Evolution/Genesis

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Orogeny said:
Would that rise to the level of heresy? Should he have been censored for that statement? How about Pope Benedict XVI who clearly accepts at least some form of evolution?

Peace

Tim
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I think the distinction is evolution vs the origins of man.

Actually I am not sure what should be done. I will have to leave censure issues to the Holy Spirit.

I think there definitely would be an issue if a Pope said - OK from now the following dogmas are henceforth reveresed or declared null and void.
 
Orogeny said:
Isn’t that what Pope John Paul II was discussing?

Peace

Tim
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It is not clear to me in the context of the whole. In most of the documents that are quote mined, the Catholic teaching is being cautiously protected, which it should be.

Suppose both our Popes have been misled or ill advised. Then time will correct the error. It kind of reminds me of a politician having a bunch of reporters pressuring him for an answer. Sometimes his reply is not as well thought out as it could have been. We are all human.

We are not aksing our Popes to get with the times. We are expecting them to faithfully protect the deposit of faith.
 
buffalo said:
It is not clear to me in the context of the whole. In most of the documents that are quote mined, the Catholic teaching is being cautiously protected, which it should be.
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Yes, but evolution of some kind is acknowledged.
Suppose both our Popes have been misled or ill advised. Then time will correct the error. It kind of reminds me of a politician having a bunch of reporters pressuring him for an answer. Sometimes his reply is not as well thought out as it could have been. We are all human.
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Yes, but there has been multiple opportunities to correct any error. My read of both JPII and BXVI is that both clearly accept physical evolution and instant creation of the soul.
We are not aksing our Popes to get with the times. We are expecting them to faithfully protect the deposit of faith.
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Clearly. Acknowledging science doesn’t necessarilly equate with just getting with the times. It may just be acceptance of reality. As you have noted before (and I agree), truth cannot contradict truth.

Peace

Tim
 
Orogeny said:
Yes, but evolution of some kind is acknowledged.Yes, but there has been multiple opportunities to correct any error. My read of both JPII and BXVI is that both clearly accept physical evolution and instant creation of the soul.Clearly. Acknowledging science doesn’t necessarilly equate with just getting with the times. It may just be acceptance of reality. As you have noted before (and I agree), truth cannot contradict truth.

Peace

Tim
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The documents do not show an accpetance but rather an acknowledgement of the current scientific thinking.

The concept of the soul. This is where I do not get it. Dualism would say the body and soul are individual entitites. Catholic teaching is they are not. Evolution cannot get you there. Catholic teaching is so strong on this issue that I see no room for a soul to be added to an existing body.

I am content to wait a bit on the Church’s long term understanding of what science is saying. I think she should be cautious and move slow on this, as she seems to be. We are understanding more everyday that we actually understand less of the workings of the universe.
 
That’s right. Infallibility is limited to those situations in which the Pope teaches ex cathedra with respect to faith and morals.
Orogeny said:
Not all statements made by the Church or the Pope are infallible. However, the statements regarding the meaning of scripture carries much weight. That being said, why does the Church, which clearly is familiar with Gen 1 and 2, allow Catholics to accept an old earth/universe and evolution?

Peace

Tim
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garysibio said:
Just curious. What is it in Gen 1 & 2 that points to a slow creation? While I realize that the Bible is not intended as a science book, why would the Holy Spirit speak of a 6-day creation if life actually evolved over a long period of time? He could have inspired the writers to use some other terminology yet He chose to inspire them to use language that implies a rapid creation.

IMO, Catholic evolutionists are hooking their wagon to a dying horse.

Gary
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The six-day scheme ending in the seventh day has nothing to do with the time God took - that’s a ridiculous idea 😃 God is not man, He does not weary or need rest.​

It is a reflection of the theology of the “Priestly” writer, or P for short, who is interested in indications of time, & in the worship of Israel; so he tells of creation by God in a way which emphasises the importance of time & of the sabbath.

