Must a Catholic believe that Noah's flood resulted in the death of all humans with the exception of Noah, his sons, and their wives?

The Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Deluge admit that a geographically limited flood is a permissible opinion yet stress that the flood should still be held as anthropologically universal.




So it's not clear to me either in the verses from the Epistles of Peter or from the flood being a type for baptisms that there must be a anthropologically universal flood. Yes St. Peter says only 8 people were saved, but 8 people out of what? We need to assume this is the whole human race to prove it was the whole human race.

So then the appeal is to the consensus of the Fathers allegedly, and the reading of the Church.

Is there a case to be made this is a dogma for Catholics?

I don't think that's correct. The context in both 1 and 2 Peter is universal.



Are we to imagine that Christ preached only to some of the spirits that were in prison, or to all of them? (Or, put another way, are we to imagine that only some of the people who'd died were among those souls in prison?) If not, then the scope here is universal. But then an immediate move to a restricted frame of reference wouldn't fit.



Again, this is a general set of considerations: the angels fell and were punished. Human beings sinned and were punished. But 8 of them escaped.

It's not an assumption that St. Peter is here referring to mankind as a whole. It's the obvious sense of the text itself.

I don't have an answer about the dogmatic status of the anthropological universality of the Flood. But I would say at the very least that we ought to believe it in the absence of some compelling reason not to. I don't believe I've ever run into any such reason.

The exegesis within the Church allows the flood to be localized - which is a reasonable conclusion; given a few scientific observations. Thus, anthropologically loss being universal wouldn't be a hard pill to swallow. Being dogmatic, I've never heard it declared.

It would be helpful for this point if you knew of an authoritative commentary on this verse. Presumably the souls mentioned are the souls redeemed from the limbo of the Fathers, or at least that is how I have understood the passage. Yet were their righteous people outside of Noah and his kin in the days of the deluge? Or are we to believe Christ preached to the damned? I am just unsure.



Yes this is a sense of the text, but I don't see how reading the flood as a type for punishment of wicked men or wicked angels is in anyway a more difficult reading. For example, Christ is called the pascal lamb (I Cor 5:7). Yet Christ died for all, and none are saved without the cleansing of His blood. The Pascal lamb was slain for the firstborn child, and it was only the firstborn child who was taken if the blood of the lamb was not found on the doorpost. (Ex 12:12-13)

The type can still represent a universal judgement even if the flood itself was not anthropologically universal.



I am not a geneticist, but I am having trouble finding evidence of a recent male common ancestor who would have had knowledge of planting vineyards (Cf. Genesis 9:20)

If it is a dogma of the faith, then it simply must be the case that it is true. If it is not a dogma of the faith, reinterpretation might be necessary.

Yes, that's right--our Lord descended into hell, which is to say, into the limbo of the fathers, and preached to the dead there. I misspoke when said "only some of those who'd died," and should have said only some of the righteous who'd died. But the point remains the same. Christ preached to all of those souls, not only to some of them.


Your examples aren't really to the point. I agree that you can stretch the text so that you're not taking it in the universal sense in which it's obviously written, and that given some good reason to do so that might be justified. But as I said before, it's not an assumption that St. Peter is here referring to mankind as a whole. It's the obvious sense of the text itself. I don't have any additional arguments to offer on that score, just the text.


I thought you were asking about whether the Flood was universal, not about the proper mode of interpretation of the book of Genesis as a whole. Your objection here changes the issue entirely. "Ought we to read everything in the scriptures as they pertain to Noah as expressing (so to speak) the strict historical truth in all its details?" is one question. "Was there a universal flood through which only one small family was saved?" is another.

Experts on ancient Hebrew aren't even sure whether the Hebrew word which is translated 'world' in most translations of Genesis means merely 'everywhere in a particular region' or literally 'the entire planet Earth', it isn't even clear whether the ancient world even understood the concept of 'the entire planet Earth', or whether the Hebrews even had a word that would mean literally 'the entire world'.

The problem is that if we were to render apparently historical claims as allegory, the flood itself would be a more likely candidate then Noah's vineyard.

Where does the "allegory" thing come from? I'm not saying the vineyard is allegorical. I'm pointing out that you're moving the goalposts here. You've got to think the thing through one step at a time.

Allegory comes in because if it can't error and it can't be read literally it must be something akin to allegory.


My point is this: references to technology both before and after the flood make it difficult to place the flood before our most recent common ancestor. So it would seem that there is prima facie a problem with the anthropological universal reading.

This seems more potent then the use of the flood as a type in the NT

If the flood was localized, does that mean the fire that God will use to "destroy the world" will be localized as well?

Define "error," and it's fine if you want to shift the discussion to the interpretational implications of holding to inerrancy, but that honestly is a different (yes, related, but different) question than your original, or so it seems to me.

Everything in the Scriptures must be read literally (in addition to other ways of reading it)--which is to say, according to the intention of the author. http://newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm#article10

So the relevant question isn't "should we read the story about Noah's vineyard literally?" The relevant question is "what truth(s) is that story intended to convey?" And in the case of the Flood, we know from St. Peter's own pen at least part of what God taught us through the event itself and in its recording in his Word.

I'm going to suggest that we take a step back and get much clearer on how to read the Bible with the mind of the Church, before delving into complicated theological matters revolving around Biblical interpretation.

Not necessarily. The type does not have to correspond to the signified in all matters.

How do you suppose we do that?

I was being facetious. My point being is that St. Peter makes a contrast in his epistle on how God destroyed the world of old and how he will do it once again in the future...

A fair question. I guess the answer is: I don't. I'm saying, in effect, that the questions you are asking are specific questions that arise in part because you aren't clear in general on Catholic Biblical interpretation. But I don't have a suggestion for here and now about what you ought to do about that, other than realizing that maybe you're putting the cart before the horse here.