Was mankind meant to procreat, at first?

The Bible must be taken as the whole truth or not at all......
Croat.....you are Roman Catholic ...correct?

Roman Catholicism teaches that the Old Testament is a story....that is totally wrong and cannot be accepted on the basis of disinformation ........ if one looks at the teachings of the early Church , like the Orthodox Church have taught and still teach the same (although who knows what lies in the mind of man and power to control the world in the future soon to be ).....sorry going off the subject a bit here.......
Croat before 1054......the Church stood as ONE and not splintered all over the place ....

Now Lady V ...........I recently read myself on teachings I did not know about....Here I will post from another web site.........


QUOTE///////St. Athanasius the Great comments on Psalm 50 in the same spirit:

God's original intention was that we give birth not through marriage and corruption; the violation of the commandment introduced marriage as a result of Adam's transgression, i.e., as the result of falling away from the commandment given to him by God. (Collection of Works [in Russian], vol. 4, p. 175)

The assumption that God created man and woman with the intention of them engaging in carnal, sexual relations is faulty and can lead to dangerous conclusions.
God created mankind in an unfallen, sinless, pure, angelic state. Carnal relations, as we can see from the Fathers cited above, came about as a result of the fall.
Finally, there came a time in the life of the Old Testament Church, when it was time for it to be replaced by the New Testament, revealed by the incarnate Word of God, in Whom man's nature was finally made whole.
Man's wholeness was not accomplished through the carnal union that occurred in blessed marriages throughout the Old Testament, but rather man's wholeness was accomplished in Christ, Whose incarnation occurred without carnal relations.

The carnal mind is enmity against God. (Rom. 8:7)

more from here....
www.orthodoxinfo.com...

Also on Genesis and the Early man....
QUOTE//////
We cannot do better than to begin with St. Basil himself, who has written so inspiringly of the Six Days of Creation. In the Hexaemeron he writes:

Those who do not admit the common meaning of the Scriptures say that water is not water, but some other nature, and they explain a plant and a fish according to their opinion.
They describe also the production of reptiles and wild animals, changing it according to their own notions, just like the dream interpreters, who interpret for their own ends the appearances seen in their dreams.
When I hear grass, I think of grass, and in the same manner I understand everything as it is said, a plant, a fish, a wild animal, and an ox.
Indeed, I am not ashamed of the Gospel.... Since Moses left unsaid, as useless for us, things in no way pertaining to us, shall we for this reason believe that the words of the Spirit are of less value than the foolish wisdom (of those who have written about the world)? Or shall I rather give glory to Him Who has not kept our mind occupied with vanities but has ordained that all things be written for the edification and guidance of our souls?
This is a thing of which they seem to me to have been unaware, who have attempted by false arguments and allegorical interpretations to bestow on the Scripture a dignity of their own imagining.
But theirs is the attitude of one who considers himself wiser than the revelations of the Spirit and introduces his own ideas in pretense of an explanation. Therefore, let It be understood as it has been written. (Hexaemeron, IX, 1)

Clearly, St. Basil is warning us to beware of "explaining away" things in Genesis which are difficult for our common sense to understand; it is very easy for the "enlightened" modern man to do this, even if he is an Orthodox Christian.
Let us therefore try all the harder to understand the sacred Scripture as the Fathers understand it, and not according to our modern "wisdom." And let us not be satisfied with the views of one holy Father; let us examine the views of other holy Fathers as well.

One of the standard patristic commentaries on the book of Genesis is that of St. Ephraim the Syrian.
His views are all the more important for us in that he was an "Easterner" and knew the Hebrew language well.
Modern scholars tell us that "Easterners" are given to "allegorical" interpretations, and that the book of Genesis likewise must be understood in this way. But let us see what St. Ephraim says in his commentary on Genesis:

No one should think that the Creation of Six Days is an allegory; it is likewise impermissible to say that what seems, according to the account, to have been created in the course of six days, was created in a single instant, and likewise that certain names presented in this account either signify nothing, or signify something else.
On the contrary, one must know that just as the heaven and the earth which were created in the beginning are actually the heaven and the earth and not something else understood under the names of heaven and earth,
so also everything else that is spoken of as being created and brought into order after the creation of heaven and earth is not empty names,
but the very essence of the created natures corresponds to the force of these names. (Commentary on Genesis, ch. I)

More from here....

www.orthodoxinfo.com...

helen....

marg,

you are saying that the garden of eden story must be true to the exact words or else the rest of the bible is fabricated or should be looked at in the same light? I don't see how that works. Do you understand that the bible is made up of books, and put into one big book? Would you say that just because the shortened biography of JFK was placed in a big book next to a story about the ugly duckling that the story of JFK must then be looked at as a metaphor? I think that is a pretty arrogant way to try and force your beliefs on every christian. All or nothing? That is like saying war and peace are the only options, when we all know that tension may not lead to a war, but isn't necesarily peaceful. Just look at the cold war.

Oh my god, don't let my wife read this thread...
I have her convinced we are to be fruitful and multiply (which oddly enough was the first thing God supposedly said to Adam).
Two events in my early life lead me to believe this is proabably erroneous LadyV, and without going into alot of detail about looks on monkey faces, the first time I went to the zoo and saw the monkeys, they did something rather scandalous right there in front of my family, then about a year later I saw my first pornographic film, and I recall thinking, they look just like those monkies, then I thought...My god, there's something to evolution after all.