All right, well, we have a lot to cover in this lecture. This lecture is entitled the creation account. We spent a significant amount of time in the past two lectures covering some of the high points on how we approach the scripture, right? Looking at divine revelation and natural revelation and the fact that God loves us and wants to reveal himself to us.
The fact that we can't possibly know who God is unless he comes down to our level and speaks to us. And so he reveals himself to us and this revelation comes down to us through scripture and tradition, and it's guaranteed by the Magisterium to protect it, transmit it to interpret it throughout the ages. And we look at all this stuff. Well, now it's time to dive into the Bible itself.
And we're going to be looking at this lecture at the creation account. So while the creation account is really just two chapters, Genesis one and chapter one and chapter two, there's still so much to cover. So let's begin with some introductory points here. All right, now it's probably no surprise that there are all kinds of different approaches and interpretations of Genesis really one through three.
And you can even say all of Genesis for that matter. Genesis means origins, right? And we're talking about the origins of humanity, the origins of some of the great mysteries that shroud our existence about these big questions that we ask. We ask about life, the origins of the people of God, Israel, Genesis is a book about origins.
Well, the origins of the world is very difficult to understand. It is a mystery. And so there are naturally various approaches to it. For example, God, you take it at face value.
God created in seven literal days. Read the scriptures and it says seven days. And there you have it. It's one very valid approach to this chapter.
Or you have some people say that the days of Genesis chapter one are symbolic for ages because various verses like in the Psalms and second Peter say, I'll just read second Peter chapter three, verse eight for you. And Saint Peter says, do not ignore this one fact, beloved that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. And then so people will say, well, the days are symbolic for ages, right? As Peter says, and he's referencing song.
Well, then you have, of course, some people also saying that we have to reject it because it just echoes in a similar two various ancient pagan mythological accounts. And those are clearly disgusting and weird and strange and violent and sexuality amongst the gods and violence amongst the gods. And that's false. And so creation, the creation account of the ancient Hebrews is also false because they have so many parallels.
Or at least echoes of one another, right? And then you're going to have some people say, well, it's false because it flatly flies in the face of science, right? Darwinian evolution has explained the origin of the species and create in the creation count in Genesis contradicts that and so it's wrong. And then other people will say, okay, well, no evolution of some sort might be the case.
And so maybe God created here by some sort of theistic evolution or evolutionary creationism of some kind, right? You have all of these different debates and it even gets into the family. I know the story of a young girl studying religion in her class and she comes home and asks her dad, Daddy, where do we come from? How do we get here?
And he said, well, honey, it's very, very clear that we evolved from apes over millions and millions of years. Life progressed and evolved until one day. Human beings came into existence from their ancestors, the apes. And she's like, oh, that sounds a little bit difficult to believe.
And so she went to her mom to ask the same question. Mommy, where do we come from? How are we here? And her mom said, well, honey, God created Adam and Eve, our first parents, and we all descended from them.
And she said, well, but Daddy says that we all evolved from apes. What are the two different theories here? And her mom says, well, that's easy to explain. He's talking about his side of the family.
I'm talking about mine. So obviously that's a joke. But you really can get a sense from this fun joke here that, hey, people are approaching Genesis completely different ways. And it has consequences, how we look at the Bible and we're going to draw conclusions from this and live our lives accordingly.
All right. So then the question becomes, well, how can we approach the text properly? What can we know from the scriptures, even if there is a lot of mystery attached to it? And to know that, really, if you think back to our lecture last time, lecture number two, the first of the five keys for a proper interpretation is to look for the original intention of the author.
Right? We cannot impose our own preconceived conclusions onto the text and then thereby draw conclusions because they're going to be false. We need to look at the original intention of the author. And to do that, we study the language, the ancient languages, the customs, the idiomatic expressions, the context.
We need to look at the literary genres that might be in use, such as poetry. And there's a lot of poetry here in these two chapters. History, liturgy, law, whatever it might be. We need to look at the literary devices of which there are tons, allegory, parallelism, symbolism, repetition, hyperbole.
