Tomorrow (June 18), Pope Francis will release his long-awaited teaching document on the environment and human ecology. With that in mind, I wrote this article to articulate some principles that underlie the Catholic environmental vision, with the hope that atheists can better understand it and perhaps find common ground. I don’t know if these principles have been set out systematically, but in my research, I have uncovered fourteen. My selection of them is my own, as is the order in which I present them. In this article I'll identify and explicate the first six, then we'll cover another eight in my next article.

The first principle is that God is the sole creator and sustainer of the universe. This includes the laws of nature implanted in things. Because God is also good in himself, we can say that God is the good creator.

A second principle is that everything God has created is good. In Genesis, when God looks at the entire creation, including the first man and woman, he sees that it is “very good” (Gen 1: 31). One reason the author of Genesis may have included this is that human beings have a recurring temptation to see physical reality, including the human body, as evil. Gnosticism, Manichaeism, and the Albigensian heresy are three examples.

An axiom of Catholic philosophy is: “All that is is good.” This is to say, everything which has being is good. It is easy to feel that wheat, wine, sunshine, and butterflies are good. But subatomic particles, uranium, arsenic, crocodiles, and killer whales are also in themselves good. Physical evils, such as floods, tornadoes, blizzards, man-eating tigers, and dangerous microbes, are bad for us but good in their being.

The third principle is that part of the goodness of the universe is that it has a design and a purpose. Things have an inbuilt order which we can discover, recognize, and cooperate with. Everything in the universe behaves according to laws, from subatomic particles, to atoms, to molecules, to chemical compounds, to cellular life, to plants and animals, even to the human body. Matter obeys the laws of physics, plants and lower animals obey their genetic programming, and animals follow their instincts. An amazing dimension of design is the potentiality in being. Assuming the Big Bang is correct, everything that exists now is a coming into being of potentialities inherent in the singularity.

In addition, everything in nature acts for an end or purpose. Every human organ, for example, is marvelously ordered to carry out a function: the eyes see, the fingers feel, the digestive system digests, and the sex organs reproduce. All technology is predicated on discovering and using things according to the way they naturally work. When Orville and Wilber Wright understood the physical laws of thrust, lift, drag and stability on three axes, and built a machine which could exploit these laws, they learned to fly. Hence, Artigas argues that modern science and technology have grown from the specific Christian premises that there is a natural order, we can know this order, and it is good to know it (Artigas 29-30). As Feser points out, it is not necessary that anything know its end or purpose in order to act toward it (Feser 35). For example, the human reproductive system produces new human beings without any awareness and it produces human beings, not bonobos, carrots, or lead.

The fourth principle is that the human race is singular and the summit of creation. Man is singular on the earth in that there is nothing else like him. There is no other being in the physical world—at least on planet earth—with a nature which makes it possible for it to exercise reason and free will. This is one of the things we interpret Genesis to mean when it reports that God made man, “in the image and likeness of God” (Gen 1:27). As awe-inspiring as are the number, variety, complexity, and beauty of the creatures of the natural world, humans alone possess oral and written symbolic language, mathematics, art, music and philosophy.

I think it is also true to say that man is like everything else . . . but more. Man is the summit of creation because he holds within himself all the lower levels of the created world. His body is made up of subatomic particles, atoms and molecules, which obey the laws of physics. He is composed of chemicals which obey the laws of chemistry. He is a conglomerate of trillions of cells which act just like all other cellular life. His body carries out all kinds of operations automatically, like plants and animals do. He has a body which has instincts and emotions, like the higher animals. While contemplating the wonders of the natural world, the Psalmist exclaims amazement that God has made man, “little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor,” giving him dominion over all His creatures (Ps. 8: 3-8). We do have god-like powers.

The fifth principle is that the earth is for our use. This principle is perhaps the hardest Christian environmental truth for modern people to accept, although almost no one had a problem with it until about 1960.¹ The earth and its creatures exist for us, not us for them. In Genesis, man receives the command to “subdue” the earth. He possesses “dominion” over the animals and is “given” the plants to eat.

