Posted on 07/08/2026 10:40:15 AM PDT by ebb tide
A new essay in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano examining the Book of Genesis argues that the narrative does not deal primarily with the devil and original sin, in contrast with the traditional interpretation.
On July 4, L’Osservatore Romano – the official newspaper of the Holy See – published an article by Italian theologian Marinella Perroni, according to whom in the Genesis narrative there is no trace of either the devil or original sin in the sense in which Christian Tradition has interpreted them. On the contrary, Perroni contends, the original text describes the “relationship between God and humanity” rather than the action of Satan or a doctrine of inherited guilt.
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The article begins by examining the opening chapters of Genesis, where God places humanity in the Garden of Eden “to cultivate it and guard it” (Genesis 2:15). Perroni noted that the biblical account presents Eden as a place of “both beauty and danger,” where human beings encounter the limits of their created condition. According to the essay, the central issue of the narrative is humanity’s desire to become “like God” by seeking access to what belongs only to the divine.
The Genesis account identifies three main figures: the serpent, the woman, and the fruit. Perroni says that the text simply refers to a fruit from a garden where all trees were described as pleasing and good for food. The serpent appears as a creature associated with deception, but the article argues that the Genesis passage itself does not identify it with Satan or a supernatural evil power.
“One of antiquity’s most poignant religious myths thus reveals, in just a few lines, both the greatness and the misery of the human being – the most extraordinary of creatures, the one closest to the divine, yet at the same time the only one burdened with the bitter awareness of not being God,” Perroni states.
“The dialogue between the snake and the woman is the first great theological discourse in the Bible,” the theologian continues. “To be like God – that is, to be able to eat from the tree of life.… It is quite beautiful that, in Eden, the woman takes on the role of the one who has the courage to enter into this desire, to claim the right to it and to discuss its limits, to help define that insurmountable boundary that separates humans from God, with no possibility of negotiation whatsoever.”
And again, she adds with great confidence that, “In the ancient biblical myth commonly called the Fall, there is no devil, no divine power to which human beings are subject.” According to Perroni, the account in Genesis 3 speaks only of the “contradiction” whereby “being of God, chosen by God, does not mean being like God. And in this lies the inexhaustible tension between humanity and the divine – there is no sin.”
To support her interpretation, the theologian notes that, “in the Bible – especially in the prophetic writings – sin is mentioned frequently, but always to condemn the people’s turning away from God’s Law, the kings’ warlike choices, the infidelity to the covenant God wished to establish with Israel. Always in relation to historical events, never with reference to Eve’s transgression.”
Anticipating the objection that scriptural books such as Wisdom or, later, the Pauline letters make explicit reference to Original Sin, the Italian theologian turns to the historical‑critical method.
“Quite late – starting around the sixth century BC – the speculation on evil spirits, common to all ancient belief systems, introduced additional elements into Jewish and Christian theology, such as the angels who rebelled against God and were cast into hell, thereby beginning to alter its original features.”
Consequently, according to Perroni, even classical angelology and demonology would be the product of mythologies.
The writer then argues that the Gospels contain mythological distortions: “This idea, however, entered Christian theology very early, as the entire New Testament tradition shows – from the accounts of Jesus’ temptations to the Book of Revelation. And the chief of the fallen angels would take on many names: devil, Satan, dragon, ancient serpent, Beelzebul.”
“Paul, for his part, echoes an interpretation of the story of the woman’s creation that evidently circulated in the Judaism of his time and that established the hierarchy of the sexes as a creaturely law,” the theologian adds. “And later, one of his disciples would intensify it (cf. 1 Timothy 2:13–15). These are the first steps of a mortgage that would weigh heavily on subsequent Christian Tradition.”
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“Thanks to a childish catechism and relentless preaching, the idea remains carved in stone that precisely there, in that first transgression – entirely attributed to the woman and her relationship with the demon – lies an original fault, a condemnation from which no human being can ever escape,” Perroni continues, adding that “feminist battles inside and outside the churches have demanded a rethinking of Eve’s role and the liberation of her figure from the burdens of guilt accumulated over millennia.”
