7 Days?

[Claire]

I was debating with a Baptist friend of mine about taking the bible literally.
I feel that it is pointless debating whether the earth was made in 7 days, I’d rather (and think it is more important) to discuss the Divinity of Jesus Christ with a doubting person.
My friend said that the person is going against truth and so everything is equal, one aspect is not more important than the other.

Any thoughts?

In His Holy Name,
Claire <><

 

[tjmiller]

So the number of hours in a day are just as important as the Divinity of Our Lord and Savior? Interesting.
Ask this Bibliolatrous fellow, where in the Bible does it say that every aspect of every truth is equal in importance? (Of course nowhere does it.)

If he insists on “taking the Bible literally” (as I in fact usually do), then ask him to explain, literally, Matthew 26:26-27, “This is my body…This is my blood.” Or John 6:55, “My flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink.”

[Or are you looking more for answers about Genesis?]

 

[awalt]

I believe the Church teaches that the Bible is taken literally on all things except it is not meant to portray scientific doctrine, it is meant to describe things as the writers saw them. The example I always remember is that the writers in the Bible may say “the sun circled the earth that day”, is not meant to say that scientifically the sun orbits the earth.

 

[thistle]

awalt:

I believe the Church teaches that the Bible is taken literally on all things except it is not meant to portray scientific doctrine, it is meant to describe things as the writers saw them. The example I always remember is that the writers in the Bible may say “the sun circled the earth that day”, is not meant to say that scientifically the sun orbits the earth.

I don’t think we are taught to take the Bible literally.
For example:

CCC 337 God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine “work”, concluded by the “rest” of the seventh day.204 On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation,205 permitting us to “recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.”

CCC 362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

 

[BryPGuy89]

Claire:

I was debating with a Baptist friend of mine about taking the bible literally.
I feel that it is pointless debating whether the earth was made in 7 days, I’d rather (and think it is more important) to discuss the Divinity of Jesus Christ with a doubting person.
My friend said that the person is going against truth and so everything is equal, one aspect is not more important than the other.

Any thoughts?

In His Holy Name,
Claire <><

One can’t define God by time, and by day who’s day, what civilization’s use. Jesus doesn’t speak in absolutes and facts but in analogies and examples. Jesus and God be one would they not communicate to people in the same way. Now as you are not talking in lack of truth then you should definitely address lost persons than debating this how many day issue.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Claire:

I was debating with a Baptist friend of mine about taking the bible literally.
I feel that it is pointless debating whether the earth was made in 7 days, I’d rather (and think it is more important) to discuss the Divinity of Jesus Christ with a doubting person.
My friend said that the person is going against truth and so everything is equal, one aspect is not more important than the other.

Any thoughts?

In His Holy Name,
Claire <><

I find it interesting when people rank parts of the truth as more or less important, or interesting, than another.

I agree with you that the 7 days thing is clearly a metaphor; of course some religions have extended that to foreshadow a 7000 year of human history – completely contrived behind the passage, “with God a day is like a thousand years.” A less anal-retentive reading would be that God is beyond time as we know it.

Here’s the question I’d ask this person: if I were to see a person who has a burning question about the origin of the universe, who was also very thirsty, would Christ be more concerned that I knew to give him a drink of water, or that I knew the answer to his theological ruminations?

Alan