturally bubble out of my heart, as water would bubble out of a fountain.”55 In a later reprise from his afflictions, he experiences the covenant of grace when he considers the righteousness of Christ. “Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed, I was loosed from my affliction and irons, my temptations also fled away: so that from that time those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now I went also home rejoicing, for the grace and love of God . . .”56

Many readers of Bunyan’s autobiography would most likely agree with Vincent Newey’s assessment: “Reading Grace Abounding is like travelling in a mighty maze whose plan is far from clear, and where at every turn we meet some new and puzzling psychodrama suggesting not so much providential design as solitary struggle in a spectacular universe of the mind’s making.”57 Bunyan begins by recounting the nightmares that he suffered as a young boy of nine or ten when fearful visions of the fires of hell plagued his sleep. After marrying his first wife around 1648, Bunyan became convinced of his sinfulness, but tried unsuccessfully to reform his life. Once after hearing a sermon on the evil of breaking the Sabbath, he soon began playing a game of “cat” in which the player strikes a wooden dart that has been placed on the ground with a cudgel and then hits the airborne dart. “But the same day, as I was in the midst of a game of cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole; just as I was about to strike it the second time, a voice did suddenly dart from the heaven into my soul, which said, Wilt thou leave thy sins, and go to heaven? Or have thy sins, and go to hell? At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was as if I had with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looking down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if he did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for these, and other my ungodly practices.”58

He first had his eyes opened when “the good providence of God” brought him to the town of Bedford. While he was there he “came where there was three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun, and talking about the things of God; and being now willing to hear them discourse, I drew near to hear what they said; for I was now a brisk talker also myself in matters of religion: but now I may say, I heard, but I understood not; for they were far above out of my reach, for their talk was about a new birth, the work of God on their hearts, and also how they were convinced of their miserable state by nature: they talked how God had visited their souls with his love in the Lord Jesus, and with what words and promises they had been refreshed, comforted, and supported against the temptations of Satan in particular . . .”59 The women at Bedford seemed to Bunyan to have found “a new world” about which Bunyan knew nothing. On his various business trips, he would make a point to stop by Bedford and listen to the women. Slowly, Bunyan writes, “I began to look into the Bible with new eyes.”60 As Newey observes, “A measure of spiritual progress, and also its means, this ‘new’ capacity for perceiving truth, comfort, and direction stands over against the ‘blind, ignorant’ state of his unregenerate self before his acquaintance with the Bedford Church.”61 Bedford becomes for him the sunny city on the hill. “About this time, the state and happiness of these poor people at Bedford was thus in a kind of vision represented to me: I saw as if there were set on the sunny side of the mountain, there refreshing themselves with the pleasant beams of the sun, while I was shivering and shrinking in the cold, afflicted with frost, snow, and dark clouds.”62 A wall surrounded the city and Bunyan sought passage through the narrow gate. Bedford represented the warmth of Christian fellowship, the light of scriptural understanding, and the security of spiritual assurance.

Bunyan’s glowing account of his time spent with the church at Bedford and its pastor John Gifford should not be taken to mean that he had found uninterrupted peace once he became a member. To the contrary, he experienced temptations so real that he reports that “sometimes I have thought I should see the devil, nay, thought I have I felt him behind me pull my clothes.”63 There are to be sure breaks in the storms of inner turmoil. “Now had I an evidence, as I thought, of my salvation from Heaven, with many golden seals, thereon, all hanging in my sight; now could I remember this manifestation, and the other discovery of grace with comfort; and should often long and desire that the last day were come, that I might for ever be inflamed with the sight, and joy, and communion of him, whose head was crowned with thorns, whose face was spit on, and body broken, and soul made an offering for my sins.”64 However, he also mentions in an offhanded manner his long periods of intense struggle. “So soon as this fresh assault had fastened on my soul, that scripture came into my heart, This is for many days (Dan 10:14), and indeed I found it was so: for I could not be delivered nor brought to peace again until well-nigh two years and an half were completely finished.”65 Certain biblical passages, such as Esau selling his birthright, haunted him. “But chiefly by the aforementioned scripture, concerning Esau’s selling of his birthright; for that scripture would lie all day long, all the week long; yea, all the year long in my mind, and hold me down, so that I could by no means lift up myself; for when I would strive to turn me to this scripture, or that for relief, still that sentence would be sounding in me, For ye know, how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.”66 The weight of the passage regarding Esau selling his birthright was counterbalanced by Paul’s assurance of the sufficiency of grace, and the scales in his mind tipped from one side to the other.67

