Father Robert Barron said that Adam was a figurative figure not a literal one? Help!

[Aloysium]

They COULD have been, they could have been, whether Adam and Eve were literal
individuals or not, there COULD have been a point when the “First Official Humans”
were perfect, immortal, and in communion with God, though that state might have
been very short lived.

Anything could have been. That is why we share what God has revealed.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Ok, so I really respect Father Robert Baron, but I came across this video:

youtube.com/watch?v=UVsbVAVSssc

at the 6 minute mark

And to say I was shocked was an understatement.

Can anyone provide some insight here? Doesn’t this fly in the face of original sin? I am sooooooo confused.

Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong, who is a revert and carefully even-handed in most matters, really goes off on Fr. Barron here:

socrates58.blogspot.com/

I can’t help but think that Fr. Barron will be forced to issue some type of response because the problem has been noticed by many people.

 

[FishyPete]

Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong, who is a revert and carefully even-handed in most matters, really goes off on Fr. Barron here:

socrates58.blogspot.com/

I can’t help but think that Fr. Barron will be forced to issue some type of response because the problem has been noticed by many people.

I hope he does, but i wouldn’t hold my breath. I have been in conversation with Dave on this topic.

Look, let me make this clear, I understand Father Barron’s position, and I don’t believe we need to hold to a strict literal reading of genesis.

But here’s my problem:

Where does Father Barron stand on original sin, and the first man and woman, irrespective of “Adam and Eve”?

For the life of me, I can’t find him speaking of the two originators of our race and our parents in sin.

I wish I could, I respect the man.

 

[Contarini]

One other thing, if what you say is true, than Father Barron is out of step with the Mother Church and is teachin false things to the Priests he’s teaching and the world in his DVDs. This is heavy heavy stuff.

Do you speak for the Church?

If Fr. Barron holds the view I’ve described (and I’m not saying he does–I’m suggesting one way of making sense of what he has said), then certainly there are important issues that need to be discussed. But does this position actually fall into the errors that have been condemned in the past, or is it a new way of approaching the question? This is how doctrine develops.

Given that the Barthian position strengthens the centrality of Christ to the story of God’s dealings with the world, I think it shouldn’t be rejected glibly. But certainly it has difficulties.

Edwin

 

[FishyPete]

Do you speak for the Church?

If Fr. Barron holds the view I’ve described (and I’m not saying he does–I’m suggesting one way of making sense of what he has said), then certainly there are important issues that need to be discussed. But does this position actually fall into the errors that have been condemned in the past, or is it a new way of approaching the question? This is how doctrine develops.

Given that the Barthian position strengthens the centrality of Christ to the story of God’s dealings with the world, I think it shouldn’t be rejected glibly. But certainly it has difficulties.

Edwin

I don’t speak for the Church, why do people always say that…

In any event it is clear that we hold to original sin as being committed by original parents? Please correct me if i’m wrong?

 

[Contarini]

If you have the link to the quote then post it, otherwise, what you are saying is invalid.

However if Fr. Barron believes such nonsense, then he truly is a danger to the church.

I hope you are able to track down this quote, this is a serious allegation.

Found the references (on Dave Armstrong’s website, which I was pretty sure was where I’d seen them originally, but Dave has written several posts on this and I apparently was looking in the wrong ones):

The Fall is happening every day, as we “fall away” from what God intends for us. We “'fall short” of our true humanity. We wander in the land of unlikeness. Choose your metaphor; it doesn’t effect the deep theological truth being communicated.

Original sin names the fact that there is something irreducibly wrong with us, something that we cannot fix on our own. Genesis speaks of that reality in the manner of a myth or saga, narrating events “in illo tempore.” The point is that the struggle with sin is an ongoing dynamic of life here and now, and the offer of grace is a present reality.

On Fr. Barron’s website (the comments on his original video), I found the following further comments, which I think make his position clearer:

Well, original sin does exist, and we are responsible for it. So it’s no good blaming God for “cutting off our legs, etc.” God wants life and life to the full, but human beings have a tendency to prefer darkness to light. That’s another way of naming the essential dynamic of original sin.

. . .

Original sin is the “sin of the world,” which is to say, the mess of selfishness, corruption, violence, and cruelty into which we are born, and which has infiltrated our families, our cultures and our institutions.

I wish you were a bit less certain that your own understanding of what the Church teaches was correct. Fr. Barron is not infallible, but he’s learned and ,by your own account, generally orthodox. However, I grant that his brief attempt to reconcile his position with HG is not very convincing or well developed.

