Man before the Fall

Created in the image of God, man came out of the hands of God as saints, dispassionate, sinless, immortal, aspiring to God. Such an assessment of man was given by God Himself when about everything that He created, including man, He said that all "good is exceedingly good" (Gen. 1:31; cf. Eccl. 7:29).

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes:

"It is told by the divine revelation that the first man was created by God out of nothing, created in the beauty of spiritual grace, created immortal, alien to evil."

Man is a complete unity of spirit, soul and body, - one harmonious whole, namely, the spirit of man is directed towards God, the soul is united or freely subordinated to the spirit, and the body - to the soul. Man was holy, deified.

“Our nature,” says Saint Gregory of Nyssa- was originally created by God as a vessel capable of receiving perfection. "

The will of God, namely, is that a person should freely, that is, strive with love for God, - the source of eternal life and bliss, and thus be invariably in communion with God, in the bliss of eternal life.

This was the first man. That is why he had an enlightened mind and “Adam knew every creature by name,” which means that the physical laws of the universe and the animal world were revealed to him.

The mind of the first person was pure, bright, sinless, capable of deep knowledge, but at the same time he had to develop and improve, as the minds of the Angels themselves develop and improve.

Rev. Seraphim of Sarov described the state of Adam in paradise as follows:

"Adam was created so far intolerable to the action of any of the elements created by God that neither water drowned him, nor fire did not burn, nor the earth could devour in its chasms, nor the air could damage it by any action of its own. He was subjugated to him as a favorite of God, as a king and owner of creation. And everyone admired him as the all-perfect crown of God's creations. From this breath of life, breathed into the face of Adam from the All-Creative Mouth of the All-Creator and Almighty God, Adam became so wise that there has never been from the ages, no, and it is unlikely that a man will ever be wiser and more knowledgeable on earth. and all the properties of a creature that it has according to the gift of God, given to her at creation. ”It is by this gift of the above-natural grace of God, given to him from the breath of life, that Adam could see and understand the Lord walking go to Paradise, and comprehend His words and the conversation of the holy Angels, and the language of all animals and birds and creeping things that live on earth, and everything that is now hidden from us, as from the fallen and sinners, and that for Adam before his fall was so clear. The same wisdom and power, and omnipotence, and all the other good and holy qualities the Lord God gave to Eve ... "

His body, also created by God, was sinless, impassive, and thus free from disease, suffering and death.

Living in paradise, a person received direct revelations from God, who communicated with him, taught him a godlike life, instructed him about all good things. According to Saint Gregory of Nyssa, the man "enjoyed the Manifestation of God face to face."

St. Macarius of Egypt is talking:

"As the Spirit acted in the prophets and taught them, and was within them, and appeared to them from outside: so in Adam the Spirit, when he wanted, stayed with him, taught and inspired ..."

“Adam, the father of the universe, knew the sweetness of God's love in paradise,” writes St. Silouan the Athonite, - The Holy Spirit is love and sweetness of the soul, mind and body. And whoever has come to know God by the Holy Spirit, they are hungry day and night for the living God. "

Saint Gregory of Nyssa explains:

"Man was created in the image of God, so that he could see like like, for the life of the soul consists in contemplating God."

The first people were created sinless, and they, as free beings, were given voluntarily, with the help of the grace of God, to be established in goodness and perfected in divine virtues.

Man's sinlessness was relative, not absolute; it lay in the free will of man, but was not a necessity of his nature. That is, "a person could not sin," and not "a person could not sin." About it Saint John Damascene writes:

“God created man by nature sinless and free by will. Sinless, I say, not in the sense that he could not accept sin (for only the Divine is inaccessible to sin), but in the sense that he had the possibility of sin not in his nature, but primarily in free will. This means that he could, aided by the grace of God, remain in good and prosper in it, just as in his freedom he could, with God's permission, turn away from good and find himself in evil. "

The meaning of the commandment given to man in paradise

In order for a person to develop his spiritual powers by perfection in goodness, God gave him the commandment not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: “And the Lord God commandment to Adam, saying: from every tree, hedgehog in paradise, take food; from the tree, the hedgehog know what is good and evil, you cannot bear it from it; on that day if you take it away from him, you will die by death ”(Gen. 2, 16-17; cf. Rom. 5, 12; 6, 23).

"God gave man free will," says St. Gregory the Theologian- so that he chooses good by free determination ... He also gave him the law as material for the exercise of free will. The law was the commandment, what kind of fruits he can eat, and what he dares not touch. "

“In fact, it would not be useful for a person,” argues Saint John Damascene- to receive immortality before he was tempted and tested, for he could become proud and fall under the same condemnation as the devil (1 Tim. 3, 6), which, by an arbitrary fall, due to its immortality, was irrevocably and relentlessly established in evil; while the Angels, since they voluntarily chose virtue, are unshakably established in good by grace. Therefore, it was necessary that a person was first tempted, so that when he appears perfect during temptation through the preservation of the commandment, he would accept immortality as a reward for virtue. In reality, being by nature something between God and substance, man, if he avoided addiction to created objects and united in love with God, by preserving the commandment would be firmly established in goodness. "

St. Gregory the Theologian writes:

"The commandment was a kind of educator of the soul and tamer of pleasures."

“If we had remained what we were,” he says, “and kept the commandment, we would have become what we were not, and would have come to the tree of life from the tree of knowledge. What would, therefore, become? "Immortal and very close to God."

By its nature, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not deadly; on the contrary, it was good, like everything else that God created, only God chose it as a means of educating man's obedience to God.

It was so named because man, through this tree, learned by experience what good is contained in obedience, and what evil is in opposition to the will of God.

St. Theophilus writes:

“The tree of knowledge was wonderful in itself, and its fruit was wonderful. For it was not deadly, as some think, but a violation of the commandment. "

“The Holy Scriptures called this tree - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” says St. John Chrysostom, - not because it communicated such knowledge, but because through it a violation or observance of the commandment of God was to be accomplished. ... since Adam, through extreme negligence, transgressed this commandment with Eve and ate from a tree, the tree is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This does not mean that he did not know what is good and what is evil; he knew this, for his wife, talking with the serpent, said: “Speech God: let him not eat him, let you not die”; this means that she knew that death would be the punishment for breaking the commandment. But since they, after eating from this tree, were deprived of the glory above and felt naked, the Holy Scriptures called it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: he, so to speak, had an exercise in obedience and disobedience. "

Saint Gregory the Theologian writes:

“They were commanded not to touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which was not planted maliciously and was not forbidden out of envy; on the contrary, it was good for those who would use it in a timely manner, for this tree, in my opinion, was contemplation, to which only those who have perfected by experience can proceed without danger, but which was not good for the simple and immoderate in their desires ".

St. John Damascene:

“The tree of knowledge in paradise served as a kind of trial and temptation and exercise of human obedience and disobedience; therefore it is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Or maybe such a name was given to him because it gave those who ate its fruit the strength to know their own nature. This knowledge is good for those who are perfect and confirmed in divine contemplation and for those who are not afraid of falling, for they have acquired a certain skill by patient exercise in such contemplation; but it is not good for those who are unsophisticated and subject to voluptuous lusts, for they are not affirmed in goodness and are not yet sufficiently affirmed in adherence to what is only good. "

Reasons for the Fall

But by their fall, people upset their nature.

NS. Justin Popovich:

“Our forefathers did not remain in a state of primitive righteousness, sinlessness, holiness and bliss, but, having transgressed the commandment of God, they fell away from God, light, life and fell into sin, darkness, death. Sinless Eve allowed herself to be deceived by a wily-wise serpent.
... that the devil was hiding in the serpent is easily and clearly seen from other places in the Holy Scriptures. It narrates: “And the great dragon was cast down, the ancient serpent, called the devil and Satan, who overshadowed the whole universe” (Rev. 12, 9; cf. 20, 2); “He was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44); “Death entered the world through the envy of the devil” (Wis. 2:24).

Just as the devil's envy towards God was the reason for his fall in heaven, so his envy towards man as a God-like creation of God was the motive for the pernicious fall of the first people. "

“It’s necessary to count,” says St. John Chrysostom- that the words of the serpent belong to the devil, who was prompted to this deception by envy, and this animal he is used as a suitable tool to cover up his deception with a bait, deceive first the wife, and then with the help of her and the primordial. "

Seducing Eve, the serpent openly slandered God, attributed envy to him, arguing against Him that eating the forbidden fruit would make people sinless and lead everything and that they would be like gods.

However, the first people could not have sinned, but they chose by their free will to deviate from the will of God, that is, to sin.

Rev. Ephraim Sirin writes that inIt was not the devil who caused Adam's fall, but Adam's own desire:

"The tempting word would not have led the tempted into sin, if their own desire had not served as a guide to the tempter. If the tempter had not come, then the tree itself, with its beauty, would have introduced their position into the struggle. , rather than the advice of the serpent, damaged their own desire "(Interpretation on the book of Genesis, ch. 3, p. 237).

NS. Justin Popovich writes:

"The seductive offer of the serpent causes a boil of pride in Eve's soul, which quickly turns into a godless mood, to which Eve succumbs curiously and deliberately violates the commandment of God. ... Although Eve fell by the deception of Satan, she fell not because she had to fall, but because wanted; violation of the commandment of God was proposed to her, but not imposed. that he is good for eating, that it is pleasant to look at him, that he is beautiful for the sake of knowledge, thinks about him and only after that he decides to pick the fruit from the tree and eat from it. As Eve did, so did Adam. As the serpent persuaded Eve to eat from the forbidden fruit, but did not force her, because he could not, so Eve did with Adam. He could not accept the fruit offered to him, but did not do it and voluntarily set foot the commandment of God (Genesis 3, 6-17) ".

The essence of the fall

It is in vain that some wish to see the meaning of the Fall allegorically, that is, that the Fall consisted of physical love between Adam and Eve, forgetting that the Lord Himself commanded them: “be fruitful and multiply ...” Moses clearly narrates that “Eve sinned before alone, and not with her husband, ”says Metropolitan Filaret. "How could Moses have written this if he had written an allegory that they want to find here."

The essence of the fall consisted in the fact that the ancestors, succumbing to temptation, ceased to look at the forbidden fruit as an object of the commandment of God, and began to consider it in a supposed relation to themselves, to their sensuality and their heart, their understanding (Col. 7, 29), deviating from the unity of the truth of God in the multiplicity of their own thoughts, own desires not concentrated in the will of God, that is, with a deviation into lust. Lust, having conceived sin, gives birth to real sin (James 1: 14-15). Eve, tempted by the devil, saw in the forbidden tree not what it is, but what she herself desires, according to known species lusts (1 John 2:16; Genesis 3: 6). What lusts were revealed in Eve's soul before eating the forbidden fruit? “And the woman saw that the tree was good for food,” that is, she suggested some special, unusually pleasant taste in the forbidden fruit — this is the lust of the flesh. “And that it is pleasing to the eyes,” that is, the forbidden fruit seemed to the wife the most beautiful - this is the lust for ochis, or the passion for pleasure. “And it is longed for, because it gives knowledge,” that is, the wife wanted to taste that higher and divine knowledge that the tempter promised her - this is pride of life.

The first sin is born in sensuality - the desire for pleasant sensations, - for luxury, in the heart, the desire to enjoy without reasoning, in the mind - the dream of arrogant polytechnic knowledge, and, consequently, it penetrates all the forces of human nature.

The human mind darkened, the will weakened, the feeling was distorted, contradictions arose, and the human soul I lost my focus on God.

Thus, having crossed the limit set by the commandment of God, a person deviated his soul from God, the true universal concentration and completeness, formed for her a false focus in her self... The mind, will and activity of man turned away, deviated, fell from God to creature (Genesis 3, 6).

« Let no one think, - declares blessed Augustine, - that the sin of the first people is small and light, because he consisted in eating the fruit from the tree, and moreover, the fruit is not bad and not harmful, but only forbidden; obedience is required by the commandment, such a virtue, which for rational beings is the mother and guardian of all virtues. … Here is pride, for man longed to be more in his power than in God; here and blasphemy of the shrine because he did not believe God; here and homicide, for he subjected himself to death; here is also spiritual fornication, for the integrity of the soul is violated by the temptation of the serpent; here is theft, for he took advantage of the forbidden fruit; here and love of wealth for he desired more than it was enough for him. "

Rev. Justin Popovich writes:

"The fall is broken and rejected the divine-human order of life, but the devil-human is accepted, for by a willful transgression of the commandment of God, the first people announced that they wanted to achieve Divine perfection, to become "like gods" not with the help of God, but with the help of the devil, which means - bypassing God, without God, against God.

