To me it seems that one problem with the approach that the Bible must be literally and historically true to be meaningful is that of where to draw the line. I imagine that few in either camp hold to a 3 tier creation, or even as held later a geocentric solar system, but even Paul talks of things above and below. Not to mentions OT references of reason and emotion being in the kidneys and heart.
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But once you have found your faith, why risk losing it? Does your faith rely on your understanding of the bible? Why? The bible is not God. Once you have your faith the bible has done its job. You do not need to keep clarifying why you believe! Do you believe or not?
We are not Jews. The history of Israel is of minor significance. It is hot the Jewish line that we look to with Christ, it is His divinity. The bible traces Jesus through Joseph. Why? Joseph is the adoptive parent at best. The only lineage is through Mary. It really does not matter where , or when Jesus came. what matters is the death and resurrection (that probably would not have occurred in modern cultures.)
The creation? Who cares! God did it. That is all we need to know!.
Where did sin come from? Who cares! As long as Jesus cancels it!
Why do you sin? Who cares! You do!.
Why must your view (or mine) be right? Who cares! Why would you want to risk your faith or mine?
The bible is the start of faith. Once you have found it you do not need to keep reminding yourself why you have it. You do not even need to remember why you found it. You have found it! (even if it was by a false route, who cares!)
Put things into perspective and try and understand why it matters to you. The answer may not be very comfortable.
Richard
The work is on the HJ. I have the 3 volume set so its not immediately clear but it could be limited to Jesus:
An argument can be made he is referring to Jesus but I think he would go further. I believe the Council of Trent at least requires a literal Adam and Eve for Catholics. Not to mention Jesus refers to Moses and both Moses and Elijah appear to Jesus during the transfiguration in the Gospels. Ratzinger says quite plainly he trusts the gospels. I am sure he would not subscribe to a wooden inerrancy with the OT but salvation history goes further than back than the incarnation.
The main implication of this for my portrayal of Jesus is that I trust the Gospels. Of course, I take for granted everything that the Council and modern exegesis tell us about literary genres, about authorial intention, and about the fact that the Gospels were written in the context, and speak within the living milieu, of communities.
Minimum of a thousand years for most events. It can lay no claim to history in a modern sense.
This is correct.
An extremely long time on historical grounds but for the Christian this does not matter so much as we also believe the text was inspired. Historical-criticism is important but it does not rule our exegesis. Ratzinger spends significant time on this in his intro:
He goes on to note that āāCanonical exegesisāāreading the individual texts of the Bible in the context of the wholeāis an essential dimension of exegesis.ā
Vinnie
āI claim that I am not interpreting the bibleās statements here.ā This claim is incorrect. You are giving a meaning to the statements. That is interpreting them. Postmodernism is correct to point out that all understandings of a text are interpretations. However, it is wrong that all interpretations are equally valid. If we respect the authority of the bible, we must seek to understand it on its own terms, not impose our readings on it. What did the authors intend? John Walton uses the image of using the Bible (or whatever other text) as a tether, to hold our ideas down in the face of pressures from our biases and desires, rather than as a springboard for our imagination. We should be asking how good our interpretations are and whether we can improve them.
āLiteralā is a problematic term. Isaiah 55:12 says the trees of the field will clap their hands. Botanists tell us that trees donāt have hands. Does a literal reading of that phrase mean that the botanists are wrong? A literalistic reading would make that mistake, but if a āliteralā reading means seeking a reasonable literary understanding, then we understand that the poetry of the passage is using figurative language.
