Should Genesis 3 be taken metaphorically rather than literally? Let's first hear the magisterium from 1909.*

V. Utrum omnia et singula, verba videlicet et phrases, quae in praedictis capitibus occurrunt, semper et necessario accipienda sint sensu proprio, ita ut ab eo discedere numquam liceat, etiam cum locutiones ipsae manifesto appareant improprie, seu metaphorice vel anthropomorphice, usurpatae, et sensum proprium vel ratio tenere prohibeat vel necessitas cogat dimittere?
Resp. Negative.

This translates:

V. Whether all and each, both words and phrases, that occur in the aforementioned chapters, always and necessarily should be accepted in the proper sense, so that it would never be licit to step away from them, even when the same expressions overtly appear used improperly, or metaphorically or anthropomorphically, and either reason forbids to hold or necessity forces to abandon the proper sense?
Resp. Negative.

Now, the judge signing this was not expressing, and was not here free to express what he considered as occasions when reason or necessity forbid to hold the literal sense. Further down (VIII) he says it's licit to take "day" as referring to "quodam temporis spatio," / a certain space of time. As Fulcran Vigouroux was a day ager, we can safely assume he considered six literal days as one no no in the proper sense of words.

However, he was not free to express that opinion as his judgement. He was stuck with "yes" or "no" and sometimes subdividing a question, to the questions he got. His answer certainly does not oblige us to consider the six days as non-literal, since in V he's not speaking of what occasions to use a liberty to use metaphors as exegetic clues and in question VIII he is only speaking of allowing, not of any necessity. Or rather, the guy who wrote the question is, but that means Fulcran Vigouroux too.

There actually is, if you look over the three chapters, at least one expression where at least one of the parts is not the proper and usual sense of the words in everyday life.

Genesis 2:17 But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.

Either "what day soever" is improperly used for "millennium" or "die" is not used about bodily death. Adam died spiritually the same moment, and he died bodily the same millennium. But spiritual death and millennium are not the proper ways in whcih "death" and "day" are usually used. When it comes to anthropomorphic language, it seems clear that up to Adam's sin, he could see and hear God, and I would hold, this refers to a theophany, i e, he could do so with his physical eyes and ears. This means, God looking for Adam was not just an anthropological expression about what God did spiritually, but God taking a visible shape actually did play hide and seek for that last day Adam had in Paradise. However, if Fr. Fulcran consided this false, this is not really the point I am trying to make.

The fact remains, Fr. Vigouroux never was precisely judging on such or such an expression actually needing metaphoric or less man-shaped interpretation. He was just saying IF there were such a thing, such interpretation is licit.

Fast Forward to 1992. A doubtful Pope or more probably certain non-Pope, Karol Wojtyla, issues a new catechism, for the Latin Church. For those who don't know, the Catholic Church has several rites, Latin and Byzantine being the two foremost. The Byzantine Rite has the catechism Jesus, Our Pascha. But the Latin Rite, or those of it accepting "John Paul II" as real Pope, has the catechism "Catechism of the Catholic Church" ... it has a § 390. I'll actually take a look at another one too:

390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.

...

397 Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.

398 In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully "divinized" by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to "be like God", but "without God, before God, and not in accordance with God".

399 Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness. They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image - that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.

So, are Adam and Eve the "our first parents"? Or does "uses figurative language" involve Adam and Eve being figures of speech? That's the problem.

The first mention of Adam in this section in § 388 says "We must know Christ as the source of grace in order to know Adam as the source of sin." — But this is clearly false, since the Jews of the first Century knew Adam as source of human sin before knowing, only some of them, Christ as their redeemer. Or as source of Grace. § 388 makes the first sin of Adam so much a theological statement, that its character as a historic statement seems fudged.

This does not represent the Catholic tradition. 17.VI.1546 the Church** said:

If any one does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema.

No "our first parents" and no "man" (as an abstract or collective entity), but "the first man" (prior to even Eve) is immediately explained as Adam. There is absolutely no distinction between the theological and the historic level of the statement. The historic level is not a "portrayal" of the theological one, much less one that "uses figurative language" ... and as obviously, the knowledge of Adam's fall was a perfectly historical one, if you look up*** Father George Leo Haydock's comment on Genesis 3.

Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. (Haydock)

We are far from the mental universe in which Adam's first sin is only accessible knowledge through Jesus' reversal of it. We are firmly in a world where Adam and Eve transmitted the events to Moses, through a limited number of intermediaries. 1909 was still Catholic in the Vatican. So was the Catholic minority in England in 1811—1814, when Haydock published his Bible commentary. Whoever was in charge in 1992, writing § 390 and the other ones, well, seemingly not.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Porphyrius of Gaza
26.II.2024

Gazae, in Palaestina, sancti Porphyrii Episcopi, qui, tempore Arcadii Imperatoris, Marnam idolum ejusque templum evertit, ac, multa passus, quievit in Domino.

* PONTIFICIA COMMISSIO BIBLICA : DE CHARACTERE HISTORICO TRIUM PRIORUM CAPITUM GENESEOS
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/pcb_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19090630_genesi_lt.html

** Citing canon 1 of
The Council of Trent : CONCERNING ORIGINAL SIN; FIRST DECREE
http://www.thecounciloftrent.com/ch5.htm

*** Citing last section of the last verse comment of
Haydock Commentary Online : Genesis 3
https://haydockcommentary.com/genesis-3