Genesis Account, not literal

  • Thread starter Thread starter seekingtruechurch
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Gorgias said:
That’s a nice try, but you still have the problem that God remembers the car’s color as ‘blue’, while man remembers it as ‘red’. If the Bible is inerrant, one cannot be wrong… but it must be.
Click to expand...
Explain with regards to Gen1 and 2.
 
buffalo said:
40.png
Gorgias:
That’s a nice try, but you still have the problem that God remembers the car’s color as ‘blue’, while man remembers it as ‘red’. If the Bible is inerrant, one cannot be wrong… but it must be.
Click to expand...
Explain with regards to Gen1 and 2.
Click to expand...
Gen 1 literally tells us that God created animals first and humans afterward.

Gen 2 literally tells us that God created Adam first, and then animals afterward (and Eve after that).

If you want to claim that the creation accounts are literal, then you have to explain the discrepancy. If you cannot, then you cannot claim that the accounts are literal: you can claim that they’re “complementary”, but that would mean that they’re figurative, not literal.

So… which is it? Are they literal (and therefore, in conflict)? Or are they complementary (and therefore, figurative)?
 
Gorgias said:
Gen 1 literally tells us that God created animals first and humans afterward.

Gen 2 literally tells us that God created Adam first, and then animals afterward (and Eve after that).

If you want to claim that the creation accounts are literal, then you have to explain the discrepancy. If you cannot, then you cannot claim that the accounts are literal: you can claim that they’re “complementary”, but that would mean that they’re figurative , not literal .

So… which is it? Are they literal (and therefore, in conflict)? Or are they complementary (and therefore, figurative)?
Click to expand...
Are you confusing literal with literalistic?
 
I take it literally, people don’t like the idea that Adam and Eve existed but their son Abel appears in the Eucharistic prayer.
 
buffalo said:
Are you confusing literal with literalistic?
Click to expand...
Actually, I keep making the claim that you are confusing the “literal sense” with “literalistic” / “literal text”… 🤣

It seems to me that you’re claiming that the Genesis creation accounts are literal historical truth. Are you not?
 
Gorgias said:
ctually, I keep making the claim that you are confusing the “literal sense” with “literalistic” / “literal text”… 🤣

It seems to me that you’re claiming that the Genesis creation accounts are literal historical truth. Are you not?
Click to expand...
I am following:

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.

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

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
 
Last edited:
buffalo said:
40.png
Gorgias:
ctually, I keep making the claim that you are confusing the “literal sense” with “literalistic” / “literal text”… 🤣

It seems to me that you’re claiming that the Genesis creation accounts are literal historical truth. Are you not?
Click to expand...
I am following:

The senses of Scripture

The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation:
Click to expand...
Fair enough. So, in your opinion… does the “literal sense” mean that the “rules of sound interpretation” conclude that what is “discovered by exegesis” is a meaning that asserts that, what the “words of Scripture” say prima facie, are a literal historical narrative?
 
The theory of evolution has nothing to contribute to the creation narrative.These are the words of St. Paul in Romans Ch.1
" For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those men who in wickedness hold back the truth of God, seeing that what may be known about God is manifest to them. For God has manifested it to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen- his everlasting power also and divinity- being understood by the things that are made. And so they are without excuse, seeing that although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, or give thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless minds have been darkened. For while professing to be wise, they have become fools and they have changed the glory of the incorruptible God for an image made like to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things "
These are the words of Our Lady of Fatima to Sister Lucia in 1970 . " People must recite the Rosary every day. Our Lady repeated in her apparitions " that we would not be fooled by false doctrines during these times of diabolical disorientation "
 
buffalo said:
40.png
Gorgias:
discovered by exegesis”
Click to expand...
as if the Bible just fell out of the sky without any prior info?
Click to expand...
Not sure what you’re getting at, here. We – the Church – receive the Bible from its human authors. The magisterium interprets it (and are given the promise that they will not err in their interpretation). The magisterium discovers the meaning of the Bible by utilizing principles of exegesis.

What’s the problem with that statement? I mean… it’s what the catechism that you quoted is saying!
 
Gorgias said:
Not sure what you’re getting at, here. We – the Church – receive the Bible from its human authors. The magisterium interprets it (and are given the promise that they will not err in their interpretation). The magisterium discovers the meaning of the Bible by utilizing principles of exegesis.

What’s the problem with that statement? I mean… it’s what the catechism that you quoted is saying!
Click to expand...
We do not study the Bible as if we just found it and trying to figure it out. We build on the constant teaching and understanding of it right from the beginning. Our understanding gets fuller and richer.

In other words, we have to know what the Church has always understood it to mean. It is not a “new” discovery.
 
Last edited:
buffalo said:
We do not study the Bible as if we just found it and trying to figure it out. We build on the constant teaching and understanding of it right from the beginning. Our understanding gets fuller and richer.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. But, we don’t stick with some elements of the “constant teaching and understanding” when they’re wrong. (Wait for the gasp from the peanut gallery: wrong? the Church?) Yes – when the Church opines on science, it can get things wrong. So, back when our interpretation of the cosmos was that the earth was the center, we got it wrong. And, when science demonstrated that we’d gotten it wrong, we had the courage to say, “huh! look at that! we did attempt to teach science! ok… we’ll stop doing that.”

It’s the same thing here: we still don’t teach science, but just theology. As Augustine taught, millennia ago: if we teach a science as theology, and the science is wrong, people will think that we’re getting the theology wrong, too. So, we can teach theology of creation… but not the science of creation. That’s outside of our mandate (and competence) as Christian believers.
 
buffalo said:
Modern physics states the center can be anywhere.
Click to expand...
Modern physics says you can calculate any frame of reference.

However, the Church used to say, incontrovertibly, that the earth was at the center and unmoving, and the universe rotated around us. I’m hoping you’re not going to affirm that statement. 😉
 
Gorgias said:
However, the Church used to say, incontrovertibly, that the earth was at the center and unmoving, and the universe rotated around us. I’m hoping you’re not going to affirm that statement. 😉
Click to expand...
There are apparently those who still believe that.
 
"But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.” Lawrence Krauss
 
Last edited:
seekingtruechurch said:
I cannot reconcile both views to be the same. I understand the views to either be, He created Man or He created something that eventually became Man.
Click to expand...
This may have already been answered; imagine you’re a carpenter, who wants to make a table. This analogy isn’t perfect, because God didn’t cut down trees for lumber, he just, poof, made all matter. But anyway, imagine you have all the lumber you need. So over, say, a few weeks, you cut all the pieces, carve your sign into it, etc, but you haven’t put it together yet. You needed to make sure each part fit together just right before everything comes together. But now that you’ve got each part perfected, it’s time to make that table! And it’s beautiful. Great job! But did you create that table? Or just put together the parts you created, and a table happened to be the end product?

This is how I personally view theistic evolution. God made all the parts necessary for our development—what some will call the “primordial soup” that first produced life—and put them together to make us, and every other living thing out there. But just because he made us out of parts already existing, which he also created, does not mean we are not technically a creation of His. Rather, the fact that he guided the natural process of evolution, like a carpenter guiding the production of a table, marks it as His.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top