deus caritas est: error?

·

Sol 1174

·

As you may know, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, released his first Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, that is, God Is Love.
I haven’t read all of it so I’m refraining from comment but I do have a question.
In Part 1, Section 11, the Holy Father refers to Adam and his way of finding love in Eve. The first paragraph concludes with “The biblical account thus concludes with a prophecy about Adam: ‘Therefore a man leave his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh”.
A prophecy about Adam? Is he referring to man in general and not just Adam?
In the next paragraph, he repeats this: “First, eros is somehow rooted in man’s very nature; Adam is a seeker, who ‘abandons his mother and father’ in order to find woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become ‘one flesh’.”
If Benedict XVI is referring to Adam as the first human male, I’m confused. It doesn’t fit at all with the document to suggest that Adam left his mother and father, that is his creators which in this case is God himself, to join Eve. Not to mention, that just isn’t sound. God formed Eve to be with Adam in the original glory we had before the fall, according to the creation story.
Are both of these references to Adam correct? Is this a way of mentioning man that hasn’t been used often? A simple proofreading mistake?

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Your post must include a link to this post.

How does this work?
Write a response on your own website and include a link to this post. Then submit your response’s URL here. Your response may appear here after moderation. To update or remove it, edit or delete your original post and submit the same URL again. Learn more about Webmentions.