II.1. The Fall and its consequences. The story of the Fall. Original sin. The first promise of the Savior. Expulsion from paradise. Holy Fathers about the Fall of the First People

The devil was jealous of the heavenly bliss of the first people and planned to deprive them of heavenly life. To do this, he entered the serpent and hid in the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when Eve passed not far from him, the devil began to inspire her to eat fruit from the forbidden tree. He cunningly asked Eve: “Is it true that God did not allow you to eat from any tree in paradise?”

“No,” Eve answered the serpent, “we can eat fruits from all trees, only fruits from the tree that is in the middle of paradise,” God said, “do not eat or touch them, lest you die.”

But the devil began to lie in order to seduce Eve. He said: “No, you will not die; but God knows that if you taste, you yourself will be like gods, and you will know good and evil.”

The seductive, devilish speech of the serpent affected Eve. She looked at the tree and saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes, good for food and gives knowledge; and she wanted to know good and evil. She picked fruit from the forbidden tree and ate; then she gave it to her husband, and he ate.

People succumbed to the temptation of the devil, violated the commandment or will of God - sinned, fell into sin. This is how the fall of people took place.

This first sin of Adam and Eve, or the fall of people, is called original sin, since it was this sin that later became the beginning for all subsequent sins in people.

NOTE: See the Bible in the book. "Genesis": ch. 3, 1-6.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL AND THE PROMISE OF THE SAVIOR

Chapter from the Law of God by Seraphim of Slobodsky

When the first people sinned, they felt ashamed and afraid, as happens to everyone who does wrong. They immediately noticed that they were naked. To cover their nakedness, they sewed clothes for themselves from fig tree leaves, in the form of wide belts. Instead of receiving perfection equal to God's, as they wanted, it turned out the other way around, their minds became darkened, they began to be tormented, and they lost peace of mind.

All this happened because they knew good and evil against the will of God, that is, through sin Sin changed people so much that when they heard the voice of God in paradise, they hid among the trees in fear and shame, immediately forgetting that nothing could be hidden anywhere from the omnipresent and omniscient God. So every sin removes people from God. But God, in His mercy, began to call them to repentance, that is, so that people understand their sin, confess it to the Lord and ask for forgiveness. The Lord asked: “Adam, where are you?” Adam answered: “I heard your voice in paradise and was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid.” God asked again: “Who told you that you were naked? Did you not eat fruit from the tree from which I forbade you to eat?” But Adam said: “The wife you gave me, she gave me fruit and I ate it.” . So Adam began to blame Eve and even God himself, who gave him a wife. And the Lord said to Eve: “What have you done?” But Eve, instead of repenting, answered: “The serpent tempted me, and I ate.” Then the Lord announced the consequences sin they committed. God said to Eve: " You will give birth to children in illness and must obey your husband". Adam said: "Because of your sin, the earth will not be fruitful as before. She will produce thorns and thistles for you. By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread, “that is, you will earn your living through hard labor,” until you return to the land from which you were taken"that is, until you die." For you are dust and to dust you will return". And to the devil, who was hiding in the snake, the main culprit of human sin, he said: " damn you for doing this"... And he said that there would be a struggle between him and people, in which people would remain winners, namely: " The seed of the woman will cut off your head, and you will bruise his heel.", that is, it will come from the wife Descendant - Savior of the World Who will be born of a virgin will defeat the devil and save people, but for this he himself will have to suffer. People accepted this promise or promise of God about the coming of the Savior with faith and joy, because it gave them great consolation. And so that people would not forget this promise of God, God taught people to bring victims. To do this, He commanded to slaughter a calf, lamb or goat and burn them with a prayer for the forgiveness of sins and with faith in the future Savior. Such a sacrifice was a pre-image or prototype of the Savior, Who had to suffer and shed His blood for our sins, that is, with His most pure blood, wash our souls from sin and make them pure, holy, again worthy of heaven. Right there, in paradise, the first sacrifice for the sin of people was made. And God made Adam and Eve clothes from animal skins and clothed them. But since people became sinners, they could no longer live in paradise, and the Lord expelled them from paradise. And the Lord placed a cherub angel with a fiery sword at the entrance to paradise to guard the path to the tree of life. The original sin of Adam and Eve with all its consequences, through natural birth, passed on to all their offspring, that is, to all of humanity - to all of us. That is why we are born sinners and are subject to all the consequences of sin: sorrows, illnesses and death. So, the consequences of the Fall turned out to be enormous and grave. People have lost their heavenly blissful life. The world, darkened by sin, has changed: from then on the earth began to produce crops with difficulty; in the fields, along with good fruits, weeds began to grow; animals began to fear humans, became wild and predatory. Disease, suffering and death appeared. But, most importantly, people, through their sinfulness, lost immediate and direct communication with God, He no longer appeared to them in a visible way, as in paradise, that is, people’s prayer became imperfect. NOTE: see the Bible in the book. "Genesis": ch. 3 , 7-24.

In the Bible, often, on almost every page, it says talks about the reality that we usually callwe suffer from sin. Old Testament expressions related toof this reality are numerous; they usually strongly borrowed from human relationships: omission, lawlessness, rebellion, injustice, etc.; Judaism adds to this "debt" (in the sense debt), and this expression also applies in the New Testament; in an even more general order, a sinner is represented as one "who does evil in the sight of God's"; “righteous” (“saddiq”) is usually contrasted with “evil” (“rasha”). But true nature sin with its wickedness and in all its breadth appears primarily through biblical history; from her we also learn that this revelation about man is at the same time a revelation about God, about His love, which sin resists, and about His mercy, which is manifesteddue to sin; for the history of salvation is nothing else,like the story of God’s tirelessly repeated Creationthe number of attempts to tear a person away from his attachment aversion to sin. Among all the stories of the Old Testament, the story of sin the fall with which the history of mankind opens, already presents a teaching that is unusually rich in its own way content. This is where we need to start in order to understand what sin is, although the word itself has not yet been spoken here.