The fuss over “evolution” versus “creation” is a modern concern, which has been imposed upon the text. There is no more reason or justification to find it in the Bible than there is to find the Heimlich Manouevre in the Fathers. P & J were not concerned with questions of what processes God used in creation - to look to them for answers to questions they do not even consider is to treat the Bible in the superstitious way people do when they expect an answer to a problem by opening it at random. Why should the ancients have bothered themselves with our controversies ? P & J are concerned with the fact that God is the Unique & Sovereign Creator - not with the
biological or palaeological or other-ological details that are so vitally important to “evolutionists” or “creationists”.

So those passages, like others which have implications for Israel’s ideas about “first things” such as “creation” do not exclude evolutionary ideas; they are not written with them in mind. The whole controversy is a gigantic fuss over nothing - if the Bible had been read with its environment & development in mind, the whole wretched controversy need never have arisen. But when the understanding of these passages traditional in the Churches was being formed, the environment in which the texts developed had been forgotten. 😦 Only in recent centuries has some of it been recovered, & Biblical scholars would be acting wrongly to ignore this.
 
Gottle_of_Geer said:

The six-day scheme ending in the seventh day has nothing to do with the time God took - that’s a ridiculous idea 😃 God is not man, He does not weary or need rest.​

It is a reflection of the theology of the “Priestly” writer, or P for short, who is interested in indications of time, & in the worship of Israel; so he tells of creation by God in a way which emphasises the importance of time & of the sabbath.

The fuss over “evolution” versus “creation” is a modern concern, which has been imposed upon the text. There is no more reason or justification to find it in the Bible than there is to find the Heimlich Manouevre in the Fathers. P & J were not concerned with questions of what processes God used in creation - to look to them for answers to questions they do not even consider is to treat the Bible in the superstitious way people do when they expect an answer to a problem by opening it at random. Why should the ancients have bothered themselves with our controversies ? P & J are concerned with the fact that God is the Unique & Sovereign Creator - not with the
biological or palaeological or other-ological details that are so vitally important to “evolutionists” or “creationists”.

So those passages, like others which have implications for Israel’s ideas about “first things” such as “creation” do not exclude evolutionary ideas; they are not written with them in mind. The whole controversy is a gigantic fuss over nothing - if the Bible had been read with its environment & development in mind, the whole wretched controversy need never have arisen. But when the understanding of these passages traditional in the Churches was being formed, the environment in which the texts developed had been forgotten. 😦 Only in recent centuries has some of it been recovered, & Biblical scholars would be acting wrongly to ignore this.
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We know that time can be different for the observer and the observed.
 
I thank God every day that the Catholic church has not taken an anti-science stand. As a graduate of a protestant charismatic seminary that lost over 80% of its faculty and staff all at once as the result of a heavy handed fundamentalist takeover, I am more than through with literalist biblical interpretation. Jesus told us in plain language that the teaching of the Kingdom comes in parallels. The question is not whether the universe was created in 6 days or 6 trillion years. The question is whether we can get beyond whatever our prejudices are and open ourselves to what our Lord is trying to teach us that will draw us ever closer to Him.

On the other hand I am grateful that God used my experience of fundamentalist literalism as a tool to encourage me to open my search for Him, a search that led me to my real home in the Catholic faith.
 
That an inspiring self-disclosure and message. Thank you.
Chancellor said:
I thank God every day that the Catholic church has not taken an anti-science stand. As a graduate of a protestant charismatic seminary that lost over 80% of its faculty and staff all at once as the result of a heavy handed fundamentalist takeover, I am more than through with literalist biblical interpretation. Jesus told us in plain language that the teaching of the Kingdom comes in parallels. The question is not whether the universe was created in 6 days or 6 trillion years. The question is whether we can get beyond whatever our prejudices are and open ourselves to what our Lord is trying to teach us that will draw us ever closer to Him.

On the other hand I am grateful that God used my experience of fundamentalist literalism as a tool to encourage me to open my search for Him, a search that led me to my real home in the Catholic faith.
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garysibio said:
re: papal statements about evolution and Catholicism

The Church and the papacy are not going to make any statement regarding the accuracy of any theory of origins. Infallibility doesn’t cover such matters.

