Adam and Eve: Real or just representation of events

  • Thread starter Thread starter Teneas
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
TimeToGrow said:
Hello Larkin31,

Maybe this will help!

CCC

375 The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice”. This grace of original holiness was “to share in. . .divine life”.

What does this Mean to you… At first glance it seems simple but it is actually more complex. There is a lot more there than most think. Do these statements mean what others think it means. Do you know why it wouldn’t make a differance when Adam and Eve were created by reading this…

The Church is interpreting the sybolism of Biblical languages in an Authentic way in light of NT Scripture and Tradition, it teachees that OUR first parents. The Churches first parents. Those predesdended before the Foundation of the World.
Click to expand...
I certainly would like to know “why it wouldn’t make a difference when Adam and Eve were created by reading this.” Unfortunately, I see both positive and negative so I am very interested in your view point. Thank you.
 
jmcrae said:
Yes. It is de fide that Heaven is populated with Angels and human beings (persons physically descended from Adam and Eve) along with the Three Persons of the Godhead. No other beings are up there.

Animals have a material soul which vanishes when they die, just as the flame of a candle vanishes when it is blown out. This is why it is okay to kill an animal to put it out of its suffering (since there is no redemption for animals, and thus, its suffering is not redemptive) but not a human being.
Click to expand...
Interesting.

Are the de fide dimensions also those of St. John’s vision?
 
grannymh said:
I certainly would like to know “why it wouldn’t make a difference when Adam and Eve were created by reading this.” Unfortunately, I see both positive and negative so I am very interested in your view point. Thank you.
Click to expand...
Hello Granymh,

There is alot more to all this.

I’m trying to be a delicate as I can for less mature or inocent folks out there. In a certain way the Lord through Adam and Eve is impregnating his Creation with spiritual beings. They are in fact a covenant Man and Woman… To better under stand things it helps to know what Adam and Eve’s sin was and how this related to the rest of the Human Race. Adam had failed in his purpose not because what he did was sin in regaurds to what the human race was doing, although they may have been corrupt before they had knowledge of sin… But Adam wasn’t faithful to the Lord and what he commanded of him.

In a way and parden me for being a bit criptic. When the Lord was commanding Israel to not eat certain things and to abstain from certain things was the rest of the world sinning because the Lord commanded Israel not to do certain things. No they weren’t. He was in fact Their God, He had chosen them for his purpose and commanded things within a covenant relationship.

It’s all really simple but because of peoples levels of understanding in both scripture and the catechism it requires a lot of typing and things that may should be said in a more private setting. The Leaders in the Churches knowledge far exceeds what written in the catechism most the time… Its for us lay people “most” the time.

Peace and Godbless…
 
Teneas said:
Like the title says. What say all of you to this.

Were Adam and Eve actually people?

Or were they just names given to no real people and merely meant to symbolize the history of the world and falling from grace that man did?
Click to expand...
Real.
 
larkin31 said:
Hi Time To Grow.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what you just said. Can you try me again to see if I can understand? What are you claiming about first “souls”? ANd When?
Click to expand...
Hello Larkin31,

When men began to invent or reason their own god to justify their existance… Then they were ready to recieve the revelation of the One true God their true creator… Faith isn’t knowing the truth… It is a gift from God… It is the field upon which the seed of the Gospel was broadcast. It’s why the Church is so compassionate towards those of other faiths.

Peace and Godbless
 
jmcrae said:
The “beasts” he saw weren’t actually animals. They were representations of human beings and of conceptual ideas.
Click to expand...
But the angels were real? What about the angels in St. John’s visions?

And I asked, also, about the dimensions.

Thanks.
 
larkin31 said:
But the angels were real? What about the angels in St. John’s visions?

And I asked, also, about the dimensions.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Some of the Angels in St. John’s visions were actually Angels; others of them were Bishops. You can discern which is which by the context. 🙂
 
grannymh said:
said in regard to post 107.

Good catch.

The misunderstanding of Catholic teaching comes from the words “developing sentience,” Catholic teaching is that the true, first, fully complete human nature (that of Adam and Eve) consists of soul/body, rational/corporeal, spirit/matter. The spiritual soul is completely distinct from sentience which animals also have.

While there are all kinds of ramifications of original sin, the necessary Catholic understanding of original sin is ignored.

Genesis only describes the first two sole parents of the human species. The reference to a group of human beings who developed… is polygenism which the Catholic Church rejects.

Blessings,
granny

All human beings are worthy of profound respect.
Click to expand...
I don’t get it. Did I go against Catholic doctrine with my post or not? If so, I apologize, I simply was trying to be speculate on scripture because I’m not entirely sure what it means.
 
SnakeMauler said:
I don’t get it. Did I go against Catholic doctrine with my post or not? If so, I apologize, I simply was trying to be speculate on scripture because I’m not entirely sure what it means.
Click to expand...
My apology. I was referring to the broadness of the speculations which was apparently misunderstood by one of the posters. That is why the spiritual soul was emphasized as being different from sentience. There is a lot of general writing about original sin which tends to downplay its meaning. That is why it is important to go back to Catholic teaching on original sin and also on soul which is found in the *Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition. *The only thing I was trying to do to help clarification is to point out the areas which could easily be misunderstood and then point to the basic soul and the basic original sin.
I was not stepping in to declare doctrine.

Genesis is very hard to read because of the mixture of literal reality and figurative language which can lead to lots of speculation. The important doctrine is that Adam and Eve are the two soul parents of the human race. There are many posters who fudge the issue of a real Adam by referring to a group of human beings as being the founders of humanity. The technical name which appears in posts is polygenism.
The Catholic Church does reject polygenism because it opposes the doctrine of Adam as the founder of the human species.

Blessings,
granny

The quest for knowledge is worthy of the adventures of the journey.

