Any young earth creationists out there?

[Aloysium]

The first persons would have been free of genetic defects. It is also probable that secondary codes in the twists and turns of DNA along with cellular factors enabled a mechanism for diversity, allowing us to flourish in very different environments. There would be no natural reason for close relatives not to have children. They also had very long lives with the possibility of having very many ofspring. The damage done to the genome has grown over time since the fall.

 

[Richca]

Glark:

Sorry, I don’t follow. I’m still wondering what happened to the race of hominids Adam supposedly descended from.

They died. What did you think happened to them?

(And, just to make sure we’re on the same page: they would be physically indistinguishable from Adam, so there’s no “fossil record” of unensouled hominins… )

I hold it is not possible according to the natural order of this created world that there could have been any unensouled brute animals with bodies that are biologically/physically indistinguishable from Adam or Eve or any human being. Various species of plants and animals have various matters organized differently precisely because they have various forms by which they are variously distinct. Philosophically speaking, forms which are acts are not for the sake of the matter which is potency but conversely, matter is for the sake of the form. Forms are the act of matter for matter in or by itself is essentially potentiality, entirely formless, and doesn’t even exist.

Accordingly, since our soul or spirit is the form of our body (cf. CCC), our bodies which are made out of matter are organized such that they are properly disposed for union with a spiritual soul. Only a human body can be united to a human soul. Since our spiritual souls are not a product of nature or matter but are immediately created by God for each human person, no body of any brute animal in its own species could have been properly disposed for union with a spiritual soul prior to the first man without a divine miraculous intervention. Brute animals do not have human bodies but bodies or matters that are fit for their respective forms or species.

Anybody can observe this simply just by looking out into the real world or going to the zoo. Are there any animals at the zoo including chimps, apes, or gorillas that look like yourself? No. They have different matters or organizational DNA properly disposed for their respective forms which forms and not the DNA is the principle by which things are distinguished in their species. Various species have various DNA structures which involves matter and bodies because they have various substantial forms.

 

[Techno2000]

Old age? Disease? Cold? Sabre tooth tiger attack?

How would that make them extinct ?

 

[Gorgias]

It is not I who wants to know. It’s obvious that Eve had daughters by Adam her husband:

‘The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters’ (Gen. 5:4).

Ooh! Good point! I’d forgotten about that!

OK – so now, the only problem is brother-sister incest! That’s still a problem, though… isn’t it?

It is also not the intention of the sacred writer to get involved in minor details which any reasonable person ought to be able to discern for themselves.

Can’t have it both ways, though: one can’t say “evolution isn’t in the Bible, therefore it’s not true” and in the same breath say “how the earth was populated is a ‘minor detail’ whose absence from the Bible isn’t important”.

And if you have no soul? Are there among us humans without original sin?

No, there aren’t. And, that’s the whole point. The human race became ensouled. All who have souls have original sin.

 

[Gorgias]

If brother-sister marriage were not a good thing in the beginnings of the human race, then you and I wouldn’t be here today nor anybody else.

So, as Catholics, we have laws about what constitutes a legal marriage, and what does not. Now, I’m not suggesting these laws were present at the time of Creation. However, I am suggesting how we understand these laws: some are merely ecclesiastical law, and these can be dispensed. But, and this is the important part: some marriages are not possible because they are in contradiction to God’s Natural Moral law. They can never be dispensed by the Church because it is not the Church who makes these marriages invalid. Among these are brother-sister marriages. _They can never be valid because it is God’s immutable Natural Moral law that makes them invalid.

So: your claim must be that God’s immutable Natural Moral law (which is true always, everywhere, for everyone – as the Church teaches us) isn’t really what it says it is. Or worse, that God contradicts His own nature and breaks His own immutable Law!

So, we have two problems here:

• Your extra-Biblical (but reasonable) presumption that, if there were only two hominins in the beginning, then there must have been brother-sister incest.
• The implication that flows from this notion: that God’s plan for humanity relies explicitly on breaking His Natural Moral law.

