he glides easily into the statement of the obvious truth that the Adam,
or lower man, or earthly principle in every human being, needs to be
transformed by the uprising of the Christ or ideal man, within the
soul. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
alive." "The first man is of the earth earthy: the second man is the
Lord from heaven."
Here, then, we have the origins of the doctrine of the Fall. Right
through Christian history the tendency has run to look upon the world
as the ruins of a divine plan marred by man's perversity and self-will.
It is time we got rid of it, for it has had a blighting, deadening
influence upon hopeful endeavour for the good of the race. It is not
integral to Christianity, for Jesus never said a word about it and did
not even allude to it indirectly. It implies a view of the nature and
dealings of God with men which is unethical and untrue. Surely, if God
knew beforehand that the world would go wrong, the blame for
catastrophe was not all man's. If He were so baffled and
horror-stricken by the results as the dogmatic theologian makes out, He
ought to have been more careful about the way He did His work at the
beginning; a world which went wrong so early and so easily was anything
but "very good," although He pronounced it to be so according to the
Genesis writer. Besides, why should a trivial act of transgression
have sent it all wrong? We take leave of our common sense when we talk
Of man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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