The biblical
teaching about the primitive state in Paradise and then the Fall of man is the connection
between Old Testament and New Testament teachings. On it is also based the teaching
of Redemption.
Of
the primitive life of man, science has no data at all. According to the
remarkable expression of the famous French anthropologist Katrefage:
“Neither experience nor observation give us the
slightest facts concerning the very beginning of mankind. Strict science must
therefore leave inviolate this problem. He who acknowledges his ignorance in
the given case recedes less from the truth than he who does not acknowledge it
and strives to press it on others.” The one oblique proof of the correctness of
biblical teaching in this question is the ancient tradition of diverse peoples
about the primitive state of the race of man. Comparative study of these traditions
forces us to conjecture their common source — the actuality in the past of a
“golden age” or Paradise.
Dim
traditions about Paradise and its loss through the Fall are met
among peoples of Assyria-Babylon, the Persians, the Chinese, the Indians, the
Egyptians, the ancient Greeks, the Romans, etc. In other words, the biblical
teaching about the primitive state of man is not alone. Various versions of
this teaching are met in traditions of people of Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia
and America (in Mexico, Paraguay, and other places). What can explain this remarkable mutual accord
in traditions of various peoples about the primitive state and Fall of man? The only explanation can be the historical
actuality of Paradise and its loss through the Fall.
Biblical
teaching about the primitive state of man embraces the state of mankind before
the fall, and the first ages after the Fall. According
to the description in the Book of Genesis, before the Fall,
the first people found themselves amid exceptionally favorable conditions for
physical, mental, and especially, religious-ethical improvements aspiring to
perfection.
Physically,
they were free from sorrows, illnesses, and death. Mentally, they possessed
great creative abilities, since they were created in the image and likeness of
God, and had to develop their abilities in order to rule over the whole earth.
As to the religious-ethical state of the first people, it was a highly blissful
and blessed state. Their main happiness consisted of a direct personal
communion with God. Their veneration of God had the character of a child’s
devotion to God; their virtue consisted of a faithful keeping of the
commandments of God.
Abundant
blessedness pouring out on them did not destroy their personal freedom — that
greatest of all blessings given to them which makes them godlike in truth. A
full personal freedom, not limited but only guarded by a prohibition of not
eating the fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, created for them
two possibilities: to grow spiritually and to be strengthened through personal,
self-active moral strivings toward perfection, or to fall morally, transgressing
the blessed and perfect will of God.