Posted on 01/29/2007 6:45:51 AM PST by stfassisi
***Warning***
The post below is blatant, sarcastic humor at the expense of the RCC. Please do not read it if you are easily offended!
I finally made it to the bobblehead site! Very cool! The best part is that if you order any of the religious bobbleheads, it comes with a mini bible keychain!!!
Maybe we can convince them to produce an entire bobblehead collection to coincide with the catholic calendar of saints. Even better, if they can get the RCC to throw in a free indulgence with each purchase, they'll sell like... well... indulgences!!!
I have sitting here, open on my lap, my very own well-worn copy of the New American Bible, St. Joseph Edition. It was a gift to me by my priest several years ago.
As I open it, I notice a few things.
The first, right at the front, is a letter, signed "Paulus P P. VI", the Pope himself, hailing this Bible.
And when I look to the left of that, I see two things.
I see "IMPRIMATUR", signed by Patrick Cardinal O'Boyle, Archbishop of Washington.
And I see "NIHIL OBSTAT", given by Stephen J. Hartdegen, O.F.M, S.S.L. and Christian P. Ceroke, S.T.D.
Next, is the Vatican II Constitution.
And next is a long instruction manual "How To Read Your Bible" offered up by the Bishop's Committee of the Cofraternity of Christian Doctrine".
And there, on page 27 of my Catholic Bible, under the heading entitled "How Do You Know?" I read this:
"Sometimes, it is secular science which gives Christians the lead to reconsider their Bible understanding. The discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo made Christians aware that Genesis 1 is not a sacred lesson in science but a poem on creation. No well-educated person denies any longer that the human species has developed from prinates. This knowledge helped Christians to understand that Genesis 2 and 3 is not a lesson in anthropology, but an allegory, teaching us the lesson that sin is the root of all evil."
Now, to me, that teaching of the Church there in my Catholic Bible, signed by the Pope, Imprimatured by the Archbishop, with the Nihil Obstat of two ecclesiasts and an essay by the American Bishops, has been a key to my understanding all of these years, which has allowed me to easily fit my rigorously scientific and rational education together with my faith.
For this exercise, which is what I did here, you have called me a heretic. Strong words.
You are not an ordained clergyman.
You are a man determined to assert authority you do not have.
You may continue to do so, of course.
We each represent different strands of Catholic thought, obviously strands which are very far apart.
Your strand has a tone to it which is familiar to students of the history of the Catholic Church. It is the key reason Protestants hate us.
My tone is that of reasoned argumentation.
In response to your accusation of heresy, I merely observe that you are very opinionated.
I have written no heresy here.
Nor will I.
If you think there is heresy, then seek out an ordained official of the church and have him read and impose discipline on one of us.
Everyone ought to be very careful about throwing around the heretic mantle. We're a very exclusive club, and you have not been allowed in... yet!
You've brushed up against the seduction that has separated "science" from theology. Today's science is better dubbed "naturalism" -- If we can't measure it, it must not exist. The fact is that God is greater than His creation. It is impossible for Him to be measured within our finite world , given His infinity. As such, the strictures of modern science are built to exclude God, or any possible explanation that includes the supernatural.
It is the height of arrogance to believe that anything beyond our limited capabilities is impossible. This arrogance has spawned utterly ridiculous "scientific" explanations for events. Events that are more probable when consideration to the Deity is paid.
Forget natsci for a minute and go to text.
Genesis 1: all birds made on 5th day, man made on 6th day.
Genesis 2: all birds made for man, as companions, after man was made.
It doesn't work.
"Everyone ought to be very careful about throwing around the heretic mantle. We're a very exclusive club, and you have not been allowed in... yet!"
Catholics need to be trebly careful, because it means something concrete. It means, if one is stubborn in it after correction, excommunication. Excommunication means that one can no longer participate in the salvific sacraments of the Church: an utter disaster.
To fling a charge of heresy at someone is to demand his exclusion from the Body of Christ. It is a dramatic charge, an odious charge, a charge that one has departed from God and become like Satan, the adversary, in our midst.
To publicly and repeatedly accuse someone of heresy is a grave thing, a public witness of the evil of one's interlocutor.
In my case, it is untrue. I have committed no heresy, writing what I wrote, thinking as I think. Nor do I aspire to.
Not true! Einstein's theory of special relativity includes the idea of "point of reference". When one event is viewed from two different reference points, the "truth" about the event depends upon which reference it is described in. Include with this the spatial distances between the location of the earth and the postulated origination point of the universe, and allow for the supernatural involvement of God... you wind up with a very good theory that fits nicely with literal, Bible-based creation AND with known facts describing both the physical universe and the geology of the earth.
