Posted on 01/29/2007 6:45:51 AM PST by stfassisi
"For if you dismiss Genesis, you might as well dismiss the Incarnation."
Dismiss Genesis? No. I do not dismiss it.
It means, somehow, 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself, and love God above all'. I don't see that in there, much, so I'll just take Jesus' word for it.
But dismiss the CREATION account in Genesis?
Yes absolutely I dismiss that. It is ridiculous.
The world was not made by making a bubble in an abyss of water, which is still above the stars and below the ground.
The birds were not made on the fifth day, before man, and then all made (same birds) after man. The world was not made in six literal days. The animals were not all vegetarians before man came along and ate a piece of fruit. Dinosaurs lived and died millions of years before men, who very probably descended from primates. The aspects of Genesis that say otherwise are not true.
Nor is it true that the whole entire world was covered by a seven-mile-high flood and every living thing, from penguins to polar bears, to woolly mammoths to toucans to orangutans to panda bears to koala bears to black widow spiders to mosquitos were all carried on a wooden ark made by a man.
None of that ever happened.
It is a myth. A legend. A story.
If faith must be based on literally believing THAT, and on ignoring the flat contradictions and obvious storytelling of the Creation account, then faith must perish immediately, because such faith would be RIDICULOUS.
Even St. Augustine saw that. So did Rashi and Maimonedes writing long ago. Genesis is not literal fact. The world didn't come to be that way, death didn't come into the world because of something man did, etc.
The Old Testament means 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself, and love God above all.' That's what it means, according to Jesus. He ought to know.
The Gospels could be quaint myths, of course.
But there are ongoing signs and proofs that they are not.
The problem with the Bible is precisely the problem that the Church saw in it, and therefore discouraged its reading except under instruction: if you take what is written in the Bible absolutely literally, you will either take leave of reason or take leave of faith.
What is important in the Adam and Eve story? Not that snakes became slimy and slithering because of an apple. That's a folk legend and it is completely false. Snakes are reptiles who evolved from amphibians, and there were slithering snakes long before there were any men to be bitten by them, much less tempted by them.
What's important is that man, even in his natural state, heads straight into sin and is aware of it. Man and the world were made by God. What is the lesson? To get out of the consequences of sin, love God and love each other. You don't get that lesson from reading the OT. In the OT you think you've got to avoid pork and circumcise yourself and tie tefillin on your head and sit around doing nothing on Saturday and make yourself little booths, etc. Those are all nice traditions. They might help you think about God more, and therefore fulfill the two commandments. But then again, they might not.
Funny. I thought it was Eve who at the apple first.
Guess that wasn't a sin.
You're posts continue to lead me to believe that you do not accept the authority of the Bible, unless it suits your already established philosophy.
I accept the authority of the Bible.
I accept the authority of the Church.
I accept the authority of the Holy Spirit, in private revelations.
I accept the authority of science.
I accept the authority of reason.
I accept the authority of the law.
And it's up to me to regulate, between these authorities which often conflict, what seems truest. That is an authority granted to me by the fact of existence and having a mind. God didn't give me a mind for me to not use it.
The Bible conflicts with itself.
Using Scripture to interpret Scripture, I can avoid this problem a few different ways, which lead to different results.
I CHOOSE to allow Jesus to be the prism of Scriptural interpretation, because internally to the Bible it makes the most sense: the BIBLE says he is God, so giving him the highest authority makes the most sense on the text. Externally, I have the Shroud of Turin and the ongoing parade of miracles to tell me he really is what the Bible says he is, which merely reinforces my view that the proper prism of interpretation of the Bible is through Jesus.
I read Jesus' words about the Old Testament and apply them literally: it means love your neighbor as yourself, and love God over all. That then avoids all the problems of having to square natural science with the Genesis account.
That Catholic Church tells me I can accept natural science's explanations of the origins of the universe and the world without being in conflict with Christian theology, so now I have Church authority to back up my own sense that Bible authority means putting Jesus first when using Scripture to interpret Scripture.
