When we meditate on the primacy of Christ in all creation we cannot help but marvel at how He draws all things to Himself when He is lifted up in the Holy Eucharist where He is really present with His body, blood, soul and divinity. Although substantially present, nonetheless the appearance or accidents of bread and wine miraculously remain. In this way we eat of His flesh and drink of His blood in Holy Communion and He truly becomes our food and drink in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

On rare occasions Our Lord works what is called a eucharistic miracle whereby not only the substance changes – transubstantiation – but even the accidents. In 1996 in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, Argentina, when the present Pope Francis was Auxiliary Bishop under Cardinal Quarracino, an amazing eucharistic miracle took place. He himself had it photographed and investigated and the results are astonishing. The video below draws this out:

Here is a segment describing the event written by Fr. M. Piotrowski:

Eucharistic Miracle in Buenos Aires

The weakening of faith in the real presence of the Risen Christ in the Eucharist is one of the most significant aspects of the current spiritual crisis. Jesus wants to strengthen our faith in His Eucharistic presence. That is why from time to time in the history of the Catholic Church He gives us signs–Eucharistic miracles that clearly underscore the fact that He, the Risen Lord Himself in the mystery of His Divinity and glorified humanity, is truly present in the Eucharist. The most recent Eucharistic miracle recognized by the Church authorities occurred in 1996 in the capital of Argentina–Buenos Aires.

A consecrated Host becomes flesh and blood

At seven o’clock in the evening on August 18, 1996, Fr. Alejandro Pezet was saying Holy Mass at a Catholic church in the commercial center of Buenos Aires. As he was finishing distributing Holy Communion, a woman came up to tell him that she had found a discarded host on a candleholder at the back of the church. On going to the spot indicated, Fr. Alejandro saw the defiled Host. Since he was unable to consume it, he placed it in a container of water and put it away in the tabernacle of the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.

On Monday, August 26, upon opening the tabernacle, he saw to his amazement that the Host had turned into a bloody substance. He informed Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Auxiliary Bishop at that time, now Pope Francis), who gave instructions that the Host be professionally photographed. The photos were taken on September 6. They clearly show that the Host, which had become a fragment of bloodied flesh, had grown significantly in size. For several years the Host remained in the tabernacle, the whole affair being kept a strict secret. Since the Host suffered no visible decomposition, Cardinal Bergoglio decided to have it scientifically analyzed.

On October 5, 1999, in the presence of the Cardinal’s representatives, Dr. Castanon took a sample of the bloody fragment and sent it to New York for analysis. Since he did not wish to prejudice the study, he purposely did not inform the team of scientists of its provenance. One of these scientists was Dr. Frederic Zugiba, the well-known cardiologist and forensic pathologist. He determined that the analyzed substance was real flesh and blood containing human DNA. Zugiba testified that, “the analyzed material is a fragment of the heart muscle found in the wall of the left ventricle close to the valves. This muscle is responsible for the contraction of the heart. It should be borne in mind that the left cardiac ventricle pumps blood to all parts of the body. The heart muscle is in an inflammatory condition and contains a large number of white blood cells. This indicates that the heart was alive at the time the sample was taken. It is my contention that the heart was alive, since white blood cells die outside a living organism. They require a living organism to sustain them. Thus, their presence indicates that the heart was alive when the sample was taken. What is more, these white blood cells had penetrated the tissue, which further indicates that the heart had been under severe stress, as if the owner had been beaten severely about the chest.”

Two Australians, journalist Mike Willesee and lawyer Ron Tesoriero, witnessed these tests. Knowing where sample had come from, they were dumbfounded by Dr. Zugiba’s testimony. Mike Willesee asked the scientist how long the white blood cells would have remained alive if they had come from a piece of human tissue, which had been kept in water. They would have ceased to exist in a matter of minutes, Dr. Zugiba replied. The journalist then told the doctor that the source of the sample had first been kept in ordinary water for a month and then for another three years in a container of distilled water; only then had the sample been taken for analysis. Dr. Zugiba’s was at a loss to account for this fact. There was no way of explaining it scientifically, he stated. Only then did Mike Willesee inform Dr. Zugiba that the analyzed sample came from a consecrated Host (white, unleavened bread) that had mysteriously turned into bloody human flesh. Amazed by this information, Dr. Zugiba replied, “How and why a consecrated Host would change its character and become living human flesh and blood will remain an inexplicable mystery to science—a mystery totally beyond her competence.”

Only faith in the extraordinary action of a God provides the reasonable answer—faith in a God, who wants to make us aware that He is truly present in the mystery of the Eucharist.

The Eucharistic miracle in Buenos Aires is an extraordinary sign attested to by science. Through it Jesus desires to arouse in us a lively faith in His real presence in the Eucharist. He reminds us that His presence is real, and not symbolic. Only with the eyes of faith do we see Him under appearance of the consecrated bread and wine. We do not see Him with our bodily eyes, since He is present in His glorified humanity. In the Eucharist Jesus sees and loves us and desires to save us.

In collaboration with Ron Tesoriero, Mike Willesee, one of Australia’s best-known journalists (he converted to Catholicism after working on the documents of another Eucharistic miracle) wrote a book entitled Reason to Believe. In it they present documented facts of Eucharistic miracles and other signs calling people to faith in Christ who abides and teaches in the Catholic Church. They have also made a documentary film on the Eucharist—based largely on the scientific discoveries associated with the miraculous Host in Buenos Aires. Their aim was to give a clear presentation of the Catholic Church’s teaching on the subject of the Eucharist. They screened the film in numerous Australian cities. The showing at Adelaide drew a crowd of two thousand viewers. During the commentary and question period that followed a visibly moved man stood up announcing that he was blind. Having learned that this was an exceptional film, he had very much wanted to see it. Just before the screening, he prayed fervently to Jesus for the grace to see the film. At once his sight was restored to him, but only for the thirty-minute duration of the film. Upon its conclusion, he again lost the ability to see. He confirmed this by describing in minute detail certain scenes of the film. It was an incredible event that moved those present to the core of their being.

Through such wondrous signs God calls souls to conversion. If Jesus causes the Host to become visible flesh and blood, a muscle that is responsible for the contraction of a human heart—a heart that suffers like that of someone who has been beaten severely about the chest, if He does such things, it is in order to arouse and quicken our faith in His real presence in the Eucharist. He thus enables us to see that Holy Mass is a re-presentation (i.e. a making present) of the entire drama of our salvation: Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. Jesus says to his disciples, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe” (Jn 4: 48). There is no need to actively seek out wondrous signs. But if Jesus chooses to give them to us, then it behooves us to accept them with meekness and seek to understand what He desires to tell us by them. Thanks to these signs, many people have discovered faith in God—the One God in the Holy Trinity, who reveals His Son to us: Jesus Christ, who abides in the sacraments and teaches us through Holy Scripture and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Ave Maria!

As I prepare a post on creation from a scotistic point of view, it seemed appropriate to make available here the traditional Catholic doctrine on creation. We profess in the Creed that God is Creator. Creation is a fundamental doctrine of the Judaeo-Christian faith; it is a dogma of the Catholic Faith. As such, it is of utmost importance that we know our Faith so as not to be mislead by conjectures and that itch for novelty of which St. Paul warns:

“For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: [4] And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. [5] But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry. Be sober” (2 Tm 4:3-5)

This article is from The Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation website and will save me from having to describe what exactly the Church teaches. Here is the article:

The Traditional Catholic Doctrine of Creation

Our Lord took pains to emphasize that any evangelization accompanied by the fullness of his power must include ALL the Truths that He entrusted to the Apostles.  One of those Truths is the doctrine of creation and the Fall which underlies the Church’s teaching on Redemption and Sanctification.  In recent decades faith in the original doctrine of creation has been shaken by the claims of evolutionary theory, but twenty-first century natural science has now answered and invalidated those claims.  This paper will summarize the traditional authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church on creation, evaluate the claim that recent Popes have officially endorsed theistic evolution, and show why Catholics are fully justified in holding fast to the traditional doctrine of creation.

