It seems that some who have commented on my post about Scott Hahn want to stick to a fundamentalist and literalist approach to the Bible, the Book of Genesis in particular, the Creation story specifically. Let me try to set things straight here. First off, "creation story" is itself a misnomer; there are two different creation stories at the beginning of the Book of Genesis. (Genesis 1:1-2:3 and 2:4-2:25.) Read them yourself and compare them. Among inconsistencies between the two the most glaring involves the creation of man and woman. In the first account (the "on the first day, etc" telling) God creates man and woman together after he has made the plants and animals. "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." (Gen 1:27). In the second, he first creates "the man" (ha-adam in Hebrew). Then he creates all the plants. The the animals in an effort to give the man a helpmate. Finally he puts the man in a deep sleep, removes a rib and creates a woman, whom the man names Eve.
If one insists on taking Genesis 1 and 2 literally then one is forced into mental gymnastics in order to make the two stories mesh. Do we believe in a God that would require us to do that? If he had intended the stories to be a literal retelling of exactly how he created don't you think he would have made them non-contradictory? I would think that the perfect God in Whom we believe would be able to get His facts right!
Fundamentalists (Protestant or Catholic) apparently have no such problem. They even take the absurdity to a higher level. In order to defend the 6,000-some year old age of the earth (as calculated by the 17th century Anglican Bishop James Ussher) they resort to the claim that God planted fossils that appear ancient in order to deceive nonbelievers. Give me a break! That's not the kind of God I want to believe in.
It is time for people to grow up intellectually and accept the Bible as the Word of God, not a history and science treatise.
About Me
- Fr. Charles Ledderer
- The Dakotas, USA
- Hi! I am a Catholic priest new to this thing they call "cyberspace." I thought I'd take a shot at expresses my opinions and sharing them with all the world.
3 comments:
It's in the nuances though that there is the real trouble. It is simply not a case of either being correct....conservative or liberal.
You wrote at the end of your outside piece:
It is time for people to grow up intellectually and accept the Bible as the Word of God, not a history and science treatise.
But the Bible as history does occur here and there especially after Genesis though there are surface mistakes at times. In short there is a tendency to use the Genesis-as-literature truism....to dismiss later historical moments that a non miraculous modern age also does not want to accept. Liberals can err as well as conservatives can err.
That God created light on the 1st day (and there was evening and morning recorded for the 1st three days) but God didn't create the sun til day 4 bespeaks non historical literature with a faulty scientific foundation: ie due to primitive man not seeing overcast days as having anything whatsoever to do with the sun....ergo there could be evening and morning for three days and the sun could be created later since overcast days are lighted by themselves to the primitive mind.
So we rightly dismiss the empirical level of that passage while allowing for a deeper meaning than the empirical should someone discover the deeper meaning.
But to use this admittedly primitive aspect of Genesis...to later dismiss the stopping of the waters of the Jordan in a wall....is to make a scholarly jump since the form of literature at that later point is not primitive at all. Still later, aspects of the Samson story may well be a form of literature that is non historical while the previous account of the Jordan stopping may be history.
In short there are Old Testament moments that are miraculous and happened historically...like the Jordan stopping and the manna from heaven... and there are Old Testament moments like Jonah inside the fish that may well be a form of literature.
There is ample room for both theological extremes to err. The conservative wants a literal flood even though 40 days and 40 nights of rain would not cover a small tree let alone the highest mountains. And the liberal wants to be able to disbelieve every miracle in the Old Testament by borrowing the Genesis mistakes whenever he bumps into a miracle in a literature form that is historical. But God worked with the Jews through grandiose signs that He no longer uses with the gentiles in Christian times. But gentile scholars want to believe that grandiose miracles never happened because they want to be able to talk to intelligent non religious gentiles...with no problems on the miracle level aside from the Christian ones.
It seems that some who have commented on my post about Scott Hahn want to stick to a fundamentalist and literalist approach to the Bible, the Book of Genesis in particular, the Creation story specifically.
Seeing as I'm the only one who chose to disagree with you in the other comment box, I'm guessing that this is directed at me.
What have I said that leads you to this conclusion? I have met literalists, and I'd assure you, I'm not one of them.
Fr. Charles Ledderer, The Dakotas, USA you are impersonating a Catholic priest. Your identity is fictitious. There are people on here that are believing you. I am asking you not to trick people anymore.
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