The Fall and its consequences. The Fall and its consequences according to the Holy Scriptures and the teachings of the church

Myth of the Fall

An important place in the Bible is occupied by the myth of the fall of the first people created by God - Adam and Eve. The book of Genesis says that, having created the world, God also created the beautiful Garden of Eden - paradise. He settled Adam and Eve in it. He allowed them to eat the most beautiful fruits, freed them from all difficulties, and made their life carefree. God forbade people to touch only two trees - the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. But the devil, incarnated in the form of a serpent, seduced Eve into eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve not only tasted the forbidden fruit, but also gave Adam a bite of it. This is how the first fall of people took place, who, at the instigation of Satan, violated the divine prohibition. Upon learning of the Fall, God angrily cursed the entire human race. He condemned all women to give birth in pain and gave them to the power of men. He doomed all men to painful labor. “By the sweat of your face you will eat bread” (Genesis, III, 19).

This is the content of the biblical doctrine of original sin, which lies at the basis of Judaism and Christianity. This myth occupies a central place in Christian doctrine. All human suffering: wars, diseases, natural disasters, etc. are a continuation of God's vengeance for the original sin of Adam and Eve. God, whom churchmen portray as a kind, merciful and loving father of people, still punishes humanity with senseless cruelty for the fact that Adam and Eve violated God’s prohibition and succumbed to the temptation of the serpent created by God.

Adam's sin manifests itself essentially as disobedience, as an action by which a person consciously and deliberately opposes himself to God, violating one of His commands (Gen. 3.3); but deeper than this external rebellious act, Scripture definitely notes the internal act from which it originates: Adam and Eve disobeyed because, succumbing to the suggestion of the serpent, they wanted to “be like gods, knowing good and evil” (3.5), i.e., according to the most common interpretation, to put oneself in the place of God in order to decide what is good and what is evil; having taken their opinion as a standard, they claim to be the sole masters of their fate and to dispose of themselves at their own discretion; they refuse to depend on the One who created them, perverting the so-called image. relationship that unites man with God.

According to Genesis 2, this relationship consisted not only of dependence, but also of friendship. Unlike the gods mentioned in ancient myths (cf. Gilgamesh), there was nothing that God would deny to man, created “in His image and likeness” (Gen. 1.26 ff); He left nothing for Himself alone, not even life (cf. Wis. 2.23). And so, at the instigation of the serpent, first Eve, then Adam begin to doubt this infinitely generous God. Commandment, given by God for the good of man (cf. Rom 7:10), seems to them only a means that God used to protect His advantages, and the warning added to the commandment is just a lie: “No, you will not die; But God knows that on the day you eat of it (the fruit of the tree of knowledge), your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3.4 ff). The man did not trust such a god, who became his rival. The very idea of ​​God turned out to be perverted: the concept of an infinitely selfless, because perfect, God, who lacks nothing and can only give, is replaced by the idea of ​​some limited, calculating being, entirely occupied with protecting himself from its creation. Before pushing a person to commit a crime, sin corrupted his spirit, since his spirit was affected in the very relation to God, whose image man is, it is impossible to imagine a deeper perversion and one cannot be surprised that it entailed such grave consequences.

The relationship between man and God has changed: this is the verdict of conscience. Before being punished in the literal sense of the word (Gen. 3.23), Adam and Eve, previously so close to God (cf. 2.15), hide from his face between the trees (3.8). So, man himself has abandoned God and the responsibility for his offense lies with him; he fled from God, and expulsion from paradise followed as a kind of confirmation of his own decision. At the same time, he had to make sure that the warning was not false: away from God, access to the tree of life is impossible (3.22), and death finally comes into its own. Being the cause of the gap between man and God, sin also creates a gap between members of human society already in paradise within the original couple itself. As soon as the sin is committed, Adam fences himself off, blaming the one whom God gave him as a helper (2.18), as “bone from his bones and flesh from his flesh” (2.23), and this gap in turn is confirmed punishment: “Your desire is for your husband, and he will rule over you” (3.16). Subsequently, the consequences of this gap extend to the children of Adam: the murder of Abel occurs (4.8), then the kingdom of violence and the law of the strong, sung by Lamech (4.24). The mystery of evil and sin extends beyond the human world. Between God and man stands a third person, about whom the Old Testament does not speak at all - in all likelihood, so that there is no temptation to consider him a kind of second god - but who, by Wisdom (Wis. 2.24), is identified with the Devil or Satan and appears again in the New Testament.

The story of the first sin ends with the promise of some real hope to man. True, the slavery to which he doomed himself, thinking to achieve independence, is in itself final; sin, once entered into the world, can only multiply, and as it grows, life actually suffers, to the point that it completely stops with the flood (6.13 ff). The beginning of the break came from a person; it is clear that the initiative for reconciliation can only come from God. And already in this first narrative, God gives hope that the day will come when He will take upon Himself this initiative (3.15). The goodness of God, which man despised, will ultimately overcome - “he will overcome evil with good” (Rom 12.21). The Book of Wisdom (10.1) specifies that Adam was taken away from his crime." In Gen. it has already been shown that this goodness acts: it saves Noah and his family from general corruption and from punishment for it (Gen. 6.5-8), in order to begin, as it were, through him new world; in particular, when “from among the nations mixed in the same mind of evil” (Wis 10.5) she chose Abraham and brought him out of the sinful world (Gen. 12.1), so that “all the families of the earth would be blessed in him” (Gen. 12.2 ff., clearly providing a counterbalance to the curses at 3.14 pp).

The consequences of the Fall for the first man were catastrophic. Not only did he lose the bliss and sweetness of paradise, but the whole nature of man changed and became distorted. Having sinned, he fell away from the natural state and fell into the unnatural (Abba Dorotheos). All parts of his spiritual and physical makeup were damaged: the spirit, instead of striving for God, became spiritual and passionate; the soul fell into the power of bodily instincts; the body, in turn, lost its original lightness and turned into heavy sinful flesh. After the Fall, man became “deaf, blind, naked, insensitive in relation to those (goods) from which he fell, and in addition, became mortal, corruptible and meaningless,” “instead of divine and incorruptible knowledge, he accepted carnal knowledge, for having become blind with his eyes souls... he received his sight with his bodily eyes” (Reverend Simeon the New Theologian). Illness, suffering and sorrow entered human life. He became mortal because he lost the opportunity to eat from the tree of life. Not only man himself, but also the entire world around him changed as a result of the Fall. The original harmony between nature and man is broken - now the elements can be hostile to him, storms, earthquakes, floods can destroy him. The earth will no longer grow all by itself: it must be cultivated “by the sweat of the brow,” and it will bring “thorns and thorns.” Animals also become enemies of man: the serpent will “bite his heel” and other predators will attack him (Gen. 3:14-19). The whole creation is subject to the “slavery of corruption,” and now it, together with man, will “wait for liberation” from this slavery, because it was subjected to vanity not voluntarily, but through the fault of man (Rom. 8:19-21).

Exegetes who interpreted biblical texts related to the Fall sought answers to a number of fundamental questions, for example: is the story of Gen. 3 a description of an event that actually took place, or is the book of Genesis talking only about the permanent state of the human race, designated with the help of symbols? To which literary genre refers to Gen. 3? Etc. In patristic writing and in studies of later times, three main interpretations of Genesis have emerged. 3.

The literal interpretation was mainly developed by the Antiochene school. It suggests that Gen. 3 depicts events in the same form as they occurred at the dawn of the existence of the human race. Eden was located at a certain geographical point on the Earth (St. John Chrysostom, Conversations on Genesis, 13, 3; Blessed Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Commentary on Genesis, 26; Theodore of Mopsuestia). Some exegetes of this school believed that man was created immortal, while others, in particular Theodore of Mopsuestia, believed that he could receive immortality only by eating from the fruits of the Tree of Life (which is more consistent with the letter of Scripture; see Gen. 3:22). Rationalistic exegesis also accepts a literal interpretation, but it sees in Gen. 3 kind of etiological legend designed to explain human imperfection. These commentators place the biblical story on a par with other ancient etiological myths.

Allegorical interpretation comes in two forms. Supporters of one theory deny the eventful nature of the legend, seeing in it only an allegorical description of the eternal sinfulness of man. This point of view was outlined by Philo of Alexandria and was developed in modern times (Bultmann, Tillich). Supporters of another theory, without denying that behind the behavior of Gen. 3 there is a certain event, decipher its images using the allegorical method of interpretation, according to which the serpent denotes sensuality, Eden - the bliss of contemplating God, Adam - reason, Eve - feeling, the Tree of Life - good without an admixture of evil, the Tree of Knowledge - good mixed with evil , etc. (Origen, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Blessed Augustine, St. Ambrose of Milan).

