Posted on 07/22/2009 10:39:38 PM PDT by bdeaner
Lamentable but essentially correct.
What, pray tell, is "reason?" Does "reason" somehow tell us that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are didactic mythology? In what way is this viewpoint the work of "reason?"
What if "science" were to start making claims about the "new testament," such as that people can't be born without fathers or that dead people can't come back to life? Would you then be as flip as you are when it is the Hebrew Bible that they are attacking?
You Catholics are such hypocrites. You use "science" to discredit the Hebrew Bible because you fear and loathe it. But you slam the dogmatic door shut when "science" starts making claims about your precious "holy book." If that isn't the dictionary definition of hypocrisy I don't know what is.
You'll never understand, will you, that there is a culture in Rural America whose devotion to the historicity of the "old testament" is as great as your devotion to the historicity of the saints? But Catholic literature, which is so understanding toward totem poles and indigenous paganism, condemns rural American Biblicism with full force. Evidently there is room in your religion for everything but the Bible (except as didactic or chr*stological mythology).
Why don't you tell that to "bdeaner" and your other Bible-hating co-religionists who are willing to baptize almost any pagan ritual and make it chr*stian but who are engaged in a war against "Biblical literalism?" Obviously, according to them, this is the one thing J*sus will not tolerate.
THANK YOU!!!
Why don't you Catholics who are more traditional with regard to the Bible take a greater role in attacking Biblical modernism when your co-religionists shoot off their big bazoos about "we Catholics believe in evolution!" "We Catholics believe the documentary hypothesis!"??? What do you think it says when only non-Catholics and anti-Catholics object to these things? How could an impartial observer not conclude that the Bible simply is not important to Catholics?
Two possible ways that could happen:
Oh, you said how could they “NOT conclude?”
Simple honesty.
Some Protestant comments...
Commentaries are a great way to find out how others have interpreted or applied scripture. I assume there are Catholic ones available. A number of good & free online commentaries can be found here:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bible/features/commentaries.html
http://deeperstudy.com/link/commentaries.html
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/commentaries.i.html
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.html
Church Fathers: http://www.ccel.org/fathers.html
Hundreds of online books and commentaries here: http://www.ccel.org/index/author-A.html
Strong’s Concordance, in a great & free format: http://www.tgm.org/bible.htm
Although many Catholics won’t do handsprings, Martin Luther’s writing - many of them - are available here:
http://www.martinlutheronline.blogspot.com/
Personally, I find it much easier to study the Bible when I read stuff I don’t expect to agree with (bdeaner’s posts!), and then need to seek out the meaning for myself.
A website that looks interesting, but I just found today & haven’t explored: http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/
Cheers to all. It is always good to see folks reading scripture, but it is also worth remembering that no scripture was intended for intellectual one-up-manship...it is intended to draw us to God, thus changing how we live.
One extra comment - we have access today to study aids that would have made me weep with joy just 10 years ago. It is a terrible thing that many Christians prefer “American Idol” to reading God’s Word.
**They’re just not supposed to believe it.**
Why do you say that?
**Catholics love “modern scholarship.” Is there a “Catholic bible” in existence that contains traditional commentary from fathers or doctors of the church rather than “modern scholarship?” I doubt it. **
Yes, you can find a Jerusalem Study Bible with traditional thoughts, references to the Church fathers, and extensive footnoting. Also other commentaries are available with traditional language.
Six translations of the Daily Readings are posted on the Daily Mass Readings thread. I think we have it covered.
I forgot about that one. Thanks.
**. It is a terrible thing that many Christians prefer “American Idol” to reading God’s Word.**
You nailed it there!
**They’re just not supposed to believe it.**
Why do you say that?
::Sigh:: Did you not read the article at the top of this thread? The one that has all the buzzwords for "the Bible is full of errors?" Or have you not read the comments of the poster, bdeaner--the man who rejects the events of Genesis 1-11 because they contradict "science" but who stubbornly maintains a belief in such "unscientific" things as the resurrection of the dead?
