Evolution. The word alone sends a shiver down the spines of many Catholics, but the truth is that it doesn’t pose nearly as much of a problem for our faith as some people think it does.
For example, there are good reasons to believe that the seven-day creation account in Genesis was never intended to be taken literally, and the Church herself has said that the theory of evolution and the idea that the human body evolved from earlier life forms such is not incompatible with her teachings, provided we understand that the human soul is the direct creation of God.[*]
The Problem of Sin
There is one genuine problem that looms over every Catholic discussion of the theory of evolution, however, and to this day, we still don’t have a definitive resolution to it. It is this: How can we square evolution with the Church’s teaching about the effect of Adam and Eve’s sin on the entire world?
The Church tells us that Adam and Eve’s sin didn’t just mess up human nature; it had disastrous consequences for the world as well. According to St. Paul, “creation was made subject to futility” (Romans 8:20) and “all creation groans in labor pains” (Romans 8:20). The Catechism says that Adam’s sin put all of creation in “bondage to decay” (Catechism, 400), but this teaching is tough to reconcile with modern evolutionary science. In particular, science tells us that this “bondage to decay” was well under way before human beings ever came on the scene.
So, how can we reconcile this scientific tenet with our belief that humanity’s Fall threw the entire created order out of whack? Admittedly, we are on very speculative ground here, so we can’t have much certainty that any given theory is right. All we can do is offer possibilities, so here is my best educated guess at an answer.
The Garden of Eden
Let’s start by taking a look at a key detail in the second creation story:
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:8-9)
These verses tell us that in the big wide world God created, there was a place called Eden, and somewhere in that place, there was a garden where He put the first man (and with him the first woman). Significantly, this means that the garden paradise God made for Adam and Eve didn’t encompass the entire world. Rather, it was just one part of the world. Perhaps the rest of creation was not as amenable to them as Eden.
Subduing the Earth
And if we turn to the first creation account, we find important confirmation of this. When God made our first parents, He told them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). Now, if the entire world was already a paradise, why would mankind have to subdue it? Wouldn’t it already have been subdued for them?
So again, this implies that the paradise God created for mankind didn’t encompass the entire world. Rather, it was only part of the world, and the rest of it was an untamed wilderness. We might even say that everything outside it was already in “bondage to decay,” and human beings were supposed to release it from that bondage.
In essence, Adam and Eve were supposed to turn all of creation into a paradise just like the garden. This raises an important question for us: why didn’t God just make the whole world a paradise from the start?
The Devil and His Minions
The answer, I believe, lies in the second creation story. It tells us that the serpent who tempted our first parents was already there before they sinned (Genesis 3:1). The New Testament clarifies that this serpent was actually the devil, “the ancient serpent” (Revelation 12:9). Presumably, he and the other fallen angels were already roaming the earth long before Adam and Eve came on the scene. They had the chance to wreak havoc on God’s good creation well before human beings evolved.
The fallen angels were most likely the originators of the world’s “bondage to decay.” They messed the world up before God ever created mankind, so when Adam and Eve finally showed up on the scene, their mission was to be God’s agents to restore the rest of the earth and free it from the devil’s grasp. God gave them a “home base” to start with in Eden, and from there they were supposed to go out and recapture the rest of the earth and bring it back under His rule.
What Adam and Eve Did
But they obviously didn’t do that! Instead, Adam and Eve let the serpent lead them into sin, so they lost any chance they had of fulfilling their mission to rescue the earth from his dominion. Because of this, Satan’s grasp on the world was strengthened, and the entire creation was put in permanent subjection to the evil that he and his minions had brought upon it (at least until God will intervene in a much more radical way at Jesus’ Second Coming).
St. Paul recognized this. The full verse of Romans 8:20 quoted partially above says: “For creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it.” And the “one who subjected it” was the evil one himself.
In this way, I would suggest, we can have our cake and eat it too. As science tells us, evil and suffering came into the world before the Fall, but in accordance with the Church’s teachings, the Fall was the nail in the coffin that made this bondage permanent and worldwide.
Theological speculation such as this helps us to makes sense of the biblical data. The reflections here fit well into the Church’s teaching about the effects of the Fall. At the very least, it shows that some conjectures of the scientific theory of evolution don’t necessarily contradict our Catholic faith.
