2.3 The Human Life Cycle
Abstract
It goes without saying that humans experience several highs and lows in the course of their lives. This is obviously different for each person. But the four phases as described in the previous chapter are nevertheless echoed in every human through biological laws and form a common denominator similar to the four seasons that frame the days of a year. As mentioned, the first three phases are described by Genesis 2:5-25, 3:1-8, and 3:9-24, respectively. On the other hand, the fourth phase is described by the offspring of Adam and Eve and thereby begins with Genesis 4:1-2.
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2.3.1 Biological Laws
As discussed in section 2.1.2, Adam was not really formed out of dust as an adult but was created out of a former species. In other words, he was born as a baby like every human. The same is true for Eve. Cassuto (1961 pp. 112-114) and Houziaux (1997 pp. 113, 140) indeed think that the initial life of Adam and Eve was similar to childhood, without being clear about whether they were children or adults in this state. Blocher (1984 p. 129) altogether rejects the idea that they ever went through childhood.
The problem these theologians have in mind is probably that our first parents were subjected to grow from the very beginning if one supposes that they were born as babies. But if they grew up, they were subdued to aging and finally dying from the beginning, which seems to be in contradiction with Genesis 3:19, which states that they were subjected to die by aging only after the fall. Adam and Eve are indeed always depicted as adults at the moment when they were seduced by the serpent. Probably because one intuitively supposes that one has to be an adult to take such a deliberate decision to break God’s rules. However, the aging of our first parents must not necessarily mean that it leads to its ultimate fate because, had they never sinned, they would have been taken to heaven like Jesus and Mary, as will be discussed in the next section.
Thus it is easy to imagine in what kind of paradise Adam and Eve lived in: it was simply childhood, during which infants are under the protection of their parents and thus do not have to bother about the dangers of this world. The boy does not have to work in the sweat of his face and the girl does not bring forth children in pain (Gen 3:16-19). In this paradise they were naked and “felt no shame in each other’s presence” (Gen 2:25) like all small children, which expresses their innocence. They also knew nothing before eating the fruit of knowledge, just as little children know nothing about the world they live in. If they want to know something, they ask their parents, who seem to be omniscient like God from their point of view.
A subtle precision must be made here: as our first parents initially benefited from an original holiness that they lost by their sin and transmitted this failure to all humans by original sin (CCC 416-417), newborns are not in the same status as our first parents during their early life. However, Catholics teach, contrarily to Protestants, that the human nature was not totally corrupted but only weakened (CCC 405). Furthermore, baptism erases original sin, even though the inclination to evil persists (CCC 418). So on this level it is nevertheless adequate to say that the initial status of Adam and Eve was similar to that of baptized children.
The childhood of our first parents implies that they were originally not destined to have sexual relations because children are biologically not able to reproduce and should not be implicated in any sexual activity. Another argument against sexuality before the fall is overpopulation due to both reproduction and immortality that would have been passed from the first parents to their offspring if nobody had ever sinned. Bodie Hodge (2011 p. 104) from Answers in Genesis does not have a problem with this standpoint, mentioning far-fetched arguments regarding the reproduction of immortal animals. As for humans, he argues that God would have ordered “stop reproducing” once they would have filled the earth.
Here, the absurdity of an earthly paradise becomes fully apparent. In fact, it is not possible for biological life to exist eternally because the entire universe is subjected to die: in some billion years the Sun will explode in a supernova and burn all life on earth, when it has not extinct before in a natural catastrophe like an asteroid impact, a gamma-ray burst from a star, a supervolcano eruption, to mention only a few. Furthermore, in case the universe expands eternally, it will get increasingly colder and finally freeze entirely. Or, if it will contract, all the matter in it will collapse and destroy all life. So sooner or later, there is no escape from death in the physical world.
Parents are more experienced than their children and would like to prevent them from making serious mistakes in their lives. So they give them advice on how to success in life and are thus similar to God who gave rules to Adam and Eve (Gen 2:15-17). But then they eat the forbidden fruit (Gen 3:1-6). Since its consumption means to live independently of God and his rules (sec. 2.2.1), growing children begin to doubt their parents and take an increasingly critical stand regarding the moral principles with which they were educated. The forbidden fruit may also be compared to drugs, which temporarily induce an artificial euphoric state. So their consumption is clearly a conscious and decisive act to be the architect of one’s own happiness. Thus, the serpent is unmasked as a seducer and kind of “dealer” of the forbidden fruit.
The awakened curiosity of pubescent children leads them to wonder how they came into existence, why humans were created male and female, and how reproduction works, which they discover with embarrassment and shame. They feel to have entered a forbidden area because they know that this knowledge is reserved to their parents, which they hide from them. In fact, while little children are completely transparent and normally share everything with their parents, with puberty they begin to conceal their intimacy and become more introverted, which leads to a less close relationship with their parents. This is described by Adam and Eve hiding from God behind trees when they hear his voice in the garden (Gen 3:7-8). They also hide their nudity by covering themselves with fig leaves. On the physiological level, this is expressed by the growth of pubic hair.
