The Literal Meaning of Genesis
15. The vast number of angels in the heavenly city cannot be adduced as proof that man and woman would not be joined in conjugal union if they were not to die. Indeed, the perfect number of saints destined to rise and join the angels was foreseen by the Lord when He said, In the resurrection they will neither be married nor take wives; for they will not be sulyect to death, but will enjoy equality with the angels of God.* Here, indeed, the earth was to be filled with men, and in view of the close ties of relationship and the bond of unity so earnestly desired, it was to be populated by men from one common ancestor. For what other purpose, then, was a female helper similar to the man sought unless it was to have the female sex assist in the sowing of the human race, as the fertility of the earth does in the sowing of crops?
CHAPTER 10
If Adam bad not sinned, procreation would have taken place in
Paradise without the ardor of passion.
16. Nevertheless, it may be better and more fitting to assume that the natural bodies of the couple put in Paradise were of such a nature that, before they were condemned to die, they did not have an appetite for carnal pleasure such as our bodies, sprung from mortal stock, today possess. One cannot say that nothing happened in Adam and Eve when they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. God had not said to them, "If you eat of it, you shall die," but, /n the day that you eat of it you shall die.3° The result was that that very day wrought in them what St. Paul laments when he says: / delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Unhappy man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? The grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.4° It would not be sufficient if he said, 'Who will deliver me from this mortal body?" But he said, from this body of death. In a similar way he says elsewhere, The body indeed is dead because of stn.*} He did not say, '""The body is mortal," but, The body is dead, al-