Disobedience to God, which manifested itself as the creation of the will of the devil, the first people voluntarily fell away from God and clung to the devil, brought themselves into sin and sin into themselves (cf. Rom. 5:19).

Really original sin means rejection by a person of the goal of life determined by God - to become like God based on godlike human soul- and replacing it by likening to the devil. For by sin, people transferred the center of their life from a godlike nature and reality to an out-of-God reality, from being to non-being, from life to death, renounced God. "

The essence of sin is disobedience to God as the Absolute Good and the Creator of all that is good. Selfish pride is the cause of this disobedience.

"The devil could not lead a person into sin," writes blessed Augustine, - if it were not for pride ".

“Pride is the pinnacle of evil,” says Saint John Chrysostom... “To God, nothing is more disgusting than pride. ... Because of pride, we became mortal, we live in sorrow and sorrow: because of pride, our life passes in torment and tension, burdened with incessant labor. The first man fell into sin from pride, desiring to be equal to God».

St. Theophan the Recluse writes about what happened in human nature as a result of the Fall:

"To obey the law of sin is the same as walking in the flesh and sinning, as can be seen from the previous chapter. Man fell into the yoke of this law as a result of falling or falling away from God. It is necessary to remember what happened as a result of this. Man: spirit - soul - body. Spirit to live in God is intended, the soul is to arrange earthly life under the guidance of the spirit, the body is to produce and maintain visible elemental life on earth under the guidance of both.When man was torn away from God and decided to arrange his own well-being, he fell into selfhood, whose soul is all self-indulgence. As his spirit did not present any means to this, due to its detached nature; then it turned entirely into the area of ​​mental and bodily life, where self-indulgence seemed to be extensive nourishment, and became soul-fleshly. sin against his nature: for he should have lived in the spirit, spiritualizing both soul and body. rushing into the psychic-bodily region, they perverted the natural forces, needs and functions of the soul and body and, moreover, contributed much that has no support in nature. The soul-flesh of the fallen man became passionate. So, a fallen man is self-willed, as a result of which he is self-pleasing and feeds his self-indulgence with a passionate soul-flesh. This is his sweetness, the strongest chain that holds him in these bonds of fall. Taken together, all this is a sinful law that exists in our udech. In order to free one from this law, it is necessary to destroy the indicated bonds - sweetness, self-indulgence, selfhood.

How is this possible? We have a detached power in us - a spirit breathed by God into the face of man, seeking God and only by living in God can find peace. In the very act of creating him - or exaggerating - he is placed in communion with God; but fallen man who had cut himself off from God rejected him also from God. His nature, however, remained unchanged - and he continually reminded the fallen one, mired in the soul-flesh, - sharpened, - of his needs and demanded their satisfaction. The person did not reject these demands and, in a calm state, thought to do what was pleasing to the spirit. But when it was necessary to get down to business, passion rose from the soul or from the body, flattered sweetness and took possession of a person's will. As a result, the spirit in the present case was refused, and the passionate soul-flesh was satisfied, because of the promised sweetness in the feeding of self-indulgence. As this way was done in every matter, then such a way of acting is justly called the law of sinful life, which held a person in the chains of fall. The fallen one himself was aware of the burden of these bonds and groaned for freedom, but he could not find the strength in himself to free himself: sinful sweetness always lured him and incited him to sin.

The reason for this weakness is that in the fallen one the spirit lost its defining strength: it passed from him into a passionate soul-corporeality. According to his initial structure, a person should live in the spirit, and we define him to be in his activity - complete, that is, both mental and physical, and to spiritualize everything by his power in himself. But the strength of the spirit to keep a person in such a rank depended on his living communication with God. When this communion was interrupted by the fall, the strength of the spirit also dried up: he no longer had the power to determine a person, - the lower parts of nature began to determine him, and moreover, they were cut off, - what is the bond of the law of sin. It is now obvious that in order to be freed from this law, the strength of the spirit must be restored and the power taken from him must be returned to him. This is what accomplishes the dispensation of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ — the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. "

Death is a consequence of the fall

Created by God for immortality and godlike perfection, people, but words St. Athanasius the Great, turned from this path, stopped at evil and united themselves with death.

They themselves became the cause of death of our first parents, since disobedience fell away from the Living and Life-giving God and surrendered to sin, exuding the poison of death and infecting with death everything he touches.

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes about the first person:

"In the midst of unbroken bliss, he poisoned himself spontaneously by eating evil, in himself and with him he poisoned and destroyed all his offspring. Adam ... is struck by death, that is, by a sin that irrevocably upset the nature of man, making him incapable of bliss. by this death, but not devoid of being, and death is all the more terrible as it is felt, he is cast down to earth in chains: in a rough, painful flesh, transformed into such from an impassive, holy, spiritual body. "

Rev. Macarius the Great explains:

"As in the transgression of Adam, when the goodness of God condemned him to death, at first, he underwent death to his liking, because the intelligent feelings of the soul became extinguished in him and, as it were, mortified by the deprivation of heavenly and spiritual delight; later, after nine hundred and thirty years, Adam also overtook bodily death. "

After a person transgressed the commandment of God, he, according to the words St. John Damascene,
“I was deprived of grace, I lost boldness towards God, I was subjected to the severity of a miserable life, - for this means the leaves of a fig tree (Genesis 3, 7), - I put on mortality, that is, in mortal and gross flesh, - for this means clotting in skins ( Genesis 3:21), according to the righteous judgment of God he was expelled from paradise, condemned to death and became subject to corruption. "

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes about the death of the soul of the first people after their fall:

“The fall changed both the human soul and body. In the proper sense, the fall was for them together and death. The death seen and called by us, in essence, is only the separation of the soul from the body, previously already mortified by the departure from them of the true life, God. We are born already killed by eternal death! We do not feel that we are killed, according to the general property of the dead, not to feel their mortification!

When the forefathers sinned, death immediately struck the soul; the Holy Spirit immediately departed from the soul, constituting by Himself the true life of the soul and body; evil immediately entered the soul, constituting the true death of the soul and body .... As the soul is for the body: the Holy Spirit is for the whole person, for his soul and body. As the body dies, by the death that all animals die, when the soul leaves it, so the whole person dies, both in body and soul, in relation to true life, to God, when the Holy Spirit leaves him. "

NS. Justin (Popovich):

By a willful and self-loving fall into sin, man deprived himself of that direct, grace-filled communion with God, which strengthened his soul on the path of godlike perfection. By this, man himself condemned himself to a twofold death - bodily and spiritual: bodily, which occurs when the body is deprived of the soul that revives it, and spiritual, which occurs when the soul is deprived of the grace of God, which revives it with a higher spiritual life.

St. John Chrysostom:

"Just as the body then dies when its soul leaves without its strength, so the soul then dies when the Holy Spirit leaves it without its strength."

St. John Damascene writes that "as the body dies when the soul is separated from it, so when the Holy Spirit is separated from the soul, the soul dies."

The soul first died, because Divine grace departed from it, says St. Simeon the New Theologian.

St. Gregory of Nyssa:

“The life of the soul, created in the image of God, consists in the contemplation of God; her real life consists in communion with Divine Good; as soon as the soul ceases to communicate with God, its real life ceases. "

Holy Bible says that death entered the world through sin:

“God do not create death” (Wis. 1:13); “God created man into non-corruption, and in the image of His likeness, create him; to the envy of the devil, death is entering the world ”(Wis. 2: 23-24; cf. 2 Cor. 5: 5). “By one man sin entered the world, and death through sin” (Rom. 5:12; 1 Cor. 15, 21,56).

Together with the Word of God, the holy fathers unanimously teach that man was created immortal for immortality, and the Church conciliatedly expressed universal faith in the Divinely revealed truth about this immortality by decree Carthage Cathedral:

“If anyone says that Adam, the primordial man, was created mortal, so that even if he sinned, even if he did not sin, he would die in body, that is, he would leave the body, not as a punishment for sin, but out of necessity of nature: yes will be anathema ”(Rule 123).

The Fathers and Teachers of the Church Understood immortality of adam in the body, not so that he supposedly could not die by the very property of his bodily nature, but that he could not die by the special grace of God.

St. Athanasius the Great:

“As a created being, man was by nature transitory, limited, finite; and if he remained in the divine good, he would, by the grace of God, remain immortal, everlasting. "

“God did not create man,” says St. Theophilus - neither mortal nor immortal, but ... capable of both, that is, if he strove for what leads to immortality, fulfilling the commandment of God, he would receive immortality from God as a reward for this and would become godlike, and if he turned to the works of death, not obeying God, he himself would become the culprit of his death. "

NS. Justin (Popovich):

“The death of the body is different from the death of the soul, for the body after death disintegrates, and when the soul dies of sin, it does not disintegrate, but is deprived of spiritual light, God-aspiration, joy and bliss and remains in a state of darkness, sorrow and suffering, constantly living by itself and from yourself, which many times means - sin and from sin.
Our ancestors had spiritual death immediately after the Fall, and bodily death afterwards. ”

“But although Adam and Eve lived for many years after eating of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” says St. John Chrysostom, - this does not mean that the words of God have not been fulfilled: "If you take a day away from him, you will die by death." For from the moment when they heard: "Thou art the earth, and return to the earth," they received a death sentence, became mortal and, one might say, died. "

“In reality,” argues St. Gregory of Nyssa, - the soul of our ancestors died before the body, for disobedience is not a sin of the body, but of the will, and the will is characteristic of the soul, from which all the devastation of our nature began. Sin is nothing more than a distance from God, who is true and who alone is Life. The first man lived for many years after his disobedience, sin, which does not mean that God lied when he said: "If you take a day away from him, you will die by death." For by the very removal of man from the true life, the death sentence against him was confirmed on the same day. "

Consequences of Original Sin

As a result of the fall all the forces of the human soul have been damaged.

1.Mind darkened... He lost his former wisdom, insight, perspicacity, scope and divine determination; in him the very consciousness of the omnipresence of God was darkened, which is evident from the attempt of the fallen ancestors to hide from the All-Seeing and Omniscient God (Genesis 3, 8) and falsely represent their participation in sin (Genesis 3, 12-13).

The minds of people turned away from the Creator and turned to the creature. From being God-centered, he became self-centered, surrendered to sinful thoughts, and selfishness (pride) and pride took possession of him.

2. Sin damaged, relaxed and tainted will people: she lost her primitive light, love of God and orientation to God, became evil and sin-loving and therefore more prone to evil, and not to good. Immediately after the fall, our ancestors develop and reveal a tendency to lie: Eve blames the serpent, Adam on Eve, and even on God who gave it to him (Genesis 3, 12-13).

The disorder of human nature by original sin is clearly expressed in the words of the Apostle Paul: “The good that I want, I do not do, but the evil that I don’t want, I do. But if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do that, but sin that dwells in me ”(Romans 7: 19-20).