Likewise, Moses did not write āAnd every living thing on the face of the earth was destroyedāman and livestock, crawling creatures and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth, and only Noah and those with him in the ark remained.ā What Moses wrote was closer to ×Ö·×Ö“Ö¼Ö×Ö·× ×Ö¶Ö½×ŖÖ¾×ÖøÖ¼×Ö¾×Ö·×ְק֣×Ö¼×× ×ֲשֶ×Ö£×Ø× ×¢Ö·×Ö¾×¤Ö°Ö¼× ÖµÖ£× ×ÖøÖ½×Ö²×Öø×ÖøÖ× ×Öµ×Öø×ÖøÖ¤× ×¢Ö·×Ö¾×Ö°Ö¼×Öµ×Öø×Ö ×¢Ö·×Ö¾×ØÖ¶Ö×ֶש×Ö ×Ö°×¢Ö·×Ö¾×¢Ö£×Ö¹×£ ×ַשÖøÖ¼××Ö·Ö×Ö“× ×Ö·×Ö“Ö¼×ÖøÖ¼×Ö×Ö¼ ×Ö“×Ö¾×Öø×ÖøÖ×Øֶׄ ×Ö·×֓שÖøÖ¼×Ö§×Ö¶×Ø ×Ö·×Ö°Ö¾× Ö¹Ö×Ö· ×Ö·Ö½×ֲשֶ×Ö„×Ø ×Ö“×ŖÖ¼Ö×Ö¹ ×Ö·Ö¼×ŖÖµÖ¼×ÖøÖ½×× but he would have used Paleo-Hebrew letters, not Aramaic-derived ones, besides the question of what editing took place after Moses. Ancient Hebrew had a much more restricted vocabulary than modern English, relying heavily on context (besides the fact that there are a lot of things unknown to them but for which we need words). Because there is not a direct correspondence between Hebrew and English words, itās important to make sure that an interpretation is not based just on the way we might read English but on the actual meaning of the original text.
How do we know when a text is using figurative language? One clue is the writing style. Poetry tends to use more figurative language than prose, but within both there is also a range depending on the style. Context is also helpful. Another very basic clue is whether the description matches physical reality. People in Song of Solomon did not actually have goats for hair or towers for noses. Jesus did not turn into a door when He said āI am the door of the sheep.ā
One YEC claim that is definitely a misinterpretation of Matthew 24:37-39 and Luke 17:26-29 is the claim that they prove that Noahās flood was global. Obviously the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was not global. But more fundamentally, that is not the point. Both Matthew and Lukeās narratives are using these incidents as examples of unexpected and inescapable judgement. They do not say anything one way or another about the geographic extent of the events. To claim that is eisegesis - the reading of our ideas into the text.
Although the interpretation that these passages are treating Noahās flood and the destruction of Sodom as historical events seems reasonable, it is not the only plausible interpretation for Matthew and Luke here. Donāt ignore weather warnings, or you might get swept away by a tornado like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Thatās a meaningful comparison, even though itās a fictional example. Likewise, Jesus did not say āHereās a lesson from history for youā; he just gave the examples as well-known instances.
2 Peter 2:5-6 and Hebrews 11:7 more clearly refer to these as historical incidents, rather than just examples. Of course, consideration of the Old Testament texts themselves is extremely relevant to determining if they are historical incidents and what they were like. But Noahās flood and the destruction of Sodom being actual historical incidents does not mean that we should believe the version of Noahās flood found in the claims of modern young earth advocates; that does not match the biblical information about the Flood and is scientifically dishonest, thus clearly violating a literal understanding of what Moses wrote in Exodus 20:16ā¦
As David Montgomery points out in The Rocks Donāt Lie, major floods are quite memorable events, likely to be preserved in cultural memory. The claims that Noahās flood is a purely fictional event are not very likely. Floods happen and are noticed. But the Bible describes the flood as being devastating to the region of Noah and his neighbors. Ancient Hebrews did not know about the whole globe. The word erets translated āearthā in Genesis 7:23 in the version you cited most commonly means ālandā, e.g., āthe land of Egyptā. Using the word āearthā there is an interpretation on the part of the translators (which is, of course, a necessary part of translation).
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This is where you lose me. Everything about Jesus is tied into Israel and its history. Since I am citing Ratzingher to @T_aquaticus Iāll quote him on the transfiguration:
You canāt understand Jesus properly outside of Jewish history or you will do so missing a tremendous amount.
