To Protestants, it can be a bit bewildering that many Catholics these days (and if they are laymen, not shepherds, I'm not automatically calling them fallen off) at the same time do believe Evolution and also do believe the events in Genesis 3 are true at a level close enough to factually and historically true.
Among Anglicans or Lutherans you would have a majority (at least over here in Europe, with heavy Evolutionist indictrination in the schools) who believe Evolution and who conclude that while Genesis 3 is in a sense a "true myth" we would need to reflect on what Genesis 3 really means, or if it could perhaps be even a false one. And you have a minority (who are perhaps closer to even in US) who consider Genesis 3 historically true and Genesis 1 at some level scientifically and historically accurate.
But among Catholics you have this bewildering phenomenon, we will always cite Genesis 3 to defend what some guys would call "Mariolatry" but some of us will still believe in Evolution which at a close analysis is not quite compatible with Genesis 3.
We know God spoke to Moses - Christ did not contradict the Pharisees when they said this, so we as Christians know that too. But we do not know, it is in fact rather improbable, that God dictated certain events to Moses about Joseph or about Job when he wrote Genesis and wrote or validated Job, when it was so much easier for Moses to simply research among the traditions and manuscripts, a bit like how St. Luke, while not denying verbal inspiration, certainly denied dictation as mode of it, when he said:
Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a narration of the things that have been accomplished among us; According as they have delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word: It seemed good to me also, having diligently attained to all things from the beginning, to write to thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mayest know the verity of those words in which thou hast been instructed. Luke 1:1-4
As Moses speaking of Joseph would not have said "among us" he would have said "among our ancestors" or "among our fathers".
On the other hand, Adam and Eve were not eyewitnesses to any creation days previous to day 6 and even Adam had missed the (first?) creation of land animals (whether God created extra exemplars or the Hebrew is translatable as God presenting animals to Adam which He had created previously). Here we are free to believe a tradition saying the six days were shown Moses on Sinai. Perhaps we Catholics are not even quite free patristically speaking not to believe this tradition. Some tradition is universal among Church Fathers, some is not, only the former is strictly binding, as is the Bible.
But for the Genesis 2 account of day six seen at close hand, we would have the account of Adam. For the blessing - which God inspired Moses to transfer from their account to the six days' account - we would also have their account. And from Genesis 3 on, everything that happens, happens before human witnesses who remain among us. Possible exception for the coming down of God to see the city and the tower, where it may not have been a visible theophany and may have taken a prophet to know God was there and why He did it.
However, traditionally speaking, this belief in Genesis 3 - 50 being handed down history, as witnessed by men, goes with a belief that is very strictly Young Earth Creationist. This model fits us faithful Catholics, but it is somewhat uneasy to apply for Catholics accepting compromise. And especially if the compromise is neither gap theory nor day age theory, but involves longer ages between Adam and Moses. And therefore after Adam.
Some have adopted the "true myth" attitude to Genesis 1 to 11. But this is awkward to fit with the complete confidence in Genesis 3 we need for things like equating St. Elisabeth's "thou and the fruit of thy womb" with God's "the woman and her seed".
So, basically, I find Catholic evolution acceptors go into some kind of ... "cognitive dissonance" about this.
Let's see one valiant attempt for this:
Every Hammontree in the United States is apparently descended from Jonathan and Mary. They are the Adam and Eve of the Hammontree race, and illustrate how a large and various population may be descended from one couple without being descended from only one couple.
"The O'Floinn" or "TOF" for short footnotes this with:
Adam and Eve. Doctrine requires belief only that every human being now living is descended from Adam. It does not require belief that every human being is descended only from Adam.
The TOF Spot : James Hammontree
Tuesday July 4 2017
https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2017/07/james-hammontree.html
In the evolutionist scheme, Americas were peopled in sometime between 20 000 and 13 000 BP. And post-Columbian colonisation is not so thorough that every Amerindian now alive would certainly descend from Adam through European colonisers. Besides, the condemnation of pre-Adamism (in the sense of pre-Adamites still being around) came when some Spaniards were trying to make it out Indians had to be beasts, they couldn't descend from Adam and Eve, they couldn't be the image of God. Racist? Extremely. Comprehensible? Perhaps so, when Spaniards saw Indians sacrifice their own children to horrible gods. But either way, the Catholic Church of the time would certainly not accept even a comprehensible racism taking such doctrinal conclusions, so historically the Papal condemnations of pre-Adamism certainly mean pre-Columbian population of Americas and Oceania already descended from Adam and Eve.