Historical-symbolic interpretation is close to allegorical, but to interpret Holy Scripture it uses the system of symbols that existed in the Ancient East. In accordance with this interpretation, the very essence of the Genesis legend. 3 reflects some spiritual event. The figurative concreteness of the tale of the Fall visually, “icon-like” depicts the essence tragic event: the falling away of man from God in the name of self-will. The symbol of the serpent was not chosen by the writer by chance, but due to the fact that for the Old Testament Church the main temptation was the pagan cults of sex and fertility, which had the snake as their emblem. Exegetes explain the symbol of the Tree of Knowledge in different ways. Some consider eating from its fruits as an attempt to experience evil in practice (Vysheslavtsev), others explain this symbol as the establishment of ethical standards independently of God (Lagrange). Since the verb “to know” in the Old Testament has the meaning of “to own,” “to be able to,” “to possess” (Gen. 4:1), and the phrase “good and evil” can be translated as “everything in the world,” the image of the Tree of Knowledge is sometimes interpreted as a symbol of power over the world, but such power that asserts itself independently of God, making its source not His will, but the will of man. That is why the serpent promises people that they will be “like gods.” In this case, the main tendency of the Fall should be seen in primitive magic and in the entire magical worldview.

Many exegetes of the patristic period saw in the biblical image of Adam only a specific individual, the first among people, and interpreted the transmission of sin in genetic terms (that is, as a hereditary disease). However, St. Gregory of Nyssa (On the structure of man, 16) and in a number of liturgical texts, Adam is understood as a corporate personality. With this understanding, both the image of God in Adam and the sin of Adam should be attributed to the entire human race as a single spiritual-physical superpersonality. This is confirmed by the words of the saint. Gregory the Theologian, who wrote that “through the crime of eating the whole Adam fell” (Mysterious Hymns, 8), and the words of the service speaking about the coming of Christ to save Adam. A dissenting opinion was held by those who, following Pelagius, believed that the Fall was only the personal sin of the first man, and all his descendants sin only of their own free will. Words of Genesis 3:17 about the curse of the earth was often understood in the sense that imperfection entered into nature as a result of the Fall of man. At the same time, they referred to the Apostle Paul, who taught that the Fall entailed death (Rom. 5:12). However, the Bible itself’s indications of the serpent as the beginning of evil in creation made it possible to affirm the prehuman origin of imperfection, evil, and death. According to this view, man was involved in an already existing sphere of evil.

In the New Testament, sin occupies no less space than in the Old Testament, and in particular, the fullness of the revelation of what God’s love has done for the victory over sin makes it possible to discern the true meaning of sin and at the same time its place in the general plan of God’s Wisdom.

The creed of the Synoptic Gospels from the very beginning presents Jesus among sinners. For he came for their sake, and not for the sake of the righteous (Mark 2.17). Using expressions usually used by the Jews of that time to remove financial debt. He compares the remission of sins to the removal of a debt (Matthew 6.12; 18.23 ff), which, of course, does not mean: sin is removed mechanically, regardless of the internal state of a person, opening to grace for the renewal of his spirit and heart. Like the prophets and like John the Baptist (Mark 1.4), Jesus preaches conversion, fundamental change spirit, disposing a person to accept God’s mercy, to succumb to its life-giving effect: “The Kingdom of God is near; repent and believe in the Gospel" (Mark 1:15). But to those who refuse to accept the light (Mk 3.29) or believe, like the Pharisee in the parable, that they do not need forgiveness (Lk 18.9ff), Jesus cannot give forgiveness. That is why, like the prophets, He denounces sin wherever there is sin, even among those who consider themselves righteous, since they observe the precepts only of the external law. For sin is inside our heart. He came to “fulfill the law” in its fullness, and not at all to abolish it (Matthew 5.17); a disciple of Jesus cannot be content with “the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees” (5.20); of course, the righteousness preached by Jesus ultimately boils down to the single commandment of love (7.12); but seeing how the Teacher acts, the student gradually learns what it means to love and, on the other hand, what sin is, which is opposed to love. He learns this, in particular, by listening to Jesus, who reveals to him the mercy of God towards the sinner. It is difficult to find a place in the New Testament that shows better than the parable of the Prodigal Son, which is so close to the teaching of the prophets, how sin wounds the love of God and why God cannot forgive a sinner without his repentance. Even more than His words, Jesus reveals God's attitude toward sin through His actions. He not only accepts sinners with the same love and with the same sensitivity as the father in the parable, without stopping before the possible indignation of the witnesses of this mercy, who are just as unable to understand it as the eldest son in the parable. But He also directly fights sin: He is the first to triumph over Satan during temptation; during His public ministry, He already plucks people from that slavery to the devil and sin, which are illness and possession, thereby beginning His service as a Child of Yahweh (Matt 8.16), before “giving His soul as a ransom” (Mk 10.45) and “ to pour out His blood of the New Testament for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26.28).

The Evangelist John speaks not so much about the “forgiveness of sins” by Jesus - although this traditional expression is also known to him (1 John 2.11), but about Christ “taking away the sin of the world” (John 1.29). Behind individual actions, he discerns the mysterious reality that gives rise to them: a vulture hostile to God and His kingdom, to which Christ opposes. This hostility manifests itself primarily specifically in the voluntary rejection of the light. Sin is characterized by the impenetrability of darkness: “The light came into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light; for their deeds were evil” (John 3.19). The sinner resists the light because he is afraid of it, out of fear, “so that his deeds will not be exposed.” He hates it: “Everyone who does evil hates the light” (3.20). This blindness is voluntary and self-righteous, because the sinner does not want to admit it. “If you were blind, you would have no sin. Now you say: we see. Your sin remains."

To such an extent, persistent blindness cannot be explained except by the corrupting influence of Satan. Indeed, sin enslaves a person to Satan: “Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin” (John 8.34). Just as a Christian is the son of God, so a sinner is the son of the devil, who first sinned and does his deeds. Among these cases, John. He especially notes murder and lies: “He was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When someone tells a lie, he says what is characteristic of him, because his father is a liar. He was a murderer, bringing death to people (cf. Wis. 2.24), and also inspiring Cain to kill his brother (1 John 3.12-15); and now he is a murderer, inspiring the Jews to kill the One who tells them the truth: “You seek to kill Me - the Man who told you the truth, and I heard it from God... You do the works of your father... and want to do the lusts of your father yours" (John 8.40-44). Homicide and lies are born of hatred. Regarding the devil, Scripture spoke of envy (Wis 2.24); In. without hesitation he uses the word “hatred”: just as a stubborn unbeliever “hates the light” (John 3.20), so the Jews hate Christ and His Father (15.22), and by the Jews here one should understand the world enslaved by Satan, all who refuse to recognize Christ. And this hatred leads to the killing of the Son of God (8.37). This is the dimension of this sin of the world over which Jesus triumphs. This is possible for him because He Himself is without sin (John 8.46: cf 1 John 3.5), “one” with God His Father (John 10.30), and finally, and perhaps mainly, “love”, for “ God is love” (1 John 4.8): during His life He did not cease to love, and His death was such a deed of love, which is impossible to imagine, it is the “accomplishment” of love (John 15.13; cf. 13.1; 19.30). That is why this death was a victory over the “Prince of this world.” The proof of this is not only that Christ can “receive the life He gave” (John 10.17), but even more so that He includes His disciples in His victory: by accepting Christ and thanks to this becoming a “child of God” (John 1.12), a Christian “does not commit sin,” “because he is born of God.” Jesus “takes away the sin of the world” (John 1.29), “baptizing with the Holy Spirit” (cf. 1.33), i.e. communicating to the world the Spirit, symbolized by the mysterious water flowing from the pierced side of the Crucified One, like the source of which Zechariah spoke and which Ezekiel saw: “and from under the threshold of the Temple water flows” and transforms the banks Dead Sea to a new paradise (Ezek 47.1-12; Rev. Jn 22.2). Of course, a Christian, even one born of God, can fall into sin again (1 John 2.1); but Jesus “is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2.2), and He gave the Spirit to the apostles precisely so that they could “forgive sins” (John 20.22 ff).

The greater abundance of verbal expressions allows Paul to even more accurately distinguish “sin” from “sinful acts”, most often called, in addition to traditional figures of speech, “sins” or misdeeds, which, however, does not in any way detract from the seriousness of these offenses, sometimes conveyed in Russian translated into the word crime. Thus, the sin committed by Adam in paradise, about which it is known what significance the Apostle attributes to it, is alternately called “crime,” “sin,” and “disobedience” (Rom. 5.14). In any case, in Paul's teaching on morality, a sinful act occupies no less place than in the Synoptics, as can be seen from the lists of sins so often found in his epistles. All these sins exclude you from the Kingdom of God, as is sometimes directly stated (1 Cor 6.9; Gal 5.21). Exploring the depth of sinful actions, Paul points to their root cause: they are an expression and external manifestation a force hostile to God and His Kingdom, which the apostle spoke about. John. The mere fact that Paul actually only applies the word sin to it (in the singular) already gives it special relief. The Apostle carefully describes its origin in each of us, then the actions it produces, with accuracy sufficient to outline in basic terms the real theological teaching about sin.

This “power” seems to be personified to some extent, so that sometimes it seems to be identified with the person of Satan, “the god of this age” (2 Cor. 4.4). Sin is still different from it: it is inherent in a sinful person, in his internal state. Introduced into the human race by the disobedience of Adam (Rom 5.12-19), and from here, as if indirectly, into the entire material universe (Rom 8.20; cf. Gen. 3.17), sin entered all people without exception, drawing them all into death, into eternal separation from God, which the rejected experience in hell: without redemption, everyone would form a “condemned mass,” according to the expression of the blessed one. Augustine. Paul describes at length this state of a person “sold to sin” (Rom. 7.14), but still capable of “finding pleasure” in goodness (7.16,22), even “wanting” it (7.15,21) - and this proves , that not everything in him is perverted - but completely incapable of “making it” (7.18), and therefore inevitably doomed to eternal death (7.24), which is the “end”, “completion” of sin (6.21-23).

