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A discussion of death in the prefall world led to this thought: What was Adam supposed to do when a big dragon came to his wife and began tempting her to sin? I think he was supposed to do exactly what the Last Adam did: Crush the serpent's head. But that means that maintaining the unfallen world of the creation depended on Adam's willingness to kill. To turn it around, Adam's fall is precisely a refusal to deal death to the serpent.
From another angle, this means that Adam's sin was simultaneously a grasping for kingly power (the tree of judgment) and a REFUSAL to exercise kingly power (judgment passed on the serpent). His cowardice before the serpent proved that he was not in fact ready for the tree of knowledge. Paradoxical that, but then sin is always paradoxical.
Or, perhaps, since Satan was invading the holy space of the sanctuary, Adam was failing to exercise his priestly duty of guarding. But the paradoxical double-sidedness of his sin remains: He is both refusing to exercise his current responsibility and simultaneously grasping at MORE responsibility. Sin is both the refusal of responsibility and the faithless and impatient grasp at privilege. It is simultaneously, and perhaps always, pride AND sloth.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 26, 2004 at 02:40 PM
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