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patg
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The existence of such a couple may be literal truth but the symbolic story exploring the nature of suffering in the world certainly is pure mythology.
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RyanL
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“He who marries the spirit of the times will soon be a widower.”
-G.K. Chesterton
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patg
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RyanL said:
And what about those who don’t know what the church teaches? (and just to be clear, talking snakes are not part of any teachings)
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whosebob
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JMJ + OBT
The point your making is not lost on us (I think); but on the other hand, there is strong guidance from the Magisterium on this issue that lends itself to a less “mythical” interpretation than you seem ready to make. For example:
Excerpts from the encyclical Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII, 12 August 1950
- When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.
- Just as in the biological and anthropological sciences, so also in the historical sciences there are those who boldly transgress the limits and safeguards established by the Church. In a particular way must be deplored a certain too free interpretation of the historical books of the Old Testament. Those who favor this system, in order to defend their cause, wrongly refer to the Letter which was sent not long ago to the Archbishop of Paris by the Pontifical Commission on Biblical Studies. This letter, in fact, clearly points out that the first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes; the same chapters, (the Letter points out), in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people. If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents.
- Therefore, whatever of the popular narrations have been inserted into the Sacred Scriptures must in no way be considered on a par with myths or other such things, which are more the product of an extravagant imagination than of that striving for truth and simplicity which in the Sacred Books, also of the Old Testament, is so apparent that our ancient sacred writers must be admitted to be clearly superior to the ancient profane writers.
- Truly, we are aware that the majority of Catholic doctors, the fruit of whose studies is being gathered in universities, in seminaries and in the colleges of religious, are far removed from those errors which today, whether through a desire for novelty or through a certain immoderate zeal for the apostolate, are being spread either openly or covertly. But we know also that such new opinions can entice the incautious; and therefore we prefer to withstand the very beginnings rather than to administer the medicine after the disease has grown inveterate.
In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
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whosebob
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whosebob said:
JMJ + OBT
I meant to note, that from the perspective shared in some form by many “more traditional” Catholics throughout the world, it appears that among clergy, laity and religious today (especially those in academia), the worst fears of Pope Pius XII have become realized and the incautious have been enticed, and the disease has grown inveterate.
I am going to be a bit bold and make a prediction right here and now:
In the 18+ years-long landmark reign of Pope Benedict XVI, no less than 3 of his encyclicals, apostolic letters, etc. will be directly involved in administering the medicine (in fact, they likely will be “the medicine”) that Pope Pius XII anticipated might be necessary, and which in fact is now overdue, as regards Catholic Scripture scholarship. At least two of them will be issued in the context of, or will contain, decrees that are just short of “ex cathedra” definitions (similar to John Paul II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis). One of them will be or will contain an ex cathedra definition as regards the absolute inerrancy (i.e. “free from all error”) and historicity of Sacred Scripture.
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patg
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I hope he does and I pray it will be to banish the simplistic superficiality of “absolute inerrancy and historicity” However, I doubt it will be something either side is satisfied with. Divino Afflante Spiritu and Dei Verbum address the issue but both straddle the fence quite well and result in many heated arguments, many of which I have enjoyed participating in on these forums.
I hope he addresses the education of the congregation by emphasizing the truth of the message as independent of both historicity and inerrancy.
I think he is intelligent enough to understand how writers write. That they use myth, legend, allegory, fiction, poetry and yes, even history, to tell their truths. It is quite an injustice to take away a writer’s talent and ability to tell a story because the word "bible’ is on the cover of the book.
Let’s picture the pope entering a vast library and selecting a random book from the shelves. He opens it and reads a story about a talking snake, magic trees, a god who walks around in a garden, and naked people. Would our pope say “Oh, I must be in the history department, I’ll use this as a history lesson on how the human race began.”? Or would maybe a more educated person say “This is a revealing story which uses complex symbolism to teach a deep theological truth…”? The bible is a collection of different books written by different authors at different times. The stories all reflect the belief, knowledge, and customs of the author’s time and they all teach deep truths using appropriate literary forms. And they are all quite full of errors in science, geography, time lines and medicine, just to name a few areas.
I can’t imagine a pope thinking that declaring something to be historically inerrant when it is clearly not somehow makes it so. He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would discard all the human knowledge and understanding we have gained over the past millenia to return to such primitve and fundamentalist concepts.
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buffalo
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patg, if God wanted a snake to talk could the snake talk?
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Darrel
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Revelation 22 mentions the tree of life as well along with the river. Is this literal or symbolic? It also speaks of the 12 types of fruit and leaves.
