Bede on the Creation of Adam and Eve

VENERABLE BEDE ON THE CREATION OF ADAM AND EVE

Bede (c. 672 – May 25, 735) was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Wearmouth (today part of Sunderland), and of its daughter monastery, Saint Paul’s, in modern Jarrow. He is well known as an author and scholar, whose best-known work is Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People), which gained him the title The Father of English History. St. Bede wrote on many other topics, from music and musical metrics to scripture commentaries. His feast day is observed on May 25, 26, or 27, depending on the sources used by the calendar.

——————————————

But after the habitation of the earth had been made and adorned, it remained for the inhabitor and lord of things himself to be created, for whose sake all things were ordained; and this follows:

[1:26a/b] And he said, Let us make man in our image and likeness.

Now it appears more clearly why it was said of the created green plants and trees, fish and birds, and terrestrial animals that they were made separately according to their classes and kinds. For the future creation was foreseen of him who would not only be suited to his own kind in likeness and appearance, but would also be made in the image and likeness of his Creator. This also gives testimony to the nobility of his creation, that God did not say, as he did in his other creatures, ‘Let man be made, and man was made’, or ‘let the earth bring forth man, and the earth brought forth man’. But before he was made, it is said, ‘let us make man’, so that it would truly seem that he was formed as a rational creature, as though made with deliberation.

He is formed from the earth as if by study, and he is raised up by the breath of the Creator through the power of the vital Spirit, evidently so that he who was made in the image of the Creator would exist not by a word of command but by the dignity of an action.

And when it is said, Let us make man in our image and likeness, the unity of the holy Trinity is clearly proclaimed. Since the same indivisible Trinity was revealed mystically in the preceding act of creation, when it was said, And God said, let it be made … And God made … And God saw that it was good, it is now made known more openly, when it is said, Let us make man in our image and likeness. And rightly, because as long as he who was to be taught did not exist, the proclamation of the divine nature was hidden in the depths; but when the creation of man was expected, the faith was revealed and the doctrine of the truth shown forth.

For the expression, Let us make, connotes one action of three persons; but the following phrase, in our image and likeness, indicates the one and equal substance of the same holy Trinity. For how would image and likeness be one, if the Son were less than the Father, if the Holy Spirit were less than the Son, or if the glory of the whole Trinity were not of the same consubstantial power? Or how would it be possible for Let us make to be said, if there were not cooperative power in one divine nature of three persons? Nor could God have said, Let us make man in our image and likeness, to the angels, because there is no reason at all for us to believe that the image and likeness of God and the angels is one and the same.

Moreover, the Apostle is a witness as to how man was made in the image and likeness of God, when he sagaciously reminds us that this condition which we lost in our first parent we recovered in ourselves by the grace of the same Creator. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, he says, and put on the new man, who is created after God in justice, holiness, and truth.

Therefore Adam, the new man, was created from earth after God, so that he was just, holy, and true, subject to and humbly dependent upon the grace of his Creator, who is eternally and perfectly just, holy, and true. And since he corrupted this most beautiful newness of the divine image in himself by sinning, and engendered the corrupt family of the human race from himself, there came the second Adam, that is, the Lord himself and our Creator, born from the Virgin, created imperishably and without change in the image of God, free of all fault and full of all grace and truth, in order to restore his image and likeness in us by his example and gifts. For he is truly the new man created after God, because without doubt he took the true substance of the flesh from Adam so that he would inherit from him no sordid vice.

To follow his example according to our understanding, to depend upon his gifts, to comply with his commandments, this is to recover in the new man the image of God that we lost in the old man.

