Agreeing with the Biblical World View

New blog on the kid : Is "Vatican II" in Continuity with Trent and Vatican "I"? · Creation vs. Evolution : Agreeing with the Biblical World View · Dwight Longenecker Maligns Fundamentalists? · Pete Vere Understimates Fundamentalism of Fathers · Can Six Days or Eve from Side of Adam be a Metaphor?

I found a blog by Matthew Distefano, on Progressive Christian channel of Patheos, he had made fun of date setting for end of the world, with some sense in showing how not to do it, and I got back to an earlier post on it:

A Biblical Worldview? No Thanks!
May 7, 2018 by Matthew Distefano
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/allsetfree/2018/05/a-biblical-worldview-no-thanks/

For instance, are we really going to sit here and think that folks like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses—assuming these were real people and not just archetypal figures—had the same view of the cosmos as Jesus or Paul? Or that their theologies were all the same? Are we honestly going to hold fast to the belief that the writer of Deuteronomy, for instance, had the exact same views as those of the prophets, or of Jesus, or of Paul, or of Peter, or of James? Or even that two brothers, Jesus and James, shared the same views? Or that John the Baptist and Jesus did? Or that Peter and Paul did?

Get real! That is just silly.

Abraham who transmitted the story of the Tower of Babel to Moses (via generations back between Peleg and himself and forth over Joseph in Egypt and his brother Levi to Moses) may have had very low tech and unsophisticated views on what the tower of Babel was. But what Moses finally expressed was:

Genesis 11 : [4] And they said: Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven: and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands. [5] And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of Adam were building.

This expression is totally compatible with a modern understanding of the "tower" as a projected three step rocket - obviously Nimrod would have been wrong on some detail they got right before Baikonoor and Cape Canaveral, he would probably have tried exploding Uranium to fuel the launch, which would have been disastrous.

There is a difference between ALL the views of a Biblical writer (or, if I may coin the word, for Saints' Moses' and Luke's sources, pre-writer, pre-hagiographer) and what the Bible finally expresses because the hagiographers express their views under God's guidance, meaning that any possibly erroneous view would not in fact be expressed.

There are two persons in flesh and blood whom we need to agree with ALL the views of : Our Lord Jesus Christ and Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

For other Biblical characters, we only need to agree with good ones, and only with views expressed by them without repentance. For hagiographers, we only need to agree with the views they finally expressed in the text.

We do need to consider at least the 12 Apostles were sufficiently instructed in human sciences, by God, as to not obstruct a good pastoral of the Church Universal by an error in them* : and this also apart from any views directly expressed in the Bible.

But we do not need to consider they were instructed on all details that can be discovered by men and which are irrelevant for pastoral.

However, we can also not tolerate that any error on the nature of integral calculus or the value of pi** could get actually expressed in the Bible.

The Biblical world view is not simply the sum of the views of Biblical good characters and hagiographers and pre-hagiographers : it is such a sum filtered through the inspiration of the all knowing God.***

That said, if Matthew Distefano thinks the range of opinions and contradicting ones between diverse Jews and Israelites of Old Testament even comes near that of diverse opinions between St Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley or C. S. Lewis and John Calvin, he should think again. The Hebrew people were a thing like the Catholic Church, with a set magisterium (from Moses and Aaron down to when Hannas and Caiaphas betrayed it), not a movement with different opposing sects, like "Christianity" understood as if including diverse branches of Protestantism.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Saint Ubaldo of Gubbio
Tuesday of Pentecost Novena
16.V.2018

* This is one reason why a psychiatrist cannot discover they were wrong on what is a sane man, another one being he is either chosing to or chosen for seeking excuses for the bullying that is psychiatry, a third is they hanker to the Pharisees on some in some axiological issues.

** If you try to cite a part of III Kings describing King Solomon's temple as showing the author thought the value of pi was 3.0 and wrote of a measure he had not seen, the key is, the 30 cubits' circumference and the 10 cubits' diameter are of different circles, both parts of same object (III Kings 7:24 : a round rimmed object has circumference measured under rim, smaller circle, and diameter measured on top over rim on either side, including it, larger circle). The difference between a circle with circumference 30 cubits and circle with diameter 10 cubits would be a rim about a hand's breadth, as mentioned - unless the hand's breadth is exact value and the 30 cubits is somewhat low on some inch or part of it, as suggested by LXX text. Supposing a man like Daniel had believed instead the object was elliptical (10 cubits' long axis) or had believed pi is 3:1, he never expressed such an error in his book and we would not need to agree with him on it, if we were brought back in a time machine and could speak to him.

*** Papal, Conciliar and Ordinary infallible magisteria are also filtered by God, hence infallible in doctrine and in morals. One of the infallible doctrines being that the Bible is even, in original autograph of each book as it finally left hagiographer (or "team," like Joshua taking last chapter of a book mainly written by Moses), not just infallible in doctrine and morals, but inerrant. We are free to think Moses' reading of Genesis 11 is better preserved in Greek LXX than in Masoretic Hebrew, and that the correct LXX reading is better preserved in liturgy (Roman or Byzantine) than a modern standard edition of LXX.