Pope Benedict XVI has made statements condemning materialism and Darwinism is a materialist belief. It not only does not require God, it makes no room for Him.

Even though it is essentially putting lipstick on a pig, it is possible that a Catholic can believe in evolution and not contradict any Catholic teaching if he interjects God into the process. However, that is not what is taught in the schools nor will you find God mentioned in texts which teach evolution. On the other hand, you can believe that little green men carved the face on Mars or that Elvis Presley is flipping burgers at a Hardees in Lansing, Michigan and not contradict any tenets of Catholicism. In other words, just because you can twist a theory around so that it doesn’t contradict Catholicism, doesn’t mean the theory is true.
By the way, I’m still waiting for someone who sees evolution in Gen 1-2 explain to me what about that text alludes to a lengthy process of evolution.

Gary
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The idea that God requires “space” to be “made for” Him is mistaken. As the idea that he needs to be “interject[ed] into the process” [of evolution].​

The problem with it, is that it rests on the idea that God is a “something” to be related to a number of other “somethings”, on equal terms with them. This is a bit like denying that an author writes his novels, because he is never found in them, whether one opens the books, or as a character in them. God is not related to creatures like that - they, are related to Him, because He brings them into relation to Him, when they of themselves could not be in relation to Him, or even exist.

God is not like creatures in the slightest - they, are a bit like God. The resemblance is unilateral: until God enters his own story & becomes one of the characters. But that changes things for the characters: not for the Story-teller. If God were not “different” & “totally other” than creatures, He would be altered by creating them. Because He is “totally other” than they are, He can neither be shut out nor given space by creatures; any more than an atheist in a story can shut out or give space to the teller of the story.

As for:
nor will you find God mentioned in texts which teach evolution
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  • indeed not; nor should He be. He is too important to be anything as trivial as an explanation. One might as well complain that He is not mentioned on every page of the Codes of Canon Law. Are Church historians atheists because they explain matters by using historical methods ? That is how history should be studied - historically. It’s not theology or liturgy, so God is out of place in history just as He is in creation, for the same reasons & in the same sense & manner. Scientists should stick to science - science & theology are entirely different disciplines, & this is not altered by the fact that some people are proficient in both. As disciplines, the two have different contents, methods, & ends, so it would be wrong to mix them. That someone may be proficient in both, does not make the disciplines the same; they remain distinct.
Besides, “Goddunnit” explains nothing - it includes far too much to be of any use as an explanatory device in the various disciplines: it explains nothing because ***if ***it explains anything, it explains everything. So it is not specific enough to be of any use, even in everyday life: if a house burns down, people call the fire brigade: not the priest or the exorcist. People who want Biblical critics, historians & scientists to explain everything by God, are being totally inconsistent: because they are using God as an explanatory device for some things, & only some. They make him into “a god”, which is undiluted paganism. 😦 But He is not an explanatory device at all. He is not “The Explanation” of things - He is their Cause.

“God as explanation” is unsatisfactory for two reasons at least:
  • it makes Him a “God of the gaps”, who becomes less & less necessary as an explanation once other explanations are found; a result which also comes of the notion that God is one something among other somethings.
  • It is a form of excessive supernaturalism, which fails to give created causes within the world their due. God is not only God - God is God the Creator; God “makes room” for what is not God to exist - that is the really incredible thing.
    The trouble with explaining things by God, is that a natural explanation can be found, as is entirely right. Plague is caused not by sin, but by bacteria; no amount of repentance, without hygiene, will improve bodily health. Thunderstorms are not caused by Jehovah passing through the heavens on His cherubim-throne, but by electricity. Electricity is a cause within the world, so ignoring it in favour of the theological picture, which was not wrong on the part of the Psalmist, would be wrong of us: for we have heard of electricity & its properties - unlike the Psalmist. He is wrong only if we attribute to him knowledge he did not have; but that is a form of cheating. By his lights, which are not ours, he was perfectly correct. And the same is true of P & J.
Part of the problem with this issue, & with inerrancy generally, is that inerrancy is not considered in as nuanced a way as it needs to be; there is far too much concern with the final result (the “inerrant” text), & far too little with what error & inerrancy actually are & amount to: with how they function. This leads to endless confusion 😦
 
buffalo said:
We know that time can be different for the observer and the observed.
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True - and irrelevant 🙂 Compare:​

