–Biblical literalism isn’t particularly recent. Augustine, for example, didn’t just read the Bible literally, he insisted on the truth of its literal reading even against the opinion of the knowledgeable scholars of other traditions in his time.
–Perhaps just as importantly, Biblical non-literalism is also not particularly recent. Metaphorical readings of biblical texts, even the ones that don’t clearly present themselves as metaphor, have been around since the beginning.
Tom that’s a great Augustine quote, but one that we already addressed way back in post #13. It’s sounds great in theory, however in practice can you give us some examples of miracle stories (even some of the crazy ones) that Augustine doubted? Or would you concede that Augustine believed pretty much every Bible story that a modern young earth creationist believes?
Also, Augustine wrote respectable philosophical works. So in terms of tone, there’s a huge gap between a modern fundi and A of H. Curiosity is the most obvious characteristic. It would be over 1000 years before the birth of modern science and still longer before journalism would be invented. A credulous take on miracles wasn’t unreasonable at the time. Also, if you look at Augustine’s arguments, a great many are grounded more on logic than on scripture. As an example, see his commentary on skepticism described here. [“There are 4 arguments for philosophic skepticism, 3 of which I can dismiss. But the fourth I need to consider in some depth.” (paraphrase) That’s philosophical thinking, not fundi stuff. B. Russell would agree IIRC. ]
I would guess that Augustine viewed the events narrated in scripture the way that he describes them in his commentary.
He probably saw them the way that pretty much everyone saw such stories up until the Enlightenment–as stories that provided meaning rather than as fact sheets that needed to be cross-checked and validated.
The first couple of chapters of Genesis tell two separate creation stories with numerous contradictions. A Literalist is compelled to spend effort reconciling the two versions, trying to demonstrate that the contradictions are not contradictory. Augustine, not being a nineteenth or twentieth century Literalist, simply provides explanations for each, allowing each story to stand on its own.
Applying an anachronistic definition of “literal,” along with a wholly anachronistic understanding of how people looked upon such stories, demonstrates nothing more than a misunderstanding of the way that people saw the world or employed Story to explain the world.
What parts of post #19 do you endorse? Because as I recently learned Augustine fell for Noah’s ark, hook line and sinker. In fact he sounds a lot like Kent Hovind.
Respectable to you maybe.
Tone is so hard to judge. Could you give any concrete examples of any stories that Augustine doubted that a modern day fundamentalist would believe in?
Tom it almost looks like you answered my questions, but you didn’t.
Can you give us some examples of miracle stories (even some of the crazy ones) that Augustine doubted? Or would you concede that Augustine believed pretty much every Bible story that a modern young earth creationist believes? You know things like a 6000 year old earth, Jonah and the whale, the global flood, parting of the red sea, people walking on water, physical resurrection of the dead, water into wine, rods into snakes, them kind of things.
I was not trying to answer your gotcha question. I was pointing out the error of your premise. Your OP asked whether Literalism really was a recent phenomenon. While there was some foreshadowing in the Renaissance, Literalism really did start in the last couple of hundred years. The fact that you want to define Literalism in a way that is totally anachronistic is not my problem. I neither know nor care which stories were held to be “literal” by people in ancient times, (as opposed to stories that they held to be True). That is a dispute between fundy believers and fundy non-believers that does not interest me since it is based on the sort of false, ahistorical premise over which fundies enjoy squabbling.
B. Russell characterized him as follows: “Saint Augustine, at most times, does not occupy himself with pure philosophy, but when he does he shows great ability.” “…some [of his writings] remain practically influential down to the present day.” That’s from B. Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, the beginning of Chapter 4. Russell also notes that Augustine is most definitely a scholastic philosopher and furthermore he rips that group a new one in the last paragraph of the chapter.
I don’t have the knowledge to characterize the respectability of Augustine’s philosophical works. But as a practicing philosopher, B. Russell does. Augustine’s philosophic stature really isn’t questioned. To be sure “Respectable” does not imply “True or correct”.
