The Great Flood was a global event

[cmotherofpirl]

TACO PARTY!!!

You really do need to see where we are coming from. One can accept science and Catholicism because they both have the same source - GOD. Genesis tells us why we are here, science tells us how. It is not either-or situation it is both.

Apology Accepted :


Want some popcorn??

[homeschoolmom]

The ranch is delicious...

[Brother Adam]

I want to be left alone. Thank you.

The topic of the thread is on the flood as it is recorded in Genesis and whether or not it was a myth or not.

[cmotherofpirl]

II. HISTORICITY OF THE BIBLICAL DELUGE ACCOUNT
It has been contended that the Flood story of the Bible and the Flood legends of other peoples, looked at from a merely historical point of view, stand on a similar footing, the Biblical account being a mere late variant of one of them. And on inquiring into their origin, we find that four theories have been advanced:

1]The Flood story is a mere product of fancy. This theory contradicts the analogy of similar legends among all peoples.

2]The Deluge story is by others considered as a nature-myth, representing the phenomena of winter, which in Babylonia especially is the time of rain. This nature-myth again is by some writers believed to have grown out of an archaic ether-myth, according to which the sun was imagined as a man voyaging on a boat in the heavenly ocean. The fact that the sea was to be found on the earth, not in heaven, and the damage wrought by the incessant winter-rain and the inundation of great rivers, transferred the myth from heaven to earth, changing the ether-myth into a nature-myth. But this theory, too, neglects the numerous Flood stories existing among many nations, which do not lend themselves to a similar explanation.

3]Connected with the preceding theory is the explanation which makes the Deluge story a cosmogonic fable. It has been seen that the hero rescued in the ship must have been the sun-god (cf. the ether-myth). Thus the Deluge becomes ultimately a variant of the Babylonian creation-myth. It is for this reason that the mythological text published by Peiser calls the time of the Deluge "the year of the great serpent". For this "great serpent" is the personified ocean which on old Babylonian maps encircles Babylonia, just as leviathan is the world-encircling ocean personified as a serpent; it is the same monster which is a central figure in the Creation story. We need not add that this theory too leaves the great bulk of the existing Flood traditions unexplained.

4]It has been inferred from the improbability of the preceding theories, that the Flood story must be a poetical or legendary presentation of some natural occurrence. Furthermore, it is maintained that the immediate basis of the legend is a local disturbance. It may have been a great inundation caused by an overflow of the Tigris and Euphrates, or the incursion of a tidal wave resulting from an earthquake south of the mouth of the two rivers. But however terrible the ruin wrought by such inundations may be, this theory does not account for the universality of the Flood tradition, unless we suppose that the ruin affected the ancestors of all human races.

Thus far we have considered the Biblical Flood story from a merely historical point of view. But the student who believes in the inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures and admits the value of tradition in their exegesis can hardly rest satisfied with the results thus far obtained. It will not even be enough to grant that the ancient Flood legend became the vehicle of religious and spiritual truth by means of a divinely guided religious feeling and insight of the inspired writer. The Deluge is referred to in several passages of Scripture as a historical fact; the writings of the Fathers consider the event in the same light, and this view of the subject is confirmed by the numerous variants under which the Flood tradition lives in the most distant nations of the earth.

(a) The following are some of the New Testament passages which imply that the Deluge was a real historical event: "And as in the days of Noe, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, even till that day in which Noe entered into the ark, and they knew not. till the flood came, and took them all away; so also shall the coming of the Son of man be" (Matthew 24:37-39). In these words Christ regards the Flood with its circumstances as being not less real than the last days will be of which He speaks in the passage. The same view concerning the Flood, Christ implies in Luke, xvii, 26-27. In the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi, 7) the inspired writer is not less clear about the historicity of the Flood: "By faith, Noe having received an answer concerning those things which as yet were not seen, moved with fear, framed the ark for the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world; and was instituted heir of the justice which is by faith." St. Peter (1 Peter 3:20) too refers to the ark and the Flood as historical facts: "When they waited for the patience of God in the days of Noe, when the ark was a building: wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water". He returns to the same teaching in II Peter, ii, 5. We might appeal to Is., liv, 9; Nah., i, 8; Ezech., xiv, 14; Ecclus., xliv, 18 sq.; Ps. xxviii, 10; xxxi, 6; but what has been said sufficiently shows that the Bible urges the historicity of the Deluge story.

(b) As to the view of Christian tradition, it suffices to appeal here to the words of Father Zorell who maintains that the Bible story concerning the Flood has never been explained or understood in any but a truly historical sense by any Catholic writer (cf. Hagen, Lexicon Biblicum). It would be useless labour and would exceed the scope of the present article to enumerate the long list of Fathers and Scholastic theologians who have touched upon the question. The few stray discordant voices belonging to the last fifteen or twenty years are simply drowned in this unanimous chorus of Christian tradition.

© The historicity of the Biblical Flood account is confirmed by the tradition existing in all places and at all times as to the occurrence of a similar catastrophe. F. von Schwarz (Sintfluth und Völkerwanderungen, pp. 8-18) enumerates sixty-three such Flood stories which are in his opinion independent of the Biblical account. R. Andree (Die Flutsagen ethnographisch betrachtet) discusses eighty-eight different Flood stories, and considers sixty-two of them as independent of the Chaldee and Hebrew tradition. Moreover, these stories extend through all the races of the earth excepting the African; these are excepted, not because it is certain that they do not possess any Flood traditions, but because their traditions have not as yet been sufficiently investigated. Lenormant pronounces the Flood story as the most universal tradition in the history of primitive man, and Franz Delitzsch was of opinion that we might as well consider the history of Alexander the Great a myth, as to call the Flood tradition a fable. It would, indeed, be a greater miracle than that of the Deluge itself, if the various and different conditions surrounding the several nations of the earth had produced among them a tradition substantially identical. Opposite causes would have produced the same effect.

