What's Not Wrong With Spong?

Refuting Dominic Statham or Medievals vs. Newtonians · What's Not Wrong With Spong? · Spong and Sarfati - Where Both are Wrong

Back in the days of C. S. Lewis, there was a "bishop Robertson" who had written a book called Honest to God. C. S. Lewis mentioned preferring being honest over being "honest to God". He made some comments on common people finding Robertson more consistent and therefore more honest if he ditched his living as an Anglican bishop.

He mentioned, an uneducated man might react to the propositions of Robertson in two ways: he might agree with them and consequently stop calling himself a Christian and start calling himself an Atheist and stop paying Robertson for the paraphernalia of something he neither of them believed in - or he might disagree and become a Catholic.

Obviously, Catholic clergy back then was not Robertson, was not Spong and was not the Spong-Robertson in "Catholic" very slight disguise whom some call "Pope Francis".

When I met with modernist positions while a Lutheran, I had the impression of dealing with Roberton - we could now say, dealing with Spong. They were not attacking all of the "five fundamentals" so I was a bit overdoing it, they were not "Honest to God" but on some level still Christian and honest in the normal sense of the word. However, I was, since before getting to Lutherans, used to including inerrancy in Genesis (perhaps some gap theory added, "inspired" by Silmarillion and Conan the Barbarian, more the former, as to what I imagined human history could have been like before that gap) in the Biblical inerrancy. I also did and still do take the words of Christ about the Eucharist literally, and in fact, some Lutherans I had contact with back then (I was part of a youth group, which is part of why I didn't get part of a youth group when converting to Catholic), were ignoring this position and presuming I had a moderately "symbolic" (i. e. not as in having symbolicism, but as in lacking literality) perception of the Eucharist, and taking the Roman Catholic position on it (which I as said shared, as far as Real Presence is concerned) as a parallel over simple literal understanding of the Bible. So, I became a Catholic.

I am not accusing each and every Lutheran clergyman I met back then of being Spong or Robertson, but some of the ones I had managed to avoid were. I was aware women "priests" - on whom my position was set through C. S. Lewis' "Priestesses in the Church" - were usually more "Robertson" than some of the male clergy I had to do with.

I definitely based Reverend Jinx (actually Reverend Jenkins, but usually called Reverend Jinx) on the type. If you like fan fiction, I did one on Susan Pevensie after the train crash.* She was told and driven to Sevenoaks by none other than Reverend Jinx - a kind of mentor to her, since I suppose someone who has been to Narnia and comes to deny it would prefer a company that is similarily two minded (I will not prefer "schizophrenic" even if popular wisdom might apply the word, since I disagree with that kind of diagnoses) about ... well, the doctrine he is making his living of, one which therefore should be as integral to his life, as having been to Narnia is to hers.

John Shelby Spong
decided to be wrong.
As he was very good at it,
believe his words, I wouldn't it.

Referring, obviously, to his words on Christian doctrine, I'm not saying he would lie about what he got for Christmas dinner.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Pompidolian Library
Boxing Day
26.XII.2019

PS, I might link to CMI's work on Spong another day, or another hour today, when in form for dealing with their one mistake (in responding to his mention of Joshua)./HGL

PPS, forgot to mention, I decided to convert the day I heard the "chaplain" announce he would be replaced by a "priestess in the Church"./HGL

PPPS, that is (as I just forgot to mention) why I would think a coffee appropriate before taking on Spong and Bott and Sarfati on Joshua's Long Day./HGL

* Here is the link to the chapter conspectus, the ones that are here do not form one continuous narrative as more chapters are planned to be inserted, including chapters I haven't even planned yet:

EN LENGUA ROMANCE EN ANTIMODERNISM Y DE MIS CAMINACIONES : Chronicle of Susan Pevensie
http://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.com/2011/12/chronicle-of-susan-pevensie.html

As you can see, Revd. Jinx is introduced in chapter 2 as the list now is.

Elves and Adam

Human Language Revisited · Elves and Adam · Back to Picq · Off the Bat

I was reading an article by Jon Mentxakatorre Odriozola - J. R. R. Tolkien : The Philosophical Basis for Sub-Creative Words - where I noted the difference between elves in Cuivienen and Adam before and in Eden. Author brought up the former, my benefactor Borgehammar the latter : Adam naming the animals.

