(This ironic entry must be read in conjunction with the previously posted entry Pain, Like Destruction, Is A Creative Passion, Too!)
According to Nietzsche, “fear is the mother of morality.” Considering that the Original Sin was caused by Adam’s “fearlessness,” wasn’t his amorality immoral, and, therefore, the properly “original” sin?
Indeed, I am talking of Adam’s fearlessness because, although he knew God “face to face” and was aware of His dominant role in their relationship, he showed no fear in disobeying His parental order not to eat from a certain Tree, even though he had God’s no-nonsense warning that in case of a disobedience, both he and Eve will surely die (which, by the way, was literally true: born mortal, both were prolonging their lives by continually eating fruit from the tree of life). We can talk of the irresistibility of temptation, of course, but the fact remains that neither Adam nor Eve had any particular fear of God, and even if that was not the most commonly accepted occasion of the original sin, the latter was its direct product.
The reason why I do not count absence of fear (particularly and shockingly, of the fear of God!) as a sin is that I believe that only an attitude of love, and not of fear, is the mother of genuine morality, whereas fear breeds the Tartuffes and the Uriah Heeps of this world, and fake morality rooted in hypocrisy with it. I am sure that this is exactly the kind of “morality” Nietzsche had in mind in the quote above, and this must be the overwhelming reason of his mocking attitude toward such morality, as well as of his famous call for a revaluation of values.
No, Adam’s and Eve’s fearlessness was not their actual sin, which had to be their lack of love for… the garden of Eden,--- the root cause of their transgression, and of their resulting Fall from God’s Grace.
According to Nietzsche, “fear is the mother of morality.” Considering that the Original Sin was caused by Adam’s “fearlessness,” wasn’t his amorality immoral, and, therefore, the properly “original” sin?
Indeed, I am talking of Adam’s fearlessness because, although he knew God “face to face” and was aware of His dominant role in their relationship, he showed no fear in disobeying His parental order not to eat from a certain Tree, even though he had God’s no-nonsense warning that in case of a disobedience, both he and Eve will surely die (which, by the way, was literally true: born mortal, both were prolonging their lives by continually eating fruit from the tree of life). We can talk of the irresistibility of temptation, of course, but the fact remains that neither Adam nor Eve had any particular fear of God, and even if that was not the most commonly accepted occasion of the original sin, the latter was its direct product.
The reason why I do not count absence of fear (particularly and shockingly, of the fear of God!) as a sin is that I believe that only an attitude of love, and not of fear, is the mother of genuine morality, whereas fear breeds the Tartuffes and the Uriah Heeps of this world, and fake morality rooted in hypocrisy with it. I am sure that this is exactly the kind of “morality” Nietzsche had in mind in the quote above, and this must be the overwhelming reason of his mocking attitude toward such morality, as well as of his famous call for a revaluation of values.
No, Adam’s and Eve’s fearlessness was not their actual sin, which had to be their lack of love for… the garden of Eden,--- the root cause of their transgression, and of their resulting Fall from God’s Grace.
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