EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE 



catch sight of him as disclosed by his fossil skeleton or his 

 stone tools, he already lives with others of his kind in bands 

 and covers the ancient earth. 



When, therefore, revelation exhibits a first human individual 

 or a first human couple, it proposes a fact which science is 

 incapable either of controlling or weakening. Consequently the 

 existence of a first man or a first pair inaugurating the human 

 race cannot be thought of as incompatible with what science 

 is in a position to establish about human origins. From the 

 scientific point of view, Adam is simply a hypothesis that is 

 admissible but unverifiable.24 Science does, indeed, tend to 

 think that passage from animal to man occured but once in 

 the history of the earth, without being repeated at various 

 times in the midst of several anthropoid branches. But this 

 monogenism is not the monogenism of theology. By mono- 

 genism, theology means a single original couple, whereas the 

 paleontological sciences cannot specify more than the unity of 

 a population that might comprise many males and females. 



Accordingly the question whether a single first man and 

 woman marked the commencement of humankind is beyond 

 the frontiers at which science can arrive. But on this problem 

 we have the testimony of the Bible that Adam and Eve were 

 the first man and woman, and that from them proceeded, by 

 way of generation, all the human beings who after them have 

 dwelt on the earth. 



In the first chapter of Genesis this teaching is contained 

 implicitly in God's order to the first man and woman to multiply 

 and fill the earth. It is manifested more clearly in the second 

 chapter, where God creates the woman to implement His 

 plans for the race. An unbiased reading of the text leads to 

 the conclusion that all men who people the planet are des- 

 cendants of the first pair. Moreover, Eve is represented as 

 the mother of all the living (Gen. 3 : 20). But it is especially 

 the doctrine of original sin that requires the unity of the human 

 race; St. Paul affirms that Adam's sin and its punishment, 

 death, are passed along to all men (Rom. 5 : 12). The trans- 



^ Cf. D. EHibarle, O.P., "Evolution et evolutionnisme," Lumiere et Vie 

 34 (1957) 87 f. 



115 



