Incest And Adam+Eve

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Louie' timestamp='1330756826' post='2395591']
Ok then if you don't believe Adam and Eve as actual people in the bible what do you do with the genealogy of Jesus given in Luke where he lines His lineage all the way down to Adam.



If Adam was not a real person then neither would Jesus be real. There is a problem with that way of thinking. Also there was a firmament that once surrounded the earth that is how they lived so long...it would be like a giant green house...thus being where all the water came from during the flood and how we now have the oceans that be. There is an explanation for the many misunderstanding you may have concerning the stories in the bible. Like I said before when you just believe the bible as the inspired word of God and all of it to be truth...without doubting the things spoken of in it...the things that you question will be given an answer to...when you stop using your human reasoning and allow the spirit to be your teacher...Adam was a real person and so too was Jesus.
[/quote]

Of course there was a first man whose soul was from God , or we wouldn't be having this conversation. Ans since we are Catholic of course we believe Jesus existed. We also believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures because the CHURCH says they are the Word of God. However, something does not have to be literally true to BE true. When the psalmist says the arm of God he doesn't mean the literal arm of God, he is talking about the power of God in action. If we tell someone "you are the wind beneath my wings" it doesn't mean I am a bird.

[Papist]

If I say it is raining cats and dogs, what is the truth in what I am saying?

[Ice_nine]

^^idioms is phun

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='Louie' timestamp='1330757737' post='2395596']


As for cutting off you arms and gouging out your eyes...that's how serious Jesus was concerning sin...He was saying that if these parts of your body keeps you from getting to heaven it would be better not to have them...don't allow a body part to be the reason why you end up in hell...that's how serious we must take the end that sin will bring to us.
[/quote]
The problem with a literal version is that if we are going to destroy parts of our body to prevent sinning then we should commit suicide to prevent it altogether. But then it is a sin to destroy what God has created. If God wanted the Bible to be as simplistic as you seem to want to interpret it, then it should be very clear and concise, which it's not. How do you explain contradictions? In adultery we are taught that if we lust, it is the same as committing. Making it impossible to commit a particular sin is not the same as our denying a sin. Jesus was using a literary tool to enforce the seriousness of sin.
[quote name='Papist' timestamp='1330787933' post='2395663']
If I say it is raining cats and dogs, what is the truth in what I am saying?
[/quote]
I'm tearing my hair out with frustration!

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='Hubertus' timestamp='1330782727' post='2395641']
And for the record Louie, one of my best friends, who is Catholic, believes in Creation the way you seem to believe it. And although we'll argue about it sometimes, the minute details about Creation are not a pivotal basis for our Faith, so it's not a huge deal to either of us.
[/quote]
[quote name='Ice_nine' timestamp='1330786343' post='2395648']
sorry, I actually knew that but, while I'm tangenting, why do we say man caused EVERYTHING to fall when the angels had already fallen? Does "everything"=everything in creation except the angels? And the consequence of the angels falling was relatively insular then, only really affecting themselves? Furthermore, man didn't bring physical death into the world, as animals/plants etc died before Man existed, so initially doesn't that seem like a design flaw? I assume there's an explanation somewheres. Help a sista out yo
[/quote]
Sometimes there's a little too much emphasis on what the church teaches. The first station of the cross.
[i]Though Pilate is unjust he is the lawful governor and has power over me and so the son of God obeys. [/i]This tells us that we should obey authority, it does not imply we have to believe everything fed to us. You are allowed to investigate, because there are often misinterpretations.

[HopefulBride]

[quote name='Mark of the Cross' timestamp='1330802781' post='2395768']
Sometimes there's a little too much emphasis on what the church teaches. The first station of the cross.
[i]Though Pilate is unjust he is the lawful governor and has power over me and so the son of God obeys. [/i]This tells us that we should obey authority, it does not imply we have to believe everything fed to us. You are allowed to investigate, because there are often misinterpretations.
[/quote]

So we don't have to believe pre-marital sex is wrong? We just gotta not do it? I know this might lead to another debate but I really don't get what you're trying to get at. Pardon me if I'm interpreting it to the extreme.

