Adam & Eve

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The Bible is the Church’s book. She and she alone tells us what it means. Our faith isn’t based on the Bible…rather the Bible reflects the faith of the Church. The Church tells us that such a literalistic interpretation of Genesis is not necessary.
Apparently, because God is mentioned in the first three clarifying chapters of Genesis, you are now declaring that a literalistic interpretation of God is foolish.
God is not necessary. :eek:

How does the Holy Spirit guide the visible Catholic Church on earth? Did the Holy Spirit throw out the literal truth of human nature in the first three chapters of Genesis to make the “Bible” easier to match human preferences?

How exactly is the Faith of the Catholic Church formed? If anyone knows, please step up.

By the way. It is nice to mention the “Bible.” However, there are many books in the “Bible.” Perhaps a clarification as to which book and which chapter and which verse is being denied would help people understand what should be ignored.

Has anyone read and understood Genesis 1: 27? Or is that verse among the ones trashed?

Please accept my sincere apology for asking such difficult questions. :o
 
Apparently, because God is mentioned in the first three clarifying chapters of Genesis, you are now declaring that a literalistic interpretation of God is foolish.
God is not necessary. :eek:

How does the Holy Spirit guide the visible Catholic Church on earth? Did the Holy Spirit throw out the literal truth of human nature in the first three chapters of Genesis to make the “Bible” easier to match human preferences?

How exactly is the Faith of the Catholic Church formed? If anyone knows, please step up.

By the way. It is nice to mention the “Bible.” However, there are many books in the “Bible.” Perhaps a clarification as to which book and which chapter and which verse is being denied would help people understand what should be ignored.

Has anyone read and understood Genesis 1: 27? Or is that verse among the ones trashed?

Please accept my sincere apology for asking such difficult questions. :o
Your twisting my words. How you deduced that God doesn’t exist from what I said I cannot imagine. The Catechism explicitly says that the first chapters of Genesis employs “figurative language” to convey primordial truths. We do not subscribe to Sola Scruptura. The Church knows what She believes and doesn’t need anyone’s private interpretation of Scripture to affirm it. Certain truths are divinely revealed in regards to the Genesis account. We know Adam and Eve existed and that they received eternal souls from God. We know they rebelled against God and fell from grace. We know God promised He would send a saviour. Beyond that, the details outlined in Genesis are likely allegorical.
 
YThe Catechism explicitly says that the first chapters of Genesis employs “figurative language” to convey primordial truths.
Actually says* “Chapter 3”* regarding the fall.

Of course that does not mean it is not also in other places…but that is where I recall it saying explicitly that it employs such language. I think “chapter 3” somehow became “three chapters” somehow in your memory -(and mine too…but I did not find such in the CCC but rather "chapter 3)). Just noting this for precision.
 
Your twisting my words. How you deduced that God doesn’t exist from what I said I cannot imagine.
Kindly note that I did not deduce that God doesn’t exist. I deduced that God is not necessary.

There are a lot of difficult questions. :o For many people, unfortunately God is o.k. for a miracle or two when miracles are needed. But is He really necessary in the first three loving chapters of Genesis once we get past the verses on the non-scientific version of the material universe. If literalistic reading is not the standard, what is God’s status? What is His relationship with humans?

What I am addressing is the complications and possible results in this sentence from your post 37. “The Church tells us that such a literalistic interpretation of Genesis is not necessary.” I used the word foolish as another way of responding to the last two words “not necessary.”

The below quote from an interview type article provides an interesting example of “The Church tells us that such a literalistic interpretation of Genesis is not necessary.” You probably never read this article. However, it is important to start exploring what is happening as a result of moving away from the literalism in the first three historical chapters of Genesis. This example from a Catholic priest is why Catholics need to go back to the literal events in the first three amazing chapters of Sacred Scripture.
"In an article about the first couple, Father wrote that Catholics who ask, “Were there an Adam and Eve?” would be better off asking another question: “Are there an Adam and Eve?” The answer, he said, “is a definite ‘yes.’ We find them when we look in the mirror. We are Adam, and we are Eve. … The man and woman of Genesis … are intended to represent an Everyman and Everywoman. They are paradigms, figurative equivalents, of human conduct in the face of temptation, not lessons in biology or history. The Bible is teaching religion, not science or literalistic history.”