The fact is that the degrees within which consanquinity have been an impediment to marriage have varied according to the various historical times. We find among the Old Testament patriarchs and ancient Israelite history recorded therein marriages between persons that would not be allowed today according to the laws of the Church and some state/human laws. Abraham’s wife Sarah was his half-sister, his father’s daughter but not from the same mother. Jacob married his first cousins, his mother’s brother - Laban’s daughters.

I think it’s necessary to make a distinction between events that the Bible reports and ones that the Bible endorses. Abraham also has a child by Sarah’s slave – would you say that the Bible endorses or merely reports that event? Jacob marries two sisters – would you say that the Bible endorses that behavior or merely reports it? So, you can’t use brother-sister relationships as a rule unless you demonstrate that God endorses them, explicitly.

Further, Jacob’s marriage is to a first cousin. In the Church, marriages to first cousins are possible – the Church is able, if she wishes, to dispense the impediment. This means that this impediment is merely ecclesiastical. So, Jacob’s marriage to Rachel (or Leah) isn’t of the same tenor as brother-sister relations.

the Church has set which degrees of consanquinity are prohibited for lawful sacramental marriages and these degrees have varied according to the various times in the history of the Church.

No: the impediment has existed. At various times, the Church has dispensed from the impediment. Big difference…

 

[Gorgias]

As St Thomas Aquinas remarks, the prohibitions appear to involve mostly all those persons who were wont to live together in one household in order to curb concupiscence or lust:

‘Wherefore as Rabbi Moses says (Doc. Perp. iii, 49) all those persons were debarred from marrying one another who are wont to live together in one household

I would think that this is a weaker case than you could make out of this article. After all, Aquinas mentions that things were different at the start of time than in later periods of time. We can dismiss this argument merely by pointing out that what held during the time of the Mosaic law doesn’t necessarily imply at the start of time, simply by pointing to the fact that this is what’s argued in this exact context.

However, your stronger argument would seem to be what Aquinas claims immediately preceding the sentences you quote, and which you argue later – those marriages which are “absolutely necessary.” Yet, in article 3, Aquinas states:

the Divine law debars from marriage not only father and mother, but also other kinsfolk who have to live in close intimacy with one another and ought to safeguard one another’s modesty. The Divine law assigns this reason (Leviticus 18:10): “Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness” of such and such a one, “because it is thy own nakedness.”

So, I would argue, the relationships that you are calling ‘necessary’ are ones that Aquinas admits are, in fact, divine law impediments.

How, then, are we to resolve this problem? On one hand, Aquinas seems to be saying that brother-sister relationships in the beginning of time are OK, and on the other, he seems to be claiming that the prohibition of these is divine law!

I would resolve the question in this way: Aquinas didn’t write the supplement to the Summa; his friends did, based on what they thought he would have written. So, I think it’s reasonable to look askance at the supplement when necessary, since it’s not a work written by Aquinas himself.

To make a long story short, I hold following St Thomas Aquinas that brother-sister marriage is not absolutely against the natural moral law for these kind of marriages were absolutely necessary for the propagation of the human race in the beginning

You may absolutely make that case.

… just don’t say that it’s because “Aquinas makes this claim in the Summa”. After all, he didn’t – his friends did.

 

[buffalo]

No, there aren’t. And, that’s the whole point. The human race became ensouled. All who have souls have original sin.

God ensouled an entire population at once?

 

[edwest211]

Not Biblical and inconsistent with Church teaching.

 

[Richca]

Richca:

If brother-sister marriage were not a good thing in the beginnings of the human race, then you and I wouldn’t be here today nor anybody else.

So, as Catholics, we have laws about what constitutes a legal marriage, and what does not. Now, I’m not suggesting these laws were present at the time of Creation. However, I am suggesting how we understand these laws: some are merely ecclesiastical law, and these can be dispensed. But, and this is the important part: some marriages are not possible because they are in contradiction to God’s Natural Moral law. They can never be dispensed by the Church because it is not the Church who makes these marriages invalid. Among these are brother-sister marriages. _They can never be valid because it is God’s immutable Natural Moral law that makes them invalid.

