Any young earth creationists out there?

[Gorgias]

"Christ, . . . in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, makes man fully manifest to himself and brings to light his exalted vocation."2 It is in Christ, "the image of the invisible God,"3 that man has been created “in the image and likeness” of the Creator. It is in Christ, Redeemer and Savior, that the divine image, disfigured in man by the first sin, has been restored to its original beauty and ennobled by the grace of God.4

So, it’s really important, @buffalo, when reading the CCC, to understand what it’s saying – based on the Church documents that it quotes – rather than just proof-texting it. So, let’s look at what the CCC is trying to say, by reading the document it’s citing here (Gaudium et spes, #22):

He Who is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), is Himself the perfect man. To the sons of Adam He restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled, by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.

So, you see, it’s not that “we are in the image of Jesus”, but rather, that Jesus restorea what we should have always been. Jesus fixes the image that we were ‘in the beginning’, but which we lost. Jesus is united to us, and in this unity, we become what we should have always been – the image and likeness of the invisible God.

But hey… you were close!

 

[buffalo]

But hey… you were close!

Of course He restores… that is because of Original Sin.

Did God fashion Jesus in Adam’s image? No. The Trinity came first, then came Adam.

 

[Gorgias]

Did God fashion Jesus in Adam’s image? No. The Trinity came first, then came Adam.

The Trinity came first, then came Adam, then came the Incarnation. Yep… that’s the order.

 

[Aloysium]

The Trinity came first, then came Adam, then came the Incarnation. Yep… that’s the order

Revelation 13:8 - All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast–all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

1Peter1:17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.

Reality’s a bit more complicated, or simpler, depending on one’s perspective.

 

[Gorgias]

Revelation 13:8 - All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast–all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

Which translation are you using? The NIV? The KJV? Or the Challoner (which was based on the KJV)? Both the NAB and the RSV offer the translation in a way that does not say what you’re trying to substantiate here:

All the inhabitants of the earth will worship it, all whose names were not written from the foundation of the world in the book of life, which belongs to the Lamb who was slain.

and all who dwell on earth will worship it, every one whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain

Similarly, 1 Peter looks different in the RSV and the NAB than it does in your translation.
Yours:

[Christ] was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake**.

And now, the NAB and RSV:

He was known before the foundation of the world but revealed in the final time for you

He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake

So… being ‘destined’ or ‘known’ by God doesn’t say what you want it to say.

Reality’s a bit more complicated, or simpler, depending on one’s perspective.

And it’s a bit simpler when you use a good Catholic Bible. Depending on your perspective, of course…

 

[Aloysium]

Depending on your perspective, of course

And the world is flat to some.

 

[Gorgias]

And the world is flat to some.

If we’re supposed to ignore what our senses tell us, and instead get our science from the Bible (which talks to us about an earth that supports the heavens on pillars), then yeah… I guess some think the world is flat.

 

[buffalo]

If we’re supposed to ignore what our senses tell us, and instead get our science from the Bible (which talks to us about an earth that supports the heavens on pillars), then yeah… I guess some think the world is flat.

Our senses are limited and there is so much more to the universe than we can detect.

 

[edwest211]

This is the missing part. The part science cannot provide, but it is critical to obtaining a complete knowledge of who human beings really are. We are not just a living product.

 

[Gorgias]

Our senses are limited and there is so much more to the universe than we can detect.

Right. Which is why we should ignore what we can detect, right?

 

[buffalo]

Right. Which is why we should ignore what we can detect , right?

No, one should be very cautious about what they claim.

If you only have one piece of a 1,000 piece puzzle it is very difficult to know what the completed puzzle looks like.

Unless… someone who sees the entire puzzle gives you more information.

 

[bobperk]

After all, it’s not Adam’s body that’s in the “image and likeness”, is it?

Yet our Lord Jesus Christ entered the world as a human being.

Does your birth, having taken place billions of years (or, at, least, 6000 years) after the creation of the universe, mean that God is “separated” from your creation?

No, but I was not the first man either.

My take is that our first parents’ bodies can be explained by evolution scientifically… but their souls can only be explained by God’s action

This is an example of how this view separates God from His Creation, as you state that bodies are explained scientifically, but the soul is God’s action. I know that you actually believe God did both, but when spelled out this way, the problem becomes more evident.

 

[bobperk]

I agree with you. I used the phrase “the various ways” just to contrast the different theories with the clear Scriptural description of the immediate creation of Adam and Eve. Good post.

 

[bobperk]

@glark @buffalo @aloysium @techno2000

Not sure if you guys have ever read this paper, but it is a fairly quick read http://catholicorigins.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/CREATION-AND-TIME-Full-Booklet-v-1014.pdf

 

[Gorgias]

This is an example of how this view separates God from His Creation, as you state that bodies are explained scientifically, but the soul is God’s action. I know that you actually believe God did both, but when spelled out this way, the problem becomes more evident.

I get what you’re saying, but that’s kind of a false dichotomy, isn’t it? I mean, after all, we could always look at things that happen in the world and identify the secondary causes of things. But, would that mean that we “separate God from His Creation” by looking at a thing and recognizing a secondary cause? After all, God is always the primary cause – but is your faith in God so tenuous that identifying a secondary cause diminishes Him?

