Theological Tidbits

“Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made” (Gen 3:1). The serpent’s first lie occurred when he claimed that God had lied (Gen 3:4). It is impossible for God, as Truth itself, to lie. Adam and Eve should have recognized the devil’s claim that God had lied as an obvious falsehood and an enticement to sin. The devil also lied when he promised them that “you will be like God” (Gen 3:5). In his previous claim that God had lied, the devil was claiming to know truth because only one who knows truth can recognize a lie. In claiming to know truth, the devil was claiming to know what God knows. In other words, the devil put himself in God’s place. With the true God, their Creator, perceived as a liar, Adam and Eve believed that the devil knew an alternate god, a true one. Unfortunately, Adam and Eve believed that they could fulfill themselves as images of God by becoming like this alternate god. However, in reality, the devil was cunningly presenting himself as the alternate god. Adam and Eve should have recognized this second lie as an enticement to sin. The devil lied a third time when he promised Adam and Eve that they could know good and evil like God (Gen 3:5). However, in promising Adam and Eve that they could fulfill themselves by knowing good and evil like God, he was promising that they could be gods. Adam and Eve should have recognized this third lie as an enticement to sin. It is interesting to note that the devil’s third lie contradicts his second lie. Through the second lie, the devil put himself in God’s place. Through his third lie, he promised Adam and Eve that they could be gods. In other words, the devil, playing god, was promising Adam and Eve that they also could play god. However, the devil would never have allowed Adam and Eve to assume the same position he had taken for himself. The inner contradiction within the devil’s temptation of Adam and Eve should have been a warning to Adam and Eve that the devil was lying.

Temptations of Adam/Eve

1. God lied.

2. You will become like a god—i.e., like me.

3. You will be gods defining good and evil.

Even while telling Adam and Eve the effects of their action, God gives them hope that He would conquer the evil they had brought upon themselves. For God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15). In these words, God is promising a Redeemer, Who, born of a woman, will crush the serpent—i.e., Satan. God will overcome the evil that entered the world through the surrender of our first parents to Satan’s temptation. God’s infinite love and unbounding love for Adam and Eve and their descendants is quite clear from His promise to overcome the evil they had brought on themselves. Even though they had rejected God, God did not abandon them.

By returning God’s love for man through the cross, Christ filled the spiritual space between God and man with love. In Christ’s suffering, “sins are canceled out precisely because He alone as the only-begotten Son could take them upon Himself, accept them with that love for the Father which overcomes the evil of every sin; in a certain sense He annihilates this evil in the spiritual space of the relationship between God and humanity, and fills this space with good” (John Paul II). The love of God offered to us is the divine life—i.e., grace. This life overcomes original sin’s most damaging effects to the human person. Further, the grace of God allows us to live the very life of God here on earth and most gloriously in heaven. Thus, through Christ’s cross, original sin and some of its effects were overcome. Therefore, on the cross, Christ loved us mercifully by eliminating original sin and its most serious effects and by drawing us close to God—i.e., reviving the friendship between man and God. Through the God-man, the ancient model of God’s mercy, established in the Old Testament, is renewed but infinitely surpassed. Through Christ, God’s merciful love for us is extended even to original sin and its effects.

Why is it that God asked Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of a particular tree? The tree ‘of the knowledge of good and evil’ signifies the unsurmountable limit for man and for any creature, however perfect. In taking the fruit, Adam and Eve tried to know good and evil as God knows them. In other words, they tried to define what was good for themselves instead of accepting God as the source of the moral order. In trying to know good and evil as God does, Adam and Eve claimed to become an independent and exclusive source for deciding about good and evil. The sin of our first parents was not so much the eating of the fruit of a particular tree—but the attempt to make themselves gods. In effect, they attempted to surpass the “insurmountable limit” for any creature. The first sin, therefore, was a sin of pride.

