Adam And Eve

[tinytherese]

So I've heard some people argue that Adam ate the forbidden because he knew that Ever would be banished and that he did it so that he could be with her. So he did it out of love. I know that we can't determine what he exactly was thinking at the time but I thought about it the other day and wondered, "What if Eve had been the only one who at the forbidden fruit? Would she and Adam be apart from each other? What would have happened. Surely, God wouldn't have sent her out alone and unprotected." Thought that it was an interesting topic to discuss.

[CatherineM]

Since Eve wasn't even created when God told Adam to not eat of the Tree of Knowledge, then if she had been the only one to eat it, maybe she might have gotten a lessor sentence. It's obvious from her discussion with the serpent that she was aware of it, but since she wasn't a party to the original contract, a good lawyer might have gotten her leniency.

[Apotheoun]

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.

[princessgianna]

Adam was created to protect Eve! He wasn't doing his job! Due to him slacking off allowed Satan to get in the Garden and near Eve therefore tempting and harming her.

That was/is the Sin of Adam!

Edited April 13, 2009 by princessgianna

[Apotheoun]

Adam's sin was his disobedience to God's command not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

[HisChildForever]

Hm, I would not say that Adam ate the fruit out of love for Eve. Out of love for Eve, he would have encouraged her to confess her sin to God; also, Adam would have prayed for her and been there to support her.

As a side note, what if Adam and Eve had had a child before the Fall? That child would be exempt from Original Sin, right? But what if that child, as an adult, married an individual who had Original Sin?

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='Apotheoun' post='1833176' date='Apr 12 2009, 09:39 PM']Adam's sin was his disobedience to God's command not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.[/quote]

I thought it was also his failure to protect Eve. Furthermore, Eve was told that her husband would have authority over her. This punishment is speculated to be a result of her assuming a role of authority and telling Adam what to do (eating the fruit).

[rkwright]

[quote name='HisChildForever' post='1833754' date='Apr 13 2009, 10:28 AM']I thought it was also his failure to protect Eve. Furthermore, Eve was told that her husband would have authority over her. This punishment is speculated to be a result of her assuming a role of authority and telling Adam what to do (eating the fruit).[/quote]

Source? The plain reading of the text seems to say the sin was eating the fruit. God says Don't eat it - they did - the end.

I understand Scott Hahn has had this take that it is a failure to protect Eve, but remember this is just his interpretation. Is there a Church source that agrees with this?

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='rkwright' post='1833770' date='Apr 13 2009, 10:04 AM']Is there a Church source that agrees with this?[/quote]
None that I am aware of.

[Groo the Wanderer]

The sin was pride...the same sin committed by Lucifer when he fell.

Genesis tells how God created two special trees in the center of the garden. One was the Tree of Life. The other was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Only the latter was forbidden. When Man was created, he had no knowledge of Good and Evil - he relied on God to tell him what was right and what was wrong.

When the tempter came, he did not tempt Eve to eat an apple. He tempted her with power. Gen 3:4 - "...and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Adam was with her and was complicit in the sin. He failed in his role as head of the family to protect her from the deceiver and willfully joined her in seeking to be like God.

The desire to know good from evil is not bad. The Bible states the tree was "a delight to the eyes" Gen 3:6. What is evil and a sin is the desire to choose for oneself what is good and evil, thereby cutting out God from the equation. This sin of pride continues to this day and presently manifests itself in the moral relativism enslaving our world.

Quis ut Deus indeed!

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='rkwright' post='1833770' date='Apr 13 2009, 12:04 PM']Source? The plain reading of the text seems to say the sin was eating the fruit. God says Don't eat it - they did - the end.

I understand Scott Hahn has had this take that it is a failure to protect Eve, but remember this is just his interpretation. Is there a Church source that agrees with this?[/quote]

I would have to dig for it, but there was another thread that was either similar in topic or derailed a bit to discuss this, and a handful of Phatmass members mentioned it.

[Mr.Cat]

[quote name='rkwright' post='1833770' date='Apr 13 2009, 12:04 PM']Source? The plain reading of the text seems to say the sin was eating the fruit. God says Don't eat it - they did - the end.

I understand Scott Hahn has had this take that it is a failure to protect Eve, but remember this is just his interpretation. Is there a Church source that agrees with this?[/quote]So do you think Adam could have sat back and watch Eve, his wife, get abused because he didn’t have an obligation to protect her? I would like to assume your answer is no.

But then again, that is just speculation too?

[rkwright]

[quote name='Mr.CatholicCat' post='1833875' date='Apr 13 2009, 02:00 PM']So do you think Adam could have sat back and watch Eve, his wife, get abused because he didn’t have an obligation to protect her? I would like to assume your answer is no.

But then again, that is just speculation too?[/quote]

I think you're right, its really is all speculation at that point. The text simply says God says don't eat it and they ate it. If you want to go into this Adam failed in his duty to protect Eve from sinning, then maybe... but like you said that calls for more speculation than what is there.

Which isn't necessarily wrong, thats why I asked if anyone had a source on this. I'm pretty sure Scott Hahn has used similar reaonsing; at least in his book Lord have mercy?

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='rkwright' post='1833880' date='Apr 13 2009, 03:15 PM']I think you're right, its really is all speculation at that point. The text simply says God says don't eat it and they ate it. If you want to go into this Adam failed in his duty to protect Eve from sinning, then maybe... but like you said that calls for more speculation than what is there.[/quote]

I think the speculation arises because Adam was no where in sight while Eve was being tempted.

[Mr.Cat]

[quote name='rkwright' post='1833880' date='Apr 13 2009, 03:15 PM']I think you're right, its really is all speculation at that point. The text simply says God says don't eat it and they ate it. If you want to go into this Adam failed in his duty to protect Eve from sinning, then maybe... but like you said that calls for more speculation than what is there.

Which isn't necessarily wrong, thats why I asked if anyone had a source on this. I'm pretty sure Scott Hahn has used similar reaonsing; at least in his book Lord have mercy?[/quote]Speculation about the answer to my question..

[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.