For hundreds of years Christian theologians have faced insurmountable difficulties concerning the how and why aspect of the sin committed by the first humans. Even great Calvinist thinkers like Jonathan Edwards, R. C. Sproul Sr., Sam Storms, and John Piper admitted that they had given up on the task of making sense of it. Despite the many works that have been written on this issue, no solution have been conclusively demonstrated. I am going to show beyond doubt both how and why Adam and Eve committed their first sin according to Christian theology. Adam’s sin is called original sin, and all humans have the guilt of Adam imputed (subjectively reckoned) on to them. So all of Adam’s descendants are treated as if they committed that sin themselves even though they did not (at least according to the popular view invented by the Church Father St. Augustine).
Before I discuss why exactly Christians have had trouble with the particular issue of the first sin of the first humans, it will be helpful to show how it is that people are able to choose in the first place. Some may think they can simply make a decision without even needing a reason or motive. They may say: “I don’t need any impetus to make my choice, I have free-will!” Though it initially can seem that way, this is in fact false. First, it is self-evident that every effect demands a cause (efficient cause). Objects fall towards the Earth (effect) because of gravity (cause). Likewise, when people or even animals make decisions, their choice (effect) needs a motivation or inclination to have enabled them to make that decision. And if anyone only has one inclination to do something, that motivation will literally determine (cause) their choice. For example, if I am 100% inclined not to eat dog waste (i.e., have 0% of an inclination to eat it), I cannot eat it, even if I possess the part of my brain that, if I were to access it, would allow me to eat it; for I would then have no motive or reason to eat the waste. It is also helpful to note that nothing would be wrong with my freedom, for I would be free to do whatever I desired—I just would not desire the waste. Since it has now been shown that it takes a motivation to do anything, or to even knowingly do nothing (which would require you to want that first as well), figuring out the sin of Adam and Eve is simple. We will first outline the various types of desires and show their relevance in the narrative to come:
- Good Inclination: Internal motivation toward beneficial actions, like caring for others, respecting people’s property, etc.
- Evil Inclination: Internal motivation toward negative actions, like stealing, lying (intentionally deceiving), etc.
- Morally Neutral Inclination: Internal motivation toward things that would lack a moral import if done, like playing golf, watching a show, etc.
According to Genesis, God (Yahweh) created two humans that were to be his image-bearers, that is, who were to represent him, in part by willingly being obedient to his laws. God created all types of vegetative life and animals, and even gave Adam the privilege to name all the animals (in what language I know not). He then informed Adam and Eve of a certain tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and told Adam and Eve that if they ate of that tree, they would die that very day. (It is debatable what “day” meant in the original Hebrew; it did not necessarily mean a 24-hour period.)
As holy creatures without our depraved nature, Adam and Eve were created with a holy disposition toward morally good actions and created with morally neutral desires, like the one for secret wisdom. Since these inclinations originated from their natures, it was God who was the efficient cause of these inclinations coming into existence. Later in the Genesis narrative Adam and Eve were confronted with a talking serpent who tried to persuade them to break the commandment of God and eat of the special tree. To this end the serpent presented the case that God’s real motive for the prohibition was that Godwas scared that Adam and Eve would know about the concepts of good and evil as extensively as God did, which would make God jealous. Adam and Eve were now confronted with a great offer according to their rational judgement; their strongest motive was then to disobey God for the pursuit of secretive wisdom that would make them as wise as God himself. It was then that the great fall of humankind occurred, and the rest was history.
Now to return to the initial issue. The problem that has baffled theologians is how exactly Adam and Eve could have sinned if they were not inclined (motivated) to commit sin via a sinful inclination. Martin Luther, Calvin, and contemporaneous Roman Catholic theologians believed that the first humans only came about with a sin inclination after they sinned. If Adam and Eve had no sin inclination, they would have had absolutely no reason to sin at all! What makes the problem worse is that they would also have only been inclined to right action; yet with their only preference to do the right thing, they both knowingly and willing did the wrong thing. No wonder Christians don’t know why or even how both sinned in the first place.
