An Apologetical Explanation of the

Protoevangelium

What is the Protoevangelium?

The Lord God said to the serpent,

   “Because you have done this … / I will put enmity between you and the woman, / and between your seed and her seed; / he shall bruise your head, / and you shall bruise his heel.”  (Gn 3:14-15)

The Protoevangelium, or “First Gospel,” refers to the passage in the Book of Genesis in which, immediately after the sin of Adam and Eve, God first promised to send a Redeemer.

Not long after Adam and Eve had committed the Original Sin, God made it clear that a “woman” and her seed would defeat the Evil One.  From the beginning, Christian writers have called this assurance the Protoevangelium, the first prophesy of the Messiah who would bring salvation to all people.  (Cf. CCC 410)

Early Christian writers elaborated extensively on the Protoevangelium, applying the names New Adam and New Eve respectively to Jesus the Messiah and the Blessed Virgin Mary, his Mother.  Christ, the New Adam, made reparation for the disobedience of the first Adam, becoming “obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8; cf. 1 Cor 15:21-22, 45; Rom 5:19-20).  Christ’s selfless and humble obedience to the will of his Father brought about the redemption of the world.  (Cf. CCC 411)

In light of the Good News of Jesus Christ, we understand that the “woman” symbolizes the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Her obedience and humble “yes” to the Archangel Gabriel was the necessary condition for the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Savior.  As St. Irenæus taught: “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience; what the virgin Eve bound through her unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosened by her faith” (Against Heresies, III, 22, 4: Harvey, 2, 124).  Only when she had accepted the invitation to be the Mother of the Savior was Christ conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.  (Cf. CCC 148, 511)

In radical contrast to the disobedience of the first Eve, who prompted Adam to bring sin into the world, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the New Eve, cooperated with God to bring about the remedy for sin and win for everyone the possibility of redemption.  Her seed, Jesus Christ, bruised the head of the serpent, the Devil.  By taking on the sins of all people to release us from our sins and lead us to everlasting life, Christ conquered the Devil once and for all, thus fulfilling the words of the Protoevangelium.  (Cf CCC 489, 494, 726, 975, 2853)

The Catechism addresses this question in paragraph 410.

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