Incest And Adam+Eve

[Ice_nine]

so basically, brother and sister "knew" each other in the Biblical sense and thank GOD that doesn't ever need to happen again?

[4588686]

Hm. I was going to point out that the Bible, I believe, makes allusions to possible other individuals living east of Eden in the land of Nod, but I guess polygenism makes that impossible. Interesting. It also raises the question of why God would need to protect Cain by placing his mark on him since Cain and Able were supposedly the only two sons of Adam and eve.

[4588686]

[quote name='Hubertus' timestamp='1330375876' post='2393709']
Wow, I just read this blog post on evolution and the Creation story and it was pretty interesting. My previous statements don't really hold up to this, but it is compatible with what Pope Pius XII said, from what I can tell.
[url="http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2011/09/adam-and-eve-and-ted-and-alice.html"]http://tofspot.blogs...-and-alice.html[/url]

In this sense I suppose you could believe that Adam and Eve's children did not necessarily perform incest. I don't really like how it treats the soul as just a genetic mutation, though.

And of course, this is if you believe in evolution. [/quote]

He's right about quantifier shifts but I'm not sure the language of HG allows his rather clever observation

[i][color=#000000][font=sans-serif][size=3]When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. [b]For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either 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[/b], or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church. [/size][/font][/color][/i]

[Hubertus]

[quote name='Ice_nine' timestamp='1330404903' post='2393941']
so basically, brother and sister "knew" each other in the Biblical sense and thank GOD that doesn't ever need to happen again?
[/quote] If you want to leave all the evolutionary theorism out of it, then yeah, I think that's basically the way it would have played out.



[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1330408119' post='2393949']
He's right about quantifier shifts but I'm not sure the language of HG allows his rather clever observation

[i][color=#000000][font=sans-serif][size=3]When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. [b]For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either 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[/b], or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church. [/size][/font][/color][/i]
[/quote] It says "true men," though. Couldn't that mean, "men with souls?" According to the theory, men with souls would begin existing alongside hominids who didn't have souls and perhaps (or maybe not) even interbreeding, until that other race died out, apparently.

But MithLuin, in that other thread that sixpence linked to, actually made a pretty nice summary of the matter.


[quote name='MithLuin' timestamp='1315585489' post='2302562']
In fact, the language of Genesis 4 strongly implies different groups of people who provide for themselves in different ways - farmers, herdsmen, metalworkers, etc. It's still dealing with origins, but the origins of groups of peoples, suggesting that we've very quickly moved on from the first couple.


The main issue with what you've proposed, [b]sixpence[/b], is that humans with souls are clearly intermarrying with humanoid creatures without souls. If you were...human...you'd certainly recognize the creatures as non-human, and there would be a huge taboo about interbreeding (I would think). The Genesis story requires some sort of taboo, or a less-than-unique experience for Adam and Eve. If they are the first couple (and there are no other humans), then it would seem that incest or interbreeding with nonhuman animals are the only options for their children. If there are other humans with souls around, then that is avoided, but their experience is not unique.


Making a mythological story literally work is probably not the way to read it, though. What is important about the story is what truths it teaches us about the experience of the first humans. What is original innocence? What is the fall? What did Adam see in Eve to identify her as just like him? And...the idea that [i]all[/i] humans alive today are descendants of Adam and Eve, and thus part of the same human family. We can't point to a group and say they aren't human like we are (though of course, as fallen human beings, we often do.....)
[/quote]

[Aloysius]

I just posted this in the other thread on Transmundane, I'll repost it here for debate and such:

I think to avoid polygenism, we must recognize Adam and Eve as the only true ancestors of man, but allow for the possibility of sibling species along the way who were not true men (for true men are only descendents of Adam and Eve) and thus only participated in the fall in the way that all creation participated in the fall--that is, they were fallen because we were fallen, just as animals and plants are fallen because we are fallen.

As an example I'd like to point out Neanderthals--I think there can be little question that they had immortal souls. Indeed, they were kinder people than our ancestors that were contemporaneous with them, as they cared for their sick and even saved flower petals to leave on graves even during the winter (suggesting an afterlife belief). Perhaps they were kinder because they were not direct descendents of the Fall of Man, though they were indeed inheritors of its effects as was all creation.