And that moves the Old Testament out of contention.
It also anchors the New Testament, and gives the foundation and the light in which Paul must be read - in light of Jesus (the reverse does not make sense to me).
Then, of course, the world moves on and there are miracles of saints and apparitions of Mary and healings, in the ongoing process of God's salvific powers poured out upon the earth. Obviously this isn't in the Bible. That ends about 90 AD or so, if not earlier.
So, the Bible must also be interpreted in terms of these continuing manifestations of the will of God as well.
I do not accept that the Bible is the rulebook for Christianity. I believe it contains inspired and useful writing, but is by no means the final word.
In short, I am not a Protestant, and you're not going to find my view of the Bible at all satisfactory.
But it is not at all true that I do not accept the authority of the Bible. I accept the proper authority of the Bible, but I do not assign it greater authority than I think it has. I do not believe, as you do, that the Bible rules the Church. I believe that the Bible is a book collected and published by the Church, written by Churchmen of the Old and New Covenant. I don't think it is the only record of God's inspiration and revelation on earth.
I simply look at it differently.
It is unacceptable to conclude God did not understand enough science, or provide sufficient inspiration to the authors of Scripture. If such were the case, then God is not God, and unworthy of worship.
God is the God of extremes. He does not accept compromise. Remember what Christ told the Laodiceans in Revelation 3:
5 I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. 16 So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.
In 1950, The Magisterium issued this ...
HUMANI GENERIS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XII
CONCERNING SOME FALSE OPINIONS THREATENING TO UNDERMINE THE FOUNDATIONS OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE...
..38. Just as in the biological and anthropological sciences, so also in the historical sciences there are those who boldly transgress the limits and safeguards established by the Church. In a particular way must be deplored a certain too free interpretation of the historical books of the Old Testament. Those who favor this system, in order to defend their cause, wrongly refer to the Letter which was sent not long ago to the Archbishop of Paris by the Pontifical Commission on Biblical Studies.[13] This letter, in fact, clearly points out that the first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes; the same chapters, (the Letter points out), in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people.If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents.
39. Therefore, whatever of the popular narrations have been inserted into the Sacred Scriptures must in no way be considered on a par with myths or other such things, which are more the product of an extravagant imagination than of that striving for truth and simplicity which in the Sacred Books, also of the Old Testament, is so apparent that our ancient sacred writers must be admitted to be clearly superior to the ancient profane writers.
*Brother, you spotted that heresy with alacrity. Kudos.
And, you are spot on with your analysis.
So, when ya swimming the Tiber?
Catholic Catechism
289Among all the Scriptural texts about creation, the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint these texts may have had diverse sources. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation - its origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation. Read in the light of Christ, within the unity of Sacred Scripture and in the living Tradition of the Church, these texts remain the principal source for catechesis on the mysteries of the "beginning": creation, fall, and promise of salvation.
* Well, so much for myths.
BTW, How come YOU don't know the Old Testament is,essentially, useless :)
LONG LIVE MARCION!!!!!!
I swear, Marcion could have written your words...For the benefit of Christian lurkers, I will post what the Catholic Church Teaches...
ROTFLMAO
105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. "The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit."69
"For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself."70
106 God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. "To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more."71
107 The inspired books teach the truth. "Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures."72
108 Still, the Christian faith is not a "religion of the book." Christianity is the religion of the "Word" of God, a word which is "not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living".73 If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, "open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures."74
III. THE HOLY SPIRIT, INTERPRETER OF SCRIPTURE
109 In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.75
110 In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. "For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."76
111 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. "Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written."77
The Second Vatican Council indicates three criteria for interpreting Scripture in accordance with the Spirit who inspired it.78
112 1. Be especially attentive "to the content and unity of the whole Scripture". Different as the books which compose it may be, Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God's plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since his Passover.79
The phrase "heart of Christ" can refer to Sacred Scripture, which makes known his heart, closed before the Passion, as the Scripture was obscure. But the Scripture has been opened since the Passion; since those who from then on have understood it, consider and discern in what way the prophecies must be interpreted.80
113 2. Read the Scripture within "the living Tradition of the whole Church". According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church's heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God's Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (". . . according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church"81).