Where are you getting the idea that brother-sister marriages are contrary to God’s natural moral law? It can’t be from the Bible itself, which is God’s word. The bible teaches explicitly the unity of the human race as St Paul says in Acts 17:26:

‘He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth.’

The ‘one’ here is Adam from whom God fashioned Eve out of from a rib in Adam’s side and from this first couple descended all human beings. Tobit 8:6 also makes this point:

‘Thou madest Adam and gavest him Eve his wife
as a helper and support.
From them the race of mankind has sprung.’

Acts 17:26 is the text the CCC#360 cites for the teaching on the unity of the human race and Tobit 8:6 is in the footnote. Many other texts from scripture can be cited as well such as the geneologies found in Genesis beginning with ‘These are the generations of Adam’ (Gen. 5:1), moves on to Noah who came from the line of Seth, Adam’s son; on to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and so on. Luke 3 traces Jesus’ ancestry back to Seth ‘the son of Adam, the son of God.’ The bible is clear on the unity of the human race and I think I’ve said enough without belaboring the point.

As I mentioned the CCC also teaches the unity of the human race and this has always been taught by the Church as it comes from the Bible itself. Accordingly, that brother-sister marriage is against the natural moral law does not come from the Church either since it teaches and has always taught the unity of the human race. Obviously, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever for something to be against the natural law which was required by human nature for the propagation of the human race in the beginning according to God’s plan and command.

 

[Richca]

(continued)

Further, St Thomas Aquinas in the ST, Pt. I-II, Q. 94, art.4 states:
‘…to the natural law belongs those things to which a man is inclined naturally: and among these it is proper to man to be inclined to act according to reason.’ Accordingly, among Adam and Eve’s children, reason would tell them that they should not only fulfill God’s command to ‘increase and multiply,’ but also the only way of fulfilling this command for the propagation of the human race would be to marry one another. As I said in the earlier post, following reason, the Bible, the teaching of the Church, and Aquinas, the only prohibition according to the natural law in the beginnings of the propagation of the human race were mother/son and father/daughter carnal union or marriages according to Gen. 2:24:

‘Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.’

Through the course of time, various other degrees of consanquinity were introduced in addition to the prohibition of the natural law I mentioned above either by custom, human law, Divine Law or the Old Law (law of Moses), by fallen nature as a consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve, and the Church itself.

From: Gorgias - So: your claim must be that God’s immutable Natural Moral law (which is true always, everywhere, for everyone – as the Church teaches us) isn’t really what it says it is. Or worse, that God contradicts His own nature and breaks His own immutable Law!

So, we have two problems here:

Your extra-Biblical (but reasonable) presumption that, if there were only two hominins in the beginning, then there must have been brother-sister incest.
The implication that flows from this notion: that God’s plan for humanity relies explicitly on breaking His Natural Moral law.

I am arguing that brother-sister marriages are not against the natural moral law in which case the problem in question doesn’t apply.

 

[Aloysium]

brother-sister marriages are not against the natural moral law

They would not have been against moral law at the beginning because the genetics would not have included deleterious recessive genes and the genome would have included the capacity for diversity thereby allowing people to flourish in different environments. People also lived Some ten times longer than they do now, enabling them to have hundreds of offspring. The longer we remained in this vale of tears, however the greater accumulation of genetic damage through the random activity of matter divorced from a greater organizing principle.

 

[Richca]

The fact is that the degrees within which consanquinity have been an impediment to marriage have varied according to the various historical times. We find among the Old Testament patriarchs and ancient Israelite history recorded therein marriages between persons that would not be allowed today according to the laws of the Church and some state/human laws. Abraham’s wife Sarah was his half-sister, his father’s daughter but not from the same mother. Jacob married his first cousins, his mother’s brother - Laban’s daughters.

Gorgias: I think it’s necessary to make a distinction between events that the Bible reports and ones that the Bible endorses.

This could be valid depending on the event being reported and a host of other factors.