In fact, the first sin could have been nothing but a sin of pride. Before sin, Adam and Eve perfectly expressed their thoughts and choices in and through their bodies. They could not be tempted—as their descendants are—by particularly luscious fruit or other delicious foods, or by any of the bodily desires or emotions. Since their spiritual faculties properly “orchestrated” their bodily powers, any temptation to sin had to be directed at their spiritual faculties. In fact, the serpent, the devil, did attack a spiritual faculty, the mind. The devil attacked Eve’s self-concept as a creature when he suggested that she could be “like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5).

Why did God take the rejection of His love as the definitive act of Adam and Eve? Could it not have been seen as one small slip among many positive, loving acts? Of course not. There were no other mature loving acts. According to the Genesis account of the first sin, the temptation of the devil was the first chance for them to choose to love God in a mature way (Gen 1, 2, 3). The devil presented Adam and Eve with the first opportunity to make a mature choice for God. Prior to the devil’s temptation, the love of our first parents for God was like that of small children for their parents. It never occurs to very young children not to respond to the love their parents show them. Similarly, with Adam and Eve, before the devil’s temptation, it never occurred to them not to love God. E.g., it never occurred to Adam to ignore God’s wish when God asked him to name the animals (Gen 2:19). The devil presented another possibility, another alternative, to Adam and Eve. The devil gave our first parents the chance to love God maturely, i.e., to choose to love Him above all things even in the face of other attractive alternatives. Therefore, until the devil’s temptation, Adam and Eve did not have an opportunity to love God in a mature way. This point reinforces the goodness of man. Man did not sin on his own. In fact, the thought of sin did not even occur to him. It had to be presented to him as a possibility by someone from the “outside.” Clearly, an opportunity for Adam and Eve to love God maturely was of the utmost importance. Perhaps God permitted Satan to tempt Adam and Eve so that they could come to a mature love for Him. Thus, the devil’s temptation gave Adam and Eve a chance to respond to God’s incredible gifts. It was their first real opportunity to satisfy God’s “longing” for His children to turn to Him.

The sin of Adam and Eve was a catastrophe not only for them—but also for all their descendants. We are all conceived and born with the sin of Adam and Eve and its effects. Still, it hardly seems fair and just that we should suffer for the personal sin of Adam and Eve. This problem might be expressed with the question: If original sin is not our personal sin, why should we suffer its effects? For good or for ill, Adam and Eve were the representatives of the human race. They could have responded to God by acknowledging Him as Creator and giving Him thanks for what He had done. Instead, as our representatives, they chose not to thank Him and to reject Him. As a result, we, their descendants, live with their decision. Had they chosen the other path, we would have benefited. As it is, Adam’s sin is inherited by all. This inherited sin is transmitted to us through the natural generative process: “Adam’s sin is transmitted to all his descendants by generation and not merely by way of bad example” (Pope St. John Paul II). There are only two exceptions: our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is God and Who, therefore, could not have been tainted with sin; and Mary, the Mother of God, who was preserved from original sin and its effects.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they hurt themselves in three ways. First, they lost the gift of God’s own life, grace, because God—Love and sin—anti-love cannot exist together. Second, they wounded their own spiritual faculties. Original sin caused a darkening of the intellect’s capacity to know the truth and a weakening of free will. Third, the bodies of Adam and Eve were wounded. Without grace, they could not come to the glory of heaven. Further, without grace and with the damage Adam and Eve did to their own natural being by acting against it when they sinned, it was almost impossible for them to love God. In addition, their bodies no longer responded properly to their choices—and their bodily desires now had an undue influence on their minds and wills. The ultimate result of the damage they did to their own bodies was death. “As a consequence of original sin, the whole man, body and soul, has been thrown into confusion” (John Paul II). The sin of Adam and Eve was a catastrophe for them. Of course, by not loving God and hurting themselves, they made it almost impossible from them to love each other. Thus, sin is an alienation from God, from oneself, and from others.