With One Accord: Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve

Volume Four, Issue 2 Spring 2024

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

Lucinda M. Vardey

REDISCOVERING ADAM AND EVE

Anne-Marie Pelletier

THE MAGDALA REFLECTION: THE SIMPLICITY OF GOD AND GOD’S SEARCH FOR US

Yamai Bature O.C.D.

THE ORIGINAL WOUND

John Dalla Costa

RETURNING TO THE GARDEN

Lucinda M. Vardey

ADAM REDEEMED

Scott Lewis S.J.

DAUGHTERS OF EVE: EDITH STEIN AND THE VOCATION OF WOMAN

Joanne Mosley

BOOKS OF INTEREST

Lucinda M. Vardey

Editorial

There is little doubt that the story of Adam and Eve has been the source of many misinterpretations. Anne-Marie Pelletier explains how the scriptural account should be read and why stereotyping has marred the ways we relate to one other, and the views we hold of the differences between the sexes.

In this issue we explore the foundations of the scriptural understanding and introduce some of the interpretations that have been transmitted over the centuries. These include Eve’s more dissident role than that of being a lifegiving help-mate. Because of the nuances that evoke —or are limited—within translated texts, we receive only part of the picture, and the articles in this issue address these points. However, in addition to the various interpretations, the most prevailing is that Eve has suffered the scorn of betrayal, and become an archetype of such within human consciousness. An archetype therefore lives as powerfully as the myth in which it is usually embedded. And the world of myth is not one of makebelieve, but introduces common experience, the narrative of which appeals broadly to most every person, whatever their creed or culture.

Archetypically Adam and Eve provide the substructure from which much has been built upon. As Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl G. Jung explained, archetypes are active in the collective unconscious. Obviously their distortions over time morph into a belief structure, an attitude that becomes a position and a rationale. This is more than evident in the common-held assumption that man was created first and therefore is naturally superior over God’s so-called “after thought”—woman. And such assumption has led to a belief that the creation of women, exemplified by the personality of Eve who heeds the serpent, seriously jeopardizes man’s position and relationship with God.

As we have stated many times in past issues of this journal, there is no sound theological evidence for any form of inequality between men and women. Both are created equal in the image and likeness of God. And in this issue, we show how that relationship of equality is developed within a relationship with God.

In the story of Adam and Eve, Eve is clearly the one who has suffered the most misunderstanding. She is redeemed by the Church in referring to Mary as “the New Eve,” the mother of all. But even with this development, it is certainly not too extreme to say that every believing woman, whether conscious of it or not, lives with a tension in her soul. The tension is caused, on the one hand, by the broad misplacement of belonging in an environment that is devoid of natural feminine values, while bearing the inherited stigma of Eve as the negative archetype. Such burdens are made heavier by the fact that Eve’s www.magdalacolloquy.org

negative archetype fed the falsification that most women are untrustworthy, rebellious and unreliable and should be kept at a distance so as not to threaten man’s comfort, status, well-being and future. On the other hand, there exists a chasm between the negative archetype of Eve and the positive archetype of Mary held to be a symbol of womanly purity and perfection. To reach Mary’s holiness and relationship with God, cannot even be imagined, let alone embraced by most women. So this tension between the negative and positive feminine archetypes that have established themselves in the collective unconscious, contributes to the invisible suffering that women have interiorly endured in what has been termed “a man’s world.” We cannot, as Church today, underestimate the need for healing and conversion of past ideas and attitudes, and an openness of heart in welcoming and supporting women’s gifts and charisms.

On that note, Edith Stein’s views on women’s vocations from the life-giving inheritance of Eve are introduced by Joanne Mosley, and Jesus, as “the New Adam,” heals and redeems what was lost in banishment. In summary, the focus on relationship between God and each other—and within the natural world—is foremost and essential. And, as Scott Lewis invites, we could “retell the story using the sacred imagination.”

A review of Kathleen MacInnis Kichline’s latest book about three of King David’s wives, and their relationships with their husband, concludes this issue.

Lucinda M. Vardey Editor

Anne-Marie Pelletier has for some years taught sacred scripture and biblical hermeneutics at the Notre Dame faculty of the Collège des Bernardins, Paris, after being Professor of Literature in French Universities and taught at the European Institute of Science of Religions (IESR). Her research extends to Judaism, Christianity and the monastic world. She has published widely: notable works in the field of hermeneutics and biblical exegesis are “Lectures du Cantique des Cantiques. De l’enigme du sens aux figures du lecteur,” “Lectures bibliques. Aux sources de la culture occidentale,” “D’age en age les Ecritures. La Bible et l’hermeneutique contemporaine,” and “Le livre d’Isaie, l’histoire au prisme de la prophetie.” With regard to the question of women in Christianity, she has written two books: “Le christianisme et les femmes. Vingt siecles d’histoire,” and “Le signe de la femme” and most recently published “L’´Eglise, des femmes avec des hommes” (Paris, Cerf 2019). She is a recipient of the 2014 Ratzinger Prize for Theology, the first woman theologian to be awarded the prize, and most recently the 2023 prize from the Judeo/ Christian Fellowship of France. In 2017 she wrote the Stations of the Cross for Pope Francis’ Good Friday prayer at the Colosseum. She is member of the Pontificia Academia pro Vita and of the new Vatican commission for the Study of the Female Diaconate.