3. The heart lost its purity and purity, indulged in unreasonable aspirations and passionate desires.

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes about the disorder of all the forces of the human soul:

"I plunge even deeper into examining myself, and a new spectacle opens up before me. I see a decisive disorder of my own will, disobedience to its reason, and in my mind I see a loss of the ability to govern the will correctly, a loss of the ability to act correctly. In an absent-minded life, this state is hardly noticed, but in solitude, when solitude is illuminated by the light of the Gospel, a state of mental disorder appears in a vast, gloomy, terrible picture. And it serves as a testimony to me that I am a fallen creature. I am a slave of my God, but a slave who angered God, a rejected slave, a slave, punished by the hand of God, this is how Divine Revelation declares me.
My state is a state common to all people. Humanity is a category of beings languishing in various calamities ... "

Rev. Macarius the Great This is how he describes the destructive effect of the Fall, the state into which the whole human nature comes as a result of spiritual death:

"The kingdom of darkness, that is, this evil prince, capturing a person from time immemorial ... So the soul and all her being were clothed with sin by the evil ruler, he defiled all of it and captivated all into his kingdom, which has no thoughts, no reason, no flesh, and finally, not one of its composition left free from its power; but all of it was covered in the mantle of darkness ... the whole person, soul and body, this evil enemy defiled and disfigured; and clothed a person in an old man, defiled, unclean, god-loathing, who does not obey the law of God, that is, he clothed him with sin itself, but a person does not see who he wants, but he sees evil, hears evil, his legs are swift to atrocity, hands that do lawlessness, and a heart that thinks evil ... As during a gloomy and dark night, when a stormy wind breathes, all plants vibrate, hesitate and come into great motion: so man, having undergone the dark power of the night - the devil, and in this night and darkness spending his life, hesitates, hesitates and agitates the fierce wind of sin, which all of his nature, soul, mind, and it pierces, and all his bodily members also move, and there is not a single soul or bodily member free from sin that dwells within us. "

“Man was created in the image of God and in the likeness,” says Saint Basil the Great- but sin has mutilated the beauty of the image, drawing the soul into passionate desires. "
NS. Justin (Popovich) writes:

“The disturbance, obscuration, distortion, relaxation, which the original sin caused in the spiritual nature of man, can be briefly called violation, damage, obscuration, disfigurement of the image of God in man... For sin darkened, disfigured, disfigured the beautiful image of God in the soul of the primordial man. "

By teaching Saint John Chrysostom, until Adam sinned, but his image, created in the image of God, kept clean, the animals obeyed him as servants, and when his image was polluted by sin, the animals did not recognize his master in him, and turned from servants into his enemies, and began to fight against him as against a foreigner.

"When in human life sin entered as a skill, - writes Saint Gregory of Nyssa- and from a small beginning an immense evil occurred in man, and the godlike beauty of the soul, created in the likeness of the Primitive, was covered, like some iron, with the rust of sin, then the beauty could no longer be completely preserved natural image soul, but it changed into a hideous image of sin. So man, a great and precious creation, deprived himself of his dignity, falling into the mud of sin, lost the image of the incorruptible God and through sin put on the image of corruption and dust, like those who inadvertently fell into the mud and smeared their faces, so that theirs and acquaintances cannot recognize. "

A.P. Lopukhin gives an interpretation of the verse “And he said to Adam: because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, saying: do not eat from it, the earth is cursed for you; with sorrow you will eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles she will grow for you ... ":

“The best explanation of this fact we find in the very same Holy Scripture, namely in the prophet Isaiah, where we read:“ the earth is defiled under those living on it, because they broke the laws, changed the charter, broke the eternal covenant. who live on it. ”(Isaiah 24: 5-6) Therefore, these words give only a partial expression of the general biblical thought about the close connection between the fate of man and the life of all nature (Job 5, 7; Eccl. 1, 2, 3; Eccl. 2:23; Rom. 8:20). In relation to the earth, this divine curse was expressed in the impoverishment of its productive power, which in turn responds most strongly to man, as it condemns him to hard, persistent work for his daily subsistence. "

According to the teachings of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, the image of God in fallen man was not destroyed, but deeply damaged, darkened and disfigured.

« Message from the Eastern Patriarchs"Defines the consequences of the Fall:

“The man who fell through transgression became like dumb creatures, that is, he became darkened and lost his perfection and dispassion, but he did not lose the nature and strength that he received from the most good God. For otherwise he would have become foolish and therefore not human; but he retained the nature with which he was created, and natural force, free, living and active, so that by nature he could choose and do good, flee and turn away from evil. "

Due to the close and direct connection of the soul with the body, original sin produced disorder and in the body of our ancestors... Before sin, it was in perfect harmony with the soul; this harmony after the sin was broken, and a war of the body with the soul began. Through the Fall, the body lost its primitive health, innocence and immortality and became painful, vicious and mortal.

« From sin, as from a source, sickness, sorrow, suffering were poured out on a person", Says St. Theophilus.

Expulsion from paradise

God removed the ancestors from the tree of life, by the fruits of which they could maintain the immortality of their bodies (Gen. 3:22), that is, immortality with all the diseases, sorrows and sufferings that they brought upon themselves by their sin. That is, the expulsion from paradise was a matter of God's love for mankind.

“Through sin, our forefathers violated their God-given relationship to visible nature: they largely lost their power over nature, over animals, and the earth became cursed for man:“ Thorns and thistles will grow for you ”(Genesis 3:18). man as his mysterious body, blessed for man's sake, the earth with all creatures became cursed because of man and subject to corruption and destruction, as a result of which "all creation ... groans and torments" (Rom. 8: 19-22) "
(Rev. Justin (Popovich)).

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) speaks of the many consequences of the Fall:

"A hostile mood towards us of all visible nature we meet at every step! At every step we meet her reproach, her censure, her disagreement with our behavior! Before a man who rejected obedience to God, a soulless and animate creature rejected obedience! She was submissive to man, until he remained obedient to God! Now she obeys man forcibly, persists, often violates obedience, often crushes her master, brutally and unexpectedly rebelling against him. The law of the reproduction of the human race, established by the Creator after creation, is not canceled; but he began to act under the influence of the fall; he changed, became corrupted. Parents were exposed to hostile relations with each other, despite their carnal union; they were subjected to birth pains and labor of education; children, conceiving in the depths of corruption and in sin, enter into being as victims of death. "

The inheritance of original sin

Archbishop Theophan (Bystrov), interpreting the words from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans: "By one man is sin into the world into the world, and through sin is death, and so is death in all men in, in whom all sinned" (Rom. 5, 12), explains:

“The holy Apostle clearly distinguishes two points in the doctrine of original sin: parabasis, or transgression, and hamartia, or sin. The first is understood as the personal transgression by our forefathers of the will of God that they did not taste the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; under the second - the law of sinful disorder, which has entered human nature as a consequence of this crime.

When it comes to the inheritance of original sin, it means not parabasis or the crime of our forefathers, for which they alone are responsible, but hamartia, that is the law of sinful disorder that afflicted human nature through the fall of our first parents, and “sinned” in 5, 12, in this case, it is necessary to understand not in the real pledge in the sense of “committed a sin”, but in the average, in the sense of verse 5, 19: “became sinners”, “turned out to be sinners”, since in Adam human nature has fallen.

That's why St. John Chrysostom, the best connoisseur of the true apostolic text, found in 5, 12 only the thought that “as soon as he [Adam] fell, then through him they became mortal and did not eat from the forbidden tree”.

St. Macarius the Great writes that the original sin is "a kind of hidden impurity and a kind of abounding darkness of passion, which through the transgression of Adam penetrated into all mankind; and it darkens and defiles both body and soul."

And so blessed Theodorite says: "Therefore, when Adam, already under the death sentence, in such a state gave birth to Cain, Seth and others, then all, as descended from the condemned to death, had a mortal nature."

Rev. Mark the Ascetic:

"A crime, being arbitrary, is not followed by anyone against their will, but the death that occurs from this, being forced, is inherited by us, and there is alienation from God."

Rev. Justin (Popovich) writes:

“In the original sin of Adam, two points must be distinguished: the first is the act itself, the very act of violating the commandment of God, the crime itself (Greek“ paravasis - Rom. 5, 14), the very sin (Greek “paraptoma” - Rom. 5, 12) ); disobedience itself (Greek "parakoi" Rom. 5, 19); and the second - this created a sinful state, o-sinfulness ("amartia" - Rom. 5, 12, 14). Since all people are descended from Adam, the original sin was inherited and transferred to all people. Therefore, original sin is also hereditary sin. Accepting humanity from Adam, we all accept sinful depravity with him, which is why people are born “by nature as children of wrath” (Eph. 2: 3). But original sin is not completely identical in Adam and in his descendants. Adam deliberately, personally, directly and willfully transgressed the commandment of God, i.e. created sin, which produced in him a sinful state in which the beginning of sinfulness reigns.

The descendants of Adam, in the strict sense of the word, did not participate personally, directly, consciously and arbitrarily in the very act of Adam, in the crime itself (in the "paraptom", in the "parakoi", in the "paravasis"), but, being born from the fallen Adam, from of his nature infected with sin, they at birth accept as an inevitable inheritance the sinful state of nature in which sin dwells (/ Greek / "amartia"), which, as a kind of living principle, acts and leads to the creation of personal sins, similar to the sin of Adam, therefore they and are punished like Adam.

The heredity of original sin is universal, for none of people are removed from this, except for the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. "

(Venerable Justin (Popovich). Dogmatics)

The inheritance of original sin is universal

The general inheritance of original sin is confirmed in many and different ways by the Holy Revelation of the Old and New Testaments. Thus, it teaches that the fallen, sin-infected Adam gave birth to children “in his own image” (Genesis 5, 3), that is, according to his disfigured, damaged, corrupted image. Righteous Job points to ancestral sin as the source of universal human sinfulness when he says: “Who will be clean from defilement? Nobody, if only one day is his life on earth "(Job 14: 4-5; cf. 15:14; Is.63.6; Sir 17.30; Wis 12.10; Sir 41 :: eight). The Prophet David, although he was born of pious parents, complains: "Behold, in iniquity I am conceived, and in sin my mother begat me" (Psalm 50: 7), which indicates the infection of human nature by sin in general and its transmission through conception and birth. All people, as the descendants of the fallen Adam, are subject to sin, therefore Holy Revelation says: "There is no man who will not sin" (3 Kings 8, 46; 2 Chronicles 6, 36); “Man is righteous on earth, who will do good and will not sin” (Eccl. 7:20); “Who will boast of a pure heart? or who dares to be clean from sins to himself? " (Proverbs 20: 9; compare: Sir 7: 5). No matter how much they look for a sinless person - a person who would not be infected with sinfulness and subject to sin - the Old Testament Revelation asserts that there is no such person: “Everything has deviated. together, you weren’t disgusting; do good, do not eat until one thing "(Ps. 52, 4: cf .: Ps. 13: 3; 129, 3; 142, 2; Job 9, 2; 4:17; 25, 4; Genesis 6, 5; 8, 21); "Every man is a lie" (Psalm 115: 2) - in the sense that in every descendant of Adam through the contamination of sin acts the father of sin and lies - the devil, lying on God and on the God-given creation.

New Testament Revelation is based on the truth: all people are sinners - everyone except the Lord Jesus Christ. Occurring through birth from Adam, corrupted by sin, as a single ancestor (Acts 17:26), all people are under sin, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3, 9, 23; cf. 7, 14), all according to to their nature infected with sin they are “children of wrath” (Eph. 2: 3). Therefore, whoever has, knows and feels the New Testament truth about the sinfulness of all people without exception, he cannot say that any of the people is without sin: "If we speak, as if sin is not an imam, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is in us" ( 1 John 1, 8; compare: John 8, 7, 9).

In His conversation with Nicodemus, the Savior declares that in order to enter the Kingdom of God, each person needs to be reborn by water and the Holy Spirit, since each person is born with original sin, for “what is born of the flesh is flesh” (John 3, 6). Here the word “flesh” (Greek “sarks”) denotes that sinfulness of the nature of Adam, with which every person is born into the world.

“There is a stench and a sense of sin in human nature,” says Saint John of Damascus,- that is, lust and sense gratification, called the law of sin. "

Rev. Justin (Popovich):

“The sinfulness of human nature, originating from Adam, is manifested in all people without exception as a ... sinful principle, as a ... sinful force, as a category of sin, as the law of sin that lives in a person and acts in him and through him (Rom. 7, 14-23). But man participates in this with his free will, and this sinfulness of nature ramifies and grows through his personal sins. "

The belief in the inheritance from the ancestors of sinful corruption, which was called the ancestral sin, has always existed in both the ancient and the new Church.

The general belief of the ancient Christian Church in the existence of original sin can be seen from ancient custom Churches baptize babies.

The baptism of children, in which the recipient on behalf of the children is denied by Satan, testifies that children are under original sin, for they are born with a corrupted nature, in which Satan operates
(blessed Augustine).

