Work Under the Fall

What is common or universal is not identical with what is normative. It is common, and, in fact, east of Eden, universal, that all human beings do err in grievous ways, but the Bible insists that though sin is universal, it is not normative. The universal human condition as we have it today is the result of a contingent change brought about by the first sin. Human nature, and, by implication, human labor, as we see them today disclose a gap between what is and what ought to be. Sin corrupts human nature, and the absence of righteousness leads not to a mere negation of something external or supplemental to human being and action but the privation of something intrinsic to who we are. The absence of sight leads to blindness, of health, to sickness, and of righteousness, to depravity.[1]

To understand the doctrine of sin in relation to human vocation and labor, therefore, one ought to consider human vocation as created first, for sin is a parasite, a privation that leads to a deformity, and thus cannot be discussed without the good on which it depends. This brief sketch then moves in three further steps: a consideration of the possibility of fulfilling human vocation in the post-fall order by virtue of common grace, of sinful labor as characterized by faithlessness and idolatry, on the one hand, and fruitlessness on the other. Idolatry is parasitic on humanity’s original representational vocation, and fruitlessness or futility is parasitic on the command to be fruitful and multiply.

Human Vocation

What was humanity called to do? Humanity was made as priest-kings in a temple-garden, bound as well to the word of God with the prophetic responsibility to pass down that word from generation to generation. The sense of “image” in Genesis 1:26-8, connected with the command to lay dominion over the earth connects with the ANE context, in which there was a “common practice for ancient rulers to place statues in conquered lands representing their rule.”[2] Kings use these icons or statues to point to their sovereignty, and, in turn, the kings would refer to themselves as representatives of the gods.[3] Genesis 1:26-28, then, when read in this background is a kind of subversion of an ANE polytheistic context – for it asserts all human beings as representatives of the one true God, whose sovereignty knows no bounds (further explicating the second commandment to not make carved images of God). The creation of humanity, therefore, is connected with its dominion in Psalm 8, where the glory of God is proclaimed in all of the earth as humanity fruitfully multiplies, spreading through the globe. This sense of representation is further clarified when Adam’s sonship is in view. Adam is made in the likeness of God and is called the son of God (cf. Gen. 5:1-3; Lk. 3:38) – not in the sense of being physically from God the way human progeny stem from their parents, but in the sense of being created to represent and honor God.[4]

Scripture describes the garden as a primordial temple (e.g. Ps. 36:7-9; Ez. 28: 13-18).[5] The two verbs that characterize Adam’s task to “work and keep” (עבד and שמר) the garden (Gen. 2:15) is used elsewhere to describe the tasks of the Israelite priests (e.g. Deut. 4:19; Num. 1:53, 18:5-6).[6] Humanity’s role as priest over the garden is further confirmed when the divine prohibition against the eating of the tree of knowledge is given in conjunction with the mandate to cultivate the earth in Gen. 2:16-17. As Beale and Kim comments: “Just as the priests were to keep guard over the temple (Num. 18:5) by obeying God’s commands, so Adam as a priest guards the Garden-temple of Eden by keeping God’s commands. Adam works out God’s priestly purposes through obedience to his word.”[7] Hence, The work of representing God on earth, obeying God’s word, and conveying that word indicates that God created humanity to be a king, priest, and prophet in creation.[8]

Francis Turretin was thus right to describe the purpose of humanity’s creation in this way: “[M]an was made by God to acknowledge and worship his Creator and to exercise dominion over the other creatures.”[9] This dominion, to be sure, is not identical with the divine dominion, but is a faint imitation and is in submission to it. Klaas Schilder describes this representational vocation as the ‘cultural mandate’[10] This work refers not merely, therefore, to pro-creation, but to the work of cultivating nature in imitation of the creator: God creates out of nothing, and we create from the pre-existing materials God has gifted to us.[11] As the Psalmist declares: “You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart.” (Ps. 104: 14-15). Image bearers are to work within the world of God in obedience to the word of God, and as they spread, not only will they work in harmony, the glory of God will reflected through their representational labor (Ps. 8).

