GENESIS 3:9-15 and 20
After Adam ate from the tree, the Lord God called to him:
– Where are you?
He answered:
– I heard your sound in the garden, I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid.
The Lord replied:
– Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?
Adam answered:
– The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me from the fruit and I ate.
The Lord God said to the woman:
– What is this you have done?
She replied:
– The serpent deceived me, and I ate.
The Lord God said to the serpent:
– Because you have done this, you are cursed above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
The book of Genesis is composed of several thematic groups. The first part of the book is pure theology, referring to the creation of the world and of humankind. The second is a compilation of very ancient traditions and legends (Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, and the flood). The third is the history of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, up to the migration to Egypt.
The first part has nothing to do with the historical genre. It is “narrative theology,” that is, theology based on stories. These stories are invented, not historical, based on traditions and legends from various very ancient cultures. About them, it makes no sense to ask “what happened?” but rather “what message did the author want to convey?” The message can be conveyed by telling a story, or a legend, or an invented tale, or a poem, a song. Once again, it becomes enormously important to know the “literary genre” of each passage. The literary genre of the passage we are discussing is not history but an invented story to convey a message.
This message here is an attempt (failed) to explain the presence of evil in the world, an act of faith in which evil does not come from God, but from misused human freedom. And the ills that humankind suffers (death, painful work, childbirth with pain) are understood as punishment from God for human disobedience.
This interpretation is no longer accepted today in the Church, although it still remains and is present in preaching and even in some pontifical documents (such as the catechism of John Paul II). Therefore, neither Adam and Eve, nor Paradise, nor the original sin existed, and therefore nothing can be built on those stories, not even on their message, which belongs to a prehistoric theology, entirely outdated.
EPHESIANS 1:3-6 and 11-12
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love.
He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
It is, of course, a precious passage that refers to God’s plan for humans, an exhortation to holiness based on God’s help, his grace, a call from God to be his children, that is, to discover and recognize who we are and what we are called to.
It can be applied to all human beings without distinction, although here it is intended to apply (rather exclusively) to the mother of Jesus.
José Enrique Galarreta