Therefore, man was created in the likeness of God not after the body, but after the understanding of the mind. And yet he has in the body itself a certain property which also indicates this, since he was made with an erect posture, so that he would be reminded by this very fact that he is not to take after animals of the earth, like cattle, whose whole pleasure is from the earth. Hence, all animals go face down and prostrate on their belly, as one of the poets very beautifully and truly said:

And while all other animals, face down, look at the earth, He gave to man an uplifted face, and ordered him To view the heavens and raise his upright countenance to the stars (Ovid)

and

Therefore his body is suited to a rational soul, not in accordance with the features and shapes of his limbs, but rather in accordance with that which was lifted up into the sky for the sake of contemplating the celestial objects which are in the body of the world itself, just as the rational soul ought to be lifted up to those things which especially excel by their nature in spiritual qualities, in order that it may ‘mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth’ (Augustine)

And Scripture appropriately adds:

[1:26c/e] And let him have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven and the beasts and the whole earth and every creeping creature that moves upon the earth.

Because there is no doubt that man was made in the image of God chiefly in the respect in which he surpasses the irrational creatures – that is to say, he was created capable of reason, by which means he could both properly govern each and every created thing in the world and enjoy the knowledge of the One who created all things.

Having been placed in this position of dignity, if he does not understand just as the Psalmist declares.

[1:27a/b] And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him.

Scripture duplicated what it first said, in his own image, by adding for the sake of confirmation, in the image of God he created him, in order the more thoroughly to impress upon us in what condition we were created by God and the more deeply to implant in our minds the hope of recovering the image of God, lest we who walk in the image of God be needlessly disquieted, amassing treasure in the uncertainty of riches.

But rather let us wait for the Lord, thirsting for the time when we may come and appear before his face, certain that when he appears we will be like to him, because we will see him as he is. The fact that it now says, ‘in the image of God he created him’, when it says above, ‘let us make [man] in our image’, signifies not that the plurality of Persons does it so that we may believe in many gods, but so that we may understand Father and Son and Holy Spirit, on account of which Trinity it says, ‘in our image’, and that we may understand one God, for which reason it says, ‘in the image of God’.

[1:27c] Male and female he created them.

It is explained more fully in what follows whence and how God made the first man and woman. But now for the sake of brevity they are only reported to have been created, so that the work of the sixth day and the consecration of the seventh along with other matters may be expounded; and thus, as occasion demands, both this and other things that have been omitted but are worthy of mention may be spoken of more freely.

In the first place, unlike the other animals which he created in their separate kinds not individually but many at a time, God created one male and one female, so that by this the bond of love might bind the human race more tightly to one another, because it remembered that it all arose from one parent. For the sake of this unity, when Holy Scripture said, And God created man, in the image of God he created him, and followed this immediately with, male and female he created them, it declined to add, ‘in the image of God he created them’. For the female also was created in the image of God, on account of the fact that she too had a rational mind. But Scripture did not consider that this needed to be added about her, because it left this to be understood about her as well on account of the oneness of their union.

Indeed, it signified that this was to be understood about the entire human race which was born from them.

For even now, insofar as every man uses reason, he has the image of God in him, for which reason John says, That was the true light, which enlightens every man that comes into this world.

For that is the same light of which the Psalmist glories in the Lord, saying, The light of your countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us.

It is entirely appropriate that male and female are described here as having been created, although the method of that creation is not yet stated, so that a suitable place may be had for the word of divine blessing, which is contained in the following:

[1:28a/b] And he blessed them and said, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it.

Indeed, this multiplication of men and filling of the earth could not be achieved except through the union of male and female.

But if the human race grows and multiplies with the blessing of God, how much do they deserved to be cursed, who forbid marriage and condemn the arrangement of the heavenly decree as if it had been invented by the devil?

Therefore marriage, which the grace of the divine blessing instituted for the propagation of the human race and the filling of the earth, must not be condemned. But more to be honored and worthy of a greater blessing is virginity, which, after the earth has been filled with men, longs with chaste mind and body to follow the Lamb wherever it goes, that is, to follow the Lord Jesus in heaven and sing him a new song, which no one else can do. For God, our Lord, who in the beginning of the infant world formed the female from the side of the male to teach that the earth was to be filled by their mutual union, himself in the fullness of time took from the flesh of a virgin the form of a man, free from all pollution, perfected by the whole plenitude of divinity, in order to show that he prized the glory of virginity more than marriage.

