Response
by D. J. Mullan to letter of
G. Keane in NOR (Sept. 2003)
Keane’s letter to NOR illustrates quite graphically an admission which appears in his
book: he is not a scientist. He claims that “Progressive Creationists do not
inform us on their belief about what happened on Earth during the supposed
4.99999 billion years (b.y.) before mankind came into
existence, let alone an earlier 10-15 b.y. while the
Universe was supposedly forming”. This is a ludicrous claim: there is plenty of
information about what was happening on Earth prior to man’s appearance. There
are fossil records of the earliest single-cell organisms, then more complicated
eukaryotes, then multi-cell organisms, and then human beings. And as for the
previous 10-15 b.y., astrophysics has a lot to say
about what was happening in the expanding universe: galaxies, stars, and
planets were all forming on time-scales which are well-defined in terms of
local conditions. Since Keane admits in his book that he is not a scientist, it
is quite possible that no-one ever informed Keane about these matters, but the
information does exist.
Keane
is simply wrong when he states that “modern scientists regard the idea of eons
of time AS A GIVEN” (my emphasis added). The idea that the universe has an age
measured in billions of years is far from a given: it did not even exist in the
minds of scientists until the 20th century. And even then it emerged
piece by piece only as a result of painstaking scientific inquiry by hundreds
of the best minds in several distinct fields of astrophysics. And the most
amazing thing is that researchers in five independent areas of research each
come up with an age for the universe which is consistent with what the others
have discovered. The concordance between these five estimates of the age of the
universe is, in my opinion, a remarkable and unique tribute to the power of
human reason. There is nothing “given” about the age: it just comes out as 13.7
b.y. when impartial people evaluate the evidence in
the light of physical laws.
Turning
now to Biblical matters, Keane claims that the “onus of proof” is on me when I
contend that a non-literal sense of scripture is “superior to the literal,
obvious sense”. To satisfy this requirement, Keane says that I must respond to five
bulleted items. I am happy to give such responses here.
(1)
Keane says that the onus of proof is on me to overturn “the long-held belief
that the Creation days were 24 hours each”. He claims there are “powerful
arguments in exegesis”. My response is that I do not put much stock in exegesis
until such times as the Magisterium raises a particular item of exegesis to the
level of doctrine. In my mind, the key question that needs to be addressed is:
did the Magisterium ever formally teach that each
creation day consisted of 24 literal hours, i.e. 1440 literal minutes, or 86400
literal seconds? I can find no evidence that the Magisterium
ever did so.
In
view of this, why should I have to overturn a teaching that the Church never
promulgated? The onus is on Keane to prove that the Magisterium
(as opposed to certain Fathers of the Church) ever required as a matter of
faith that Catholics believe in six creation days of 1440 literal minutes each.
(2) Keane wants me to “Show
where is the clue given by the sacred Writer that the Genesis Creation account
was intended to be understood completely differently from its literal and
obvious meaning”.
Here
is how I show this. I refer to Genesis Chap. 2, v. 4-7. There, the sacred
Writer says “IN THE DAY that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens…then
the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground….and man became a living being”
(my emphasis added). Notice the use of the words “the day” (singular) in this
sentence. These words in Genesis 2 imply that if the word “day” is taken literally,
then three separate entities (the Earth, the heavens, and man) were all created
ON THE SAME “DAY”.
But
this is very different from what is in Genesis Chap. 1. There is simply no way
in which the literal meaning of the words in Chapter 2 can be consistent with
the literal meaning of Genesis Chap 1. In the latter, the heavens, Earth, and
man were formed ON THREE SEPARATE DAYS: the heavens on Day Two, the Earth on
Day Three, and man on Day Six.
Now,
God is the writer of both Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 in the Book of Genesis, and
God cannot lie. Therefore, there must be some way in which the two chapters do
not contradict each other. Since the literal meanings do contradict each other,
I take this to be the clue given by God that we should seek a non-literal
interpretation for one or other chapter (or both). In this regard, I stand with
(3)
Keane is misleading when he claims that “Leo XIII insisted that we must believe
what the fathers unanimously believed”. Certainly Pope Leo respected the
teachings of the Fathers on scriptural matters. But he added an important
caveat which Keane chooses not to cite. Here is what the Pope actually wrote in
PD (Denz. 1948). “The unshrinking defense of Holy
Scripture however does not require that we should equally uphold ALL OF THE
OPINIONS which each of the Fathers or the more recent interpreters have put
forth in explaining it. For it may be that, in commenting on passages WHERE
PHYSICAL MATTERS OCCUR, they have sometimes expressed the ideas of their own
times, and thus made statement which IN THESE DAYS HAVE BEEN ABANDONED AS
INCORRECT” (my emphasis added). Following Pope Leo, I do not have to believe
everything the Fathers wrote about things in the physical world.
Keane is being disingenuous when he groups Augustine among those who thought that “the days of creation were not longer than 24 hours each”. The implication is that Augustine believed that God required six intervals of time (each about 24 hours long) to create the world. Actually, Augustine believed no such thing. Instead, he believed in instantaneous creation (Summa Theol., Blackfriars edition, Vol. 10, p. 209). In Augustine’s view, “God created everything…without any interval of time between the creations of different things. The various days of creation do not indicate a temporal priority but merely a relationship in a pattern of meaning or of logical development” (ibid. p. 210).
But what about the mention of evening and morning in the days of Genesis? Augustine has an
explanation that Thomas Aquinas “often repeats…the days signify series of
illuminations by which God successively acquainted the angels with works He had
accomplished IN ONE INSTANT: the evening signifies the direct knowledge of
things by angels, and the morning, the more perfect knowledge acquired when the
angels contemplate them in the Word” (ibid., p. 209).
(4)
Those who believe that God required 24 literal hours, i.e. 1440 literal
minutes, i.e. 86400 literal seconds, to create various items of creation need
to explain why such finite intervals are necessary at all. God’s power is such
that He does not require 24 hours (as we reckon time) or even 24 nanoseconds to
create. He has the power to create instantaneously (if He chooses to do so) or
He has the power to perform continuous creation at all instants of time, from
the very beginning of time up to the present moment.
Is
there any proof that God indeed does perform continuous creation? Yes: there is Magisterial
teaching to that effect. Each human soul is created by a direct act of God’s
creative power (Humani Generis).
I offer this as proof (as Keane requests me to show) that the Fathers “were
wrong in holding that the work of Creation formally ceased at the end of the
Creation events”. Every human soul
demands that God’s work of creation be ongoing.
(5)
Contrary to Keane’s statement, the Church did not get the “package of origins
beliefs wrong for 1850 years”. The Magisterium
certainly taught that the world had a beginning in time (at Lateran IV), but
the Magisterium never taught when that instant in time was ACCORDING
TO THE RECKONING OF OUR CALENDARS.
Moreover, the Magisterium has never taught in any
statement that is to be believed de fide
that God used six intervals of precisely 1440 minutes each to perform the task
of creation. Contrary to Keane’s claim, I do not need to disprove anything
here.
Dermott J Mullan, Elkton MD