The elves first saw and first named stars (before sun and moon were there, or even the two trees). Their first naming of a thing was also their first word. And "el" suspiciously resembles a Hebrew word of God, but in proto-eldarin it is supposed to mean "star" and "speak". Because looking up at the stars was the first topic they ever spoke a single word about.

Adam also named things, in the real story. Animals. But before he did that, he had spoken a lot with God, who had told him to do so.

The Silmarillion was published posthumously, and includes material written after the publishing of Lord of the Rings and also after ... Humani Generis. An encyclical of which we know Tolkien's reception was obedient and obedient to an excessively pro-evolutionary interpretation - basically : we are free to believe Adam's body evolved, as long as we believe Adam's soul was a direct and primary creation of God*. In other words, Tolkien was considering himself free to disregard facthood of entire account as it stands in Genesis. A man so interested in languages as he must have asked himself what Adam's acquisition of language may have been like, if it was not a direct gift from God (leaving only animal names to Adam).

Somehow, what he said directly of elves in Cuivienen may have been similar to what he thought of man.

Now, the difference is a bit like the difference between a Catholic and a Liberal Protestant view of the origin of the Church.

In a Catholic view, God founded mankind as well as Church with one clear start to which all the rest is connected, whether it be by sexual propagation of humanity (along with, usually, sin) or sacramental propagation of episcopal succession making the seven sacraments possible. If your valid Communion comes from a valid Mass said by a priest validly ordained by a bishop validly consecrated in a series going back to the Twelve, so does your Y-chromosome (if you are a man) come from Adam and your mitochondriae from Eve, and your ability to speak started with Adam and Eve, just as your ability to get saved started with Christ's work on Calvary and among the twelve.

In a Liberal Protestant view, sacraments were gradually emerging in the Church, the narrative material of the Gospels were added to, and Church unity was also slow before Nicaea. Church didn't "magically" start with God and the Apostles - and mankind didn't "magically" start with God along with Adam and Eve.

Of which one consequence is, speech would not have started as a direct gift from God, it would have been something for which man had a capacity and gradually developed. Perhaps by Adam between being born of irrational parents with himself a rational soul and meeting God and getting Eve - on the kind of conservative reading Tolkien would no doubt have preferred even within the liberties of* Humani Generis. How this may have - if this scenario had been possible - taken place is a study for Cuivienen chapter in Silmarillion.** Adam would have one night been astonished at the beauty of the stars ... like the elves in Cuivienen. This way, the existence of the elven kind, in Tolkien, does not start with a direct and conscious contact with God, their speech is a reaction to surroundings : an unfallen reaction, a very aesthetic reaction, a reaction worthy of saints as well as very talented men, but still a natural reaction : having the God-given capacity to speech, they develop it.

In Adam's case, as the Bible has it, which is the truth, Adam has the God-given capacity for speech and God also provides, for free, Hebrew grammar and a near complete Hebrew*** lexicon, lacking however words for animals, which Adam then provides. After already knowing how to speak.

I believe Tolkien's version of elves in Cuivienen is wrong and inferior to the Bible. But I also believe both theories are superior to Pascal Picq, Bernard Victorri and Jean-Louis Dessalles - against whose book I wrote back seven weeks ago. Pascal Picq got a link to it, via FB. He hasn't answered and if he transmitted the link to the other two, they didn't bother to answer either.

One more, Tolkien's Cuivienen scene as well as the "Narnia awake" scene in The Magician's Nephew leave out the trauma it would have involved if Adam had been born of non-human parents who could not cope with his humanity. Or of him not sharing it with them. Elves are - like Adam in the Bible - created adults. And created rational. Talking beasts are created as non-talking beasts at first, but first generation such. This makes, for those who love these books, the "liberal Humani Generis" take on Adam even more mysterious and ominous. Even Tolkien and Lewis could not deal with that aspect of the theory some have defended "as Catholics" since 1950, and in Paris since 1947.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Margerite Audoux Library
St. Rufinus of Assisi°
30.VII.2019

* Humani Generis actually doesn't state anyone is free to believe that Adam was born of non-human parents or even as a non-human before God changed him into a human, it only states both options can be defended by people who are both "expertes" in exegesis and in natural sciences. In Latin, "expers" does not primarily mean a formal and accredited "expert", it means someone having experience in the matter. However, it does state very definitely that Adam's soul was a direct creation of God, not a development, and this must be believed.

