Why does man not keep the law? Or, to put the question more generally, why do
men sin? That is, what is the origin of sin? The Biblical answer is twofold:
(a) sin had its historical origin in the act of Adam which is called
the fall, and
(b) sin has its immediate, contemporary and personal origin in the
spiritual death which along with physical death spread upon the whole race
because of Adam's act of sin.
The classical passage of Scripture that sets
forth this twofold origin of sin is Romans 5:12.
"Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world,
and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men,
because of which all sinned: - " (ERS)
The historical origin of sin set forth in the phrase, "through one man sin entered into the world." This is a direct reference to the first man, Adam, and his act of sin, the Fall. Let us go back to the book of Genesis and examine the creation and fall of man in order to understand the historical origin of sin.
The basic Biblical assertion about man is that he is created by God (Gen. 1:26-27). Man is a creature. He is not God. He is not divine. He does not have a "spark of the divine" in him. He is a created being, and as such is under the sovereignty and dominion of God by creation. But even though man is a creation of God, he is different from the rest of creation. Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that God created man in His own image. This makes man different from the other creations of God.
What is the image of God? The image of God is the Son of God (Col. 1:13-15; compare II Cor. 4:4); He is the plan and pattern according to which God created man. Note the Scriptures never say that the image of God is in man, but rather that man has been created in the image of God. What does it mean for man to be created in the image of God? The answer may be seen in Genesis 1:26-27. There are two aspects to man being created in the image of God. The first may be found in the words "let them have dominion over the fish of the sea...over all the earth...." God has given man dominion, sovereignty, lordship over the creation (Psa. 8:4-8). This passage justifies the task and existence of all the sciences and especially biology. But it is not only the study and knowledge of creation that is involved here. Man has a God-given right to use this creation for the good of mankind and for the glory of God. Man in his limited sovereignty over creation is like God in His unlimited sovereignty. In this sense man is like God. Man's lordship over creation is the first aspect of man being created in the image of God.
But there is a second aspect to man being created in the image of God. In these verses of Genesis one we see this in the words "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:26). Man cannot live alone. In Genesis 2:18 "The Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'" Of all the creatures God had created "there was not found a helper fit for him" (Gen. 2:20). So God created, out of man, woman. Man, in the very way in which he was created had a social need - a need for fellowship. This need could only be satisfied through an equal fellow creature. None of the animals could satisfy this need for fellowship. So God made an equal being, a woman. Man as a social being is able to enjoy reciprocal fellowship with an equal being. In this respect man is also like God. In God there is an equality and fellowship between the three persons of the Godhead.
Man's dominion over creation and his fellowship with an equal being - woman - are two aspects of man being created in the image of God. Both of these presuppose freedom - freedom of choice and freedom of action. This freedom is the presupposition and the possibility of being in the image of God. When God created man with freedom, dominion over creation and fellowship with equal beings became possible. With freedom of choice and action man can exercise his dominion over creation. Since love is the essence of fellowship, with his freedom of choice and action, man can love an equal being and thus enter into fellowship with her. This freedom of choice and not his reason, nor self- consciousness, nor self-transcendence, is that which make possible man's dominion over creation and fellowship with an equal being. This is what distinguishes man from the rest of creation. This freedom of decision is what gives to man his existence as a person or self and to his reason that human and personal character. Man is a personal being in a created physical world and as such is a union of spirit (person or self) and body (psycho-physical organism). "Then the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" (Gen. 2:7).