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Gottle_of_Geer
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There are realities which can only be conveyed by being stated mythically - such as the “descent” of Christ among the dead. *Something *happened, for sure - but what the exact detail of it is, can’t be stated, because it did not take place within the world as known to us. That it can’t be adequately described as an event of this world, does not make it any less real. Mythical language of the kind that makes Jesus sound like one of the ancient heroes descending into the netherworld - even though He is better by far than they - is the best that the Church can do, so far at least; and however much that sort of language needs to be interpreted, it is at least not too remote from what most of us can get into our heads. We all know what “descent” means, & are not likely to confuse “The Descent of Species”, the Descent into Hell, and descent from one floor to another in a shop, eveb though the same word is used in all instances.
Jesus did not go down spatially, like one of the characters in “Journey to the Centre of the Earth” - but He did go down into the utter humiliation of the death of the Cross; to be raised from it in glory. He is described as descending spatially, so that the other descent, the one He consented to suffer for our sake, may be “got across”The Eden story is also speaking of something beyond our experience - unfallen man in an unfallen world, and unbroken friendship with God: so it uses mythical language to “get across” theological truth to us. The truth conveyed, is truer, & more valuable, than the literary form it comes in. The story is an Ancient Near Eastern story, so it has an ANE background. ##
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Gottle_of_Geer
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No - because it is not in accord with the qualities of a snake that it should talk; it is not that kind of being.
God does not create oddities - creatures can develop wrongly, but that’s because of secondary causes in the natural world: pollution, for example. A human being, however misshapen, is still a human being, still a person made in the image of Christ, with a vocation to eternal life in Christ. A snake is none of these. A talking snake would be as outlandish as a singing tortilla or a piece of toast that could grow arms, climb into a toaster and toast itself. ##
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patg
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Revelations is all symbolic - it is a classic example of Jewish prophetic writing (which is a large and complex subject in itself)
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patg
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Let me ask you this - were there once cats who could disappear? When you read Alice in Wonderland do you wonder about that or do you realize that you are reading fiction which is heavy with symbolism to tell a story about political realities in England? It, like the story of the couple in the garden, is talking about truth using a deeply symbolic fictional account.
The author who chose to explore the nature of suffering does not have the option of giving an historical explanation. He doesn’t know a historical explanation. The author makes it very evident that his genre is not historical by his obvious use of symbols.
Not recognizing the symbolic nature of the myth and the truth it is teaching represents a serious misunderstanding of the literary form of the story.
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Gottle_of_Geer
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whosebob
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Gottle of Geer said:
JMJ + OBT
Satan is an angel, and as such is not any kind of corporeal being, but a purely spiritual one. In order to aid his deception and temptation of our first parents, he may well have appeared to them as a snake or snake-like creature, indeed one that could even talk (why that would have helped his cause, I am not inclined to speculate upon at this late hour, perhaps someone else can/will).
Your point still stands, of course, though I am inclined to strongly disagree with you. A talking snake would certainly be a stark aberration from what we find in nature (though not at all an uncommon phenomenon in, say, the U.S. Senate), but it would be improper to put it in the category of a four-sided triangle or a “rock so heavy . . .” – in other words, a self-contradiction – which is what you seem to be implying.
“None so strange as the men of science,” as Chesterton would say, and in this case he would probably lump in the “progressive” Scripture scholars as well.
Or as outlandish as a piece of bread that only appears to be a piece of bread, even under a microscrope, while it (and every particle of it) is in actuality the living body (with beating heart, breathing lungs, thinking brain, etc.) of a human male named Jesus, AND at the same time is (or “contains”) his soul and the whole Divine Nature.
Or as outlandish as a few pieces of bread and fish being temporally and spatially multiplied, or multilocated, such that they can be used to feed thousands of more people than would otherwise be possible.
Or as outlandish as the dead, rotting body of a man named Lazarus being brought back to life and reunited with his soul.
Etc.
In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
IC XC NIKA
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buffalo
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Gottle of Geer said:
So you would put this in the same category as God creating a rock He could not lift? Interesting!
While I agree a talking snake is by today’s standards seems foolish, but this snake could have been a vision of a sort.
Let’s experiment for a minute. Say today you had a vision. In the vision the device God used to get His point across to you was a talking snake. Now, after you had experienced this it was your job to transmit this to today’s readers. How would you go about it?
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Chris_Jacobsen
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Of course there was a real Adam and Eve. To say anything else is to say that the Word of God is a pack of lies.
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