[Catholic Caucus] How Pope Pius XI defended the history of Genesis, special creation of St. Adam

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[Catholic Caucus] How Pope Pius XI defended the history of Genesis, special creation of St. Adam

The Creation of Adam – Michelangelo, 1511

Editor’s note: This article is Part 1 of a four-part study of Pope Pius XI’s understanding of the Catholic doctrine of creation as opposed to the modern scientific proposition of the evolution of mankind.

(Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation) — One of the wonderful things about the Kolbe apostolate has been the way that members of our leadership team have been inspired to research different topics relevant to our mission, resulting in all kinds of fruitful discoveries.

In recent months, researcher Christian Bergsma has brought to our attention a document that highlights the Church leadership’s vigorous defense of the literal historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis well into the 20th century.

In this article we will focus on a treatise^[1] written by the Rev. Achille Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI, toward the end of the 19th century. Though he wrote it before becoming pope, Pius XI defended this work during his pontificate, according to his close friend Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini:

Our Holy Father, Pope Pius XI, in private audiences, from time to time recalled with pleasure this work of his (“which cost him no little labor”), and reconfirmed his conclusions.^[2]

Theological arguments for the special creation of Adam

Dr. Kenneth Miller is typical of Catholic intellectuals who teach our young people that the Fathers and Doctors of the patristic era did not read Genesis as history and that this is a recent, “fundamentalist” misinterpretation, stating:

Great theologians of the early centuries of the Christian era, like Saint Augustine, did not read Genesis as history. It’s only in the last hundred years, mostly in the United States, that you have people coming up with a radically different view.

READ: Pope preaches against chance evolution: ‘Man is not the chance result of evolution’

As the recipient of the Laetare medal at Notre Dame University in 2014, “the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics,” according to Notre Dame’s president, Michael O. Garvey, one would think that Dr. Miller would be able back up his claims, but St. Augustine himself made clear that he agreed with the rest of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church that Genesis is written “from beginning to end in the style of history.”

In keeping with this historical interpretation of Genesis, at the beginning of his treatise, the future Pope Pius XI sets forth his plan to demonstrate the direct and immediate creation of the body of St. Adam, first from theology and then from natural science. He asks:

What is to be held of the first origin of man as regards the body, according to faith and sound theology?

The answer is this: It is clear from divine revelation that the first parents, not only regarding the soul, but also regarding the body, were formed by God himself, not by simple concurrence, but by direct and immediate action, although not creative.

Explaining the phrase, “although not creative,” Christian Bergsma notes:

Ratti distinguishes the formation of the body as “not creative” in the strict sense that the body was not called into being out of nothing like the soul was, but rather was formed from the material of mud and the rib. St. Thomas Aquinas defines creation in the unequivocal sense as the original emanation of each thing into being from nothing:

“‘To create is to make something from nothing’… we must consider not only the emanation of a particular being from a particular agent, but also the emanation of all being from the universal cause, which is God; and this emanation we designate by the name of creation … it is impossible that any being should be presupposed before this emanation. For nothing is the same as no being. Therefore as the generation of a man is from the ‘not-being’ which is ‘not-man,’ so creation, which is the emanation of all being, is from the ‘not-being’ which is ‘nothing.’^[3]

However, per Aquinas, the whole man, as a composite of both body and soul, can be said to have been created out of “not-man” in that immediate and simultaneous action, as he was brought from a state of non-being into being in all of his principles:

“Creation does not mean the building up of a composite thing from pre-existing principles; but it means that the ‘composite’ is created so that it is brought into being at the same time with all its principles … for creation is the production of the whole being, and not only matter.”^[4]

The literal and obvious sense of Scripture must be believed

Like the Fathers and Doctors before him, the future Pope Pius XI takes as his starting point that the sacred history of Genesis gives a divinely inspired account of the creation of the first human beings in which the literal and obvious sense should be believed unless it would detract from “purity of life or soundness of doctrine.” In the words of St. Augustine:

