There is a difference in the “conventional” understanding of the Fall of Man and what the Orthodox Church understands and preaches. In order for us to properly understand God and what it means for man to be made in His image and likeness, we must come to understand a more proper way of reading this story out of Genesis.

            The conventional view is that man was placed in the garden and God pointed out the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil and were told not to eat of it. Then the sly serpent enters the garden and convinces Eve that she too can become like God. She then convinces Adam to eat. God punishes them and casts them out of the garden. While there may be some truths we can recogonize in the conventional way of the telling about the Fall of Man, it also makes God out to be a petty and a rule-obsessed tyrant.1

            Our understanding is different in that God did not place Adam and Eve in the garden to obey a rule but to cultivate the Temple garden where God could walk with his friends.  Adam and Eve were to be Priests, Kings and Prophets.2 In being Priests, they were to give thanks to God for everything in creation and that partaking of creation was to have direct communion with God. Yet in partaking of the Tree, they partook of something that was not offered as a gift and thus failed to have communion with God.

            They were to be King and Queen over all creation. Adam named all the animals and what he named them God accepted. They were to take special care for the Temple garden, instead thjey allowed something from the outside to come in a bring deceit and lies into paradise. They failed as co-rulers of creation with God. Finally, they were to be Prophets. Man being made spirit and flesh was to stand between the boundary between God and the world and mediate and lead all creation to God.

            In all of this Adam and Eve failed – this is the true diseaster of the garden. Not breaking a rule! In the state of not being fully human, lest they touch the tree of life in their state and live, God kicks them out of the garden, He does not desire to punish them but to live in reality of who they have chosen to become as well as to have mercy on man in that he won’t live forever in this state of sinfulness. The high calling of the Christian, through a life in Christ, is to now have the opportunity to accept our Priestly, Kingly, and Prophetic calling as being made in God’s image and likeness. Through man sin entered into the world, and through man (Jesus Christ) our true nature of who we  are called to be can now be restored and we can one again, if we choose, to become Priest, King, and Prophet in this world.

 

1-2 Essential Orthodox Christian Beliefs- A manual for adult instruction. 2023