Adam's sin manifests itself essentially as disobedientshaniye, as an action by which a person consciously and deliberately opposes himself to God, shaya one of His commandments (Gen. 3.3); but deeperthis outward act of rebellion in Scripture the internal act from which it happens: Adam and Eve disobeyed becausethat, succumbing to the serpent’s suggestion, they wanted “to be like gods who know good and evil” (3.5), i.e., according to the most common interpretation is to put oneself in the place of God in order to decide what- good and what is evil; taking your opinion for measure, they claim to be the only ones points of your destiny and control yourself yourself at your own discretion; they refuse depend on the One who created them, pervertingt. arr. relationship that unites man with God.

According to Genesis 2, this relationship was not only in dependence, but also in friendship. Unlike the gods mentioned in ancient myths (cf. Gilga mesh), there was nothing that God would refuseman created “in His image and likeness”(Genesis 1.26 ff); He left nothing for Himself one, 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. A commandment given by God for the good of man (cf. Rom 7:10), seems to them only a means that God used to protect Their advantages, and added to the warning commandments are just lies: “No, you will not die; but God knows that in the day that you eat of it (the fruit of the tree of knowledge) it will be opened your eyes and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3.4 ff.). The man did not trust such a god, who became his rival. The very concept of God turned out to be perverted: the concept of infinitely demon selfish, for perfect, God, having no there is no shortage of anything and can only give, is replaced by the idea of ​​some limited, calculating being, entirely occupied in order to protect himself from his 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 by 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 reign 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 through him, as it were, a 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 in 3.14 sll).

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? What literary genre does Genesis belong to? 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 of the tragic event: man’s falling away 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 view eating 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 this Testament, and especially that the fullness of the revelation about done by the love of God 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 Wisdom.

The creed of the Synoptic Gospels from the very beginning The beginning represents Jesus among sinners. For he came for themand not for the sake of the righteous(Mark 2.17). When using expressions, we usually takeencouraged by the Jews of that time to remove the mate real debt. He compares vacation forgiveness of sins with removal of debt (Matt 6.12; 1 8.23 sll), which of course does not mean:sin is removed mechanically,regardless of the internal statea person who opens himself to grace for the renewal of his spirit and hearts . Like the prophets and like John the Baptist(Mark 1.4), Jesus preachesconversion, indigenous change of spirit , disposing a person to acceptGod's mercy, succumb to its life-giving effect: “The Kingdom of God is near; repent and believe in the Gospel" (Mark 1:15). To those who refuse to accept the light (Mark3.29) or thinks like a Phariseein the parable that does not need forgiveness (Luke 18.9sll), Jesus cannot give forgiveness. That is why, like the prophets, He denounces sin wherever there is sin, even among those who believethemselves righteous because they observe the dictates of the external law only. 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 satisfied with the "right" knowledge of the scribes and Pharisees"(5.20); of course, the righteousness preached by Jesus in the end ultimately comes down to a single commandment about love (7.12); but seeing how the Teacher acts, the student graduallylearns what it means to love and, on the other hand, what is sin that is opposed to love. He'll learn it, in particular, listening Jesus opening up to him sweetlyGod's kindness to the sinner. V NIt is difficult to find a place in the new Testamentshowing better than the parable of the prodigal son, To which is as close to the teaching of the prophets as sin hurtsGod's love and why God cannot forgivesinner without him remorse. Jesus reveals even more through His actions, than in His own words, God's attitude towards sin. He is not only accepts sinners with the same loveand with the same sensitivity as the father in the parable, without stopping in the face of possible indignation workers of this mercy, just as incapable of understanding it as the eldest son in the parable. But He also directly fightssin: He is the firsttriumphs over Satan during temptations; During His public ministry He had alreadypulls people out of that slavery to the devil and sin, which are illness and obsession, thereby beginning His service as a Child of Yahweh (Matt. 8.16), before “giving His soulas a ransom" (Mark 10.45) and "the blood of His New To pour out the covenant for many for the remission of sins” (Mt 26:28).

Evangelist John says not so much about the “remission of sins” by Jesus– although this is traditionalThe expression is also known to him (1 John 2.11), how much about Christ, “who takes away sin peace" ( John 1.29). For individual actions heexpects a mysterious reality that gives rise to them: a vulture hostile to God and His kingdom, towhich Christ opposes. This hostility manifests itself primarily specifically in voluntary rejection of the world. Sin characterized by the impenetrability of darkness: “The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light; for their deeds were evil” (John 3.19). Sinnerresists the light because he is afraid of it, fromfear, “lest his deeds be exposed.” Hehates him: “Everyone who does evil, hatesthe light is coming" (3.20). It's blinding– voluntary andself-righteous, because the sinner does not want to confessin him. “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 no 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 behold, water flows from under the threshold of the Temple” and transforms the shores of the Dead Sea into a new paradise (Ezekiel 47.1 -12; Rev. John 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 deeds,” 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 the Russian translation by 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 in the sinful nature of man an expression and external manifestation of a force hostile to God and His Kingdom, about which the apostle spoke. 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 all it 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 upon the Apostle accusations of exaggeration and pessimism. The injustice of these accusations is that Paul's statements are not considered in their context: he describes the condition 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 by it with the sole purpose of establishing the impotence of the Law and extolling 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 setting forth 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, such as Irenaeus, strongly emphasize the idea that man was created completely free and I lost my bliss due to my guilt. However, very early there is a divergence between the Eastand the West in building on these themes. WesternChristianity was more practicalcharacter, always supported eschatological ideas, thought about the relationship between Godand man in the forms of law and therefore occupying The study of sin and its consequences was much more than that of the East. Already Tertullian spoke of “damage”, arising from the first initial vice. Cyprian goes further. Amv Russia is already of the opinion that we all died inAdam. And Augustine finishes these thoughts toend: he resurrected Paul's experiences, his doctrine of sin and grace. And it was this Augustine that the Western Church had to accommodate. just when she was getting ready assert their dominance over the world of barbarians. WHO niklo original “clutch”opposites" - a combination in oneand the same church of ritual, law, politics, power with a subtle and sublime teaching about sin and grace. Theoretically difficult to connect twopractical directions found in life combination. The Church, of course, changed the content of Augustinianism and pushed it into the background. plan. But on the other hand, she always enduredthose who looked at sin and graceAugustine. Under this powerful influence standseven the Council of Trent: “ If anyone does not admit that he is the first man, Adam, when Bo's ban was violated alive..., immediately lost his holiness and righteousness, in which it was approved, ...and in relation to the body and souls have undergone a change for the worse, that yes will be anathema. And at the same time practicethe story supported a different order of views. Suppressed by thoughts of sinfulness in the Middle Ages God thought of God as a punishing Judge. Fromhere is an idea of ​​the importance of merit and satisfactions. In fear of punishment for sin, the laitynaturally thought more about punishments andmeans to avoid them than about eliminating sin. The punishment served not so much to gain the Father again in God, but rather to avoid God the Judge. Lutheranism is emphasized there was a dogma about original sin. Apology of the Augsburg Confession states: “After the fall, instead of morality, evil lust was innate 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 assert that the natural man is nothas freedom to choose good. If he allows If it is the opposite, then Christ died in vain, for there was no would be the sins for which he had towould die, or would he die only for the sake of the body, and not for the sake of the soul." Formula of consent quotes Luther: “I condemn and reject as a great error every teaching that glorifies our freedom bottom will and not calling for help andgrace of the Savior, for outside of Christ our lords death and death."

