Genesis is Literal

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Matthew 23:35

“That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar”

Does the Pope and Catholicism deny Jesus’s words?? Indeed they do.

Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?

Hath not my hand made all these things?

Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.
 
ReadTheBible said:
“That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar”
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How do you read this?

Does it refer to “all the righteous blood shed upon the earth”?
Or just to that “from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar”?
Or is that all the righteous blood that was ever shed? Those who fought the Romans for Jerusalem are not meant, nor the Maccabees? Excluded are all the martyrs? St Oscar Romero is not included, though he was slain at the altar?
 
Is he using the name of Abel figuratively? Isn’t that what you asked? How am I doing anything but addressing that question?

Jesus is able to use Abel figuratively because Abel has a figurative dimension to his story. The first murder of brother by brother is an image of every murder, of blood crying out for blood. Does it matter if it is history?

So why does the use of Abel mean that Abel actually existed? Righteous blood has been spilled, whether the history is correct or not. And Abel is a figure of it. That seems bigger to me than factual accuracy.

Be careful what you hear, the voice of Christ or that of an historian who does not care for you.
 
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That’s nonsense. Sharing is not a miracle. Let’s not forget the fragments His disciples collected afterward.
 
From Catholic Answers -

The Time Question

Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeared. The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago.
 
This is addressed to the OP:

Wow! Your post could use several threads. But I will only comment only on the title of your post.

St. Thomas Aquinas actually thinks that the literal sense of Holy Scripture is very important, even more important than the allegorical and anagogical senses. However, the meaning he has of the “literal sense” may not be exactly what people mean when they use the same word “literal.” For him, the literal sense is not what the actual words mean, but what the speaker intends to say. For example, when I tell you sarcastically, “Yeah, right!” I don’t mean to say I agree with you. I actually mean the opposite. The literal sense of “Yeah, right!” is not “Yes, you are correct,” but “No, you’re wrong.” Again, in Holy Scripture the literal sense is the intended meaning of the passage, not the actual meaning of the words.

With that introduction, what do you think is the literal sense of our Lord when He told the Apostles, “You are the salt of the earth”? If you think that the literal meaning of the passage is that our Lord was telling the Apostles that they were chemicals (Sodium Chloride), then you would be mistaken. That would be the literalist interpretation, but not the literal sense of Christ’s words. The literal sense is the meaning that our Lord wanted to say. The salt brings out the flavor in food. So, by telling the Apostles that they were the salt of the earth, He was telling them that they were the ones who would bring out whatever is good (spiritually) in our life on earth. That is the literal sense of Christ’s words.

Now let’s go to Genesis. As you know, we Catholics believe that its ultimate Author is the Holy Spirit. The literal sense of Genesis, Ch.1, is therefore what the Holy Spirit wanted to say in that Chapter. Genesis said that God created the world in six days, and on the seventh day He rested. The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to teach religious truth in a language that people will understand. So, did He use the word “day” to mean a 24-hour period. Yes! Because the Holy Spirit was teaching them the need to sanctify the Sabbath, so He said that God worked for six days and on the seventh day He rested. He wanted to give the people a pattern of how they have to live their lives. That was the literal sense of Genesis. At least one of the literal senses.

Genesis is literal, as long as it captures the message that the Holy Spirit was trying to say. Don’t be fooled into giving it a literalist interpretation. It was never His intention to explain the formation of the world in terms of the Big Bang theory or evolution. And it would be the fallacy of concordism to try to stretch the meaning of the word “day” into millions of years, just to make Genesis consonant with the Big Bang. It is neither necessary nor correct to interpret “day” that way.
 
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Don’t be fooled into giving it a literalist interpretation.

Don’t be so insulting to those who do…we are not fools…
 
From Communion and Stewardship -

“According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” ( Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles…It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” ( Summa theologiae I, 22, 2).”

God works infallibly in His Creation.
 
Ooops excuse me, I didn’t mean it that way. I meant to say, “Don’t make the mistake of giving it a literalist interpretation.”
 
