Adam And Eve

[Nihil Obstat]

It's a meaning that you can read into it, and on some level I don't think it's wrong. There are lots of different levels of meaning to everything in the Bible.

[dairygirl4u2c]

i'd say adam and eve is just a story, basically an analogy to make a point. trying to read into it is like trying ot pick holes in an analogy. even the CC says that for every good analogy similarity, there's an even greater dissimilarity.
you're not proving anything about our sinful nature etc by pokig hles in a sstory.

it's not pointless to speculate into the story, but it's just hypotheticaing something that doesn't exist.

if it's not just a story an dmy assumption there is wrong, then the speculation is moe warranted.

[Aloysius]

Genesis 3:6
[quote]The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband,[b] who was with her[/b], and he ate it.[/quote]

Adam was with Eve during the entire conversation with the serpent, and he said nothing. that is a large part of his sin, because he could have used his reason to argue Eve out of it. think of the way a good angel and a devil will appear on the two shoulders of a person in a cartoon... Eve was in that position: the devil was tempting her, and Adam was meant to be the good angel on the other soldier to come and argue against the devil. He assuredly had enough wit about him to do so, and since it is the serpent's conversation with Eve which is mentioned, it is clear that only Eve was convinced by the serpent's arguments... Adam was not necessarily convinced by the serpent and he could have easily refuted them logically... he likely wasn't even paying attention off in his own little world (which is demonstrably a natural problem that occurs with men and women. and its source is in Adam who was, at one point, alone and had sort of gotten used to being in his own little world... you know, it's the man who reads the newspaper while his wife nags at him and just shakes his head not listening, or watches a sports game... it was likely the beginning of humanity equivalent to that.. Adam was likely sitting around contemplating everything in nature, as his passtime/entertainment before had been to name all these things... and not even paying attention to the arguments that he should've been refuting)

[Aloysius]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1834352' date='Apr 13 2009, 09:09 PM']i'd say adam and eve is just a story, basically an analogy to make a point. trying to read into it is like trying ot pick holes in an analogy. even the CC says that for every good analogy similarity, there's an even greater dissimilarity.
you're not proving anything about our sinful nature etc by pokig hles in a sstory.

it's not pointless to speculate into the story, but it's just hypotheticaing something that doesn't exist.

if it's not just a story an dmy assumption there is wrong, then the speculation is moe warranted.[/quote]
the question of its historicity is one thing; but it has always been useful since the beginning to discuss it as if it were a real history. that is how what it says about human nature is uncovered... by talking about it in the historical sense. you know how it is, like with a piece of fiction, when a book club gets together to discuss a piece of fiction they talk about it as if the story had really happened... like "can you believe that Tom Sawyer, he's so clever for getting his friends to whitewash that fence!"... now, the Genesis account is something which benefits all the more from this type of suspension of disbelief or doubt in its historicity

moreover, Catholics believe that it is not JUST an analogy. Sacred Scripture is inerrant in everything which it intends to say, and the things Catholics posit that the Genesis author meant to say was that there were two and only two original parents who disobeyed God by the temptation of Satan. it's not just an analogy, at the very least it's an allegory made with historical truths. it'd be like telling the story that "George Washington said to King George III 'Bugger off! this is our country' after being tempted to do so by his fellow revolutionaries and for that reason, he forever lost his British citizenship"... don't read too much into the fact I ended up having the King of England in God's role in that analogy and the American revolutionaries as Satan, it was just the best analogy I could come up with to show the way the historical allegory of Genesis is meant to be taken.

anyway, that's why we have to talk about the story word for word as if it were 100% literal history the way we understand history when searching for the deeper meanings. it is a type of history, but a type of history written with a different historiography than our own, a historiography which is not as interested in the things we are interested in when looking at history (dates, figures, statistics, et cetera)

[Justified Saint]

[quote name='Apotheoun' post='1833065' date='Apr 12 2009, 05:43 PM']Adam is the head of the human family, and so it is his eating of the forbidden fruit, and not Eve's, that brought the corruption of death to humanity.[/quote]

Not according to St. Paul who writes that "For Adam was formed first, then Eve. Further, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed. But she will be saved through motherhood, provided women persevere in faith and love and holiness, with self-control." 1 Tim 2: 13-15

Aside from Eve being more blameworthy, women have incurred special punishment and need saving irrespective of Adam's sin.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Justified Saint' post='1835918' date='Apr 14 2009, 11:22 PM']Not according to St. Paul who writes that "For Adam was formed first, then Eve. Further, Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed. But she will be saved through motherhood, provided women persevere in faith and love and holiness, with self-control." 1 Tim 2: 13-15

Aside from Eve being more blameworthy, women have incurred special punishment and need saving irrespective of Adam's sin.[/quote]
Certainly Eve was deceived, but had Adam not succumbed there would have been no fall. It is Adam, as the head of humanity, who brings death into the world, not Eve.

[Justified Saint]

I was not suggesting that Eve brought death into the world as much as demonstrating, along with St. Paul, woman's agency in incurring special wrath, at least for women, through Eve's transgression. As long as we are speculating, there is no reason to believe that transgression would not have existed had Adam not succumbed, especially in light of the St. Paul's words. For if Adam is the head of humanity (father?) then Eve is the mother of humanity.

[Apotheoun]

The analogy between Adam and Christ requires it. Just as Christ alone is the savior, so Adam alone brought death into the world. The most that can be said in relation to Eve is that she begins the fall, much as the Theotokos begins redemption, but neither Eve nor Mary are the efficient cause of what happens to humanity.

[Justified Saint]

Correct, but insofar as Eve and thus women are considered a subset of creation and humanity, I don't see why Adam's sin requires their plight. Would God have rescinded his curse on Eve and the rest of women had Adam not sinned? Hard to imagine, because Eve repeated God's command not to eat the fruit to the serpent, so she knew the consequences if she did and thus it was just as binding on her.

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='Justified Saint' post='1836101' date='Apr 15 2009, 11:02 AM']Correct, but insofar as Eve and thus women are considered a subset of creation and humanity,[/quote]

Excuse me? A [i]subset[/i]??

[Justified Saint]

I do not claim the word as my own, simply summarizing what has often been the position of the church and might be interpreted from some passages of the Bible.

[StColette]

[quote name='HisChildForever' post='1837245' date='Apr 16 2009, 11:14 AM']Excuse me? A [i]subset[/i]??[/quote]

Stop being such a drama queen. A subset can mean a set contained within another set, meaning women are a subset of humanity as a whole and the same can be said for man. It can also mean a set whose members are all contained in another set (ie humanity).

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='Justified Saint' post='1837249' date='Apr 16 2009, 11:22 AM']I do not claim the word as my own, simply summarizing what has often been the position of the church and might be interpreted from some passages of the Bible.[/quote]

Thank you for politely clarifying.

[Madame Vengier]

[quote name='Justified Saint' post='1837249' date='Apr 16 2009, 12:22 PM']I do not claim the word as my own, simply summarizing what has often been the position of the church and might be interpreted from some passages of the Bible.[/quote]


Do you have a link or something?

[Madame Vengier]

[quote name='StColette' post='1837251' date='Apr 16 2009, 12:26 PM']Stop being such a drama queen.[/quote]


Uncalled for.