Salvation History is like the Days of Creation: Alternating Darkness and Light

[spauline]

**Salvation History is like the Days of Creation: Alternating Darkness and Light

**[this is addressed to Protestant Evangelical mindset, not Catholics, so this is NOT attacking Catholics]

See the clear metaphor of the “day” in Genesis. Evening came, and morning followed.

Does this mean all was made in six literal 24 hour periods. Most likely not.

For, how does it really matter how God made all things except man? Man, yes, is special. God alone makes the soul specially, for that which is spiritual in nature cannot be the cause of processes that are merely material. Therefore, the appearance of man is a special Divine Intervention.

Now, sure, God could tell us that how He made the banana tree, and the kangaroos, and the amoeba. But in the end, we should say, how does this help us get to heaven? Is this useful history?

For what history did God come to reveal in the Scriptures, merely temporal, or those developments that impact Salvation? For notice, not very much Gentile history is recorded after Abraham, only those Gentiles that had meaningful interaction with the Jews. And hence, eastern Asia and the Americas and most of southern Africa and Northern Europe are not in the OT.

For God focuses on the spotlight of His Plan.

Similarly, what the NT Apocalypse reveals is the history that is directly pertinent to the Catholic Church.

Hence, China, India, and the Americas prior to 1500 are not part of Divine Revelation, because they never knew Christ to any greater degree.

For this reason, the NT history in prophecy must focus on a Eurocentric view of Catholic history, in so far as the more important ages of Catholicism are mainly Eurocentric: pagan Rome, the Christological Heresies, Islam, the Schism, the Middle Ages, the Protestant Rebellion, the Enlightenment, the Modern Secular European derived apostasy.

Therefore, the NT Prophecy of stuff up until now will not say really anything about the Orient, or southern Africa.

But let us return to the literal day. You stubborn hypocrites, does it really matter literal light and darkness and time frames for the creation, or rather the spiritual times and seasons, the AGES in which God REcreates the world, redeeming man?

Therefore, open your eyes, you foolish literalists: The days of creation are not literal: They are a metaphor for the SPIRITUAL process of the REmaking, the REcreating, the REDEMPTION of the world, that is, of man.

And so, look at the evidence: is not the general trajectory of salvation history the constant alternation between a greater age of spiritual darkness followed by a greater stage of spiritual light? The sun sets figuratively, and it rises figuratively?

Yes, open your eyes, you foolish literalistic persons: Simply look at the history.

For consider also the beast in Revelation 13: is not the mortal wound of a head of the beast a symbol of a great Divine Motion in human history, whether of miraculous intervention (as in the Flood or Exodus) or of grace (as in the repentance of the hitherto unfaithful Jews in the Babylonian Exile), which surely wounds the great manifestation of sin in human history, and slays wickedness for a time?

Or put another way, what is the healing of the wound of the beast except a resurrection of unrighteousness, the fallen nature coming to prominence again in the Divine Plan, in as much as the Christ fell several times (a beast’s head comes up, or, that is, the sun sets) and got up several times (God wounds a head of the beast, or, that is, the sun rises)?

Fall down, get up, fall down, get up, …: constantly, the weight of the cross of Original Sin causes humanity to fall into wickedness, that is, on a grand scale. God raises man up through stages of Redemption in His Plan, but after each Redemption, the fall comes again. Simply follow the history.

Darkness: The Fall and Noah’s day
Light: The Flood

Darkness: The Tower Babel
Light: The Confounding of Languages and Calling of Abraham, the Hebrew People

Darkness: Egypt’s Enslavement of God’s People
Light: The Exodus and OT Kingdom

Darkness: Intermediate Jewish Apostasy from OT Cov
Light: Exile, Repentance and Restoration of Jews to Holy Land

Darkness: OT Antichrist Antiochus, Maccabbees
Light: First Coming of Christ

Darkness: Pagan Rome persecutes the Church
Light: The First Conversion, Catholic Christendom

Darkness: Protestantism to Modern Secular Apostasy, Progressive Loss of Faith

This is the meaning of the “Evening came, and morning followed”, so that just as there are seven days in Genesis that are extended to eight by Tradition (Christ rose on the eighth day), so Salvation History, in the greater ages, from the Fall to the New Creation inclusvise, shall be eight ages, the first part of which is always a great spiritual darkness and the second part of which is always a great stage of spiritual light.

"Evening came, and morning followed"… man fell, but God lifted him up, again, and again…

 

[twinc]

so according to this and not according to the CATHOLIC church “the literal and obvious sense must be accepted unless reason or necessity dictate otherwise” - twinc

 

[spauline]

so according to this and not according to the CATHOLIC church “the literal and obvious sense must be accepted unless reason or necessity dictate otherwise” - twinc

in light of what we know scientifically, and according to opinion of last pontiff, who sees evolution as highly probable, reason and common sense DO dictate otherwise.

or do you believe in a universe that six thousand years old only?

 

[twinc]

most certainly or more certainly the Universe is thousands and not millions or billions years old and of course you have got it wrong as to what the Pope said or could possibly have said for one Pope cannot overrule another - btw who is this way out,weird and wacky explanation by - twinc

 

[spauline]

most certainly or more certainly the Universe is thousands and not millions or billions years old and of course you have got it wrong as to what the Pope said or could possibly have said for one Pope cannot overrule another - twinc

even if it is literal, how about the metaphor in addition?

I am really talking about the metaphor.

 

[edwest2]

in light of what we know scientifically, and according to opinion of last pontiff, who sees evolution as highly probable, reason and common sense DO dictate otherwise.

or do you believe in a universe that six thousand years old only?