Again, pick up a copy of Gerard Schroeder's book. He offers some fascinatingly insightful theories!
If they're not excommunicating the Dem politicos you're probably not in much jeopardy.
It wasn't an apple.
No disrespect, Scubie, but the website speaks in generalities and does not answer the very specific charge.
Let me cite the problem very specifically.
Genesis 1
1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and EVERY WINGED FOWL after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
1:23 And the evening and the morning were THE FIFTH DAY.
1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
...
1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were THE SIXTH DAY.
__________________________
To recap: God made all the birds - every winged fowl - on the fifth day. And God made man on the sixth day.
__________________________
Now let's look at Genesis 2
2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden...and there he put the man whom he had formed.
2:9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree ...
2:15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden...
2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat...
2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and EVERY FOWL OF THE AIR; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
To recap: God made man before the plants sprouted (which doesn't mean before he made the plants - they could have been seeds).
And then God made Eden, and then put man in it.
And then God saw Adam was alone, that this wasn't good, so then he made the animals to be his companions, including EVERY BIRD.
Genesis 1: EVERY BIRD is made BEFORE man.
Genesis 2: EVERY BIRD is made AFTER man, and for the purpose of being man's companion.
This is not a question of greater detail, as the website suggests. That the plants haven't sprouted yet is a greater detail. That the animals, made on the same day as Adam in Genesis 1, are made for Adam is a detail. But Genesis 2 reverses the order of creation of the birds, specifically, and creates an impossible situation, where every bird was created before man, and every bird was created after man (and there was no death to make the every bird created before to die and be replaced by every bird to be created after).
This is simply a Bible contradiction.
How could this happen?
The answer, the Jews will tell you, is that there were at least two ancient traditional sources for Genesis, what they call the Priestly source, and the Yahistic source. The story lines in the two sources were slightly different. The author of Genesis, who actually took to the task of writing down the ancient lore, did not want to choose one sacred tradition over the other, so he wrote them both down and blended them. But some details could not be blended and made to correspond. The creation of the birds is one of them.
This is no big deal: God created the world. He created life. He created man. But Genesis doesn't tell us how He did it. In fact, it gives us a conflicting account of when He made the birds. It's not a little thing IF one is a strict literalist, because it's a conflict which forces on to choose. I have read before the websites that say what the one you posted said: but they don't answer the problem of the birds.
Some translators know the problem of the birds, and have tried to finesse it by adding a verb tense. The NIV does this, inserted a HAD into Genesis 2, so that God puts the birds he HAD made into the garden with Adam. This is tampering with the text. There is no Hebrew pluperfect. There NEEDS to be a pluperfect there in order to make the problem of the birds go away, but there ISN'T one, in any text, in any manuscript. It should make a reader nervous if his translator is so desperate to get rid of a tiny little textual problem that he actually adds words and changes verb tenses in the Bible. The NIV is not faithful to the scripture for Genesis 2:19. (You haven't raised this yet, but you will find it on a website and link it. Don't. The NIV move is not correct for the Hebrew OR the Greek. There is no "had", no pluperfect tense there.)
Now, what this means is that SOME PEOPLE have a problem, because they have insisted on the literalism of every word in all the text. If that were really true, what does one make of the Levitical and Deuteronomic Laws of divorce, which Jesus nullifies and says did not reflect what God wants for marriage.
Probably the most alarming case of a textual conflict is Jesus giving the sign of Noah, and saying that the Son of Man will be in the earth three days and three nights.
Jesus died on Friday afternoon. One day (stretching it). He was put in the tomb before sunset and the onset of the Sabbath. Night passed and Saturday morning came (one night). Saturday's sun rose and set (Day two). The night fell. Night two. Jesus rose before dawn on Sunday.
He was in the grave two days and two nights. Had he risen on Monday, he would have been in the grave three days and three nights. There's no finessing it. The text that says what Jesus said would happen does not descibe precisely what DID happen. It doesn't matter to ME, but it does matter to those who demand that every word be taken absolutely literally.
The mustard seed is NOT the smallest seed. Jesus was wrong about that, if he was speaking literally. If he was not speaking literally there, because he was making a point, why must God have been speaking literally in Genesis, when he was also making a point, and not a moral point.
Jesus said that the Old Testament was: Love your neighbor as yourself and love God above all. What does when the birds were created have to do with that?
There are other examples, and maybe we should cite them, but not yet.
There is a far larger point, and it has to do with authority and faith.
The website you cited was arguing from a certain perspective, and directed at a certain type of argument. I have answered these same arguments myself. The argument about textual conflicts and inaccuracies is generally asserted by non-Christians to ridicule the Bible. Their point is "Look! The Bible is in conflict here! Look, it errs there! Therefore, the whole religion is a pile of crap!"