The Greek-Eastern Church did not have to endure such an intense struggle over questions of salvation and sin, which flared up between Catholicism and Protestantism. It is noteworthy that until the 5th century for The East turns out to be alien to the doctrine oforiginal sin. Here are religious claims and tasks remain very tall and bold for a long time yim (Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great). This and other circumstances created a shortage to certainty in the doctrine of sin. "Sin itself does not exist in itself, since it was not created by God.Therefore, it is impossible to determine what it is consists,” says the “Orthodox Confession” (question, 16). "In the fall of Adam man destroyedthe perfection of reason and knowledge, and his willturned towards evil rather than good” (question,24). However, “the will, although remained intactin relation to the desire for good and evil, however, has become more inclined towards evil, in others for 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 in the wrong direction of the mind, in the wrong disposition of the feelings and in the wrong direction of the will. All these anomalies point to race structure of the soul, determine the stay of the soul in state of passion and are the cause of sin. In patristic writing, consider every sinappears as a manifestation of the 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 pleasureDenia. An error in speculation leads to an error in planning.practical activities. Practical consciousness that has fallen into error affects the 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 lustflesh, he willingly stops in this state,imagines objects of passion, gets involved in the play of passions,becomes an intemperate, carnal, indecent mind.St. John Climacus writes: “The reason for passion isfeeling, and the misuse of feelings comes from the mind.” A person's emotional state can also because of sin and influence the intellect. In the statein the event of an inappropriate disposition of feelings, for example, in a relationship standing of passionate emotional arousal, whether the mind the ability to carry out realistically correct moral assessment of the situation and control over actions actions taken. Saint Isaac the Syrian points tosinful sweetness in the heart - a feeling that permeates everythinghuman nature and making him a prisoner of the sensual passions.

The most serious cause of sin is intentionalbut an evil will that deliberately chooses disorder andspiritual damage in your personal life and in the lives of others. Unlike sensual passion, which seeks timesgreat satisfaction, embitterment of the will makes a sinner even more heavy and gloomy, since it is a more constant source of disorder and evil. People became susceptible to sensual passion and prone to evil after committing ancestral sin, the instrumentwhich the devil was, therefore he can be considered an indirect cause of all sin. But the devil is not unconditionalthe cause of sin in the sense that it seems to force the human will to sin - the will remains free and even untouchable. The most I can do the devil is to tempt a person to sin by acting oninternal feelings, prompting a person to think about sinfulobjects and focus on desires, which promise forbidden pleasures. St. John Cassian the Roman says: “Neitherwho cannot be deceived by the devil, except the one who himself wishes to give him the consent of his will.”Saint Cyril of Alexandria writes: “Diathe ox is able to offer, but is not able to impose ourchoice” – and concludes: “We choose sin ourselves.” Saint Basil the Great sees the source and root sin in human self-determination. This thought found clear expression in the views of St. Mark the Hermit, expressed in his treatise “On the Holy Baptismnii": "We need to understand what sin makes us dothe reason lies within ourselves. Therefore, from ourselves depends on whether we listen to the dictates of our spirit and learn them, whether we should follow the path of the flesh or the path of the spirit... for in our the will to do something or not to do.”

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.

Men A., archpriest. “Dictionary of bibliology in 2 volumes.” M., 2002. Volume 1. Page 283.

Men A., archpriest. “Dictionary of bibliology in 2 volumes.” M., 2002. Volume 1. Page 284-285.

"Dictionary of Biblical Theology". Edited by Ks. Leon-Dufour. Translation from French. "Kairos", Kyiv, 2003. Pp. 244-246.

"Dictionary of Biblical Theology". Edited by Ks. Leon-Dufour. Translation from French. "Kairos", Kyiv, 2003. Pp. 246-248.

See: "Christianity". Encyclopedia of Efron and Brockhaus. Scientific publishing house "Big Russian Encyclopedia", M., 1993. Pp. 432-433.

Evdokimov P. “Orthodoxy.” BBI, M., 2002. Pp. 130.

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

Chapter 3 of Genesis is entirely devoted to the Fall and its consequences. The mythological (meaning “sacred-symbolic”) language of the ancient legend is not always understandable to contemporary people. They often talk about an apple that came from nowhere, which the wife ate - and she “tasted the fruit”; one also hears that original sin consisted of the first sexual cohabitation, which is forbidden by God, etc. Western medieval fairy tales and heresies in in relation to chapters 1-3 of the books of Genesis, they migrated to accusatory books of atheists of the 19th century. and modern jokers who make fun of things that are not even mentioned in the Bible. But the Bible contains an allegorical description of the greatest drama that happened to man at the dawn of his historical existence.