———-
[*EDITOR’S NOTE: While the Church allows the possibility of “the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter” (Humani Generis, 36), Catholics are not strictly bound to believe that humans in their material reality descended from other animal species, even if there might be striking similarities in their respective DNA. Correlation, in this case, is not necessarily evidence of causation. In a previous Catholic Stand article, Bob Kurland cites the “Mitochondrial Eve” hypothesis that suggests “there is evidence from analyses of mitochondrial DNA that humanity indeed did originate from a very limited gene pool, possibly just a pair (Adam and Eve).” This has also been noted elsewhere by Fr. Terry Donohue, CC.]
34 thoughts on “How Could There Be Suffering Before the Fall?”
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JP:
I disagree with you. That entire chapter is also about God’s creation of the earth.
Take off your blinders!
Of course it’s about creation in some sense. But in what sense? Why is God asking all those strange questions? The text itself doesn’t give us those answers, so the only way to figure that out is to look at it in context. And in the context of the entire book of Job, the point is to show how much greater God is than Job (and, by extension, all of us), so Job should trust that God knows what He’s doing even when Job himself doesn’t. It’s not about the inability of modern science to figure out the exact details of how human beings got here.
JP:
And just because you disagree with my thoughts, it doesn’t make you correct about what God meant.
Of course the mere fact that I believe something doesn’t make it right. So let’s talk about it a bit more. The whole point of the book of Job is that it’s about the problem of evil. Job suffers a lot, then his friends try to explain why he’s suffering, but Job doesn’t buy their explanations. Then God comes and basically says, “I’m so far above you that you have no shot at understanding why I allow all the things I allow, so don’t even try.”
And that’s where the passage you quoted fits in. It’s part of God’s explanation of why Job has no shot at understanding why He allows all the evil that He allows, so it has nothing to do with whether or not we can understand the history of the earth before homo sapiens arrived.
In fact, since the book is about the problem of evil rather than the history of the earth before human beings arrived, the burden of proof is on you to show why this specific passage is actually something other than the theme of the entire book. It’s on you to show why this passage tackles a different theme than the one the rest of the book does.
JP:
My point?
The scripture reading is God’s response to Job. I thought it was appropriate for the topic at hand, i.e. creation of the earth.
However, I also think that God’s response would be appropriate to Darwin’s theory of evolution, the Pope’s comment about evolution, and your article.
You’re ripping those words out of context and applying them to a situation they were never meant to address. Just because God said that to Job in that specific situation doesn’t mean that He would say the same thing to us regarding modern scientific theories of evolution.
His point wasn’t that human beings will never be able to know anything about the history of the earth before we got here (that wasn’t even on people’s radars back then). Rather, He was simply pointing out how much greater He is than us, so we should trust that He knows what He’s doing with our lives even when we don’t.
My credentials are irrelevant because, even though I have a Science Degree, that doesn’t make a wit of difference when it comes to the all to easily accessible fact that our dating methods for the age of the earth, and anything else within it, are seriously flawed. Here is the link, since my suggestion to do a simple Google search about it was not accepted. This site states 3 (assumptions):
https://answersingenesis.org/geology/radiometric-dating/radiometric-dating-problems-with-the-assumptions/
In Christ,
Andrew
Thanks for sharing.
For those who would validate the theory of evolution by a self-proclaimed agnostic, I offer these words from the Bible for consideration.
Job 38
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
VIII. The Lord and Job Meet
Chapter 38
1 Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm and said:
2 Who is this who darkens counsel
with words of ignorance?
3 Gird up your loins now, like a man;
I will question you, and you tell me the answers!
4 Where were you when I founded the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its size? Surely you know?
Who stretched out the measuring line for it?
6 Into what were its pedestals sunk,
and who laid its cornerstone,
7 While the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
8 Who shut within doors the sea,
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 When I made the clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling bands?
10 When I set limits for it
and fastened the bar of its door,
11 And said: Thus far shall you come but no farther,
and here shall your proud waves stop?
12 Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning
and shown the dawn its place
13 For taking hold of the ends of the earth,
till the wicked are shaken from it?
14 The earth is changed as clay by the seal,
and dyed like a garment;
15 But from the wicked their light is withheld,
and the arm of pride is shattered.
16 Have you entered into the sources of the sea,
or walked about on the bottom of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been shown to you,
or have you seen the gates of darkness?
18 Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth?
Tell me, if you know it all.
19 What is the way to the dwelling of light,
and darkness—where is its place?
20 That you may take it to its territory
and know the paths to its home?
21 You know, because you were born then,
and the number of your days is great!
22 Have you entered the storehouses of the snow,
and seen the storehouses of the hail
23 Which I have reserved for times of distress,
for a day of war and battle?
