Literal Readings Of Creation

[Byzantine]

I might have asked this question or a similar one already. Sorry if I have.

 

Can we take a literal reading of the 7-day Creation? Until this year in school, I was under the impression that we can, but now it seems that such an approach was barred. Or is it just an extremely popular private opinion?

 

Thanks!

[cappie]

The literal sense is what the author intended to express and convey by the words used.

 

According to Divino Afflante Spiritu the literal sense in #31 is that “which is expressed by the words themselves.” Pope Pius XII  goes on in #33-36:
“[33] Let the interpreter then, with all care and without neglecting any light derived from recent research, endeavor to determine the peculiar character and circumstances of the sacred writer, the age in which he lived, the sources written or oral to which he had recourse and the forms of expression he employed.
[34] Thus can he the better understand who was the inspired author, and what he wishes to express by his writings. . . . the supreme rule of interpretation is to discover and define what the writer intended to express.
[35] What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use.
[36] For the ancient peoples of the East, in order to express their ideas, did not always employ those forms or kinds of speech which we use today; but rather those used by the men of their times and countries. What those exactly were the commentator cannot determine as it were in advance, but only after a careful examination of the ancient literature of the East.”

 

Some thoughts from Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger) book "In the Beginning...." A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Ressourcement: Retrieval & Renewal in Catholic Thought)

 

The Pope says that the literal meaning of Genesis 1-3 is:
Creation by God!
The Original sin is to doubt His loving Covenant.
That the Creation demythologized the pagan stories, fear, gods, demons, and culture.
The numbers that run the covenant are seven and ten.
The placing of the Seven Days are the Sabbath--sign of God's Loving Covenant.
The Lord says "Let there be" Ten times, and thus reminds us of the Ten Words/Commandments.
The placing of the light to rule the day and the one to rule the night does away with two more gods.

the Pope says, it is not an either-or situation. We need to make great use of science and faith, but understand that both are doing their own work. Faith tells us of our dignity. Science tells us about our biology, chemistry and physics.