VIIMan and His Destination

82. The image and likeness of God in man. The image and likeness of God, the purest spirit. According to the teaching of the church, the Theology says, as it said before, that this purest spirit has mind and will, and so the image and likeness of God means mind and will. But mind and will, as we have seen, were ascribed quite arbitrarily to God. In the whole book there is not the slightest hint why we should assume mind and will in God. So it turns out that in the division about God the division of the pure spirit into mind and will was introduced, not because there were any causes for that in the concept of God itself, but because man, comprehending himself as mind and will, has arbitrarily transferred this division to God.

Now, in the division about man, in explaining the word "he was made in the image and after the likeness of God," it says that since the attributes of God are divided into mind and will, the word image means rniad, while likeness means will. But the concepts of mind and will have been transferred to God only because we find them in man ! Let not the reader think that I have anywhere omitted the definition of God's mind and will. It does not exist. It is introduced as something known in the definition of the attributes of God, and now the attributes of man are deduced from it. In this article we have the following exposition :

"To be in the image of God is natural for us according to our creation; but to become after the likeness of God deDends on our will. This dependence on our will exists in us only potentially; it is acquired by us in fact only through our activity. If God, intending to create us, had not said beforehand, ' We will make ' and ' after our likeness,'" and if he had not given us the power to be after his likeness, we could not by our own force be after the likeness of God. But as it is we received at creation the power to be like God. But, having given us this possibility, God has left it to us to be the actors of our own likeness with God, in order to be worthy of an acceptable reward for our activity, and that we may not be like soulless representations made by artists." (p. 458.)

83. Man's destination is as follows :

"(1) In relation to God this destination of man consists in this, that he shall unalterably remain true to that high bond or union with God (religion), to which the Allgood has called him at the very creation, while stamping upon him his image; in order that, in consequence of this calling, he may constantly strive after his Prototj^pe with all the forces of his rational, free soul, that is, in order that he may know his Creator, and glorify him, and live in moral union with him. (p. 459.) (2) In man's relation to himself, his destination is that he, being created in the image of God with moral powers, shall constantly try to develop and perfect these powers by exercising them in good deeds, and, in this manner, shall more and more become like his Prototype. For this reason the Lord has more than once commanded in the Old Testament : Ye shall be holy; for I am holy, the Lord your God (Lev. xi. 44; xix. 2; xx. 7), and now we hear in the New Testament from our Saviour : Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matt. v. 48). However, this purpose of man is essentially not to be distinguished from the first; on the contrary, it is included in it and serves as a necessary condition for its attainment." (pp. 460 and 461.)

Consequently it is the same.

"(3) Finally, the destination of man, in relation to the whole Nature which surrounds him, is clearly determined in the words of the tri-personal Creator himself : Let us make man in our image and after our likeness : and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the beasts, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

The third is evidently not a destination, but a convenience; but here it is included as a destination. There turns out to be one destination : to remain true to the union with God,

84. The abihty of the first-born man for his destination, or perfection. "In predestining man for such a high purpose, the Lord God created him fully capable of attaining this aim, that is, perfect."

85. The special cooperation of God with the first-born man in the attainment of his destination.

In order to attain this high purpose, the preservation of the union with God, God considered it necessary to cooperate with the man. The first cooperation consisted in this :

"God himself planted a garden eastward in Eden as a habitation for man; and there he put the man whom he had formed (Gen. ii. 8). This was, according to the words of St. John Damascene, as it were, a royal house, where man, living, might have passed a happy and blissful life — it was the abiding-place of all joys and pleasures : for Eden denotes enjoyment. The air in it was perfectly pure. It was surrounded by bright air, the thinnest and the purest; it was adorned with blooming plants, filled with perfume and light, and surpassed every representation of sensual beauty and goodness. It was truly a divine country, a worthy habitation, created in the image of God." (p. 467.)

Here it is proved, that Paradise is to be understood directly as a garden, as described, and we may only presume that Adam, besides the body, enjoyed also his soul. The second cooperation with Adam was this, that God visited him in Paradise (p. 468). The third cooperation consisted in this, that God gave Adam his grace. What grace is, is not explained here. The fourth cooperation consisted in this, that God planted in the garden the tree of life; and here we suddenly get the explanation that this tree of life was that very grace. The tree of life was the cause why Adam did not die. The fifth cooperation was this, that for the "exercise and development of the physical forces God commanded Adam to make and keep the Paradise (Gen. ii. 15); for the exercise and development of his mental powers and the powers of speech, he himself brought to Adam all the beasts to see what he would call them (Gen. ii. 19); for the exercise and strengthening of his moral powers in what was good, he gave a certain command to Adam, not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying. Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ye shall not eat of it : for in the day that ye eat thereof, ye shall surely die." (pp. 472 and 473.)