III. UNIVERSALITY OF THE DELUGE
The Biblical account ascribes some kind of a universality to the Flood. But it may have been geographically universal, or it may have been only anthropologically universal. In other words, the Flood may have covered the whole earth, or it may have destroyed all men, covering only a certain part of the earth. Till about the seventeenth century, it was generally believed that the Deluge had been geographically universal, and this opinion is defended even in our days by some conservative scholars (cf. Kaulen in Kirchenlexikon). But two hundred years of theological and scientific study devoted to the question have thrown so much light on it that we may now defend the following conclusions:

(1) The geographical universality of the Deluge may be safely abandoned.

Neither Sacred Scripture nor universal ecclesiastical tradition, nor again scientific considerations, render it advisable to adhere to the opinion that the Flood covered the whole surface of the earth.

(a) The words of the original text, rendered "earth" in our version, signify "land" as well as "earth"; in fact, "land" appears to have been their primary meaning, and this meaning fits in admirably with Gen., iv, v, and Gen., x; why not adhere to this meaning also in Gen., vi-ix, or the Flood story. Why not read, the waters "filled all on the face of the land", "all flesh was destroyed that moved in the land", "all things wherein there is the breath of life in the land died", "all the high mountains under the whole heaven (corresponding to the land) were covered"? The primary meaning of the inspired text urges therefore a universality of the flood covering the whole land or region in which Noe lived, but not the whole earth.

(b) As to the cogency of the proof from tradition for the geographical universality of the Flood, it must be remembered that very few of the Fathers touched upon this question ex professo. Among those who do so there are some who restrict the Deluge to certain parts of the earth's surface without incurring the blame of offending against tradition.

The earthly paradise, e.g., was exempted by many, irrespective of its location on the top of a high mountain or elsewhere;
the same must be said of the place in which Mathusala must have lived during the Flood according to the Septuagint reading;
St. Augustine knows of writers who exempted the mountain Olympus from the Flood, though he himself does not agree with them;
Pseudo-Justin hesitatingly rejects the opinion of those who restrict the Flood to the parts of the earth actually inhabited by men;
Cajetan revived the opinion that the Flood did not cover Olympus and other high mountains, believing that Genesis spoke only of the mountains under the aerial heaven;
Tostatus sees a figure of speech in the expression of the Bible which implies the universality of the Flood; at any rate, he exempts the earthly Paradise from the Deluge, since Henoch had to be saved.
If the Fathers had considered the universality of the Flood as part of the body of ecclesiastical tradition, or of the deposit of faith, they would have defended it more vigorously. It is true that the Congregation of the Index condemned Vossius's treatise "De Septuaginta Interpretibus" in which he defended, among other doctrines, the view that the Flood covered only the inhabited part of the earth; but theologians of great weight maintained that the work was condemned on account of its Protestant author, and not on account of its doctrine.
© There are also certain scientific considerations which oppose the view that the Flood was geographically universal. Not that science opposes any difficulty insuperable to the power of God; but it draws attention to a number of most extraordinary, if not miraculous phenomena involved in the admission of a geographically universal Deluge.

First, no such geological traces can be found as ought to have been left by a universal Deluge; for the catastrophe connected with the beginning of the ice-age, or the geological deluge, must not be connected with the Biblical.
Secondly, the amount of water required by a universal Deluge, as described in the Bible, cannot be accounted for by the data furnished in the Biblical account. If the surface of the earth, in round numbers, amounts to 510,000,000 square kilometres, and if the elevation of the highest mountains reaches about 9000 metres, the water required by the Biblical Flood, if it be universal, amounts to about 4,600,000,000 cubic kilometres. Now, a forty days' rain, ten times more copious than the most violent rainfall known to us, will raise the level of the sea only about 800 metres; since the height to be attained is about 9000 metres, there is still a gap to be filled by unknown sources amounting to a height of more than 8000 metres, in order to raise the water to the level of the greatest mountains.
Thirdly, if the Biblical Deluge was geographically universal, the sea water and the fresh water would mix to such an extent that neither the marine animals nor the fresh-water animals could have lived in the mixture without a miracle.
Fourthly, there are serious difficulties connected with the animals in the ark, if the Flood was geographically universal: How were they brought to Noe from the remote regions of the earth in which they lived? How could eight persons take care of such an array of beasts? Where did they obtain the food necessary for all the animals? How could the arctic animals live with those of the torrid zone for a whole year and under the same roof?
No Catholic commentator will repudiate an explanation merely for fear of having to admit a miracle; but no Catholic has a right to admit Biblical miracles which are not well attested either by Scripture or tradition. What is more, there are traces in the Biblical Flood story which favour a limited extent of the catastrophe: Noe could have known the geographical universality of the Deluge only by revelation; still the Biblical account appears to have been written by an eye-witness. If the Flood had been universal, the water would have had to fall from the height of the mountains in India to the level of those in Armenia on which the ark rested, i.e. about 11,500 feet, within the space of a few days. The fact that the dove is said to have found "the waters . . . upon the whole earth", and that Noe "saw that the face of the earth was dried", leaves the impression that the inspired writer uses the word "earth" in the restricted sense of "land". Attention has been drawn also to the "bough of an olive tree, with green leaves" carried by the dove in her mouth on her second return to the ark.
(2) The Deluge must have been anthropologically universal, i.e. it must have destroyed the whole human race.

After limiting the extent of the Flood to a part of the earth, we naturally ask whether any men lived outside the region covered by its waters. It has been maintained that not all men can have perished in the Flood for the following reasons: Tribes which certainly sprang from Noe were preceded in their earliest settlements by other tribes whose origin is unknown to us: the Dravidic tribes preceded the Aryans in India; the proto-Medians preceded the Medians; the Akkadians preceded the Cushites and Semites in Chaldea; the Chanaanites were preceded in Palestine by other races. Besides, the oldest Egyptian monuments present the Negro race just as we find it to-day, so that even at that remote age, it was wholly different from the Caucasian race. Again, the languages of the races springing from Noe are said to be in a state of development different from that in which we find the languages of the peoples of unknown origin. Finally, the Biblical account of the Flood is said to admit a restriction of its anthropological universality as readily as a limitation of its geographical completeness; for if "land" be substituted in our translation for earth, the Book of Genesis speaks only of the men inhabiting a certain district, and not of the men of the whole earth, as being the victims of the waters. Considerations like these have induced several Catholic writers to regard as quite tenable the opinion that the Deluge did not destroy all men outside the ark.

