What Happened to Us in Eden? - Psychology of the FallNäide

DIFFERENCES OF ESSENCE OR OF PRESENCE?

If you arrive somewhere and you are alone, you might feel free to do whatever you want. But if you are there to form a team and to be a suitable helper—as was the woman when she came into Eden—then you truly cannot afford to do that. And this is not a matter of being so much as of being there. It’s not because you are a woman and therefore must be led. It’s because you would be stepping outside the very purpose for which you were placed there.

• Receiving a gift (as Adam did) naturally obligates one to care for it. Perhaps that is so obvious that God didn’t need to give an explicit command. But I don’t see any command either for him to lead her, as the traditional view has often insisted.
• On the other hand, if one arrives as a gift for someone who was already there (as was the case for the woman), this calls for care and respect toward him—acknowledging his presence, not ignoring it. Again, it may be that an explicit instruction was unnecessary, since it can be easily understood with a little reflection.

If the woman had been created first, and if it had been seen that no suitable helper was found for her, then bringing Adam second would have placed him in the same position of responsibility—not of hierarchy, but of care—toward that newly received gift.

Adam, for his part, should never have gone off on his own. He should have understood his place as the one arriving second. That would not have been about submission, but about partnership and mutuality with the one who was already there (had it been the woman), recognizing the role his arrival played in the scene. Perhaps in this way the point becomes clearer.

Scholars still debate whether Adam was or was not present during the serpent’s conversation with the woman—the moment where the dilemma began that has brought us to where we are today as humanity.

Beyond all this, and after reflecting on being versus being there, essence versus presence, I think it’s worth making one more small exercise—this time of combination. Let’s try to “cross” these questions:

• Was Adam present or not in that serpent-woman conversation?
• And was Adam given a mandate to lead her with authority—or rather a calling to care for her as a gift?

Have you thought about the implications?