Rediscovering Adam and Eve

Anne-Marie Pelletier

Immortalized in past cultures, the couple Adam and Eve still live on today in our more secularized world. The clichés about them tend to have nothing to do with biblical scripture: they are both seen as being the source of misogyny that has marked centuries of Christianity and with which we continue to struggle. Moreover, the way in which believing readers allude to Adam and Eve only perpetuates the confusion. They frequently refer to them as “our first parents,” without concerns that this kind of reference implies that Adam and Eve share the same factual existence as that of David and Bathsheba for instance. This is enough to expose the Scriptures to the derision of our contemporaries, even those remotely trained in the knowledge of paleontology.

The first necessity, then, is to recognize that the initial chapters of Genesis speak a mythic language. Myth is the only relevant language for examining our obviously inaccessible origins, and for questioning the meaning—and stakes—of the fundamental relationship between a man and a woman

with its charge for happiness as well as for trials and tribulations. It is also worth noting the difference in the biblical tradition as it relates to the other origin myths circulating round Israel in the ancient Near East.

The Bible assigns a particular development to the creation of man and woman. It does so in different ways, first in chapter 1, then again in the narrative of chapters 2 and 3. We know how the first chapter depicts creation in the sequence of the days of a week. The creation of a man and woman appears on the sixth day, as the culmination of the creative act. In the midst of the many subtleties in the text that needs detailing, let us note verse 27:

“God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female.”

In only a few words the text defines humanity as a differentiated unit. The humanity shared by a man and a woman is thus articulated by a difference that is imprinted within the relationship, the whole

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being linked to the theme of the image of God. In this way, we learn the crucial truth that the difference between the sexes doesn’t degrade humanity in God’s image, as some conventional views have maintained. On the contrary, this difference is an intrinsic sign of the identity of the Creator, the one God whom Christian faith confesses to be in Himself the Triune God.

Consenting to a face-to-face encounter with the other sex will therefore have to do with consenting to our identity as creatures existing through and for relationship, each with the other and together with God. The rest of the biblical text in no way negates this essential truth. It is expressed in the story of the Garden of Eden, which runs through the next two chapters. The staging of creation is different here. A gardener God, who is also a potter, brings forth from his hands “human” (haadam), molded from the earth (haadamah), being the first step towards becoming fully human. This “human” is still a lower version of a man and woman. This “human” will be the essence that undergoes a strange surgical procedure, from which a counterpart will be born (this is the meaning of the word kenegdo in verse 20), and only later on will there be talk of a woman (ishah) and a man (ish) emerging from it. The text is full of subtlety with which the more conventional interpretation, obsessed as it is with inequality and misogyny, has obviously not wanted to burden itself. This conventional reading seemed to also ignore the dense theological words, particularly when it refers to a “helper (ezer) to match him.” This word should not be interpreted to mean a woman is to be used by a man or be his subordinate, but as it is used elsewhere in Scripture to designate God, and precisely the help that man receives from God. In fact, it’s a question of recognizing that, according to biblical economy, the relationship between a man and a woman is based on difference, that each sex constitutes a vital help for the life of the other. It’s quite the opposite, then, to the more conventional mindset that makes it unfavourable to women. In contrast to this, there are also the positions held by more fundamentalist readers of the text of Genesis who continually second-guess women, deny them access to authority, and keep them in roles that protect male privilege, falsely purported to be “natural.”

BEYOND THE STEREOTYPICAL

The opportunity in our present time is to re-appropriate the biblical text by extricating ourselves from the confines of conventional misogynistic constructs. In other words, to free ourselves from stereotypical interpretations and rediscover a text full of subtleties that covers more ground than just an unequal anthropology. A recent close reading of chapter 2 in Hebrew, even argues that the biblical text here is committed to rebuking and reversing prejudices that devalue women.1

However, we cannot ignore the contradiction in chapter 3, when the serpent tempter challenges the divine command of the use the fruits of the garden by addressing the woman, not the man who had received the divine command. Does this mean that the biblical text speaks irrevocably against women? Here too, of course, we need to work with the intelligence of the text to correctly interpret the staging of

the transgression. Let’s just say that, far from being a rehash of the well-known myth of a woman being dangerous to a man, the biblical story meditates on the reality of a humanity in defiance of God, experiencing its relationship with God as a hindrance, an alienation. It should be stressed that this reality is not the first and last truth of creation, as the misguided theology of “original sin” would tend to ascribe. What the biblical text assumes is the mystery in the rift between humanity and God, which enigmatically affects all human generations by precisely suggesting the focus be on women’s role as mothers i.e. as closely as possible to the act of transmitting life. In a sense, it also claims that the feminine is summoned to herald the day of victory over the serpent and within humanity itself, through a descendant of the woman.