A snake suddenly appears in paradise. This image means two thoughts at once:

First, evil already existed, before and outside of man;

Secondly, the bearer of this evil, Satan, is just a creation before God, a cunning reptile.

It is noteworthy that in the entire narrative about the creation of the world and the fall of man, there is no direct mention either of the devil or of the initial fall of some of the angels who were drawn into darkness by him. Chapter 1 talks about the abyss, chapter 3 talks about the serpent. According to the Genesis Writer, the main biblical events and problems of salvation lie only on the “God - man” axis. The appearance of a serpent in the Garden of Eden is an echo of the fact that beyond the borders of paradise there is the not yet transformed, “formless” earth, the universe, and beyond its borders there is the same darkness of non-existence. The serpent is the “partisan” of the abyss in paradise. Crawling up to his wife, he cannot penetrate her soul and therefore tries to attract attention to himself: “Did God really say: do not eat from any tree in paradise?” What is typical here is a call to doubt the truth of God (is it real?) and His goodness (prevents us from tasting). Verily, the serpent tempts the wife with logic! She answers him, recalling the commandment she heard from Adam, that only the fruits of that tree should not be eaten by people, lest they die. But for the snake, who already knows all this, what is really important is that his wife managed to hear him and is talking to him. In the next phrase, he already fully reveals himself as a spirit of slander against God: “No, you will not die; but God knows that on the day that you eat of them (the fruits), your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil (i.e. everything in the world). The wife’s fall occurred already at the moment when she did not object to these words. A certain creature of God refutes God and continues to exist calmly, which means one can live like this! She begins to look at God in a new way , He is insincere, He is hiding something. But it turns out that you can also look at the world around you from a different, non-God’s point of view, and not die. And she looks at the terrible tree differently: it is “good for food, pleasant for the eyes and is desirable, because it gives knowledge." These are the very three components of original sin, which the holy Apostle John the Theologian calls “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and pride,” and the ascetic fathers call voluptuousness, love of money and love of glory. What does the serpent promise to man? ? - “You will be like gods.” But didn’t God set the same task for man? “I said: you are gods,” the Psalmist exclaims on behalf of the Creator. And in the New Testament the Lord says even more specifically: “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” - this is the very “likeness” to God. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, developing this thought, boldly say about Christ: “God became Man, so that man could become God.” But the devil’s deception is contained in the word “as” - “like gods.” God calls man to become “a god with God,” a son of God, a partaker of Him. And the serpent seduces with the opportunity to be “a god without God,” his own god, because man has potential power.

Thus, eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which led a person to spiritual catastrophe, means knowing the world outside of God and organizing one’s life in it without God. The spiritual tendency, in which a person strives to place himself at the center of the universe and subjugate all its spiritual and material forces, is called magism in theology. And this trend throughout subsequent history is opposed to the religious trend, in which a person, having placed God at the center of his life and sacrificially serving him, strives to restore lost intimacy (the term “religion” can be interpreted as “reunion”, renewal of unity).

The wife "took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave it to her husband, and he ate. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and... they made aprons for themselves." And before that, “they were both naked, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed.” Adam tastes the same as his wife, because love is not yet broken, they are like undivided Siamese twins. So, they thought that they were gods, but they found out that they were naked. "Nudity" has a very specific meaning. This is a feeling of one’s own smallness, insignificance, insecurity: just a worm, just dust, just a grain of sand on the outskirts of the worlds. To become aware of one's nakedness is to lose one's sense of grace. Before the fall, man does not know about this nakedness and is not afraid, does not know about sin and is not ashamed, but fallen man is familiar with the states of shame and gracelessness. Making “belts” for yourself is a pathetic attempt to cover up “nakedness” and compensate for spiritual loss. The same is said in (3, 8): “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise during the cool of the day, the nearness of the Lord for the author, who lived in the sultry climate of Palestine, is described as a welcome coolness; and Adam and his wife hid from sight Lord God between the trees of paradise." This could be the “tree of science”, “tree of art”, etc.; This is how an attempt is expressed to drown out the ever-growing spiritual anxiety. “And the Lord God called to Adam, and said to him: Adam, where are you?” It’s amazing, it’s not the man of God, but God who seeks the man! The serpent acts brazenly, deceives, seduces, paralyzes the will of the one who promises freedom and does not retreat until he achieves his goal. The Creator, having given man life and peace, giving commandments and warning about danger, requires a trusting relationship and does not control every step of a person, and when the latter makes a mistake, he does not reproach, does not threaten, but fatherly asks: where are you, where are you going, think that you are losing. “He said: I heard Your voice in paradise, and I was afraid. The voice of God was a melody of bliss, and now it is the source of fear - this is where the specific horror of multi-armed deities appears in ancient religions, because I am naked (false repentance, is it really necessary to be afraid of this , to be ashamed), and hid himself. And God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you not eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat?” A direct question requires a direct answer. If Adam had said: yes, this is so, forgive me, then the story would have gone less dramatically. But the first man went through the sinful path to the end. "Adam said: The wife whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate." To him, as the Rev. says in one of his sermons. Simeon the New Theologian should have answered his Creator this way: “O Master, I have truly sinned, breaking your commandment. .. Have mercy on me, God, and forgive me." Adam outwardly speaks the truth, but in fact, instead of repentance, he responds with ingratitude and double accusations: the wife who seduced him - this is how marital unity collapses; God, who gave her - this is how Adam first reaches to Satanism. The wife, in response to a similar question from God, refers to the serpent: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (3, 9-14). “Oh, petrified insensibility! And you, Eve, after you agreed to talk with the serpent, preferred... the commandments of the Lord to his advice and considered it (the serpent) more true than the commandment of God!..” - the Monk Simeon exclaims sadly.

