Why was Eve made from a rib of Adam?
Eve is not presented as a separate creature but as derived from the very life of Adam, so that all mankind might be by origin one, and naturally disposed to love and defend one another, for God “made from one every nation of men” (Act 17:26; see Q015, Q607).
The unity of Man was thus not divided by Eve’s creation, as Adam himself confessed: “This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because from Man she was taken!” (Gen 2:23; see Q252).
God’s creating does not produce disunity: it brings forth love through a multiplication and distribution which is not division, an earthly icon of the Trinity itself, in whom distinction of Persons entails no division of nature. Disintegration, by contrast, is the work of the Evil One and the fruit of sin, which arrives with blame: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate” (Gen 3:12; see Q159).
