Welcome to Thomistic Womanhood. In today’s video, I am going to talk about the fall of Adam and Eve. And I’m going to give a few points that I think are less well known when I think they’re very pertinent to the discussion of the role of women and the role of men and the way God did things. Sometimes, religious guys can hold it against women that Eve committed the first sin and things like that. So I would like to go over the text and kind of give some thoughts about it. I think women do not have reason to be as ashamed as some guys will make it out to be. And so we’re going to talk about that a little bit today.

Welcome to Thomistic Womanhood. In today’s video, we are going to talk about the fall of Adam and Eve and a little bit basically, like how responsible for that was Eve and a couple of things about the punishments and just some general thoughts about it. So I recently moved and my Bible, my Douay-Rheims Bible is packed up in a box somewhere, I can’t find it. I tried to find it for this video, I don’t know which box it’s in. So I went to the online Douay-Rheims version, “drbo.org” And I went to the book of Genesis chapter three. And so basically, if you’re not Catholic or Christian, you stumbled across this video, I’m going to briefly give you the Cliffs Notes of the fall of Adam and Eve, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were created by God in a beautiful garden, it had every kind of plant and fruit and everything you could think of. It was beautiful. It was easy. Before the fall, men and women didn’t suffer, they knew everything, there was no ignorance, whatever they set out to do, they did there is no weakness of will, we often know is procrastination. YouTube is full of videos about procrastination, and people having a hard time. We’ll set goals. We know we want to do them. But somehow we’re weak. And it’s hard for us to get after our goals, we procrastinate. There’s nothing like that before the fall, we had a strong will and we weren’t ignorant and there was no malice, there’s all this love and kindness. in the world nowadays, there is the human will and the human heart has kind of become worked. We have that malice, we have that hatred of our fellow man, we can get jealous, we can get envious. None of that exists that originally, none of that existed in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, they didn’t have that problem. That was one of the punishments for sin. So having said that, they’re putting this amazing garden. And God only gave one rule. Nowadays, this is, you know, predominantly a Catholic channel. as Catholics, we know all the rules, we have a whole religion full of them. But if you’re watching this, and you’re not Catholic, you may have heard of all the rules of religion and be like, what the heck, I don’t get it.

Well, back in the Garden of Eden, there’s only one rule, one thing, it’s like, Adam, you had one job. But there was one thing. God was like, you can eat whatever fruit you want. But there is one tree, I think the knowledge of good and evil, you know, a tree of life, you can’t eat from that tree. And that was that. So we’re going to read about the fall of Adam and Eve, their first sin, and how God punished them. So now there was the devil who had been created. At that point. If you recall the creation story, God created light, He created the earth, He created angels, you know, He created man, he created animals. And when the angels were created, there are 1000s, probably billions of angels, and justice, there are different species of animals, there are different species of angels. So it’s very fascinating, but we don’t fully know all about the angels, the way we can study and learn about the species of animals. But we can’t do that with the angels, just because they’re immaterial. And we can’t see them with our bodily senses. We can’t see them or hear them or touch them, so it’s very hard to study and observe them. Now, there have been times throughout history where angels have intervene in the life of man. And so, we do learn a little bit about them, they are the messengers of God. That’s actually where the name angel comes. It’s from the Latin Angelus, which means messenger. And there are seven different kinds, but I’m going off on a tangent here.