If anybody imagines that anything essential is added or omitted here, or in any way transformed, let him read the book itself ! I am trying to cite the most essential and intelligible passages. The Theology represents the question of Adam's fall in the most remarkable manner and insists that it is not possible and not allowable to understand it in any other way. According to the church teaching God has created man for a certain destination, and has created him quite capable of attaining his destination; it says that he has created him perfect and has shown him every kind of cooperation for the purpose of attaining his ends. The command about not eating the fruit was also a cooperation.

86. The command given by God to the first man, — its necessity and meaning. Of the command about not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the Theology says (1) that this command was very necessary, (2) that in this command the whole law is contained, (3) that the command was an easy one and that it was guarded by a terrible threat. And, in spite of it all, man fell and did not reach his destination. One would think that it would be necessary to clear up this contradiction, and one involuntarily waits for some interpretation of this whole remarkable event. But, on the contrary, the Theology bars the way to all interpretation and carefully preserves it in all its coarseness. It proves that it is not possible and not allowable to understand the meaning of the second chapter of Genesis, about the Paradise and the trees planted in it, in any explanatory way, but that it is necessary to understand it as Theodoret understood it :

"*The Divine Scripture says,' asserts the blessed Theodoret, 'that the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil grew out from the ground; consequently they are by their natures like any other plants. Just as the rood is a common tree, but receives the name of a saving cross on account of the salvation which we receive through faith in him who was crucified upon it; even thus these trees are common plants that grew out from the ground, but, by God's determination, one of them is called the tree of life, and the other, — since it has served as a tool for the knowledge of sin, — the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The latter was proposed to Adam as an opportunity for an exploit, and the tree of life as a certain reward for the keeping of the command.' (h) This tree is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not because it had the power of imparting to our first parents the knowledge of good and evil, which they did not have before, but because, by their eating from the forbidden tree they were to find out experimentally, and did find out, all the distinction between good and evil, ' between the good,' as the blessed St. Augustine remarks, 'from which they fell, and the evil into which they fell,' a thought which is unanimously taught by all the teachers of the church, (c) This tree, according to the opinion of some of the teachers of the church, was by no means destructive and venomous in its nature; on the contrary, it was good, like all the other divine knowledge, but it was chosen by God only as a tool for trying man, and was forbidden, perhaps, because it was too early yet for the new-born man to eat of its fruits.

"' The tree of knowledge,' says St. Gregory the Divine, * was planted in the beginning without any evil purpose and was not forbidden through envy (let not the wrestlers against God open their lips and imitate the serpent ! ); on the contrary, it was good for those who used it in proper time (for this tree, according to my opinion, was the contemplation to which only those may proceed who are perfected by experience), but it was not good for simple people and for those who were immoderate in their desire, even as perfect food is not useful for feeble people who need milk.' — ' The tree is good,' blessed St. Augustine, who understands the forbidden tree in a sensuous sense, says to Adam, in the person of God, 'but do not touch it ! Why ? Because I am the Lord, and you are a slave : that is the whole reason. If you consider this insufficient, it means that you do not wish to be a slave. What is there more useful for you than to be under the power of the Lord ? How will you be under the power of the Lord, if you are not under his command ? ' "

Thus the church understands it, and thus it commands you to understand it. The fact that the tree is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the fact that the serpent says to the woman : You will know good and evil; the fact that God himself says (Gen. iii. 22), that, having eaten of the fruit of the tree, Adam is become as one of us, to know good and evil, — all that we must forget and we must think about the profound account in the Book of Genesis in a most inexact and absurd manner; and all that, not in order to explain anything in this account, but that there should not be left any sense in it except the most apparent and coarse contradiction that God was doing everything for the purpose of attaining one end, while something different resulted.

87. According to the doctrine of the church, the first man lived in the garden and was blessed. This is told as follows : Adam and Eve lived in bliss in the garden, "and there is no doubt that this bliss of the first men would not only not have diminished in time, but would have increased more and more in proportion with their greater perfection, if they had kept the command which the Lord had given them in the beginning. Unfortunately for our progenitors themselves as well as for their descendants, they violated this command and thus destroyed their bliss."

88. The manner and causes of the fall of our first parents. But the serpent came (the serpent is the devil, — that is proved by Holy Scripture) and Adam was tempted and fell, and lost his bliss.

