The fall in the early church · Sophia Scriptura

Adam's transgression, the loss of paradise, and its consequences for humankind. Part of Sin.

To Diognetus 12.3Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · God planted both trees; misuse of knowledge through the serpent's deceit led to the fall.
Acts of Andrew (Vatican fragments), chapter 5Anonymous · ca. 150-200 (the Acts); the Martyrdom text is later · Andrew urges Maximilla to refuse Aegeates and to endure his threats, seeing in her Eve repenting and in himself Adam turning back.
Sibylline Oracles 8.261ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The Sibyl tells how the serpent deceived Adam, and how the Almighty, taking the Son as counsellor, said "Let us make" man, and how the Son came, mindful of that purpose, through a holy virgin.
Dialogue with Trypho 124.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The LXX reading refers to the fall of Adam and Eve and of the serpent.
To Autolycus 2.21Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Genesis 3:1–19 is quoted: the serpent's temptation, the first sin, and God's judgment on the serpent, the woman, and the man.
To Autolycus 2.25Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The tree of knowledge was good; Adam was a child not yet ready for it, and death came from disobedience, not from the fruit; God forbade it not from envy but to test him and keep him innocent.
To Autolycus 2.28Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · God made Eve from Adam's rib to show that one God made both, and marriage fulfills Adam's prophecy; Satan, a fallen angel, deceived Eve and is still invoked in the Bacchic cry “Euan.”
Fragment 13Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 170–200
Fragment 30Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 170–200
Martyrdom of Peter (Greek Acts of Peter) 9Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · Hanging head downward, Peter begins to explain the mystery of the first man's fall.
Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 37Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · Peter speaks on the hidden mystery of the cross, asks to be crucified head downward, and explains it as an image of the first man's fall and of conversion.
Exhortation to the Greeks 11.111Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Adam, a free child of God, was enslaved by pleasure; the Lord, taking flesh and stretching out his hands on the cross, set humanity free from the serpent and death.
Against Heresies 3.18.7Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Only a true man united to God could justly conquer the enemy and give man incorruption; as many were made sinners through Adam’s disobedience, so many are justified through the obedience of the one born of a virgin.
Against Heresies 3.22.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Mary’s obedience undid Eve’s disobedience: as the virgin Eve bound the knot by unbelief, the virgin Mary loosed it by faith.
Against Heresies 3.23.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God cursed the ground and the serpent, not Adam; the eternal fire was prepared for the devil and his angels, though the unrepentant share it.
Against Heresies 3.23.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Adam, unlike Cain, feared God and showed repentance by his rough covering of fig leaves, and God had mercy on him.
Against Heresies 3.23.6Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God expelled Adam from Paradise and the tree of life out of mercy, so that death would put an end to sin.
Against Heresies 5.23.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The devil lied from the beginning, telling Eve she would not die; but God proved true, and disobedient Adam and Eve became debtors to death.
Against Heresies 5.23.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Adam died on the day he ate, in several senses: the sixth day, on which Christ also died to give man a second formation, or within the first thousand-year “day”.
Miscellanies 4.23.150Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Empedocles says wise souls become gods; man is formed by nature, but each person is shaped by what he chooses; Adam was perfect in formation but was to attain perfection by obedience; his fall was his own choice, and God is not to blame.
Fragment 5 on Genesis (Gen. 8; 1)Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-235 · Adam's fig-leaf girdle, which itches, symbolizes his sins and the reproof of his transgression.
Fragment 6 on Genesis (Gen: 3, 21)Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-235 · The garments of skin, a dead covering, signified the corruption brought by sin.
Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 5Tertullian · ca. 211–213 · God is good, so his will is good; martyrdom is good because it frees from idolatry, as painful surgery is good because it heals, and God heals the death brought by Adam's disobedience with remedies that resemble the disease.
Exhortation to Chastity 2Tertullian · ca. 208 · Since God took the first spouse away, remarrying is striving against his will; and we cannot excuse our choices as his will, because we choose freely, as Adam did.
On the Flesh of Christ 17Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Christ was born of a virgin to begin a new birth: as the first Adam came from virgin earth, the last Adam came from a virgin, and as Eve believed the serpent to our ruin, Mary believed Gabriel to our salvation.
Against Marcion 2.2Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Heretics put the Creator on trial because they cannot grasp him, like blind men wishing for a gentler sun; but Scripture teaches that God's ways are beyond human judgment, and even Adam, the first to choose his own opinion over God's, never blamed his Maker.
Against Marcion 2.8Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God made man for life, not death; man fell not because he was too weak, since God's image was stronger than the tempting angel, and the same free will today lets believers defeat the devil.
