Prefiguration, Apocalypse, Tragedy: Three Trajectories of Patristic Interpretation of the Adamic Fall

This essay examines three major (and to some degree overlapping) trajectories of patristic interpretation of the Adamic Fall in Genesis 3, all of which have considerable representation in early Christian writers. Following on the Pauline treatment of Adam especially in Romans 5, a first interpretive trajectory sketches the Fall principally as a prefigurative event, a lapse that, modeled in the protoplasts Adam and Eve, human beings have continued to imitate and prolong transgenerationally. A second whole interpretive approach interprets it as an “apocalyptic” event within the larger divine economy, taking account of questions of theodicy and divine wisdom, of how allegedly perfect creatures could fall in the first place, and of the ontological and moral repercussions of the Fall for the human race. Still a third trajectory enhances the “dramatic” dimension of the Fall and plays up the features of tragedy which characterize the protoplasts’ fateful miscalculation and the divine intervention to save the day. This essay seeks to demonstrate the interpretive latitude within all three trajectories, which, though not necessarily exhaustive, are certainly representative in late ancient and early medieval Christianity.