[Aloysius]

[quote name='Ice_nine' timestamp='1330786343' post='2395648']
sorry, I actually knew that but, while I'm tangenting, why do we say man caused EVERYTHING to fall when the angels had already fallen? Does "everything"=everything in creation except the angels? And the consequence of the angels falling was relatively insular then, only really affecting themselves? Furthermore, man didn't bring physical death into the world, as animals/plants etc died before Man existed, so initially doesn't that seem like a design flaw? I assume there's an explanation somewheres. Help a sista out yo
[/quote]as I said before, I was being loose with terms like "creation" and "cosmos" and, I suppose, "everything"

it was the whole cosmos/universe/world that became fallen as a result of our fall, through which death and sin entered the world. the angels are not part of the physical cosmos, as they are spiritual beings created before the physical universe was created. so our fall did not affect them, it affected the whole of material creation-the whole "world" into which death entered as a result of our fall.

[Papist]

[quote name='HopefulBride' timestamp='1330802968' post='2395769']
So we don't have to believe pre-marital sex is wrong? We just gotta not do it? I know this might lead to another debate but I really don't get what you're trying to get at. Pardon me if I'm interpreting it to the extreme.
[/quote]

I don't think he is referring to teaching regarding faith and morals. I took him as referring to the Church's teaching of scripture. We are not bound to believe/agree with all the Church's interpretations...although we be a fool to use that fact to translate scripture according to our fancy.

[Aloysius]

The way you're saying that sounds a bit off to me, the Church has many dogmatic and binding teachings on the interpretations of scriptures; we are indeed bound to believe that there were two first parents and that there was a real fall from grace, for instance, though we are free to believe in evolution or creationism... we are indeed bound to believe the things I have said about the angels being created and falling before us, these are basic tenants of the faith. there's a whole lot of stuff that the Church teaches regarding the meanings of the scriptures that we are bound to believe in terms of the salvation history and the spiritual meaning.

Of course, one can read the scriptures and get something significant out of it for themself, it's not like the Church has some sort of authoritative annotation, there are mutliple depths of meanings in the scriptures and in spiritual matters you can definitely get your own message, guided by the Holy Ghost, out of a prayerful reading; as a scholar you can learn a lot about the scripturess from the different translations and sources without reference to Church teaching, but you always must go back and find a way that it squares with the Church's teaching... Church teaching is usually loose enough to let the scriptures stand on their own, to be sure, but that doesn't mean there's not a significant issue of Church teaching being hugely important to how one interprets the scriptures.

For instance, the children of the Church have full liberty to believe in evolutionism or creationism, but when it comes to questioning whether there were two first parents--Adam and Eve--the children of the Church enjoy no such liberty, they must believe that there was indeed an original couple that fell from grace. As to how that squares with evolutionary science, I proposed my theories on the first three pages of this thread

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='Papist' timestamp='1330806643' post='2395780']
I don't think he is referring to teaching regarding faith and morals. I took him as referring to the Church's teaching of scripture. We are not bound to believe/agree with all the Church's interpretations...although we be a fool to use that fact to translate scripture according to our fancy.
[/quote]
Thank you! Explained it much better than I was halfway through doing.

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Mark of the Cross' timestamp='1330808193' post='2395786']"[color=#282828]I don't think he is referring to teaching regarding faith and morals. I took him as referring to the Church's teaching of scripture. We are not bound to believe/agree with all the Church's interpretations...although we be a fool to use that fact to translate scripture according to our fancy."[/color]

Thank you! Explained it much better than I was halfway through doing.
[/quote]
However as Cat pointed there are some parts of Scripture that are dogma and the interpretations are not open to debate.