No, because my knowledge of Augustine is entirely from secondary sources, mostly B. Russell. Russell says Augustine was “Voluminous” and that his treatment wasn’t comprehensive, so I can’t even state what Augustine’s major concerns were.
From the Noah’s ark citation, I see that Augustine advances a nonliteral interpretation: “For what right-minded man will contend that books so religiously preserved during thousands of years, and transmitted by so orderly a succession, were written without an object, or that only the bare historical facts are to be considered when we read them?” Then he argues that the Flood was an historical event, and answers some of the criticisms lodged against the story. I don’t know whether he was making a straw-man argument or not, but I can’t find a problem in his reasoning (though I didn’t study the whole passage as the subject bores me).
If Augustine ducked a strong argument of the day against the historicity of the Flood, then that would be an example of fundi-logic, not high quality scholastic reasoning.
You are really good at not answering any questions that might put your position in a bad light.
I’m going to assume that because you have not answered, it must be that you know, as well as I know, that Augustine believed pretty much the same things were literally/historically true as do modern day fundamentalists. He and Ken Ham could probably go on for hours about how God fit all them animals on that boat and managed to feed them too. Disagree?
OK, but from doing a little googling I was able to find out that Augustine believes all that miracles stuff, even 3 days in the belly of a whale.
See I read the whole passage. Yes, Augustine is boring, but it’s only one page. One thing I notice about you Christians, if facts, or even scripture isn’t going your way, you tune out.
I think he said something like Noah could feed the carnivorous animals figs and chestnuts. Pretty funny yo!
Yeah. I disagree. You are wearing your fundy filters and ignoring the way that people related to scriptures. You keep trying to drive the conversation back to supporting or opposing your error, and I am not interested in that, only in pointing out the error, itself.
Do you really think that all the contradictions in the bible, (or Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, or the conflicting stories of Herodotus and Thucydides, or Vergil’s Aeneid, or Geofffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain), were invisible to the people to whom they were originally presented?
The story and its meaning was the important point, not the supposedly “literal” facts narrated in the story. People held firmly to contradictory stories because they had no interest in trying to reconcile the sort of “facts” that hold your attention. That was not how they saw stories. As long as you miss that point, the rest of your thesis pointless.
Where are the tracts from Augustine trying to reconcile the conflicting “facts” of the two separate creation stories? (Where are the similar efforts by Philo or Josephus or Hillel or Shammai or Irenaeus or Jerome or Maimonides?) As long as you choose to ignore the salient point that they were not concerned about such details, you are going to anachronistically try to wedge them into your belief system, demonstrating only your own ignorance and prejudices.
You are trying to attack the belief of people who were fully aware of the contradictions in the stories they used to explicate their faith, yet never worried about trying to make all the supposed “facts” line up and perfectly dovetail. That sort of effort, (now called Literalism) is a late development.
I just read quickly through Augustine’s On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis. It appears that his view is that the literal interpretation will be vindicated–but that we will not know what the literal interpretation actually is until we know all the physical facts.
The work just cited doesn’t give a single literal interpretation of the first few sentences of Genesis, but instead, catalogs a host of possible interpretations which may turn out to be the “correct” literal interpretation should the physical world turn out to be this way or that way.
So there is a doctrinal affirmation that the scriptures are not only allegorically true but literally true. But there’s also an argument that we do not understand the literal sense of scripture independently of our scientific knowledge. And you’ll note that the possible interpretations he works through and which he calls “literal” are often not anything we today would recognize as particularly “literal.” (For example, he allows for the six days of creation to be a logical, not a temporal order. He calls this literal. To me, that ain’t literal.)
So though he uses this word that gets translated into English as “literal,” from an examination of how he actually uses the word, it would appear to me he is not a literalist in the contemporary sense. He’s saying we should adjust our understanding of scripture’s meaning according to our best scientific knowledge, rather than the other way around.