Reason is the new circumcision, a requirement to enter the House of God. This is false. Those who are educated and the uneducated are acceptable to God. The worship of the mind of man is idolatry.

If you have facts then you do not need the word of a pontiff to confirm them. No, this is the same message, repeated endlessly. How did Jesus raise the dead or cleanse the lepers or calm the wind and waves? With technology? With common sense? That is how God works.

The Dictatorship of Relativism uses what it calls science to reduce God and exalt man above Him.

Peace,
Ed

 

[spauline]

Reason is the new circumcision, a requirement to enter the House of God. This is false. Those who are educated and the uneducated are acceptable to God. The worship of the mind of man is idolatry.

If you have facts then you do not need the word of a pontiff to confirm them. No, this is the same message, repeated endlessly. How did Jesus raise the dead or cleanse the lepers or calm the wind and waves? With technology? With common sense? That is how God works.

The Dictatorship of Relativism uses what it calls science to reduce God and exalt man above Him.

Peace,
Ed

For crying out loud, even if the days of creation are describing literal temporal history, should not the SPIRITUAL remaking of the world be more important to God than HOW it was made PHYSICALLY?

So many persons in this world, do not have wisdom. And what is wisdom? To be able to order various things in terms of degrees of IMPORTANCE.

BTW, I am no relativist. I argue that relativism and a reason divorced from religion is a primary form of the BEAST.

Do you really understand where I am coming from.

For that matter then, ignore my critique of whether Genesis 1 is to be taken as temporal history, and, for that matter, let us grant that it is literalistically true.

STILL, I ask you, is God’s revealing of the way He made the PHYSICAL world as important as God’s revealing of how He HAS and WILL REmake the world spiritually in Salvation History?

Honestly, WHICH of these two forms of information is more important, and brings us closer to God?

Honestly, and you are a CATHOLIC, of all things.

 

[edwest2]

How God does something is very important. We believe all of the Bible, not just parts we happen to like. Yes, I am a Catholic. In Catholic grade school I was taught the Bible as quite literal. I was pointing out How Jesus worked in the Bible – without technology. And I believe that God can do whatever He wills.

As far as I can tell, the only reason anyone is concerned about the days in Genesis is their absolute, undying devotion to a particular secular idea and for no other reason. That is what makes people upset.

Peace,
Ed

 

[twinc]

even if it is literal, how about the metaphor in addition?

I am really talking about the metaphor.

what metaphor,by whom,presumably the six literal days of creation are also metaphors - btw what processes are merely material since materiality itself is a bluff it seems - twinc

 

[spauline]

How God does something is very important. We believe all of the Bible, not just parts we happen to like. Yes, I am a Catholic. In Catholic grade school I was taught the Bible as quite literal. I was pointing out How Jesus worked in the Bible – without technology. And I believe that God can do whatever He wills.

As far as I can tell, the only reason anyone is concerned about the days in Genesis is their absolute, undying devotion to a particular secular idea and for no other reason. That is what makes people upset.

Peace,
Ed

Well, for the record, I am NOT denying Great Divine Intervention in human history. Look at the list of Biblical History I cited. I am implying that these ages were VERITABLE history, even if sometimes described allegorically.

I believe, as does Catholic Tradition, that, the Fall rather quickly plunged humanity into a near total wickedness, sparing a remnant, and that God manifested Himself to the righteous remnant and spared them from a cleansing of humanity.

I believe, as does Catholic Tradition, that the ultimate root of the division of humanity into separate tongues is the result of a Positive Major Divine Intervention, whose purpose was to temporarily delay fallen man’s tendency to aggregate in selfish cooperation toward materialistic utopia and dominion, so as to provide for the formation of the Hebrew Covenant. Etc… for the Exodus, the history of the Jews and prophets in Israel, the Exile, the repentance and restoration, the Maccabbees, as well as the literal history of the Gospels.

What I AM saying, however, is that whatever degree of LITERALness is implied in the “days of creation”, such meanings that would attribute a PHYSICAL meaning to them are NOT as important as the Revelation of the profound THEOLOGY of SALVATION history, the great Divine Actions in human history that guide toward the coming of the Son and the process of His Redemption applied to the human race in the age of the Church.

For example, we can say, well, God literally made all things in six days, and it was in the sixth period of 24 hour segments that He literally made Adam and Eve.

And that is great. But is the fact that man appeared PHYSICALLy on earth with a soul on a SIXTH 24 hour period as important as that God REmade man in His likeness and Image in the SIXTH age of Salvation history by the Church’s triumph over pagan Rome and the conversion of Europe to the fullness of truth, where, for the first age since the fall (the sixth to be exact), great numbers of human beings once again had God’s grace in them since man walked in friendship before the Fall?

And were that not enough, that there THEOLOGICAL reasons why the ages of the Old Testament were FIVE (five days before Christ)?

THAT stuff is way deeper and more meaningful, at least, imho.

If you cannot see this, I question whether you are all that wise a person.

 

[spauline]

what metaphor,by whom,presumably the six literal days of creation are also metaphors - btw what processes are merely material since materiality itself is a bluff it seems - twinc

So, what, do you think I deny the reality that God must sustain all the Creation in existence at ALL instants, lest it fall into nothingness, or that the Creation is the product of the Divine Wisdom and is not random laws for survival, but a beautiful gift brimming with physical natures that are profound analogies for spiritual truths?

For crying out loud, the title of this thread is really about the analogy I am proposing. Therefore, instead of arguing about what the literal sense of the days of creation are, can we not simply look an ADDITIONAL layer of meaning that I PROPOSE.

For the record, my idea is based on Tradition: several ECFs draw this parallel to some extent.