Let's start with Adam and Eve. Have you swallowed the poisonous swill about them being a myth? This is a fundamental question. Did God lovingly create our first parents or did he generate them through non-human ancestors, i.e. are we closer to the Planet of the Apes than the city of God?Think about His great love in providing a spotless home for Baby Jesus in the womb of Mary. Think of Him sending angels to announce the birth. Think of Him inspiring the scientists from the East to come bearing gifts and giving them a sign in the heavens to guide them.
Can you really imagine that same God starting his human family in the womb of a monkey?
That sure isn't a picture of the God I know. Check out the article below and recall that science continually confirms biblical events. DNA evidence now shows we all share genetics from one man and one woman. Science gets a little fuzzy after that about the timeline and location. But the DNA confirms our relationships with each other. We're all brothers and sisters. So let's act like it, and I don't mean like Cain and Able, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers! We can do better than that if we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus!
Adam and Eve Are Myth, Really? by Regis Nicoll
Very good point - reminds me I have an article to write before returning a book by Colin Renfrew ... as he is atheist, he believes that stuff.
ReplyDeletePope Pius the XII dealt with this issue of Adam and Eve being a "myth" in his encyclical Humani Generis, Mary Ann. :^)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_pi12hg.htm
Here is a snippet:
38. Just as in the biological and anthropological sciences, so also in the historical sciences there are those who boldly transgress the limits and safeguards established by the Church. In a particular way must be deplored a certain too free interpretation of the historical books of the Old Testament. Those who favor this system, in order to defend their cause, wrongly refer to the Letter which was sent not long ago to the Archbishop of Paris by the Pontifical Commission on Biblical Studies.[19] This letter, in fact, clearly points out that the first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes; the same chapters, (the Letter points out), in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people. If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents.
39. Therefore, whatever of the popular narrations have been inserted into the Sacred Scriptures must in no way be considered on a par with *myths* or other such things, which are more the product of an extravagant imagination than of that striving for truth and simplicity which in the Sacred Books, also of the Old Testament, is so apparent that our ancient sacred writers must be admitted to be clearly superior to the ancient profane writers. (stars added on myth)
God bless you, Mary Ann! I love your blog.
Kev
"Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule ... So God created man in His image; in the image of God He created Him; male and female He created them". (Gen 1: 26,27)
ReplyDelete"And God saw all the things He had made, and they were very good". (Gen 1: 30)
Period. And all that comes next in Holy Scripture flows from that creative moment, when Time separated from eternity.
The Christian faith rests upon the foundation of the Creation narrative: specific names, dates, history. From creation to the new creation; Adam and Eve, to the Jesus Christ and Mary (blessed among women), to the parousia. All depends upon creation and new creation; perfect, as God intended; defineable by lineage and history (His story). From the mind of God, exactly as he intended and intends at every moment through time. Not chance. Perfection. The Cross of Calvary placed precisely upon the location of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; the fruit taken down by our first parents in th fall, placed back upon the Tree by Christ; the new Eve with Him, participating in redemption. All very precise; perfect.
No. Evolution and its random, godless chance is not compatible with the Christian faith. It is the product of a godless pagan ethos. It is their religion. But God is active and present; from the beginning, to the middle, all the way to the end. He is the perfect creative force behind all reality. And the first of all reality was named Adam.
Modernism is, in general, just pointless speculation based on ideas that have no secure basis in fact. Special creation is though problematical due to evolution theory, but then evolution theory is itself largely preposterous the more you know about the biochemistry of life. God's ways are not our ways ... There is also the question about where exactly Eden was ... it likely wasn't even on this earth as we know it. When Adam and Eve fell, the whole of creation fell with them.
ReplyDeleteVery insightful and interesting comments. Ray, when I was in school they were teaching that Eden was between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Won’t it be interesting to get all our questions answered. Although in the light of the Beatific Vision chances are we won’t care.
ReplyDeleteMy sense of it is that since death had not entered the world, that Adam and Eve and the animals existed in a kind of archetypal state, perfect world where they failed to obey the rather simple command they were given. Talking snakes are a bit unusual as well. When they fell, their punishments were a world of toil and the prospect of death and with this as we look around much have been the death of all the other created life.
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