Comments on: More on A Young Earth

By: T O'Rama

T O'Rama — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 02:45:10 +0000

Number 8 on your list is very, very interesting to me, something I’ve long struggled with. Cardinal Ratzinger says he would love to retire and study that issue, and the issue of the Fall in general, with great intensity.
The swarmy NY Times writer Nicholas Kristof once wrote, “All religions have scriptures that say some ridiculous things, Islam no more than others. The trick of modernization has been to interpret the ridiculous bits away as merely
‘allegorical’.”

I posted his comments on a Catholic billboard and received this wise response:

Did we take the 7-day creation account literally until science made us treat it as allegory?

Well, yes and no.
There is a long tradition (both Jewish and Christian) of reading Scripture in a sophisticated, multi-level manner. So allegorical interpretation is quite venerable.
Part of the difficulty is the genre of the creation narratives. History did not exist when Genesis was written, for example. And how literally did surrounding groups regard their creation narratives?

A useful analogy might be the Illiad of Homer. As an epic, it purports to relate the history of the Trojan war. Many scholars believed it was all fiction until the 1920s when Troy was discovered. They found not one but seven cities built one upon the other. Scholars believe that some events were not recorded literally but symbolically. For example, some believe that the Trojan Horse is a symbolic allusion to Posseiden, god of horses, the sea, earthquakes. Scholars found evidence that an earthquake assisted one of the sieges of the city. The idea is that that earthquake was recorded in a memorable way, as the Trojan horse.
There is literal content to the creation narratives, but theologians debate where the literal begins and ends. A minimalist position is that the creation narratives tell us that God created the world and that the world is basically good. Others favor a more exact correspondance.

Your newspaper author demonstrates an ignorance not only of traditional hermeneutics, but also of modern orality studies (including Homerics).

Like or Dislike: 0 0 (0)

By: Wiseman

Wiseman — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 02:43:13 +0000

I’m going to bed, but two comments first.

Pope St. Pius X in his Syllabus of Errors condemned the following: “Divine inspiration does not extend to all of Scared Scripture so that it renders its parts, each and every one, free from every error.” This is clearly directed at those who claimed, at the time, that Scripture was inerrant only in “faith and morals” but not in history and other details.

Second, as a left-hander, I’m not sure I appreciate the designation of “mutant”. I suppose it could be worse. Goodnight.

Like or Dislike: 0 0 (0)

By: William

William — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 02:40:28 +0000

I get to have a final bit of fun:

1. The Bible is inerrant (in its spiritual authority) and Genesis is (a mix of) history (and allegory, and analogy and anagoge).

2.There was a real worldwide (but possibly localized) Flood (just as the Jews were selected out of all humanity, so might have been the flooded area), and it occur(r)ed after the Fall (as opposed to before the Fall?);

3. Seems reasonable

4. Yep.

5. Follows from 4

6. Humani Generis leaves room to speculate, but he had to birth her somehow. And probably from his right side. Left-handers are much less common – i.e. mutants.

7. Right again

8. Yeah, but did the lion lie down with the lamb?

9. Got me there.

10.The world was created for man (under God, with liberty and justice for all, and it might have taken a very long time, the end so there).

Like or Dislike: 0 0 (0)