Question: (Fr James P. Bangalore)

Thanks for your rational explanation for my question on original sin in Light of Truth March 15-31, 2017. If we hold a scientific and evolutionary perspective there could be the possibility of our human origins from many couples (polygenesis). Would this then not contradict the traditional teaching of the Church of monogenesis from one single common stock of humanity (Adam and Eve)? What does modern theology say about this?

Answer:
Science (Darwinian Theory of Evolution) has shown us that what we read in Genesis about original sin is not a historical fact. Adam & Eve are only common nouns and not proper names of two individuals. Further, Cosmic and biological evolution instructs us as never before that we live in a world that is in great measure not yet created to full perfection. The incompleteness of the cosmic project logically implies, therefore, that the universe and human existence have never, under any circumstances, been situated in a condition of ideal fullness and perfection. In an evolving cosmos, createdbeing as such has not yet achieved the state of integrity. Moreover, this is nobody’s fault, including the Creator’s, because the only kind of universe a loving and caring God could create in the first place is an unfinished one. The world has inevitably a dark side because it is unfinished, and therefore we cannot expect it to be perfect. Redemption, if it is going to mean anything, is the healing of a tragedy that accompanies a universe that is evolving.

Coming to your question of human origins in science and Scripture, Karl Rahnerwho lived through the theological battles surrounding original sin, contributed important essays to these discussions, notes a gap between science seeing the first humans as the end product of an ascent from very rudimentary beginnings and the old theology of Adam and Eve which saw human perfection at the beginning. It is this gap that helped to impel theologians to demolish the traditional view of Adam and Eve lest this old theology lead to another Galileo affair. So, Rahner further asked if these two approaches are really contradictory. To Rahner’s mind, the Church’s teaching about human beginnings is founded on nothing more than what the Scriptures say, and the Scriptures are really not talking about the visible and tangible concrete details of the historical origins of first humans. But what we do know is nonetheless impressive. We know that human beings were created by God; that concupiscence and death do not belong to man as God wills man to be, but to man as a sinner; that the first man was also the first to incur guilt before God and his guilt as a factor of man’s existence historically brought about by man, belongs intrinsically to the situation in which the whole subsequent history of humanity unfolds.

Rahner feels that if the first reaction of our parents to God’s initiative had been a positive one, it would have been made without concupiscence; it would have been a confirmation in grace. In other words, original sin can only be thought of as the first act of man’s real, authentic freedom. If this is true, then this original state before the ‘Fall’ could not have lasted very long, and the picture of our first parents in that state deals much more with what ought to have been than what actually was. The first human did not have to empirically look and feel very different from what he does today. Rahner points out that despite medieval theological speculation on the prerogatives of Adam before the fall, the first man was at the beginning of the road of human development he was meant to travel [Karl Rahner in Hominization].

According to Rahner, science might never be in a position to form a detailed picture of the initial inner and outer situation of the first humans. It might not even be able to point to a clear dividing line between the hominids and the first true humans, but there is a metaphysical difference at stake because we are dealing with the difference between spirit and non-spirit. And with spirit comes the knowledge of God. This knowledge need not be an explicitly developed knowledge, and here Rahner evokes an idea that was to flourish in his development of the theme of anonymous Christianity, that is, that the real decisions of a man can occur very implicitly in a global commitment, in a fundamental decision regarding some conceptual content which to all appearance is very far removed from God and moral principles.

We can hardly expect that this kind of view of the first humans could be confirmed by science, but it is not contradicted by science, either. From a philosophical point of view there must have been a “hidden plenitude” or “genuine real potentiality” in the beginning from which future development and progress grew. There is no danger, therefore, that evolution if it is understood in a truly rational and theologically correct way, will teach us to think less of the first human being than was thought in earlier ages. In essence, therefore, we could say that we need to affirm the genuine spiritual nature of the first humans even though this nature may have expressed itself in less conceptual ways, and far from precluding further development that was the root from which this development and progress was meant to grow.

