The Gap Theory, Don’t Know Anything About It

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Ok,we’re on the same page, I think. The ND church I checked out sounds tomato believe Scripture is like a history textbook.
 
@Hope1960 are you familiar with “the birds and the bees?”

You know how that story tells children the story of human sexuality? It’s not a lie, it’s true the meaning it conveys. But it’s told in a way children can understand. It’s not the same as a biology textbook describing homo sapien intercourse, but it’s essentially revealing that truth.

In the same sort of way, Genesis reveals the truths about faith and the history of man and God’s people. But it’s doing it in a manner which ancient Hebrew people could understand, it’s not conveying those truths in a way which 21st century Harvard grad students would convey it.
 
Hope1960 said:
The ND church I checked out sounds tomato believe Scripture is like a history textbook.
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That’s called “biblical literalism,” and such a view contradicts both science and the Church’s teaching on how Scripture is to be understood.
 
But we can believe in evolution is correct, right?

Do we have to believe in a worldwide flood that killed everyone except Noah and his family?
 
Hope1960 said:
But we can believe in evolution is correct, right?

Do we have to believe in a worldwide flood that killed everyone except Noah and his family
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Yes, we can believe in evolution, with a couple caveats.

We have to believe God was guiding and in control of evolution, his Providence over it. And we have to believe that God literally created Adam and Eve, the first true human beings made with a soul created in the Image of God.

And the flood of Noah, it is acceptable to believe it was a large flood which engulfed an entire “world” - remember, the world was VERY small to people living in 3,000 BC. So we have to believe that the people who lived in that “world” of 3,000 BC were wiped out entirely and only Noah and his family survived.

The “world” of the Genesis flood which happened around 3,000 B.C, and the “world” of the Sacred Author of Genesis writing between 1,000-500 B.C. was an immensely smaller place than the “globe” of the “world” we know today.

Keep in mind, God was inspiring the Sacred Author to write down Sacred History conveying theological truth, he wasn’t concerned with giving him a 21st century geology or topography textbook.
 
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Hope1960 said:
But we can believe in evolution is correct, right?
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Within the constraints of the Church’s theological teaching, yes.
Do we have to believe in a worldwide flood that killed everyone except Noah and his family?
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No, because that’s not what the Bible teaches. 😉

Ask yourself: did the sea animals die in the flood? And, if not, then did God kill all living creatures except those in the ark? 😉

Let’s take it a step further: in Genesis 6, the setup for the flood narrative offers a few surprising ideas, if you take it completely literally:
  • Do you think God is omniscient? A literal approach to Genesis 6 says that this is not true, since God didn’t see what would happen to humans (after all, it says that He “regretted” his decision to create humanity).
  • Did God achieve what He had intended with the flood? If you take the account literally, then the answer is no:
    • not only is the wickedness of humanity not destroyed, but it continues immediately following the flood! . See what Noah and his sons do after the ‘rainbow covenant’ narrative.
    • In Genesis 6:13, God says that He intends to destroy creatures and the earth. Was the earth destroyed?
So, I ask you: does the flood account really say what you claim it says? If not, then we have to conclude that it doesn’t teach a literal global flood in the way that literalists would like to claim it does.
 
Back to evolution, the “constraints of the Church” teaches that we can believe in evolution if we believe it was done by God and He gave Adam and Eve their souls after they evolved, correct?
 
Hope1960 said:
He gave Adam and Eve their souls after they evolved,
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He gave them their Souls at the moment of their creation.

Whether Adam was literally created from the dust instantly and full grown and Eve literally created from his rib is another story…

I personally believe it’s allegorical, meaning Adam was born from hominids who, if you went back far enough in time were created from earth, and Eve was born from his “rib” simply meaning she was born as flesh of his flesh and bone, a fully human woman who also had a soul created in the Image of God like her husband Adam.

The way Adam and Eve were specifically created has been a theological debate since before Christ, and it’s ongoing today.

