The Fall and the Cross

A regular reader and commenter raises an excellent issue with regard to the series of posts I've just concluded. Robert writes:

I'm having trouble fitting the central thesis of what you want to propose as the origin of natural evil, that is, intelligent, evil being working to pervert God's creation for a very long time, inside my salvation history narrative.

If one accepts this idea as an origin of natural evil, if asked the question, when was God's good creation, well, very good, then the goodness of creation gets pushed back into a time predating organisms of any complexity, perhaps predating life at all.

Robert is right to see this implication. Accepting the reality of an ancient, evolving creation as well as the idea that evil cosmic forces have always been present influences the evolutionary process necessarily entails and Satan and his crew were around influencing creation history long before the first human came into being. This means that the fall of mankind which Genesis 1 speaks of must have taken place long after the fall of creation (if indeed creation can be said to "fall," see below). This shouldn't bother us too much, I think, since it is clear from the Genesis stories that Satan was around before Eve took the first bite of the forbidden fruit (and was in fact the one who influenced her to bite it!). What might bother us a little more is that the narrative I'm discussing here completely robs Genesis 1 of even a mythic historical truth: God's creation was never perfect in reality, but only in God's mind. The fall was not a historic fall. I hope to deal with this implication in a future post.

But what is really bothering this commenter is who exactly has dominion over the world and how the work on the cross fits into this narrative. Genesis 1:28 is clear that God gives mankind dominion over the earth; but how can this be consistent with the idea that Satan was already ruling over it? If we say that God was giving mankind authority over Satan in Genesis 1:28, then does this diminish the work of the cross? Does this mean that the cross wasn't absolutely necessary? As Robert puts it:

Yet if God gives Adam world-rulership, when Satan seems to have been already exercising it for some time (though Adam through sin forfeits it again), there is an arbitrariness about it that comes close to mocking Christ's salvation-labor. If God has already once arbitrarily given world-rulership to man, why must man perfected suffer death to attain it? The cross seems no longer quite so necessary, if the precedent for an arbitrary revolution in the system of the world has been already set.

I think Robert is right about the implications of the view developed here, but I disagree that it diminishes the work of the Cross. Here is the narrative I have in mind here. Imagine that God creates the world, but rules it in a representative way giving dominion over certain aspects of nature to various created beings (each with their own free will). One being in particular (Satan), is given the most important job of all - to have dominion over matter itself, the prince of the "power of the air." Now imagine that billions of years ago, before life even began on earth, a rebellion takes place. This prince of an angel and a third of his brethen decide to rebel against God. These still maintain their various responsibilities, but now they work to push their principalities toward chaos and violence rather than harmonic peaceful order. They work against God's will rather than for it.

On earth, life eventually begins and these demonic forces take interest in that as well. While God's forces push evolutionary development toward cooperation and tolerance, demonic forces push it toward competition and suffering. Finally, after billions of years, the first humans evolve and they are unlike any other creature on the earth. In particular, they are the first creatures that have the ability to comprehend and ponder the rest of creation and in doing so they are the first creatures on earth that can take responsibility for it. Suddenly Satan's eyes are opened and he sees what God's plan was all along - to give responsibility for creation to these creatures. He sees humans for what they are: a challenge to the authority he has enjoyed for a long, long time. But he also knows that the same evolved characteristics that makes humans capable of reigning over creation with love and acceptance also makes them capable of hatred and deception. After all, it is partially through his activities influencing evolutionary development that mankind even came to exist. He appeals to their pride. He gets them to buy the lie that they have no authority. He subverts their authority and so maintains his own.

Where does the work of the cross fit in here? At the Cross, Christ defeats Satan by exposing Satan's lie. In killing Christ, Satan exercised his authority over something of which he had no legitimate claim. Christ is therefore the victor and by following Christ and living by principles of self-sacrificial love, we too have this victory. By refusing to live by Satan's rules and choosing to live by Christ's, Satan has no claim upon us. In that state, we can exercise our inherent authority over Creation and influence it according to God's will.

In this narrative, the work of the cross does indeed have the flavor of being God's "back-up plan," but I do not think this diminishes it's importance or its necessity given the fact of humanity's subversion under Satan. The cross is still necessary, but it is necessary because of man's failing. It was not a part of God's original plan for creation.