From the last scene we see that both Adam and his wife were to blame for the Fall (Adam behaved much worse in the end), and when it is said that sin entered us through his wife, it is not her particular guilt that is meant, but the mechanism of penetration of original depravity . Due to the fact that ideally “Adam and his wife” are a full-fledged person (the name Eve appears after the Fall and signifies the beginning of disunity), some commentators allegorically interpret Adam as the mind and Eve as the heart of man; That. original sin first struck the sensitive side of the soul, and then the rational side (“outside of God, the mind becomes like an animal and demons” - St. Gregory Palamas).

Generally speaking, in the Bible and Christianity, Adam is not only the first man or the first humanity. The word Adam also means “man in general,” “human genotype.” The Holy Apostle Paul contrasts the Western Christian formulation - “all sin because of Adam’s guilt” with the “genetic” view: “in him (in Adam) all sinned" (Rom. 5:12). That is, we sin “in Adam,” “together with Adam,” “like Adam.” We are all the first, or old Adam. The concept of original sin describes the general depravity of the human race, its fallenness, potential sinfulness; the Fathers of the Church call this “comfortableness to sin.” (But this complacency does not mean the fatal inevitability of committing a sin.)

The further narrative of chapter 3 concerns the curse of the serpent, the condemnation of people and their expulsion from paradise. But what is called exile is the result of the loss of paradise in the spiritual sense, which has already occurred through the fault of man. Disobedience, unrepentance and rejection of God after the Fall led to the fact that the previous life with God was destroyed. Fallen man cannot be in heaven by definition, and not because of the wrath of God.

In (3, 14-15) the Divine curse of the serpent-devil sounds before the whole world. He will crawl on his belly (evil creeps, touches base passions) and always feeds on dust (Adam is spiritualized “dust,” but the food of the devil is completely unspiritual, internally dead people). Some Church Fathers, out of an abundance of love, expressed the opinion that even demons can be saved, but apparently Lucifer, having seduced man, not only transferred the Fall to another level, not only significantly deepened the distortion of the wonderful Divine plan, but also excommunicated himself from the precarious possibility of salvation, those. turned out to be truly cursed. And further: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, ... between your seed and ... her seed; it (in the original - “He”) will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.” Indeed, from now on one of the main tasks of spiritual life will be the struggle of man (the seed of the woman) with all kinds of manifestations of evil (the seed of the serpent) - a struggle to the death. Prophets and righteous people of all times will try to destroy evil (strike the serpent's head), but the devil will successfully find their weak points (cf. "Achilles' heel"). The main “fifth” will, of course, be the mortality and defenselessness of the righteous, and evil will often triumph. But one day the One who will destroy the root of evil will appear (in Slavic this sounds specifically: “the seed of the woman will erase the head of the serpent”). Such a message primarily reflects the ancient hope of humanity for salvation from the power of evil and sin. But in such obvious images (“He,” “the seed of the woman,” “he will strike the head”) the Church could not help but see the first prophecy about Jesus Christ in biblical history. It’s amazing: even before God determines the punishment of Adam and Eve for what they did in paradise, He already pronounces His first Gospel, containing the promise of inevitable salvation! But for God this means giving up the Son on the cross.

The wife's pregnancy is now sorrowful and childbirth painful;

In marriage there is inequality: the husband will dominate the wife;

Impurity and lust entered into love;

The earth (nature) is now “cursed” for man, sick, hostile to him (St. Apostle Paul says that all creation is collectively tormented because of man...);

The “robes of skin” given by God (3, 21) can speak either of a certain immunity or of the coarsening of a person due to a changed climate; labor from a blessed task becomes a painful necessity for obtaining food. The most terrible consequence of original sin is death. It is described at first simply as the cause of life's nonsense: a person, by the sweat of his brow, obtains bread growing from the earth, so that this bread, becoming part of the aging person himself, returns him to the earth from which he was (materially) formed: "earth thou art, and thou shalt return to the earth" (St. John of Damascus, from the requiem service). But verses (3:22-24) explain this topic further: “And the Lord God said: Behold, Adam has become as one of Us... and now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life... and began to live forever. And the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden... and set... Cherubim and a flaming sword (revolving) to guard the way to the tree of life." So, after the Fall, physical immortality became impossible. But this, it turns out, is not the whim of the Creator (atheistic commentators here liked to speculate about God’s envy). Death is not only tragic. If a person who had once chosen evil remained immortal, then this, especially because of man’s weakness in the face of the active pressure and deception of the devil, would inevitably lead to the emergence of a totally rabid world, where people would suffer hopelessly and endlessly, i.e. to victory the depths above God's creation. Death becomes that natural limit that limits in time any evil phenomenon, which is no longer omnipotent, but for the person himself means the most important life milestone. Physical death does not mean the end of existence, but is a symbol and warning about the “second death” - spiritual. If the first death is a temporary separation of soul and body, then the second means the eternal separation of the soul and God. Death turns out to be the final argument in favor of faith and repentance. Truly, “death has been established with grace” (St. John Chrysostom).

Sins, illnesses, suffering - all these are consequences of mortality. The Fathers of the Church say that after the Fall the very nature of man changed. In particular, the actions of the mind, will and feelings, as well as body and soul among themselves, have lost their former harmonious unity. In this regard, asceticism speaks of the emergence of mental and physical passions - deep-seated painful complexes.

Read a verbatim summary (audio transcript) of Professor A. I. Osipov’s lecture.
(5th year MDS, November 5, 2012) Download mp3 from the official website

12. About the Fall of Man

Spirituality of Man Before the Fall.

Man in his primordial state was not infected with passions. Nothing arose in his soul that would contradict the will of God, contradict his nature, God-created nature, God-like. He was the image of God, pure, unsullied by sin. This is the first.

