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catholic1seeks
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They accept it because the evidence best supports the “theory”.
Genesis is still Genesis.They had Genesis, but they didn’t have the evidence and methodology of modern geology and biology.
Unlike the cosmos, literature (whether written or orally transmitted) is the creation of men; and it is created precisely in order to be understood by other men. Hence (aside from Rosetta-Stone-type situations where translation is a problem), there is no reason why we should expect literature to contain profound secrets which cannot be unlocked by other men without laborious research requiring thousands of years of effort. If Gen. 2: 21-23 were really just intended as symbolic or metaphorical in character, why was this never discovered long before the advent of Darwin? Why did neither the classical Jewish commentators — undoubted experts on literary genres coming from their own culture and language — nor the Church’s Fathers, Doctors, Bishops and Popes — assisted collectively by the light of the Holy Spirit — never discern this truth about the Genesis passage? Why, indeed, did they consciously decide against giving it any such figurative or symbolic interpretation?
They will maintain that, since there is no serious literary or linguistic reason to suspect a parabolic/symbolic intention on the part of the ancient author, those believers who postulate such an intention, in an attempt to reconcile the divine inspiration of Genesis with the perceived need to read it through Darwinian-tinted spectacles, are merely resorting to a self-deceptive ploy. That is, they are shielding themselves from the unpleasant, but more rational, conclusion that the evolutionary account of human origins, if correct, will render the integral truth (and, therefore, the divine authorship) of Genesis untenable — a fact which will in turn debunk the whole of historic Christianity (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox), which has committed itself irrevocably to the divine inspiration of the entire Bible as a dogma of faith.
The devotee of this approach will conveniently be able to find pretty much whatever he wants to find as the Holy Spirit’s supposed message in any given passage of Scripture. He reads it through, mentally sifting the text with a view to discerning, in an a priori fashion, what he feels is its essential ‘salvific’ or ‘theological’ content. This is then dubbed the only ‘real’ divine message communicated to us by the Holy Spirit in this text, so that anything left over can be politely laid aside as ‘merely human’, ‘non-salvific’ and therefore possibly not free of error. Thus, in the case of I Corinthians 11 before us, we will be told that the only truth that God wants to communicate to us here is something like the intimate reciprocity or interdependence of man and woman (and perhaps, if the interpreter is not strongly feminist, the headship of men over women)
It frightens me.This is a relief to me.
That’s macro-evolution. That’s all we needed you to say. Thank you. A Catholic can accept evolution.“Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true.”
I knew you were trying this “trap” so I addressed it. I notice you ignored the refutation and plowed on ahead (what I also predicted). Until you address my refutation, I will have no further discussion on the topic.So the only way to make Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 non-contradictory is to admit that they are not word-by-word straightforward, descriptive details of what actually happened.
No. That is the principle theory of how evolution takes place. Applied to the origins of the universe and man, it is non-Christian and in fact anti-Christian. Applied to the events following the creation of the universe and man it is philosophically barren and possibly non-Christian, but it is not explicitly anti-Christian.Well, this is how most people understand evolution most generally.
The story has to go like this. One day God chose an evolved brute to ensoul after 14 Billion years. Then immediately put Adam into a deep sleep and fashioned Eve from his side? Are you OK with this?
And they say this because they have lost their faith in Scripture. They have more faith in provisional human reasoning.However, that specific link is not referring to the Eve-from-Adam’s side issue. I have found JPII talk about it in general audiences, and have posted the quotes in other posts, but I do not remember what Colin Donovan referenced today on his show. Regardless, JPII and the church generally allows a non-literalistic interpretation of Genesis more generally and even Eve’s creation more specifically. Colin confirmed that THAT is indeed the case, when a caller asked about it on today’s show.
Yet another poster who thinks he knows better than JPII, Benedict, or Francis. Looks like if the Popes disagree with you, just call them out as ignorant, “blasphemous,” or weak. Got it!…as the clear consistent teaching of the Church.
Yes they can. Common descent is not at issue. Universal common descent is.Catholics can believe that biological organisms have a common ancestor
Somehow I have the feeling this Pope will be waved away and ignored.I confess … that all men from Adam onward who have been born and have died up to the end of the world will then rise again and stand “before the judgment-seat of Christ,” together with Adam himself and his wife, who were not born of other parents, but were created: one from the earth and the other from the side of the man…
This document, the Constitution Fidei catholicae, takes up and canonizes the classical Patristic theme that the formation of Eve from Adam’s side, far from being some kind of strange, incomprehensible and perhaps salvifically insignificant prodigy, was a profound and beautiful foreshadowing of the very heart of the work of our Redemption: the mystical foundation of the Church, the immaculate Spouse of Christ, in the water and blood — symbols of the principal sacraments — which flowed from the Saviour’s side as he ‘slept’ in death on the Cross. The relevant text reads as follows: (We confess) … that after (Jesus’) spirit was already rendered up, his side suffered perforation by a lance, so that through the ensuing flow of water and blood, the one and only, immaculate, virgin holy Mother Church, the Spouse of Christ, might be formed, just as from the side of the first man, cast into sleep, Eve was formed for him unto marriage. This happened so that the reality manifested in our last Adam, that is, Christ, might correspond to a certain prefiguring of that reality constituted by the first and ancient Adam, who, according to the Apostle, “is a type of the one who was to come”
A still more telling witness than the foregoing illustration is the draft schema prepared by bishops and theologians of Vatican Council I for the proposed Constitution De doctrina catholica. More than a decade after The Origin of Species appeared, these conciliar Fathers and periti consciously defied its implications in the second draft of this schema with the following solemn affirmation: This, our Holy Mother the Church believes and teaches: When God was about to make man according to his image and likeness in order that he might rule over the whole earth, He breathed into the body formed from the slime of the earth the breath of life, that is, a soul produced from nothing… . And blessing the first man and Eve his wife who was formed by divine power from his side, God said: “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth”
That is in the singular.It says “A common ANCESTOR.”
Exactly the sixth (?) century Pope I mentioned. Did he know anything about modern science? I suspect he assumed the Earth was the center of the cosmos, too. Oh, and I doubted he knew the content of stars, or that a few other continents existed.Somehow I have the feeling this Pope will be waved away and ignored.
Provisional science with its self limiting methodological naturalism a priori claims trumps God’s Revelation?Exactly the sixth (?) century Pope I mentioned. Did he know anything about modern science? I suspect he assumed the Earth was the center of the cosmos, too. Oh, and I doubted he knew the content of stars, or that a few other continents existed.