Sunday, March 17, 2013

The Holy Bible: Read It!


  1. It seems that this post, unintentionally I am sure, is promoting the error of Concordism. That is, the reading of scientific processes/cosmogenesis into the Bible - science, however indirectly, to explain physical phenomena.

    Why Concordism is erroneous is clear enough: the Bible does not teach science. It is not a textbook, in a astronomical or biogeophysical sense, on how all that is came to be, or how the material universe functions in a physical sense.

    One example to substantiate: circa 1900, prominent exegetes Fr. Franz von Hummelauer and Fr. Marie-Joseph Lagrange made a shocking admission: the previous 1800 years of Catholic exegesis on Creation in Genesis 1 was not credible, unpersuasive.

    From Fr. Stanley Jaki: "Concordism kept a hold on the minds of most Catholic theologians and in fact became a quasi-official position in Catholic seminaries. Concordism, which produced an immense literature, fell merely into official disfavor with the publication November 18, 1893, of Leo XIII's Encyclical Providentissimus Deus on the interpretation of the Scriptures. The Pope emphasized that the inspired authors did not mean to teach about the workings of nature... the subsequent grappling of theologians and exegetes with this task did not improve a bit on the dismal picture that had emerged from their previous efforts", Genesis 1 Through the Ages (London: Thomas More Press, 1992), p. 238.

    Fr. Hummelauer helped Pope Leo XIII draft that encyclical.