Literal versus figurative stories in Bible

[Dovekin]

there’s a world of difference between saying “Jesus grows from birth” and “Jesus didn’t understand what His mission was.”

What are those differences? How is growth compatible Jesus not growing in understanding of his life?

What I offered is a staple of Catholic interpretation of the Bible. Matthew is widely portrayed by the figure of a man, a reference to his human genealogy that begins the gospel. John is portrayed by an eagle, usually referred to the soaring high Christology that begins the fourth gospel. Given the limitations of intros and notes, it doea not need to be elaborated here, or at least the editors decided that.

OTOH, Mr Akin could certainly elaborate on “incompatible with the Christian faith.” I am guessing at what he means because his comments are so brief. Such a sweeping condemnation is irresponsible, particularly when aimed at people chosen by the bishops to help with their preaching mission. Some deference should be shown to the bishops, not just to Mr Akin.

Deference is the problem with the fisheaters article that Tolle_Lege linked to in his post. It not only does not defer to the bishops, it launches an apocalyptic assault on their Bible. The author seems to envision himself in a battle with the bishops, and it is from that animosity that most of the objections come. If he has such a problematic relationship with the bishops and their hand picked collaborators, it is hard to see why he considers himself Catholic.

I could probably find as many faults in the NAB as others do, some possibly more important than what has been reported to now. I do not try for the same reason I do not interrupt homilies. When I try to hold people to my ideas of theological correctness and editorial perfection, I usually end up not hearing the Lord speak through his Writings.

 

[Gorgias]

What are those differences? How is growth compatible Jesus not growing in understanding of his life?

The distinction is huge in our understanding of Jesus in His humanity and divinity. To say “he didn’t make predictions about his ministry that are attributed to him in the Gospels” – in the context of his adult life – says something about his divinity that’s at odds with mainstream Catholic belief. (Are there theologians who make this claim, even some who are Catholic? Of course. However, this is a Bible, not a theological essay, and so (IMHO, of course ) it seems inappropriate to insert ideas that run outside the Church’s teachings.)

So, yeah … “growing in his humanity” is worlds away from asserting that Jesus did not know his divinity or what it entailed for him in the ministry and actions of his incarnation.

Such a sweeping condemnation is irresponsible, particularly when aimed at people chosen by the bishops to help with their preaching mission.

So, here’s the measuring stick: do the bishops, in their exercise of the ordinary magisterium, teach that Jesus didn’t know his ministry? If not, then the comment doesn’t really have a place in Scriptural footnotes. If they do – and I’m gonna assert that they don’t – then it would be interesting to see a citation elsewhere among the Church’s magisterial teachings that makes this claim.

 

[Dovekin]

Matthew has emphasized that Jesus’ revelation of his coming suffering and death marks a new phase of the gospel. Neither this nor the two later passion predictions (Mt 17:22–23; 20:17–19) can be taken as sayings that, as they stand, go back to Jesus himself. However, it is probable that he foresaw that his mission would entail suffering and perhaps death, but was confident that he would ultimately be vindicated by God.
NAB note on Mt 16:21-23, bold added for emphasis.

I am posting this text since you make several statements about it that do not match what it says. Clearly the author thinks that Jesus revealed “his coming suffering and death,” since he says that in the first sentence. The claim in the note is very different from your mischaracterizations:

Neither this nor the two later passion predictions can be taken as sayings that, as they stand, go back to Jesus himself.

I am not sure what his point is, but I probably got it wrong in my earlier remarks about growth. Verse 23 makes the point that accepting Jesus’ mortality is part of “thinking as God does.” (“You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Mt 16:23) This identifies it as prophetic in that it speaks for God, even more than as a prediction of the future. It is a rebuke to Peter, who is thinking of Jesus in more glorious terms: Jesus is most glorious when he is most human, at his death.

And that explanation could be wrong too. The gospel is difficult here, with its contrast of thinking as God and thinking as men. The commentator may be saying that despite objections about the form of the saying, Jesus was “thinking as God does.” Which is directly opposite what Akin and I understood.

