BISHOP WHO DENIES GENESIS
ADAM AND EVE ONLY A LEGEND. , Adam and Eve never existed in history; in the Bible they are merely the embodiment of every man and every woman. This is one of the conclusions of Dr. Charles Gore, formerly Bishop of Oxford, in a remarkable book, "Can We Then Believe?" published a few weeks ago. Dr Gore also doubts if Christ ever "descended into hell" —which he suggests is a symbolical phrase—but he expresses belief in the miracles recorded in ..the Bible. "Withom such-belief,' he says, "the conviction of the Christian faith would not hold its ground."
"The Bible," he asserts "was not given to teach us science, and it simply accepts the science of its time; it knows nothing of physical evolution. But there features in the Bible, especially the account it gives us of the slow and gradual self-dis-closure of God and His gradual education of mankind, which, as some of the Christian Fathers perceived, seemed to cry out for a theory of creation by evolution. We must surely recognise that, while it in no way weakens the ground for belief in God, it gives us a far more adequate (and satisfying method of divine method than the old scientific dogma of special creations, to whicli the theologians of the Renaissance unfortunately commited themselves." "Three-Storeyed."
Dr Gore agrees .that the "three storeyed" view of the universe —"the earth in the middle, heaven above, and hell beneath'' —has been demolished, although he rejects the effect on the doctrine of the Ascension which is apparently ascribed to the demolition. Yet Dr Gore claims that the "best Christian thinkers never did hold the 'three storeyed view." He quotes St. Jerome as declaring, that "those who spoke of heaven as. if it were literally a place above the blue vault, in which Christ sits on a throne and is attended by messengers in His heavenly Court," do harm to the Church.
That there was an Ascension —"a vision actually seen by the apostles" Dr Gore has no doubt, but he admits the necessity for asserting that some of the ideas which Christians have held arc no longer possible. "Let us" he says, "continue to publish the abandonment by the Church of an untenable position to which medieval and later Christianity often unfortunately committed itself—viz., that. In spite of all appearances to the contrary, , which were quite evident to some of the educated Fathers— the early chapters of Genesis record literal history. Let it be as publicly abonded as possible. Let us return to the position of some of the Fathers, that what we have here is not history but 'ideas' of 'doctrines' in the form of a story. ,
Everyman. "Thus," declares Dr Gore, "we should regard Adam and Eve not as
( historical individuals, but as Man and i' Woman —as Everyman. We have need to think out all the consequences of this change of position, and adapt all our popular teachings to it.
And it is not so much an innovation -><? a return to a position which sometime's received expression in the early centuries of the Church." Dr Gore points out that there is no
evidence that anyone witnessed the descent into hell —which therefore becomes merely symbolical—but that there is evidence that the Ascension was witnessed and therefore it must be true as fact. "The strength of the Christian religion was grounded," he asserts, "on what were claimed to be events in recent experience, solidly witnessed to —thing's seen.gazed upon, heard and
handled —concerning the birth, the life, the death, the corporal resurrection, and the final disappearance by ascencion of an historical person, Jesus of Nazareth."
Dr 1 Gore pins his faith to miracles. Christ, he thinks, "refused to regard miracles as means of compelling belief, but regarded them as necessarj to encourage or confirm weak faith. "As the Christian religion," he declares, "could not have begun without miracles or the belief in miracles so I think that today Ave are rationally led to believe that they actually occurred, and that without such belief the conviction of the Christian faith would not hold its ground."
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/SNEWS19260907.2.19
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Shannon News, 7 September 1926, Page 4
Word count
Tapeke kupu
687BISHOP WHO DENIES GENESIS Shannon News, 7 September 1926, Page 4
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Copyright undetermined – untraced rights owner. For advice on reproduction of material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.