C.S. Lewis: The Fall

Troo, Scotland-Facebook

MPhil 2003

6. The Fall of Man

Lewis stated: "According to that doctrine, man is now a horror to God and to himself and a creature ill-adapted to the universe not because God made him so but because he had made himself so by the abuse of free will." Lewis (1940)(1996: 63).

Lewis tied in his free will concept with what he saw as the doctrine of the fall. He concluded that this concept was developed by the church fathers to counteract the heresy of Monism, that God produces effects being both good and evil, and Dualism, where two Gods existed, one good and one evil.

Lewis proclaimed that the Christian view opposed this and stated that God made things good, but that they were corrupted through free will. He then went on to discuss the theological idea that the fall somehow resulted from Adam’s sin. He seemed unsure whether or not the story of Adam was fact or fiction. He stated on this point : "Wisely, or foolishly, they believed that we were really-and not simply by legal fiction-involved in Adam’s actions." Lewis (1940)(1996: 64).

On the idea that Adam can perhaps be fictional the question should be asked: "then where does sin come from?, and why did Jesus Christ, the God-man, come to earth to rescue us from Adam’s sin?" The apostle Paul in Romans 5:12-21 seems to clearly portray a literal Adam as falling, and thus a literal Christ is needed for restoration. I think if Adam is deemed as not necessarily literal true man, then Christ may just as well be fiction, and this basically challenges the core of the Christian faith.

I believe that within Christian orthodoxy, it is plausible that Adam could be seen as fiction and somehow another non-defined person may have sinned, and this leads to the need for Christ to die for humanity (2015 note, but this is not a Biblical view and is unnecessary use of figurative approaches). Why, however, should Christians believe this without any documented evidence? If believers seek to deny the literal story of Adam, since we do not have historical evidence outside of Scripture, then we are faced with a worse problem with a hypothetical first sinful human with no evidence to back up his/her existence whatsoever.

KILBY, Clyde S. (1965) The Christian World of C.S. Lewis, Appleford, Abingdon, Berks, U.K., Marcham Manor Press. LEWIS, C.S. (1961)(1983) A Grief Observed, London, Faber and Faber. 

LEWIS, C.S. (1941)(1990) The Screwtape Letters, Uhrichsville, Ohio, Barbour and Company. 

LEWIS, C.S. (1940)(1996) The Problem of Pain, San Francisco, Harper-Collins.