Along with what occurred at Eden, account needs to be taken of a related cosmic drama cryptically referred to in Genesis 6:1-2 which impacted upon humanity, but as with the elusive Universal Covenant, in accordance with God’s stratagem of progressive revelation it has not been taught or generally understood by the churches, even though the earliest Fathers refer to it175. Once clarified, our loving God’s decision to flood the earth, obliterate Sodom and Gomorrah and annihilate the men, women and children of the Canaanite territories will be better understood, indeed perceived to be essential. It is necessary to refer to the extra-biblical Book of Enoch as it throws considerable light on Gen6:1-2 and matters concerning judgement and the age to come. In recent times fragments of copies were found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is literature that was regarded as inspired and a genuine work of the patriarch by early Church Fathers such as Clement, Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine and Tertullian since it is directly quoted in the New Testament176. Tertullian specifically regarded Enoch as falling within the remit of 2Tim3:16
concerning “all Scripture” being inspired and useful. He believed the book had been rejected from the Jewish canon because it contained this prophecy pertaining to Christ:
“And there was great joy amongst them and they blessed and glorified and extolled because the name of that Son of Man had been revealed to them. And He sat on the throne of His glory and the sum of judgement was given to the Son of Man and He 171 E.g. Gal3:26
172 Cf. Rom1:17 Faith applied to faith
173 Gen15:5
174 Mt9:13
175 E.g. 2nd Apology of Justin Martyr (AD110-165) – chap. 5; Transgression of angels & Irenaeus against heresies Book IV chap. 36 (4)
176 Jud1:14-15
29
caused the sinners to pass away and be destroyed from off the face of the earth, and those who have led the world astray”177
But the more salient reason Enoch was excluded from the Old Testament canon, apart from that formulated by the Coptic Orthodox Church, was because of an unacceptable degree of variation in the manuscript copies available to the early Church councils that determined the composition of the biblical canon. Apart from being directly quoted in the Bible, this Scripture clarifies some otherwise obscure verses which themselves are quite important and cannot be properly understood by comparing canonical Scripture with Scripture. None more so than the opening of Genesis 6, vital to a rounded understanding of God’s nature and modus operandi, together with the respective culpability of the human and celestial agencies that contributed to the Fall and the Flood. The latter was another reason it was more conclusively rejected by the later Fathers who believed it did not place sufficient emphasis on man’s culpability for those cosmic disasters, especially having endorsed Augustine’s austere take on the matter. It also contains certain prophecies regarding the Mystery of God178 being outlined in this document that would not have remained such a mystery had the book been received within the canon and historically focused upon within the Church.
Enoch’s exclusion from the biblical canon will have been in accordance with God’s will, for if we do not accept that the early Church councils were infallibly guided in determining which of the alleged “gospels”, “epistles” and “revelations” were genuine then we cannot trust the Holy Scriptures at all. An agreed canon was not properly settled until the late fourth century, and for some time thereafter very few Christians would possess a Bible, for before the invention of the printing press the complete manuscripts would have been rare and extortionately expensive. Much later the Protestant Reformers relegated seven books classified as deuterocanonical having been included in the Septuagint but not the Hebrew Bible; these have subsequently disappeared from most Protestant Bibles. Yet some of these books are referenced in New Testament Scripture and many were utilized as proof-texts in the writings of the Early Fathers.