Against Marcion 2.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God's severity after the fall (pain in childbirth, the cursed ground, death) followed his original goodness as a response to sin; justice is not evil but the safeguard of goodness.
On the Soul 52Tertullian · ca. 210 · Death is not natural to man but the result of sin; every death, even a peaceful one, is a violent tearing apart of soul and body.
On Fasting 3Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Fasting's rationale goes back to Adam, who lost salvation by eating; hunger is the antidote by which the first sin of the appetite is expiated.
Fragments on Genesis, column 99Origen · ca. 220-254 · Short catena notes: the trees of paradise are not perceptible; Eden means “delight”; Gihon and Cush; paradise is the church, and death follows sin naturally, not as God's contrivance.
Fragments on Genesis, column 101Origen · ca. 220-254 · The garments of skin are neither literal hides nor simply bodies; the cherubim guard the way to the tree of life; Cain's words to Abel are not in the Hebrew; Cain's sins listed.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.47.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The heretics identify the Kneeler with Adam, who guards the serpent's head as in Genesis.
Commentary on John 1.121Origen · ca. 230–248 · Had there been no fall, Christ would not have died and become the firstborn from the dead.
Commentary on John 13.223Origen · ca. 230–248 · In paradise God gave laws about food; man would have stayed immortal had he obeyed.
Commentary on John 13.241Origen · ca. 230–248 · Humanity became incomplete through disobedience, and the Savior was sent to perfect each person for solid food and wisdom.
Commentary on John 13.243Origen · ca. 230–248 · Not only humans but the sons of God and all who left their proper dwelling fell from perfection.
Commentary on John 20.224Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil killed the life of man made in God's image; he murdered the whole race in Adam.
Commentary on John 20.388Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Jews may have meant the spiritual death that came through Adam's sin.
Homilies on Leviticus 6.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Moses, that is, the law, first washes and then clothes the priest; so those seeking baptism must first be purified by the law, and the priestly garments of incorruption replace Adam's tunics of skin.
Homilies on Numbers 17.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The praise of Balaam as “the man who truly sees” fits the people whose veil is removed; Origen distinguishes the better eyes from the eyes of the flesh opened by the serpent’s counsel, which Christ closes.
Homilies on Jeremiah 8.1Origen · ca. 240 · God made the earth by strength, the world by wisdom, the heaven by understanding; the soul is an inhabited world when Father, Son, and Spirit dwell in it, and the fallen world is set upright by God's wisdom in Christ.
Lines 143–166Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · In the resurrection the body will be restored without pain; man fell through the devil, an angel set over the earth, and after Cain and the flood the builders of the tower sinned again.
On the Computation of Easter 12Anonymous · 243 · The fall of Jerusalem in the 1006th year after the exodus is read as a figure of Adam's fall: 1,006 minus Abraham's 75 years plus one (the lamb) leaves 930, Adam's lifespan.
Against Celsus 4.40Origen · ca. 248 · The story of Adam concerns human nature as a whole: “Adam” means “man,” and in him all die; the garments of skin carry a mystical meaning deeper than Plato's image of the soul losing its wings.
Commentary on Romans 5.4Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains the condemnation that came to all through Adam, as bodily death or as expulsion from paradise into this valley of weeping.
On Free Will 17.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Evil began with the first man’s disobedience to God’s command.
On Free Will 17.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Disobedience was not in man’s nature but came by another’s teaching, as Scripture shows.
Res. 2.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius begins Book 2 by explaining 'I was once alive apart from the law' as the bodily life of Adam and Eve in paradise before the commandment, when they knew no desire.
Res. 2.25Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The story of Jonah is read as a figure of man's fall, his swallowing by time and death, and his resurrection after the three intervals of time, as Christ's three days in the earth also teach.
Church History 1.2.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · After Adam's fall, his descendants, with few exceptions, sank into a savage way of life.
Divine Institutes 2.12.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God forbade man to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, on pain of death.
Divine Institutes 2.12.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The devil deceived the woman and through her the man, who then hid in shame.
Divine Institutes 2.12.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God expelled man from Paradise and guarded it with fire until the just return at the final judgment.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.10.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Man dwelt first in paradise but lost it through transgressing God's command.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.18.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Man freely fell from paradise by neglecting God's command.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.11.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s myth of Resource and Poverty reworks the story of Eden.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 22.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The serpent, envious, tempted man, who gained knowledge but lost immortality.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 22.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · God expelled man from Paradise and guarded it with fire.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.6.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Man misused his freedom and fell into brutish wickedness.
Against the Heathen 3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Humanity turned from contemplating God to the body and its senses, as Adam did at the serpent’s counsel, and from this came desire, fear, and violence.
On the Incarnation 3.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · God gave the first humans a law and paradise: obedience would keep them incorrupt, transgression would bring natural corruption and death.
