What they are believed to represent.
This is like pulling teeth. What do they represent? I do genealogy and enjoy learning about my family history, but that history doesn’t affect who I am (with the exception of inherited medical conditions).
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I would go with:
Ensouled humans in a state of privation,
A way to reconcile a very common interpretation of the Bible with science.
And I am not sure that my family history doesn’t affect who I am. Where I was born, when, how my parents acted, their socioecomnic status and so on all played a role in shaping who I am. Maybe you were born in a vacuum. I was not.
Vinnie
Which would mean that about two-thirds of all humans aren’t ever even born – only about a third of conceptions end up at birth. Or are you saying that the ones that don’t make it are those that God didn’t make souls for?
There are three ways to harmonize distinct accounts: One is to explore the ranges of meaning likely for two parallel instances and see where they overlap. The second is to take all possible meanings for those instances and picking one that works for both. The third is to decide what one instance means and then hammer the other one to make it fit.
For non-professionals, the last is most common.
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And every single major heresy of the first three centuries came from trying to force the scriptures to fit Greek philosophy.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
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We believe conception= soul = human dignity. Born or not, the soul survives death. It could be 99% that don’t make it. This isn’t an issue for me anymore than some places in the past having high infant mortality rates that may have approached 50%. Dying young did not make those babies and young children less human, inhuman or not created in God’s image.
Historically speaking, Mosaic authorship is pretty dead.
I think we can certainly believe some aspect of the law or core set of material inside goes back to Moses. As the narratives and accounts were edited together and expanded over time, they kept the name Books of Moses because that is where it all stems from. That helps reconcile the witness of scripture and Jesus for those feeling that is appropriate.
Vinnie
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Moses lived before modern Hebrew language developed, so it is quite certain that Moses did not write the current Hebrew text. That does not exclude the possibility that the stories originate from the time of Moses or that Moses wrote some texts that were included into the text when a later editor compiled the oral and written material to the Torah we know today.
As many of the stories have probably circulated as oral tradition for a long time period before they were compiled to the Hebrew bible, it may be very difficult to tell the source (author) of the original story.
Of course it is.
Do monozygotic twins only have half a soul each? Do they have identical copies of the same soul? Does only one have a soul and the other misses out? Does one twin have a soul that’s added later? Do they have some form of time-share arrangement?
What about chimeras? Do they have two souls? If they do have two souls, do the souls merge into one, do they mingle, or do they stick rigidly to their own regions of the body? Does one of the two souls get reclaimed or destroyed? If so, when and how? Is it re-used for some-one else or kept as a spare in case the retained one gets besmirched?
Mosaic humans, on the other hand, are alive and well and complicating the idea that souls are provided at conception.
Biological reality is too messy for simplistic beliefs.
It is quite certain the current Hebrew text is not a direct translation of something Moses wrote either.
Agreed. There are actually some good arguments for viewing portions of the material as reflecting a time period much more contemporaneous with Moses than say 500 BC.
Probably true for some but we see several passages in scripture telling us Moses wrote x, y or z (e.g., Deuteronomy 31:9). Nowhere does scripture say “the entirety of the Pentateuch was written by Moses.” I don’t find it objectionable to consider these the Books of Moses if he really existed and an exodus happened and he wrote down laws and details that later on ended up the way they did in the Torah later on.
Vinnie
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Certainly a complicated issue but not one that Thomists have not considered in much detail.
Playford R. The Mathematics (and Metaphysics) of Identical Twins. Linacre Q. 2020 Aug;87(3):278-291. doi: 10.1177/0024363920920396. Epub 2020 May 12. PMID: 32699438; PMCID: PMC7350103.
Vinnie
In the ancient world, naming a book according to a famous person did not always mean that the famous person wrote that book - it could have been a book dedicated to the person or something similar. That is at least what I have read. Torah/Pentateuch could have been named as the book(s) of Moses by some later person even if the Torah was a work compiled by someone else from earlier oral or written tradition.
It is a matter of opinion how we consider the possibility that Moses wrote much of the text. As a believing Christian, I take that as a possibility that should be considered seriously. Someone with a different background or worldview would assume that the whole work was written by someone else centuries after Moses. Both could agree that there are sentences in Torah that are obviously written/added after Moses died.
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Given that we do not receive salvation and renewal of God’s image through genealogical descent, it seems possible (though speculative) that being spiritually human could spread from Adam and Eve to other biologically similar individuals.
Many ideas about the transmission of positive and negative aspects of human nature remain heavily influenced by classical Greek philosophical ideas about reproductive biology. As many of those ideas are scientifically incorrect, reviewing these concepts is an important task.
Of course, creating doctrines to conform tightly to the latest scientific ideas is likely to similarly face problems of obsolescence. Science does make progress. The basics of genetics are not likely to change. But new complications are likely to be found, in addition to the problematic questions of how spiritual components are linked to the physical. Rather, we should seek to identify where theological ideas have been excessively influenced by Classical thought or by anything else.
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In a new thread, a FULLER explanation for the creation of BioLogos is
crafted. I agree with it completely!
cleaner, forum-ready way to put it
If you want a precise correction that doesn’t overclaim:
“YEC has clearly been a major driver of the evangelical ‘science vs faith’ conflict BioLogos addresses, but it’s not the only one. BioLogos exists to bridge perceived conflict between mainstream science and Christian faith more generally; without YEC the need might be less acute, but the broader integration project would still be there.” (BioLogos)
I like the enhanced corrective!
G.Brooks
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You are disputing out of ignorance of the assertions proposed by the book G.A.E.
The book G.A.E. is addressed specifically to those who require an Adam & Eve as real people.
But the book also includes discussions of computer simulations with various factors regarding
the length of an average generation.
As well as the existence of a pre-Adamite population that could be 10,000 or 100,000 or
millions.
Read the book. I don’t intend to reproduce the book paragraph by paragraph.
G.Brooks
Yes your recent family. Does the fact that I am related to Charlamagne have any role in shaping who I am?
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No but if he was the reason for humanity being kicked out of Eden he would.
This is how I approach it. We know some YECs can be very loud in the states but the reconciliation of science and scripture is much broader than just dealing with a small percentage of fundamentalists and some evangelical Christians.
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So Adam was the source for all of humanity? Even in GAE A&E aren’t the sole ancestors of humans. So God applied the lack to every human alive or born after A&E?
They were put in a sacred space where they would not have tasted death or suffered. By violating that covenant, everyone after them feels the effects. This was laid out in the OP with several analogies.
When a baby is born to a mother who is a crack-head, does God apply the drug addiction to the baby? Your question is odd to me. You are viewing it as if God is inflicting a positive punishment on everyone. He is just leaving us as normal humans in our normal environment—exactly how you believe we were born in the first place. Do you think God applies the “selfishness” of evolution to everyone? Do you even think this question makes sense?
Vinnie
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