There is another reason to believe Enoch was not intended for the Church throughout its history yet is Scripture intended for the final generation of Christians – that is the very opening verse:
“The words of the blessing of Enoch, wherewith he blessed the elect and the righteous who will be living in the day of tribulation when all the wicked and godless are to be removed”179
And at the end of Enoch there is a prophecy concerning the book itself and other books:
“But when they write down truthfully all my words in their languages, and do not change or remove anything from my words but write them all down truthfully – all that I first testified concerning them; then I know another mystery, that books will be given to the righteous and the wise to become a cause of joy and uprightness and much 177 Enoch (Charles version) chap LXIX vv26-27 http://qBible.com/enoch/68.html
178 Rev10:7
179 Enoch1:1 https://sacred-texts.com/bib/boe/boe004.htm
30
wisdom. And to them shall the books be given, and they shall believe in them and rejoice over them, and then shall all the righteous who have learnt from them the ways of uprightness be recompensed”180
The idea of books or scrolls being made widely available for distribution is a concept nowhere to be found in the canon of Scripture and was beyond human envisaging before the invention of the printing press. It cannot be referring to the propagation of the Protestant Bible in the Middle Ages, for the Reformers like the Catholic Church did not regard Enoch as canonical, apart from which Enoch’s prophecy pertains to the generation living at the time “when the wicked are to be removed from the earth” (opening verse). For there will be something quite unique about that final generation: unlike all Christians who have gone before them, they will not have visited Headquarters before the Lord comes to realize His Kingdom. As Peter indicates in his epistle181, those who have died will have had the opportunity to be acquainted and prepared for the next age whilst in heaven; not so those alive at His coming.
In terms of the Genesis story, the ultra-metaphorical reading employed by Augustine and many others has resulted in some essential principles and events being glossed. Clearly, he and his contemporaries were right to recognize that the creation story as presented in the Pentateuch was not intended to be a scientific account of the various creative processes. But when the Lord tells Cain “Now you are cursed” and Cain replies “from this
day I will be hidden from your face”182, that has a theological significance which has been quite eluded. Christians affirm that human history has been tainted by the disobedience committed as an act of free will by Cain and Abel’s parents against their Creator; but there has been a tendency to understate the influence of the third player in this catastrophe, for Satan (the serpent) was its instigator rather than Eve183 and this is reflected in the punishments. These are radically different in degree once the prepared remedy is applied, for it benefits the one guilty party at the expense of the other. The eternal Word’s incarnation as a man and His death on the cross would bring about the ultimate destruction of the one guilty party, whilst for the other it would result in forgiveness, salvation and ultimate theosis184.
Having created what we now know to be a staggeringly immense universe, the Lord through His Spirit prepared this pinprick within space we call earth to receive life. But not just any life; for He had determined to initiate within this perfectly suited physical environment a relationship with beings created to be both physical and spiritual in makeup; made according to His nature so that they themselves could come to share in His divinity185
and support His activity by subduing the earth. From the outset, man was to act as God’s vice-regent, overseeing and caring for all that had been created on earth. Provided with an equal yet complementing helpmate, Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden to tend and 180 Enoch104 vv11-13
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Enoch_(Charles)/Chapter_104
181 1Pet4:6
182 Gen4:14
183 1Tim2:14-15 (verse 15 will make more sense once this document as a whole has been understood)
184 Union with the Godhead
185 Cf. 2Pet1:4
31
care for it. The garden is presented as containing all the trees required for this first couple’s eternal sustenance. It also contained a tree with the ability to give them knowledge of good and evil, intended for their future participation in the divine life186. Meanwhile they were forbidden to touch it; but having been tempted by the devil to do so, these two children of God who were created innocent yet pliant disobeyed their Father and immediately lost their original state of righteousness.
At that very moment they “died” just as foretold187. That death pertained to their relationship with God, whilst what had been a perfectly complementing union between man and woman became subject to tensions and marked by lust and domination. In terms of their morality, their demise had the effect of weakening the soul’s ability to master the latent tendencies of the body, for through a modification of the brain, the latter became subjugated to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for material goods and ostentatious pride. This is a triple concupiscence pertaining to “worldliness” as summed up by John: All that is in the world: the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the ostentation of life is not of the Father but of the world”188
Through Satan’s treachery and our first parents’ disobedience, man together with the whole visible creation became subject to physical decay and death. Through procreation, the human body that Paul and Peter refer to as our earthly tent189 or vessel190, becomes a corrupting influence on the spirit/soul that temporarily inhabits it.