I mean, you can go on and on. So these various things that are in use in the text are going to help us to understand what does the original author intend to say. Okay. So what that means is Genesis is presenting the who of creation, the what of creation, the why of creation, and also the theological how of creation.
The theological how. Now, I would argue that science is not the predominant concern of Genesis, but there are certainly scientific implications in the in the account. That's that certainly true, but it's the theological how. Now, we can certainly say and agree that, you know, both the interpretation of the seven days of creation is valid as well as the interpretation that there are perhaps were longer periods of time.
That's valid as well. The church does not require us and bind us to believe one or the other. And so we can kind of go with whatever, you know, hard study and discipline study could lead us into that conclusion. Okay.
So it's important to keep in mind though that the Bible's primary concern is to teach us about our destiny in crisis, to teach us about how we can be reunited to our to God the Father, to our heavenly Father, and be forgiven for our sins and be with him in eternity. All right. It is not a scientific textbook. It is not concerned with science, with economics, politics, and all these things that we discussed in a prior lecture.
And it reminds me of a very, very famous quote from Cardinal Chezet de Barronio, at least where it seems to be attributed to. And he said the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. So astronomy and physics and biology and all these different things. It's not the primary concern of Genesis.
Although there are scientific implications, I think it's more important to focus on this theological meaning of the book, right? Genesis. So we're never going to understand entirely how it all happened. Job chapter 38 through 41 is spent a lot of time where God says to Job, and you're never going to understand, you're never going to understand and figure out how God created the world.
All right. So there is mystery. We weren't there in the beginning. This happened long before we walked this earth.
And so we have to understand these things. But on this at the same time, reason does not contradict faith. And faith is just simply the intellectual ascent to what God has revealed to us. We believe what God has revealed.
If God has revealed it and he cannot lie, he cannot deceive. I simply believe it because he's revealed it. Well, science and divinely revealed religion cannot contradict either. It's simple.
I mean, if God's the origin of both, God has revealed what we're to know about himself about himself and what God has revealed. And really, I mean, it's not the origin of both. I mean, if God's the origin of both, God has revealed what we're to know about himself and reason can understand that. Not fully, not completely.
There's always mystery. But what God has revealed is not illogical. It doesn't contradict reason. So reason and faith are harmonious.
Science and divinely revealed religion is harmonious. We certainly have religion out there, religions, various theologies and particular beliefs about the divine, that certainly are contradictory and illogical, but not divinely revealed religion because, as we said before, God cannot error. God cannot error. All right.
Fantastic. So, we're not really quickly before we move on a couple of different things about this remark of the pagan mythology. And what we're going to find, I'm just going to point out a couple of things here that in fact, Genesis is a correction and an attack of the false pagan myths. They're not similar at all.
In fact, if you go and read a lot of these ancient mythological accounts, you find that there are incredible differences between those and the Genesis accounts. And so, here's a couple of points in your notes. Number one, there's only one true God, right? And he creates all things by his efficacious word.
He merely speaks and things come into existence from nothing. All right. We'll talk about that in a moment. We'll talk about some of these pagan mythology accounts, and it's pretty gruesome stuff.
You know, the humanity springs from the corpse of a dead God. You know, it's like, wow, that's pretty intense stuff here. But not with the Judeo-Christian religion, right? Not with divine revelation.
God speaks. Let there be light, and there is light. God speaks. Let there be waters, and there are waters, and so on and so forth.
All right. That's the first major correction. So, that brings us to the second point. All these other gods are not gods at all.
They're not divine. They're mere creatures, or they're just mere fabrications, right? So, you might worship the sun. I guess we're going to find Egypt did.
Well, the sun is merely a creation of the one true God. And then next, finally, number three, when God creates Adam and Eve, and God creates mankind, he creates mankind in his image and his likeness, and he wants a covenant with them. He wants to be their heavenly Father. He wants to share his own divine life.
That is not all the case with these other ancient accounts. And these other ancient accounts are supposed to be the slaves of the gods, right? And there are various ways to see that humanity is far inferior to the gods not loved by the gods, and used and abused by the gods, not the case here. God the Father creates Adam and Eve in a relationship of love, okay?
And we're going to look at a lot of that here in this lecture.