I've been struggling with this question for a while and did not know who to ask, hopefully
I can learn more from this forum.
Jesus died on the cross to redeem us from our sin.
There's a lot of proof about Jesus existence around 2000 years ago.
Our sin is because Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit.
But did this event really happen?
Was there an actual Adam and Eve who walked on this earth?
If they did exist, where is the proof?
There are different opinions on this topic in Christianity, here are probably the three most common:
1) There was a literal Adam and Eve as described in Genesis.
2) There was not a literal Adam and Eve as described in Genesis.
3) There was an Adam and Eve, but not necessarily as literally described in Genesis.
It largely depends on how literally the early chapters of Genesis are read, and Christian interpretation of these texts have, historically, been diverse (there has always been room in Christianity for different interpretations here, going back to the earliest centuries of our faith).
The first two views are fairly self-explanatory, but the third may need clarification. The third position is that Adam and Eve, even if that wasn't their actual names, are the first human beings to bear God's image, and therefore the first humans to be morally culpable, and they are ancestral to us all. They may not have been the first humans (strictly speaking) or the first hominids; but the first people with the capacity of higher reasoning, having a rational soul, and therefore able to have a relationship with the Creator and also be morally culpable.
In any case, all Christians recognize the Fall as real and something serious; some understand it literally as described in the third chapter of Genesis where Eve is tempted by a talking snake to consume fruit from a literal tree, and Adam likewise eats the fruit after his wife gives him some. Though other Christians understand these things less literally, the Church Father Origen for example argued that we shouldn't perceive the cause of our fall being the physical act of masticating a piece of literal fruit. But there is a common recognition that:
1) There was a primal, ancestral, or original sin; an act of human disobedience and hubris which fundamentally changed our relationship with God, with other people, and with the rest of creation; whereby sin and death are the ruling principles of human life in this world which is not as it ought to be.
2) That in some way this first sin has drastically affected not just human beings, but all of creation. The Western, Augustinian view of Original Sin involves human nature itself having been negatively effected by the Fall, and as such human beings inherit the fallen human nature of Adam; inheriting his original sin and guilt in the form of concupiscence--selfish, wayward desire out from which actual sin springs. The Eastern, Orthodox view of Ancestral Sin is that the first sin caused a rift in creation, creating an environment in which creatures are out of harmony with God, and from which individual sin becomes inevitable as a consequence.
3) It has always been God's purpose to bring all of creation to its intended purpose, and the Fall doesn't change that. God has not abandoned His creation, but will redeem, restore, heal, and ultimately bring it to the glorious purpose He intended from the beginning. He does this through Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection, and, ultimately, Christ's glorious return, the resurrection of all the dead, the renewal of all creation, and the everlasting life in the Age to Come.
-CryptoLutheran
