Can the Book of Genesis Be Reconciled with the Evolutionary History of the World Without a “God of the Gaps”?

Faith & Science Conversation
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864

If the Greek-speaking Christians misunderstood their roots and what was ‘inspired scripture’, we should not continue their errors just because of old tradition.

When Jesus was teaching what the scriptures told about him, he was speaking about Tanakh (Torah, prophets and writings), not about all the Hebrew writings that circulated at that time. Tanakh was the basic ‘Holy scriptures’ also for the apostles and the other early Hebrew/Jewish followers of Jesus.
Early texts show that the apostles and the other early Christians read also other Hebrew writings but these other writings (such as the book of Enoch) did not have the same status as Tanakh.

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865

And how can you judge whether they were wrong about it? You can’t. Christians have believed in the necessity of prayers for the dead from the very beginning across multiple geographical locations. It is quite arrogant to believe that we needed the XVI century Saviours to understand how wrong they were all along (and not only on this, but also on the Eucharist, the authority of the Church, we basically got nothing right for 15 centuries and we needed to wait for the enlightened revolutionaries 15 centuries later to finally see the light :joy:. God founded a Church and left it in darkness and errors for 15 centuries until the revolutionaries came along and set things straight, it makes absolute and total sense).

866

Also

Your explanation in terms of a “cultural misunderstanding” runs up against two specific historical testimonies.

Augustine, in The City of God, XVIII, 36, says of the books of Maccabees: “These are held as canonical, not by the Jews, but by the Church.” He therefore knows the distinction and states it openly.

There was not the misunderstanding you are talking about.

The fact that Luther denied the Maccabees’ canonicity and then, after denying it, claimed that it (the purgatorial state) was a teaching with no biblical basis just shows his own intellectual dishonesty, it certainly doesn’t show that the Church was in error or that we didn’t understand what the jews taught about the subject.

867

Augustine was a learned man, esteemed professor and a faithful member of the church but he was a child of his time. We should read his writings with a critical mind, to separate what is truthful from what is not. When the basic assumptions are wrong, even the most logical thinkers end up to wrong conclusions.

868

You are dancing around the point. The point was that the Church knew that book was considered canonical by the Jews, but it made no difference in their judgment.

So your claim that there was a misunderstanding is simply wrong and refuted.

There is not much tiptoeing to be done.

The Church knew the book was not considered canonical by the Jews, and yet she considered it canonical. More than a millenium before Luther was born.

869

Call it a day if you wish.

As long as you do not slander my views as unorthodox or false.

Your quotes do not mean or even imply what you claim, but they confirm that Justice is in God’s hands and not by your standards or wishes.

You will have difficulty confirming your views on forgiveness as the Scriptural references do not state your understanding at all.

Richard

870

Which they are. They are both undorthodox and false. Sorry.

And i’m certainly not the first one to tell you that you have a Gospel “à la carte”.

Justice being in God’s hands doesn’t mean that forgiveness wipes away all the consequences.

871

That is not your call.

Richard

872

This is false. Demonstrably so.

Forgiveness removes guilt and eternal condemnation, but it doesn’t necessarily remove every temporal punishment resulting from sin.

Scripture explicitly demonstrates this distinction in Psalm 99:8, 2 Samuel 12:13–14, and Numbers 14:20–23.

The New Testament further distinguishes divine discipline from final condemnation in 1 Corinthians 11:30–32.

873

The early Greek-speaking Christians who used Septuagint as their basic source of scripture put much authority on all the writings in the Septuagint. When that opinion was adopted, it became a tradition that continued to the following generations. Augustine is a child of that tradition and he seems to have used the prevailing practices of the local church as the starting point in his theological reasoning.

The divergence between the traditions based on Hebrew Tanakh vs. Greek Septuagint happened early, before Augustine. That does not make Septuagint the authoritative source in this question. If the Greek- or Latin-speaking Christians in those regions (‘church’) declared authority to all the writings in the Septuagint, that does not make their opinion correct.

