Pope Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Humani Generis is a remarkable document. It is a brilliant discussion of the proper relation between reason, the natural sciences, and divine revelation. In the text, Pius XII displays a calm confidence and certainty in the face of the secular elites who ridiculed not just him personally, but the Church itself as ignorant, anti-science, and superseded. What his critics didn’t and still don’t understand is that his serenity came from the Magisterium1 and supernatural authority of a Vicar of Christ properly exercising his office.2
It is now doubted that human reason, without divine revelation and the help of divine grace, can, by arguments drawn from the created universe, prove the existence of a personal God; it is denied that the world had a beginning; it is argued that the creation of the world is necessary, since it proceeds from the necessary liberality of divine love; it is denied that God has eternal and infallible foreknowledge of the free actions of men - all this in contradiction to the decrees of the Vatican Council3 (Humani Generis, par. 25).
As our previous posts have demonstrated, modern scientific advances are actually not disproving the existence of a personal God, they are not proving that the world did not have a beginning, and they do not demonstrate that a scientifically credible understanding of time would prevent God from having an eternal and infallible foreknowledge of the actions of men. In fact, science is emphatically demonstrating the opposite.4
However, Humani Generis is perhaps best known for its affirmation of monogenism.5
The faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own (Humani Generis, par. 37).
As a general rule, the Church does not concern itself with scientific disputes.6 That is not its proper role. However, if these disputes cause scandal, the Church might have to address them or at least put them into a proper theological context. This is the case with the monogenism vs. polygenism debate. If there were many lineages and progenitors of humanity, then the fundamental doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin would not make sense. We might be in a bizarre contradictory moral universe where some humans would have original sin and others would not. There would also be no need for a universal Redeemer, and therefore no universal Sacrifice on the Cross, and no re-presentation of that Sacrifice in the Mass.
However, advances in genetics over the ensuing decades have allowed deeper investigation into the question of human origins. Geneticists now know that DNA undergoes random mutations at predictable rates. By studying mutations of mitochondrial DNA, which we only inherit from our mothers, and the Y chromosome, which boys only inherit from their fathers, scientists are able to calculate the genetic differences between various human populations around the world. Modern genetic studies have now shown that the descent of humanity from one set of common parents is certainly more than plausible.7 We can confidently believe along with the Church that we are all descended from an Adam and Eve.
Reasonable people have no trouble accepting that their actions have consequences. They recognize that if they did something objectively wrong, they will suffer for it. A more difficult kind of suffering to accept is the suffering caused as the result of an evil action of another person. In the case of Original Sin, it isn’t easy to accept that we are born guilty and fundamentally flawed as a result of a sin that may have been committed long ago by someone else.
However, just as the strict logic of love requires us to suffer from the sins of those around us, we must also suffer from sins that came before us. We are all part of the entire human family unbounded by time. Once evil has entered the human race, the human race is tainted. Since we all share human nature in common, all of us are individually tainted. Since human nature, unlike the human body, is something that is not physical and therefore outside of time, any change to human nature is outside of time. Adam’s sin fundamentally changed human nature for all of humanity in a way that it is outside of time and for all time.
So what actually happened in the Garden of Eden?
Blinded by self-love, Satan refused to serve God and to acknowledge the limitations of his own nature. He seduced the first humans, Adam and Eve, by selling them on the notion that “they shall be as gods” if they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — in other words, if they determine and choose for themselves what is good and evil. Determining what is good and evil is determining what is real and true. To do so is to appropriate to themselves a power that exclusively belongs to the Creator who determines the nature of each thing when he creates it.
Determining what is good and evil shall then make them “as gods.” Grasping at being gods themselves is an act of rebellion against their natures and against the Creator. It is an attempt to define what they are, to make themselves in whatever image they choose. It is an attempt to create their own reality. Making your own rules for what is good and evil for you means choosing your own nature. It is an arrogant delusion. Only God is Existence, and therefore Reality. Becoming gods in their own right is of course something that cannot be granted by the Creator. It is a logical absurdity that contradicts their natures as created and dependent beings. God is by definition an independent and uncreated being who cannot be created by anything or anyone. Thus, he cannot create another God, for then that God would be created. Of course, Satan wants Adam and Eve to do what he did when he grasped at dominion, a power he was not created to have.