His mother was Jewish. Women donāt count?
Some of us live with doubts our whole life and we have to constantly struggle, read and fight. You seem to have found yourself a safe space and barricaded yourself in. We are not all there yet. Some of us also have a lot of baggage.
And no offense, but for so many things that donāt matter, you seem to frequently get involved in discussions over them.
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According to Wiki (which isnāt the last word on anything), evolution is accepted within Roman Catholicism, and is even taught in Catholic schools. There is no requirement to accept evolution, but it is not rejected either.
I also ran into this article:
What Pope Benedict said aligns with a lot of what BioLogos stands for. I certainly donāt think Pope Benedict believes in the YEC description of history, nor do I think he believes in Adam and Eve being the sole ancestors of the current human population. So whatever he may say about historicity in the Bible, I donāt think that includes a literal Genesis account as described by YECās.
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You can accept evolution in catholicism. But you must accept there were a literal Adam and Eve I think which has issues. The Wikipedia link says:
. Catholicism holds that God initiated and continued the process of his creation, that Adam and Eve were real people,[1][2] and that all humans, whether specially created or evolved, have and have always had specially created souls for each individual.
From another site:
In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated: āWhen, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his ownā (Humani Generis 37).
I could be wrong but the catechism seem to imply this as well. The RCC is big on the fall.
So while we can believe in evolution It seems A&E are still problematic.
With the caveat that I am not Catholic nor an expert on Catholicism . . .
According to this article, their view on Adam and Eve has evolved (pun intended).
It seems a figurative Adam and Eve are now accepted within Catholicism, at least according to that article.
The church has not really updated its position since 1950. From a book I have used at Notre Dame:
There has to be a primeval fall at the start of humanity. There is no way around that in Catholicism at the moment.
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This should be emphasized. Figures of speech are expected in poetry, but are a natural part of language and may occur in otherwise literal prose.
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i have intentionally not gotten involved in any responses up to this point and that was because i am genuinely trying to find out how others attack the dilemma i posed in the question.
However, the above i cannot ignore and i have to respond to this statement of yours Richardā¦
Do you recall why the Septuagint came into being and exactly how it happened according to the story?
Pharoah Ptolemy organized 70 odd scholars in Alexandria, the best-known Jewish scholars they could find in the day, separated them into separate rooms without their knowing why they were there, and then had each one recite the Torah in written documented form.
Ptolomey then had each recital compared to ensure consistency in translation later including the rest of the Tanakh forming Greek Septuagint (which if memory serves also included the Apocrypha).
Anyone here who knows anything about the scholarly debate regarding the protection of the bible by God will agree that the best method of ensuring NO CORRUPTION is to do what Ptolemy didā¦use multiple sources who do not have contact with each other.
We should also remember, contrary to what some individuals use to discredit the authenticity of Moses (ie an Egyptian Pharoah wouldnāt allow writings that portray Egypt in a negative suffering manner), Ptolemy was not Egyptianā¦both Ptolemy 1 and 2 were Greek! (Ptolemy 2 was the son of Ptolemy 1)
Ptolemy I Soter (/ĖtÉlÉmi/; Greek: Ī ĻĪæĪ»ĪµĪ¼Ī±įæĪæĻ Ī£ĻĻĪ®Ļ, PtolemaĆ®os SÅtįør āPtolemy the Saviorā; c. 367 BC ā January 282 BC) was a Macedonian Greek[2] general, historian, and successor of Alexander the Great who went on to found the Ptolemaic Kingdom centered on Egypt and led by his progeny from 305 BC ā 30 BC. Ptolemy was basileus and pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt from 305/304 BC to his death
This is also why it is that the KJV is considered by fundamentalists to be the best and most accurate bible translationā¦it was protected by distance and indirect linking of its caretakers over centuriesā¦it is absolute proof that Chinese whispers did not affect its authenticity or accuracy. (I am not a KJV only individual btw)
We use the exact same procedure in courts of law today in order to try to obtain the correct account of an incident that is being tried. I accept that these statements from individuals are assessed against the scientific evidence, however, the difference in Christianity:
- that no one was eyewitness to creation or the flood except the bible characters recorded as having been there by Moses and we cant speak with those individuals,
- No science experimental data exists from the time of Creation or the Flood that can be checked against the Creation and Flood events. The modern science investigation is purely hypothesisā¦there is no recorded historical data. We have simply put together a narrative this is our best guess according to the hypothesis.
