The Meta-Historical Fall

Mythology has been very important to me since my twenties when I discovered the works of Joseph Campbell. Engaging with myth and mythic structure changed the way I think about the meaning of life, and it changed the way I create my own forms of art. It’s not surprising then that one of the most important parts of fighting biblical literalism for me is reclaiming Christian mythology. Taking myth literally misses the point of the stories and is in fact disrespectful to scripture. That’s right, I’m calling you out if you think that there was a real Noah or a real Jonah for dishonoring our sacred text. When people ask me how I know parts of the Bible are mythological, I usually like to say, “there’s a talking snake by the third chapter.” The joke is literally on you if you think that story is historical reportage.

The stories of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and the fall of humanity into sin are clearly myth. Unsophisticated believers have done a lot of damage by taking the myth literally, from using it to fight against LGBTQ+ rights, to blocking science in our schools, to manipulating the masses with painful theologies of original sin. Christian writers in the early church understood this myth to be what it was, allegory and example, not history. And long before that, I’m quite certain that our faith ancestors also understood that any story involving talking snakes was not literal history.

Philo of Alexandria was a contemporary of Jesus and Paul, so we’re talking a really early time frame in church history. He wrote that we should take a literal reading of Genesis because there are so many obvious contradictions, such as the existence of light before the creation of the sun, or the God of all creation taking physical human-like actions. He encourage an allegorical approach to interpretation because taking these stories literally dishonored them.

Still, the myth is true. It is painfully clear that we live in a fallen world. Look into your own mirror to understand how broken humanity is, how many bad choices we make daily and how separate we are from God’s purposes for us. Adam is a symbol of that separation. We face an existential reality that we are fallen even if that fall cannot be located in human history. More importantly, and unfortunately well beyond the scope of my little article here, the fall is a mirror of the constant story of exile and return we find in our faith. There is real meaning in bookending Adam with Christ. But what I want to talk about today is what do we do with the knowledge that our universe has always had death as a part of life since the Big Bang? Our life of death, separation, sin and despair is just the way the universe is, it is not a result of our ancestors’ choices about fruit trees.

This is the topic of the meta-historical fall, a concept that some orthodox and universalists thinkers such as Sergei Bulgakov and David Bentley Hart have shared. The meta-historical fall is a theological idea that the understands the original occasion of sin not as a literal event in human history, but as a metaphysical condition that affects all of creation. There wasn’t a moment in time where humans separated from God, but there truly is a terrible fracture between Creator and creation. This manifests all around us as alienation, suffering and death. That is true not just of humans, but the entire cosmos. Dinosaurs suffered and died. This fallen reality has been true for over 13 billion years. Thus, the meta-historical fall reframes the story of sin and separation as an ongoing reality, a universal condition, that demonstrates the necessity of universal restoration with God. Somehow this has been true since before the beginning of time.

I’ve only recently become acquainted with Sergei Bulgakov, a Russian Orthodox theologian from the late 19^th and early 20^th century. So don’t take what I say here as the definitive explanation of Bulgakov’s thinking, just an entry point that should encourage you to read more. Bulgakov believed that creation is fundamentally good. So evil is not an act but a privation. That means evil is not a thing, but a loss or distortion of what is good. Our purpose in God has been disrupted, so our goal is theosis or full divinization where we become full participants in God.

There is some kind of disharmony between creation and God that has led to suffering and separation. But that wasn’t limited to a kind of before-and after image locked in time, it is the very nature of creation. Personally, I tie this to my ideas about the problem of suffering. For us to experience true love as creation, we must have free will and free will by its very nature has the potential for chaos. This is a part of creation, but it is also fundamental to a broken relationship between creation and Creator. There is simply no other way for God to create.

This implies of course that death and entropy, the very forces that bring about decay and the end of life, are not random. For Bulgakov, they signal the deepest of spiritual problems: a less than perfect communion with God. There is a cosmic level brokenness that corrupts all of creation, not some kind of genetic defect handed down to us from Adam and Eve. There could be no other way to bring about a loving creation. To force unity with God would be to create mindless automatons, not loving participants. Our goal is to slowly return to our intended harmony and divine purpose for the best of both worlds, a freely chosen life in God.

I learned about Bulgakov from David Bentley Hart. Like me, Hart insists that the Genesis stories are first and foremost mythological. They articulate a theological truth even if they do not provide a literal chronical of human history. My most shared definition of myth is that which never was but always is. Flattening out myths like Eden into some kind of literal history is a brutish vulgarity that ignores literary forms and cheapens our sacred texts. The point of the story is not to demonstrate the beginnings of our guilt but is instead a profound meditation on the universal condition of sin and death. As creation, we are limited and that limitation includes alienation from God and a kind of perpetual susceptibility toward nonexistence and disorder. It is always there for us, that is temptation.

Like any good universalist, Hart rejects penal substitutionary atonement or any other juridical atonement theories. The “fall,” is not to be understood in legal terms or explained as the necessary retribution of a wrathful God. You may argue that Paul uses that language, but I would counter that Paul is grasping at many different metaphors to explain the experience of a living, post-resurrection Christ. So instead, Hart says that sin and death are simply the nature of our disordered desires as free creatures. The story of Eden is an allegory for the soul that chooses to turn from God in any given moment, a choice that naturally results in diminished participation in God’s life and purpose for us. Salvation and redemption are not the reversal of an historical crime but a constant reorientation toward life in God.

But Matt, what’s the point? You’re saying that we are living in a fallen universe, separate from God and constantly tempted toward more sin. That sounds a lot like what my fundangelical neighbor believes, too, and she takes the stories as literal history. That’s all fine, but there are actually some theological implications to consider if the fall did not hinge upon an historical moral choice. If the fall is not rooted in human moral decision but is a fundamental part of creation, baked in from the beginning of time, then it does require us to reshape common understandings of sin, redemption and hope. Sin is simply pervasive in creation and so the focus of our culpability should also be on corporate or existential issues, not as absolving individuals from misdeeds so they can go play a harp on a cloud when they die. This is the point where your fundangelical neighbor will depart your front lawn and stop borrowing your wheelbarrows. Of course, she may later bring friends to stand on the street and pray over your house for fear of your eternal soul.

Christ truly saves. Christ is our redeemer, not just for us individually but for the entire cosmos. The point is not to give each one of us a legal pardon if we say we believe certain ideas. The point is the restoration of all of existence. It’s about participation in Christ, not a get out of Hell card. We are meant to participate in theosis, in divinization and that participation is all of creation. We are going through this process of restoration together. Our hope is that the entire order is healed and brought back into harmony. So, let’s end those guilt narratives and simply work together to live in Christ as best we can.

My home ELCA church participates in a corporate confession each week. Now, I happen to enjoy private confession with my pastor as well, but I get the sense that I’m pretty rare in the congregation in calling or visiting my pastor and starting with the phrase, “will you receive my confession.” Private confession is very good for your soul. But the focus in our weekly liturgy is on corporate brokenness and a shared desire for healing and forgiveness. That is a subtle and beautiful break from the common guilt narrative that surrounds a lot of discussions about sin in my town, and probably yours. We stand up and recognize the personal and universal aspects of our brokenness and then we partake in the means of grace to remind ourselves that the point of all of this is to freely draw closer to God.

The story of Eden is of repetitive exile. It’s a diagnosis, not a judgement. It points to a cosmic reality of our created life and calls us to restoration and return from that exile.

Rinse. Wash. Repeat.