Why didn't God save Neanderthals?

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… GEORGE PELL: Well, Adam and Eve are terms - what do they mean: life and earth. It’s like every man. That’s a beautiful, sophisticated, mythological account. It’s not science but it’s there to tell us two or three things. First of all that God created the world and the universe. Secondly, that the key to the whole of universe, the really significant thing, are humans and, thirdly, it is a very sophisticated mythology to try to explain the evil and suffering in the world.

TONY JONES: But it isn’t a literal truth. You shouldn’t see it in any way as being an historical or literal truth?

GEORGE PELL: It’s certainly not a scientific truth and it’s a religious story told for religious purposes.
Do you think Cardinal Pell is aware of Humani Generis of Pope Pius XII and the Council of Trent dogmas?

“For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents” - Humani Generis

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13008879&postcount=456

And the dogmas from Council of Trent, Session V:… the holy, ecumenical and general Council of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the same three legates of the Apostolic See presiding, wishing now to reclaim the erring and to strengthen the wavering, and following the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures, of the holy Fathers, of the most approved councils, as well as the judgment and unanimity of the Church herself, ordains, confesses and declares these things concerning original sin:
  1. If anyone does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he transgressed the commandment of God in paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted, and through the offense of that prevarication incurred the wrath and indignation of god, and thus death with which God had previously threatened him,[4] and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil,[5] and that the entire Adam through that offense of prevarication was changed in body and soul for the worse,[6] let him be anathema.
    1. If anyone asserts that the transgression of Adam injured him alone and not his posterity,[7] and that the holiness and justice which he received from God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone and not for us also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has transfused only death and the pains of the body into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul, let him be anathema, since he contradicts the Apostle who says:
      By one man sin entered into the world and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.[8]

    [*]If anyone asserts that this sin of Adam, which in its origin is one, and by propagation, not by imitation, transfused into all, which is in each one as something that is his own, is taken away either by the forces of human nature or by a remedy other than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ,[9] who has reconciled us to God in his own blood, made unto us justice, sanctification and redemption;[10] or if he denies that that merit of Jesus Christ is applied both to adults and to infants by the sacrament of baptism rightly administered in the form of the Church, let him be anathema; for there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved.[11]
    Whence that declaration: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sins of the world;[12]
    and that other: As many of you as have been baptized, have put on Christ.[13]
    [*]If anyone denies that infants, newly born from their mothers’ wombs, are to be baptized, even though they be born of baptized parents, or says that they are indeed baptized for the remission of sins,[14] but that they derive nothing of original sin from Adam which must be expiated by the laver of regeneration for the attainment of eternal life, whence it follows that in them the form of baptism for the remission of sins is to be understood not as true but as false, let him be anathema, for what the Apostle has said, by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned,[15] is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church has everywhere and always understood it.

    For in virtue of this rule of faith handed down from the apostles, even infants who could not as yet commit any sin of themselves, are for this reason truly baptized for the remission of sins, in order that in them what they contracted by generation may be washed away by regeneration.[16]
    For, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.[17]
 
It was a specific and pointed question that needed a straightforward answer, but unfortunately Cardinal Pell chose to use circumlocution. The average viewer/listener/reader could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that the story of Adam and Eve is not a literal truth in Pell’s eyes, especially since he said that A & E are “terms” and just a little earlier in the programme he had expressed his belief in descent from the neanderthals. How I wish that Dawkins’ immediate next question on the implications (of the non-existence of A&E) for Original Sin was answered by Cardinal Pell, but unfortunately it got lost in the flow of the conversation.

What I dearly want to know is whether there has been any subsequent clarification by Cardinal Pell especially since this particular answer of his generated such a storm in the Christian world?

The relevant transcript extract is reproduced below:
TONY JONES: So are you talking about a kind of Garden of Eden scenario with an actual Adam and Eve?

GEORGE PELL: Well, Adam and Eve are terms - what do they mean: life and earth. It’s like every man. That’s a beautiful, sophisticated, mythological account. It’s not science but it’s there to tell us two or three things. First of all that God created the world and the universe. Secondly, that the key to the whole of universe, the really significant thing, are humans and, thirdly, it is a very sophisticated mythology to try to explain the evil and suffering in the world.

TONY JONES: But it isn’t a literal truth. You shouldn’t see it in any way as being an historical or literal truth?

GEORGE PELL: It’s certainly not a scientific truth and it’s a religious story told for religious purposes.

