Recently, I’ve been having a back and forth with an atheist and he’s thrown out a ton of questions, but I told him we can only take one topic at a time. It’s hard to debate and discuss multiple topics in person, let alone on Facebook Messenger. I’ll present his question in his words and lay out my answer.
Question: What about Noah and the great flood where millions died leaving only an incestuous family left alive?
Noah. Everyone knows the story of Noah, even non-believers or those from different faith backgrounds. To a modern-day reader, the story of Noah looks, well, a tad ridiculous. A world-wide flood? Please. One dude and his family left to populate the earth after 40 days? Get real. Show me the evidence!
What are we to make of the story of Noah? I’ll lay out the atheist’s claims and then give my response.
- There is no scientific evidence for a massive world-wide flood. How could you possibly believe in the story of Noah? Seems all religious people want to do is believe “their book” and ignore actual facts.
Back in the 1500s, there was a man named Martin Luther. He was Catholic, but he disagreed with the Catholic Church on a number of points, which I’m not going to go into here for the sake of time. He started what Protestants call “The Reformation.” Catholics call it “The Protestant Revolution” because Martin wasn’t looking to reform the Catholic Church; he was looking to revolt and break off on his own path. Once he broke away, we got the Lutheran denomination. One of the beliefs that came out of the Protestant Revolution was Sola Scriptura–the Bible alone. This is where the Bible alone is the sole authority on all things religious. From this, what happened was a very literal interpretation of most things in the Bible by many, but not all, Protestants.
As Catholics, we don’t hold to Sola Scriptura for a couple of reasons. One, the early Christians did not have the completed Bible until nearly 400 years after Christ’s death and resurrection. If the Bible is the only way they could come to know anything about God or how He wanted His Church established, what did they use? They didn’t have the Bible. Also, it isn’t biblical. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Bible alone is the sole authority on all matters of the faith. The Catholic Church utilizes three things to discern God’s truth: The Bible, Tradition (what was handed down to us from the Apostles and the early Church Fathers) and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. The Magisterium is the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Guided by the Holy Spirit (as Christ promised), the Magisterium looks at all things–history, science, economics, social sciences, theology, philosophy, etc.–in order to make decisions on how to interpret passages in the Bible or on how we should believe on certain issues.
“It is needful also to make use of Tradition, for not everything can be gotten from sacred Scripture. The holy apostles handed down some things in the Scriptures, other things in Tradition.” St. Epiphancius of Salamis (c. A.D 375)
With Sola Scriptura and its (usually) very literal interpretation of the Bible, we get a very literal understanding of Noah’s story. For Catholics, things are a little different. The Church does not have a definitive interpretation of Noah’s story, meaning that a Catholic doesn’t have to take the story as word-for-word literal. Doesn’t mean that the story is a lie, it just means that there are other ways to understand it.
When reading the Bible, you have to first understand the genre of the book you are reading. Some parts of the Bible are very poetic, some are historical, some are parables, some are meant to be taken very literally and some are more metaphorical in nature. The Catholic Church guides us and helps us to understand how a certain book or passage is meant to be taken. You also have to remember the context of the book you are reading. Annndddd….remember the context of the whole Bible. You simply can’t take a piece out of the Bible and just let it stand alone without any context. It’s nice and all for wall hangings and social media memes, but we are meant to understand verses and passages in a deeper context.
All throughout the Bible, there are stories or parables told to explain a truth about God. Jesus used parables all the time. People have been telling parables all throughout history as a way to explain and understand moral truths. We should ask ourselves, “What’s the point of the story?” I’ve found in my life that moral truths are easier to explain in parables rather than lecturing someone. It’s easier to hear and let soak in.
The Catholic Church gives us several ways of understanding Noah and the great flood. You can believe it to be a literal interpretation if you want. The Church doesn’t say that’s bad or wrong. We are still learning much about our world, so who knows what is left to discover.
OR
You can believe that the Genesis author was meaning that the flood covered the “known world” to the people reading the Bible. Ancient people didn’t travel nearly as much as we do. They didn’t know there was a South or North America. The “known world” for them was the region that they knew. There could have been a great flood that covered that area. There has been scientific evidence for a great flood around the Black Sea in ancient times. The Church allows for this interpretation. Contrary to popular belief, the Catholic Church does take science into account when looking to understand things. Science is a tool given to us by God, so it’s not going to contradict our faith. In fact, it can help us more fully understand it.
OR
You can believe it to be more within the realms of a parable meant to show what happens when people turn away from God. Sin leads to death and destruction. Noah and his family were trying to follow God and so blessings flowed for him. He was saved because of his goodness, his love of God, and his obedience to the Creator of all things. This does not mean that it’s a fabricated lie, as some will throw out. It means that it was meant (possibly) to be a parable which is delivering the message about a moral truth. Everything in the Bible is divinely inspired and therefore must be taken seriously by the faithful. There is a reason this passage is in the Bible; we are meant to glean something from it.
Most Catholic scholars do agree that Noah was a real person, a godly man. As Tim Staples, a Catholic apologist, states, “Noah would have existed, most scholars would agree with that today. But, what is the story teaching? Is it a literal flood-covering-the-whole-earth kind of thing or a localized flood? As Catholics, we can debate and discuss this issue.”
Instead, Catholic theologians understand the first eleven chapters of Genesis contain, in the words of Pope Pius XII, “simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people” (Humani Generis, 38). —Catholic Answers Magazine Article
“That’s nice for you. You come across a hard part of the Bible and you just make excuses for it. You try to make it sound not so bad to cover up,” says the non-believer.
These aren’t excuses, they are possible explanations. The Magisterium of the Catholic Church has been at this a very long time: Longer than any Protestant denomination, longer than any modern-day atheist interpretations. It’s always easy for non-believers to attack the weakest point of any belief. Then, when Christians are asked to defend their position and someone offers a different explanation, we’re told that’s an excuse. Non-believers try to peg us all into this one corner where it’s easy to attack us.
I find St. Augustine’s advice very helpful.
“In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.” –St. Augustine (A.D. 415)