Ultimately, of course, Jesus is the true image bearer who represents God perfectly, whereas we failed. As the second person of the Trinity, Jesus’s person discloses to us God incarnate, and as the true and second Adam, Jesus shows us perfect human obedience. He fulfils the cultural mandate, thus creating many sons as the church produces her children, by the Spirit working with the word and sacrament. Christian labor is now done in imitation of Christ, and in a way that witnesses to human labor as God intended it to be in the created order.

Work in the Post-Fall Order

The work that should be joyous and fruitful, however, was rendered complicated due to the cursed ground after the fall. Confirming that human vocation involves the twin aspects of pro-creation and labor, childbearing and marriage will now involve much pain and sorrow (Gen. 3:16), and work becomes difficult and apparently futile (Gen. 3:18-19). This prompts several questions: how should Christians now labor in this present, fallen order? And how should Christians account for the fact that non-Christians, despite resisting God, continues to make serious advancements in many areas of life and labor? Can, and should, Christians engage, or even partner, with non-believers for the sake of certain common goods?

God remains committed to his original purposes and despite the entrance and spread of sin, the line of Cain produces advancements in technology, agriculture, music, and infrastructure (Gen. 4:17-24). God does not merely give us over to our sinful tendencies (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28), but preserves fallen humanity by common grace gifting it with epistemic, moral, and life-giving goods.[12] Due to common grace, fallen humanity can enjoy penultimate goods despite resisting the ultimate good, living, as it were, under borrowed capital. Common grace explains why it is that, formally speaking, unregenerate cultures can persist in advancements.

Petrus van Mastricht speaks of an “inward grace” that tampers humanity’s depravity in both subjective and objective ways. Subjectively, “with regard to both intellect and will, there is, internally, restraining grace, by which sin itself is not removed or diminished, but its action is curbed so that it would not burst its restraint, a grace also by which the more upright at least abhor more atrocious sins”, and objectively, these restraining graces form “certain political, ecclesiastical, economic, and academic remedies, by which in some measure the license of sin is restrained, and indeed there is added a stimulus to perform upright deeds.”[13] These non-salvific forms of divine graces, therefore, explains why it is that both regenerate and unregenerate communities can co-exist in relative peace and harmony in this present order, and why Christians can learn from, co-labor with, and partner with non-Christians for penultimate ends.

Another way of discussing the gifts of common grace is to take note of the distinction between sins per se and sins per accidens. The distinction between sins per se and sins per accidens illumine that actual sins are diverse. We are all corrupted by sin, but we all sin distinctly, and in various ways. Sins per se are those sins which are by their very nature “repugnant to the law, such as idolatry, blasphemy, homicide”.[14] On the other hand, sins per accidens refer to acts which, consider in themselves may not be formally evil, but “through the circumstances, from the efficient cause, the end, the manner, and other things, vice is added from elsewhere to an act that is good per se.”[15] The Leiden Synopsis argues that this distinction is useful, but should be clarified, for even sins per accidens is judged no less severely than sins per se.[16] Further, to illustrate sins per accidens, the Synopsis points to a few examples. An act might be right but not from the right principle of the heart, as in 1 Tim. 1:5, which commands that acts should be done out of purity of heart. An act might be sinful when it’s done for the wrong end, as “the Pharisees fast, pray, and give alms, in order to obtain glory from men (Matthew 6:1).”[17] Finally, an action might be evil because of “sinful circumstances”, as seen in the examples of the sons of Aaron offering strange fire (Lev. 10:1), when Uzzah touched the ark to keep it from falling (2 Sam. 6:6), and when believers wrongly exercise Christian liberty and cause stumbling (Rom. 14:20).[18]

This distinction illumines how an unregenerate society can continue with relative peace, and not devolve into utter chaos, and why, again, Christians can often work alongside non-believers. In other words, although total depravity does say that everyone has been corrupted, we do not all exercise sins per se (for thus peace would be impossible), but sins per accidens. As Paul says, even the Gentiles continue to do the law, despite being in their sin (Rom. 2:14). One way to illumine why sins per se and per accidens are both punishable sins is to attend to Bavinck’s articulation of ego-centricity as the ultimate principle of all actual sins: he argues that the “organizing principle of sin is self-glorification, self-divination; stated more broadly, self-love or ego-centricity.”[19] This means that humanity can often do the right things for the wrong reasons, and are motivated to do formally good acts for the ends of self-glorification. Christians and non-Christians might do the same formally good act, therefore, while the principle motivating taking up that act would be radically different.