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1330807938' post='2395785']

Of course, one can read the scriptures and get something significant out of it for themself, it's not like the Church has some sort of authoritative annotation, there are mutliple depths of meanings in the scriptures and in spiritual matters you can definitely get your own message, guided by the Holy Ghost, out of a prayerful reading;
[/quote]
That too! Although I cannot get what you mean about the first parents. As we've just discussed both a literal and figurative interpretation can both be true. I did originate from one pair of humans. A man and a women. It goes back to the old saying which came first the chicken or the egg. How does evolution explain that? If early chickens didn't reproduce by laying eggs then you couldn't call them chickens. So the first chicken laid an egg! If evolution is true at some stage there had to be a step toward mixing of genes ie a pair of humans to reproduce. Therefore of course the Church would teach that we originated from a pair because before that they would not be humans. (in an evolutionary world)

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' timestamp='1330808962' post='2395790']
However as Cat pointed there are some parts of Scripture that are dogma and the interpretations are not open to debate.
[/quote]
See Papists last sentence. I like to have my own thoughts, but I like them to be in step with church teachings. I'm not vain enough to think that I can achieve what learned theologans cannot. Summed up by my excerpt of Aloysius. I don't think in this modern time we are not allowed to read the Bible and try to understand especially when we get stuck on a church teaching, then it is necessary to keep studying.

Edited March 3, 2012 by Mark of the Cross

[Aloysius]

the idea that we came from two first parents (Adam and Eve) is called monogenism, it contradicts polygenism, the idea that we came from multiple groups of first parents; those are two different ideas and it's not just nothing to talk about their difference, we must affirm some type of monogenism because scripture did indeed intend to teach us that it was two first parents who fell from grace. Humanari Generis makes clear that Catholics cannot be polygenists. The theories I have explained allow for ensouled hominid "sibling species" that were not truly humans, thus explaining the evolutionary record and keeping in tact the reality of the story of Adam and Eve. The existence of Adam and Eve, the fact that they were given a choice and chose sin and disobedience and thus fell from grace, is not figurative any more than the existence of Jesus Christ and His mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, is figurative. They are historical realities. The descriptions of the way things went down in "the garden of Eden" was likely done in idioms including some symbols, but they aren't falsehoods.

Catholics are required to believe that the scriptures are divinely inspired and [b]inerrant [/b]in all things the author intended to say. Most of us Catholics don't think that the writer of Genesis intended to say that there was a talking snake, we generally think he intended to reference a fallen angel with this symbol. Most of us don't think he intended to say there was literally a tree and literally a fruit, it looks to us like he was using symbols and idioms of his culture to tell us that the first man and woman were given a command by God and they disobeyed that command. Most of us don't think they were trying to tell us what the shape of the world was, but that they were trying to tell us how the world was made. The fact that they drew from other creation myths in the area like Gilgamesh and purposefully created contrasts in how they distinguished their stories from those myths leads credence to this idea of the intentions of the sacred authors IMHO.

[Papist]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1330807938' post='2395785']
The way you're saying that sounds a bit off to me, the Church has many dogmatic and binding teachings on the interpretations of scriptures; we are indeed bound to believe that there were two first parents and that there was a real fall from grace, for instance, though we are free to believe in evolution or creationism... we are indeed bound to believe the things I have said about the angels being created and falling before us, these are basic tenants of the faith. there's a whole lot of stuff that the Church teaches regarding the meanings of the scriptures that we are bound to believe in terms of the salvation history and the spiritual meaning.

Of course, one can read the scriptures and get something significant out of it for themself, it's not like the Church has some sort of authoritative annotation, there are mutliple depths of meanings in the scriptures and in spiritual matters you can definitely get your own message, guided by the Holy Ghost, out of a prayerful reading; as a scholar you can learn a lot about the scripturess from the different translations and sources without reference to Church teaching, but you always must go back and find a way that it squares with the Church's teaching... Church teaching is usually loose enough to let the scriptures stand on their own, to be sure, but that doesn't mean there's not a significant issue of Church teaching being hugely important to how one interprets the scriptures.

For instance, the children of the Church have full liberty to believe in evolutionism or creationism, but when it comes to questioning whether there were two first parents--Adam and Eve--the children of the Church enjoy no such liberty, they must believe that there was indeed an original couple that fell from grace. As to how that squares with evolutionary science, I proposed my theories on the first three pages of this thread
[/quote]

I did not say we are not bound by any interpretations. Just not all.