God created Adam and Eve and bestowed upon them His own image. God desires humanity to bear His image with gratitude and obedience. Though Adam and Eve fully possessed God’s image, Satan tempted them into believing that they must do something else to be like God. By choosing to disobey God, Adam and Eve chose their own way.
When Adam and Eve ate the fruit on the tree of knowledge, they brought death into themselves as God had forewarned them earlier.[i] Instead of enforcing upon man the full consequences of death immediately after the fall, God chose to preserve the life of Adam and Eve for some time in a “world between curse and promise.”[ii] God gave Adam and Eve the opportunity to be like God by affirming the fallen-ness of the world. God’s word still remains in the world, though now it is wrathful and cursing. By living with the word of God’s wrath, fallen humanity is tempted and faces constant strife. Because God had subjected all of His created world to humanity before the fall, the whole of the natural world is forced to bear God’s curse. After the fall, humanity’s relationships with nature, with God, and with each other all express God’s wrath.
Though the world bears God’s curse, “it is the world of the preservation of life, blessed in God’s curse, purified in enmity, pain and work.”[iii] God graciously preserves Adam and Eves’ lives on their way to death. By eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve were already dead before they received the curse of physical death. The curse of God informed Adam and Eve that they would die “the death of being like God” and not the “death of non-being.”[iv]
In the midst of His curse, God promises victory to humanity by humanity over Satan, but He also promises that humanity will also be wounded in “the battle for the Word of God.”[v] God’s promise to Adam was to put humanity’s present state of death to death by the hand of Adam’s descendant.[vi] While Adam (trapped by sin) thought that his death meant return to nothingness, God declared to swallow up death in victory through the resurrection of the dead. God’s decision to preserve life directs humanity toward the future hope in Christ.
Adam’s firstborn, Cain, never had access to the tree of life and seeks the fruit of death (that is the destruction of life) even more so. This desire of humanity to destroy itself leads to the death of Christ. On the cross, Jesus the man dies, yet he lives because God raised Him up from the grave.[vii] Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, “the spring of life wells up in the wood of the cross.”[viii]
The ‘spring of life,’ which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, gives identity and purpose to Christians by giving them a future. Through Christ, one becomes newly created and attached to the eternal presence of God.[ix] Lost people, unlike Christians, are centered on themselves and are confined to the past. To escape the past, a person must accept Jesus by faith. By choosing to reject Jesus, one would have no hope for future life and only the grim realization of future death.
Through faith, the future becomes a present reality to the believer. Faith itself is not a product of the future, but it is the future’s “mode of being.”[x] By receiving a future through faith, the believer becomes able to live in the present. The future provides substance and direction to the believer’s past life.
God has reserved the present (in this passing world) to allow time for decisions regarding Jesus. For those who confess Jesus and hold firmly to His word, Jesus will stand by their side during the hour of judgement. Jesus will acknowledge them as His own when Satan makes his accusations. All men will bear witness that Jesus has been faithful to Those who are called by His name.
In both the present and the past, Jesus has not left the world without a witness to the truth. Through Christ, God causes an eternal gap where His Church can reside in the midst of the world. Within this gap, the Christian has died to his or her old self and lives a new life in fellowship with Christ. At the point of baptism into the name of Jesus Christ, the Christian “is wrested from the dominion of this world, and passes into the ownership of Christ.”[xi] Those who are owned by Christ are given membership into His Body which the Church.
Through the presence of the Church, Jesus continues to penetrate the world by being connected with the past and confirms the reality of His eternal presence which includes both present and the future. For the Christian, “Christ has come to him [or her], thus robbing the world of its own” and perpetuating His presence in this world.[xii] Within the Church, the Christian has cut off all connections to the world and to the past.” The Christian now lives in the present which is also the future. In the present, the Christian is bombarded with all manner of temptations, yet he or she has overcome these temptations in Christ who conquered sin “for all time, unto the end.”[xiii] The faithful Christians overcomes by holding to the promises of God in Christ.
God promises in His word that a day will come and has been declared for humankind to once again “be called to utter the word of God.”[xiv] On this day of judgement and reconciliation, the Christian will be able to utter the word of God, but the non-Christian will be cut off from the word of God. The hope of all Christians is directed toward this day when God will dwell with humanity in the absence of sin and death. This hope in Christ and in the promises of God connects the Christian to the future and even allows the Christian to live in the future during the present. With childlike faith, the Christian trusts not in his or her own strength, but in Christ.
[i]. John D. Godsey, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 32: The original sin of humanity caused a break in fellowship between God and humanity and within humanity. The qualities of right relationships were possessed by humanity before the fall. Afterwards, these good qualities were replaced with qualities that form and insure wrong relationships.
[ii]. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1-3, trans. by John C. Fletcher (London: SCM Press LTD, 1960), 85.
[iii]. Ibid, 88.
[iv]. Ibid, 88.
[v]. Ibid, 86.
[vi]. Godsey, 132: According to Godsey, Bonhoeffer views the serpent in the garden as merely a creature of God and not Satan himself. However, God’s creation had not been cursed prior to the fall of humanity because God had placed His creation under the authority of humanity. Satan must have presents himself as a serpent and at least possessed a serpent. Godsey’s understanding of Bonhoeffer also breaks down when one considers Bonhoeffer’s discussion on the promise given to Adam. God says that humanity will crush the serpent’s head. Certainly, God is not talking about the snake. If that were so, God’s promise would have only a physical dimension and no eternal dimension.
[vii]. Ibid, 173: Bonhoeffer accounts for two temptations in the Bible. The first temptation happens the garden where humanity under Satan’s control. The second temptation happens at the cross of Christ when Satan is tempted. Because Jesus died though He had not sinned, Satan lost control of humanity.
[viii]. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 95.
[ix]. Ernest Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. by Martin Rumscheidt (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 109: Christians are citizens of God’s eternal kingdom who dwell in this present world but hope the “eschatological eternity.” Christ’s death marks the end of the old world order which was ruled by death and the beginning of the new world order not ruled by death. Through hope in a future world where there is no death, Christians can live a new life in Christ in this present world.
[x]. Dietrich Bohoeffer, Act and Being, trans by Bernard Noble (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1961), 182.
[xi]. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1972), 206.
[xii]. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, trans. Chr. Kaiser Verlag Munchen (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1959), 233.
[xiii]. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Temptation, trans. by Kathleen Downham (London: SCM Press LTD, 1960), 47.
[xiv]. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 300.