DarinHamel:
Jesus came to counter-act original sin. Which means I must literally believe the Adam and Eve story. I don’t. The jewish creation story comes from the Babalonian one which come from the Summer one. Much of the Torah come from the code of Hammerabi.
Respectfully, your premise is flawed. Yes Jesus came to counter-act original sin, but that does not mean that you must believe the Adam and Eve story as a literal factual history in the modern sense. That is not the teaching of the Catholic Church. The
Catechism says:
The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and
without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.”
In other words, Genesis is true to the extent that it conveys the message God wanted to convey. You will find various theories of what that message is. Some certainly will say that the “core truth” includes the identities of the our forebears, their literal creation, historical events in a garden, and the precise dialog that took place at the Fall. Others will say that those are simply story elements, adapted from pre-existing myths, and the the inspired author used them to convey essential truths such as free will, our fallen nature, and God’s continuing love for us.
Here’s what Pope Pius XII had to say in
Divino Afflante Spiritu:As in our age, indeed new questions and new difficulties are multiplied, so, by God’s favor, new means and aids to exegesis are also provided. Among these it is worthy of special mention that Catholic theologians, following the teaching of the Holy Fathers and especially of the Angelic and Common Doctor, have examined and explained the nature and effects of biblical inspiration more exactly and more fully than was wont to be done in previous ages. … Let the interpreter then, with all care and without neglecting any light derived from recent research, endeavor to determine the peculiar character and circumstances of the sacred writer, the age in which he lived,
the sources written or oral to which he had recourse and the forms of expression he employed.
Another poster called your attention to G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. It’s available online at
dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/ortho14.txt. I am just beginning it myself, but one of his first points is that for so much of history, original sin was taken as a given:
Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin–a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.
He goes on to try to deal with the new rationalist theologians on their own terms. It looks to be good reading.
The point I am trying to make is that original sin exists. Catholic theology develops and explains it, but other religions also acknowledge a basic flaw in the world or in humanity that disposes us toward evil. Genesis tells us that the problems of the world are not caused by an evil God or an evil creation, but are the consequence of our free disobedience of a good God. Further it says that he continues to love us, despite our sin, and that he will never abandon us. Jesus came to restore the relationship we broke.
–Bill
.