Edwin

 

[FishyPete]

Found the references (on Dave Armstrong’s website, which I was pretty sure was where I’d seen them originally, but Dave has written several posts on this and I apparently was looking in the wrong ones):

On Fr. Barron’s website (the comments on his original video), I found the following further comments, which I think make his position clearer:

I wish you were a bit less certain that your own understanding of what the Church teaches was correct. Fr. Barron is not infallible, but he’s learned and ,by your own account, generally orthodox. However, I grant that his brief attempt to reconcile his position with HG is not very convincing or well developed.

Edwin

Let me just say this:

“The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents”

Father Barron can tap dance all he wants around a liberal pole, but he cannot escape this. By the way, he is of the school, and I have read, that whatever science teaches us to attack the bible, we must respond in a more mystic reading… and that’s what he is doing.

Are we responsible for original sin as much as Adam and Eve were? Of course we are. But to pull away from an actual event to satisfy a secular and liberal word simply to evangelize them? Well, I draw the line there.

 

[Contarini]

Let me just say this:

“The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents”

Father Barron can tap dance all he wants around a liberal pole, but he cannot escape this. By the way, he is of the school, and I have read, that whatever science teaches us to attack the bible, we must respond in a more mystic reading… and that’s what he is doing.

Are we responsible for original sin as much as Adam and Eve were? Of course we are. But to pull away from an actual event to satisfy a secular and liberal word simply to evangelize them? Well, I draw the line there.

Whether Fr. Barron is right or wrong, I don’t think he’s taking the position he does in order to satisfy a secular and liberal world for evangelization purposes. He’s doing it because he thinks it’s true.

If what we think we know from natural revelation and what we think we know from Scripture and Tradition appear to conflict, then our understanding of one or the other must be at fault. That’s a basic principle taught by Aquinas and Augustine. Fr. Barron is applying that principle, although of course one can question his application.

Edwin

 

[FishyPete]

Whether Fr. Barron is right or wrong, I don’t think he’s taking the position he does in order to satisfy a secular and liberal world for evangelization purposes. He’s doing it because he thinks it’s true.

If what we think we know from natural revelation and what we think we know from Scripture and Tradition appear to conflict, then our understanding of one or the other must be at fault. That’s a basic principle taught by Aquinas and Augustine. Fr. Barron is applying that principle, although of course one can question his application.

Edwin

Agreed, but he’s throwing this out the window: “but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man”.

 

[Ion]

This is the quote:
"Adam. Now, don’t read it literally. We’re not talking about a literal figure. We’re talking in theological poetry. Adam: the first human being . . . "

Why can’t you speak symbolically/ metaphorically /poetically / about a literal figure?
For me it looks like he doesn’t deny the fact that Adam was the first human, but only he wants to look at it symbolically. There are many passages in the Bible with facts that are having symbolical meaning. Ex. when Jesus cursed the fig tree because was barren and the next day the tree was withered.

 

[FishyPete]

He replied to me this:

Adam is a literary figure gesturing toward the truth of what obtained “in the beginning.” He is not to be read as a straightforward historical figure like Caesar or Abraham Lincoln.

so, I think HE thinks Adam is a lterary figure. See what I mean?

 

[Aloysium]

He replied to me this:

Adam is a literary figure gesturing toward the truth of what obtained “in the beginning.” He is not to be read as a straightforward historical figure like Caesar or Abraham Lincoln.

so, I think HE thinks Adam is a lterary figure. See what I mean?

You will have to pursue a response from him.
Don’t historical figures belong to the past?
They had an impact in their time which has consequences, but in earthly terms, they are gone.
It is not good to think of Adam in this way, solely as a historical figure, back then.
With Adam, we as eternal beings having fallen, share in the here and now the consequences of sin that began with one man at the beginning of our existence.

CCC:
404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? the whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man”.293 By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state.294 It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. and that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act.
405 Although it is proper to each individual,295 original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence". Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.

 

[FishyPete]

You will have to pursue a response from him.
Don’t historical figures belong to the past?
They had an impact in their time which has consequences, but in earthly terms, they are gone.
It is not good to think of Adam in this way, solely as a historical figure, back then.
With Adam, we as eternal beings having fallen, share in the here and now the consequences of sin that began with one man at the beginning of our existence.

CCC:
404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? the whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man”.293 By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state.294 It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. and that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act.
405 Although it is proper to each individual,295 original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence". Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.

I agree.

I don’t think he will further respond though.