[1:28c/d] And rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven and all living creatures that move upon the earth.

It is proper to ask for what profit man received dominion over fish and birds and all the living creatures of the earth, and for what uses or comforts these were created for man, if he never sinned, since the sequel of this passage declares that in the first creation they were not granted to him for food but only the green plants and the fruits of the trees.

But perhaps it could be said that God foreknew that man would sin, and by sinning that he, whom God created immortal, would become mortal, and therefore that God instituted these comforts for him in the beginning, by which he as a mortal could care for his own fragility, gaining from them, that is to say, both nourishment and clothing and assistance in labor and travel. It is not proper to ask why man does not still rule over all living creatures, for after he would not submit himself to his Creator, he lost dominion over those whom the Creator had subjected to his jurisdiction. Finally, as evidence of the first creation, we read not only that birds have rendered obedience to saints humbly serving God, but also that they have been spared from the yawning jaws of wild beasts, and that the poison of serpents has been unable to harm them.

[1:29-30c] And God said: Behold I have given you every plant bearing seed upon the earth and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind to be your meat, and to all beasts of the earth and to every bird and to all that move upon the earth and wherein there is life, that they may have to feed upon.

Now here it is clear that before the sin of man earth produced nothing harmful – no poisonous plant, no unfruitful tree. Since it is plainly said that every plant and all trees were given to men and to birds and to all the living creatures of the earth for food, it is clear that those birds did not live by stealing the food of weaker animals, nor did the wolf search out an ambush around the sheepfold, nor was the dust the serpent’s food, but all things in harmony fed upon the green plants and the fruits of the trees.

Of course, in all this there arises a question, which ought not to be overlooked, as to how man was made immortal in contrast to other living creatures, and nevertheless took earthly nourishment in common with them. In this regard, we should observe that the immortality of the flesh that we received in the first creation in Adam is one thing, and the immortality that we hope we will receive in resurrection through Christ is another. Adam was certainly created immortal, in the sense that he could not die if he did not sin; but if he sinned, he would die.

But the children of resurrection will be immortal, since they will be equal to the angels of God in that they can neither die nor sin again.

And therefore after resurrection our flesh needs no nourishing refection, since no deficiency from hunger or weariness or any other weakness whatever is in store for it. But before his sin Adam’s flesh was created immortal so that, with the aid and support of temporal nourishment, he would be free of death and pain, until he was brought by bodily sustenance to the age determined upon by the Creator. Then, after fathering offspring, he would presently, at the Creator’s command, take many things of this kind from the tree of life. Having been made perfectly immortal by this, he would require no further support of corporeal food. Therefore the flesh of the first human beings was created immortal and incorruptible so that they might preserve that same immortality and incorruptibility of theirs by keeping the commands of God.And among these commands was this, that they should eat from the lawful trees of paradise, but that they should refrain from eating from the forbidden tree. By eating of the former, they would preserve the gift of immortality bestowed upon them; in contact with the latter, they would find the bane of death. Thus, in the end our flesh will assuredly be incorruptible and immortal in order that it may always remain in the same state like the sublimity of the angels, and so that it cannot be in need of corporeal food, which to be sure will not exist in the spiritual life. For as to the fact that we read that angels ate with the patriarchs, they acted not from need, but out of kindness, so that by doing this they would meet more agreeably with the men to whom they appeared.

The Lord also ate with his disciples after his resurrection, not as being in need of refreshment, but in order to show that he had received real flesh after death.

[1:30d] And it was so done.

That is, it was done in order that man should rule all things that were created on earth and in the waters and in order that he should gain the means and power of eating from the fruits of the earth with the birds of heaven and the animals of the earth.

[Sidenote : As with all the other Fathers, “evolution” of Adam and Eve from some hominoid is not an option]