Such statements sometimes bring charges of exaggeration and pessimism upon the Apostle. The injustice of these accusations is that Paul's statements are not considered in their context: he describes the state of people outside the influence of the grace of Christ; the very course of his proof forces him to do this, since he emphasizes the universality of sin and enslavement to it with the sole purpose of establishing the impotence of the Law and exalting the absolute necessity of the liberating work of Christ. Moreover, Paul recalls the solidarity of all humanity with Adam in order to reveal another, much higher solidarity that unites all humanity with Jesus Christ; according to the thought of God, Jesus Christ, as a contrasting prototype of Adam, is the first (Rom 5.14); and this is tantamount to asserting that the sins of Adam with their consequences were tolerated only because Christ had to triumph over them, and with such excellence that, before expounding the similarities between the first Adam and the last (5.17), Paul carefully notes their differences (5.15). For the victory of Christ over sin seems no less brilliant to Paul than to John. The Christian, justified by faith and baptism (Gal. 3.26), has completely broken with sin (Rom. 6.10); having died to sin, he became a new creature (6.5) with Christ who died and rose again - “a new creation” (2 Cor 5.17).

Gnosticism, which attacked the church in the 2nd century, generally considered matter to be the root of all impurity. Hence the anti-Gnostic fathers, like, for example, Irenaeus, strongly emphasize the idea that man was created completely free and through his own fault lost bliss. However, very early on there is a divergence between the East and the West in constructs on these topics. Western Christianity was more practical in nature, always supported eschatological ideas, thought of the relationship between God and man in the forms of law, and therefore studied sin and its consequences much more than Eastern Christianity. Already Tertullian spoke of the “damage” arising from the original vice. Cyprian goes further. Ambrose is already of the opinion that we all perished in Adam. And Augustine finishes these thoughts: he resurrected Paul’s experiences, his teaching about sin and grace. And it was this Augustine that the Western Church had to accommodate just at the time when it was preparing to assert its dominance over the world of barbarians. A kind of “concatenation of opposites” arose - a combination in the same church of ritual, law, politics, power with a subtle and sublime teaching about sin and grace. The two directions, difficult to connect theoretically, have found practical combination in life. The Church, of course, changed the content of Augustinianism and pushed it into the background. But on the other hand, she always tolerated those who looked at Augustine's sin and grace. Even the Council of Trent stands under this powerful influence: “If anyone does not recognize that the first man, Adam, when the prohibition of God was broken..., immediately lost the holiness and righteousness in which he was established,... and in relation to the body and the soul has undergone a change for the worse, let him be anathema. And at the same time, the practice of confession supported a different order of views. The Middle Ages, depressed by thoughts of sinfulness, thought of God as a punishing Judge. Hence the idea of ​​the importance of merit and satisfaction. In fear of the punishments for sin, the laity naturally thought more about punishments and means of avoiding them than about the removal of sin. Punishment served not so much to reacquire God the Father as to avoid God the Judge. Lutheranism emphasized the dogma of original sin. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession states: “After the fall, instead of morality, evil lust was born to us; after the fall, we, as born from a sinful race, do not fear God. In general, original sin is both the absence of original righteousness and the evil lust that has come to us instead of this righteousness.” The Schmalkaldic members maintain that natural man has no freedom to choose what is good. If we admit the opposite, then Christ died in vain, for there was no sins for which he would have to die, or he would die only for the sake of the body, and not for the sake of the soul.” The Formula of Concord quotes Luther: “I condemn and reject as a great error every doctrine that glorifies our free will and does not appeal to the help and grace of the Savior, for outside Christ sin and death are our lords.”

The Greek-Eastern Church did not have to endure such a bitter struggle over issues of salvation and sin as broke out between Catholicism and Protestantism. It is noteworthy that until the 5th century the doctrine of original sin turned out to be alien to the East. Here religious claims and tasks remain very high and daring for a long time (Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great). This and other circumstances created a lack of certainty in the doctrine of sin. “Sin in itself does not exist, since it was not created by God. Therefore, it is impossible to determine what it consists of,” says the Orthodox Confession (question 16). “In the fall of Adam, man destroyed the perfection of reason and knowledge, and his will bowed more to evil than to good” (question, 24). However, “the will, although it remained intact in relation to the desire for good and evil, however, became in some more inclined towards evil, in others towards good” (question 27).

The Fall deeply suppresses the image of God without distorting it. It is the similarity, the possibility of similarity, that is seriously affected. In Western teaching, “animal man” retains the foundations of a human being after the Fall, although this animal man is deprived of grace. The Greeks believe that although the image has not faded, the perversion of the original relationship between man and grace is so deep that only the miracle of redemption returns man to his “natural” essence. In his fall, man appears to be deprived not of his excess, but of his true nature, which helps to understand the statement of the holy fathers that the Christian soul, by its very essence, is a return to paradise, a desire for the true state of its nature.

The main causes of sin are hidden in the wrong structure of the mind, in the wrong disposition of the feelings and in the wrong direction of the will. All these anomalies indicate a disorder of the soul, determine the presence of the soul in a state of passion and are the cause of sin. In patristic writing, every sin is considered as a manifestation of passion living in a person. With an incorrect structure of the mind, that is, with a vicious view of the world, perceptions, impressions and desires acquire the character of sensual lust and pleasure. An error in terms of speculation leads to an error in terms of practical activity. Practical consciousness that has fallen into error affects feelings and will and is the cause of sin. Saint Isaac the Syrian speaks of the ignition of the body with the fire of lust when looking at objects outside world. At the same time, the mind, designed to restrain, regulate and control the functions of the soul and the lust of the flesh, itself willingly stops in this state, imagines objects of passion, is drawn into the game of passions, and becomes an intemperate, carnal, and indecent mind. St. John Climacus writes: “The cause of passion is feeling, and the misuse of feelings comes from the mind.” Emotional condition a person can also be the cause of sin and affect the intellect. In a state of inappropriate disposition of feelings, for example, in a state of passionate emotional arousal, the mind is deprived of the ability to carry out a realistically correct moral assessment of the situation and control over the actions taken. Saint Isaac the Syrian points to sinful sweetness in the heart - a feeling that permeates the entire nature of a person and makes him a prisoner of sensual passion.

The most serious cause of sin is the willful evil will that deliberately chooses disorder and spiritual damage in one's personal life and in the lives of others. Unlike sensual passion, which seeks temporary satisfaction, embitterment of the will makes the sinner even more difficult and gloomy, since it is a more constant source of disorder and evil. People became subject to sensual passion and prone to evil after committing the ancestral sin, the instrument of which was the devil, therefore it can be considered an indirect cause of all sin. But the devil is not the unconditional cause of sin in the sense that he seems to force the human will to sin - the will remains free and even inviolable. The most that the devil is capable of is to tempt a person to sin by acting on the inner feelings, encouraging a person to think about sinful objects and focus on lusts that promise forbidden pleasures. St. John Cassian the Roman says: “No one can be seduced by the devil, except the one who himself wishes to give him the consent of his will.” Saint Cyril of Alexandria writes: “The devil is able to offer, but is not able to impose our choice on us” - and concludes: “We ourselves choose sin.” Saint Basil the Great sees the source and root of sin in human self-determination. This thought found clear expression in the views of St. Mark the Hermit, expressed in his treatise “On Holy Baptism”: “We must understand that we are forced to commit sin by a reason that lies within ourselves. Consequently, it depends on ourselves whether we listen to the commands of our spirit and know them, whether we follow the path of the flesh or the path of the spirit... for it is in our will to do something or not to do it.”

Priest Maxim Mishchenko

See: Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Edited by Ks. Leon-Dufour. Translation from French. "Kairos", Kyiv, 2003. Pp. 237-238.

See: Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Edited by Ks. Leon-Dufour. Translation from French. "Kairos", Kyiv, 2003. Pp. 238; "Bible Encyclopedia. Guide to the Bible." RBO, 2002. Pp. 144.

Hilarion (Alfeev), abbot. “The sacrament of faith. Introduction to Orthodox Dogmatic Theology". 2nd edition: Klin, 2000.

See also: Alypiy (Kastalsky-Borodin), archimandrite, Isaiah (Belov), archimandrite. "Dogmatic Theology". Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 1997. Pp. 237-241.

See: Plato (Igumnov), archimandrite. "Orthodox Moral Theology". Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 1994. Pp. 129-131.

Etc.) allegorical arbitrariness led to the fact that he himself began to be rejected historical fact the fall of the first people, and the description of the fall was perceived as “a myth, or a symbolic expression of the idea of ​​​​the cultural and historical progress of mankind, rising from the lowest level of complete mental and moral indifference to the ability to distinguish good from evil, truth from error” (Pokrovsky A. The Fall of the Forefathers / / PBE. T. 4. P. 776), or as “a turning point, a critical moment in the history of mankind on the path of its evolution from an animal to a higher state” (The Fall // Myths of the Peoples of the World. M., 1987. T. 1. C .321). Dr. Variants of interpretation of Genesis 3 recognize the historical nature of the biblical story, but do not perceive this story in the usual, modern way. sense of the word. “This is rather a spiritual history... where events of ancient times are conveyed in the language of images, symbols, visual pictures” (Men A., Archpriest Isagogy: Old Testament. M., 2000. P. 104).