We can imagine that Rahner’s exposition represent the last gasp of an exegesis and a dogmatic theology that is striving at all cost to shore up the traditional teaching, and that it is theologian Herbert Haag who is pioneering a new and more authentic path. But that would certainly be to oversimplify the matter, to say the least. Rather, it is probably more accurate to see Haag’s kind of radical demolishing exegesis more as a reaction against the poor use of exegesis made by the traditional theology of original sin than as some sort of definitive state of the question [Herbert Haag, in Is Original Sin in Scripture?].

It is entirely possible to arrive at a much more positive view of the presence of original sin in Scripture on the basis of today’s exegesis, as we can see in the case of Henri Blocher, the evangelical theologian and scriptural scholar who writes, for example, “The affirmation of the disobedience in Eden as a real event or occurrence at a specific moment in time has been part of church dogma from the start; this could hardly be disputed. I submit that it is an essential part, which we shall be wise to maintain. This, however, sounds hopelessly conservative and literalistic to many ears today, not only among opponents of the doctrine of original sin but among its official defenders, especially Roman Catholic and ‘neo-orthodox’.” Nor does he find insuperable problems coming from the direction of paleo-anthropology. “Modern prejudice may tempt us to underestimate the mental powers and sensitivities of palaeolithic man; the artists who painted the cave walls of Lascaux, Altamira, and the Grotte Chauvet near Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, discovered in December 1994, were masters at least equal to the greatest in our times” [Henry Blocherin Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle].

The post-Vatican II theology of original sin has produced some positive results within a mainly negative landscape which can be used to construct a modern theological view. This is made by the work of Karl Rahner who maintained his balance in terms of the historical nature of original sin. In 1954, in the aftermath of Pope Pius XII’s remarks in the Encyclical Humani Generis on polygenesis and original sin, Rahner wrote a long essay called, “Theological Reflexions on Monogenesis” that, while subjecting the traditional understanding of the traditional sources to serious criticism, basically defends monogenesis by looking at the official teaching of the Church, and the possibility of proving it from the Scriptures, as well as by way of rational arguments. His examination of the Magisterium is confined to the Encyclical Humani Generis as the first place where this issue was formally raised. The Encyclical had stated that it was unclear how polygenesis could be reconciled with the doctrine of original sin. Rahner concludes that the Encyclical presents monogenesis as ‘theologically certain,’ a qualification that does not preclude change in the future. Also the decree of the Biblical Commission at this time takes us no further. In the case of the Council of Trent, the Council fathers, when speaking of original sin, had had in mind one couple at the beginning of human history from whom all people had descended, who by their sin affected those who had come after them. This fact has considerable weight, but does not go so far as to be an implicit definition of monogenesis.

As far as the Scriptures are concerned, Rahner cannot see a firm determination of the presence of monogenesis which can be established by exegetical methods only, in Genesis, chapters 2 and 3. When he comes to the New Testament he is more positive. The indirect proof of monogenesis consists in the demonstration that it is an indispensable presupposition of the doctrines of redemption and original sin as these are contained in Scripture and in its interpretation by Tradition and the Church’s Magisterium; and that in this sense it is taught by Scripture. Christ has taken on our sinful flesh. He has become one with sinful humanity. Scripture knows of such a common situation of ‘Salvation’ and ‘Fall’ only in so far as men are of one stock (monogenesis). This common situation has come about by a personal action which presupposes this common stock. Here Rahner says that the exegesis of the foundations of original sin cannot be confined to the classical texts, but must look to the wider picture of sin and our redemption in Christ.
In order to develop a rational

argument for monogenesis, Rahner starts with some notes for a metaphysics of generation in which generation is seen not as one of the possible ways of an individual coming to be, but the one necessary way of forming community. Monogenesis and the unity of species allow of being distinguished conceptually but not of being separated in reality. Rahner then argues against polygenesis as a possible object of divine action, for the same thing cannot have two different causes, and if men arise by generation, then they cannot arise otherwise. The first man is created by God as capable of generation, and therefore God would not use other methods to produce other men and thus reduce God’s action to the level of the secondary causality of creatures. The first man is not temporally and numerically the first, “he is also the transcendent humanity instituted by God.”