Finally, it is worth noting the correlation between humankind’s relationship with God and the relationship between the sexes. After disobedience was inspired by the serpent and consummated, it bore witness

to a distorted relationship with God (i.e. if God forbids access to a tree in the garden, it’s because God is a jealous God who considers humans to be in competition!). The relationship between a man and a woman then immediately suffers the consequences. Genesis 3:15 thus describes a relationship between the sexes as now marked by violence and evil seduction. The two relationships though are interdependent. This is why what is theologically called the eschaton (the final event of the divine plan) is not viewed in the Bible as that of overcoming or annulling the difference between the sexes. Instead, it is seen as the transfiguration of this difference into the happy, jubilant harmony celebrated in the Song of Songs, the little book in which, in another garden than that of Genesis, a man’s and woman’s desire and celebration causes all of creation to reverberate.

“Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields ... let us go out early to the vineyards and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love”

(Song of Songs 7:10-12).

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Yamai Bature O.C.D. a native of Nigeria, joined the Nigerian mission under the Anglo-Irish Province of Order of Discalced Carmelites in 2008. After his first profession in 2010, he went on to complete his studies in philosophy and theology at the Dominican Institute in Ibadan and was awarded degrees from the University of Ibadan and the Angelicum (Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas) in Rome respectively. Following his priestly ordination in 2018, Yamai was assigned to the Carmelite Priory in Oxford, England where he has been involved in the teaching and retreat ministry at the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS). He loves taking walks in nature and has a keen interest in the aesthetic appreciation of philosophy and theology and their complimentary influence on cultural history and identities. He was recently transferred to Avila Carmelite Centre in Dublin, Ireland.

The Magdala Reflection:

The Simplicity of God and God’s Search for Us

Yamai Bature O.C.D.

The Original Wound

John Dalla Costa

John Dalla Costa is an ethicist, theologian and author of 5 books. For more on his background please visit our website.

All of the Bible unfolds as the story of God’s redemption in history after humanity’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Given what is at stake, the Genesis writers gave remarkably short shrift to the betrayal that resulted in humanity’s banishment from God’s company in the Garden—less than one page of text in my New Revised Standard Version Holy Bible of 1,404 pages. Even though the verses are few, many of the assumptions we have formed and perpetuated do not do justice to the exact content. Not only is the sequence confused or conflated, but, often, so too are the textual details. In that process, it is easy to scramble both anthropology and theology—projecting ourselves into the story without engaging the ambiguity (and incompleteness) of the all too short, all too decisive narrative.

For example, it was not Adam and Eve who committed the first sin. They only received their names after the litany of suffering was pronounced as judgment for transgressing God’s command to not eat “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” This is perplexing, no? It implies that fully formed human identity rests on the capability to face, understand, and judge good and evil. Can we even regard ourselves as human without distinguishing between right and wrong, between moral and immoral? More to the point, is it possible to be in relationship—to give and receive authentic love—without this ethical capacity inscribed in the heart?

Three other details in the narrative have caused me to displace my condemnation for Adam and Eve, and grow in sympathy for them. One is that God created them as adults, with mature bodies hosting personalities that lacked any experience or formation. As best as I’ve been able to search the Rabbinic literature and theological commentaries, I’ve not found any explanation regarding this conundrum. Not (yet) knowing good and evil, can the man and woman be judged as having had full agency in making their mistaken choice?

Another detail is that only the man received God’s command concerning the forbidden fruit. The “crafty” serpent attacked the couple at their most vulnerable point, addressing the woman who, at this point in the narrative, would only have heard God’s prohibition second-hand. Although told to avoid eating the fruit that illumined good and evil, there is no evidence in the text that the first man and woman had been warned that evil was already loose and slithering in the Garden. They did disobey, but in a sense, frivolously, like children rather than with cold-blooded premeditation and calculation.

The third aspect to underscore is that God was absent. Vulnerable creatures, still new to creation, were left on their own. In a sense, this was the first experience of the “dark night of the soul”—the first instance when humans, created in the image and likeness of God, were left without the presence of their Holy Parent and prototype. What was God thinking and implying by stepping away?

Obviously, the brevity and ambiguity of this quintessentially important text may be the exact point. Origins and evil remain mysteries

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What could have been God’s plan in exposing the first humans to temptation while forbidding them the very fruit that could have morally informed their response?

that cannot but be acknowledged even if only understood incompletely. There is no denying the human capacity for sin. Reading this passage in Genesis 1 can’t help wondering if God’s disappointment was from having intended a different rite of passage for the man and woman God had created. Perhaps the plan was for a kind of one-on-one spiritual direction, with God forming these innocent adults to receive wisdom commensurate with their capacity for being created in God’s image and likeness. Or perhaps the vulnerability that the serpent exploited was part of God’s larger plan for redemption, by the Incarnation of Jesus Christ that not only saved humanity, but brought each of us into the project of repelling evil and building God’s reign. Perhaps the wounding is the point: that God as love generates creation, destroys and continuously restores and renews it with mercy, forgiveness, inspiration and purpose.

initially an act of love for a not-yet-existing being. Parents commit themselves to bringing into existence a being which, when real, will not and ought not wholly conform to their own design but which fulfill itself in unforeseeable ways through its freedom.”1 Part of the reason for God’s absence may have been to initiate this freeing. In love, God took a risk for what “is not yet, yet can be.” The disobedience that was to cause suffering for humans first, and perhaps most deeply, wounded God.

