The New Adam and the New Eve

Salvation follows the path by which sin had come, to undo it from within. Evil engaged a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, and salvation passes in the same way through a man and a woman, Christ and Mary. Yet it was in Adam, the head of the human race, that sin entered the world; it is Christ who undoes it. The Fathers of the Church named Christ the new Adam and Mary the new Eve, because they take up and set right what the first couple had spoiled. “And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.” 1 Corinthians 15:22

The new Adam

Adam had received life and lost it by his disobedience. Christ, obeying unto the Cross, restores that life and gives it in superabundance. “And where sin abounded, grace did more abound.” Romans 5:20 “The first man Adam was made into a living soul; the last Adam into a quickening spirit.” 1 Corinthians 15:45 The whole work lies in this turning of disobedience into obedience. “By the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners; so by the obedience of one, the many will be made righteous.” Romans 5:19 Where Adam had taken the fruit of the forbidden tree, Christ gave himself on the wood of the Cross: the tree of the fall is repaired by the tree of salvation.

Saint Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in the second century, gave this setting right its truest name: recapitulation. To recapitulate is to take things up again from the head, to remake from end to end the road that Adam had marred, and this time to carry it through to its end. Christ passes once more through the whole history of men, correcting it: where Adam disobeyed, he obeys; where humanity had scattered, it gathers again in him. The word comes from Saint Paul, who describes God’s design as the plan to “to re-establish all things in Christ, that are in heaven and on earth.” Ephesians 1:10 This head is truly the head of a new humanity, as Adam was the stock of the old. “He is the head of the body, the Church.” Colossians 1:18 Every man is born an heir of Adam; by baptism he is reborn a member of Christ and receives from him, as from a head, the life that reaches through the whole body.

The new Eve

Eve had believed the serpent and drawn Adam into her fault. Mary believed the angel and bore the Saviour into the world. Saint Irenaeus said it in a word: the knot tied by Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.” Luke 1:38 From the fall, God had announced this woman and her offspring. “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” Genesis 3:15 Eve was called the mother of all the living (Genesis 3:20); Mary becomes so in the order of grace when Christ, from the height of the Cross, calls her “Woman” and gives her as mother to the disciple: “Woman, behold thy son… Behold thy mother.” John 19:26-27 In calling her thus, he marks her as the woman announced from the fall. This title runs from one end of Scripture to the other: at Cana already, Christ called her “Woman” (John 2:4), and the Apocalypse shows a Woman clothed with the sun, whose son is snatched away from the dragon (Revelation 12:1-5): the enmity set in Eden between the woman and the serpent unfolds there until the end of time.

The Fathers read a second sign in the way the new Eve comes to light. Eve had been formed from a rib taken from Adam’s side while he slept. “Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it.” Genesis 2:21 On the Cross, in the sleep of death, Christ’s side is opened in turn. “But one of the soldiers with a spear opened his side: and immediately there came out blood and water.” John 19:34 From that open side the Fathers saw the Church born, as Eve was born from Adam’s side: the blood and water figure the sacraments by which she lives.

Free from sin

Christ and Mary share one purity before sin, on different grounds. Christ is free from it by his very nature as the Son of God made man: he never knew sin (2 Corinthians 5:21), “one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin.” Hebrews 4:15 Mary, a mere creature, is preserved from it by grace, from the first instant of her conception: this is what the Church confesses under the name of the Immaculate Conception. Both are also free from concupiscence, that inclination to evil which original sin leaves behind: “For the flesh lusteth against the spirit: and the spirit against the flesh: For these are contrary one to another.” Galatians 5:17 Of the original state they keep grace and integrity, one of the preternatural gifts: those gifts God had joined to human nature at the beginning, above what it requires of itself, and which the fall caused to be lost.

Given over to suffering, out of love

Christ freely took a flesh able to suffer and to die, to redeem men by his Passion. Mary, preserved from sin yet truly mortal and passible like us, was joined with her whole heart to that suffering, her soul pierced at the foot of the Cross. “And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed.” Luke 2:35 The new Adam and the new Eve themselves bore what they came to heal.