Getting older, they become adolescents and aspire eagerly to adulthood, which comes with many privileges like getting more respect and having more rights, being physically and intellectually stronger, owning money, being able to drive a car, and so on. They want to experience every aspect of life, whether it is good or evil (Gen 3:5, 22), which usually leads to the well-known conflict between parents and their pubescent children. Becoming finally adult, humans separate themselves from their parents and found a new family, which implies for the woman the pain of pregnancy and for the man to work by the sweat of his face, since henceforth he has to feed his family (Gen 3:16-18). At the end of their life, both undergo biological death preceded by aging (Gen 3:19).
It is important to specify here that modern children are living in a fallen environment where they are often influenced negatively from the beginning. Furthermore, inherited concupiscence by original sin can accelerate the discovery of sexuality, which may lead to a mixing up of the typical phases. This is why a natural initial development of children as described above would only be possible in a morally healthy, almost Eden-like society that is not influenced by modernity. Even then, there is no sharp transition from one phase to another such that in any case they overlap largely with each other like the seasons of a whole year.
The history of Adam and Eve is also recognizable on the level of Western history: at first, Christianity was well established in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Then appeared first cracks with the Renaissance and later the Age of Enlightenment, which can be regarded as an eyes-opening event, to finally arrive to modernity, which has widely replaced religion and the original authority of the Church by science built on atheism. High technology offers a material welfare based on human skills rather than spiritual happiness. The consequence is increasing dissent among humans about good and evil, which leads to the ills of modern society: moral degradation, division, overpopulation, pollution, climatic change, social unrest, war (Ramm 1964 p. 16).
2.3.2 Original Sin
St. Paul states that death was introduced by the sin of Adam, who transmitted it to all humans (Rom 5:12-19), which is a concept known as original sin (Denzinger 1955 nos. 102, 788). In order to understand original sin and in particular its transmission from one generation to the next, we need to ask ourselves first what would have happened if Adam and Eve had never sinned. Genesis 2:17 suggests that Adam and Eve would not have died if they had not succumbed to Satan’s insinuations. This raises a number of questions, which can be answered with the parallel between Adam/Eve and Jesus/Mary.
Jesus is overwhelmingly described in Scripture as being without sin (2 Co 5:21; Heb 4:15, 9:28; 1 Pe 2:22; 1 Jn 3:5). According to Catholic tradition, Saint Mary is equally exempt of original and personal sin, which is called Immaculate Conception (CCC 491, 508), while Jesus’s Ascension to heaven (Lk 24:50-53; Ac 1:9) corresponds to her Assumption to heaven without corruption of her body (CCC 966; Denzinger 1955 nos. 2331-2333). These and her perpetual virginity as well as other dogmas are more implicitly based on Scripture (Scheeben 1946; 1948), which cannot be discussed in detail here.
Does this imply that Jesus and Mary were at the same time exempt from the bonds of death? Jesus died at the cross. However, as will be discussed in section 2.4.1, the reality behind physical death is returning to naught. If death is defined in this sense, Jesus did not really die because he was resurrected and his body did not undergo corruption (Ac 2:31; 13:34-37), that is, did not return to dust (Gen 3:19). So he thus did not succumb to death but abolished it (2 Ti 1:10; Heb 2:14-15).
The Gospel is silent about Mary’s death. The Eastern Churches celebrate the Dormition of the Mother of God, that is, the belief that she died before being taken to heaven. But this tradition is late and uncertain. Two cities indeed compete for Mary’s alleged tomb: Jerusalem and Ephesus. The majority of theologians thinks that she shared the same sufferings as her Son based on Luke 1:35 and deceased like him, even though they agree that in principle she was not to suffer death because of her exemption from original and personal sin (Cantinat 1963 pp. 176-179). The Catholic teaching about her Assumption is also silent about her death. Thereby, it is an open question whether she died or not. The important point though is that she was taken to heaven, body and soul, like her Son. So her body did not return to dust either. From this it can be concluded that Adam and Eve would have enjoyed the same privileges, which is supported by the example of Enoch, who was taken to heaven as well because he was considered a righteous man (Gen 5:24) just as prophet Elijah (2 Ki 2:11).