114 3. Be attentive to the analogy of faith.82 By "analogy of faith" we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation.
The senses of Scripture
115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.
116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal."83
117 The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God's plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.
1. The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ's victory and also of Christian Baptism.84
2. The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written "for our instruction".85
3. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, "leading"). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.86
118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses:
The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.87
119 "It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgement. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God."88
But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me.89
IV. THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE
120 It was by the apostolic Tradition that the Church discerned which writings are to be included in the list of the sacred books.90 This complete list is called the canon of Scripture. It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if we count Jeremiah and Lamentations as one) and 27 for the New.91
The Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachariah and Malachi.
The New Testament: the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the Acts of the Apostles, the Letters of St. Paul to the Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, the Letter to the Hebrews, the Letters of James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2 and 3 John, and Jude, and Revelation (the Apocalypse).
The Old Testament
121 The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value,92 for the Old Covenant has never been revoked.
122 Indeed, "the economy of the Old Testament was deliberately so oriented that it should prepare for and declare in prophecy the coming of Christ, redeemer of all men."93 "Even though they contain matters imperfect and provisional,"94 the books of the Old Testament bear witness to the whole divine pedagogy of God's saving love: these writings "are a storehouse of sublime teaching on God and of sound wisdom on human life, as well as a wonderful treasury of prayers; in them, too, the mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way."95 123 Christians venerate the Old Testament as true Word of God. The Church has always vigorously opposed the idea of rejecting the Old Testament under the pretext that the New has rendered it void (Marcionism).
Redgolum was responding to rank heresy. I wish Catholics had beaten him to the punch. I was at work, so I didn't have the chance
"The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory........
Looks like Article 22 of the 39 Articles of the Episcopal Church!
*Oh, so you are a protestant. I thought so.
Earlier you mislead me when you wrote to me you are a Catholic. Care to correct that now?
*heresy
*heresy
As an avowed heretic of the RCC, I take issue with my label being associated with such a wrong-headed postulate!
I accept the authority of the Holy Spirit, in private revelations.
I accept the authority of science.
I accept the authority of reason.
I accept the authority of the law.
And it's up to me to regulate, between these authorities which often conflict, what seems truest. That is an authority granted to me by the fact of existence and having a mind
*All the above means "I am the one with authority."
*Remember, brevity is the soul of wit.
2 John Whosoever revolteth, and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that continueth in the doctrine, the same hath both the Father and the Son.
*Repent while you still have time
LOL Touche
If you keep quoting Scripture the way you've been, We're going to admit you as an honorary member to the Heretic Club!
Well done!
I was holding hands with apostasy once... we never consummated the romance but I was damned (pun intended) close
LOL! I doubt Rome would want me. I don't agree with it on to many things to make the swim.
As to the OT, there is a rather long answer to that question, but the short one is simple. If it is just myth, then the NT makes no sense. If you are talking canon, well that is another thread.
"It is unacceptable to conclude God did not understand enough science, or provide sufficient inspiration to the authors of Scripture."
God only inspired them to write what they needed to write to get His point across. He did not give them absolute knowledge. Jesus didn't have absolute knowledge of everything. He didn't know when the parousia would occur. He didn't know who touched his garments.
As regards natural science and the Bible, if we insist that the Bible, because it is divinely inspired, is literally true in every instance, then we crash into problems outside of Genesis. Jesus says the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds. Of course it isn't. Error on his part.
Depends on how you look at it.
