In our deepest convictions, reaching into the very depths of our being, we deserve to live forever. We experience our transitoriness and mortality as an act of violence perpetrated against us. Only Paradise is authentic; the world is inauthentic, and only temporary. That is why the story of the Fall speaks to us so emotionally, as if summoning an old truth from our slumbering memory.

—CZESLAW MILOSZ, Milosz’s ABCs

The church fathers, and not only Augustine, condemned as heresy the assertion that Adam, along with Eve, was damned for all eternity. They in fact became saints, their day falling on December 24. They ultimately advanced to patrons—not as might be expected of the planters of orchards, but rather—of the guild of tailors. After all, they were the first human beings to wear clothes. And God the Father had sewn their garments Himself.

—KURT FLASCH, Eva und Adam