P
PhilVaz
Guest
Tim (Orogeny) has it right. The modern Popes darn well know about all the previous statements of the Popes and Councils, etc. Competent orthodox Catholic theologians wrote that statement overseen by Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI. They know the dogma of the Church, and they know the science.
As for the “bodily immortality” of Adam/Eve question, here is one orthodox Catholic answer from Dennis Bonnette and his book Origin of the Human Species. The theological / philosophical material in the book is good, but the science in my opinion is sometimes lacking (Bonnette is a philosopher, not a scientist).
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In the 1950 papal encyclical Humani Generis (Concerning Some False Opinions Which Threaten to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine), Pope Pius XII stated that we may speculate on bodily evolution, if we leave unquestioned the human soul’s direct, immediate creation (Denz 2327). Provided that God directly create the human spiritual soul, we may read the 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission’s teaching on the “special creation of man” to mean that the human body’s material origin took place through some form of evolution.
The “unity of the human race” implies the doctrine of monogenism, that Adam and Eve are the first parents of the entire human race. Ludwig Ott maintains: “The teaching of the unity of the human race is not, indeed, a dogma, but it is a necessary presupposition of the dogma of Original Sin and Redemption” (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, page 96). This teaching follows because Original Sin “is the result of a sin committed, in actual historical fact, by an individual man named Adam, and it is a quality native to all of us, only because it had been handed down by descent from him” (Denz 2328). The Council of Trent’s Decree defines that Original Sin “is communicated to all men by propagation not by imitation.” The unity also means the entire human race takes its origin from Adam and Eve, our first parents, who were an actually existing individual pair of human beings, male and female, from whom we are all descended through natural generation.
St. Augustine notes that the attendant “preternatural gift of immortality” should be understood as the possibility of not dying, rather than as being the impossibility of dying (Ott, 104). The gift of immortality does not contradict every physical substance’s potential corruptibility, its composition of matter and form. The possible immortality of our first parents in no way opposes the dictum, “every man is mortal.” This famed syllogistic axiom merely states the potentially corruptible character of human hylemorphic nature. Ott maintains that the associated gift of impassibility means “the possibility of remaining free from suffering” (Ott, 104). The preternatural gifts of integrity and immortality seem to violate early humans’ natural condition. We do not easily control our passions, nor do we possess bodily immortality. But the proper ordering of elements in human nature that constitutes the gift of integrity is nature’s perfection, not its contradiction. So too, immortality, the possibility of not dying, entails the possibility of continued life. Life is the first act and perfection of any living nature, not its contradiction.
From the standpoint of intrinsic finality, the proof that such gifts were praeter-natural is the dismal fact that they have been lost. If they were natural properties flowing from human nature, we could never have lost them. The preternatural gifts of integrity and immortality are beyond human nature. They represent simply the ultimate natural perfection of human nature, awaiting eschatological realization. Predictably, the fossil record gives no evidence of such gifts. Still, revelation presents no intellectual scandal if it maintains our first parents possessed them.
Further, evolutionary science sees the broad picture of human origins taking place over a time-frame measured in hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years. It cannot focus on events affecting a single pair of humans at a given point in time. Anthropological data and theories are so general that they cannot oppose particular facts about an Adam and Eve, unless even the broad trends of such data are shown to oppose such particulars’ possibilities. Speculation based upon present data can, at best, indicate the nature and activities of early humans, pointing to largely undefined populations and imprecise time periods. It cannot address with precision the conditions of existence of a single pair of humans at a particular, distant-past time. It cannot exclude, a priori, the possibility of miraculous divine intervention whose reality falls entirely outside the fossil record.
From Adam, Eve, and the Hominid Fossil Record
Phil P
As for the “bodily immortality” of Adam/Eve question, here is one orthodox Catholic answer from Dennis Bonnette and his book Origin of the Human Species. The theological / philosophical material in the book is good, but the science in my opinion is sometimes lacking (Bonnette is a philosopher, not a scientist).
==========
In the 1950 papal encyclical Humani Generis (Concerning Some False Opinions Which Threaten to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine), Pope Pius XII stated that we may speculate on bodily evolution, if we leave unquestioned the human soul’s direct, immediate creation (Denz 2327). Provided that God directly create the human spiritual soul, we may read the 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission’s teaching on the “special creation of man” to mean that the human body’s material origin took place through some form of evolution.
The “unity of the human race” implies the doctrine of monogenism, that Adam and Eve are the first parents of the entire human race. Ludwig Ott maintains: “The teaching of the unity of the human race is not, indeed, a dogma, but it is a necessary presupposition of the dogma of Original Sin and Redemption” (Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, page 96). This teaching follows because Original Sin “is the result of a sin committed, in actual historical fact, by an individual man named Adam, and it is a quality native to all of us, only because it had been handed down by descent from him” (Denz 2328). The Council of Trent’s Decree defines that Original Sin “is communicated to all men by propagation not by imitation.” The unity also means the entire human race takes its origin from Adam and Eve, our first parents, who were an actually existing individual pair of human beings, male and female, from whom we are all descended through natural generation.
St. Augustine notes that the attendant “preternatural gift of immortality” should be understood as the possibility of not dying, rather than as being the impossibility of dying (Ott, 104). The gift of immortality does not contradict every physical substance’s potential corruptibility, its composition of matter and form. The possible immortality of our first parents in no way opposes the dictum, “every man is mortal.” This famed syllogistic axiom merely states the potentially corruptible character of human hylemorphic nature. Ott maintains that the associated gift of impassibility means “the possibility of remaining free from suffering” (Ott, 104). The preternatural gifts of integrity and immortality seem to violate early humans’ natural condition. We do not easily control our passions, nor do we possess bodily immortality. But the proper ordering of elements in human nature that constitutes the gift of integrity is nature’s perfection, not its contradiction. So too, immortality, the possibility of not dying, entails the possibility of continued life. Life is the first act and perfection of any living nature, not its contradiction.
From the standpoint of intrinsic finality, the proof that such gifts were praeter-natural is the dismal fact that they have been lost. If they were natural properties flowing from human nature, we could never have lost them. The preternatural gifts of integrity and immortality are beyond human nature. They represent simply the ultimate natural perfection of human nature, awaiting eschatological realization. Predictably, the fossil record gives no evidence of such gifts. Still, revelation presents no intellectual scandal if it maintains our first parents possessed them.
Further, evolutionary science sees the broad picture of human origins taking place over a time-frame measured in hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years. It cannot focus on events affecting a single pair of humans at a given point in time. Anthropological data and theories are so general that they cannot oppose particular facts about an Adam and Eve, unless even the broad trends of such data are shown to oppose such particulars’ possibilities. Speculation based upon present data can, at best, indicate the nature and activities of early humans, pointing to largely undefined populations and imprecise time periods. It cannot address with precision the conditions of existence of a single pair of humans at a particular, distant-past time. It cannot exclude, a priori, the possibility of miraculous divine intervention whose reality falls entirely outside the fossil record.
From Adam, Eve, and the Hominid Fossil Record
Phil P
