What was life like for Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden? This isn’t just an idle question about
ancient history or the first beginnings of the human race – the answer tells us
something very important about God’s original plan for human beings, about the condition we
find ourselves in today, and about the relationship between nature and grace.
The book of Genesis in chapters 2 and 3 says that the first man, Adam,
was placed by God in “a garden in Eden, in the East.” And the Lord placed in this garden many
trees, pleasant to the sight and good for food, and also gave to Adam a fitting companion, the
first woman, about whom Adam exclaims: "This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh."
And the text then tells us: "The man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed."
Genesis is describing something evocative, beautiful, and true:
our first parents existed in profound harmony with the natural world around them,
in a communion of love with each other, without shame, and in a state of harmony
and friendship with God, who provided them what they need and cared for them out of love.
Sin only entered this picture later. As St. Paul explains in the letter to the Romans,
“[S]in came into the world through one man, and death through sin,
and so death spread to all men.” That is, death was not a part of God's original plan.
We are born into a world already disordered by sin, and subject to death.
We’ll have more to say about these effects of original sin in our next video. For now, let’s
focus on what the theological tradition calls the original justice or original grace of our first
parents -- the great gifts that they received to live in that original harmony in the garden.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, Scripture reveals to us
that the first human beings were not created in a neutral state, a state of pure nature. Rather,
they were created in grace. From their first existence, they were to be friends of God, made
capable by a supernatural gift of grace to know and to love Him.
In other words, God made man to be perfect in the beginning, rightly ordered and upright,
with all of his powers well-functioning as they should. And more specifically,
St. Thomas teaches this original justice has a three-fold dimension of right-ordering.
First and most importantly, by a special gift of grace, the minds of our first parents
were subject to God in charity. They knew God, they had a relationship of trust in
and obedience to him, and by a gift of grace, they loved him absolutely and above all things.
As a result of this first harmony, the harmony of the human mind in its proper subjection to God,
a second dimension of right-ordering flowed for our first parents: the sense appetites of Adam
and Eve were subject to their minds. Let's give a practical example. How often do you
experience an appetite – for example, hunger – for something that your mind knows you shouldn’t eat?
Aquinas says that, because of the profound harmony of man under God in grace in the garden, there was
also a profound harmony within man: Adam and Eve wouldn’t have experienced what we do,
a bodily hunger for things that their minds knew they shouldn’t eat.
Instead, their appetites were ordered by their minds.
Related to this is the third dimension of right-ordering of our first parents created
in grace: their bodies would have been perfectly subject to their graced souls. Since the soul
is the immaterial principle of the body's life, and since their bodies would have been
perfectly subjected to their souls which had been elevated and strengthened by a supernatural grace,
our first parents living in the garden would not have experienced defects of body, that is,
they wouldn't have experienced illness, old age, or death. The power of the supernatural life of
their souls would have kept their bodies alive – in other words, they were made to
live an eternal life in communion and friendship with God. That was God’s original plan for us.
When we see how powerful this first grace of creation was for our first parents,
then we also begin to see just how catastrophic the first sin was:
By freely choosing to disobey God, our first parents lost these gifts of grace,
and death, decay, and disorder became a part of every human life.
It also helps us understand the high dignity of our human nature – God wanted us to live with him.
Why was it fitting for God to create human beings in this state of original justice
or with this powerful original grace?
St. Thomas reminds us of a crucial point:
these original graces given to our first parents were truly graces.
The human race wasn’t owed this kind of wonderful and supernatural elevation to friendship with God,
it wasn't owed immunity from illness and death – in fact, if it were owed these things,
we wouldn’t call it grace. On this point, we have to add some further qualifications
in order to understand the relationship between nature and this original grace.
When God creates a creature, he endows it with what it needs in order to reach its natural end.
Otherwise, something absurd would result, it would be created in vain, with a natural
end it can't reach. Thomists therefore identify an ORDER OF NATURE for all things,
including for human beings – an order that has its own intelligibility and internal coherence.
In other words, it makes sense that man, as a rational animal, would have the natural capacity
to understand the world around him as created by and coming from God. This ability to understand is
natural to us, it is not given by grace. It is also natural that man would be able to come to
recognize that God is the supreme cause, even as the ultimate end of all things. And likewise, by
the power of natural reason, a man created without grace would be able to know and love God in a
certain ay as a creator who remains transcendent and infinitely above us. But he wouldn’t expect
to be able to live a life of true communion with the divine nature, which is infinitely above us.
But as God has revealed, human nature can be raised up by God, by God's grace, to something
above us, above this natural life. Our nature is open upwards, you might say, to an even greater
gift: To know God personally, in fact, to know the three divine Persons as we are made adopted
sons and daughters of God. The ultimate end of the human creature can thus be raised up to something
infinitely above its natural end – even to the heights of sharing in the divine nature, of seeing
God directly, of living with him and sharing with him in his infinite and eternal glory.
This amazing elevation of our nature – to live a life that is truly supernatural, even divine -- is
something we never would have imagined as possible to us on our own, from our own natural powers,
and we would never have tried to live such a life, except that God has revealed it to us.
And we never would think that we’d be able to achieve this kind of life
from our own natural powers -- but God teaches us (Jesus Christ teaches us)
that, with the help of God, it really is possible for us.
The Catholic Church claims that this is precisely what God intended for us
in the beginning. And even though God in no way OWED this gift to human beings,
it was entirely fitting for God to endow our first parents with it.
That’s because human beings straddle the threshold between the material world and the realm of
the immaterial and spiritual. We have bodies made of matter and which come from the earth,
but we also have a divine spark of intelligent life given to us from above,
infused by God at the first moment of each human person’s existence.
This spiritual soul endowed with the light of reason is something that does not die.
Your soul will continue to exist, even after your body dies and decays. And
most of us have some sense that death SHOULDN’T exist – that we are capable
of acts that reach out towards what is eternal, towards what is forever.
Here’s an analogy to understand how God supernaturally elevates our nature to a
dignity that is above it: a diamond, by its own nature, is wonderfully suited
to being cut by a jeweler, being set in a crown, and being placed on the head of a king or a queen.
When that happens, and it is placed in the strong light of the sun,
the diamond sparkles with a wonderful radiance that is simply delightful. What could have been
described as a piece of carbon that has undergone a transformation due to intense pressure, that
same reality, that mineral, now is illuminated by a light coming from above, it achieves an end
that in a sense exceeds its natural capacity as it crowns and glorifies the highest nobility.
That is, the wonderful splendor of the diamond does not come from within it,
it doesn't come from its own power, it is bestowed on it by the light it receives from above.
What we learn from God’s revelation to us about the first beginnings of the human race, then,
is that God made us to be like jewels set in the radiance of his divine life, to become sharers
of his unending glory. Our nature is not owed this grace, it doesn't come from our own powers,
and we can lose it – indeed, our first parents DID lose it, with catastrophic consequences for
us their children. But God’s original plan was for us to dwell even on earth in harmony with nature,
with each other, and with him. But thanks be to God, in Jesus Christ
God restores our fallen nature and gives us once more the opportunity to share in his eternal life.
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