Link to the *Catechism of the Catholic Church *
www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm
 
jmcrae said:
:confused:

Revelation 21:15-21 is about the construction of the Heavenly temple. I have no idea how that relates to what we were discussing.
Click to expand...
I asked you if you took the dimensions to be literal and accurate. We were discussing literal vs figurative descriptions of Adam and Eve, and then you said not all angels are literal, so I wondered how you read other descriptions that seem very literal in Revelations.

You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.
 
larkin31 said:
I asked you if you took the dimensions to be literal and accurate. We were discussing literal vs figurative descriptions of Adam and Eve, and then you said not all angels are literal, so I wondered how you read other descriptions that seem very literal in Revelations.

You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.
Click to expand...
May I share a personal view point. Adam and Eve are real people. Original sin is a real event. The promise regarding a Savior was kept with the real Jesus Christ. This is the information God wants us to know. When it comes to Divine Revelation, I follow the Catholic Church regarding particulars. This is why I don’t get bent out of shape over some of the details in Genesis or Revelations.

Blessings,
granny

God loves all of us from our toes to the top of our heads.
 
WhitSunday said:
Why not? God can do anything. Which is easier to believe? That God shaped Adam and Eve from dirt, or that they came from monkeys which came from birds which came from reptiles which came from fish which came from single-celled organisms?

personally, I’ll take dirt over amoebas…but I’m a poetic sort. I LOVE the idea of God making this cool mud-pie creature and then breathing life into it and shazam! it’s Adam! The CCC says that God creates each of our souls, right? Why couldn’t he create Adam and Eve’s whole persons?

just sayin’
Click to expand...
Well I’m not sure what is “easier to believe” but then, that is hardly relevant. The only relevant question is “what actually happened”. For the record, evolutionary theory does not hold that monkeys came from birds or that reptiles came from fish. Monkeys are mammals. The earliest mammals (much more primitive than apes) were pseudo-mammals with both reptilian and mammalian features. The earliest birdlike creatures were also reptilian (from totally different ancestral lines.) Not only that, but these changes are heavily and thoroughly documented in the fossil record, particularly the reptile to mammal sequence.

Of course God could do anything instantly. Our souls must have been created instantly, but nothing in nature is created instantly. Nature is bound by rules and secondary causality. Evolution doesn’t undermine creation any more than the laws of physics.
 
Rothbardcatholi said:
Well I’m not sure what is “easier to believe” but then, that is hardly relevant. The only relevant question is “what actually happened”. For the record, evolutionary theory does not hold that monkeys came from birds or that reptiles came from fish. Monkeys are mammals. The earliest mammals (much more primitive than apes) were pseudo-mammals with both reptilian and mammalian features. The earliest birdlike creatures were also reptilian (from totally different ancestral lines.) Not only that, but these changes are heavily and thoroughly documented in the fossil record, particularly the reptile to mammal sequence.

Of course God could do anything instantly. Our souls must have been created instantly, but nothing in nature is created instantly. Nature is bound by rules and secondary causality. Evolution doesn’t undermine creation any more than the laws of physics.
Click to expand...
What rules were present during the creation period?
 
larkin31 said:
I asked you if you took the dimensions to be literal and accurate. We were discussing literal vs figurative descriptions of Adam and Eve, and then you said not all angels are literal, so I wondered how you read other descriptions that seem very literal in Revelations.

You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.
Click to expand...
I’ll take the silence as a “pass”.
 
dnu said:
There was definately two “first” humans. Science has shown us that there is a “mitochondrial Eve.” That is, a women that every human being alive today is descended from. She lived about (I believe off of the top of my head) around 100,000 years ago. We know about her through molecular genetic evidence and we know of her time frame of existence due to the molecular clock calculated from internal evidences of the mitochondria.

Likewise, there is also a “Y-Chromosome Adam” that was the first male of our species. So yes, there were two “first” parents. Were these two formed from dirt approx. 6,000 years ago? For heavens sakes, NO. But, the exact date of their existence is not as important as the fact that they did exist.

Did the biblical authors believe they were really two peoples from around 4,000 b.c.? YES. But again, I would suggest that-that is irrelevant as they did not have the genetic evidence we have today. The length of time does nothing to change the fact that (whenever we came about) we fell into a state of sin and that God came to this world in the person of Jesus and brought about salvation for all who desire it.

Just my 2 cents though.

David
Click to expand...
You say that it can be traced back to 100K years ago. This seems plausible to me. I have wondered about this subject myself, and one of the concepts I was trying to rationalize is that there could have been “Humans” around for how every many years they existed. However, at some point in human history man had developed intellectually enough to perceive God and communicate with Him, or that God saw that, at this point in time of human history, that man was intellectually advanced enough to reveal Himself to them and Start His relationship with us. Adam and Eve were the first two that were intellectually advanced enough to perceive and communicate with God. The reason I have come to this train of thought is after Cain killed Able in Genesis 4:13-17:

13 Cain said to the LORD: “My punishment is too great to bear.
14 Since you have now banished me from the soil, and I must avoid your presence and become a restless wanderer on the earth, anyone may kill me at sight.”
15 Not so!" the LORD said to him. “If anyone kills Cain, Cain shall be avenged sevenfold.” So the LORD put a mark on Cain, lest anyone should kill him at sight.
16 Cain then left the LORD’S presence and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
17 Cain had relations with his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. Cain also became the founder of a city, which he named after his son Enoch.

Who are the who would kill Cain
Who were all these people in the land of Nod where Cain had a wife
Who were all these folks in the city of Enoch

Seems like there were a lot of people outside the Garden of Eden who had not reached the intellectual capacity to perceive God or for God to reveal Himself to them.

These are just my random thoughts, to any official teachings that I have come across anywhere. Peace.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top