Continuing with Tom Dorsey

Men, Dinos, Trent, Church Fathers · Continuing with Tom Dorsey · Men, Dinos, C14 and Harry Weatherford · Two other subthreads, here with Creationists

Hans-Georg Lundahl

[link to previous one]

Tom Dorsey

Hans-Georg Lundahl your giving me you as a reference? And by who's authority do you claim VII was invalid?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I am not giving you me as a reference, if you looked it up, I am notifying you our debate has been mirrored on my blog.

On authority of Pope Michael.

Tom Dorsey

Hans-Georg Lundahl I'm finding Clement of Alexandria and Origen, as well as Augustine, call the Six Days of Creation figurative.

Hans-Georg Lundahl pope Michael?

Hans-Georg Lundahl are you a Sedevacantist?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I don't think His Holiness likes being called a Sedevacantist, since on his view the vacancy was ended in 1990.

Calling the six days figurative doesn't mean calling the whole account figurative. I specifically read St Augustine on this one a few years ago, and apart from six different and full 24 hour days, he is not calling the account figurative. Also, he is giving that as a kind of speculation or "strong food for advanced learners".

Calling the six days figurative also does not in any way or shape or form detract from the creation being recent.

Also, if CMI got him correct, one of his arguments was an overliteral interpretation of another passage, given in a Latin not his own dialect (he and St Jerome had agreed Vulgate needed to avoid older and obsolete words, "iunctim" for "together" was one of these, and in St Jerome's dialect it probably was "simul" while in St Agustine's it was as probably "iunctos / iunctas /iuncta", leading to his taking "simul" in Classical value as "simultaneously"). This exact passage would obviously have made him even more horrified about the old age paradigms than the six days, not less.

Tom Dorsey

Hans-Georg Lundahl his view is meaningless, since he and you are in Schism.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Unless you are in both schism and heresy - for denying Trent and Church Fathers, for instance.

Tom Dorsey

Hans-Georg Lundahl lol, Trent not once referred to genesis. And I gave you 3 Doctors of the Church that give testimony that it shouldn't be taken literally.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

// At the Council of Trent she enumerated the books which must be considered "as sacred and canonical". They are the seventy-two books found in Catholic editions, forty-five in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New. //

The first of the seventy-two, being, of course, Genesis.

You have not given ONE single either Church Father or doctor of the Church who considers that Genesis as such should not be taken literally.

You have given two who did not consider that the word "day" should be taken literally, which is a separate question, and which involves a one moment creation which I already took into account.

My quoted reference was of course:

Catholic Encyclopedia : The Bible
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02543a.htm

Tom Dorsey

Hans-Georg Lundahl Along the same lines, but with deeper metaphysical considerations, St. Clement of Alexandria and Origen both recall Genesis 2:4: “In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,” as evidence that the “six days” are to be taken figuratively.9 In his Miscellanies, St. Clement notes that the creation could not have taken place in time because time itself was created.10 So, new things could be “generated” over a span of days, but creation itself did not transpire over a period of time but is rather the source of time.

Origen argues similarly that “there was not yet time before the world existed,”11 and that the first days cannot be taken literally because you cannot have a day without a sun, a moon, and a sky.12 So, early in the third century Clement and Origen have already articulated the central difficulties in taking six ordinary days as the literal sense of Genesis 1.

St. Augustine does not interpret the six days of creation to be six periods of twenty-four hours. He treats this theme in a few different works and is consistent on this point. In his Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Augustine makes some important distinctions about how Scripture should be read and then directly addresses the question of creation in Genesis 1:

In all the sacred books [of Scripture], we should consider the eternal truths that are taught, the facts that are narrated, the future events that are predicted, and the precepts or counsels that are given. In the case of a narrative of events, the question arises as to whether everything must be taken according to the figurative sense only, or whether it must be expounded and defended also as a faithful record of what happened. No Christian will dare say that the narrative must not be taken in a figurative sense. For St. Paul says: “Now all these things that happened to them were symbolic.” And he explains the statement in Genesis, “And they shall be two in one flesh,” as a great mystery in reference to Christ and to the Church. If, then, Scripture is to be explained under both aspects, what meaning other than the allegorical have the words: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth?” Were heaven and earth made in the beginning of time, or first of all in creation, or in the Beginning who is the Word, the only-begotten Son of God? And how can it be demonstrated that God, without any change in Himself, produces effects subject to change and measured by time? And what is meant by the phrase “heaven and earth”? Was this expression used to indicate spiritual and corporeal creatures?13

Augustine goes on to raise a host of possible interpretations of “heaven,” “the earth,” “darkness,” “the abyss,” and “let there be light”; and he will conclude that “heaven and earth” refer to formless matter.14 He explains that in a narration, you must give one thing before the other, but that doesn’t mean that there is a difference in time. So, the first day and the second day are not different times but different orders. He offers the example of speech: “But the speaker does not first utter a formless sound of his voice and later gather it together and shape it into words. Similarly, God the Creator did not first make unformed matter and later, as if after further reflection, form it according to the series of works He produced. He created formed matter.” Augustine clarifies that the material itself of a thing does in a certain sense precede the thing, as clay in a certain sense precedes a clay pot; but whatever shape the clay has at any time is simultaneous with its being clay.15

In a manner reminiscent of Origen’s argument, Augustine doubts the counting of six ordinary days, pointing out that the sun would never set on God in his creation—for where would it go, to another universe?16 And not unlike Clement, Augustine insists that creation had to be instantaneous. "No one certainly would be so foolish as to think that, because God is great beyond all beings, even a very few syllables uttered by I-us mouth could have extended over the course of a whole day. Furthermore, it was by His coeternal Word, that is, by the interior and eternal forms of unchangeable Wisdom, not by the material sound of a voice, that “God called the light Day and the darkness Night.” And further questions arise. If He called them with words such as we use, what language did He speak? And what was the need of fleeting sounds where there was no bodily sense of hearing? These difficulties are insurmountable in such a supposition."

Helpful to our overall consideration, Augustine warns against pretending to have one single right interpretation of these difficult passages: In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

OK, you made it three by adding St Clement.

Fine.

Now, none of the three said that the narrative as such was figurative.

Each of them took exactly one key word, namely "day" as figurative.

That is still a far cry from any of them taking the passage as a whole as primarily on its own subject figurative.

"In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it."

That is why I am not dogmatic between six days and one single moment.

This does NOT mean I could not be dogmatic against:

• millions and billions of years
• human history longer than Biblical history
• sin and suffering in either men or lower creatures before Adam fell
• time before creation of Adam and Eve comparable to or even exceeding time after it (as per Mark 10:6).

When you have come over the haze in which "six days needs not be six literal days" seems to you as a code phrase for any of above, you are welcome to TRY TO document any of these - from Church Fathers.

Note, I said try to.

Oh, by the way, there seem to be numbers referring to footnotes not given by you and not starting with one, so I'll suppose you are copying from somewhere. From where? A link is in order.

This one?

Thomistic Evolution : Interpreting Genesis 1 with the Fathers of the Church
https://www.thomisticevolution.org/disputed-questions/interpreting-genesis-1-with-the-fathers-of-the-church/