CREATIVE LOVE

Jesuit theologian Edward Vacek explains some of the prenatal dimensions of God’s creative love. “Parental love is (or can be)

This original wound permeates the Bible and has its zenith on Christ’s cross. Scripture is often regarded as the medium of God’s self-revelation, and it is. But even more precisely, the text we hold as holy reveals God’s consuming longing for humanity. As much as we may seek God, that very desire for searching is a gift implanted by God in our souls for missing every single one of us with such anguish and fervour. God spoke, and God called, and God sent prophets from love’s desire to see that the one loved is well, and to draw the one loved into embrace. It

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may seem as if God is inadequate in being so needy for humanity’s recognition and response, but this quality bespeaks the absolute and infinite self-offering of love. By now separating from the woman and man whom God had created, freedom is being realized in full, in ways of growth that involve the hard-won wisdom from failures as well as successes, from sins as well as repentance.

The longest section of the Genesis chapter dealing with this original wound details the suffering humans will face upon being expelled from the Garden (3:14-19). Again, sombre as is this punishment, an indication of God’s parental longing and mercy for humanity is made clear in a single verse before the banishment. We are told that “the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and his wife, and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21). First, we need to recognize this vestment-making as a primordially maternal act. Second, it assumes a great intimacy, cutting and sewing together materials that will be worn next to the skin. Third, making the garments and “clothing them” signifies protection that will be worn long after the separation—a practical and tangible manifestation of nearness that will not be foiled even by the posting of a “cherubim…with a flaming sword” at the gates of now offlimits Eden. Like the waiting father in Jesus’ parable of “the Prodigal Son,” God’s garmentmaking to clothe Adam and Eve before being forced to depart bespeaks a wounded heart, that nevertheless longs with parental love for them to be safe, to feel God tangibly near, and to one day return.

Returning to the Garden

Lucinda M. Vardey

Lucinda M. Vardey is the editor of With One Accord and the author of 9 books. For more on her background please visit our website.

However we interpret the story of Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden it must surely feel like a tragedy to the human soul. As the couple made their exit, their break with the community at Eden would have affected the hearts and souls of all the creatures they left behind. Plants have been proven to have emotions, so what of the flowers that spread their carpet of beauty that once comforted Adam and Eve’s

naked feet? The banishment signalled the end of unity with not only God but God’s creation as it was given, and with it came the end of innocence: an innocence nourished by being surrounded by everything that is needed to feed body and soul. As Adam and Eve left Eden for a different world, they left innocence behind. Other states of being took its place, parenting their sons who, over time, developed a competitive life in relationship with God, and Cain killed his brother, Abel. A life of violence was unleashed, suffering was guaranteed, homelessness a given, and fighting caused by difference and envy, became the norm for human life beyond the garden.

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Over time, and especially prevalent In recent centuries, we have continued to be far from relating to the natural world. As a result, God is not so easily found and prayed to outside. It is interesting to note, however, that throughout scripture God usually appeared in clouds, on top of mountains, at the mouth of caves, in barren deserts, even a burning bush, always inviting us to be close. By moving more into cities—in the main for economic or political reasons—we have lost that primary consciousness, the innocence that links us with the land. City life with all its attractions and distractions, makes it harder to live in accordance with the rhythms of the seasons and in intimacy with the creatures around us, even to gaze at the night sky in all its glory. Instead our distance from nature has only unleashed damage to our environment, and against all life that is sustained by the harmonic forces of God’s creative power.

“Man-made” structures, such as temples and later churches are the places we frequent to pray to God, to petition, to worship, to honour, to receive. We’ve abused our role as stewards of creation and taken the “dominion” given to us to mean superiority. In the process of so-called progress, we have not only forsaken innocence and wonder, but the time to be in communication with non-human life and what it can teach us about God.

Recognizing the earth as sacred—and calling it “Mother”—was brought to our Christian consciousness by St. Francis of Assisi. As the institutional Church had become corrupted by power, he took to the fields, wearing a simple brown robe the same colour of sparrows. He preached the gospel to not only the people who were too poor (and illiterate) to attend churches, but equally to the birds and glorified God in the sun, the moon, the stars, fire and water—all the elements. When his brother monk, St.