  • a novelist whose story takes 10 years of his life to write
  • the time taken within the story - say, 50 years
  • the discontinuities in the time taken writing because the author sleeps or is doing other things than attend to his tale; which is why the time spent in the telling takes 10 months of the 10 years.
    There are several times here - the characters have direct knowledge of their own. And this is without complicating matters by suggesting that the novel may contain stories within stories, & reminiscing by the characters, & other accounts of the past.
Characters within the story have no access to their creator’s extra-authorial life; the atheists among them might say that the author is a figment of the imagination of their fellow-characters. Yet the author is real, present to all the characters, without their being able to sense it; because their very existence is “from” his own. Not only so, but the novelist is himself a creature - the only true God in all this is the God Who created the novelist, & Who is the true Source of the being of the characters in the novel. Will the characters recognise Him 🙂 ?

They act freely only because God is the Lord both of novelists & of their characters. Divine Sovereignty everywhere effective in all creation is the most solid foundation of human freedom. Unless God is inescapably “in charge”, there is no true freedom at all, no creativity, no life, nothing. Division of freedom between God & man is a hopelessly inadequate solution - only in the most absolute slavery to God can we be free 😃
 
garysibio said:
re: papal statements about evolution and Catholicism

The Church and the papacy are not going to make any statement regarding the accuracy of any theory of origins. Infallibility doesn’t cover such matters.

Pope Benedict XVI has made statements condemning materialism and Darwinism is a materialist belief. It not only does not require God, it makes no room for Him.

Even though it is essentially putting lipstick on a pig, it is possible that a Catholic can believe in evolution and not contradict any Catholic teaching if he interjects God into the process. However, that is not what is taught in the schools nor will you find God mentioned in texts which teach evolution. On the other hand, you can believe that little green men carved the face on Mars or that Elvis Presley is flipping burgers at a Hardees in Lansing, Michigan and not contradict any tenets of Catholicism. In other words, just because you can twist a theory around so that it doesn’t contradict Catholicism, doesn’t mean the theory is true.
By the way, I’m still waiting for someone who sees evolution in Gen 1-2 explain to me what about that text alludes to a lengthy process of evolution.

Gary
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Rest assured, over time, we will have lost of “speculative theologies” by budding “theologians” in regard to “evolution” in Genesis 1 & 2.

The Roman Catholic Church in its Wisdom teaches that

– The Bible is an INSPIRED BOOK with a unique Religious message for humanity and **NOT **a book written based on emphrical Sciences and the stylea of “modern Journalism” or “profane history reports”.
  • Was anyone there, when God created? (Even the human authors who penned the inspired messages were not present and God did not whisper to them the inspired words of Scripture in the form we know today as “Dictation”!
Truths that must be believed in FAITH for all Cathollics"

The creation of all things by God at the beginning of Time.
The special creation of Man. (Eve from Adam)
The formation of the first Woman from Man.
The Unity of the Human race. (Because of our common parents.)
The Original happiness of our first parents.
The Divine command placed upon Man to prove his obedience.
His transgression of that command sy the instigation of the devil by the serpent.
The fall of our first parents from the state of Innocence.
The Promise of a future Redeemer.

(Extracted from Jeff Cavins Lecturd “Adventurea in the Bible” #2 of 24)
 
richardeekw said:
Truths that must be believed in FAITH for all Cathollics"

The creation of all things by God at the beginning of Time.
The special creation of Man. (Eve from Adam)
The formation of the first Woman from Man.
The Unity of the Human race. (Because of our common parents.)
The Original happiness of our first parents.
The Divine command placed upon Man to prove his obedience.
His transgression of that command sy the instigation of the devil by the serpent.
The fall of our first parents from the state of Innocence.
The Promise of a future Redeemer.