 

[Hugh_Farey]

I’ve just read it, and think it is splendid. It sets out very clearly what all Creationists ought to believe, so I hope Glark, Buffalo, Edwest, and Techno will subscribe to it in full, and give up their individual idiosyncrasies. The careful explanation of difficult words, the detailed quotations from Church Fathers: excellently done. The only bit which is completely factually wrong are the four paragraphs regarding “Geological Data”.

And, of course, the implication that the Catholic Church should do what it’s told by the authors, and not succumb to any of the ongoing revelation of God in his wonderful works.

But here’s a thing.

In quoting long-dead Fathers of the Church, there is a danger of mistaking their bones for their minds. What St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas and others wrote then was, as they readily admitted, entirely contingent on their knowledge and understanding of the natural world at the time. There is no doubt at all that had they lived today, they would be as firmly explaining a theology which includes evolution as they explained a creationary theology at their own period. These early explorers of God’s word were not hide-bound by their predecessors, as so many Creationists are today, they were explorers. They would have relished every new scientific observation and incorporated it into their thinking, not rejected it in obstinate adherence to antiquity.

 

[bobperk]

I get what you’re saying, but that’s kind of a false dichotomy, isn’t it? I mean, after all, we could always look at things that happen in the world and identify the secondary causes of things. But, would that mean that we “separate God from His Creation” by looking at a thing and recognizing a secondary cause? After all, God is always the primary cause – but is your faith in God so tenuous that identifying a secondary cause diminishes Him?

In this case I am just talking about the direct creation of Adam and Eve.

 

[bobperk]

Hugh,
Thanks for reading and commenting. It puts a lot of information into a short paper.

I think it is highly possible (but how will we ever know?) that many of the Fathers would still hold to direct creation of our first parents, and not all would support macro-evolution. Hopefully we all get a chance to ask them someday.

 

[Aloysium]

Aloysium:

And the world is flat to some.

If we’re supposed to ignore what our senses tell us, and instead get our science from the Bible (which talks to us about an earth that supports the heavens on pillars), then yeah… I guess some think the world is flat.

Evolution is not detected by the senses. It is a story which organizes primary impressions of the world, such as plants, animals, microbes and rocks, themselves having been explored and described in terms of universal principles, the subject matter of physics, chemistry and biology, allowing us to participate in the world.

Sitting by the lake, surrounded by trees, the world is most definitely flat with its hills and valleys. On the Mediterranean, it is like a turtle shell, and now a globe in my mind.

My statement was related to the hubris of those who embrace the science of their day as being the truth. As in the story of the tower of Babel, the search for what is higher, the truth, without God, can only result in the chaos of individual truths, the facts arranged in one manner and another and another, an endless series of illusions.

Similarly, reinterpretations of the written word will appear as the zeitgeist changes.

What we have is an eternal, all-knowing God who is central to and overarches everything that He brings into existence from the primary moment, the One Now, thereby “instantaneously”, In that first moment, Jesus Christ, the unblemished lamb through His death and resurrection at the centre of time and in eternity, brings that which has corrupted and died, back to life.

 

[Aloysium]

obstinate adherence to antiquity

I see it more as having to do with changes in definitions with the subsequent tensions and conflicts that arise in our understanding.

Our views tend to be transformed with the technology we use as part of our relationships with the world and each other. In the case of what we have been discussing, what constitutes a day, now understood in terms of twenty-four hours, has only existed since the invention of the clock and solidified by our use of trains which necessarily must rule on schedule. A day for a hunter-gatherer, is a bit different from that of a shepherd or that of a farmer although all three would understand it in terms of the sun’s movement during the day the shifting of its position during the course of the year. Village life and the ringing of steeple bells provides a different order and meaning to the day as did industrialization. Time is money for most of us. Of course physics has abstracted the notion of time and the day with atomic clocks, GPS systems, and theories about relativity and the big bang. A day is seen more of an illusion, with the measurement of time, although linked to its now archaic definition, ultimately derived from the one constant that is a unity of space and time - the speed of light.

When we consider that we can detect the microwave background radiation, if we try to imagine what occurs in the universe simultaneously, let’s say in this precise moment in time, we will have to admit that the moment of simultaneity involves the entirety of the universe from its beginning to end.

We can however break this whole down into separate events. I’m saying the following, not having thought it out but as an example of how we can see things differently. I see no reason not to believe that a day actually exists and that in some manner it involves an event occurring on a massive scale, in which we are participants. If that event were a totality of subevents, it would make sense that to be equal, a collection of simpler events would have to be larger than that of those that are more complex. Twelve moles of hydrogen atoms weigh as much as one mole of carbon. Using that as an anology, we being carbon atoms and the mass of one mole being a day, might think that hydrogen, that which existed at the beginning, twelve moles, was twelve times greater when in fact it was one day, the molecular weight of carbon.

The bottom line is to remain open to the truth. Even though we might separate science from religion, the pursuit of truth is facilitated by the graces of the Holy Spirit. When doing or contemplating science, it is important to pray for God’s guidance.