1.  18 and 19 September 2013

2. Okay, so we’re reading the Genesis creation stories on a symbolic level, but what if they’re not true? What if the account of creation they give never really happened?

3. The Word of God The Word of human beings

4. “Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

5. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles, holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.

6. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted.

7. Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.

8.  God uses the Word of human beings to be a means of communicating the Word of God. o What we need to hold in balance: the words of the Bible are both human and divine words.  The sort of truth that a newspaper article seeks to report, and the sort of truth that the Bible communicates, are not identical. o In other words, the primary goal of the Bible is not to report facts.  Because the Bible is a human word, it can contain factual errors, language we would today find offensive, and imagery that is profoundly violent…

9. But because the Bible is also the Word of God, none of the truths it contains that pertain to our salvation, to our deepening relationship with God, can ever be in error.

10.  All of you have had your Bible Verse Treasure Hunt and Symbolic Functioning of Genesis homework assignments returned via Doctopus. o Look at them. o If I require you to make some changes to what you have done, make them by tomorrow morning to receive full credit for this assignment. o Make them by Monday morning to receive partial credit. o After Monday morning, you will receive no credit for these assignments.  If you have not submitted one or both of those assignments, please complete them and tell me why you are doing them only now.

11. Genesis 3

12.  Check out the new Doctopus homework!  If, when you get home tonight, you have nothing from me in your Google Drive, then e-mail me immediately.