Common grace allows for Christians to engage in common human labor without sacrificing their Christian identity or to fail to recognize the importance of the regenerating work of the Spirit when one encounters advancements from non-believing communities or cultures. The Spirit that has regenerated believers is the same Spirit that works to gift nonbelievers with these penultimate gifts. Work in the post-fall order remains less than ideal, as one must reckon with unjust social structures and impure motivations. It often leads to futility, marked by idolatry, hubris, and pride.[20]

Idolatry, Hubris, and Cultivation

Common grace is not saving and thus does not redirect the attentions of the human heart toward the God for whom it was created, and thus these formal good acts, being sins per accidens, continue to have malforming implications. As Bavinck argues, there is no neutrality in culture. Either true religion or unbelief will “animate” our cultural efforts, and thus line up our cultural mandate under the “heavenly” mandate of obedience to God for the sake of fellowship with him or in rebellion against him. “Religion must be the principle which animates the whole of life and which sanctifies it into a service of God.”[21] Thus, the “sins per accidens” might be “splendid vices” insofar as they are formally good works, though not done for the proper end, namely, the glory of God. When those works are set not to God but to an idol, we end up working for a deified object that could not deliver. Or, to echo Augustine, when good ends become ultimate ends, they cannot satisfy the human heart and substitute God with a creature, giver with the gift.

Humanity thus continues to sin because now it labors not for the glory of God but for the glory of another, usually, the glory of itself. The call to dominion, therefore, in light of sin can easily be misunderstood and abused, turned into hubris by pride. Humans are images of God, and so are dependent on God. Humans do not create out of their mere imagination or power, but must recognize reality as God intended it to be. God is the author of nature, and humans must work along its grain. Failure to attend to God’s word is a failure to attend to nature as it really is, as God’s creation that manifests God’s purposes.

The purposes of human labor, when divorced from the word of God, will be malformed, tempted toward a redirection that sees not sin but some facet of creation itself as the problem. One might be tempted to see human finitude or the human itself as something to be overcome rather than something that was an intrinsic part of the created order, or misinterpret creation, refusing to see its diversity ‘according to its kinds’ (Gen. 1: 21, 24-25), flattening it, imposing uniformity, or refuse to accept our responsibilities to steward the earth. One could also see the gain of material rewards as higher than the priority of caring for those in the image of God.

The call to work and keep the ground is a priestly work, after all. This is further signified by the conjunction of this command to work the garden alongside the prohibition from God in Gen. 2:16-17 – God is the one who imbues meaning on the trees. The first humans were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of God and evil, and were thus bound to the word of God for their destinies and as an interpreter of created nature rather than seeking to legislate and author nature by themselves. The first sin was preceded by Eve’s desire to interpret the tree for herself, using her eyes and judgment, rendering the word of God as a mere hypothesis to be tested by her own experience and reason, rather than recognizing that God’s word and world convey a united meaning (Gen. 3:6). Eve’s idolized herself, and thus subjected nature to her own word.

True dominion, therefore, presupposes obedience to God, and hubris is the result of disobedience. Failure to heed the word of God leads humans to re-interpret and instrumentalize nature for unnatural and selfish ends. Hence, the call to dominion should be understood as a call to cultivation. We must listen to God’s intentions and work in accordance with the norms and bounds he has set for us. Adam’s naming of the animals in Gen. 2:20 itself presupposes pre-existing “kinds” that God has set before him, and Adam does not name or bless himself.[22] This obedience to God by naming the animals itself is another indicative of Adam’s conformity to God – what later theologians, again, would refer to as his original righteousness.