In the first place, then, we must show the way to find out whether a phrase is literal or figurative. And the way is certainly as follows: Whatever there is in the Word of God that cannot, when taken literally, be referred either to purity of life or soundness of doctrine, you may set down as figurative.^[5]

READ: On pathological science: Darwinian evolution and the devaluing of man

Using these criteria, Christian Bergsma rightly poses and answers a critical question:

Is the formation of the body from mud impossible to reconcile with purity of life or sound doctrine? Certainly not. Pope Leo XIII likewise cites “the rule so wisely laid down by St. Augustine – not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires…^[6] Does reason or necessity compel us to believe that an all-powerful God could not create a body from mud? Certainly not! Therefore, we ought to take the words literally.

The age of the universe

Having established that the direct and immediate creation of Adam, body and soul, must be believed as, at a minimum, Catholic doctrine, if not, as some authorities believe, Catholic Faith, Ratti addresses the question of the timing of Adam’s creation:

It remains to say a few things about the antiquity of human origin. Holy Scripture nowhere expressly presents a complete chronology which extends to the creation of Adam; but what it sparsely reports presents no little difficulty, especially if one considers the discrepancies between the Hebrew text and the Septuagint and Samaritan versions; but the Vulgate version follows the Hebrew text.

Even greater and far more numerous discrepancies occur among the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers. Cardinal Meignan counts one hundred and fifty different calculations, none of which can be called reprobate; in fact, Des Vignoles collected more than two hundred different indications of the time from Adam to Christ, the minimum of which he counts as 3,483 years, the maximum as 6,984. It is true that in all the aforesaid calculations, a common foundation was sought in the Holy Scriptures themselves. For, after certain minor difficulties, it was seen that the following numbers of years could be gathered from inspired books.

From Adam to Noah’s flood:

according to the Vulgate and Hebrew text… 1,656

according to the Samaritan text… … … … 1,306

according to the Septuagint… … … … … … 2,242

From Noah’s flood to Abraham’s birth:

according to the Vulgate… … … … …292 or 293

according to the Samaritan text… … … … … 942

according to the Septuagint… … … … … … 1,183

From Abraham to Christ’s birth:

with hardly a few decades of difference… 2,190

Having said this, it follows that neither Holy Scripture nor Tradition contains a chronology of the human race that is at least completely defined. Here again, it is certainly possible to follow any of the chronologies received here and there in the Church.

This is a remarkable passage – remarkable because we find the future Pope Pius XI defending the common teaching of all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church that the Scriptures provide a basis, though not a precise formula, for calculating universal chronology, when Catholic intellectuals were abandoning this teaching in droves in the name of “science.” As Christian Bergsma observes:

Though they posited various dates for Christ’s birth, all the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers who mentioned the subject taught a recent creation as a matter of faith in Scripture, in opposition to the old-earth mythologies of the pagans (not, as some have said, simply due to their ancient scientific conceptions). The Church teaches:

“In consequence, it is not permissible for anyone to interpret holy Scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the Fathers. ^[7]

Even modernist bible scholar M.J. Lagrange had to admit the substantial sensus fidelium on the young earth within the Church over the centuries, regardless of the differing proposed dates. Lagrange found himself arguing that the ancient Fathers had been right to interpret Genesis 1-11 as teaching a young chronology, because the text indeed does teach it, even though it is not true, and that God intentionally used their errant belief in the historicity Genesis 1-11 to bring them to spiritual truths, as they would not have otherwise been able to grasp them if he had explained them at that time in a manner fitting with what we now “know” through science.