Fathers concerning the baptism of children for the remission of sins Carthage Council (418) in the 124th canon they say: “Whoever rejects the need for baptism of small children and newborns from the mother's womb of children, or says that although they are baptized for the remission of sins, they do not borrow anything from the ancestral Adam's sin that should have been washed with the bath of the tradition (from which it followed if the image of baptism for the remission of sins is used over them not in a true, but in a false sense), then let it be anathema. For what the Apostle said: “Through one man sin is in the world, and death is sin: and so (death) in all men, in him all sinned” (Rom. 5:12) The Catholic Church, scattered and widespread everywhere. For according to this rule of faith, even babies, who by themselves cannot commit any sins, are truly baptized for the remission of sins, so that through pacification, what they have taken from the old birth will be cleansed in them. "

In the struggle against Pelagius, who denied the reality and heredity of original sin, the Church at more than twenty councils condemned this teaching of Pelagius and thereby showed that the truth of Holy Revelation on the general inheritance of original sin deeply rooted in her holy, catholic, universal feeling and consciousness.

This doctrine of original sin is contained in the works of the Holy Fathers of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries. It expounds St. John Damascene in his Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.

St. Athanasius the Great writes that since all people are heirs of the Adamic nature corrupted by sin, then all are conceived and born in sin, for according to the natural law, what is born is identical to the one who gives birth; from the injured by the passions the passionate is born, from the sinner the sinner.

St. Athanasius the Great:

“Because, at last, it was necessary to pay a debt that lies with everyone; for, according to what was said above, all had to die, which was the main reason for His coming; then after he has proved his deity by his deeds, he finally offers a sacrifice for everyone, instead of all giving up his temple to death, to make everyone free from responsibility for the ancient crime, about Himself, in His incorruptible body, revealing the beginning of the general Resurrection, proving that He is higher than death ”.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem:

“One man's sin, Adam, could bring death to the world. If by the sin of one (Rom. 5:17) death reigned in the world, then will not life reign by the Righteousness of the One? "

“Death was necessary; surely there had to be death for all people, because it was necessary to pay the common debt that lay on all people. "

St. Macarius the Great is talking:

"From the moment of violation of the commandment of God, Satan and his angels have sat down in the heart and in the human body, as on their own throne." "From the crime of Adam, darkness fell on all creation and on all human nature, and therefore people, covered with this darkness, spend their lives in the night, in terrible places."

With the transfer of the ancestral sinfulness to all the descendants of Adam by birth, all its consequences are transferred to all of them at the same time: the disfigurement of the image of God, the darkening of the mind, the corruption of the will, the defilement of the heart, illness, suffering and death. All people, being descendants of Adam, inherit from Adam the God-like soul, but God-like, darkened and disfigured by sinfulness.

Rev. Justin (Popovich):

“Death is the lot of all descendants of Adam, for they are born of Adam, infected with sin and therefore mortal. As an infected stream naturally flows from an infected source, offspring infected with sin and death naturally flow from the ancestor infected with sin and death (Compare: Rom. 5:12; 1 Cor. 15:22). Both the death of Adam and the death of his descendants are twofold: bodily and spiritual. Physical death is when the body is deprived of the soul that revives it, and the spiritual death is when the soul is deprived of the grace of God, which revives it with a higher, spiritual, God-driven life, and according to the words of the holy prophet, “the soul that sins will die” (Ezekiel 18, 20; Wed: 18, 4) ".

V Epistles of the Eastern Patriarchs it says:

“We believe that the first man, created by God, fell in Paradise when he broke the commandment of God, listening to the advice of the serpent, and that from there ancestral sin is extended to all posterity through inheritance so that there is no one born in the flesh who is free from this burden and does not feel the consequences of the fall in this life. But we call the burden and the consequences of the fall not the sin itself (somehow: atheism, blasphemy, murder, hatred and everything else that comes from the evil human heart), but strong inclination to sin ... A man who fell through a crime became like an unreasonable animal, that is, he became darkened and lost his perfection and dispassion, but he did not lose that nature and strength that he received from the All-good God. For otherwise he would have become unreasonable and therefore not human; but he retained the nature with which he was created, and natural strength - free, living and active, so that by nature he can choose and do good, avoid evil and turn away from it. And the fact that a person can do good by nature, the Lord pointed out to this when he said that the Gentiles love them, and the Apostle Paul teaches very clearly in the Epistle to the Romans (1, 19) and in another place where he says, that "the tongues, the law is not property, by nature they create lawful" (Rom. 2:14) ".

We are delivered from original sin in the ordinance of baptism

Man's nature damaged and upset by sin on their own, without the intervention or help of God, it is impossible to restore. Therefore, it took the condescension or coming of God Himself to earth - the incarnation of the Son of God - to recreate the fallen and corrupted human nature, to save man from destruction and eternal death.

Saint Theophan the Recluse explains the essence of the restoration of human nature:

“If anyone is in Christ, a new creation,” teaches the Apostle (2 Cor. 5:17). The Christian becomes this new creature in baptism. A person leaves the font quite differently from what he enters there. As the light of darkness, as the life of death, so the baptized is the opposite of the unbaptized. Conceived in iniquity and born in sins, a person before baptism carries in himself all the poison of sin, with all the burden of its consequences. He is in the disgrace of God, is by nature a child of wrath; damaged, upset in himself, in the ratio of parts and forces and in their direction mainly towards the reproduction of sin; subject to the influence of Satan, who acts in him powerfully, because of the sin that dwells in him. As a result of all this, after death, he is inevitably a quitrent of hell, where he must suffer along with his prince and his minions and servants.

Baptism delivers us from all these evils. It removes the oath by the power of the Cross of Christ and returns the blessing: the baptized are the children of God, as the Lord Himself gave them the name and be. “If children are, then they are heirs, - heirs for God, and joint heirs with Christ ...” (Rom. 8, 17). The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the one who is baptized already by baptism itself. He will be removed from the dominion of Satan, who is now losing his power over him and the power to arbitrarily act in him. By entering the Church, a home of refuge, Satan barred the entrances to the newly baptized. He is here in a safe enclosure.

All these are spiritual and external advantages and gifts. What's going on inside? - Healing of sinful disease and damage. The power of grace penetrates inside and restores the Divine order here in all its beauty, heals disorder both in the composition and relation of forces and parts, and in the main direction from oneself to God - to pleasing God and multiplying good deeds. Why baptism is rebirth or new birth, which brings a person into a renewed state. The Apostle Paul compares all the baptized with the resurrected Savior, letting it be understood that they also have the same radiant being in renewal as humanity appeared in the Lord Jesus through His resurrection in glory (see: Romans 6: 4). That the direction of activity in the baptized person changes - this is evident from the words of the same Apostle, who says in another place that they no longer “live for themselves, but for the one who died for them and was resurrected” (2 Cor. 5:15). “The hedgehog will die, die one sin, but the hedgehog lives; God lives ”(Rom. 6:10). “We are buried in Him by baptism into death” (Rom. 6: 4), and: “Our old man is crucified with Him ... as if sin does not work for us” (Rom. 6, 6). Thus, all human activity by the power of baptism turns from oneself and sin to God and righteousness.

Remarkable is the word of the Apostle: "How can sin not work for us ..." and another: "Let sin not possess you" (Rom. 6:14). This allows us to understand that what in a disordered fallen nature constitutes a force that attracts to sin is not completely destroyed in baptism, but only put into such a state in which it does not have power over us, does not possess us, and we do not work for him. ... It is in us, it lives and acts, just not as a master. The headship from now on belongs to the grace of God and the spirit, consciously betraying itself to it. Saint Diadochus, explaining the power of baptism, says that before baptism, sin dwells in the heart, and grace from the outside acts; after this, grace dwells in the heart, and sin draws in from the outside. He is expelled from the heart, like an enemy from a fortification, and settles outside, in parts of the body, from where he acts in fragmented raids. Why is there a ceaseless tempter, a seducer, but no longer a master: he worries and worries, but does not command. "

Saint Gregory Palamas is talking:

“... although through divine baptism the Lord revived us and through the grace of the Holy Spirit sealed us on the day of Atonement, yet he left us to have a mortal and passionate body, and although He drove out the chief of evil from the souls of men, however, allows him to attack from outside, so that a person who is renewed according to the New Testament, i.e. To the Gospel of Christ, living in good deeds and repentance, and despising the pleasures of life, enduring suffering and tempering in the attacks of the enemy, - in this century he prepared himself to contain incorruption and these future benefits that will correspond to the future age. "

Rev. John Damascene:

For since God created us in fatigue - and when we transgressed the saving commandment, he condemned death to decay, so that evil would not be immortal, then, descending to his servants, as beneficent and becoming like us. He delivered us from corruption by his suffering; from His holy and blameless rib he brought us out a source of absolution: water for our rebirth and washing from sin and corruption, blood is like a drink that gives eternal life. AND He gave us the commandments - to be regenerated by water and the Spirit with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through prayer and invocation. For, since man is two-part - of soul and body, He also gave two-fold cleansing, - by water and the Spirit; - by the Spirit, renewing the image and likeness in us, by water, cleansing through the grace of the Spirit the body from sin and delivering from corruption; water, representing the image of death. By the spirit that pledges life.

Rev. Simeon the New Theologian writes:

“Baptism does not take away our autocracy and self-will. But it grants us freedom from the tyranny of the devil, who cannot rule over us against our will. "

Saint Philaret explains:

“Adam,” according to the Apostle, “is naturally the head of all mankind, who is one with him, by natural origin from him. Jesus Christ, in whom the Divine was united with humanity, gracefully became the new omnipotent Head of men, whom he unites to Himself through faith. Therefore, as in Adam we fell under sin, curse and death, so we are delivered from sin, curse and death in Jesus Christ. "

Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow and Kolomensky writes in Orthodox-dogmatic Theology:

"The Church teaches that baptism blot out, annihilates the original sin in us: this means that it is cleanses the sinfulness of our nature, inherited from our ancestors; that through baptism we get out of the sinful state, we cease to be the nature of the children of the wrath of God, i.e. guilty before God, made completely pure and innocent before Him, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, due to the merits of our Redeemer; but it does not mean that baptism destroys in us the very consequences of original sin: an inclination to evil more than to good, sickness, death, and others, because all these designated consequences remain, as experience and the Word of God testify (Rom. 7, 23 ), and in people reborn ".

Distortions of the doctrine of original sin

According to Catholic teachings, original sin did not affect human nature, but only reflected in the relationship of God to man. The sin of Adam and Eve is understood by Catholics as an infinitely great insult to people of God, for which God was angry with them and took away from them the supernatural gifts of righteousness, or primitive integrity. To restore the disturbed order, it was necessary, according to the teachings of Catholicism, only to satisfy for the insult to God and thus remove the guilt of mankind and the punishment that weighed upon him. Hence the legalism of the doctrine of atonement, salvation, how a person should act in order to get rid of "anger, punishment" and hell, dogmas about satisfying God for sins, about super-deserving merit and about the treasury of saints, purgatory and indulgences.

Orthodox theology alien is the theological Catholic point of view, which does not know the unchanging love of God for His creation, does not see the distortion by sin of all the forces of the human soul, distinguished by the formal, legal nature of the formulas "insult - punishment - satisfaction for insult". Orthodoxy teaches that in the Fall, man himself departed with his soul from God and, as a result of sin, became immune to the grace of God. According to St. Nicholas of Serbia, when Eva "... believed the beautiful serpent, feigned lies, her soul lost harmony, the strings of divine music in her weakened, her love for the Creator, the God of love, cooled. ... Eve ... She looked into her muddy soul and did not see God in her anymore. God left her. God and the devil cannot be under the same roof. " That. as a result of voluntary sin, a person has lost communion with God, God's grace, holiness and perfection, the harmony of all mental and physical powers, has lost true life and entered into the power of death. This nature, upset by sin, was inherited from Adam and Eve by their descendants. Orthodoxy understands original sin not as a mechanical punishment of God for the sin of people, but as a disorder of human nature due to sin and the naturally ensuing loss of communion with God, as a distortion of human nature by an irresistible inclination to sin and death. According to this understanding of the essence of original sin, Orthodoxy, differently than Catholicism, understands the dogmas of atonement and salvation. We confess that God expects from a Christian not satisfaction for sins and not some sum of external, mechanical deeds, but a soul-transforming repentance, a cleansing of the heart.

