EV 2001: The reason why Wheaton College continues to maintain the existence of an historical Adam and Eve as a statement of faith is because the existence of those two people occupy a key theological role in everything else that we believe. Evangelical Christians, and indeed all Orthodox Christians, believe that Jesus had to come and sacrifice himself on the cross and then conquer death by rising from the dead. Why did he have to do that? He had to do it because all of humanity was in bondage to universal ["original"] sin, and then that leads to the question where did that come from? That in turn came from, what Christians have historically believed, was a historical fall by two human parents who carried along with them, bore with them, the rest of the human race in what happened. So Adam and Eve in fact play a very strategic role in all of the theology of what Christians have historically believed.

RP 1999: The Greek word for Messiah, "Christ," became Jesus' last name. It's actually a title, and that's how Christians define his function. But the Christian definition of Messiah is something that's generated after the lifetime of Jesus…According to Christian belief, the purpose of the Messiah becoming human, the purpose of God being born as a man of flesh, is so that Christ can die a mortal death and descend into Hades to free all souls imprisoned in the pit. Everyone is born with original sin, which condemns us to hell unless we are saved by the Savior. "It was in Sheol, Hades, or Hell," notes John Crossan, "that the souls of holy and righteous, persecuted and martyred Jews awaited their final and promised deliverance. And it was there that Jesus descended in burial to deliver those that slept, as they were called, in triumphant resurrection and communal ascension." The Messiah dies and goes to hell for the purpose of freeing Adam and mankind from the penalty of original sin so that we may finally enter heaven. Jesus in hell is described in the Gospel of Nicodemus.

RP 1999: We have a concept of human nature that is epitomized by the story of Adam and Eve, banished from Paradise because of indulging in pleasure for which one has to suffer penance. This ideal of human nature is splitting the mind and the body, and the mind is superior to the body, and unless you control the body with your mind, your body is likely to erupt in chaos, you'll succumb to its impulses…We in the West have been trained to associate lust with shame. We've been taught that the human spirit must transcend desires of the flesh. This is a central tenant of biblical thinking: spiritual realms oppose physical life. Only in the Garden of Eden are there no opposites, explains the Hebrew Bible; time is non-existent in the eternal now of Paradise. Past and future are unknown in Eden. Man and woman are indistinguishably one with God. It is written that this bliss was shattered when Adam ate forbidden fruit. Mortal life begins with the disobedience of Eve. From Eden's Tree of Knowledge they gained awareness of opposites. For this offense God cast mankind out of Eden and into mortality, into the illusional realm of time: past and present, then and now, life and death.

RP 1999: Outside the Garden, separated from God, alienated against nature, Adam and Eve were transfixed by their differences and covered themselves in shame. Their fall from Paradise was the result of indulging their senses: they hungered, they desired to taste the fruit, they ate. In satisfying the cravings of their bodies, Adam and Eve disobeyed God. The whole human race, it is written, is therefore punished by exile from Paradise, unable to enter heaven unless this human sin, originating with Adam and Eve, is redeemed from our soul. Redemption symbolically and formally condemns human flesh for its urges and temptations which trigger disobedient sin. This belief is called the Fall of Nature and it explains why, in Western culture, all impulsive acts, all behaviors that are inspired by nature, have been for centuries regarded as sin.

RP 1999: The novel element of the New Testament conception of sin is the presentation of Jesus as the conqueror of sins. This is the beginning of the Christian religion, the beginning of what makes it distinctive…The curious thing about the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve is the way that the Roman Church connects it with the idea of "Messiah," the anointed one. For a thousand years before Jesus, the Hebrews waited for someone to replace King David and restore their shattered Jewish nation. David had been anointed of God, just as Aaron was anointed by Moses (Exodus 40:13). Jews waited for a Savior to bring world peace and prosperity. This Messiah idea represents a mechanism through which we hope for an improved future. But the concept underwent intense evolution under the new Roman Church.