Magisterial Teaching on Creation

Both the Council of Trent and Vatican Council I taught that no one is permitted to interpret Sacred Scripture “contrary to the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.” In the words of Fr. Victor Warkulwiz:

The Fathers and Doctors of the Church unanimously agreed that Genesis 1-11 is an inerrant literal historical account of the beginning of the world and the human species as related by the prophet Moses under divine inspiration. This does not mean that they agreed on every point in its interpretation, but their differences were accidental and not essential. Pope Leo XIII, following St. Augustine, affirmed the Catholic rule for interpreting Sacred Scripture, “not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires.”

For the first five centuries of the Church, all of the Fathers believed and proclaimed:

that God created the different kinds of living things instantly and immediately

That Adam was created from the dust of the earth and Eve from his side

that God ceased to create new kinds of creatures after the creation of Adam

that the Original Sin of Adam shattered the perfect harmony of the first-created world and brought human death, deformity, and disease into the world.

This patristic teaching on creation was implicit in the words of the Nicene Creed, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”  Not until the Middle Ages when the Albigensian heresy denied the divine creation of the material universe did an Ecumenical Council elaborate on the first article of the creed in the following words:

God…creator of all visible and invisible things of the spiritual and of the corporal 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, constituted as it were, alike of the spirit and the body.

For 600 years, according to the foremost Catholic Doctors and commentators on this dogmatic decree, the words “at once from the beginning” signified that God created all of the different kinds of corporeal creatures and angels “simul” (“at once”).  This could be reconciled with the six days of creation (the view of the overwhelming majority of the Fathers) or with the instantaneous creation envisioned by St. Augustine–but it could not be reconciled with a longer creation period.  Among the commentators who taught that Lateran IV had defined the relative simultaneity of the creation of all things, perhaps the most authoritative was St. Lawrence of Brindisi (1559-1619), Doctor of the Church.  In his commentary on Genesis, St. Lawrence wrote:

the Holy Roman Church determined in the Fourth Lateran Council that the angels along with the creatures of the world were at once created ex nihilo from the beginning of time.

This precise meaning of the words of Lateran IV was also explained by the most authoritative catechism in the history of the Catholic Church-the Roman Catechism-which taught that God created ALL things by his Fiat instantaneously “in the beginning” without any natural process:

[T]he Divinity ­­ created all things in the beginning. He spoke and they were made: He commanded and they were created.

According to the Roman Catechism, “Creator of heaven and earth” in the Creed also referred to the creation of all of the different kinds of living things.  It states:

The earth also God commanded to stand in the midst of the world, rooted in its own foundation, and made the mountains ascend, and the plains descend into the place which he had founded for them. That the waters should not inundate the earth, He set a bound which they shall not pass over; neither shall they return to cover the earth. He next not only clothed and adorned it with trees and every variety of plant and flower, but filled it, as He had already filled the air and water, with innumerable kinds of living creatures (emphasis added) (Catechism of Trent).

Note that God created all of these creatures by his word, instantly and immediately.  During the creation period, He made, specifically, trees, “every variety of plant and flower,” air creatures and water creatures and land animals.   There was no evolution.  There was no long interval of time.

The Council Fathers reiterated the constant teaching of the Fathers, Doctors, and Popes, that God created the first man, Adam, by an act of special creation.  They wrote:

Lastly, He formed man from the slime of the earth, so created and constituted in body as to be immortal and impassible, not, however, by the strength of nature, but by the bounty of God. Man’s soul He created to His own image and likeness; gifted him with free will, and tempered all his motions and appetites so as to subject them, at all times, to the dictates of reason. He then added the admirable gift of original righteousness, and next gave him dominion over all other animals. By referring to the sacred history of Genesis the pastor will easily make himself familiar with these things for the instruction of the faithful (Catechism of the Council of Trent).

Notice that the plain sense of the “sacred history of Genesis” is so sure a guide to the truth of the creation and early history of the world and of man that the council fathers direct the pastor to read the sacred history so that he can “easily” make himself familiar with the facts.  “Lastly” means God created man last.  There has been no further creation since the creation of Adam and Eve.  Only variation within limits established during the six days.

The Catechism of Trent underscored the teaching of all of the Fathers and Doctors that creation was complete with the creation of Adam and Eve-and that God ceased creating new kinds of creatures after creating the first human beings.

We now come to the meaning of the word sabbath. Sabbath is a Hebrew word which signifies cessation. To keep the Sabbath, therefore, means to cease from labor and to rest. In this sense the seventh day was called the Sabbath, because God, having finished the creation of the world, rested on that day from all the work which He had done. Thus it is called by the Lord in Exodus (emphasis added) (Catechism of the Council of Trent).

Note that God finished the creation of the world and all of the different kinds of creatures specifically on the sixth day of a seven day week.  Soon after the Fourth Lateran Council, St. Thomas Aquinas had summed up the teaching of all the Church Fathers on the two perfections of the universe:

[T]he final perfection, which is the end of the whole universe, is the perfect beatitude of the saints at the consummation of the world; and the first perfection is the completeness of the universe at its first founding, and this is what is ascribed to the seventh day.[1] ST, I, q. 73, a. 1.

The teaching of St. Thomas makes clear that the reason why God created the entire universe and everything in it was so that men made in the image of His Son could become saints-and not for any other reason!  He also reaffirms the teaching of all of the Church Fathers who held that the original creation was perfect, complete and harmonious in all of its parts.  In contrast, theistic evolution holds that all kinds of creatures evolved and became extinct long before man evolved, that there never was a perfectly complete and harmonious creation in the beginning, and that God ordained that hundreds of millions of years of death, deformity, negative mutations, and disease should exist on earth before the first human beings evolved from sub-human primates.

The teaching of the Catechism of Trent was upheld by the Magisterium well in to the twentieth century.  The First Vatican Council affirmed the teaching on creation of Lateran IV word for word.  The Popes who reigned during the decades after Vatican I all mandated that the Catechism of Trent be used to teach priests and faithful the true doctrine of creation.  Moreover, every magisterial teaching that touched on the interpretation of Genesis 1-11 upheld the literal historical truth of Genesis 1-11.

In 1880, in an encyclical on Holy Marriage, Pope Leo XIII wrote to the Bishops as follows:

What is the true origin of marriage? That, Venerable Brethren, is a matter of common knowledge. For although the revilers of the Christian faith shrink from acknowledging the Church’s permanent doctrine on this matter, and persist in their long-standing efforts to erase the history of all nations and all ages, they have nonetheless been unable to extinguish, or even to weaken, the strength and light of the truth. We call to mind facts well-known to all and doubtful to no-one: after He formed man from the slime of the earth on the sixth day of creation, and breathed into his face the breath of life, God willed to give him a female companion, whom He drew forth wondrously from the man’s side as he slept. In bringing this about, God, in His supreme Providence, willed that this spousal couple should be the natural origin of all men: in other words, that from this pair the human race should be propagated and preserved in every age by a succession of procreative acts which would never be interrupted. And so that this union of man and woman might correspond more aptly to the most wise counsels of God, it has manifested from that time onward, deeply impressed or engraved, as it were, within itself, two preeminent and most noble properties: unity and perpetuity (emphasis added).[4]

Pope Leo XIII also defended the traditional Catholic approach to Scriptural exegesis with his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, in which he re-affirmed the rule that Scripture scholars must “uphold the literal and obvious sense of Scripture, except where reason dictates or necessity requires.” In the light of this rule, the “sacred history” of Genesis 1-11 had to be interpreted literally unless exegetes could offer proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the literal interpretation of that history could not be true. Pope Leo’s successor, St. Pius X, was equally aware of the tendency of contemporary intellectuals to see evolution at work in theology and morality as well as in nature-and he deplored this tendency.  In Lamentabili St. Pius X condemned with the full weight of his office the proposition that “the progress of the sciences demands that the concept of Christian doctrine about  . . . creation . . . be recast.”  He also established the Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC) to uphold the traditional Catholic approach to the study of the Bible and to combat modernism in Scripture study.  The PBC’s rulings on the interpretation of the book of Genesis are-together with Humani Generis, but even more so–some of the last authoritative magisterial statements on the subject.  In the Motu proprio, “Praestantia Scripturae,” on November 18, 1907, Pope St. Pius X declared that no one could contest the rulings of the PBC without “grave sin.”

