0147 So far, I have two levels to the Traducian doctrine.

0148 Both of these levels are explicit abstractions, drawing from the foundational stories of Adam and Eve.

The stories of Adam and Eve ask us to recognize a possibility.

These two levels of explicit abstraction arise from that possibility.

These two levels of abstraction tell us that Adam and Eve stand at the beginning of our current Lebenswelt.

0149 Except for the Creation Story, all other written origin stories of the ancient Near East concur with the stories of Adam and Eve.  All testify that humans are a recent creation.  Prior to 2023, no scientific hypothesis accounts for this testimony, except for the hypothesis of the first singularity.

Premodern Christian theologians know that Adam and Eve occupy the content level.  The question is how.  Saint Augustine proposes the normal context of Original Sin_3a.  Adam and Eve, in disobeying God’s command, are thrown onto their own devices.  Their reason is dulled.  They are tarnished Image Bearers of God.  And, that tarnish is experienced as disorienting waves of desire_1a.  

Cupid is the Roman god of desire.  He is perpetually adolescent.  He is the love-child of Venus, the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war.  Saint Augustine puts a label on our almost irresistible waves of desire_1a.  He calls them, con (with) cupi (Cupid) scence (being).  Concupiscence_1a is “being with Cupid”.  Cupid relishes having a good time.

0150 Original Sin_3a is the normal context.  Concupiscence is the potential_1a.

The question is, “How to label the actuality?”

Heaving bodies [substantiate] soulful emissions?

0151 I suppose modern society is no longer polite society.  No one really wants to discuss, much less apply an appropriate label, to the content-level actuality_2a virtually underlying the situation-level actuality of sperm [and] egg_2b.

Fortunately, the fairy tales of Adam and Eve provide a suitable label.  After Eve is introduced to Adam as his helper (think of the irony of that), Adam is overjoyed.  The storyteller then provides a commentary, explaining why a man and a woman get married.  The two become one flesh.

0152 Each of the terms in the content-level nested form is an explicit abstraction.

Yet, the result is a intuitively satisfying category-based nested form that says, “Even in marriage, concupiscence operates.  Even though the waters of baptism remove the stain of Original Sin, the potential for disorienting waves of desireremains.  Be on guard.  We can fall into temptation at any moment.”

0153 Original Sin_3a is the consequence of the Fall of Adam and Eve.  Original Sin_3a is a normal context for our current Lebenswelt.  If we are all subject to Original Sin because we are directly descended from Adam and Eve, then Traducianism explains how.

0154 Ironically, Augustine’s position, that we are all direct descendants of Adam and Eve, is a scientific (as well as theological) proposition.

Modern genetics proves Augustine’s proposition to be incorrect.

Yet, there is a certain honesty to the Traducian doctrine.

The doctrine offers a certain intellectual satisfaction.

And, this satisfaction tells us something about the character of our current Lebenswelt.