When God placed Adam and Eve in their new home, the Garden of Eden, like a modern real estate broker, he literally gave them a walk through before they took possession, describing its features and comforts. They were given dominion and were free to use and eat everything as they wished, except for that one thing: they were not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Simplistically, particularly with our poor Bible translations, someone might think that the knowledge of good and evil is the same thing as saying the knowledge of right and wrong. Just because someone knows that there is right and wrong, or even has knowledge that evil or wrong things exist, does not create culpability or taint that person. The Greek word for knowledge used here is γνωστος or gnostos. While the word does mean to “know,” it also has the connotation of “acquaintance.” Therefore, to have knowledge of good and evil is to be acquainted with good and evil. To be acquainted with something implies more than simply having an intellectual understanding; it suggests an experience of that something. The word translated here as “knowing” is even a Jewish idiom for sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. As we know from the Church Fathers, existence is a good and therefore evil is the lack of the existence of the good. Obviously, for a living thing to lose its existence is to die. That is the basis of God’s warning. Even though they were not yet subject to death, Adam and Eve clearly knew what death was. Eve herself said to the serpent, “God said, ‘You shall not eat from it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die’” (Genesis 3:3). Evil is the lack of the existence of the good, which is God. God couldn’t be more clear, a rejection of the good is a rejection of God and of existence, a lack of existence is death. Eve understands this. The fruit from this tree is so bad, so noxious, that not just eating it, but simply touching it will cause death. Any separation at all from God inevitably results in death either suddenly or by degrees.
The serpent’s response is interesting—both a lie and true. He says, “You shall not die by death. For God knows that the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:4-5). What does the seemingly contradictory statement “you shall not die by death” mean? Some Church Fathers take this to mean that their bodies will not die and they will not decay in the grave. But that is not true, for bodily death is the wages of their sin and they do indeed die. What does “death” then mean? How can the serpent’s statement also be true? What kind of death could he be talking about? The Greek word for “gods” used here is the word θεος or theos, the same word that is used to refer to God as the supreme divinity throughout the Bible, including by Eve and the serpent in this passage. Since God’s primary characteristic is Being or Existence, by knowing good and evil, by manipulating existence and non-existence, Adam and Eve shall be on God’s exalted level. The serpent is telling Eve that she shall not just be in the image of God, but she shall have her own separate God-like existence. What the serpent is tempting her with is the divine. If Adam and Eve are gods, particularly supreme gods, they cannot die, even if their bodies die; hence, they would not “die by death.” The existence given to them by God may disappear or “die” but they will carry on as “gods” separately from God. They already possess immortal souls from their creation that cannot “die by death.” In short, they would exist the way Satan does, though he conveniently neglects to mention what his separate existence of eternal self annihilation is really like. The divinization that he is tempting her with is completely opposite to the deification offered by the triune God. It is the dead-end worship of the self rather than limitless deification in Love in the community of the Trinity.
He is also tempting her with the promise of dominion. As an angel, Lucifer was not given this gift of dominion; he grasped for it, but Adam and Eve already have it. However, Adam and Eve’s dominion is shared with the triune God and will only be complete and permanent upon their deification. It is not exclusively their own. Eve knows this — she isn’t stupid enough to be tempted by a dominion she and Adam already possess. The serpent has to offer something different — something higher and more enticing. What the serpent is tempting them with is the desire for the highest dominion, exclusively possessed by theos or the supreme God—the dominion that determines the very existence or non-existence of things, the “knowledge of good and evil.” But in reality, the serpent is not offering them anything at all, since his dominion is a fantasy, nothing more than a share in his eternal self-annihilation. He is attempting to cheat them of something they already have, the dominion they share with God, who is the very definition of dominion, being, and existence. This is why Jesus says that Satan was a “liar from the beginning.”8 He lied to himself at his creation, then he seduced others with lies. He will never stop.