But man did not stay in this ideal state - the way God created him in His image. He has fallen away from the image of God. How did this happen? After He created man and placed him in a garden (Gen. 2:8,15), God gave to him a command: "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:16-17, NAS). After the woman had been created, she was tempted by the serpent (Gen. 3:1) who is also called Satan (the adversary) and devil (the slanderer, Rev. 12:9). The serpent's temptation contained two lies: "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" (Gen. 3:1, NAS) and "You surely shall not die!" (Gen. 3:4, NAS). The first lie attacks God's goodness indirectly by implying that God makes unreasonable demands. The serpent misstates God's command. And the woman corrects the serpent's misstatement but accepts his insinuation that God makes unreasonable demands. This is the reason she changes God's command by adding "neither shall you touch it" (Gen. 3:3). This leads to the serpent's second lie. For if it is unreasonable to forbid touching the fruit, then it is unreasonable to think that she would die if she touched it. The second lie attacks God's goodness directly by implying that He is untruthful. This second lie is supported by the implication in verse five that God is withholding something good from them: "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
These lies are attacks on God's goodness and love. This is the first element of this satanic temptation: Satan begins with an attack on God's character. God's goodness is attacked indirectly and then directly. The second element of this satanic temptation is the offering of a substitute for the true God - a false god, an idol (compare Matt. 4:8-10). Having undermined her faith and confidence in the goodness of God, the serpent offers Eve the knowledge of good and evil as a substitute for God. The third element in this temptation is the presenting of a method to obtain the substitue god. Satan implied that this knowledge of good and evil could be obtained trough the process of eating. This was part of Satan's strategy. He had to obscure the basic fact that knowledge, moral as well as scientific, is obtained by decision, a choice, an acceptance or rejection. Adam and Eve could have known good and evil by their acceptance of the good (obeying God's command) and their rejection of the evil (Satan's temptation to disobey God's command). Evil may be equally known in its rejection as in its acceptance. Rejection is a far better way to know evil, for one does not have receive the painful consequences of the choice of evil. The knowledge of good and evil was not something God was trying to keep from them, contrary to Satan's lie. God was trying to give to them in the only way possible, by decision, by a choice between good and evil. Of course it was necessary for Satan to obscure this fact that knowledge comes by decision. Otherwise there would be no necessity for eating of the fruit of the tree and thus disobeying God.
At the serpent's suggestion Eve ate of the tree and gave to her husband, Adam, who also ate (Gen. 3:6). Thus did man first sin. What was the nature of Adam's sin? Was it disobedince, unbelief, rebellion, or a transgression? It was all of these, but also something more. It was not merely something negative but something positive. It was idolatry. In Genesis 3:6 the Biblical explanation of Adam's sin is given:
"So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,The woman saw it was good for food - she had probably observed this many times before; we have no record that the serpent told her that. She saw that it was a delight to the eyes. She had surely noticed this before also. Neither of these appeals had previously made this fruit a temptation to her. It was the third element that made it a temptation: It was a tree to be desired to make one wise. As was seen above, the serpent added this element (Gen. 3:5). This was not a temptation to pride as some have affirmed; it was a temptation to put wisdom and knowledge in the place of God. Adam's sin was basically misplaced ultimate allegiance. It was not just unbelief but wrong faith: trust in that which is not God. The technical Biblical term for it is idolatry.
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 and he ate."
The sin of the first man was the choice of wisdom and knowledge, reason, as his god. As important and good as reason is in its proper place, it it not supreme or ultimate; it is not God. Adam's sin is basically an idolatry of reason. This is essentially what classical Greek philosophy involved, where reason is the universal and necessary. Even though it was a rejection of the popular Homeric polytheistic religion, this does not mean that Greek philosophy is non-religious. "Greek thought did not cease to be religious when it became philosophical." [1] The interest of the pre-Socratic philosophers was not, or not primarily, scientific but theological. They abondoned the myths of the Homeric poets and rejected the then popular Homeric polytheistic religion, not because these were unscientific but because they presented an unworthy picture of the Divine.