RP 1999: Spin doctors at Vatican think tanks stitched together new connections. The result goes like this: Because Eve disobeyed God, and Adam ate forbidden fruit, all people are therefore born with the original sin of Adam and Eve, and condemned to hell unless we are saved by a Messiah sent from God to "take away" our sins. The Messiah/Christ thus becomes a necessary "antidote" or "Savior" who saves us from sin, frees us from hell and purgatory, and leads us into heaven.

RP 1999: Now that God has accepted us because the Messiah sacrificed his life's blood, we will also be kept safe from God's anger . . . Adam sinned, and that sin brought death into the world. Now everyone has sinned, and so everyone must die . . . Everyone was going to be punished because Adam sinned. But because of the good thing Christ has done, God accepts us and gives us the gift of life. - Paul: Romans 5:8-15

RP 1999: Unless Christ was raised to life, your faith is useless, and you are still living in your sins...But Christ has been raised to life and become the first fruits of them that slept [in hell]. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Adam brought death to all of us, and Christ will bring life to all of us. - Paul: I Corinthians 15:17-22

RP 1999: Paul's vision of Adam bringing sin and death into the world via Eve inspired Augustine, four centuries after the lifetime of Paul, to create the myth of "original sin." Augustine's idea of original sin is a key connection to the denigration of sex and women. "Adam's fall perverted all humanity," writes Gregory Shaw, ". . . its effects were passed by hereditary transmission from generation to generation…Augustine's interpretation of the Fall became the accepted doctrine of Catholic Christianity."

RP 1999: When Adam and Eve fell into sin they became conscious of new and selfish impulses . . . over which they had no control. The immediate effect of their lapse from grace was that they became aware and ashamed of their nakedness, and Augustine interpreted this as meaning that their own disobedience to the Creator was reflected in sudden and willful activity on the part of their genitals . . . Lust and sex were integral to the doctrine of original sin, and every act of coitus performed by humanity subsequent to the Fall was necessarily evil, just as every child born of it was born into sin . . . Augustine had set out to validate the Church Fathers' revulsion against sex . . . The body was no more than a flawed vessel for the mind and spirit, and it was now up to the Church to propagate Christian morality in these terms.

RP 1999: The Fall is the result of Adam and Eve disobeying God by succumbing to the desires of their flesh. According to Augustine, the couple is a symbol of life and they introduce death into the world, causing all people to be guilty of original sin and thus banished from heaven unless we are "redeemed." In the opposite corner is Christ, a virgin born of a virgin, a new Adam, conceived of the Spirit to be the gateway to eternal life, through whom God allows us to enter Paradise, but only if we worship the Savior who saves us from God's punishment of eternal fire in hell as revenge for the disobedience of Adam and Eve in Eden. Augustine's myth, besides depicting "God" as a psychotic sadist, sets up an Adam-Christ (illness/cure) connection through which is enshrined rejection of the body (Eve/illness). Women, being the vessels of flesh and source of bodies, are thus fingered as handmaidens of evil. The critical link in this scheme to demonize women is the Messiah/Christ.

RP 1999: The Messiah/Christ is an antidote for original sin. The Christian Church, centuries after Jesus died, came to define Christ, not as the Messiah who liberates Jews from oppression, but as God's response to Adam and Eve's disobedient act of satisfying themselves with forbidden fruit…The Hebrew term for hell is She-ol. According to the Messiah story the main reason for Christ's birth and death was to go to hell and liberate the sinful souls in She-ol. The soul of every human who had ever died was imprisoned there. After Christ burst open the gates of Hades, he was then resurrected from death on Easter Sunday. This is the Christian interpretation of the Messiah: By "dying for our sins" Christ inspires God to forgive us for Eve's disobedience in Eden and then lets us enter heaven again. God had closed the gates to man after Adam ate forbidden fruit. This sin is forgiven through baptism and belief in Christ; thus the Savior "saves" us by paving our way back to Paradise. This is what Christians call salvation.