Quote: You Can Understand the Bible

From You Can Understand The Bible: A Practical And Illuminating Guide To Each Book In The Bible by Peter Kreeft:

The account of the fall in Genesis 3, like the account of creation, is couched in highly poetic, symbolic language [...] what they symbolize is real and literal. The event of the fall must have really happened at some point in real time. For if not, if the fall is merely a timeless truth about our sinfulness projected into the form of a before-and-after story, then there never really was a time of innocence; and in that case, we are sinful not because we freely chose to make ourselves that way, but because God created us that way from the beginning. In that case, God is on the hook and we are off the hook for sin.