Eve didn't cause the Fall. Eve caused the Rise.

[The Great Open Dance]

Sin is separation; salvation is reunion. If love unifies, then sin separates. Instead of reaching out to others, we coil into ourselves. We do this as individuals, sacrificing the common good to our petty selfishness. We do it as groups, looking for that negative reference group that our in-group can organize itself against.

Such separation defies the intention of God, who has joined all things together. All reality is nondual, united in agape. Separation itself—separation from the environment so that we can exploit it, separation from our neighbors so that we can use them, separation from other religions so that we can condemn them—separation itself is sin, a tear in the fabric of being that demands mending.

Sin alienates us from one another, then helps us come to terms with that alienation through the ruse of pride. Pride interprets the self as separate from and higher than others. In a bid to subvert pride and mend the fabric of being, Jesus declares, “The last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16). Through this declaration, he is trying to save us from ourselves by condemning our pridefulness, instead counseling the participation of an open self in an open community.

The strength of this community is predicated on the strength and openness of the selves that constitute it. Therefore, Jesus also tries to save us from self-trivialization. Everyone has a sense for the transcendent that is woven into the universe. Everyone senses that mere matter cannot exhaustively explain the beauty and power coursing through experience. The Holy Spirit Sophia is present, within and without, inviting us to overcome.

We fear difficulty, but ease and comfort are the real dangers. Returning home after spending World War II in a Japanese POW camp, Ernest Gordon wrote:

[After the war,] everyone spoke of seeking security. But what did security mean but animal comfort, anaesthetized souls, closed minds, and cold hearts? It meant a return to the cacophonous cocktail party as a substitute for fellowship, where, with glass in hand, people would touch each other but never meet. They would speak, but nothing would be said and nothing heard. They would look at their partners, but would not see them. With glassy eyes they would stare past them into nothingness.

Riskless life pains the living God, who offers us more. Since vitality is God’s desire for us, triviality is sinful. Hell might very well be air-conditioned.

The Trinity delivers us beyond Eden. Given the intransigence of our self-inflicted misery, we may be tempted to sigh for Eden. A return to innocence, simplicity, and unstudied spontaneity can prove attractive to anyone struggling through the inevitable complexities and disappointments of adulthood. But the fullness of life lies beyond Eden, not in a return to Eden.

Could God’s purpose for us have been fulfilled by running around naked in a garden for all time? Such a life would not have fulfilled the image of God within us, an image that includes the capacity for reason, the ability to create, and the necessity of choosing between good and evil. To fulfill the image of God within us, we had to become more than naked innocence. We had to become experience, and not just any experience, but experience that transcends itself.

If experience surpasses innocence, then we should thank God that Eve ate the fruit. It may have been God’s plan all along. Every child who learns the Adam and Eve story asks why God put the serpent in the garden, as well as the tree itself. If the goal was perpetual ignorance, then why not just leave them out? Of course, God also told Adam (not Eve, at least not directly) not to eat of the fruit. But Paul notes the tendency of any law to cause its own disobedience: “Does it follow that the Law is sin? Of course not! Yet I wouldn’t have known what sin was except for the Law. And I didn’t know what ‘to covet’ meant until I read, ‘Do not covet.’ But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetousness” (Romans 7 ).

Eden was a setup. God put the tree in the garden and said, “Don’t eat from that tree.” Then, God put a serpent in the garden as well. We mistakenly associate the serpent with Satan, an association foreign to ancient Jewish symbolism. Serpents were associated with intelligence, not evil, as the story itself suggests: “Now the serpent was more crafty [arum] than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made” (Genesis 3:1a NIV). The Hebrew word arum, as applied to the serpent, has been translated as “crafty,” “cunning,” “clever,” “subtle,” “shrewd,” and “intelligent.” But when applied to a person, as in Proverbs 14:8, it can be translated as “prudent” or “sensible.” Jesus himself says, “Be wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16b).

Eve admired this quality of the serpent, then aspired to it: “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Genesis 3:6 KJV).

Western Christianity has called this event The Fall. We will take a contrary approach. Eve does not cause The Fall; Eve causes The Rise. God needed a hero to cooperate with the divine plan and set humankind on the trying path of theosis, or divinization, that process through which we draw ever closer to the unreachable God. God needed a hero to lift humankind from preconsciousness to consciousness, a hero who could grant us the freedom within which we can relate to one another meaningfully.

Eve is that hero. As the founder of culture, she leads us into understanding. Genesis itself records this rise, as it remembers the first generations: “Adah gave birth to Jabal, the ancestor of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother was Jubal, the ancestor of all those who play the harp and the coppersmiths” (Genesis 4:20–22a). Through Eve’s decision, humanity’s “eyes were opened.” We have gained unimaginable abilities, discerning the tiniest elements of nature, observing the farthest reaches of space, visiting the darkest depths of the sea, and the journey continues.

Alas, awareness is painful. Adam and Eve, like toddlers becoming children, realized that they were naked. Ashamed, they made clothes for themselves. Then they took these clothes off to make babies, the brothers Cain and Abel, who grew into strong young men. And so the violence began. Our freedom to participate in moral judgment, to choose between good and evil, results in Cain’s murder of Abel. We became free, but we used that freedom to initiate violence against the innocent.

Even if we do not initiate the violence, we are free to respond in a disproportionate, retaliatory manner. Cain’s descendant Lamech declares: “Adah and Zillah, listen to my voice, spouses of Lamech, hear what I say: I killed a man who wounded me—a youth who merely struck me! If Cain’s deed will be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech’s will be avenged seventy-seven times!” (Gen 4:23–24) Lamech’s berserk vengefulness anticipates eons of human violence. We have been immersed in needless brutality like fish immersed in poisoned water, too accustomed to the situation to realize that anything is wrong.

We cannot undo Eve’s decision. Although some of us may sigh for Eden, there will be no return to innocence: “So YHWH drove them from the garden of Eden, and sent them to till the soil from which they had been taken. Once they were banished, winged sphinxes with fiery, ever-turning swords were placed at the entrance to the garden of Eden to guard the way to the Tree of Life” (Genesis 3:23–24).

Genesis declares that our expulsion from innocence to experience is permanent. We cannot go back, and we should not want to. Instead, we must go forward. If abundant life is to be found, then we will find it east of Eden, where joy and suffering entwine. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 182-185)

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For further reading, please see:

Gordon, Ernest. To End All Wars: A True Story about the Will to Survive and the Courage to Forgive. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013.

Habito, Ruben. Living Zen, Loving God. Boston: Wisdom, 1995.

Parker, Julie Faith. Eve Isn't Evil: Feminist Readings of the Bible to Upend Our Assumptions. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Publishing Group, 2023.