If we apply this logic, I think we can view, at a certain point, a subset of humanity that was indeed true men, and around them perhaps numbering in the thousands or so from a local population, there were others on a similar, indeed nearly identical, evolutionary stage physically as them--and they were indeed ensouled and able to interbreed with Adam and Eve's descendents, but their story is quite different from the story of man. Adam and Eve were a sort of biological Israel, the chosen ones among a group of ensouled creatures, from whom we have descended.

I think I'm sounding dangerously close to the polygenism condemned by Pius XII, but I think what saves me is that I adamently insist that the other ensouled creatures are not "true men"--they are not part of salvation history, they had their own relationship with their creator and were dealt with in a wholly different way than the race of men--indeed, perhaps they themselves were not even destined for the beatific vision, perhaps they were destined for a type of afterlife that was a wholly different kind of paradise. Who knows what wonders God had in store for them, but they are likely different wonders--because the race of man is unique in all creation, the only race in which God Himself incarnated to redeem the whole world. It was the sin of mankind that brought death into the world (in principle, of course it wasn't a temporal cause-effect relationship wherein nothing died until Adam and Eve existed, or else you'd have immortal dinosaurs) and it was the redemption of mankind that brings the possibility of eternal life to all life in the world. If along the way we had sibling species like Neanderthals, and perhaps like the ensouled hominid creatures who surrounded Adam and Eve, then their place in the eschatalogical world is unknown to us (but it's fun to speculate) for they are not true men and their relation to original sin is like the relation of plants and animals to original sin, it is only for the race of man to bear it as we do, all other life is affected by it but does not bear it.

and thinking of this, it's hard not to turn ones thoughts to extraterrestrials --for the ponderings I make about ensouled sibling species on earth would also apply to ensouled extraterrestrial species.

NB: I am not ascribing any certain time period or species along the human evolutionary line as the time for this ensoulment to have occurred, I am undecided, but suffice it to say I could even consider the possibility of ensouled humans prior to Homo Sapiens, or some time after the first Homo Sapiens existed, perhaps the first Homo Sapiens Sapiens was Adam, or perhaps the first Homo Habilis for all I know. But I think a contemporaneous ensouled hominid co-existing need not be polygenism in any of those ages

[Hubertus]

That is a very interesting theory, Aloysius. Would you say that it was possible that these other ensouled beings were not inclined to sin, or if they were that they had their own salvation story? Now it does sound like we're talking about aliens...

And imagine what society would be like today if they did still exist. Imagine the conflict. Or, if they were innocent, imagine us enslaving them.

I know that this all may sound like silliness to some, since we can't exactly prove any of it, but it does give me some comfort in a way. It reinforces for me how completely compatible the Faith is with science (which I was already sure of, but up until now I had been a bit unsure of the Creation story). Glad to be Catholic.

[Aloysius]

I wonder what effect original sin would have on ensouled beings who themselves did not bear it directly as a burden, for the fall of man dragged all material creation down with it--the whole earth, the beasts, the plants, everything living, so I'm not so sure they wouldn't have some type of inclination to go against their nature, some sinful inclination, though it would likely be different in some way than the concupisence of the race of man.

so yeah, I don't quite see them as being perfect or anything, I am sure we dragged them down with our sin that affected the whole of the cosmos, and it's possible for them to have had their own kind of fall. If they did not have their own kind of fall, I wonder if they were in some way better than us in innocence, perhaps not culpable for doing wrong (though still cursed if they were to harm Cain ) and perhaps less inclined to do wrong, we can't know. The fossil record of an ensouled hominid species that we do not think is in the same line as ours--the neanderthals--(which we may have interbred with), actually indicates a hominid species that was more kind than our ancestors at the time, so perhaps that is evidence of less malice among those not directly in the line of original sin.

I think that the redemptive suffering of Christ goes towards the redemption of all material creation, so no I would not imagine any separate incarnation or sacrifice, no seperate "salvation history" exactly, for their salvation... as I stated, they may not even have been destined for the beatific vision but perhaps destined for some other type of paradise in God's more indirect presence without the beatific vision, and their path towards that type of paradise (or towards heaven) may have been completely different than our own; but of course the fallenness of all creation, caused by the fall of Adam, being re-made through the redemption of Christ would play a part in making them perfect according to the Creator's plan for them.

now, we must recognize that it is absolutely de fide that if there was any interbreeding along the way and all that, everyone alive today... everyone alive at the time of Christ even, everyone alive at the time of Abraham, they were all bona fide sons of Adam. no race on earth evolved into human at some later stage, there are not multiple sources of different races of man--we are all common brothers. one thing Pius XII was concerned about when condemning the polygenism of the time was that polygenism was often used as a cover for racism, trying to pick which race had been evolved to modern man longest and which should be at the top of the evolutionary ladder, so to speak. this is not so--whatever temporary sibling species have existed with distinct destinies in God's plan, we know for sure that those species are no more and we are all one species, one family, all descendents of one and the same acestor, with no elements of interbreeding changing the degree to which any of us is fully human. that goes without saying of course, but it needed to be said anyway because the issue of the polygenism Pius XII was most worried about is definitely tied into racism.