24 What is the way to the parting of the winds,
where the east wind spreads over the earth?
25 Who has laid out a channel for the downpour
and a path for the thunderstorm
26 To bring rain to uninhabited land,
the unpeopled wilderness;
27 To drench the desolate wasteland
till the desert blooms with verdure?
28 Has the rain a father?
Who has begotten the drops of dew?
29 Out of whose womb comes the ice,
and who gives the hoarfrost its birth in the skies,
30 When the waters lie covered as though with stone
that holds captive the surface of the deep?
31 Have you tied cords to the Pleiades,
or loosened the bonds of Orion?
32 Can you bring forth the Mazzaroth in their season,
or guide the Bear with her children?
33 Do you know the ordinances of the heavens;
can you put into effect their plan on the earth?
34 Can you raise your voice to the clouds,
for them to cover you with a deluge of waters?
35 Can you send forth the lightnings on their way,
so that they say to you, “Here we are”?
36 Who gives wisdom to the ibis,
and gives the rooster understanding?
37 Who counts the clouds with wisdom?
Who tilts the water jars of heaven
38 So that the dust of earth is fused into a mass
and its clods stick together?
39 Do you hunt the prey for the lion
or appease the hunger of young lions,
40 While they crouch in their dens,
or lie in ambush in the thicket?
41 Who provides nourishment for the raven
when its young cry out to God,
wandering about without food?
What exactly is your point here?
AN ORDINARY PAPISTFEBRUARY 24, AD2022 AT 2:06 PM
And so the author of Genesis tried again, and came up with what we have.
A fictional account as opposed to non fiction.
AnOrdinaryPapist, that is calumny.
I defy you to identify *anywhere* in my comment where I stated or described Genesis as “fiction.” Quote me. Or retract your lie about me.
I described Genesis as perhaps a second attempt to tell a TRUE story a DIFFERENT way.
Either you simply slipped up, and in that case, I am sure you will be eager to retract your calumny and apologize.
Otherwise, you are a vicious person who needs to go to confession.
I’m glad you don’t have access to a rack.
This is a big topic to say the least, as are most forays into interpreting Scripture. I commend you for it, and I like a lot of what you said.
However, I must caution you: if you want to do this, be far more careful with your terminology. Specifically, when you speak of the Bible being “taken literally.”
Given the work you’ve done in college and graduate school, you really ought to be familiar with the perils of this kind of language. I strongly recommend you read or re-read Raymond Brown’s article in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary on the literal sense. Yes, I know the problems both with him in particular and that source in general; I do not give a blanket endorsement to their approaches *at all*! But on this particular issue, I think Brown has it right: the literal sense is that which the human author intended, to the extent we can figure it out.
Why does this matter?
Because then we don’t get into this trap of saying, oh we don’t take Genesis (or any other part of the Bible) “literally.” In fact, when we correctly understand our own words, we can say we take 100% of the Bible “literally,” meaning: as the human author intended his words to be taken.
In this case, it is certainly reasonable to suppose that the author of Genesis intended his account of Creation to be something other than what we would call a “scientific” presentation. That doesn’t make it contrary to natural sciences; it doesn’t make it a whit less true. It means that the human author didn’t look at the world through a modern lens, and that would be obvious once you think about it.
Think of it this way. Let us fancifully suppose the author of Genesis (through divine inspiration, perhaps) knew absolutely everything there is to know about the age of the universe, the development of life in it, including on earth, and all the relevant disciplines of geology and biology and so forth. And let us further suppose his first draft of Genesis incorporated all this. That would read rather like those texts we had in high school, don’t you think? Isn’t that exciting to contemplate? I’m sure all of us treasure those textbooks and frequently return to them for inspiration, right?
Continuing my fancy, imagine the author of Genesis shared his first draft with friends and family, and asked their opinion. They’d say what we’d say: BORING!
And so the author of Genesis tried again, and came up with what we have.
My point being that there need be no conflict between the text of Genesis and “science,” however we understand that term. It’s two different ways of apprehending the truth. If we choose not to read Genesis as a science textbook, that doesn’t mean we’re not taking it “literally”; instead, it means we really are. We’re reading it for what it is, not what it is not.
And so the author of Genesis tried again, and came up with what we have.
A fictional account as opposed to non fiction.
Fr. Fox, You’re totally right to point out that the literal sense of the text is the meaning the author intended to convey, regardless of whether he used literal or figurative language to convey it. However, that’s not the way most people use the word “literal” in their everyday conversations, so that can get a bit confusing for people who aren’t used to it. That’s why I’ve chosen to use the word “literal” in its more common usage.
