How NOT To Get Away with Murder
Jan 19, 2020
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Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute’s Newman Forum. Open to current high school students.
The book of Genesis is one of the most interesting and difficult books of the Bible. And there is so much more to it than meets the eye. For example:
When the snake approaches Eve for the first time, he asks her: “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?” But that isn't what God said at all. He told Adam, "You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil." Already, the snake has changed God's command in order to make God appear unjust. God says: all but one. The snake says: none at all, right? Eve is in trouble--she wasn't there when God gave Adam the original command. She hadn't been created yet. If she heard the command at all, she heard it second-hand from Adam. As you can see, the snake is very devious.
This 90-minute seminar will investigate this and other passages in the 3rd and 4th chapters of Genesis. By reading the text closely and paying attention to what is (and isn't) there, we will discover a whole new complexity to the relationship between God, the first four humans, and the snake. Not only is God revealed as imminently just and merciful, but also as a very acute observer of human psychology!
Resources from the seminar are drawn from Joseph Ratzinger's (Pope Bendict's) In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall.
There is no charge for the seminar, but a good-will donation of $10 is encouraged.
On February 15, the Newman Forum will host a day-long conference for high school students on "Creation: Artistic & Divine."
IMAGE: The First Mourning by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1888 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
