God set mankind on the earth. In Eden He planted that wonderful Garden that should be its possessors’ delight and pleasure, for “Eden” means “pleasure land,” or “loveliness.”
Christ and the New Testament guarantee the historicity and literality of the opening chapters of the Bible. Everywhere the Lord and His apostles treat them as accounts of actual events; indeed they even draw from them dogmatic conclusions (Mt. 19: 4-9; Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:21-22; 1 Tim. 2:13-14; Jas. 3:9; 1 Jn. 3:12; Rev. 20:2. Therefore if the New Testament is truth, then Genesis 1–3 is history. Whoever rejects or explains away this history at the beginning is thereby in opposition to the absolute authority of the Lord Jesus and His apostles.
THE HOME OF AN INDESCRIBABLE BLISS
Majestically Adam, the lord of the earthly creation, ruled the Garden and all the work of his hands prospered. The flowers bloomed with such beauty as the human eye has never again seen, and the trees bore the most glorious fruit. In the vegetable and animal world a wondrous breath of heavenly peace prevailed; and above all, God Himself, the Creator of the universe, held ungrieved fellowship with him and granted him the enjoyment of His blessed presence (Gen. 3:8).
Where the earthly Paradise was situated cannot be stated with certainty. Some have suggested Armenia or the Syrian-Arabia desert. In any case the Phrat (Gen. 2:14) is the Euphrates and Hiddekel the Tigris (comp. Dan. 10:4, the Aramaic Diglat). That the district of Eden must have lain high is proved by the circumstance that it was the birthplace of great rivers (Gen. 2:10). The Garden is not Eden itself, but “in” Eden (Gen. 2:8, 10). That later the name of the district passed to the Garden itself (e.g., Ezek. 28:13) is a common occurrence easily to be understood. The rivers Pison and Gihon cannot with certainty be identified. It appears that substantial changes in those regions were effected by the Flood.
The word “paradise” is derived from the Persian and means simply a park or forest which surrounded the royal stronghold. Thus Nehemiah 2:8 speaks of a certain Asaph, the keeper of the royal forest (Heb., pardes). Similarly, Solomon in the sentence “I made me gardens and orchards” uses for orchards the same word paradises (Eccl. 2:5; comp. Song of Sol. 4:12). In the New Testament the word occurs only three times (Lk. 23:43; 2 Cor. 12:4; Rev. 2:7).
But God had placed man in Paradise not for enjoyment only: he was also to be active and produce fruit; and thus the garden became for him the beginning of a great work.
THE STARTING-POINT OF A WONDERFUL TASK
“Be fruitful, and multiply, and [populate] the earth, and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). In these words the royal appointment of the human race is declared. The capacity for this is the human spirit, which reveals itself above all in speech.
What is a word? A sound which goes out of the mouth! Yet much more! A conveyor of a motion of the spirit, an instrument for manifesting the intelligence, a sign, a symbol of an activity of the souL Only through the gift of the spirit and speech does man becomes really man. Only thus is it that he receives the capacity of inward development.
By speech Adam began in Paradise the exercise of his royal authority. At the very beginning, even before the creation of the woman, God Himself brought to him the creatures of the air and the earth, so that he, discerning their natures, should give them suitable names (Gen. 2:20). Thus was their “king” at the very beginning crowned by the Creator, and speech became, spiritually speaking, the “scepter of mankind.”
Thus speech is not, as unbelieving philosophers assert, an invention which man first made little by little within human society for the purpose of mutual intercourse. For God “spoke” to Adam even before He had given him Eve as helper, and in like manner Adam, before the creation of the woman, made use of speech in the naming of the animals. Rather therefore is speech an “instinctive emanation of the spirit” which, “passing out through the mouth, is a perceptible revelation of the intelligence” (Plato). As an aptitude inherent in creation, the gift of speech was present in man from the beginning.
The earth—at least exterior to Paradise—in spite of its creation and government by the Most High, was a region that had not yet entirely reached its goal. Indeed, it appears that the condition of disharmony that with the fall of Satan had invaded this earthly realm (Rom. 8:20-21) was still existing in the earth outside Paradise at the time man was created. This is proved by the command of God to man not only to cultivate the garden of Paradise, but to “guard” it; as also by the fact that his temptation came through a hostile power opposed to God, appearing on the earth and making use of an animal.
Thus the extending of man’s rule on the earth, provided he remained subject to God, signified a drawing of all things earthly into the sphere of the moral purposes, an increasing resumption of the earth for God and therewith a progressive leading forward of the creation to redemption and perfection. Paradise was thus the fixed point from which the uplifting of Nature into the sphere of the spirit should take its beginning.
In this regard Adam himself counted not only as an individual, but at the same time as the primary ancestor and representative of the whole of his descendants, then already seen in principle “in” him (1 Cor. 15:22; Rom. 5:12-21). Therefore is it said first, “Be fruitful and multiply and [people] the earth,” and only afterward, “and subdue it to yourselves and rule it” (Gen. 1:28). So then the Paradise garden is beginning and end, start and goal, basis, program, and type of the whole task of man on earth.
But this could be attained only by the man being placed in a moral conflict with the possibility of yielding to evil. Only in a conflict could he “conquer;” only so could he obtain the crown of the “overcomer.” On the other hand Satan, the adversary of God, would not allow the work of his enemy, this man created pure and good, to go unattacked. Thus, at the very beginning, there forthwith opened a highly significant struggle, and Paradise became a battlefield of sorts.
THE ARENA OF A MIGHTY CONFLICT
With this its mysterious background it entered into the cosmic frame of universal super-history. Behind Paradise stands the star world of God and the greatest revolt that has ever taken place, the conflict between Satan and God.