In 1909, the PBC’s answers to several questions about Genesis 1-3 established certain truths unequivocally.

Its reply to Question I established that the literal historical sense of the first three chapters of Genesis cannot be called into question.

Its reply to Question II established that Genesis contains “stories of events which really happened, which correspond with historical reality and objective truth,” not “legends, historical in part and fictitious in part.”  In short, the PBC definitively excluded the possibility that even a part of the Genesis 1-3 narrative could be fictitious and non-historical.

The PBC’s answer to Question III established that the literal and historical truth of the following facts cannot be called into question:

1)       “The creation of all things wrought by God in the beginning of time”

Comment:

This passage upholds the Lateran IV doctrine that all things were created by God “in the beginning of time.”

2) “The special creation of man”

Comment: This excludes any process in the formation of man and requires that the creation of man was immediate and instantaneous.

3) “The formation of the first woman from the first man”

Comment:  This, too, excludes any process in the formation of the first woman and requires that the creation of Eve was immediate and instantaneous.

In 1950, in the encyclical Humani generis, Pope Pius XII gave permission to Catholic scholars to evaluate the pros and cons of human evolution.  But this permission in no way abrogated the authoritative teachings cited above.  Permission to investigate an alternative view is not tantamount to approval!  On the contrary, it is often a means to expose an error root and branch.  Pope Pius XII also called the German philosopher Dietrich Von Hildebrand a “twentieth century Doctor of the Church.”  Commenting on a Catholic catechism that spoke favorably of theistic evolution, Von Hildebrand wrote the following:

A grave error lies in the notion of “an evolutionary age” – as if it were something positive to which the Church must conform. Does the author consider it progress, an awakening to true reality, that Teilhard de Chardin’s unfortunate ideas about evolution fill the air? Does he not see that the prevailing tendency to submit everything, even truth–even divine truth!–to evolution amounts to a diabolical undermining of revealed truth? Truth is not truth if it is ever changing. The “courageous response” called for is precisely the opposite of yielding to evolutionary mythologies.

Nowadays many Catholics reject the “traditional” Catholic doctrine with respect to the special creation of man, the creation of Eve from Adam’s side, and other doctrines derived from the literal historical interpretation of Genesis 1-11 on the grounds that the authoritative teaching of the Magisterium in recent decades has “moved beyond” and “corrected” certain errors in its earlier pronouncements on these subjects in the light of scientific advances.  However, in the passage quoted above Dr. Von Hildebrand has given the simple reason why the special creation of Adam and the creation of Eve from Adam’s side, among other doctrines derived from Genesis 1-11, are authoritative and unchangeable Catholic doctrine. He reminds his readers that “Truth is not truth if it is ever changing.”  Therefore, it is impossible for the Magisterium to have taught these doctrines as authoritatively as it has in the past and then to contradict that authoritative teaching.  This would not be a “development of doctrine,” like the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception or Papal Infallibility, but a deformation of doctrine.

Nowadays it is widely asserted that defenders of the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation only accept Magisterial teachings that agree with their own views and reject more recent pronouncements that contradict earlier teachings.  Since this accusation goes to the heart of the creation-evolution debate within the Catholic community, it is worth taking the time to examine it closely.  What is really at issue here is whether an ambiguous or non-authoritative teaching of a Pope or Council on a matter of faith or morals trumps a more authoritative prior Magisterial teaching on the same matter.  Theologian Fr. Chad Ripperger, FSSP, has written a penetrating reflection on this very question entitled “Conservative vs. Traditional Catholicism.” In his essay Fr. Ripperger observes that:

some ecclesial documents today do not have any connection to the positions held by the Magisterium prior to the Second Vatican Council. For example, in the document of Vatican II on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, there is not a single mention of the two previous documents that deal with the ecumenical movement and other religions: Leo XIII’s Satis Cognitum and Pius XI’s Mortalium Animos. The approach to ecumenism and other religions in these documents is fundamentally different from the approach of the Vatican II document or Ut Unum Sint by Pope John Paul II. While the current Magisterium can change a teaching that falls under non-infallible ordinary magisterial teaching, nevertheless, when the Magisterium makes a judgment in these cases, it has an obligation due to the requirements of the moral virtue of prudence to show how the previous teaching was wrong or is now to be understood differently by discussing the two different teachings. However, this is not what has happened. The Magisterium since Vatican II often ignores previous documents which may appear to be in opposition to the current teaching, leaving the faithful to figure out how the two are compatible, such as in the cases of Mortalium Animos and Ut Unum Sint. This leads to confusion and infighting within the Church as well as the appearance of contradicting previous Church teaching without explanation or reasoned justification.

Moreover, the problem is not just with respect to the Magisterium prior to Vatican II but even with the Magisterium since the Council. For instance, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1975 (“Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics,” as found in the official English translation of the Vatican by The Wanderer Press, 128 E. 10^th St., St. Paul, MN 55101) asserts the following regarding masturbation: “The main reason is that, whatever the motive for acting this way, the deliberate use of the sexual faculty outside normal conjugal relations essentially contradicts the finality of the faculty.” This indicates that regardless of one’s intention or motive, the act is in itself gravely immoral. Then, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,8 a definition is given that seems to allow for different intentions to modify whether such an act is evil or not: “Masturbationis nomine intelligere oportet voluntarium organorum genitalium excitationem, ad obtinendam ex ea veneream voluptatem” (“by the name masturbation must be understood the voluntary excitement of the genital organs to obtain venereal pleasure”). The last part of the definition therefore includes in the act of masturbation a finality – “to obtain venereal pleasure.” This appears to contradict the prior teaching of the Church as well as the teaching of the CDF. If one does not do it for the sake of pleasure, does that mean that it is not masturbation? For example, if one commits this act for the sake of determining one’s fertility, does this justify it? One can rectify the situation by arguing that when it is done for the sake of pleasure it is an instance of masturbation, but that the actual definition is what the Church has always held. Clearly, however, this example is testimony to how careless the Magisterium has become in its theological expression.

I think that it would be helpful for the reader to pause for a moment and reflect on the question, “Does the later definition of the evil of Onanism contained in the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church supersede the traditional definition reflected in the 1975 declaration by the CDF?”  How one answers this question is crucial for any constructive discussion of the Church’s authoritative teaching on creation and evolution.  On the one hand, the Catechism is an authoritative guide for bishops’ conferences to use in developing their own contemporary catechisms.  On the other hand, the definition contained in the new Catechism leaves out an essential element of the definition that has been used since the time of the Apostles and that is contained in the 1975 declaration.  When faced with a contradiction of this kind, should the faithful follow the more recent teaching because it necessarily reflects the guidance of the Holy Spirit?  If so, does this mean that Onanism performed for the sake of obtaining a child through in vitro fertilization is now an acceptable moral action for Catholics?  Or does the informed Catholic have an obligation to evaluate the more recent teaching in the light of the constant teaching–the “traditional doctrine”–of the Church?

