Child Adam?

Theological Consequences · Jimmy Akin on Patristic and Scientific Expertise. · Child Adam? · Archaic Actual Humans or Apes in Human Shapes? · What If Adam Became a Man - When he Became a Man? · Tolkien's Elves Are Not the Key to Cain's Wife or Adam's Growth

BioLogos has the good sense to show off their knowledge of the traditional doctrine that they reject:

In a common traditional view, Adam and Eve were created de novo—they were created by God as fully formed humans (Homo sapiens), roughly 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. God made them quickly and completely as fully formed humans with no biological ancestors. In this traditional de novo view, Adam and Eve are “sole progenitors”: they were the first two humans, and they alone gave rise to all other humans. The Genesis account is taken to be a record of real events similar to the way a journalist would record them today.

If we change the job description from "journalist" to "involved actors" and the recording mode from detailed reportage to scaled down easy to recall narratives, yes, that is how I, as a proponent of the traditional view see this. Here is the article I cited by the way.

Were Adam and Eve historical figures?
https://biologos.org/common-questions/were-adam-and-eve-historical-figures/

Now, they proceed to state that and why they don't share it. Genesis 4 refers to Cain's wife who along with the people in his city "do not seem to be descended from Adam and Eve", Genesis 2 and 3 suggests archetypes, but above all they are Evolutionist.

If you accept Adam and Eve as archetypes only, you are not Catholic, Session V of the Council of Trent makes it abundantly clear that Adam was an individual, the first human sinner and by that fact and the fact of approaching the sin from a sinless state, the origin of original sin. Now, what about their other options?

Now, they give two views on how to reconcile Evolutionism with a more than just archetypal existence of Adam and Eve. And since both of these make them part of an already existing Homo sapiens population, both will involve Adam, if not Eve, having been a child of some biological ancestry not sharing his relation with God. Now, there are problems with each, I'll state these first, but there is also this common problem, which I will come back to.

Some Christian leaders (such as Billy Graham) are open to models that see evolution as compatible with Adam and Eve as real historical people. In one version, suggested by theologian Henri Blocher and others, God entered into a special relationship with a pair of ancient historical representatives of humanity about 200,000 years ago in Africa. Genesis retells this historical event using cultural terms that the Hebrews in the ancient Near East could understand.

Genesis 3 is history. More precisely, it is not history as revealed by a revelation, it is more like the Exodus event a history known historically and in which God reveals Himself in the actual events (obviously, Genesis 3 includes a revelation by God to Adam, to Eve and to the serpent, but this does not make the events something only Moses was told of. Haydock in the famous Haydock Bible had facing pages Douay Rheims in the Challoner revision, facing pages comment he provided by compilation and own learning. Attached to his comment on Genesis 3:24 is this, which actually is his own comment - signed H. - to the whole chapter:

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.

With the primeval longevity, the 2500 years from Adam to Moses in Masoretic chronology or the 3000 years from Adam to Abraham in LXX chronology are not a huge problem. They become comparable to the 400 years between the Trojan War and Homer's composing the Iliad. But with 200 000 years lapsing, not only is the probability far less of a correct transmission, the transmission would also be shown incorrect by Genesis 5 and 11 showing, not so much a genealogy with some gaps, comparable to Matthean genealogy, as more gap than genealogy. In other words, we would be asked to believe a transmission not just incredibly long for a purely oral one that's still correct, but also one even shown incorrect through the faulty transmission of genealogies.

In another version Adam and Eve are recent historical persons, living perhaps 6000 years ago in the ancient Near East rather than Africa. By this time Homo sapiens had already dispersed throughout the earth. God then revealed himself specially to a pair of farmers we know as Adam and Eve. God could have chosen them as spiritual representatives for all humanity. Genealogical science suggests that a pair living at that time and place could be part of the genealogies of all humans living today.

First, there is not just a question of Adam being an actual man, but also of his being the first such.

But second, suppose you waver that problem for a moment, how is Adam supposed to have been ancestor of all First Nations in the Americas and all Aborigines of Australia, not now, but back when Vikings arrived to Vinland and van Diemen to Tasmania? You see, Americas are in the uniformitarian line supposed to have been peopled c. 20 000 BC, and Australia's Mungo man or Mungo woman would carbon date about the same, but a thermoluminiscence date has given Oz the added prestige of a 40 000 year old human settlement.

The second solution therefore flirts with the idea of pre-adamism, which is also condemned by the Catholic Church, the specific reason why Isaac La Peyrère got in trouble with Church Authorities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Adamite

And it seems some "Catholic" old earthers, notably Jimmy Akin, buy into this idea too. Even if he is not explicit when his Adam and Eve are supposed to have lived, he clearly says they were not all the men there were, even if they were the first two modern men with modern human souls.

