... against Robber Baron of Theology and his "Misreading Genesis"

Bishop Barron on Misreading Genesis
Bishop Robert Barron | Ajoutée le 28 févr. 2011
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVsbVAVSssc

I

"Creation is happening now"

No. Creating the world and upholding it are two distinct acts of God. It's like building a harp and playing on it (analogy given by St Thomas Aquinas).

"Great act of violence" of Pagan Mythologies. None such n Big Bang or Abiogenesis?

"Stars are being born everyday"

I have heard that mentioned.

I have not seen it proven.

However, the stars born today, if such there be, are of the same type as the first one's created on day four, precisely as the salmons and thrushes born today are same type as first ones on day five, or as the sheep and donkeys today are of the same type as created on day six, before Adam was created.

3:35 The great acts of violence in Pagan myths are probably in part by conflating Creation, which was non-violent with Flood, which was very violent.

II

"Some worshipped stars"

Modern scientist Lawrence Krauss said "a star had to die so you can live"

"Some worshipped animals"

Modern scientists of evolutionist bent say we have five phalangs on each hand or foot because non-human ancestors survived better that way. Or that other traits of our nature can be traced to non-human supposed either ancestors or beings with a same last common ancestor.

AronRa on his video series (five parts) on evolution of morality argues about Chimps coming in two shapes: bonobos and troglodites. Hippies and warriors. If that is all there si as alternatives go for chimps, so it is for men ... if chimps were our gods, of course, which they are not.

5:13 Praised be Thou, Lord God, through all of Thy Creation, and first of all for our brother Mister Sun : he is ...

St Francis disagrees with Amerindians worshipping the Sun, but not with their thinking he is (on some level, perhaps the guiding angel) a person.

In other words, while idolatry is removed, animism is not.

Too bad I had no time to write the article for Ursula LeGuin on that before she died.

III

0:46 How do you square the naive mythology with the subtle work of etc?

You know, that sounds like someone having faith in someone else's learning.

Before Incarnation happened, Trinity, Incarnation, Death and Resurrection were explicitly believed by the learned, and by the unlearned implicitly in the outer trappings of the OT.

That is why this tradition, no doubt corrupted by Caiphas, and by a few more centuries of anti-Christian atitudes, and perhaps by Sadducee ideology too, and codified in Zohar sometimes nevertheless produces Christian conversions and semi-conversions, like Yitshaak Kadoori.

How did the unlearned then have faith in anything more than outer trappings? Well, they had faith in the faith of the learned.

But note, they had faith in someone else's faith, not in someone else's learning.

Knowing more about the Bible is a human accomplishment. Those who have and lack it are ultimately equal before the accomplishment of God in revealing the faith. So, we have faith in the faith of learned men on points we don't quite understand ourselves, but we do not have faith in their learning as learning.

When someone asks what you cited, How do you square the naive mythology with the subtle work of etc? this clearly means, they have faith in the subtle work, in the learning of someone. It has become their criterium of truth.

I just looked up St Thomas Aquinas on De Actu Fide or De Habentibus Fidem in order to correct a mistake from CSL's Reflections on the Psalms.

IV

1:40 You have faith in the learning of Galileo etc.

1:46 You know, around 100 AD a man lived who had been to the Last Supper with God. Around 1510 BC a man lived who took off his shoes before a burning bush, and to whom God revealed a name not revealed to the Patriarchs.

Science ultimately is supposed to be about the work of God, who has also revealed Himself in a more direct and clear fashion.

Theologia regina scientiarum.

1:50 Modern science didn't exist yet.

Scientific values like facthood, accuracy and so on are not a product of modern science.

V

2:41 And what about history?

If Genesis were made as a sopeopera, the first eleven chapters would be one or two episodes.

Or one and a half, second episode from Noah got drunk to Abraham defending Sodom.

There is exactly one chapter which you can label as "theological reflections on the origins" in any wider perspective than that of the first two men, and at chapter 3 you either deal with history, solid such, or Original Sin is a scam, Crucifixion for our Redemption is a scam, Baptism of infants is a scam.

How can Eve have trusted a talking snake? Obviously, if she was anatomically adult and had the use of free will, not just the capacity, but the use, she had not lived long enough to know snakes don't talk very clearly. They hiss, they don't talk.

If Genesis 3 is history, Eve cannot have lived for very long before that.

VI

3:10 Creation is happening now - of new exemplars of things, like new days, new water drops, new plants, new fish and birds, new land animals and new men - but not of new kinds.

Creation happening now is also a good ground to, ditching "modern science" on this point, believe God turns the Universe around us each day.

Abandon that, and the rather more abstruse Tertia Via replaces the Prima Via, as in the Dominican Tertiary who was my introduction to Thomism.

VII

5:55 "I don't read it literally" ... and what about Genesis 3?

And if Church Fathers read Adam as the great philosopher, they torpedoed, with King Solomon's nil novum sub sole, your "modern science didn't exist yet".

A certain modern tradition of it did not exist yet.