Mathews notes,
Adam’s participation is rather understated in the account, given the attention it receives from God (3:17-19) and in later Jewish and Christian tradition. He simply followed the example of the woman without hesitation. There is no sense that Adam is lured by logic or sexual provocation. “For he would have never dared oppose God’s authority unless he had disbelieved God’s Word.” Was Adam privy to the conversation between Eve and the snake? Although “with her” does not in itself demand that he is present since the serpent speaks “to the woman,” nevertheless, the action of the verse implies that Adam is a witness to the dialogue. “You” at each place in 3:1-5 is plural and thus suggests his presence. However, there is no indication that he too is deceived by the serpent.15
Mathews helpfully points out that the “you” used in Genesis 3:1-5 is plural, and that the action of the verse implies that Adam is present with Eve for her entire conversation with the Devil. Instead of submitting to God, Adam chose to submit to his wife and the Devil.
14 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 238.
15 Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, 238.
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Later, the apostle Paul wrote that Eve was deceived but Adam knew full well what he was doing (1 Tim 2:14). He knew the serpent and Eve were wrong, but he willed the desire for the forbidden tree and fell into sin, fell from being “very good” (Gen 1:31).
Engaging Melinda Selmys
One objection to this exegesis of Genesis 3:6 comes from Melinda Selmys.
She wrote a guest post at Spiritual Friendship, the website co-founded by Wesley Hill, discussing Genesis 3:6. Selmys refers to herself as “a Catholic in exile.”16 In an article titled “Still Looking to Desire,” she argues,
To understand the difference between concupiscent desire, and ordered desire, let’s follow John Paul II’s lead and return to the Beginning. I’d like to analyze [sic], specifically, Genesis 3:6: “The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was enticing for the wisdom that it could give.”
Surely this is a case of disordered desire, right? Eve wants what she’s not supposed to have, and as a result of that desire, she sins.
Sed contra, Eve at this moment is still in a state of Original Innocence. She does not have concupiscence clouding her judgement. What she sees at the moment is
objectively true: the fruit really is good to eat, it really is pleasing to the eye, and it really is desirable for the wisdom that it could give. What is false is her conclusion, that because of these properties, it is justifiable for her to take and eat what has been denied to her by God.17
Selmys misunderstands Genesis 3:6. First, Eve has concupiscence clouding her judgment because the inward desires of her heart are an attempt to justify the sin she is about to commit. She has believed the serpent rather than God. In order to have the desires she had in Genesis 3:6, she had to will the concupiscence or desires; or Selmys must argue that the desires for the forbidden tree are morally good, since they were created by God.
Yet, Eve told the serpent God forbade the tree (Gen 3:2-3), the serpent then corrected her
16 The first line of Selmys’ bio at her website says, “Melinda Selmys is a Catholic-in-exile.”
Melinda Selmys, “About,” Catholic Authenticity {Amor Ipse Notitia Est}, Accessed August 8, 2019, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/catholicauthenticity/about/.
17 Melinda Selmys, “Still Looking to Desire,” Spiritual Friendship, March 17, 2014, https://spiritualfriendship.org/2014/03/17/still-looking-to-desire/.
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(Gen 3:4-5), and she then self-justifies in her heart why she is about to eat of the forbidden tree (Gen 3:6).
Second, Eve’s desires for the tree were not desires for what is “objectively true.” Selmys is correct that God created the forbidden tree as good, but Eve went from saying that God even forbade her and Adam from touching the tree (Gen 3:3) to
justifying her sinful desires for the tree as “good,” “pleasant,” and as the pursuit of
“wisdom.” In other words, it was the serpent who encouraged Eve to eat of the forbidden tree, not the tree’s objective beauty. Eve desired the forbidden tree precisely because she believed the serpent instead of God. Moses even used the same word, “good,” for God’s description of his creation (Gen 1:31) and Eve’s description in her heart of the forbidden tree (Gen 3:6). She made a moral declaration in her heart that went against God’s
command that the tree was forbidden. The forbidden tree was good because God made it, but it was not morally good for Adam and Eve, for God told them it was forbidden. Eve was not God, but she wanted to be God, and she wanted to be like the serpent.