Perroni taught New Testament theology at the Pontifical Athenaeum of Sant’Anselmo in Rome, where she served as a professor for many years. Her academic work focuses on the Gospels, Pauline literature, and the presence and role of women in the earliest Christian communities, an area in which she is considered a leading voice.
She is also a founding member and former president (2003–2013) of the Coordination of Italian Theologians, the main association of Italian female theologians, and has published extensively on biblical studies with a feminist focus, and “gender studies” in Scripture.
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Ping
This!!!
Thanks Ebb
Chip away...chip away...chip away at each element of the story of Creation! It’s all leading to the ultimate loss of Faith among the believers.
Pick a bishop....
Editor needs OCIA more than a job.
Great marketing tactic. Tell the sinners that sin does not exist so there’s no reason to feel guilty as long as you join our cult, pray to the statues and ask the man in a robe behind a window (God only knows where his hands are below the sill) for forgiveness.
I’m a Christian. I bypass the middleman and pray directly to God.
This garbage violates so much Biblical truth and theology. It is disgusting and vile heresy.
I don’t understand how anyone who reads their Bibles can be Catholic, honestly. All it is, is tradition.
I am sure there will be Catholic people in heaven, but that organization is sure doing the devils work.
Yet the vast majority of "conservative" Catholics has absolutely no trouble with either. Look at the conservative Catholics on FR. They sound so conservative defending the "one true church" and yet they are theistic evolutionists and higher critics (not you, Ebb). They invoke the uniformity of nature to dismiss any and every supernatural event in the Hebrew Bible but then discard it when it comes to the "new testament." Is there even an authorized Catholic (or Orthodox) version of the Bible that doesn't assume both evolution and higher criticism from the very beginning?
It's amazing to me that any sort of "religious conservative" can quote the Book of Daniel to justify chrstianity while simultaneously claiming it is a pseudepigraph from the time of the Chashmonaim!
I first became a follower of Christ thirty years ago this coming November. I didn't understand some things then. I don't understand just as many if not more than that now.
I have lived long enough however to not doubt God, or His Word. I have seen things that don't seem possible, except accepting that there is much in this world than can be explained by science of physics or medicine or mind.
If I can believe those, then I can absolutely trust God's Word on things that I haven't seen.
I may not understand them, but I can believe them.
If scripture teaches that sin entered the world through man's misbehavior, and that all has been accursed ever since, then I can believe it.
This newspaper is publishing heresy. And that goes for whether one is a Catholic, a nondenominational Christian, a Protestant, an Orthodox, or most other flavors of Christianity.
I am not a Catholic but I am going to pray that that body of believers can right their ship, if this article by their official newspaper is any indication.
Is there a point where one says;
“Enough Is Enough!” -?
.
“Hath God Truly Said”..?
.
It Truly makes Me sad that
In this twisted world So
Many are looking for a ‘Rock’
A Foundation, some Thing to
Believe In. The ‘Universalist’
Church is in Big Trouble.
This is gibberish. Sex has nothing to do with the Fall, despite what unbelieving mockers keep wanting to read into the text.
Next up: No God?
born and raised catholic, I heard every day “God will punish you for that” and “god will punish you for that”
so I gew up believing that god was a mean man in the sky who hated me.
decades ;ater. I went to another kind of religious service that was wonderful and never set foot in a catholic church again,
Because God doesn’t count the transgression against Eve - He counts it against Adam. At least as far as *original* sin goes. Eve has sinned, but her curse is only against child birth AND it comes with a blessing - the promise of the Messiah. Adam’s curse is against all Mankind and can only be redeemed BY that Messiah. This woman is dead wrong - God is explicit that this is a sin, but accounts it against Adam and all of Humanity inherits it through Adam. So that the Second Adam can absolve it for all Humanity in the same way.
Of course not. God told them to be fruitful and multiply. How is that going to happen without sex?
Interesting observation...
I could not agree with your first line more.
Your second and third lines are in contradiction. Truth is somewhere between the two.
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