Without the proper orientation toward God, therefore, human individuals will seek to satisfy itself by working for itself, often to the exclusion of others. Fallen humanity finds its identity in its labor, in its achievements, and its culture. Pride and hubris stem from these. Instead of seeing these aspects of human vocation as gifts, we use our labor as a way to justify ourselves, and thus we are not just discouraged when our work is hampered or taken away from us, but fall into despair. Because our identities are found in our labor rather than in God, we use our labor as the yardstick to measure not only ourselves but others, and thus we fail to celebrate the work of others and instead foster envy or vicious competition. Because we take pride in the cultures we foster, we fail to take opportunities to learn from others, but rather use our cultures as the yardstick to measure others, deeming them inferior from ours, and, at worst, seek the domination of others. Only when our vocation is oriented to God can we begin to treat our labors, achievements, and cultures as gifts rather than our identities or idols, tampering our pride and hubris.

Fruitlessness

With the ground resisting our labor, and idolatry marking the direction of our hearts, much of our work is bound up in futility. This can happen in two ways. First, we may fail to realize that the next world is not a mere continuation of this world. The transition to the glorified order is marked by a qualitative, decisive, and apocalyptic change brought about by divine power alone. Work, even work done by Christians, will not produce artifacts or material goods that will survive the coming purifying fire (2 Peter 3), and, as Michael Allen’s essay in this journal issue emphasizes, whatever continuity there will be between this world and the new heavens and the new earth must be tempered by the expectation of a genuine ‘surprise’. No heart can imagine what is in store for us. This does not mean that human labor here is insignificant or meaningless – the seed, the direction, the talents we have, which are themselves gifts of the Spirit, will be taken up by God as fragmentary signposts, as it were, of the glorious priestly and kingly culture of the next world.

As Richard Bauckham observes on Rev. 21:24, 26-7, the glorified city “comes down from heaven”, and yet, there is something that is brought into it that shows its continuity with humanity now. [23] We should be wary here and not overly speculate. As we say elsewhere, “the first word of eschatology is modesty.”[24] Kuyper warns, it is not as if the paintings we make or the chairs we build will be transferred over into heaven, though the “germ”, or seed, of our labors, or the direction of them, will be consummated (see 2 Peter 3:11).[25] Further, the glorified self will be in continuity with the regenerated self, and the good works that characterize the regenerate will be consummated there (e.g. Phil. 2:13-14; Eph. 2:10).

Jesus therefore warns not to lay up our treasures on earth “where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, ²⁰ but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matt. 6:19-20) One of the features of unbelief is the failure to attend to the penultimate character of this present secular age (Gal. 1:4), and of the enduring character of the next life. This is not to repeat the mistake of dispensationalist eschatologies that suggest that work now is a matter of cleaning a sinking ship (as Allen’s essay rightly shows), but it is about recognizing that work done to the glory of God is still a mere witness to the consummated culture of the next life, tempered by the decisive transition of aeonic proportions. As such, to work as if this life is all there is, and to accrue material possessions on earth now, as the book of Ecclesiastes reminds us, is to work “under the sun”, leading to vanity. Marked by sin, this present order is passing away. Sabbath rest, in this regard, is a reminder to see all things from the perspective of eternity.

The second way our work might become fruitless follows from the first observation: work that prioritizes material gain over people is vanity. Work ought to be done to the glory of God and is thus an expression of love of neighbor. When we prioritize material gain for ourselves, we tend to fashion our neighbor as impediments to be removed at worst or tolerated at best. In doing so, we substitute divine priorities with our own, fruitless ends. Work becomes exploitative and leads to futility. Examples of these abound: from the existence of slavery, our debt-fueled economy, unfettered capitalism which leads to radical inequalities and ecological denigration, and socialism that leads to uniformity and totalitarianism. Sin and idolatry are ubiquitous. As Luke Bretherton has argued:

Material security, work, and economics are not the sum total of the meaning and purpose of life. And when we make them our ultimate horizon then we have made an idol of them so that instead of imaging God, we refashion ourselves and our world in their image. The consequence of such idolatry is that the fabric of what makes up a human life is quickly shredded. Instead, economic life must be made to serve the meaning and purpose of life, which is to love God and neighbour and bless creation. We get confused about that, but the Bible is not. We do not live by bread alone and the call is to serve God and not mammon. And as a way of pointing to eternal life, the people of God should generate forms of life here and now that are in excess of and don’t fit well with current economic systems.[26]

