There is a common understanding amidst those who study biblical texts that

a four part narrative reveals itself within the flow of the story —

Creation, the Fall, Redemption/Atonement, & the Eschaton. James Olthuis

suggests that it is not so much a linear path way to the telling of the

Devine story, but rather a spiral of converging forces revealing the never

ending rhythms to, “God’s suffering love [as] the energizing surge of the

cosmos, not in distance from, but as the cosmos’s intimate, indwelling,

generative and regenerative dynamic.” In essence, the story of all that

exists & its relationship with the Devine is never ending while the four

themes play out in, around, & with one another.

These ideas were already playing out in my head when I joined Rabbi Mark

Glickman & father Adrien Martens in a conversation about the Fall. Mark

Glickman dropped a bombshell upon me with how the Jewish community viewed

the Fall & it sparked the idea to explore together the Jewish & Christian

perspectives of these four themes.