This is in no way an apologia for Uriel, with whom I disagree profoundly, but I find it strange and ironic that a Catholic is attacking metaphor when the Catholic Church has exalted metaphor over literal meaning for two thousand years, to the point that nowadays its clergy, theologians, and laity more often than not dismiss the "old testament" as "mythology."
True, higher criticism was invented by liberal Protestants. However, for some reason Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have taken this Protestant-invented theory to their hearts almost to the point of insisting on it as "proof" that one is not a "fundie."
Come on now, you don't interpret Genesis literally. Admit it.
I will certainly acknowledge that SOME Catholic clergymen have taken to dismissing things as myths and metaphors (as have a good many Protestant clergymen and Jewish rabbis). However, the Church has NEVER taught this infallibly.
Come on now, you don't interpret Genesis literally. Admit it.
Are you calling me a liar? Please show me a single post that I have made since I've been here where I have EVER suggested that I don't accept Genesis literally.
The ONLY thing that I have ever questioned in the first chapter of Genesis was whether the first three days MAY have been longer than a standard twenty four hour day. Light was made in Genesis 1:3 and then in Genesis 1:16 lights were made to rule the day and the night. Without the Sun to orbit it would not have been necessary to confine those first days to twenty four hour segments. But I am perfectly comfortable accepting Genesis at the most literal level.
They use allegory and thus create what ever they wish. The Roman church does not understand Metaphor.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
Yep. We've heard RCs dismiss the OT on this forum for years as if over time God somehow changed His very nature.
True, higher criticism was invented by liberal Protestants. However, for some reason Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have taken this Protestant-invented theory to their hearts almost to the point of insisting on it as "proof" that one is not a "fundie."
There is a place for German higher criticism when debunking the superstition of the papacy, such as the RCC's literal interpretation of the Lord's Supper. The scientific method can be applicable to theology in that abstract thinking is good. It is what separates us from the animals. But too much abstract thinking and you float into the sky. You become gnostic.
Our faith should be verifiable and repeatable. If I do this, this will happen. We are to "test the spirits" to know the truth. Empirical evidence of men's salvation is discernible according to a man's good fruit or lack of it.
But the trap of higher criticism is that we tend to see life as bipolar and so we say it's either all metaphor or all literal, but Scripture contains both. Methuselah may have lived 900 years, but that could be a metaphor. God really did speak to Moses and give him stone tablets of the 10 Commandments and that is a literal fact.
Like so much, the RCC ridicules many of the facts of God's word while inventing traditions of their own making.