(November 29, 2022 at 12:21 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Because the literal was, and still is, the least important way to approach scripture.
Just the contrary, Genesis must be taken literally by Christians because Jesus having himself tortured and executed for a metaphorical sin committed by a non-existent individual would be barking mad.
Take Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin, for example. He claimed in the 20th century that literal interpretations of creation in the Book of Genesis should be abandoned in favor of allegorical and theological interpretations. And what happened to him? In 1925, Teilhard was ordered by the Superior General of the Society of Jesus to leave his teaching position in France and to sign a statement withdrawing his controversial statements. This was the first of a series of condemnations by a range of ecclesiastical officials that would continue until after Teilhard's death. The climax of these condemnations was a 1962 warning of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cautioning on Teilhard's works. In 1981, the Holy See stated that they did not change the position of the warning issued by the Holy Office on 30 June 1962, which pointed out that Teilhard's work contained ambiguities and grave doctrinal errors.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
