I appreciate Raj's comments on excrement and sexual pleasure, not only because I find his affinity for bathroom topics refreshing, but also because I think the line of questioning here is on track with the spirit of paleotheology. What was a typical day in the life of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden? Giving Genesis 1 and 2 a second reading after having written a first response, I noticed for the first time in my reading of Genesis that Adam's purpose in the Garden of Eden involved work! Gen. 2:15 "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it." It seems that Adam was to be dedicated to some agricultural tasks in the Garden. Furthermore, if God thought that Adam needed a suitable helper, for what was she destined to help if not with some work?
Krista Tippet, in her show on National Public Radio called "Speaking of Faith," recently interviewed Jean Vanier (the founder of the Le'Arche movement that integrates communities of able-minded and mentally disabled people), who commented briefly on Aristotle's concept of pleasure. To paraphrase Jean Vanier: [Pleasure for Aristotle is not the kind of pleasure we normally think about, in other words, it does not have to do with sort of goofing around. True pleasure has to do with engaging in a task that we love to do because we know profoundly that we are doing it very well.] In light of Jean Vanier's comments on Aristotle, it makes perfect sense that if there is pleasure in Paradise, there should also be work to do. If Adam and Eve had work to do in Paradise, they ought to have somehow taken pleasure in their work. Indeed, God himself ended each day by admiring his own handiwork and blessed and sanctified the seventh day because he "rested from all the work that he had done in creation." If Adam and Eve were indeed dedicated to some agricultural tasks in the Garden, and there was no poop, I wonder what they were to have used for fertilizer.
As for sexual intercourse, I don't think that chapter 2 explicitly resolves the question of whether there was any in the Garden of Eden. The comment that "Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh," could go either way. The story of the sixth day, however, demonstrates God's will for male and female humans that they, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it." I am not sure whether we the readers are meant to synthesize the story of The Seven Days of Creation and the story of The Garden of Eden. I will not assume, for the purposes of this theological excavation, that God's words of blessing imply that there was sexual intercourse in the Garden of Eden. In my opinion, I do think that there was a whole lotta love in the Garden of Eden because, as we learned from Thor Heyerdahl and his Jungle Princess, a reasonably sized Garden (containing the mother of all rivers) even with all the animals and two human mouths to feed, does not require a whole lot of tilling. Agriculture, as opposed to hunting/gathering or pastoral means of food production, is usually necessary to accommodate larger, city-building societies i.e. civilizations. Adam and Eve were almost certainly, in the lyrical words of Spinal Tap's rock legend, Nigel Tuffnel, "working on a sex farm." Perhaps I simply prefer to believe that Adam and Eve were extremely busy in more ways than one because that is my personal bias.
If we should conclude from reading Genesis 1 and 2 that both work and sex were part of God's original intention for Creation, how does that affect the way that we conceptualize God, work, and sex? If we were to say that neither work nor sex were part of the Garden, then what would that imply about our concept of God, work, and sex?
Excavating the Word of God
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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