The fall of Adam and Eve is a violation of one of the Divine commandments prescribed to the first people in paradise. “And the Lord God made out of the ground every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for food, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” says the biblical story... “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying: From every tree You will eat in the garden, but do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat from it you will die” (Genesis 2:9, 16-17). The writer of everyday life expresses the content of the commandment through the image of a tree, characteristic of the consciousness of ancient man. With its help, as a rule, “general binary semantic oppositions are brought together that serve to describe the basic parameters of the world” or the connection between the heavenly (divine) and the earthly (Toporov V. N. The World Tree // Myths of the Peoples of the World. P. 398-406) . The tree of life, the fruits of which served as “food of immortality,” symbolized the unity of God and man, thanks to which the latter became a communicant eternal life. Human nature in itself did not possess immortality; she could live only with the help of Divine grace, the source of which is God. In its existence, it is not autonomous and can realize itself only by being in unity with God and in communion with Him. Therefore, the symbol of the tree of life appears not only in the first chapters of the book. Being. It finds continuation in another tree - the “tree of the cross”, the fruits of which - the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ - become for Christians the new “food of immortality” and the source of eternal life.

The name of the other tree of paradise - “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” - is lit. translation of ancient Hebrew , where (good and bad, good and evil) is an idiom translated as “all” (for example: “... I cannot transgress the commandment of the Lord to do anything good or bad according to my own will” (Num. 24. 13); “... my lord the king is like an angel of God, and can hear both good and bad” (2 Kings 14.17); “... God will bring every deed into judgment, even everything secret, whether it is good or not. bad" (Ecclesiastes 12:14)). Therefore, the 2nd tree of paradise is the “tree of the knowledge of all things,” or simply “the tree of knowledge.” The prohibition to eat its fruits may cause bewilderment, since everything that God created is “very good” (Gen. 1:31). Accordingly, the tree of knowledge was also “good,” the fruits of which did not contain anything harmful to humans. The symbolic function that the tree performed in relation to man helps to resolve this bewilderment. There are sufficient reasons to perceive this tree symbolically, since in ancient times it often acted as a symbol of knowledge of the universe. However, God does not prohibit learning about the world around us. Moreover, “contemplation of creations” (Rom 1:20) is in direct connection with the knowledge of the Creator Himself. What kind of prohibition are we talking about in this case? The ancient Hebrew helps answer this question. the verb “to know” (), often meaning “to own”, “to be able to”, “to possess” (cf.: “Adam knew () Eve his wife; and she conceived..." - Gen. 4. 1). The commandment forbade not the knowledge of the world, but the unauthorized possession of it, achieved by eating forbidden fruits, which led to man’s usurpation of power over the world, independent of God. With the help of the commandment, a person had to be involved in the process of education, which was necessary for him, for he was only at the beginning of the path of his improvement. On this path, obedience to God as one’s Father not only served as a guarantee of a person’s loyalty to God, but was also an indispensable condition for the only possible comprehensive development of a person called to live not in selfish self-isolation, but in love, communication and unity with God and with people.

The account of the Fall in Genesis 3 begins with a description of the temptation of the serpent addressed to Eve. Most of the fathers and teachers of the Church who commented on the fall of the first people claim that the devil appeared before man in the form of a serpent. Some of them refer to the text of Revelation: “And the great dragon was cast out, that ancient serpent, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, he was cast out to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (Rev 12:9). Regarding the serpent itself, the writer only notes that he “was more cunning than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God created” (Genesis 3.1). As for language as a means of communication, which, according to the biblical text, the serpent used, biblical commentators rightly note that the gift of speech can only belong to a rational being, which the serpent could not be. St. John of Damascus draws attention to the fact that the relationship between man and the animal world before the Fall was more lively, close and relaxed than after it. Using them, snakes, according to the remark of St. John, “as if he was talking to him (that is, to a person - M.I.)” (Ioan. Damasc. De fide orth. II 10).

“And the serpent said to the woman, Did God truly say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” (Genesis 3.1). The first appeal of the devil to man, expressed in a questioning form, shows that the devil chooses different tactics of temptation compared to the one he used when seducing the angels into direct and open rebellion against God. Now he does not call for such an uprising, but tries to deceive people. Eve's answer to the devil's question indicates that the first people were well aware of how they should use the fruits of the trees of paradise (Gen. 3.2-3). At the same time, the addition contained in this answer - “and do not touch them” (i.e., the fruits of the tree of knowledge), which is absent in the commandment itself, raises the suspicion that in the relationship with God of the first people there was already an element of fear . And “he who is afraid,” as the apostle notes. John the Theologian is imperfect in love” (1 John 4:18). The devil does not seek to dispel Eve's fear by using it for the purpose of deception. “And the serpent said to the woman: No, you will not die; but God knows that on the day you eat of them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil” (i.e., knowing everything) (Genesis 3.4-5). The devil’s suggestion is aimed at one goal: to convince the first parents that eating from the tree of knowledge, the fruits of which will give them a new and unlimited ability to possess, can give them complete power over the world, independent of God. The deception was a success, and the temptation took effect. Love for God changes in Eve to lust for the tree. She looks at him enchanted and contemplates in him something that she has never seen before. She saw “that the tree is good for food, and that it is pleasant to the eyes and desirable because it gives knowledge; and she took of its fruit and ate; And she gave it also to her husband, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6). What happened next was what the devil predicted to the first parents in an ironic form: “your eyes will be opened” (Gen. 3.5). Their eyes did open, but only to see their own nakedness. If before the fall the first people contemplated the beauty of their body, because they lived with God - the source of this beauty, then, according to St. Andrew of Crete, having moved away from God (cf.: 1st canon of the Great Canon of Andrew of Crete), they saw how weak and defenseless they were in themselves. The seal of sin made the nature of man dual: without completely losing the gifts of God, man partially retained the beauty of his image and at the same time brought into his nature the ugliness of sin.

In addition to discovering their own nakedness, the ancestors felt other consequences of the sin committed. Their idea of ​​the omniscient God changes, as a result of which, having heard “the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise during the cool of the day,” they hid “between the trees of paradise” (Gen. 3.8). Regarding the anthropomorphism of this verse, St. John Chrysostom remarks: “What are you saying? God walks? Are you going to attribute your feet to Him? No, God does not walk! What do these words mean? He wanted to arouse in them such a feeling of the closeness of God as to plunge them into anxiety, which in fact was the case” (Ioan. Chrysost. In Gen. 17. 1). The words of the Lord addressed to Adam: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3.9), “Who told you that you were naked? have you not eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat?” (Genesis 3.11) - and to Eve: “What have you... done?” (Genesis 3.13), created a favorable precondition for repentance. However, the first people did not take advantage of this opportunity, which further complicated their situation. Eve places responsibility on the serpent (Genesis 3.13), and Adam - on Eve, “whom,” as he deliberately emphasizes, “You gave to me” (Genesis 3.12), thereby indirectly blaming God Himself for what happened. The ancestors, therefore, did not take advantage of repentance, which could have prevented the spread of sin or to some extent reduced its consequences. The Lord God's response to the violation of the commandment by the first people sounds like a sentence determining the punishment for the sin committed (Gen. 3. 14-24). However, it is not such, since its content only reflects the consequences that inevitably arise when the norms of created existence are violated. By committing any sin, a person thereby, according to St. John Chrysostom, punishes himself (Ioan. Chrysost. Ad popul. Antioch. 6. 6).

The divine definition caused by the first sin begins with an appeal to the serpent, through which the devil acted: “...cursed are you above all cattle and above all the beasts of the field; You will go on your belly, and you will eat dust all the days of your life” (Genesis 3:14). St. John Chrysostom foresees the question that inevitably arises in this case: “If the devil gave advice, using a serpent as an instrument, then why was this animal subjected to such punishment.” This bewilderment is resolved by comparing Heavenly Father with a father whose beloved son was killed. “Punishing the murderer of his son,” writes St. John, - (father - M.I.) breaks the knife and sword with which he committed the murder, and breaks them into small pieces.” The “child-loving God,” grieving for the fallen ancestors, does the same and punishes the serpent, who has become “an instrument of the devil’s malice” (Ioan. Chrysost. In Gen. 17.6). Blzh. Augustine believes that God in this case turns not to the serpent, but to the devil and curses him (Aug. De Gen. 36). From the fate of the snake, the writer of everyday life moves on to man and describes his life. fate in conditions of sinful existence. “He (God. - M.I.) said to the woman: I will multiply and multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; in illness you will give birth to children; and your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). The expression “by multiplying I will multiply” used in this verse is not characteristic of Russian. language, the Hebrew literally conveys. . Turns of this kind are characteristic of Biblical Hebrew. They are usually used to emphasize or strengthen the described action, to show its certainty or immutability (cf. Gen. 2.17). Therefore, “by multiplying I will multiply” in Gen. 3.16 can be understood as an indication of the special strength of the suffering of a woman who finds herself in a world lying in evil (cf. 1 John 5.19), and as evidence of a violation of the harmony of human nature, manifested in disorder relations between the sexes and people in general.

