Episode 184.
I find this passage on polygenism by
Pope Pius XII in Quote eight to be quite fascinating.
It invites me to ask the question,
is a door being left open regarding the hermeneutics of Genesis two and three?
As this pope admits,
"It is in no way apparent how such an opinion that is polygenism can be reconciled with
the Bible and the tradition introduced by St. Augustine on original sin."
Here's my approach to how this reconciliation can be done.
First, we need to recognize the Bible has an ancient biology,
in particular, the De Novo Creation of Adam.
Second, we need to recognize that St. Augustine had an ancient biology,
the De Novo Creation of Adam.
As we've seen previously in this course,
we have to remember that St. Augustine was
a scientific and historical concordist in Genesis 1-11.
He accepted geocentricity, the firmament and waters above,
the worldwide flood of Noah,
spontaneous generation, and the origin of life through seed principles.
Now to be more specific,
in answering Pope Pius XII's how question,
we need first to let the ancient biology, that is,
De Novo creation of Adam and the one-seed theory,
to be incidental and not the message of faith.
Second, we can also apply
the message-incident principle to the Western Christian tradition.
In this way, we need to separate Augustine's ancient biology from his theology.
There is one last important document in the Christian tradition that we need to consider,
Pope John Paul II, in his 1996 paper on evolution,
affirms the scientific theory of evolution.
In Quote 9 he states, "Today,
nearly half a century after the publication of the encyclical,
that is by Pope Pius the 12th,
new knowledge leads to the recognition of the theory of
evolution as more than a hypothesis."
This pope then affirms the spiritual uniqueness of humans,
from our pre-human evolutionary ancestors.
In Quote 10, he writes,
"With men and women then,
we find ourselves in the presence of an ontological difference,
an ontological leap, an ontological discontinuity."
In other words, at the deepest level of our being,
we are radically different from our evolutionary ancestors,
in that humans have the image of God and that humans are sinful.
I find it quite notable that, in this document,
Pope John Paul II makes no mention of Adam.
And I can't help but wonder,
is the silence speaking volumes and
reflecting pastoral sensitivity to the people in the pews?
In other words, could it be that it's too early for the Church
to question the historicity of Adam and all its implications?
Conclusion. To the Western,
that is Catholic and Protestant theological tradition on human origins,
this Christian tradition is firmly based on the Bible.
It accepts monogenism.
Adam is historical, and all humans descend from him.
With this being the case,
it's obvious that the Western tradition accepts
scientific and historical concordism in Genesis 1-11.
But, do you see a hermeneutical problem?
Conclusion number two.
The Western theological tradition is deeply impacted by St. Augustine.
In particular, it accepts the doctrine of original sin,
and this doctrine depends on Adam being historical.
Let's close this episode with a question I'd like you to think about.
Does Christianity depend on a historical Adam?
In the next episodes,
I'll try to answer this important question.
End of episode.