I know that you're fairly literal when it comes to Genesis. But I don't understand why you don't challenge your more anti-literalist co-religionists on this forum. I don't understand how people who believe Genesis and people who don't believe Genesis can form one big happy religious family. It's as if the issue simply isn't that important. How can this be so? How can anything be more important?
Please forgive me for repeating something for the umpteenth time. But I don't get it. You regularly confab on the friendliest of terms with people whose opinions on the Bible are despicable--and yes, they post them--but you never see it. And when I call them on it, you ask where in the world I get these ideas. How is it that you miss all the posts that I see? I don't get it.
Is there anything a fellow Catholic could say against the truth of the Bible that would cause you to object?
Please forgive me. I know you're a nice person. But so help me, I do not and cannot understand you.
Translation: if you believe all that stuff actually happened.
Yes, I believe all that stuff actually happened. Just as you hypocritically (and in utter contradiction to your own position) believe J*sus was born to a virgin mother, multiplied loaves and fishes, walked on water, and rose from the dead. Did you not know that each and every one of these alleged events contradicts science? They couldn't have happened! If you believe they did, you are obviously reading the new testament as a "science book!"
BTW, for what it's worth, cosmogony isn't science at all. Science has nothing to say about cosmogony at all. It is wholly a Theological subject and the Torah is certainly theology.
To be honest with you, I think the physical sciences so overwhelmingly support a view of the origin of the universe that is at odds with Genesis taken literally, I would sooner give up my belief in the Bible than my belief in physics if a literal interpretation was the only valid interpretation. Fortunately that’s not the case. On the contrary, physics overwhelmingly, via circumstantial evidence, supports the belief in a Creator. Science has strengthened my faith, not weakened it.
Also, transbustantiation does not violate the principles of science, because the transformation of the Eucharist into Christ’s body is not a change in the substance of the host — the material aspect of the host examined by science — but rather a change in its essence, which is not in the realm of science, but taken for granted by it.
There are however miracles such as the Virgin Birth that are singular events that violate scientific principles, but that is the very nature of a miracle, without which it would not be a miracle. They are miracles because they are singular and non-repeatable, and therefore outside the realm of science, which is the examination of measureable and repeatable events. Science does not contradict the belief in the miraculous, rather, the miraculous is outside the limits of science.
Amen to that. It’s a good ‘reminder’ from the Bishops, even if we already do.
I'm not surprised.
There are however miracles such as the Virgin Birth that are singular events that violate scientific principles, but that is the very nature of a miracle, without which it would not be a miracle. They are miracles because they are singular and non-repeatable, and therefore outside the realm of science, which is the examination of measureable and repeatable events. Science does not contradict the belief in the miraculous, rather, the miraculous is outside the limits of science.
The only thing more palpably oppressive in your post than your hypocrisy is your apparent ignorance of it.
You insist that "singular miracles" are outside science--yet you also insist that the Creation of the Universe, an event which by the very nature of things is the most singularly miraculous non-repeatable "outside the laws of science" event that ever happened, is subject to the laws of uniformitarian, naturalistic science, and you would sooner reject the Bible than that science. Pray tell how the ex nihilo Creation of Everything from Nothing comes within the purview of science while the virgin birth does not.
Your charges of hypocrisy and other over-inflated rhetoric makes it difficult to have a reasonable, sincere discussion with you about these issues. Can you have a conversation with me that gives me some benefit of the doubt, and in which you listen with some generosity before jumping to conclusions? I am not asking you to agree with me, just to hear me out. It seems to me that you box me into straw man positions that do not represent what I am actually stating. How do you suggest I deal with that problem so that you can understand where I’m coming from? Do you want to understand? I’m not asking for agreement, just an understanding before you disagree, so that you are clear about what you are disagreeing with.
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