It is a matter of opinion whether the reliance on Septuagint was a misunderstanding or not. Whatever word we chose to use, I think that giving canonical authority to Hebrew scriptures just because they were included in Septuagint was an error, misunderstanding or whatever word we might use instead.

874

This would be true if the canonical acceptance of the canonical nature of the book was a merely local thing, but it’s not true. Do you have any evidence that their canonicity wasn’t widely accepted?

John Barton — The Oxford Bible Commentary (2010), in his “Introduction to the Old Testament”, Barton writes: “the early Christian church, which was predominantly Greek-speaking, tended to accept this wider canon of books.”

Barton also says that che some fathers, like Melitone and Jerome, proposed to exclude the deutero canonical books, but said proposal was not accepted.

Not accepted by whom?

Also, I think there is a big problem with your wider argument, because although you correctly distinguish historical acceptance from divine inspiration, you assume that the Hebrew canon must be the authoritative standard for Christianity without establishing why.

I agree that a book doesn’t automatically become inspired merely because it appears in a Greek biblical manuscript, but the reverse is equally true: a book doesn’t automatically become uninspired simply because it is absent from the Jewish biblical canon.

1. You are assuming precisely what needs to be demonstrated.

What historical evidence establishes that the Christian Church was obligated to adopt the boundaries of the Hebrew canon rather than recognize its Scriptures through its own received tradition?

The existence of a Jewish canonical tradition doesn’t, by itself, establish its exclusive authority over Christian Scripture.

In fact, biblical scholar Edmon L. Gallagher explains in The Apocrypha through History (Oxford University Press, 2025) that we lack firm evidence of a closed Jewish biblical canon at the beginning of Christianity.

2. Augustine did not simply assume that every book found in the Septuagint was inspired.

Read for example De doctrina christiana, Book II, chapter 8.

Augustine explicitly proposes evaluating canonical books according to their reception among the Catholic churches, giving particular importance to churches of apostolic significance.

That is quite different from saying that he mistakenly canonized books merely because they appeared in the Septuagint.

Furthermore, the inclusion of the two books of Maccabees is explicitly attested by the African councils and by Pope Innocent I in his letter to Exsuperius in AD 405.

These are concrete ecclesiastical judgments, not simply an accidental consequence of using a Greek translation.

3. The Septuagint itself was not a single, universally fixed collection of books.

Therefore, the suggestion that Christians automatically granted canonical authority to everything included in “the Septuagint” oversimplifies the historical situation.

4. Christian belief concerning prayers for the dead was not dependent solely on Augustine or the canonical status of 2 Maccabees.

Tertullian already witnesses to offerings for the dead in the early third century.

Even more significantly, Cyril of Jerusalem teaches the spiritual benefit of Eucharistic prayers for the departed, despite omitting Maccabees from his own canonical list.

This demonstrates that the underlying Christian practice cannot simply be dismissed as Augustine’s misunderstanding of the Septuagint.

5. Calling the wider canon an “error” is not a historical argument.

You acknowledge that this is a matter of opinion. But if you want to establish that the Christian reception of 2 Maccabees was mistaken, you need to provide a positive argument for why the Hebrew canon should be exclusively authoritative for Christians.

You cannot simply assume that conclusion and then characterize the contrary Christian tradition as an error.

So my question is very simple: what evidence from the apostles or the first-century Christian Church establishes that the Hebrew canonical boundaries were binding on Christians and that 2 Maccabees had to be excluded?

Until that question is answered, appealing to the Hebrew canon does not refute the legitimacy of the Church’s wider canonical tradition.

875

False.

There is no Scriptural evidence of purgatory as it undermines the passion and Jesus. It is a Catholic doctrine (this time there is no argument)

Lord our God,
you answered them;
you were to Israel a forgiving God,
though you punished their misdeeds.[a

has nothing to do with the forgiveness of the Passion

**13 **Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. **14 **But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for[a] the Lord, the son born to you will die.”

does not mention forgiveness.

**0 **The Lord replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked. **21 **Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth, **22 **not one of those who saw my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times— **23 **not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their ancestors. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it.