[Aloysius]

[quote name='Hubertus' timestamp='1330442207' post='2394032']
And imagine what society would be like today if they did still exist. Imagine the conflict. Or, if they were innocent, imagine us enslaving them.
[/quote]

the story of the neanderthals may sort of illustrate the type of conflict between two ensouled sibling species, as it were... because we basically displaced them and thus all but wiped them out. we may have interbred with them, but most certainly the neanderthal species lost the little race we had with them... perhaps they were more innocent than us, and perhaps that led to their downfall. and when I say more innocent, I don't mean to mythologize them, I include the possibility of them simply not being culpable for any "sinful" inclination as it was not they themselves that ate from the Tree of Knowledge, so even if they had a fallen nature along with the rest of the world because of our fault, any disordered inclinations may have been sort of innocent disordered inclinations. like the difference between a gay Penguin couple and a gay human couple, for instance. it's not merely a lack of an immortal soul, but a fundamental lack of culpability that I could see potentially being present in some rational ensouled creature that was not in the line of original sin.

however it happened, I don't think God ever intended any sibling species of ours to survive alongside us in any way. the race of man was the chosen race, amongst all other species whether they were immortally ensouled or not, it was humanity that was made uniquely in God's image with the destiny of the Beatific Vision (not that another species couldn't possibly be destined for the Beatific Vision, for indeed we know of two kinds of creatures created with that destiny--Angels and mankind--it's feasible for another ensouled fleshly creature, be it a sibling hominid species or an ensouled extraterrestrial, to be destined for the beatific vision)... our uniqueness is unquestionable, and so is the unity of the generation of all men alive today, we are all one big happy human family.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Aloysius

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1330435128' post='2393998']
I just posted this in the other thread on Transmundane, I'll repost it here for debate and such:

[/quote]
Nice! But don't we need to accept that Adam & Eve is an allegory or metaphor which-ever is the correct word? And not try to part literalize it. Wouldn't it be simpler to replace A&E with humanity. Our ancestors were humans whom God gave dominion over the earth. And the fall of mankind was not one particular bad decision, but humanities inherent nature (original sin) which brought him undone. As a consequence death was also brought upon all other life which is only there as a service to mankind.

[Aloysius]

Church teaching is pretty clear on the subject that there were indeed two first parents, literally. The way the story is told in Genesis is not literal, there needn't be a talking snake and a tree and a garden and a flaming sword banishing them, but it is absolutely de fide that there were two original parents who were given a choice and chose evil, and through that choice evil entered the world. They were indeed influenced by the fallen angels, by Satan himself, symbolized in the Genesis account by a talking serpent.

the reason this is important is because we recognize the fallen nature of all of humanity, and indeed of the whole cosmos, as being the result of the first human beings choice freely given to them, through Adam and Eve, sin entered the world of man. The climax of salvation history is when Mary is given the choice by an angel to undo Eve's choice, and she says "Fiat", "be it done unto me according to Thy word"--in essence, where Eve said no to God, Mary said yes to God and become mother of all the faithful. Mary is the new Eve and Christ is the new Adam, their actions and choices in life undo the fall of the first two parents.

it is absolutely important to our faith that there be historical characters of Adam and Eve, they absolutely represent two individual first parents who were given a choice. denying the existence of these individuals is like denying the existence of Mary and Christ as individuals and instead trying to say that they just represented an idea or they represented all of human choice now turning to God and all of human redemptive suffering... no, that is not our faith. our faith is that through two individuals sin entered the world, and through two individuals Salvation entered the world. (through Mary because by her answer she brought Christ, who is the salvation).