The Church has always taught that an authoritative Magisterial teaching must take precedence over a less authoritative teaching on the same topic, especially when the latter teaching is ambiguous or contradicts the prior teaching. There are many examples of this in Church history.  In an article on Pope St. Zosimus, the Catholic Encyclopedia teaches:

Not long after the election of Zosimus the Pelagian Coelestius, who had been condemned by the preceding pope, Innocent I, came to Rome to justify himself before the new pope, having been expelled from Constantinople. In the summer of 417 Zosimus held a meeting of the Roman clergy in the Basilica of St. Clement before which Coelestius appeared. The propositions drawn up by the deacon Paulinus of Milan, on account of which Coelestius had been condemned at Carthage in 411, were laid before him. Coelestius refused to condemn these propositions, at the same time declaring in general that he accepted the doctrine expounded in the letters of Pope Innocent and making a confession of faith which was approved. The pope was won over by the shrewdly calculated conduct of Coelestius, and said that it was not certain whether the heretic had really maintained the false doctrine rejected by Innocent, and that therefore he considered the action of the African bishops against Coelestius too hasty. He wrote at once in this sense to the bishops of the African province, and called upon those who had anything to bring against Coelestius to appear at Rome within two months. Soon after this Zosimus received from Pelagius also an artfully expressed confession of faith, together with a new treatise by the heretic on free will. The pope held a new synod of the Roman clergy, before which both these writings were read. The skillfully chosen expressions of Pelagius concealed the heretical contents; the assembly held the statements to be orthodox, and Zosimus again wrote to the African bishops defending Pelagius and reproving his accusers, among whom were the Gallic bishops, Hero and Lazarus. Archbishop Aurelius of Carthage quickly called a synod, which sent a letter to Zosimus in which it was proved that the pope had been deceived by the heretics. In his answer Zosimus declared that he had settled nothing definitely, and wished to settle nothing without consulting the African bishops. After the new synodal letter of the African council of 1 May, 418, to the pope, and after the steps taken by the Emperor Honorius against the Pelagians, Zosimus recognized the true character of the heretics. He now issued his “Tractoria”, in which Pelagianism and its authors were condemned. Thus, finally, the occupant of the Apostolic See at the right moment maintained with all authority the traditional dogma of the Church, and protected the truth of the Church against error (emphasis added)  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15764c.htm

Defenders of the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation do not challenge the legitimacy of Vatican II or of the 1994 Catechism.  Nor do we deny that Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have made non-authoritative statements favorable to theistic evolutionism. We simply maintain that an ambiguous, tentative or non-authoritative teaching of a Pope, Bishop, or Council cannot supersede a clear, unambiguous teaching that has been handed down from the Apostles.  Any such tentative or ambiguous teachings on matters of faith and morals must be understood in light of previous clear and authoritative magisterial teachings on those matters, if any have been handed down.  In regard to creation and evolution, we have demonstrated that a great number of highly authoritative magisterial teachings have upheld special creation and the literal historical truth of Genesis 1-11.

Advocates for theistic evolution will object that cosmological or biological evolution are hypotheses in natural science and cannot be excluded by the Church’s creation theology.  And it is true that Pope John Paul II believed his scientific advisors when they asserted that everything in the universe (except for man’s soul) could have evolved through natural processes after the creation ex nihilo of some material elements and natural laws in the beginning.  But the Pope never cited any evidence that their opinion was true beyond a reasonable doubt. Moreover, Pope John Paul II’s endorsement of the evolutionary hypothesis was always tentative and never obliged our assent.  For example, in one Wednesday audience he stated:

It can therefore be said that, from the viewpoint of the doctrine of the faith, there are no difficulties in explaining the origin of man, in regard to the body, by means of the theory of evolution. It must, however, be added that this hypothesis proposes only a probability, not a scientific certainty.

Furthermore, in his famous speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996, the Holy Father admitted:

A theory’s validity depends on whether or not it can be verified; it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability.  It must then be rethought.

One of the main reasons why evolution still appears to many Catholics to be a credible hypothesis is that it has not been subjected to rigorous critical examination in the public forum.  In his encyclical letter Humani generis in 1950, Pope Pius XII asked that Catholic scholars examine the evidence for and against the hypothesis of human evolution.  However, in the last 62 years only a handful of Catholic universities and research centers have given any attention to the serious shortcomings of the evolutionary hypothesis. On the eve of his election to the papacy, then-Cardinal Ratzinger approved the publication, in English, of his work Truth and Tolerance in which he observed:

There is . . . no getting around the dispute about the extent of the claims of the doctrine of evolution as a fundamental philosophy . . . This dispute has therefore to be approached objectively and with a willingness to listen, by both sides-something that has hitherto been undertaken only to a limited extent (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), pp. 179-181).

This statement was all the more remarkable in light of the fact that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences has long refused to give any serious consideration to the scientific evidence against the evolutionary hypothesis, while defending a number of positions on other issues that are highly questionable from a Catholic point of view.  (Questionable positions advocated by publications of the PAS include limiting family size to two children; using the so-called “brain death” criteria to determine human death; and using GMO food to combat world hunger.)  During the Darwin year, the organizers of a PAS conference on evolution refused to allow any scientists to present compelling scientific evidence against the evolutionary hypothesis, even when Ph.D. level Catholic scientists offered to do so at their own expense (Cf. www.sciencevsevolution.org ).

In reality, the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church–upheld by all of the Fathers and Doctors without exception–has been that the origin of man and the universe is not a question for the natural sciences but for theology.  In the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas summed up the common view of the Fathers and Doctors that:

In the works of nature, creation does not enter, but is presupposed to the work of               nature (ST, I q. 45, a. 8.).

In  other words, according to St. Thomas and all the Fathers, natural processes and operations are not themselves instances of God’s creative activity; rather, they show His Providence at work in maintaining His prior work of creation, which is presupposed by the way these processes and operations now take place.  In light of this traditional Catholic understanding of the distinction between Creation and Providence, the origin of man and the universe does not fall within the realm of the natural sciences.

Now, if the traditional distinction between creation and providence is correct-and the unanimous teaching of all of the Fathers must be correct on a point of this kind-all the efforts of natural scientists to demonstrate or to observe “the origin of species” in nature or in the laboratory are doomed to failure. And, indeed, this has proven to be the case.  For example, more than seventy years of experiments on fruit flies to produce mutations that would make the fruit fly evolve into something else have failed miserably.  Fruit flies are still fruit flies, and all of the forms produced through induced mutations are inferior to the non-mutant forms.  Indeed, more than 150 years after the publication of Origin of Species, all experimental evidence and observations indicate that the evolutionary hypothesis is still, in the words of Nobel-prize winning biochemist Sir Ernst Chain, “an hypothesis without evidence and against the facts.”

For decades Catholic theistic evolutionists have attempted to defend evolution as the “only scientific explanation for origins” on the grounds that “natural science” is restricted to explanations in terms of presently-observed natural processes.  “Creation,” they say, is not a “scientific” explanation for the origins of man or of other life-forms, because it does not meet this criterion.  But the Church has always held that “theology” is the “queen of the sciences,” so there is nothing “unscientific” about the traditional doctrine of creation.  It simply acknowledges that there are limits to how far natural scientists can extrapolate from presently-observed material processes back into the remote past.  This is a perfectly reasonable assumption in the light of Divine Revelation about Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, and it is no more “un-provable” than the evolutionists’ assumption that “things have always been the same” since the beginning of creation.

Moreover, by embracing evolution as the “only scientific” explanation for the origin of the different kinds of living things, theistic evolutionists not only jettison the constant teaching of the Fathers, Doctors, Popes and Councils; they also unintentionally impugn the goodness and wisdom of God.  This is because, unlike St. Thomas and the Fathers and Doctors who taught that God created all of the different kinds of creatures, perfect according to their natures, for man, in a perfectly harmonious cosmos, theistic evolutionists hold that God deliberately produced-through evolutionary processes-many different kinds of creatures only to destroy them so that something more highly evolved could take their place.  Moreover, this evolutionary god used a process of mutation and natural selection that littered the earth with diseased and deformed creatures in the process of producing the alleged “beneficial mutations” that transformed reptiles into birds and chimpanzees into men.  Whatever one wants to call this evolutionary god, it is not the God of the Bible, of the Fathers, and of the Doctors of the Church, of whom St. Thomas says again and again that “all His works are perfect.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, it has been demonstrated that there is an impressive body of highly authoritative magisterial teaching that upholds special creation and the literal historical truth of Genesis 1-11.