In the words of the Lord addressed to Adam, the biblical text describes the consequences that the Fall had for surrounding nature and the relationship between her and the person. Having taken a place in Adam’s soul, the “thorns and thistles” of sin spread throughout the earth (Genesis 3:18). The earth is “cursed” (Gen. 3.17), which means that a person will be forced to earn his own bread “by the sweat of his brow,” that is, to work hard (Gen. 3.19).

In the “skin garments” in which the first people were clothed after the Fall (Gen. 3.21), the exegetical tradition coming from Philo of Alexandria (Philo. De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini. 139) sees a generalized idea of ​​the consequences of G. p. “What we received from the skin of the dumb,” writes St. Gregory, bishop Nyss, is carnal mixture, conception, birth, uncleanness, breasts, food, eruption... old age, illness, death” (Greg. Nyss. Dial. de anima et resurr. // PG. 46. Col. 148). In the interpretation of this concept sschmch. Methodius, bishop Patarsky is more laconic: by dressing the first people in “clothes of leather,” God clothed them with “mortality” (Method. Olymp. De resurrection. 20). ““Robes,” notes V.N. Lossky in this regard, “is our current nature, our rough biological state, so different from the transparent heavenly physicality” (Lossky V. Dogmatic Theology. P. 247).

Man has broken the connection with the source of life, therefore eating from the tree of life as a symbol of immortality from now on becomes unnatural for him: by eating the fruits of immortality, a mortal would only intensify his suffering, transferring it to infinity (cf. Gen. 3.22). Death must put an end to such a life. Divine “punishment educates: for man better death, that is, separation from the tree of life, rather than consolidating its monstrous position in eternity. His very mortality will awaken in him repentance, that is, the possibility new love. But the universe preserved in this way is still not the true world: an order in which there is a place for death remains a catastrophic order” (Lossky V. Dogmatic Theology. P. 253). The first people were expelled from paradise in the hope of the promise of the “seed” of the woman (Gen. 3.15), thanks to Krom, according to the thought of the blessed one. Augustine, a new paradise will appear on earth, that is, the Church (Aug. De Gen. XI 40).

Consequences of the sin of the first people

Due to the genetic unity of the human race, the consequences of genetic history affected not only Adam and Eve, but also their offspring. Therefore, the morbidity, decay and mortality of the human nature of the forefathers, who found themselves in conditions of sinful existence, did not become only their lot: they are inherited by all people, regardless of whether they are righteous or sinners. “Who will be born clean from an unclean person? - asks the rights. Job himself answers: “Not one” (Job 14.4). In New Testament times, this sad fact is confirmed by St. Paul: “...just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men...” (Rom 5:12).

The sin of the first people and its consequences. Augustine called “original sin” - this gave rise to significant differences in the understanding of what Adam and Eve did and what the human race inherited from them. One understanding led to the fact that all people began to attribute the crime of their ancestors as a personal sin, for which they are guilty and for which they bear responsibility. However, this understanding of G. p. is in clear contradiction with Christ. anthropology, according to which a person is charged with guilt only for what he, as an individual, does freely and consciously. Therefore, although the sin of our first parents has an effect direct impact on each person, personal responsibility for him cannot be assigned to anyone other than Adam and Eve themselves.

Supporters of this interpretation rely on the words of Rom 5.12, which ap. Paul concludes: “... because in him all have sinned,” understanding them as teaching about the complicity of all people in the sin of the first created Adam. This is how the blessed one understood this text. Augustine. He repeatedly emphasized that all people were in an embryonic state in Adam: “We were all in him alone, when we were all him alone... We did not yet have a separate existence and a special form in which each of us could live separately; but there was already the nature of the seed from which we were to come” (Aug. De civ. Dei. XIII 14). The sin of the first man is at the same time the sin of each and every one “on the basis of conception and origin (per jure seminationis atque germinationis)” (Aug. Op. imperf. contr. Jul. I 48). Being in the “nature of the seed,” all people, as the blessed one asserted. Augustine, “in Adam... we sinned when all were that one person on the basis of the ability to have offspring invested in his nature” (Aug. De peccat. merit. et remiss. III 7). Using the expression of the prot. Sergius Bulgakov, who in the main provisions accepted the teaching of the Bishop of Hippo about G. p., one can say that for the bl. Augustine, all human hypostases are only “different hypostatic aspects of a certain multi-unit hypostasis of the whole Adam” (Bulgakov S. Bride of the Lamb. P., 1945. P. 202). Error blzh. Augustine is anthropological in nature: the first person, as a hypostasis, is fundamentally different from any other person, while the Orthodox. Anthropology singles out Adam among others. people only because he was the first among them and was born not in the act of birth, but in the act of creation.

However, this interpretation of Rom 5.12 is not the only possible one due to the polysemy of the construction ἐφ᾿ ᾧ used here, which can be understood not only as a combination of a preposition with relative pronoun, i.e. “in him (ἐφή ᾧ) all sinned,” but also as a conjunction introducing a subordinate clause of reason, i.e., “because all sinned” (cf. the use of ἐφ᾿ ᾧ in 2 Cor 5.4 and Philippians 3. 12). This is exactly how Rome 5. 12 was understood. Theodoret, bishop Cyrus (Theodoret. In Rom. II 5. 12), and St. Photius K-Polish (Phot. Ep. 84).

Those who recognize the responsibility of all people for the sin of Adam to substantiate their opinion usually use, in addition to Romans 5. 12 and other biblical texts - Deut. 5. 9, in which God appears as “a jealous God, punishing children for the guilt of the fathers to the third and fourth generation those who hate" Him. However, lit. understanding of this text contradicts another text of the Holy Scripture. Scriptures - 18th chapter. Books of the prophet Ezekiel, which presents two positions on the problem of responsibility for the sin of others: the Jewish one, reflected in the proverb “The fathers ate sour grapes, but the children’s teeth are set on edge” (Ezekiel 18.2), and God Himself, who rebuked the Jews for their erroneous understanding of the consequences of sin. The main provisions of this reproof are expressed with utmost clarity: “...if anyone has a son, who, seeing all the sins of his father that he commits, sees and does not do the like of them... (no. - M.I.) fulfills My commandments and walks according to My commandments, this one will not die for the iniquity of his father; he will be alive. ...You say: “Why does not the son bear the guilt of his father?” Because the son acts lawfully and righteously, keeps all My statutes and fulfills them; he will be alive. The soul that sins, it will die; the son will not bear the guilt of the father, and the father will not bear the guilt of the son; the righteousness of the righteous remains with him, and the iniquity of the wicked remains with him” (Ezek 18:14, 17-20). Following, the text of Deut. 5.9 does not contain letters. sense. This is evidenced by the fact that the text does not speak about all children, but only about those who hate God. In addition, the text mentions the generation from which wicked children come, which gives reason to see in it evidence not of the punishment of children for the sins of their parents, but of the consequences of generational sin (see Art. Sin).

The absence of legal responsibility of descendants for the sins of their ancestors does not mean that each person suffers only due to his own, that is, personal, sins, while remaining absolutely free from spiritual and moral responsibility for the moral state of other people. Humanity is not a mechanism consisting of separate individuals who are not spiritually connected to each other. In the broadest sense of the word, it can be called a single family, since it came from the same ancestors - Adam and Eve, which gives grounds to also call it “the human race”: “From one blood He made the whole human race to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17.26; cf.: Matthew 12.50; 1 John 3.1-2). Characteristic of Christ. anthropology, the idea of ​​the unity of the human race has another basis: people were born (descended) from Adam and in this sense everyone is his children, but at the same time they were reborn by Jesus Christ (cf.: “... who will do the will of the Father My heavenly one, he is My brother, and sister, and mother” - Matthew 12:50) and in this sense are “children of God” (1 John 3:1-2).

Anthropological unity is not limited to the generic principle underlying it. Dr. and at the same time, the more important factor creating human unity is love - the main law of the existence of the created world. This law underlies created existence, because God Himself, who called the world out of non-existence, is Love (1 John 4:16). It is love, and not legal responsibility, that is the main driving force for people of great faith and special fortitude in their boldness to save their fellow men. Such love is limitless: those driven by it are ready to go to the last line. “This people... made themselves a golden god,” says the prophet. Moses, beseeching the Lord, forgive them their sin, and if not, then blot me out of Your book..." (Exodus 32:31-32). A similar grief haunted the apostle. Paul: “... great sorrow for me and unceasing torment of my heart: I myself would like to be excommunicated from Christ for my brothers who are related to me according to the flesh...” (Rom 9. 2-3). Prophet Moses and the ap. Paul is guided not by narrow legal ideas about sin, requiring retribution imposed on descendants, but by bold love for the children of God living in one human body, in which “if one member suffers, all members suffer with it; if one member is glorified, all members rejoice with it” (1 Cor 12:26).