My apology for jumping too fast to God is not necessary.

Sometimes we set aside the fact that the Evolution Model per se does not consider God is necessary. It is at this point where we need a clear understanding of the material realm because the Evolution Model is employed in the medical arena. The Evolution Model is proper in the material world at the same time that it can contradict Catholic doctrines such as the literal Adam and Eve, and the necessity of God in Genesis chapters 2 & 3. Therefore, we need to turn to literal details such as Genesis 1: 1; Genesis 1: 27; Genesis 2: 8; Genesis 2: 16-17; Genesis 3: 9; Genesis 3:14-19; Genesis 3: 23 as a start.

A literal truth flowing from the first three informative chapters of Genesis is precise because it is properly defined and duly declared by a major ecumenical Catholic Church Council guided by the precise wisdom of the Holy Spirit. Because of the issue of literalism, today, preciseness is not always followed when we look for actual Divine Revelation. The “media” quote above is a good example of the lack of literalism. It not only omits God’s literal encounter with Adam, Genesis 2:15-17; it sidesteps God’s literal intention in Genesis 1: 27.

Personally, my observation is that people have to get rid of the lazy way to read the first three intellectual chapters of Genesis. Bringing back the concept of literal information is very difficult.:o

The human person is worthy of profound respect.
 
You’re both right, of course.

Hard to do any better than JP II.

In his Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Evolution in 1996, Pope John Paul II quotes from Pope Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Humani Generis: “If the human body take its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God. . .”

“With man, then, we find ourselves in the presence of an ontological difference, an ontological leap, one could say. However, does not the posing of such ontological discontinuity run counter to that physical continuity which seems to be the main thread of research into evolution in the field of physics and chemistry? Consideration of the method used in the various branches of knowledge makes it possible to reconcile two points of view which would seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition to the spiritual is not the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being.”

Earlier, in the fall of 1985, Pope John Paul II gave some public audiences as a Catechesis on Original Sin. He said that the third chapter of Genesis “is to be interpreted by taking into account the character of the ancient text and especially its literary form” but that it “describes a primordial event … at the beginning of human history” that “gives rise to a fundamental change in the human condition.”
 
The Bible is the Church’s book. She and she alone tells us what it means. Our faith isn’t based on the Bible…rather the Bible reflects the faith of the Church. The Church tells us that such a literalistic interpretation of Genesis is not necessary.
Correct.
God reveals, humanity expresses. Human expression is never perfect as God is perfect. The Scriptures express in human words the Truth God wishes to communicate and therefore lead us to salvation. But the bible itself is not God. That is idolatry, or bibliolatry as I have seen it said.

“Adam” is the human expression of the reality of the first man. That’s what the name means. He is not called Adam because that’s what his birth certificate said. The scriptures could have called him “Steve” and it wouldn’t matter, other than the Scriptures don’t call him Steve, so it is proper to call him Adam with the Scriptures.

Genesis was never intended to be history and/or science. Ancient peoples did not write that way.
How many are even aware that Genesis has two complementary accounts of man’s creation? This should give a reflective pause for those who like their scripture to be literal**ist **accounts.

By the way, this thread brings up a question that has a very profound depth, that of the nature of Adam before Eve. JP2 talks about this in Theology of the Body.
Interesting, Adam is not referred to as male until after Eve is created.
ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb5.htm Chapter 5 “Meaning of Man’s Original Solitude”
 
The feast of Adam and Eve is celebrated by the Church on December 24th.
 
Actually it makes a GREAT deal of difference: Here’s WHY
  1. God has freely chosen to make HIMSELF know to us a “FATHER”
  2. Jesus Christ became Incarnate MAN
  3. Throughout the churches history and Sacred Tradition GOD has freely chosen One-MAN to lead HIS chosen people:
Noah, Abram, Moses. the Judges, the Kings, the Prophets leading up to John the Baptist who Introduce Jesus Himself who choose freely 12 MALE apostles [Mt 10:1-4]

So t seems obvious and indisputable that this was and REMAINS God’s freewilll choice:thumbsup:

GBY
See my post above which includes “meaning of man’s original solitude”. You might be making a connection between some truths that does not follow.
 
