Question:
What would be the results if only Eve sinned and Adam resisted eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? How would it differ from the way events played out according to the Bible?
Answer:
It’s a theologically speculative question. Genesis 2:15 provides, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” The Hebrew word for “keep” the garden is “shamar.” One of its meanings is “to guard.” In that light, one can argue in your scenario that Adam’s failure to guard the garden and his wife from the machinations of the devil would make him complicit in her sin. And so he would have sinned too.
In any event, in reality Adam and Eve were both participants in original sin (CCC 390; 396ff.).
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