The initial response to a note like this should not be “He is wrong. Off with his head!” It should be more “I must have misunderstood.” Some deference to the bishops that commissioned and approved this translation with commentary demands an effort to understand what is being said. That does not mean there is nothing wrong, just that hasty condemnations are not in order.

 

[Dougbro1]

No offense to the person who wrote that document, but…in the title, it doesn’t even spell “heresies” right.

 

[Tolle_Lege]

Neither this nor the two later passion predictions (Mt 17:22–23; 20:17–19) can be taken as sayings that, as they stand, go back to Jesus himself

Yep, they know with absolute certainty that Jesus didn’t say those things.

I don’t think most of the bishops had a clue about those notes or what they meant. They are 60s - 70s modern skeptical scholarship, and unfortunately the bishops were victims of this secular view of Scripture. They just really didn’t know any better and were clobbered with it in seminary when secular historical criticism was all the rage. This isn’t just my opinion. The fact that the NAB footnotes are so contrary to the preceding 1,950 years of Church tradition speaks for itself.

 

[Gorgias]

I am not sure what his point is, but I probably got it wrong in my earlier remarks about growth.

This might be the source of the divergence in our opinions. I take the statement that the passion predictions “can [not] be taken as sayings that … go back to Jesus himself,” especially in correlation with the statement that He merely “probably foresaw” suffering and “perhaps” death, as an assertion that contradicts the Church’s teaching on Jesus’ divine nature. More to the point, it seems (to my view) to be suggesting that Jesus himself actually said what the Evangelist places as coming from His lips. These two suggestions, from the footnotes, really make it seem to me that the authors of the footnotes do not believe that “Jesus revealed ‘his coming suffering and death’”, but rather, the Evangelist later spun his tale as if Jesus had done so.

At the heart of it, then, this is what makes this footnote seem egregiously bordering on heresy to me.

Some deference to the bishops that commissioned and approved this translation with commentary demands an effort to understand what is being said. That does not mean there is nothing wrong, just that hasty condemnations are not in order.

Fair enough… but, on the face of it, these footnotes seem to be saying something that certain progressive theologians assert in contradiction to the teachings of the Church. Not sure how to harmonize that with “[Catholic] bishops [who] commissioned and approved this … commentary”, though…

I don’t think most of the bishops had a clue about those notes or what they meant.

Well… I think that goes too far.

They are 60s - 70s modern skeptical scholarship

Yup.

unfortunately the bishops were victims of this secular view of Scripture. They just really didn’t know any better

Maybe, maybe not.

 

[Tolle_Lege]

I don’t think most of the bishops had a clue about those notes or what they meant.

Clergy of a certain vintage (seminary in 60s to probably early 2000s) were taught mostly secular, skeptical historical criticism of Scripture. Fr. Raymond Brown’s de-supernaturalization of the Holy Bible is held in high regard, as it was thought quite en vogue to dismiss miracles as superstition and fantasy to more easily make the faith more “approachable” to the unbelieving masses. Yes, it was time for us to shed our outdated, quaint, medieval belief in divine intervention, the holy miracles of the prophets and our Lord, and many other traditional teachings. There was kind of an unwritten rule of twisted doublespeak belief, a thought process that would confirm the Church’s belief in these things but along the lines of “true myth” or “using symbolism to teach a truth,” some other backpedaling type, embarrassment of the faith language. / rant over /

 

[Gorgias]

Clergy of a certain vintage (seminary in 60s to probably early 2000s) were taught mostly secular, skeptical historical criticism of Scripture.

Your date range is rather expansive. “Probably early 2000s” is quite erroneous.

 

[Tolle_Lege]

Yeah I thought that might be at the later end of the range…maybe early 90s?

 

[Gorgias]

Yeah I thought that might be at the later end of the range…maybe early 90s?

Maybe. “Early 80s” might be more representative, though…

 

[Dovekin]

There was kind of an unwritten rule of twisted doublespeak belief, a thought process that would confirm the Church’s belief in these things but along the lines of “true myth” or “using symbolism to teach a truth,” some other backpedaling type, embarrassment of the faith language.

