Against Heresies: Book V

HE WAS ALREADY USED TO LYING ABOUT GOD TO LEAD PEOPLE ASTRAY: At the beginning, when God had given man many things to eat but commanded him not to eat from just one tree, as Scripture tells us that God said to Adam: “You may eat from every tree in the garden; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat: for on the day you eat from it, you will surely die.” The serpent, lying against the Lord, tempted man, saying to the woman: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” And when she exposed the lie and clearly stated the command as God had said, “We may eat from the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You must not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die,’” the serpent, having learned from the woman the command of God, used his cunning and ultimately deceived her with a lie, saying, “You will not surely die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” In the first place, then, in the garden of God, he argued about God as if God were not present, because he was ignorant of God's greatness.

Then, after learning from the woman that God had said they would die if they ate from the tree, he spoke his third lie, “You will not surely die.” The truthfulness of God and the serpent's deceit were proven by the outcome, as death came upon those who ate. Along with the fruit, they fell under the power of death because they ate in disobedience, and disobedience to God brings death.

Therefore, as they became subject to death, they were handed over to it from that moment.

THEREFORE: on the day they ate, they also died and became bound to death, since it was one of the days of creation. It is written, "There was evening, and there was morning, one day." On the same day they ate, they died. According to the sequence and progression of the days—first, second, third—if anyone carefully examines which of the seven days Adam died, they will discover it through the Lord's plan. By summing up the entire human race from beginning to end, He also gathered up its death.

It is evident that the Lord agreed to death on the day Adam disobeyed God and died. Adam died the same day he ate. God had said, "On the day you eat of it, you will surely die." The Lord, by including Himself on this day, underwent His suffering on the day before the Sabbath, known as the sixth day of creation, when humanity was made. In doing so, He offered a new creation through His suffering, a creation out of death.

Some claim Adam died in the thousandth year since "a day of the Lord is as a thousand years," and he died within those years, fulfilling the consequence of his sin. Whether we focus on disobedience as death, or that they were handed over to death and became indebted to it, or the fact that they ate and died on the same day, which is the day of preparation or the sixth day of the feast, on which the Lord also suffered; or whether we note that Adam didn't live past a thousand years but died within that limit, it follows that in all these meanings, God is indeed true.

Those who tasted the tree died, and the serpent is shown to be a liar and a murderer, as the Lord said of him: "For he is a murderer from the beginning, and the truth is not in him."