I thought that we accept that they are real people and that the story is true. However a trad convert asked me recently if the story was true or was it used as a metaphor.

If its true, what can be said to support it. I mean, it might be a hard one to debate over.

Thanks

That Adam and Eve are the true progenitors of every living human being in the whole of history is considered setentia certa, or theologically certain, which means that it has not been formally defined but is held as certain through examination of those things that are de fide.

As with most things, defending it is a point of faith.  There have been genetic studies that admit a primordial commonality among all DNA haplogroups but they have not, as yet, pointed to a single mating pair.  And no matter your view of geology or the age of the Earth, Adam and Eve have been dead for a long time, really before the advent of written history, so all anthropological evidence of them would be anecdotal.

Our Lord's genealogy is traced back to Adam.

If Adam's not real, then where does that leave Seth... Noah... Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.... David.... etc? Are they all metaphors too?

Here are a few very imperfect thoughts on this inexhaustible mystery of the faith:  We are not to doubt that the Biblical story of Adam and Eve is true in both literal (historical) and figurative senses.  That said, then we are free as Catholics to inform this literal history according to the best of our historical knowledge, but only for as long as we remember we are merely approximating the historical truth, not completing it.

That the historic Black Sea Flood of circa 5400 B.C. may well coincide with the Biblical Flood is a reasonable suggestion.  That the flight of Noah and his people to the Caucasus region after that Great Flood coincides with the historic expansion of the Indo-European peoples from the Caucasus mountains after the Black Sea Flood is also a reasonable speculation.

Then what would the Edenic world have been from before the Black Sea Flood?  According to the Biblical literature, Eden was "to the north."  The actual consensus among the more educated Catholic elite has always been that "Eden" referred to pre-historic Europe and now with the evidence of a Black Sea Flood and the expansion of the Indo-Europeans from the Caucasus mountains after that flood, the more logical hypothesis would be that "Eden" would coincide with what might be described as pre-historic Paleolithic proto-Nordic Central and Eastern Europe while Adam and Eve would be both the historic founders of the royal lineages thereof as well as names for the entire lineages of said proto-Nordic Europe as well.

The ENTIRE history of the early chapters of the Book of Genesis is completely and radically MONARCHIST and ROYALIST in nature.  (The "democratic" element is very clearly the introduction of personal death.) Therefore the unity of the human race includes a monarchist view that submission to a King and his Royal Dynasty makes their loyal subjects into a unity.  Therefore, above all, Adam and Eve are the parents of us all because we are all by law and history the rightful subjects of their royal and aristocratic lineages and therefore children of the founders of those dynastic families and we are also all their racial descendants (in view of the universally feudal and aristocratic view of family shared by our entire human race), both the more direct ones of the white Indo-Europeans and the more indirect ones of the non-white human races.

NOTHING in the Book of Genesis suggests human equality in any sense other than the universal subjection to personal death  and to the necessity of labor due to the sins of Adam and Eve.  Hence humanity is unified, but in a strict hierarchical sense as a real hierarchic unity, not in any false egalitarian sense of merely sentimental democratic absurdities.  Are we humans born equal and does any actual racial equality among humans exist?  Not according to the Book of Genesis and its history of Adam and Eve!

And moral equality only applies to ROMAN CATHOLICS, not to non-Catholics.  Because of Adam and Eve during life the unbaptized have no equality with the baptized at all.  The true history of Adam and Eve should teach us that the non-Catholics are only the Children of Wrath and we must never expect anything better than that from those Children of Wrath.  Therefore we can have good relations with the non-Catholics because, with the history of Adam and Eve kept in our minds, we are able to expect very little from them.  Whereas that same true history teaches us that we are to expect very much indeed from our fellow Roman Catholics, and above all from our own selves.  Adam and Eve show us that we Catholics are responsible for Creation, whereas the non-Catholics are our burden, the pampered and spoiled inferior humanity for whom we should show a paternal compassion, but also a truthful monarchic superiority.  The non-Catholics are our heavy burden, and we Roman Catholics are their rightful and eternal Lords and Masters.  Such is the true nature of our hierarchic human race.

Of course this true history of Adam and Eve can and has filled volumes.  The above is only a greatly simplified summary of the current state of our knowledge of these incredibly mysterious and remote events.  Therefore the truest version of history will always be simply to open our Roman Catholic Holy Bible and read with a humble and grateful heart.