But I have done nothing of the kind! What I have pointed out, gently but insistently, is that the Bible is not the bedrock on which faith can be built. The Bible is good, and contains the Word of God, but if faith is built on just the Bible, it is liable to be creaky, as creaky as the texts. There really are places where the text conflicts with itself (the birds; three days), never mind external reality (the mustard seed, the fact that plants were being eaten before the Fall, and therefore there was in fact death, of plants anyway, before The Fall). If Faith is built on the Holy Spirit, one sees these things, knows we are dealing with very ancient texts and very ancient ideas - some of them cultural and traditional. One knows what Jesus said about Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament -one knows GOD'S point in inspiring the thing, because Jesus tells us. And one is not alarmed by the inconsistencies and errors. This is a work of men. They were inspired by God, and the thing God inspired is related true, but as with the mustard seed, it is relayed to men, through the hands of men, and the prism of the understanding of men of that day. At one point, the Bible says the Hebrews were in Egypt 400 years. At another, 430+ years. A conflict! Perhaps. But the ancient Jews did not care (and modern Jews don't either). Neither do Catholics - though I hesitate now to be too positivist about Catholic beliefs since lest some Catholic layman with a differing view come out of his armchair and start screaming "Heresy!". 400 years, 438(?) years. Either way it's a long time. Good enough. That wasn't God's POINT. Jesus told us God's point.
The problem with taking the literalist view is that you have to end up avoiding, and eventually denying, the fruits of all other learning. Natural science advances? To the extent it contradicts Genesis, it must be in error, and evolution of any sort must not be taught. The world is a few thousand years old because Genesis says so, and Genesis is the Inspired Word of God, and therefore every word in it, on every subject, must be literally and exactingly true. Therefore the world cannot be very old, and evolution didn't happen. And dinosaur bones? Died in the flood, I guess. And Three Days and Three Nights? The trouble is that one ends up having to perform mental contortions (which are never completely believable to many people who feel they have to do them). The BIGGER trouble is that one must then get very, very aggressive with anybody like me who gently and patiently points out that on Jesus' own words about what God meant, we really don't have to do these contortions, we really don't have to oppose biological science, we really don't have to avert our eyes from dinosaur bones. It's ok. Jesus told us what the Old Testament meant. It doesn't matter that Jesus wasn't in the tomb for three days and three nights, and we don't have to resort to some sort of twisted counting of days and nights that does not respect Jewish or Roman custom or either Hebrew, Greek, Latin or English language. (Nobody in any of those languages or cultures would have ever said that, after midnight tonight, it is now FRIDAY night, a different night, even though the day changes. It is desperate and pathetic, and rings hollow, to count the Saturday night before Easter as two nights. There is actually a whole branch of Christianity devoted to the idea that Jesus was really crucified on THURSDAY, because that would make Sunday the day of the Resurrection and not conflict with the literal Bible words.) Jesus went into the tomb and came out after three days, more or less. That's what matters. Did the cock crow once or thrice? This is not a difference about which to build a theology. Different authors remembered things a little differently. So what? These minor variations do not matter a jot when speaking of the message of salvation...UNLESS one has become obsessed with literalism.
But why would one do that?
On what basis?
Jesus wasn't. He amended the Torah quite a bit. And he summarized the whole OT in two sentences.
It is only if one assigns EXCESSIVE authority to the Scriptures, as the FOUNDATION of faith, that these problems erupt.
Now, I am not going to criticize you for doing it.
I do not do it, and most Catholics do not do it.
This is one of the key reasons why reading of the Scripture alone, without the assistance of clergy, was frowned upon. People reading something sacred are very serious, and may become TOO literalist and legalistic about the words. Remember, the letter of the law kills, but the spirit gives life.
There are many ways to approach this book, this Bible. Reverentially, for the inspired Word of God, yes, we all agree on that. Where we disagree is on the interpretation of those words, and the hermeneutic whereby that can be done.
"It wasn't an apple."
How do you know?
"If they're not excommunicating the Dem politicos you're probably not in much jeopardy."
I'm in no jeopardy whatever, because I have committed no heresy.
But you know what, your point about the Church's failure to discipline notorious, overt pro-aborts is worth noting.
The pro-abort Catholics really ARE a scandal.
There's no mention of eating any apple in the book. The "fruit" eaten was from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Ok. When Eve ate the banana.
You realize, bananas aren't fruits, they're plantains.
Anyway, what Adam & Eve ate wasn't actually a "fruit".
It wasn't?
What was it then?
LOL.
No one can say you're inconsistent in you're Catholic-bashing.
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