How Jesus (and Mary) Undoes the Fall

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]It doesn't take long for the story of the Bible to take a downward turn. Soon after God is creating everything and calling it good, even very good, we find the crown of this creation, humans, falling into sin. God had given them one command. Don't eat from that tree over there. Don't eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And then lo and behold, it's precisely what humans do. Now, whatever this story is meant to communicate at a literal level about creation, at a spiritual level, it gives voice to a deep sense that something's gone wrong in the world. And our choices, specifically our choices to act contrary to God, are at the core of that problem. Once this has happened, the rest of the biblical story has a big question mark hanging over it. How will things be made right? If we were made for communion with God in the garden, how do we get back? For Christians, the answer is that Jesus is the one who can restore what was lost. But how exactly that works has been a matter of debate.

[00:01:02]Specifically, Christians have long had disagreements about theories of the atonement, which is to say debates about how Christ overcomes the problem of sin and restores man to fellowship with God.

[00:01:15]One of the earliest and most profound views on this question comes from St. Irenaeus of Leon, a bishop in the 2n century who is famous for what's known as recapitulation theory, which I'll be unpacking today. Chances are recapitulation isn't a word you use every day. Though you might notice that it sounds like recap, which is to give a summary of something or go back over it in brief. And there's a connection here.

[00:01:38]The root here is caput, which is Latin for head. And then you also have capitulum which is a little head meaning a chapter head to recapitulate then could be to go back over the chapter headings or it could be to give a new head. For Irenaeus both of these are being invoked. Let me explain. The basic impulse of recapitulation theory is that what has gone wrong must be made right.

[00:02:02]And to do that we must go back to the start back to the head which for humanity is Adam and Eve. If Adam is the head of the old creation, Christ's work must reach back in time such that he can become the new head in the place of Adam. And this reaching back is really key. Imagine the fall being like a line of dominoes with Adam at the front. Adam and Eve sin and their dominoes falls and setting off a string of subsequently falling dominoes. There are two ways you could fix that. First, you could go to the far end of that line of dominoes and put Christ there to set up a new line and it all go well from there. That's one option, but it's not the way that Irenaeus sees things. The other option would be to go back to the start, reversing the effects along the way by picking up the dominoes and then have Christ standing within that first domino that is Adam. That's more like how Erynaeus sees things. And this is rooted in St. Paul's repeated connection between Christ and Adam. For instance, in Romans 5:14, St. Paul explicitly calls Adam a type of Christ. Now, here type doesn't mean like a kind or version of Christ, like Christ 2.0, but more like the one that foreshadows and represents another, forming a pattern that links the two together. Romans 5:18 shows how this works. It states, "Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men." St. Erynaeus takes this idea and really runs with it making it central to his idea of what is happening in the life of Christ. And the key thing is it's not that there's just one parallel between Christ and Adam.

[00:03:44]That would be recapitulation only in that sense of like a reheading. But Irenaeus extends this to find further parallels such that we can think back to that idea of capitulum or chapter headings which gets back to like summaries, right? We're going into all of it. What I mean is that Urenaeus sees the work of Christ undoing and transforming all of salvation history.

[00:04:05]Urenaeus doesn't only limit this to Christ though. Just as humanity stood in need of a transformation and redemption of what Adam did, it also needed a transformation and redemption of what Eve did and the role she played in the fall. And for that, St. Erynaeus sees a really interesting connection between Eve and the blessed virgin Mary. Now, Erynaeus views have some fascinating implications for our theology and how we read scripture. But first, let me show you this in his own words. We're going to dive in deep. We can find St. Erynaeus describing recapitulation theory really throughout his magnumopus against heresies, but it's especially concentrated in book 5, chapters 19- 21.

[00:04:45]And side note, I've been reading this text with my Patreon book club over the past few months where we meet every other week to do close readings of the church fathers. This semester, we've been reading Irenaeus, but we've read like 10 other books over the years, and we're getting ready to start our summer session soon. To join the book club, get access to one-on-one office hours with me, and help support the channel, you can go to patreon.com/gosspelsimplicity.