On the Incarnation 3.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Genesis 2:16–17 threatens not only death but remaining in the corruption of death.
On the Incarnation 4.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · By turning from God humans incurred the threatened death and began to return to the non-being from which they came.
On the Incarnation 5.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Humans, corruptible by nature but graced by the Word, turned by the devil's counsel to corruption and so caused their own death.
Letter 3.1Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony begins his third letter with Christ's poverty that makes us rich, and explains that the natural law grew cold through sin, so that God visited his creatures through the saints.
Demonstration 9.14Aphrahat · 337-345 · Adam exalted himself and was humbled; Christ humbled himself and was exalted; the lover of God should remain in humility, whose fruits reach God's presence.
Demonstration 14.22Aphrahat · 337-345 · Desire led Adam to sin though all paradise was his; the righteous will rest in paradise and the land of life when this earth and firmament pass away.
Oration I Against the Arians 51Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius argues that “You have loved righteousness” shows the Son's unchangeableness: as second Adam he could not fall, and so he frees changeable human flesh from sin.
Oration II Against the Arians 65Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The way through Adam was lost; the Word put on created flesh to open a new and living way, becoming the beginning of the new creation.
Catechetical Lecture 12.5Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Everything must be proved from the prophets; the cause of Christ's coming lies in Genesis, where man, God's image, was cast out of paradise by the devil's envy.
Cento, lines 172–194Proba · ca. 360 · The serpent, hateful even to its own father, approaches the woman and argues that the prohibition is vain superstition and that she should persuade her husband to break it.
Cento, lines 195–219Proba · ca. 360 · The woman eats the forbidden fruit and gives it to her husband; their eyes are opened, they cover themselves with leaves, and they hide from God.
Cento, lines 220–244Proba · ca. 360 · God comes walking in the garden, rebukes the man, and the man confesses his fault and blames the woman.
Cento, lines 245–269Proba · ca. 360 · God curses the serpent, sentences the man to toil, thorns, disease and death, and condemns the woman as the cause of the evils.
Tractates on the Psalms 52.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · We first become useless through sin and then turn aside from the good, as Adam hid from God after his sin.
Tractates on the Psalms 59.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalm applies to all mankind, cursed in Adam and justified in Christ; God gives a sign to escape his wrath, and the "wine of compunction" is sorrow for sinful joys.
Tractates on the Psalms 66.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The earth’s fruit is the fruit Adam’s earth lost through sin and regains in those conformed to Christ, first in Christ’s own sinless body.
Sermon on Baptism 1Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian opens his baptismal sermon by describing the death and bondage in which humanity, descended from Adam, lay before baptism.
Oration 19.14Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory traces need, greed, war, and taxation back to the fall, and asks that those under the same sentence not add to one another’s punishment.
Oration 38.12Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Adam, placed in paradise with free will and a commandment, ate prematurely of the tree of knowledge (contemplation), was exiled and clothed with mortal flesh, yet even death was a merciful limit to sin.
Oration 39.13Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · God made man to worship him on earth and, when man fell, became man without ceasing to be God, deceiving the deceiver; Christ's baptism teaches reverence for purification, humility before the church's ministers, and patience before teaching.
Oration 45.8Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Adam, placed in paradise with free will and a commandment, ate prematurely of the tree of knowledge (contemplation), was exiled and clothed with mortal flesh, yet even death was a merciful limit to sin.
Oration 45.28Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory sums up the history of salvation: created for blessedness, given paradise and a commandment, humanity fell, and needed God made flesh and put to death, so that dying and rising with him it might be cleansed and glorified.
Tractates 1.6.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno traces the ruin caused by impatience from Adam and Cain to Sodom and the rebellions of Israel.
Tractates 1.12.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno tells how God made the world for man, made man in his image, and how the devil's deceit brought death on the whole race.
Homilies 9.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · God set enmity between the serpent and humanity; the tree tested obedience, and the devil, an incorporeal ruler of the air whose name means 'adversary', is used by God to exercise our souls.
Commentary on Romans 5:15Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Adam is a type of Christ only in that one sinned and one amended; grace abounds to more than died through Adam’s offence, including those freed at Christ’s descent to the underworld.
Question 19, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Adam was mortal by nature but kept from death by the tree of life while he obeyed; immortality depended on his own choice.
Question 123, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ambrosiaster takes up the view of some that Adam was created with the Holy Spirit, lost it by sin, and that believers regain it.
Question 127, section 24Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Adam’s sin came from the soul’s ambition, not bodily desire; the mortality it brought is outweighed by the greater glory God gives the faithful, so being born is a gain.