Here we must consider for a moment the history of Old Earth ideology among Catholics. The Day-Age paradigm was held by Sulpîcian Father Fulcran Vigouroux, and this may be the exact same scenario as held by Pius XII. It goes like this: add lots of time in the creation days by making each an age, but only up to creation of Adam. From then the Biblical timeline, at least in the LXX version, holds, though one could imagine it to hold some gaps in the genealogies (notably Genesis 11) apart from the II Cainan omitted in Masoretic. But for the moment, he didn't need that. He was also the man who on behalf of the Papal Biblical Commission in 1909 authorised Day-Age as an option. And note, just as an option.

Now, since certain dates - carbon for El Sidrón Neanderthals, others for Homo sapiens 200 000 pretended years ago - have been made, this is no longer an option. One must either defend a Biblical timeline by saying no to these dates, which would involve saying no to the Old Earth overall, or, buying into Old Earth, accept these dates, which will involve the named and also other problems. I already said : since both of these scenarios make them part of an already existing Homo sapiens population, both will involve Adam, if not Eve, having been a child of some biological ancestry not sharing his relation with God.

The one version is therefore pre-Adamism - others were truly human, if not modern human before Adam and Eve. But this is condemned. In Humani Generis, Pius XII speaks of:

For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.

So, he doesn't speak of men before Adam, he speaks of "pre-existent and living matter"? In other words, the parents of Adam would have been non-human. Indeed, there seems to be a piece from 1941, adressed to the academy of sciences, in which he says as much - they would not have been truly his parents, since not truly human.

And this poses the question of how Adam fared as a child. A human being with a rational soul - and let's underline, what's special is not a special relation with God not shared by other beings with equally rational souls, what's special is having a rational souls in the first place, some relation to God follows from that - can be a parent, can teach his children language, does have language. A non-human can't, and isn't.

If Adam was human, and the testes and ovaries he came from belonged to non-humans, it is impossible that they had real human language, and therefore impossible that they taught Adam such. Indeed, they could not have anything remotely like it. Human language has a double articulation into three levels : sentence, morphemes, phonemes. This can produce an infinity of sentences, and is only motivated if a rational being has an infinity of rational observations to make. The pragmatic observations of beasts come into the range of sth like 500 complete messages - about as many as the traffic signs, which are also purely pragmatic.

And man is created to receive a first language (possibly two first languages at the same time) at a certain stage in his development. For an adult it is too late. So, Adam would have been a feral child. No language.

Or one could say Adam got a language from God, while aware of not sharing it with his genitors. How good is it to feel quasi infinitely superior to one's parents? No. Adam getting his language as a miracle sparing him from being feral isn't an option either. Only Adam being created with an adult and getting language miraculously from start is theologically viable.

But could Cain at least have married an anatomical human not his sister, if by his doing so she was also endowed with human rationality? I have already answered that years ago:

Creation vs. Evolution : Scenario impossible
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2014/01/scenario-impossible.html

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Monday after Quinquagesima
28.II.2022

The plain reading of Scripture clearly supports six day Creationism

1) Mike O'Neil Gets it All Wrong, 2) What can Sumerian King List Teach Us?, 3) Two Things You Might Be Asking Now?, 4) The plain reading of Scripture clearly supports six day Creationism

Sunday on youtube and yesterday on my blog copying my comments, I described this blog this way*:

"I nearly only mention the Bible when defining what I am defending."

And today I have to mention the Bible in it - because there are people who think they know I have misdefined what I should defend. So, here I must defend my reading of the Bible. I cite both Jim Stump** and his opponent on CMI Paul Price.***

Stump

If “plain reading” means “what the words clearly mean in my language and culture”,

My comment

Yes and no. As formulated it seems to narrow down the exegetic requirements so as to exclude using exact knowledge of earlier cultural contexts, even if applicable.

But that would not be the plain meaning of the definition, it would be an overly literalistic one. Not to say a simplistic one.

We have slightly varied languages (businessmen and people unilaterally engaged in sciences often think my English is bad in grammar, when it simply has a different style) and obviously my culture is much more different from theirs than my language.

I feel like Kent Hovind (I think it was) is "one of them" when he can utter such frogs as Grendel being the dragon of Beowulf poem (the poem has more than one monster, the dragon is not named and the sea monsters are not named either : only the humanoid monsters are identified as "Grendel" and "Grendel's mother", whether they be very ill shapen men or very huge apes, however such came to Denmark). He has not the kind of clture in which it makes sense to actually read the poem through or at least read a summary through instead of thinking that is too geeky stuff to check out for oneself, let's rely on hearsay.

