Where are you?

The story of the Fall in Genesis 3 confronts us with five compelling and intriguing questions which reverberate throughout the pageant of Scripture. They connect as well to the philosophical traditions about what it means to be human and about our relationship to the world. They especially concern what is, perhaps, the distinguishing feature of modernity, namely, the question and issue about self-consciousness. How do we come to know ourselves as selves?

The first question is the question of the serpent in the Garden. “Did God say?” it asks. The other four questions are the questions of God to our humanity, ‘Adamah, now distinguished as Adam and Eve. “Where are you? “God asks Adam. “Who told you that you were naked?” and “Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? “God asks him. To the woman, he then asks, “What is this that you have done?”

In the story of Cain and Abel that follows upon this chapter, the Lord asks Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” and, to his evasive response, then asks, “What have you done?” All the questions of God to our humanity in this mythological and poetic form serve to call us to account, to truth, and as such belong to our awakening to self-consciousness. The questions seek to make us aware of ourselves and of the radical nature of ourselves as rational creatures who are ultimately responsible for our thoughts and actions. In a way, these questions reach a kind of crescendo of intensity in God’s great question to suffering Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth … when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” The question recalls us at once to creation and to our separation from the Creator and his creation and thus to the pageant of redemption. Job, too, is being called to account about the meaning of the Law in terms of the prior order of creation upon which the Law of Moses ultimately depends.

In Luke’s introduction to his famous parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus asks a questioning and cynical lawyer, “What is written in the Law? How do you read?” and then, in the conclusion of the parable that illustrates the love of neighbour, a further question, “Which of these three, do you think, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” In every case, the questions of God seek to convict our consciences and in so doing awaken us to the greater truth of his creation of which we are a part but from which we have departed. Such is the radical meaning of the Fall.

But it all begins with the question of the serpent, itself an image or aspect of human rationality. Apart from God, only rational creatures can ask questions. Assumed in such things is the idea that we seek to know, that “all humans by nature desire to know”, as Aristotle notes, but the question is upon what basis? What kind of question is the serpent’s question? There is all the difference in the world between questions which seek to know and questions which seek to undermine and twist what is actually known. But to what end? Self-interest and power. “Did God say?”, the serpent asks. Well, we know exactly what God said, and that is precisely recalled by Eve. What the serpent’s question and dialogue shows is a twisting of what God said by insinuating doubt, by suggesting an alternative meaning, one which we devise.

But it is a denial of the truth which is known. The commandment not to eat at this point in the journey of human life is part of the goodness of creation and known as such. The answers of Adam and Eve are actually truthful at least in a descriptive sense though Adam does not acknowledge his culpability in yielding to Eve about eating the forbidden fruit. Eve’s answer to God’s fifth question shows her wonderful insight into what has transpired in their disobedience, a kind of acknowledgement though only in a partial sense. “The serpent beguiled me, and I ate.” This recognises, at the very least, the nature of temptation which is always about preferring an interpretation of our own making to what we actually know to be true in some sense.

The story of the Fall is equally the story of our fall upwards into self-consciousness albeit through separation from the principle of our being and knowing. O felix culpa, O blessed fault! It launches our humanity into the long, long pageant of redemption, of learning through suffering and sacrifice what belongs to the deeper truth of our humanity. That journey is about seeking our homeland of the spirit, seeking a return to what belongs to God’s will and purpose for our humanity. Do these questions have an answer? Yes, but in a way which simply highlights the purpose of these questions themselves, namely, in awakening us to self-consciousness about ourselves, about our sins and follies as well as what we truly seek, everlasting goodness.

In the Christian understanding, these questions converge on the Cross in the words of Christ crucified. “What is written? How do you read?”, Jesus had asked. The seven words from the Cross are written in the crucified body of Christ revealed in the four Gospels in their accounts of the Passion. The first and last word in the classical ordering of Christ’s words from the Cross are an address to the Father. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”, and “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”. They are the words of forgiveness and restoration through the suffering and sacrifice of Christ. The fourth word captures the radical meaning of the Fall, our separation from God. “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? Jesus says, itself a question which expresses the sense of desolation and separation which belongs to sin.

These words capture something of the same quality of gentleness as the questions to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. They seek to convict our consciences by awakening us not just to ourselves but to ourselves as embraced in the all-encompassing goodness of God. We are awakened to the principle of love which wonderfully creates and yet more wondrously redeems our humanity. They are the questions which belong to the pageant of human redemption, to the project of the restoration of our humanity from its disobedience and brokenness; in short, to the awakening of ourselves to the truth of ourselves in God.