This is heresy, because we are bound to hold that whatever Scripture teaches is inerrant, and that such inerrancy extends not just to spiritual truths but also to statements touching history and the natural world^[8]. However, in defending this position Lagrange aptly exposed the ridiculous inconsistency of those “concordists” who try to defend one tenet of Scripture (i.e., the universal flood) by denying that another tenet (i.e., the young chronology) was ever upheld by the Church:

“Then came the turn of the philologists. It seemed to them that there would never have been time enough for the formation of languages had the Deluge swallowed up all mankind … but, in point of fact, the arguments of the scientists were only conclusive if biblical chronology were upheld…And so, when the universality of the Deluge was defended by this [concordist] school, they held that biblical chronology was non-existent. They went so far as to foster the delusion that Catholic opinion had never admitted a chronology, because it did not agree as to its limits: as though the differences of opinion, reached as the result of so much painful effort, did not suppose a common groundwork known to all.“^[9] (emphasis added)

By the very admission of this preeminent modernist, to believe that the tradition of the Church on the biblical chronology was either non-existent, insubstantial, or due to mistaken exegesis, is delusional, but to accept an old universe is to believe that Scripture teaches falsehood. Therefore, the best option for a pious Catholic is to believe in the young universe – “young” only in relation to the uniformitarian extrapolations of naturalists, and not in relation to any objective chronology of the world.

READ: How atheistic Darwinism led the West into a dark age of eugenics

References[+]References[−]

References

↑1	De hominis Origine Quoad Corpus, in Msgr. Frederick Sala, Institutiones positive-scholasticæ Theologiæ Dogmaticæ Tomus II: De Deo Uno et Trino – De Deo Creatore (1899), pgs. 197-211. For the original Latin see here. For English and Latin side-by-side, see here.
↑2	Ruffini, The Theory of Evolution Judged by Reason and Faith, trans. Francis O’Hanlon (Joseph F. Wagner, Inc.: New York, 1959), 135–37.
↑3	[St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part 1, q. 45. art. 1.]
↑4	Ibid, Part 1, q. 45, art. 4.
↑5	St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book 3, Ch. 10.
↑6	Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, 15.
↑7	Vatican Council I, ch. 2 On Revelation, 9.
↑8	Benedict XV, Spiritus Paraclitus, 19-26.
↑9	Lagrange, Historical Criticism and the Old Testament (1905), Lecture IV, pgs. 134-135).

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This is heresy, because we are bound to hold that whatever Scripture teaches is inerrant, and that such inerrancy extends not just to spiritual truths but also to statements touching history and the natural world[8]. However, in defending this position Lagrange aptly exposed the ridiculous inconsistency of those “concordists” who try to defend one tenet of Scripture (i.e., the universal flood) by denying that another tenet (i.e., the young chronology) was ever upheld by the Church:

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Ping

[Claud]

This post is exactly why I stopped reading modern treatises on evolution. Lifesite and Kolbe have both embarrassed themselves.

So did “Pope Pius XI” defend it, or did Rev. Achille Ratti?

The author basically tries to pull the authority of the Papacy back in time over the private interpretations of Rev. Ratti *23 years* before he became Pope. And I might add, in 1899 before the Mendelian synthesis.

We have Papal documents on this subject. Chief among them Humani Generis, which leaves room for the evolutionary creation of Adam’s body. Kolbe is free to argue their position, but not disingenously like this.

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So you believe the Bible is errant?

Humani Generis on Evolution – E-Book (PDF)

$5.00

In Humani Generis on Evolution, Fr. Victor Warkulwiz demonstrates that Pope Pius XII in Humani generis upheld the fundamental tenets of the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation and the validity of the literal historical interpretation of Genesis. Humani generis did not endorse theistic evolution or allow it to be taught. Instead, Pope Pius XII laid down firm guidelines to insure that Catholic scholars who examined the evidence for and against the claims of the evolutionary hypothesis would be able to confirm and defend the truth of the traditional doctrine of creation.

[Claud]

The Scriptural Chronology we have only goes back to the birth of Adam. Not before. It’s only tangentially the date of creation—if the Genesis days are interpreted as short, or instantaneous (as with Augustine).

