The Pontifical Biblical Commission Under Pius X

In honor of Pius X we are dedicating this portion of the series on the Creation/ Evolution controversy to the statements made by this illustrious Pope on this very topic, and to the Pontifical Biblical Commission under his authority.

Pius X, without much argument, was one of the most faithful and dedicated pontiffs the world has ever known. For his faithfulness, God allowed him to see where the trends of his own day were headed -- into the era of modernism, liberal theology and pseudo-intellectualism, of which evolution was one of the leading movements. Pius X was concerned about evolution on two fronts. First, he made frequent condemnation of the "evolution" of Catholic doctrine and practice that modernists were seeking to force onto the Catholic populace. Due to the influences from the social dialectic of Hegel and the biological theory of evolution espoused by Lyell and Darwin, many liberal Catholic theologians insisted that the Church must also "evolve". [1] In the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Pius X stated the problem quite succinctly:

"To conclude this whole question of faith and its various branches, we have still to consider, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about the development of the one and the other. First of all they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must in fact be changed. In this way they pass to what is practically their principal doctrine, namely, evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is subject under penalty of death -- dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself. The enunciation of this principle will not be a matter of surprise to anyone who bears in mind what the Modernists have had to say about each of these subjects. Having laid down this law of evolution, the Modernists themselves teach us how it operates. And first, with regard to faith -- The primitive form of faith, they tell us, was rudimentary and common to all men alike, for it had its origin in human nature and human life. Vital evolution brought with it progress, not by the accretion of new and purely adventitious forms from without, but by an increasing perfusion of the religious sense into the conscience ... Finally, evolution in the Church itself is fed by the need of adapting itself to historical conditions and of harmonizing itself with existing forms of society ..."

Obviously, Pius X knew that evolutionary theory was less the result of real facts and more the result of the Hegelian dialectic that had pervaded Europe in the 1800s and into the 1900s. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (d. 1831) proposed that life could be understood by seeing everything as a result of a thesis meeting an antithesis, which resulted in a synthesis. As one thing evolves, it meets up with an opposite thing that evolves, and when the two clash, an amalgamation of the two is produced. The synthesis itself then becomes another thesis, which is challenged by another antithesis, and so on and so on. This formula was applied to culture, religion, science, economics, politics, and everything else under the sun. Everyone was bowing to the Hegelian dialectic and the Tübingen school of modern Protestant theology from which Hegel came. Not only liberal Catholic theologians were giving their obeisance, but even atheists like Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Adolf Hitler used Hegel's dialectical materialism to advance their own agendas. It was an insidious problem throughout the whole world, and it caused Pius X much grief. He writes:

"Hence, by those who study more closely the ideas of the Modernists, evolution is described as a resultant from the conflict of two forces, one of them tending towards progress, the other towards conservation. The conserving force exists in the Church and is found in tradition; tradition is represented by religious authority, and this both by right and in fact. The progressive force, on the contrary, which responds to the inner needs, lies in the individual consciences and works in them -- specially in such of them as are in more close and intimate contact with life ... Now it is by a species of covenant and compromise between these two forces of conservation and progress, that is to say between authority and individual consciences that changes and advances take place."

Pius concludes this section with these stinging words against Hegel and the Catholic modernists:

"From beginning to end everything in it is a priori, and an a-priorism that reeks of heresy. These men are certainly to be pitied, of whom the Apostle might well say: 'They became vain in their thoughts ... professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.' (Romans 1:21-22)"

As noted, Pius X also fought evolution on a different front -- the biological theory espoused by Darwin, and which was championed by various Catholic clerics in the late 1800s. Taking his cue from Vatican I's statements against the concept of evolution, Pius X told the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which was then considered an authoritative arm of the magisterium, to issue allowances and prohibitions regarding the interpretation of Genesis.

Vatican Council I (1870), which reiterated the statements of Lateran Council IV (1215) against alternative cosmologies, had already put a substantial damper on Darwin's evolutionary theory. Darwin had released his foundational book in 1859, Origins of Species, and it created quite a stir in Europe. The first 3,000 copies sold out in one day. Eleven years later, in the midst of the issues raised by Darwin, Vatican I released Canons 4 and 5. Canon 4 stated:

"If anyone shall say that finite things, both corporeal and spiritual, or at least the spiritual, have emanated from the divine substance, or, that the divine essence by a manifestation or evolution of itself becomes all things, or, finally, that God is universal or indefinite being, because by determining Himself, He created all things distinct in genera, in species, and in individuals: let him be anathema." (DS 1804)

Unfortunately, modernists often interpret this canon as merely a statement against special forms of pantheism. Although it is certainly against pantheism, it is much more than that. We can see this in retrospect. Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who received his education from liberal Jesuits in the late 1800s, would eventually espouse the theory that God was manifest throughout the universe in material objects which were evolving to the "Omega Point," the place where he claimed both would become one and fully realized. As we can see in Vatican I's Canon 4, de Chardin's pantheistic ideas were flatly denied, and Pius XII eventually condemned his books. The direct connection between social evolution and biological evolution was shown no more clearly than in the fact that, de Chardin, also a "world renowned" paleontologist, was one of the strongest advocates of Darwin's evolutionary theory. His passion to prove evolution was so strong that he succumbed to fabricating evidence to support Peking Man -- one of the famous "missing links" -- a hoax that survived being exposed for 40 years.

