Jimmy Akin on Patristic and Scientific Expertise.

Theological Consequences · Jimmy Akin on Patristic and Scientific Expertise. · Child Adam? · Archaic Actual Humans or Apes in Human Shapes? · What If Adam Became a Man - When he Became a Man? · Tolkien's Elves Are Not the Key to Cain's Wife or Adam's Growth

Creation vs. Evolution: Jimmy Akin on Patristic and Scientific Expertise. · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Extract of Lazar - Akin : Where is the Authority?

Understanding the “Unanimous Consent” of the Church Fathers
Jimmy Akin | August 13, 2018
https://jimmyakin.com/2018/08/understanding-the-unanimous-consent-of-the-church-fathers.html

Around 50 minutes in into his discussion with Gideon Lazar, the latter says all Church Fathers were Young Earth Creationists and believed Genesis 5 and 11 literally. Jimmy Akin admits this is true. He counters the Church Fathers believed "other things" and goes to Ptolemaic astronomy and this implying Earth at the centre and crystalline spheres. Gideon Lazar considers Geocentrism would if so be authoritative, but gives a somewhat hesitating rejection of the crystalline spheres. Like an at least preliminary one. Now St. Basil did not hold Ptolemy and his likes in great esteem:

4. One day, doubtless, their terrible condemnation will be the greater for all this worldly wisdom, since, seeing so clearly into vain sciences, they have wilfully shut their eyes to the knowledge of the truth. These men who measure the distances of the stars and describe them, both those of the North, always shining brilliantly in our view, and those of the southern pole visible to the inhabitants of the South, but unknown to us; who divide the Northern zone and the circle of the Zodiac into an infinity of parts, who observe with exactitude the course of the stars, their fixed places, their declensions, their return and the time that each takes to make its revolution; these men, I say, have discovered all except one thing: the fact that God is the Creator of the universe, and the just Judge who rewards all the actions of life according to their merit. They have not known how to raise themselves to the idea of the consummation of all things, the consequence of the doctrine of judgment, and to see that the world must change if souls pass from this life to a new life. In reality, as the nature of the present life presents an affinity to this world, so in the future life our souls will enjoy a lot conformable to their new condition. But they are so far from applying these truths, that they do but laugh when we announce to them the end of all things and the regeneration of the age. Since the beginning naturally precedes that which is derived from it, the writer, of necessity, when speaking to us of things which had their origin in time, puts at the head of his narrative these words--"In the beginning God created."

Elpenor, St. Basil's Hexaemeron, Homily I, chapter 4
https://www.elpenor.org/basil/hexaemeron.asp?pg=6

And here, more directly to Jimmy Akin's point:

Elpenor, St. Basil's Hexaemeron, Homily III, chapter 7
https://www.elpenor.org/basil/hexaemeron.asp?pg=28

Citing only the first words:

Therefore we read: "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." I have said what the word firmament in Scripture means. It is not in reality a firm and solid substance which has weight and resistance; this name would otherwise have better suited the earth. But, as the substance of superincumbent bodies is light, without consistency, and cannot be grasped by any one of our senses, it is in comparison with these pure and imperceptible substances that the firmament has received its name. ...

Tycho Brahe proved, there were no crystalline spheres that were solid bodies, since the comet would have crashed into such, when going through the levels of several planetary, possible spheres. So, at least one Church Father does not believe the Firmament is a solid crystalline sphere. And that is all that has been disproven.

Geocentrism hasn't.

Jimmy Akin's point against believing the Church Fathers does not stand. But is it even compatible with what he said himself?

He considers the doctrinal content behind the Tridentine discipline means that we need to take heed of the Church Fathers, partly when bishops and reflecting the ordinary magisterium, and partly whether bishops or not when they bear witness to the sensus fidelium.

This is a point where I took difference with Robert Sungenis, who had said the Church Fathers were Geocentric in face of massive Pagan Heliocentrism:

Mr. Olar’s appeal to Augustine and Aquinas might have some bite, that is, until we realize that both these saints were dyed-in-the-wool geocentrists, and who chose this cosmological stance in the face of the Greeks of the former’s day who were touting heliocentrism and the Indians of the latter’s day who were touting the same.

I made the bad choice to link to Sungenis' work not in a full url, but in a short url which no longer works - I was overusing short urls at the time, and now they are down. So, here is where I quoted it and I refute it in part:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : St Augustine was a Geocentric ... in face of what, Mr. Sungenis?
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2011/03/st-augustine-was-geocentric-in-face-of.html

I really see no reason to say that the Greeks of St Augustine's day were touting heliocentrism. Aristotle was as Geocentric as Augustine. The Pythagorean and Epicurean authors who were not were long since dead and by St Augustine's time had few followers.

I'm not sure there even was an Epicurean Heliocentric - Lucrece was Geocentric. And very bad at astronomy. So, one could say St. Augustine was Geocentric by default, not because "that was the science of the time" (though, in a somewhat different sense than that considered by Jimmy Akin, it was). But because it was common sense commonly admitted by the time and nothing in St. Augustine's faith made him challenge it. However, it is bound up with things that are of the faith, like miracle of Joshua, God being truthful when working miracles, heaven being a place, and the universe being created well below 10 000 years ago, not thirteen billion plus years ago.

