This series is exploring the holistic nature of the gospel by interrogating the unhelpful single-story theology that creates a dichotomy between word and deed or proclamation and social action.

In the first part of this series, we examined the creation story found in Genesis 1-2 and could find no sign of this “single-story” thinking. Word and deed are found as an integrated whole within the creation story. God’s word is always directed towards very specific ends that encompass all of creation.

An Alternative Voice:

What is significant, however, is that unlike many Ancient Near Eastern creation myths, there is no great battle between, often evenly matched, foes that in some way resulted in the creation of our world and humanity. There is only one voice that speaks. One voice that creates. There are no rivals to be conquered or battles to be fought. The powerful Creator God speaks, and it happens. [1]

And then in Genesis 3, for the first time, we encounter an alternative voice. A voice whose narrative rivals that of the first voice. But, and this is a twist that would have caught the attention of the earliest listeners, this voice is focused not on the downfall of the Creator-God but on the downfall of the Created Ones.

In Genesis 1 and 2, it is God’s word that determines what is good, ordered, just, and right. It is God’s word that allows for abundance, dignity, and inclusion. Now the alternative voice of the serpent [2] appears, throwing doubt and suspicion on the words and the character of the Creator-God. “Did God really say…?”

“God may have said you can eat from any tree in the Garden, but what about that tree in the middle of the Garden? If you eat from that tree, you will be just like him. You will be gods, deciding for yourself what is right and what is wrong. You cannot trust God! He is a tyrant who, whilst claiming to have your best interests at heart, is holding back the best from you and keeping it for himself. Don’t trust him!” (Genesis 3:1-5)

At this point, the man and the woman have a choice to make: whose voice will they listen to? Whose voice can they most trust to speak truth about the nature of the world? Despite all the evidence to the contrary of the goodness and provision of God, they choose instead to trust the voice of the serpent.

Their unfaithfulness, though, cannot silence the voice of God. Humanity’s betrayal will not be allowed to have the final word. Instead, God speaks again, but this time not words of blessing and abundance but words of judgement and discipline. Words to restore order, limit destruction, and provide hope.  

The First Rebellion is Holistic

The story of the first rebellion told in Genesis 3 does not divorce the spiritual from the physical when it comes to judgement and enacting the curse of sin. God’s word of judgement affects all aspects of creation, both relational and structural.

In the biblical narrative, every aspect of shalom is broken at the first rebellion; both individual and communal, personal and structural, spiritual and material. Often our theological concepts of sin and the fall are far too focused on the individual and the spiritual, ignoring the structural and communal aspects of sin. Consequently, our understanding of sin, salvation and repentance is far too limited, or narrow.

In 1988, a group of South African Pentecostals put out an anti-apartheid statement, Relevant Pentecostal Witness, in which they argued that to deal only with the individual sins of the victims without dealing with the conditions in society which often give rise to this individual behaviour is akin to dealing only with the symptoms and not the cause. To preach only a “single message of repentance” in a land of such inequality, such as South Africa, is not only inconsistent with the biblical witness regarding repentance but also fails to consider the complex and multi-faceted nature of sin as both individual and structural. Repentance too, like sin, is complex and multi-faceted and requires the recognition of both individual, corporate, and structural sin. [3]

The rebellion’s effects can be traced across seven interlocking relationships or systems:

(a) The Relationship Between People and God is Broken:

The tone of the passage suggests that the relationship between God and the two people was one of a familiar intimacy. Even though never explicitly stated, we can assume that God walking in the Garden, visiting with Adam and Eve, was an established pattern. However, this time neither the man nor the woman can be found, and so God calls out, “Where are you?”

To which the man replies, “I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” (3:10, NRSVue). Mistrust, selfish ambition, greed, shame, and fear have now entered and disrupted the relationship between humanity and God. Ultimately resulting in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden (3:22-24).

(b) The Relationship Between Men and Women is Broken:

Barely eight verses on from Adam’s declaration that “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (2:23, NRSVue), their relationship is one of shame (3:7,10), guilt (3:6, 10), and blame-shifting (3:12-13). They are now “unsafe before each other.” [4] Perhaps most significantly is the word of judgement spoken to the woman, “your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (3:16, NRSVue). The relationship of mutual vulnerability and care is now replaced by a power struggle and ultimately by the man’s dominance over the woman.

Goldingay helpfully notes that “the two creation stories contained no pointers toward male “headship” in the sense that men or husbands are supposed to exercise authority or leadership over women or wives.” Patriarchy, however, was a reality built into Israelite society; “Genesis here tells them how this came to be. Male authority or domination was not God’s design but a consequence of a breakdown in relationship… From now on, the Bible will assume the reality of patriarchy and of male headship, but it begins by noting that this came about only as a result of those various breakdowns of relationship. [5] 

De La Torre sums this up well: “The idyllic idea of being naked and feeling no shame was distorted by the establishment of male superiority… Rather than finding equality within the image of God (1:26), humans found inequality in the patriarchy established as rebellion’s first consequence. Not only is the oppressed woman forced to wear the mask of inferiority, but so too must the oppressor, man, wear the false mask of superiority—always fearful the mask might slip and reveal his true nature of vulnerability.”[6]

