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Can Six Days or Eve from Side of Adam be a Metaphor?
Note, some people have said, and I have already rejected, "we cannot take the six days literally, since the Church Fathers believed in the allegoric sense" which they did.
The answer is, the allegoric sense is not another way of making sense of same topic from the text, but using the literal sense of the text on this topic as something to apply also allegorically or typologically or prophetically to another topic, very often a New Testament topic : Eve from the side of Adam when he slept being an allegory for Church from the opened side of Christ on Calvary, for instance.
But what if instead it is literal sense, but a metaphoric sense in the meaning? Well, a first consequence of this approach to the six days or Eve from side of Adam in Eden is, you cannot use Church Fathers' supporting allegory to support this approach, since that is as you admit another topic.
Here are the words of St Thomas Aquinas again:
- I Pars, Q 1 A 10:
- Objection 3.
- Further, besides these senses, there is the parabolical, which is not one of these four. ...
- Reply to Objection 3.
- The parabolical sense is contained in the literal, for by words things are signified properly and figuratively. Nor is the figure itself, but that which is figured, the literal sense. When Scripture speaks of God's arm, the literal sense is not that God has such a member, but only what is signified by this member, namely operative power. Hence it is plain that nothing false can ever underlie the literal sense of Holy Writ.
Now, let us, without dragging in the red herring of Church Fathers supporting sensus allegoricus, examine the question whether specifically the six days can be a metaphor for something else ... and we should list what we take into consideration.
A - the text "God created the world in six days"
It is very easy to read that very short text in isolation as a metaphor, whether for shorter (God created the world in a nano-second which was viewed as six consecutive nano-seconds by the angels) or for longer (God created the world in six major eras lasting, each, perhaps millions of years).
It is however a somewhat recurrent fallacy or dishonest debating technique to argue from a summary of the relevant propositions rather than from them in themselves. So ...
B - the full text of Genesis 1 and 2
It is very much less easy to read in any metaphor about time into "first day", "morning and evening". St Augustine considered a possibility for days being consecutive that God created all simultaneously, but the angels viewed the process in a vision of six consecutive parts, and they viewed each part in an "evening knowledge" (knowing what was made materially by their perfect knowledge of matter) and "morning knowledge" (reviewing it with gratitude in the glory of God).
It is however somewhat fuzzy how he considered that this reduction of day six to one aspect of one nanosecond compares to the description of many hours in day six from Adam's viewpoint.
I think the difficulties are somewhat even greater if we try the other opposite type of metaphor, as metaphor for much longer periods of time.
C - Genesis 1 and 2 in Context of Bible and Taking Archaeology into Account
Now we are not dealing with the six days only, but with chronogenealogies of Genesis 5, 11, and birth chapters for patriarchs after Abraham. For St Augustine's position, that is not an additional problem ... but :
Since Abraham interacted with a Pharao of Egypt, it is necessary that he lived well after Göbekli Tepe (or at least survived well after Göbekli Tepe, depending on how fast the carbon millennia can be reduced if we suppose a real rise in carbon 14 levels relative to carbon 12). Abraham lived in the time of perhaps pre-dynastic and certainly early dynastic Egypt.
However, on conventional dating Göbekli Tepe is several millennia before the beginning of dynastic Egypt. But Abraham was not several millennia after the Flood of Noah ... so, either Flood was after Göbekli Tepe, perhaps even after Abraham, or Göbekli Tepe falls within the roughly one millennium (at about longest) between Flood and Abraham.
Flood can
neither come after Göbekli Tepe, let alone Abraham, since Abraham descends from the three sons and three daughters in law of Noah, and since we all do, and since not only since Abraham, but on a somewhat rougher level even since Göbekli Tepe, human populations have been fairly stably inhabiting their regions, as far as archaeology tells us,
nor can we reduce the method of carbon 14 to squeeze Göbekli Tepe in
without also reducing early C14 to relative only values and therefore highly putting into doubt the even less certain radiometric dating methods.
But if we scrap much (if not all) of radiometric dating, we therefore eliminate the need to enlarge six days to longer periods too. If not even Flood can be put after Göbekli Tepe, still less parts of day 6.
That also means, we cannot identify what we call Bronze Age with the pre-Flood bronze use of Tubal-Cain.
D - Patristics added
Obviously Fathers are taking literal sense either in literal word meanings of "six days" or as metaphor for sth shorter, never for something longer (when Origen said sth about Earth being less than 10 000 years old, he was probably on LXX authority considering the Earth as more than 5000 years back when Christ was born, but he was not sure how much, only it was lots shorter than 10 000 years).
Both Origen and St Augustine are noted for having reduced six days to one moment, and both are also actively rejecting Pagans who propose longer than Biblical timelines.
And, obviously, no Church Father actually proposed to take the six days as metaphor for something longer than those hours. Those 144 hours.
E - And how was Our Lord taking it?
On Pharisees becoming murderers of prophets, He puts Abel at beginning of creation or foundation of the world:
"That the blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation,"
[Luke 11:50]
"That upon you may come all the just blood that hath been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even unto the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachias, whom you killed between the temple and the altar."
[Matthew 23:35]
On marriage meaning one man and one woman, He refers also to beginning of creation:
"But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female."
[Mark 10:6]
One more. Technically, if a tribulation is considered as more horrendous if suffered by rational than by irrational creatures, however sentient, some people (like Father Spitzer, the blind priest) could try to get around the following one:
"For in those days shall be such tribulations, as were not from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, neither shall be."
[Mark 13:19]
To a man like Spitzer, any tribulation before anatomic men were endowed with real rational and immortal souls would of course be inferior - but for one thing, this attitude is not convincing as exegesis of Mark 13, not compared to God creating man and allowing man to suffer all tribulations there are since creation (since they all result from Adam's sin and God's curse), and for another, Spitzer would have to account for Göbekli Tepe - in timeline it would be "pre-Adamite", since he accepts conventual dating, presumably, unless he also wants to attack chronogenealogies as vastly incomplete, which is a further departure from the text than the one we discuss here.
Some would like to get around this by saying "the creation" in this context means only human creation.
This cannot be claimed by Catholics who honour St Francis for preaching to birds, St Anthony for preaching to fish, and the three young boys exhort all non-human creation to glorify God, we use that in the liturgy. Each Matins or Lauds (forget which) involves their canticle. Also, animals, plants and inanimate objects are blessed ... therefore we are in some sense clearly preaching also to non-human creation and "in all creation" in Colossians cannot be made an excuse to introduce a usage of "creation" as limited to men only.
"If so ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and immoveable from the hope of the gospel which you have heard, which is preached in all the creation that is under heaven, whereof I Paul am made a minister."
[Colossians 1:23]
So, in a Latin Vulgate, or in a Douay Rheims version, this passage has the Gospel preached "in" and not necessarily "to" all creation : salt cannot understand the Gospel, as far as we can tell, but the Gospel is even so preached
in salt, whenever a priest is blessing salt. So "in all creation" is not metonymic for "among all men" which disposes of many bad or half brained arguments against Our Lord's clear meaning.
So, in sum, no, we really and truly cannot take six days as metaphors for millions of years.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Paul of Constantinople
7.VI.2018