Second. He was not just a soul, but a soul and a body. His very body and flesh were spiritual. What does it mean? Before the Fall of man, not only the soul, but also the body itself was spiritual. What is the spiritual body? A non-spiritual body cannot walk on water - it will drown right away. Remember, Peter tried, poor thing, - and then, - Ay, God save me, I’m drowning! But we know from the history of the Church that there were many such cases: the same Mary of Egypt crossed the Jordan, for example. For Christ, when He resurrected, there were no barriers. The spiritual body has properties that we do not have now, since everything with us is sinful.

So, before the Fall, the first people had a spiritual body, not just a soul. Ephraim the Syrian writes: “Their robes are light, their faces are radiance. Judging by the name of paradise, one might think that it is earthly, but in its power it is spiritual and pure. And the spirits have the same names, but the Holy [spirit] is different from the unclean. The heavenly fragrance satisfies without bread, the breath of life serves as drink. Bodies containing blood and moisture there attain a purity equal to that of the soul itself. There the flesh rises to the level of souls, the soul rises to the level of spirit. They were not ashamed because they were clothed with glory - heavenly clothing. God did not make man mortal, but he did not create him immortal either.”

We can observe the primordial state of man by the state of the flesh of the risen Christ. This is precisely the state in which primordial man was.

The Necessity of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

Why did God plant the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? The father will not leave matches for the child in the house, especially knowing that the child, of course, will take these matches and begin to set fire to everything. What is it here? God planted a tree whose fruit He knew.

Firstly, it is quite understandable that the father hides the matches; he would never have brought these matches home if he did not need them. God specially planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Secondly, he warned the person. Thirdly, God knew perfectly well that the fruit would be plucked. He knew, he planted it, he warned – that is, the situation is completely different. These are not matches, this is something else. What is this different?

Speaking about the first man, it must be said that the first man, before the Fall, not only did not know what evil was, but also did not know what good was. When is goodness assessed? Only when we see what evil is. There is a wise thought: what we have, we don’t keep, and when we lose it, we cry. Only when we have lost do we cry and understand what good we had, what good we had. A healthy person looks at a sick person and cannot understand anything. The young man looks at the old man - how can it be possible to walk like this, bent over, and even with sticks in his hands, and even just barely, and hurting everyone in the world - nothing is clear how this can be.

This is a psychological moment that is present in a person: without knowing evil, we cannot appreciate good, or even understand that it is good. A healthy person cannot understand what a disease is if he has never been sick. So here, the first people did not know what good was, because they did not know what evil was. They found out only later.

So, God planted this tree on purpose. That is, this tree had a direct positive meaning for humans. Which one? A person has sinned - so what? Expelled from paradise, and this terrible history of mankind began. What is the positive value? Without knowing evil, we cannot appreciate good - this is the key to understanding this fact. Man was called to a godlike state, but in order to receive this state, or rather, to appreciate this state, he must know who he is, on his own, without God.

Remember, having eaten the fruit, you hid from God. God himself walks around paradise: “Adam, where are you?” These images are very beautiful, wonderful, they express the essence! "Adam, where are you?" - hid from God, just as we hide from God, from our conscience, when we violate what our conscience directly speaks of, directly protests.

Man didn’t even imagine, didn’t know, and couldn’t know who he was without God’s help. Human nature was in direct, closest communication with God. Not by external communication, but by spiritual communication, a person is permeated with this spiritual spirit. Man, it turns out, was already by nature, to some extent already God-human, such is his nature, then his nature could be normal, not having death, not having any undue deviations, being in this spiritual unity with God. It was natural human condition.

This tree, this eating of the fruit, revealed to man, firstly, what evil is. Evil is being outside of God, without God. God is being. And suddenly the person fell out of the sphere of this existence. Of course, he didn’t fall out completely, but he lost his spiritual involvement with God.

As a result of the Fall, man fell out of the atmosphere of God's spiritual influence. To what extent did it fall out? The Holy Fathers say that this is not about the fact that he completely lost his free will - no. He didn't lose his freedom. The image of God remained in man, but his mind, his will, his feelings, his body turned out to be distorted. All these parameters turned out to be distorted and damaged. And we see this damage constantly, at every step: how can we run after miracles and forget about what is going on in our souls.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not the matches of the father, but a means through which only man, having known evil, having learned what it is, that is, having known who he is, departed from God, understood it, seen it, realized it, voluntarily, freely , turn to God. Without knowing the bitter, you cannot appreciate the sweet. The man was free, God warned him: look, you will die. And no violence, no violation of free will: look, man. He freely chose this path. Also freely, without the slightest violence on the part of God, he was called, having understood the misfortune of his condition, to turn to Him.

The meaning of a person’s entire earthly life from first to last is nothing more than the knowledge of evil and good. Through the knowledge of evil, the knowledge of good, by good meaning the need for unity with God, with the source of all good.

We, possessing freedom and reason, it turns out, we cannot, without getting burned on milk, not blow on the water. Do you know who we are? There are some by nature, they die as children. They will apparently be able to take advantage of the experience of other people and accept the good of the Kingdom of God that is promised to every person, without harm to themselves.

The pride of the first people is the root of original sin

If we were now given all the blessings of the Kingdom of God - everything, do you know what would happen? Revolution in the Kingdom of God! Which? Exactly the same as what happened to the first people. Which one? “You will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The Hebrew idiom “knowledge of good and evil” means knowledge of all things. Just as God knows everything - and you will know everything.

What is knowledge of everything? This means complete power, complete domination. What passion is there - the search for complete power? - pride.

We are constantly convinced with amazement, with chagrin, with indignation, with condemnation when we see that a little man, raised one step, is already beginning to crush other people under himself. And if it’s two steps, or three – oh my God! Run like fire!

This is the original root of sin that is present in us - power, domination. Knowledge of good and evil, knowledge of everything and dominion over everything - it turns out that this is what it is, what kind of sin it was. Man saw himself as the master of the entire created world. Remember, God brought everything created and man gave names to everything that exists. Is it clear what called names are? Naming names has been a sign of power since slave times.

