metis said:
Being raised in the Roman Church and studying the changes in the Roman Church over the years I cannot accept your explanation of the view of the Roman Church on the 'Fall' and 'Original Sin,' but of course we will likely continue to disagree. You may advocate a a more personal interpretation, but I do not believe this in reality is accepted by the Roman Church. The Roman Church does allow and supports a Theistic Evolution perspective, which includes Adam and Eve, and a non-literal(?) interpretation. The concept of the 'Fall' and Original Sin' remain at foundation of Roman Church beliefs It would help if you could provide a reference supporting your personal view, According to the Vatican II and the standardized Catechism worldwide your view definitely does not reflect the teachings of the Roman Church.
The view of an allegorical teaching of the Adam and Eve does run into problems with the New Testament, because the Roman Church does state that the New Testament is predominately original authored, literal in intent and inspired by God. The New Testament supports a literal Genesis and the Noah flood. The willingness of the Roman Church to accept a literal interpretation of Genesis is definitely a paradox in the modern world, and contributes to the chasm between religion and science.
The authors, by content of the NT, and/or the Church Fathers believed in a literal Genesis, even though some offered both a literal and allegorical together.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: New Testament
The New Testament was not written all at once. The books that compose it appeared one after another in the space of fifty years, i.e. in the second half of the first century. Written in different and distant countries and addressed to particular Churches, they took some time to spread throughout the whole of Christendom, and a much longer time to become accepted. The unification of the canon was not accomplished without much controversy (see CANON OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES). Still it can be said that from the third century, or perhaps earlier, the existence of all the books that today form our New Testament was everywhere known, although they were not all universally admitted, at least as certainly canonical. However, uniformity existed in the West from the fourth century. The East had to await the seventh century to see an end to all doubts on the subject. In early times the questions of canonicity and authenticity were not discussed separately and independently of each other, the latter being readily brought forward as a reason for the former; but in the fourth century, the canonicity was held, especially by St. Jerome, on account of ecclesiastical prescription and, by the fact, the authenticity of the contested books became of minor importance. We have to come down to the sixteenth century to hear the question repeated, whether the Epistle to the Hebrews was written by St. Paul, or the Epistles called Catholic were in reality composed by the Apostles whose names they bear. Some Humanists, as Erasmus and Cardinal Cajetan, revived the objections mentioned by St. Jerome, and which are based on the style of these writings. To this Luther added the inadmissibility of the doctrine, as regards the Epistle of St. James. However, it was practically the Lutherans alone who sought to diminish the traditional Canon, which the Council of Trent was to define in 1546.
It was reserved to modern times, especially to our own days, to dispute and deny the truth of the opinion received from the ancients concerning the origin of the books of the New Testament. This doubt and the negation regarding the authors had their primary cause in the religious incredulity of the eighteenth century. These witnesses to the truth of a religion no longer believed were inconvenient, if it was true that they had seen and heard what they related. Little time was needed to find, in analyzing them, indications of a later origin. The conclusions of the Tübingen school, which brought down to the second century, the compositions of all the New Testament except four Epistles of St. Paul (Rom.; Gal.; I, II Cor.), was very common thirty or forty years ago, in so-called critical circles (see Dict. apolog. de la foi catholique, I, 771-6). When the crisis of militant incredulity had passed, the problem of the New Testament began to be examined more calmly, and especially more methodically. From the critical studies of the past half century we may draw the following conclusion, which is now in its general outlines admitted by all: It was a mistake to have attributed the origin of Christian literature to a later date; these texts, on the whole, date back to the second half of the first century; consequently they are the work of a generation that counted a good number of direct witnesses of the life of Jesus Christ. From stage to stage, from Strauss to Renan, from Renan to Reuss, Weizsäcker, Holtzmann, Jülicher, Weiss, and from these to Zahn, Harnack, criticism has just retraced its steps over the distance it had so inconsiderately covered under the guidance of Christian Baur. Today it is admitted that the first Gospels were written about the year 70. The Acts can hardly be said to be later; Harnack even thinks they were composed nearer to the year 60 than to the year 70. The Epistles of St. Paul remain beyond all dispute, except those to the Ephesians and to the Hebrews, and the pastoral Epistles, about which doubts still exist. In like manner there are many who contest the Catholic Epistles; but even if the Second Epistle of Peter is delayed till towards the year 120 or 130, the Epistle of St. James is put by several at the very beginning of Christian literature, between the years 40 and 50, the earliest Epistles of St. Paul about 52 till 58.
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