Ethics & Religion Talk: How does Garden of Eden sin affect us?

Rabbi David Krishef

Our question this week is from 'SN,' who asks, "What exactly was the sin that Adam and Eve committed in the Garden of Eden and how did it affect the rest of us?"

Doug Van Doren, pastor of Plymouth United Church of Christ, responds:

"I believe that the story of the sin of Adam and Eve (the fall) is descriptive rather than proscriptive. It is not an event that forever condemns or proscribes human behavior to be sinful. Rather, it is a story to describe human kind's propensity to usurp God's place. That is, to not want to live within the limits of our power, but rather to lord over one another and the creation.

"The first three major stories in the book of Genesis: the 'fall,' the flood and the Tower of Babel, all have that the same theme. In the flood, the people have forgotten about God and gone their own (evil) ways. In the Tower of Babel, the people seek to build a tower 'with its top in the heavens.' The concern is that 'nothing they propose will be impossible for them.'

"Our forebears in this story (in addition to providing an explanation of the diversity of language) give us the same warning as in the previous stories. God is God, and we are not. We are to live within the bonds of God's love and care for us and all living creatures."

R. Scot Miller, who writes from an Anabaptist and Quaker Christian perspective, responds:

"The sin of Adam and Eve was the sin of disobedience. God instructed his created beings not to eat from a specific tree, and they rejected that order, thus separating themselves from submission to God's greater knowledge and purpose. The consequences have been both disastrous and a blessing. I say disastrous for obvious reasons; we live separated from a fully realized relationship with God, instead having to navigate life through a maze of violence, selfishness and a variety of 'isms' that promote hatred and, well, violence.

"We often feel as though we live in a total absence of love, and sometimes, in a total absence of God presence, as the Psalmists write so honestly. Yet, the blessing of Adam and Eve's decision to reject God's command could be just as obvious if we allow ourselves to see it.

"Because of their desire for knowledge, our relationship with God and one another is one of process, of learning and of having to knowing one another. We are not robots controlled by a miserly and dictatorial deity, but are in relationship because we can respond to grace; we can choose to respond to grace (with apologies to our Reformed friends). The confusing of languages at Babel is just such a blessing. Knowledge, like relationship, is of no value if it is not struggled for, valued and identified as the way that God is works out redemption.

"In the cross we identify the self-sacrifice that overwhelms the selfishness of Adam and Eve. In the ensuing relationships, we begin to value the truth that Adam and Eve had choices, and so do we. What better way to be in relationship than to have a choice."


"The sin Adam and Eve committed in the Garden of Eden was disobedience to the trust God placed in them. God created Adam and Eve in His own likeness and asked them not to eat the fruit of one tree, but God infused Adam and Eve with free will. Free will is the ability to make one's own choices, and Adam and Eve were not able to remain obedient to God.

"This disobedience opened the door to let sin run rampant in the world. The presence of sin in the world is the connection to all humanity. Because humans are created in the image and likeness of the God, they have the freedom to make choices.

"Like Adam and Eve, these choices include sin, which is disobedience to God."

My response:

"With respect to Adam and Eve, the question is simple. The sin was disobeying God's instruction and eating the fruit. The question of how the sin affects future generations of humanity is far more complicated.

"Judaism does not describe it as 'original sin' because, unlike the Christian notion, no human being is born carrying the sin of Adam and Eve. We are born with a clean slate and we create our own salvation based on our actions.

"Still, the sin does affect us because we live in a world that contains violence and suffering as a consequence of its imperfect state.

"Jewish theology envisions history as a circle, the goal being to restore the world to the original perfection of the Garden of Eden. Our job, therefore, is to do enough mitzvot (commanded acts) to bring the world into a messianic state of perfection."