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The most significant consequence of Adam’s Fall is spiritual death,
closely related with a breakdown in relationships. Physical death is different,
present in creation from an earlier time and connected with angelic/demonic
corruption. This leads us to a consideration of Men’s understanding of creation
and interpretation of Genesis 1.
B. Creation, Cosmic and Angelic Fals
We shall now discuss evolution as the motivating factor in positing a Cosmic
Fall, then the relationship between Cosmic and Angelic Falls in Men’s writings
and lectures.
Evolution is a reality that cannot be avoided. Men describes it in the
following terms: ‘Even an uneducated person, if he examines carefully the
fossilised bones and imprints of ancient animals, will convince himself without
difficulty that they chased, ran away, watched out for trouble, and ate one
another, that they died in catastrophes or from diseases, and that they were
armed for defence or for attack... And the human in his turn, appeared in a
world where the cries of struggle and pain were continually sounding out and
where blood was continually poured out, where every second death carried
away millions of living organisms’ . Men sees death as a universal principle not
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only for living organisms, but even within the non-living material of the
universe, represented by its entropic processes.
When considering the created universe Men tells us ‘Only a blind man
can deny the rational ordering of creation, showing itself it its orders and
structures, but on the other hand, no less blind is the one who does not see in
the form of the universe beside the mark of Logos, the mark of chaos’ . The
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universe has a dual nature, divided between forces of chaos that result in
entropy and death and the order and structure of a rational Creator. This dual
nature is reflected in Psalm 102: 25-26: ‘Long ago you laid the foundation of the
earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you
endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing,
and they pass away’, a passage used by Men to counterbalance the apparent
conclusiveness of Gen 2:1 in his understanding of creation as an ongoing
process.
If this duality is not to be explained in terms of the Fall of Adam and the
curse on the ground (Gen 3:17), then Men sees that an earlier Fall must have
20 Men: Magicism and Monotheism, Appendix 8 Part 8
21 Men: Magicism and Monotheism, Appendix 8 Part 9
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