"The Being or Nature which philosophy sought to reach was thought ofThe religious language and concepts of the pre-Socratics are not just relics of the pre-scientific way of thought, not yet outgrown, but the expression of their fundamental religious orientation. As Werner Jaeger says in his Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, "Though philosophy means the death of the old gods, it is itself religion." [3] And this religion is a religion of reason. This became explicit in the teaching of Socrates. Socrates lived and taught the ultimacy of reason and was executed in 339 B.C. for nothing less than the crime of rationalism - an act of destroying the gods by reason. [4] But he was only substituting for faith in one set of gods faith in another god - reason. Plato was inspired by his teacher Socrates to the same faith. The divine, according to the Greek conception of reality, is that which is not subject to change, decay or death; the gods in Homer are "immortals." The divine, therefore, cannot be known through the senses because that which is known through the senses is a world characterized by change, decay or death. But since the objects of reason are always and everywhere the same, the divine can be known through reason. This eternal, unchanging realm of the ideas, the objects of reason, is the divine.
as a worthier conception of the divine than that presented by the
anthropomorphic gods." [2]
"Plato does not hesitate to use religious language of this knowing.With this conception of the divine Aristotle is basically in agreement but without the use of the religious language. He says,
He says that both reason in man and the objects of reason are divine,
and speaks of the kinship of one with other." [5]
"For while thought is held to be the most divine of thingsAfter discussing these difficulties he concludes,
observed by us, the question how it must be situated in
order to have that character involves difficulties." [6]
"Therefore it must be of itself that divine thought thinksThis self-thinking thought is the divine. Thus both Plato and Aristotle held reason to be divine. God is the divine or eternal realm of the ideas in Plato's philosophy, or he is a self-thinking thought of Aristotle's philosophy.
(since it is the most excellent of things) and
its thinking is a thinking on thinking." [7]
According to the Greek thinkers reason is the divine or God. But since the concepts of God and man are correlatives, the Greek concept of man reflects the image of this god. Since reason is god, man viewed in the light of this god, is a rational animal. Reason is the divine part of man. Aristotle says,
"It would seem, too, this (reason) is the true self of every man,
since it is the supreme and better part.
It will be strange, then,
if he should choose not his own life,
but some other's...
What is naturally proper to every creature is the
highest and pleasantest for him. And so, to man,
this will be the life of Reason, since Reason is,
in the highest sense, a man's self." [8]
This is not the Bibical view of man or God. God is not reason. God is a person (or more accurately, three persons) whose existence is not in His reason but in His unlimited sovereign free decision and will; man is also a person (or more accurately, a unity of spirit [person] and body - see Gen. 2:7) whose existence is also to be found not in his reason but in his limited free decision and will. And since decisions involve a reference to an ultimate criterion beyond the self, a god, the Bibical view of man is that he is a religious animal, a being who must have a god. Reason is not the divine part in man but is a function of the will of the person. To be is to choose, not to think or to know. Knowledge and reason depend upon a prior decision as to what is real.
"...whatever evidence one accepts,It is upon decision that any knowledge finally depends. Reason is not the ultimate criterion but the sovereign will of the Creator who made all things and has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. This basic incompatibility between the Greek and Biblical view of God and man explains the conflict between Greek philosophy and the Christian faith and the failure of the attempted synthesis of these divergent points of view by Augustine and Aquinas. All attempts to synthesize the classical Greek view of God and man with the Biblical view will fail. Worst of all, the Biblical view of God and man will be obscured and misunderstood.
whether that of experience or that of logic,
will depend upon neither logic or experience alone,
but upon a decision by the individual concerned
in favor of the one or the other." [9]
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[1] Michael B. Foster,
Mystery and Philosophy
(London: SCM Press Ltd., 1957) p. 32.
[3] Werner Jaeger,
Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers
(Oxford: The Claredon Press, 1947), p. 72.
[4] William Barrett,
Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
(New York: Doubleday & Co., 1958), p. 72.
[5] Forster, Mystery and Philosophy, p. 32.
[6] Aristotle Metaphysics, 12. 9. 1074b16, in vol. 8 of
Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins
(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), p. 605.
[8] Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, 10. 7. 1178a2-7,
quoted in Barrett, Irrational Man, p. 78.
[9] Cherbonnier, "Biblical Metaphysics," p. 372. Emphasis mine.