Three implications are entailed from this recognition of the priority of neighborly love as an expression of subordinating our work to the purposes of God. First, we ought not labor for the bread that perishes, but recognize that the proclamation of the Gospel – the good news of what Jesus had done so that image bearers can be with him in eternity – is a primary work, this side of the fall, that cannot be diluted, eclipsed, or sidelined by penultimate human work. Second, we should see work as another means of sanctification. Engaging in work forms us with particular habits of discipline, cultivating virtues of patience, consistency, and longsuffering, causes us to take on meaningful responsibility as we take up care of others, and fosters our sense of dependence on neighbor and God. Work forms character, and character, our good works, will be consummated in the last day (Phil. 1:6). Finally, we should subordinate our own ends to God’s own summons to prioritize ‘the least of these’ (Matt. 25:40). True religion is caring for widows and orphans (James 1:27). What we consume, produce, and contribute to are never neutral, and living wisely means recognizing the ambivalence with which we participate inevitably in fallen conditions, and also alleviating such fallen conditions where we can in our own immediate contexts.

[1] The material in this essay anticipates two forthcoming works on theological anthropology: N. Gray Sutanto, God and Humanity: Herman Bavinck and Theological Anthropology, T&T Clark Explorations in Reformed Theology (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2024), and N. Gray Sutanto, For Us and For Our Salvation: The Biblical Doctrine of Humanity and Sin (Bellingham: Lexham Press, forthcoming).

[2] Richard Lints, Identity and Idolatry: The Image of God and its Inversion (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015), 69.

[3] Cf. John F. Kilner, Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 55-8.

[4] Lints, Identity and Idolatry, 72.

[5] For a concise presentation of the Scriptural data on Eden as a temple-garden, see G. K. Beale and Mitchell Kim, God Dwells Among Us: A Biblical Theology of Temple (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021), 5-12. For an expanded account, see G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2004).

[6] See also Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord: A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015), 53.

[7] Beale and Kim, God Dwells Among Us, 13. Cf. Stephen G. Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2003), 62-3.

[8] Cf. Brandon Crowe, The Lord Jesus Christ: The Biblical Doctrine of the Person and Work of Christ (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2023), 13-14.

[9] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 1: First to Tenth Topics (Philipsburg: P&R, 1992), 468.

[10] Klaas Schilder, Christ and Culture, trans. Williem Helder and Albert H. Oosterhoff (Hamilton: Lucerna, 2016), 78. For more on the cultural mandate in biblical and systematic perspective, see N. Gray Sutanto, “Cultural Mandate and the Image of God: Human Vocation in Creation, Fall, and Redemption,” Themelios 48 (2023): 592-604.

[11] Luke Bretherton, A Primer in Christian Ethics: Christ and the Struggle to Live Well (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 278.

[12] For more on common grace, see Cory Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2023).

[13] Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 3, The Works of God and the Fall of Man, ed. Joel Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2023), 528.

[14] Van Mastricht, TPT, 3: 493.

[15] Van Mastricht, TPT, 3: 493-4.

[16] Synopsis of a Purer Theology: Latin Text and English Translation, vol. 1, Disputations 1-23, ed. Dolf te Velde, trans. Riemer A. Faber (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 1: 391.

[17] Synopsis of a Purer Theology, 1: 391.

[18] Synopsis of a Purer Theology, 1: 391.

[19]Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, vol. 1, Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity, John Bolt, ed. and trans. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 105. Hereafter, RE.

[20] Space constraints disallow me to also explore the important vice of sloth. On the importance of sloth for one’s account of sin, see Rachel Sophia Baard, Sexism and Sin-Talk: Feminist Conversations on the Human Condition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2019).

[21] Herman Bavinck, Wonderful Works of God, trans. Henry Zylstra (Glenside: Westminster Seminary Press), 169.

[22] Cf. R. R. Reno, Genesis (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2017), 73.

[23] Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 135.

[24] Cory C. Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2023), 167.

[25] Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace, vol. 1: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed. M. van der Maas, ed. Jordan Ballor (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015), 545, 550.

[26] Bretherton, Primer in Christian Ethics, 281.