Catholic View on the creation and fall

Essay by sophietCollege, Undergraduate November 2014

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Meaning to examine the Catholic perspective of Creation and of Adam's Fall into sin, I will be looking to summarize Joseph Ratzinger's (later Pope Benedict XVI) view of Creation and also his view of the Fall. I will also evaluate how Ratzinger refutes the literalist view of Creation and the rationalist view of Creation. This essay will also include my specific opinion on whether or not I agree with Ratzinger's view on Creation and the Fall. Firstly, we cannot gain a scientific understanding about creation and how the world came to be from the Bible, we can strictly only gain a religious experience from the Bible. The Bible was written in a way so Christians in antiquity could understand the Word of God and therefore we cannot take the form of the Creation story and confuse the content within it

From a Catholic perspective, explained by Ratzinger, all creation comes God, specifically his eternal Reason which is the power of Creation.

The Creation narrative speaks of a creating Intelligence that was present at the beginning and will be there at the end. "The universe is not a product of darkness. It comes from intelligence, freedom, and from the beauty that is identical with"1. The universe was not created out of a demonic war and we were not created as a result of the struggle of a pantheon of gods. God created the universe from freedom and love, for it is the creation of His word. "We are all one humanity, formed from God's one earth", this quote of Ratzinger's tells us what he thinks is at the heart of the Creation account and the Bible. Taking this view into consideration, there are no grounds for human division or human superiority because we are all one creation; each human...