 

[cmodrmac]

read Joseph Campbell’s works or look up DNA Adam or DNA Eve-

or look up or read “The Last Human” by Yale University Press

no Garden -DNA Adam and DNA Eve likely never met-

The story is a creation myth - I agree sin does not require an Adam and Eve

a talking serpent?

 

[Aloysium]

read Joseph Campbell’s works or look up DNA Adam or DNA Eve-

or look up or read “The Last Human” by Yale University Press

no Garden -DNA Adam and DNA Eve likely never met-

The story is a creation myth - I agree sin does not require an Adam and Eve

a talking serpent?

I see you have it all figured out.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

One of the dangers of being constantly in the public eye is that it is easy to say something incorrectly without intending to or to say something that sounds like a mistake because the wording or the context was not the best. I think this is what happened in this case. Besides, he doesn’t have much prep time if he is doing these videos nearly every day besides doing everything else he does. It would be very easy to get things twisted up a little.

However the constant teaching of the Church is quite clear. A First Man and a First Woman, created by God sinned and we inherited that sin. Whether God actually called our First Parents Adam and Eve is open to dispute but the facts are not.

We are not responsible for Original Sin. The Church makes that absolutely clear. We inherited Original Sin because we inherited our wounded nature from our first parents. Please read paragraphs 385-395 of the CCC. That the Original Sin of our first parents was transmitted to us is De Fide ( Council of Trent ). Paragraph 389 says in part, " …The Church, which has the mind of Christ, knows very well that we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without undermining the mystery of Christ."

And we might consider this. Each one of us would have sinned as well. The Mother of Our Lord is the only one who would not have and did not and she did not have the other preternatural gifts Adam and Eve had, which makes her victory even more astonishing.
Linus2nd

 

[oldcelt]

Throughout this discussion all I am seeing are posters using the documents of the teaching under fire to say that the teaching is true. What would you expect? Church Y to say that their teachings don’t add up?

If a church wishes to believe in an all powerful, and so on God, then real responsibility comes with that. Not to simply regurgitate teachings that were written specifically to defend and explain church teachings.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Throughout this discussion all I am seeing are posters using the documents of the teaching under fire to say that the teaching is true. What would you expect? Church Y to say that their teachings don’t add up?

If a church wishes to believe in an all powerful, and so on God, then real responsibility comes with that. Not to simply regurgitate teachings that were written specifically to defend and explain church teachings.

You have the wrong idea. No one is trying to prove anything. Fr. Barron knows and we all know that the teachings of the Church are not open to debate by Catholics. That is why we are resorting to Church teaching, we want to make it clear what the teaching is. We are not attemting to prove the validity of that teaching. If you want to open a thread with proof in mind then you are welcome. Though no proofs are available for most teachings as they mostly depend on Faith in the Truth of God’s Revelation.

Linus2nd

 

[EternalPromises]

Barron is clearly mistaken if he means that Adam is not a historical figure. Adam is explicitly referred to in the genealogies of the bible and It is part of the catholic doctrine that we all inherited original sin through the man that we call Adam.

I apologize if this sounds harsh but I have corresponded with Barron in the past and I found his answers to my questions and arguments deeply disappointing. A look of his philosophy/theology gives the impression that he’s not really in touch with classic scholasticism but a modern, watered-down form of Thomism, his talk of Adam as an allegory might be a symptom of that. I am not the only one that feels that way, though:

lyfaber.blogspot.com/search?q=barron

If you want a really good classical Thomist you might want to check Edward Feser. This is a good article by Feser about Adam and original sin in the face of modern biology:

edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/09/modern-biology-and-original-sin-part-i.html

edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/09/modern-biology-and-original-sin-part-ii.html#more

Hope that helps.

I have to agree with you, I really like Fr. Barron and he has a great way of explaining things. When I first started my journey I watched a ton of his videos but he does seem to promote watered down Thomism which really turned me off.

 

[magnumo]

Fr. Teilhard de Chardin danced across borders to defend his murky theology. Bad poetry? It’s good philosophy. Bad philosophy? It’s good science. Bad science? It’s good poetry. Here’s Dave Armstrong’s rebuttal to Fr. Barron’s Adam-as-symbol.

socrates58.blogspot.com/2013/11/fr-robert-barrons-denial-that-adam-and.html

The good science of a real first man and a real first woman, while contending “they never met,” shows there was one first man and one first woman. The “never met” assertion is based on reconstructed gene permutations that mysteriously do not account for the evolutionistas last refuge: punctuated equilibrium, i.e., some big change. Like God.