God created Adam and Eve, our first parents, in a state of perfection. What happened? God allowed that their trust and love for Him be tested. Why did God do that? It was because He wanted them to have the freedom of choice. Without the freedom of choice, one cannot love.[1] A robot cannot love because a robot doesn’t really have a choice; it can only do what’s programmed. Only a free creature can truly love.
Freedom: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
So, although the creation was perfect, God included within it an opportunity for Adam and Eve, should they so desire, to choose not to love. That is what we find taking place in Genesis chapter 3, when the serpent — whom Scripture and Tradition later identify as the devil or Satan — comes on the scene.[2] This serpent tempted Adam and Eve to distrust and to disobey God their Father by encouraging them to eat the fruit which God had forbidden them to eat. The Scriptures say that Eve saw the fruit and she recognized that it was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable to make one wise.[3] This is the origin of what we call “concupiscence,” that weakness within ourselves that leads to sin.
Three-fold Concupiscence
The traditional explanation of concupiscence breaks down into three basic categories: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.[4] We get those categories from 1 John 2:15-16. The Apostle, when he writes those verses, is really reflecting on the temptation that Eve experienced in the Garden. Seeing that the fruit was good for food, refers to physical desire, and that is “the lust of the flesh.” Seeing that it was pleasing to the eye corresponds to “the lust of the eyes,” which is usually described as avarice or greed — the desire to acquire things for their beauty or their value. Seeing the fruit as desirable to make one as wise as God — that is really an ego-trip. That is “the pride of life,” which is the third category of concupiscence.
Tempted by the serpent, who we know to be the devil, Adam and Eve gave in to the three-fold concupiscence. They desired this fruit, and they ate it. By doing so, they acted in distrust and disobedience to God, their loving Father. This “original sin” had the following results:
- It broke their family relationship with God;
- It drove out the gift of the Holy Spirit, along with the gift of original justice and the preternatural gifts (the various perfections that they enjoyed);
- It implanted concupiscence into their nature. Now, the threefold concupiscence of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life would be part of their very being.
All these things, furthermore, would henceforth be transmitted to their children. “Original sin,” in other words, is transmitted from generation to generation.[5]
Yet despite the tragic results of the fall into sin and this rupture in the family relationship with God, Adam and Eve are quickly given “good news.”[6]
The Promise of a Redeemer
In Genesis 3:15, God the Father, in placing a curse upon the serpent, said to Adam and Eve that there would be enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, but that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. In hindsight, we recognize that this is a mystical prophecy of our salvation, of the coming of Jesus Christ. There is no seed of a man involved in the conception of Jesus Christ. He was conceived and born of a virgin girl alone, with no man involved. Being the true “seed of the woman,” then, He is the one to finally “crush the head of the serpent.” That’s precisely what He does through His death and resurrection.
Sin Proliferates
But before the “seed of the woman” comes, in the intervening centuries after the fall of Adam and Eve, things go from bad to worse. The first murder takes place when the son of Adam, Cain, kills his brother Abel. After this, human society degenerates further, until Genesis 6:1-5. At this point, the entire world is filled with a kind of sexualized violence.[7] It becomes so bad that God has to intervene to keep human history, as it were, from careening off the rails into complete disaster. God’s intervention in this case is the occasion of His next covenant with mankind — the covenant with Noah.
Relation to Evangelization
Why is the Fall of Adam and Eve important for evangelization? As we’ve already said, it is important to realize that the mess in human society — the evil, the sorrow, the violence — are not God’s original plan of creation. They were not invented or formed or made by God. These woes, these sufferings, these challenges are the result of our choices, beginning with the choice of our first parents. Not only is Adam and Eve’s fall into sin an historical event, but it’s also a kind of paradigm for how temptation and sin occur on a daily basis in the world. The consequences of sin are perpetuated by our own sinful choices.
At any given moment, one is often faced with something that is attractive, a sin that draws us, that pulls on the lust of our flesh, the lust of our eyes, and our pride. So often in our lives that first fall of Adam and Eve is repeated, thus perpetuating the woes in culture, society, and in the world. Human wrongdoing, not God, is the major problem in the universe. The solution to our own sorrow and to the sorrow of those around us is a healing of the human heart — finding a way to be free from the sad reality of sin. The gospel kerygma shows us that this “way” and this “healing” is now present in the person of Jesus Christ. For He Himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
[1] Cf. CCC 387, 1730-1748.
[2]Revelation 12:9; 20:2.
[3] Genesis 3:6.
[4] Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 77, a. 5.
[5] CCC 377, 400-409.
[6] CCC 410-412.
[7] Cf. John Bergsma and Brant Pitre, A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament (San Francisco, California: Ignatius Press, 2018), 112.