Selmys then takes this hermeneutic and applies it to her same-sex attraction:
When I look at a woman, and see that she is beautiful, that she is desirable, that she is enticing, I’m seeing something that is objectively true: she is objectively a manifestation of the imago dei, she is objectively attractive, and it is objectively legitimate for me to desire to be united with her in the vast communio personarum which is constituted by the Church and by the whole human race.18
First, the reader should be surprised that Selmys wants to be like Eve as described in Genesis 3:6. Both Eve (Gen 3:13) and the apostle Paul (1 Tim 2:14) said that Eve was deceived by the Devil. Nowhere in Scripture is Eve’s desire for the forbidden tree put in a positive light, only negative. Furthermore, God through Moses used two cognates of the same words used to describe Eve’s sinful desire in Genesis 3:6, “pleasant” and
“desirable,” in the Tenth Commandment for “covet” and “desire” (Deut 5:21). At the
18 Selmys, “Still Looking to Desire,” https://spiritualfriendship.org/2014/03/17/still-looking-to- desire/.
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very least, the reader must admit that Eve’s desire for the tree was not morally good.
Therefore, Selmys’ desire, if it is like Eve’s, cannot be morally good either.
Second, Selmys’ description is faulty because Eve did not desire something
“objectively beautiful.” Eve desired sin, and Selmys is not desiring women in an objective way either. Unless Selmys views these “objectively beautiful women” as her sisters or mother (1 Tim 5:2), like Jesus views every woman, she views them sinfully.
The fact that she refers to this woman as “beautiful,” “desirable,” and “enticing,” is shocking. She is using the words that Moses used to describe Eve’s sinful desire which quickly lead to her sin, Adam’s sin, and the death and curse of all creation. All that is wrong with the world can be traced back to Genesis 3:6, and Selmys wants to use Eve as a positive example for sublimating her same-sex attraction for good? God has forbidden same-sex attraction by creating heterosexual attraction in the pre-fall Garden of Eden, when he made Eve for Adam and not another Adam for Adam (Gen 2:20-25).
Third, it is immoral to desire the unity God provides in the Eucharist because one is same-sex attracted to an individual. Sexual attraction should be irrelevant when desiring to be united with one’s brothers and sisters in Christ through partaking of the Lord’s Supper together. There is not a shred of biblical proof that goes along with what Selmys argues here.
Selmys then contends that she can take these “objective desires” and turn them to good things:
My desire is not disordered in and of itself: it becomes disordered when I direct it, or allow it to [sic] direct itself, towards something which is forbidden. If it leads me to fantasize about homosexual acts, or to think of the woman as a sex object, then it becomes disordered, that is ordered towards an end which is not in conformity with Truth and with the dignity of the person. But what if I make the act of will to redirect that desire, to use it as an opportunity to give glory to God for the beauty which He has made manifest in that particular woman? Or to meditate on my desire for the one-flesh union of the entire humanum in the Eucharist where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, slave nor free, woman nor man? Or as an opportunity to
contemplate the relationship between the doctrines of the Communion of Saints and
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of the resurrection of the Body? What if, by an act of will, I take that desire and order it towards its proper end: towards the Good, the Beautiful and the True?19 God forbade Eve from eating of the tree “in the midst of the Garden” (Gen 3:3). She could not redirect her desire for the forbidden tree to something else, for then it would be a desire for something holy. Eve did not desire good food, pretty trees, and wisdom. If she desired these things, she would have enjoyed the trees God had already given her.
Eve desired the forbidden tree. She believed the serpent instead of God. If Selmys desired to unite with other Christians in the Eucharist due to viewing them as God’s image- bearers, she would not care about their sex since all males and females are equally God’s image-bearers (Gen 1:26-28). Choosing to unite with a sister in Christ because she looks
“beautiful,” “desirable,” and “enticing,” is not holy and can never be a holy desire.
Selmys’ desire is not an objectively good desire that needs to be redirected; it is a sinful desire that needs to be repented of.
Matthew 5:27-30