Mary remained virgin during her whole life, according to Catholic teaching (CCC 499-501). As for Jesus, his celibacy is traditionally assumed by most denominations and can implicitly be deduced from Scripture (Mt 19:12; 1 Co 7:1, 7-8, 32-34). Consequently, if Adam and Eve had never sinned, they also would have abstained themselves from having any sexual relations with each other or with other partners. However, many or probably even most authors believe that according to God’s original plan Adam and Eve were destined to reproduce while sojourning in Eden before the fall (Aquinas ST part 1 question 92 article 1, part 1 question 98 article 1; Holzer 1964 p. 113; Blocher 1984 pp. 180-181; Waltke 2001 p. 90; Ross 2001b pp. 95-96; Kahn 2007 p. 122; Klein & Klein 2020), which may be based on the benediction of fertility (Gen 1:28) mentioned before the fall.
However, there is no chronological transition from the creation to the Eden story. Rather, the second resumes the first under another viewpoint, as discussed in section 2.1.4. Thereby, it is not because God’s order “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen 1:28) is mentioned before the fall that it was also uttered before the fall. Furthermore, Adam and Eve got children only after the fall (Gen 4:1-2). Thereby, Genesis 1:28 is clearly referring to this event. Consequently, there is no sexuality and no death before the fall but only afterwards.
This does not mean, however, that sexuality is a sin. As mentioned in section 2.1.2, Priscillianists taught that Adam and Eve were thrown from heaven on earth and got physical bodies as a punishment. So they abhorred marriage and sexuality (Denzinger 1955 nos. 241-243). Even Augustine, Thomas von Aquinas and other Fathers considered that seeking sexual pleasure within marriage is a venial sin and that original sin is passed from one generation to the next by the male seed, which was contested by Pelagius, who held that sin is spread in human history by imitation of Adam’s example (Höfer & Rahner 1957 vol. 3 p. 970; Blocher 1997 p. 112; Wiley 2002 pp. 65-69, 93).
The position of the Church is indeed that original sin is transmitted by sexual intercourse but not by imitation of Adam’s bad habits (Denzinger 1955 no. 795), whereas it does not consider sexual relations in marriage as sin like Augustine (Denzinger 1955 no. 792). Imputation and other more complex constructs have also been proposed in the course of centuries. However, all these theories are not without contradictions, which is why a number of contemporary theologians reject original sin altogether (Schmitz-Moormann 1992 p. 131; Blocher 1997 ch. 5).
As shortly mentioned in section 2.2.2, original sin is similar to universal sin perpetrated by the angels, which caused God to create the material world in order to save them by Christ’s mission. Now, as discussed in section 2.1.4, there have been several Adams in the course of history. Let us take the literal Adam who lived in Mesopotamia roughly 6000 years ago. According to Richard J. Fischer (2008 p. 23), this Adam may have been given a similar mission to that of Christ, that is, to bring God’s word to the heathen living around him. He even proposes Adapa as a possible historical candidate living in the same region and at around the same time (pp. 38-49). This is not the ancestor of all humans, of course, but his example shows that all former Adams may have had similar missions.
This begs the question of whether Adam could have redeemed angels and humans if he had lived as exemplary and sinless as Jesus. Aquinas (ST part 3 question 1 article 3) thinks that in this case Christ’s mission would not have been necessary, citing Augustine in support. In any case, Adam’s mission may also have displeased some established and revered religious leaders, fearing for their authority, such that they would possibly have put him to death. So Adam having remained obedient to the point of death like Christ (Php 2:8) may be considered God’s first plan. However, regardless of whether such a perfect devotion and sacrifice would have had the same effect as Christ’s, it would have been a mission impossible because only God has the power to redeem his creation. Despite this, it seems necessary that a human first got the chance to achieve what Jesus did – if only to demonstrate that he is not up to the task, even though we are invited to follow Jesus’s example.
Now, Adam and Eve have sinned, which automatically called for God’s second plan. In view of what has been discussed in section 2.2.1, their sin consisted in refusing obedience to God’s rules and choosing their own selfish way of life by seeking personal success and happiness independently of God, which made them lose their privileges and supernatural graces. Thus aborting their initial mission, they automatically transferred it to the divine Redeemer who had to be born from their offspring (Gen 3:15) in due time. As a result, Adam and Eve were henceforth meant to reproduce and thus trigger the generation process.
The mutual consciousness of their nudity (Gen 3:7) must be understood in this sense: it’s not the awakening of their sexual desire but the shameful realization of their failure to accomplish God’s mission and the awareness that henceforth they were relegated to the same natural state as their compatriots who got children. In fact, it is only when “Adam knew Eve his wife” (Gen 4:1) that sexuality came into play. However, this is part of the renewal phase, which confers it a positive sense. So sexuality is an effect of an asexual sin and is consequently not only sinless inside marriage but even beneficial since its purpose is the advent of the Savior. In this sense it is blessed by God (Gen 1:28; 1 Co 7:36).
In other words, the transmission of original sin from one generation to the next is a kind of domino effect: by reproducing, Adam and Eve generated verbatim copies of themselves as far as their fallen status is concerned. Their offspring makes the same from generation to generation as long as no Savior is in sight. Thus, each generation is calling again and again for the Redeemer. Thereby, original sin is not transmitted by seed but by causality, which is immaterial and invisible, even though sexual intercourse is necessary for its transmission. Thereby, sin is a spiritual affair and as such cannot be transmitted by biological substances.