Such oscillation may run counter to the typical conversion account in which doubt and confusion are cast aside, but it aligns nicely with Gregory’s understanding of the Christian life. Gordon Wakefield keenly observes, “If, following Gregory of Nyssa and the Greek fathers, perfection is understood not as a state so much as a continual advance towards a transcendent glory which we attain only as we see that it beckons us to heights we have yet to scale, it may be more compatible with Bunyan’s analogy of pilgrimage.”68 Davies makes a similar point when he observes, “What Grace Abounding shows the reader is that conversion into faith offers an escape neither from sin nor temptation. Rather it presents their accommodation within a doctrine of grace and forgiveness . . . For this reason, the visible saint that Bunyan progresses towards is not one perfected or freed from sin and temptation but, through grace, is pre-eminently both saint and chief of sinners.”69 In this way, perseverance rather than freedom from temptation marks the discipleship of those who have become new creations in Christ (2 Cor 5:17).

Phyllis Trible, “Eve and Adam: Genesis 2–3 Reread”

In 1973 the Scripture scholar Phyllis Trible published a seminal article, “Eve and Adam: Genesis 2–3 Reread,” in which she challenged the long-standing interpretation of the Adam and Eve story as an endorsement of “male supremacy and female subordination.”70 We will focus on four key elements of Trible’s argument.

First, Trible challenges the traditional reading of the second creation story that sees the man being created before the woman. She does so based on the two possible senses of the Hebrew word ‘adham.

Ambiguity characterizes the meaning of ‘adham in Genesis 2–3. On the one hand, man is the first creature formed (2:7). The Lord God puts him in the garden “to till it and keep it,” a job identified with the male (cf. 3:17–19). On the other hand, ‘adham is a generic term for humankind. In commanding ‘adham not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the Deity is speaking to both the man and the woman (2:16–17). Until the differentiation of female and male (2:21–23), ‘adham is basically androgynous: one creature incorporating two sexes.71

This androgynous being, therefore, is the one formed by God in 2:7: “then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” Trible contends that the creation of “the woman” and “the man” happens only later in 2:21–23 and that the creation of the woman, following behind the garden, the animals, and the man represents the “climax, not the decline” of the creation.72 Trible’s contention that “the woman” and “the man” are created concurrently in Genesis 2:23 has not gone unchallenged. For example, Robert Kawashima counters, “Far from indicating the woman’s emergence prior to or simultaneous with the man’s, however, this sentence logically presupposes the prior existence of man. Specifically, this directly quoted speech [2:23], presenting Adam’s point of view, demonstrates that he already identified himself as ‘man’ before the creation of the woman out of his male body.”73

Second, Trible argues that the formation of the man’s ‘ezer, which is often translated as “helpmate” or “suitable partner” should not be taken to mean “servant” or “subordinate.” “Thus ‘ezer is a relational term; it designates a beneficial relationship; and it pertains to God, people, and animals. By itself the word does not specify positions within relationships; more particularly, it does not imply inferiority.”74 Rather, the creation of the woman from the rib “means solidarity and equality.”75 Related to this is the common misunderstanding that the man (‘ish) “names” the woman (‘ihshah) (Gen 2:23), implying a domination over her in the same way that the man exercises dominion over the animals by naming them (Gen 2:19). Trible insists that the text does not support such an interpretation. The typical literary form in the Bible for “naming” someone or something is to combine a form of “to call” and the name itself. For example, “Cain built a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch” (Gen 4:17).76 The text does use the word for naming, but rather simply says the man “calls” his partner “woman.” Trible concludes, “My translation is this: God is the helper superior to man; the animals are helpers inferior to man; woman is the helper equal to man.”77

Third, Trible rejects the frequent characterization of Eve as either flawed or devious in ways that the man is not. She cites various scholars who explain that the serpent tempted the woman and not the man because she was intellectually weaker, more prone to participate in astrological cults, or morally suspect. “But the narrative does not say any of these things,” Trible counters. “It does not sustain the judgment that woman is weaker or more cunning or more sexual than man.”78 Neither does the text say that the woman is a temptress or seducer. A close reading of the text also interestingly reveals that “the man does not blame the woman; he does not say that the woman seduced him; he blames the Deity.” The only suggestion of a seduction or beguilement comes when the woman says, “the serpent beguiled me and I ate” (3:13). Only here occurs the strong verb nsh’, meaning to deceive, to seduce.”79

Fourth, Genesis 3 concludes with the fall from paradise into the world that we experience, a world in which all relations are distorted. Serpents strike at the heels of humans and humans try to stomp the lunging creature; women experience pain in childbirth; farmers till the soil under the scorching sun, and all creatures suffer the inevitable reality of death and their bodies return to the earth from which they were made. Trible insists, however, that “we misread if we assume that these judgments are mandates. They describe; they do not prescribe. They protest; they do not condone.” Like an earthquake that overturns everything in its wake, the effects of the fall ripple throughout every aspect of creation, including the relationship between men and women.