Moses lived from 1590 BC to 1470 BC, according to Roman martyrology which states Exodus was in 1510. Same Roman martyrology also states (and if I don't say "stated" it is because I consider the "Popes" who changed and endorsed the change to "unknown ages" as apostates and non-Popes) that the beginning and obviously six days from that creation of Adam and Eve was 5199 BC.
5199 - 1510 = 3689 years.
20 000 - 1510 = 18 490 years.
18 490 / 3689 = roughly speaking five times as long. This means, the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 would be missing 4/5 of the real genealogy. Even more, if we take into account that Mungo Woman has carbon dates to 25 000 years, and this makes up for my blunder of mixing a BP with a BC date.
It is not just a question on whether Genesis 3 could have been transmitted accurately for 16 490 years or even more, in societies that had neither cities nor writing, it is also a question of, in that case, knowing for a fact Genesis 5 and 11 were not transmitted correctly and this brings the question, why would we suppose Genesis 3, some of the very oldest matter, was?
I have so far not seen any coherent solution to this. One young Catholic (well, younger than I, he's in the twenties or thirties) considered Genesis 3 could have been revealed ... why would history be revealed rather than documented is one problem, but another one is, we don't have this kind of information on the origin of Genesis 3. In the absense of direct attestation for the very special mode of knowledge that a revelation granted by God to a specific man in his solitude from other men, we should not presume this mode of knowledge.*
Karl Keating was presented with the comment by Fr. George Leo Haydock on Genesis 3 and he told me he disagreed with Haydock. But he did not tell me what he agreed with instead.**
A Mejicano friend of mine who is also involved in apologetics against Protestantism and very obviously is using Genesis 3 (correctly so) to prove Mary is the perfect enemy of Satan along with Her divine Son, responded at first with not seeing any problem, only it was interesting, then when I pointed out there was one, he said "one cannot calculate God's time" and then I pointed out whatever be the case with creation days, Genesis 5 and 11 are clearly times of men, since human lifespans.***
One presumably practising Catholic in the South of France, Gabriel Audisio, when showing a piece of 16th C. palaeography, polemised against a Renaissance calculation of time from Creation to Flood (that is Genesis 5) by giving an own calculation that (by mathematic implication) has Seth's lifetime starting not when Adam was 130 or 230, but when he was 930, that is when he died. I pointed out it would be a very curious chronology for the Bourbons from birth of Henri IV to death of Louis XVI, supposing we didn't have AD dates for them, to add up the lifespans in total rather than lifespans up to birth of next in the family line (I don't say next in the line of kings, since twice the son and once even the grandson died before the succeeding king). Even with modern very much shorter lifespans, we would have a clear discrepancy.°
So, we have Catholics arguing Genesis 3 as to Marian implications and with the theory of knowledge presented to Haydock.°° We also have Catholics arguing Genesis 3 as to Marian implications but without any unified theory of knowledge as to how we know these events.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibl. M. Audoux
Octave of Holy Innocents
4.I.2020
PS. I corrected html, so the emphasis by O'Floinn shows - it was in italic in the original, and when I used italics here, I forgot that the blockquote here puts all of the citation in italics. So now his emphasis is in underlined instead./HGL
* New blog on the kid : Quatre évolutionnistes rencontrés
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2019/06/quatre-evolutionnistes-rencontres.html
** This exchange was after I had already put a conversation or debate onto this post, and therefore does not figure on it:
HGL's F.B. writings : Karl Keating Disclaims Responsibility for Paris Archdiocese Having a Prejudice on YEC = Protestant, Claims he Never Said So
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2019/12/karl-keating-disclaims-responsibility.html
*** Carlos Salazar, obviously. Unlike Keating, I consider him a friend. Here we come:
HGL's F.B. writings : El tiempo de Génesis 5 y 11 no es incalculable
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2019/12/el-tiempo-de-genesis-5-y-11-no-es.html
° Correspondance de Hans Georg Lundahl : âge du monde avec Gabriel Audisio
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2017/06/age-du-monde-avec-gabriel-audisio.html
°° Here is this comment:
Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. H.
Haydock comment to Genesis 3
https://www.ecatholic2000.com/haydock/untitled-05.shtml#navPoint_6
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