It has been suggested in the past that the inclination to secretive wisdom (which was an ordinate desire) is what enabled Adam and Eve to sin. The reasoning is that the motive to obtain secret knowledge was the cause of their actions. This beyond doubt could not have been the case—I will explain why in a moment—but I first want to present an analogy to make my point easier to understand. Suppose there are two people, an old grandmother who is a saint, and a person who recently committed murder. They both have luxurious cars. Say a thief was to consider who he or she would like to steal from more. One thief could think: “I would rather steal that murderer’s car. I know I don’t have the moral right to take the car just because the person killed someone, but I would feel less bad if I stole from that person than from that old lady. Come to think of it, even without the murderer to steal from, I would never steal from that old lady; she always donated money to charity and once risked her life to save an abuse victim from their terrible spouse. There’s no way I would steal her hard-earned car.”
What happened here? Here the thief had a desire to take and drive the car, which is a good/neutral desire and is not itself the desire to steal, since there is nothing wrong with taking a car in and of itself. However, there was also present within the thief a good inclination that motivated him to respect the property of the person who owned the car and therefore not steal, as well as an evil inclination that motivated him to disrespect someone (as with the murderer) and take property that he was not entitled to have from the owner. Someone could have an inclination to get in a car and drive it and therefore be attracted to the car, yet this would not enable that person to take the car if in fact the car was owned by someone else—if the person had only a good inclination to respect the owner and not steal, and no evil inclination to disrespect the owner and steal the car. Likewise had Adam and Eve had a desire to take of secretive wisdom that would not and could not have enabled them to sin if they had only a holy disposition to respect God and not steal, and no evil inclination to act disrespectfully and steal the fruit that had the gift of wisdom concerning good and evil.
Therefore, it is an irrefutable fact that Adam and Eve had an evil inclination to disobedience and proceeded to give into it to commit their first sin. Since dispositions come from one’s nature, it was God who created Adam and Eve with an evil disposition alongside all their other ones. It wouldn’t even matter if it was only after the serpent’s tempting that Adam and Eve experienced an inordinate desire; if God had created Adam and Eve morally perfect, they could not have had a sin inclination even if the serpent were to attempt to tempt them into doing evil. According to the Christian New Testament, Jesus never sinned and was not even able to sin, and even though he was still hungry for food when tempted by the Devil, this extreme hunger did not even enable him to disobey God. Why? Because Christ (according to Scripture at least) was only inclined to do good and obey God, and had no evil inclination to disobey God.
I have now clearly solved the unsolvable issue relating to the first sin. To recap: God created Adam and Eve with morally pure natures. Adam and Eve only possessed ordinate and good desires until the Devil (the serpent) tempted them. When given the pitch by the Devil, Adam and Eve then became convinced that, despite God’s prohibition, it was the best thing according to their personal judgment to sin. Their greatest motive was to therefore sin in part due to the sin inclination which enabled them to, and for the first time they were directly motivated towards an evil action, in this case to disrespect God and steal from his property. They, still possessing good natures (more or less), gave into their sinful inclination, and then they sinned. The reason Adam and Eve were able to be inclined to evil action is because God made them morally imperfect.
This is important to note: It was a moral dysfunctionality, something bad, that gave Adam and Eve the ability to sin, not something good. Christians need to become aware of this. And merely saying that free will enabled Adam and Eve is nonsensical. What enabled them to use their free will? Motivations, obviously, since without them you cannot choose even if you possess a will. The impressive point I just illustrated is devastating to Christian theism. We clearly have a sad picture—God created Adam and Eve with a somewhat morally flawed nature, created them with a desire to secretive wisdom, placed a prohibition on what God himself was the efficient cause of them being motivated to do, and then got flippantly angry at them for giving into the very desires he imbued in them! This is clearly a form of entrapment. The next time you hear a hellfire sermon, tell the preacher that God should have made Adam and Eve without a morally flawed nature, since without the moral freedom to do evil, one cannot do evil. If said Christian preacher tells you that Adam and Eve would have been robots if that happened, call them a fool and ask them whether they think their God Jesus Christ was a robot since he could not commit sin.
