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Barbkw
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You’re an expert on God now?
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karebear92
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I never said that I was an expert. Feel free to correct me.
I suppose He could be in one place and everywhere at the same time, but that seems to be stretching it a bit. I am pretty sure that Catholics believe that God is not physical in nature, so how can God walk and make noise, and ask where Adam and Eve are, yet be omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient?
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Warrenton
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The key words in your statement are “as far as I know.”
Because all of us must admit that “we don’t know very far?”
Especially when it comes to the attributes of God.
We can say He is just, and loving, and all knowing. But about his fundamental essence, apart from what He has revealed, we know nada.
What we know is the story says “walked in the cool of the evening.”
The words in the story transcend modern human understanding. The story, such as it is, is divinely inspired and that is really all we can say.
If we lack understanding, it is because of our ignorance. The most we can say is either “I believe it” or “I don’t believe it because it does not comport with certain ideas I have.”
What we cannot say is that we were there, or the story is false.
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karebear92
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I don’t believe that the story is false. I believe that it is told in a way that humans understand. At the time they did not know that God was in three persons, and to relate the story they said that God walked and talked like a human.
Wouldn’t Jesus assuming human nature before he was human be fundamentally against our beliefs? Did He assume human nature, de-assume human nature, and reassume human nature? For us and for our salvation He was made man. So was He made man, de-made man, and remade man?
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Warrenton
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Sorry I jumped over your post - I missed it and would have replied first.
First of all, let me admit that the story contains more information than I can understand based on my experience. I have never seen, heard of felt the Lord so far as I can safely say. Rather, my experience with the Lord are through the mechanism of His Church, my appreciation of the nature of God is intellectual.
So, I when I read Genesis, I the feeling I have is that Adam knew God was with him in the manner that husbands and wives and children know each other are in the room without necessarilly turning to look. It’s a kind of sensation. I expect that Adam knew when God was present, and knew when God was active in his (Adam’s) life.
Whether God’s voice was audible or not I do not know, but there is nothing fundamentally unbelievable about hearing the voice of God, any more than it is incredible to hear a dormouse. We cannot hear God’s voice because we no longer expect to hear it, or are distracted by other sounds of our own making.
The fact that God the Father is a spirit does not exclude being visible. Why? The tangible world is a subset of creation, but the spiritual world is not a subset of the tangible world. We, not the spirits, are the minority. Spirits can become visible in our world, (think of St. Raphael) but we cannot transcend ours (yet). The analogy is mathematical: we can see two dimensional figures, but if two dimensional figures were alive, they could only see us if we oriented to their plane - in other words, two dimensionally. God the Father, if He desired, could make an appearance in our tangible dimension, but we would only perceive that part of His aspect that intersects our dimension in the tangible world.
Does that help? If not, I’ll try again if you want!
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Barbkw
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karebear92
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I think so, although I admit that I cannot say so for certain. I have to revert to my last post about God having a physical body.
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Warrenton
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I understand that you don’t reject the moral meaning of the story, and that you don’t reject a factual basis for the story. Instead of false, I should have said “accurate.”
In response to your specific questions: God walking and talking does not mean that Christ took on human nature before he was born of the Blessed Virgin, any more than when we pray, if our prayer is received in heaven, it means that we are glorififed before the resurrection and judgment.
We need not ask what the nature of the form of God in Genesis was. It could have been an illusion, or it could have been a form that God only assumed when appearing to Adam, it could have been something else entirely. There is nothing in the account that requires us ask to whether God was deconstructed, or self destructed after Genesis and re-constituted later.
All we know is that God’s presence was observed, that it appeared in a manner that evoked humanity, and that God communicated in a voice that could be understood by men and women.
That’s all the story tells us. Though an interesting thought, the “double incarnation” concerns you have are not necessary to the meaning of the words.
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Warrenton
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I perceive a paradox in the way you interpret Genesis, and other passages as well (not that this means you can’t hold to your interpretation in good faith - you can). It is just this: the literal interpretation is rejected on the basis that the figurative language was just a method of making something understandable. But having rejected the literal interpretation, we are left not knowing anything about the Father. Bereft of what you call anthropomorphism, we are left with nothing: because we don’t know what was said, if it was said, or how it was heard. We can no longer conceive anything about the Father. In short, we have a message that miraculously appeared in the bible ex nihilo, as it were.
Thus, in the effort to make the story more clear, we end up with a knowing even less than before the story was properly interpreted.
Curious.
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karebear92
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We know everything that we know now. There isn’t a physical description of God, and that is all that I reject. I reject that He took human form, but to convince and describe it to them or to future generations they made Him physical at some point. Or they used it to describe an experience that could not be expressed because it was incomprehensible while in human form.
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Contarini
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How about considering the possibility that your son needs a better understanding of what it means to “believe the Bible”?
Yet again, the alternative fundamentalist magisterium within Catholicism takes upon itself to declare who the “real Catholics” are.