(c) Humanity’s Relationship with the Rest of Creation is Broken:

The idyllic picture of shalom, a world where all the relationships are functioning correctly for the flourishing of all, is now replaced by an adversarial relationship between humanity and creation. What was once a blessing is becomes a “curse” (3:17), dominated by humanity’s fight for survival. Food is no longer simply the gift of the benevolent Creator (2:15), now it must be produced by “painful toil” (3:17), as the ground actively opposes this struggle for survival, the ground no longer producing the abundance of the previous chapter but “thorns and thistles” (3:18). This toil and struggle will be their lot all the days of their lives (3:17), until finally to dust they return (3:19). The breakdown of harmony between humanity and creation is further exemplified by the adversarial relationship between the serpent [7] and the “offspring of the women” (3:15). A relationship that will ultimately significantly wound both parties.

(d) Our Understanding and Experience of Ourselves and Our Own Bodies are Fundamentally Disrupted:

At the centre of the rebellion story is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:17), suggesting that the original state of humanity is that of innocence or naivety rather than that of perfection or righteousness.[8] The ability to discern “good from evil” is the essence of wisdom, the pursuit of which is actively encouraged throughout the Bible, particularly in the Wisdom literature (e.g., Proverbs 4:5; 15:16). Growing in wisdom and discernment is central to the growth from youth or innocence to maturity.

The prohibition against eating from the tree is not an indication that God wishes to keep humanity in some sort of perpetual childhood, but rather that the gaining of wisdom and knowledge must be done in God’s way. [9] “To use the language of Proverbs, Adam and Eve were fools. They spurned God’s instruction and took the shortcut to get to what was intended to be a good thing.”[10] The description of the serpent as “crafty” (3:1) and the pre-rebellion description of Adam and Eve that they “were both naked and were not ashamed” (2:25) further supports the suggestion of an original state of youth or innocence.

After eating the fruit, the man and woman realise their own nakedness and experience shame for the first time (3:7, 10-11). Whilst they were naked before, they were never ashamed. Their fundamental understanding of their own bodies has changed. It is not insignificant that their body’s own relationship with creation is now defined not only by the blessing of work or childbirth but by the pain and the struggle which these activities now inflict upon the body (3:16, 19)

The rebellion affects not only the fundamental creational relationships but also the systems and structures which people build to shape and regulate these relationships.

(e) Broken Religious Systems

There is now a distance that exists between people and God. First, when man and woman hide from God in the Garden and then, more fundamentally, when they are banished from the Garden. (3:23; see also Romans 1:18-32). If we accept a later date for the writing and compilation of Genesis (see note one) then it is not too far of a stretch to see the system of animal sacrifices foreshadowed [11] in the garments of animal skin God provides for Adam and Eve (3:20). The intimacy of walking in the Garden (“God with us”) is replaced by the distance and complexity of the sacrificial system.

(f) Broken Economic Systems:

Economic systems are fundamentally about the provision of needs, labour, and the control of the means of production. Previously, “the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (2:9). Both God and creation were working with humanity as they tended and kept the garden (2:15), in the process providing for their own basic needs and those of all creation. Now there exists between man [12] and the ground a similar enmity and struggle as that seen between man and woman.

Providing for their basic needs will now be through struggle, painful toil, and “the sweat of his face” (3:17-18). In return, the soil will produce for him “thorns and thistles.” (3:18). In many ways, this prefigures the pain and injustices we experience around employment and food security. “What was once ordained in paradise, to tend to the garden, now becomes a cursed drudgery.” [13]

(g) Broken Socio-Political Structures:

The adversarial relationship and power struggle between man and woman is amplified throughout all human relationships. The rebellion and sin grow in every generation as seen in the narratives of Cain and Abel (4:1-16) and then Lamech (4:19-24). Genesis, in part using the patriarchal structure of Israelite society, shows sin to be an inversion of the socio-political structures of society. It is the serpent who speaks to the woman, whilst Eve, the one who was created as helper-partner [14] for Adam, is the one who takes the fruit and then gives it to Adam, who likewise fails in his role as the helper-partner by raising no objections. When God delivers the words of judgement in 3:14-19, it is hardly insignificant that he both follows and thus inverts the order of rebellion: first the created serpent, then the woman, and then the man. We can read this as a literary device that hints towards God’s ultimate redemption of creation and the restoration of the original created order, which, to my mind, includes the dismantling of all patriarchal structures.

In their expulsion from the Garden, Adam and Eve are sent into exile, “forced to leave the land from which they were formed, under the sky that witnessed their coming into being.” [15] In a sense, they become refugees, experiencing for the first time what millions have experienced throughout history, and continue to experience. “Only those torn from their homeland can relate to the gut-wrenching pain of being expelled from all that one knows.” [16]

The resulting loss, marginalization, and disenfranchisement are the same, whether your exile is your fault or due to events and forces beyond your control. This imagery becomes even more poignant when we consider that Genesis was most likely finally compiled and edited during the Jewish exile in Babylon. Would they see their own rebellion and exile mirrored in this narrative? Would they see their own pain and dispossession mirrored in these first exiles?