Gorgias: Abraham also has a child by Sarah’s slave – would you say that the Bible endorses or merely reports that event?

Abraham is called our ‘father in faith’ in one of the eucharistic prayers of the Mass and St Paul writes about Abraham as ‘the father of us all’ and points to him as an example of a man of faith. Indeed, through his faith God promised him that his descendants would number as the stars of heaven and that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him which was a prophecy of Christ.

The scripture says that Sarai gave Hagar to Abram her husband as a wife (Gen. 16:3). It’s no secret that some of the patriarchs of the Old Testament were polygamists. It was not forbidden in the Old Law God gave to Moses for the Israelites but neither did God command it. The Old Divine Law was imperfect and looking forward and prefiguring the perfect New Law of Christ in the Spirit. It was reserved for Christ to fulfill and perfect the Law of God.

The Church teaches as does Aquinas that monogamy and the indissolubility of marriage are of the natural law. Jesus said that Moses allowed the bill of divorce because of the hardness of heart. He also probably allowed it to prevent wife murder. Divorce in the Old Testament among the Israelites was apparently a dispensation from the natural law approved or permitted by God. Polygamy may also have been a divinely inspired dispensation from the natural law in regards to some of the patriarchs as the knowledge and worship of the one True God was entrusted to the one nation of the Israelites at this time and the building up of this nation depended on natural propagation of humans so that a plurality of wives at this time may have been allowed by God for the building up of the nation. Also, maybe the patriarchs and ancient Israelites were simply ignorant of the demands of the natural law concerning monogamy and indissolubility.

 

[Richca]

Abraham also has a child by Sarah’s slave – would you say that the Bible endorses or merely reports that event?

Back to Abraham. I would like to point out first that the teaching of Aquinas concerning the natural law as it pertains to matrimony is that he distinguishes between the first principles of the natural law which are immutable and conclusions or secondary principles as it were that follow from the first principles which though applicable in the majority of cases, in some cases may not apply and thus admit of a dispensation as it were. He gives as an example in an article treating of the natural law:

‘…Thus it is right and true for all to act according to reason: and from this principle it follows as a proper conclusion, that goods entrusted to another should be restored to their owner. Now this is true for the majority of cases: but it may happen in a particular case that it would be injurious, and therefore unreasonable, to restore goods held in trust; for instance, if they are claimed for the purpose of fighting against one’s country’ (ST, Pt. I-II, Q. 94, art.4)

This sort of thing Aquinas is talking about pertains to the positive precepts of the moral law, either the natural or the Divine Law, as these kind of precepts which inculcate acts of virtue in particular instances or under various circumstances could involve a sin. For example, if one were to stay in church all day and pray while it is his duty to support a family and work, although praying is a good act, in this case the person is failing in his duty and not following God’s will to support his family. The negative precepts of the Law, on the contrary, do not admit of exceptions, i.e, under no circumstances is murder, for example, lawful or good. These are actions which in their object are intrinsically evil and admit of no exceptions.

The conclusions drawn from the first principles of the natural law still pertain to the natural law and in those cases in which they may fail such as the example above from Aquinas, the right thing to do here in this case one could say also pertains to the natural law simply because it is the right thing to do.

With all the above in mind than, Aquinas proceeds to explain the polygamy found among the Israelites in the Old Testament. He says that monogamy and indissolubility of marriage though of the natural law perfected by Christ pertains to the conclusions drawn from the first principles of the natural law concerning marriage. Consequently, before the New Law established by Christ who is God, God could or may just simply permit or allow a dispensation in the Old Law and natural law pertaining to the conclusions or secondary principles without violating the first principles of the natural law which are immutable.

 

[Richca]

Abraham also has a child by Sarah’s slave – would you say that the Bible endorses or merely reports that event?

