| Important notice : my article refers to the two cited paragraphs on Trent Horn's podcast, the rest is rather sensible. Writing this after signing the article, and it's too important for a PPS.
See also: New blog on the kid : Could Da Vinci Code be read by Mature Catholics? And what about Potter? https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2020/01/could-da-vinci-code-be-read-by-mature.html |
Citing two paragraphs:
I may do a podcast in the future on people at the Kolbe Center, who say that Catholics are obligated to believe in young earth creationism, which is not true. The Church does not oblige that. I would say the best evidence from science and the writings of the Church Fathers and what the Church teaches is that Catholics should not believe in young earth creationism and that the earth is 6,000 years old.
We should believe, as Pope Saint John Paul II said in his encyclical On Faith and Reason, that faith and reason are complementary. They don’t contradict each other. So if science tells us the universe is 13.7 billion years old, our faith does not contradict that scientific finding. We don’t have to entertain a conflict. Otherwise, if we do, Saint Augustine in his commentary on Genesis, he criticized Christians of his day who were arguing for a literal creation theory, saying that they become a mockery to non-Christians, claiming to be experts in astronomy and the sciences when they actually are not experts in these things.
Transscript from a podcast by Trent Horn, available here:
Fr. Ripperger, Harry Potter, and Healthy Skepticism
TRENT HORN • 9/5/2019
https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/fr-ripperger-harry-potter-and-healthy-skepticism
Analysed:
I may do a podcast in the future on people at the Kolbe Center, who say that Catholics are obligated to believe in young earth creationism, which is not true.
Technical on what texts are authoritative and what they really say.
Trent Horn accepting Vatican II as a real Council and Dei Verbum as one of the highest ranking if not the most highest ranking document of it might consider its § 3 as infallible. And it teaches young earth creationism.
It trumps Humani Generis, which was only an encyclical and anyway did not decide for or against considering Adam as having a biological but not moral ancestry that was not fully human.
It trumps the speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on November 22 1951, in which he considered the Earth as 5 billion years old.
It is much more clear than making some kind of advocacy against such obligation from other words in Dei Verbum like "revealed for our salvation" (is YEC salvation relevant?) or "genre" (if it features, have not read all of the document).
But for me as not accepting it and as considering Humani Generis ambiguity as being a sin against the faith comparable to Pope Honorius not allowing polemics against Monotheletism, my latest authorities as to Church law are things like the decisions of 1905 and 1909. Do not know of much between that and Pius XII's roughshod handling of it.
The Church does not oblige that.
The 1909 decision gives an open door to day-age theory, if it stays at that. While the consulter Fulcran Vigouroux is on record as previously having envisaged extending the timeline for Genesis 5 and 11 too, for one thing he had even back then decided that with present (1880's or 90's) evidence and taking a LXX timeline, that was not necessary, and for another, he did not repeat this potential licence in his capacity of consulter in 1909. So, the 1909 decision gives an open door to an old earth one might call "pure day age" - tampering with timeline of Genesis 1, but not of Genesis 5 or 11.
This one may agree that the Church does not forbid, unless Pope Michael has issued a decree since that removes this liberty. His Holiness is himself certainly not a proponent of day age.
However, an old earth position really thought through (and not just accepted by ignorance and laziness and half learning) these days, given that C14 dating is more, not less, reliable than geological strata or Ka-Ar dating, would imply extending the timeline radically for Genesis 5 or 11 or both. This extension is NOT provided for in the 1909 decision.
The "day age +" theory of old earth has as its most harsh problem that it throws a doubt on the historic accuracy of Genesis 3. In order to honour Our Lady, we need not only to identify Her with the woman of Genesis 3:15, we also need the text of God's words to the serpent to have been accurately transmitted from Adam to Moses. Since Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 deal with later events, if we cannot trust them, how can we trust Genesis 3 not to have been garbled prior to Moses?
And if you say "Moses was inspired when writing down Genesis 3, historic truth was miraculously restored or had been miraculously preserved among conditions very adverse to preserving history" - why not the same with Genesis 5 and 11? Though accepting it would certainly remove some of your motives for calling the conditions unideal for transmitting stories of Genesis 2 to 11 accurately.
