What is the Catholic church’s beliefs about the bible being literally true? I had the misfortune of going to a liberal “Christain” college and found out that “higher criticism” is another word for you don’t believe in the Bible, but it’s OK to lie about it. Does the church teach that Noah’s flood, Adam and eve, etc. are literally true or can they be interpreted as myths? How about evolution as being a part of God’s creation?
Hi Roger12345
I gave a talk, and am now writing a book, on how science and the Bible agree, providing you understand the way that they were written. I gave that talk to a community of very traditional Discalced Carmelite Nuns. Believe me, they would soon have pounced if I had said anything that was contrary to what the Catholic Church taught!
The Bible is not a history or science textbook, it is a spiritual guide. We must also remember that the parts you are refering to were written over 2500 years ago. They were also written in a very different time and very different culture. As our language is very different to the language the Old Testament was written in, we miss a lot of what the language is actually telling us. For example the creation in six days passage is actually a poem. The people who wrote Genesis lived in a non-scientific culture, they did not see things the way we see them. To them, the important question on hearing the passages about Adam and Eve or Noah was not, “did this really happen exactly as described?” but rather, “what is God trying to tell us through this story?”.
If you know about science, it is perfectly possible to reconcile most of Genesis (and other books of the Bible) and science. For example, the story of Adam and Eve is about the point in our evolution where ensoulment took place. We do not know when that happened but the descriptions in the Bible seem to correspond to a point about 5 million years ago, when the climate in our ancestor’s African home began to change dramatically, due to weather patterns changing when Panama arose. The lush forests in which they had found food and shelter died as a result of much less rainfall. This seems to be the “expulsion fromEden”. It was at this point that we began to walk upright and our brains began to get much bigger. I have written two whole chapters on the agreement between the two creation stories and science but I’ll give a quick example. In the expulsion from Eden, one of the “punishments” that humans face is God telling Eve it will be more painful for her to give birth. When our ancestors began to walk upright, in order to take the whole body’s weight, the pelvis had to become much stronger. This lead the birth canal to narrow, making it more dangerous and painful for human females to give birth.
The story of the flood cannot be literally supported by science, there is simply no way to get enough water on Earth to flood the whole world. What I find really interesting, apart from the spiritual lesson, seems to be the idea of a handful of creatures surviving a mass extinction. I sometimes feel as if these passages were deliberately coded, awaiting the time when our scientific knowledge gave us the key to understanding the physical aspect of the story, the Church having had the key to the spiritual aspect.
I find evolution to be perfectly consistant with the Bible, after all the first chapter of Genesis has lifeforms being created on different days. There is a progression of life from plants to mammals, that gives the picture of life changing and becoming different over time. The Church teaches that evolution doesn’t contradict the Bible.
I hope this helps you.
of the way higher criticism has been abused by people promoting their own particular agendas. He also considered it to be a valuable tool for giving us a better understanding of scripture when used responsibly, which he demonstrated in his book.