We’re just a few chapters into Genesis and already some traditional theological assumptions need to be challenged. Firstly, it is erroneous to intimate that the Fall led to
“death of the human soul”, for that implies that the whole person including the human’s spirit had become alienated from God and no longer has any effectual enlightenment or spiritual capacity. The historical error of mainstream Christian theology since its systemization in Late Antiquity has been a failure to distinguish between disobedient Adam and his psychopathic eldest son. That was not the case amongst the earliest Fathers such as Irenaeus191 and Origen192 who classified fallen Adam with righteous Abel not Cain.
Adam was the first man to be created; Cain the first to be born of woman; the one was the federal head of humanity and the progenitor of “the body of this death”, the other was the type of the damned, being those who through an act of free will leave the intuitive path of sound reason and deference to God’s still small voice speaking through the conscience “to walk in the way of darkness, and rejoice in evil and delight in the waywardness of the wicked, whose ways are perverse and devious”193. Sound reason, even the spiritual faculty of conscience will not instruct a man how to be a disciple of Christ - His demands go well beyond the scope of natural law, requiring special revelation, spiritual empowerment and the means of sanctifying grace. But innate human reason, informed by 186 Cf. Gen3:22
187 Gen2:17
188 1Jn2:16
189 2Cor5:1; 2Pet1:13-14
190 1Thes4:4
191 Irenaeus against heresies Book III chap. 23 (5)
192 Origen de Principiis Preface (4)
193 Prov2:13-15
32
conscience is effectual and normative regarding what is to be pursued and what is to be avoided in the cause of being humane, and that is the basis upon which everyman is judged, being without excuse if he has opposed and rejected the light that he has received194. Cain did just that, killing his innocent brother in cold blood and so was cursed, whilst Adam had never received such a curse.
Cain became alienated from such light, Adam did not. Cain came under Satan’s mastery, Adam did not. Cain was a plant of the devil, Adam a lost child of God. Adam was dead in trespasses and sins, Cain twice dead and pulled up by the roots195. Adam experienced a moral dichotomy between the impulses of spirit and flesh196, Cain did not -
both components being “dead” in his case. Adam typified those on a long and arduous path to theosis; Cain to those who become the children of hell197. The understanding has been that Abel was the first man to be saved; the reality is his brother was the first man to be damned, the latter also acknowledged by the earliest Christian writers. Nor would such an affirmation of man’s innate ability to walk uprightly, attend to morals or observe sound reason have appeared heretical to the Church Fathers of the first three centuries, for they recognized that is quite distinguishable from being soul-healed and raised to eternal life through an interior communion with Christ198, which, as we shall see, is what the Bible effectively means by “being saved”.
Why the Universal Covenant has been eluded
Theologians cannot rely on a single passage in Genesis but must compare Scripture with Scripture, and the concept of a Universal Covenant for fallen humanity implicit in the Cain and Abel story (more explicit utilizing the Masoretic text) does not fit well with much else as it has been historically and universally interpreted ever since Christian doctrine was systematized. Moreover, the Greek Septuagint (LXX) renders the key verse about God’s warning to Cain differently and that is the version to which most of the apostles and the early Church referred. The Hebrew (Masoretic Text) is no less reliable, but it was not utilized by the apostolic Church, the Greek language being lingua franca for the Roman Empire and therefore the Greco-Roman Church. It is therefore no surprise that the apostles do not make direct reference to Gen4:7 in this context whilst the early Fathers always quote from the LXX, which refers to Cain’s incorrect division of his offering and that he should “be at peace and rule over him”; the “him” presumably referring to the devil. Such obscurity will have been an intentional veiling on God’s part regarding an understanding of a Universal Covenant, yet it is not dependant on this verse alone but can be deduced from Cain’s punishment and curse in which he became excluded from the nature of the relationship with God that his brother, his fallen parents and Cain himself experienced before the fratricide199.