The reality is our best guess can be totally wrong even with the best science methodsā¦point and example āThe Lindy Chamberlain Dingo took My Baby Case in Australia in the 1980āsā where science found Lindy guilty of a crime that it later turned out was a gross miscarriage of justice that completely ignored eyewitness accounts on the night in question instead favouring grossly errant interpretation of scientific data.ā¦I argue it was a 9 out of 10 on the Rictor scale of scientific failures!
The above is why i lean towards the Bible historical narrative. It is consistent across its pages and unrelated and disconnected writers across thousands of years have recorded accounts that are consistent with each other. Given there was no postal service, internet, telephones, tv setsā¦this is an incredible coincidence is it not? Id suggest no, its a miracle and therefore it was God who did this and God doesnt make a habit of telling one individual one thing only to tell someone else something completely different. So why would God leave evidence that is contrary to the narrative of His own inspired Word? God wouldnāt and that is the point. So again i fall bak on the āLindy Chamberlain Dingo Took My Baby analogyā!
That leaves a problemā¦why is the science interpretation different to the bible narrative? The bible already answer this dilemma:
- Sin and Satan and his influence on mankind and the environment - we know from the story of Job that Satan can drive the weather among other things
- Secularism and the willful intent to prove āthere is no Godā
I canāt imagine there not being a historical awakening for ancient mankind. Whether the names match doesnāt concern me so much. A spritual awakening which brought with it an abundance of health and insight. Jonathan Edwards account of the Great Awakening made an interesting point at the end about how after the episode passed, it was as if people would get sick as they normally did again.
There was also a fall. I am pretty sure Godās higher beings were not so pleased with his calling and election of a lowly hominid species.
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Thatās an overly broad generalization ā most believe that it depends on the particular piece of Genesis.
Iām certain that YEC is āerrantā because it is founded on imposing a modern, secular worldview on the ancient text. This is not just wrong, it is dishonest.
Poor translation ā an honest translation would be:
And every living thing on the face of the land was destroyedāman and livestock, crawling creatures and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the land, and only Noah and those with him in the ark remained.
In context in Genesis, the word ālandā refers to the world known to Noah. It is also limited to the flat earth-disk under the solid sky-dome.
Your citations from Matthew and Luke cannot be said to do more than reference a commonly-known story.
Hebrews 11:4-10 is a little more solid.
Thatās a bit arbitrary ā they donāt have any of the marks usually found with OT parables.
Another would be to say it made no difference to them: the narratives were authoritative, and that was that.
Quite so.
This has often made me stop and ponder: The opening Creation account was not written as historical, yet by the time of second-Temple Judaism it was widely regarded as historical, and today we have the data to know that it wasnāt meant as historical. But all along the way God still used it to instruct.
Wrong literary type for that ā but then so are the bits of early Genesis.
Literary genre, for starters. There are other ways to tell that I didnāt really touch on in grad school so I wonāt venture to try to explain any.
The period in which the New Testament writings were being penned is transitional in this regard; indeed the Gospels plus Paulās insistence that the things known about Christ rally happened are likely part of the hinge, though their influence didnāt really have an impact till about 300.
Itās a Jewish legend that was fairly popular in second-Temple Judaism. The legend treated this āfollowing rockā as literal; Paul turns it to a spiritual meaning that would be easily understood due to how common the legend was.
