17. The origin of evil.

On the primary state of man.

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.