WishboneDawn

Then we've got nothing to discuss on that matter I guess.

xunzian

Been a while since I read The City of God,

xunzian

But as I recall, he thought it was a metaphor. Basically, a version of history that God could reveal without TOTALLY BLOWING PEOPLE'S MINDS. For lack of a better description.

Personally, I think that is a very sane position for a believer to take. In the modern day, when we know better. So much more so from a time when people didn't.

lpetrich

Various works of various Church Fathers and medieval theologians are online at http://www.newadvent.org including St. Augustine's City of God. So xunzian, you may want to reread that book there.

Plutarch, in his On Isis and Osiris, gave us an admirably precise statement of rejection of literalism:
He went on to argue for allegorical interpretation.

Some of the people here seem to be claiming that every Xian theologian believed that the Bible was 100% allegory until those gawdawful fundies started claiming that it is literally true, that these theologians had believed about the entire Bible what Plutarch had believed about Egyptian mythology.

But instead they believed that the Universe is about 6000 years old, calculating a creation date of about 4000 BCE (Masoretic) or 5500 BCE (Septuagint). Did any theologian believe that the Genesis creation stories describe timeless processes and that the Universe is eternal? Not that I know of. And Augustine titled Chapter 40 of Book 18 "About the Most Mendacious Vanity of the Egyptians, in Which They Ascribe to Their Science an Antiquity of a Hundred Thousand Years." in which he harrumphed that the Universe is only about 6000 years old. He also believed the history of the Bible to be literally true, and he put together a comparative timeline of Biblical and Gentile history.

Such belief in the literal historicity of the Old Testament did not stop theologians from arguing that it was an allegory of the life of Jesus Christ, a foreshadowing of him. They believed that the text has both literal and allegorical meanings, and not necessarily one or the other.

Sitamun

I don't know if this has already been stated. I do know from personal experience that my religion class (catholic) was taught that genesis was the literal truth, until I voiced out loud in front of all the class that science says otherwise. Then my teacher changed the story to it being metaphoric. (six days COULD mean six billion years). This was 20 years ago, I don't know if they still do it. I honestly don't see why they wouldn't still do it. It wasn't just genesis either. They taught the bible as the literal truth until confronted with evidence that says otherwise, then they would change. (My religion teachers just LOVED me)

jaymack2

I'm a product of Catholic education all the way through graduate school. The nuns in my youth basically taught as if Genesis really happened, then somewhere in high school the priests starting using a more allegorical interpretation ("Maybe each day of Creation was really a million years . ."). However, I taught CCD classes until recently, and our textbook never referred to anything but a literal interpretation of everything in the Old and New testament. Genesis, Exodus (the manna in the desert), the parting of the Red Sea, everything was still being taught to the kids as if it really happened.

I think what the Church has done in modern times, among educated people, is encourage a sort of collective unspoken conspiracy to not ask uncomfortable questions. That is, we don't say out loud that the Bible is literally true, and we still read the Scriptures and talk about them as if they're true, but each person individually doubts the Genesis story (among others) and can give him or herself an out when cornered by calling it allegory. It's like the collective pretending that goes on with Santa Claus.

I think it's purposely vague and muddled, so the Church and believers can wiggle out of uncomfortable questions about truth. The problem for me is that once you start calling some parts of the Bible allegory, it opens up the rest of it to critical examination, and then you see that there are many other areas where literal truth is almost impossible to prove. To me, that's why the Church relies so heavily on Sacred Tradition -- which is basically saying "We have a tradition that says this is true. Just believe because we say so."

Chili

Yes, and it would be wrong for the Catholic Church to disspel the mystery of faith from the pulpit by telling believers that it is all in their head because that is where the transformation of the mind takes place.

aa5874

But, don't Catholics believe the Gospels of John is true right now?

John 1.1-3 John 1.10 John 1.14
And don't Catholics believe in Jesus today?

Well, this is Jesus, according to gMark 10.6 And don't Catholics believe the words of their so-called "Paul", the supposed co-founder of the Roman Church?

This is the so-called "Paul" in Colossians 1.16 And what about the history of the Church with respect to creation?

This is Eusebius who wrote the history of the Church, "Church History" 1.2.5 By the way is the guy you are debating Catholic? He needs to read the history of the Church. Just ask him who created Jesus, the Catholics or the Creator, literally?

2-J

Isn't the Catholic Church's basic position "it doesn't really matter?" (I've heard pretty much the same from some Anglicans). Science is a gift from God to help us understand the wonders of creation, but how exactly the earth and universe came about, as described by science, isn't that relevant for faith. Science by its nature is never going to be in a position to say 'God didn't make the universe' or 'God made the universe'. Even dealing with hypotheses that don't posit a 'moment of creation', it can still be argued (baselessly from a scientific / 'strictly rational' point of view, but that's exactly the point...) that the whole order of the universe requires God to sustain it in a way not accessible to science.

J842P

He wouldn't and hasn't, Logos. That's why he created the Catholic Church to guide us.