St. Basil the Great is talking:

“Adam, as he sinned because of bad will, so he died because of sin:“ the wages of sin is death ”(Rom. 6:23); the extent to which he has withdrawn from life, to such an extent has drawn to death: because God is life, and deprivation of life is death; because Adam prepared death for himself through separation from God, according to the written: “Those who remove themselves from You perish”(Psalm 72:27)”.

“Man was created in the image and likeness of God; but sin distorted (ήχρείωσεν) the beauty of the image, capturing the soul into passionate desires. "

"Message of the Eastern Patriarchs" so defines the result of the Fall. "Fallen by crime human he became like dumb creatures, that is, he became darkened and lost his perfection and dispassion, but he did not lose the nature and strength that he received from the most good God. For otherwise he would have become foolish and therefore not human; but he retained the nature with which he was created, and natural free power, living and active, so that by nature he could choose and do good, flee and turn away from evil. "

Prot. Maxim Kozlov writes:

"... according to Roman Catholic teaching, human nature did not undergo changes due to original sin, and original sin affected not so much the person himself as his relationship with God. ... the loss of a person of his paradise state is interpreted precisely as the loss of a certain amount of supernatural gifts, without which “a person is not able to communicate with God, without which the human mind is darkened by ignorance, the will weakened so much that it began to follow the suggestions of passions more than the demands of the mind, their bodies became subject to weakness, illness and death.” The last phrase was a quote from the Roman Catholic catechism 1992 The Roman Catholic understanding of human nature determines several derivative provisions: First, since a person simply lost his natural grace and at the same time human nature itself has not undergone any changes, then this supernatural gift can be returned to a person at any time, and for this there is no need for the action of the man himself. adorable. From such a point of view, in order to explain why God does not return a person to his paradise state, nothing else can be imagined, except that a person must deserve his justification, satisfy the justice of God, or that this justification must deserve him, buy someone else ".

Orthodoxy claims that all actions of God in relation to man have a source not His insult and anger (in the human understanding of the passion of anger), but His unfailing love and justice. So, Rev. Isaac the Sirin writes:

"Whoever makes discipline in order to make it sound, he instructs with love; but whoever seeks vengeance, there is no love in that. God instructs with love, and does not take revenge (let this not be done!), On the contrary, he means that the image should be healed. His ... This kind of love is a consequence of righteousness and does not deviate into the passion of revenge. "

St. Basil the Great writes about the foundations of God's providence:

“God, according to his special economy, gives us over to sorrows ... because we are the creations of a good god and we are in the power of the One who arranges everything that concerns us, both important and unimportant, then we cannot tolerate anything without the will of God; and if something is tolerated, it is not harmful, or not such that one can provide for something better».

“Adam, as he sinned because of bad will, so he died because of sin:“ the wages of sin is death ”(Rom. 6:23); the extent to which he has withdrawn from life, to such an extent has drawn to death: because God is life, and deprivation of life is death; because Adam prepared death for himself through separation from God, according to the written: “Those who remove themselves from You perish”(Psalm 72:27)”.

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov):

God, allowing us to be tempted and betraying us to the devil, does not cease to provide for us, punishing, does not cease to benefit us.

Rev. Nikodim Svyatorets:

« All temptations in general are sent by God to our benefit... all the sorrows and torments that the soul endures during internal temptations and depletion of spiritual consolation and sweets, nothing else than the essence, as the love of God, arranged cleansing medicine, with which God purifies her, if she endures them with humility and patience. And ultimately they prepare for such patient sufferers a crown, acquired only by means of them, and the crown is all the more glorious, the more painful the torments of the heart are, endured during them. "

St. Nicholas of Serbia:

“... the forefathers of the human race. As soon as they lost love, they clouded the mind. With sin, freedom was also lost.

... At a fateful moment, God-loving Eve was tempted by the one who had abused her freedom. ... she believed the slanderer against God, believed the lie instead of the Truth, the murderer instead of the Lover of Man. And at that moment when she believed the beautiful serpent, the feigned lie, her soul lost its harmony, the strings of divine music in her weakened, her love for the Creator, the God of love, cooled.

... Eve ... She looked into her muddy soul and did not see God in it anymore. God left her. God and the devil cannot be under the same roof. ...

Listen now, my daughter, to this secret. God is a perfect person, therefore He and love are perfect. God is a perfect person, therefore He and life is perfect. That is why Christ uttered the words that shook the world: “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14: 6), meaning by the way - the way of love. That is why love, as a path, is put in the first place. For it is only through love that truth and life are comprehended. That is why it is said in the Word of God: “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be cursed” (1 Cor. 16:22). How then will he not be damned who is deprived of love, if at the same time he remains without truth and life? Thus, he curses himself. ...

God wanted to forgive Adam, but not without repentance and sufficient sacrifice. And the Son of God, the Lamb of God, went to the slaughter for the redemption of Adam and his family. And all of love and truth. Yes, and the truth, but the truth is in love. "

Orthodox doctrines of atonement and salvation are based on this understanding of original sin.... According to the immutable Truth of God, sin entails alienation from God. As the Holy Scripture testifies, "retribution (" obrotsy "(slav.) - payment) for sin is death" (Rom. 6, 23). This is also spiritual death, which consists in alienation from God, the Source of life, for “sin being done gives birth to death” (James 1:15). This is physical death, which naturally follows spiritual death. " We must always remember that God is not only love, but also truth, and He has mercy righteously, and not arbitrarily", - writes St. Theophan the Recluse.

Without ceasing to provide for the fallen man and desiring his salvation, God combined His mercy, His perfect love for the man created by Him and His perfect justice, Truth, having redeemed humanity with the Cross of Christ:

"The only begotten Son of God, unable to bear the sight of the tormented human race from the devil, came and saved us" (From the prayer of the rite of consecration of the water of the Holy Manifestations).

Orthodoxy teaches about the death of Christ the Savior on the cross, as a redemptive, atoning sacrifice for the sins of the human race, brought to the justice of God - the Holy Trinity - for the entire sinful world, thanks to which the rebirth and salvation of mankind became possible.

The essence of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross- this is God's love for man, His mercy and His Truth.

Archim. John (Krestyankin) spoke:

"... out of divine love for all people, the Lord drank the bitter cup of the greatest suffering.…out of His love for people, God gave His Only Begotten Son to the sufferings of the Cross and death for atonement for the sins of the entire human race.

The Atonement Sacrifice was offered on the Cross (Rom. 3:25) immutable truth of God for each of us. With the life-giving Blood of Christ shed on the Cross, eternal condemnation has been removed from humanity. "

St. Philaret (Drozdov) this is how he spoke of the essence of redemption:

“There is a God of love,” says the same beholder of love. God is love in essence and the very essence of love. All His attributes are the garments of love; all actions are expressions of love. ... it is His justice, when it measures the degrees and kinds of the bestowed or withheld gifts of its own with wisdom and goodness, for the highest good of all its creatures. Come closer and consider the formidable face of God's justice, and you will definitely recognize in it the meek gaze of God's love".

Svmch. Seraphim (Chichagov) lays out the Orthodox doctrine of atonement showing and that the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ both original sin and its consequences in the souls of believers are forgiven, on it "the right of the Redeemer is based to forgive the sins of those who repent, to cleanse and sanctify their souls with His blood," thanks to it, "gifts of grace are poured out on believers." :

"The truth of God requires first of all that for the merits of people there should be a reward, and for their guilt - punishment. ... But since God is love in essence and the very essence of love, He predetermined a fallen man a new path to salvation and perfect rebirth through the cessation of no sin.

At the request of the Truth of God, man had to bring satisfaction to the Justice of God for his sin. But what could he sacrifice? Your remorse, your life? But repentance only mitigates the punishment, and does not get rid of it, for it does not destroy the crime. ... Thus, man remained an unpaid debtor to God and an eternal prisoner of death and the devil. The extermination of sinfulness in oneself was impossible for man, for he received an inclination towards evil along with being, with soul and flesh. Therefore, only the Creator could recreate a person, and only Divine omnipotence could destroy the natural consequences of sin, like death and evil. But to save a man without his will, against his will, by force, was unworthy of both God, who gave man freedom, and man, a free being. ... The Only Begotten Son of God, Consubstantial with God the Father, took on human nature, united it in His Person with the Divine and, thus, restored humanity in Himself - pure, perfect and sinless, which was in Adam before the fall. ... He ... endured all the sorrows, sufferings and deaths assigned to man by the Truth of God, and with such a Sacrifice he fully satisfied the Divine Justice for all mankind, fallen and guilty before God. Through the incarnation of God, we became brothers of the Only Begotten, became His joint heirs, united with Him, like a body with a head. ... This endless price of the atoning sacrifice offered on the Cross is the basis of the Redeemer's right to forgive the sins of those who repent, to cleanse and sanctify their souls with His blood. By the power of the merits of Christ on the cross, gifts of grace are poured out on believers, and they are given by God to Christ and to us in Christ and through Christ Jesus. "

Prot. Mikhail Pomazansky writes in Orthodox dogmatic theology about Catholicism's distorted understanding of original sin:

“Roman Catholic theologians believe that the result of the Fall is the removal from people of the supernatural gift of God's grace, after which man remained in his“ natural ”state; original sin is that guilt before the God of Adam and Eve is passed on to all people.

The Roman Catholic teaching is based on
a) understanding the sin of Adam as an infinitely great insult to God;
b) the insult was followed by the wrath of God;
c) the wrath of God was expressed in the withdrawal of the supernatural gifts of God's grace;
d) the withdrawal of grace entailed the submission of the spiritual principle to the carnal principle and deepening into sin.

Hence, a special understanding of the atonement accomplished by the Son of God: in order to restore the broken order, it was necessary, first of all, to satisfy the offense inflicted on God and thus remove the guilt of mankind and the punishment that weighed upon him.

Alien to Orthodox theology Roman Catholic point of view, characterized by a clear legal, formal character.

Orthodox theology perceives the consequences of ancestral sin in a different way.

Man after the first fall departed with his soul from God and became immune to the grace of God open to him, he stopped hearing the Divine voice addressed to him, and this led to further rooting of sin in him.

However, God has never deprived humanity of His mercy, help, grace.

But even the Old Testament righteous could not escape the common lot of fallen mankind by their death, stay in the darkness of hell, before the creation of the Heavenly Church, that is, before the resurrection and ascension of Christ: the Lord Jesus Christ destroyed the doors of hell and opened the way to the Kingdom of Heaven.

You cannot see the essence of sin, including original sin, only in the dominance of the carnal principle over the spiritual. as it represents Roman theology. Many sinful inclinations, moreover, heavy ones, belong to the properties of a spiritual order: such is pride, which, according to the Apostle, is a source, alongside lust, of total sinfulness in the world (1 John 2, 15-16). Sin is also inherent in evil spirits, which have no flesh at all. The word "flesh" in Holy Scripture refers to the state that is not regenerated, the opposite of the regenerated life in Christ: "that which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the spirit is the spirit." Of course, this does not negate the fact that a number of passions and sinful inclinations originate from the bodily nature, as indicated by the Holy Scriptures (Rom. 7 chapter).
Thus, original sin is understood Orthodox theology as a sinful inclination that entered humanity, which became its spiritual illness. "

From the Catholic doctrine of original sin comes and misunderstanding of the essence of salvation. Orthodoxy teaches that salvation is the cleansing of the soul, deliverance from sin itself: and "He will deliver Israel from all her iniquities" (Psalm 129: 8); “For He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21); “As this is our God, deliver us from our iniquities; For that is our God, save the world from the delusion of the enemy; The human race freed ecu from incorruptibility, life and incorruption of the world of the gift ”(stichera of Octoechus). God demands from man not satisfaction for sins, but a soul-transforming repentance, the likeness of righteousness to God. In Orthodoxy, the matter of salvation is a matter of spiritual life, the purification of the heart; in Catholicism, it is a question that is formally and legally resolved by external affairs.

