What Happened to Us in Eden? - Psychology of the FallNäide

AN EXERCISE IN COMBINATIONS

We can imagine four possible scenarios:

Adam is not present

• and what is expected of him is care toward her (CASE 1)
• and what is expected of him is leadership over her as an authority (CASE 2)

Adam is present

• and what is expected of him is care toward her (CASE 3)
• and what is expected of him is leadership over her as an authority (CASE 4)

CASE 1: If he were not present, he could not dissuade her or protect her in that moment. Later, however, when she offered him the fruit, he could have responded differently—for example, by interceding or by refusing to eat.

CASE 2: If he had not been there from the start, but leadership was expected of him, then once he learned what had happened, he could have confronted her or led by example by not eating. But that didn’t happen.

In both of these cases, he neither cared for her nor led her. And that failure didn’t depend on being present in the conversation with the serpent. It is also clear that he did not care for or lead himself. It is hard to do so with others when we don’t begin with ourselves.

The added difficulty comes if Adam was present in the conversation, and yet did not do what he was supposedly “assigned” to do as leader or head of the family.

Depending on whether Adam had been given authority over the woman—and whether he was present or not—his actions can be weighed very differently. The implications of this combination are serious for how we understand what happened in Eden. That is why we need to look at it closely.

CASE 3: In this scenario, Adam was present, but each one—man and woman—bore full responsibility for obeying God or not. He could not be accused of a “lack of leadership,” nor she of “rebellion against authority.” She did not care for him by going off on her own, it seems, and he did not care for her by accepting the offer. Both ended up reproducing the same disobedience.

CASE 4: This is the most troubling scenario, because it would mean that Adam abandoned his responsibility even before the woman sinned. That would suggest a prior sin on his part, forcing us to rethink the entire story of Eden. Are we willing to go that far?

We’ll take a closer look…