Did Adam and Eve have children before the Fall?

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ChristRocket

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I have often contemplated whether or not it was possible for Adam and Eve to have children inside the garden of Eden. After all, they were created for the purpose of becoming one flesh. I’ve heard it explained that the one flesh is the bond between the two sexes, once the conjugal act is commited, but I’ve also heard (which would also make sense) that the child that is created from them (which in most cases would be just one) would be the “one” that is explained as one flesh.
Would it be Anathema to suggest that they had children inside of the Garden?
I don’t think that there is anything that suggests within the text of Genesis, that this is an impossiblity.
 
And on a related note: if concupiscence and its related physical drives and passions are a result of the Fall, how would intercourse have been different in the Garden? Passionless? Unemotional? Minimally pleasurable?
 
In the first creation account-
Gen 1:28
“God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.* Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth.”
It was part of Gods commandments, before the fall.
 
If they had, wouldn’t such children and their descendants be free from original sin?
 
Tarpeian_Rock said:
And on a related note: if concupiscence and its related physical drives and passions are a result of the Fall, how would intercourse have been different in the Garden? Passionless? Unemotional? Minimally pleasurable?
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Huh? It’s part of God’s plan that sex be unitive. Only disordered sex drives are the result of sin. Far more likely, before the fall, sex was far more pleasurable as it would have been perfectly aligned with God’s will.
 
Its a creation myth. Don’t go getting worked up about a literal interpretation and its logical consequences.

Your view that sexual desire is a result of disobedience from a God is troubling. Read up on human sexuality from academics, there is nothing inherently wrong or evil about experiencing sexual desires.
 
Tarpeian_Rock said:
And on a related note: if concupiscence and its related physical drives and passions are a result of the Fall, how would intercourse have been different in the Garden? Passionless? Unemotional? Minimally pleasurable?
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It’s not that there were no passions or physical drives before the fall. It’s just that they were rightly ordered. They didn’t control Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve controlled them. But that doesn’t mean they were Vulcans. 😉 They still felt love and joy.

Since there was happiness and pleasure in the garden, there’s no reason to think sex would have been less pleasurable before the fall. If anything, it probably was more.
 
Allegra said:
If they had, wouldn’t such children and their descendants be free from original sin?
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No, because when they fell, it would have affected all of man kind. It would not have left anyone unaffected. Personally, looking at the language, Adam meaning “Man” and Eve meaning “Mother,” it may have referenced to Man and Woman in general. And… leading up to their second son, after the fall, finding a wife, it makes you ask, where did she come from if they had no children before the fall?
 
Todd977 said:
St Justin Martyr, writing about 155 A.D. in his work Dialogue with Trypho, 100, and St Irenaeus, writing about 189 A.D. in his work Against Heresies, 3, 22, both say Eve was still a virgin at the time she and Adam committed the first sin.
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I haven’t read the readings, but perhaps, because of everything being in perfect harmony within the Garden, she would not have been considered a non-virgin by having sex, whereas virginity references to purity, how could she have ever been impure before the fall even with having sex?
 
This question is nonsensical since the existence of two people from which all humans descended is easily falsified by modern genetics.
 
Allegra said:
If they had, wouldn’t such children and their descendants be free from original sin?
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Yes. Because those children would not have been “in Adam” at the time of his disobedience.

Ah…so this is where the Immortals come from…no original sin…no death. Sound like a great plot for a TV series. 👍
 
Neither Genesis nor the* Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition* teach that Adam and his spouse Eve had children before the Original Sin. The contracted State of Original Sin is transmitted by propagation not by imitation.
Information source. CCC 404-405;* Humani Generis*, 37
 
ChristRocket said:
I haven’t read the readings, but perhaps, because of everything being in perfect harmony within the Garden, she would not have been considered a non-virgin by having sex, whereas virginity references to purity, how could she have ever been impure before the fall even with having sex?
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Virginity isn’t the same as chastity. Virginity means not having had sex before. Chastity is sexual purity.
 
Randy_Carson said:
Yes. Because those children would not have been “in Adam” at the time of his disobedience.

Ah…so this is where the Immortals come from…no original sin…no death. Sound like a great plot for a TV series. 👍
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Actually… It does!
But really, perhaps Adam symbolized ALL men and EVE symbolized all women. We’ve always (Since the Early Church Fathers) looked at Genesis as Allegorical-why not?

By the way Randy-nice Forum Master status. 14k posts!!
 
ChristRocket said:
This isn’t true-in fact, science has proven that modern man comes from 1 male and 1 female-
Genetic Adam and Eve-Here
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DId you even read the article? You suffer from confirmation bias. Here is a quote from the article:

Despite their overlap in time, ancient “Adam” and ancient “Eve” probably didn’t even live near each other, let alone mate.
“Those two people didn’t know each other,” said Melissa Wilson Sayres, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley.
 
“…probably didn’t even live near each other”
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Probably, is what the article said. Not positively. And the particular person quoted wasn’t even part of the study.

You said previously that the claim that we decended from 2 was easily falsified.

Well, this first of all isn’t an absolute study, nor is it a fully complete study and second of all it DOES say that we can trace most men back to 1 male Ancestor and most Women to 1 common ancestor.
Whether or not it “proves” the biblical story or not, it’s still interesting.
 
ChristRocket said:
This isn’t true-in fact, science has proven that modern man comes from 1 male and 1 female-
Genetic Adam and Eve-Here
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Even *Wikipedia *warns that the genetic Eve cannot be the original Eve because the “media” Eve in the 1987 research article by Rebecca Cann et al is one of many females living at that time. By the way, science absolutely denies a population of two as the founders of the human species.

However, Divine Revelation Trumps.

From link in post 16

"Adam and Eve?
These primeval people aren’t parallel to the biblical Adam and Eve. They weren’t the first modern humans on the planet, but instead just the two out of thousands of people alive at the time with unbroken male or female lineages that continue on today."
 
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