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Genesis; The Literal Truth?
Topic Started: Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 19:30 (226 Views)
Mairtin
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Moved from SORS thread:
Clare
Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 18:06
There's more to Genesis than the Hexaemeron, Mairtin.
But it's the bit that you and Protestant fundamentalists use to try to dismiss science.

Quote:
 
So, while Our Lord may not have mentioned the six days

Why say "may not have" instead of "didn't"? I'll accept it, however, as some sort of grudging admission that in actual fact He did not say anything that supports a literal reading of Genesis contrary to waht you implied earlier.

(BTW, your reference to "beginning" is a red herring as the word could just as easily apply to the beginning of Mankind.)
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Mairtin
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Clare, whilst searching through previous exchanges, I came upon this from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Quote:
 
Meaning of the Hexaemeron

The genuine meaning of the Hexaemeron is not self-evident. The history of its exegesis shows that even the greatest minds differ in their opinion as to its real meaning. All interpreters begin by feeling the need of an explanation of this passage of the Bible, and all end by differing from all other interpreters. There are hints as to the meaning of Genesis 1 in other parts of Scripture. Proverbs 3:19 sq.; 8:22 sq.; Wisd., ix, 9; Sirach 24, refer to the personal Divine Wisdom what the Hexaemeron attributes to the word of God; Proverbs 8:23 sqq. and Sirach 24:14, exclude eternal creation. The words of the woman recorded in II Mach., vii, 28, inculcate a production out of nothing. Psalm 103 and Job 38 sq., give a poetical amplification of the Hexaemeron. But these Biblical elucidations cannot claim to be a commentary on Genesis 1. Nor has the Church given us any official explanation of the Mosaic account of God's creative work. We must, therefore, rely on the principles of Catholic hermeneutics and the writings of Catholic interpreters for our understanding of the Hexaemeron. It will be found convenient, in our review of the pertinent exegetical work, to distinguish between literal and allegorical explanations.


The legitimate character of this method of proceeding will become clear in the light of the aforesaid decree of 30 June, 1909, issued by the Biblical Commission. After safeguarding the literal, historical sense of the first three chapters of Genesis in as far as they bear on the facts touching the foundations of the Christian religion - e.g., the creation of all things by God at the beginning of time, the special creation of man, the formation of the first woman from the first man, the unity of the human race - the commission lays down several special principles as to the interpretation of the first part of Genesis: - (1) Where the Fathers and Doctors differ in their interpretation, without handing down anything as certain and defined, it is lawful, saving the judgment of the Church and preserving the analogy of faith, for everybody to follow and defend his own prudently adopted opinion. (2) When the expressions themselves manifestly appear to be used improperly, either metaphorically or anthropomorphically, and when either reason prohibits our holding the proper sense, or necessity compels us to set it aside, it is lawful to depart from the proper sense of the words and phrases in the above-mentioned chapters. (3) In the light of the example of the holy Fathers and of the Church herself, presupposing the literal and historical sense, the allegorical and prophetical interpretation of some parts of the said chapters may be wisely and usefully employed. (4) In interpreting the first chapter of Genesis we need not always look for the precision of scientific language, since the sacred writer did not intend to teach in a scientific manner the intimate constitution of visible things and the complete order of creation, but to give his people a proper notion according to the common mode of expression of the time. (5) In the denomination and distinction of the six days mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis the word yôm (day) can be taken either in its proper sense, as a natural day, or in an improper sense, for a period of time, and discussion on this point among exegetes is legitimate.


Note the date of the decree by the Biblical Commission - 30 June, 1909. I wonder who was the Pope at that time who approved the decree .... :wh: :stirthepot:
Edited by Mairtin, Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 19:42.
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Gerard

It would be interesting to know what the Rabbis of the time thought.
It would be even more interesting to know what Gamaliel thought.
There is a chance they left something in writing.

Gerry
"The institutional and charismatic aspects are quasi coessential to the Church's constitution" (Pope John Paul II, 1998).
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Clare
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Putting the "Fun Dame" into Fundamentalist
Mairtin
Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 19:30
Quote:
 
So, while Our Lord may not have mentioned the six days

Why say "may not have" instead of "didn't"?
Because I do not know everything He said, as it is not all recorded in Scripture.

He may well have mentioned it!

I prefer not to make assertions like "Our Lord never said such and such" because we are Catholics. We are not Sola Scriptura Protestants.

Everything in the Bible is true, but not everything that is true is in the Bible.
S.A.G.

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Clare
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Putting the "Fun Dame" into Fundamentalist
Mairtin
Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 19:41
Clare, whilst searching through previous exchanges, I came upon this from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Quote:
 
Meaning of the Hexaemeron

... (5) In the denomination and distinction of the six days mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis the word yôm (day) can be taken either in its proper sense, as a natural day, or in an improper sense, for a period of time, and discussion on this point among exegetes is legitimate.


Note the date of the decree by the Biblical Commission - 30 June, 1909. I wonder who was the Pope at that time who approved the decree .... :wh: :stirthepot:
Yes, and?

I am at liberty to believe in six days of creation. It says so.

And given that (as I understand it) the Fathers believed in six days, except St Augustine who believed it happened in an instant, and given that we are to accept what the Fathers were unanimous on, then the Fathers were unanimous on creation taking six days or fewer! (An instant being less than six days, by my reckoning.)
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Gerard

Quote:
 
St Augustine who believed it happened in an instant


:jaw:

Proof please .....

Gerry
"The institutional and charismatic aspects are quasi coessential to the Church's constitution" (Pope John Paul II, 1998).
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Mairtin
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Clare
Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 19:51
Quote:
 
Note the date of the decree by the Biblical Commission - 30 June, 1909. I wonder who was the Pope at that time who approved the decree .... :wh: :stirthepot:
Yes, and?
Well you can't certainly can't blame non-literal interpretation on some form of Modernism :grin:

Quote:
 
I am at liberty to believe in six days of creation. It says so.