I love the angels. We can Talk about it forever. But basically, there was one angel who fell, there was a test in heaven. And basically that a third of the angels failed the test. And then they became what we know as demons. And the number one Angel who’s kind of like the head of them is Lucifer. And that’s who we know, like Satan, like the head, the head demon, the worst demon, the one that is most filled with hatred for us because he hates God. And God made us and had an awesome plan for how we were going to be what humans were going to be like, and the devil hates us because we were a beautiful thing that God made and the devil wants to destroy everything God made, it is piously believed, while we’re not sure what that test was, it is piously believed the mind of the church. And the strong suspicion of the church has always been that that test of the angels was the incarnation, that God showed the angels his plan, and he was like, I am going to create, I am going to take human flesh, these humans, I’m going to create humans look at them, this is what they’re like, and what they’re going to be like. And then I’m going to enter into this world I’m creating, and I’m going to become one of them, and I’m going to redeem them and save them. And I am going to use a woman to do that. And so he showed the angels, the Virgin Mary, and it is piously believed that and I say, piously believe, because what I mean is like, it’s not the official teaching of the Church, as far as I know. But it is the strong traditional suspicion of the church, that the test was, God’s going to come into the world that he’s going to be born of a woman, this woman is going to be the Virgin Mary, she’s going to be amazing. And the demons, they were not having it, certain angels were just like, No, I’m not submitting to that. No, that’s a stupid idea. Your God, you’re so powerful. Look at these, like pitiful little creatures you made. They’re half-human, they’re a half spirit, they Bumble into walls, they don’t understand things as well as we angels do. Because angels are brilliant, they have an IQ of like, 900, they’re so smart. And so they look at human beings and like, it’s easy for them to think of us as just like, pitiful and lame because we are so limited compared to them.

And it is suspected that the demons were just like, no, we’re not having that you’re gonna you know, that the bad angels, the angels who fell, God discussed this plan with all of them. And they were just like, No, I’m not going to, uh, no, I’m not going to go along with that. That’s ridiculous. That’s stupid. I will not serve a God who is going to do that. And so Lucifer, he’s kind of rallying cry was, I will not serve this plan. I will not cooperate with this. And so then we got St. Michael, he is the head of the angels. Technically, he was a lower-ranking Angel. Again, I’m going off on a tangent here. I’ll try to wrap this up. There are hierarchies of angels. There are seven ranks of angels. Lucifer was kind of one of the highest, I think he was the highest angel that God created. And St. Michael was, he was an archangel, which is like, that’s like, ranked number six, I think. So he was like, pretty low ranking. But St. Michael led an army of angels against him. There’s a big clash, the demons are kicked out of heaven, they were sent into hell. And then now they prowl around making life miserable for human beings because they are just consumed with hatred and jealousy. Because they hate God, they refuse the plan he had. And so they hate us because we are part of that plan. And also, there is another aspect to their hatred, in that when the angel sinned, God didn’t redeem them. If you think about it, regardless of why you know what their test was, and what exactly happened there. Again, we don’t know for sure, but we kind of have a suspicion of what happened, but they were damned, they went to hell. And God didn’t redeem them, which is interesting, but God redeemed us. And so there can be hatred because of that.

Now, the reason God redeemed us and not the angels is that angels had full knowledge, and they did not have a body kind of like weighing them down and confusing them, sometimes because of our bodies, our minds are not as keen. You know, have you ever tried to study when you’re sick because we are human, and we have kind of a weak will and we can change our mind and we don’t fully understand everything. God kind of took pity on us and was like, Well, I’m going to redeem them because they’re a little more helpless than the angels. However, the angels were a lot more powerful than us, and the angelic will, the intellect of the will, of an angel, is like perfectly once they make up their mind. They don’t change it. They’re not like human beings, you know, human beings. We can get new information and then we change our mind. Angels don’t do that. When they made that choice, they had all available information available to them, and they still made that choice. That is why I think there’s an exorcist, Father Ripperger. He’s on YouTube, he said that in exorcisms, he will ask a demon. So you chose to reject God. Yes. And you knew it at the time? Yes. And you knew everything about the decision, you knew what would happen to you? Yes, would you still do it? Yes, because they don’t change their mind.

