Eros Condemned, 12/08/09

Review

Let’s first briefly review the 2nd Creation Story briefly.

Earth Creature – God created a creature of the earth, and infused it with God’s own “breath,” or Spirit. The earth creature’s purpose was to occupy a position between God and the world, t0 “husband” the earth – which is to nurture, care for, till the earth – and to lift the creation heavenward. That happens when we use our God-given spiritual abilities to do for the world what God would have us do. And, the earth creature was made to have eternal life. That original earth creature was divided into male and female human persons.

Life (Eros) – In this story (and in much of the Bible), “life” is not a matter of physical duration; it is a matter of the quality of that physical duration. In this story, “life” (or eros) is unity, harmony, delight and fulfillment. It is a state of being that we possess when we are occupying the position God created us to fill. In other words: to be in the relationship to God and the world that God created for us is to be in life; is to be in unity and harmony, which fills us with delight and fulfillment.

The key point here: Life requires living in God. That is, life requires living within boundaries established by God. Outside of those boundaries, life gets corrupted – unity, harmony, delight and fulfillment are lost.

The Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil – God puts the Tree in the Garden and tells the earth creature not to eat of it. In other words, God limits human behavior; that is, God establishes boundaries within which Life can blossom. So the Tree externalizes, or manifests the boundaries. The Tree creates the possibility of disobedience, and therefore creates the possibility of obedience to God, which is what is required for us to have unity, harmony, delight and fulfillment.

The Serpent – Remember, the serpent is not portrayed as the devil, coming in from outside of God’s creation to mess things up. Rather, the Bible says God created the serpent along with the other animals. The serpent is one in a series of creatures God created to fill the earth and provide company for the human beings.

However, the serpent is used as a literary device in the story. It’s purpose is to  voice the question that exists within all of nature: is God essential to fulfillment? Or can we make a heaven of earth without God? Is God telling the truth when He says we must obey Him in order to experience unity, harmony, delight and fulfillment? The serpent suggests God is not telling the truth – and the human pair listens to the serpent’s whisper because that same whisper exists inside of each human being.

We think we can have unity, harmony, delight and fulfillment – Life – without God and on our own terms. That is, we want to create life in our own image, rather than accept life in God’s image on God’s terms.

Therefore the couple eats of the forbitted fruit, and Death enters the world.

Death (Thanatos) – Death is the opposite of Life. It is not about physical existence, it is about the quality of our experience of physical existence. Death is the experience of discord and strife, which leads to hostility and danger. It is unrelieved tragedy.

Death – discord and strife, hostility and danger – enter into the world because the human couple chooses to not obey God, but to take it upon themselves to determine how to create unity, harmony, delight and fulfilment. And, of course, fall short. But, having stepped out of the boundaries within which unity and harmony can flourish, the couple have stepped into disharmony, discord and strife. From then on, Life as God intended it has been corrupted.

Not only that, but because people were meant to have dominion over the animals, the couple should not have listened to the serpent’s whisper. However, because they did listen to the serpent’s voice rather than God’s voice, they have replaced God with nature. One characteristic of death is that human beings are no longer subservient to God, but have become subservient to nature – to the natural impulses; to our own appetites, which we are supposed to control.

So, now that Eros is contaminated, what happens?

Eros Condemned (Genesis 3:8 – 24)

The condemnation of Life (Eros) takes place in 3 stages.

Part I: The Trial – The man and woman, knowing they are naked, create clothing in vs. 3:7. Their motivation is to hide their nakedness, their shame, from one another. Immediately, we know that they are no longer in unity and harmony because they put up a barrier between them: clothing. Shamed in spirit, they are ashamed of their nakedness; ashamed to be “exposed” to one another. Now they have something to hide, and clothing symbolizes that need and desire to keep some things away from the other person’s eyes and knowledge.

Now, in vs. 3:8, they hide in the bushes when they hear God coming. They are hoping to hide themselves from God. But, can anybody really hide from God? Of course not, and so God calls to the man: “where are you?” The man replies, “I heard you coming and I was afraid because I was naked, and so I hid.”

Wait. How does he know he’s naked? And why does being naked cause him to be afraid of God?

Because he is guilty, and he knows he’s guilty of disobeying God.

“Who told you that you were naked?” God asks. “Have you eaten from the tree of which I told you not to eat?”

Of course God knows he did, and the man knows there is no point in denying it, so he responds: “It’s not my fault; I’m the victim here. The woman – whom you gave to be with me, by the way – she gave me of the tree and I ate.”