So, "my" language and culture would indeed be an apt guide in someone having a broad human learning. But not in a reader who was ... well, either a scientist or a businessman. As they typically are.

Stump

then I suppose Exodus 20:11 could be used to support six day Creationism.

My comment

Oh, you only SUPPOSE so? And only COULD be used?

You suppose pretty right it CAN be and IS used to do so.

Stump

But if that is really how we’re supposed to read Scripture, then 1 Samuel 2:8 means the earth is set on pillars,

Price

1 Samuel 2:8, a verse often cited by skeptics to attack the Bible, does not teach that the earth is suspended on pillars. An examination of the context shows that this passage is talking about people, not inanimate objects, and thus metaphorical language is clearly being used.

My comment

I checked the Catholic Bibles. Only second half of verse 8 deals with pillars or anything like it, but in the Vulgate and Douay Reims, it is not pillars exactly.

He raiseth up the needy from the dust, and lifteth up the poor from the dunghill: that he may sit with princes, and hold the throne of glory. For the poles of the earth are the Lord' s, and upon them he hath set the world.

Suscitat de pulvere egenum, et de stercore elevat pauperem: ut sedeat cum principibus, et solium gloriae teneat. Domini enim sunt cardines terrae, et posuit super eos orbem.

Note that the first part is echoed in the Magnificat of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Speaking of which, is either Stump or Price among those "praising" her as "blessed"? If not, do they belong to "every generation" of the Church?

Now, to the second part.

No, Price, it is not a metaphor. The second half is really about cosmology. The point being made is that since God rules the cosmos including its close part Earth, he ALSO rules human events.

Now, the Latin has cardines and the English has Poles. A cardo is the kind of pin below and above a door which are set in a door and which the door swings on. Ambiguous as to whether Earth is doorway and cosmos is swinging around it each day (the orthodox interpretation as per from other contexts) or whether instead cosmos is the doorway and Earth is swinging (the modern interpretation, and probably one found in Galileo and Zuñiga). But "cardo" does not mean pillar. Either way, the N and S poles make sense as translations, and there are two of them (plural of cardo, cardines) which is only possible with a round earth. That might be why Masoretic text by now and why KJV has "pillars".

However, let us suppose pillars are the right meaning.

Even so there is nothing absurd in it: continental plates are set on a kind of pikes going downward into the magma. Hence the world - as surface of the globe - is really set on pillars. That the whole of Earth - that is the globe or whatever total three dimensional shape - should be set on pillars can not be the meaning, since of the whole we read elsewhere Earth is hanged on Nothing. Which fits a round Earth quite as well as "Domini enim sunt cardines terrae".

So, no reason NOT to take a plain reading of 1 Kings 2:8.

Stump

and Deuteronomy 21:21 means we should stone our rebellious sons,

Price

When it comes to Deuteronomy 21:21, Stump misses the point by confusing the meaning of a command with its applicability today. Various Christian denominations have different views of the latter. But most agree that since we are not signatories to the Sinaitic Covenant, the civil penalties don’t apply today. Similarly, most would agree that Christians are not bound by the Mosaic food (kosher) laws today. See Is eating shellfish still an abomination? and Are we allowed to eat all animals today?

My comment

The Catholic view is that the commands of civil justice given for Israel are not directly applicable per se under the new law.

They are not unjust, but they were a harsher justice.

However, Sweden under Charles IX (an usurper of Calvinist/Puritan bent, though Sweden was Lutheran, not Calvinist, and the father of Gustavus Adolphus - equally an usurper) did enact death penalty for rebellious children.

In Catholic justice, especially the Middle Ages, the punishment if the matter was grave enough for such, was milder, since taking into account the sweetness of the New Law replacing the harshness of the Old Law.

Stump

and John 15:5 means Jesus is a plant, and

Price

John 15:5 begins, “I am the vine … ” Not much needs to be said here. Jesus often spoke in figures of speech. Taking that verse literally is not even possible, so we have no record of anyone thinking that He had stems and leaves. Therefore by process of elimination (and common sense) we can see it was a metaphor. Jesus also spoke in parables, but they were intentionally designed to hide the truth from the unbelieving masses, while He spoke plainly to His disciples. See discussion in Biblical creation impedes evangelism?

My comment

If Stump is really so uncultured that the plain meaning of this obvious metaphor (which has been missed by no generation in the Church as being that!) is a literal meaning ignoring the words are metaphoric ... sigh. Well, if he is that uncultured, he has no business educating other people on how to read the Bible.