In the history of Christ. The Church knows of cases when individual ascetics or even entire monies, in an effort to help a person free himself from the burden of sin, shared with him the heavy burden of his sins and carried it as their own, begging God to forgive the sinner and help him take the path of spiritual rebirth. The highest Christ. the sacrifice shown in this case also indicates that the problem of sin and the fight against it is solved in such cases not in the categories of law, but through the manifestation of compassionate love. A sinful burden voluntarily accepted by Christ. Ascetics, naturally, did not make them guilty before God. The problem of guilt generally receded into the background, because the main goal was not to remove guilt from the sinner, but to eradicate sin itself. Sin causes double harm to a person: on the one hand, it powerfully subjugates him, making him his slave (John 8.34), and on the other, it inflicts a severe spiritual wound on him. Both of these can lead to the fact that a person who is entrenched in sin, although he wants to break out of its shackles, will practically no longer be able to do this on his own. Only one who is ready to lay down “his life for his friends” (John 15:13) can help him. Seeing the spiritual suffering of a sinner, he shows him, as his brother, compassionate love and provides spiritual assistance, entering into his plight, sharing his pain with him and boldly praying to God for his salvation. According to schema. Zosima (Verkhovsky), “sins and stumblings... are made common in the following way: those who have succeeded... and established... in love, when sick, cry out to the Lord about the sinner and the one who is exhausted: Lord, if you have mercy on him, have mercy; If not, then blot me and him out of the book of life. And again: seek upon us, Lord, his fall; Have mercy on your weak brother! And for this reason, they apply labor to labor and feats to feats, in every possible way... exhausting themselves for their brother’s mistakes, supposedly for their own.” The love of the monks of the monastery for their brother who is weak in spirit evokes in him such strong reciprocal love that he, as the schema notes. Zosima, is ready to lose his own life, “rather than be separated from such lovingly friendly brethren” (Senior councils of some domestic ascetics of piety of the 18th-19th centuries. M., 1913. pp. 292-293).

Patristic teaching on G. p.

The problem of sin, being an integral part of the problem of soteriology, occupies a central place in the patristic heritage. At the same time, its solution, as a rule, begins with a discussion of the biblical legend about G. p. In the context of this legend, the fathers and teachers of the Church reflect on good and evil, on life and death, on the nature of man before and after the Fall, on the consequences of sin in the environment world, etc.

This problem attracted the attention of the first apologists of the Church. Yes, martyr. Justin the Philosopher, contrary to the Hellenistic ideas about the immortality of the soul that were widespread in his time, argued that the soul “if it lives, it lives not because it is life, but because it participates in life” (Iust. Martyr. Dial. 6). As a Christian, he confessed God as the only source of life, in whose communion only all things can live. The soul is no exception in this regard; in itself it is not the source of life, because man possesses it as a gift received from God at his creation. Mch. Justin said almost nothing about the fate of the soul that has lost unity with God. He only asserted that such a soul dies. The dead soul, which nevertheless continues to exist, is not the object of his observation.

Lit.: Yastrebov M. The teaching of the Augsburg Confession and its Apology on original sin. K., 1877; Macarius. Orthodox dogmatic theology. T. 1; Sylvester [Malevansky], bishop. Theology. K., 18983. T. 3; Kremlevsky A. Original sin according to the teachings of the blessed one. Augustine of Ippona. St. Petersburg, 1902; Lyonnet S. De peccato originali: Rom 5. 12-21. R., 1960; Dubarle A. M. The Biblical Doctrine of Original Sin. N. Y., 1964; Schoonenberg P. Man and Sin. Notre Dame (Ind.), 1965; Znosko-Borovsky M., prot. Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Sectarianism. N.Y., 19722. Serg. P., 1992r; Westminster Confession of Faith: 1647-1648. M., 1995; Biffy J. I Believe: Catechism Catholic Church. M., 1996; Calvin J. Instruction in the Christian Faith. M., 1997. T. 1. Book. 1-2; Book of Concord: Confession and Doctrine of the Lutheran Church. [M.]; Duncanville, 1998; Erickson M. Christian theology. St. Petersburg, 1999; Tyshkevich S., priest. Catholic Catechism. Harbin, 1935; Tillich P. Systematic theology. M.; St. Petersburg, 2000. T. 1-2; Christian doctrine. St. Petersburg, 2002.

M. S. Ivanov

In all interpretations of the book "Genesis", which tells about the creation of the world and man, about the fall of man, one can highlight a certain invariant. The authors of interpretations, despite their different positions, are united by a tacit recognition of a certain basis. Let us try to outline the concept of the biblical story generally accepted in the Christian tradition.

God creates the world. Creates a paradise in the middle of the earth. Heaven is a kind of spiritual-material sphere. God creates man in paradise and for life in paradise. Man is created in the image and likeness of God, that is, he has the fullness of goodness. At the same time, man is an infantile being. In the middle of paradise, God plants the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God allows man to eat from everyone tree, except for the fruits of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Man is destined for eternal life in paradise, to remain eternally in the state in which he was created. Man is called to become like God; love for God is based on disinterested naive trust in the Creator. Man is commanded: "...be fruitful and multiply..."(Genesis 1:22).

In general, the purpose of man seems to be completely passive. Let us give a typical example of a description of a person’s mission in patristic literature:

“God, who created us, did not want us to worry and fuss about many things, nor for us to worry and provide for our lives... God wanted us to be as dispassionate as He... God wanted us to be free from cares that have one thing, the work of the angels: to vigilantly and unceasingly sing the praises of the Creator and enjoy His contemplation, and to place our care on God.” (St. John of Damascus).

A number of authors have no doubt that the only task of man on earth is to literally follow the commandment: .

Satan, in the form of a serpent, tempts man, inviting Eve to taste the fruit of the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve violated God's prohibition and ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The sin of the First People lies in disobedience to the Creator, conscious and deliberate opposition of oneself to God. Adam and Eve violated God's command because they wanted to put themselves in God's place and, knowing what there is good and evil, be the sole masters of their own destiny. This is rebellion against God, a refusal to further depend on the One who created them. With the eating of the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve lost the mercy of God, their original chastity, innocence and became sinful.

The nature of sin is usually interpreted in two senses. Some authors claim that The Fall occurred primarily in the area of ​​gender. The sinful fruit awakened the lust of the flesh among the first humans, people learned carnal pleasures and found themselves in captivity. In this tradition, a woman is seen as the source and bearer of an evil principle that tempts human nature itself - male nature. This is the influence of ancient Jewish ideas, formalized in Kabbalah, which says that the fall of Eve consisted of her copulation with the serpent. Among Russian theologians, this tradition is developed by Archpriest. Sergius Bulgakov and Vladimir Lossky, although they have different approaches to other problems.

Other authors believe that the Fall took place in the realm of human knowledge. With eating the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge, man lost his original innocent, holistic contemplation of God. Having lost intuitive, direct knowledge, he fell into the temptation of an analytical, rational division of being. Sinful knowledge separates you from the truth and makes consciousness fragmentary and partial. With the help of such knowledge a person acquires everything O greater power over objects, but loses a direct, deep internal connection with the cosmos. Striving for insatiable intellectual possession leads to the destruction of nature and the enslavement of man. Lev Shestov adhered to a similar position.

Common to both traditions is the belief that the earthly path of humanity is the result of the original sinful fall of the first humans. Through the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge it was revealed to people something that should have been hidden from them forever, and this discovery turned their innocent nature into a sinful one. With original sin, people lost the original chastity with which they were endowed by the Creator.

For violating the Divine prohibition, Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise to earth, where they were forced to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. From a state of innocent bliss they fall into a state of sinfulness and suffering. Instead of a carefree heavenly existence, they are doomed to painful, graceless work. On earth, people become mortal, because God expelled them from paradise for this purpose, so that sinful people would not also eat from the Tree of Life and begin to live forever.

Adam and Eve become the progenitors of all humanity. The souls of people are created by God at the moment of conception. Original sin - the consequence of the Fall of Adam and Eve - extends to all people and is passed on, as it were, by inheritance. The purpose of people on earth is to atone for original sin, to live earthly life in such a way that it opens up the opportunity for the soul, after a person’s earthly death, to return to the heavenly realms - to the original state of innocence in which Adam and Eve were created.

As a supplement to what has been said and an illustration of the generally accepted interpretation, one can cite the article by A.I. Pokrovsky “The Fall of the Forefathers” from the “Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia” (edited by A.P. Lopukhin, St. Petersburg, 1903):

“The sad fact of the fall of the first people... runs like a red thread through the entire history of not only the Old Testament, but also the New Testament religion, being the main node around which the entire drama of world history is concentrated and develops. The real meaning of this simple narrative is quite simple and clear, and can be briefly conveyed in the next few words. The pristine couple enjoyed complete bliss and immortality in paradise. God Himself appeared to them and guided their spiritual and moral development, giving them for this purpose, as well as to test their gratitude to Him and obedience to His holy will, a special, very easy commandment about not eating fruits from one of the many trees of paradise. The devil was jealous of such unperturbed bliss of our first parents and decided to destroy them. For this purpose, he entered the serpent and began a tempting conversation with Eve, in which he first shook her confidence in the immutability of the commandment, then instilled a feeling of mistrust in God, then aroused a proud desire to become equal to God, and, finally, by influencing her external feelings finally inclined her will to break the commandment. Having sinned herself, Eve also carried away her husband Adam. Thus the forefathers of mankind fell, and in their person all their future offspring, that is, the entire human race, fell. The general reason for the fall of our ancestors was, according to the Bible, their abuse of their free will, a more specific – the wife’s criminal desire to leave subordination to God and become equal to Him; Finally, the reason for all this was a temptation inflicted on the woman from the outside, from the devil.”.