Very interesting Brother Francis.

Are there any geneticists who maintain we have one common ancestor?

As I mentioned earlier they have isolated our mitochondrial (mother) DNA to the one woman of African descent.

Does this mean Eve was black?

No, it means the "they" who have so isolated "our" DNA are egalitarian Marxist fanatics who yearn to insult our Roman Catholic mothers.  Sometimes the truth is unpleasant...  The pseudo-scientists who claim "to know" we are all "black" haven't the slightest respect for Negritude or the glories of ancient African Egypt or Africa's glorious Roman Catholic past.  This is only more Marxist envy and hate-mongering.

The universal city of Rome is a white Indo-European city and likewise the universal race of our human origins is the white Indo-European race of the actual historic Adam and Eve, much like the universal Savior is the white Indo-European Hebrew King Jesus Christ of Nazareth.  Catholic Western Civilization is the one universal civilization and the white Indo-European race that has formed that universal civilization is the true universal race.  

We don't need to mix with everyone to have a universal race because the race of Adam, Eve and Our Lord Jesus Christ is already the one true universal race.  The majority of the human race is Indo-European, so the human race that the Lord has made ought to be good enough for everybody.  Although, of course, nothing God does is ever good enough for the Marxist deicide Jєωs.

Quote from: Thursday

I thought that we accept that they are real people and that the story is true. However a trad convert asked me recently if the story was true or was it used as a metaphor.

If its true, what can be said to support it. I mean, it might be a hard one to debate over.

Thanks

That Adam and Eve are the true progenitors of every living human being in the whole of history is considered setentia certa, or theologically certain, which means that it has not been formally defined but is held as certain through examination of those things that are de fide.

As with most things, defending it is a point of faith.  There have been genetic studies that admit a primordial commonality among all DNA haplogroups but they have not, as yet, pointed to a single mating pair.  And no matter your view of geology or the age of the Earth, Adam and Eve have been dead for a long time, really before the advent of written history, so all anthropological evidence of them would be anecdotal.

First of all, we have Sacred Scripture, and equally authoritative with that is the
Sacred Tradition of the Church, the teaching of the Apostles and the Doctors, all
of which agree, that every human creature shares Adam and Eve as common
ancestors, protoparents. That Catholic converts could be asking whether it's true
is only a reflection on how deficient catechesis is for converts: they very well may
not even know what it is that they are submitting themselves to when they say
they "want to be baptized." This is not their fault, but the condemnable fault of
the negligent pastors who have failed to teach them.

Quote from: Council of Trent, The Fifth Session, DECREE CONCERNING ORIGINAL SIN

1. If any one does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema.

Source


This solemn condemnation implies that Adam is a real man with body and soul and not a metaphor.

It's a real testimony to the depravity of modern man that we have arrived at the
point when it is questioned whether Adam was a real man with body and soul and
not a metaphor.

It's a real testimony to the depravity of modern man that we have arrived at the
point where it is questioned whether Eve was a real woman, or whether Adam and
Eve were truly the first parents of all the human race.

It's a real testimony to the depravity of modern man that we have arrived at the
point where a good Pope now needs to define these things to put to rest all the
ridiculous sqabbling; but perhaps that is exactly what needs to take place.

Ok, so if Adam and Eve weren't black how did we get black people. Just a genetic mutation after the fall?

The DNA of Adam and Eve was INITIALLY perfect. Everyone's DNA today contains
imperfections. After the fall, one of the effects of original sin was genetic
imperfection, per se, meaning that if they had not fallen, all their children would
have had perfect genes, too. But Adam did fall, and therefore, corruption became
part of our genetics. After the Flood of Noe, people were disbursed throughout the
world, but it wasn't until the Tower of Babel that groups separated and went to far
away places. Those who went to Africa had a proclivity toward negroid
development, and combined with the climate of the continent, they eventually
became blacks. The same can be said about India, China, Japan, Australia,
Russia, and the Americas.

Thanks for the comments. To be honest when I found tradition and realized that there was a body of revalation that we had to accept in to be Catholic I found the Adam and Eve part a bit hard to accept. I was hoping I could give this individual a decent answer to their query so they won't suffer any serious doubts.