The man saw himself as the ruler of this world and could not stand it. I saw my power, my greatness, my glory in this created world. I saw this, and, poor thing, I still didn’t know who he was without unity with God. This is what happened to the man. This is the temptation of power, domination. This is the most terrible thing that lives in us. Why do all the holy fathers unanimously, the Holy Scripture itself says: God opposes the proud.

Pride is the root. How important it is to catch this in yourself and suppress it, avoid this nastiness, your superiority. How often, when we see ourselves a little higher than others, we begin to go crazy. If only they thought - how many people are taller than me and have this, that, and that?

This is the most terrible temptation that will engulf and defeat the one we talked about - the Antichrist. He will see that there is no one else who would possess everything that he possesses: strength, power, dominion, and the creation of miracles and signs. He has no equal. Here, poor thing, I got caught, poor thing! He got caught and thought he was a god.

So that's why God planted this tree. Without the knowledge of evil and good, man could never appreciate the good that God is. Just as a healthy person does not value his health and takes it for granted, so here, without tasting evil, a person could not accept the Kingdom of God as it should, he would become proud. And even if he had stayed, if God had left him with his power, he would have become proud. This wild idea of ​​knowledge of everything and dominion over everything (I am the master, not you, I am God, and I no longer need you, God) led to a confrontation between man and God.

This is what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is. This is a terrible temptation that has come into the human soul. And he succumbed to it. But why did he succumb to it? He didn't know what evil was, he didn't know who he was without God. That is why his fall from grace did not turn out to be absolutely radical, irrevocable - no. Unknowingly this happened. But this ignorance, if you like, turned out to be blessed, because through it we, Adam and everyone who finds themselves in the elements of this world, continuously learn good and evil. We continually experience it in ourselves and in others and in all of humanity. And this knowledge will ultimately give humanity the opportunity to accept God. Having seen that God is only love, there is no violence, only love and nothing more. This is how true acceptance of God and salvation will occur.

This is very important for understanding what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is and why it was planted.

Damage to human nature as a result of the Fall

What happened to human nature after the Fall? The Holy Fathers here, expressing themselves differently, say, in principle, the same thing. The first thing I want to draw your attention to is that the holy fathers even talk about damage to the image of God, about damage to nature. Other fathers say: no, nature cannot be damaged, the image of God cannot be distorted. What are we talking about here? About different ways of expressing what happened to a person. What happened to him? - this is very important.

What does patristic thought say? This was expressed especially well by St. Maximus the Confessor and a number of fathers. In this case, what is important is what all fathers agree on. The man turned out to be mortal. Before the Fall, he, being in an immortal state, was potentially capable of death. Potentially - this means that having sinned, he becomes mortal. While there, he was immortal. Having sinned, he becomes mortal.

So, the first and most difficult thing: a person becomes mortal. Maximus the Confessor says: “Mortality, perishability...” By perishability we mean all the processes that occur with our body and which are obvious to everyone. We see how a person changes from childhood to old age. Look at the portraits of a cute child, a young girl, a boy, and see what happens in old age: beyond recognition. Corruption is a gradual process of dying.

The third thing that Maximus the Confessor calls is the emergence in man of so-called sinless passions, or, as elsewhere, blameless passions.

Impeccable Passions

In this case the word passion used in an etymological meaning, that is, from the word suffering. If before this a person could not even have suffering, the flesh was even spiritual, and nothing could cause him suffering, then from now on it began! Already the fear of God, already an attempt to hide from Him, they already saw that they were naked! Let's quickly get dressed! Next comes hunger, cold, and the need for food and nutrition, temperature. That is, the person found himself surrounded on all sides. And the slightest change in the conditions of his existence brings him suffering. The animal world itself rebelled against man. Man was the absolute master, here he had to defend himself and avoid.

This is impeccable passion. Blameless means not sinful. There is no sin in the fact that we feel cold, hunger, thirst. Because people want to get married, there is no sin in that.

Sin is a violation of one's nature

Sin occurs when we cross moral boundaries. And instead of eating, gluttony begins, instead of drinking, drunkenness begins. There are some reasonable needs for nature, natural needs for nature, and there is something that goes beyond these reasonable limits. In religious language this is called sin, but let us translate it into ordinary human language. It turns out that when a person crosses the boundaries of natural use, he begins to do unnatural things. What is unnatural? Nature is nature, nature is my state. It turns out that I am starting to fight against myself.

What is bingeing - what is it, you need to ask any doctors - and so we know! Drunkenness – what is it? – natural or unnatural? - punishes himself. That's what sin is.

This is very important for us now. Sin is not a violation of God's law - God gave us laws, I broke them, now wait, how many lashes will they give you: 10, 20, 40? No! Sin is an unnatural act against one’s nature, one’s nature.

Nature is my nature, I start cutting, stabbing, frying or freezing myself. Oh, how sweet this is! This, it turns out, is what the passion that has arisen is.

Passion here and in another sense. It turns out that a person’s will has weakened, he has ceased to be able not to violate the laws of his human nature. Soreness struck him. Sin is an unnatural phenomenon.

The rejection of God by the first people led to irreversible consequences

So, mortality, corruption and irreproachable passion - this is what arose in man. Moreover, irreversible processes have occurred. It started with the first couple Adam and Eve. If you want, processes have taken place, of a genetic order, irreversible.

I have to draw this image. A diver goes under the water, he has a hose through which air is supplied to him. In the Red Sea he admires the beautiful fish and swims in this oasis of beauty. And suddenly he received a command from above: Get up, that’s enough! He: it’s me, to get up from here - uh, no! He grabs the cutlass and cuts off this wire and hose. What's going on, he can't breathe now! That's it, he dies! They pulled the poor thing out, pumped him out, but irreversible processes had already occurred. He seems to be both alive and not alive, dead and you won’t understand what.