On the other hand you can say "Genesis 5 and 11 are not salvation relevant, Genesis 3 is, therefore Genesis 3 was miraculously excepted from the process affecting Genesis 5 and 11" - why would we believe that? Why would God make the claims not directly pertaining to our salvation, but pertaining to our knowledge of those that pertain to salvation a non-inerrant claim, if He intends His word to have any inerrancy? And if Genesis 5 and 11 are not literally true, how would they help us to know the truth of salvation relevant Genesis 3?
For make no mistake, if Genesis 5 and 11 are historical fact, then this very much helps the credibility of Genesis 3 as historical fact too. I'll again cite Fr. George Leo Haydock on his last comment on Genesis 3:
Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. H.
https://www.ecatholic2000.com/haydock/untitled-05.shtml#navPoint_6
Sure, he says, theoretically there would have been time enough to just potentially garble some minor detail of Genesis 3, but thanks to God's inspiration we know this is not so. But, before this, he states clearly, that we have a good purely natural expectation of Genesis 3 having been correctly preserved. The "minimal overlap" steps of transmission (which are not separated but completed by the other generations) are on purely natural grounds a fairly good security against involuntary and unintentional garbling of what Genesis 3 says. I might concur with Fulcran on LXX for Genesis 5 and 11 (on somewhat other grounds), this extends the minimal overlap steps somewhat but not very much. Connected to this is the next:
Its next harshest disaster in accepting "day age +" is, if we place Adam even near when he is on traditional time, but accept modern "scientific" dates for certain Cro-Magnon and Neanderthals and for certain people in Americas, you get a clear difficulty for all men descending from Adam as even only one of the ancestors in his time.
And if you place Adam and Eve at c. 30 000 or 40 000 BP, you may have a better case for pre-Columbian Americans and pre-Tasman Australians descending from them, but you have radically worsened the case for Genesis 3 being history.
Not to mention you would be very anti-Semitic about Jewish genealogies, since Matthew 1 gives 42 ancestors of 46 (or 41 of 45?), 91%, but this would imply sth like less than 20 % of the ancestors mentioned. Three in a row, and if my memory serves me, one later on, omitted for reason of condemnatio memoriae.
I would say the best evidence from science and the writings of the Church Fathers
It is easy to say the phrase "the best evidence from science and the writings of the Church Fathers" but precisely therefore, it doesn't guarantee you actually have accessed the founts of knowledge you are talking about.
and what the Church teaches
If you mean the Vatican II Sect in its present liturgy, you have a case. That precise case is also one, if I am right, for "John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis" not having been or being Popes, since the "unknown ages" version of Christmas Martyrology is at great odds with what I am saying and not just on behalf of very personal feelings, but for good objective reasons.
is that Catholics should not believe in young earth creationism and that the earth is 6,000 years old.
We have an ambiguity. Does he mean "should not" as I would say we should not believe "pure day age" even if 1909 decision may seem it is allowable? Or does he mean "must not" as I would say we must not believe "day age +"?
We should believe, as Pope Saint John Paul II said in his encyclical On Faith and Reason, that faith and reason are complementary.
Faith has a propositional content - "I believe in God Father Almighty" - but reason has not. Reason is the capacity that accepts or rejects the propositional content of the faith.
By claiming complementarity, Wojtyla was suggesting that "reason" too has propositional content. That "reason" refers to some kind of doctrine.
They don’t contradict each other.
Someone's reason will accept the Faith, someone else's reason will contradict the Faith. Unlike Faith, there is no such doctrine as "Reason".
And in the following he, or Trent Horn resuming him, or Trent Horn thinking on after him is in fact not speaking of reason, but of an activity which depends on reason in order to be healthy, namely science.
So if science tells us the universe is 13.7 billion years old, our faith does not contradict that scientific finding.
I could point out that the "if [then]" clause has an empty apodosis. It could be as formally true as a sentence beginning "if the moon is a blue cheese" ... but it would be empty.
Yes, faith does contradict anyone telling us that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, including a scientist, and no, it is not a scientific finding or at least not a legitimate one.
We don’t have to entertain a conflict. Otherwise, if we do, Saint Augustine in his commentary on Genesis, he criticized Christians of his day who were arguing for a literal creation theory,
Trent Horn seems to have read only one commentary by St. Augustine on Genesis, namely THE most quotemined quote of St. Augustine these days.
