30

The Fall

Reflection by Alec Bell

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Then the Lord God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’— therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.

Genesis 3.6-7, 22-23

Adam lay ybounden, bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter thought he not too long.
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took.
As clerkes finden, written in their book. 
Ne had the apple taken been, the apple taken been,
Ne had never our ladie abeen heav'ne queen.
Blessed be the time that apple taken was,
Therefore we moun singen: Deo gratias!
BL Sloane MS 2593

The first surviving record we have of the carol Adam lay ybounden is in the famous Sloane Manuscript in the British Library. This 15th-century manuscript also notably includes the carol I sing of a maiden that is makeless alongside other poems and songs. Adam lay ybounden has been popularised in musical arrangements by composers such as Boris Ord, Peter Warlock, John Ireland, and Benjamin Britten to name just four. The biblical basis of the carol is no enigma: the story of the taken apple, the knowledge of good and evil, and the banishment from paradise in Eden is memorable, not only because it is a story we have heard many times, but also because it reminds us of a fundamental reality in which we as humans find ourselves – the reality of sin. The knowledge of good and evil – that same knowledge which gives us the free will to love our neighbour – means that our flawed race finds itself, as Adam, ‘bounden in a bond’. We cannot, by ourselves alone, free ourselves from the bond of sin.

That, however, is not where the story, or the carol, ends. ‘Blessed be the time that apple taken was’ we sing. How can something so dreadful as sin be considered blessed? An answer to this question can be found in the Easter Exsultet chant where we are introduced to the idea of felix culpa – a ‘happy fault’.

‘This is the night that gave us back what we had lost;
beyond our deepest dreams you made even our sin a happy fault.’

This isn’t to say that we need not worry about our sin or that when others sin against us it can’t hurt. Sin remains a painful thing, something which we cannot completely avoid neither should think we might ever be able to do so. Rather, through the death and resurrection of Christ we are reconciled to God so that even despite our sinful nature we can truly sing ‘Thanks be to God’, ‘Deo gratias!’

Through our shared baptism we enter into the redeeming work which was completed in the events of Holy Week. We hear in the words of another carol how Jesus, the second Adam, through his incarnation freed mankind from the bond of the first:

‘He assumed this mortal body,
Frail and feeble, doomed to die,
That the race from dust created
Might not perish utterly,
Which the dreadful Law had sentenced
In the depths of hell to lie,
Evermore and evermore.’

Thanks be to God!