OK but, and I’m not really interested in your talk of fundy filters or theoretical points of view. I’m just asking you to answer a couple simple questions. Could you just do that?
OK, you want me to answer questions for you. Great, I’ll be happy to, but first respond to the following:
Can you give us some examples of miracle stories (even some of the crazy ones) that Augustine doubted? Or would you concede that Augustine believed pretty much every Bible story that a modern young earth creationist believes?
Why? I have already noted that your questions are the wrong ones for the topic you posted.
You really are hung up on your viewpoint. Your question is silly and irrelevant. You are asking as if a question framed in a twenty-first century context had any meaning for a person in the fifth century.
I’m really not interested in your answers to my rhetorical questions because you have already demonstrated (in multiple threads) that you neither know the answers nor understand the context in which they are asked.
Of course, you are not interested in talk of fundy filters; you cannot even recognize that you wear them or understand how they distort your perspective.
Just cause I asked Tom, just humor me. Honestly I think it would take you less words to answer than it is taking you to stonewall.
Can you give us some examples of miracle stories (even some of the crazy ones) that Augustine doubted? Or would you concede that Augustine believed pretty much every Bible story that a modern young earth creationist believes?
Since you read the whole passage, you shouldn’t have difficulty giving an example of Augustine’s faulty reasoning - an example where his argument is noticeably weaker than that of the opponent he presents.
I’m not trying to play gotcha here - it’s just when you make an assertion, you’re expected to back it up in this forum. Otherwise you are just making a faith-based argument. The latter is acceptable - but it does not constitute a valid claim about the world. It’s just a subjective claim. If you claim that Augustine’s logic is faulty, then you should be able to point it out. [To be fair, you didn’t make such a claim - you drew a parallel with an author I was unfamiliar with, but assumed was a fundi. hijack -> I don’t know your geographic background, but plenty of practicing mainline Christians (of which I am not one) find fundi stuff to be pretty alien. ]
[And vis a vis Tom. Kable: you might consider leveling up. That would involve indicating that you’ve absorbed your opponent’s arguments. You really haven’t done that here. ]
[Hijack] I’ll reproduce Russell’s last paragraph of Chapter 4:
[QUOTE=Bertrand Russell]
It is strange that the last men of intellectual eminence before the dark ages concerned, not with saving civilization or expelling the barbarians or reforming abuses of the administration, but with preaching the merit of virginity and the damnation of unbaptized infants. Seeing that these preoccupations that the Church handed on to the converted barbarians, it is no wonder that the succeeding age surpassed almost all other fully historical periods in cruelty and superstition.
[/QUOTE]
Augustine possessed a fine mind, but he was caught in an intellectual cul de sac. It wasn’t that he had bad logic, just a tragically misplaced focus. [/hijack]
He doesn’t really present the arguments of opponents, he just mentions a few questions and answer how he thinks Noah could have done it with God helping with miracles as needed. Really it’s just a page. You can’t read a page?
OK, but I did back it up and you were too lazy to read it.
As you mentioned I wasn’t speaking about his logic, I was drawing a parallel between him and a YEC, and yes if you read both, they sound remarkably alike. When Augustine talks about Jonah and the whale he sounds remarkably like another YEC Ken Ham.
I think I know the Catholic position fairly well. Stories don’t need to be historically true to teach the main truth that God intended. That way they can true, even when they never really happened. However, regarding all these crazy miracle stories that liberal Christians mostly doubt but fundamentalist mostly believe in, St. Augustine near as I can tell believed most every single one of them happened, historically, as written. And Tom just can’t bring himself to admit it. My guess is he’s still choking on Galileo’s recantation.
There is nothing to “admit.” It is really irrelevant which stories Augustine may or may not have believed to be true. That is just another fundy type argument that has nothing to do with the topic you posed in the OP.
As Marley noted, elsewhere, it appears that you are posting threads simply to try to say something different than your actual assertion in the OPs. If you want a different discussion, open a separate thread with an honest declaration of your thesis.