This one.
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics;
In fact, he has written three : De Genesi contra Manichaeos libri duo; De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber; De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim.
This is not apparent from the English wikipedian article on St. Augustine's works, as it has been garbled - The Chronicles of Narnia (Librum annalium Narnia) would seem to have another author, it would also not be "liber" / "librum" but "libri VII" but C. S. Lewis lived more than 1500 years later than St. Augustine - but the Polish page has been well preserved (and also gives the Latin titles).
It so happens, I have read City of God, and it so happens I have of De Genesis ad litteral libri XII read the first five books (or skipped some from 2:nd to 4th and then read 5) and into book 6. I happen to know from my reading in De Genesi ad Litteram Libri XII (which for some reason is not on Newadvent Patristics page!) that the liberties St. Augustine took with six days were the very opposite ones to the ones taken by Fulcran Vigoroux. St. Augustine thinks that creation in one single moment (not even divisible into microseconds as to itself) is sensible to assume, knowing God is all powerful and also bc of Genesis 2:4 and a mistranslated Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 18:1 (simul would have been near correct in St. Jerome's native everyday Latin, like "insimul" = "insieme" = "ensemble" - meaning "together" but this was different from the Latin of St. Augustine, who also replaced "iunctim" with something, but with something else - arguably "iuncti, iunctae, iuncta" like Spanish "juntos, juntas"). And to return to City of God, he both upholds literal truth of old ages attained (Adam dying at 930 etc.) and of short overall timeline, compared to such offered by some Pagans.
So, St. Augustine did not materially agree with you. He was in fact a Young Earth Creationist. However, he did also not formally agree with you.
Let's recall what Christians should not contradict, on his words, repeated:
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something ... and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience."
From expertise? Or from reason and experience?
I hold the theorem of Pythagoras to be certain from reason and experience, and dito with π being an irrational (but not a number). But it is obvious that "expertise" will hold lots more than the usual man as "certain from reason and experience".
saying that they become a mockery to non-Christians, claiming to be experts in astronomy and the sciences when they actually are not experts in these things.
I am sorry, but the translation is tendentious. Latin does not clearly distinguish nouns from adjectives. The noun "expert" is not one that can be attested for Latin of pre-modern times. The word "expertus" is an adjective and means "experienced".
In case you consider St. Augustine did want us to cave in to expertise on matters where our reason and experience are insufficient to by themselves conclude, rather than to the Bible, you are not just over relying on this mistranslation, but you are also contradicting the title of a certain work of his:
Contra academicos.
When searching, the ctrl+F gave me for "contra" 38 hits. St. Augustine was definitely a polemic. The title is also missing in the Newadvent site for Church Father writings, and it suggests that St. Augustine on the contrary thought it could be very well and dandy on occasions to contradict expertise.
By his time, the four schools of philosophy were dwindling to two, namely Plato an Aristotle. Plato is the one relevant for Academici in the classical sense, but both were together among the closest equivalents that the time of St. Augustine had to experts in the modern sense.
I give an alternative translation:
"saying that they become a mockery to non-Christians, claiming to be geeks in astronomy and the sciences when they actually are not very geeky in these things."
This covers both "experts" and "amateurs". And unlike the nouns "experts" it is actually correct. A geek has the experience of study in a subject he is geek in.
I am not an academic expert in carbon 14 dating, but I certainly am a geek in it and am not making myself a mockery by the fact of claiming to be so - except to those who refuse to look up my actual solutions, which is not a case of being a mockery by my behaviour, but of being so by someone else's unfounded rumour and prejudice.
Hans Georg Lundahl
St. Maur des Fossées
St. Agnes of Rome
21.I.2020
Link to Polish list of St. Augustine's works:
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzie%C5%82a_Augustyna_z_Hippony
PS, a fraudulent rumour about inter alia St. Augustine suggests that you don't have a Young Earth Creationist unity among Fathers - you do, and this should suggest a certain council to a man named Trent Horn. Recall "unanimem sensum patrum" or sth?/HGL
PPS, on reading the rest of the podcast's transscript - see the important notice above/HGL
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