Why is it morally legitimate for us to “use” creation? According to the Catholic vision, there is a fundamental difference between human beings and everything else in creation. Human beings have absolute value: we are ends in ourselves. According to the Vatican II Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, man is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake” (Gaudium et spes 24). The rest of creation is of limited value: it is a means to an end. This is already seen in God’s mandate to Adam and Eve to subdue and use the things of the earth. In a highly technical explanation of this in his Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas Aquinas writes, in reference to “subsistent intelligences,” by which he means men, “the good things which are given them . . . are not given them for the profit of any other creature: while the gifts given to other creatures by divine ordinance make for the use of intellectual creatures.” In other words, the gifts which man is endowed with are for his own benefit, not for the benefit of the creatures below him. On the other hand, the good things lower creatures possess are for our benefit (and the benefit of other lower creatures). They are for us; we are not for them. We are not designed to be shark food or malaria hosts, even though we can be those things.

This is why the earth’s ecology is at the service of human ecology and not vice versa. According to Pope Benedict XVI in his January 1, 2010 World Day of Peace Message, If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation (CPPC), “Our duties towards the environment flow from our duties towards the person, considered both individually and in relation to others” (CPPC 12). Note that our duties towards the environment do not flow from any “duties” towards trees, dolphins, the air, or the earth as a whole. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) tells us,

[I]t is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing. They may be domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives. (CCC 2417)

On the other hand, an environmental policy or practice that does real harm to people to benefit “the environment” is wrong. For example, some environmental activists hammer spikes into trees to “save” them and to punish the logging industry. If the spikes are discovered, they must be laboriously removed, and they lower the economic value of the trees. If they are not found, they could physically injure a logger or sawmill worker when the saw hits the hard object.

If it is legitimate for man to use creation, may he use it any way he wishes? As we will see later, the answer is no.

This brings us to the sixth principle: Stewardship is man’s God-given mandate to direct wisely the development of the earth. If we look back over the five principles articulated so far, one could argue that the first great principle of the Catholic environmental vision is that God is the good creator of everything that is. The second is that man is God’s steward of creation. The principal of stewardship is also the answer—or at least an answer—to those who (falsely) say Christians believe God has given them license to rape the environment. A steward is not the owner of a good thing but rather the one who is entrusted with its use and care. The owner of the entire natural world is God who has given mankind the order to fill the earth and subdue it. Man’s stewardship imposes responsibilities on him.

Man’s stewardship includes respect for God’s creation. A person’s abuse of creation is wrong because it degrades him and is an injustice to other people on earth and to future generations. However, it is not wrong because of any inherent rights which lower created things possess. Abuse of creation is also wrong because it is a kind of insult to God who has created it good.

Man’s actual practice of stewardship can be seen in human history, which is an astonishing account of man’s dominion over and use of the goods of the earth through discovery, adaptation, and technology. We rightly think of our age as one of an explosion of knowledge and of astounding scientific and technological progress. But the discovery and use of fire, the domestication of animals, and the development of agriculture all occurred in human prehistory.

Stewardship is also not optional. As Pope Benedict XVI points out, God has created the world with a certain “grammar” which includes “giving man the role of a steward and administrator with responsibility over creation, a role which man must certainly not abuse, but also one which he may not abdicate” (CPPC 13). Whether anyone likes it or not, man is master of creation. Therefore, he has a responsibility.

In the next post, I will articulate the final eight principles. After that, if there is interest, I can start applying these principles to specific environmental issues.

NOTE: Today we begin a two part series by Dr. Edward Feser exploring questions about evolution, creation, faith, and human origins. We'll share the second part on Friday.
 

 
On questions about biological evolution, both the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and Thomist philosophers and theologians have tended carefully to steer a middle course.  On the one hand, they have allowed that a fairly wide range of biological phenomena may in principle be susceptible of evolutionary explanation, consistent with Catholic doctrine and Thomistic metaphysics.  On the other hand, they have also insisted, on philosophical and theological grounds, that not every biological phenomenon can be given an evolutionary explanation, and they refuse to issue a “blank check” to a purely naturalistic construal of evolution.  Evolutionary explanations are invariably a mixture of empirical and philosophical considerations.  Properly to be understood, the empirical considerations have to be situated within a sound metaphysics and philosophy of nature.

