Bishop Barron on Genesis

Submitted by LocutusOP on Sat, 08/18/2018 - 23:37
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Saturday, August 18, 2018 - 23:30
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Bishop Barron on Genesis

 

 

  1. "While a small minority of Fathers and Doctors of the Church made or entertained claims that a few portions of Genesis were merely figurative,"

    No, I don't think there were.

    If you think otherwise, feel free to enumerate that small minority on what they said.

    St Augustine entertains the thought that the termini technici "day, evening, morning" in Genesis 1 refer to:

    day = one moment in which an angel grasps one aspect of creation (which in itself, including their own, took just one moment)
    evening = angel sees or grasps the things by his apprehension of material things
    morning = angel sees the things as God's work to glorify Him.

    But he does NOT entertain that the descriptions of these days are figurative, for instance.

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  2. Should I have not used the word "figurative"? I was thinking of Origen, who obviously was in some ways a weird outlier, but also of course St. Augustine. Now, as far as I can tell, he waffled somewhat within and across his different works. But if one says that by "day" one doesn't really mean "day" in terms of a standard 24-hour day, but instead a moment, or a way of perceiving an event or whatever, isn't that an example of figurative use?

  3. There is a difference between having one key word used figurative and believing a whole narrative is figurative, like the lost and found penny.

    Origen and St Augustine were indeed alone in considering the key word "day" as figurative, but not even they considered the passage as a whole as figurative.

  4. Yes. I haven't read much actual Origen (will I ever?) but as far as I can tell from secondary sources, what you say is exactly so.

  5. Oaks,
    Earth has a 24 hour day (±). The other planets have longer and shorter days. Jupiter has the shortest day at 9 hr 55 min 29.69 sec. and Venus has the longest day at 243 Earth days.

    Those who express the creation of the Universe in Earth days needs to get a new perspective.

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  1. "It's almost as if he has the lecture notes from some liberal 1980's seminary class up his sleeve."

    If you've ever seen him speak on "beauty", that lecture includes his coming to Paris to study theology.

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Good article. Modern science today has taken God out of the equation. That began when certain Catholics and non-Catholics, even as far back as the 12th century, began depending on mathematics to prove science.

The problem is, is that the whole idea of Creation is a theological one, since it's God's ceation. Whatever is discovered by "science" needs to be informed by theology, though Divine Revelation. Sadly, nowadays, for many people, "science" has replaced religion.

Here's a good video that explains it better. I think the video is by Fr. Ripperger. Not sure that the link will work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI_vTyP8f9k

~M. Ray

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  2. I think your criticism of Bishop Barron is a bit excessive. While the Church has taught that one can interpret Genesis as literal or figurative text, the argument that Bishop Barron "sides with the modernists" goes too far.

    Any University or seminary student of Hebrew Scripture should be able to summarize the message central to the Book of Genesis and the creation account(s).

    If I were to ask a student, "what is the most important thing a Christian can learn from Genesis chapter 1?" I would be more than a little annoyed if the response were, "God created the universe in six days."

    Genesis chapter 1 contains references to the Trinity (God, the Word, the Wind on the surface of the waters - wind and spirit being the same term in Hebrew).

    Genesis 1 also tells us that creation is essentially good. Most importantly, Genesis 1 tells us that man and woman are created in the image of God.

    You have three important, theological take aways from Genesis 1, none of which have anything to do with a literal interpretation of the text.

    This is what Bishop Barron is trying to say. Insisting that the literalism of Genesis 1 is central to the understanding of Genesis 1 is not merely poor judgment, it would undermine central tenets of the faith.

    Sometimes, sacred scripture is written in such a way that we need to understand what the story conveys, and not merely what the story "says".

    And by the way, the Second Vatican Council teaches that the Gospels are historically accurate. As Catholics, we don't mandate that Genesis 1 has to be taken literally.

    Reverend Father Justin Bianchi

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  3. "While the Church has taught that one can interpret Genesis as literal or figurative text"

    But it hasn't.

    "As Catholics, we don't mandate that Genesis 1 has to be taken literally."

    As Neo-Catholics.

    "And by the way, the Second Vatican Council teaches that the Gospels are historically accurate."

    Ambiguous, since some would take it as Gospels among other things, which is perfectly correct, others would take it as Gospels but not necessarily Genesis 1, which is false and pernicious.

    "You have three important, theological take aways from Genesis 1, none of which have anything to do with a literal interpretation of the text."

    The point that creation was VERY good prior to the fall of Adam is one which is compromised (you said "essentially good" which could leave room for "perhaps not in all accidents") if one believe T Rex munched on other T Rex and on diverse other critters millions of years before Adam.

    Also, these three are somewhat less obvious than God creating all in six days, like Jews tend to miss on Holy Trinity (even experienced readers).

  4. I supposed, Rev Bianchi, you accept Genesis 12, 13 and 14 as literal history?

    Now, Genesis 13 features a Pharao which would very easily have been Narmer (a recent conqueror of a not quite stabilised country, on the lookout to not misplease supernatural factors), and in Genesis 14 you have an up to then inhabited Asason Tamar - which is En-Geddi, which was not inhabited in 2000 BC.

    This means the times of Abraham would as per carbon dating be misdated c. 1000 years or even a bit more. And this is incompatible with the uniformitarian understanding that atmosphere has had near stable c. 100 pmc for last 100 000 years.

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No one (including me), as far as I know, has EVER asserted that Genesis is MERELY literal. That it is figurative in that, among other things, it prefigures many future events is obvious. The argument against Barron is that asserting that it is MERELY figurative, with no, as it were, grounding in actual historical claims about real historical events is silly and incidentally counter to the virtual entirety (for the first 1800+ years at least) of Christian interpretive tradition.

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  1. Yes, blatheramus. Awhile back I was looking for something Catholic to send to my kids daily that was short and orthodox. I signed up for Word on Fire hoping this would fill the bill. It didn't. The meditations were too long, too confusing, tending to explain Catholic teaching in a politically correct way. However, I did sign up daily quotes from this site:
    https://americaneedsfatima.org/Miscellaneous/daily-quote-sign-up-form.html