TONY JONES: Just quickly, because the Old Testament in particular is full of these kind of stories, I mean is there a point where you distinguish between metaphor and reality? For example, Moses receiving the Ten Commandments inscribed directly by God on a mountain?

GEORGE PELL: I’m not sure that the Old Testament says that God inscribed the Ten Commandments but leaving that aside it’s difficult to know how exactly that worked but Moses was a great man. There was a great encounter with the divine. Actually, with Moses we get the key that enables us to come together with the Greeks with reason because Moses said who will I tell the Egyptians and he tell that my name is “I am who I am”.

TONY JONES: Okay, I’m just going to…

GEORGE PELL: And we’ll come back to that.

TONY JONES: I’m just going to bring Richard Dawkins back in here because we’ve moved from evolution obviously to the biblical versions of it. Your response.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, I’m curious to know if Adam and Eve never existed where did original sin come from? But I also would like to clarify the point about whether there was ever a first human…
I am thinking about the average viewer and this question from afthomercy post 517. “What I dearly want to know is whether there has been any subsequent clarification by Cardinal Pell especially since this particular answer of his generated such a storm in the Christian world?”

Pardon my bluntness.

I do not want answers to these questions . However, these thought questions are a basic structure for dealing with various questions about Adam and the Neanderthals that spill over into Catholic teachings about Adam.

These are strictly thought questions.

Should we think about the average viewer as the authority regarding Catholic doctrines? Should we think about defending the average viewer? Defending the average viewer is a great idea because then there could be the opportunity to also present the correct Catholic teachings.

Do we ever think about going straight to Catholic teachings before thinking about Cardinal Pell? Do we ever think that high ranking clergy do take advantage of free speech?

If we were actually thinking about this quote – “Well, Adam and Eve are terms - what do they mean: life and earth. It’s like every man. That’s a beautiful, sophisticated, mythological account.” – would we take the time to analyze it according to the omitted information?

I do think that my thoughts do not belong in this discussion.
My brain is tired from thinking.:yawn::sleep:
 
Short answer: more than 100,000 years of evolution.
Haha, very good 🙂

Well God did take the bone from Adam to make an Eve (woman) God also could do what ever he wished in order to make the “twin” of Adam a female. I just was thinking of the bone marrow, and how their blood would be the same then.
 
What is Cardinal Pell’s CAF username?

If you do not have the Cardinal’s CAF username, then your request is not valid.
We know the real name of Cardinal Pell and we know his credentials.
I will take the word and authority of Cardinal Pell over the word of an anonymous blogger.
 
Do you think Cardinal Pell is aware of Humani Generis of Pope Pius XII and the Council of Trent dogmas?
For a Cardinal of the Church not to be aware of these basic things is highly unlikely.😦
I will take the word and authority of Cardinal Pell over the word of an anonymous blogger.
I think you need to weigh the whole Catholic Deposit of Faith on the one side and the unclarified opinion of a clergyman (however high ranking he may be) on the other and decide on which side you want to weigh in. I came across a nice compact compilation of church teaching on this subject (may not be exhaustive):
whynotcatholicism.net/view/adam-and-eve-true-original-sin-true

Since you attach so much importance to what he said during that one TV programme, you might want to ask His Eminence, should you ever meet him, for his response to Dawkin’s unanswered question, viz. “if Adam and Eve never existed where did original sin come from?”. For all you know, he might turn around and say “I never said that Adam and Eve never existed. Please read the transcript again!”😃
Dear Aloysium, I was just copy-pasting from the official transcript. No disrespect meant. I thought it was obvious.🙂
 
the cro magnons (modern europeans) and neanderthals bred to some extent.

the neanderthals also interbred with denisovans, who themselves may have bred with modern humans in asia.

so these species/people have been saved through us, if they were ever much different at all.
 
. . . Dear Aloysium, I was just copy-pasting from the official transcript. No disrespect meant. I thought it was obvious.🙂
It was obvious. What wasn’t, was what made me laugh.
Chalk it up to internet ambiguity.
It was funny to juxtapose the different way in which we can address each other.
The Cardinal’s name alone reminds us that we ultimately have one man’s opinion no matter how high in the church, if that opinion differs, and it is not clear that it does, from what the church informs of revealed truth.
The other poster seemed to be heaping on laurels to argue his own point, what he believed the Cardinal to be saying, by appealing to authority.
You start analyzing something funny and it drains all the humour out.
It made me laugh. No offence to anyone intended.
 
I think it’s best to view Neanderthals as kind of a beta-version of humanity that God was trying out. He created them, was unimpressed with the result, and went back to the drawing board.
 
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