[Aloysius]

oh, and original sin is not humanity's inherent nature, it is a fallen nature that came about because of the choice of our first parent. but as we can all be guilty for crucifying Christ, we can all in some sense be guilty of eating the fruit of the Tree, of being disobedient towards God. it's an illegitimate cop-out to say we are just disobedient because of the defect of original sin that we inherited, for the depth of the inheritance is much more than just one who inherits money from an uncle. the sin of Adam brought down all the cosmos into a fallen nature, and it was indeed Adam's sin, but as his sons and as Eve's daughters, we cooperate in that sin from the moment of our birth. if we did not cooperate in some way, then baptism would make us all into perfect little angels with no inclination towards sin; but it doesn't, because concupiscence is something that has seeped into the free will of every man to the core of their nature, and it is a lifelong struggle to allow grace to rebuild us to where we ought to be.

[Mark of the Cross]

I'm not trying to be a troll here, I'm genuinely interested in what you are writing.
But we did literally originate from two humans. A male and a female! And why am I responsible for my fathers bad choice if not by my inherited genetic nature (back on the science)? How does baptism undo this to an innocent (baby) who has no knowledge or choice in the matter. Baptism was originally only performed on adults. Whole families yes, but why wouldn't you if they were present together. The practice of infant baptism came later, some say out of fear of infant limbo. Another question that fascinates me is Jesus statement. "Unless you are born again of water and the Holy Spirit.." Would it be a heresy to move the word 'again'. 'Unless you are born of water and again of the Holy Spirit.'

[Hubertus]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1330466226' post='2394193']
. . . we recognize the fallen nature of all of humanity, and indeed of the whole cosmos, as being the result of the first human beings choice freely given to them, through Adam and Eve, sin entered the world of man.[/quote] But if there were other ensouled beings, then what was special about man's decision that caused it to take precedence and bring the rest of the cosmos down with it? I can see why the angels' decisions weren't involved, since they are purely spiritual and immortal, but if there was another race of beings on this earth then it would follow that their decisions should have some weight as well.

[Aloysius]

mark of teh cross: Adam and Eve made the choice for the whole human race, and just as we can say that through our sin it was we ourselves that crucified Christ, through our sin it is we ourselves that have in some mystical way eaten of the Tree--there is a connection between the human family that unites us to Adam's choice so that we cannot merely blame the tendency towards sin we inherited from Adam for our sins, it's sort of a chicken and the egg kind of thing. we are born with a tendency towards acting contrary to our nature, so baptism cleanses us of that by providing us with grace. when we think of the sacraments as Catholics we do not think of them in merely human terms, but in mystical spiritual terms. in human terms we would wonder why a baby could have original sin without ever exercising free will in actual sin, but in spiritual terms there is a real sense in which from birth we share in the disobedience of our first parents. that's by no means an exhaustive explanation, but I'm trying not to stray too far from the topic at hand.

Hubertus: why was Israel special? it was the chosen people of God. but I think when it comes to why mankind was special it goes even deeper than the analogy to the specialness of Israel (though I like the idea of our species being the sort of Israel of all ensouled flesh), I think it was mankind that was made specifically in God's image and likeness. Which is why I would not be certain that any other ensouled rational creature would even necessarily be destined for the Beatific Vision--the purpose of their existence may have been entirely different. Indeed, it was likely a purpose subordinated to God''s ultimate will for the human race, because the human race was the pinnacle of God's creation. of course, applying that to extraterrestrial ensouled beings would be questionable, I think other ensouled hominids would likely have been created by God on earth for the purpose of humans the way animals are created to be subordinated to the destiny of the human race, whereas extraterrestrials may or may not be such. in any event, the uniqueness of the human race is a fundamental doctrine of the Catholic faith, so I think it is on that that the idea that it was the human decision that drug the whole cosmos down into the fallen state rests. if we ever find evidence of extraterrestrials, we might have to question what exactly that uniqueness of the human race entails, because there's no way we could ever treat other rational ensouled creatures as somehow "lesser" beings morally IMO.

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Mark of the Cross' timestamp='1330468081' post='2394214']
I'm not trying to be a troll here, I'm genuinely interested in what you are writing.
But we did literally originate from two humans. A male and a female! And why am I responsible for my fathers bad choice if not by my inherited genetic nature (back on the science)? How does baptism undo this to an innocent (baby) who has no knowledge or choice in the matter. Baptism was originally only performed on adults. Whole families yes, but why wouldn't you if they were present together. The practice of infant baptism came later, some say out of fear of infant limbo.
[/quote]
Infants as part of households were baptised with everyone else, it was not just a later addition.