Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?

Lesson 45 –
Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?

The Catholic faith holds that God has revealed to us that we are all descendants of Adam, the name we assign to the first true human being, who was created in grace—and that, because he sinned, we all inherit from him as his descendants a wounded and fallen human nature.

Course Reading

Summa Theologiae I q. 95, aa. 1-2 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologiae I q. 95, aa. 3-4 | St. Thomas Aquinas

For a deeper dive into this topic, we recommend the following resources:

William Lane Craig, “The Historical Adam” (First Things, 2021)

David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past

Excerpt from the Summa Theologiae I q. 95, a.1:

[T]he very rectitude of the primitive state, wherewith man was endowed by God, seems to require that, as others say, he was created in grace, according to Eccles. 7:30, "God made man right." For this rectitude consisted in his reason being subject to God, the lower powers to reason, and the body to the soul: and the first subjection was the cause of both the second and the third; since while reason was subject to God, the lower powers remained subject to reason, as Augustine says [*Cf. De Civ. Dei xiii, 13; De Pecc. Merit. et Remiss. i, 16]. Now it is clear that such a subjection of the body to the soul and of the lower powers to reason, was not from nature; otherwise it would have remained after sin; since even in the demons the natural gifts remained after sin, as Dionysius declared (Div. Nom. iv). Hence it is clear that also the primitive subjection by virtue of which reason was subject to God, was not a merely natural gift, but a supernatural endowment of grace; for it is not possible that the effect should be of greater efficiency than the cause.