89. The importance of the sin of our first parents. This sin is important because (a) it is disobedience; (h) the command is easy; (c) God had benefited them and only demanded obedience; (d) they had the grace, and needed only to wish; (e) in that one sin there were many other sins, and (/) the consequences of this sin were very great for Adam and for all posterity,

90. The consequences of the fall of our first parents were in the soul: (1) the disruption of the union with God, the loss of grace, and spiritual death.

All this is proved by Holy Scripture, but nothing is said about what disruption of the union with God is, what grace is, what spiritual death is. It would be particularly desirable to know what is meant by spiritual death, as distinguished from corporeal death, since above it was said that the soul was immortal. Other consequences of the fall: (2) dimming of the intellect, (3) proclivity toward evil rather than toward good. But what difference there was between Adam before and after the fall in relation to the proclivity toward evil it does not say. Before the fall there was also a greater proclivity toward evil than toward good, if Adam, as we are told in Art. 89, comitted an evil act when everything drew him on to the good. (4) The mutilation of the image of God. Mutilation means :

"If a coin, which has upon itself the image of a king, is spoiled, the gold loses its value and the image is of no service : the same happened with Adam."

For the body the consequences were : (1) diseases, (2) bodily death. For Adam it was : (1) expulsion from Paradise, (2) the loss of his dominion over the animals, (3) the curse of the serpent, that is, man had to work to earn his sustenance.

We are all used to this story, which we have briefly learned in our childhood, and are all accustomed not to think of it, not to analyze it, and to connect with it an indistinct, poetical representation, and therefore the detailed repetition of this story with the confirmation of its coarse meaning and seeming proofs of its correctness, as expounded in the Theology, involuntarily strikes us as something new and unexpectedly coarse.

The representation of God and of the garden and of the fruits makes us doubt the truth of the whole, and for him who assumes justice there arises involuntarily the simple childish question as to why the omniscient, almighty, and all-good God did everything in such a way that the man who was created by him should perish, and why all his posterity should perish. And every person who will stop to think of this contradiction, will obviously wish to read the passage in Holy Scripture, on which it is based. And he who will do so will be terribly surprised at that striking unceremoniousness with which the church commentators treat the texts. It is enough to read carefully the first chapters of Genesis and the church exposition of the fall of man, in order to become convinced that two different stories are told by the Bible and by the Theology.

According to the church interpretation it turns out that Adam was permitted to eat from the tree of life and that the first pair was immortal, but not only is this not said in the Bible, but the very opposite is mentioned in verse 22 of Chapter III., where it says : lest Adam put forth his hand, and eat of the tree of life, and live for ever. According to the church interpretation the serpent is the devil, but nothing of the kind is said in the Bible, nor could anything be said, because no idea about the devil is given in the Book of Genesis, but it says there : the serpent was more subtile than any beast. According to the church interpretation it turns out that the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a calamity for men; but according to the Bible it was a benefit for men, and thus the whole history of the fall of Adam is an invention of the theologians and nothing like it is mentioned in the Bible.

From the story of the Bible it does not follow that the men ate from the tree of life and were immortal, but the opposite is said in verse 22, nor does it say there that the evil devil tempted man; on the contrary, what is said is that the most subtile of beasts taught him that. Thus the two chief foundations of the whole story about the sinful fall, namely, the immortahty of Adam in Paradise and the devil, are invented by the theologians in direct opposition to the text.

The only connected sense of the whole story according to the Book of Genesis, which is exactly the opposite of the church account, is this : God made man, but wished to leave him such as the animals were, who do not know the difference between good and evil, and so prohibited them from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. At the same time, to frighten man, God deceived him, saying that he would die as soon as he ate of it. But man, aided by wisdom (the serpent), discovered the deception of God, found out the good and the evil, and did not die. But God was frightened by it and barred his way from the tree of life, to which, to judge from the same fear of God lest man should eat of that fruit, we must assume, according to the sense of the story, man will find his way, as he has found his way to the knowledge of good and evil.

Whether this story is good or bad is another matter, but thus it is told in the Bible. God, in relation to man in this story, is the same God as Zeus in relation to Prometheus. Prometheus steals the fire, Adam the knowledge of good and evil. The God of these first chapters is not the Christian God, not even the God of the Prophets and of Moses, the God who loves men, but a God who is jealous of his power, a God who is afraid of men. And it is the story about this God that the Theology had to harmonize with the dogma of the redemption, and so a jealous and evil God is combined with God the Father, of whom Christ taught. Only this reflection gives a key to the blasphemy of the chapter. If we do not know what it is all needed for, we cannot understand why it was necessary to misinterpret, contort (directly departing from the text) the simplest, most naive, and profound story, and to make of it a conglomeration of contradictions and absurdities. But let us suppose that the story is correct as told by the Theology : what follows from it ?