How Did the Fall Happen?

Adam and Eve did not wake up one day and say, “Let’s disobey God today, because I am tired of obeying his stupid rules.” Something more was going on. To understand our situation, we need to understand what happened to Adam and Eve.

The Genesis account begins with the bad behaviour of the serpent (Gen 3:1), not with human disobedience. It does not fully explain what was happening, but clearly, it was something important. The key to understanding this event is realising that the Old Testament provides a two-agent view of reality. It mostly records the actions of two agents in the world: God and humans. The New Testament explains that we live in a three-agent universe. The main actors are God, humans and the spiritual powers of evil. To understand any event, we need to take cognisance of what each of these three actors is doing.

Apart from a few glimpses into the spiritual realms by Job, David and Daniel, the Old Testament writers mostly ignore the activities of the spiritual powers of evil. They took this approach because the Holy Spirit did not want to give unnecessary glory to these evil powers. God preferred to be blamed for evil at times over bolstering the credibility of the spiritual forces that are always at work in the world doing evil. To fully understand the Old Testament, we need to read it through a New-Testament, three-agent-lens. Therefore, to understand the Genesis account of the fall, we need to take into account the reality that the spiritual powers of evil were actively working to undermine the authority and freedom of the first humans.

Genesis 3:1 does not explain why the serpent was so cunning, or why it had become an instrument for undermining evil, but given their objectives, it is reasonable to assume that spiritual powers of evil were working through him. The Revelation of John explains that the serpent was being used by the devil/satan (Rev 12:9; 20;2).

The scriptures do not explain how or when, but a massive spiritual rebellion had occurred in the spiritual realms. I presume that this occurred before the human failure recorded in Genesis 3. The scriptures never claim that Adam’s sin caused the powers of evil to rebel against God. On its own, such an event on earth would not have such a serious effect in the spiritual realms, whereas a rebellion in the spiritual realms could be expected to have a significant impact on the earth.

God had given authority over the earth to humans. By getting control of humans, the spiritual powers of evil could gain authority on earth and establish a domain where they were free to operate. Once they had rebelled, they had a strong incentive to persuade humans to rebel. I presume that this is the order that the rebellions happened: the spiritual powers of evil rebelled first, followed by human rebellion.

Following the rebellion of the spiritual powers of evil, Adam and Eve got caught up in a terrible spiritual battle in which the serpent was an unwitting participant. By giving humans authority on earth (Gen 1:28), God had taken an enormous risk, because it allowed humans to constrain his actions (this was real grace). The spiritual powers of evil understood the risk that God was taking, and they realised that if they could steal the authority that God had given to humans, they could constrain his activity on earth. The stakes were high, but God knew that humans would mess things up with terrible consequences, but he had a plan to put things right.

Large numbers of spiritual beings had rebelled against God. Naturally, they attacked Adam and Eve with a vengeance. They did not have much chance against such a powerful onslaught. They had no children when they lapsed, so they can’t have been in existence very long when the attack occurred. They were still learning their role, as the Holy Spirit taught them how to care for the world that had been entrusted to them. They had access to all the resources of the Holy Spirit, but they probably had not learnt how to draw on them under intense battle conditions. They would not have been prepared to handle such a massive spiritual assault.

We tend to assume that Adam and Eve disobeyed God because they were rebellious. That is a distorted view of what happened. They came under such an intense spiritual attack that few humans would have been able to resist it. Paul records that Eve was deceived.

Eve was deceived by the serpent’s craftiness (2 Corinthians 11:3).

The serpent lied to Eve. He said that the humans needed to eat the fruit of the tree to be like God, when they were already created in the image of God, and as like to God as humans can be.

Of course, it was not just the serpent at work, but the spiritual powers working through him. Their attack was so intense that Eve believed something that was not true. That kind of deception does not just happen, without spiritual interference. Obviously, Adam was pushed towards disobedience too.

Given the intensity of the battle (because authority over the earth was at stake), Adam and Eve succumbed to the attack. Could they have remained strong despite the pressure? Maybe? But it is easy to understand why they didn’t. Rather than calling it “The Fall”, we should describe it as a massive spiritual defeat. Perhaps we should call it “The Rout” because it gave the spiritual powers of evil authority over the earth. They would use this stolen authority to do terrible things to humans and the rest of God’s creation.

This understanding of what happened changes the nature of the solution that is required. The cross does not just cover our sins, as is usually taught. We did not need the cross to stop God hating us. We needed the cross to rescue us from the authority of the spiritual powers of evil. Jesus' death is the ransom that rescues us from the control of the spiritual powers of evil, who gained control over us when Adam and Eve were defeated and manipulated into disobedience.

This understanding also shifts some of the responsibility. Adam and Eve’s disobedience was not a totally free choice. They were provoked and manipulated without being aware of the power that they were up against. They don’t fully deserve the condemnation that is heaped on them by Christians. They are still responsible for their actions, but it was harder for them than we realise, so they also deserve more sympathy.

There is a bit of blame passing going on here. If the fall was Adam and Eve's fault, it gives us an excuse for our disobedience. We can say, “It's all their fault, not ours”. A more productive response would be to acknowledge the difficult struggle they faced. That would help us to understand the spiritual battle that we are engaged in.