Question 127, section 26Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The punishment of Adam and Eve does not reveal what their sin was, for the same sentence falls on different sins and different sentences on the same sin.
On Virginity 12Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Passion and death were not part of man’s nature but came by his free choice; restoring the hidden image of God, like the woman’s lost coin, means retracing the steps of the fall, beginning by leaving marriage, the last stage of the exile from paradise.
Letter 46.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · They add the tradition that Adam was buried at Calvary and interpret the city's three names as a movement from affliction to the vision of peace.
Letter 140.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · On Ps 90:3 Jerome explains both the Hebrew ('turn man back to contrition') and the Greek, as God's sentence of death and his call to repentance.
Ancoratus 62.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Origen held that the garments were bodies given after the fall.
Ancoratus 109.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · “Where are you?” showed Adam's fall.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.1.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The same serpent that deceived Eve deceives them.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.1.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The tree was not evil in itself.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.1.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Death came from disobedience, not knowledge.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.1.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The expulsion was a caring punishment.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.4.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The snake-son deceived Eve.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.4.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · He read Ps 119:67 of the soul’s fall.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.4.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · He said Adam lost the image and the coats of skin are bodies.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.21.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Aglaophon held the coats of skin are bodies.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.30.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Man disobeyed, lured by the devil.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.32.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Genesis 3:21–24 is quoted.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.47.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Adam fell from an earthly paradise, after the soul was joined to the body.
On Paradise 31Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Adam was not like an innocent child: even without full knowledge of good and evil he knew enough to obey, and so his sin was justly charged to him.
On Paradise 32Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Even without full knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve knew by nature that God's command was to be obeyed, as Eve's own words to the serpent show.
On Paradise 33Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Having learned by eating that she had sinned, Eve sinned again by drawing Adam into her sin, perhaps from fear of being expelled alone.
On Paradise 34Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Knowledge of evil is not itself evil; sin comes from anger, desire or fear. Eve sinned knowingly in giving the fruit to Adam, though some excuse her as wishing not to be parted from him.
On Paradise 35Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Death came not from the tree or from God but from Adam's disobedience, as a patient who ignores a good physician causes his own death.
On Paradise 56Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The serpent twisted God's command, and the woman added "nor touch it"; nothing may be added to or taken from God's commands, and Ambrose thinks the fault began with the woman.
On Paradise 60Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Ambrose holds the tree was forbidden entirely, since knowledge of good and evil is useless to the imperfect, as Paul's struggle with sin shows; God foresaw the whole race in Adam.
On Paradise 62Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Eve judged the fruit good without tasting it; Scripture passes over how Adam was deceived, since he fell through his wife.
On Paradise 73Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The serpent stands for bodily delight, the woman for sense, the man for mind; they are condemned in the order in which sin spreads from delight to mind.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.34.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · God punished man's disobedience with death but promised rebirth through Christ.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.12.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · The anaphora praises God for creation and the history of salvation, joins the angels' Holy, recalls Christ's incarnation and passion, offers the bread and cup, calls down the Holy Spirit, and intercedes for the whole church and world.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 147Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina defines the resurrection as the restoration of human nature to its first state, which had no age, disease, or misery; these came with sin, symbolized by the “garments of skin,” and will be cast off with it.
Homily 6Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · On Eccl 3:1–4 Gregory sets due measure and right timing as the criteria of the good, and reads the seasons to be born and to die, to plant and pluck up, to kill and heal, to pull down and build, to weep and laugh, to mourn and dance, of the soul’s birth through virtue, dying to sin, and present mourning that leads to future gladness.
On the Making of Man 19Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The food of paradise was spiritual: the “every tree” is the Good itself, the tree of life, while the forbidden tree bore a mixed fruit of good and evil that the serpent made attractive.
On the Making of Man 20Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The forbidden tree bore a “mixed” fruit: evil disguised as good, attractive to sense but deadly; by tasting it man, God’s image, became like vanity.
On the Beatitudes 1227Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Humanity, made in God’s image in paradise, has fallen into slavery to the passions, death, and disease; whoever sees this cannot but weep, whereas those who know nothing better live content like animals.
On the Beatitudes 1257Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Since the beatitude does not say toward whom mercy is to be shown, it includes mercy toward oneself: as we pity friends who have lost home and freedom, we should pity our own soul, fallen from paradise into captivity to death and the passions.
On the Lord's Prayer 1183Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Even the saints must pray for forgiveness, as sharers in Adam’s nature and fall; praying toward the east recalls the lost paradise, and like the prodigal we confess our condition, clothed in garments of skin and fig leaves instead of the divine robe.
Book of Heresies 115.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some say God expelled Adam out of envy.
Book of Heresies 115.3Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · One God made Adam and expelled him for transgression.
