If Genesis isn't literal, why did Christ die? Where does original sin come from?

[buffalo]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

Scroll down to the “misconceptions”

Mitochondrial DNA is also passed through the fathers line.

 

[tjm190]

Mitochondrial DNA is also passed through the fathers line.

Only incredibly rarely

 

[buffalo]

Only incredibly rarely

Check it out.

 

[turtle18]

Thread title.

Keep in mind, I know in Eastern theology that Christ’s sacrifice isn’t necessarily for Atonement, so I suppose I’m speaking to more Western types that interpret Genesis figuratively.

Also, if there was no actual “Fall,” where did original sin come from (again, the Western understanding of original sin)?

Thanks.

Hi NoWings,

I am in the apparently relatively small minority of Catholics that believes in Genesis. If science contradicts the Bible, then I am still going to believe what the Bible tells me, because that is where faith comes in. Science was created by God. God is an artist & science is his tool He uses to create. That is the absolute, beautiful, wonderful, mystery of God.

I don’t necessarily need to understand his “tools” in order to understand Him. Unfortunately, in the Catholic Church, there has been some sort of modern tendency to deconstruct the Bible, just to show we aren’t “backwards” like fundamentalists. But I agree with your implication, our whole faith falls apart if you don’t take Genesis literally.

Not only does Jesus make a reference to Adam, the third chapter of Luke traces Jesus directly back to Adam, through the lineage of St. Joesph:

usccb.org/nab/bible/luke/luke3.htm

And then I ask you this paradox? If Moses wrote Genesis as some sort of allegory to explain how the world began, why he would write of the Garden of Eden? Is it some sort of accident that our first human ancestors were banished from a garden & Jesus began his redemption of us in a garden in the Garden of Gethesame? No, it is not an accident, it is a Divine Plan.

Think about, what makes a day for humans? The earth rotates on its axis. What makes a year? The earth rotates around the sun. Since God did not create the sun til the “fourth day” it is clear we are not talking about an eartly timeline here but God’s perception of what time is. It even says God does not create an Earth day–til the “fourth day”-

Let there be lights in the dome of the sky, to separate day from night. Let them mark the fixed times, the days and the years, and serve as luminaries in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth

 

[Bluegoat]

Thread title.

Keep in mind, I know in Eastern theology that Christ’s sacrifice isn’t necessarily for Atonement, so I suppose I’m speaking to more Western types that interpret Genesis figuratively.

Also, if there was no actual “Fall,” where did original sin come from (again, the Western understanding of original sin)?

Thanks.

Even if Genesis is not understood literally, it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t an actual Fall. It just means that the story is a theological, and perhaps even lityerary, description of what the Fall is.

Some theologians have suggested that the Fall took place in the instant of human creation, almost outside of time, in much the same way that the fall of the angels must have happened. There are some reasons to think that the Genesis account of Eden is in some way “pre-creation” or before space and time as we know them existed. In that case, the creation we see every day, that science attempts to describe, is wholly a post-fall phenomena. Had there been no Fall, it might have looked rather different - it’s hard to imagine how. Not to say that it is a different thing entirely - but that in some way it is a bit like a shadow of the real thing. (Perhaps rather like Narnia and Earth are portrayed after the end of time in the C.S. Lewis book The Last Battle.)

Would the Fall then also have played out somehow in an historical or evolutionary sense, or only at an individual level? I tend to think the latter - all of creation is Fallen through man, and has been since the beginning of things as we know them.

 

[Jack17]

Evolution is basically a fact, that’s proven with viruses that evolve so our bodies are always not immune to something. So Genisis is somewhat literal.

I don’t know how original sin enter- Megan Fox look alike.

 

[fhansen]

Thread title.

Keep in mind, I know in Eastern theology that Christ’s sacrifice isn’t necessarily for Atonement, so I suppose I’m speaking to more Western types that interpret Genesis figuratively.

Also, if there was no actual “Fall,” where did original sin come from (again, the Western understanding of original sin)?

Thanks.

Th CC teaches that all humans alive today were descended from two literal parents who literally committed the first sin of disobedience of God. Various other parts of the story may or may not be literal-much figurative language is used.