Dogmas on Creation and Fall: The Church's Middle Road

Dogmas on Creation and Fall: The Church’s Middle Road

Pope Francis was not at all removing God from the equation when He said that evolution is true and that God did not wave a magic wand. He would not deny the Church's teachings. The main thing is, the Church sees Genesis 1-3 as an allegorical poem, NOT fiction, but a figurative poem symbolizing the first ages of human history: Creation, Original Justice, Fall.

So the Church is in the middle: Conservative Protestants would say it is not just history,but is to be taken literally and as science. Liberals would say it is a poem, but it is NOT history, just a lesson about how God does things over and over. Catholicism is in the middle: it IS history and not a parable, but it is NOT science, it is a poem.

Beyond the below dogmas, other questions are not relevant to Divine Revelation, since how the stars and trees and spiders evolved isn't pertinent to our salvation.

A Collection of the Most Important Church Dogmas on Creation and Fall

The world is the product of the Divine Wisdom, De Fide

The world had a beginning in time, De Fide

All things outside of God were brought into being from nothing by God's infinite power, De Fide

God created the first man (evolution could have led to the physical animal like man, who was then infused with rational soul)

God specially creates the soul for every human being

Man lived in original justice

Prior to the material creation, God made an angelic creation, rational creatures of purely spiritual nature. All were created originally good, but some, through their own doing, became evil and were consigned to eternal damnation. The one definitive creature of such that we know for certain exists is the supreme leader of the rebellion, whom we call Satan, the devil, or Lucifer. This is dogma.

Man transgressed the probationary commandment and merited death and suffering through the seduction of this same devil, De Fide

Every successive state of existence is brought into being by God from nothing, and

All laws of nature are the product of the Divine architecture, those are facts