Book of Heresies 115.5Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · God expelled Adam out of care, to prevent greater sins.
Book of Heresies 116.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some say Adam and Eve were blind before the fall, but Eve saw the tree.
Book of Heresies 116.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Their nakedness was the loss of immortality.
Canons on the Letters of Paul 26Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Sin and death came through Adam, and death reigned from Adam to Moses.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.27Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · God holding the right hand reverses the devil’s place at Adam’s right; Christ drove him back, and Peter was held up on the waters.
Second Apology of David 71Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · All sinned in Adam, who broke the command entrusted to him; we owe a debt, and must recognize who the lender is.
Catechetical Oration 6Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Gregory explains the fall: an angelic power set over the earth grew envious of man, who joined the intelligible and the sensible, and by deceit mixed vice into man's will, so that death, curse, and shame replaced life, blessing, and freedom.
On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.8Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Temperance was the first command given in paradise, and its loss brought exile and death.
On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.9Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Scripture shows that the virtues are taught, and that righteousness is acquired by learning and obedience, which led to death in Adam and to life in Christ.
Exposition of Psalm 118 1.14.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Adam fell because he did not keep the commandment exceedingly; so God has since warned us to keep it fully.
Exposition of Psalm 118 1.15.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Since Adam was put to shame by sin, we must keep all the commandments, for breaking one is enough to condemn.
Exposition of Psalm 118 4.2.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Adam, cast out of paradise, laments that his soul cleaves to the earth.
Exposition of Psalm 118 4.3.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Fallen Adam clings to the earth like a fox; only Christ’s cross raises him, and his followers cleave to God.
Exposition of Psalm 118 8.25.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Adam was condemned because he transgressed a clear command, not merely because he was weak.
Exposition of Psalm 118 8.25.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · God justly condemned Adam but justly pardons us, his heirs, bound by inherited weakness.
Exposition of Psalm 118 18.18.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Forgetting God’s precepts cost Adam paradise and the Jewish people their election.
Exposition of Psalm 118 18.47.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Adam grasped at knowledge instead of asking for understanding, and so died.
Exposition of Psalm 118 19.44.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · God’s testimonies are founded for ever; had Adam and Eve heeded them, they would have kept paradise.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.17.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ’s obedience to death undid Adam’s disobedience, and God exalted him.
Letter 140.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · 'I am a worm and not a man' may mean, besides the virgin birth, 'I am the son of man and not man', that is, Christ in whom all are made alive, not Adam in whom all die.
Letter 140.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Earthly deliverance belongs to the old man descended from Adam; the new 'sons of men' in Christ hope for the eternal salvation that Psalm 36 distinguishes from the safety shared with beasts.
Letter 157.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Adam is a type of Christ by contrast, but the gift exceeds the offense: Christ's life is eternal and his redemption covers many sins.
Letter 181.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Adam fell by misusing freedom; Christ restores through baptism and continues to supply daily grace.
Homilies on Matthew 65.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The devil fell by pride and Pharaoh was humbled by it, while the humble, like Abraham, stand with the angels and are loved by God and men; pride brought mortality on the first man, humility gains what we lack.
On Elijah and Fasting 7Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The first law in paradise was a law of fasting, and the first sin came through eating; gluttony expelled man from paradise, abstinence recalls him.
On Elijah and Fasting 8Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God's words 'Adam has become like one of us' are spoken in irony: aspiring to be divine, Adam fell beneath himself and was clothed in skin.
On Joseph 25Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Joseph fled leaving his garment, stripped but not naked, clothed in modesty, unlike Adam, who kept his clothes yet was naked through sin.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.1.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Delight was set by God as a spur to virtue and turned by the devil into a spur to error, as Adam's story shows.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.3.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · David gave us psalm-singing to restore something of the heavenly delight Adam lost.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.14.5Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The man is named first because Eve, who fell first, broke the order of nature.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 35.29.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Pride leads to sin, fall and expulsion, as for Adam.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 35.29.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · We fell in Adam but rise in Christ.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.20.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Adam hid and was "not seen"; faith makes us present to God.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.20.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Adam was exiled to do penance; Eve saved through childbearing, read as the line of the faithful.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 39.20.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Adam fell, but his fall is repaired for the better; in paradise there will be no marriage, and those with Christ need not fear the serpent.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 39.20.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Adam fell because he did not remain in Christ’s word; hence the question, “Adam, where are you?”