** Of the Coming of the Elves.

*** The Bible doesn't state what language spoke, directly, but certain traits in the naming of things - Adam and Eve, for instance - suggest it was Hebrew or a very closely related language, which could have been considered as Hebrew as well by non-Hebrews who weren't specialists : the second best candidate after Hebrew being Aramaic; Our Lord's primary language.

° Not identic to Ruffino Niccacci, but his patron saint.

Would GKC have Agreed with MkSh that KH was a Bible Idolater?

1) Newspeak in Nineteen - Eighty ... er Sorry ... Ninety-Four, 2) Mark Shea Recommended David Palm Who Misconstrues Bible Commission of 1909, 3) Would GKC have Agreed with MkSh that KH was a Bible Idolater?, 4) Correspondence of Hans-Georg Lundahl : With Jonathan Sarfati PhD on Fall and Inquisition, 5) New blog on the kid : Quarterlife is a Bad Term, 5b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Answering Bill Nye, the Science Guy on a few points, 5c) New blog on the kid : Phil Provaznik/Dalrymple on Potassium-Argon and on Principle, more on Fission Track and Isochrons (a debunking of...), 6) [Back to Creation vs. Evolution :] Scenario impossible, 7) Karl Keating Out of His Depth?, 8) Three Kinds of Proposition, 9) Is Flat Earth Belief Heretical?, 10) HGL's F.B. writings : Between Palm and Sungenis, 11a) HGL's F.B. writings : On Helios in Christian Geocentrism, 11b) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on Rivers Clapping Hands, Anaximander, Greek Philosophy at time of Ecclesiasticus ... , 12) Assorted retorts : ... on Geocentrism with Raymond Doetjes and "Imdor"

First of all, GKC = Gilbert Keith Chesterton, MkSh = Mark Shea, KH (in this essay) = Kent Hovind. Oh, KJV = King James Version, whereas DR = Douai-Reims. Also a Bible "version" but the one I use as my English Bible. And CSL = Clive Staples Lewis, of course. To the subject. I recall some examples of Chesterton and I will adress them.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton thought certain Bible Worshippers Superstitious and Idolatrous and said of them, whether they had in fact the hat off, certainly "had a tile loose". His example: certain men systematically refuse to use "you" when speaking to one man, saying instead "thou" as Shakespear or KJV Bible. Or DR, for that matter. Their reason? "Using the plural pronoun when adressing just one man is a lie" ...

KH is aware that grammar has changed and the distinction "thou, thee, thy" vs "ye, you, your" was archaic already when KJV (or DR) was being printed. Nowadays "you" not only means both "ye" and "you" but also "thou" and "thee" as well. Replacing "ye"/"you" with "you"/"youm" after "who"/"whom" has so far not occurred to the English speakers, but replacing "thou"/"ye" or "thee"/"you" with "you"/"you all" or "you"/"y'all" or "you"/"youse" has occurred to them. And I suspect that not just "you guys" is a modern "ye" but also "you man" a modern "thou". KH is certainly not open to GKC's ridicule on this one, he uses "you" correctly as in contemporary English and reserves "thou"/"ye" for reading from KJV (or Shakespear).

Next item on GKC's list. Taking off the hat to someone is an act of idolatry and therefore forbidden by "thou shalt not have any other gods before me ... and shalt not worship them" ... now, being polite is usually not an act of idolatry, the "worship" given to a man by bowing down or taking off the hat being merely dulia or hyp-O-dulia (not to be confused with hyp-ER-dulia given to the Blessed Virgin: hyper means over and hypo under). One can add on this question that bowing down to a man is NOT enumerated in express words in the law as constituting latria (and possibly even dulia was not permissible in the Old Testament), BUT Mordechai in the Book of Esther tells Haman he cannot bow down to him, since it would offend the law. I do not know if this was a tradition among Jews or if Parsism or a possibly pre-Zoroastrian Paganism was interpretating such - usually polite - bowing down as an act of Divine Worship. I do know that KH is not wearing a hat, and most people are not wearing a hat nowadays. The occasion for that test has fallen away.

But KH takes that Protestant Superstition (the age old common culture of Christendom being Pagan and including definite acts of idolatry prohibited to Real Christians) more seriously than many. When showing a certain photo, he begins with:

"This is not my wife" Then he pauses. "It is just a picture of her."

If he truly believes it to be idolatrous to refer honours or affections comparable to those given the real person to an object depicting them also, well, he is at least honest and courageous about it. I suppose quite a few Jews would be in a similar predicament and not all of them as honest and courageous as he. Of course some of them avoid photography all together.

