3.1.1 On the History of the Interpretation of the Fall of Man

The credibility of the accounts of creation and the fall of man has been  undermined by the trivialized form of the doctrine of the 

“Original sin” has done considerable harm. No one wants to be held  responsible for what someone should have done in the distant past.  Even in the days of the prophet Jeremiah, there was resistance to the  idea of clan liability, although this is at least partly true: “The fathers  have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are blunted. “(Jer.  31,29) One speaks better with the correct theological tradition of the  peccatum originale, the original sin of Adam (thus: of mankind). Sin (root  word of Sund, i.e., separateness from God) sets in motion a generational  process of evil that cannot be easily escaped. But this fatal line can also  be severed: Ps. 79:8: “Do not count the iniquity of the fathers against  us…” The bridge over the Sound of Sin was built only by the second  Adam: Christ (Rom. 5,12ff). 

How topical Gen. 3 is also for the present, one can recognize from the  fact that the most important philosophical direction of the 20th century,  the existentialism, can be understood basically also as a paraphrase of  the Fall – experience. The terms “essence, actuality” etc. are secular  paraphrases of the paradisiacal primordial state, the state after the  expulsion from paradise is, among others, understood as the 

“Uneigentlichkeit, das Geworfensein der Existenz” or the like. In Marxism, too, the story of the Fall of Man is one of the most important  structural elements of the entire ideology: the Fall of Man here consists  in the foreign determination of man through the introduction of the  division of labor and the associated private property.

Modern humanism starts from the premise “I am ok – you are ok”. A naturally popular misconception, which for its part then needs its own scapegoats to explain the evil in the world. 

The view held by many theologians that Gen. 3 “demythologize” in order to be able to speak intelligibly for the secular  world today proves to be a fatal error here. Conversely, one must  uncover the hidden religious myths of modern substitute religions and  question them from the Bible. 

Finally, a parenthesis to the NT: In the solemn liturgy of the Easter Vigil,  the “exsultet” is traditionally sung with the theologically daring, steep  formulation: “o felix culpa”. The fall of man is ultimately the “happy guilt”  of Adam, which led to Jesus’ sacrifice and thus opened the kingdom of  God for us! 

Gen. 3: The first sin: Hubris, arrogance – wanting to be like God. It follows

Gen. 4: The second sin: envy – comparing oneself with others – wanting  to have more.