For the Thomist, this will have to include the doctrine of the four causes, the principle of proportionate causality, the distinction between primary and secondary causality, and the other key notions of Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) metaphysics and philosophy of nature (detailed defense of which can be found in my book, Scholastic Metaphysics).  All of this is perfectly consistent with the empirical evidence, and those who claim otherwise are really implicitly appealing to their own alternative, naturalistic metaphysical assumptions rather than to empirical science.  (Some earlier posts, on my personal blog, bringing A-T philosophical notions to bear on biological phenomena can be found here, here, here, here, and here.  As longtime readers know, A-T objections to naturalism have absolutely nothing to do with “Intelligent Design” theory, and A-T philosophers are often very critical of ID.  Posts on the dispute between A-T and ID can be found collected here.)

On the subject of human origins, both the Magisterium and Thomist philosophers have acknowledged that an evolutionary explanation of the origin of the human body is consistent with non-negotiable theological and philosophical principles.  However, since the intellect can be shown on purely philosophical grounds to be immaterial, it is impossible in principle for the intellect to have arisen through evolution.  And since the intellect is the chief power of the human soul, it is therefore impossible in principle for the human soul to have arisen through evolution.  Indeed, given its nature the human soul has to be specially created and infused into the body by God -- not only in the case of the first human being but with every human being.  Hence the Magisterium and Thomist philosophers have held that special divine action was necessary at the beginning of the human race in order for the human soul, and thus a true human being, to have come into existence even given the supposition that the matter into which the soul was infused had arisen via evolutionary processes from non-human ancestors.

In a recent article at Crisis magazine, Prof. Dennis Bonnette correctly notes that Catholic teaching also requires that there be a single pair from whom all human beings have inherited the stain of original sin.  He also rightly complains that too many Catholics wrongly suppose that this teaching can be allegorized away and the standard naturalistic story about human origins accepted wholesale.
 

The Sober Middle Ground

 
Naturally, that raises the question of how the traditional teaching about original sin can be reconciled with what contemporary biologists have to say about human origins.  I’ll return to that subject in a moment.  But first, it is important to emphasize that the range of possible views consistent with Catholic teaching and A-T metaphysics is very wide, but also not indefinitely wide.  Some traditionalist Catholics seem to think that the willingness of the Magisterium and of contemporary Thomist philosophers to be open to evolutionary explanations is a novelty introduced after Vatican II.  That is simply not the case.  Many other Catholics seem to think that Pope St. John Paul II gave carte blanche to Catholics to accept whatever claims about evolution contemporary biologists happen to make in the name of science.  That is also simply not the case.  The Catholic position, and the Thomist position, is the middle ground one I have been describing.  It allows for a fairly wide range of debate about what kinds of evolutionary explanations might be possible and, if possible, plausible; but it also rules out, in principle, a completely naturalistic understanding of evolution.

Perhaps the best-known magisterial statement on these matters is that of Pope Pius XII in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis.  In sections 36-37 he says:

"[T]he 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…
 
When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty.  For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.  Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own."

The pope here allows for the possibility of an evolutionary explanation of the human body and also, in strong terms, rules out both any evolutionary explanation for the human soul and any denial that human beings have a single man as their common ancestor.  This combination of theses was common in Thomistic philosophy and in orthodox Catholic theology at this time, and can be found in Neo-Scholastic era manuals published, with the Imprimatur, both before 1950 and in the years after Humani Generis but before Vatican II.