The burden of proof rests upon the scholar who challenges the traditional interpretation of “the sacred history of Genesis.”

All statements by Church leaders favorable to evolution have been non-authoritative or ambiguous.

One hundred and fifty years after the publication of Origin of Species, the evolutionary hypothesis remains “an hypothesis without evidence and against the facts.”

Therefore, Catholics are obliged to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles and to pray that the Magisterium will re-affirm the traditional doctrine of creation as soon as possible, for the good of souls and for the benefit of all the sciences.

May His Kingdom come!

Ave Maria!

As has been pointed out repeatedly on this website, all things exist for Jesus Christ, all things were created with Him in mind. He is that God’s perfect Temple, that Masterpiece of God’s created hand where the creature and the divinity unite in the Person of the Word in the hypostatic union of the Incarnation.

Since creation and all history leads to or flows from Christ, it seems fitting that I create some posts on this rather large subject of creation for two reasons. First, because I just spent a long time exposing from Sacred Scripture and Tradition that Jesus Christ is “the beginning of the creation of God” (Apoc 3:14). So obviously I believe in creation as taught by Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church and, therefore, in a beginning of that creation.

Second, because I have noticed that many who espouse the position of Scotus on the Incarnation tend to de-emphasize his (and the Church’s) position on original sin and Redemption and to over-emphasize the cosmic Christ (which is true enough, as seen in St. Paul, but not at the cost of our salvation), and that sometimes they even do this in a way that can lead to a subtle (or not so subtle) form of pantheism. Two figures stand out immediately: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Matthew Fox.

Proclaiming Christ as absolute King of creation in God’s plan, sin or no sin, does not conclude with downplaying (let alone denying) original sin and our need for Redemption. But even in this camp of basic Christian orthodoxy I find that many (most?) espouse a form of theistic evolution. My reflections on this subject are not dogmatic; nonetheless, it is important for Christians in a modern world filled with scientific knowledge and theories to know that the positions that God created the world, and man in particular, without any evolution process and that there was indeed a flood are intelligent and well-founded positions; that the theory of the evolution of man (Darwinism) and of the world (the “big bang theory”) remain theories. In the end, as Catholic theologians continually point out, there can be no contradiction between science and revelation and hence as Catholics we are not afraid of scientific discovery and research. What is important, as Pope Pius XII points out in Humani generis, is that we don’t confuse conjecture with fact and that we stand firm in the profession of our Faith.

Just what are we bound to believe about creation as Catholics? Both Pope St. Pius X and Pope Pius XII touched upon this. Below is a synthesis from James B. Stenson in his article Evolution: A Catholic Perspective [well written and informative, but personlly I don’t accept his tendency to accept theistic evolution and his attempt to frame it into a Catholic framework].

Synthesis of the Church’s teaching under Pope St. Pius X:

The Church has maintained that the first three chapters of Genesis contain historical truth. Their inspired author used a popular literary form of his day to explain certain historical facts of Creation. These were named specifically by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, with the approval of Pope Pius X in 1909. The official document states that the literal historical meaning of the first three chapters of Genesis could not be doubted in regard to: “the creation of all things by God at the beginning of time; the special creation of man; the formation of the first woman from the first man; the unity of the human race; the original happiness of our first parents in the state of justice, integrity, and immortality; the command given by God to man to test his obedience; the transgression of the divine command at the instigation of the devil under the form of a serpent; the degradation of our first parents from that primeval state of innocence; and the promise of a future redeemer.”

From the pen of Pope Pius XII we know:

In 1950, Pope Pius XII addressed the question of man’s origins more specifically in his encyclical *Humani Generis*. With a few terse paragraphs, he set forth the Church’s position, which we may summarize as follows: 1. The question of the origin of man’s *body* from pre-existing and living matter is a legitimate matter of inquiry for natural science. Catholics are free to form their own opinions, but they should do so cautiously; they should not confuse fact with conjecture, and they should respect the Church’s right to define matters touching on Revelation. 2. Catholics must believe, however, that the human *soul* was created immediately by God. Since the soul is a spiritual substance it is not brought into being through transformation of matter, but directly by God, whence the special uniqueness of each person. 3. All men have descended from an individual, Adam, who has transmitted original sin to all mankind. Catholics may not, therefore,
believe in “polygenism,” the scientific hypothesis that mankind descended from a group of original humans.

Let me immediately point out the obvious: those that hold that God created man from the elements of the earth without any evolutionary process have no fear of being in error regarding the doctrine of the Church; whereas those who propose a theistic evolution that does not contradict all that has been said have a lot of “i”s to dot and “t”s to cross so as not to trample down what has been revealed to us. If anyone wants to really dig into the theology, philosophy and science on this subject without fear of straying from the faith, I would highly recommend the articles presented by The Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation.

For me personally, I find it ironic that so much “faith” has been put in the far-fetched theory of man’s evolution from beasts. No species has ever evolved into another. And if apes were transforming into homo sapiens, wouldn’t there witnesses to half men/ half apes walking around over the millenia? Would there not be some writings or drawings of these incidences? And yet no one has ever mentioned such a thing and the written record we do have – complete with accounts and geneologies from the beginning – tells of creation, of sin, of a flood, and of the beginnings of human history in God’s creation. Believing in a theory which has little, if any scientific evidence, and disbelieving what was passed on to us from the time of our first parents and even written down with considerable detail, seems a bit rash. But that’s just me. And I certainly find it degrading to man, let alone the “Son of man,” to say that we derived (even “theistically”) from apes.

Regarding the “big bang theory,” before the creation of Adam and Eve there can be discussion of how God created the universe; but what is a nonnegotiable is that God created the universe out of nothing – what can be discussed (and God-willing I hope tackle some aspects of this) is just what went on when God said, “Fiat lux!” (Gen 1:3) over the initial empty and void of the material world He had created out of nothing (v.2).

Let me leave off evolution for the moment (both human and global) and let me focus for the moment on how time has to have a beginning and on how young the human race actually is with two short arguments.

A beginning

Logically speaking, there has to be a beginning of time. If you’re interested in an excellent presentation on this – using the insights of the Seraphic Doctor St. Bonaventure – you can read Dr. Michael Sullivan’s piece (well worth the time and thought). Time must have a beginning. Why? Because the past qua past cannot be infinite by virtue of the fact that in order for any moment to have been a real moment in time it had to pass through the present moment. All past moments, having passed through the present moment, must always be a finite distance from the present – otherwise, if it were infinite then there would be a “past” that is immeasurably distant from the present, a past “moment” that never happened because it never passed throught the present moment.

Dr. Sullivan uses a splendid analogy of “debts” and “promissory notes” to help illustrate this:

If future years are like promissary notes, past years are like debts which have already been paid to reach the free and clear state of the present. Thus Bonaventure insists that it makes no sense to wave one’s hand at an infinitely and indefinitely distant past without relating it to the present. Either some given past year has an infinite distance from the present, or it doesn’t. If not, then the past is finite. But if it does, then since that infinite distance cannot have been traversed, it must really be a kind of simultaneous eternity with no real relation to the present at all, a year which was never passed through to reach the present, a year that the world now cannot count as having once experienced as part of its journey to reach the present now.

A word on the flood

The flood really took place, and this is recorded not only in the Bible, but in practically every civilization that left writings or art behind. But it is also recorded in the history of the earth – called geology. Perhaps the best researched site on the subject of science and the flood (and creation) is AnswersinGenesis.org. They have many articles, but this one on six geological evidences for the flood is particularly convincing and well done.

I personally have visited three waterfalls/gorges that clearly indicate that about 4000-6000 years ago water started flowing and eroding the ground which can be seen visibly and calculated to give decent ballpark figure of when that flow of water began: Niagara Falls, Taughannock Falls, and the Gola Infernaccio (Italy).