But if the reason advanced for limiting the Flood to a certain part of the human race be duly examined, they are found to be more specious than true. The above scientific arguments do not favour a partial destruction of the human race absolutely, but only in so far as the uninterrupted existence of the various races in question gives them more time for the racial development and the historical data that have to be harmonized with the text of Genesis. Those who urge these arguments grant, therefore, implicitly that the allowance of a proper length of time will explain the facts on which their arguments are based. As there is nothing in the teaching of the Bible preventing us from assigning the Flood to a much earlier date than has usually been done, the difficulties urged on the part of science against the anthropological universality of the Flood may be easily evaded. Nor can the distribution of the nations as described in the tenth chapter of Genesis be appealed to, seeing that this section does not enumerate all races of the earth, but confines itself probably to the Caucasian.

Science, therefore, may demand an early date for the Deluge, but it does not necessitate a limitation of the Flood to certain parts of the human race. The question, whether all men perished in the Deluge, must be decided by the teaching of the Bible, and of its authoritative interpreter. As to the teachings of the Bible, the passage which deals ex professo with the Flood (Genesis 6-9), if taken by itself, may be interpreted of a partial destruction of man; it insists on the fact that all inhabitants of the "land", not of the "earth", died in the waters of the Deluge, and it does not explicitly tell us whether all men lived in the "land". It may also be granted, that of the passages which refer incidentally to the flood, Wis., x, 4; xiv, 6; Ecclus., xliv, 17 sqq., and Matt., xxiv, 37 sqq., may be explained, more or less satisfactorily, of a partial destruction of the human race by the inundation of the Deluge; but no one can deny that the prima facie meaning of I Peter, iii, 20 sq., II Peter, ii, 4-9, and II Peter, iii, 5 sqq., refers to the death of all men not contained in the ark. The explanations of these passages, offered by the opponents of the anthropological universality of the Deluge, are hardly sufficient to remove all reasonable doubt. We turn, therefore, to authority in order to arrive at a final settlement of the question. Here we are confronted, in brief, with the following facts: Up to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the belief in the anthropological universality of the Deluge was general. Moreover, the Fathers regarded the ark and the Flood as types of baptism and of the Church; this view they entertained not as a private opinion, but as a development of the doctrine contained in I Peter, iii, 20 sq. Hence, the typical character of both ark and Flood belongs to the "matters of faith and morals" in which the Tridentine and the Vatican Councils oblige all Catholics to follow the interpretation of the Church.

newadvent.org

[cmotherofpirl]

The Genesis Controversy


Has it been duly noted that Darwin’s theory of evolution is dying? Not at the hands of fundamentalists; it is being killed off by the scientific community itself. The slow acknowledgment that the theory has died may prove to be an intellectual watershed more important than the ongoing demolition of Marx and Freud. No book has so profoundly affected the way modern man looks at himself than The Origin of the Species, first published in l859. The notion that man is the result of a blind, materialist process which did not have him in mind is at the core of modern secularist thinking. If Darwin’s theory goes, we are in for what philosophers call a ’paradigm shift,’ a moving of tectonic plates, and a lot of intellectuals will be running for cover.


RELUCTANT OR UNTHINKING ACCEPTANCE
But it may be too early for the obituaries. Many scientists would rather cling to Darwin’s theory, in whatever baroque form, than face the implications of its demise. Darwin’s scientific detractors, moreover, are generally reticent about making their objections public for fear of being labelled ‘creationists.’ So the newspaper-reading public has not been let in on what the British scientific journal “Nature“ recently called ’the sharp dissent and frequently acrimonious debate’ over evolutionary theory, while the armies of biology teachers, science writers, and public television wildlife hosts carry on as though there were no problem with Darwin at all.

So many myths have been spun around the figure of Darwin and the history of his theory that untangling them can be difficult. History as they say, is written by the victors, and most encyclopedias, textbooks, and popular histories spoon-feed the prevailing Darwinian orthodoxy. So before examining the theory of evolution, it is worth looking at Darwin himself and at how his ideas developed.


NATURAL SELECTION
Charles Darwin (1809-82) was a dull, reticent Englishman whose large fortune allowed him to pursue a passion for studying nature. Although he claimed his work had no objectives other than scientific, it is clear from his private journals that his motives were no less metaphysical than those of the clergy who attacked him. Darwin was a materialist. He dispensed with a mild Protestant faith early in life and became increasingly hostile toward religion as he grew older. One historian has described Darwin as a ’good Christian,’ but this hardly fits the man who wrote in his journal in 1873:

I have lately read Morley’s Life of Voltaire and he insists strongly that direct attacks on Christianity (even when written with the wonderful force and vigor of Voltaire) produce little permanent effect; real good seems only to follow the slow and silent side attacks.

Contrary to popular myth,Darwin did not hit upon his idea of natural selection while observing the animal life on the Galapagos Islands in 1835 during the voyage of the Beagle. The varieties of finches and other species he saw there merely gave him the idea that species might change over the course of time. This idea had been around since the ancient Greeks. The Eureka! moment came later when Darwin read Malthus’ famous (and discredited) Essay on Population, which held that population tends to multiply faster than food supply and that only the fittest will survive. Darwin took this ’struggle for existence’ among humans and applied it to plants and animals.


SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
Malthus had wished to show that political economy was subject to the same sort of mechanical laws that Newton had demonstrated in physics. Darwin had the same motive in biology to describe the origin of life as the result of mechanical laws rather than the wilful act of a Creator. Like Malthus, Darwin came up with a formula whose simplicity and seemingly taut logic gave it immense popular appeal: ’natural selection’ - to which he later appended Herbert Spencer’s phrase, ’survival of the fittest.’

Darwin maintained that organisms produce off-spring which vary slightly from their parents and that ’natural selection’ will favor the survival of those individuals whose peculiarities (sharper teeth, more prehensile claws) render them best adapted to their environment. Darwinian evolution is a two-stage process: random variation as to raw materials, natural selection as directing force.


MICRO-EVOLUTION VS. MACRO-EVOLUTION
Once he struck on his theory, he spent a great deal of time observing breeders at work near his Kent home. The opening section of The Origin of the Species is mainly about pigeons, which often surprises readers. He noticed that through selective breeding pigeons could be made to develop certain desired characteristics such as color and wing-span. He extrapolated from this observation the notion that over many millennia species could change - with natural selection acting as the ‘breeder’ - into entirely new ones.

But a critical distinction has to be made here. What Darwin saw in the breeding pens is micro-evolution. Micro-evolution is the name biologists give to the small changes that occur within a species over time. Such evolution is common. People, for example, are generally taller today than they were a hundred years ago. The various finches Darwin saw on the Galapagos islands are another example of ‘micro’ changes. Darwin went further, however. He said that over time, these micro-evolutionary shifts could gradually add up to macro-evolution, a change from one species into another, and that all plants and animals have descended from ancestors whose forms were entirely different from those we see today. Here we run into problems.


FOSSIL RECORD DOES NOT SUPPORT DARWIN
First, the fossil evidence. If Darwin’s theory is correct, the fossil record should show innumerable slight gradations between earlier species and later ones. Darwin was aware, however, that the fossil record of his day showed nothing of the sort. There were enormous discontinuities between forms. He accordingly entitled his chapter on the subject, On the Imperfection of the Geological Record. He hoped that future digging would fill in the gaps, which he admitted to be the ’gravest’ objection to his theory. Plenty of fossils have been dug up since, and they do not support gradual evolution. Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard biologist, calls this the great ’trade secret’ of modern paleontology.

The fossil record shows exactly what it showed in Darwin’s day - that species appear suddenly in a fully developed state and change little or not at all before disappearing (99 out of 100 species are extinct.) About 600 million years ago there was a sudden explosion of highly organized life-forms such as molluscs and jellyfish. Not a single ancestral multicellular fossil is to be found in earlier rocks. Niles Eldredge, head of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, writes that the theory of gradual evolution ‘is out of phase’ with the fossil record:

“We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not.”


NO TRACE OF TRANSITIONAL FORMS
Admits Gould: “Phyletic gradualism (i.e., gradual evolution)...was never seen in the rocks.”

What about those pictures in museums and textbooks, those charts showing how large horses gradually evolved from smaller ones, and so forth? These are artistic conjectures which are constantly being falsified as new bones are dug up. In effect, paleontologists find a fossil of an extinct species and make up a scenario connecting it with a later or earlier animal. But they never find the series of transitional forms which Darwin’s theory demands.

The famous series of pictures at the American Museum of Natural History showing the ‘evolution’ of horses, the diminutive Eohippus slowly changing into modern Equus, has become some thing of a joke even among Darwinists. Eohippus remained Eohippus; it was followed by numerous species of horses, some smaller. The chart is nonetheless widely reprinted in textbooks and passed off as fact.

John Bonner, a science professor at Princeton, says that textbook discussions of ancestral descent are generally ‘a festering mass of unsupported assertions.’ The ‘ancestry’ of man changes about once a decade as the few bits of hominid fossil are shuffled about.


BREEDING EXPERIMENTS LEND DARWIN NO SUPPORT
Since the fossil record gives no evidence of the gradual transformation of species, the only other place to look is breeding experiments. But here the evidence also goes against Darwin. Breeders can change the color of a pigeon or the size of a cow to some degree, but they can only go so far. In fact, all breeders have the same experience: if they try to go too far in one direction, the animal or plant in question either becomes sterile or reverts back to type.

The most famous breeder of all, Luther Burbank, found no evidence of the unlimited plasticity of species which Darwin’s theory demands and posited a Law of Reversion to Average. The late Richard Goldschmidt, a leading geneticist who taught at Berkeley, spent years observing the mutations of fruit flies and concluded that biologists had to give up Darwin’s idea that an accumulation of micro changes creates new species. If you have a ‘thousand point’ mutation in a fruitfly - a statistical impossibility - it is still a fruitfly.


ADAPTATION TO PRESERVE THE SPECIES
The small changes we do see in species, such as wolves growing a heavier coat of fur to cope with a colder climate, tend to preserve a species rather than change it. As Robert Augros and George Stanciu point out in The New Biology, ‘adaptation’ is simply ecological adjustment; it is not the source of new species. No one, then, has ever seen one species change into another either in the fossil record or in breeding experiments. Darwin himself was unable to come up with a single indisputable case of one animal changing into another via ‘natural selection.’ His case was entirely theoretical; it rested on a chain of suppositions rather than empirical observation; the ‘facts’ that he mustered were either made to fit the theory or were explained away.


A TRUISM THAT THE FITTEST SURVIVE
The theory itself - Natural Selection, or the survival of the fittest - has been dismissed by many critics as an empty tautology rather than a scientific theory. Tom Bethell, writing in Harper’s several years ago, was not the first to point out that the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ is entirely circular. Who survives? The fittest. How do we know that they are the fittest? They survive. Jacques Barzun, an acute critic of Darwin, pointed out that this is like the character in Moliere who explains that opium causes sleep because of its ‘dormitive powers.’