For example, in Celestine Bittle’s The Whole Man: Psychology, published in 1945, we find:

"[T]he evolution of man’s body could, per se, have been included in the general scheme of the evolutionary process of all organisms.  Evolution would be a fair working hypothesis, because it makes little difference whether God created man directly or used the indirect method of evolution…
 
Whatever may be the ultimate verdict of science and philosophy concerning the origin of man’s body, whether through organic evolution or through a special act of divine intervention, man’s soul is not the product of evolution." (p. 585)

George Klubertanz, in Philosophy of Human Nature (1953), writes:

"Essential evolution of living things up to and including the human body (the whole man with his spiritual soul excluded…), as explained through equivocal causality, chance, and Providence, is a possible explanation of the origin of those living things.  The possibility of this mode of origin can be admitted by both philosopher and theologian." (p. 425)

Klubertanz adds in a footnote:

"There are some theological problems involved in such an admission; these problems do not concern us here.  Suffice it to say that at least some competent theologians think these problems can be solved; at any rate, a difficulty does not of itself constitute a refutation."

At the end of two chapters analyzing the metaphysics of evolution from a Thomistic point of view, Henry Koren, in his indispensable An Introduction to the Philosophy of Animate Nature (1955), concludes:

"[T]here would seem to be no philosophical objection against any theory which holds that even widely different kinds of animals (or plants) have originated from primitive organisms through the forces of matter inherent to these organisms and other material agents…
 
Even in the case of man there appears to be no reason why the evolution of his body from primitive organisms (and even from inanimate matter) must be considered to be philosophically impossible.  Of course… man’s soul can have obtained its existence only through a direct act of creation; therefore, it is impossible for the human soul to have evolved from matter.  In a certain sense, even the human body must be said to be the result of an act of creation.  For the human body is made specifically human by the human soul, and the soul is created; hence as a human body, man’s body results from creation.  But the question is whether the matter of his body had to be made suitable for actuation by a rational soul through God’s special intervention, or if the same result could have been achieved by the forces of nature acting as directed by God.  As we have seen… there seems to be no reason why the second alternative would have to be an impossibility." (pp. 302-4)

Adolphe Tanquerey, in Volume I of A Manual of Dogmatic Theology (1959), writes:

"It is de fide that our first parents in regard to body and in regard to soul were created by God: it is certain that their souls were created immediately by God; the opinion, once common, which asserts that even man’s body was formed immediately by God has now fallen into controversy…
  
As long as the spiritual origin of the human soul is correctly preserved, the differences of body between man and ape do not oppose the origin of the human body from animality…

The opinion which asserts that the human body has arisen from animality through the forces of evolution is not heretical, in fact in can be admitted theologically…
 
Thesis: The universal human race has arisen from the one first parent Adam.  According to many theologians this statement is proximate to a matter of faith."  (pp. 394-98)

Similarly, Ludwig Ott’s well-known Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, in the 1960 fourth edition, states:

"The soul of the first man was created immediately by God out of nothing.  As regards the body, its immediate formation from inorganic stuff by God cannot be maintained with certainty.  Fundamentally, the possibility exists that God breathed the spiritual soul into an organic stuff, that is, into an originally animal body…
 
The Encyclical Humani Generis of Pius XII (1950) lays down that the question of the origin of the human body is open to free research by natural scientists and theologians…
 
Against… the view of certain modern scientists, according to which the various races are derived from several separated stems (polygenism), the Church teaches that the first human beings, Adam and Eve, are the progenitors of the whole human race (monogenism).  The teaching of the unity of the human race is not, indeed, a dogma, but it is a necessary pre-supposition of the dogma of Original Sin and Redemption." (pp. 94-96)

J. F. Donceel, in Philosophical Psychology (1961), writes:

"Until a hundred years ago it was traditionally held that the matter into which God for the first time infused a human soul was inorganic matter (the dust of the earth).  We have now very good scientific reasons for admitting that this matter was, in reality, organic matter -- that is, the body of some apelike animal.
 
Aquinas held that some time during the course of pregnancy God infuses a human soul into the embryo which, until then, has been a simple animal organism, albeit endowed with human finality.  The theory of evolution extends to phylogeny what Aquinas held for ontogeny.
 