2.3.3 Revival
As discussed in the previous section, the offspring of the first couple is blessed and is thereby to be considered part of the fourth phase, that is, return to peace after judgment. Therefore, the revival phase is transferred to the children rather than to the parents, whose original state, that is, their own childhood, is thereby not restored. This is why the revival of the parents only occurs after death when they get the chance to go to heaven. As discussed in the previous section, however, no such sharp transition occurs between the judgment and revival phases. That is why there is nevertheless a certain return to peace in the later life of the parents. Adam’s work is indeed similar to what he was predestined to before the fall (Gen 2:15). It is just that now the ground is cursed because thorns and thistles grow on it (Gen 3:18). But this effort will produce new terrestrial paradises during later generations, as we shall see.
Furthermore, parents participate in the renewal phase of their children and thus are like reborn by them, which prefigures the spiritual rebirth from above by the Holy Spirit: by giving the woman his reviving seed to get her a new breath of life by her newborn children, the man resembles God, who pours out his Spirit on us to adopt us as his sons and daughters (Jn 3:3-7; Gal 4:4-7). So the man resembles the Creator while the woman resembles the creation. Thereby, the duality Creator/creation is mirrored by the duality man/woman, which seems to place the man above the woman, who in turn plays the unworthy role of the sinful creation.
However, this image can be inverted because man, as God’s representative, at the same time plays the role of a person who puts himself in God’s place (Gen 3:22) and thus reflects the image of a more important rebel. In this sense, he is more in need of the exterior recovery through his children than the woman, who is part of his restoration because she is more united with her children than the man by first carrying them inside her and then mainly educating them. She is thereby nearer to the true spiritual rebirth introduced by Christ, which does not perform salvation from the exterior – in other words by biological offspring – but directly from the interior of the person in need of it. Thereby, the woman mirrors a person who has spiritually remained a child, in the sense of being without sin.
The woman’s physiognomy indeed differs from that of the man in that she has more rounded and less chiseled features, which rather resemble those of children. She gets no beard and has a lesser vocal change at puberty. She shows her emotions more easily in general, not as freely as children, of course, but nevertheless more than men. She is physically weaker and traditionally sustained by her husband, similar to children, just to mention a few characteristics.
The duality man/woman seems to be visible in the whole creation. As mentioned earlier (pp. 2, 2, 2), the Sun is an image of God, our spiritual Father. The corresponding celestial body, which has almost the same apparent disk size when observed from Earth, is the Moon. So since we not only have a father but also a mother, the Moon can be considered an image of Mary the new Eve, who is our spiritual Mother (sec. 2.1.1), as also suggested by Revelation 12:1. Since Mary is not part of the Holy Trinity but is a created being, the couple Sun/Moon is also referring to Creator/creation and thereby to man/woman.
The same duality is also reflected by fauna/flora if rather traditional gender differences are taken into account: animals are indeed often noisy, and there is usually fierce competition between them for food, territory, mating partners, and so on, resulting in losers and winners, reminiscent of human activities in sport, politics, economy, etc. mainly reserved for men before emancipation was introduced. On the other hand, the inoffensive and silent character of plants with their leaves, which remind long hair, are indeed rather feminine. Furthermore, flowers attract insects with their colors and scents in order to being pollinated. Similarly, women often use perfume and makeup to be beautiful and attractive. Beauty is indeed rather attributed to women. It gives them greater visibility compared to men. This is expressed in the colorful and voluminous manner by which women dress themselves, especially in the past. Even in the present, fashion is still something that is more important to women than to men. Fashion changes with the seasons and is thus linked to vegetation, the visibility of which is omnipresent.
By contrast, animals are less visible than the surrounding plants and prefer to conceal themselves in the shade, the earth or under leaves or elsewhere. Analogously, men are more discreet about their clothes and, in general, are less judged on characteristics visible to the eye. Visibility can also be understood as transparency. In this sense, men are more introverted and secret about their emotions compared to women. Furthermore, animals depend on oxygen produced by plants. This can be compared to the moral role rather played by women in the life of a couple. They thus release a salutary spirituality like plants exhaling their oxygen. To mention also that the mean age of plants exceeds that of animals. In general, women effectively have a longer life expectancy than men.
One has to keep in mind, however, that these dualities are images relative to each other. This is why it is possible that they may contradict each other, for the duality parents/children also corresponds to the duality Creator/creation, which means that both the man and the woman resemble God with the same consequences. In other words, the new parents recover the lost happiness of childhood partly through their own children, which helps them to reach heaven, where only children can enter in the spiritual sense (Mt 18:1-4).
References
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