But not only did Vatican I condemn de Chardin's pantheistic concepts, it did so by showing its familiarity with the terminology of Darwin. The clause from canon 4: "He created all things distinct in genera, in species, and in individuals" ac- knowledges that the world of living things appears in distinct biological categories. Canon 4 not only condemns those who would use these categories to say that God was "universal or indefinite being," it also revealed that "genera, species and individuals" were not the result of a process, but that God "created" them, and that they were ready-made and "distinct" from one another.

Darwin was one of the first to coin the word "species," (i.e., it was used in the title of his book Origin of Species), but he maintained that the species "evolved," as opposed to Vatican I's declaration that they were created ex nihilo. In addition, Canon 4's use of the word "distinct" showed that Vatican I acknowledged there was no crossing-over of the species (e.g., a fish was not the same as, or did not evolve into, a reptile or a bird). Coincidentally, this fits the language of Genesis 1:24-25, which specifies, six times, that members of the animal kingdom were created "in their kind," and it also fits the language of 1 Cor. 15:39 which says that the flesh of men, beasts, birds and fish are all different from one another, and thus they had to be created differently.

The import of Vatican Council I's Canon 4 is seen more clearly when Canon 5 is added to it:

"If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and corporal, as regards their whole substance, have been created by God from nothing, let him be anathema." (DS 1805)

Here Vatican I says that "all things" in the "material" world are "created by God from nothing". Coupling this with Canon 4 (which uses the same word "created"), we can logically deduce that the "corporal" things are the "distinct genera, species and individuals" which "all" must have been "created from nothing". Hence, this leaves little room to say that the "distinct species" were a product of evolution."[2]

Canon 5 even adds a phrase that did not appear in the original wording of Lateran Council IV. Lateran IV had stated:

"God ... who by His own omnipotent power at once from the beginning of time created each creature from nothing, spiritual, and corporal, namely, angelic and mundane, and finally the human."

Vatican I, however, adds the important phrase "as regards their whole substance" after "spiritual and corporal." Hence, it can be additionally concluded that Vatican I did not see the "distinct species" mentioned in Canon 4 as being created partially or incompletely, but in complete, or "whole," substances. That Vatican I would add this crucial phrase at the same time Darwin's theory was circulating through Europe (which held that the various "species" all had missing parts that had not yet evolved into being), is quite remarkable.

In fact, Vatican I more or less clarified its intentions. Since it also said "spiritual" things were created from nothing in their whole substance (which "spiritual" things Lateran IV defined as "angelic" beings), obviously the Council was acknowledging that angels were not created in partial or incomplete form, or that they evolved into their present state of being. Since that is the case with angels, and since Vatican I made no distinction between the "spiritual and corporal" in regards to what was created from nothing, one should conclude that the Council understood the "corporal" world as being outside the realm of evolution, as were the angels.

As it is specified in Canon 5 of Vatican I, "all things" that appear in Genesis 1's record were created from nothing, miraculously and instantaneously. It is no wonder that Darwin offered a counter-thesis with another book four years after Vatican I, which he titled Descent of Man (1874). We can see clearly that modern science and the Church were drawing the battle lines between the theory of evolution and ex nihilo creation, respectively.

After Lateran IV, the Council of Florence (1441) reiterated the same truth about ex nihilo creation:

"God ... is the creator of all things visible and invisible, who, when He wished, out of His goodness created all creatures, spiritual as well as corporal; good, indeed … since they were from nothing ..."

We see again the phrase "spiritual as well as corporal" which Florence borrowed from Lateran IV, and again, both groups are stated to be "created from nothing". Logically, if it is agreed that the angels were not created in incomplete form, then one could hardly conclude that the "species" and "individuals" of the corporal world were created in incomplete form. The only way to conclude otherwise is to posit that the council was being duplicitous in its language, but this would create even worse problems, since canons of an ecumenical council are supposed to be precisely defined infallible statements.

Additionally, just ten years prior to Vatican I, the Council of Cologne (1860) condemned the idea of human evolution in very straightforward words:

"Our first parents were formed immediately by God. Therefore we declare that … those who … assert … man … emerged from spontaneous continuous change of imperfect nature to the more perfect, is clearly opposed to Sacred Scripture and to the Faith."[3]

Twenty years later, Pope Leo XIII, in his 1880 encyclical Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae, stated this about ex nihilo creation:

"We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep."