It is an obvious truism that the fittest survive. The question is whether the ‘struggle for existence’ is the mechanism by which one species changes into another. C.H. Waddington, one of the major biologists of the twentieth century, dismissed the idea of natural selection as ‘vacuous,’ saying that it ‘merely amounts to the statement that the individuals which leave most offspring are those which leave most offspring.’ What is needed, as Bethell pointed out, is a criterion of fitness other than ‘survivability.’ Despite much verbal gymnastics, Darwinists have not been able to provide one.


NOT AND OPEN MINDED SCIENTIST
Darwin presented himself in his writing as an open-minded, amiable naturalist sorting his facts and humbly open to objections. This image partly accounts for the enormous intellectual authority he exerted in Victorian England. He kept telling his readers, in effect, that he could be trusted, that he was only going by the facts: ‘I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.’

But in reality he argued like a man in the grips of a dogma. He did not hesitate to get rid of embarrassing facts with ad hoc explanations - or no explanations at all. His method, as Gertrude Himmelfarb describes it, ‘was neither observing nor the more prosaic mode of scientific reasoning, but a peculiarly imaginative, inventive mode of argument...possibilities were promoted into probabilities, and probabilities into certainties.’


EXAMINING THE WHALE
Confronting the whale, for example, which appears out of nowhere in the fossil record and which he, like all evolutionists since maintained to be descended from land animals. Darwin was unable to explain how, for example, the specialized apparatus which allows the mother whale to suckle her young underwater - which includes a special cap around the nipple into which the snout of the young fits very tightly to prevent it from taking in sea water - slowly evolved on land. All modifications would have had to take place before the first whale could successfully suckle her young underwater. Why would ‘natural selection’ bring about such changes in a land animal?

Here’s how Darwin handles the whale (which presents many other problems as well) in the first edition of Origin I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.’


THE EVOLVING EYE
Darwin, in effect, proposed natural selection as a theory in need of proof and then used it as an a priori explanation for the origin of complex organisms. This circularity is for the most part camouflaged, although sometimes Darwin slips into solutions like: ‘In living bodies variation will cause the slight alterations.’ To this day, no evolutionist has explained how an organ as complex as the eye, all of whose components - retina, iris, cornea, etc. - must be fully formed and coordinated for it to work, could have suddenly appeared, by biological freak and in a form developed enough to prove its ‘survival value,’ on a slippery creature feeling its way around in the muck. As one biologist put it: ‘Since the eye must be either perfect, or perfectly useless, how could it have evolved by small, successive, Darwinian steps?’


ALL IS NOT CHANGE OR STRUGGLE
This problem of accounting for intermediate stages, each of which, according to Darwin, must be useful to the organism, has been a major thorn in the side of evolutionists. As Gould puts it; ‘What good is half a jaw or half a wing?’ In 1940, Goldschmidt published a list of 17 items - including hair, feathers, teeth, eyes, whalebone, and the poison fangs of a snake - and challenged anybody to explain how they evolved on a step-by-step basis. Goldschmidt was subjected to a savage campaign of vilification, but no explanation has ever been furnished. It should be recalled that Darwin himself admitted that his theory would break down if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications.’

There are other major problems with classical Darwinian theory. Among them are the fact that scientists see very little ‘struggle for survival’ in nature (many species tend to cooperate and occupy ecological niches which do not compete); the fact that fossils show a few species in many groups (or phyla) have been replaced over millennia by many species in a few groups (which is the reverse of Darwin’s model); and that several species like the lungfish have not changed at all in over 300 million years despite important shifts in their environment (which flatly contradicts the constant fine tuning Darwin attributed to ‘natural selection’).


THEORY BECOMES DOGMA
Darwin himself was increasingly plagued by doubts after the first edition of the Origin. In subsequent editions, he kept backing off from natural selection as the explanation for all natural phenomena. Loren Eiseley writes in Darwin’s Century that a ‘close examination of the last edition of the Origin reveals that in attempting on scattered pages to meet the objections being launched against his theory the much-labored upon volume had become contradictory...The last repairs to the Origin reveal...how very shaky Darwin’s theoretical structure had become.’ Darwin’s unproven theory nonetheless had become dogma in the public mind.


SCIENTISTS OPPOSE DARWIN
Yet, there was sharp scientific opposition from the start. As Swedish biologist Soren Lovtrup points out, most of Darwin’s early opponents, even when they had religious motives, “argued on a completely scientific basis.” In fact, in the decades following Darwin’s death in 1882, his theory came increasingly under a cloud.

Lovtrup writes: “During the first third of our century, biologists did not believe in Darwinism.” Mans Driesch in Germany, Lucien Cuenot in France, Douglas Dewar in England, Vernon Kellogg and T.H. Morgan in America, biologists and geneticists with international reputations, all rejected Darwin’s theory during this period. Cuenot wrote that: “we must wholly abandon the Darwinian hypothesis,” while the Dictionnaire Enclopedique des Sciences dismissed Darwin’s theory as “a fiction, a poetical accumulation of probabilities without proof, and of attractive explanations without demonstrations.”

The great irony is that the Scopes trial in 1925, which the American popular imagination still regards as putting to rest the whole case against Darwin, took place against this background of general skepticism. The scientific issues were never properly discussed at the trial and Clarence Darrow was able to ridicule William Jennings Bryan’s fundamentalist beliefs. A properly coached cross-examination could have made Darrow seem equally ridiculous defending Darwin. To this day, an aesthetic aversion toward Bible-thumping fundamentalists in the United States and England accounts for the fact that Darwinism remains a somewhat parochial theory. It is rejected, for example, by a large majority of French biologists, including the most eminent, Pierre P. Grasse, who says Darwin’s theory is “either in conflict with reality or else incapable of solving the major problems.” And French philosopher Etienne Gilson was amazed by “the American tendency to take evolutionary Darwinism for a phenomenon of planetary significance.”


