Literal Rib?

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No one believes that the Garden of Eden story does not contain figurative language. The question is whether or not Catholics should believe that Eve was formed out of Adam’s side. I have a hard time seeing why we shouldn’t since it is hard to see what alternative explanation of which creation from Adam’s rib would be a figure. Evolution? The New Testament clearly affirms the teaching that Eve was made from Adam, and the Church teaches that all humanity is descended from two individual humans, Adam and Eve. So if we do not interpret this part of the story literally, what can be proposed in its place. Eve evolved from Adam by some asexual manner of reproduction? God made Adam pregnant (like Arnold Schwarzanegger in the movie Junior) and Adam gave birth to Eve? Are any of these explanations more reasonable than the literal reading? I don’t see how there is a more reasonable interpretation for Catholics given what Catholics are bound to believe.
 
QNDNNDQDCE said:
No one believes that the Garden of Eden story does not contain figurative language. The question is whether or not Catholics should believe that Eve was formed out of Adam’s side. I have a hard time seeing why we shouldn’t since it is hard to see what alternative explanation of which creation from Adam’s rib would be a figure. Evolution? The New Testament clearly affirms the teaching that Eve was made from Adam, and the Church teaches that all humanity is descended from two individual humans, Adam and Eve. So if we do not interpret this part of the story literally, what can be proposed in its place. Eve evolved from Adam by some asexual manner of reproduction? God made Adam pregnant (like Arnold Schwarzanegger in the movie Junior) and Adam gave birth to Eve? Are any of these explanations more reasonable than the literal reading? I don’t see how there is a more reasonable interpretation for Catholics given what Catholics are bound to believe.
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Evolution?

I think the point of the story is that the first human spirits were in an spiritual paradis, where they experienced spiritual death. That there’s nothing physical about the story, at all.
 
Gorgias said:
And here’s something that the Biblical Commission said in 1993:

Note especially that literal ≠ literalist, and that “the literal sense does not necessarily imply belief that the facts recounted actually took place.” 😉
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PNEUMA said:
There was no literal Eve, there was no literal rib, there was no literal paradis, the whole creation of paradise story, is a metaphor ! Or do you really believe “they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze” ? God is spirit ! remember ?

http://www.colourbox.com/preview/40...senior-nordic-walking-in-narcissus-garden.jpg
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What faith are you, if you don’t mind my asking?
 
Faith1960 said:
What faith are you, if you don’t mind my asking?
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Catholic, but in this question, I share the view of Church Father Origen (b. 184 d. 253)

“Who would be so childish as to think that God was like a human gardener and planted a paradise in Eden facing the east, and in it made a real visible tree, so that one could acquire life by eating its fruit with real teeth or, again, could participate in good and evil by eating what he took from the other tree? And if the text says that God walked in the garden in the evening, or Adam hid himself under the tree, I cannot think that anyone would dispute that these things are said in the figurative sense, in an effort to reveal certain mysteries by means of an apparent historical tale and not by something that actually took place” (First Principles - 4: 16 )
 
PNEUMA said:
There was no literal Eve, there was no literal rib, there was no literal paradis, the whole creation of paradise story, is a metaphor ! Or do you really believe “they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze” ? God is spirit ! remember ?

http://www.colourbox.com/preview/40...senior-nordic-walking-in-narcissus-garden.jpg
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And Jesus Christ, true God and true man, lived among us. He raised the dead, cleansed the lepers and gave sight to the blind. He rose from the dead bodily and was seen by many witnesses.

Peace,
Ed

Christ is Risen!
Alleluia!

Christ will come again!
Alleluia!
 
edwest2 said:
And Jesus Christ, true God and true man, lived among us. He raised the dead, cleansed the lepers and gave sight to the blind. He rose from the dead bodily and was seen by many witnesses.

Peace,
Ed

Christ is Risen!
Alleluia!

Christ will come again!
Alleluia!
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I think you have to differentiate between the Father that is spirit and the Son that is man, Ed 🙂 Human Jesus Christ, doesn’t mean that the Father was a human in paradise with Adam and Eve
 
PNEUMA said:
I think you have to differentiate between the Father that is spirit and the Son that is man, Ed 🙂 Human Jesus Christ, doesn’t mean that the Father was a human in paradise with Adam and Eve
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No, but Adam and Eve could communicate with God directly. Before The Fall, they had bodily immortality and other gifts. What some want to believe denies the power of God to work in supernatural ways, including the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Peace,
Ed
 
If you believe that God is unable to make Eve from Adam then feel free to disbelieve it but If you believe that God is able to make Eve from Adam then you should believe it.

Which is harder?

Making Adam from dust or Eve from Adam’s rib?
 
To all those who do not believe that Adam and Eve existed, why is their son in the Eucharistic prayer if it was just a nice story?