[00:05:09]Okay, back to Irenaeus. He writes, "Of Christ, he has therefore in his work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy and crushing him who at had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam and trampled upon his head." That is, where Adam fell before the serpent, Christ triumphed over the serpent. Adam made us captives, Christ set us free. But how did he do this? To use slightly more modern theological language, he did this by means of his person and work. That means that this recapitulation was accomplished by Christ both by virtue of who he is as the God man and by what he did in his perfect obedience. On the first point, St. Erennaeus writes, "These things therefore he recapitulated in himself by uniting man to the spirit and causing the spirit to dwell in man.

[00:06:03]He is himself made the head of the spirit and gives the spirit to be the head of man. For through him, the spirit we see and hear and speak. Now the basic idea here is that by taking on human flesh, Jesus united humanity and divinity such that in his very person, communion was restored between God and man. As Irenaeus says, in Christ, God is attaching man to God by his own incarnation. This is why the church fathers cared so much about christologology and thought it was worth having long often heated debates about the nature of Christ. For them this wasn't just like speculation. It was a question about how we are saved because as St. Gregory Nazanzen said that which has not been assumed has not been healed. The underlying premise is that it is by Christ assuming true humanity that he heals it in himself. So that's the way in which Christ recapitulates through his person. He takes on that humanity in himself and now restores humanity from inside of him. What about Christ's work though? Because while it's essential to recognize that the incarnation itself is our salvation, we can't lose sight of the importance of what Christ has actively done as well.

[00:07:18]It's not like Christ just had the incarnation and then just sat there and did nothing. His life is incredibly important. And here is where the overlaps between Adam and Christ become even more numerous and really fascinating. First, there's a connection between the role of trees in both of their lives. St. Arena writes that Christ makes a recapitulation of that disobedience which had occurred in connection with a tree through the obedience which was exhibited by himself when he was hung upon a tree. Now trees are no longer a symbol of disobedience but of redemption. In the garden, a tree was the source of the fruit which led to our fall. But in Christ, a tree provided the wood for the cross which leads to our redemption. So even at this level, at the level of trees, Christ is transforming and redeeming the world.

[00:08:07]But that's not all. I'll offer one other parallel before looking at Mary. But truthfully, St. Erynaeus sees innumerable connections. The parallel I want to look at though is between Christ's temptation and Adam's temptation. As we know, the serpent tempted Eve and then Adam likewise succumbed to temptation and ate the forbidden fruit. In the gospels, we find Christ also being tempted by Satan. But crucially, unlike Adam, Christ triumphs.

[00:08:32]You might remember that there are three temptations of Christ. In the first, Satan tells Christ who was fasting to turn a stone into bread. Now, much like the tree parallels, Irenaeus notices overlaps here as well. He writes, "For as at the beginning it was by means of food that the enemy persuaded man, although not suffering hunger, to transgress God's commandments, so in the end he did not succeed in persuading him that was hungry to take that food which proceeded from God." The pattern here is that where Adam fell through food, Christ triumphed by abstaining from said food. What makes all these patterns so significant is that just as in a certain sense we were all in Adam when he fell in an even better sense we were all in Christ who had joined humanity and divinity in himself when he triumphed in each of these occasions that means that Christ's triumph is our triumph as says the corruption of man therefore which occurred in paradise by both of our first parents eating was done away with by the Lord's want of food in this world. Urnaeus continues this reversal pattern throughout the next two temptations. The cunning serpent tried to use the pride of reason to tempt Adam and succeeded, but Christ overcame with humility when Satan told him to test God. In the third temptation, Satan tells Christ to worship him, but Christ responded with the commandment of God.

[00:09:56]And Irenaeus writes, "There was done away with that infringement of God's commandment which had occurred in Adam by means of the precept of the law which the son of man observed who did not transgress the commandment of God." Once again, Christ is going back putting right what was wrong so that now we might be restored to God. In a nutshell, that's what salvation is all about for St. Irenaeus. Christ has restored humanity to communion with God. what we were ultimately created for. But it's not a mere return to the original state, not just taking us back to the garden.

[00:10:31]It's actually even better than that. For Irenaeus, Adam was essentially like an infant. He was created good, but in need of maturity. The fall then, while truly tragic, in some ways, wasn't unexpected.