RANDOM VARIATIONS: THE DRIVING FORCE OF EVOLUTION
Because of obvious flaws in Darwin’s original theory, the so called ‘synthetic theory’ (sometimes called ‘neo-Darwinism’) emerged around 1930. This incorporated genetics, molecular biology and mathematical models. But the synthetic theory remained completely Darwinian in its identification of random variations preserved by natural selection as the driving force of evolution. Contradictory facts were explained away with smoothing phrases like ‘genetic drift’ or with mathematical models intelligible only to a small minority of biologists.

But as Waddington complained: “the whole real guts of evolution - which is how do you come to have horses and tigers and things - is outside mathematical theory; you are still left with the vacuous explanation of natural selection.”

Genetics and molecular biology turned out to be no help, either. In Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Adler & Adler, 1986), molecular biologist Michael Denton demolishes the idea that natural selection could have produced at random the smallest elements of life - the functional protein or gene. And “to get a cell by chance would require at least one hundred functional proteins to appear simultaneously in one place,” which is outside the realm of probability. A cell is so complex, writes Denton, that it excels “anything produced by the intelligence of man.” It is also irreducible; a simpler ‘cell’ would not work. So how, asks Denton, could cells have randomly ‘evolved’? It would be like a volcano spewing out a factory.


VIEWS OF DARWINISM TODAY
In 1980, Stephen Jay Gould echoed the private sentiments of many scientists when he declared:

‘The synthetic theory...is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy.’ Since the synthetic theory originally arose in response to the collapse of classical Darwinism, where does that leave scientists today? There are roughly three camps in America:

Those who still cling to orthodox Darwinism on the grounds that no one has come up with a better explanation for the origin of species: Those (like Gould and Eldredge) who have concocted baroque refinements of the original theory, such as ‘punctuated equilibria,’ in order to shelter it from empirical falsification; and Those, including a well-known group of ‘cladists,’ who reject the theory altogether.

The tenacity of Darwin’s theory among scientists and educators can only be explained by its crude materialism. The biologist Julian Huxley, who was a kind of roving statesman for Darwinism in the 1940s and 50s claimed that Darwin’s real achievement was to remove the idea of a Creator from intelligent discourse. Huxley’s famous grandfather, T.H. Huxley, was more explicit; he claimed (wrongly, it turned out) that the great merit of evolutionary theory was its “complete and irreconcilable antagonism to that vigorous and consistent enemy of the highest intellectual, moral, and social life of mankind - the Catholic Church.”


FAITH IN EVOLUTION
But Darwinism itself quickly became a kind of religion - a “metaphysical research program” in the dismissive phrase of Karl Popper. In their determination to rid nature at any cost of the principle of design, Darwin’s disciples still show every sign of being under the spell of a dogma, one which explains all phenomena by a single unproveable cause, namely, natural selection. There is so much circumstantial evidence against natural selection as the cause of changes other than those within a given genus that belief in it requires a leap of faith - or, shall we say, ulterior motives. As biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy put it:

That a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable, and so far from criteria otherwise applied to hard science, has become a dogma, can only be explained on sociological grounds.

To give up natural selection would violate the ‘teleological taboo’ of modern scientific thinking. As Augros and Stanciu have said:

“If evolution is not the product of random mutations and survival of the fittest, then the production of new species is not a matter of chance.”

In other words, it’s natural selection or a Creator. There is no middle ground. This is why prominent Darwinists like G.G. Simpson and Stephen Jay Gould, who are not secretive about their hostility to religion, cling so vehemently to natural selection. To do otherwise would be to admit the probability that there is design in nature - and hence a Designer.


PARADIGM SHIFT
The last line of defense of Darwinism is that nobody has come up with a better scientific explanation for the appearance of new species. And it is probably true that Darwinism will not entirely disappear until there is an alternate theory. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn writes that: “the decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another.” History is full of examples (including the Galileo affair) of what Kuhn calls the “priority of the paradigm.” Men will go to any length to defend a theory in the face of falsifying evidence, especially if they are professionals who have invested their careers in the reigning orthodoxy.


BEGINNINGS OF A NEW THEORY
Is a new scientific explanation for the origins of species emerging? I asked one biologist, an anti-Darwinist at the American Museum of Natural History, and he told me that most anti-Darwinists are ‘agnostics’ at this point. “All we know is that species reproduce and that there are different species now than there were 100 million years ago. Everything else is propaganda.” Other scientists, however, claim that research points to the possibility that an internal ‘preprogrammed’ genetic mechanism may cause ‘superfluous’ DNA suddenly to organize itself into new forms. According to this theory, species do not evolve into other species (an assertion supported by the fossil record), but rather harbor the seeds of new species which appear quite suddenly.

Interestingly, this new theory dovetails with the argument St. Augustine set forth in his commentaries on Genesis - that in the beginning God created all living things not immediately, but “potentially in their causes.” God, according to Augustine, placed in his creation seeds (rationes seminales ) which remained “in the hidden recesses of nature.” Augustine understood evolution in the strict etymological sense of the word - an ‘unfolding’ of what is already there.


READING THE BOOK OF GENESIS
But Augustine’s real significance for Catholic thinking on this issue lies not in his scientific conjectures, which were sometimes farfetched, but in his reading of Genesis. In De Genesi ad litteram he asserts that the account of creation could not possibly have been meant to be taken literally. And since Augustine, the Church has never subscribed to a literal reading of the first chapters of Genesis. Catholic thinkers have generally deemed the account of creation as theologically true, if not strictly factual - a poetic compression of the truth, as it were. Darwin’s theory was never the bombshell for Catholics that it was for Protestants adhering to a literal reading of scripture. Darwin himself said that as a young man he had believed the ‘strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible’ and lost his faith when it became clear that ‘science’ disproved Genesis. He was not the last Protestant to do so. In Three Scientists and Their Gods (1988), Robert Wright, interviewing the Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. writes:

Like E.O. Wilson, I was brought up a Southern Baptist. Like him, I was bowled over by its power and beauty. Like his religious faith, mine did not survive this encounter.


