As It Is Written . . .
Who, Me?
by Patrick Henry Reardon
A notable feature of the "reign of sin" (Rom. 5:21) is man's reluctance to blame himself; as a result of sin's introduction into this world, individual human beings are disposed to shift the responsibility for their moral failures to some other cause.
This disposition appeared pretty early. After his sense of shame, in fact, man's reluctance to assume responsibility seems to have been his most primitive response to the Fall. Adam should have answered, "Yes, Sir, and I am deeply sorry," when God inquired of him, "Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?"
God knows the fact, of course; his question is rhetorical. Adam, however, pushing a possible rhetorical ambivalence to his own advantage, promptly decides to treat this as a real question, as though God isn't really sure, and the truth is in doubt. Mentioning what he hopes is a mitigating circumstance, he declares, "The woman, whom you gave to be with me—She gave me the fruit" (pronoun emphatic).
This exchange may be counted the most primitive instance of the misuse of logic, the fatal response of a fallen philosopher. When God created man, he created him with the ability to trace effects back to causes, and this is exactly what Adam pretends to do here.
Let us follow his reasoning: I ate the fruit, but why did I eat the fruit? What caused this dilemma? Well, he reasons, this would never have happened if this woman had not "given it to me" (natnah-li). But, our logician goes on, this woman would not have given it to me, if God had not "given" (nattah) me this woman in the first place. That is to say, none of this is my fault; if God had not given me this woman, she would not have given me this fruit. It's all perfectly simple; that's my account of it.
God, ignoring Adam's pathetic appeal to logic, turns his attention to Eve. All right, Eve, he says, just what did you have in mind, dear? "What is this you have done?" Eve, not yet confused by complex logic, keeps it simple: "The snake deceived me, and I ate." The burden of Eve's response, however, is the same as Adam's: I'm not to blame, really.
What the responses of Adam and Eve have in common is their appeal to an external agency by way of explaining their personal moral decisions. This deep and inveterate disposition should be counted among the most -elementary components of the reign of sin. The "I" is replaced by the "me"; you gave me the woman; the woman gave me the fruit. I am not really a moral agent, certainly not the primary moral agent. I am, you see, a victim.
No sin or sinner is redeemed by ongoing recriminations. A vicious part of the reign of sin—a chief effect of the Fall—is the psychological distortion that prompts human beings to become, in turn, accusers of others by way of not accusing themselves, or of mitigating their own guilt by such an appeal.
Parallel with the Passion
This basic quality of the reign of sin is later described in Matthew's Passion account, in two successive scenes joined by a shared vocabulary and rhetorical pattern: the first is the exchange between Judas Iscariot and the Lord's enemies, and the second is between Pontius Pilate and the mob clamoring for the Lord's blood.
Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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