What we lost in Eden and how to get it back

Why the "gender roles" debate is too shallow

The New York Times recently released a podcast asking, “Did women ruin the workplace?”

It sparked the usual debate about gender roles in marriage and society. Should women work or stay home?

The podcast was insightful, but the conversation surrounding it was too narrow (as gender role debates often are.)

We’re arguing about the division of labor when we should be talking about something deeper—what marriage was supposed to be before sin broke it.

The workplace debate is downstream from marriage. If we get marriage wrong, we’ll get everything else wrong too.

Christ’s Appeal to the Beginning

When the Pharisees asked Jesus if divorce was lawful, He said: “Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of your hearts, but in the beginning it was not so.” (Mt 19:8).

For John Paul II, this verse is key. Christ is pointing back to Eden, to marriage before the fall. He’s saying the true meaning of marriage has been lost to us, broken after the fall. And He came to restore it.

But restore it to what?

To answer that, we have to go back to the beginning.

The Threefold Vocation

Edith Stein points out three verses where God reveals his purpose for making man: “Let us make man in our image” (Gen 1:26), to till and keep the garden (Gen 2:15), and to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28).

She calls this the Threefold Vocation of Man in the garden:

1. Till the earth

2. Fill the earth

3. Image the Trinity

Eve’s body was built for filling the earth—her body is designed to bear and nourish children. Adam’s body was built for tilling the earth—strong muscles, consistent, designed for physical labor.

Eve was made as Adam’s helpmate in tilling. And Adam has an obvious role in helping Eve fill the earth. Each of them has a primary role in the first two parts of the threefold vocation, but they need each other. In this collaboration, working together, they achieve something greater than what they could do on their own, the third vocation: Image the Trinity.

That’s what complementarity actually means.

Not merely “men go to work, women stay home.” But two people becoming greater than the sum of their parts. The two sexes collaborate in such a way that they become an icon of God.

Adam’s body reveals Eve’s vocation. Eve’s body reveals Adam’s vocation. It’s impossible for them to do their vocations without each other.

What the Fall Broke

After the fall, both Adam and Eve now experience pain in their primary vocation. Adam would undergo pain in his labor. Eve would undergo pain in childbearing (Gen 3:16-17).

And that pain created a rift between them. They covered their bodies, symbolically hiding their role in marriage from the other.

Here’s what this looks like today.

A man fears he’ll be used as a tool, just a paycheck for financial stability, not loved as a person. A woman fears she’ll be seen as an object for sex, not loved as a person. A husband resents the pressure to provide for his family. A wife resents the difficulty of raising children.

This pain and fear underpins our debates on gender roles.

What Christ Restored

When Christ elevated marriage to a sacrament, He gave husbands and wives the grace needed to remove the fig leaves and see the meaning of each other’s vocation.

He made it possible for Christian spouses to return to Eden.

In Christian marriage, you’re given the grace to soften your hearts toward each other. Animated by Christian charity, you see your spouse not as a threat nor as an object but as a person to be loved.

You are naked without shame again.

This is what a well-lived Christian marriage looks like: two people who refuse to let fear win. Who trust each other enough to work together toward something greater than either of them can do alone.

If you’re married in the Church, you already have this grace. You have the capacity to look at your spouse and see not a competitor or a threat, but a collaborator. Someone whose vocation reveals something about God that yours cannot.

We are still called to the threefold vocation: till the earth, fill the earth, image the Trinity.

And only in Christian marriage can you do all three.