Anthony of Padua wasn’t listened to by the people of Rimini—where he had gone to preach to them about God— he turned to do so to the fish in the river estuary running into the sea. They popped their heads out of the water, stayed still and reverently listened to his every word. Witnessing the fish, the local people felt great remorse and changed their minds, and their hearts were converted.

What is clear is that even with these examples from our tradition, we are wary—and sometimes fearful—of trusting innocence and the wisdom embedded in creation. In researching a book I have just completed on discovering God in nature, I found that it is common to believe that animals and non-human life are lesser beings, devoid of souls, lacking consciousness, intelligence, linguistic skills, logic and reasoning, imagination and memory — even spirituality. However, recent research has proven that we may be at fault with our assumptions, that non-human life operates instead on a different level. Nonverbal communication between species is one area of which we know little about. But we do know that verbal and non-verbal communication with God is possible for us, and could well be possible with creatures, with all life. It just doesn’t look the same, nor can it be fully explained.

“...unless you change and become like children, you’ll never enter the kingdom of heaven”

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(Matthew 18:3).

Some of us have had the privilege of growing up with access to gardens, or meadows, or woods and forests. Our imaginations were fed with stories of the mysterious otherworlds of spirits that dwelled in the earth, or the seas, or flew by night on the backs of owls. The challenge in our maturity is to allow ourselves a bit more of that childlike ambience, spending more time in nature, without any intention than to be present, to praise God in the beauty and harmony, and make a space in our soul to be nourished by what was always our natural environment from the beginning. We could well find ourselves closer to God, when putting aside our responsibilities and concerns, whatever pains us, whatever we yearn for, and begin to consider what it could be like to be a lily in a field ( Cf, Matt 6:28). In addition, by loving God and loving the Earth we might well contribute some much needed light and healing to the distresses experienced with climate change.

I recall reading a story in a magazine many years ago which has stayed with me. It was about a young woman who was severely depressed to the point of contemplating suicide. An uncle of hers took her out into the country to help him plant some vegetables. As they prepared the soil he asked her to drop the seeds into the trenches in the earth and cover them with her bare hands. While doing so a smile appeared on her face, her mood shifted and she was lifted of her depression. The story concluded with the insight that we need to return to the land, handle the earth, have it touch our skin, the way it did Adam and Eve when they lived unclothed and happy with God in Eden.

Our souls can be filled by allowing the natural world to teach us simplicity: doves and other birds innocence, and serpents, not so much as tempters, or the devil, but as bearers of wisdom (Cf. Matt 10:16). Then we’d take a step back, or forward, into participating with the beauty and unity once known in Eden.

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Scott Lewis S.J. is Associate Professor Emeritus of Regis College at the University of Toronto and is currently on the faculty of Campion College in Regina, Saskatchewan. He served in the U.S. Navy for several years and entered the California Province of the Society of Jesus in 1979. After ordination in 1987, he studied Scripture in Rome, obtaining the Licentiate in Sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Gregorian University. He taught and worked for two years in Jerusalem before coming to Toronto in 1997. His expertise is in the Gospel of John, the Letters of Paul, the Bible and Religious Violence, and the history of exegesis. From 2008 to 2014 he was director of the Jesuit Spiritual Renewal Centre in Pickering, Ontario. In addition to his teaching duties, he presents weekly insights on the Sunday Gospel readings in the Catholic Register, lectures on Scripture and gives retreats both in Canada and internationally. Author of many books, his latest is “How Not to Read the Bible” (Novalis/Paulist Press, 2019).

Adam Redeemed

Scott Lewis S.J.

The story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:5-3:24 has exerted a powerful—and some would say negative—influence on theology and culture over the centuries. It is the root of the doctrine of Original Sin and in some theological streams, an extremely negative view of human nature.

But the theological tradition is much more nuanced and is not at all univocal. The interpretation of the text of the Garden of Eden event need not be static. Jewish midrashic tradition was malleable and in interpretations could be stretched and molded in many ways, while always keeping their fundamental form and connection with the text. Over time, the collective sacred imagination engaged the story with questions of sin, death, and redemption.1 On the one hand, it has traditionally been seen as a primeval catastrophe and the source of all evil and suffering. But there were other voices that saw the ‘fall’ as a learning experience and a necessary step for humanity in its journey and struggle to achieve unity with God.

Adam is a rather passive figure in the narrative and does not speak until he and Eve were confronted by God. He blamed it all on Eve; she blamed the serpent; the serpent (not at this point the devil) had no one to blame it on. Eve was portrayed in a very negative manner in Sirach and in 1 Tim 2:13-14: ‘For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.’ In Sirach and Wisdom, Adam is portrayed as the first of the human race and the founder of humanity, possessing a glory present from the beginning.2

In the Jewish theological traditions Adam was not portrayed as the source and cause

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of human evil – human agency is nearly always emphasized. Cain’s murder of Abel was always seen as far more serious. After the Garden of Eden story, Adam and Eve are rarely mentioned in the Jewish scriptures. He does appear in such apocryphal works as the Apocalypse of Moses and the Life of Adam and Eve. In these works, hope in forgiveness and restoration is extended to Adam—all is not lost. The rewritten Scripture, the Book of Jubilees, treats Adam very well, laying the blame and God’s fury on Eve and the serpent and omitting passages that highlighted Adam’s culpability.3