As said above, a culture even in our day should mean things like knowing Grendel was the humanoid and not the dragon or like knowing older manners were more profuse in metaphor than modern ones.

Stump

Roman 16:16 means we should kiss everyone we meet.

Price

Romans 16:16 asks believers to greet one another with a ‘holy kiss’. It’s true that most churches don’t abide by this, at least in my country. But why? Is it because Paul was being non-literal here? I see nothing in the context to suggest this was supposed to be poetic language. Paul wrote a lot of letters to people in the churches. Among those letters, there is much heavy doctrinal teaching, but there are also some side comments of a personal, non-doctrinal nature, like “bring me my cloak” (2 Timothy 4:13). I’d say most if not all interpreters would consider this statement about kissing to be in that latter category. In Paul’s time and place, kissing people as a greeting was a normal and acceptable thing to do, just as it remains to this day in parts of Europe—Paul wasn’t asking people to rebel against their cultural norms about personal space. For many modern-day Christians, a suitable equivalent would be a pat on the back or a handshake. That is, Paul was expressing the trans-cultural principle of greeting each other warmly with the cultural application of his day.

My comment

Both Stump and Price seem to take it this is not done now.

However, in each Holy Mass, a Kiss of Peace is usually given, though Latin rite has tended to omit that.

During the Middle Ages, in order to avoid Kiss of Peace giving anyone butterflies, a gold plate was circled around which everyone kissed, and all those who kissed it were deemed to have kissed each other. But the application was literal enough.

Stump

The “plain reading” of Scripture leads to picking and choosing which verses we like and which we ignore. That is not a responsible way to read the Bible.

My comment

No, the plain reading leads to singling out only very few and very obvious cases as metaphor.

Stump

There are reasons we don’t take the plain meaning of those other verses as the best interpretation of Scripture; that makes us at least ask whether there might be reasons not to take Exodus 20:11 and Genesis 1 in their plain sense.

My comment

I have never deviated from the PLAIN meaning, though in one precise case from the literal one.

Genesis 1 and Exodus 20 should probably be taken in the plain and literal meanings.

However, St Augustine for Genesis 1 departed from both plain and literal reading in favour of a literal rather than plain reading of a verse in Genesis 2.

This other reading is however ALSO totally at odds with Old Earth any shape or form.

Nearly all other Church Fathers (of those who at all mentioned subject) take the plain and literal meaning of Genesis 1 and a plain rather than extremely literal meaning of the said verse in Genesis 2.

The one exception, if you will call him a Church Father (he is not canonised) being Origen. Possibly the Stromatist too. And Origen takes same view as St Augustine, the Stromatist (Clement of Alexandria, earlier considered a Saint, no longer so since Photius pointed out a formulation which he found heterodox about the Sonship of God the Son) a "chronological agnosticism".

But even that one is hardly strong enough to swallow Old Earth.

Now, the problem is, some people feel they are cultured, knowing that metaphors were used, and think they are more cultured than others if they feel the others, if having their culture should just understand that Genesis "was never meant to be taken literally" (well, it was taken literally and we have no record of an age before our own in which men claiming to believe it were not taking it literally or close enough (see St Augustine, the Stromatist and Origen). But it is they whose level of culture is like the one who had heard of Grendel - and who thought it was the name of the un-named dragon in the Beowulf poem. There is a Grendel, there is a dragon, they are not identical. There are verses meant and from start understood to be metaphorical. There is Genesis 1. They are ALSO not identical.

I get an uncanny feeling some will have me say this over and over again. Like some will abuse their powers of prayer, mixing iniquity in their chalice if celebrating Mass even, in order to avoid exposing their own authority by replying me and finding out how much I know, while praying that I should find out this or that or the other thing they think they know and is applicable.

And if cabbalists are involved, how come they got power over me? Some priest refusing to absolve me from sins, or deeming me excommunicate, while he is the one making the trouble by not being a Creationist of the Young Earth type.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St John of the Cross
24-XI-2015

Notes:

* Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Several Matters, Including Carbon Dating, Canaaneans, and Ape DNA
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2015/11/on-several-matters-including-carbon.html

** Biologos : 10 Misconceptions about Evolution
September 28, 2015 | By Jim Stump on Faith and Science Seeking Understanding
http://biologos.org/blogs/jim-stump-faith-and-science-seeking-understanding/10-misconceptions-about-evolution

*** CMI : Stumped by biblical creation: BioLogos takes a cheap shot at biblical creation … and misses
by Paul Price | Published: 24 November 2015 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/response-jim-stump-theistic-evolution