They are far more than folklore, though the Garden stories are a lot closer to it than the one that precedes those ā the first one is pretty āhighā literature.
Or worse!
But Jesus taking it seriously and moderns taking it seriously are very different things because the foundation of what makes literature serious wildly diverges between the two cultures. To a modern, taking it seriously is linked to its content being scientifically and historically accurate; in Jesusā time those werenāt even categories on the table.
A physical afterlife is the only one the scriptures know of.
Knor isnāt quite accurate there: Paulās argument depends on the reality of a āfirst moral agentā, just not necessarily the one in the Garden story.
But the stories about Christ are different because without the Incarnation nothing else makes sense.
And pretty much all theologians!
Given his past, he likely meant the Creed.
Thatās a tough question; there are good cases that have been made that the first Creation account is from the time of the Exodus, and good cases that have been made that it is from the time of the Exile, as well as some points in between. One factor is that there is really no shift in worldview right up until Alexander came along cross-pollinating cultures.
And in the New Testament period compassion resided in the intestines!
[Which is something we havenāt completely shifted away from ā think āgut feelingā.]
Sure . . . it only teachs us about Christ and the Father!
The Bible is the companion of faith; it is where we go to know God better.
Unfortunately the H-CM can be used to make scripture mean about anything you want, from the book of Joshua as ancient travel guide to āGod didnāt know Jesus was going to be bornā. Whatās actually indispensable is historical-grammatical because it doesnāt justify the mind games that H-CM brings.
Frak, yes! I could make a case that salvation history starts at Genesis 6:1 where we are introduced to the unfaithful heavenly guides of mankind who instead decided to give up their jobs and get it on with human women ā thatās where real warfare for the destiny of this world started.
We have to, as Michael Heiser puts it, āLet scripture be what it isā.
That is one of the hardest concepts to get across to even grad students using Hebrew and a reason that good Hebrew professors will include as much non-Bible material as possible (and good Greek professors will start students off with Aristotle and Xenophon and such): to disconnect the understanding of the language from the link with the scriptures.
[As a demonstration of how anchored we are to our familiarity with the text one Greek professor handed back a written translation assignment with a notation of a specific translation on the last page, indicating what translation he thought each student had been raised on (in a few cases, he put the name of a Greek professor instead, his guess at who weād started out in Greek with). In a class of forty-eight, he got only on wrong ā and where he wrote the name of a professor, they were the ones who started students out in much older Greek.]
Without going into details, ālandā in that literary and grammatical context means āknown worldā ā nothing more.
Absolutely. For example, without the stories of Moses and Aaron, then of Samuel and Saul and David, we would have no understanding that the Messiah would reunite the offices of prophet, priest, and king; without Daniel, we would have no clue why the Sanhedrin freaked out when Jesus invoked the āSon of Man coming on the cloudsā ā or why Luke was careful to relate that Jesus would return just as He departed.
I think that those both overstate the case. IIRC the Catechism merely maintains that the story affirms an event at the start of human history, not that the Garden stories are literally true.
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I guess the main interest in the Roman church is to preserve the teaching about the Original sin. The interpretation of Original sin as presented by Augustine and accepted by the western church assumes a fall from a āvery goodā creation to a world where we are all sinners and doomed from the birth. If Adam and Eve are interpreted as mythical persons representing humankind in the story, or even that we all are not direct descendants of Adam, the theology about Original sin might need some rethinking.
Otherwise, the Roman church has been relatively open to the conclusions of modern scientific research.
I am not a Roman-catholic so my interpretation about the position of the Roman church may be wrong. Please correct if I am totally wrong.
Thatās an exceptionally silly argument! At the earliest the Exodus accounts werenāt written until after the Hebrews were at Sinai; Pharaoh didnāt really care what a bunch of shepherds (who to Egyptians were āabominationsā) thought; and the Hebrews didnāt send their account back to Egypt to be spread around anyway.
There are the rocks and stones.