Man’s Millions-of-years Myth

Let me propose an argument, rather simple, but which should convincingly indicate that the human race – whether through evolution or as an intact race – cannot date tens or hundreds of thousands of years back (let alone millions and zillions!). The argument is based on population growth and the 7 billion people on earth as of 2012. Seven BILLION people is a LOT of people and so one can readily imagine that it took tens of thousands of years to reach this point. And yet 7 billion is a very finite number…

According to sociological studies (frequently quoted and well documented by those who want to “save” the earth and reduce the human population by 90-95%, if you think I’m kidding take a glance at the “Georgia guidestones” and listen/read what Ted Turner has been saying like a broken record: 350 million ideal number for the entire world population and international 1 child per family policy), the rough average of population growth in the early 1900’s (before contraception, legalized abortion, etc.) was 1.4%. We are told that Noah entered the ark with his three sons and their wives; when they exited the ark the world population was eight. Now population growth presumes that the number of births is greater than the number of deaths. God blessed mankind twice with the words: “Increase and multiply” (Gen 1:28; 7:17), the second time was after Noah and his family left the ark.

My dad was an actuary, by the way, so this type of story problem is right up my alley 🙂 First, let’s start by doing the math based on a 1.4% annual increase of the population starting with eight persons and see how many years it would take to arrive at 7 billion. The math would look like this:

p*b ^y = x

p = the starting population, so 8
b = rate of annual growth, we’ll start with 1.4% (which means 1.014) [population growth includes deaths and births]
y = the years, since the growth would be exponential
x = the final population, in our case 7 billion

Drumroll please… yes, eight people with a 1.4% annual growth rate would surpass 7 billion people in a whopping 1481 years. Take a look at the math:

8 people * (1.014 annual growth) ^{1481 years} = 7,003,277,544

That is an eyeopener, is it not? Well, since the human race has obviously been around longer than 1481 years, let’s work our way backwards to see what the median growth rate would have had to be for eight persons to arrive at 7 billion over a period of 4600 years (what Scripture scholars tell us would have been the time of the flood).

p*b ^y = x
8 people*(? growth rate) ^{4600 years} = 7 billion today

And the answer is that for eight people to surpass 7 billion over a period of 4600 years the annual growth rate would only have to be 0.45% (yes, less than half a percent annual growth rate). 4600 years is realistic, then, for arriving at 7 billion people from 4 married couples.

My point here is that to argue that man dates back tens of thousands or more years ago would go completely against all the statistics. Annually there are consistently more births than deaths (that’s not to say that there were not years where the death rate surpassed the birth rate, just as there were years – like the baby boom years – where the growth rate surpassed 2%). Even now with world wars, abortions, sterilization, contraception – in a word, in a culture of death the growth continues and this exponentially. In fact a growth rate of 0.45% from 2 people over a twenty thousand year period comes out to be “infinity” on the exponents calculator (just put 1.0045 in the number slot and 20,000 in the exponent slot and see what happens). I don’t deny that there could have been some unlikely years of decrease or stagnancy, but the consistent trend has always been growth and increase and this indicates (if not outright proves) that the human race is relatively young compared to the outlandish theories that are proposed (dare I say dogmatically) in classrooms today around the globe.

Look, for example, at this graph of world population growth taken from Wikipedia:

Clearly there is nothing nonsensical about saying that the entire world population came from four married couples after the flood around 4500-5000 years ago. Actually, to say that the human population goes back indefinitely or even tens of thousands of years is impossible to prove and even against the information that we have

At any rate, if you have read this far, well, God bless you! I want to look more at evolution and big bang theories. So…

to be continued

Ave Maria!

On December 12th, 2012, His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke blessed a newly unveiled statue of Blessed John Dun Scotus in front of the Friary Chapel at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, WI. Following the ceremony His Eminence gave an account of the Blessed’s life and the great theological contribution he made to the Church, especially in regards to the declaration of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. To read the full text of the Cardinal’s talk please click here.

Ave Maria!

For anyone who is interested, I just found this Christmas blog post on the absolute primacy of Christ on the website of Frank Weathers, a recent (and somewhat reluctant, at first) convert to the Catholic Faith. Here is an excerpt:

Wow. Basically, this makes the Incarnation the pinnacle of God’s work of creation. He wills Christ first of all as the summum opus Dei, and his love for us, and for the angelic hosts, is so vast that God planned to enter into his handiwork “before the foundation of the world,” without his doing so being contingent upon mankind sinning. Which helps explain why Satan, and his followers, rebelled and started a war in heaven. I clearly remember being taught this in RCIA, by the priest teaching our class. Lucifer rebelled when he learned that God intended to become human. The idea that God would enter into the glory of his creation as a human, “lower than the angels,” was repugnant to Lucifer. And contrary to Humphrey’s thinking in the preface to his digest, St. Thomas did not refute any of this, as he made obvious while pondering this mystery.

“Wow” is right. The biggest surprise is when we are surprised by the truth. “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:3).

In Corde Matris,
fr maximilian mary dean

Ave Maria!

Today, the great feast of lights, Candlemas, also known as the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple and the Purification of the Madonna, is a day of the fulfillment of a great mystery, hidden from times past, but now revealed to us in Christ.

“And presently the Lord, whom you seek, and the Angel of the testament, whom you desire, shall come to His Temple. Behold He cometh, saith the Lord of hosts.” (Mal 3:1)

Filled with the Holy Spirit, Holy Simeon is impelled to enter the Temple. He had been promised to see the Messias before he died and today was that happy day. He was so overwhelmed by this grace and so aware of whom he held in his arms that he exclaimed:

“Now Thou dost dismiss Thy servant, O Lord, according to Thy word, in peace;

because my eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples:

a light of revelation to the Gentiles, and a glory for Thy people Israel.” (Lk 2:29-32)

Of this mystery St. Augustine writes that Simeon… “Differabatur exire de saeculo, ut videret natum, per quem conditum est saeculum — he deferred leaving this world in order that he might see Him born by whom the world was created” (Sermo 13 de temp. post init.). In the Infant Jesus the Holy Simeon saw his Creator. In fact, as we have clearly shown elsewhere, the entire creation was made in, through and for Christ the Word Incarnate.

The entire universe was made with Christ in mind, modelled on Him. Today He enters the Temple, He who is the supreme Temple of God’s praises: Jesus Christ.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Fr. Tim Finnigan is Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Southwark, parish priest of Our Lady of the Rosary, Blackfen, visiting tutor in Sacramental Theology at St John’s Seminary Wonersh, and tutor in Dogmatic Theology at St Hugh’s Charterhouse, Parkminster.

 
Here is a post from Fr. Tim Finigan’s website “The hermeneutic of continuity” [please note that all comments and links in brackets are my addition]
 

Pope Benedict on the motive of the Incarnation
in the thought of Rupert of Deutz

Another theme in today’s [Wednesday, 9 December 2009] General Audience was the motive of the incarnation. Here is a passage which I have translated from the address:

“Like other theologians of the Middle Ages, Rupert also asked: why was the Word of God, the Son of God, made man? Some, many, responded, explaining the incarnation of the Word with the urgency of repairing the sin of man. Rupert on the other hand, with a christocentric vision of the history of salvation, enlarged the perspective, and in a work of his entitled “The Glorification of the Trinity” held the position that the Incarnation, the central event of all history, was foreseen from all eternity, even independently of the sin of man, so that all creation could give praise to God the Father and love Him as a unique family gathered around Christ, the Son of God. He therefore saw in the pregnant woman of the apocalypse the whole history of humanity which is oriented to Christ, just as conception is oriented to birth; a perspective which would be developed by other thinkers and enriched also by contemporary theology, which affirms that the whole history of the world and of humanity is a conception oriented to the birth of Christ.”

The thesis that the incarnation was predestined even apart from sin is usually attributed to the Blessed John Duns Scotus who defended it against the Dominicans; it is often called the “Franciscan Thesis”. It is fascinating that a Benedictine theologian, writing a century and a half earlier, promoted the same perspective on the incarnation. One can find evidence of the same view in Maximus the Confessor [more on St. Maximus] and, arguably, in St Irenaeus and St Paul, but it is significant that Pope Benedict seems to speak in favour this view as well. [i.e. Pope Benedict’s General Audience of July 7th, 2010]

The thesis is particularly taught in the Faith Movement as part of an overall perspective on creation and the incarnation, and much scholarly work has been done by the Franciscans of the Immaculate, especially relating to the Blessed John Duns Scotus himself.

