At the Crossroads 4

At the Crossroads
We will now conclude our commentary on this section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The hope of salvation, by the promise of redemption, buoyed humanity up, after the fall”, to paraphrase the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 55, with the following notes.

Gen 2,4-3,24 though read as one story of Creation, Fall and Redemption, has mixed authorship. Clearly, 2,4-3,11 is a Yahwist adaptation of an older Mesopotamian myth of creation. The Yahwist author (Y), in a primordial setting, was actually commenting on the experience of Israel in the time of the kings: an experience of despotic domination by a series of kings who, in the name of God, ruled and impoverished the people. But this Yahwist use of some old Mesopotamian myth has been re-read by the Priestly author. The Priestly tradition (P) used it to explain why there is evil in the world, why there is a coexistence of good and evil in human history. The P tradition is trying to answer why, on the personal, social, national and international order of things, humankind experiences this egoism, this despotic tyranny and totalitarianism which only a profound mature faith can truly unmask. (In this regard, it would be instructive to revisit the phenomenon of today’s economic recession, the Wall St.-Main St. divide, the broken immigration and health care systems, the strong middle class as a buffer between Wall St. and Main St, through the eyes of a profound mature faith).

There is also a strand of the Elohist (E) authorship and Wisdom tradition in this narrative. Take for example the symbol of the seductive snake and the “tree of knowledge of good and evil”. The tree of knowledge of good and evil takes central place in the story. In the Old Testament tradition, (2Sam 14,17; 1 Kings 3,9; Ecclesiastes 12,14, cf. also Jer 10,5) the knowledge of good and evil means the attitude to make of oneself as the sole owner of ultimate decisions of one’s concrete actions. This is the huge temptation that besets every human being: to make of oneself as the sole arbiter of things, and to put one’s interests as the supreme norm of life, apart from God and even using the name of God!

Finally, Gen 3,14-24, from the P tradition, is a prophetic oracle with four elements: (1) a judge – here, God as the supreme authority; (2) the accused/defendant – a person, an institution, or a nation; here, the man, the woman and the serpent; (3) the crime or motive of the judicial process; and (4) the judgment, with the sentence or punishment due to the offender. In this case, the theme comes back: God is the sole supreme moral sovereign and there is no other. Humankind self-destructs when he loses this vision, institutionalizes his personal interests and perverts God’s vocabulary, by calling just the unjust: a perverted conscience born out of a claim for power. But only God liberates. Only God redeems! “Even when he disobeyed you and lost your friendship you did not abandon him to the power of death. . . Again and again you offered a covenant to man.” --Fr. Ben Alforque, MSC