Well St. Augustine is a heavyweight, so we’re not talking about some obscure thinker.
According to religioustolerance.org: The Roman Catholic Church and some other denominations consider the Bible to be a main source of information that is to be** supplemented** by their church’s traditions. The Catholic Church stated at the Council of Trent (1546-1563) that the Church is “…the divinely constituted depository and judge of both Scripture and tradition.” 2 Emphasis in original.
If you want to get insight into the common man’s approach, one source is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Check out paragraph 115+: According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church. There’s more. Look, it’s not like these issues didn’t come up in confession et al. The Church had to appeal to a wide range of stakeholders: literalism, though attractive to lawyers, lacks universal appeal.
Here’s a parallel take from Yale: The principles of interpreting the New Testament in this course assume a historical critical perspective. The historical critical method of interpreting a text privileges the intended meaning of the ancient author, the interpretation of a text’s original audience, the original language the text was written in, and the avoidance of anachronism. However, for most of the last two thousand years, this has not been the method of interpretation of the Bible. Pre-modern interpreters, such as Origen and Augustine, felt free to allegorize and use the text as they saw fit. It was only through the Reformation and other events in modern history that the historical critical method became the predominant method of interpretation. It’s Good News, not Eyewitness News.
Well there have been plenty of blasphemous heresies that attempted to deny the plain truth of Scripture in many ways that in earlier times (until a solid foundation of orthodoxy was gradually laid through the ecumenical councils) threatened to overwhelm the Church such as the various Gnostic groups for example. However the vast majority of Christians-both Catholic and Protestant-have generally taken the events of the Bible meant to be taken literally as literal truth throughout history. Mind there are some exceptions to this-for example in the 19th Century most orthodox theologians and preachers such as Charles and AA Hodge, BB Warfield, and Charles Spurgeon held to old earth creationism or even allowed for evolution but these days orthodox Calvinist theology tends to be dominated by advocates of a Young Earth even as society in general has come to accept evolution more.
Not just them (in terms of Calvinists(, but earlier, John Calvin himself, said in his commentary about Genesis (in a passage about “the firmament”…the sky, which Genesis describes as ‘waters over the earth’)
(Gregory there refers to Pope Gregory the Great, who defended religious art in churches, saying that its purpose wasn’t idolatry, but instead a way to educate ignorant people about religion). Calvin is talking about a doctrine people call “accommodation”, which is traditionally a Calvinist idea, which was that the bible includes the scientific understanding of the time, and deliberately simplifies things like the creation of the earth, because the purpose of the bible isn’t to be a science textbook. It’s to be a moral guide, and God knew the only way people would accept it is if it was written in a way that was understandable and acceptable to them.
Well, I thought Ehrmann had discussed this in either Misquoting Jesus or Jesus, Interrupted, but, having checked them both last night, this isn’t the case. I’ll need to look elsewhere.
There are good reasons not to believe any miracle.
I don’t know about that. How do 6 day creation, a global flood, 3 days in the belly of a fish, and the physical resurrection of the dead different, with regards to irrationality? It’s my understanding that most liberal Christians still choose to believe in the resurrection of Jesus at least.
That’s what I thought too. That Augustine was talking to simple-minded literalist readers, because they are NOT a new phenomenon.
That’s what I think too. That people pretty much trusted the Bible as true until observation and science showed that it wasn’t.
Well, yes. Which is why we have pity for those who lived before the Enlightenment (or however you categorize the beginning of observation and experiment to learn how the world works) but only contempt for those who continue to hold such superstitions.
(Of course, your mileage may vary, as will the level of contempt expressed by individuals.)
I find this topic very interesting. I have noticed that many, many, Christians that I try to discuss religion with have taken the angle of, “Well, it is the atheists who are so literal about the bible. We Christians don’t take it so literally. It’s not all talking snakes.”
Ok, I accept that. Noah and the Ark isn’t a literal story…Jonah and the whale, walking on water…ok, but where does it EVER get literal.
I have decided to just nip it in the bud with, “Do you believe that Jesus died on the cross and came back to life three days later.” If you agree with that, then that is just as non-scientific as Noah’s ark, so whatever. If you DON’T believe that Jesus literally died and came back, then I don’t know if we can call you a Christian.
But what is a new phenomenon is church leaders declaring the literalist view as the only possible view. Augustine lived in the 4th and 5th century, and he tried to break people from their literalist views. At the Catholic high school that I attended, they taught that every story in Genesis from the Creation to the Tower of Babel were not to be taken literally.
So to answer the OP, the phenomenon of the masses beleiving in the literalist view is not new, but the phenomenon of church leaders teaching the literalist view is very new.
I pity them, much in the same as I pity you liberal Christians who still believe that Jesus died for your sins, rose from the dead, answers your prayers, and has prepared paradise for you when you die. If you think about it, it’s all the same type of thing.
Cite that the above is new? What I see fundamentalists saying is that once you start doubting the miracles, then what proof is the Bible regarding all the other stuff deemed important.
I realize that isn’t in Genesis. I just think it is so arbitrary. And I admit, I don’t know much about how Catholicism works, but I find it so arbitrary to say, “Of course the miracles in Genesis isn’t real. That would be silly. Now here, eat these crackers which is really the flesh of Christ.”
I don’t pity him. He is as God made him, and if God decided He needs an argumentative, close-minded anti-religious person to harangue people on the internet, He must have His reasons. I sometimes wish I had the faith in myself to do without any reliance on a Supreme Being. (These are some of the questions I hope to explore at Judgment.)
Great, but can you demonstrate that your beliefs are more reasonable than those held by Christians who think that Jonah was really 3 days in the belly of a whale?
