Studenica Monastery, Central Serbia, July Of 1931. Photo By Slovene Ethnographer Matija Murko.

Studenica monastery, central Serbia, July of 1931. Photo by Slovene ethnographer Matija Murko.

Why Eve Was More Courageous Than Adam

Why did the serpent not attack the man, rather than the woman? You say he went after her because she was the weaker of the two.

On the contrary. In the transgression of the commandment, she showed herself to be the stronger... For she alone stood up to the serpent. She ate from the tree, but with resistance and dissent and after being dealt with perfidiously.

But Adam partook of the fruit given by the woman, without even beginning to make a fight, without a word of contradiction - a perfect demonstration of consummate weakness and a cowardly soul. The woman, moreover, can be excused; she wrestled with a demon and was thrown. But Adam will not be able to find an excuse... he had personally received the commandment from God.

☦︎ St. Irenaeus, 2nd Century

Trawling through Orthodox tags and it’s like 50% my own posts, what the heck guys. My back hurts from carrying the Orthoblr universe.

Why we trying to glorify and place virtue on an act that explicitly a failure of trust and lack of faith in God

We’re not. I recommend reading about the issues and dissent against the Christian faith during the time of St. Irenaeus in the 2nd century to get an idea of what his writings were a response to. He was not saying that Eve was the height of virtue, he was responding to the Romans who accused the holy scriptures of falsehood; accusations of Adam having demonic tendencies to defy God; and accusations of God having created Eve imperfectly, saying that she was created without proper brain function with malicious intent on the Creator’s part.

The quote that I posted was only a part of a bigger dispute. This is not man vs woman.