Executive Summary

An enduring theological dispute concerns whether the sin of Adam and Eve should properly be called “the Fall,” or whether it should instead be understood as a deliberately designed and planned act within God’s redemptive purposes. Some argue that calling the event a “fall” implies divine surprise or failure, while others maintain that Scripture presents it as a genuine transgression that nevertheless unfolds under divine sovereignty.

This white paper examines whether a biblicist reading—one committed to prioritizing the explicit claims, language, and narrative logic of Scripture—supports the idea that the event was designed and planned by God, or whether it instead depicts a permitted and foreknown transgression whose consequences are real and grievous. The conclusion reached is that the Bible provides clear evidence of divine permission and foreknowledge, but insufficient warrant to describe the event as designed, scripted, or morally intended by God, and that the term “fall,” while extrabiblical, accurately reflects the narrative logic of Scripture.

I. Defining the Biblicist Standard

A biblicist approach operates under several constraints:

Priority of explicit textual statements over theological inference. Narrative logic matters: what the story portrays as good, evil, tragic, or restorative. Moral language is taken seriously—commands, warnings, judgments, and consequences are not treated as rhetorical theater. Later doctrinal synthesis (e.g., systematic theology) must remain accountable to earlier textual claims.

This standard does not deny divine sovereignty, but it resists importing philosophical determinism where Scripture does not explicitly do so.

II. The Genesis Account: What Is Explicitly Said

The account in Genesis 2–3 presents the following uncontested textual features:

1. A Clear Command

“Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it” (Genesis 2:17).

This is framed as a genuine prohibition, not as a symbolic inevitability.

2. A Real Warning

“For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

The warning presupposes the meaningful possibility of obedience.

3. A Deceptive Temptation

The serpent contradicts God’s warning and impugns God’s motives (Genesis 3:4–5). The text presents this as deception, not divine instruction.

4. Moral Judgment After the Act

God interrogates, judges, and curses—language that is incoherent if the act were merely the execution of a divine script.

III. Permission vs. Design: A Biblicist Distinction

A. What “Allowed and Expected” Means Biblically

Scripture often presents God as:

Allowing actions He condemns Foreknowing outcomes He nevertheless opposes Working redemptively after human sin, not morally endorsing it

This pattern is consistent throughout Scripture (e.g., Israel’s demand for a king, the betrayal of Joseph, the crucifixion of Christ).

B. What “Designed and Planned” Would Require Textually

To claim that the sin itself was designed and planned by God would require Scripture to state at least one of the following:

That God intended Adam and Eve to disobey That the command was given to be broken That the deception was divinely commissioned That the act itself is later described as good

None of these appear in the text.

IV. Foreknowledge Does Not Equal Moral Causation

Later biblical texts affirm divine foreknowledge without collapsing into moral determinism:

God foreknows human sin (Psalm 139) God incorporates sin into redemptive plans (Genesis 50:20) God remains morally opposed to the sin itself

The New Testament is explicit that God does not author sin:

“God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” (James 1:13).

Any reading that frames the Edenic sin as divinely designed risks contradicting this principle.

V. Is “The Fall” a Legitimate Term Biblically?

While the word fall does not appear in Genesis 3, the concept is unmistakably present:

Loss of innocence Loss of unmediated access to God Introduction of death, toil, alienation Exile from the garden

Later Scripture reinforces this interpretation:

Romans 5 frames Adam’s act as a transgression that brings death. 1 Corinthians 15 contrasts Adam’s act with Christ’s obedience.

The theological logic assumes a downward rupture, not a neutral transition.

VI. Why Some Resist the Term “Fall”

The resistance often stems from philosophical concerns, not textual ones:

Fear of limiting divine sovereignty Discomfort with contingency in creation Overcorrection against naïve views of God’s knowledge Influence of deterministic theological systems

A biblicist reading, however, allows for:

Sovereignty without authorship of sin Foreknowledge without coercion Redemption without moral scripting

VII. Conclusion

The Bible does not provide sufficient detail to claim that the sin of Adam and Eve was designed or planned as a moral act by God. It does, however, clearly portray the event as:

Permitted by God Foreknown by God Morally opposed by God Redemptively addressed by God after the fact

Under a biblicist reading, the term “fall” remains appropriate because it reflects the narrative, moral, and theological trajectory of Scripture itself. Attempts to replace it with language of divine design risk exceeding what the text warrants and flattening Scripture’s moral grammar.

Appendix (Optional for Publication Use)

Textual contrasts: command vs. deception Table distinguishing sovereignty, permission, and causation Common philosophical imports not textually grounded Biblicist criteria for evaluating doctrinal terminology