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fabio_rocha
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They defended that the world was created in 6 days (24 hours period each day) but now the CCC says its symbolic. Aren’t we going against the Church Fathers?
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snarflemike
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You’ll have to provide a lot more evidence than none.
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Classicist
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Sant Ambrogio, St. Basil the Great, and St. Bonaventure all wrote “Hexaemeron” works, detailing the 6 days, both in their literal & symbolic meanings.
I don’t know whether the Church of today teaches that the 6 days of creation are just symbolic. That wouldn’t make much sense…
At any rate, the Fathers were just theologians. It’s not as if they had some charism of infallibility.
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agnes_therese
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The Church Fathers were theologians and pastors, not scientists. There is nothing wrong with improving our understanding of the universe.
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CatholicGeek1
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Right, doctrine develops as information and knowledge develops.
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Iron_Donkey
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Some did, some didn’t. It wasn’t complete consensus. But it also doesn’t really matter because it’s not really that important of a question, and never one that was addressed dogmatically.
There’d be an issue if we were going against them on something like the Divinity of Christ. But the length of time in which the world was created doesn’t really make that much of a difference to anything.
The fate of unbaptized infants is another example where beliefs have varied widely over time - and a question that is much more important - but also one where there would be much disagreement between people now and people earlier. But again, because such fate hasn’t been a matter of dogma, such disagreement isn’t a problem.
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yogosans14
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Catholics dont believe in the literal story of Genesis?I’m surprised since they seem the most conservative to me
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snarflemike
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True faith and true science cannot be in conflict. The true science regarding the age of the universe and the age of the earth and the timeline of life on earth is pretty overwhelming. Another way to look at this is that there would have to be a large number of divine “gotchas” to explain all the observations in terms of a young earth/universe.
Catholics believe that scripture teaches without error those things that God wanted it to teach. We don’t believe this includes scientific theories.
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brb3
Guest
Peter covered that matter saying “a day is like a thousand years”.
The CC always seems to keep the ship righted, via every storm that hits her.
The CC always seems to keep the ship righted, via every storm that hits her.
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Arthropod
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I would be interested to see your source for this.
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Arthropod
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Absolutely right. It is amazing that anyone believes in evolution and the old universe at all.
And God wanted to tell us the earth was created in six days:
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catholictiger
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there are many great Catholic Thinkers that we go against this doesn’t mean that they are correct and we are wrong. St. Thomas Aquinas didn’t believe that Mary was immaculately conceived but now it is one of the rare moments that a pope made an infallible statement and is doctrine. The Aquinas example is the only one that comes to mind as of know but there are hundreds of other examples of saints and doctors of the Church who said one thing and later the church condemned that statement. The reason is that the Catholic Church’s doctrine develops, the early Church Fathers had no understanding of modern biology, evolution, the big band, astronomy, cosmology, etc. So their best guess was from the bible and using their own reason. Now the Church speaks with 2000 years of development of doctrine and a modern understanding of science. Now the Church hasn’t said anything on what we have to believe as far as creation goes but it does lean towards big bang and evolution.
But again Catholic doctrine develops, this is why we are going against the Church Fathers, because they didn’t have the same understanding we do.
Plus augustine said that we should never apply science to genesis.
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Arthropod
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I would be interested to see the church fathers who said the earth was billions of years old.
It makes a HUGE difference.
How can a loving God create a world of disease, death, suffering etc? How could a loving God use death, disease, and suffering as a means to create? As a biblical creationist I can answer that he didn’t - we just stuffed it up, he made everything perfect. You, on the other hand, don’t have a leg to stand on.
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catholictiger
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I don’t know if I agree with the a day is like a thousand year analogy because first of all, there are two different stories in genesis that if you go at it from a scientific view contradict each-other. Also the explanation of earth is way off, also take a book shelf with 20 books on it . The length of the universe are these 20 books, the length of the existence of the earth is maybe a dozens of pages in one book, the existence of humans maybe a page in one of these books if even that. Genesis messes up the order as well, how can the earth be there with no light. I wouldn’t even claim that let there be light is the big bang, because the scribe of genesis would have no knowledge of the big bang so in no way could this be his intent. I could go on and on.
My basic point is while it sounds nice and all to claim that in Genesis a day is like a thousand years, I don’t really think it adds up correctly with the truth. Genesis isn’t a scientific retelling of creation, don’t hold it to that standard. Don’t try and adjust it to make it sound like it is.
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catholictiger
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I don’t want to get into the creationist debate this thread will be closed if we do I believe.
But God can allow suffering and death because it is in his divine providence to bring good out of that. I think its possible (I’m still wrapping my head around this theory) that God is brining everything towards its final end its final cause. God allows: death, chaos, violence, suffering, etc. because he knows it will bring about the final end. The perfect union with him in the end of time. This is why we can say that God can allow this stuff.
The analogy Augustine uses while it doesn’t perfectly apply to my explanation is that of a painting, there are dark spots and light spots, if you were to take a 1% square of the painting and try to see if it was beautiful you may say well if there wasn’t this darkness (evil) it would be very nice shouldn’t he just take this darkness out and make it all light. Well no this would take away from the beauty of the entire painting. God sees all of creation in one instant for all eternity, because of this evil can bring out good and the allowing of evil (God can’t create evil he can only allow it) can be in his providential plan for the cosmos and man kind.
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Arthropod
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I agree with your analogy, but we are not talking about God bringing good things out of evil, but a God who created a world of evil using evil his first preference tool of creation. The analogy doesn’t fit.
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Arthropod
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What is Genesis then, according to you? What truth does it communicate? What did the original inspired author (whoever he was) intend to say, if not to communicate a straight forward historical narative?
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catholictiger
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not necessarily God in his infinite wisdom knew that because he would give man freedom, which is all loving, he would violate that freedom and sin disobeying God. God knowing this fact and to avoid taking away our freedom, God allows us to sin and allows suffering and chaos to occur in the World so that through the redemptive suffering of his only Son, we can enjoy true eternal freedom with him in perfection union with the God head. This is why God can create a universe that has these things in it because he knows when humans are to come into existence they will disobey him, if he were to create us in such a way that we couldn’t disobey him we would become his slaves, robots to do God’s will. God wanting to allow freedom allowed us to stray from his path so that we can freely choose to follow him and become in union with God in the end times.
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catholictiger
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First let me say this I’m no biblical scholar so I can’t sit here and tell you exactly what Genesis is trying to say and what the intent is and so on and so forth.
I actually can’t sit here and tell you what it is, but if you claim to know that it is a straight forward narrative why the two different accounts of creation? Why does it say other parts in scripture that the universe came from nothing and Genesis say it comes from a primordial soup?
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Arthropod
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Where does the bible say both these things? What two differing accounts? Where does Genesis say the universe came from a primordial soup?
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