This sin vitiates all relationships: between animals and human beings (3:15); mothers and children (3:16); husbands and wives (3:16); man and the soil (3:17, 18); man and his work (3:19). Whereas in creation man and woman know harmony and equality, in sin they know alienation and discord.80

Expressing her appreciation for Trible’s work on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, Jennifer Koosed remarked, “Phyllis Trible taught me to read Genesis 2–3 with new eyes, to strip off thousands of years of interpretation, and to look at the text itself, to ask—is this really there or could the passage be interpreted another way? Is it obvious that Eve is a secondary creature, created inferior to Adam, subject to him for all eternity for her disobedience?”81 Indeed, one of Trible’s most lasting contributions to the study of the second creation story has been her insistence that we need to return to a close reading of the text and be aware of how our own assumptions about a story (deeply shaped by individual and communal readings of the text) can skew our results. This issue strikes at the heart of the current theological debates among the orthodox, liberal, postliberal, and postmodern proponents. Is the tradition a help or a hindrance to our reading? Are some interpretations better than others, and if so, by what standard are they measured? Is there a meaning to a text? If so, is that meaning based on the intention of the author?

Trible’s argument does not always fall neatly on either side of many of these questions. First, though clearly critical of many of the traditional readings of the text, Trible develops that critique using the very exegetical tools (e.g., etymology, rhetoric) that have been developed and employed by Jewish and Christian scholars for centuries. In this way, her argument is both revolutionary and traditional. Second, Trible unreservedly holds that some interpretations are better than others. Egalitarian readings of Gen 2–3 are clearly better than patriarchal readings. Reading texts is not like taking a Rorschach test in which we project our own inner world onto the ink blot. Third, on the question of meaning, Trible’s argument can go in two possible directions. In another article published in the same year, she argues, “Depatriarchalizing is not an operation which the exegete performs on the text: It is a hermeneutic operating within Scripture itself. We expose it; we do not impose it.” Here Trible asserts that there is a meaning embedded in the text that exists prior to readers discovering it. However, she continues, “Tradition history teaches that the meaning and function of biblical materials is fluid. As Scripture moves through history, it is appropriated for new settings.”82 This latter comment could be taken in one of two ways: first, multiple legitimate interpretations can emerge over time. The Christian orthodox tradition has long held that a biblical text can have different spiritual meanings or “senses.” For example, the temple can refer to the physical structure in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus (“the literal sense”), the human soul (“the moral sense”), or heaven (“the anagogic sense”). A second reading of Trible’s observation moves in a postmodern direction. The Scripture scholar Dale Martin, for example, argues, “Texts are not containers that hold meaning. The meaning of a text is a result of the interpretive process itself, which is not possible apart from the activities of human interpreters . . . Texts cannot dispense their meaning, and they cannot control their interpretation. These activities are done by human beings.”83

The Revitalization of the Image of the Second Creation Story

While certainly moving in their own unique direction in their readings of Genesis 2–3, Gregory, Bunyan, and Trible share a deep appreciation for the ways in which the human heart can pursue desires that bring disorder to our personal and social lives. Gregory compared that first step away from the good “like a rock, torn asunder from a mountain ridge, which is driven down headlong by its own weight.” The person is “dragged away from his original natural [propensity] to goodness and gravitating with all his weight in the direction of vice . . . and borne away as by a kind of gravitation to the utmost limit of iniquity.”84 Bunyan declares in a similar vein, “Man indeed is the most noble, by creation, of all the creatures in the visual world: but by sin he has made himself the most ignoble.”85 Trible emphasizes the social and interpersonal distortion pictured in Genesis 2–3, yet sees its original vision as a hopeful challenge. “The [second creation story] tells us who we are (creatures of equality and mutuality); it tells us who we have become (creatures of oppression); and so it opens possibilities for change, for a return to our true liberation under God. In other words, the story calls female and male to repent.”86 Just as the seemingly dissimilar theologies of Gregory, Bunyan, and Trible can enrich our appreciation for the many dimensions of the fall, the perspectives of orthodox, liberal, postliberal, and postmodern theologians can revitalize our own thinking about the image of the second creation story.

