A Catholic Approach to the Genealogical Adam

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

So, @vjtorley, let’s see if I can collect your remaining objections.

@vjtorley

I have to say I find this very unsettling, and hard to wrap my mind around. It would seem to imply that, for instance, Tasmanian Aborigines or Amazonian Indians living 6,000 years ago were not “true men.” And yet, at the same time, they’re said to have rational souls, made in the image of God. If a human with a rational soul, made in the image of God, is not a true man, then what is he?

Recall, he would be much like a rational martian. One of the rational souls to whom Scripture does not make reference.

@vjtorley

Your statement that Adam’s descendants alone are the “true men” to which Pius XII’s statement in Humani Generis refers, would also have the bizarre implication that Adam himself was not a true man. Furthermore, how do you explain Genesis 1:26, where God says, “Let us make mankind in our image"?

“True men” is not the best term for it. I would say another group of man, to whom theology never has reason to refer because they no longer exist. In the same way, theology has no reason to refer to rational aliens or life in other universes.

Remember, that here, “mankind” is “adams.” It is not possible ot make sense of this in English. We should really refer to the Hebrew here.

@vjtorley

Note that St. Augustine does not write: “if they are human and born after 1 A.D., they are descended from Adam.” His principle is a universal one. And as far as I can tell, all of the Church Fathers would have agreed with him on this point.

What said here still applies. Augustine is defining the humans to whom Scripture refers as descendent of Adam, and asserting that this includes all men alive in his moment. His statement here is contextually bound. Asked about “rational souls” that no longer exist from 400 kya, I think he would have said that this has no relevance to our theology today, in the same way rational souls in Narnia or the Space Trilogy (granting they were real) have no relevance to our theology today.

This is not to say that the people before Adam (the “adams” of Genesis 1) were less rational souls or less human, but they are a group of people to whom Scripture and theology (e.g. Augustine and Pious XII) are not referring, and no longer exist.

So yes, St. Augustine does not write: “if they are human and born after 1 A.D., they are descended from Adam,” however know his claims contextually-bound to the current time. We know this because traditional theology (and the Book of Enoch) regularly considered interbreeding between Adam and other lines, including asserting rational souls that existed alongside and before Adam. For example, Angles and Nephilim in all traditional tellings are rational souls, but are not descendent from Adam, and Augustine did not find them in conflict with his theology.

You are reading Augustine and Pious XII’s statements disconnected from context, as timeless claims, but that leads to far too many contradictions with Scripture (e.g. Genesis 6:1, the Serpent, Angels, etc.). Clearly not all rational minds are the “men” of Scripture. There exist some rational minds that are not the “men” of scripture.

@vjtorley

I’m afraid this does not tee up with Romans 5:12-15:

Actually does, but I’ll deal with this after we deal with the prior point. To start with one approach, it can all come down to how Paul defines men, which appears to be defined descent from Adam. He is not referring to anyone who does not descend from Adam. His claims here, once again, that all the men he is referring to descend from Adam, and this includes all people in his moment. His theology cannot be read as a timeless statement, but also as contextually bound, because otherwise we would have the same contradictions arise as we would with St. Augustine.

@vjtorley

There’s more. St. Paul expressly states that death came into the world through Adam’s sin. If that’s the case, then prior to Adam’s sin, no human beings with rational souls should have died. And yet they did. They died in their millions. Why?

Remember, St. Paul defines the men to whom he is referring as Adam and his descendants. They begin existence in the Garden free of death. When Adam is exiled from the Garden, all of them are condemned to death, just as Paul teaches. Paul, by definition, is not talking about the people outside the garden, and has no need to. They no longer exist.

@vjtorley

I’d like to leave you with an even more difficult passage to explain away: Mark 10, where Jesus discusses divorce:

Once again, this is resolved in a similar way. Either, Jesus is referring to the origin of Adam’s descendent, which does have male and female created from the beginning (Genesis 2). Or he is referring to the origin of the same biological kine, which also has male and female created from the beginning (Genesis 1). The question with this passage, as always, is “which beginning?” In either case, we are going to see male or female, so it is hard to see what the contradiction could possibly be.

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This gets to the core argument I am making here Vincent. We, in our moment, are preoccupied by the antiquity of “human beings.” However, this is not the questions of traditional theology and Scripture, which exclusively focuses on the descendants of Adam and Eve, who are “all of us,” but not everyone in distant paleohistory. Scripture and theology are as silent about them as they are about rational souls in other universes and planets.

I’m asserting that if we were to ask Paul, St Augustine, etc, about rational souls that do not descend from Adam and lived in a realm outside our ability access, and does not apply to anyone in recorded history, they would shrug and say that Scripture does not speak of them. Don’t you agree? Curious @jongarvey additions too.

Peace.