(Extracted from Jeff Cavins Lecturd “Adventurea in the Bible” #2 of 24)
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That’s a very nice summary.
 
richardeekw said:
Truths that must be believed in FAITH for all Cathollics"

The creation of all things by God at the beginning of Time.
The special creation of Man. (Eve from Adam)
The formation of the first Woman from Man.
The Unity of the Human race. (Because of our common parents.)
The Original happiness of our first parents.
The Divine command placed upon Man to prove his obedience.
His transgression of that command sy the instigation of the devil by the serpent.
The fall of our first parents from the state of Innocence.
The Promise of a future Redeemer.

(Extracted from Jeff Cavins Lecturd “Adventurea in the Bible” #2 of 24)
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Buffalo mentioned some points that may be added to this list:

bodily immortality before the fall
preternatrural gifts
infused knowledge

I am unclear about what specific preternatrural gifts and infused knowledge are, but they do not appear in Jeff Cavin’s list.

I’m summarizing as a learner here… It so great to have so many smart people here. It so much better than the Anti-Catholic blog on USA today. (Yuck)
 
AnyoneAnybody said:
Buffalo mentioned some points that may be added to this list:

bodily immortality before the fall
preternatrural gifts
infused knowledge

I am unclear about what specific preternatrural gifts and infused knowledge are, but they do not appear in Jeff Cavin’s list.

I’m summarizing as a learner here… It so great to have so many smart people here. It so much better than the Anti-Catholic blog on USA today. (Yuck)
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Buffalo is correct in mentioning that
Before the “fall” of our First Parents; they were adorned by God with PRETERNATURAL GIFTS. This refer to
[Fr. Hardon Archives - THESIS VIII: Before the Fall, Adam Possessed Sanctifying Grace and the Preternatural Gifts of Integrity, Immortality and Infused Knowledge]](Fr. Hardon Archives - THESIS VIII: Before the Fall, Adam Possessed Sanctifying Grace and the Preternatural Gifts of Integrity, Immortality and Infused Knowledge])
  • Could not suffer like the way we suffer today .Suffer: Yes, in self-giving love.
    I- mmortality (Live forever)
  • Perfect Integrity.
It does NOT deny the fact that they too have FREE WILL
  • to Trust in God or to Live and decide for themselves.
After the “fall” **CONCUPESCENCE **steps in:
i.e. The inclination to do wron and
The Will dominates.(rather that Perfect Integrity that rules in the mind and the heart)

You should take the opportunity to go through Jeff Cavin’s - The Great Adventure Bible Timeline in 24 Lectures (via DVD). This teaching is available in Session 2 - Lecture1 of 24.🙂
 
richardeekw said:
Buffalo is correct in mentioning that
Before the “fall” of our First Parents; they were adorned by God with PRETERNATURAL GIFTS. This refer to
[Fr. Hardon Archives - THESIS VIII: Before the Fall, Adam Possessed Sanctifying Grace and the Preternatural Gifts of Integrity, Immortality and Infused Knowledge]](Fr. Hardon Archives - THESIS VIII: Before the Fall, Adam Possessed Sanctifying Grace and the Preternatural Gifts of Integrity, Immortality and Infused Knowledge])
  • Could not suffer like the way we suffer today .Suffer: Yes, in self-giving love.
    I- mmortality (Live forever)
  • Perfect Integrity.
It does NOT deny the fact that they too have FREE WILL
  • to Trust in God or to Live and decide for themselves.
After the “fall” **CONCUPESCENCE **steps in:
i.e. The inclination to do wron and
The Will dominates.(rather that Perfect Integrity that rules in the mind and the heart)

You should take the opportunity to go through Jeff Cavin’s - The Great Adventure Bible Timeline in 24 Lectures (via DVD). This teaching is available in Session 2 - Lecture1 of 24.🙂
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What is “infused” knowledge?
 
buffalo said:
Knowledge given to them supernaturally by God, thatthey could not get by themselves.
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If I had to defend this point, I’d fail miserably. I am being lazy by not reading scripture… but I was thinking since you already know…

What specific examples does scripture provide to this end?
 
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