That’s a very contrived unnatural old Jewish story Anthony. What does it have to do with reality?
I guess part of the equation would be just where the lines of historical and mythological are drawn for you. When you mention Adam, and I mention early man, I’m coming from the view that before Adam was even here there was already other men and that before our species was even here there was other species in our genus and maybe a species or two before our genus was here was already capable of fairly complex thoughts like Australopithecus. I am under the impression that out of them arose the genus Paranthropus which though roughly half the brain size may have been similar. They believe that H. Erectus also haunted and killed them and ate them. Early human species may have eaten each other. Which is crazy kind of.
But if you bypass all of that and see it as only Sapiens was human and that the first was Adam then we will be on a impossible discussion since we don’t see eye to eye on to many things.
There are others in here thought that take it even less literal. I view it as sort of a historical fiction about a couple being called out of the many and god making a covenant with them.
Some believe the story is entirely a metaphor for humanity and that they never existed as individuals at all.
I think you might need to be more clear about your definitions, because you are using words that mean different things to different people and in different contexts in the Bible.
It sounds like you are using sin here in the sense of “sinful nature.”
Others are using it as acts of disobedience with reference to God’s revealed law/will/covenant.
Others are using it to mean general immorality (taking life, greed, violence, etc.)
I think animalistic propensity for self-preservation has always existed in nature, and humans are a part of nature. But at the point where humans evolved the capacities for moral reasoning and moral accountability as well as intimate relationship with God and other humans, they had the opportunity to rise above their animal instincts. They also had the capacity to commit sins that are not a part of the general amoral struggle for survival of the animal world that entails violence and selfishness. Making idols, taking the LORD’s name in vain, breaking the Sabbath, coveting, adultery, lying, and dishonoring parents are sins that only apply to human society where worship rituals, monogamous sexual relationships and strong family bonds, property rights, and human language exist.
So I think we need to make a distinction between animal instincts for self-preservation and survival and human sinful propensities toward pride, idolatry and deceit, which is the true heart of sin in the Bible. In the same way, we draw a line between good animal instincts like mothers caring for their young and fathers protecting their mates and offspring from predators and uniquely human capacities to fulfil God’s moral calling by truly loving God and others, a capacity which animals do not have.
The doctrine of total depravity is a human construct based on certain interpretations and extrapolations of the Bible’s story. I think for a lot of church history theologians have been most interested in extracting highly abstract Truth from the stories and constructing coherent theological systems. These systems have their uses and gifts to us, but I think at many points the stories have been forced to serve the systems that have been imposed on them, to the detriment of our ability to hear the Truth of the story.
The Bible is not a straightforward exposition of a theological system, it’s the story of God interacting with his beloved people to bring them to himself and join him in his mission of bringing peace and justice to the world. The story says the world was created good, but it still needs to be ruled and brought under the authority of God’s kingdom. So I don’t think it’s right that there was this perfect state of affairs that fell into corruption because of sin and our mission is to bring things back to “before sin.” I think sin was corporate humanity’s rejection of God’s calling to use their unique capacities to participate in God’s mission as his faithful representatives and their rebellion against him as Father and King. I think sin in the Bible is always relational (against God, God’s law, God’s children), not some abstract violation of an abstract principle and not just general lack of goodness or morality.
The stories we have teach us where we are (separated from God in our sin and rebellion) and give us a picture of where we could be in terms of our relationship with God (forgiven and welcomed as God’s own beloved children). That’s what they are for. They are much less concerned with clarifying how sin “works” in some kind of precise sense. All of our attempts to figure out the hows and whens and whys of the very first human sin, the creation and transmission of sinful natures, the extent to which hypothetical humans of the past could resist sin, and God’s foreknowledge of how everything would play out-- these are all peripheral speculations that aren’t central to the story we’ve been given.
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Bible scholars today think “created in the image of God” is 1) a corporate designation of humanity, not a statement about the intrinsic qualities or capacities of each individual human, and 2) a calling.
So to say humans were created in God’s image (probably better in English to say “created to be God’s image”) is to not to say they were created with some god-like qualities (i.e. holiness, sinlessness), but rather to say they were called to represent God and join him in his mission of ruling the world with love and justice. They are capable of faithful ambassadorship and that is what they are specifically called to. “Image of God” speaks to humanity’s purpose, not their essence.