GUIDANCE FROM THE CHURCH
As is often the case, there is a reasonable Catholic ‘center’ between the poles of scientific and religious fundamentalism. The Catholic response to Darwin was always measured and intelligent. Pope Leo XIII warned scientists not to be ‘overly hasty’ in proclaiming hypotheses as established results, but the Vatican never issued an official condemnation of Darwin’s theory and no scientific work about evolution was ever placed on the Index of forbidden books. In 1909, the Pontifical Biblical Commission, following Augustine and Aquinas, said that one is not bound to seek scientific exactitude in the opening chapters of Genesis. In his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, Pius XII, while pointing out correctly that the theory of evolution ‘has not been fully proved’, permitted “research and discussion...in as far as it requires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent matter.” But whatever the findings of science, Pius affirmed, Catholics must believe that “God intended, from all eternity, to create...and he took those means which he saw to be the most suitable to the purpose.”


SUPPORT FOR CREATION
While allowing what Pope John Paul II, who has a special preoccupation with Genesis, calls a ‘metaphorical’ element in the creation-account, we should keep in mind that the Book of Genesis has held up well under the scrutiny of modern geology and archaeology. Twentieth-century physics, moreover, describes the beginning of the universe in virtually the same cosmological terms as Genesis. Roughly 18 billion years ago, space, time, and matter came out of nothing in a single burst of light exactly calibrated to bring forth carbon based life. The so-called ‘anthropic principle’ that, the universe was made for man to live, is becoming a scientific commonplace. Biologists now tell us that life had its origin from clay templates (ef. Gen. 2. 7), while geneticists assert that we are all descended from one woman (another embarrassment for Darwinists, whose scenarios do not allow for a single progenitor so late in prehistory).

We are obliged to believe that our first parents committed a primal act of disobedience whose effects we still suffer. This belief is, of course, entirely outside the realm of science. But it is worth keeping in mind Cardinal Newman’s remark that the more he thought about humanity, the more clear it was to him that the race was “implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity.”


LET COMMON SENSE PREVAIL
As Catholics, we should look forward to advances in science with enjoyment and confidence. And as nonscientific laymen, we should not hesitate to get involved in the debate over evolution. There is an honorable line of inspired amateurs - Samuel Butler, G.K. Chesterton, Jacques Barzun, Arnold Lunn, Norman Macbeth - whose common sense criticisms of Darwin’s theory have often anticipated those of scientists. Nor should we leave popular science writing to people like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould or the late J. Brunswick, whose charming expositions, in Stanley Jaki’s phrase, “mask a fierce counter metaphysics.” These writers are masters of what Darwin called the “slow and silent side attacks” against Christianity. But they may be fighting a rearguard action against the dissolution of the nineteenth-century materialist paradigm.



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This article was published in CRISIS magazine. CRISIS is a publication of The Morley Institute, Inc., a non-profit educational foundation. To subscribe to CRISIS magazine call 1-800-852-9962

[Brother Adam]

I'm trying to figure out what your second post has to do with the flood?

[url="http://www.kolbecenter.org/"]http://www.kolbecenter.org/[/url]

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Brother Adam' date='Mar 22 2006, 01:30 PM']I'm trying to figure out what your second post has to do with the flood?

[url="http://www.kolbecenter.org/"]http://www.kolbecenter.org/[/url]
[right][snapback]918076[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]

It discusses the book of Genesis

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Mar 22 2006, 01:31 PM']It discusses the book of Genesis
[right][snapback]918077[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]

What does it have to do with the flood?

[Brother Adam]

[quote]First, no such geological traces can be found as ought to have been left by a universal Deluge; for the catastrophe connected with the beginning of the ice-age, or the geological deluge, must not be connected with the Biblical.
Secondly, the amount of water required by a universal Deluge, as described in the Bible, cannot be accounted for by the data furnished in the Biblical account. If the surface of the earth, in round numbers, amounts to 510,000,000 square kilometres, and if the elevation of the highest mountains reaches about 9000 metres, the water required by the Biblical Flood, if it be universal, amounts to about 4,600,000,000 cubic kilometres. Now, a forty days' rain, ten times more copious than the most violent rainfall known to us, will raise the level of the sea only about 800 metres; since the height to be attained is about 9000 metres, there is still a gap to be filled by unknown sources amounting to a height of more than 8000 metres, in order to raise the water to the level of the greatest mountains.
Thirdly, if the Biblical Deluge was geographically universal, the sea water and the fresh water would mix to such an extent that neither the marine animals nor the fresh-water animals could have lived in the mixture without a miracle.
Fourthly, there are serious difficulties connected with the animals in the ark, if the Flood was geographically universal: How were they brought to Noe from the remote regions of the earth in which they lived? How could eight persons take care of such an array of beasts? Where did they obtain the food necessary for all the animals? How could the arctic animals live with those of the torrid zone for a whole year and under the same roof?
No Catholic commentator will repudiate an explanation merely for fear of having to admit a miracle; but no Catholic has a right to admit Biblical miracles which are not well attested either by Scripture or tradition. What is more, there are traces in the Biblical Flood story which favour a limited extent of the catastrophe: Noe could have known the geographical universality of the Deluge only by revelation; still the Biblical account appears to have been written by an eye-witness. If the Flood had been universal, the water would have had to fall from the height of the mountains in India to the level of those in Armenia on which the ark rested, i.e. about 11,500 feet, within the space of a few days. The fact that the dove is said to have found "the waters . . . upon the whole earth", and that Noe "saw that the face of the earth was dried", leaves the impression that the inspired writer uses the word "earth" in the restricted sense of "land". Attention has been drawn also to the "bough of an olive tree, with green leaves" carried by the dove in her mouth on her second return to the ark.[/quote]

So if something is not explainable by scientific measure, than it is not true?

[Brother Adam]

I'm also curious, which of the following should we look for reasonable scientific answers for, so that we may reject the special intervention of God? I've highlighted the ones that we "[i]know[/i]" really didn't happen per our discussion so far.