[To learn more about Abbott Rupert of Deutz’s position on the Incarnation and that of Bishop Robert Grosseteste one can read this piece by Fr. Daniel Horan, OFM]

I have translated a passage of Abbott Rupert of Deutz here.

Christ, the Beginning of Creation – Conclusion

by Fr. Maximilian M. Dean

[To see the full article on one page visit Appendix: Christ the Beginning]

Everything has been made by means of Christ

Returning, then, to the words of the Evangelist we see that all of this corresponds to the flow of the Prologue. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was made nothing that has been made” (Jn 1:1-3). The revelation here is that everything had been made through Jesus Christ.

That the entire universe was made by God is logical. Every work of God ad extra, in fact, is always a work of the entire Trinity, even if at times certain works may be attributed to only One of the Divine Persons. Creation is a work of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and is sometimes attributed to the Father, sometimes to the Son and sometimes to the Spirit (i.e. Veni Creator Spiritus), but it remains always a work of God Three in One.

However, in this verse St. John wants to make us understand that the creative work of God was accomplished through Christ, “the Beginning of the creation of God” (Apoc 3:14). St. Paul had already written this a number of times before St. John wrote his Gospel. In his letter to the Hebrews Paul wrote that “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the world” (Heb 1:1-2). God, through Christ, made the world, that is, through Him who “effected man’s purgation from sin” (v.3), namely the Word made flesh (in fact this entire first chapter – the “Prologue” – of the Epistle to the Hebrews is speaking of the Word Incarnate who now sits “at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much superior to the Angels…” and in this passage Christ, as we have already seen earlier, is called by God Himself the “Beginning”).

Paul also affirms this when writing to the Colossians. Christ, “in whom we have our redemption, the remission of our sins” (1:14), thus the Word Incarnate, “is the Image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For in Him were created all things in the heavens and on earth […] All things have been created through and unto Him” (1:14-16).[1]

In this regard Augustine emphasizes the fact that John in the third verse of the Prologue would be speaking “uselessly of the Divinity of the Word if he meant to be silent about the humanity of that same Word”.[2] This follows from the fact that Christ is “insinuated” in the Prologue in two modes: on the level of His predestination ante assumptionem carnis and on the level of His manifestation cum assumpta carne, but whether speaking of Christ’s predestination or manifestation he is always referring to Christ, the Word made flesh.[3]

The Prologue then says that John the Baptist gave witness to Christ, to Him who “was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world knew Him not. And He came unto His own, and His own received Him not” (Jn 1:10-11). Christ “was in the world.” Christ “came unto his own.” The world, therefore, “was made through Him,” through Christ.

Once again, the Apostle Paul preceded the Evangelist in maintaining that all things exist in virtue of the Christ: “for us there is only one God, the Father from whom are all things, and we unto Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him” (1 Cor 8:6).

In conclusion, following the norm lex orand, lex credendi, there is a clear affirmation in the Eucharistic Prayer II of the present Roman Missal which is not a recent invention, but rather a continuity of Tradition. Eucharistic Prayer II, which has its own preface, is based on the Anaphora composed by St. Hippolytus in 215, and for this reason it is strictly connected with his preface. In this preface the Church prays thus, that is that is it right and just to give thanks and praise to You “Father most holy, through Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, Your Word through whom you made all things, whom You sent as our Savior and Redeemer, incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin.”

“Ante me factus est” (Jn 1:30)

Yet another confirmation of Christ as the Beginning comes from the testimony of John the Baptist which is recorded after the Prologue. He says, “This is He of whom I said, ‘After me there comes One who has been set above me, because He was before me.’” (Jn 1:30). We do well to look at the text in Latin: Post me venit vir, qui ante me factus est, quia prior me erat.” Some English translations (like the Confraternity which I use) translate vir (ἀνὴρ in Greek) with “one,” but the literal translation reads, After me comes the man who was made [factum est] before me, because He has been set above me.” The point here is that the Baptist is giving witness to the man Jesus Christ – this is as clear as the day. But the question is how can he say that Jesus was made before him? That ante me factus est cannot be applied to the Word in Himself, because the Eternal Word was not made, but begotten. The Baptist is always bearing witness to the Verbum caro factum est – the Word made flesh (1:14). Here is St. Augustine’s comment: “Christ created John [the Baptist] himself, after whom was created Christ who was Creator and creature…”[1]

Note well that St. Paul had already employed this terminology in strict reference to the Incarnation: God sent His Son factum ex muliere – made of the woman (Gal 4:4). Even St. Luke recounted how the shepherds, after the vision of the Angels and the hearing of that “good news of great joy,” said among themselves: “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, [videamus hoc Verbum, quod factum est] which the Lord has made known to us” (Lk 2:15).

The Baptist, therefore, was giving witness to the Word made man. But we all know that historically Christ was not made (temporal conception and birth) before the Baptist, but six months after him (cf. Lk 1:36). Jesus was conceived and born after him. This means that the Baptist, even if in a subtle way, was witnessing to Christ as the Beginning of every creature that existed; Christ was that Beginning in the mind of God before the foundation of the world. In fact, this is the only way in which Christ could be said to have been factum est before John the Baptist.

Otherwise this would mean that the Baptist was giving witness either to the creation of the Word in Himself (the Word was made – factum est – before the Incarnation!?!) or to the pre-existence of the humanity of Christ (in which case we would have an eternal creature!?! Equally heretical). These two heresies have been condemned repeatedly by the Church: namely, that the Eternal Word was created or that His humanity pre-existed. No, the Church has constantly professed that the Eternal Word was not created and that His humanity did not pre-exist.

Rather, Christ – as the Beginning – was always the firstborn in God’s decree of creation because Christ was foreseen and predestined in the beginning. Hence the Baptist was correct in saying that this Man comes after him, yet was set above him because He was before him. In other words: “After me comes the Christ [the Man], the Beginning in which God created all things, who was made before me in the divine decrees precisely because He preceded me in the divine design.”

Conclusion

In the end we profess and believe that God is God, Three and One, eternal, without beginning and outside of time, and that God freely willed to create. The first creature to be willed by the Lord was Christ, and He willed that Christ’s human nature be united in soul and body to the divine Nature in the divine Person of the Son. We joyfully profess that Jesus Christ was the “Beginning of the creation of God” (Apoc 3:14) in whom all things were created, and this without exception (cf. Jn 1:3). In fact, all of the elect were chosen in Christ “before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4) and were created by means of Him and with a view to Him who is the Beginning of creation. In other words, Christ was the start of creation (and thus of time itself) and was the creative principle of everything. Time finds its beginning in God’s decree to communicate Himself to the humanity of Christ in the Incarnation[2] and this decree is the source from which all other creatures come forth.

The arguments of Scotus on the primacy of Christ can be reduced to two. The first is his perspicacious teaching of the ordinate volens[3] which maintains that God’s will unfolds in a most orderly fashion. After His Divine Essence (Scotus speaks of God as first ‘willing Himself’ – in modern English we might say: first, God is God, then…), God willed that which was most perfect, that which was closest to this end, namely the soul of Christ.[4] Then, through Christ, God willed everything else.

The second argument is his teaching on Christ’s predestination to the maximum grace and glory possible in the created world. His is a predestination which is not occasionata, not conditioned, not relative, but willed first as the summum opus Dei – the greatest work of God.[5]

But as we have seen in this study, the Scripture and Tradition attest that Jesus Christ is the Beginning of God’s creative activity. And since the Beginning must be the first, and not the second or third, this means that to the two principal arguments of Scotus we can add this datum of divine revelation that from the beginning God had Jesus Christ before Him as the cause and beginning of His designs to create. Therefore, the Incarnation was an immutable decree of the Divinity, a decree willed in an absolute manner, independently of anything which is outside of God. To sum it up: “Dico tamen quod lapsus non fuit causa praedestinationis Christi. Immo etsi nec homo nec angelus fuisset lapsus, nec plures homines creandi quam solus Christus, adhuc fuisset Christus praedestinatus sic.[6]”

Ave Maria!