The Pauline pattern of seeing Adam as a “type” (Rom 5:14) or foreshadowing of Christ pervades orthodox Christian thought. “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:18–19). In his battle with the Pelagians, Augustine asserted the doctrine of original sin using the Adam-Christ typology. Countering the Pelagian claim that human sin persists because humans imitate the bad example of Adam, Augustine argued,

Moreover, if Christ alone is He in whom all men are justified, on the ground that it is not simply the imitation of His example which makes men just, but His grace which regenerates men by the Spirit, then also Adam is the only one in whom all have sinned, on the ground that it is not the mere following of his evil example that makes men sinners, but the penalty which generates through the flesh. Hence the terms “all men” and “all men.” For [those] who are generated through Adam are actually the very same as those who are regenerated through Christ; but yet the language of the apostle is strictly correct, because as none partakes of carnal generation except through Adam, so no one shares in the spiritual except through Christ.87

For Augustine, the concept of a universal flawed human nature (“Adam is the one in whom all have sinned”) undergirds the Christian claim that Christ is the savior of all people. If sin is the common malady afflicting all humans, then Christ is the physician who heals their wounded nature. As orthodox theologians dealt with the myriad of questions stemming from the story of the fall, they followed Augustine’s lead and understood “the fallen state of Adam” to be the equivalent of “the human condition”—the universal, inescapable state of being in which all humans found themselves. As Augustine wrote regarding Adam in City of God, “For, we all existed in that one man, since, taken together, we were the one man who fell into sin . . . Although the specific form by which each of us was to live was not yet created and assigned, our nature was already present in the seed from which we were to spring.”88 Only in this light, orthodox thinkers concluded, can we fully understand ourselves as “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:11).

Reinhold Niebuhr’s criticism of liberalism, especially in what he regarded as its overly optimistic assessment of human potential and its mistaken belief in the inevitable scientific and moral progress of human history, is well-known. He would, then, seem to be an odd choice to represent the contribution of liberalism to the present discussion. His discussion of myths, however, is remarkably liberal in tone.89 Niebuhr operates with a fundamental distinction between “primitive” and “permanent” myths. In his 1937 article, “The Truth in Myths,” he argues that the former “is derived from prescientific thought” while the latter “deals with aspects of reality which are suprascientific rather than prescientific.”90 Primitive myth can be rightly discarded by later generations, but, as the label implies, permanent myth is permanently valid. Referring specifically to the myth of the fall, Niebuhr believes that the orthodox theologians erred by insisting that the story of the fall is actual history, while modern theologians have erred by failing to recognize the crucial distinction between primitive and permanent myth. “It is because man can transcend nature and himself that he is able to conceive of himself as the center of all life and the clue to the meaning of existence. It is this monstrous pretension of his egoism, the root of all imperialism and human cruelty, which is the very essence of sin. To recognize all this is not to accept the story of the fall as history.”91 As Niebuhr noted in his earlier work, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, “It is in its interpretations of the facts of human nature . . . that the myth of the Fall make its profoundest contribution to moral and religious theory.”92 The story of the fall correctly suggests that “the root of man’s sin lies in his pretension of being God” and sadly, this “tragic reality of life, is attested by every page of human history.”93

Bunyan’s Grace Abounding illustrates in interesting ways many of the themes in postliberal theology: a strong church/world distinction, the formative power of Scripture, and the Christian life as an interiorization of the language of the biblical narrative. Bunyan’s sharp distinction between the church at Bedford and the world appears when he offers a description of the physical landscape surrounding the church. The church is in a walled town on the sunny side of a tall mountain which he enters through a straight and narrow gate. “Now, this mountain and wall, etc. was thus made out to me; the mountain signified the church of the living God; the sun that shone thereon, the comfortable shining of his merciful face on them that were therein: the wall I thought was the Word that did make the separation between the Christians and the world: and the gap which was in the wall, I thought was Jesus Christ, who is the way to God the Father” (John 14:16; Matt 7:14).94 When he first met the women at Bedford, it seemed as if “they had found a new world, as if they were people that dwelt alone, and were not to be reckoned amongst the nations” (Num 23:9).95 The “new world” that the women had discovered was in fact an account of the world and human existence in it as narrated in the biblical story. Bunyan’s spiritual journey involves learning about this new world and entering into it. After coming into contact with the women of Bedford, he “began to look into the Bible with new eyes.”96 With these new eyes, he sees Esau’s sale of his birthright as his own sin and the cities of refuge in Joshua 20 as his own place of refuge. Even Stephen’s vision at his stoning becomes Bunyan’s own vision (Acts 7:55).97 The entire arch of story that Bunyan relates in Grace Abounding involves his ever-increasing interiorization of the biblical narrative. The postliberal theologian George Lindbeck contends that to “become a Christian involves learning the story of Israel and Jesus well enough to interpret and experience oneself and one’s world in its terms.”98 Bunyan’s autobiography provides a splendid example of how this very process unfolds in the course of his own life.