Is not the Passion either. It would appear that the forgiveness is concessional and not complete.

You appear t be in the Old Testament , not the New..

Last time I looked Jesus overturned the views on forgiveness and punishment. He paid for it ll. That leaves nothing left to be paid. Nothing .

876

Sure, if you arbitrarily remove from the Canon the books that teach its existence, then there is no Scriptural evidence, ROTFL.

Do I really need to comment the unseriousness and ridiculousness of this behaviour?

877

Matthew 5,25-26: “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”

1 Cor 3,11-15: “** **For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. ** **If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.“

Then the book of the Maccabees couldn’t be clearer, which is why Luther didn’t recognize it as canonical despite the fact that the Church had recognized it as such for more than a millenium.

In other words: if some of the doctrines from the Scripture bother you, you can always create your own Canon and then claim that said doctrines have no scriptural basis. :joy::joy::joy:

878

Is not talking about God.

:innocent:

I didn’t.

Richard

879

Someone else did.

The context is very clear. The first letter to the Corinthians is even clearer when it talks about salvation “yet so as by fire.”

But then again, the clearest biblical testimony on the subject has been declared non canonical by Luther, so that he could claim that the doctrine he repudiated (the same doctrine which he accepted just a few years earlier) had no scriptural basis, so…

880

can’t blame me for that.

If it was clear, I would not have queried it.

Well, you know my opinion of other human “Authorities.” An argument stands or falls on its merit. And by that yardstick, purgatory fails. It has no merit. it has no Christianity. it has no Love. it has no forgiveness.

Richard

881

This is your opinion, I stand with the church and with the first 1000 years of undivided Christianity.

And you should ask yourself whether your opinion is shared by Jesus, because He is the one Who founded the Church and gave the power of the keys to Peter. How the power of the keys is compatible with modern ideas that Peter’s successors have the same authority as your random South Dakota tele preacher has never been explained.

882

While instead stating that you can live the life of an absolute monster and then go directly to Heaven without even repenting of your sins just because you believe in Jesus is a doctrine full of love, Christianity and forgiveness.

Give me a freaking break.

It’s a doctrine that promotes indulgence, moral nihilism and complete lack of mercy towards the oppressed (who, if true, would not see justice not just on this earth but in the afterlife too).

883

That is a valid point, thanks for it. That leads to a more general question: what are the valid criteria for including some writing into the library of authoritative writings (biblical canon)?

In the first ecumenical council, one criteria seemed to be that the writing is read in the services of many or most churches. That is a good indication but (IMHO) not a sufficient basis.

When we evaluate a scripture, there is a difference between the OT and NT writings.
In the writings written after Jesus, accordance with the teachings of Jesus and his original apostles is a key point.

In the writings written before Jesus, we need to use different criteria. Basically, we are speaking about the scripture that formed the ‘Holy scriptures’ of the Jews, including Jesus and his disciples. What Jesus and his disciples used, what they considered to be authoritative.
In some places (Samaritanism), only the Torah was considered to be authoritative. Gospels give the impression that Jesus used a wider set of scriptures, Torah but also Prophets (Nevi’im) and Writings (Ketuvim), hence the whole Tanakh. As Tanakh was the scriptural basis of the Jesus-movement and the wider roots of Christianity, Tanakh (Hebrew Bible or ‘Old Testament’) is the core of the pre-Jesus scriptures.

If we want to add other pre-Jesus writings into the ‘Old Testament’, we need good justification to include such extra writings that did not seem to be part of the scriptural basis used by Jesus and his disciples. We may think that some writings are beneficial reading for Christians but that does not make the writings authoritative - that is why we have collections like Apocrypha. I do not see sufficient justification to including Maccabees or comparable writings into the ‘Old testament’. Apocrypha yes, but not authoritative in the same way as Tanakh.

By the way, your citation about Jerome proposing to exclude the deuterocanonical books is interesting because Jerome was one of the very few early Christian theologians who had learned Hebrew. He who knew Hebrew knew enough to take the deuterocanonical books out from the proposed list.