He thus abuses himself about parts of Scripture, but less so than those who would say Scripture does not apply. However, he accepted a title "Doctor" which is pretty nearly synonymous to "Rabbi" ... not a thing I would grudge a man being in prison for "intellectual fraud", when the supposed fraud is very much not these things that Chesterton would have objected too. Or for "tax fraud," when the tax exemption in one charge was only "fraudulent" due to a supposed intellectual fraud.

[Long neglected rectification, here I link to Eric Hovind stating the facts:

Kent Hovind STILL In Prison - Son Speaks Out In Personal One-on-One with PPSIMMONS
ppsimmons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GADfTc_j9Y]

Now, would Chesterton have called his Creationism a fad?

Or would Chesterton perhaps have called Evolution a fad?

Because, sometimes faddists get their fads from other occasions than the Bible. Like dug out bones or dug forth cave man art. I could add, ultimately, since on one occasion he said it did not much matter if it was just a doctrine about origins of animal species but left man alone.

He would at least have agreed that from the Creation of the Human Soul onward the account in Genesis is historical. If he had looked into the question he might have found that this could not be unless the six days were at least close to literal truth rather than long ages ... as Kent Hovind found it out.

"From the beginning of creation, God created them male and female." (Mk 10:6)

Yes, KH has a clear point. Since GKC died in 1936 he could not have heard the new Christmas Proclamation from 1994 where the 5199 years are replaced with "unknown ages" ... and he never complained about the Church telling him a fixed and recent age for the world. The kind of mystique of vastness, whether of time or of space, that appealed so much to Teilhard de Chardin, never appealed to him. If a vast cosmos is worthier than a small one, obviously a big man like himself was worthier than a thin man as he had been in his youth as a painter ... which he fortunately knew was nonsense. He also knew academia was in the habit of producing lots of nonsense. Back in his day or a bit later Haldane was seriously suggesting a life force worship - which academicians would not suggest today. He called that Paganism or even Devil Worship (CSL considered it at least very close to such). He would perhaps have been rather surprised at the suggestion - which Mark Shea and David Palm seem to be making - that once that particular fad vanishes and academia seem to concentrate on facts, it suddenly becomes immune to fads.

Because, even when men outwardly concentrate on visible facts, or what seem such to them (by assuming certain calculations, such as age from C14 content or distance in space from angle of parallax per annum) they do so with hearts that remain spiritual. And which may even be imbued with a collective positive spirituality - however little it may be voiced in academic publications, or however merely negative it may be when reacting to a Christian comment.

And if such a spirituality is wrong, so will the conclusions be, at least some of those collectively accepted by that body of men.

He accepted in fact Catholicism because it was traditionalist, testing each modern fad by a test of its traditions, not as if this was enough to guarantee its truth, but because this was one necessary part of its remaining true if starting so. He did not consider a religion able to start as a Pagan or Heretical lie and end up as truth without any kind of conversion in between. And similarily, a religion which remains true up to a point in time may - as Catholic Churchmen under Henry VIII - turn their back on truth, for opportunity.

Now, when it comes to Ritual, I cannot see how Chesterton would have agreed to "let's become closer to Protestants" ideals. Actually, a perhaps rather simple view of veracity and saying the right thing, comparable to people refusing to give up "thou" when adressing a single person was behind reinforcing the Latin a bit before 800 into the old pronunciation, as kept alive in England where it was a learned tongue, when Latin and Vernacular started to be two different things on the Continent. And in England the celebration in Latin rather than Ænglisc or Pryddoneg (English or Welsh, supposing I got the second word right) was a bit like the concern of missionaries choosing KJV English rather than indigenous tongues as yet unexplored and unchartered, without either grammar or spelling or word book as yet fixed. You can sing a Christmas carol in which "hunters come with beaver pelts" rather than shepherds with sheepskins, but you cannot chant the Christmas Gospel that way. And tomorrow, in the Gospel if not in the carol, the three magi must be magi and come with precisely gold, frankincense and myrrh, however absent these may be - excepting gold - from a language like the English of St Augustine's day. So it must be read in a language which has all the right words with all the right meanings. And, as Chesterton pointed out, a living occidental language is as much in a flux as an Amerindian language or a pre-civilised, pre-Christian English - "the choice is not between a dead language and a live language, but between a dead language and a dying language" - as in a language continually killed by speakers misusing it.