Why would you say this was unwritten. John Paul II has a footnote explaining the meaning of “myth” in one of his early audiences on the Theology of the Body. References to Mircea Eliade, Paul Tillich and the like show the roots in philosophy and religion. Very much written about!

Historical criticism remains an indispensable part of Catholic Scripture study. Complaints about “demythologization” have long been cast aside in light of faithful scholars like Brown, Fitzmeyer and others. They only persist in backwaters that isolate themselves from the Church’s guidance.

 

[William_Scott]

Why would you say this was unwritten. John Paul II has a footnote explaining the meaning of “myth” in one of his early audiences on the Theology of the Body. References to Mircea Eliade, Paul Tillich and the like show the roots in philosophy and religion. Very much written about!

Historical criticism remains an indispensable part of Catholic Scripture study. Complaints about “demythologization” have long been cast aside in light of faithful scholars like Brown, Fitzmeyer and others. They only persist in backwaters that isolate themselves from the Church’s guidance.

Mircea Eliade, Paul Tillich, Brown and Fitzmeyer simply recycled the worn out heresies of our 19th and early 20th century Protestant higher critics.

Our Protestant higher critics did a fine job of creating a new religion that lacked Holy Writ, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, Christ, an Omnipotent, Omniscient God, the Trinity, Salvation, etc.

Mormonism and Islam with their affirmation of such things as the supernatural are closer to orthodox Christianity than our Protestant higher critics. In contrast, your Roman Catholic proponents of higher criticism are generally clever enough to at least give lip service to the most fundamental tenants of the faith, in spite of the same overall anti-Christian thrust of their teachings.

In the early 20th century, J. Gresham Machen did real scholarship (in line with the fine scholarship of the great minds of the preceding 1900 years of the Church) which tore apart the “scholarship” of the higher critics in his day and the preceding century. The Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars of this new higher critical religion haven’t come up with anything genuinely new since that time, and the foolishness of their dated ideas has only become more pronounced with each ancient manuscript discovery, etc.

“The truth is that the life-purpose of Jesus discovered by modern liberalism is not the life purpose of the real Jesus, but merely represents those elements in the teaching of Jesus–isolated and misinterpreted–which happen to agree with the modern program. It is not Jesus, then, who is the real authority, but the modern principle by which the selection within Jesus’ recorded teaching has been made. Certain isolated ethical principles of the Sermon on the Mount are accepted, not at all because they are teachings of Jesus, but because they agree with modern ideas.”
― J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism

 

[edwest211]

Thay’s entirely true. The true but it didn’t actually happen idea is 100% wrong.

 

[edwest211]

Thank you for telling people about such fake ideas which were designed to destroy the Church.

 

[TMC]

Thank you for telling people about such fake ideas which were designed to destroy the Church.

Are you saying that Mircea Eliade, Paul Tillich, Brown and Fitzmeyer set out to destroy the Church? That is a pretty strong accusation, especially considering the stature of those men within the Church.

 

[William_Scott]

Thanks edwest211. Of course, we have to grant that the higher critics are not really teaching a novel doctrine. In fact, there’s a long storied precedent of higher criticism, with the original scholar being none other than the lord of darkness: “Yea, hath God said” (Genesis 3:1).

I happen to think St. Augustine is closer to the mark than Beelzebub on the question of inerrancy ;-):

We must therefore be careful to secure, in order to our knowledge of the divine Scriptures, the guidance only of such a man as is imbued with a high reverence for the sacred books, and a profound persuasion of their truth, preventing him from flattering himself in any part of them with the hypothesis of a statement being made not because it was true, but because it was expedient, and making him rather pass by what he does not understand, than set up his own feelings above that truth. For, truly, when he pronounces anything to be untrue, he demands that he be believed in preference, and endeavours to shake our confidence in the authority of the divine Scriptures.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102028.htm

Of course, the higher critic often claims that a historical narrative in Scripture can be false in the literal sense while being true in a figurative or spiritual sense, but St. Augustine maintained no such sophistry.