Now, irreversible processes have occurred in man. Resulting in? He cut off the wire that connected him to God. For man does not exist on his own, but he exists only in unity with God. We are now in an unnatural state. We are cut off from God, we are in the state of what happened there as a result of the Fall.

So, passion, decay and mortality have become the lot of all human existence. But, I repeat once again, not reproachful, not sinful passion. The soul by nature can be dispassionate if it does not sin. But the fact of the matter is that a person violated the moral norms, the spiritual norms of his existence, therefore, in addition to these changes - decay, passion and mortality, something else happened in him, changes of the spiritual and moral order occurred. There was a distortion of the human soul itself, which affected the mind, the heart, and the body - it affected everything.

John Chrysostom says that it was sin – Adam’s disobedience – that was the cause of general damage. Basil the Great says: “The Lord came to unite human nature, which had been torn into thousands of parts. The man has fallen into discord." Maximus the Confessor writes: “Man must learn what the law of nature is and what the tyranny of passions is. Not naturally, but randomly invading him due to his free consent. And he must preserve this law of nature, keeping it in tune with natural activity, and expel the tyranny of passions from his will and by the power of reason preserve his nature immaculate, in itself pure, untainted and free from hatred and discord.” [Interpretation of the Lord's Prayer]

So, we have looked at what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is, for what reason such a perversion of our nature happened to man, and what, ultimately, means this state in which we find ourselves. This is necessary in order to understand what Christ did.

To understand what Christ did, we turn to the question of the Incarnation. After all, He came to save man, that is, human nature. What could God do with man? After all, to sin or not to sin is his freedom, and God does not concern freedom. God does not use any violence towards man in spiritual and moral terms. This means that we may not be talking about his freedom, but about the state of nature. How a person sinned is a moral act, and changing nature is an act that in itself cannot be assessed as moral or immoral - it is simply its state.

What is sin? The Lord came to save from sin. But God does not violate freedom. How can He save from sin? This is what I want or don’t want. I am free. Freedom remained after the Fall. What are we talking about then?

Personal sin is committed deliberately

Word sin one thing, but it has several meanings. Here are the values ​​to keep in mind. The first thing that needs to be said is about personal sin. Personal sin is entirely determined by a person’s freedom; it depends on whether to commit it or not to commit it. But here, too, not everything is so simple. If I am used to drinking, and although I know that it is a sin, I can no longer help but drink. How am I here: do I do it freely or not?

It turns out that this is the kind of situation. There is a stage of sin in which I am free. So far I am not at all attracted to wine. But I know, I see what happens to people if they start abusing. And here I can completely freely allow myself or not to drink more or less. I am free. But if I still freely surrender to this desire to drink more and more, I become a slave. And then I am no longer free. This is what is already called passion. Why is it called passion? Not only because I am irresistibly attracted to him, but also because it brings me suffering. The wine of joy begins to bring suffering. And this is certainly true, like any passion and any sin.

So, personal sin is a sin that is committed freely, consciously. And when a person does not sin freely, this is a sign that he has violated before, and therefore he is responsible for his passions. Not because now he can’t, but because before, when he could, he didn’t do anything.

On discerning the severity of personal sins

So, this is the first and very important characteristic - personal sin. Moreover, this personal sin, again, can be purely personal. I judge someone inside myself, I envy someone - no one sees it. I am becoming greedy inside myself, no one can see this yet. This is one sin, one category, one level.

This same sin becomes immeasurably more serious when I commit it publicly, when I infect others. Christ spoke about this with such force that it becomes scary. It is better for such a person who seduces another or others to have a millstone hung around his neck and drowned in the depths of the sea. Wow, what a burden! It’s one thing when I sin within myself, and it’s quite another thing when I involve other people in this sin.

Now you understand how much the responsibility of each person increases when he reaches a higher level of social, political, church life, when he becomes a priest, bishop, and so on. How much responsibility increases! It’s not for nothing that they say: “Look, priest, and look how he behaves! Or the bishop, and how he behaves!” It seems, on the one hand, so what, what’s your business, he’s the same person. In fact, we feel in our gut that what is being committed here is not just a personal sin, but a personal sin here, but squared. You are already seducing many others! This causes severe wounds to many people.

Therefore, you see, personal sin turns out to have different levels. But not only in this direction, but also in another. The same sin that I commit in myself can have different degrees of severity. I can judge in different ways. I have dislike for some people, and anger for others.

Also in external terms. I can deceive just like that, in a trivial way. Saw? - Saw. But in fact, I didn’t see it – it’s a trifle. But I can deceive you in such a way that I lead a person into a terrible storm of life, into a real tragedy. I can let a person down so that I don’t know what will happen to him, having deceived him. Promising and not delivering. And there is only one sin - deceiving.

“Father, I cheated.” “You cheated?!” And a man committed suicide because of you!” Wow, he was “deceiving”! This, my dear, was not just deceiving. You see how different the degree of sin in a person can be. One and the same, but what's the difference? - colossal.

So, personal sins can vary in severity. Then, “public” sins can be very dangerous: I offend many. Church sins, when a person staying in the church violates those rules of life and seduces not only someone outside, but can even damage the church itself. Look, there's a split. When a few people imagine themselves above everyone else and go against everyone, declaring that they understand Orthodoxy better than everyone else. This is what concerns personal sins.

The Holy Fathers have very important, interesting thoughts on this issue. I just want to say that personal sin is the source of other sins that are not sin. How do you like it? This is what the situation is like. I already told you that there is only one word - sin, but what is hidden behind it is something else. So, when I said that it is not a sin, then what are we talking about?

Original sin

Firstly, about the so-called original sin. Not the ancestral sin, that is, the one that the ancestors committed when they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but about what befell all of humanity, starting with these first people. So, here original sin is called sin. What it is? This is damage to human nature. This is called sin, but what kind? - not a sin for us, we are born with it, we are not guilty of this, we have nothing to do with it. But this original sin was the result of what? - Adam's personal sin.