But when it comes to the world view in general, rather than ritual, he would not have accepted Teilhard de Chardin for a moment. Let us give the word to Jonathan Sarfati, even Doctor, unless he objects to not literally and literalistically obeying the injunction not to call a man rabbi. In his view of the Fall, there is exactly one detail where he is wrong and where Chesterton and Tolkien and I agree he is wrong. It is about free will being real, but he thinks it is not real, after the Fall. Apart from that he is right. Suffering is one consequence of the fall and not a prequel to it. Let us also give the word to King Alfred, as imagined by Chesterton. Same story somewhat more poetically and without that error:

CMI : Why would a loving God allow death and suffering?
by Dr Jonathan Sarfati
Published: 2 January 2014
http://creation.com/why-death-suffering

And slowly his hands and thoughtfully Fell from the lifted lyre, And the owls moaned from the mighty trees Till Alfred caught it to his knees And smote it as in ire. He heaved the head of the harp on high And swept the framework barred, And his stroke had all the rattle and spark Of horses flying hard. "When God put man in a garden He girt him with a sword, And sent him forth a free knight That might betray his lord; "He brake Him and betrayed Him, And fast and far he fell, Till you and I may stretch our necks And burn our beards in hell. "But though I lie on the floor of the world, With the seven sins for rods, I would rather fall with Adam Than rise with all your gods. "What have the strong gods given? Where have the glad gods led? When Guthrum sits on a hero's throne And asks if he is dead? "Sirs, I am but a nameless man, A rhymester without home, Yet since I come of the Wessex clay And carry the cross of Rome, "I will even answer the mighty earl That asked of Wessex men Why they be meek and monkish folk, And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke; What sign have we save blood and smoke? Here is my answer then. "That on you is fallen the shadow, And not upon the Name; That though we scatter and though we fly, And you hang over us like the sky, You are more tired of victory, Than we are tired of shame. "That though you hunt the Christian man Like a hare on the hill-side, The hare has still more heart to run Than you have heart to ride. "That though all lances split on you, All swords be heaved in vain, We have more lust again to lose Than you to win again. "Your lord sits high in the saddle, A broken-hearted king, But our king Alfred, lost from fame, Fallen among foes or bonds of shame, In I know not what mean trade or name, Has still some song to sing; "Our monks go robed in rain and snow, But the heart of flame therein, But you go clothed in feasts and flames, When all is ice within; "Nor shall all iron dooms make dumb Men wondering ceaselessly, If it be not better to fast for joy Than feast for misery. "Nor monkish order only Slides down, as field to fen, All things achieved and chosen pass, As the White Horse fades in the grass, No work of Christian men. "Ere the sad gods that made your gods Saw their sad sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale, That you have left to darken and fail, Was cut out of the grass. "Therefore your end is on you, Is on you and your kings, Not for a fire in Ely fen, Not that your gods are nine or ten, But because it is only Christian men Guard even heathen things. "For our God hath blessed creation, Calling it good. I know What spirit with whom you blindly band Hath blessed destruction with his hand; Yet by God's death the stars shall stand And the small apples grow."

A Neanderthal man who was buried by his near and dear after being kept alive for years without having any teeth to chew with was clearly human, since his close ones were so. And since he lost teeth and died, he was clearly suffering consequences of the fall. I e, he was descended from Adam. And not dead 50.000 years ago or 43.000 years before Adam ate the forbidden fruit.

Now, Chesterton made a point. If a scroll belongs to a certain procession from the start, along with priests and statues and candles, you do not take the scroll in order to smash all the rest. KH would have answered that the Bible scroll was not from the start part of the Catholic Church, but that it persecuted it from 400 to 1400, and herein he would be wrong, even if subjectively answering Chesterton's point. But there is a parallel point to make.

If a procession has always been going to the East and suddenly starts going to the West, if it has always been using statues and someone starts scrapping them, if it has always had a cross and six candles on an altar facing East and someone starts fiddling both with candle numbers and altar direction, I think it is possible to use the scroll to correct that nonsense. And if the people of the particular procession have had the habit of taking the scroll as reliable history, it is arguably a corrective to people thinking they continue the procession while not believing it to be reliable history.

And if priests calling themselves Catholic call Creationism a Paganism - believe me, some do - they remind me of the Pagans who would not perpetuate the Pagan image of the White Horse. It is only Christian men who will keep even Pagan things, as King Alfred (or perhaps rather Chesterton through him) sung.

