What Fell in “the Fall”?
written by SEA member, Roy Ingle
F. Lagard Smith in his book Troubling Questions for Calvinists (and all the rest of us) asks 15 questions about the Fall in Genesis 3:1-7.
I post his questions here without comment.
[Editor’s note: Smith is not an Arminian, but a Semi-Pelagian. Yet these questions can still be helpful in thinking about the issue of human depravity.]
1. What do you think? Were Adam and Eve free moral beings, fully able to decide between obeying and disobeying God without any predetermined secret eternal will of God preempting their freedom to choose right from wrong?
a) If not, is there any way that God Himself is not responsible for their sin and “the Fall”?
b) If so, were they simply exceptions to an otherwise universal rule of predestination and sovereign causation?
2. Were Adam and Eve either totally or partially depraved before “the Fall”?
3. What about immediately after “the Fall”?