Science, theology, and monogenesis

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 85, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 217-236

  Kemp, Kenneth W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ST THOMAS   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84875341651     PISSN: 10513558     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/acpq201185213     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), 396-421.
2. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (London: Bogley Head, 1908), chap. 2.
3. John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua (London: Longman, Green, 1864), chap. 3; emphasis added.
4. The Catechism characterizes original justice as follows: "The first man was⋯ established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him. [He] would not have to suffer or die⋯ [He] was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthly goods, and self-assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason" (§§374-377). Ludwig Ott, in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, trans. Patrick Lynch (Cork: Mercier, 1955), Bk II, §18, judges that the inclusion of immortality among the preternatural gifts is de fide and freedom from irregular desires is a doctrine proximate to faith. Although many theologians interested in elaborating the doctrine have held that they include also freedom from suffering and infused natural and supernatural knowledge, Ott judges that these can only be called widely-held theological opinions, the magisterium never having formally affirmed them.
5. Decree Concerning Original Sin, 3. Heinrich Denzinger, original editor, Enchiridion sym-bolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 39th ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 2001), 1510-6, at 1513. Cf. CCC, 419.
6. It should be noted, however, that Pope John Paul II's comments on evolution in his Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of 22 October 1996, though they followed Pope Pius XII's encyclical on many points, were silent on the question of monogenesis. A 2004 study prepared by the International Theological Commission entitled Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God is pointedly non-committal, referring to "the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations)" (International Theological Commission: Texts and Documents, Vol. 2: 1986-2007, ed. Michael Sharkey and Thomas Weinandy [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009], 319-52, para. 70; see also para. 63).
7. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: Murray, 1859), chap. 11 ("Geographical Distribution"): "the view of each species having been produced in one area alone, and having subsequently migrated from that area as far as its powers of migration and subsistence under past and present conditions permitted, is the most probable."
8. Charles Darwin, Descent of Man (London: Murray, 1871), chap. 6.
9. Carleton S. Coon, The Origin of Races (New York: Knopf, 1962), 657.
10. Theodosius Dobzhansky, Mankind Evolving (New Haven: Yale, 1962), 183. A direct exchange between Coon and Dobzhansky appeared in
11. "Two Views of Coon's Origin of Races with Comments by Coon and Replies," Current Anthropology 4 (1963): 360-7.
12. Rupert E. Billingham and Willys K. Silvers, "Skin Transplants and the Hamster," Scientific American 208 (1963): 118-27, at 118-9.
13. Dobzhansky, Mankind Evolving, 180-1. Darwin had made the same point: "in the majority of cases, namely⋯ I believe that during the slow process of modification the individuals of the species will have been kept nearly uniform by intercrossing; so that many individuals will have gone on simultaneously changing, and the whole amount of modification will not have been due, at each stage, to descent from a single parent" (On the Origin of Species, chap. 11).
14. For a recent survey, see J. H. Relethford, "Genetic Evidence and the Modern Human Origins Debate," Heredity 100 (2008): 555-63.
15. Milford Wolpoff et al., "Modern Homo Sapiens Origins: A General Theory of Hominid Evolution Involving the Fossil Evidence from East Asia," in Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence, ed. F. H. Smith and F. Spencer (New York: Liss, 1984), 411-84.
16. Also Milford Wolpoff, "Multiregional Evolution: The Fossil Alternative to Eden," in The Human Revolution: Behavioral and Biological Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Humans, ed. P. Mellars and C. Stringer (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1989).
17. Weijun Xiong et al., "No Severe Bottleneck during Human Evolution," American Journal of Human Genetics 48 (1991): 383-9.
18. John Hawks et al., "Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution," Molecular Biology and Evolution 17 (2000): 2-22, at 16-8.
19. Stanley H. Ambrose, "Late Pleistocene Human Population Bottlenecks, Volcanic Winter, and Differentiation of Modern Humans," Journal of Human Evolution 34 (1998): 623-51.
20. See Francisco J. Ayala, "The Myth of Eve: Molecular Biology and Human Origins," Science 270 (1995): 1930-6
21. and, with A. A. Escalante, "The Evolution of Human Populations: A Molecular Perspective," Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 5 (1996): 188-201. Ayala reported the results of this work to a meeting of the US Catholic Bishops in 1998. See
22. Francisco Ayala, "Evolution and the Uniqueness of Humankind," Origins: CNS Documentary Service 27 (1998): 565-74.
23. H. A. Erlich et al., "HLA Sequence Polymorphisms and the Origin of Humans," Science 274 (1996): 1552-4.
24. See, e.g., Henry C. Harpending et al., "The Genetic Structure of Ancient Human Populations," Current Anthropology 34 (1993): 483-96.
25. The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans. John Hammond Taylor, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), I.19 (§39).
26. K. Rahner, S.J., "Theological Reflections on Monogenism," in Theological Investigations vol. I, trans. Cornelius Ernst, O. P. (Baltimore: Helicon, 1961), 34-5.
27. See also Rahner, "Evolution and Original Sin," Concilium 26 (1967): 61-73
28. Rahner, "Erbsünde und Monogenismus," in Karl Heinz-Weger, Theologie der Erbsünde (Freiburg: Herder, 1970).
29. Edward Yarnold, Theology of Original Sin (Notre Dame: Fides, 1971), 34-5.
30. E.g., Jerry D. Korsmeyer, Evolution and Eden (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1998), 44.
31. Stephen J. Duffy, "Our Hearts of Darkness: Original Sin Revisited," Theological Studies 49 (1988): 597-622, at 619.
32. See also Joan Acker, H.M., "Creationism and the Catechism," America 183 (2000): 6-9: "Modern theology regards these evidences of finiteness [sc., ignorance, pain, disease, and death] as necessary parts of created life, just as natural as birth."
33. Duffy, "Our Hearts of Darkness," 619.
34. Langdon Gilkey, On Niebuhr: A Theological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 134.
35. Yarnold, Theology of Original Sin, 77.
36. Ibid., 620. One might ask whether the "before" was ever understood to be "totally graceless." Note also in this connection Korsmeyer's comment that "one of the best reasons for infant baptism is that it reminds the community of the complete gratuitousness of God's love, in that it is given to humans before we are capable of doing anything by ourselves" (Korsmeyer, Evolution and Eden, 69).
37. Andrew Alexander, C.J., "Human Origins and Genetics," Clergy Review 49 (1964): 344-53, at 350-1.
38. "The rational or intellectual soul is per se and essentially the form of the body" (Council of Vienne, Constitution "Fidei Catholicae." Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum, 900-4, at 902).