So anyway, that is a long tangent to describe the fact that now there is a serpent, there’s a demon, you know, Satan is in the garden. And he’s trying to basically ruin what God made because he just hates everything that God made. And so it says, Now the serpent was more subtle. And again, we’re reading it Genesis 3:1, Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth, which the Lord God had made. So he was smarter than all of them, which would make sense because he’s an angel. He’s smarter than the animals. And he said to the woman, why has God commanded you that you should not eat of every tree of paradise? And the woman answered him saying, of the fruit of the trees that are in Paradise, we do eat, you know, so he’s like, why can’t you eat the trees in paradise? And she’s like, Oh, we can’t eat them. And he says, Yeah, we can eat them. But the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of Paradise, God has commanded us that we should not eat and that we should not touch it less, perhaps we die. And the serpent said to the woman, no, you shall not die to death. For God does know that what day soever You shall eat there. Your eyes will be open, and you shall be as Gods knowing good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat and fair to the eyes and delightful to behold, and she took the fruit thereof and did eat and gave to her husband who did eat.

So basically, she’s sitting here like, Oh, yeah, we can see how the devil kind of sets it up. He comes up to her, and he’s like, oh, can’t you eat the trees in the garden? Oh, yeah, yeah, we can have them. It’s just one we can eat. Oh, are you sure? God said that no. So she took it, she ate it, and she gave it to her husband and the eyes of them both were opened. And when they perceive themselves to be naked, they sewed together fig leaves and made themselves aprons. And when they heard the voice, Lord God walking in paradise in the afternoon air, Adam and his wife hid from the face of the Lord God amid the trees of paradise. And this is interesting, and the Lord God called Adam and He said, I heard that voice in Paradise, and I was afraid because I was naked and hid myself. And he said to him, God said this, and who told you that you were naked, but that you had eaten in the tree? Where have I commanded thee that you should not eat? And Adam said, the woman who now gave us me to be my companion gave me the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said to the woman, why have you done this? And she answered, the serpent deceived me and I did eat and the LORD God said to the serpent, Because thou hast done this thing, thou art cursed above all cattle and beast of the earth; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life this is kind of traditionally believe, where we got snakes, I will put enmities between thee and the woman and I seed and her seed, she shall crush the head, and thou shalt lion wait for her heel. This is a prophecy about Our Lady, about the Virgin Mary. And this is partly why the devil has such a hatred of Our Lady. Because when the devil kind of scored his major victory, God was like, ah, not so fast. There’s another woman who’s going to come and she’s going to crush your head, you got one over on Eve, but there’s going to be another Eve that’s going to come and she’s going to crush her head.

So now the Fathers of the Church, there’s an interpretation note here about she shall crush that head and you will lie in wait for her heel. Now the Fathers of the Church, there are two interpretations. Some of them interpret it as Our Lady will crush his head, or it’ll be her seed, but either way, she’s gonna crush the head through Jesus Christ. Either way, it’s a triumph of Our Lady, whether it’s Jesus that does it, you know, where did we get Jesus while Mary gave birth to Him? So she clearly has a very big role there. This is the part that I want to talk about. And that I think is very interesting for our purposes on this channel, it says, and this is 3:16. To the woman, this is when God doles out the punishment, He discovers them and he says To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee. one verse, God very quickly and briefly tells her what she did, what she’s going to have happened And to Adam he said: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work; with labor and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return. And Adam called the name of his wife Eve…

So it’s interesting, this is three verses. So 3:16 is God telling the woman her punishment, and then 3:17, 3:18 and 3:19 is God kind of scolding at him a little bit here. Now, again, this is just my private interpretation of things. This is not the official teaching of the Church. So take it with a grain of salt. I could be wrong, but I think this is interesting. S lot of guys, especially religious guys will try to kind of throw it in girl’s faces like, Oh, well, Eve sinned first. And like, women are a pain in the neck, and they just create trouble for men. And this is interesting because there is a little known fact about Catholic theology. And it is that the same it’s referred to as the sin of Adam, it is believed theologically, it is the sin, we’ve all been punished from original sin, we have weakness, malice, and ignorance. So the weakness of our will, procrastination is a good example of that malice, you know, hatred of people, things like envy, things like that. And then ignorance, we have to study, we don’t know everything immediately. Those are punishments of original sin. And they came to us through Adam. Interestingly enough, the Church teaches that it’s actually because Adam ate the apple. That’s why the whole human race was cursed. It was not because Eve ate the apple. And the reason for that is, Adam was the head of the human race, Eve was the first human. So he was the head of her, she was not the head of the human race if she had eaten the apple. And let’s say she offered it to Adam, and he refused. The teaching of the Church is that the punishments of sin would have been localized just to Eve, it wouldn’t have spread to the whole human race. It’s because Adam ate the apple, that it affected everyone. After all, he was the head of the human race, and as the head, so the members, what the boss does, affects everybody else.