Adam does appear in apocalyptic literature as a transgressor but not the cause of sin and death in any transmitted sense. For example, in 2 Baruch—a Jewish pseudepigraphal apocalyptic work written after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE – the emphasis is placed on human responsibility: ‘For though Adam first sinned and brought untimely death upon all, yet of those who were born from him each one of them has prepared for his own soul torment to come, and again each one of them has chosen for himself glories to come… For His works have not taught you, nor has the skill of His creation which is at all times persuaded you. Adam is therefore not the cause, save only of his own soul, but each of us has been the Adam of his own soul’ (2 Baruch 54). 4

STILL EVOLVING

Adam bursts on to the scene again in the New Testament. Rather than beginning the genealogy of Jesus with Abraham, as in Matthew, Luke’s genealogy begins with Adam. This signals that the redemptive work of Jesus is intended for all humanity, and in fact, universalism was a key theme in Luke.

In the writings of Paul, Adam’s transgression was all part of the divine plan.

He was the type of the one to come—Jesus the Christ. Neither can be understood in isolation. It is in the Pauline letters of the New Testament that Adam’s full significance is manifested. In Rom 5:12-21 , Adam’s sin brought sin and death into the world, affecting all of humanity. Rather than sin being guilt that is transmitted through procreation—as the later doctrine of Original Sin would insist—sin is a negative energy that is passed on to future generations through human choices and following Adam’s example of disobedience. The Old Adam represents the old dispensation and the world that is passing away. The early followers of Jesus believed that they were standing on the cusp of the New Age, represented by Christ, the Spirit, and the new creation.

Paul develops this idea of the universality of sin as the counterpart to the universality of salvation in Christ. In 1 Cor 15:21-49 Christ is the New Adam and a life-giving spirit. The contrast between the Old Adam and the New is between the mortal and corruptible on the one hand, and the immortal and incorruptible on the other. The emphasis is not on erasing sin but spiritual transformation and elevation. The New Adam transforms and spiritualizes the individual and endows it with immortality. This is portrayed in visual form in the icons of the Harrowing of Hell. Having demolished the gates of hell, Jesus reaches down into a fiery pit and grasps Adam by the wrist to pull him out.

The Old Adam and New Adam meet, and the cycle is complete. There is also a tradition that

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Adam was buried on Calvary. Many icons display a skull beneath the cross, thereby joining the Old and New Adam.

According to Irenaeus, the fall was unfortunate but was part of God’s plan all along. Adam himself is incomplete and still evolving. 5 It is only by choosing and even making mistakes that we learn to choose and follow good. God allowed the disobedience in the Garden so that humanity could grow in gratitude and humility.6

“O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”

(The Roman Missal).

The exultant cry of the Roman Missal (above) only begins to make sense looking back over the entire tradition concerning Adam, both Jewish and Christian. Interpretation of Adam and Eve took many twists and turns, and there were various avenues that theology could have taken. The story of Adam’s fall need not be a dark shadow over our theological traditions. In midrashic fashion, we could retell the story, using the sacred imagination.

Joanne Mosley is an editor, speaker and writer, specializing in Carmelite spirituality. She is a linguist by training and after her degree in French and German she obtained a doctorate in the area of French biography specializing in the period during the Wars of Religion. She initially taught university students but changed career in 2001, from which time she has been associated with the Carmelites. She has edited numerous articles and books and has given a number of lectures on the Carmelite saints, especially for the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality in Oxford, England. She is the author of “Edith Stein: Woman of Prayer” published by Gracewing in 2004 (also by Paulist Press in 2006 as “Edith Stein: Modern Saint and Martyr”), which has been translated into four languages; and the two-volume biography “Elizabeth of the Trinity: The Unfolding of Her Message” (2012, Teresian Press, Oxford).

Daughters of Eve: Edith Stein and the Vocation of Woman

Joanne Mosley

When we consider a woman’s vocation, what undoubtedly comes to mind is a specific calling, such as marriage or the religious life. Or we may, like German philosopher and Carmelite saint Edith Stein, widen the picture to include the professions, which we sometimes term “vocational.” In fact, Edith uses the word Beruf (from berufen, meaning “to call”) to denote all these callings.1 According to Edith, though, each woman has two interweaving vocations: a specific calling, and woman’s vocation as such. Importantly, the latter would appear, from Edith’s writings, to be the primary one: for it is essential to our nature, and is a constant

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regardless of the life’s path in which it is lived out. To understand woman’s vocation, it is first necessary to understand woman’s nature, and for this Edith turned to Eve.

