Meta-historical fall

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The meta-historical fall is the idea that the biblical Fall of Adam and Eve happened outside ordinary history and time, and that it still shapes the whole universe. It’s a minority view among modern Christian theologians and is sometimes linked to other controversial ideas, like the belief in pre-existent souls.

Roots and influence:
- The idea draws on early church thought and some Gnostic systems, and was revived by German thinkers such as Jakob Böhme, Friedrich Schelling, and Julius Müller.
- It influenced thinkers like the English poet Samuel Coleridge and Russian philosophers such as Vladimir Solovyov, Nikolai Berdyaev, and Sergei Bulgakov.
- Some church fathers, like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, described the Fall as a movement into a different time and biological state. Modern writers such as Bulgakov argue the Fall is not a historical event but a meta-historical one.

Key claims and debates:
- Bulgakov argued that empirical history begins with the Fall and that the Fall occurred outside this world, at the threshold of birth. He also warned against ideas of a pre-existence of the soul as incompatible with sound theology.
- Critics say a meta-historical fall clashes with the idea of inherited guilt or with human free will. Some also see it as a problematic devaluation of human responsibility.
- The concept often involves ideas about divine eternity and different kinds of time, suggesting that ordinary history sits inside larger, timeless modes of being. Some writers say creation itself is a non-temporal act by God, and that time and the Fall relate to this bigger picture.
- Other theologians and philosophers discuss various forms of time, such as “angelic time,” and whether the Fall affected the whole cosmos or only humanity.

Cosmic and broader context:
- The idea can be part of a larger view called the cosmic fall, which sometimes includes an accompanying fall of angels. Some thinkers connect the Fall to events like the Big Bang or to the evolution of life, proposing that our current world is shaped by a fall outside normal history.
- Some modern writers emphasize that all of creation bears the marks of this fall, while others stress that God’s creative act remains good even as the world bears the wounds of rebellion.

In short, the meta-historical fall is a complex, debated idea that the Fall happened outside time and history and that this event continues to influence the entire universe. It raises questions about free will, guilt, the nature of time, and how evil fits into creation.