So that’s an interesting point that a lot of people don’t take into consideration. I think it’s also interesting here, we read here, God just says briefly, what’s going to happen to the woman, but God kind of goes on and on a little bit with Adam here. And he tells him, over and over, this is what’s going to happen, you are going to toil the earth, in thorns and thistles you’re going to in the sweat of your brow, he goes, kind of school Adam a little bit. And if you look above here, again, this is just my interpretation, but it seems like and I think it’s like St. Bernard of Clairvaux. He commented on this, and he said, Here, this is verse 13, I think it is 12 or 13. And Adam, God is confronting them. And Adam is like, the woman you gave to me to be my companion gave me the tree, and I did eat. So in a way, he’s almost blaming God for the problem, because he’s saying, Well, he’s blaming. Adam is like an expert of blame, as many men and sons of Adam down to this day are good at doing, like most men, he’s very good at blaming other things for things he’s done. And so he says here, the woman you gave me, like, she gave me the apple. And so it’s like, he didn’t just say, well, the woman gave me the apple, it was the woman you gave me, God. So he’s kind of getting an attitude with God a little bit here. And he’s like, Well, if you hadn’t given me this woman, this would have never happened, and it’s my suspicion, St. Bernard of Clairvaux commented on this. And he said, Oh, Adam, you’re trying to excuse your fault, but you’re actually making it worse here. He says, oh, Adam, you’re on many your fault, because yeah, he’s kind of throwing it in God’s face. He’s like, well, this woman you gave me she’s causing the problem. Like, why’d you give me her? It’s my suspicion or interpretation that I think that might be why God kind of goes on and on a little bit about this punishment, and then throws that little jab in there at the end.

Let’s read it again. And to Adam, he said, because you listen to the voice of your wife and you ate at the tree when I commanded you that you should not eat cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil will you eat thereof all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to me; and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth. in the sweat of thy face. You will eat bread until you return to the earth, out of which you are taken for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return. So he’s kind of like reminding Adam, like, look here, buddy, you’re dust, I made you, you came from dust, and you’re gonna go back to dust. So I think God is kind of scolding at him a little bit here. And you know, because Adam was getting an attitude earlier, it was like, Well, you gave me this woman and Gods like, ah you’re dust, like, Don’t give me that. So I think that’s interesting. One of the other things about this, which I think is an interesting concept, I noticed that the punishments are different, the glory of the woman was going to be that she would have children. And she would be the mother of all the living and everything. That is a glory, and that’s why here in verse 20, after we talk about this, Adam called the name of his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. God was like, I’m going to multiply your conceptions, you’re going to have a lot of children. And so Adam is like, Okay, well, I’m going to name you, the mother, the living and, to women, the punishment we got was like, really painful childbirth, that’s often quoted as the curse that women bear. We have children, we’ve had, we have birth control now. So women are not having as many children as they used to. But childbirth is very painful. pregnancy is very painful, which is a result of sin. Pregnancy and childbirth were not originally supposed to be this big deal. And I think this is kind of interesting. I will multiply thy sorrows and thy conceptions.