194 Mt25:31-46
195 Jud1:12
196 Cf. Rom7:23
197 Mt23:15
198 Col1:27; 1Jn3:2
199 Gen4:11-14
33
But the principal reason for what in a dual sense200 might be termed the Lost Covenant concerns the nature of the Bible itself. This divinely inspired library of books was never intended to be a comprehensive account of God’s creation, for example relatively little is disclosed about the angelic realm from which evil had sprung and with which mankind will one day participate; rather Scripture’s focus is the salvation history for the world centred on Christ and His peculiar peoples (the Jewish nation and the Church). Hence Abraham is a vastly more significant figure than Abel; both were representatives within covenants, but Abraham initiated the exclusive covenant by which God would work from within through an elect people to enlighten and reconcile the world to Himself.
The inclusive covenant in which Abel was declared to be righteous and Cain defaulted does not have a direct role in that salvation story, firstly because it pertains to
that which is intuitive, so is not dependant on special revelation, and secondly because
individuals are not “saved” through it, i.e., they are not cleansed from sin and spiritually empowered to maintain in life the integrity of the intellectual vessel the soul currently inhabits201. The Universal Covenant determines a person’s post-mortem fate, but also prior to that his involvement or otherwise with Satan as an agent within God’s mysterious providential role for evil (chapter six). That is why the type of those rejected from it being Cain was brand-marked and protected rather than destroyed. These issues are, as it were, the unilluminated side of the revelation globe, pertaining to the final Mystery of God.
As a consequence, biblical theologians have for ever been attempting to fit three square pegs (soteriological categories) into two round holes (soteriological outcomes); hence the numerous, seemingly intractable tensions in Scripture typified by the “narrow way” leading to life that few will attain on the one hand and frequent intimations, not least by Paul, of God’s broader scale intentions to reconcile all redeemable humanity to Himself on the other. It is also to be observed that Adam had three sons as did our postdiluvian Patriarch Noah, and from these have sprung all humanity: Adam’s son Seth and Noah’s son Shem represent the elect line; Adam’s son Abel and Noah’s son Japheth the “righteous”
within the Universal Covenant whilst Adam’s son Cain and Noah’s son Ham were the accursed defaulters albeit that only one of Ham’s sons was cursed (Canaan) as Ham had already received a blessing202. Once we arrive at the Abrahamic Covenant, Isaac represents the elect line resulting in Israel whilst Abraham’s other son Ishmael who was also blessed by God203 and remained in His favour and care204 was not elected to the exclusive Covenant of Promise. Yet such as he, representing most of humanity, remain within the inclusive Covenant of life from which Cain defaulted, provided they do not “follow in his way”205.
Such multi-dimensional effectual grace (innate and celestial) can only be distinguished and systemized within a sacramental and synergetic soteriological framework, so it is no wonder that such a schema has yet to be established, for on the one hand it undermines some early (fourth/fifth century) Catholic biblical theological groundwork whilst 200 It has itself been lost or theologically eluded and it concerns “the lost” being the bulk of humanity and their individual acceptance or rejection in the eyes of God 201 1Thes4:4
202 Gen9:1
203 Gen17:20
204 Gen21:20
205 Jud1:11
34
on the other is incompatible with the Protestant conviction of total depravity, sola fide and sola gratia. The Reformed concept of “common grace” is not linked to the Atonement, does not pertain to the individual and is deemed ineffectual for forgiveness or the avoidance of perdition. Since Vatican II through the Spirit’s prompting the Catholic Church has effectively acknowledged a third soteriological category being the “people of good will” who do not find their way into the Church but will ultimately be accepted into God’s eternal Kingdom.
What has been lacking for the last fifty years from the Catholic side is a workable biblical underpinning for such a proposition, for that cannot be provided without substantial doctrinal deconstruction involving contradicting earlier conciliar pronouncements that the Church deems to be immutable.
Even if the Genesis account of the Fall is taken allegorically one must take stock of the events and what they are intended to symbolize given that all the key players in the saga are often referred to in New Testament writing. Augustine’s analysis of our first parent’s disobedience and its consequences failed to distinguish between Adam and Cain’s transgression and their respective punishments, nor did it take on board the extenuations indicated in the Book of Enoch (expanding on Gen6:1,2), even though along with many of his contemporaries he had regarded it as genuine and inspired writing.