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 39.20.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Adam made himself absent by hiding from God’s face.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 40.1.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Psalm 40 (Protestant 41) follows the coming of Psalm 39 with the passion; its number recalls Christ’s forty-day fast, which repaired Adam’s fall.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.77.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The flesh is humbled through frailty, but Adam was in glory until his own transgression humbled him.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.77.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Adam’s fault passed to us; the corruptible body weighs down the soul and the wisdom of the flesh will not submit to God.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 48.8.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The “iniquity of the heel” is Adam’s wound from the serpent, from which all his descendants limp.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 48.10.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Adam’s fall affected all his heirs, Judas’s only himself, for believers are now the Redeemer’s inheritance.
On Free Choice of the Will 3.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · The first man was made neither foolish nor wise but rational, able to receive and keep a command and so to attain wisdom; his fall through pride was a voluntary passage, neither foolish nor wise, from wisdom to folly.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Temperance restrains the desires that turn us from God; it means stripping off the old man, Adam, and putting on the new, as both Paul and the Psalms teach.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine explains that thorny, poisonous and unfruitful plants appeared because of human sin, as warnings and punishments, and that barren trees rebuke those without good works in the church.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine introduces the second account of man, which he says is told figuratively, and quotes Genesis 2:4–3:24 in full.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · The serpent persuaded the first couple through pride to want to rule themselves without God; the eyes then opened were the eyes of cunning, and the fig-leaf aprons signify the itch of lying that hides simplicity.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · God's walking in the evening signifies the withdrawal of the inner light of truth; Adam and Eve hide in themselves, and Adam's shame at his nakedness shows that, turned from God's light, he has nothing of his own.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Adam and Eve shift the blame, Adam even onto God; the serpent, who cannot confess, is sentenced to a present punishment, power over those who despise God's commands, and crawling on breast and belly signifies pride and carnal desire.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · God's words 'Adam has become like one of us' are mockery or a reminder of what Adam might have been; he was 'sent out', not 'shut out', of paradise, and the warning about the tree of life may even mean God hoped he would one day reach it through the cross.
On True Religion 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine explains that evil is not a substance but the soul's disordered will in preferring lower goods, illustrating with the tree of paradise, a stylus, and the sun, and warns against imagining God as boundless bodily light.
Homily 12Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · On Song 5:5–7 Gregory reads the myrrh dripping from the bride's hands as voluntary death to sin through which the soul rises, the bridegroom's passing by as God always beyond the soul's grasp (as with Moses), and the watchmen's blows that remove her veil as the healing discipline of the Spirit and the angels, by which her longing for God is endlessly renewed.
Sermon 26.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against those who say that God made them men but they make themselves just, Augustine argues that Adam, made upright, broke himself by free choice and can be remade only by God.
Sermon 88.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Sin wounds the inner eye, as it did Adam’s; Christ the physician came to us and drank first the bitter cup of insult, pain, and the cross, so that we would drink it and be healed.
Sermon 110.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The barren fig tree is the human race through three ages, before the law, under the law, and under grace; the saints intercede for it, and the trench and dung of repentance are applied before the judgment.
Sermon 151.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Concupiscence, with which we are born and because of which infants are baptized, arose when Adam and Eve broke the first law and felt the shameful motion of their bodies; Christ, conceived without it, frees us from it.
Sermon 177.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God alone, who made all things and holds their patterns in himself, suffices; the soul that leaves him to have more, like the prodigal son, loses everything, and Adam's first sin was avarice, for God did not suffice him.
Sermon 278.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As a man can fall sick by intemperance but needs a physician to recover, so Adam fell by free choice into sin and death, and now must obey Christ the physician to be healed.
Against Jovinianus 1.29Jerome · 393 · Jerome reads Ecclesiastes as teaching a time for marriage under the law and a time for virginity under the Gospel, and argues that Adam and Eve married only after leaving paradise.
Against Jovinianus 2.15Jerome · 393 · Jerome traces fasting through Scripture from Adam's fast in paradise to Moses, Elijah, Daniel, John the Baptist, Christ, and Paul.
Against Jovinianus 2.30Jerome · 393 · Jerome argues from the members of the body, the difference between sins, and the two Adams that there are degrees among the righteous and among sinners.
On Continence 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · The conflict of flesh and spirit is a division of one nature caused by sin, not a mixture of two natures; evil is not a substance and will be wholly removed.
Confessions 13.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Because of Adam's fall, humanity became a restless sea needing bodily sacraments, which must lead on to spiritual life.
Tractates 15Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · For the feast of the Maccabean martyrs: why Christians honour Jews who died rather than eat pork; the food laws taught continence and obedience, as the tree of paradise did, and the apostolic decree kept only abstinence from idol meats, blood, and sexual immorality.
On Catechizing the Uninstructed 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · The narration begins with creation: God made all things good and made man in his image with woman as his helper, set them in paradise under a commandment, and permitted the fall of the devil and of man, whose sin harmed only themselves.