Yes, you are quite free to ignore the concept of "prudently adopted opinion" recommended by the Commission, just as you are free to discard anything that science says - insisting that the Earth is flat or that the Moon is made of green cheese doesn't actually break any Church rules.

Quote:
 
And given that (as I understand it) the Fathers believed in six days, except St Augustine who believed it happened in an instant, and given that we are to accept what the Fathers were unanimous on, then the Fathers were unanimous on creation taking six days or fewer! (An instant being less than six days, by my reckoning.)

You understand wrong. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Cyprian and Lactantius all explicitly stated that a day was really a thousand years; there are several other Fathers whose opinions are not quite clear.

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Clare
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Putting the "Fun Dame" into Fundamentalist
Gerard
Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 19:54
Quote:
 
St Augustine who believed it happened in an instant


:jaw:

Proof please .....

Gerry
Catholic Encyclopedia
Quote:
 
St. Augustine attempted three different times to explain the Hexaemeron in a literal sense, but each time he ended with an allegorical exegesis. In 389 ("De Gen. c. Manich." in P.L., XXXIV, 173) he arrived at the conclusion that the cosmogonic evening and morning denote the completion and the inception of each successive work. In 393 ("De Gen. ad lit. lib. imperf." in P.L., XXXIV, 221) the great African Doctor starts again with a literal explanation of Genesis 1, but is soon perplexed by the questions: Did God consume the whole day in creating the various works? — How could there be days before there were heavenly luminaries? — How could there be light before the existence of the sun and the stars? — This leads him to adopt simultaneous creation, to identify the light of the first day with the angels, and to explain the evening and morning by the limitation and the beauty of the various created objects. In 401 Augustine began the third time to explain the Hexaemeron ("De Gen. ad lit. libr. XII" in P.L., XXXIV, 245; cf. "Retract.", II, 24; "Confess.", lib. XII sq., in P.L., XXXII, 825), but published his results only fifteen years later. He admits again a simultaneous formation of the world, so that the six days indicate an order of dignity — angels, the firmament, the earth, etc. Morning and evening he refers now to the knowledge of the angels, assuming that they denote respectively the angelic vision of things in the Word of God, and the vision of the objects themselves.

S.A.G.

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Clare
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Putting the "Fun Dame" into Fundamentalist
Mairtin
Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 20:09
...insisting that the Earth is flat or that the Moon is made of green cheese doesn't actually break any Church rules.
Are the Fathers unaminous on those matters?

I would say they are unanimous on the moon not being made of green cheese, so I will just have to accept that it isn't I guess.

And they are pretty unanimous on the non-flatness of the earth, except (and I got this from Wikipedia so it's probably nonsense) St Augustine.

But the general consensus of the Church has always been that the earth is round, and in fact the Old Testament does bear that out somewhere (I can't remember the reference, but I think it refers to "the round world" somewhere.)

So, you can put away those straw men now, Mairtin.
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OsullivanB

How wonderful. I hadn't even realised that any of the Fathers had addressed the lunar verdant cheese issue. Unanimous, eh?
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer
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Mairtin
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Gerard
Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 19:54
Quote:
 
St Augustine who believed it happened in an instant


Proof please .....

Clare is quite right about that, Gerry, I can't recall the exact refernce but he states that in his great work The Literal Interpretation of Genesis.

What she ignores, however, is that he explicitly stated that "[ I] worked out and presented the statements of the book of Genesis in a variety of ways according to my ability; and, in interpreting words that have been written obscurely for the purpose of stimulating our thought, I have not rashly taken my stand on one side against a rival interpretation which might possibly be better. I have thought that each one, in keeping with his powers of understanding, should choose the interpretation that he can grasp.(pp. 43-44)

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Anne-Marie

Mairtin
Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 20:09
Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Cyprian and Lactantius all explicitly stated that a day was really a thousand years; there are several other Fathers whose opinions are not quite clear.

This could, perhaps, be down to interpretation: What the English call 'eternity' the French call 'siecle de siecle' (century of century - that being 10,000), which isn't anything like how the English comprehend eternity!
As for whether a 'day' was 24hours or an unspecified time or phase of Creation, I have no idea.
Anne-Marie
FIAT VOLUNTAS DEI
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Clare
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OsullivanB
Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 20:24
How wonderful. I hadn't even realised that any of the Fathers had addressed the lunar verdant cheese issue. Unanimous, eh?
Well, I take their non-addressing of it as unanimity against the theory, but maybe it was unanimity in favour of it.

It sounds like a modernist novelty to me though.
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Mairtin
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It is also worth noting that whilst St Augustine came to the conclusion that everything was initially created in an instant, he also theorised that life forms were not brought into existence in the form we know them; he hypothesised the concept of rationes seminales, where life forms were created in a crude form but contained a built-in plan for them to evolve into how we see them today.

His ideas were obviously not totally in tune with what science tells us today but nevertheless when you consider he was writing 1500 years before Darwin, the Big Bang Theory and the discovery of genetics, his idea of an instantaneous creation bear an uncanny resemblance to the Big Bang and his rationes seminales to the Theory of Evolution and DNA.
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Rose of York
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Clare
Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 20:14
Mairtin
Tuesday, 24. August 2010, 20:09
...insisting that the Earth is flat or that the Moon is made of green cheese doesn't actually break any Church rules.
Are the Fathers unaminous on those matters?

I would say they are unanimous on the moon not being made of green cheese, so I will just have to accept that it isn't I guess.
Is there no record Jesus telling us, in writing, signed and witnessed?
Keep the Faith!

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