Prot. Mikhail Pomazansky This is how he describes the way of human salvation:

“The plant grows upward. The idea of ​​organic growth is inseparable from the spirit of Orthodoxy. It is also expressed in the Orthodox understanding of human salvation. The focus of a Christian is not “satisfaction with the righteousness of God,” not “assimilation of merits,” but the possibility and necessity of personal spiritual growth, the achievement of purity and holiness. The redemption of man, his grafting into the Body of Christ are the conditions under which it is possible to begin this growth. The blessed powers of the Holy Spirit, as for a plant - the sun, rain and air, cultivate spiritual sowing. But growth itself is “doing,” labor, a long process, inner work on oneself: tireless, humble, stubborn. Rebirth is not an instant rebirth from a sinner into a saved one, but an actual change in the spiritual nature of a person, a change in the content of the very secret places of his soul, the content of thoughts, ideas and desires, the direction of feelings. This work is reflected in the bodily state of a Christian, when the body ceases to be the ruler for the soul, and returns to the official role of the executor of the dictates of the spirit and the humble bearer of the immortal soul. "

“This is a fundamental difference in the understanding of salvation, that salvation is, according to the patristic understanding, deliverance from sin as such, and according to the legal, legal - deliverance from the punishment for sin,” notes Archpriest. Maxim Kozlov. “According to medieval Catholic doctrine, a Christian should do good deeds, not only because he needs merit (merita) to obtain a blissful life, but also to bring satisfaction (satisfactio) to avoid temporary punishments (poenae temporales).

Proceeding from the understanding of original sin as a disorder of human nature itself, Orthodoxy claims that no good deeds can save a person if they are performed mechanically, not for the sake of God and His commandments, not from the depths of a soul that humbles itself and loves God, because in this case they do not attract the grace of God, which sanctifies and cleanses the soul from all sin. On the contrary, from the Catholic understanding of original sin arose the teaching that along with ordinary merit there are super-deeds and merit (merita superrogationis). The totality of these merits, together with meritum Christi, forms the so-called treasury of merit or the treasury of good deeds (thesaurus meritorum or operum superrogationis), from which the Church has the right to draw in order to efface the sins of her flock. Hence the doctrine of indulgences follows.

Venerable Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations:
About the state of Adam before his transgression of God's commandment and after he lost both his own and heavenly image. This conversation contains several very useful questions.
This conversation teaches that not a single person, if not backed up by Christ, is unable to overcome the temptations of the evil one, shows what should be done to those who desire divine glory for themselves; and he also teaches that through Adam's disobedience we fell into slavery to the passions of the flesh, from which we are delivered by the sacrament of the cross; and finally, it shows how great the power of tears and divine fire

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What exactly did Adam and Eve do, since the Lord drove them out of Paradise, and moreover, that for some reason we all are paying for their act? What is it about, what forbidden fruit, what is this tree of knowledge, why was this tree placed next to Adam and Eve and at the same time forbidding anyone to approach it? What happened in paradise? And how is this connected with our life, with the life of our loved ones, friends? Why does our fate depend on a deed that was not committed by us, moreover, committed a very, very long time ago?

Raphael. Fresco Adam and Eve

What happened in paradise? There happened the most terrible thing that can happen between loving beings who trust each other. In the Garden of Eden, something happened that after a while will be repeated in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Judas will lead there a crowd of armed guards looking for Jesus.

Simply put, in a betrayal happened to paradise.

Human betrayed his Creator when he believed in the slander against Him and decided to live exclusively of his own free will.

Man learned to betray those closest to him when accused his wife of his own sin.

Human betrayed himself... After all, "to betray" means literally - to convey. And man transferred himself from the good will of the God who created him to the evil will of his murderer - the devil.

This is what happened in paradise. And how it all happened and why it turned out to be connected with the life of each of us, now let's try to find out in more detail.

You can't imagine!

God created man and placed him in the most favorable place for his life. That is, in the beautiful garden of Eden, which is also called paradise. Today we can only build various assumptions and guesses - what was the Garden of Eden. But on the other hand, you can safely bet that any of these guesses will turn out to be wrong. Why?

But because the person himself was then different - pure, joyful, not knowing worries and worries, open to the world who greets this world with a happy and imperious smile of its master. The reason for this is simple: man had not yet erased God from his life, was with Him in the closest communion and received from God such knowledge, consolations and gifts that we have no idea about today.

We, the current ones, as already mentioned, can only dream up on a paradise theme. Moreover, with effort, squeezing these fantasies through the narrow gaps between gloomy thoughts about the falling ruble exchange rate, grievances against the mother-in-law, worries about buying winter tires for a car, the upcoming USE for the eldest son and a thousand more unpleasant thoughts, at the same time tormenting any modern person every day with morning to night. That meager stuffing of fantasies that will fall out at the exit of this mental meat grinder will be our present ideas about paradise.

Of course, the Garden of Eden was beautiful. But life with God can turn out to be a paradise for a person even in the middle of a waterless desert overgrown with camel thorn bushes. And life without God and the Garden of Eden instantly turns into ordinary thickets of grass, bushes and trees. Only by understanding this, you can understand everything else that happened in paradise with the first people.

In God's creation, man has taken a unique place. The fact is that God created the spiritual world and the material world. The first was inhabited by angels - disembodied spirits (some of which later fell away from God and became demons). The second - all inhabitants of the Earth who have a body. Man turned out to be a kind of bridge between these two worlds. He was created by a spiritual being, but he also had a material body. True, this body was not at all what we know it today. Here is how St. John Chrysostom describes him: “That body was not so mortal and perishable. But just as the golden statue, which had just emerged from the furnace, shines brightly, so the body was free from all decay, neither labor was burdensome, nor sweat did not exhaust it, nor worries did not torment, nor sorrow did not besiege, and no such suffering was depressing ". And Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov) speaks of even more amazing possibilities of the body of the primordial man: “... Clothed in such a body, with such senses, a person was capable of sensually seeing spirits, to the category of which he belonged to the soul, was capable of communicating with them, to that God-seeing and communicating with God, which are akin to holy spirits. Holy body man did not serve as an obstacle for this, did not separate man from the world of spirits. "

Able to communion with God, a person could proclaim the will of God to the entire material world, over which he received enormous power from God. And at the same time, only he alone could stand on behalf of this world before its Creator.

Man was created as a king or, more precisely, the vicar of God on Earth. Having settled him in a beautiful garden, God gave him a commandment to keep and cultivate this garden. In combination with the blessing, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, this meant that over time, man was to make the whole world a garden of paradise.

For this, he received the broadest powers and opportunities. The whole world gladly obeyed him. Wild animals could not harm him, pathogens did not cause disease in him, fire could not burn, water could not drown, the earth could not absorb him in its abysses.

And only one prohibition received from God this almost sovereign ruler of the world:"And the Lord God commanded man, saying: from every tree in the garden you will eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you will not eat from it, for on the day you eat of it, you will die a death."(Genesis 2: 16-17).

It was this only prohibition that the man in the Garden of Eden violated. The man who had everything decided that for complete happiness he still had to do what was impossible.

Sandbox mined

But why did God plant such a dangerous tree in paradise? Just hang a sign on him with a skull and bones "Don't get in - he'll kill." What a strange idea - in the middle of the most beautiful place on the planet to take and hang deadly fruits on the branches? As if a modern architect in planning kindergarten suddenly, for some reason, I designed a small minefield on the playground, and the teacher would then say: “Children, you can play everywhere - on the slide, on the merry-go-rounds, and in the sandbox. But don't even think of coming up here, otherwise there will be a big bang-badabum and a lot of troubles for all of us. "

Here it is immediately necessary to clarify: the prohibition on eating fruits from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not mean at all that a person without these fruits knew nothing about good and evil. Otherwise, what was the point of giving him such a commandment?

Chrysostom writes: “Good and evil do not know only those who by nature have no reason, and Adam possessed great wisdom and could recognize both. That he was filled with spiritual wisdom, see its discovery. “Brought”, it is said, to him the God of beasts, “to see what he would call them, and that as a man called every living soul, so was its name” (Gen. 2:19). Think about the wisdom possessed by someone who could give names to various breeds of cattle, reptiles and birds. God Himself accepted this naming of names so that he did not change them and even after the Fall did not want to cancel the names of animals. It is said: As a person calls every living soul, so was its name ... So, who knew so much, really, tell me, did not know what is good and what is evil? With what will it be consistent? "

So, the tree was not the source of knowledge about good and evil. And its fruits were not poisonous either, otherwise God would be like the already mentioned alternatively gifted kindergarten architect. And it was called so for one simple reason: a person had ideas about good and evil, but only theoretical. He knew that good is in obedience and trust in the God who created him, and evil is in violation of His commands. However, in practice, he could learn what is good only by fulfilling the commandment and not touching the forbidden fruits. After all, even today any of us understands: to know about good and to do good are not very much the same thing. In the same way, how to know about evil and not do evil. And in order to translate your knowledge of good and evil into a practical plane, you need to make some effort. For example, in a situation where close person In a temper, he told you something offensive, good, of course, he will remain silent in response, wait until he cools down, and only then calmly and lovingly find out what made him so mad. And evil in this situation, just as surely, will be - to tell him in response from three boxes of all sorts of nasty things and quarrel for long agonizing hours, or even days. Each of us knows about this. But, alas, it is not always possible to use this knowledge in a real conflict.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is so named in the Bible because it was an opportunity for the first people to experimentally demonstrate their striving for good and aversion from evil.

But man was not created as a robot, hard-coded for goodness alone. God gave to him freedom of choice, and the tree of knowledge became for the first people just such a point where this choice could be carried out in practice. Without it, the Garden of Eden, and the entire beautiful world created by God would be for man only a golden cage with ideal conditions content. And the essence of God's prohibition was reduced to a caring warning addressed to people who are free in their decision, as if they were told: “You can not listen to Me and do it your own way. But know what disobedience is - death for you, created by Me from the dust of the earth. Behold, I also leave open to you the path of evil, on which inevitable destruction awaits you. But this is not why I created you. Strengthen yourself in good through the rejection of evil. This will be for you the knowledge of both ”.

But - alas! - people did not heed this warning and decided to know evil through the rejection of good.

We are not guilty!

The Bible goes on to describe the events in the Garden of Eden as follows: “The serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field, which the Lord God created. And the serpent said to his wife, Has God truly said, Do not eat of any tree in paradise? And the wife said to the serpent: We can eat the fruit from the trees, only the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of Paradise, God said, do not eat them and do not touch them, lest you die. And the serpent said to his wife: No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day you taste them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods who know good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree is good for food, and that it is pleasing to the eyes and desirable, because it gives knowledge; And she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband, and he ate "(Genesis 3: 1-6).

The serpent here means Satan - the head of the angels who fell away from God and turned into demons. One of the most powerful and beautiful spirits, he decided that he did not need God, and turned into Satan - the implacable enemy of God and all His creation. But Satan, of course, could not cope with God. And therefore he directed all his hatred to the crown of God's creation - to man.

In the bible Satan is called the father of lies and the murderer... We can see both in the passage from Genesis quoted above. Satan wrote a false story in which God appeared as an envious deceiver, afraid of human competition. And people who have already received so many gifts and benefits from God, who knew Him, communicated with Him and from the experience of this communication were convinced that He is good, suddenly believed this dirty lie. And they decided to taste the fruits from the forbidden tree in order to become "like the gods."

But instead, they just discovered that they were naked, and began to urgently construct themselves a primitive clothing from tree leaves. And when they heard God's voice calling them, they were frightened and began to hide between the trees of paradise from the One who planted this paradise for them.

Traitors are always afraid of meeting those who have been betrayed. A what the first people did, and was a real betrayal of God. Satan subtly hinted to them that by eating the forbidden fruits, they could become like God, become equal to their Creator. And that means - to live without Him. AND people believed this lie. They believed Satan and stopped believing God.

This terrible shape-shifter was the main tragedy of what happened in paradise. People refused to obey God and voluntarily gave themselves into obedience to the devil.

God forgave them this first betrayal and gave them a chance to return to Himself, but people did not want to take advantage of it. The wife began to justify herself by the fact that she was seduced by a snake. And Adam even blamed his wife and ... God for his transgression of the commandment, who gave him such a "wrong" companion. Here it is, the last conversation of people with God in paradise: “… Did you not eat from the tree from which I forbade you to eat? Adam said: The wife you gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate. And the Lord God said to his wife: why have you done this? The wife said: the serpent deceived me, and I ate "(Genesis 3: 11-13).