Next we will talk about the fact that true meaning events, around which the entire drama of world history is concentrated and develops, it can't be completely simple and clear.

It can be noted that the generally accepted interpretation is full of contradictions that cannot be resolved if one is within the framework of its ideas. Usually these contradictions are not noticed, or attempts to solve them are naive and, as a rule, are of a naturalistic nature.

First of all, there is a complete mixing of spiritual and naturalistic dimensions. The events described are fundamental in existence. We are talking about metaphysical - unearthly, spiritual phenomena and processes, at the same time, the language of interpretation is naturalistic. The destinies of existence as a whole are decided, but everything is described in the images of everyday scenes, private psychological motivations, infantile emotions and passions. General background - environment and tone, manner, character, style of interpretation disproportionate to the tragic event that underlies existence. With this approach, it is unclear how these chamber scenes could define the life of the universe, its meaning, and universal purpose.

To illustrate, we can cite an episode from the interpretation of the Fall by Archpriest. Sergius Bulgakov. This example is all the more characteristic because the brilliant theologian on this issue only decided to repeat the usual view:

“...And instead of stopping the conversation, Eve humiliated herself to talk with the serpent about God and His truth. It wasn't that she was talking to an animal, of course. – on the contrary, in communication with animals there was the sacred advantage of a sinless person. The subject of the conversation was reprehensible, and this fact alone weakened the life-giving connection between Eve and Adam. Deceitfully drawn into the fatal circle of the first separation,– from her husband, Eve became lonely, weak, deprived of his protection. This was Eve's first betrayal. Her second betrayal consisted in falling away from the love of God and the unbelief born from it, which, of course, immediately began to be sought in her own favor.“arguments”.Just by the fact that Eve heard the serpent’s question and answered it, she testified that she was, at least at that moment, outside the love of God, and God for her was only an alien ruler,“owner”, whom she tried to the best of her ability to protect and justify in his course of action. Then the snake, seeing that the victim has fallen into its net, unfolds it more boldly. He is already directly lying... and slandering, attributing to Him (to God) envy of people and fear of cooperation...".

The language of traditional interpretations of the Fall seems to continue the language of the biblical story. But the mythological language of the Bible is one thing, which in everyday images tells about universal and metaphysical events. And another thing is a modern naturalized language that describes empirical phenomena. The interpretation of the biblical story requires theological deepening into the problem. Just as the creation of the Christian Creed required the development of theological categories that were not originally in the New Testament, so the solution to the problems of “creation and the Fall” must be transferred to the plane of theological understanding.

What are the main internal contradictions of the traditional concept? The heavenly state of man is defined as innocent, chaste, infantile, and, at the same time, man is godlike, which means he has the fullness of being, is complete in himself. If a person is incomplete, then he is not godlike, but if he is finally completed, then it is not clear how and where he should develop, what does his growth consist of? The pointing out by some authors that man is created only in the image of God, and that he must acquire the likeness of God himself, does not resolve this contradiction. For none of the concepts characterizes the ontological difference between way And likeness

, and without qualitative differentiation there can be no development from one state to another - there are no growth parameters. In addition, the text of the legend provides little basis for highlighting such a fundamental distinction between these concepts. It's not clear Why should a person strive to transform this world if he got here by accident?

The ban on eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is not fully understood. Why does the Lord impose a completely unmotivated ban on a god-like being, the crown of creation? God deals with man in a manner disproportionate to the status of the relationship between the Creator and His likeness. From the way the motivation for the ban that decides the fate of man and the world is traditionally described, an image of a naive and irresponsible, still insane person, on the one hand, and a capricious, selfish and cruel God, on the other, arises. And this is a bad anthropomorphization - human-likeness, when God and the First Man are judged not by the highest, but by the lowest qualities of human nature.

Within the traditional interpretation the concept of heaven is not understood. On the one hand, everything that was created by God is not only heaven and paradise, but also the earth with all animals and flora, – "very good"(Gen. 1:31). But, on the other hand, their obvious essential opposition to the act of expelling sinful people from heaven to earth remains inexplicable. If heaven is spiritual and material, then what is the nature of earth? What is the fundamental ontological difference between heaven and earth?

Where and where are the original people essentially expelled after the Fall? Is this a transition from one state of being to another - and if so, then from which to which? Or, as many authors argue, man was expelled from paradise, which was literally on earth - somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates? If so, where does paradise disappear from earth after people are expelled? If such an event were possible, changing the face of existence, then it would be such a catastrophic or creative phenomenon that it could not pass without a trace for the cosmic evolution and spiritual knowledge of mankind. Meanwhile, there are no traces of this initial phenomenon either in nature or in the Bible. And where is now the paradise in which the first humans found themselves? What is its nature? How does the eternal paradise of Adam and Eve compare with the paradise to which the souls of the righteous ascend after death? If this is one and the same paradise, then the sought return of people to paradise will not be a return to the original state, for two were expelled - Adam and Eve - but the whole humanity returns.

Thus, in the concept itself there is a premonition of a certain addition of being, in the name of which the creation of the universe takes place. But this is not explicitly stated anywhere, and this intuition is not developed. The idea that the paradise after the end of time is different from the primordial paradise speaks even more about the creative increment of being. Although this idea is not developed, it follows from the interpretation and is not explicitly rejected.

Fulfillment of the commandment be fruitful and multiplyimpossible before the Fall and without it, for the fall of people, according to this same interpretation, consisted in the fact that they learned the method of their own reproduction.

In addition, you can notice some inconsistency of interpretation with the text of the biblical story. Thus, in the text of the tale, the snake is not characterized as an evil force, especially as Satan. Both in the Bible and in the Middle Eastern mythology close to it, the image of a serpent has long denoted a certain ambivalent - dual beginning. It was characterized by the simultaneous manifestation of opposing qualities, connecting good and evil, heavenly and earthly, male and female... The identification of the image of the serpent with evil and the indication in the New Testament contradict: “...be wise as serpents...”(Matt. 10:16).

The biblical legend does not speak definitely about the purpose of man, which is given to him by the traditional interpretation, as if the entire course of history is aimed at returning man to his pristine condition. This is an introduction that violates both the letter and the spirit of the Bible.

It's no secret that from a psychological point of view we are all very different. One is given mathematics, another is given literature, one swims like a fish in water in the world of philosophical abstractions, the other stands firmly on the basis of real things and facts. There are many psychological typologies. One of them is based on the relationship to Existence - to God. Let's consider first partial types that this typology highlights.

Related to contemplatively penetrating type have the experience of a direct encounter with the existence of God. It seems that people of this type are in worldly inaction - there is an illusion of non-action, an external absence of work. However, in fact, a representative of this type is filled with deep inner activity, immersed in the depths of peace, as a result of which he receives revelation.

Those who can be defined as symbolic-transformational type, they go to Existence in an indirect way: they serve the Lord through information (number, letter, number, word) and sign transformation - transition, meaning, symbol, transformation.

People structural-organizational type also go to Existence in an indirect way, but their service is accomplished through matter (the world of things), structure, organization, personal and active orderliness.

And finally, the fourth partial type - energy-educational. Those belonging to this type undergo service through flows, concentration, images, ups, breakthroughs, etc.

In the process of understanding the monuments of the Eastern Christian theological tradition, Russian Orthodox culture (patristic works, lives of saints, biographies of recent ascetics, etc.) holistic types of ontological relationship of personality(connective-collective/complex and initially holistic):

Human connective-collective type chooses an indirectly direct path to Existence, which is carried out in accordance with His plan (and one’s own), circumstances, situation, etc. This type of service is performed through the capabilities and originality of all four or several of the above-mentioned partial types, including their corresponding form, content , structure, sign, symbol, image, substance, information, energy.

Originally integral type defines those whose path to Existence is direct, not divided into separate attributes, signs and definitions, in the original fullness of self-denial “in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit” - integrity. This type presupposes the integrity of service “in the Church - the universal body of Christ” as a life filled with love, about O marriage, salvation.

Partial types are fragments of a certain prototype - an initially integral type. In our opinion, it should be sought in the first man - Adam. The main ontological basis for the definition of Adam as an initially integral type is his creation in the image and likeness of God, about which the Bible speaks: “And God said: Let us make man in Our image [and] in Our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the beasts, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Gen. 1:26).

Let us analyze the concepts of “image” and “similarity”.

Unlike Father Alexander Men, we believe that the concepts of " image" (Heb. Tselem) and " similarity"(Heb. Demuth) are not synonyms. In the Hebrew text, tzelem - image means something permanent, an ontological constant, while demut - likeness is a variable quantity.

On the other hand, “tselem” means “appearance, appearance", and "demut" - "plan, idea, drawing."

Accordingly, if the “tselem” image can be interpreted as a God-given given, then the “similarity” can be interpreted as a given, God’s plan for man. These same meanings are further deepened in the translated Greek terms: eikon (image) and omoioma (similarity), where eikon means “image” (often a natural image), and omoioma is something similar not only externally, but also internally, not only phenomenologically , but also energetically. Let us note that the concept of eikon appeals to integrity, totality, and omoioma - to existential completeness.

