Now we can see clearly you don’t even know what an argument is!
Anyway, this is moot IMO. I indicated above that, based on On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, it is clear that no matter how many of the crazy miracle stories Augustine affirms, he is not a literalist in the contemporary sense in which you are using the term.
But Augustine is an exception amongst his fellow believers.
He only converted to Christianity at age 30(ish) and had had a real education before that.
It is precisely against his fellow believers taking stuff literally that he protests.
So taking Augustine as an example that ‘people *didn’t *take the bible literally’ is incorrect. The vast majority of Christians did take it literally. Making fools of themselves, when talking to pagans.
The question isn’t whether people took it literally, the question is whether they were literalists. Above it’s been made clear by myself and others that literalism isn’t just thinking the stories literally true, but rather, thinking that they must be literally true come hell or high water, no matter what our otherwise-best science has to tell us.
Now it may be that there have been literalists all along, but I was discussing Augustine[ specifically because he was being brought up by Kable as a counterexample to the claim “There were no literalists before two hundred years ago or so.” It turns out Augustine is no counterexample after all. So the ball is back in Kable’s court.
What do you think the reaction of Augustine’s ‘fools’ will have been, in reaction to the pagans explaining things to them?
I hardly think your distinction is that clear.
In the end it wasn’t the Christians that shut up about foolish things, they made the others shut up.
The distinction is very clear. A literalist is someone who not only takes the bible literally, but would insist that the literal reading is true even if the methods of knowledge development generally accepted in his community would tend to judge it false. Someone can believe the bible literally true without being a literalist in this sense. And those who have held that literalism is recent have been referring to literalism in this sense. What do you find unclear about this?
I don’t know what the reaction of Augustine’s fools would be. He seems to be talking about people he considers ignorant. Perhaps, once apprised of better methods of knowledge acquisition, they’d change their mind. One can speculate either way. The more important question is what documentary evidence we have for the claim that literalism (in the sense just outlined) was held as a doctrine prior to the 1800s.
Will you admit that Augustine believed Jonah was literally and historically was 3 days in the belly of a whale/fish?
Will you admit that Augustine believed literally and historically in a global flood and Noah gathering all the animals on a big boat?
Because there is no real difference and you have not demonstrated any.
Yeah, right!
Since they have already stated “there is nothing to admit,” the answer to your questions is obviously “no.” Now ask them if they will ‘affirm’ it. “Affirming” and “admitting” are two different actions. You know this of course, and one easily speculates as to why you are not acting on what you know.
I described the difference clearly. If you cannot see it, the fault isn’t mine.
Here you demonstrate an unwillingness to work with the information you actually have before you, and instead to insist on information you create in your own mind.
Have fun.
That’s a good point that might be getting lost. In spite of what Frylock wrote in post #301 we’re only talking about Augustine because he was given as the best example of a “non-literalist” from antiquity. Yet it turns out he literally believed pretty much everything in the Bible that I’ve come across. So far the only thing I have seen give him pause is when he runs into a contradiction from another part of the Bible.
Two people, Auggie and Jerry.
Auggie and Jerry both affirm at age 23 that the flood actually happened.
Auggie and Jerry both go to grad school for Archaeology. (Let’s say they go to the same school and take the same classes.)
After grad school, Auggie says “I once believed the flood literally happened, and I still think the flood passages express truths. But I no longer take them literally–I’ve learned a lot about how Archaelogists figure out truths about ancient history, and I can see that a literal interpretation of the flood passages doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.”
Jerry, however, after grad school, says “I have always believed the flood literally happened, and as long as I am a Christian will continue to do so. I have learned a lot about how Archaeologists figure out truths about ancient history, but in this case they are wrong. Though the commonly accepted archaeological methods and evidence would point practically every archaeologist towards the falsehood of the account, these methods don’t apply to the flood account for reasons that I will now delineate.”
Both Auggie and Jerry, at age 23, believed in the literal account. But only one, at age 23, was a literalist. The distinction was discovered over the course of grad school–it is the characteristic that made the difference between them over the course of that time.
This illustrates the distinction between literal reading and literalist reading, and shows how a person’s affirming the literal reading is not sufficient to show that they are a literalist.
In other words, the “Auggie” accepts the literal meaning of each passage until/unless he encounters a good reason not to, while the “Jerry” literalist is committed to accepting the literal meaning of each passage no matter what reason he may encounter not to … is that a fair summary?
"It is to St. Jerome that we owe the earliest full and extant commentary on the book of Jonah. The saint composed it towards the end of the 4th century, in Bethlehem. He has no doubt but that Jonah, a type of Christ, is also a real person: indeed, in his preface, he asks that the prophet may bestow on him a renewed fervour, so that he may write as he ought. In several passages of the book, he notes certain characteristics of the historical Jonah, for example, his magnanimity in wanting to die, so that the crew of the ship should be saved. He distinguishes clearly what belongs to historia, the life and adventures of the prophet, from what belongs to tropologia, this same life as a prefigurement of the Saviour. In commenting on chapter two, he says:
“I am aware that some will be incredulous that a man should be preserved three days and three nights in the belly of a whale, to which the shipwreck had led him; these people are either believers or non-believers: if they are believers, they are obliged to believe much greater things.”
Among these ‘much greater things’, the saint lists the preservation of the three young men in the fiery furnace (Dan.3), and Daniel’s being preserved among the lions (Dan.14; Heb.11). One might also include any of the miracles of resurrection in either the Old or the New Testament.
St. Augustine argues similarly. In Epistle 102, written around 409 A.D., he is replying to a priest who had reported some objections to the Christian faith made by a mutual acquaintance of theirs, a pagan. Some of these objections, says St. Augustine, seem to stem from Porphyry, but the last, concerning the story of Jonah, and in particular his survival in the whale and the plant which miraculously sprang up over him, is presented as being a general matter of mockery among the pagans. In replying, the Bishop of Hippo says:
“Either all the divine miracles are to be disbelieved, or else there is no reason why this should not be believed. We should not believe in Christ Himself, and that He rose on the third day, if the faith of Christians feared the laughter of the pagans.”
There’s probably some trouble to be had about what “a good reason” is, but basically yes.
Right now I’m saying “a good reason” to include at least “a reason held by the acknowledged experts by consensus in a community the person belongs to.”
The work where Augustine actually sets out to articulate his beliefs about literalism, discussed above in one of my posts, would seem to be the controlling document here. Whatever he may have said elsewhere, I would think his explicit arguments in On Genesis are the ones we should pay the most attention to when trying to figure out whether he’s a doctrinal literalist or not.
That’s a good point. What we may consider “literal” may not be considered that way in 300, in Latin. We have translation issues as well as different context between Augustine’s time and ours.
and now Auggie does not believe the bible to be literally true while Jerry does.
Really, what meaningful difference have you demonstrated with this ‘distinction’?
The only people to whom your idea of Jerry *might * apply are creationist scientists.
But we all know, these don’t exist.
Continue having fun.
…
why stoop to your level
I stoop only slightly lower than the level you set in post 327.