JP:
You assert that the Bible is the truth, but you don’t believe that Genesis 1 should be taken literally.
Wow!
If that’s the case, then logically speaking, what in the Bible is true? And if the Bible isn’t true, who are we to believe? You? Darwin? The Pope? The Vatican’s astronomer? Our priest?
I think not!
Saying that something shouldn’t be taken literally is very different from saying that it’s not true. For example, when Jesus calls Himself a door (John 10:7), or when He says that He’s the vine and we’re the branches (John 15:5), we obviously don’t take His words literally. He’s not literally a door or a vine, and we’re not literally branches. Rather, He’s using figurative language to express a spiritual truth, so the fact that we don’t take His words literally doesn’t mean that it’s not true.
So how do we know what is and isn’t supposed to be taken literally? Well, there’s no one size fits all answer to that. Sometimes it’s obvious that a passage is meant to be taken figuratively (as in the texts I just cited as examples), but other times it’s not as obvious (as, I would argue, in the case of Genesis 1). And when it’s not so obvious, we have to look closely to see if the text gives us any clues that it’s not supposed to be taken literally. For example, as I argue in my article about Genesis 1, if we pay close attention to the text itself, it gives us an important clue that it’s not supposed to be taken literally. Rather, it’s a figurative account of creation that’s meant to teach us certain truths about God and our relationship to Him, but it’s not meant to be a literal, eyewitness account of the exact way in which God created the world.
Nice article, but I find it hard to believe that “The word evolution alone sends a shiver down the spines of many Catholics”. Nor indeed of any Catholics. Only of the more extreme Protestant fundamentalist heretics.
A lot of Catholics hold similarly fundamentalist views. Maybe you’re lucky and you haven’t encountered them, but they definitely exist.
Maybe it’s just that I’ve never been to the USA where even Catholics are influenced by the surrounding Protestant Fundamentalist culture.
Yeah, that’s probably it.
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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope-francis-evolution-big-bang-theory-are-real-n235696
https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/creationism-dismissed-kind-paganism-vaticans-astronomer-2508334
So, do you agree with these 21st Century voices more than the Bible?
Maybe you should revisit Genesis 1:1-2.
Genesis 1:1-2
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
Preamble. The Creation of the World
Chapter 1
The Story of Creation. 1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth— 2 and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waves.
As a Catholic, I believe that “since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation” (Dei Verbum 11). However, I don’t think the opening chapters of Genesis were meant to be taken 100% literally. Sure, they teach important truths, like the fact that God is the creator of the universe and that the entire human race is descended from a single pair of original parents, but that doesn’t mean they’re teaching literal science the way a modern textbook would. And as evidence of that, I linked to an article that I wrote about the 7-day creation story in Genesis. If you’re interested, here’s the link again: https://catholicstand.com/world-made-seven-days/
Catholics owe no allegiance to the Genesis account, any more than to other Old Testament headscratchers like God ordering genocide or killing babies, or unwilling girls being served up like hors d’ouevres.
We Catholics have to take the entire Bible seriously as the word of God. Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation teaches that “the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.
Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” (Dei Verbum 11)
So this means we are supposed to reject evolution? Or agree with the judgment in Galileo’s case (which JP II apologized for)?
Of course it doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to reject evolution. That’s the whole point of this article. Rather, as Vatican II goes on to say in the very next paragraph of that same document:
“However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.
To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to ‘literary forms.’ For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another.” (DV 12)
In other words, Scripture often uses figurative language (just like we do in our everyday communication), and we have to figure out when it’s doing this and when it’s using more literal language. To take an easy example, when Jesus says that He’s the vine and we’re the branches (John 15:5), He’s clearly speaking metaphorically, so we don’t have to believe that human beings are actually plants. Similarly, I would argue that Genesis 1 is describing God’s creation in figurative language (the intro of this article links to another one I wrote about that very topic), so we don’t have to interpret it as if it were a literal, eyewitness account of the exact manner in which God created the world.
And the same basic concept applies to the Galileo stuff too.
Figurative vs. literal. That’s the whole nub of it, isn’t it?
1. Any time the literal language becomes impossible, ridiculous or offensive, we can say it’s “figurative”. Galileo’s inquisitors took geocentric language (in Joshua, Isaiah, the Gospels, Psalms 19 and 104) as literal, but the Church has changed its mind and now says it’s figurative. This seems like a cop-out.
