Whether modern theology regards the story of the Fall as literally or only as symbolically true, I cannot say for certain.

The question is of minor importance.

What is of supreme importance is that Christian theology accepts and has always accepted the consequences of the _idea_ of the Fall, and that in formulating those consequences it has provided the popular thought of the West with conceptions by which its whole outlook on life has been, and is still, determined and controlled.
The idea of the Fall, as dramatised by Israel and interpreted by the "Doctors" of the West, gives adequate expression--on the highest level of his thinking--to the crude dualism which constitutes the philosophy of the average man.

Hence the immense attractiveness of the idea to the practical races of the West,--to peoples whose chief idea is to get their mental problems solved for them as speedily, as authoritatively, and as intelligibly as possible, that they may thus be free to devote themselves to "business," to the tangible affairs of life.
Let us follow the philosophy of the Fall into some of its more obvious consequences.

The Universe (to use the most comprehensive of all terms) is conceived of as divided into two dissevered worlds,--the world of Nature, which is fallen, ruined, and accursed, and the Supernatural world, which shares in the perfection and centres in the glory of God.