Notice that Leo makes mention of the "sixth day" when God created Adam from the slime. We can infer that Leo is not viewing the sixth day as representing millions of years, since evolution requires the existence of primates and other creatures between the slime and Adam. Leo's interpretation of Genesis is that the slime was instantaneously fashioned into the first man.

That this was Leo's intent is noted by the fact that he purposely adds that Eve was "miraculously" taken from the side of Adam when he was in a "locked" in sleep. Since Eve was miraculously made, then she was made instantaneously. The day she is made, the sixth day, is called "an evening and morning" in Genesis 1:26, which obviously means she was created between the evening and the morning of the sixth day. Logically, since the sixth day consists of an "evening and morning" in which Eve was instantaneously created, there is little room to argue that the "evenings and mornings" of the other days mentioned in Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23 were anything but literal days. This is even more emphatic when we look at the precise way that Scripture, outside of Genesis, uses the phrase "evening and morning".[4]

Thus, when Pius X came on the scene in 1903, he had quite an ecclesiastical tradition before him that refuted the tenets of evolution. Three Popes affirming the canons of three ecumenical councils, one local council, and one Pope in an encyclical, had laid the groundwork for him. The Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC), which Pius X set up to answer queries on the interpretation of Genesis, would then add a few more wrinkles to the issue. It published its findings in 1909.

In the first query, the PBC felt no compunction in referring to modern cosmological theories as the "pretense of science" seeking to interpret the first three chapters of Genesis in a non-literal fashion. The question was stated:

"Whether the various exegetical systems which have been proposed to exclude the literal historical sense of the three first chapters of the Book of Genesis, and have been defended by the pretense of science, are sustained by a solid foundation?"

The PBC's answer was: "Reply: In the negative." In other words, the PBC was not about to let the theories of science dictate the interpretation of Genesis.

"Whether all and everything, namely, words and phrases which occur in the aforementioned chapters, are always and necessarily to be accepted in a special sense, so that there may be no deviation from this, even when the expressions themselves manifestly appear to have been taken improperly, or metaphorically or anthropomorphically, and either reason prohibits holding the proper sense, or necessity forces its abandonment?"

The PBC answered: "Reply: In the negative." In other words, although in Query 1 the PBC stated that the "pretense of science" could not be a basis for abandoning the literal interpretation of Genesis 1-3, nevertheless, it could not be stated that "everything" in those passages was to be interpreted literally. This is no surprise, since the Church has never had an absolute insistence that everything must be interpreted literally.

Unfortunately, some theistic evolutionists have taken this as a license to interpret figuratively al- most everything in the beginning chapters of Genesis (so as to leave room for some type of evolutionary theory). But the PBC was no more granting that privilege than the 1992 Catechism does when it states in paragraph 337:

"Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine 'work,' concluded by the 'rest' of the seventh day."

In the above statement, theistic evolutionists see the word "symbolically" and automatically think that the Catechism is promoting the idea that the opening chapters of Genesis were mostly, if not all, symbolic. But they fail to notice that the Catechism puts only the words "work" and "rest" in quotes, and thus it is saying that what is to be interpreted "symbolically" are the anthropomorphisms of God, which is the same answer given by the 1909 PBC when it stated that certain things in Genesis were "metaphorically or anthropomorphically" described.

Despite these clear parameters, it is the last query answered by the PBC that today's theistic evolutionists have interpreted as providing their greatest leeway to support the concept of long ages. Query 8 stated:

"Whether in that designation and distinction of six days, with which the account of the first chapter of Genesis deals, the word 'days' can be assumed either in its proper sense as a natural day, or in the improper sense of a certain space of time; and whether with regard to such a question there can be free disagreement among exegetes?

Because of the PBC's affirmative answer, many of the over-zealous have concluded that, as of 1909, the Catholic Church was adopting or accepting the theory of long-ages. But that is far from the truth.

First, the PBS mentioned nothing about the days of Genesis being billions of years long, which is a strict requirement of evolutionary theory. The PBC simply said "a certain space of time," which can be less than 24 hours or more than 24 hours. Based on the tradition handed down, it must be considered that the intent of the PBC was not to sanction the long-age theory of evolution, but merely to accommodate the view of St. Augustine (and which St. Thomas also said was possible), which held that a conceivable interpretation of Genesis 1 was that the whole universe was created instantaneously, i.e., in one day, rather than six days. A period of one day is "a certain space of time," but it is certainly not billions of years. Further, the PBC does not state that the long- ages of evolutionary theory could fit into the days of Genesis 1, and hence, the PBC was giving no suggestion that the world is billions of years old.