The postmodern engagement with the second creation story’s imagery of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and the fall has produced some interesting reflections on the theme of distortion. Postmoderns sees a triad of interrelated forms of distortion described in Genesis 2–3: a distortion of human desire, a distortion of human relations, and a distortion of language and meaning. Gregory’s careful examination of the driving force of the emotions and passions and Augustine’s claim that our hearts are restless until they rest in God reappears in postmodern reflection. As John Caputo comments in an exchange with the philosopher Edith Wyschogrod, “Our hearts are structurally restless, with the restlessness of this desire [for God], which is as you say ‘inherently unfulfillable’ and not a desire for ‘static eternity,’ which is part of its so-called ‘post-modernity,’ and does not expect rest. This is what interests me, the way this most classical, most biblical, desire, this most Augustinian aspiration, has been rediscovered, refashioned—‘repeated,’ as Derrida says—in what is popularly called ‘postmodernism,’ or at least a certain version or voice of postmodernism.”99 The story of the fall expresses this fundamental drive within humans, but also recognizes the instability of our desires and our inherent tendency to pursue that which ruptures our friendship with God and neighbor and drains us of the fullness of being.

Following from the discussion of desire and its possible misdirection, the theologian Jan-Olav Henriksen distinguishes between a desire that is accepting of the other and a desire that seeks to control the other. “There is a difference between the desire to control and master reality and the desire to enjoy, participate, and communicate. The first emerges out of concern, worries, and insecurity, the other out of trust and gratitude.”100 The desire to control the other results in various forms and degrees of subjugation of the other. Trible highlighted the distorted relationship that develops between men and women, but the argument could also be applied to issues such as international relations, racial tensions, and income inequality.

The third type of distortion and the one that perpetuates oppressive social structures over time is the distortion of language and meaning. Language requires differentiation and differentiation requires naming: God is not a human; a human is not one of the various birds that fill the sky; the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life, etc. Graham Ward notes that in the rabbinical tradition the story of God blowing the breath of life into Adam is interpreted to mean the giving of speech to humans. In this view, the snake represented the distortion in language and meaning when it asked Eve, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Gen 3:1). “The snake imitates God and Adam in its ability to speak. But its representation, and repetition of God’s instructions to the earthly creature distorts them.”101 Eve’s repetition of the divine command not to eat of the tree of knowledge does not dissuade the serpent from offering a distorted reading of the command. In fact, Ward argues, “Even if the woman’s words to the serpent had remained the same there would have been a slippage of meaning, because the context of each iteration is different. The woman cannot then repeat what God intended when he first spoke. Reiteration will always be interpretation and misreading.”102 Language in a fallen world can be twisted and misused for ends not intended by the original speaker. Even speech suffers the destabilizing effect of the fall.

Just as Gregory of Nyssa, John Bunyan, and Phyllis Trible opened up new and thought-provoking perspectives on the second creation story, so too contemporary thinkers help us to read the text in a new light. The orthodox correlation of the old Adam (anthropology) and the new Adam (Christology and soteriology), the liberal treatment of the fall as existential estrangement, the postliberal absorption of the biblical narrative into one’s own life story, and the postmodern focus on the various forms of distortion suggested by the fall help revitalize our appreciation for Genesis 2–3 as a text that speaks powerfully to the human condition.

Discussion Questions

1. What is your interpretation of the story of the fall?

2. Gregory of Nyssa speaks of the human as positioned between divinity and brutality. Is this an accurate portrayal? If so, how do humans move closer to divinity rather than brutality?

3. Is the persistence of temptation and despair a sign that a person has not made any progress in the Christian life?

4. Does the traditional reading of Genesis 2–3 legitimate patriarchal attitudes and practices? What are some common misreadings of the second creation story?

5. What types of personal and social forms of distortion exist? How does the gospel address these conditions?