Hence there is no philosophical difficulty against the hypothesis which asserts that the first human soul was infused by God into the body of an animal possessing an organization which was very similar to that of man." (p. 356)

You get the idea.  It is in light of this tradition that we should understand what Pope John Paul II said in 1996 in a “Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.”  The relevant passages are as follows:

"In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points…
 
Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis.  In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines.  The convergence in the results of these independent studies -- which was neither planned nor sought -- constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory…
 
[T]he elaboration of a theory such as that of evolution, while obedient to the need for consistency with the observed data, must also involve importing some ideas from the philosophy of nature.
 
And to tell the truth, rather than speaking about the theory of evolution, it is more accurate to speak of the theories of evolution.  The use of the plural is required here -- in part because of the diversity of explanations regarding the mechanism of evolution, and in part because of the diversity of philosophies involved.  There are materialist and reductionist theories, as well as spiritualist theories.  Here the final judgment is within the competence of philosophy and, beyond that, of theology.
 
Pius XII underlined the essential point: if the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created directly by God…
 
As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man."

Some traditionalists and theological liberals alike seem to regard John Paul’s statement here as a novel concession to modernism, but it is nothing of the kind.  The remark that evolution is “more than an hypothesis” certainly expresses more confidence in the theory than Pius had, but both Pius’s and John Paul’s judgments on that particular issue are merely prudential judgments about the weight of the empirical evidence.  At the level of principle there is no difference between them.  Both popes affirm that the human body may have arisen via evolution, both affirm that the human soul did not so arise, and both refuse to accept the metaphysical naturalist’s understanding of evolution.  John Paul II is especially clear on this last point.  As you would expect from a Thomist, he rightly insists that evolutionary explanations are never purely empirical but all presuppose alternative background metaphysical assumptions.  Hence he notes that a fully worked out theory of evolution “must also involve importing some ideas from the philosophy of nature” and that here “the final judgment is within the competence of philosophy and, beyond that, of theology” -- not empirical science per se.  And as Bonnette notes, the Catechism issued under Pope John Paul II essentially reaffirms, in the relevant sections (396-406), the traditional teaching that the human race inherited the stain of original sin from one man.

Neither those conservative Catholics who would in principle rule out any evolutionary aspect to human origins, nor those liberal Catholics who would rule out submitting the claims made by contemporary evolutionary biologists to any philosophical or theological criticism, can find support in the teaching of either of these popes.
 
 
To be continued! Stay tuned for Part 2 on Friday.
 
 
NOTE: Dr. Feser's contributions at Strange Notions were originally posted on his blog, and therefore lose some of their context when reprinted here. Dr. Feser explains why that matters.
 
 
(Image credit: National Geographic)

The theory of evolution proposes an explanation for how life in general and mankind in particular arose. It holds that that there was a long period in which natural processes gave rise to life and to the different life forms on earth.

This in no way conflicts with the idea of God. As the omnipotent Creator, he is free to create either quickly or slowly and either directly or through intermediate processes that he sets up.

He can even do a mixture of these things, such as creating the universe in an instant (as apparently happened at the Big Bang) and then having it experience a long, slow process of development giving rise to stars and planets and eventually life forms including human beings.

He can even intervene periodically in these processes going on in the universe, such as when he creates a soul for each human being or when he performs a miracle.

From its perspective, science can learn certain things about the laws governing the universe and the processes occurring in it. But that does nothing to eliminate the idea of God, for the question remains: Why is there a universe with these laws and these processes in the first place?

Consider an analogy: Suppose that after a thorough and lengthy scientific investigation of the Mona Lisa, I concluded that it was the result of innumerable collisions of paint and canvas which gradually went from indecipherable shapes and colors to a beautiful and intriguing picture of a woman.

My analysis of the painting may be correct. That is, in fact, what the Mona Lisa is and how it developed. But it by no means disproves nor makes unnecessary Leonardo Da Vinci as the painter behind the painting.

Furthermore, if we were the product of a purely random processes then we have good reason to doubt our mental faculties when it comes to knowing the truth. Why? Because our mental faculties would be the result of a random evolutionary process which is aimed, not at producing true beliefs, but at mere survival. But if that were the case then why should we trust the idea that we are the product of purely random factors? The mental processes leading to this conclusion would not be aimed at producing true beliefs.