Foolish indeed is the objection that to eat of a forbidden fruit was no more than nibbling a dainty on the sly and so a small sin; for to the first pair it was not simply to test the flavor of the fruit, but they wished, behind the back of the Creator, by a forbidden way, to rise to equal exaltation with Him (Gen. 3:5). The prohibition as to eating from the tree was thus essentially spiritual, inasmuch as it established the absolute authority of God over men, and this as the true good.
Through not eating the fruit of the tree, that is, through victory in the temptation, Adam’s moral consciousness, through the exercise of his freedom of choice, should attain to freedom of authority, and at the same time his service to the earth as its ruler should therewith become effective. Each victory over temptation would have ripened and deepened his inner life. More and more would he have recognized the good and seen through the evil, and would have grown out of the condition of childlike innocence into one of adult maturity, of victorious holiness, with an attainment of a perception of good and evil like to that of God.
This tree of the knowledge of good and evil was become Adam’s altar and pulpit, from which he was to render due obedience to God, recognize God’s word and will and give Him thanks; and had Adam not fallen, this tree would have been like a temple and cathedral (Luther).
Thus the tree was a sign of the rule of God over man and the subjection of man to God. Even in the prohibition God wished far more to give than to withhold. The tree of knowledge had consequently in a double manner a divine purpose: it was a means in the hand of God for the education of man and by this for the transfiguration of the earth.
But then came the sin. Man lost his Eden; and Paradise, this dwelling of delight and loveliness, became the scene of the Fall of man, and the whole creation came crashing down with it.
THE PLACE OF A TRAGIC COLLAPSE
The serpent had promised man the knowledge of good and evil, and in a distorted form he has kept his word. But “instead of perceiving the evil from the free height of the good he perceived the good from the deep abyss of the evil.” According to God’s plan, man through victory in temptation should have perceived what good is and what evil would be; but through sin he subsequently perceived what evil is and what good would have been. And because at the tree of knowledge he had wantonly sinned, he must now also be cut off from the tree of life (Gen. 3:22-23). Death entered the human race, and in Paradise began man’s sad tale of sorrow from that day to this.
Yet man could never forget his native place. All peoples have sung of “Paradise Lost” and, hoping and waiting, have watched for its return. Paradise is still a goal of the human heart.
THE LONGED-FOR GOAL OF A WAITING HUMANITY
In fact their hopes will not be disappointed. The final history will return to the opening history, and as at the beginning of the ancient earth there existed an earthly paradise, so at last on the new earth there will be a heavenly paradise (Rev. 22:1-5). Moreover, after the Fall the Lord permitted the high calling of man to continue. Even now the glorifying of the earth and the perfecting of mankind still remain eternally connected.
Therefore the Scripture intimates repeatedly a deep connection in the history of salvation between the earth and mankind.
Thus Paradise corresponded to the man in innocence; the land under curse to him as the fallen man. So to Israel, as the typical people of God, corresponded the Promised Land as the type of the future Paradise. Similarly, to each moral decline of that people there corresponded a desolating of its land (Deut. 28:14ff.; Joel 2; Zeph. 1:14ff.), even as to each period of spiritual reviving there corresponded an uplifting of nature (Deut. 28:8ff.; Ps. 72:16-17). Likewise at the death of Christ the sun became darkened, and the renewing of the earth announced itself at His death by the earthquake.
Similarly with the increase of sin in the time of Antichrist there will come an increased distress over nature (Rev. 16:1ff.); but in the Millennial kingdom nature will be blessed with the whole of mankind (Isa. 11; etc.). Finally, with the close of human history the old universe perishes as to its form (2 Pet. 3:10; Rev. 21), in order that, with the glorifying of redeemed humanity, there may come a glorified “new earth” (Rev. 21:1).
Therefore “the earnest expectation of the creation awaits the manifestation of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19), and therefore can it be brought to the sharing of “the liberty” only when the children of God are in the state of glory (Rom. 8:19-22).
In Christ at last will mankind attain its blessed goal. He appeared on earth and completed His work. He humbled Himself, went to the cross and bore there the sins of mankind. Thereupon He ascended to heaven and now sits at the right hand of the Father, until at length He shall usher in the day on which He will present to Himself and to the Father His own people glorified (Eph. 5:27).
Yet as the Son of Man He has perfected here the work which the Father gave Him to do. As Man He bore here the crown of thorns which the unredeemed land, standing under the curse, offered Him; and therefore as Man will He some day, as Head of His church, reign over the same earth, though then redeemed and freed from the curse (Eph. 1:22). The divine Redeemer became Man and as such redeemed the human ruler of the earth, united him then to Himself in eternal, inseparable oneness, and at the same time effected the redemption of the earth. This is the way which grace found. Thus the old vocation of man remains, and yet is it filled with wholly new content. In Christ as its head, mankind attains the purpose of its appointment. As the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45, 21-22; Rom. 5:12-21) He is its center, crown, and star.
But it is one of the deepest secrets of the counsel of the grace of God that, in order to reach His great objective, He did not set man aside when, through his sin and fall, he proved unworthy of his high vocation. “The gifts [by grace] and the calling [of God] are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). In spite of all, the perfecting of creation is to be bound up with man. Though its development may proceed along other ways than it would have done had man not fallen by sin, yet the final purpose remains. And because it remains the way and the goal of God that man shall be the channel of blessing for the creation, therefore can the devil be cast into the lake of fire, and there be a new heaven and a new earth after the conclusion of the revealed history of the redemption of mankind (Rev. 20:1; comp. 20:11-15).
Written by Erich Sauer