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Did Adam Sin?
وَقُلْنَا يَا آدَمُ اسْكُنْ أَنتَ وَزَوْجُكَ الْجَنَّةَ وَكُلَا مِنْهَا رَغَدًا حَيْثُ شِئْتُمَا وَلَا تَقْرَبَا هَٰذِهِ الشَّجَرَةَ فَتَكُونَا مِنَ الظَّالِمِينَ
And We said, “O Adam, dwell, you and your wife, in Paradise and eat there from in [ease and] abundance from wherever you will. But do not approach this tree, lest you be among the wrongdoers.” (2:35)
The question
If Adam was a prophet and prophets are infallible, how are his eating from the forbidden tree, and the Qur’an’s words disobeyed and wrongdoers, to be understood?
Views answered: Fakhr al-Rāzī, al-Ālūsī, and the narration from Imam al-Riḍā on a minor sin before prophethood
Jawādī Āmulī’s argument
Āyatullāh Jawādī Āmulī weighs several ways of keeping Adam’s infallibility intact: the prohibition was advice, not law, since no law yet existed; it was a minor slip before prophethood; it was forgetfulness (20:115); it was a disliked act; or it was leaving what was more fitting (tark al-awlā). Each has strengths and weaknesses; rational and heart-based considerations should come first, so that prophethood is not stained by any sin, for every sin is grave in itself, as al-Ṭūsī and al-Ṭabrisī hold. Fakhr al-Rāzī’s main answer to the seven proofs of Adam’s disobedience is that none shows it happened during his prophethood. But he, like most exegetes, missed the central point: Adam lived before any law (sharīʿah) had come into the world, so infallibility cannot be judged there as it is under an established law.
Views compared
Each view is given as al-Tasnim reports it. Each point opens al-Tasnim at that place.
A minor sin before prophethood Read →
The narration from Imam al-Riḍā; Fakhr al-Rāzī
It was a minor sin, permitted to prophets before revelation; none of the seven proofs shows it happened during his prophethood.Jawādī Āmulī
Hard to establish: who would have brought a law before the first prophet? And the narrations are unconnected reports, unfit to settle a theological question.Forgetfulness Read →
Rūḥ al-Maʿānī (al-Ālūsī)
He forgot the covenant (20:115), and what is done in forgetfulness carries no blame.Jawādī Āmulī
A prophet who forgot even his own religious duty could not be fully trusted in his sunnah.Advice, not law Read →
A reading
No law had yet been given, so the prohibition was advisory, like the command to the mother of Moses.Jawādī Āmulī
This is the heart of the matter: before any sharīʿah existed, the ruling of an act cannot be taken from a law, and infallibility is a different question there.A disliked act, or leaving the more fitting Read →
Readings
The act was disliked (makrūh), or the abandonment of what was preferable.Jawādī Āmulī
Possible, but each step of the case is hard to prove; whatever reading is taken, prophethood must not be stained by sin.Reading guide
Each step opens al-Tasnim at that point.
- Ways of keeping Adam’s infallibility
- Forgetfulness, and why it is not enough
- Leaving what was more fitting
- Every sin is grave: al-Ṭūsī and al-Ṭabrisī
- The narrations, and Fakhr al-Rāzī
- The point most exegetes missed
The whole commentary on 2:35 → · The same debate in al-Mizan ↗