A Revitalization of Images. Gregory C. Higgins

“permanent” myths. In his 1937 article, “The Truth in Myths,” he argues that the former “is derived from prescientific thought” while the latter “deals with aspects of reality which are suprascientific rather than prescientific.”90 Primitive myth can be rightly discarded by later generations, but, as the label implies, permanent myth is permanently valid. Referring specifically to the myth of the fall, Niebuhr believes that the orthodox theologians erred by insisting that the story of the fall is actual history, while modern theologians have erred by failing to recognize the crucial distinction between primitive and permanent myth. “It is because man can transcend nature and himself that he is able to conceive of himself as the center of all life and the clue to the meaning of existence. It is this monstrous pretension of his egoism, the root of all imperialism and human cruelty, which is the very essence of sin. To recognize all this is not to accept the story of the fall as history.”91 As Niebuhr noted in his earlier work, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, “It is in its interpretations of the facts of human nature . . . that the myth of the Fall make its profoundest contribution to moral and religious theory.”92 The story of the fall correctly suggests that “the root of man’s sin lies in his pretension of being God” and sadly, this “tragic reality of life, is attested by every page of human history.”93

Bunyan’s Grace Abounding illustrates in interesting ways many of the themes in postliberal theology: a strong church/world distinction, the formative power of Scripture, and the Christian life as an interiorization of the language of the biblical narrative. Bunyan’s sharp distinction between the church at Bedford and the world appears when he offers a description of the physical landscape surrounding the church. The church is in a walled town on the sunny side of a tall mountain which he enters through a straight and narrow gate. “Now, this mountain and wall, etc. was thus made out to me; the mountain signified the church of the living God; the sun that shone thereon, the comfortable shining of his merciful face on them that were therein: the wall I thought was the Word that did make the separation between the Christians and the world: and the gap which was in the wall, I thought was Jesus Christ, who is the way to God the Father” (John 14:16; Matt 7:14).94 When he first met the women at Bedford, it seemed as if “they had found a new world, as if they were people that dwelt alone, and were not to be reckoned amongst the nations” (Num 23:9).95 The “new world” that the women had discovered was in fact an account of the world and human existence in it as narrated in the biblical story. Bunyan’s spiritual journey involves learning about this new world and entering into it. After coming into contact with the women of Bedford, he “began to look into the Bible with new eyes.”96 With these new eyes, he sees Esau’s sale of his birthright as his own sin and the cities of refuge in Joshua 20 as his own place of refuge. Even Stephen’s vision at his stoning becomes Bunyan’s own vision (Acts 7:55).97 The entire arch of story that Bunyan relates in Grace Abounding involves his ever-increasing interiorization of the biblical narrative. The postliberal theologian George Lindbeck contends that to “become a Christian involves learning the story of Israel and Jesus well enough to interpret and experience oneself and one’s world in its terms.”98 Bunyan’s autobiography provides a splendid example of how this very process unfolds in the course of his own life.

The postmodern engagement with the second creation story’s imagery of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and the fall has produced some interesting reflections on the theme of distortion. Postmoderns sees a triad of interrelated forms of distortion described in Genesis 2–3: a distortion of human desire, a distortion of human relations, and a distortion of language and meaning. Gregory’s careful examination of the driving force of the emotions and passions and Augustine’s claim that our hearts are restless until they rest in God reappears in postmodern reflection. As John Caputo comments in an exchange with the philosopher Edith Wyschogrod, “Our hearts are structurally restless, with the restlessness of this desire [for God], which is as you say ‘inherently unfulfillable’ and not a desire for ‘static eternity,’ which is part of its so-called ‘post-modernity,’ and does not expect rest. This is what interests me, the way this most classical, most biblical, desire, this most Augustinian aspiration, has been rediscovered, refashioned—‘repeated,’ as Derrida says—in what is popularly called ‘postmodernism,’ or at least a certain version or voice of postmodernism.”99 The story of the fall expresses this fundamental drive within humans, but also recognizes the instability of our desires and our inherent tendency to pursue that which ruptures our friendship with God and neighbor and drains us of the fullness of being.

Following from the discussion of desire and its possible misdirection, the theologian Jan-Olav Henriksen distinguishes between a desire that is accepting of the other and a desire that seeks to control the other. “There is a difference between the desire to control and master reality and the desire to enjoy, participate, and communicate. The first emerges out of concern, worries, and insecurity, the other out of trust and gratitude.”100 The desire to control the other results in various forms and degrees of subjugation of the other. Trible highlighted the distorted relationship that develops between men and women, but the argument could also be applied to issues such as international relations, racial tensions, and income inequality.

The third type of distortion and the one that perpetuates oppressive social structures over time is the distortion of language and meaning. Language requires differentiation and differentiation requires naming: God is not a human; a human is not one of the various birds that fill the sky; the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life, etc. Graham Ward notes that in the rabbinical tradition the story of God blowing the breath of life into Adam is interpreted to mean the giving of speech to humans. In this view, the snake represented the distortion in language and meaning when it asked Eve, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Gen 3:1). “The snake imitates God and Adam in its ability to speak. But its representation, and repetition of God’s instructions to the earthly creature distorts them.”101 Eve’s repetition of the divine command not to eat of the tree of knowledge does not dissuade the serpent from offering a distorted reading of the command. In fact, Ward argues, “Even if the woman’s words to the serpent had remained the same there would have been a slippage of meaning, because the context of each iteration is different. The woman cannot then repeat what God intended when he first spoke. Reiteration will always be interpretation and misreading.”102 Language in a fallen world can be twisted and misused for ends not intended by the original speaker. Even speech suffers the destabilizing effect of the fall.

      Just as Gregory of Nyssa, John Bunyan, and Phyllis Trible opened up new and thought-provoking perspectives on the second creation story, so too contemporary thinkers help us to read the text in a new light. The orthodox correlation of the old Adam (anthropology) and the new Adam (Christology and soteriology), the liberal treatment of the fall as existential estrangement, the postliberal absorption of the biblical narrative into one’s own life story, and the postmodern focus on the various forms of distortion suggested by the fall help revitalize our appreciation for Genesis 2–3 as a text that speaks powerfully to the human condition.

      Discussion Questions

      1. What is your interpretation of the story of the fall?

      2. Gregory of Nyssa speaks of the human as positioned between divinity and brutality. Is this an accurate portrayal? If so, how do humans move closer to divinity rather than brutality?