SECOND ARTICLE: THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE

State of the question. In opposition to the Scriptures and tradition, the Preadamites, led by Isaac de la Peyrere (1655), denied the unity of the human race and taught that some men existed before Adam, and that Adam was the father of the Jews but not of the Gentiles.[1374] The Coadamites held that many human families existed contemporaneously with Adam.

The revealed doctrine. According to Holy Scripture the entire human race had its origin in the one protoparent, Adam. This truth is an article of faith.

We are speaking here of our earth and of the human race that is on this earth. If some indulge in the hypothesis that there are rational creatures on the stars or planets, or that other men existed on our earth before Adam and were extinct before his creation, many theologians hold that such gratuitous assumptions do not affect the teaching of faith.

According to Genesis no men existed when Adam was created: "And there was not a man to till the earth..... But for Adam there was not found a helper like himself."[1375] Eve is called the mother of all the living;[1376] and Adam is called the father of the human race.[1377]

St. Paul says: "And hath made of one, all mankind, to dwell upon the whole face of the earth";[1378] "Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned."[1379] That is: all men are born with the stain of original sin because all derive the same nature infected with sin from the same head.

This is the common teaching of the Fathers, especially of Lactantius, St. Ephrem, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine.[1380]

Confirmation by reason. We find various signs of specific identity in all men of whatever race or color. As Quatrefages points out,[1381] we find the same anatomical structure, the same physiological functions, the same laws of generation, unlimited fecundity in the marriages contracted between various races of men, the same faculty of speech, the same power of reasoning, and the same moral and religious sense. Differences in color, brain capacity, facial angles, or idiom, are not substantial but only accidental, as ethnographers admit.[1382]

From paleontology and geology we now know that man is much older than was thought formerly, but there is still a great difference of opinion about the precise epoch when man appeared on earth. On this point the Scriptures are silent, and the Church has made no declaration.