Notice he blames both the woman and God. He does not admit his own guilt, except as a victim of God’s lack of wisdom (in creating the woman) and the woman’s beguiling behavior. If God had not created the woman, he would never have sinned – that’s his defense.

God doesn’t buy it, as we’ll see. But he turns to the woman and asks, “What have you done?”

When I read that, I don’t read it as a stern Father confronting a disobedient child, but I read it as a plaintive cry: “oh! what have you done? you’ve ruined everything!”

That’s not to place the blame on the woman alone. No; we’ve discussed that already, and at length. The story makes it clear that (1) the man was present when the serpent asked the woman whether they really had to be obedient; (2) the serpent used the plural form of the word “you,” indicating that it is talking to both the man and woman, even though directly addressing the woman; (3) the man’s presence is confirmed by the fact that she eats and “gives to her husband with her,” and he eats. She does not go maliciously hunting him down to corrupt him, now that she is corrupt. Rather, having made a decision in unity, in harmony, one eats first and the other eats second. It is only after they eat that their eyes are opened and they become capable of malicious calculation. Prior to eating, they are in unity and harmony – that is why one of them, even the woman, can speak for both. So God is not blaming the woman only, though he addresses her because she is the instrument of the couple by which this disobedience commenced. However, (4) the man, present during the serpent’s tempting, had both the power and the responsibility to speak up if he disagreed with the woman – not because he is “superior” to her, but because the couple did not exist in a “mind meld” state. Each was capable of discernment; being in unity and harmony does not absolve us from individual responsibility and accountability.

“What have you done?” God asks. And she answers, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Notice she does not blame the man, as he blamed her. She could have said, for example, “the man you gave to be with me did not put out his hand to protect me,” or something like that, but doesn’t. She does however blame the serpent – and by extension, the serpent’s Maker, God. In a very subtle way she’s suggesting that if God had not created the serpent, she would not have fallen. On the other hand, she owns up to her failing more directly than does the man.

Part II: The Judgement - God turns to the serpent, but does not ask it why it did as it did. There is no point: the serpent is not designed to occupy a decisionmaking role; it is not made to mediate God’s Will to the earth, therefore it is not responsible: it is only doing what it does by nature. Since the serpent is not a “moral agent,” there is no point to asking why it behaved immorally. That is, against God’s command.

The earth creature, male and female, is designed to occupy that mediating role. We are called by God to lift the creation toward greater obedience to God’s will – that is, to make the earth more heavenly; more filled with life (unity, harmony, delight and fulfillment). So our decisions matter. The earth is to be fashioned by us toward Godliness. We are responsible for doing or failing to do that.

Since the serpent is not a moral agent God does not ask it to account for its behavior. Rather, God informs the serpent of the consequences of its actions: “On your belly you shall crawl, eating the dust of the earth, and you will be an enemy of the woman and her seed; men will bruise your head and you shall bruise their heels.”

This is a signal of the estrangement between human beings and nature, now that the Garden of Eden has been corrupted by Death (discord, strife, division, oppression, tragedy).

In telling the serpent that it will crawl on its belly, eat dust, and be in strife with humans, God is not establishing a punishment; He is describing a consequence. God is telling the serpent what life is like outside of the Garden, where life (unity, harmony) has been corrupted by death (strife, division).

God is describing, not either proscribing (denouncing) or prescribing (set down authoritatively). That’s to say, God is not making up a punishment for disobedience. Disobedience lands the world outside of God’s realm, and that carries its own set of dynamics. God is merely describing that new reality and what it means to the serpent.

Next, God describes what existence outside of the Garden means to the woman: “you will have sorrow and pain in bringing forth children, and you will yearn for your husband – but he will not reciprocate, he will lord it over you.”

Remember that the woman did not blame the man, as he blamed her. Here we see the implications of that: she continues to yearn for that now-lost sense of mutuality, but he’s not on the same page – as he signalled when he drove a wedge into their relationship by blaming her for his failings. So she will yearn for union with her husband, but she will experience frustration and lack of fulfillment; she will remain “hungry” for close intimacy with her spouse.

Furthermore, she will experience sorrow and pain in bringing forth children. That’s physical of course, but not only: it is also emotional and spiritual. Children and mother, starting as one inside the mother’s body, will experience division and discord, leading to sorrow and pain, as the children emerge and grow into childhood and adulthood. Here again, her yearning for close unity and harmony will be frustrated and left stillborn. That is existence apart from God’s Life.