Eve, at her creation, represented God’s ideal of womanhood, and the titles she is given in Genesis are deeply significant. In the second account of creation (Gen 2:23) she is called woman because she was taken from man; and Edith will emphasize the fact that Eve was taken from man’s side. Eve is also given two roles. The first is as companion or “helpmate” (Gen 2:18, 20); Edith gives the Hebrew term for this (Eser kenegdo) and describes Adam and Eve as “[complementing] each other as one hand does the other.” The second role is that of mother: from the name “Eve,” meaning “mother of all the living” (Gen 3:20). In sum, then, Eve is to be a companion and mother, 2 which represents the essential nature of woman. Edith’s endeavour was to explore how women, as “daughters of Eve,” may live out this vocation.

surrender her whole self to her Spouse, so that she can be filled with his love and let it overflow in service to others. In terms evoking motherhood, Edith describes this religious state as being “ready to serve, […], awaken and foster life,” like God’s merciful love which “bends down to everyone who is in need […], protecting, cherishing, nourishing, teaching, and forming.” Encouragingly, Edith comments that “the heights of the vocational ethos” are accessible to any woman, so long as she is completely surrendered to God.

The unpromising backdrop of an office or factory allows Edith to highlight woman’s vocation in sharp relief. She wanted to show female workers (many of them single and not by choice) that they can fulfil their destiny as a woman in a spiritual sense, through the two roles of Eve:

The most literal way to do this is in marriage and motherhood. Here, a woman can support her husband “by his side”– this position recalling Eve’s creation from man’s side—and as a mother, with her natural gifts of feeling and empathy, can foster her children’s development. Nature, however, needs perfecting by grace. If a woman’s natural interest in people is carried to excess, it can become possessive and cause harm. Edith holds up Mary, the new Eve, as the corrective: “In the centre of her life stands her son,” but as Mary lived as the Handmaid of the Lord, “that is why she does not consider the child as her own property” but surrenders him back into the hands of God.

The consecrated woman is called to

Wherever [this woman] stands at the side of a lonely person, especially one who is in physical or psychological need, lovingly supporting and understanding, counselling and helping, she is a life companion who is helping “so that man may not be alone” [Cf. Gn 2:18]. Wherever she helps a soul, who is in the process of developing, to reach its goal, in its physical, spiritual, psychological evolution, she is a mother.3

BLESSINGS EVERYWHERE

Edith invites women to really notice their fellow workers; to give a friendly word or ask a sympathetic question, allowing those with “trouble-laden hearts” to open up. “Everywhere [a woman] meets with a human being, she will find opportunity to sustain, to counsel, to help.” Their model is

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the new Eve: the Mother of Mercy or Mary at Cana, sorting out problems behind the scenes – “the prototype of woman in professional life.” Such a woman, says Edith encouragingly, will “like a good spirit spread blessing everywhere.”

The new Eve is also the Church—born, on Calvary, from the side of the new Adam— and the Church “stands at His side as the Spouse of Christ and cooperates with Him in His work.” Here, we glimpse a profoundly feminine theology of the Church.

Edith shows how we can imitate Mary, the new Eve. By entrusting ourselves to Christ, we become free to “walk by the side of the Saviour,” like Mary who was “always by the Lord’s side.” More deeply still: by being in intimate relationship with Christ, Mary “intercedes with Him for humankind; she receives from His hands graces to be bestowed” and “is the mother of the living not because all succeeding generations come from her but because her maternal love embraces the whole Mystical Body with Jesus Christ its head.”

A woman, Edith tells us, assumes the Christian vocation “in a special way, thanks to her special relationship to the Lord who has destined her for it.” In this faith-filled light, a woman’s vocation is exceptionally rich and truly noble: it is to be “an image of the Mother of God, a Spouse of Christ, an apostle of the divine Heart.”

Edith’s descriptions of the richness of the feminine nature were matched by her own example. With maternal warmth she cared for her nieces and nephews, encouraged her students, and gave both a listening ear and practical help to those in need. Her spiritual director, Raphael Walzer OSB, noted her “tender, even maternal, solicitude for others.” Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than in Westerbork transit camp, where Edith went among the other women prisoners, “like an angel, comforting, helping, and consoling them;” and when mothers were unable to look after their children, Edith did so, combing their hair and trying to make sure they were fed and cared for.

In her life, Edith exemplified holiness as she once described it: the wholeness in which a woman’s nature is combined with “manly boldness,” or a man’s with “maternal solicitude.” It is the wholeness of Christ himself, in whom “the masculine and feminine virtues are united.”

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Books of Interest

Lucinda M. Vardey

Kathleen MacInnis Kichline has a gift for bringing scripture alive—the stories, the characters, the historical backdrop and especially how it can influence us today. She naturally specializes in women with her Sisters in Scripture community, retreats and reflections (sistersinscripture.com) but in true “with one accord” style, she brings to life also the men.

