That Jesus and Mary are the new Adam and Eve according to reason and the Church Fathers
3 min • Digitized on May 1, 2023
From A Defense of the Teachings of Mary, page 33
By St. John Henry Newman
As regards the Blessed Virgin, I shall postpone the question of devotion for a while, and inquire first into the doctrine of the undivided Church (to use your controversial phrase), on the subject of her prerogatives.
What is the great rudimental teaching of Antiquity from its earliest date concerning her? By “rudimental teaching” I mean the primá facie view of her person and office, the broad outline laid down of her, the aspect under which she comes to us, in the writings of the Fathers.
She is the Second Eve 1. Now let us consider what this implies.
Eve had a definite, essential position in the First Covenant. The fate of the human race lay with Adam; he it was who represented us. It was in Adam that we fell; though Eve had fallen, still, if Adam had stood, we should not have lost those supernatural privileges which were bestowed upon him as our first father.
Yet though Eve was not the head of the race, still, even as regards the race, she had a place of her own; for Adam, to whom was divinely committed the naming of all things, entitled her “the Mother of all the living,” a name surely expressive, not of a fact only, but of a dignity; but further, as she thus had her own general relation to the human race, so again had she her own special place, as regards its trial and its fall in Adam.
In those primeval events, Eve had an integral share. “The woman, being seduced, was in the transgression.” She listened to the Evil Angel; she offered the fruit to her husband, and he ate of it.
She co-operated, not as an irresponsible instrument, but intimately and personally in the sin: she brought it about. As the history stands, she was a sine-qua-non, a positive, active, cause of it. And she had her share in its punishment; in the sentence pronounced on her, she was recognized as a real agent in the temptation and its issue, and she suffered accordingly.
In that awful transaction there were three parties concerned,—the serpent, the woman, and the man; and at the time of their sentence, an event was announced for the future, in which the three same parties were to meet again, the serpent, the woman, and the man; but it was to be a second Adam and a second Eve, and the new Eve was to be the mother of the new Adam. “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed." The Seed of the woman is the Word Incarnate, and the Woman, whose seed or son He is, is His mother Mary.
This interpretation, and the parallelism it involves, seem to me undeniable; but at all events (and this is my point) the parallelism is the doctrine of the Fathers, from the earliest times; and, this being established, we are able, by the position and office of Eve in our fall, to determine the position and office of Mary in our restoration.
1: Vid. Essay on Development of Doctrine, 1845, p. 384, &c.