A CATHOLIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE STORY OF CREATION AND THE FALL. Notes from Pope Emeritus Benedict Joseph Ratzinger XVI s In the Beginning

Transcription

1 A CATHOLIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE STORY OF CREATION AND THE FALL Notes from Pope Emeritus Benedict Joseph Ratzinger XVI s In the Beginning

2 The words of Genesis are beautiful and familiar, but are they also true? Here s one answer: The Bible is not a natural science textbook, nor does it intend to be such. We cannot obtain information about the natural sciences from it. We can only glean religious experience from it. Genesis is theology not natural science

3 But we can ask: If theologians or the church can shift the boundaries here between symbols and actual events why can they not do so elsewhere - like with Jesus' miracles or his resurrection? So the you can t read it literally defense is not enough to save faith We need to be careful therefore when we defend the faith by saying, You can t always say we don t read it literally Behind what is written, which we can no longer defend with reason, there is something more real. When we say this we may end up actually putting the faith itself in doubt, by raising the question of the honesty of those who are interpreting it and of whether anything at all there is enduring.

4 The biblical creation narratives represent another way of speaking about reality than that with which we are familiar from physics and biology. This doesn t mean that the Bible sinks into meaninglessness. The Bible expresses truth in the way that symbols do. Mythic realities are more real than historical realities. Historical realities were true once (E.g. The day of your birth May 1 st 1996) Symbolic realities are true always So is the Bible real? (E.g. The celebration of your birth May 1 st of each year)

5 When you interpret the Bible, keep the whole thing in mind Holy Scripture in its entirety was not written from beginning to end like a novel or a textbook. It is, rather, the echo of God's history with his people. It arose out of the struggles and the changes of this history. The Bible is thus the story of God's struggle with human beings to make himself understandable to them over the course of time, but also the story of their struggle to seize hold of God over the course of time. The Bible itself constantly readapts its images to an always developing way of thinking in order to bear witness to God s creative act. Genesis 1:1-2:4a is not the only creation account in sacred Scripture. Immediately after there follows another one in Genesis 2:4b-25. In the Psalms (8, 19, 139) there are still others. In the Bible itself the images are free and they correct themselves ongoingly. The Bible is littered with references to creation throughout!

6 But the Old Testament is not the end of the road. In the New Testament, the last Gospel gives us the conclusive account: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made (John 1:1, 3) When interpreting the Bible, use Christ as a criterion We read the law, like the creation account, with Jesus; and from him we know what God wished over the course of the centuries to have gradually penetrate the human heart and soul.

7 Our new way of thinking about the Bible is to read every text in its bare literalness. We want to explain all the details, but we lose sight of the Bible as a whole. We no longer read the Bible forward but backward not with a view to Christ but to the probable origins of the text. The problem with our new historical thinking

8 The New Testament speaks of Christ as the second and definitive Adam and as the image of God. This means that in Christ alone appears the complete answer of what the human being is. In Christ alone appears the deepest meaning of what is for the present a rough draft. Human beings are Christ s brothers and sisters because we can be one with Christ (the Eucharist). Christ as the new Adam The relationship of creature to Christ, of the first to the second Adam, signifies that human persons are beings en route, characterized by transition.

9 Creation or Evolution? Both. We can t say: either creation or evolution. Creation and Evolution respond to two different realities. The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. Genesis explains our inmost origin. Evolution describes biological development, but it can t explain where the "project" of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. Creation and evolution are therefore complementary-rather than mutually exclusive accounts of how we came to exist and why we came to exist.

10 The images in the stories aim to make profound realities graspable to human beings. As Christians we read Holy Scripture with Christ he is our guide all the way through it. Christ indicates to us what an image is and where the real, enduring expression may be found. What s with all the imagery and symbols? Christ is, at the same time, freedom from a false slavery to literalism and a guarantee of the solid, realistic truth of the Bible.

11 There are hard passages in Scripture that seem to show that the God of the Bible is a dreadful, hateful, cruel, and violent God. The so-called new atheists present these passages as objections to the moral authority of the God of the Bible. Christians, too, wrestle with and struggle to make sense of these passages. Here s what we can respond: What about violence in the Bible? 1) This is not a new problem that we today discovered in the 21 st century, since the first Christians were aware of this issue. Early Christians (Marcionites) proposed getting rid of the whole Old Testament, and keeping only the New Testament. Origen of Alexandria, We must read the whole Bible from the standpoint of the last book of the Bible. 2) We read the difficult passages as allegories about the spiritual life. Israel s enemies are enemies of God and all that he stands for Love, justice, mercy, beauty. We therefore are to fight the spiritual enemies of our God thoroughly and mercilessly. We aren t supposed to fight evil a little bit, but all the way. 3) Israel in ancient times was a warring nation it is natural that the writers and poets of the nation would reach for militaristic metaphors to illustrate God s power, sovereignty. What good would it be for a poet to say, Our God killed some of our enemies?