Posted: Oct 18, 2010 4:56 pm
nunnington wrote:Your point about orthodox Catholics being literalists is probably true, but of course, there are liberal Catholics, whose views presumably are less literalist. I suppose modern Christian views have spread out to now occupy a very wide spectrum, from fundies at one extreme, to Christian atheists at the other, who I suppose take everything symbolically (Sea of Faith, etc.).
With Catholicism, however, there are some clearly-defined bounds to the spectrum of belief. Those doctrines which are called de fide must be affirmed by the believer in order for him or her to remain in communion with the Church—in other words, to actually be a Catholic. A Catholic (however “liberal”) who persistently and wilfully denies the Virgin Birth is no Catholic at all, but an apostate.
Are you a professing Catholic, nunnington?
nunnington wrote:Your middle of the range liberal Christian probably doesn't accept a literal virgin birth, takes a spiritual or symbolic view of the resurrection, and so on. It's possible that the same views were found in very early Christianity - at any rate, we find Paul arguing with those who denied resurrection completely, and he himself has a less than fully physicalist view of it, doesn't he?
By “liberal Christian,” do you mean liberal Protestant Christian? I’m not arguing that there aren’t as many ways to interpret the bible as there are people who read it. The Catholic, on the other hand, has a Magisterium to obey.
Yes, it’s possible that the Virgin Birth was denied during the early days of Christianity, but how likely is it? Especially when many of the Early Church Fathers were pointing out the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy. What kind of “fulfilment” is an event that didn’t actually happen? Besides, miracles of that sort were much more readily accepted in those days. Even Celsus granted Jesus most of his miracle-working—but for Celsus this amounted to nothing impressive, since a variety of other magicians had reportedly done the same.