Cristo, il Principio del creato – VIII parte

P. Maximilian M. Dean, FI

In Cristo Dio creò il cielo e la terra (Gn 1,1)

Abbiamo già notato in modo generale e fatto qualche allusione particolare al vincolo stretto fra Genesi 1,1 e Giovanni 1,1. Adesso vogliamo stabilire dai Santi Padri e Dottori della Chiesa che, secondo la Sacra Tradizione, il principio di cui parla la Genesi e in cui Dio creò fu proprio Gesù Cristo[1]. Vuol dire che “In principio Dio creò il cielo e la terra” significa precisamente che Dio creò in Cristo quale Principio ditutto il creato.

Ecco soltanto qualche esempio tratto dai Santi Padri:

– San Zeno dichiara distintamente: “Carissimi fratelli, ‘in principio’ vuol dire, senza dubbio, Cristo nostro Signore”[2].

– San Girolamo afferma che Cristo è il principio di cui parla la Genesi: “Più secondo il senso che per la traduzione delle parole, per ‘in principio’ si può intendere il Cristo”[3].

– Nella sua Liturgia San Cirillo di Alessandria parla a Dio così: “Tu creasti tutto in Gesù Cristo, nostro Salvatore e Re”[4].

– San Gregorio di Tours insegna: “In principio il Signore formò il cielo e la terra nel Suo Cristo che è ogni principio, ossia nel Figlio Suo”[5].

– Il venerabile San Beda sostiene: “Il principio è Cristo”[6].

Come se non fosse sufficiente tutto ciò, il Serafico Dottore ci dà una conferma chiara: “Se qualcuno vuole pervenire alla sapienza cristiana, deve necessariamente iniziare da Cristo… dal quale iniziarono i due più grandi sapienti, cioè Mosè, iniziatore della sapienza di Dio, e Giovanni, che ne è il termine. Il primo disse: ‘In principio Dio creò il cielo e la terra’, cioè nel Figlio…; e Giovanni: ‘In principio era il Verbo…’.[7]”

Come si vede, se la Genesi sta parlando di Cristo quale Principio in cui tutto fu creato, così anche l’Evangelista nel suo Prologo. Siccome Giovanni vincolava fortemente il suo Prologo alla Genesi, occorre intendere che parla anche lui di Cristo e non soltanto del Verbo in Sé, quando scrive: “In principio era il Verbo…”

Su questo argomento, non possiamo omettere l’insegnamento di Sant’Agostino, che lo ha proposto più volte nei suoi scritti e sermoni. Come autorità su questo, vale la pena citarlo a lungo nella sua difesa della vera dottrina contro i manichei:

“Che cosa ribatteranno [i manichei] quando avrò risposto che il ‘Principio’ è lo stesso Figlio di Dio, nel quale la Genesi afferma che Dio ha fatto il cielo e la terra? Non ho difficoltà a provarlo, sapendo di avere a disposizione dei testimoni dallo stesso Nuovo Testamento, a cui, volenti o nolenti, spezzato il collo della superbia, sottostanno anch’essi. Disse pertanto il Signore agli increduli giudei: ‘Se aveste creduto a Mosè, credereste anche a Me; perché egli ha scritto di Me’ (Gv 5,46). Come non vederci lo stesso Signore, nel quale principio Dio Padre ha fatto il cielo e la terra? Infatti la frase: ‘In principio Dio ha fatto il cielo e la terra’, l’ha scritta proprio Mosè, che l’autorità dello stesso Signore ha confermato averla scritta riferendola a lui. O forse neanche Lui è il ‘Principio’? Non c’è possibilità di dubitarne: il Vangelo dice chiaro che avendo i giudei domandato al Signore chi fosse, Lui rispose: ‘Il Principio, lo stesso che parlo a voi’ (Gv 8,25). Ecco in quale Principio Dio ha fatto il cielo e la terra. Dio perciò ha fatto il cielo e la terra nel Figlio, per mezzo del quale sono state fatte tutte le cose e senza il quale niente è stato fatto. Così, concordando il Vangelo con la Genesi, conserviamo l’eredità secondo il consenso di ambedue i Testamenti e lasciamo le pretestuose calunnie agli eretici discreditati”[8].

Christ, the Beginning of Creation – Part VIII

by Fr. Maximilian M. Dean

[To see the full article on one page visit Appendix: Christ the Beginning]

God created the heavens and the earth in Christ (Gn 1:1)

We have already pointed out in general and even made some specific allusions to that strict bond between Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1. What we want to do now is to establish from the Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church that, according to Sacred Tradition, the beginning to which Genesis is referring and in which God created the universe was Jesus Christ Himself.[1] In other words, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth” means precisely that God created all things in Christ who is the Beginning of all of creation (cfr. Apoc3:14).

Here are just a few examples drawn from the Church Fathers:

– St. Zeno distinctly asserts: “My dearest brothers, ‘in principio’ – ‘in the beginning’ without any doubt means Christ our Lord.”[2]

– St. Jerome maintains that Christ is the Beginning referred to in Genesis: “More from the sense [of the text] than from the translation of the words one can understand in principio – ‘in the beginning’ to be Christ.”[3]

– In the Divine Liturgy (Mass) written by St. Cyril of Alexandria God is addressed in this fashion: “You created all in Jesus Christ, our Savior and King.”[4]

– St. Gregory of Tours teaches: “In the beginning our Lord formed heaven and earth in His Christ who is the beginning of all, namely in His Son.”[5]

– Venerable Bede affirms: “The beginning is Christ.”[6]

As if all of these affirmations were not enough, the Seraphic Doctor gives a clear confirmation: “If anyone desires to attain Christian wisdom, he must necessarily start with Christ… where the two great ‘wise men,’ namely Moses – the initiator of God’s wisdom [Genesis] – and John who is its completion, started. The former said, ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth,’ that is in the Son…; and John: ‘In the beginning was the Word…’.”[7]

As is evident, if Genesis is speaking of Christ as the Beginning in which all things were created, then the Prologue of the Evangelist is also referring to Him as well. Since St. John decisively links his Prologue to Genesis, it is necessary that one grasp that he too is speaking of Christ, and not just the Word in Himself as God, when he writes; “In the beginning was the Word…”

On this point we cannot leave out the illustrious teaching of St. Augustine who reiterated it over and over in his writings and sermons. Given his authority on the subject matter, we do well to cite at length his defense of the true doctrine of Christ against the Manicheans:

How will they [the Manicheans] respond when I will have told them that the ‘Beginning’ is the very Son of God in whom Genesis states that God made the heaven and the earth? I have no difficulty in proving this since I know that I have witnesses available from the New Testament itself which, willing or not – their stubborn pride broken – they too submit to. Thus our Lord said to the unbelieving Jews: ‘For if you believed Moses you would believe me also, for he wrote of me’ (Jn 5:46). How can we not see that this very Lord [is the Beginning], in whom God the Father made heaven and earth? In fact, the phrase ‘In the beginning God made heaven and earth,’ was written precisely by Moses, and the authority of our Lord Himself confirmed that he had written with reference to Him. Or is He not perhaps the ‘Beginning’? It is not possible to doubt this: the Gospel clearly says that the Jews, after having asked our Lord who He was, He responded, ‘The beginning, who also speak unto you’ (Jn 8:25). Behold the Beginning in which God made heaven and earth. God, therefore, made heaven and earth in the Son through whom he made all things and without whom nothing exists. In this way, harmonizing the Gospel with Genesis, we preserve the heritage according to the consensus of both Testaments and we leave the self-serving calumnies to the discredited heretics.”[8]

To be continued…