Justice and the Rebellion

In part one we saw that the creation narratives are infused with the language of justice, and so too is the narrative of the first rebellion.

The very act of disobedience was also the first act of injustice. Man and woman, fuelled by greed, selfish desire, and a grasping after power, reach out and take what is not theirs to take. This is the archetype of historical acts of injustice that fuelled colonisation, land dispossession, forced removals, resource exploitation and apartheid. It can hardly be insignificant that it was an act involving food, when you consider our present inequalities around food, provision and land.

God, then, is not only the restorer of “justice-righteousness” [17] but perhaps more fundamentally, the first victim of injustice. The one whose “working words” of provision and flourishing were doubted, distorted, and discarded. The biblical story begins not with human suffering but with a wound against God.

There is no “single-story” or dichotomous thinking about the first rebellion or its consequences, no separation between the material and the spiritual, or between the personal and the structural. That first act of rebellion set off a chain reaction escalating and compounding injustices that reverberate horizontally throughout society and vertically throughout history, “generating contexts and connections that are laden with collective sin.” [18] “Evil and sin,” as Wright reminds us, “weave their way into every aspect of God’s creation and every dimension of human personhood and life on earth.”[19]

Part 3 continues to explore this same pattern in the stories of Noah, Babel, and Abraham.

Notes:

[1] Genesis should not be read as an historical account of creation. All the signs are there that this narrative is not meant to be read literally – a talking serpent, trees whose fruit, when eaten, can result in death or life, the problematic but very ordered structure of the creation in Genesis 1, etc. This does not mean it is not true. Something does not have to be factual for it to be true – poetry, for instance. Genesis is likely written during the Babylonian exile, where questions of God’s power and Israel’s identity were in question. The writer thus tells the story of Israel’s “genesis” using the language and symbology drawn from the creation myths of other peoples (the Babylonians in particular) but adapting and reshaping these familiar stories to unique power and character.
[2] The serpent in this story is never identified as Satan, and we should be hesitant to do so. Satan is, in fact, not mentioned anywhere in Genesis, and is mentioned sparingly in the Hebrew bible. When the word is used, it has the more general connotation of adversary or accuser. It is not until the intertestamental period that Satan begins to be personified as an entity of evil. In Genesis 3, the serpent in this story functions rather as a “trickster” character, common in many ancient myths and fables (including African myths). The trickster is not evil per se, but rather a character that creates mischief and disrupts the status quo.
[3] Relevant Pentecostal Witness. 1988. In Leonard, G.S.D. (ed.) Kairos: The Moment of Truth: The Kairos Documents.  KwaZulu-Natal: Ujamaa Centre for Biblical and Theological Community Development and Research. [Online]. Available:
http://ujamaa.ukzn.ac.za/Libraries/manuals/The_Kairos_Documents.sflb.ashx.
[4] M.A. De La Torre, 2011. Genesis. Westminster/John Knox: Louisville, p.81.
[5] Goldingay, J. 2010.  Genesis for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–16. SPCK: London, p.55.
^[6] De La Torre, 2011 :86
[7] It would be a category error to identify the serpent with Satan. See note 2 for further discussion
[8] Knowledge of good and evil, or discernment, is regarded as wisdom in other biblical texts. This does not suggest that God never wanted them to “grow up” and gain wisdom, i.e. (know the difference between good and evil), but they were to attain this wisdom, God’s way. Thus, Adam and Eve may be regarded as “fools” who attempt to take a shortcut to achieving a good thing. See Enns, P. & Byas, J. 2019. Enns, P. and Byas, J. (2012) Genesis for Normal People: A Guide to the Most Controversial, Misunderstood, and Abused Book of the Bible. Englewood, CO: Patheos, p.37-39.
[9]  Enns and Byas, 2019: 38-39
[10] Enns and Byas, 2019: 39
[11] I use the word foretelling more in a literary sense, foreshadowing events or themes later in the story, not in the sense of prophetic foretelling of events, themes, or systems that will be later instituted.
[12] While I generally prefer to use more inclusive language (i.e. women are very much able to work the land, and will experience the same struggles), as this word of judgement is particularly spoken to Adam in this narrative, I chose to leave this nuance.
[13] De La Torre, 2011: 82
[14] This concept does not denote any sense of male supremacy or creational hierarchy. Eve is created as a partner for Adam and invested with full dignity and equality.
[15] De la Torre, 2011:89.
[16] De La Torre, 2011: 89.
[17] Many scholars argue that both the Hebrew and Greek words for “righteousness” ought to be better translated as justice-righteousness to convey the full sense of the word.
[18] Wright, Christopher J.H. 2009. Biblical Paradigms of Redemption, Exodus, Jubilee and the Cross. In Grant, Jamie A. & Hughes, Dewi A. Transforming the World: The Gospel and Social Responsibility. Nottingham: Apollos, p.69-70
[19] Wright, Christopher J.H. 2010. The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, p.40

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