In the exegesis of the Church Fathers, these meanings are deepened. In the treatise “On the Constitution of Man” the “image” (eikon) is considered as something given to a person from nature, and “likeness” (omoioma) as that highest ideal, or limit (telos), to which a person should strive.

So, according to Saint Maximus the Confessor, Adam contains the totality of the energies of the Logos, therefore, he was a kind of energetic integrity.

And therefore, we can believe that he combined all four ontological types. We find confirmation of this thought in other Church Fathers. Saint Gregory of Nyssa calls Adam the all-man. In the words of St. Augustine, Adam is “the entire human race” (“totus genus humanorum”), and not only because he is the ancestor of humanity, but also because he represents an initially integral type as the bearer of the image of God, not yet damaged by the Fall.

This idea of ​​the fathers about the pan-humanity of Adam is confirmed by the biblical text. From it we see that Adam is the bearer of the properties of the most different types.

First, it should be noted that the very command to “rule” is associated with management tasks and, therefore, with a structural-organizational type. The manifestation of the structural-organizational type is also visible in the image of Adam, the cultivator of the Garden of Eden: “And the Lord God took the man [whom he had created], and put him in the Garden of Eden, to cultivate it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15).

Adam is also the bearer of the energy-educational type, since he gives names to animals: “The Lord God formed from the earth all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air, and brought [them] to man, to see what he would call them, and so that what he would call them man is every living soul, that was its name. And the man named the names of all the livestock, and the birds of the air, and every beast of the field...” (Genesis 2: 19-20).

According to ancient Eastern thought, giving a name meant, first of all, dominion over someone. However, naming a name implies knowledge of the essence of what is being named and, in a sense, contact with it, and therefore, we have the right to talk here about synergistic activity, which is inherent in the energy-educational type.

Naturally, Adam also belonged to the contemplative-penetrating type, since he listened to Divine commands and contemplated Divine mysteries.

But it still has features of the symbolic-transformational type. This is confirmed by the parable that Adam spoke after the creation of Eve:

“And the man said, Behold, this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she will be called woman, for she was taken from [her] husband” (Gen. 2:23).

We will understand little here if we do not remember that in Sumerian the word “ti” means both “bone” and “life”, and in Hebrew the words “husband” and “wife” come from the same root: “husband” - “ ish", wife - "isha".

Adam speaks this parable, symbolically denoting the connection between husband and wife, the wife's participation in the gift of life, as well as their ontological unity and, therefore, Eve's participation in the original wholeness.

The Church Fathers represented the variety of types united in Adam in the image of his three ministries - royal, priestly and prophetic (St. Gregory the Theologian). As king, Adam was to lead creation to perfection. Like a prophet - to know the will of God and communicate with God. Like a priest - to sanctify creation and sacrifice all of yourself to God. In relation to our classification, we can add that the royal ministry, to a first approximation, corresponds to the structural-organizational type, the priestly and prophetic ministries (each in its own way) are energetic-educational and contemplative-penetrating. The vocation of a priest also implies participation in a symbolic-transformational path. Consequently, both along the line of the biblical text and along the line of patristic exegesis, we come to an understanding of Adam as an initially integral type.

But then the Fall occurs. In his cosmic catastrophe, the original integrity of man is destroyed, including his ontopsychological type.

The descendants of a person of an initially integral type, for the most part, become carriers of attributive types, which are somewhat ontologically flawed.

Here is a biblical account showing the loss of integrity first by Eve and then by Adam:

“The serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God created. And the serpent said to the woman: Did God truly say: You shall not eat from any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent: We can eat fruit from the trees, only from the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God said, do not eat it or touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day that you eat of them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and desirable because it gave knowledge; and she took of its fruit and ate; And she gave it also to her husband, and he ate” (Gen. 3:1-6).

The Serpent carries out its destructive work according to all the rules of provocation and hidden control. First, he engages Eve in dialogue with a clearly exaggerated accusation against God, the very form of the question: “is it real?” - with the caveat that this is supposedly an incredible rumor that needs to be checked. Then, drawing her into the flow of conversation, he, having calmed Eve with positive information (“you will not die”), skillfully pours slander into her ears, presenting God as a greedy envious person (“the Lord God knows”), and ends his speech with a victorious chord: “and you will like gods,” having conducted the last and most important part of the conversation in the key of the triad “positive-negative-positive” (Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis). The serpent skillfully influences all structures of the human personality: the desire for knowledge, the thirst for justice, the instinct for safety.

The loss of integrity begins when the wife enters into dialogue with the tempter: instead of immediately stopping him, she gets carried away by the course of the discussion, experiences the temptation of instrumentality, the illusion that with the means available to her she can lead the erring (as it seems to her) serpent to the truth. Thus, the germs of the sin of vanity appear in a person.

The next important stage of personality destruction is Eve’s energy-resonant experience of the serpent’s slander against God - accusations of His supposed envy, and then - a cardinal temptation for the energy-resonance type: “And you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” Thus, a feeling of jealousy appears in a person and its reverse side is the sin of envy.

After the destruction of the instrumental and energy-resonant side of the single type, a slippage occurs into the lower level of the contemplative-inactive type - into the hedonic type: “And the wife saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eye and desirable because it gives knowledge.” Here a distorted materialistic hierarchy of existence is already being built: first there is rough material hedonism - a feeling of pleasant taste, then a more refined aesthetic hedonism: “and pleasing to the eyes” - and only then, in the background, is the intellectualist thirst for knowledge.

It is not said what the psychological mechanism of Adam’s fall is - probably, due to the ontological unity of the first people, this happened with Adam, as with Eve, in a more or less similar way. Regarding Adam, the only detail that should be noted is that he does not take the fruit himself, as he should have, but receives it from his wife, in a sense submitting to her and becoming dependent on her. Consequently, in Adam the structural-organizational principle is defeated and the hedonistic type triumphs - that is, from a king he turns into a slave.

The motif of slavery is further emphasized by the following detail: “And their eyes were opened, and they saw that they were naked.” Nudity in the Ancient East was a symbol of slavery, defenselessness, captivity and humiliation. A feeling of shame is born in a person, which, however, is experienced not so much as guilt, but as discomfort. This is not accidental, since this reaction is typical for representatives of the hedonistic type. That is why Adam and Eve run and hide from God: “And Adam and his wife hid from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of paradise. And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him: [Adam,] where are you? He said: I heard Your voice in paradise, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. And [God] said: Who told you that you were naked? have you not eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat? Adam said: The wife whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman: Why have you done this? The woman said: The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3: 8-13) .

Adam, who is within the hedonistic type, experiences fear, discomfort and in every possible way avoids responsibility, which he perceives as stress. His very actions - running away from God, and then an arrogant and aggressive response - are attempts to relieve stress, to get away from guilt and exposure to it.

God shows amazing fatherly care and understanding towards Adam by asking the question: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you not eaten from the tree?..” Such a sensitive question, reminiscent of the question of a loving parent to a guilty child or a confessor to a confessor, naturally suggests a positive answer, the possibility of repentance and, consequently, cleansing from sin and the possible restoration of a person. In this matter, God turns to the energy-educational side.

But Adam pushes away the outstretched hand, preferring to remain in an aggressively stressed state. Moreover, he tries to shift responsibility and punishment to someone else - to his wife, and ultimately to God: “The wife you gave me, she gave me from the tree.”

In the same way, the hero of George Orwell’s novel “1984” tried to “buy off” the torture of his beloved, shouting: “Do it to her.”

But if we read the biblical text, we will see that Adam, building an “instrumental” chain of giving” (God, Eve, Adam) in the spirit of simple sophism, ultimately accuses God of giving him fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good . It is no coincidence that Adam forgets about the serpent: from his point of view, if God created the serpent and Eve, then he must bear responsibility for everything that happened with their participation; and he, Adam, is beyond guilt as such. This attitude is characteristic of consumer consciousness, which is closely related to the hedonic type.

Eve’s reaction is much more sober and sincere, “essential”, with an admission of guilt, which is typical for representatives of the energy-educational type: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” That is why it is not Adam, but she, who is given the hope that her seed or offspring (and not Adam) will crush the head of the serpent. As for Adam, firstly, the disintegration of his personality, his original integrity is stated: “You are dust, and to dust you will return.”

And secondly, God, sending suffering and sorrow, extremely limits the possibilities for the development and rooting of the hedonistic type - and at the same time, commanding to work by the sweat of his brow, he posits the possibility of development in Adam of the instrumental or structural-organizational type: “For this, that you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree of which I commanded you, saying: You shall not eat from it; cursed is the ground because of you; you will eat from it in sorrow all the days of your life; She will bring forth thorns and thistles for you; and you will eat the grass of the field; By the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:17-19).

This is how the instrumental-ascetic principle is brought up in a person, and on the other hand, “ leather clothes" - the coarseness of bodily feelings - limit for him the side of life associated with the contemplative and penetrating and partly with the energetic and educational. “Leather vestments,” according to the Fathers of the Church, are given to prevent a person from falling into unhealthy mysticism and communication with the demonic world.

At the same time, for man there is still the possibility of communication with God and the future restoration, which will be accomplished in the God-man Christ, the new Adam, according to His humanity - for He reveals Himself as an initially integral type.