On the Nature of the Good 34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Sin is not desire for an evil nature but desertion of a better one: Adam desired a good tree but deserted the better Creator who forbade it.
On the Trinity 12.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The fall of Adam and Eve figures the mind's fall when the reason that manages temporal things slides outward and the contemplative part consents.
On the Trinity 12.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · By a desire to be like God under no one, the soul falls through itself to the likeness of beasts, and it can return only by the grace of God through Christ.
Greek Questions to the Christians 3.26Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Twenty-three short arguments for the resurrection: God's irrevocable gifts, his power to remake as he made, the dead lying in potency in the elements, the justice owed to martyrs, and the failure of all Greek opposition to the teaching.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 91–92Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Adam, being rational, already had the notion of death and of shame without having seen them; and the answer distinguishes Scripture's terms judgments, ordinances, law, testimony, commandments, and precepts.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains that “fruit” includes every benefit and that thorns and thistles may have existed before the fall but became a burden to man afterward.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · If Adam had an animal body, how do we recover the immortality he lost? Some therefore held that Adam's body was changed into a spiritual one in paradise.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Against those who say Adam would have died bodily even without sin, Paul (Rom 8:10–11) shows that bodily death too comes from sin.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Adam's body was mortal by nature but able not to die by the gift of the tree of life; through sin it became not mortal (as it was) but dead.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The tree of knowledge was a real and harmless tree, named for the knowledge of good and evil that disobedience to God's command would bring by experience of punishment.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 9.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Before sin, bodies were animal but not doomed to die, and the first couple could have begotten children by will without lust; through sin death and the law in the members entered, which marriage orders and continence restrains.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine quotes Genesis 2:25–3:24, restates his rule of defending the literal narrative, and explains why the first couple's nakedness caused no shame before sin.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · A hidden pride in the man's soul preceded the temptation, and the fall taught by experience that no creature fares well apart from God.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The woman's answer shows she remembered the command, making her transgression inexcusable; she believed the serpent only because pride was already in her mind.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · “Their eyes were opened” does not mean they had been blind, but that after sin they noticed their members with a new desire; the phrase is a transferred word in a literal narrative, as at Emmaus.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · On the day of the sin they lost the condition sustained by the tree of life; their bodies became mortal and subject to bestial desire, at which the soul blushed and covered itself.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God questions Adam first because the command came through him; the couple, now ashamed, tried to hide from God, who probably appeared to them in human form through a creature.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Adam and Eve, questioned, blame God and the serpent instead of confessing; their pride is contrasted with the psalmist's “I have sinned against you.”
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine reports and rejects two views: that the sin was a premature grasp at knowledge, and that it was intercourse before marriage, the latter as ridiculous and contrary to the literal sense.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.42Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Adam, being spiritual in mind, was not deceived by the serpent as the woman was; like Solomon with his wives, he sinned out of affection, unwilling to grieve his companion.
Letter 29, chapter 6Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Adam, using free will heedlessly, fell beyond self-recovery; Christ restores through baptism and gives daily grace, without which we are again overcome.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 2.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, always present by his divinity, came in the flesh to fallen and wounded humanity, even accepting a human witness, John the 'lamp', because of our weakness.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 22.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Believers still pay bodily death as Adam's penalty, but now pass by faith from the death of unbelief to the life of faith.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 44.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The man born blind signifies the human race, blind in mind from birth through Adam's sin.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.2Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Against those who say Adam would have died even without sin, Augustine argues from Genesis 3:19 and 2 Corinthians 5 that death came as a penalty and that sinless Adam would have been changed without dying.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.35Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Adam and Eve ate of the tree of life, which kept them from aging and signified wisdom; the forbidden tree was not evil, and their punishment came only from violated obedience.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.36Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Before the fall the body obeyed the soul as the soul obeyed God; after disobedience, the flesh became disobedient in sexual desire, which caused shame, the penalty of sin called “the opening of the eyes.”
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.55Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Adam and Eve, though afterwards righteous and believed saved by Christ's blood, were not restored to paradise; likewise the forgiven still suffer the death inherited through sin.
City of God 13.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine turns to the fall of the first humans, who, unlike the angels, would have passed to immortality without death had they obeyed, but were justly condemned to death for disobedience.
City of God 13.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God made man upright, but Adam's free sin corrupted the seminal nature in which all were present, so that all are born depraved and bound for the second death unless freed by grace.
City of God 13.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Adam forsook God before God forsook him; the soul's death was felt at once in the disobedient flesh, and bodily death followed as the penalty of sin, not a law of nature.
City of God 14.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Because of Adam's sin all would perish in the second death but for grace; beneath all human diversity there are only two societies, those living according to the flesh and according to the spirit.