(continued)

In reference to my immediate last post than and Aquinas’ distinction between the first principles and the secondary principles or conclusions that follow from the first principles, to answer your question here whether the Bible endorses or merely reports the event in question, namely, Abraham at the request of Sarah going into Hagar as his wife in order to have posterity, I can’t say outright that either what Sarah requested of Abraham or Abraham going into Hagar was sinful. At this time, I’m not sure God would have counted it as sinful as like overlooking the act even if the act is considered a bad act (possible involuntary ignorance of the demands of the natural law). But, I’m not to sure it can be considered even a bad act but they may have been moved by the Holy Spirit prophetically. For St Paul contrasts Hagar and Sarah and says that this is an allegory:

21 Tell me, you who desire to be under law, do you not hear the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. 23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise. 24 Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written,

“Rejoice, O barren one that dost not bear;
break forth and shout, thou who art not in travail;
for the desolate hath more children
than she who hath a husband.”

28 Now we,[c] brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now. 30 But what does the scripture say? “Cast out the slave and her son; for the son of the slave shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” 31 So, brethren, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. (Galatians 4: 21-28).

 

[Richca]

However, your stronger argument would seem to be what Aquinas claims immediately preceding the sentences you quote, and which you argue later – those marriages which are “absolutely necessary.” Yet, in article 3, Aquinas states:

the Divine law debars from marriage not only father and mother, but also other kinsfolk who have to live in close intimacy with one another and ought to safeguard one another’s modesty. The Divine law assigns this reason (Leviticus 18:10): “Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness” of such and such a one, “because it is thy own nakedness.”

So, I would argue, the relationships that you are calling ‘necessary’ are ones that Aquinas admits are, in fact, divine law impediments.

How, then, are we to resolve this problem? On one hand, Aquinas seems to be saying that brother-sister relationships in the beginning of time are OK, and on the other, he seems to be claiming that the prohibition of these is divine law!

The Divine Law Aquinas is talking about here is not the natural law but divine positive revealed law, i.e, the Old Law, the law given by God to Moses through divine revelation. Before this Divine Law was given singularly to the Israelites, all people were under the natural law. The other Divine Law or revealed law is the New Law of Christ which has superceded the Old Law.

Gorgias: I would resolve the question in this way: Aquinas didn’t write the supplement to the Summa; his friends did, based on what they thought he would have written. So, I think it’s reasonable to look askance at the supplement when necessary, since it’s not a work written by Aquinas himself.

The supplement to the Summa is the work of Aquinas compiled word for word from his commentary on the sentences of Peter Lombard. When we are reading the supplement, we are reading Aquinas’ own commentary on the sentences pertaining to the questions found in the supplement.

To make a long story short, I hold following St Thomas Aquinas that brother-sister marriage is not absolutely against the natural moral law for these kind of marriages were absolutely necessary for the propagation of the human race in the beginning

Gorgias: You may absolutely make that case.

… just don’t say that it’s because “Aquinas makes this claim in the Summa”. After all, he didn’t – his friends did.

As just noted, we can say Aquinas makes the claim in the supplement to the Summa because the supplement is his own work compiled from his commentary on the sentences of Peter Lombard.

Peace and blessings, Richca

 

[Techno2000]

OK – so now, the only problem is brother-sister incest! That’s still a problem, though… isn’t it?

In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
Acts 17:30

 

[Glark]

Given the quote marks in 337, I would assert that the claim that it’s “symbolic” has to do with the “work” and “rest” of God.

Yes, that makes sense. Thank you.

Looking at the other paragraph,362, again … it says it is the fact that the “human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once both corporeal and spiritual” that is being expressed in “symbolic language”. Therefore my initial interpretation may have been wrong.

So I recant my complaints against 337 and 362.

 

[Glark]

Charles Darwin … was a self proclaimed agnostic tending to atheism, an unbeliever in christianity and Christ who is the Truth. A number of his most immediate followers were atheists.

Suprise, surpriise!

 

[Glark]

I forgot to mention that as Australia’s first dictator, I will also ban the teaching of microbe-man evolution … on the grounds that, like Shakespeare, it is of no practical use to anyone and therefore has no place in education.

 

[Glark]

I don’t know where all this confidence and smugness comes from when you’re opposing both mainstream Catholicism and pretty much every discipline of modern science.

… from the Holy Spirit, maybe.