rossum:
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Originally Posted by Lief Erikson
Yet God is outside of time. He says of himself, “I am.” It is an unnecessary interpretation to say that within time, chronologically after creating Adam, God said this. Particularly as Genesis 2 is written in such a way that verse 18 is disconnected from verses 16 and 17. I’ll get into that below.
I see this as a dangerous line of argument for two reasons. Firstly if God is “outside time” then how can he act inside time? If God is both inside and outside time then your argument is self refuting.
He can act within time because he is present at every time, for he is everlastingly present. He is “I AM.” That’s present, present everywhere. But these specific words were not spoken to Adam. They had to have been spoken to the heavenly court. When is not revealed in a clear fashion. It does not have to be chronologically after the conversation with Adam- that is not at all made clear by the verses.
rossum:
Secondly, if your argument is correct then we have to drop all possible sequential descriptions of God’s actions.
Not so. The point is that it is not clear from these verses that 16 and 17 come chronologically before 18 and 19. There’s a shift in paragraph and a shift in scene between the two. Verses 16 and 17 are addressed to Adam, verses 18 and 19 addressed either to the heavenly court or to member(s) of the Trinity. Both Heaven and the Trinity are outside of time, in eternity. They are not bound by human time and chronology. Therefore words spoken in them do not have to come after the conversation with Adam. The grammar does not imply come chronologically after that conversation, either. Verses 16 and 17 clearly go together and 18 and 19 clearly go together, but there also is a clear scene break between the two, verses 16 and 17 addressed to Adam within human time and verses 18 and 19 addressed to someone in the Heavenly, outside of time.
rossum:
Augustine would have been right to compress the six days of Genesis 1 into a single instant. Why did God wait thousands of years after the Fall to send Jesus? He completely foresaw the need for Jesus and sent Him immediately after Adam sinned.
God said, “I AM,” which means he is at every time, within time and outside of time, everywhere completely all the time equally present.
rossum:
Whoever wrote the verse down was clearly hearing it within time, so it must have been spoken within time as well. Had it only been spoken outside time then the human writer could never have heard it.
Yes, the human writer heard it. So what?
rossum:
You are leaving out the first part of the verse: Genesis 2:18 ‘Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”’ I see “Then the LORD God said…” The use of “Then” clearly indicates to me a sequence in time.
Except that other good translations, as I mentioned earlier, translate it “and,” not “then.” The Vulgate translation, for one, uses “And.”
vulgate.org/ot/genesis_2.htm
There are others I’ve seen that also use that translation.
rossum:
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But this statement, seeing as it isn’t addressed to any material person, and therefore has no obvious relationship to verses 16 or 17, is of unclear chronology and could be spoken at any point in eternity.
So you are saying that you cannot assign this statement to any time either before or after the creation of Adam? You are weakening your own argument here.
No, I’m saying this statement was made in Heaven, in eternity, and therefore does not take place within human time. Whoever wrote it either was told about it by a Heavenly being, or heard it himself in the way John heard God declaring judgments on the world in the Book of Revelation, hundreds or thousands of years in the future. God is eternal, so he spoke eternally, and John heard his words even though their primary audience was supposed to be future generations. In a similar way, the author of Genesis 2 could have heard God speaking, even though the word’s primary audience was Heavenly and millions of years ago.
rossum:
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I don’t believe that people should interpret the Bible as contradicting itself either, though.
That is my problem. It is always possible to come up with some interpretation, however bizarre, to eliminate the obvious/apparent contradictions. [Just see a politician explaining what they were really saying into that open mike. ] It is not clear to me that such interpretations are the correct interpretations. Whatever the original text of the Bible was, what we have now is not the original text and contains errors such as the ending of Mark.
The ending of Mark is not an error. The fact that some ancient texts don’t include it, and it may well have been added by another author, doesn’t mean it’s not true, that it doesn’t belong, or that it isn’t God’s Word.
rossum:
The insistence that a text, known to be an imperfect copy of an original that we no longer posess, contains no contradictions seems to me to be unreasonable. It is an imperfect copy so contradictions must be possible.
The New Testament actually has very, VERY few errors. I’ve heard different numbers given for its calculated textual consistency to the original manuscripts, and it’s somewhere between 99.5% and 99.95%. Something like that. It’s very, very close.
With the Old Testament, it’s harder to know (from a scholarly perspective), because there isn’t a vast number of ancient copies.
It’s enough to see the scripture’s complete truth asserted by repeated papal, council, and Early Church statements. The place of this viewpoint in Sacred Tradition is rock solid.
rossum:
Buddhists know that our scriptures contain some errors;
They
believe that our scriptures contain some errors.
rossum:
our source of knowledge is not completely reliant on scripture - tradition and our own experience are also important.
[The Buddha said:] “Now, look you Kalamas, do not be led by reports, or tradition, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, nor by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances, nor by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, nor by the idea ‘this is our teacher’. Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are bad; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,’ abandon them. … Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,’ enter on and abide in them.”
Kalama sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 3.65
Tradition, personal guidance by the Spirit, and the Magesterium are indeed vital, along with Scripture, not because Scripture is fallible but because humans can interpret it falsely when working on it on their own.
Those Buddhists teachings you cited have nothing to do with Catholicism. They actually oppose Catholicism on a few points:
[The Buddha said:] "Now, look you Kalamas, do not be led by reports, or tradition, or hearsay.
Sacred Tradition is one of the rocks on which the Catholic Church is based. This statement by Buddha is counter to Catholicism.
Be not led by the authority of religious texts,
This statement too is opposed to the Church’s teaching. The Magesterium bases many of its teachings on Sacred Scripture, the Word of God, of which, according to the Church, God is the author. According to Sacred Tradition, this means that there can be no error at all within the scripture.
nor by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances, nor by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities,
I agree with this. Reason should be considered, but human reason is fallible.
nor by the idea ‘this is our teacher’.
This concept runs directly counter to the idea of the idea of Sacred Magesterium and Papal infallibility.
Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are bad; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,’ abandon them. … Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,’ enter on and abide in them."
THIS is subjectivism, radically counter to the ways of the Catholic Church. People come to completely different conclusions through their own private reasoning of what is bad, what is blamable, what is censured by the wise, what is undertaken and observed, and what leads to harm or ill. They come to radically different conclusions. That is why God gave us three sacred authorities that cooperate and reveal truth. They are all made one in the Church, just as the Trinity is made one in God. They are Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Magesterium, none of the three contradicting any of the others, all working together, all revealing God’s truth in a clear fashion for humans to understand and obey, for their benefit in day to day life, and for their eternal salvation. Human personal opinion is not one of those three great authorities, as it can go any which way and is therefore anything but infallible.
It is very dangerous to remove the authorities God has given us for our salvation from their infallible status, and to claim that they make mistakes. That viewpoint paves the way to placing personal opinion above the opinion of God, and thereby destroying oneself.
] It is not clear to me that such interpretations are the correct interpretations. Whatever the original text of the Bible was, what we have now is not the original text and contains errors such as the ending of Mark. The insistence that a text, known to be an imperfect copy of an original that we no longer posess, contains no contradictions seems to me to be unreasonable. It is an imperfect copy so contradictions must be possible.