In my book Does Grace Have a Ceiling? The Anatomy of the Will, I argue that the architecture of the human will is not an autonomous faculty but a sovereignly designed structure whose natural teleology reveals our absolute dependence upon an external force — not only for grace, but to be generated, moved, directed, and made alive.

The universal serpent-shaman motif, which Joseph Campbell so powerfully traced across cultures, supplies a mythic prefiguration of “a path” or “course,” or “way” in which is destined or fated. The shaman-serpent offers “one way”: “You will be like Elohim, knowing good and evil.” The Hebrew text of Genesis 3:5 states: “For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like Elohim, knowing good and evil” (כִּי יֹדֵעַ אֱלֹהִים כִּי בְּיוֹם אֲכָלְכֶם מִמֶּנּוּ וְנִפְקְחוּ עֵינֵיכֶם וִהְיִיתֶם כֵּאלֹהִים יֹדְעֵי טוֹב וָרָע).

The phrase “like Elohim” (כֵּאלֹהִים, kēʾlōhîm) employs the plural of majesty from the ancient Semitic root ʾil/ʾel (“powerful one”). The promise “you shall be” (וִהְיִיתֶם, wihyîtem) derives from the verb הָיָה (hāyāh, “to be, to exist”), the same root underlying the divine name Yahweh. Most significant is the clause “your eyes shall be opened” (וְנִפְקְחוּ עֵינֵיכֶם, wənipqəḥû ʿênêkem), from the primitive root פָּקַח (pāqaḥ), which signifies the opening of the senses — not mere physical sight, but the awakening of moral discernment and reflexive consciousness. This moment marks what modern psychiatry would recognize as a radical shift in perception, analogous to the onset of a substance-induced dissociative state or the first break in a psychotic disorder as described in the DSM-5 under Substance/Medication-Induced Psychotic Disorder.

From the Mesopotamian Ningishzida (Sumerian 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒄑𒍣𒁕, dNIN.G̃IŠ.ZID.DA, “Lord of the Good Tree”), a chthonic deity of vegetation and the underworld whose iconography prominently features serpents emerging from his shoulders, to the Hebrew נָחָשׁ (nāḥāš), whose polysemous root נ-ח-שׁ connotes serpent, whisperer, diviner, enchanter, and that which shines like burnished bronze — the ophidian figure consistently appears as a divinely ordained instrument that cracks open human consciousness.

This awakening is no accident of cosmic rebellion. As I develop in Does Grace Have a Ceiling? The Anatomy of the Will, all things, including what our bifurcated eyes label “evil,” are sovereignly integrated into a single teleological order. The nachash functions as the tool by which the knowledge of good and evil enters human experience, producing the very bifurcation that makes grace intelligible. Without this primordial fracture, the natural man or woman remains locked in a fatalistic default — our will, left to itself, inevitably chooses that which destroys it. There exists, in other words, a primal necessity to sin embedded in the structure of the unregenerate will.

This same pattern recurs globally with striking coherence. The Australian Aboriginal Rainbow Serpent, known as Ngalyod among the Kunwinjku or Wonambi among the Ngarrindjeri, shapes the land, imparts sacred law, and embodies both creative power and dangerous potency. Among the Hopi, chü’a carries prayers between worlds in the Snake Dance. In Indian tradition, the nāga and especially Śeṣa, the cosmic serpent upon whom Vishnu reposes, sustain the very order of existence. Ningishzida’s iconography — snakes emanating from his shoulders, his annual descent to the underworld paralleling Dumuzi, and his guardianship of the “Good Tree” — offers a particularly potent ancient Near Eastern parallel to the Edenic serpent-tree complex centuries before the Hebrew text.

The serpent-shaman across traditions, therefore, is no independent adversary but a sovereignly appointed catalyst. Its role was to shatter undifferentiated innocence, to open the eyes, and to render visible the chasm between human capacity and divine requirement. Only through this necessary wound does the anatomy of the will stand fully exposed: a faculty that, operating according to its own nature, can never self-rescue. The ethical choice, apart from sovereign intervention, remains illusory. It is precisely through our sin — understood here as ordained error and natural default — that the plan of salvation becomes legible.

Thus the serpent, even when later identified with the satan figure, remains in my reading nothing more nor less than a tool in the divine economy. Its apparent malice is subsumed within a larger predestined order whose final movement is not condemnation but the universal triumph of grace. In this light, the “fall” is not a tragic derailment of an otherwise free will; it is the sovereignly orchestrated initiation into the knowledge that we cannot, by the native operation of that will, deliver ourselves. Grace, therefore, does not merely respond to the fall. In the deepest sense, the fall exists to reveal grace.

Glossary 

• נָחָשׁ (nāḥāš): Hebrew, from root נ-ח-שׁ; serpent, diviner, enchanter, “shining one.”
• פָּקַח (pāqaḥ): Hebrew, “to open the eyes,” denoting awakening of moral and reflexive consciousness.
• 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒄑𒍣𒁕 (dNIN.G̃IŠ.ZID.DA): Sumerian logogram for Ningishzida, “Lord of the Good Tree.”
• Anatomy of the Will: The sovereignly structured human faculty that defaults to self-destruction apart from grace.
• Primordial Fracture: The necessary bifurcation of consciousness introduced by the serpent’s intervention.
• Teleological Order: The purposeful divine arrangement in which even the fall serves the revelation of grace.
• Substance/Medication-Induced Psychotic Disorder: DSM-5 diagnostic category describing perceptual changes following ingestion of a psychoactive substance.

• Jones, Kyle. Does Grace Have a Ceiling? The Anatomy of the Will. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2026.
• Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.
• Wiggermann, Frans A. M. “Ningišzida.” In Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed., 368–372. Leiden: Brill, 1999.
• American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th ed. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013.
• Charlesworth, James H. The Good and Evil Serpent. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.
• Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964.
• Botterweck, G. Johannes, and Helmer Ringgren, eds. Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Vol. 9. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.