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My view is close to this but slightly different…
The Fall was a real event which corrupted the inheritance of mind we had from God. Communication from God gave birth to the human mind and our humanity with a number of notions (peculiar to the animal kingdom) such as (some types of) love, justice, and the idea that we are persons with some connection to the divine. But this inheritance was corrupted with self-destructive habits which severely damage our potentiality – reducing our awareness, free will, and the ability to learn from our mistakes. So of course this means A&E are not the beginning of the species but only chosen for communication from God, not so different from others in the Bible like Abraham and Moses – those who heard a voice and believed that God had spoken to them.
Yep, at least as much as chimpanzees and probably a great deal more. After all, we parted from them when we went from tree dwelling eaters of fruit and scavengers to long distance running hunters. But it is our evolution adapting us to the use of language which most interested God for it enabled communication with God. The life of the mind was so much greater than biological life with the ability to learn and develop thousands of times faster, thus there was some hope that we could overcome the biological instincts with the devotion to higher ideals.
So the problem with sin is certainly not the origin of our capability for violence, but our bad habits did make it more difficult to leave such things behind, and the development of the human mind and civilization has taken a great deal longer than was originally hoped.
Why do you think that? When did this occur?
Sadly, every day.
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I think that is what the Genesis story teaches in a typological, metaphorical way.
I think that the calling to stewardship and co-regency is clear in Gen 1 and 2.
We don’t know when this occurred “for the first time” or whether the story intends to generalize many individual instances into a pattern that applies to all. You are supposed to come away from the story realizing the pattern applies to all humans, not mastering historical specifics.
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Great answer [@Christy]. Truly. I do think there’s something special around the Exile. Some remarkable, unprecedented humanist thinking emerged at that cultural crossroads.
When I responded to you @Klax that it sadly happens everyday I was thinking that being fallen is something that happens in every human life time in that we all reach the point where we recognize what we ought to do but also recognize we have options which might gratify us more in the short term. In the same way when we recognize a calling to serve the general good we do - in Christian parlance - become image bearers. So we are all sinners in that we will at least sometimes choose to enjoy that which gratifies ourselves alone without regard to the general good.
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That sounds like you think that for Christians all gratification without conscious regard for ‘the general good’ is sin.
I’m not sure. I hadn’t drawn that conclusion. What do you think?
Definitely not. I’m allowed to smell the roses without any guilt feelings. 
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Something that I’m pretty sure that most if not all unbelievers, and many Christians as well, fail to consider is that thinking wrong thoughts about God is sin, contrary to Job:
When we are talking about God’s justice, maybe we should include that in our considerations.
Apparently not if they inspire any incorrect thoughts about God – according to you.
Of course I don’t agree with your claim. Thinking wrong thoughts is not a sin. Bad habits of thought is another matter – those can be extremely self-destructive. But… maybe your use of the word “wrong” meant a little more than just incorrect.
(The NIV has it wrong: it says from the heart.)
That is a ‘what if’ logical fallacy – there are several names for it.
Of course they can be. What is covetousness? Can you do that without thought? How about lust? You can always decide what you what you are paying attention to – it is a continuous moral decision that we are making.
YES! can be. Exactly my point. It is the difference between and errant thought and a bad habit.
It is not simply thinking that you would like the same things as someone else has. That can lead in different directions. One direction is to make some effort to earn or build such things yourself. That is not a bad thing. The wrong direction is in the attitude of entitlement – thinking that such things should be yours without earning and building them.
Is the physiological response a sin? No. Is it the thought that this person is attractive? No. Just like with covetousness it is not just a thought that is sinful but when it becomes a persistent habit. The problem with habits is that they become a kind of programming which controls you. It erodes your freedom of will and occupies your mind in a way that precludes better things.
You can only decide when you see the alternatives. It is such a decision that stops a thought from becoming a habit.
Didn’t say it was. But dwelling on it is.
You contradict yourself. First you say is not, and then you say can be. Your point exactly.
I would identify the Fall with the Big Bang; that is, it is a fall of Creation rather than just of humanity.