He didnāt. Itās just that He didnāt make the ancient writers write in ways to satisfy modern curiosity, He used forms the actual audience would have recognized and understood.
Nope ā the scriptures tell us that Creation tells us about God. That means Satan didnāt get to tamper with things (unless you think Satan is more powerful than YHWH).
When heās given permission. Do you really expect us to believe that God gave Satan permission to tamper to make God look like a liar?
Really? Where are you finding that in the text?
The Catechism practically comes right out and says that very thing as I recall. Apparently they havenāt twigged to the fact that Augustine screwed up.
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Yes, the RCC doctrine of original sin and the fall of humanity are still held to. It would be incorrect to say evolution does not create some friction with the church belief. They havenāt come out with a statement fully resolving this.
This link pretty much lays out all the info:
The Catechism states, āThe 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 parentsā (CCC 390).
Evolution is not really fully compatible with most versions of Christianity which still believe in the fall.
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My apologies for putting it that way, then. Of course I recognize (as I believe you wish) that you fully accept Christ and all that he taught - even if we together wrestle with some of the harder judgment characterizations of God. Can you see my deeper point I was aiming for though? If Christ doesnāt demote story / allegory / parable / things that didnāt technically happen - he doesnāt demote any of those as vehicles for Truth - in the highest and fullest sense of that word - then why do we?
Because here scriptures are clear. Paul takes special umbrage at this notion in 1 Corinthians 15. Unlike anything else - this challenge gets his special attention and rebuttal against the skepticism that was already in circulation back then even, that perhaps the resurrection could be reduced to merely a spiritual event - providing an out for those who want to hold on to skepticism regarding God doing anything with such direct physicality. No other doctrine or tenet of law or prophet or scripture gets that kind of attention: āHey! - this really, physicallly happened! And woe to you/us - pity upon pity - if it didnāt really happen!ā It is the singular one-off event that launches the church and the new covenant. The bible doesnāt launch it (didnāt even exist yet - except for the old covenant record). Certain doctrines or practices or temple worship didnāt start it. The chosen people of God didnāt start it. No ā¦ It was Christ, his crucifixion (the glory and victory right there in that event already) and the resurrection (the revealing of that glory to us) that, and that alone that is the cornerstone of our present faith.
Event! Not events. The incarnation event - finding its climax in the crucifixion and resurrection. Everything else - as important as it may be to eventually understand correctly, can wait on Christ. Once weāre at his feet, all the rest of how we are to understand this or that will take care of itself in His good time.
He, and he alone is the game-changer for us. Not Genesis. Not some cultish, modern human tradition about the particular way Genesis or Exodus or anything else must be āliterallyā true whatever that turns out to mean, not correct scientific understandings of any of all that - no; If Christ is raised then, with Paul, we brush all that stuff aside as so much dung, and go for the gold. And if Christ isnāt raised then ā¦ believe in crystals and essential oils, hold hands singing Kum bay yah for all I care. None of it would matter in the slightest. Thatās what I see in the new covenant described in scriptures. There is little or nothing there about sorting out what sort of understanding of the forms of truth we need to have as curated to us by modern scientific standards. But we do need Truth, in a form meaningful enough to us that weāre willing to live by it and into it (into Him rather) in what is then a life of faith, and most importantly Love. It does fascinate me that whenever Paul comes up with lists of fruits or gifts of the spirit, āTruthā as such, doesnāt even make his lists. Sure - I suppose āknowledgeā counts as a form of truth to be valued in its own right (Peter includes it); and Paul mentions it too in 1 Corinthians 13 - to show how itās worthless in the absence of the highest gift of all: Love.
It isnāt that Paul didnāt value truth, obviously. And maybe he just thought it too obvious to even mention. I suppose the case could be made for that. But for those who put themselves at pains of at least trying to pretend they want to be āscriptures onlyā - they are stuck, then, with lists of fruits that find their highest aspiration and manifestation in ā¦ Love. And there you have it.
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