Genesis: A Revolutionary Reading

Monica Migliorino Miller invites us to a feast, a celebration of the goodness and intelligibility of creation, the beauty of human sexuality, and the sublime destiny of the human person working in collaboration with God to achieve salvation. These form the content of the first three chapters of Genesis, the subject of her latest book, In the Beginning. The biblical account, which is truly revolutionary, presents a totally radical worldview in contrast to ancient pagan civilizations and their errors. Its assumptions and truths also sharply differ from modern renditions of those errors. Part of the genius of Miller’s work is to discern the commonalities between ancient and modern heresies. She also explores the human anthropology implicit in the Genesis account.

The Hebrew deity is benevolent; His creation is good. He gives freely, without needing to be appeased. On the other hand, the Hebrews’ pagan contemporaries worshiped deities who were subject to anger and revenge, who could bestow and rescind favors. This was true of the Greek and Roman gods, too, who were motivated by passions, just as humans are. The grim idols of the Babylonians required human sacrifice, including the immolation of children, as well as ritual prostitution. Man has no intrinsic value in any brand of paganism, while in Genesis he is the culmination of creation, over which he is given dominion.

In the biblical narrative, creation is unqualifiedly good. This differs markedly from the worldviews of the pagans. Plato is among those who espoused a gnostic dualism that denigrated matter and saw the body as a prison. Union with the deity and entry into the real world could only be realized upon death. Only there could man find goodness, truth, and beauty. The Enuma Elish, a Babylonian myth from the 12th century B.C., exemplifies this dualism in a more radical way, as gods wage war against one another and create chaos in the universe.

For the early pagans, the course of human history consists of endless cycles — a belief that vitiated a true sense of time. As Miller explains, Judaism, along with its fulfillment in Christianity, is a religion founded in time, with highly significant historical events advancing the cause of salvation. There is a beginning and there will be an end. We are so accustomed to the concept of history that the Genesis account no longer seems revolutionary to us.

As the Western world becomes increasingly de-Christianized, we find modern examples of pagan errors abounding. One case Miller explores in some depth is radical feminism, another example of gnostic dualism. The notable feminist Mary Daly, who went from Catholic to post-Christian, rejected the world as created, inasmuch as men are a part of it. “The entire material world has been corrupted by male influence,” she said. An even more radical feminist, Rosemary Radford Ruether, who inexplicably continued to identify as a Catholic, dismissed even the differentiation between spirit and matter. Her “God/ess” was both spirit and matter, and death meant that the individual consciousness merged with the deity. The concept in Genesis of man and woman as made in the image of God and at the center of the created world finds no place in her work.

Another area in which modern thought distorts reality is man’s dominion over creation. This is exaggerated in those who espouse contraception, in vitro fertilization, and embryonic stem-cell research. We also see disdain for creation in those who show no concern for environmental ravages, such as pollution and deforestation, caused by the misuse of resources. Then there are those who privilege the environment to the point of espousing an anti-natalist policy to prevent further degradation of Earth.

Miller’s discussion of the human anthropology of Genesis is the centerpiece of her book. The creation of man and woman, she writes, includes “a sacred dimension.” They are endowed with intellect and will in order to be able to perceive the reality, the truth of things, and to choose the good as they cooperate in God’s creative work. To do this, they must “increase and multiply.” The inherent good of fertility depends on the right use of the sexual faculty and respect for its ontology and its role in communicating the total self-giving of spouses. “It is a liturgy in which the covenantal/marital union of Christ and the Church is made present in the world,” Miller writes. These are magnificent insights, awakening the reader to the sublimity of the vocation of marriage. Efforts to thwart or manipulate the act of intercourse by use of artificial contraceptives not only destroys the end of the act, the creation of children, but wounds the marital union itself and constitutes a lie about the reality of the total acceptance of the other, of the woman with her fertility. Homosexual unions or those involving persons who identify as the opposite sex are also blatant misuses of the sexual faculty.

Man and woman possess equal status, as implied in the first account of the creation of Adam and Eve (cf. Gen. 1:26-31), which states, “Male and female He created them.” In the second account (cf. Gen. 2:7-3:24), Eve is formed from a rib of Adam’s, as a “helper fit for him.” Miller rejects any interpretation of this verse as indicating that woman has a subordinate status; rather, Eve rescues Adam from what Pope St. John Paul II termed his “original solitude.” In Miller’s words, “she is his savior” (emphasis in original), a surprising and unusual reading of the Hebrew text, which seems unwarranted. Eve brings Adam “hope, health, peace, and life,” Miller says. John Paul II, in his apostolic letter on the dignity of women, Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), stresses the reciprocity of assistance. “It is a question of a ‘help’ on the part of both, and at the same time a mutual ‘help,’” he writes (emphasis in original). Fr. Eugene H. Maly, in his article on Genesis for the Jerome Biblical Commentary, offers a more traditional interpretation in discussing the headship of Adam. “Man dominates woman in the domestic and social order,” he writes. “Man’s domination, although part of the order of creation (cf. 2:21-23), is intensified by sin beyond the divinely willed measure,” referring to the consequences of the Fall, when God tells Eve that Adam will be her master. It is not surprising that in Miller’s discussion of Ephesians 5, she omits verses 22-24, which refer to the headship of the husband and the submission of wives. It should be noted that John Paul, in Mulieris Dignitatem, sees this subjection as mutual “out of reverence for Christ.” Indeed, for each spouse to put the interests of the other first in a spirit of service is a sine qua non of a happy, holy marriage. There remains, however, a tension between traditional and recent concepts of headship in marriage.

The first chapters of Genesis are revolutionary not only for their presentation of God and creation as good and of the dignity of man and woman and their spousal communion, but also for the explanation of how evil enters the world. In distinction to Gnosticism’s dual principles of good and evil, the sacred author makes clear that sin is the origin of evil and all suffering. The disobedience of our first parents was “the attempt to replace God’s moral universe as man’s own,” Miller writes. She provides a robust discussion of Eve’s attempts to turn the transgression of God’s commandment into something good. Then, when confronted by Him, Eve casts blame on the serpent, while Adam shifts the responsibility to Eve. They “deny that they are free moral subjects who are personally responsible for their transgression,” Miller observes. In the modern world, on the other hand, personal freedom is conceptualized in an absolute sense: If they can determine what is right and what is wrong, “then human beings have become ‘like gods.’”

The creation narrative ends on a happy note, with the announcement of the protoevangelium: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel” (Gen. 3:15). The New Adam — Son of Mary, the New Eve — will redeem humanity from the far-reaching effects of the Fall and open the gates of Paradise. Miller fittingly ends her book with words from the Book of Revelation: “To the victor I will give the right to eat from the tree of life that is in the garden of God” (2:7). In the mercy of God, the New Heaven to come far surpasses the earthly paradise forfeited by our first parents.

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