So long as you believe Adam and Eve were the first true humans with a soul created in the Image of God, you’re all set.
 
Hope1960 said:
the “constraints of the Church” teaches that we can believe in evolution if we believe it was done by God and He gave Adam and Eve their souls after they evolved, correct?
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If evolution happened, it didn’t happen outside God’s will, so yes … we would believe that it happened according to God’s plan.

We believe that Adam and Eve were the first true humans. So, Adam and Eve can’t be proto-humans; they have to be fully human. If that’s what you mean by “after [Adam and Eve] evolved”, then ‘yes’.
 
In the second story of creation, Genesis 2:21 reads: “So the Lord God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The Lord God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man.” Some important literary imagery needs to be considered.

First, the “deep sleep” denotes God’s divine activity. God Himself is the one creating. In Chapter 2 of Genesis, God created Adam from the earth and breathed life into him, and now He takes from the flesh of the man to create the woman.

Second, why God used a rib is a mystery. However, some scholars suggest that the word “rib” in the ancient Sumerian language means both “rib” and “life.” Accepting this meaning of “life,” all of the phrasing — “rib,” “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh,” and “man and woman,” — denotes the creative love of God and the original unity of man and woman. Remember in Genesis 1:18, we read, “God created man in His image; in the divine image He created him; male and female He created them.” While each person is made in God’s image and likeness, the complete image and likeness of God is found in marriage when man and woman become one as husband and wife, when the two become one flesh.

 
Gorgias said:
If evolution happened, it didn’t happen outside God’s will, so yes … we would believe that it happened according to God’s plan.

We believe that Adam and Eve were the first true humans. So, Adam and Eve can’t be proto-humans; they have to be fully human. If that’s what you mean by “after [Adam and Eve] evolved”, then ‘yes’.
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Are you familiar with Edward Feser and his idea (which may have come from somebody else), that Adam and Eve appeared by evolution but God gave them souls, making them true humans. Their offspring mated with existing humanoids and their offspring were given souls, also making them human, and so forth?
Is that ok in your book? My former priest whom I’m still in contact says Catholics can believe the theory, as did philosopher Ed Feser himself, in email.
 
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KevinK said:
simple
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But faith isn’t simple.

Faith can’t be reduced to a series of affirmations. Faith is a complex human dynamic, and it doesn’t do anybody favors by oversimplifying one of, if not the most complex aspect of human existence.

When comparing faith to calculus or computer programming, faith makes those things look elementary.

In fact, I’d say true faith, faith of the heart, DEEP faith, is utterly ineffable.
 
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KevinK said:
Yes and no are also mutually exclusive.
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Depends.

Have you stopped beating your wife?

(Your answer, I hope, will be “yes, I am not beating my wife” and “no, I never beat her”. So… “yes and no”, in a non-mutually exclusive answer. You’re welcome.)
 
The very Mystery at the heart of our faith is a sort of Divine Contradiction.

God is perfectly One, yet Three. There are Three Divine Persons, yet One God. God is Three, and God is One - God is not only Three, God is not only One, God is One and Three, Three in One.

It’s a Divine Mystery that resists unraveling, it’s Ineffable just like the Name of the Father. YHWH, the One Who Is, I AM WHO AM, the Being Who Is Being.

Something which Western theology could learn from the East would be to resist the temptation to have to break down everything about our faith into logical suppositions, and simply sit back and enjoy the Mystery, live and breathe the Mystery of God, since we live and move and have our being within the Divine Mystery.
 
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That is not at all analogous to the question being discussed. It is basically a semantic parlor trick.
 
KevinK said:
It is basically a semantic parlor trick.
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🤷‍♂️

If you want to look at my original answer, which said “here are the ways in which ‘historical narrative’ and ‘mythical narrative’ are the same, and here are the ways that they’re different”, and characterize them as “mutually exclusive”, then that’s your prerogative. After all, it’s easier to mock an answer than respond to it.

However, if you wish to respond to the substance of my reply, I’m all ears. 😉
 
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