City of God 14.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God foreknew the fall and his good use of it; man was made upright with a good will, lost true freedom by sin and can regain it only through the Son; the devil through the serpent deceived Eve, while Adam sinned knowingly out of attachment to her.
City of God 14.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The first sin, though about food, was grave because it violated obedience, the mother of virtues, in a command that was supremely easy to keep before desire resisted the will.
City of God 14.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The evil deed was preceded by an evil will, whose beginning was pride, a self-pleasing turning from God; humility lifts up and pride casts down, and love of God and love of self distinguish the two cities.
City of God 14.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Worse than the sin was Adam's and Eve's proud excuse-making, blaming the serpent and the woman instead of seeking pardon.
City of God 14.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The just penalty of disobedience was disobedience: man, given over to himself, cannot command his own mind and flesh; pains and pleasures of the flesh belong to the soul, and “lust” (libido) is the general name for every craving, though used chiefly of sexual desire.
City of God 14.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Adam and Eve were not blind before the fall; their eyes were opened to the shame of the flesh's new disobedience, a penalty in kind, so they covered their genitals, as all nations still do.
On Man's Perfection in Righteousness 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · Man fell into sin by free choice, but the penalty turned freedom into necessity; true freedom is restored by the Son and ends in a happy necessity of never sinning.
Apologetic Book 26.5Orosius · ca. 415–416 · The fall and original sin.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 1.1.11Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Sin and its punishment began with Adam, and the historians record only wars and disasters.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 1.3.1Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Man, made upright, sinned, and punishment followed at once.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 1.3.5Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The fall and the flood suffice as the chief examples.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 1.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Shame arose in the first couple not because they had been blind before the fall but because sin brought an indecent motion into their members.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 1.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · The disobedience of the sexual members is the fitting penalty of man's disobedience to God, and so the first couple covered them with fig leaves.
The Institutes 12.5John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Through the devil, pride passed to Adam, who lost God's gift by seeking divinity through his own will.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine explains that Adam and Eve made loincloths, not tunics, because after their disobedience they felt the disobedience of their sexual members.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine cites Cyprian's On Mortality and On Patience, which speak of paradise lost and of the whole human race bound by the sentence passed on Adam.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · From the first fall followed ignorance, harmful desire, error, pain, fear, and false joy, the sources of all the misery of rational nature.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Fallen nature keeps its desire for happiness; besides the evils shared with fallen angels, man suffers bodily death, the penalty God threatened when he gave him free choice in paradise.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Adam's sin vitiated his whole stock, so that all born of him through carnal concupiscence contract original sin and its penalty, as Rom 5:12 says.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · The whole human race was a condemned mass under God's just wrath, sustained by his goodness; God would have been just to abandon it forever, but chose to show undeserved mercy.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 45Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Adam's one sin contained many: pride, sacrilege, murder, spiritual fornication, theft, and avarice.
The Conferences 5.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Christ, the second Adam, was tempted in the same vices as the first Adam, gluttony, vainglory, and pride (or, in Luke's order, love of money and pride), but not in the passions that follow from sin; he came in the likeness of sinful flesh.
The Conferences 23.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The “law in the members” is the curse of Adam, by which thoughts sprout like thorns and even the saints can eat the heavenly bread of contemplation only by the sweat of their brow.
The Conferences 23.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas explains “sold under sin” as Adam’s sale of his descendants into slavery to the devil for the forbidden fruit, from which God, respecting free will, redeemed them only in the fullness of time by Christ’s blood.
Chapter 18Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 426-428 · Prosper rejects the charge that Augustine teaches fate or two natures: all humanity is one mass fallen in Adam and restored only by grace; he urges Rufinus to read Augustine himself.
On Rebuke and Grace 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 427 · Adam was created upright and could have persevered by free choice; he fell by his own will and the whole race was condemned in him; God ordered angels and men to show first what free choice could do, then what grace and justice can do.
Chapter 9Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 432-433 · Prosper refutes Cassian's claims that grace meets a will already turning to good and that Adam kept the knowledge of good after the fall, arguing that all fell in Adam and lost their good freedom, which only the liberator restores.
Chapter 2Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · The devil, a proud angel who fell, envied Adam and stripped him of chastity, temperance, love, and immortality, binding all his descendants with him.
Poem on Genesis 151–180Hilary of Arles · ca. 440-449 · Adam's sin brings shame, weakness, and a progeny ever worse in crime, until the flood washes the earth; Noah's ark prefigures baptism and the Church.
Part 1, chapter 2Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The death foretold for eating the forbidden fruit passed to all Adam’s descendants and signifies the second, eternal death, from which those who keep Christ’s word are free.