This is how the first man betrayed God in paradise, his wife and himself. Created to reign over the material world, he turned into a miserable creature hiding in the bushes from his Creator and reproaching Him for the wife ... whom You gave me. This is how the poison made him accept the lies of Satan. Once having fulfilled the will of God's enemy, man himself became an enemy of God.

Saint Theophan the Recluse writes: “The falling away from God was accomplished with disgust by a certain and hostile rebellion against Him. Therefore, God departed from such criminals - and the living union was interrupted. God is everywhere and contains everything, but he enters into free creatures when they surrender themselves to Him. When they are contained within themselves, then He does not violate their autocracy, but, keeping them and containing them, does not enter inside. Likewise, our forefathers were left alone. If they had repented as soon as possible, perhaps God would have returned to them, but they persisted, and with obvious reproofs, neither Adam nor Eve confessed that they were guilty. "

All in Adam

That, in fact, is all. Having betrayed God, people fell away from the source of their life. And they began to die slowly. So the branch broken off from the native trunk for some time still turns green in the roadside dust, but its further fate is predetermined and inevitable. A beautiful human body, shining with the beauty and strength of God who is with him, immediately turned into a miserable body, prone to diseases and threats of the elements, when God departed from him. And paradise itself - the meeting place of man and God on earth - has become a place of fear and torment for man. Now, having heard the voice of his Creator, he, seized with horror, rushed about the Garden of Eden in search of shelter. Leaving such a person in paradise would be senseless cruelty.

So, according to the word of the Bible, man was expelled from paradise, became a vulnerable, mortal and satanic being. This was the beginning of human history. All these terrible changes in human nature, associated with the falling away of the first people from God, were inherited by their descendants, which means - we, and our friends, and all contemporaries.

Why did it happen? Because man was conceived as constantly abiding with God and in God. This is not some kind of additional bonus to our existence, but its most important foundation, foundation. With God, man is the immortal king of the universe. Without God - a mortal being, a blind instrument of the devil.

A series of births and deaths did not bring a person closer to God. On the contrary, each generation, living in spiritual darkness, took in more and more shades of evil and betrayal, the seeds of which were sown by sinful people in paradise. Macarius the Great writes: “... As Adam, who transgressed the commandment, took in himself the leaven of evil passions, so those who were born of him, and the whole race of Adam, by succession, became partakers of this leaven. And with the gradual prosperity and growth, sinful passions have already multiplied in people that they have extended to adultery, lewdness, idolatry, murder and other absurd deeds, until the whole of humanity is fermented with vices. "

This is, in brief, the connection between what happened in paradise with the ancestors of humanity and how we are forced to live today.

What exactly did Adam and Eve do, since the Lord drove them out of Paradise, and moreover, that for some reason we all are paying for their act? What is it about, what forbidden fruit, what is this tree of knowledge, why was this tree placed next to Adam and Eve and at the same time forbidding anyone to approach it? What happened in paradise? And how is this connected with our life, with the life of our loved ones, friends? Why does our fate depend on a deed that was not committed by us, moreover, committed a very, very long time ago?

What happened in paradise? There happened the most terrible thing that can happen between loving beings who trust each other. In the Garden of Eden, something happened that after a while will be repeated in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Judas will lead there a crowd of armed guards looking for Jesus. Simply put, there was a betrayal in paradise.

Adam and Eve betrayed their Creator when he believed the slander against Him and decided to live exclusively of their own free will.

A man learned to betray those closest to him when he accused his wife of his own sin.

The man has betrayed himself. After all, "to betray" means literally - to convey. And man transferred himself from the good will of the God who created him to the evil will of his murderer - the devil.

This is what happened in paradise. And how it all happened and why it turned out to be connected with the life of each of us, now let's try to find out in more detail.

You can't imagine!

God created man and placed him in the most favorable place for his life. That is, in the beautiful garden of Eden, which is also called paradise. Today we can only build various assumptions and guesses - what was the Garden of Eden. But on the other hand, you can safely bet that any of these guesses will turn out to be wrong. Why?

And because the person himself was then different - pure, joyful, not knowing anxieties and worries, open to the world, meeting this world with a happy and imperious smile of his master. The reason is simple: Adam and Eve had not yet erased God from their lives, were with Him in the closest fellowship and received from God such knowledge, consolations and gifts that we have no idea about today.

We, the current ones, as already mentioned, can only dream up on a paradise theme. Moreover, with effort, squeezing these fantasies through the narrow gaps between gloomy thoughts about the falling ruble exchange rate, grievances against the mother-in-law, worries about buying winter tires for a car, the upcoming USE for the eldest son and a thousand more unpleasant thoughts, at the same time tormenting any modern person every day with morning to night. That meager stuffing of fantasies that will fall out at the exit of this mental meat grinder will be our present ideas about paradise.

Of course, the Garden of Eden was beautiful. But life with God can turn out to be a paradise for a person even in the middle of a waterless desert overgrown with camel thorn bushes. And life without God and the Garden of Eden instantly turns into ordinary thickets of grass, bushes and trees. Only by understanding this, you can understand everything else that happened in paradise with the first people.

In God's creation, man has taken a unique place. The fact is that God created the spiritual world and the material world. The first was inhabited by angels - disembodied spirits (some of which later fell away from God and became demons). The second - all inhabitants of the Earth who have a body. Man turned out to be a kind of bridge between these two worlds. He was created by a spiritual being, but he also had a material body. True, this body was not at all what we know it today. Here is how the saint describes it: “That body was not so mortal and perishable. But just as the golden statue, which had just emerged from the furnace, shines brightly, so the body was free from all decay, neither labor was burdensome, nor sweat did not exhaust it, nor worries did not torment, nor sorrow did not besiege, and no such suffering was depressing ". And the saint speaks of even more amazing possibilities of the body of the primordial man: “... Clothed in such a body, with such senses, a person was capable of sensory vision of spirits, to the category of which he belonged to the soul, was able to communicate with them, to that God vision and communication with God, which are akin to holy spirits. The holy body of man did not serve as an obstacle for this, did not separate man from the world of spirits. "

Able to communion with God, a person could proclaim the will of God to the entire material world, over which he received enormous power from God. And at the same time, only he alone could stand on behalf of this world before its Creator.

Man was created as a king or, more precisely, the vicar of God on Earth. Having settled him in a beautiful garden, God gave him a commandment to keep and cultivate this garden. In combination with the blessing, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, this meant that over time, man was to make the whole world a garden of paradise.

For this, he received the broadest powers and opportunities. The whole world gladly obeyed him. Wild animals could not harm him, pathogens did not cause disease in him, fire could not burn, water could not drown, the earth could not absorb him in its abysses.

And only one prohibition received from God this almost sovereign ruler of the world: “And the Lord God commanded man, saying: from every tree in the garden you will eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you do not eat from it, for on the day on which you will taste of it, you will die ”().

It was this only prohibition that the man in the Garden of Eden violated. Adam and Eve, who had everything, decided that in order to be completely happy, they still had to do what was impossible.

Sandbox mined

But why did God plant such a dangerous tree in paradise? Just hang a sign on him with a skull and bones "Don't get in - he'll kill." What a strange idea - in the middle of the most beautiful place on the planet to take and hang deadly fruits on the branches? As if a modern architect, when planning a kindergarten, suddenly for some reason designed a small minefield on the playground, and the teacher would then say: “Children, you can play everywhere - on the slide, on the merry-go-round, and in the sandbox. But don't even think of coming up here, otherwise there will be a big bang-badabum and a lot of troubles for all of us. "

Here it is immediately necessary to clarify: the prohibition on eating fruits from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not mean at all that a person without these fruits knew nothing about good and evil. Otherwise, what was the point of giving him such a commandment?

Chrysostom writes: “Only those who, by nature, have no reason, do not know good and evil, and Adam possessed great wisdom and could recognize both. That he was filled with spiritual wisdom, see its discovery. “Brought”, it is said, to him the God of animals, “to see what he will call them, and that, as a man calls every living soul, so was its name” (). Think about the wisdom possessed by someone who could give names to various breeds of cattle, reptiles and birds. God Himself accepted this naming of names so that he did not change them and even after the Fall did not want to cancel the names of animals. It is said: As a person calls every living soul, so was its name ... So, who knew so much, really, tell me, did not know what is good and what is evil? With what will it be consistent? "

Adam and Eve - why do we pay for the sin of Adam and Eve?

So, the tree was not the source of knowledge about good and evil. And its fruits were not poisonous either, otherwise God would have turned out to be like the alternatively gifted architect of the kindergarten already mentioned here. And it was called so for one simple reason: a person had ideas about good and evil, but only theoretical. He knew that good is in obedience and trust in the God who created him, and evil is in violation of His commands. However, in practice, he could learn what is good only by fulfilling the commandment and not touching the forbidden fruits. After all, even today, any of us understands: to know about good and to do good are not very much the same thing. In the same way, how to know about evil and not do evil. And in order to translate your knowledge of good and evil into a practical plane, you need to make some effort. For example, in a situation where a loved one has spontaneously told you something offensive, good, of course, will remain silent in response, wait until he cools down, and only then calmly and lovingly find out what made him so mad. And evil in this situation, just as surely, will be - to tell him in response from three boxes of all sorts of nasty things and quarrel for long agonizing hours, or even days. Each of us knows about this. But, alas, it is not always possible to use this knowledge in a real conflict.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is so named in the Bible because it was an opportunity for the first people to experimentally demonstrate their striving for good and aversion from evil.

But man (Adam and Eve) was not created as a robot, hard-coded for goodness alone. God gave him freedom of choice, and the tree of knowledge became for the first people just such a point where this choice could be carried out in practice. Without it, the Garden of Eden, and the entire beautiful world created by God, would be for man only a golden cage with ideal living conditions. And the essence of God's prohibition was reduced to a caring warning addressed to people who are free in their decision, as if they were told: “You can not listen to Me and do it your own way. But know what disobedience is - death for you, created by Me from the dust of the earth. Behold, I also leave open to you the path of evil, on which inevitable destruction awaits you. But this is not why I created you. Strengthen yourself in good through the rejection of evil. This will be for you the knowledge of both ”.

But - alas! - people did not heed this warning and decided to know evil through the rejection of good.

We are not guilty!

Further, the Bible describes the events in the Garden of Eden as follows: “The serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field, which the Lord God created. And the serpent said to his wife, Has God truly said, Do not eat of any tree in paradise? And the wife said to the serpent: We can eat the fruit from the trees, only the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of Paradise, God said, do not eat them and do not touch them, lest you die. And the serpent said to his wife: No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day you taste them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods who know good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree is good for food, and that it is pleasing to the eyes and desirable, because it gives knowledge; And she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband, and he ate ”().

The serpent here means Satan - the head of the angels who fell away from God and turned into demons. One of the most powerful and beautiful spirits, he decided that he did not need God, and turned into Satan - the implacable enemy of God and all His creation. But Satan, of course, could not cope with God. And therefore he directed all his hatred to the crown of God's creation - to man.

In the Bible, Satan is called the father of lies and a murderer. We can see both in the passage from Genesis quoted above. Satan wrote a false story in which God appeared as an envious deceiver, afraid of human competition. And Adam and Eve, who had already received so many gifts and blessings from God, who knew Him, communicated with Him and from the experience of this communication were convinced that He was good, suddenly believed this dirty lie. And they decided to taste the fruits from the forbidden tree in order to become "like the gods."

But instead, they just discovered that they were naked, and began to urgently construct themselves a primitive clothing from tree leaves. And when they heard God's voice calling them, they were frightened and began to hide between the trees of paradise from the One who planted this paradise for them.

Traitors are always afraid of meeting those who have been betrayed. And what the first people did was the most real betrayal in relation to God. Satan subtly hinted to them that by eating the forbidden fruits, they could become like God, become equal to their Creator. And that means - to live without Him. And people believed this lie. They believed Satan and stopped believing God.

This terrible shape-shifter was the main tragedy of what happened in paradise. People refused to obey God and voluntarily gave themselves into obedience to the devil.

Adam and Eve - why do we pay for the sin of Adam and Eve?