2. How do we know which is which? As you point out, Jesus said he was a vine, and that was figurative. But when he says bread and wine is his body and blood, that’s literal. Or so the Church teaches. But one can’t determine which is which just from reading the text.
3. Even changing it to figurative doesn’t always solve the problem of offensiveness. There is no way one can “figuratively” defend smashing babies’ skulls as in Psalm 137. And what does the Garden of Eden story mean, even in figurative terms? That it’s bad to know the difference between good and evil? I haven’t seen a good explanation of this yet.
Well, we can’t simply assert that a passage is figurative simply because we want it to be. We need to have defensible reasons for taking a passage figuratively. To take an easy example, we take the book of Psalms figuratively because that’s simply how the book’s genre works. It’s poetry, and as we know even from modern poetry, that genre uses a ton of flowery, figurative language. Granted, not every case is that simple, but the same basic principle applies to the entire Bible. We can’t simply declare that a certain portion of Scripture is figurative simply because we don’t want it to be literal. We have to have demonstrable reasons for it.
As for the Galileo stuff, I don’t know enough about the history of that incident to speak for the Church authorities at that time, but I know that today, we have a very good reason for not getting our understanding of the solar system from the Bible. For example, even today, we still talk about the sun setting and rising even though we know that’s not what literally happens. We’re simply describing how those events look to us, and we don’t care much about whether that’s literally, scientifically correct or not. So it stands to reason that the authors of Scripture spoke and wrote in the same way. Sure, they may have believed that the sun really did rise and set, but that wasn’t the point they were really trying to teach in those passages. They were simply using the common language of their day, and if someone were to travel back in time and teach them that the earth really revolves around the sun, it wouldn’t affect the real messages they were trying to convey in the passages where they mention the sun rising and setting.
As for the Eucharist, that’s a bit more involved, but as a start, I would point you to John 6, where Jesus talks about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. There are very good reasons to believe that Jesus wasn’t speaking figuratively there (it would take us on too much of a tangent for me to spell them out, but they’re easy to look up on any Catholic website that deals with this kind of stuff), so even if Jesus’ words at the Last Supper are inconclusive by themselves, John 6 resolves the debate for us.
Psalm 137 is a tough case, but I would suggest that we don’t have to try to blunt the offensiveness of the passage. While the Church teaches that God moved the authors of Scripture to write down exactly what He wanted them to write (and only what He wanted them to write), that refers to the message, not to the particular words that they used to express that message. So yes, sometimes, due to their own failings, they expressed things in ways that are offensive to us today, but that message is still from God. He simply worked through imperfect human beings to deliver that message to us.
Last but not least, we have the garden of Eden. While we can’t be 100% sure about what exactly the “knowledge of good and evil” refers to, but I would suggest that the text does give us a clue. After they sinned, it says that they covered themselves up because they were ashamed, and that implies that they began to recognize the possibility of lusting after each other as well as the ways they could try to curb that kind of behavior (namely, by covering themselves up). So it seems that before they sinned, the possibility of lusting after each other didn’t even cross their minds (that’s why they had no problem being naked). And if that’s the case, then they really did gain knowledge of good and evil. They gained a deeper knowledge of the evil things they could do (like lusting), and they also gained some knowledge about what they could do to curb their evil impulses (like covering up).
Evolution is nonsense because we were not evolved by God, we were created out of the dust/clay of the ground. Also, as any well versed science person knows, there are five unproven assumptions (that can give easily found with a web search) which are the basis for the seriously flawed dating methods used to come up with evolutions anti-biblical assertions. Check out Genesis Apologetics to get up to speed more easily and God bless! We do not come from apes or goo!!!
In Christ, Andrew
Andrew, please, before you start making assertions about what “any well versed science person knows,” establish your credentials. All sorts of stuff–sciience and nonsense goes on the web. I am a “well versed science person,” (BS Caltech–with honor, Ph.D. Harvard Univ, still being cited –more than several thousand at last count–and with a name equation to my credit–web search “Kurland-McGarvey Equation” and I don’t believe a word of what you’ve written. By the way if Genesis 1 is to be taken literally in the ordinary sense of the word, then you should go back to the original Hebrew…and you should have to discredit not only evolution of animals but also of the cosmos, and that takes what the Catholic Encyclopedia calls “invincible ignorance.” I am amazed that people credit GPS (depending on satellites that use relativistic corrections to keep time) computer solid state devices (which depends on quantum mechanics0 but brush away other parts of physics or science.