Week 6: Chapter 5 — The Fall of Man

1.Lewis argues that whatever the pre-Fall state of humanity looked like historically, the doctrine of the Fall is saying something theologically true: that human nature as we now experience it is not human nature as it was meant to be. How does separating the doctrinal claim from the precise historical form help or hinder your reading of Genesis 3?

2.He describes the original human as having 'a thousand faculties' subordinated to God, so that the whole self was oriented and ordered rightly. The Fall, in Lewis's account, is essentially the creature asserting its own will as supreme — 'I am my own.' How does this definition of sin compare to other definitions you have encountered?

3.Lewis argues that the Fall introduced not just moral disorder but a kind of ontological disorder — the self became, as it were, curved in on itself (what Luther called incurvatus in se). Can you observe this self-curvature in your own instincts? Give an example of a desire that is not wrong in itself but becomes disordered when it curves inward.