§332Angels have been present since creation and throughout the history of salvation, announcing this salvation from afar or near and serving the accomplishment of the divine plan: they closed the earthly paradise; protected Lot; saved Hagar and her child; stayed Abraham's hand; communicated the law by their ministry; led the People of God; announced births and callings; and assiste…

Now the serpent was more subtle. Moses does not speak of the serpent as it was in itself, but as the instrument of Satan. The fall of man was not a light or trivial transgression but a dreadful abomination. By one man sin entered into the world: Adam, being the head and root of the human race, corrupted and ruined all his posterity. Yet in the very curse God gives the first gle…

Were we freed from sin by Christ's Passion? Were we thereby delivered from the power of the devil? Were we freed thereby from our debt of punishment? Were we thereby reconciled with God? Was heaven's gate opened to us thereby? Did Christ derive exaltation from it? Article 1. Whether we were delivered from sin through Christ's Passion? Objection 1. It would seem that we were not…

Josephus retells the Genesis narrative: creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the genealogy from Adam to Noah, the flood, the tower of Babel, and the lives of Abraham and Isaac. He follows the biblical account closely but adds rationalizing explanations and draws on extra-biblical traditions.

The first man enjoyed a life of virtue and communion with God, but through pleasure and desire — represented by the serpent — he fell from his original state. The fall is not merely historical but an allegory of how every soul descends from contemplation of the divine into enslavement to the passions. Philo reads the expulsion from Eden as the loss of the philosophic life.

The cherubim placed at the east of Eden represent the two highest powers of God: His creative goodness and His sovereign authority. The flaming sword that turns in every direction is the Logos, which mediates between these powers. After the fall, the way back to the tree of life passes through the Logos — the Word that both guards the holy and provides the way of return for the…