Introduction to Orthodoxy

It sounds rather apocalyptic, doesn’t it? ‘The Fall’. Makes it sound like we’ve falled down a chasm, like there was no other fall quite like The Fall. In a sense, that kinda makes sense.

The Fall was the event when Adam and Eve, having been created by God and told to enjoy each other’s company and name animals and such, were persuaded by the serpent to eat the fruit of the tree that God told them not to eat from.

As some of my readers will already know, the problem that happened with this bit wasn’t really that Adam and Eve were disobeying God. This was wrong – a sin, even, especially when ‘sin’ is considered to be opposition to God – but it wasn’t the main problem. It could have been covered over with repentance. Instead, the sin was compounded because Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent – that is, no one would accept responsibility for their own sin.

So: The Fall, in Orthodox theology, was caused by pride – disobedience and refusal of responsibility.

But, there is a critical difference in Orthodox theology when compared to other conceptions of the Fall. Where others may see Adam and Eve as the pinnacle of human development, Orthodox theology does not – rather, Orthodox theology sees Adam and Eve being around the emotional age of teenagers. Which, by the way, goes a long way towards explaining why they hid in the bushes from an omnipresent God.

There are a number of advantages to this viewpoint. It means that The Fall didn’t mean that God had to change His whole plan about the future to fit in with that Fall – rather, Christ was always going to become incarnate. Adam and Eve didn’t go from nothing to everything – rather, Adam and Eve were developing closer to God, and perhaps even had the capacity to make mistakes and learn from them.

Well, that sounds good, of course. Where’s the justification for such a belief?
It’s actually in Genesis itself: ‘Let us create man in our own image and likeness’, followed by ‘and so man was created in the image’ (Genesis 1:26-27). Why not the likeness? There hasn’t been any trouble over repeating words before – see any list of genealogies – so we have to assume that there must be a reason. In this case, the reason is that Adam was created to grow into the likeness of God.

The Fall made that a problem, and over time, there was a great problem: how to bring humanity back into a loving relationship – something that, by necessity, requires free will? The answer was, gradually. Hence, the Mosaic Law, which became perfected by the Incarnation of Christ. Now, we are also able to be the image, and grow into the likeness, of God.

It’s kinda trippy, really. We have the potential to be so much more than we give ourselves credit for. Our lives – particularly in Christian and nominally Christian circles – can be so much about morals and ethics that we forget what we’re supposed to do – to be closer to God, and grow into the likeness of God.