A Catholic Approach to the Genealogical Adam

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

Before I respond to @vjtorley, I want to thank you, @Agauger and @Agauger for walking through this with me.

I want to affirm again that I support considering the full range of options. I understand that @Agauger and @vjtorley may still prefer a single couple sole-genetic progenitor origin. I also understand that @AntoineSuarez has a homo divinus approach that merits its own consideration too. All this diversity is a good thing.

At the same time, I am drawn to a more recent Adam (that avoids the objections you have to Kemp) for the same reasons as @jongarvey:

@jongarvey

f there is a compelling historical reason for adopting genealogical Adam, it is that the text places him in what, by all reasonable standards, is a recent period; at which time we know that human beings existed and were long-established.

And he is right too, that this does not presume evolution, even though it is compatible with evolutionary science.

@jongarvey

In other words, although Genealogical Adam functions to allow evolutionary human origins with a historically recent Adam as fountainhead of the mankind to which we belong, it is open to many versions of directed evolution, progressive creation and Old Earth special creation, provided that their proponents can square the necessary scientific arguments.

Of course, I’m saying there is a great deal of evidence for common descent. Others will dispute that, but at least we can take the theology of Adam out of jeopardy in that conversation. That seems like it has high value, and serves the common good for everyone.

@vjtorley

I’d now like to comment on your proposal for a Catholic Genealogical Adam. Before I go on, let me commend you for making a truly valiant effort, @swamidass.

So your objections appear to be resolved with some simple revisions. How do you feel about this model?

A Better Catholic Genealogical Adam

So, therefore, we could take all this conversation to propose a model that, it appears, satisfies all the doctrinal constraints of Catholic thought.

First (Genesis 1), God creates all humankind, male and female, in His Image, as rational beings, with rational souls, as a community. He does this by miraculously giving all our ancestors alive at a point in history (either 400 kya or 2 mya), instantly, the genetic capacity for rationality. This could take place by putting a set key mutations instantly into their genomes, or into all embryos in a generation. Consequently, in a single generation all our ancestors would become rational souls. To be clear, they are all in the Image of God, and they all have the same biological type of as Adam (e.g. Homo sapiens, or Homo genus).

Second (Genesis 2), at a later time or maybe the same time (perhaps 15 kya with the rise of agriculture, or 6 kya with the rise of written language), God creates de novo (or chooses) Adam and Eve and places them in a divine Garden. They live for a time here, but then they fall. As their offspring interbreed with others, they become ancestors of us all, transmitting original sin to all there natural (genealogical) descendants. In this way, by the time Paul writes Romans, all rational souls in the world are all just as described by Scripture: infected with original sin.

This happens quickly too, so when Scripture is given, there is no need to reference to rational souls that are not subject to original sin. Instead, Scripture only references the fallen descendants of Adam, all of us, the “true men” of Pious XII’s Humani Generis.

Adam’s descendants alone are the “true men” to which Pious XII’s statement in Humani Generis refers. For this reason, Adam is the first father of all true men. No true men of theology exist in the past that do not descend from Adam, because to be a “true man” one must be both a rational soul and subject to original sin, which comes exclusively by descent from Adam.

Analysis

It seems like this does fit within Catholic theology. Do you agree?

@Agauger

I understand how the scenario allows both common descent and a first couple, even de novo, to be possible.

Maybe @Agauger is becoming convinced this could work?

@vjtorley

Pius XII’s statement in Humani Generis that “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” entails that even in the distant past, it would still have been true that all human beings were descended from Adam.

This statement is still staisfied. The rational souls before Adam are not “true men.”

@vjtorley

I’m also uneasy with the phrase, “a new type of rational soul.” On the Catholic view, human souls are immaterial: they don’t come in types of any sort - not even male and female.

I see what you are saying. Rather, it is original sin that is the final ingredient to be one of the men to which Pious XII is refering.

@vjtorley

So if you’d like to modify the second part of your proposal for a Catholic genealogical Adam, Joshua, I’d push the Fall back in time. My two cents.

Perhaps, but that leaves us disconnecting Adam from the narrative of Genesis. Of course one could do that, but I’m trying to see if there is a way that does not need to be done. I’m pretty sure I’ve succeeded for most Protestant starting points. I’m wondering if this does the trick for Catholicism.

What do you think?

As @jongarvey eloquently puts it:

@jongarvey

So, for the sake of argument, let us suppose that the human race in Genesis 1 did not evolve at all, but was created either ex nihilo, or from other species by progressive creation still by divine fiat. Or even by some former “creation bottleneck” of a single pair as seems to have been under test on the Buggs-Venema BioLogos thread. In all those cases, Genealogical Adam would still deal with the theological issues posed by an old earth and an ancient mankind - and in my view would do so as a conclusion from the text, not an imposition upon it.

That has value to some, including me. As I’ve said though, let’s develop multiple models, and I’m curious your response to this “better catholic model”.