Nine Questions of CMI answered - by a Catholic

Source for the Nine Questions:

CMI : ‘Are you a biblical creationist?’

• Do you believe that God created the earth and universe in six ordinary-length (earth-rotation) days?
  • Basically yes. Heaven beyond the stars (where God's throne is) was, with angels and also earth in its most basic state created before the days.
    
    Days are circling around earth before as after creation of the Sun, but are counted as from location of Jerusalem. There day one was certainly rather beginning at noon than at morning. And day Seven, the first Sabbath, lasted only twelve hours as opposed to 24, it would seem, since "it was evening it was morning" were left out and God was already (at the location) resting from creation on evening of day six.
    
    Whether the days occurred as spontaneously understood from how they are described or are a description of one moment creation as St Augustine thought or whether his one moment creation was followed up by the literal six days is patristically undecided.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that the earth and universe are only thousands (not millions or billions) of years old, as measured by Earth time?
  • Yes, and since I am a Geocentric as measured by time anywhere in the universe else too.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that Adam and his wife Eve were the literal, historic ancestors of all (other) people who have ever lived?
  • Amen, amen.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that Adam and Eve had no physical parents, but were created directly by God; Adam from the actual dust, and Eve from the actual flesh and bone of Adam’s side?
  • Yes.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that human physical death began only after Adam sinned?
  • Yes.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that all animals were originally created vegetarian?
  • I believe that either carnivores were not yet so in Eden, or if they were it was Adam that fed them, designing other animals as their food. But I favour the first theory, since it is supported by early Church Fathers and sticks closer to the text of the Bible.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that fossils showing evidence of bloodshed and suffering (e.g. half-eaten prey, dinosaur cancers,) could not have been formed before Adam’s Fall led to the Curse?
  • Such waste cannot have been the case even if there were real carnivores in Eden.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that the Flood of Noah covered the whole globe?
  • Yes.
  
  
  
• Do you believe that after Lazarus was physically dead for days, Jesus miraculously caused him to regain physical life?
  • Yes.

Comment, the original meaning of the Nine Questions was this:

Nine questions to ascertain whether your future pastor, youth group leader or Bible College principal takes a straightforward view of Genesis

I am not a future pastor, nor a youth group leader (though I hope to be a father some day), nor a Bible College principal (though a Traditional Catholic Seminar could possible get me as a Consultant, once it is clear I am not into celibacy or priesthood myself). I am just a writer. But those too are better if being Traditional about the Literal meaning of Genesis.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou Library
All Hallows Day 2013

PS, All Souls' Day, I came to think of a tenth point:

• Do you believe that you will rise in the same body that now you have?
  • Yes, I believe that whether for glory or for shame, my body will eternally be involved from the day of resurrection.
    
    C. S. Lewis is a writer many of us, including me, find enjoyable and also instructive. When it comes to Evolution Compromise, he is very instructive in a less enjoyable way insofar as he was (since back from his atheist days) an Evolution believer. But he shows what that leads to in diverse ways, and here we get a glimpse in that passage where he says "we can no longer believe in a literal material resurrection of the body, there would not be enough matter to go around for one thing ..."
    
    I do not believe the atoms in my body have been circulating for millions of years in and out of other living bodies, nor that men have been around long enough for the atoms in my body to have been recycled from other men. Especially not those that will be in my body when I die as compared to those that were in other men's bodies when they died. Each will get his body back, and for those glorified it will be in the best shape possible.
    
    No, here I do not hold with C. S. Lewis, but rather with Pope Innocent III. In a Leonine Edition of the Summa, in the footnotes of the Supplementum, I found that Pope Innocent III had imposed on Valdensians returning to the faith a confession against their particular errors which included "I believe I will rise in the same flesh that now I have" (eadem carne ac nunc gero). I hold with that, of course./HGL