the serpent says to the woman: You will know good and evil; the fact that God himself says (Gen. iii. 22), that, having eaten of the fruit of the tree, Adam is become as one of us, to know good and evil,—all that we must forget and we must think about the profound account in the Book of Genesis in a most inexact and absurd manner; and all that, not in order to explain anything in this account, but that there should not be left any sense in it except the most apparent and coarse contradiction that God was doing everything for the purpose of attaining one end, while something different resulted.
87. According to the doctrine of the church, the first man lived in the garden and was blessed. This is told as follows: Adam and Eve lived in bliss in the garden, “and there is no doubt that this bliss of the first men would not only not have diminished in time, but would have increased more and more in proportion with their greater perfection, if they had kept the command which the Lord had given them in the beginning. Unfortunately for our progenitors themselves as well as for their descendants, they violated this command and thus destroyed their bliss.”
88. The manner and causes of the fall of our first parents. But the serpent came (the serpent is the devil,—that is proved by Holy Scripture) and Adam was tempted and fell, and lost his bliss.
89. The importance of the sin of our first parents. This sin is important because (a) it is disobedience; (b) the command is easy; (c) God had benefited them and only demanded obedience; (d) they had the grace, and needed only to wish; (e) in that one sin there were many other sins, and (f) the consequences of this sin were very great for Adam and for all posterity.
90. The consequences of the fall of our first parents were in the soul: (1) the disruption of the union with God, the loss of grace, and spiritual death.