What is the serpent’s motivation here with Eve? Envy. His pride makes him envious. He was the most beautiful of all created things. His destiny was to serve not only God, but also humans, who will be in God’s image and likeness, which Lucifer never can be. His destiny was to carry God’s glory to Creation and be a reflection of that magnificent and luminous glory. Now he is darkness in the image of a snake — one of the ugliest and most vile of all things. He wants Adam and Eve to be like him. In a grotesque way, if Adam and Eve are in the image of God and now they also take on Satan’s image, Satan may think that his image then joins with God’s image through them?9
Of course, envy is one of the seven deadly sins exactly because it wishes to annihilate the very thing that it can’t possess. It is anti-being, anti-existence, anti-love, and therefore anti-God. It is the ideal vice for someone like the serpent, who has chosen eternal self-annihilation. The seductions of the serpent never really change.10
The serpent tempts Eve by taking advantage of the “God-shaped hole” in her and in all of us. The God-shaped hole is there to cause us to desire God, not to desire to be gods ourselves. The purpose for which we are given the hole is to draw us closer to God. Rather than fill the space with God, the serpent convinces her that it can be filled with her own existence, something that seems to her to be even better than God and is strictly and selfishly hers. She thinks that she can accomplish this and be a God on her own once she has the God-like “knowledge of good and evil” — the power to choose what is right and wrong and thereby create her own nature. Perhaps she doesn’t fully trust God? Or, is it simply her own grasping pride?
However, as the serpent already knows full well, there is no existence apart from God. Attempting to be independent of God is to be separated from life; it is death. A classic trick of the serpent’s is to induce humans to distort a good impulse for something for which it was never intended. He will use this strategy on Adam and Eve’s descendants over and over and over again with good results. Sex will be turned into lust, hunger into gluttony, self-respect into vanity, etc. Another classic strategy of the serpent’s makes its first appearance here as well. He seeks to create suspicion and disunity. Here he says, “God knows in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened” (Genesis 3:4) to suggest that God is purposely keeping something from Eve in order to keep her down, even oppressed. Satan is the first conspiracy theorist and grievance merchant. Of course, he also employs another classic strategy—an appeal to vanity. She could be even greater, she could be a theos if she weren’t being held back. The serpent always wants us to feel insecure and covetous so that he can offer us false security and false goods. If Eve is indeed aware of the God given hole inside of her, then why take a risk to trust and depend upon God to fill it? Why not just eliminate him and solve the problem herself as the serpent suggests?
"Magisterium,” Wikipedia, accessed May 5, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magisterium.
There is a tremendous difference between the proper exercise of papal teaching authority as defined by Tradition and the First Vatican Council and the fallible personal opinions and babblings of modern popes in spontaneous interviews on airplanes, social media, etc. For an authoritative discussion of papal authority, see:
“Vatican I's Dogmatic Constitution Pastor aeternus, (on the Church of Christ),” EWTN, accessed May 5, 2025, https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/teachings/vatican-is-dogmatic-constitution-pastor-aeternus-on-the-church-of-christ-243.
Another conspiracy theory? Why is there no English translation on the Vatican website of Pastor aeturnus, one of the most significant documents ever written on papal authority, yet you can read documents slyly promoting the heresy of synodality in several major languages?
He means the First Vatican Council not the Second Vatican Council.
The Church is eventually proven right yet again.
"Monogenism,” Wikipedia, accessed May 5, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogenism.
“The Galileo Controversy,” Catholic.com, accessed May 6, 2025, https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-galileo-controversy.
Ola Hössjer and Ann Gauger, “A Single Couple Human Origin Is Possible,” Bio-Complexity, October 21, 2019, https://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2019.1/BIO-C.2019.1.d
Actually, Jesus said Satan was a “murderer from the beginning” and that he was “the father of lies” (John 8:44).
Of course, he is also looking for followers of his own. To quote the Nobel laureate Bob Dylan,
You're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.
Envy remains a temptation not only in individual lives, but also in diabolically inspired political ideologies, such as socialism, that try to dress up their envy as virtue with the lie that they are only demanding “justice” because other people’s success is intrinsically oppressive to them.