The passages quoted are quite sufficient to show that both the Fathers and teachers of the Church believed, in accordance with the Word of God, that the main cause of the origin of sin was in man himself, precisely in his freedom (from Book 1:1). "Sin, Its Origin, Essence and Consequences", is sacred. V. Veltistova. Moscow, 1885, pp. 183-190).

 5. The History of the Fall of the First Men

      (According to the teaching of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow)

      I. The Origin of Sin. The beginning of sin is in the devil. - Man's sin was preceded by sin in the spiritual world (1 John 1:10). III, 8). "Before the visible and rational creature, that is, man, God created the invisible rational creature of spirits, which are called angels. One of these bright spirits, with some spirits subordinate to him, had the audacity to go out of obedience to the all-good will of God, His Creator, and through this he was deprived of the light and bliss granted to him and became an evil spirit (The Beginnings, p. 10).

      The fact of the fall of good spirits "is confirmed by the Word of God when it speaks of angels who did not preserve their beginning, but left their habitation" (Jude VI.). Evil spirits, "made such through falling away from God" after their sin, "fell into self-love, pride, and malice"; they have become "unclean spirits, provoking the wrath of God, condemned, although the sentence of this judgment has not yet been promulgated in the whole Kingdom of God, nor has it been fulfilled in all its power" (Homilies and Speeches, 1848, II 290; Cat. XXIV); they "became so rooted in evil that they became utterly incapable of loving the good and repenting of sin" (Zap. on Gen." I, 61).

      It is clear after this that in relation to man they desire nothing and do nothing but evil. They "seek to deceive men, and to deceive them, to inspire them with false thoughts and evil desires" (John 1:10). VIII, 44), for which they are called devils, i.e. slanderers and seducers (Cat. XXIV). Such an attitude of evil spirits towards man is all the more dangerous for him, since they, as belonging to the higher world of spirits, are superior in their powers to man. They can "act on the elements". Thus, for example, the devil "was allowed to kindle fire in the air to burn the sheep and the shepherds of Job, and to raise up a storm to destroy the tabernacle and to slay his children." "The devil can have no less, and perhaps even more, knowledge of nature than man, since, by the subtlety of his being, he sees much in nature which the spirit of man, enclosed in the body, does not see" (Words and Speeches, 1848, I, 315; 1882, IV, 586).

      II. The Fall of the Ancestors. - After we know how hostile the devil is to God, to all that is holy and good, it is not surprising that he "envied the blessedness of men" and wished to "deprive them of it." To do this, he "used cunning; entered into the serpent and persuaded Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit," to transgress the Commandment of God (Beginnings, 11).

      The temptation of the ancestors in paradise is not a myth. "The Lord said to the Jews, 'You are the devil of your father; he was a murderer from time immemorial (John 1:10). VIII, 14). The Jews to whom this was said were not mythical, but real beings, and consequently their father was also the devil. What do the words "murderer from time immemorial" indicate? Without a doubt, to the temptation in paradise and the fall of men."

      This is how the fall of the progenitors took place. "Having been transformed before Eve into a bright angel, into a teacher of truth," the devil first "led her into doubt as to whether she had heard the Word of God from her husband and whether it was not out of superstition that she abstained from the tree of knowledge."

      "Eve, answering the serpent, repeats the commandment about the tree of knowledge, with the peculiarity that she adds to it the word: and do not touch it. From this one can guess that the thought of the strictness of the commandment and the fear of death was already beginning to overshadow in her the pure feeling of love and reverence for God the Lawgiver.

      The second speech of the tempter contains as many words, as many lies, but woven in such a way that they give the apostasy of God the appearance of acting according to God's intention. Noticing that the fear of death keeps Eve in obedience to God, he takes away first of all this support: you will not die. But in order not to appear to contradict the Word of God, he tries to introduce his own contradiction into the Word of God itself, and to this he turns the God-named name of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Explaining this name, he asserts that with eating from the tree of knowledge, God has united the perfect knowledge of good and evil, just as with eating from the tree of life He combined immortal life, and promises in this knowledge new eyes, that is, a new degree of knowledge and even divinity." "Two thoughts could revive such a description of the tree of knowledge: either the one that God out of envy forbade it, so as not to have partakers of His nature, or the one that Adam changed the true meaning of God's Commandment. One was more advantageous to the tempter than the other, but in Eve it is more convenient to assume the latter." "The sinful disposition in Eve's soul began with a disorderly direction of cognitive powers: excited to curiosity and distrust, the wife looks at the forbidden tree as if she had seen it for the first time - she forgets to look at it as an object of God's commandment, but considers it in a supposed relation to herself - to her sensuality, to her heart, to her understanding (Eccl. VII, 30); with the deviation from the unity of God's truth into the multiplicity of one's own thoughts, the multiplicity of one's own desires, not concentrated in the will of God, or lust, which is the immediate guilt of deception and which, having conceived, gives birth to real sin (James 1:14-15). Eve sees in the forbidden tree not what it is, but what she desires, according to certain forms of lust (1 John 1:10). II, 16; Life. III, 6). The first sin is born in sensuality - the desire for luxury, in the heart - the desire to enjoy without reasoning, in the mind - the dream of arrogant polyphony and, consequently, penetrates all the forces of human nature." The inclination to sin was followed by a sinful act: the wife took the fruit of it (the tree of knowledge) and ate, and gave it to her husband also, and he ate (Gen. 2:10). III, 6). Thus an event occurred that changed the subsequent fate of man and God's attitude towards him.

      III. The gravity of the first sin. - Who is the culprit of the sin that has occurred, on whom should its consequences fall? In any case, the origin of sin does not lie in the will of God - holy and good. The goodness of God willed nothing for man and did nothing for him except good. By the grace of God, "the first man, having received at creation high abilities and powerful powers, having been appointed lord of paradise and earth, enjoyed the most extensive freedom that a created being can have." If "a limit was set to this freedom - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil", "if Adam was not given the freedom to eat of its fruit and thus was given the opportunity to abuse freedom, then this was necessary for the affirmation of freedom in good, for the perfection of man". "God, in His goodness, Who gave man a (free) will, naturally disposed to love God," is not to blame for the fact that "man used this freedom for evil" (Words and Speeches, 1861, vol. III, p. 253), having very many motives for fulfilling God's commandment. Temptation from the devil cannot completely justify the forefathers; it can only reduce the degree of their sinfulness and guilt. In spite of the mitigating circumstance, the sin of the ancestors was still very grave; they offended the majesty of God "in the most criminal and rebellious degree by the desire to be as God, an arbitrary deviation from the law" (John 2:10). III, 4) they found "unbelief, disobedience, ingratitude, pride against God, and perverse use of all faculties"; "having overstepped the limit set by the commandment of God," man "deviated his soul from God, the true universal focus and fullness, formed for it a false focus in its selfhood, imprisoned it in the darkness of sensuality in the coarseness of matter," "his mind, will, and activity turned away, deviated, descended from God to creation, from the heavenly to the earthly, from the invisible to the visible" (Gen. 2:11). III, 6); "Deceived by the temptation of the tempter, (man) voluntarily joined himself to senseless cattle and became like them" (Ps. XLVIII, 13). This is what the fall of man is.