If you realize that he's talking to Jewish farmers in First Century Palestine, and using figures that they understood, the he wasn't in error: the mustard seed was the smallest seed they planted.
However, if one insists that, because God inspired the Bible and knows all things, that the Bible is literally, exactly right in every detail, then Jesus was greatly in error. There are many, many seeds in the world smaller than the mustard seed.
Me? I choose to read the text as Jesus addressing people using terms they understood. Likewise, I choose to see the inspired writer using the Sumerian/Babylonian creation legendarium, with its flood, its domed creation, its universal abyss of water, it's flood and ark - all of those things that really are not literally true in an historical, geological sense, in order to teach people that God created the world and man using forms they understood. Giving the ancients a lesson in superstring theory would not have illuminated anything. They would have been lost in the physics, and the POINT, that an intelligent God orchestrated it all, and watches still, would be lost too.
The mustard seed isn't the smallest seed. And the earth wasn't made in 6 days. And neither of these natural history errors of the Bible is an error in the sense of a flaw in the divine inspiration. God was not talking about that. That's not what was inspired. Jesus very probably didn't even know what an orchid seed was. He was not omniscient. He was a man, the son of Mary. He was also son of God. There were lots of things he didn't know about the natural world. And it didn't matter, because God Incarnate, extremely limited as he was by the flesh, was nevertheless God with perfect knowledge of the truth about the father and the moral law he taught. THAT is the part that is literally true. Mustard seeds and floods and apples and serpents? Their literal truth is not relevant. And insisting on the letter of the law loses the spirit entirely, by pitting the reason God gave us, and the knowledge imparted by the senses God gave us, against an old book that has Babylonian and Jewish fables in it.
The message is divinely inspired. The fables weren't.
God even tips us off, by giving us open contradictions in the text. All the birds were created at conflicting times. It matters. It matters because it's impossible for both to be right. God knew that when he inspired it. He's telling us, TODAY, that we DON'T HAVE TO BELIEVE THAT. He's given us the OUT of literal belief in Genesis, by making it absurd in parts. So that when our reason found science and can do the great act of forensics on the Shroud of Turin, and discovering even the inscriptions on the coins!, we have in our day proof that even modern science testifies to the resurrection! As it does to the healings at Lourdes. Science is in no sense at war with God or Jesus or true faith.
But if you must take every word of Genesis literally, or the Gospels literally, then you end up with faith-destroying errors, in syntax let alone facts. Birds couldn't have been created twice in time. The text conflicts. The mustard seed isn't the smallest seed. Jesus was wrong! Taken literally, yes. And yet we have the shroud and the healings, miracles indeed! Which means that we mustn't destroy the truth of the Bible by taking it literally where it must not be taken literally.
Jesus told us the inspired part of the Old Testament: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. That's the inspired part. If the rest of the words of the OT become tares and snares, if the letter kills faith because of the errors, then cling to what Jesus said it all means, and remember that the errors about birds don't speak to love of God or neighbor: they can be ignored. The OT is optional to read. Jesus summarized it. The whole Bible is optional to read. Jesus' message is the point. If you can't read you can still get the whole message. There isn't much of it.
Your point is almost on, but enough off to be misleading.
ANY parable presented in Scripture (and Jesus told plenty), is meant to highlight a specific teaching. None is meant as a complete blueprint for dogma. The "mustard seed" parable is no exception.
When the Bible teaches authoritatively on a subject, that is, when the context is not clearly an allegory/parable, then it must be taken at face value. There are no hidden codes in the Bible. So when the Bible teaches us about the creation of the world, it must be so.
Incidentally, if you want to read a very good theory about the validity of Biblical creation, pick up a copy of Gerald Schroeder's "The Science of God"
http://www.amazon.com/Science-God-Gerald-Schroeder/dp/076790303X/sr=8-1/qid=1170288632/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-8920454-7524053?ie=UTF8&s=books
It's quite compelling. And if you have a strong background in physics you'll find it even more convincing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.