 

[AlNg]

where in the Bible do the stories become literal?

I have the same question. Some of the Bible is figurative, but not all. Some of what Jesus said is taken in a figurative sense, but not all. I don’t know if there is complete agreement among Roman Catholics about which passages are literal and which are not. I would like to know this also.
And on top of that, even with passages that are taken literally, there is disagreement between Roman Catholics and Orthodox about their interpretation. And of course, there is a lot of disagreement with other Christians also.

 

[edwest211]

"9. Now Catholic theologians and philosophers, whose grave duty it is to defend natural and supernatural truth and instill it in the hearts of men, cannot afford to ignore or neglect these more or less erroneous opinions. Rather they must come to understand these same theories well, both because diseases are not properly treated unless they are rightly diagnosed, and because sometimes even in these false theories a certain amount of truth is contained, and, finally, because these theories provoke more subtle discussion and evaluation of philosophical and theological truths.

"10. If philosophers and theologians strive only to derive such profit from the careful examination of these doctrines, there would be no reason for any intervention by the Teaching Authority of the Church. However, although We know that Catholic teachers generally avoid these errors, it is apparent, however, that some today, as in apostolic times, desirous of novelty, and fearing to be considered ignorant of recent scientific findings, try to withdraw themselves from the sacred Teaching Authority and are accordingly in danger of gradually departing from revealed truth and of drawing others along with them into error.

"11. Another danger is perceived which is all the more serious because it is more concealed beneath the mask of virtue. There are many who, deploring disagreement among men and intellectual confusion, through an imprudent zeal for souls, are urged by a great and ardent desire to do away with the barrier that divides good and honest men; these advocate an “eirenism” according to which, by setting aside the questions which divide men, they aim not only at joining forces to repel the attacks of atheism, but also at reconciling things opposed to one another in the field of dogma. And as in former times some questioned whether the traditional apologetics of the Church did not constitute an obstacle rather than a help to the winning of souls for Christ, so today some are presumptive enough to question seriously whether theology and theological methods, such as with the approval of ecclesiastical authority are found in our schools, should not only be perfected, but also completely reformed, in order to promote the more efficacious propagation of the kingdom of Christ everywhere throughout the world among men of every culture and religious opinion.

"12. Now if these only aimed at adapting ecclesiastical teaching and methods to modern conditions and requirements, through the introduction of some new explanations, there would be scarcely any reason for alarm. But some through enthusiasm for an imprudent “eirenism” seem to consider as an obstacle to the restoration of fraternal union, things founded on the laws and principles given by Christ and likewise on institutions founded by Him, or which are the defense and support of the integrity of the faith, and the removal of which would bring about the union of all, but only to their destruction.

 

[edwest211]

"13. These new opinions, whether they originate from a reprehensible desire of novelty or from a laudable motive, are not always advanced in the same degree, with equal clarity nor in the same terms, nor always with unanimous agreement of their authors. Theories that today are put forward rather covertly by some, not without cautions and distinctions, tomorrow are openly and without moderation proclaimed by others more audacious, causing scandal to many, especially among the young clergy and to the detriment of ecclesiastical authority. Though they are usually more cautious in their published works, they express themselves more openly in their writings intended for private circulation and in conferences and lectures. Moreover, these opinions are disseminated not only among members of the clergy and in seminaries and religious institutions, but also among the laity, and especially among those who are engaged in teaching youth.

"14. In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.

“15. Moreover, they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that his can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries.”

 

[Dovekin]

Mircea Eliade, Paul Tillich, Brown and Fitzmeyer simply recycled the worn out heresies

Why did you leave out st John Paul II, who quoted them approvingly? My only point was that the subject of “myth” has been written about extensively, and is not some “unwritten rule of twisted doublespeak belief.” It is easy to find out about it if you care to learn, instead of seeking hidden conspiracies. If you do not care to study them, I am ok with that. Just do not imply shadowy motives to them because you choose to ignore them.

(Correction to my original post, JP2 quoted Paul Ricoeur, not Paul Tillich)