[00:10:45]In fact, in many ways, it was part of the long journey of man's growth. But now in Christ, we are growing fully into adulthood, deepening our union with God such that we become partakers of his glory. So that is the thrust of salvation foreas that Christ is restoring, redeeming, recapitulating, and thrusting us onward into ever deeper union with God. It's a beautiful vision.

[00:11:12]Almost all the language I've been using here is about what Christ does. It's a certain like objective view of salvation as something that's achieved apart from us. And that's well largely correct. I mean, it's important that we remember that salvation is not something we achieve on our own, but something that Christ achieves for us and that we received as a gracious and free gift.

[00:11:34]But using language like that can sometimes lead people to ask like, "But what about the personal side of this?

[00:11:39]Where do we fit? I mean, are we just included in the all, but there's nothing really about us? We don't have to appropriate this gift for ourselves."

[00:11:46]And that is one thing I should clear up here. For St. Erynaeus, it is certainly true that Christ is redeeming and restoring these things in his very person and through his actions. He is recapitulating what has happened such that all things are now being put right.

[00:12:03]And yet he is very clear that this is something that we do have to appropriate for ourselves. It's something we do have to choose to receive. He is adamant that we have free will, that we must submit to Christ, and that the normative way in which this happens is that we receive baptism, which is itself a participation in Christ. And Christ baptism is the one baptism that we then participate in and are joined in. It is kind of itself has a kind of a cosmic scope to it, but it is something that we do. We enter into the church. We receive the Eucharist to continue to feed on Christ, participate in him, be nourished by him, and continue in our growth. So while recapitulation primarily looks at this at the kind of broad high level, it also reaches down at the particulars through Christ's actions, but it is something that we also have to then join into. And that might actually help us understand the role of Mary in all of this. I promised at the beginning that we would also talk about the blessed virgin Mary and you might be on the edge of your seat waiting what is Mary's role here and that's what we'll look at now. St. Irenaeus writes, "For just as the former, Eve was led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had transgressed his word, so did the latter, Mary, by an angelic communication, receive the glad tidings that she should sustain God, being obedient to his word." Now, to understand this, we have to make just a few connections. In Christian theology, the serpent of the garden is equated with Satan, and Satan is considered a fallen angel. So Eve's encounter with an angel, Satan, sparked downfall. But Mary's encounter with an angel, Gabriel, brought restoration through Mary's yes to God, saying, "Let it be to me according to your word." So St. Erynaeus can then continue. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so it is rescued by a virgin. Elsewhere, he writes, "The knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Eve. For what the Virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the Virgin Mary set free through faith. Thus the image of Mary as undoer of knots. In a similar way, we have this idea of undoing that which was wrong in the past. And let's be clear here, Erynaeus is not saying that Mary is somehow equivalent with Christ, that her work is that which saves the world apart from Christ. Not at all. He is seeing a parallel in how God is working in salvation history to see that there is a connection between Eve and Mary and Mary's role is important, but we should never take that apart from the grace of God and in his working through Christ.

[00:14:42]This is not to say that he's got like a two god vision, but to say that he sees genuine parallels between how God is working throughout time and that God used the ver blessed virgin Mary in a substantial way to bring about the redemption through Christ and that is fascinating and I think really interesting to see. So putting these examples together, we can now appreciate that St. Erynaeus sees a great deal of order and intentionality in how God is at work in the world. The events of Christ's life are not random. They're designed to redeem that which was broken. And that in itself is a sort of theodysy, a sort of answer to the problem of evil. While humanity has suffered greatly as a result of sin, none of it is wasted. God is at work redeeming and restoring and through it allowing mankind to mature and grow into deeper relationship with him. Not only does this impact how we see problems of sin, but it also impacts how we read scripture. Just as Christ's actions weren't accidental, the stories of the Old Testament are not disconnected from Christ. They're not just mere historical data. All throughout the Old Testament, Erynaeus finds connections to Christ.

[00:15:50]The Old Testament is prefiguring Christ in a way that preaches the gospel when seen in the right light. Because ultimately, Christ is the center not just of scripture, but of reality such that things are ordered towards what he has done. that we can see all of life through Christ and that includes all of scripture. Christ is reaching backwards and forwards, drawing all things to himself. And that is a vision of the Christian faith that is inexhaustible in depth and astounding in beauty.