So we talk a lot about how, you know, it says to the woman, also, he said, I will multiply thy sorrows and thy conceptions, in sorrow shot, they’ll bring forth children, and now shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee. So this is why this whole argument about patriarchy or the oppression of men, they are observing something in the world that does exist, men do have a different position than women do. And that position is often… they can often have the upper hand over women, and we often do have to rely on men, and they get to kind of call the shots of things. And that’s punishment here, you know, because Eve kind of went off did her own thing. And she kind of controlled Adam a little bit, she kind of dominated Adam a little, like, here, you eat this apple, and Adam was like, Okay, so, you know, God kind of punished her for that kind of active, like domination there a little bit. But I think this is interesting. He says to the woman also, he said, I will multiply thy sorrows. We all know that as women, we have a lot of sorrows. We’re very sensitive, we get our feelings hurt about a lot of things. And men don’t have that, men have a thicker skin, they’re not constantly getting their feelings hurt. And I feel like I’m wondering if maybe it’s maybe it’s a curse, from original sin. God said, Here, I will multiply the sorrows.

Can you as a woman, can you? I mean, doesn’t that sound like a fitting description of our life? Like our sorrows? Yeah, we have a multiplication of sorrows. We’re always having bad things happen. It can be hard to be a woman, there are so many disappointments and things that happen. So I thought that was very interesting. We always talk about childbearing and the men, your husband’s going to be over you, the head of the head of the family, and you’re going to be subject to him. And those two things are talked about, but nobody mentions the part I will multiply thy sorrows. And I really think that He’s talking about the sensitivity of women, we get our feelings hurt a lot.

So anyway, the last thing I’m going to say is something that I think is common nowadays, and which I think is very unnatural. Feminism has introduced the idea that women should work alongside men and they should work just like men. But we see here that God didn’t curse women with working he cursed Adam with working Adam would have to toil and struggle to get you know, an eat by the sweat of his brow. But women were not cursed with that we were cursed with having difficult pregnancies and difficult labor’s and deliveries and, birth complications and risking our life. A lot of women died on the table when they were having children. And that’s, you know, that is something that women have to do. a lot of men die in workplace accidents, but women also, they will often die during childbirth. Not as much now, but, it used to be very common, Women used to kind of die like flies, it was very sad, but with feminism, I feel like we take the curse of Adam, and we give it to women, and that’s why they want abortion so bad. Nobody wants to have a double curse. Nobody wants to suffer both of them. God knew that the woman couldn’t handle both of them.

So that’s why he was like Adam, you do the working, Eve you do the childbearing, you give birth and Adam will work. But you know, God knew that it was too much for one person to do both those things. And I think with feminism, we have an issue because we actually expect a woman to shoulder the burden in the curse of men. And so naturally, in a way, it’s no surprise, they’re trying to shirk the burden of the other curse and be like, Well, I’m not going to have kids, I’m not going to have this pregnancy, I’m gonna, you know, that’s why abortion is so important to them, because they’re like, No, I’m not going to work and do this. Now not excusing abortion, it’s horrible. You know, it’s murder, it’s not right. But in a way, you can see a certain sort of consistency to the idea. If you are going to take one burden, It is not fitting that you have the other one. I think that’s interesting. And I think that’s also why if a guy expects his wife to work, there are some men we’re in an economic situation where some women have to work,  I’m not judging, but there are some men who go into marriage fully expecting their wife to contribute 50/50 to the family budget, he expects her to go out and have a job, and, work right alongside him. And he wants her to be like an over-glorified roommate, and split half the bills with her. And I would argue that he’s expecting something of her that not even God expected and so I think some I have, sadly run into this attitude even from Catholic men, where they’re like, Well, my wife should work… It’s like, That’s too much. That is Adam’s curse. That’s not Eve’s curse. Women are already going to be bearing children. Do you want her to not have your kids okay? Then don’t expect her to like a very large family like she’s going to be working it’s probably going to affect your fertility.

So anyway, food for thought, I’m kind of rambling here. I thought it was an interesting thing to talk about. Yeah. So I hope that was helpful if anybody ever throws it in your face that women caused all the problems… You can tell him some of this stuff in here that it was actually Adam that we got the curse through and that Eve, God isn’t punishing her as badly as many men seem to want to do and many feminists want to do so anyway, food for thought.

I hope that was helpful. I just felt like talking about that. So I thought I’d make a video about it. Anyways, yeah, if you have a question or a comment, feel free to leave it below, and hope you have a good day.