While biological evolution could have produced different creatures suitable to become human beings, that act of transformation only took place once in order to establish something metaphysically new which then multiplied by way of generation. Otherwise, why did God ordain to give human beings the ability to generate? Once the transformation took place, evolution developed away from this point and the forerunners of man became extinct because they had fulfilled their purpose. God acts within evolution in the most discreet and economical way, only, in fact where something essentially and irreducibly new is to appear for the first time as an origin. What the world can do by itself, it must do in the highest possible way; and that includes both the preparation of the biological substratum which was to ‘become man’ and the spreading abroad of the one stock.

Now over to your implicit question: Does original sin demand the existence of monogenesis from one single common origin of humanity (Adam and Eve)?
Rahner argues that it is not necessary to maintain monogenesis in order to uphold the doctrine of original sin if we imagine a polygenistically derived group that formed a biological and historical unit. So, even if there are human beings in another planet, if they from are truly human, they belong to the group of human family in not physical but moral [and mystical] solidarity. So, the Magisterium ought to refrain from censuring polygenesis in order to protect the doctrine of original sin.

Following this, in 1968 Rahner in a lecture given to Protestant and Catholic theologians at Paderborn puts forward the essentials of his own understanding of what the official Catholic teaching means. In this lecture Rahner takes an ‘existential’ approach to his own theology of original sin. Original sin belongs to the initial constitution of that ultimate beginning which is withdrawn from us and never recurs, and the true nature of which is only gradually revealed in the light of the future which is Christ. God’s self-bestowal is given to the whole of humanity only in virtue of the fact that this humanity as a historical reality draws its existence from Christ and is oriented to Him. But what, then, can be said of our descent from the first humans by way of generation? This descent was the way God willed to make His self-bestowal in view of Christ as the supreme point in history.Therefore, descent from and union with the human race… was capable of being, and should have been the medium in which this sanctifying grace was communicated to the individual man.Human descent should have been the medium of grace, and the only way we can account for its absence is by a sin on the part of the first humans. But along with the state of original sin we have to recognize another universal and even more powerful state, which is the effective will of God to save men which, on account of Christ, always imparts that sanctification through Christ (at least as ‘offered’) which was not imparted through descent from Adam.

At the heart of Rahner’s view of original sin, then, is the insight that descent from Adam was supposed to be the medium of grace but can no longer function that way because of original sin. But we are still caught up in the mystery of Christ as the Redeemer. Such a view of original sin doesnot come into conflict with what modern science tells us of early man because the interior freedom it demands could have existed in a variety of material circumstances without this freedom being reflected upon in a fully conscious way. Further, the subject of this freedom can be conceived of as a group either of a saving solidarity of all humankind in Jesus Christ or enslaving solidarity of selfish people, groups and collectivities. There are only two choices for human freedom: either to live in and with Christ in courageous and generous co-responsibility or to remain imprisoned in the enslaving sin-solidarity of the ‘sin of the world.’

I hope I have answered your questions in a rational manner through the arguments of Karl Rahner, that there is no real contradiction between a theologically conservative account of monogenesis and the scientific insights of evolutionary biology and modern genetics. Whether our descent is from monogenesis or polygenesis, the whole discussion of the history of the first humans remains always a mystery connected to God who created human beings and in His mercy pardoned and redeemed them through Christ when they rebelled against Him. What is important then is to live in and with the mystery of Christ as our Redeemer and Mediator of sanctifying grace for building up God’s Kingdom of love, justice and peace without remaining imprisoned in the enslaving solidarity of the sin of the world by our selfishness.

Dr GEORGE THERUKAATTIL MCBS