Was that really necessary? Is charity and humbleness a part of our comission?
 
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
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

"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 judgment. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment 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
 
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edwest said:
God works infallibly in His Creation.
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How true! Sometimes a process appears as a random process to us only because we do not know all the causes at play in the process. But to God, who knows all causes at work in nature, and who is the First Cause of all causes, nothing is really random.
 
BlueMaxx said:
Don’t be so insulting to those who do…we are not fools…
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This post will probably come off way more combatative than I intend. I apologize for any awkward phrasing in advance.

For me, I know there are times in various threads of this subject where I definitely share a harsh criticism of six-day literalists, intending only the literalists that overreach and tell others that they must also believe in a literalist interpretation otherwise [insert variant of “you’re not really a Christian.”]

On the other hand, while I may not get it personally, I am much more “live and let live” with (assuming I’ve interpreted your posts correctly) people like you who hold a literalist view on Genesis’ early chapters but don’t make the pitfall of the literalists I described above. So when I express my criticism of the former, what kind of phrasing would help someone like you to know you’re not in the intended group and not be inadvertently offended?

And if I may ask, a while ago there was a thread where someone was asking people people with a literalistic view what the importance of Genesis’ early chapters are. What it meant to them. There weren’t really any clear responses to that question (and to be honest, he was a bit antagonistic in his methods) but I would like to ask the question of you as I feel it could be an interesting response.
 
buffalo said:
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
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Thank you for posting this. Your’re the fastest gun alive. I was looking for this text from the CCC and you beat me into it.

Note how it defines the literal sense: The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis. That means, the literal sense is not just the meaning conveyed by the words as they stand, but as discovered by exegesis. And what does exegesis try to discover? Nothing else but the meaning intended by the Author of the text, that means the meaning intended by the Holy Spirit. This is important because some people read into the Scriptures meanings that the Author did not intend. It is the task of the exegete to decipher the true meaning intended by the Author and separate it from meanings that we introduce ourselves. It is a difficult job sometimes because to do it properly you have to be familiar with the language, the type of literature that the text is written, the background of the text, etc.
 
Well, I too feel that if a person wants to believe in another interpretation, such as billions year old earth and aspects of evolution who am I to argue as long as their faith is in Christ?

Perhaps the places we come from and roads we travel may be varied from one another but as long as we arrive at the cross and our faith is in Him who created this world for us then I am content.

For me personally, I have never been one to argue the point, merely to express by own personal belief.
That being, God created our reality, our concept of time.
He created this earth, and as He is the three big O’s there is nothing that is beyond His ability. Be it a new earth, an earth created with the appearance of age, or an earth created in which time as we know it in that seven day period may not be quite as linear as we experience now.

I find for myself, it is a chance to allow God to be God. It allows me to say, ok God, You said it this way, I will take that on faith.

God created our physical world and all the laws we as mortals are subject to, He however is not subject to them.
I think it would be very prideful of me to say otherwise, to try and express to God the tenants of evolution or how fossils somehow negate scripture lets say.

Job did a bit oft that and we see God’s answer.
The Lord Answers Job

38 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:

2 ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

4 ‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

8 ‘Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb?—
9 when I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,
11 and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped”?

(the whole chapter is wonderful)

My point being, we are like ants traversing an elephant and trying to describe it to a blind man when it comes to our origins…in my humble opinion.

Now, irregardless what people think…I am a rational man, I exist with both the creationist and those who believe the science they study…I just feel we are trying to subject God to our known laws of science when He exists outside of them…

M
 
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Thank you for sharing.
BlueMaxx said:
I find for myself, it is a chance to allow God to be God. It allows me to say, ok God, You said it this way, I will take that on faith.
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And I appreciate you sharing that. It offers a nice insight I’ve never really heard of before from the more literalistic approach.
 
No problem, I find myself at odds with militaristic creationist at times…The creation museum is not far from me so I went once…once…🥴

There are extremes on both sides I suppose…
 
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