To add insult to injury, it is not even stated in the Genesis narrative whether God made Adam and Eve with libertarian free will, or the ability to have done other than what they did. The account only mentions that God made Adam and Eve with a will that could make choices, which all determinists (Calvinist Christians) affirm. So, it very well could have been that Adam and Eve’s first sin could have been certain and necessary as well. The Bible leaves it an open question. I have concluded my presentation on the problems regarding the first sin and shown the definitive resolution for them.
Before I end my essay, I would encourage readers to check out my Modern Library piece titled “The Origin of Evil” (which is also featured in A Drop of Reason: Essays from the Secular Web on Amazon Prime). In that piece I show that the Calvinist secondary cause defense cannot work since God is the creator of all things, including the secretive wisdom tree and the Devil who tempted Adam and Eve. I also show there that since God created Adam’s, Eve’s, and the Devil’s desires, he would absolutely have to be the efficient cause of sin, not simply the final cause (as Calvinists claim). In Calvinism, it is not simply a sole supreme motivation that determines the will, the greatest motive or inclination determines the will as well, which God was responsible for Adam and Eve having since he made their natures, and he even determined the Devil to tempt them.
One note to end on: There is a severe problem with the concept of libertarian free will. I would need to write another paper to address all its issues, but the central one is the fact that it violates the cause-and-effect principle, where every effect can be traced back to an efficient cause. Some libertarian free will advocates will pretend there is not an issue and claim that the cause of your choice was you, and the effect of that choice is you willing. This cannot work because of the point I brought up at the start of my paper—one needs an internal motivation to enable them to choose. Without it, a choice would not be metaphysically possible. Take for example the case of Christ. What was the cause of his choice to obey God the Father? Himself? No, it was his supreme internal motivation to good that served as the efficient cause of his doing good. So, the cause of his choice was his motivation, and the effect was his choice to do the good. Why not think that even the greatest desire determines the will to necessarily choose if the only one does?
The devastating issue regarding libertarian free will can be illustrated as follows. Say an individual has two inclinations, one to go to the usual ice cream store and get rocky-road-flavored ice cream, the other to immediately check out the next episode of G-Friend Goes to Paris. (yes, I am a K-Pop fanatic.) The desire to eat the ice cream is at 50%, while the one to watch the episode is also at 50%. Imagine the person chooses to watch G-friend’s adventures in Paris, where one must sing a song without mistakes to get a free lunch at an expensive restaurant. Since it is obvious that any macroscopic event (whether it involves rocks falling or a person making a choice) involves cause-and-effect as well as a why explanation, here is the question: Why did the person choose to give into motivation #2 and not motivation #1? No Reason? None of the desires determined the person to act, so what did? No desire was greater than the other, either. You cannot say the person determined his choice since only motivations have determining power.
“He had no reason to give into motivation #2, but somehow chose it,” a libertarian free will advocate might say. The advocate could not simply exclaim “He just did” because that does not answer why he did. The person ultimately chose to act on motivation #2 because of nothing! In other words, on libertarianism you have an effect (a choice) without a cause (nothing caused or determined you to choice). This is metaphysically impossible and violates Leibniz’s physics. So Libertarian free will is impossible, which could only mean that all our choices are determined by prior causes. If this is so under theism, then God would be the cause of everything that occurs, including sin itself. This would make God himself morally evil, since he would be positively causing evil and not permitting it, say, for a greater good. This is a damaging conclusion for a theist, where God not only creates desires in Adam and Eve to sin, but even determines them to give into those desires so they end up sinning! I would highly encourage readers to check out my YouTube interview with Richard Carrier titled “Why There is No Free Will” for further details. Finally, my last recommendation would be to read the famous Calvinist writer Sam Storms’ work titled “Fettered Yet Free,” republished by John Piper on his on his Desiring God website. In that work Storms shows that a system of divine determinism would have to result in God being the direct cause of sin, not simply the final cause of it (as most Calvinists claim).