“Adam” literally means “man”. Yes it is the name that Tradition gives us, but we are literally calling him “the man”. It is a symbolic name. He was the first man, hence he is “the man”. That doesn’t mean that the real Adam didn’t also have a distinct personal name. Though of course we wouldn’t know what it was.
Jesus is the new Adam…maybe it was his name? :confused: 🤷
 
As I noted Adam was the first man.

Tis the name used by Sacred Scripture and the Church.

Tis the name he is called. That is who we mean when we say “Adam was the first man”.

When we refer to the first man…well it is* Adam* we refer to.

No point really in arguing about it. Tis the name he is called by us and by Scripture.
 
I was wondering whether it mattered or not if Adam came first or if Eve came first. Does it make any difference if Eve came first rather than Adam?
Well if we take Genesis 2 at its word Adam is first but things fall a bit apart. For one since Eve was taken from Adam then through genetics they are clones. Both have XY chromosomes.
 
Well if we take Genesis 2 at its word Adam is first but things fall a bit apart. For one since Eve was taken from Adam then through genetics they are clones. Both have XY chromosomes.
Dr. Bonnette has some information on this particular question:

The “formation of the first woman from the man” poses a greater challenge, if we are to take an evolutionary perspective and attempt a real material connection to Adam. Again, God could have taken Eve from an adult Adam’s rib in most literal fashion. Still, since the Hebrew word sela can also mean “side,” a more creative, evolutionary scenario might be proposed – one based on Vollert’s hypothesis of embryonic transformation. Monozygotic twinning might have occurred immediately following Adam’s formation. Save in the rarest of instances, such twinning produces siblings of the same sex. God might have foreordained that an almost unique “XXY” zygote form monozygotic boy/girl twins by one of the twins dropping the extra “X” chromosome and the other twin dropping the extra “Y” chromosome. Or else, by unseen direct divine intervention, a “Y” chromosome is changed into an “X” chromosome in the twin that becomes Eve. In the miracle of the Virgin Birth in which Mary begets her Divine Son, it appears that an “X” chromosome must have been transformed into a “Y” chromosome – in order that a male Savior be born. The process of begetting Eve might have entailed a “reverse” foreshadowing of the miracle that was to bring mankind its Redeemer.
 
Dr. Bonnette has some information on this particular question:

The “formation of the first woman from the man” poses a greater challenge, if we are to take an evolutionary perspective and attempt a real material connection to Adam. Again, God could have taken Eve from an adult Adam’s rib in most literal fashion. Still, since the Hebrew word sela can also mean “side,” a more creative, evolutionary scenario might be proposed – one based on Vollert’s hypothesis of embryonic transformation. Monozygotic twinning might have occurred immediately following Adam’s formation. Save in the rarest of instances, such twinning produces siblings of the same sex. God might have foreordained that an almost unique “XXY” zygote form monozygotic boy/girl twins by one of the twins dropping the extra “X” chromosome and the other twin dropping the extra “Y” chromosome. Or else, by unseen direct divine intervention, a “Y” chromosome is changed into an “X” chromosome in the twin that becomes Eve. In the miracle of the Virgin Birth in which Mary begets her Divine Son, it appears that an “X” chromosome must have been transformed into a “Y” chromosome – in order that a male Savior be born. The process of begetting Eve might have entailed a “reverse” foreshadowing of the miracle that was to bring mankind its Redeemer.
So magic???
 
I gather that Dr. Bonnette can accept interpreting some parts of the account figuratively, but other parts are interpreted more literally, including that Eve’s body was formed in some manner from Adam’s body. I imagine that’s what leads to the discussion of such scenarios.
 
I gather that Dr. Bonnette can accept interpreting some parts of the account figuratively, but other parts are interpreted more literally, including that Eve’s body was formed in some manner from Adam’s body. I imagine that’s what leads to the discussion of such scenarios.
So then magic. Because that is not how things work.
 
And what is their evidence supporting these claims.
374 The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ.
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”.250 This grace of original holiness was “to share in. . .divine life”.251
How is this known?

Looking around I found this: whatjewsbelieve.org/explanation5.html
 
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