Second, and more importantly, in the clause "to such a question there can be free disagreement among exegetes," the PBC is not so much making a determination of whether Genesis speaks of indefinite periods of time, but only that "exegetes" can be free to disagree. Who are "exegetes"? They can be anyone, but they certainly do not have official standing in the Church. Exegetes can be "free to disagree" because they are, in fact, merely exegetes, not officials of the magisterium who must speak dogmatically for the Church. "Exegetes" are a diverse body of individuals who quite frequently "disagree" with one another on a whole host of subjects, not to mention the fact that they do not bind anyone's conscience, and thus they can argue all they want about the meaning of "day" in Genesis 1, but it won't matter at all in the final analysis. Conversely, the Church, in her official declarations, is not "free to disagree," simply because Church doctrine cannot waver between two opinions, since obviously, a "day" in Genesis 1 cannot be both 24-hours and not 24- hours at the same time.

Third, we must realize that, in allowing exegetes two possibilities of interpreting "day" in Genesis 1, ironically, the PBC is admitting that it does not know how to interpret the word. Obviously, if the PBC did know, it would have clearly stated whether "day" was literal or non-literal. Hence, the PBC is not claiming divine assistance to make a definitive decision on the word "day," for by the same token, neither will God waver between two possibilities when He gives divine help to Peter and his underlings. Again, the PBC's only purpose was to tell "exegetes" they could be "free to disagree". Yet the reason for this concession was not because the PBC was giving credence to the theory of evolution, for no Father, medieval, doctor, saint, Pope or council in the Tradition had espoused anything close to evolution. The real reason was that, ever since the days of Augustine, the length of the "day" of Genesis 1 had been contested, but the contest was never between whether the Hebrew YOM referred to 24- hours or "billions of years," but whether it referred to six separate 24-hour days, or one instant, with the stipulation that both described a miraculous, instantaneous, ex nihilo creation.

Thus, Pius X's Biblical Commission was faithful to the received tradition. In no instance did it depart from the established dogma that "all things" both "spiritual and corporal" were "created from nothing" in their "whole substance". The PBC, in fact, deferred its comments to the consensus of the tradition.

1. In a similar vein, modern science's grip on the mentality of our generation has produced the idea that morals and ethics are "relative" due to the theory of Relativity espoused by Einstein and many late 19th and 20th Century physicists.

2. Regarding species, no one espousing evolutionary theory has yet to explain how the genes required of an advanced species are produced from an inferior species, and thus evolution does not possess the very mechanism that is the basis of its assertions.

3. Because of this council, the Holy Office at Rome demanded that two priests renounce their views concerning evolution. Cited in Brian Harrison's Did the Human Body Evolve Naturally: A Forgotten Papal Declaration at www.rtformum.org.

4. Examining "evening and morning" in Scripture shows that it always refers to the sequence of darkness and light comprising a single period of a day, a 24 hour period (cf., Ex 16:8-13; 27:21; 29:39; Lv 24:3; Nm 9:21; Dan 8:26). As opposed to the many times in Scripture that the words "morning" or "evening" appear separately with the word "day," some of which refer to a literal solar day and some which are indefinite of time, the specific phrase "and there was evening and there was morning" never refers to a figurative or indefinite length of time. As Aquinas stated: "Thus we find it said at first that "He called the light Day": for the reason that later on a period of twenty-four hours is also called day, where it is said that "there was evening and morning, one day." (Summa Theologica, Bk 1, Ques. 69, Art 1). Knowing the insurmountable problems Eve's miraculous creation on the sixth day causes for theistic evolution, in 1932 one Catholic theologian, J. Paquier, proposed that Adam and Eve were twins from the same immediate ancestor! (J Paquier in La Création et l'Evolution, la Révélation et la Science [Paris: Gabalda, 1932], p. 132. Cited in B. Harrison, f. 31).

since obviously, a "day" in Genesis 1 cannot be both 24-hours and not 24- hours at the same time.

Actually....the author ought to be careful about that "obviously" there. Time is not constant everywhere, as any physicist will tell you, and time passes at different rates at different velocities and locations in the universe.

I've just read a book "Genesis and the Big Bang" by a Jewish physicist with an interesting theory that bridges the gap. The universe looks 15.5 billion years old if you measure from earth....BUT if you measure from the beginning at the very source of the big bang...it comes out to ...fancy that...six days. I'm not a physicist I can't get into all the nitty gritty...but check it out here on Dr. Gerald Schroeder's website. He also does a nice job of quoting supporting Scripture such as "the day of the Lord is like a thousand years", which seems to be a pretty direct contradiction to what our author is arguing here. He also quotes medieval Talmudic commentary by Maimonides, Nachmanides etc., to show this interpretation is not new-fangled but was always present in the text.

I highly recommend Schroeder's books to all interested...and I've failed to be impressed by a whole lot of these science-meets-Genesis type works.

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