Adam & Eve and the Soul Question
Posted: Tue May 10, 2016 2:17 pm
Many of those who believe that the Book of Genesis is divinely inspired also believe in evolution, and, in particular, in the descent of humankind from earlier species going all the way back to the unicellular. “God behind evolution” and “guided evolution” are popular ways of expressing their view. As I understand it, Catholic doctrine does not speak to the question of evolution, although recent popes have expressed confidence in it as lay scientists. Still, the spiritual truth of Adam and Eve is a tenet of doctrine: there was an historical couple, the progenitors of us all, and these two were the first people on this planet in that they were the first creatures with souls. (More accurately they were the first with the religiously important sort of soul, not the sort of soul that dogs, clams, and dandelions may have if you tend towards the Aristotelian. The human soul has life after death potential. By virtue of its possession humans are “in the image of God” and only a little lower than the angels. This is what I mean by soul hereinafter.) Actual Adam and Eve committed an actual historical act of disobedience to God, constituting original sin and prefiguring the relation of our species to God. Salvation is possible for, and only for, the descendants of Adam and Eve.
This theory must accommodate the fact that some of the other pairs of the generation of Adam and Eve will have had children, and grandchildren, and so on. None in their lines of descent will have had souls until they were crossed with a line descending from Adam and Eve. (They all do either so cross or die out on the assumption that we are now all descended from the select couple.) That would have taken many generations. So for that length of time, on the doctrine at issue, the human race would have had ensouled and soulless members living side by side.
Now there is nothing impossible about this, but it seems pretty implausible. The root problem is the idea that there is such a thing as a soul of an either you have it or you don't sort: humans do, animals don't. This is the traditional Jewish, Christian, Muslim doctrine, and combining it with the theory of evolution inevitably brings some puzzles.
One problem involves the status of fertilized ova. Aquinas, following Aristotle, had ensoulment at 40 days for males, 80 for females (remarkable the polarity of this distinction, given what we now know about the development timing of the male and female brain). Anti-abortion ideology has now followed the view of Pythagoras over that of Aquinas and Aristotle to settle on ensoulment at conception. This, however, raises the embarrassing questions whether the zygote that splits (identical twins) had, pre-split one soul or two, and when two zygotes fuse (chimerism) did the souls of each of the predecessor zygotes fuse or did they disappear, replaced by a new soul. (If the latter is the case, then it is not true that each fetus has his or her soul from conception.) (For more on this you could take a look at the 6/3/2014 post “Life at Conception” of http://www.LawrenceCrocker.blogspot.com.)
What about fetuses with genetic abnormalities inconsistent with their survival to birth? Is every miscarriage a soul that never sees the light of day? What if those genetic abnormalities that prevent the formation of the cerebral cortex? Was there a soul “in” a fetus that could never have had a thought and that met its end after a few weeks of gestation.
The theory of an all or nothing, ontologically crucial, soul requires some elaboration, in addition, with respect to whether homo-other-than-sapiens. Did Neanderthals, Denisovans, Flores have souls or not? Perhaps only those Neanderthals and Denisovans with some sapiens blood had souls?
For a fuller version of the main theme here, see “Doctrinal Adam & Eve and Genetic Adam & Eve,” at http://www.LawrenceCrocker.blogspot.com.
This theory must accommodate the fact that some of the other pairs of the generation of Adam and Eve will have had children, and grandchildren, and so on. None in their lines of descent will have had souls until they were crossed with a line descending from Adam and Eve. (They all do either so cross or die out on the assumption that we are now all descended from the select couple.) That would have taken many generations. So for that length of time, on the doctrine at issue, the human race would have had ensouled and soulless members living side by side.
Now there is nothing impossible about this, but it seems pretty implausible. The root problem is the idea that there is such a thing as a soul of an either you have it or you don't sort: humans do, animals don't. This is the traditional Jewish, Christian, Muslim doctrine, and combining it with the theory of evolution inevitably brings some puzzles.
One problem involves the status of fertilized ova. Aquinas, following Aristotle, had ensoulment at 40 days for males, 80 for females (remarkable the polarity of this distinction, given what we now know about the development timing of the male and female brain). Anti-abortion ideology has now followed the view of Pythagoras over that of Aquinas and Aristotle to settle on ensoulment at conception. This, however, raises the embarrassing questions whether the zygote that splits (identical twins) had, pre-split one soul or two, and when two zygotes fuse (chimerism) did the souls of each of the predecessor zygotes fuse or did they disappear, replaced by a new soul. (If the latter is the case, then it is not true that each fetus has his or her soul from conception.) (For more on this you could take a look at the 6/3/2014 post “Life at Conception” of http://www.LawrenceCrocker.blogspot.com.)
What about fetuses with genetic abnormalities inconsistent with their survival to birth? Is every miscarriage a soul that never sees the light of day? What if those genetic abnormalities that prevent the formation of the cerebral cortex? Was there a soul “in” a fetus that could never have had a thought and that met its end after a few weeks of gestation.
The theory of an all or nothing, ontologically crucial, soul requires some elaboration, in addition, with respect to whether homo-other-than-sapiens. Did Neanderthals, Denisovans, Flores have souls or not? Perhaps only those Neanderthals and Denisovans with some sapiens blood had souls?
For a fuller version of the main theme here, see “Doctrinal Adam & Eve and Genetic Adam & Eve,” at http://www.LawrenceCrocker.blogspot.com.
Where does your 'divinity' sit within this rudimentary understanding?