If the days of Genesis represent longer periods of time—years, centuries, epochs—then we don’t actually have the date of Creation. We only have the date of Adam’s birth.

Under this model, it is entirely plausible to fit all of evolutionary history in the Hexaemeron and then have Adam appear right on schedule at 4004 B.C. or whenever we think that the chronology begins.

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The Scriptural Chronology we have only goes back to the birth of Adam.

No, it doesn't. I goes back five days before the Creation, not at some monkey-birth of Adam.

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Correction: Goes back five days before into Creation.

[Claud]

No. I believe your interpretation is errant. And mine. And the Kolbe Center’s. And Rev. Achille Ratti’s.

Read Augustine’s “On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis.” He starts off apologizing that he is asking more questions than he answers, and then says he has tried his best, but if a better explanation could be found than what he offers, then we should go with that.

THAT is humility. Humility in the face of an extraordinarily difficult text that I have been wrestling with in 3 languages for 25 years.

But humility before Genesis 1 and 2 is in very short supply lately. Everybody just crowns themselves a professor of exegesis, Patristics, linguistics, palaeontology, archaeology, and proclaims they got it all figured out. It’s Young Earth! Old Earth! It’s evolution! It’s special creation!

Sorry. But if St. Augustine tread lightly here, then I’d be an idiot to charge in pretending I had it all figured out. And so would the Kolbe Center.

[Claud]

No, it doesn't. I goes back five days before the Creation, not at some monkey-birth of Adam.

I was using "birth" casually...but both terms are inexact. Adam was not "created" ex nihilo, he was *formed*.

Doesn't affect the argument one bit anyway. The Chronology depends purely on the age of Adam, not the creation of the world.

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I believe your interpretation is errant. And mine. And the Kolbe Center’s. And Rev. Achille Ratti’s.

So who's "interpretation" is right?

Why not resort to Holy Scripture, instead of "interpreting" it?

[Claud]

So who's "interpretation" is right?

The Church's, led by the Holy Ghost. And aside from providing certain guiding parameters, the Church has left this question open.

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the Church has left this question open.

I strongly disagree.

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The Traditional Catholic Doctrine of Creation

[Claud]

Disagree all you like, but that's where we're at. Humani Generis.

"36. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith"

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...in conformity with the present state of human sciences...

You lost me there!

PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS

PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS

Faith and Science

16. Having reached this point, Venerable Brethren, we have sufficient material in hand to enable us to see the relations which Modernists establish between faith and science, including history also under the name of science. And in the first place it is to be held that the object of the one is quite extraneous to and separate from the object of the other. For faith occupies itself solely with something which science declares to be unknowable for it. Hence each has a separate field assigned to it: science is entirely concerned with the reality of phenomena, into which faith does not enter at all; faith on the contrary concerns itself with the divine reality which is entirely unknown to science.

[Claud]

And it’s “Traditional Catholic doctrine...” why??? Because the Kolbe center said so, of course!

That article didn’t mention that Augustine believed in the 6 days being allegorical, nor did it tackle the famous “rationes seminales” that Augustine put forward in his account of the creation of flies and the moon phases. It rightly says Humani Generis didn’t endorse evolution, but then tries to elevate the PBC’s ruling over it.

I’ve been going to the Latin Mass for 25 years. Been wrestling with Genesis, palaeontology and archaeology just as long, if not longer.

So pardon me if I get annoyed when students who obviously haven’t even done the homework show up and think they can teach the class.

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See Pascendi.

This is not about 6 days or 6,000 years; it’s about Creation vs. Darwin’s “evolution”.

You slipped when you spoke about Adam’s “birth”. If so, who were his birth parents ?

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Been wrestling with Genesis, palaeontology and archaeology just as long, if not longer.

I'm sorry you had to wrestle with Genesis; I never had to.

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Pope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory are real and God is not 'a magician with a magic wand'

“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said.