Because, there were indeed pagans who thought Egypt had 40 000 years' history or Mesopotamia (with various metropoles) 150 000 years' history. Now, this was invariably repudiated. Why? Because these pseudo-histories involved various divinities we know to be false gods? No, Church Fathers had no problem, generally speaking with Euhemerism, I think the dropping of Euhemerism as to pagan divinities started with St. Francis Xaver concluding from the Japanese god "Bodda's" 9000 years of incarnations that "Bodda" had to be a total invention of imagination, when most people these days consider that the "last of the reincarnations" namely Siddharta Gautama was perfectly historic. The one reason the Church Fathers could have had to ditch Egyptian and Babylonian chronology was ... the Bible.

Now, let's see:

6) Does the decree mean that Catholics can’t interpret the Bible and must simply repeat what the Church or the Fathers say it means?

No. The decree doesn’t say anything so restrictive. Catholics are free to read and interpret the Scriptures.

The law merely established that they weren’t to contradict Church teaching or the unanimous consent of the Fathers when these sources had a definitive teaching on the meaning of a passage.

That's exactly why I verified that the "skyscraper" interpretation of the Tower of Babel was not universal in Fathers and Scholastics before I offered an alternative one - or before I persisted in doing so.

Now, the next paragraph seems to be somewhat ill chosen here:

7) Are there many such passages?

No. Pope Pius XII pointed out in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu:

There are but few texts whose sense has been defined by the authority of the Church, nor are those more numerous about which the teaching of the Holy Fathers is unanimous (n. 47).

Catholic biblical interpreters thus have a broad liberty of interpretation. As Leo XIII stated:

By this very wise law the Church by no means retards or blocks the investigations of biblical science, but rather keeps it free of error, and aids it very much in true progress. For, to every private teacher a large field is open in which along safe paths, by his industry in interpretation, he may labor efficaciously and profitably for the Church (Providentissimus Deus 14).

Suppose this is correct, I think taking the timelines of Genesis 5 and 11 literally would be among the top candidates. If a given passage to have such a patristic unvarying interpretation had to be commented on by all Church Fathers, arguably no passage at all would qualify, and the Church law of Trent would have been empty of concrete object - like a law on land property on Atlantis would be void of object since Atlantis sank.

Note, I am not saying the Church Fathers all agree on what the timeline is, but they are however deriving it from the text - as is Josephus who is even, for Genesis 11, in contradiction with himself as to what the timeline is, but nevertheless takes it as literally true, whether he means the sum total given (292 years from Flood to birth of Abraham) or the details given (which if correctly added together give a very different sum total).

But if one passage (outside the New Testament) has even better claim to have all Church Fathers agree, it's God creating Adam directly and directly specially. Not via evolution and by adding a special chosing. It's a matter for another post why this is a problem, but it is clear that Jimmy Akin has run into it. And very much from not taking the Biblical timeline even remotely literally as history.

Now, the spontaneous interpretation of the rule from Trent, in practise, is treating Church Fathers, when they don't disagree between them, as infallible, whether "consensus of Church Fathers" was or was not erected to an infallibility occasion. All the upshot of Jimmy Akin's post is to minimise this. There is another type of consensus which he is by contrast not the least interested in minimising : that of experts. The infallibility of the Church is a promise by Christ and the consensus of fathers is at least possibly a way of verifying if this was on a certain matter met during the first thousand years. The infallibility of human reason after the fall is not a promise at all, and as there are human reasoners not in "communion" with expertise, unlike Catholic Christians who needed to be in communion with bishops and with the saints canonised, the consensus of experts is not a way to verify that the best criteria of human reasoning have been met. Nevertheless "you'd need like 6 PhD's to be a qualified expert" ... "the standard answer, throughout human history, has been experts" (he's not an expert on history!) "historically it has been viewed safer to go with majority opinion" (in certain areas, roughly corresponding to where something we would consider "expertise" was already recognised as such).*

Obviously, he refers to the "Magisterium" as source of CCC 283, which I disagree on. Trent said we can't go against what the Church "tenet atque tenuit" - meaning a magisterial position has to be traceable to earlier magisterium. CCC 283 clearly isn't.

Again : "if that's the only question you are interested in, you are never going to settle it, unless you acquire 6 PhD's" ... Jimmy Akin clearly stated a layman has a right to read and interpret the Scriptures, the law by Trent session IV has sometimes been viewed as a doctrinal condemnation of "Scripture with individual interpretation" and Jimmy tells us it isn't so, but for some reason, he can't abide with the human reason side of questions getting the solution "experience and logic and individual interpretation" - that's a no no. I think we see some lopsidedness of criteria. Ordinary magisterium of 1500 years and more by bishops counts less than "ordinary magisterium" of 150 years and less by secular scientists.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Quinquagesima Lord's Day
27.II.2022

* Latin has no word for expert. It has words for various types of experts, like "medicus, faber, architectus" and in the Middle Ages, you get the idea that an "artifex" is an expert on his "ars" - but obviously an astrophysicist is not an "artifex" on stars, there is one only who actually made stars, and that's God. "Omni artifici de sua arte loquendo credendum est" rhymes better with Biblical than with Scientific inerrancy on stars.