In her newest book Royal Wives , she portrays three of King David’s eight wives, Michal, Abigail and Bathsheba, the only ones for whom we have a story in scripture. In addition she does these women great service by awakening us to their predicaments, their choices, their gifts and their personalities through questions that can exercise our imaginations, as in some practices of Lectio Divina, and invite us into their stories. Kichline provides us with essential information on the cultural norms as regards relationships between women and men as well as marriage at that time. The Bible she explains is “a product of and a mirror to a patriarchal time” and women were marginalized, outsiders to the structures of power, hence unjustly treated as commodities.

The patriarchal backdrop is one of violence: going to battle the norm for most men. David, well known for his military prowess, is also, even with his foibles, a man of many talents, with broad abilities of leadership,

and you have to like him. Kichline describes his early love for Michal as that of “puppy love.” Abigail is identified as a prophetess in the line of other prophetesses and was more like a partner to David and a peacemaker. And Bathsheba his “soul mate,” mother to Solomon, was by David’s side until his death.

Royal Wives is a spiritual companion about companions. It captivates from the start with Kichline’s literary and theological skills. Not only is it a “good read” but it provides essential information about that time. Original prayers are interspersed within the text. It’s also worth buying the book for the chart the author prepared on the Old Testament Timeline and the periods leading up to the birth of Christ.

Royal Wives also comes in a deluxe study edition with good and helpful instructions for wider reading groups or those on retreat.

Royal Wives: David and His Wives: Michal, Abigail & Bathsheba

By Kathleen MacInnis Kichline

Available in Paperback

Normal Edition 57 pages (US$8.95)

Deluxe Study Edition 74 pages (US$9.95)

Published in 2023 by Sisters in Scripture. Can be purchased on Amazon.

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With One Accord

O God, our Creator, You, who made us in Your image, give us the grace of inclusion in the heart of Your Church.

R: With one accord, we pray.

Jesus, our Saviour, You, who received the love of women and men, heal what divides us, and bless what unites us.

R: With one accord, we pray.

Holy Spirit, our Comforter, You, who guides this work, provide for us as we hold in hope Your will for the good of all.

R: With one accord, we pray.

Mary, mother of God, pray for us. St. Joseph, stay close to us.

Divine Wisdom, enlighten us.

R: With one accord, we pray. Amen.

Anne-Marie Pelletier: Rediscovering Adam and Eve

1 Hélène de Saint Aubert, Sexuation, parité et nuptialité dans le second récit de la Création, Genèse 2, (Paris, Editions du Cerf, Lectio divina 282, 2023).

John Dalla Costa: The Original Wound

1 Edward C. Vacek, S.J., Love Human and Divine, Washington D.C: Georgetown University Press, 1994, 95.

Scott Lewis, S.J.: Adam Redeemed

1 Anderson, G. A. (2001). The Genesis of Perfection. Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination (Louisville, KY, Westminster John Knox) pp.1,8.

2 Bouteneff, P. C. (2008). Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives, Baker Academic. p.28.

3 Bouteneff, Beginnings, p. 29.

4 Bouteneff, Beginnings, p.31.

5 Bouteneff, Beginnings, p. 78; AH 4:37-38.

6 Bouteneff, Beginnings, p. 81.

Joanne Mosley: Daughters of Eve: Edith Stein and the Vocation of a Woman

1 Where “Beruf” refers to “profession,” this can also mean “occupation” or “trade”. Nowadays, “Berufung” is the more usual term for “vocation.”

2 See also John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem (e.g. MD 7 and 18) which he wrote in 1988, the year after he beatified Edith Stein.

3 Edith Stein, “Die Bestimmung der Frau” [The Destiny of Woman], in Die Frau (Freiburg: Herder [ESGA 13], 2000), p. 50; my italics.

4 Waltraud Herbstrith, Edith Stein: A Biography (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), p. 94.

5 Ibid., p. 183.

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations as they appear are taken from “Edith Stein, Essays on Woman” (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996) pp. 59-60, 61, 257, 78, 82, 47, 53, 264, 51, 239, 56, 200, 239, 54, 84.

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With One Accord signature music for the Magdala interview composed by Dr. John Paul Farahat and performed by Emily VanBerkum and John Paul Farahat.

Images used in this edition:

Cover: “Adam and Eve” by Lewis G. Vardey, oil and wood collage 1958.

Page 2 Detail from “Venus Verticordia” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882).

Page 3 Detail from “Adam and Eve” by Jan Gossaert (1478-1532)

Page 5 Detail from “The Garden of Eden” by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665).

Page 9 “Adam and Eve driven out of Eden” (colourized) by Gustav Doré (1832-1883).

Page 12 Detail from “The Garden of Eden” by Jan van Kessel (1626-1679).

Page 13 “The Creation of Adam” detail from Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo (1475-1564).

Page 17 Detail from “Science and Charity” by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).

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This edition

Copyright © 2024 Saint Basil’s Catholic Parish, Toronto, Canada

For editorial enquiries, please contact editor@magdalacolloquy.org

ISSN 2563-7924

PUBLISHER

Morgan V. Rice CSB.

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Lucinda M. Vardey

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Emily VanBerkum

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John Dalla Costa

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