But the point remains also that to Chesterton the Garden of Eden was essential:

"When God put man in a garden He girt him with a sword, And sent him forth a free knight That might betray his lord;

As is also apparent from his view on the Morning of Easter Sunday:

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

Chesterton quotes from The Ballad of the White Horse & Everlasting Man

And Neanderthal preceding Adam as "not yet the image and likeness of God" is quite as incompatible with free will as Sarfati's nod to Calvin. It is also quite as incompatible with the garden as the start ... with a God who loves gardens and doll houses.

Or even more so.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Twelfth Day of Christmas
5-I-2014

Nine Questions of CMI answered - by a Catholic

Source for the Nine Questions:

CMI : ‘Are you a biblical creationist?’

• Do you believe that God created the earth and universe in six ordinary-length (earth-rotation) days?
  • Basically yes. Heaven beyond the stars (where God's throne is) was, with angels and also earth in its most basic state created before the days.
    
    Days are circling around earth before as after creation of the Sun, but are counted as from location of Jerusalem. There day one was certainly rather beginning at noon than at morning. And day Seven, the first Sabbath, lasted only twelve hours as opposed to 24, it would seem, since "it was evening it was morning" were left out and God was already (at the location) resting from creation on evening of day six.
    
    Whether the days occurred as spontaneously understood from how they are described or are a description of one moment creation as St Augustine thought or whether his one moment creation was followed up by the literal six days is patristically undecided.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that the earth and universe are only thousands (not millions or billions) of years old, as measured by Earth time?
  • Yes, and since I am a Geocentric as measured by time anywhere in the universe else too.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that Adam and his wife Eve were the literal, historic ancestors of all (other) people who have ever lived?
  • Amen, amen.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that Adam and Eve had no physical parents, but were created directly by God; Adam from the actual dust, and Eve from the actual flesh and bone of Adam’s side?
  • Yes.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that human physical death began only after Adam sinned?
  • Yes.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that all animals were originally created vegetarian?
  • I believe that either carnivores were not yet so in Eden, or if they were it was Adam that fed them, designing other animals as their food. But I favour the first theory, since it is supported by early Church Fathers and sticks closer to the text of the Bible.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that fossils showing evidence of bloodshed and suffering (e.g. half-eaten prey, dinosaur cancers,) could not have been formed before Adam’s Fall led to the Curse?
  • Such waste cannot have been the case even if there were real carnivores in Eden.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that the Flood of Noah covered the whole globe?
  • Yes.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that after Lazarus was physically dead for days, Jesus miraculously caused him to regain physical life?
  • Yes.

Comment, the original meaning of the Nine Questions was this:

Nine questions to ascertain whether your future pastor, youth group leader or Bible College principal takes a straightforward view of Genesis

I am not a future pastor, nor a youth group leader (though I hope to be a father some day), nor a Bible College principal (though a Traditional Catholic Seminar could possible get me as a Consultant, once it is clear I am not into celibacy or priesthood myself). I am just a writer. But those too are better if being Traditional about the Literal meaning of Genesis.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou Library
All Hallows Day 2013

PS, All Souls' Day, I came to think of a tenth point:

• Do you believe that you will rise in the same body that now you have?
  • Yes, I believe that whether for glory or for shame, my body will eternally be involved from the day of resurrection.
    
    C. S. Lewis is a writer many of us, including me, find enjoyable and also instructive. When it comes to Evolution Compromise, he is very instructive in a less enjoyable way insofar as he was (since back from his atheist days) an Evolution believer. But he shows what that leads to in diverse ways, and here we get a glimpse in that passage where he says "we can no longer believe in a literal material resurrection of the body, there would not be enough matter to go around for one thing ..."
    
    I do not believe the atoms in my body have been circulating for millions of years in and out of other living bodies, nor that men have been around long enough for the atoms in my body to have been recycled from other men. Especially not those that will be in my body when I die as compared to those that were in other men's bodies when they died. Each will get his body back, and for those glorified it will be in the best shape possible.
    
    No, here I do not hold with C. S. Lewis, but rather with Pope Innocent III. In a Leonine Edition of the Summa, in the footnotes of the Supplementum, I found that Pope Innocent III had imposed on Valdensians returning to the faith a confession against their particular errors which included "I believe I will rise in the same flesh that now I have" (eadem carne ac nunc gero). I hold with that, of course./HGL