Hopefully the bishop will either smile indulgently and ignore you or, more pastorally, explain that there are legitimate disagreements among Catholics on such matters, and that in fact the mainstream of Catholic scholarship is highly open to the view that Old Testament stories like this are divinely inspired myth or legend.
Edwin
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Contarini
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That makes no sense at all. It’s a blatantly false dichotomy.
It’s curious that you would engage in such a bizarre and illogical misconstruction of the exegetical situation.
Based on both sound historical scholarship and the continuous Tradition of the Church, we have abundant resources for understanding the meaning of the Bible without resorting to literalism.
In fact, literalism is often irrelevant or harmful in an orthodox reading of Scripture. For instance, the Tradition of the Church holds that the primary meaning of Genesis 3 is that Satan tempted our first parents to disobey God. The literal meaning of Genesis 3 is that a talking snake persuaded them to eat an apple which gave them a kind of knowledge God didn’t want them to have, because it made them gods.
Take the passage in a strictly literal manner, and you are plunged into theological difficulties (is God really threatened by Adam and Eve?) and have destroyed the basis for much of Christian salvation history.
The consequence you claim for abandoning literalism actually follows from confining yourself to it.
Edwin
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Contarini
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That’s an odd question. The basis of traditional Christian theism is that only pure spirit could create the universe.
The understanding of creation implicit in your question seems radically different than that found in, for instance, St. Thomas Aquinas.
Edwin
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Contarini
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No. No logic here at all. There is nothing at all in the literal/historical meaning of Genesis, for instance, about a “loss of grace.” The concept of “grace” isn’t there. You’re throwing in later theological concepts and then claiming that abandoning a literalistic reading (from which such concepts cannot be derived) is abandoning these concepts. It makes no sense.
It isn’t a question of “stopping.” It’s a question of discerning the proper meaning of a passage based on both sound historical-critical scholarship and the Christian theological tradition.
There isn’t a “point” at which you “stop” doing this. There are simply different answers given with regard to different passages.
Edwin
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Contarini
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Warrenton
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I am sorry you think so little of my position.
However, the literal interpretation of a Catholic is different than other literal interpretations.
I would never conclude that a talking snake was just a talking snake, because I reject the idea of private interpretation.
I have the Church to teach me that the talking snake is Satan.
Without the Church, I would not know that. I might think it was some random god or a mere creature. This resolves the conundrums that arise, perhaps, in the literalism of which you write.
But there is nothing in tradition that tells me the snake did not talk, or that Eve did not heed it.
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Contarini
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Fair enough. But the non-literalist also has tradition. My objection was not to your belief that the snake literally talked (I find that to be a highly dubious proposition, but I can see why you would hold it–I certainly used to hold it myself) but to your claim that without literalism people don’t know what the Bible is saying. That seemed to imply an exclusive literalism which was subject to the objection I made.
If you hold to literalism informed by tradition, then you and the non-literalist know essentially the same things about Genesis.
Edwin
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Warrenton
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I guess what I am asking is how much of what we know, is really just what we think?
Let’s, however, pin down where we agree:
I’m not saying God is described, I’m saying his actions are described.
I’m not saying God took human form. I’m saying that whatever form he took, it could be described in human terms.
Now, to where we disagree:
Who is the “they” that changed the original facts to suit the audience, and who was the audience?
Why would the people then be any more satisfied with the changed version that you are?
If Moses (let us say) said Adam knew God did not want him to disobey, are you imagining someone said “Disobey what?” and then Moses just made up the part about the tree?
Or do you imagine that after carefully explaining that God is pure spirit, someone asked “how then does He communicate with us?” to which Moses said, “Well, in olden times He came down and talked.”
That, to my thinking, would have immediately raised questions 4000 years ago as now.
Unless of course we conclude that 4000 years ago people were just dolts.
Which begs the question, why we continue to believe in their religion?
Again, I’m with you when you say those old stories are hard to reconcile with modern thinking. I’m still with you when you say that harmonizing them with modern thinking makes it easier for you to understand.
You lose me, however, if you claim that a literal interpretation leads to theological error.
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Warrenton
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Thank you for this nice post!
Let me say, I am a non-exclusive literalist, which is perhaps a rare bird, I admit.
In earlier posts, or perhaps on another thread, I directed a hard pressed non-literalist to Origen (who I then had to defend!!!) and St. Augustine, two eminent allegorical interpreters of the Old Testament.
The allegorical school of thought is ancient, and well pedigreed. I just happen to find the literal school more satisfying, for the reasons you read. I do not make a habit of forcing my views on anyone. I explain when questioned, and try to show the logical basis for why I think as I do.
But I completely respect and honor the other tradition as being totally Catholic (in the widest sense of the word).
Hope that helps!
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fisherman_carl
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Then, how do you explain the Eucharist? It’s his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. You can’t explain it because it is a mystery that goes beyond human reason. We simply don’t know everything since we are not God.
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