This frustrated desire for her husband, and his “lording it over” her, is not permission from God for man to dominate woman, or for woman to disappear into men. It is, rather, the sign and consequence of their mutual sin. Therefore, keep in mind what Paul says in the New Testament: in Christ there is no male or female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free. That is to say, in the restored kingdom of the Church and Christian community, woman is equal to man and harmonious relationships are restored.

Finally, God addresses the man: “Because you preferred to go along with your spouse rather than Me (that is, because you put the woman before your God), the ground is going to be cursed for you, you will eat of it through toil and sweat, and it will yield weeds and thorns where you plant gardens and fruit.”

That’s a far remove from the original intent. In the Garden, where Life reigned, the human would experience delight and fulfillment as he “nurtured, tilled, cared for, husbanded” the Garden. Outside the garden, where Death reigns, the garden has become a place of weeds and thorns, the nurturing has become a struggle to scratch out enough to eat, and caring for the earth has become an exhausting chore rather than a fulfilling exercise. The human creature, made to find harmony through work on the world, drawing it toward God, has inherited a world that is hostile to him, and resistant to his effort to make it fruitful and beautiful.

Phyllis Trible refers to this condition of life outside the Garden as “unrelieved tragedy.” It’s a fit description for so much of life. Given as a gift of joy, living has become a struggle.

Part III: The Aftermath – At the end of the story, human sexuality has fallen into disarray. As soon as God stops speaking, as soon as God finishes explaining to the man what his life is now going to be like, he “calls the name of his wife Eve.”

Remember what it means to “call the name of”? It means he has taken a position of lordship over her; he has reduced her to a level like the animals in relation to himself. I find it both fascinating and horrifying to see how completely unrepentent he is. Rather than hearing God and striving to ameliorate the tragedy of the fall, the man immediately embodies the very dissolution of Life that God has described.

And notice that as soon as the man “calls the name of his wife” Eve, she disappears from the story. She has been “absorbed into” the man, and from this point on, she does not have a separate, equal existence. Her God-created integrity is gone as he “lords it over her,” even though she continues to silently and invisibley “yearn for her husband.” When God speaks about the man in vs 3:22, the words “man” and “he” are male-oriented – reinforcing the woman’s loss of standing.

However, God has not abandoned the human couple. Verse 3:21 tells us that God Himself fashions better clothing for the couple than they had been able to fashion for themselves. That is, even though their feeble efforts to hide from one another and God are a sign of their disobedience, God has compassion. Knowing their fundamental need to cover their shame, He teaches them how to make clothing even as He permanently banishes them from their Garden.

The Hebrews refer to this divine loyalty as hesed. God’s hesed is God’s faithfulness. It is a profound faithfulness; it is the faithfulness of God that you cannot drive away. There is a loyalty in God to the human creature that cannot be broken by human persons. There is nothing you can do to make God abandon you. No matter how depraved, insolent, or persistently evil you behave or become, God will not abandon you.

God’s hesed is what we Christians mean by grace. There is nothing we can do to earn grace; and there is nothing we can do to make God withdraw grace. God loves us unconditionally and regardless of what we do or fail to do. It is a gift, and all we can do is deny it or accept it. We cannot push it away. Nor can we push God away: we can turn our backs on God, but God will never turn His back on us. That is divine faithfulness; hesed.

At the end of the story, the universe is disordered. Oppressive hierarchy has replaced mutuality in human-to-creation and man-to-woman relationships. Differences have replaced distinctions, causing distinctions to become a source of conflict rather than enjoyment. Pain now interpenetrates and dominates pleasure. And woman disappears into man.

Salvation is needed that we might be restored to the creation God intends. And God has signalled that He will work to that end; by making clothing for the human couple, God signals that he will be with them, protecting and “covering” them through their long sojourn in the wilderness. Hope remains. God has not abandoned his earth creature.

Coming Next

We have learned a lot about how human beings got into the mess we’re in, but we have not learned all that the Bible has to say about our human predicament apart from God. This whole study is titled “Myths of Origins,” and we have looked at the first myth, “The Fall.” Next, we will look at the story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4) briefly, then move on to Noah’s Ark (Genesis 6 – 9). Finally, we will look at The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11).

We have taken a lot of time on this story of the Fall. As I indicated we would at the beginning, we have taken more time with it than we will take on the next 3 stories. I took the time because the reading of the Fall provided by Phyllis Trible is both pregnant with insight and so different from what we were taught in Sunday school that the story gives us an opportunity to reset our expectations. Now we can read the Bible with fresher eyes, and perhaps continue to see things that have eluded us for years.

To prepare for the Dec 29 meeting, you can read Genesis 4 & 6 – 9.