Two Real People, One Real Choice
The Bible relates sin’s entry into universal human experience through the primal sin of Adam and Eve. Through the actions of two actual persons the human race turned against God, and Genesis treats them as personally responsible.
Beyond Genesis they’re plainly regarded as real historical figures (1 Chron 1:1; Luke 3:38; Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:22, 45; 1 Tim 2:13-14). The whole subsequent storyline assumes it, placing them in concrete historical relation to other people — not least to Jesus Christ himself (Rom 5:12-21). To deny their actual historical identity is contrary to Scripture.1A good case for the real historicity of Adam and Eve is Wayne Grudem, ‘Theistic Evolution Undermines Twelve Creation Events and Several Crucial Christian Doctrines’, in J. P. Moreland et al eds., Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique (Crossway, 2017), chapter 27. See also, for example, Matthew Barrett and Ardel B. Caneday, Four Views on the Historical Adam (Zondervan, 2013); William Lane Craig, In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration (Eerdmans, 2021); Kenneth Keathley, Perspectives on the Historical Adam and Eve: Four Views (B&H Academic, 2024).
Genesis suggests their sin came a relatively brief time after their creation. God had given them a choice during a period of probation, couched as a direct instruction: ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’ (Gen 2:16-17).
What does ‘the knowledge of good and evil’ mean? Likely this: ‘to determine good and evil, right and wrong, by oneself, and refuse to submit to any external law. It is … to desire emancipation from God.’2Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 341.
So what’s at stake is how humanity proceeds in relation to God — dependently or independently, obediently or rebelliously. The temptation was to become autonomous, self-governing, to ‘be like God, knowing good and evil’ (Gen 3:5) in the sense of deciding for themselves what counts as good and evil. That amounts to refusing to accept that the measure of good and evil is set by the Creator’s character and will. Setting yourself up as arbiter of right and wrong is revolt.
How Temptation Actually Worked
Straightforward obedience was well within their capacity. They were ‘able not to sin, able not to die, able not to abandon the good.’3Augustine, On Reprimand and Grace, 12.33; in On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, trans. Peter King (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 214. Adam’s created goodness was such that ‘his understanding was adorned with a true and saving knowledge of his Creator … his heart and will were upright, all his affections pure.’4Canons of the Synod of Dort, 3/4.1; Schaff, Creeds, 3:587. Set against everything already given — every tree of the garden, dominion over every living thing — the one limit was moderate and should have been bearable.
The suggestion to cast God’s ruling aside came from the serpent, from outside themselves. Evil approached from the unknown. Under Satan’s influence, God’s command became the occasion of temptation: the serpent took what God intended purely for good and turned it into something very bad. The tempter’s objective was evidently an attack on God through the destruction of humanity.
The assault began by introducing uncertainty — first about what God had actually said (Gen 3:1, 4), then about the goodness of his intentions (Gen 3:5). Bavinck traces the sequence:
‘First, the proscriptive command which God has given is represented as an arbitrarily added burden, an unfounded limitation on man’s freedom. … Next that doubt is developed into unbelief by means of the thought that God has given the command lest man become like Himself. This unbelief in turn serves the imagination and makes the transgression appear to be, not the way of death, but the way to everlasting life. The imagination then does its work on the inclination … Desire, having thus conceived, banishes the will and bears the sinful deed. … It begins with the darkening of the understanding, continues with the excitement of the imagination, stimulates desire in the heart, and culminates in an act of the will.’5Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 223-24.
Their action, born of wrongful desire (Gen 3:6), was deliberate disobedience. It involved bodily appetite — they ate — but behind the act lay sinful thoughts and sinful impulses in the heart.6Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 362.
A Kind of Madness
Scripture offers no fuller explanation than deception and temptation. Why would Eve prefer the serpent’s twisted version of reality to the Creator’s? Why would both, in paradise, reject God’s manifest goodness?
Genesis 3 makes no attempt to rationalise it. That’s probably deliberate — sin itself is meant to be not understandable. There’s an insanity about it. It isn’t rational but foolish and reckless, a riddle defying comprehension, a kind of madness, by definition senseless.7Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 130-132.
Scripture presents sin as a terrible fact and miserable reality — yet a reality absolutely illegitimate and entirely invalid. Intolerable yet actual, inexcusable yet real.8Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 224-25. ‘Here we arrive at the boundaries of our knowledge; sin exists, but it will never be able to justify its existence.’9Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 351.
Their situation differed from ours. They had no sinful nature and no sinful world. But they did have a proneness to sin: created perfection wasn’t impervious to evil. It was childlike innocence, not indifference — no inward urge toward sin, but an innocence that could be altered.
None of which lessens the offence. Their innocence carried duty, responsibility, and the dignity of genuine choice. God ‘endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined good, or evil. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.’10The Westminster Confession of Faith, 9.1-2; in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, Volume 3: The Evangelical Protestant Creeds. Sixth edition (Baker, 1931/1985), 3:623.
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- 1A good case for the real historicity of Adam and Eve is Wayne Grudem, ‘Theistic Evolution Undermines Twelve Creation Events and Several Crucial Christian Doctrines’, in J. P. Moreland et al eds., Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique (Crossway, 2017), chapter 27. See also, for example, Matthew Barrett and Ardel B. Caneday, Four Views on the Historical Adam (Zondervan, 2013); William Lane Craig, In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration (Eerdmans, 2021); Kenneth Keathley, Perspectives on the Historical Adam and Eve: Four Views (B&H Academic, 2024). ↩︎
- 2Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 341. ↩︎
- 3Augustine, On Reprimand and Grace, 12.33; in On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, trans. Peter King (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 214. ↩︎
- 4Canons of the Synod of Dort, 3/4.1; Schaff, Creeds, 3:587. ↩︎
- 5Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 223-24. ↩︎
- 6Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 362. ↩︎
- 7Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 130-132. ↩︎
- 8Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 224-25. ↩︎
- 9Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 351. ↩︎
- 10The Westminster Confession of Faith, 9.1-2; in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, Volume 3: The Evangelical Protestant Creeds. Sixth edition (Baker, 1931/1985), 3:623. ↩︎