God forgave them this first betrayal and gave them a chance to return to Himself, but Adam and Eve did not want to take advantage of it. The wife began to justify herself by the fact that she was seduced by a snake. And Adam even blamed his wife and ... God for his transgression of the commandment, who gave him such a "wrong" companion. Here it is, the last conversation of people with God in Paradise: “… did you not eat from the tree from which I forbade you to eat? Adam said: The wife you gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate. And the Lord God said to his wife: why have you done this? The wife said: the serpent deceived me, and I ate ”().

This is how the first man betrayed God in paradise, his wife and himself. Created to reign over the material world, he turned into a miserable creature hiding in the bushes from his Creator and reproaching Him for the wife ... whom You gave me. This is how the poison made him accept the lies of Satan. Once having fulfilled the will of God's enemy, man himself became an enemy of God.

The saint writes: “The falling away from God was completed with disgust by a certain hostile rebellion against Him. Therefore, God departed from such criminals - and the living union was interrupted. God is everywhere and contains everything, but he enters into free creatures when they surrender themselves to Him. When they are contained within themselves, then He does not violate their autocracy, but, keeping them and containing them, does not enter inside. Likewise, our forefathers were left alone. If they had repented as soon as possible, perhaps God would have returned to them, but they persisted, and with obvious reproofs, neither Adam nor Eve confessed that they were guilty. "

All in Adam

That, in fact, is all. By betraying God, Adam and Eve fell away from the source of their life. And they began to die slowly. So the branch broken off from the native trunk for some time still turns green in the roadside dust, but its further fate is predetermined and inevitable. A beautiful human body, shining with the beauty and strength of God who is with him, immediately turned into a miserable body, prone to diseases and threats of the elements, when God departed from him. And paradise itself - the meeting place of man and God on earth - has become a place of fear and torment for man. Now, having heard the voice of his Creator, he, seized with horror, rushed about the Garden of Eden in search of shelter. Leaving such a person in paradise would be senseless cruelty.

So, according to the Bible, man was expelled from paradise, became a vulnerable, mortal and subject to Satan being. This was the beginning of human history. All these terrible changes in human nature, associated with the falling away of the first people from God, were inherited by their descendants, which means - we, and our friends, and all contemporaries.

Why did it happen? Because man was conceived as constantly abiding with God and in God. This is not some kind of additional bonus to our existence, but its most important foundation, foundation. With God, man is the immortal king of the universe. Without God - a mortal being, a blind instrument of the devil.

A series of births and deaths did not bring a person closer to God. On the contrary, each generation, living in spiritual darkness, took in more and more shades of evil and betrayal, the seeds of which were sown by sinful people in paradise. Macarius the Great writes: “... As Adam, who transgressed the commandment, took in himself the leaven of evil passions, so those who were born of him, and the entire family of Adam, by succession, became partakers of this leaven. And with the gradual prosperity and growth, sinful passions have already multiplied in people that they have extended to adultery, lewdness, idolatry, murder and other absurd deeds, until the whole of humanity is fermented with vices. "

This is, in brief, the connection between what happened in paradise with the ancestors of humanity and how we are forced to live today.

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Chapter 2.
The first rebellion in the universe (the emergence of evil)

This question is reflected in several books of the Bible: the book of the prophet Isaiah (14 chap., 12-14), Ezekiel (28 chap., 14-17), the Revelation of John the Theologian (12 chap., 7-9).

Before Adam and Eve sinned (as described in the third chapter of the book of Genesis), the rebellion of a third part of the angels had already taken place in heaven.

This rebellion against God was led by one of the cherubim named Lucifer, which means "luminiferous." Subsequently, he was called Satan ("adversary") or the devil ("slanderer").

As stated, angels are heavenly beings that occupy more high position than inhabitants of the earth or inhabitants of other worlds. Like everything in the universe, they were created for the mutual service of love. Like humans, they could be happy provided they freely and consciously obey the law of God: However, some angels misused their freedom, became proud, began to envy God and disobey Him.

God the Father and the Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ admonished Lucifer and his followers with love, but they did not submit. And then, for the good of the Universe, a third of the angels were removed from heaven.

The question arises: why did not God destroy Satan and his supporters at the very beginning of the rebellion?

If God had done this right away, then among the celestials there would have been a doubt about the Creator's justice. Therefore, evil had to be manifested so that everyone could see where the violation of the law of God leads. Only after a certain historical time has elapsed will God put an end to the development of evil on our planet and in the Universe.

Sin of Adam and Eve

The rebel angels tried to tempt the celestials, but “the rest of the inhabitants of the universe did not fall” (Isa. 26, 18).

The only world they managed to penetrate is, unfortunately, our Earth. The Bible says that the devil deceived Eve with cunning and cunning, appearing to her in the form of a talking serpent. He invited her to violate the only requirement given by God - to pick the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and eat it.

God had the right to test the faithfulness of people before giving them eternal life.

The devil promised that Eve would not die if she plucked the forbidden fruit, but would be like God, knowing good and evil. It was a deception and a temptation at the same time. Eve obeyed the voice of the tempter and ate the fruit, and offered it to Adam. This is how the Fall of people took place.

At first glance, Eve's act seems innocent. But if you delve into its essence, it becomes clear that this was a violation of the great principle of trusting God. The first disobedience severed the bond between God and man and gave rise to further disobedience and opposition to His will.

The Lord pronounced judgment on the first people and Satan. Adam and Eve could not now live forever, from now on they were subject to death.

The earth, flora and fauna also had to undergo changes in connection with the fall of people.

But the Creator did not leave humanity without hope. He prophesied that the woman's seed would hit the serpent's head.

The "seed of the woman" is one of the future descendants of the human family who will deal a crushing blow to the serpent (Satan). The love of God has found a way of salvation for people. At a certain time in world history, the Son of God Jesus Christ will take on human flesh, be born on earth, like each of us. He will glorify God with His holy life and then die for the sin of Adam and Eve and for the sins of all mankind. Satan will be exposed as a murderer, and people will have the opportunity to be saved and forgiven on condition of faith and repentance.

This prophecy was fulfilled at the beginning of our era, that is, almost two thousand years ago.

Note 2. It is very important to know that death means the termination of both the physical existence of a person and his consciousness. Death is the complete cessation of all life processes. Satan instilled in people a false teaching about the "immortality of the soul." It presupposes the life of the soul after the death of the body and its transfer to either heaven or hell. This teaching is inherent in all pagan religions, and many Christians profess it. The Bible tells us: “The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and there is no more reward for them, because the memory of them is forgotten” (Ezekiel 18: 4). According to Holy Scripture, only God is immortal. Dead people will be resurrected during the Second Coming of Christ at the end of world history.

Earth is the arena of the universe

Our planet has become an arena where the struggle between good and evil continues, the struggle that began in heaven. The outcome of this struggle is of great importance for the Universe. And therefore, every person living on earth must know the essence of this struggle in order to take the right position and not perish along with the devil and his accomplices.

To win in it, you need to turn to Christ with faith, repent of your sins and ask God for the strength to keep His holy law. The law of God is an expression of His love and justice. It is set forth in ten short commandments that God Himself wrote for people on two stone tablets (See Exodus 20 chap.).

Christ, who died for each of us, awaits the return to Him of every son or daughter of the Earth. “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened,” He says to us, “and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

God has endowed every thinking creature with free will: we can either agree or disagree with Him, independently decide "for" or "against". Without this right, we would be nothing but slaves. But God wants us to believe in Him voluntarily and consciously, so that through this faith we receive His strength, peace and joy. He wants us to have hope in our lives. He cleanses our soul from evil and sin.

Today on earth, every person is being tested for eternal life, which God will give to all believers and lovers.

Its on the day when Christ comes a second time to end evil on our planet forever and establish His eternal Kingdom.

Before the flood

After the Fall, Adam and Eve were forced to leave the Garden of Eden. They no longer had access to the tree of life and had to die after a certain time.

Degeneration and death were a natural consequence of disobedience. However, even in these conditions, which had changed for the worse, a balance was maintained in the animal and plant world. Some of the animals began to lead a predatory lifestyle, destroying sick herbivores, eating carrion.

Before the flood, the climate was mild, with no sharp fluctuations in the weather. People lived much longer than our contemporaries. They were beautiful, majestic, endowed with great abilities. “These are strong, glorious people from the earliest times” (Genesis 6: 4).

They built, were engaged in agriculture, ate, drank, got married, got married and did not think about the higher purpose of life. Disobedience to God, pride and intemperance caused the moral decay of the first civilization on earth. Holy Scripture says: “And the Lord saw that the corruption of men on earth was great, and that all the thoughts and thoughts of their hearts were evil at all times. And the Lord repented that he had made man on earth, and grieved in His heart "(Genesis 6, 5-6) ...

Only a very few people realized how destructive the loss of faith in God is. They sought Him, worshiped Him and tried to preserve moral purity amid general decay.

Noah loved God and led righteous image life. He and his family were warned that the retribution for human sins was approaching, that the trespassers would come to earth, the wicked would perish. Noah was commissioned to build a huge ark and call the people to repentance.

The construction of the ark continued for one hundred and twenty years. and during all this time, Noah repeatedly urged people to leave their sinful way of life and warned of an impending catastrophe. In response, he heard only mockery and ridicule.

Flood

When the ark was ready, God commanded Noah to place in it in pairs all kinds of animals and birds, so that they would be saved from the waters of the flood. Then Noah entered there with his wife and his three sons with their wives, and the angel of the Lord closed the door behind them. They were in the ark for seven days before the flood began. People made fun of them- It was a test of the faith of Noah and His family.

The seventh chapter of Genesis, verses 11-12, says: “In the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the springs of the great abyss were opened, and the windows of heaven were opened; and it rained on the earth forty days and forty nights. " We can imagine the despair and horror that gripped the careless and haughty inhabitants of the Earth, when dark clouds covered the sky and the first large drops of rain turned into a downpour. People tried to escape in the trees, on the tops of the mountains, but soon the most high mountains covered with the waters of the flood. The ark alone resisted the boundless water element.

This is how the antediluvian world - the first civilization of our planet - perished.

Application 3. Scientists have discovered that in the oldest traditions of all the peoples of the world there is a vague memory of the flood. So, for example, in the study of the ethnography of the American Indians, it was found that the tradition of the flood was preserved in 105 tribes. Similar information was found in the records of the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians and many other peoples. Archeology also confirms the history of the flood (see Keram K. V. "Gods, tombs, scientists").

There is no need to describe in detail the events of chapters 7 and 8 of Genesis.

The main thing that the Bible draws attention to in these chapters is that the current state of the world is in many ways reminiscent of its moral state before the flood. This is one of the signs of the end of the world. "For, as in the days before the pursuit - they ate, drank, married, got married ... and did not think until the flood came and destroyed everyone, - so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man" (Matt. 24: 38-39 ).

Great forbearance of God! The antediluvian world existed for almost 16 centuries, neglecting the possibility of repentance and salvation. And now, there is a limit to lawlessness. But in punishing people, God did not feel joy. Holy Scripture says that He grieved in His heart, seeing how great the corruption of people on earth, and that every creature has perverted its way.

In the name of the life of subsequent generations, the family of righteous Noah was saved. She was in the ark until the end of the flood, and when the ark stopped at the top of the Ararat Mountains, Noah and his descendants went south to the Shinar Valley region (modern Iraq).

Scripture says that Eve was deceived in the fall of our first parents, but Adam was not deceived. “And Adam was not deceived, but the wife, when she was deceived, fell into transgression” (1 Tim. 2:14). Eve herself agreed with this, saying: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:13).

The serpent was, of course, Satan (see Rev. 12: 9). He did not appear before Eve in the form of an angel, but, in all likelihood, took the form of a flying serpent, dazzling with the splendor of colors and brilliance and very wise. Using this image, he seduced Eve in three ways:

The first relates to the love of God. Evidently, Eve withdrew from her husband and gazed with curiosity and admiration at the forbidden tree. She might wonder why God didn’t allow them to eat the fruit of him.

The serpent sitting on the tree said in an ironic questioning tone: "Did God truly say: do not eat from any tree in paradise?" (Genesis 3: 1). In other words: “And such a God you serve, who finds satisfaction in forbidding you free access to all the useful and beautiful fruits in this wonderful garden? "

Sometimes we say: “Nothing can be done about the birds flying overhead, but it is in our power to prevent them from making a nest in ours)