Charles Darwin seems to have understood this when he wrote:

“With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”

This worry disappears if God was guiding whatever process led to us and if he shaped the development of the human mind so that it was aimed at knowing him, and thus knowing the truth.

"But," you might be thinking, "surely evolution contradicts the creation account in Genesis."

No, it doesn't.

The Bible contains many different styles of writing. History, poetry, prophecy, parables, and a variety of other literary genres are found in its pages. This is not surprising since it is not so much a book as it is a library – a collection of 73 books written at different times by different people.

As such it is important that we distinguish between types of literature within the Bible and what they are trying to tell us. It would be a mistake, for example, to take a work as rich as the Bible in symbolism and literary figures as if it were always relating history in the manner that we in our culture are accustomed to.

Much less should we expect it to offer a scientific account of things. If one is hoping to find a scientific account of creation then he will not find it in these texts, for the Bible was never intended to be a scientific textbook on cosmology.

Saint Augustine put it this way: “We do not read in the Gospel that the Lord said, ‘I am sending you the Holy Spirit, that he may teach you about the course of the sun and the moon’. He wished to make people Christians not astronomers.”

The Catholic Church is open to the ideas of an old universe and that God used evolution as part of his plan. According to Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers” (CCC 283).

When it comes to relating these findings to the Bible, the Catechism explains: “God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. 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” (CCC 337).

Explaining further, it says:

“Among all the Scriptural texts about creation, the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint these texts may have had diverse sources. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation–its origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation. Read in the light of Christ, within the unity of Sacred Scripture and in the living Tradition of the Church, these texts remain the principal source for catechesis on the mysteries of the ‘beginning’: creation, fall, and promise of salvation.” (CCC 289)

In other words, the early chapters of Genesis, “relate in simple and figurative language, adapted to the understanding of mankind at a lower stage of development, fundamental truths underlying the divine scheme of salvation.” (Pontifical Biblical Commission, January 16, 1948).

Or, as Pope John Paul II put it:

“The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its makeup, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise but in order to state the correct relationship of humanity with God and the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God” (Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 3, 1981).

As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) explained:

“The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God...does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the ‘project’ of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary–rather than mutually exclusive—realities.”

The recognition that the creation accounts must be understood with some nuance is not new, nor is it a forced retreat in the face of modern science. Various Christian writers form the early centuries of Church history, as much as 1,500 years or more before Darwin, saw the six days of creation as something other than literal, twenty-four hour periods.

For example, in the A.D. 200s, Origen of Alexandria noted that in the six days of creation day and night are made on the first day but the sun is not created until the fourth. The ancients knew as well as we do that the presence or absence of the sun is what makes it day or night, and so he took this as an indicators that the text was using a literary device and not presenting a literal chronology. He wrote:

“Now who is there, pray, possessed of understanding, that will regard the statement as appropriate, that the first day, and the second, and the third, in which also both evening and morning are mentioned, existed without sun, and moon, and stars—the first day even without a sky? . . . I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.” (De Principiis, 4:16)

What Origen was onto was a structure embedded in the six days of creation whereby in the first three days God prepares several regions to be populated by separating the day from the night, the sky from the sea, and finally the seas from each other so that the dry land appears. Then, on the second three days, he populates these, filling the day and night with the sun, the moon, and the stars, filling the sky and sea with birds and fish, and filling the dry land with animals and man.

The first three days are historically referred to as the days of distinction because God separates and thus distinguishes one region from another. The second three days are referred to as the days of adornment, in which God populates or adorns the regions he has distinguished.

This literary structure was obvious to people before the development of modern science, and the fact that the sun is not created until day was recognized by some as a sign that the text is presenting the work of God, as the Catechism says, “symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work’” (CCC 337).

Origen was not the only one to recognize the literary nature of the six days. Similarly, St. Augustine, writing in the A.D. 400s, noted: “What kind of days these were is extremely difficult or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!” (The City of God, 11:6).

The ancients thus recognized, long before modern science, that the Bible did not require us to think that the world was made in six twenty-four hour days.
 
 

 
 
(Image credit: For Wallpaper)