Look with favour on these offerings and accept them as once you accepted the gifts of your servant Abel, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the bread and wine offered by your priest Melchisedech.
 
edwest2 said:
No, but Adam and Eve could communicate with God directly…
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Yes, the first human sprits were alive and could communicate with God (a spirit) directly, after their spiritual death, they lost communication. Jesus Christ woke up our dead human spirits so that we can communicate with God (a spirit).
 
adawgj said:
No it is not literal. John Paul The Great even said that evolution is more than a hypothesis. So you are able to believe in evolution and not the literal version of Genesis.

No we are not Cafeteria Catholics who believe in evolution we are militant Catholics.

However the Church does teach that you can believe in almost any form of origin as long as you acknowledge that God is the creator.
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This! 👍
 
Nelka said:
To all those who do not believe that Adam and Eve existed, why is their son in the Eucharistic prayer if it was just a nice story?

Look with favour on these offerings and accept them as once you accepted the gifts of your servant Abel, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the bread and wine offered by your priest Melchisedech.
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Two thoughts: first off, you’re using the old version of Eucharistic Prayer I. The current version states:

Be pleased to look upon these offerings with a serene and kindly countenance, and to accept them, as you were pleased to accept the gifts of your servant Abel the just, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.

In answer to your question, then, I would state that the reason that the Eucharistic Prayer uses them is because it’s making a Scriptural citation. Matthew 23:35 refers to Ἅβελ τοῦ δικαίου in the Greek and Abel justi in the Latin. In other words, they’re speaking of “Abel the just”… which is the same appellation given him in the Eucharistic Prayer. So, it’s there because it’s a Scripture reference. 😉
 
I don’t think it is literal and by literal meaning that God cut opened Adam’s skin cut one of his ribs leaving him with one less rib sutured or got the wound close and built a female out of one rib. However the story is truth, in the sense that God indeed created Eve out of Adam. I think this is similar as to if there is a torrential rain and I say “it is raining cats and dogs” I don’t meant that an actual cat and dog are falling from clouds into the ground. I mean it is raining torrentially. It is a complete truth but doesn’t mean that there physical cats and dogs in the cloud that are being dropped to the ground.

A literal interpretation means that God performed surgery on Adam left him missing a rib and somehow crafted a human body out of one rib. That is not what the writer is intending to say. He is intending to say God created Adam first and that it was not good for Adam to be alone(again you can’t isolate the passage you need to read in its full context) so god decided to make a mate a wife for him which will be one flesh to him (there is a huge reference to marriage in here to) so God created out of Adams flesh(how exactly only God knows) his wife who should be one with him. Trying to get too hooked up on the literal words on one phrase may make you loose the meaning of the entire context which is God created one man and one woman to be meant to be together in marriage.

Also John Paul II said that God created Eve, not out of Adam’s head to be stepped on, not out of his feet for her to step on him (or something along those words…can’t recall the exact wording) instead of his rib to be next to his heart to be loved and cherished by him. O think that is the best explanation I’ve heard in my life.
 
Nelka said:
If you believe that God is unable to make Eve from Adam then feel free to disbelieve it but If you believe that God is able to make Eve from Adam then you should believe it.
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Nelka,

You realize that you’ve moved the goalposts, right? No one here has argued that “God is unable to make Eve from Adam” – that’s a construct purely of your own making. God can do anything, of course. If you believe that God is able to … make us attain heaven without the suffering and temptation of life on earth… then should you believe it? 😉

The discussion here isn’t whether God is able to make Eve from Adam’s rib, but simply whether literally He did so.

Happy Easter!

G.
 
Also, another question we need to ponder on this topic. How do we know if the definition and understanding that we have of the word “rib” is exactly the same of someone who may very well lived over three thousand years ago. Most of us today have an understanding of the word rib based on anatomy and from knowledge developed of professionals cutting the human open. The writer of the bible probably never had a class on all the bones and the muscles of the bodies so his understanding may very well have been the side of the body and by trying to be literal we are placing our 2014 definitions on someone who maybe did not mean the specific bone we based on science denominate rib.
 
Pope Leo XIII provided the answer in the encyclical Arcanum:

“We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep. God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time.”

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Pope Leo XIII provided the answer in the encyclical Arcanum:

“We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep. God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whomway step by step might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time.”

Peace,
Ed
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I think this goes exactly with what I am saying. The text is intrinsically related to the mystery of marriage, and that marriage is the base of society. That the woman was made “miraculously” out of man i. e. We don’t know the literal way God did it because God is God and human brain cannot comprehend the exact way how God did this hence we don’t know if it was the actual bone we call rib, if it was from the flesh on the side or if it was done out of Adam’s DNA. It was a miracle and attempting to try to figure out the exact way that God performed that miracle misses the point of the entire text.
 
Gorgias said:
Nelka,

You realize that you’ve moved the goalposts, right? No one here has argued that “God is unable to make Eve from Adam” – that’s a construct purely of your own making. God can do anything, of course. If you believe that God is able to … make us attain heaven without the suffering and temptation of life on earth… then should you believe it? 😉

The discussion here isn’t whether God is able to make Eve from Adam’s rib, but simply whether literally He did so.

Happy Easter!

G.
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Thanks G. As most threads go, we tend to lose the original point which in this case is whether Eve was literally made from Adams rib.
 
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