[b] 1. Creation of the universe, including plants, animals and humans (Genesis 1-2)
2. The flood (Gen. 7, 8)[/b]
3. Confusion of languages (tongues) at Babel (Gen. 11:1-9)
4. Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:24)
5. Lot's wife turned into a "pillar of salt" (Gen. 19:26)
6. Birth of Isaac at Gerar (Gen. 21:1)
7. The burning bush not consumed (Ex. 3:3)
8. Aaron's rod changed into a serpent (Ex. 7:10-12)
The ten plagues of Egypt (Ex. 7:20-12:30)
9. waters become blood
10. frogs
11. lice
12. flies
13. murrain
14. boils
15. thunder and hail
16. locusts
17. darkness
18. death of the first-born
19. Red Sea divided; Israel passes through (See: Passage of Red Sea) (Ex. 14:21-31)
20. Waters of Marah sweetened (Ex. 15:23-25)
21. Manna sent daily, except on Sabbath (Ex. 16:14-35)
22. Water from the rock at Rephidim (Ex. 17:5-7)
23. Nadab and Abihu consumed for offering "strange fire" (Lev. 10:1, 2)
24. Some of the people consumed by fire at Taberah (Num. 11:1-3)
25. The earth opens and swallows up Korah and his company. (Num. 16:32-34)
26. Fire at Kadesh (Num. 16:35-45)
27. Plague at Kadesh (Num. 16:46-50)
28. Aaron's rod budding at Kadesh (Num. 17:8)
29. Water from the rock, smitten twice by Moses, Desert of Zin (Num. 20:7-11)
30. The brazen serpent in the Desert of Zin (Num. 21:8, 9)
31. Balaam's ass speaks (Num. 22:21-35)
32. The Jordan divided, so that Israel passed over dryshod near the city of Adam (Josh. 3:14-17)
33. The walls of Jericho fall down (Josh. 6:6-20)
34. The sun and moon stayed. (Josh. 10:12-14)
35. Hailstorm. (Josh. 10:12-14)
36. The strength of Samson (Judg. 14-16)
37. Water from a hollow place "that is in Lehi" (Judg. 15:19)
38. Dagon falls twice before the ark. (1 Sam. 5:1-12)
39. Emerods on the Philistines (1 Sam. 5:1-12)
40. Men of Beth-shemesh smitten for looking into the ark (1 Sam. 6:19)
41. Thunderstorm causes a panic among the Philistines at Eben-ezer (1 Sam. 7:10-12)
42. Thunder and rain in harvest at Gilgal (1 Sam. 12:18)
43. Sound in the mulberry trees at Rephaim (2 Sam. 5:23-25)
44. Uzzah smitten for touching the ark at Perez-uzzah (2 Sam. 6:6, 7)
45. Jeroboam's hand withered. (1 Kings 13:4)
46. Jeroboam's new altar destroyed at Bethel (1 Kings 13:4-6
47. 31. Widow of Zarephath's meal and oil increased (1 Kings 17:14-16)
48. Widow's son raised from the dead (1 Kings 17:17-24)
49. Drought at Elijah's prayers (1 Kings 17, 18)
50. Fire at Elijah's prayers (1 Kings 18:19-39)
51. Rain at Elijah's prayers (1 Kings 18:41-45)
52. Elijah fed by ravens (1 Kings 17, 18)
53. Ahaziah's captains consumed by fire near Samaria (2 Kings 1:10-12)
54. Jordan divided by Elijah and Elisha near Jericho (2 Kings 2:7, 8, 14)
55. Elijah carried up into heaven (2 Kings 2:11)
56. Waters of Jericho healed by Elisha's casting salt into them (2 Kings 2:21, 22)
57. Bears out of the wood destroy forty-two "young men" (2 Kings 2:24)
58. Water provided for Jehoshaphat and the allied army (2 Kings 3:16-20)
59. The widow's oil multiplied (2 Kings 4:2-7)
60. The Shunammite's son given, and raised from the dead at Shunem (2 Kings 4:32-37)
61. The deadly pottage cured with meal at Gilgal (2 Kings 4:38-41)
62. A hundred men fed with twenty loaves at Gilgal (2 Kings 4:42-44)
63. Naaman cured of leprosy, Gehazi afflicted with it (2 Kings 5:10-27)
64. The iron axe-head made to swim, river Jordan (2 Kings 6:5-7)
65. Ben hadad's plans discovered. Hazael's thoughts, etc. (2 Kings 6:12)
66. The Syrian army smitten with blindness at Dothan (2 Kings 6:18)
67. The Syrian army cured of blindness at Samaria (2 Kings 6:20)
68. Elisha's bones revive the dead (2 Kings 13:21)
69. Sennacherib's army destroyed, Jerusalem (2 Kings 19:35)
70. Shadow of sun goes back ten degrees on the sun-dial of Ahaz, Jerusalem (2 Kings 20:9-11)
71. Uzziah struck with leprosy, Jerusalem (2 Chr. 26:16-21)
72. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego delivered from the fiery furnace, Babylon (Dan. 3:10-27)
73. Daniel saved in the lions' den (Dan. 6:16-23)
74. Jonah in the fish's belly. Safely landed (Jonah 2:1-10)
75. Gideon's fleece (Judg. 6:37-40)

Miracles Recorded in the Gospels
76. Cure of two blind men (Matt 9:27-31)
77. Piece of money in the fish's mouth (Matt 17:24-27)
78. The deaf and dumb man (Mark 7:31-37)
79. The blind man of Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26)
80. Jesus passes unseen through the crowd (Luke 4:28-30)
81. The miraculous draught of fishes (Luke 5:4-11)
82. The raising of the widow's son at Nain (Luke 7:11-18)
83. The woman with the spirit of infirmity (Luke 13:11-17)
84. The man with the dropsy (Luke 14:1-6)
85. The ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19)
86. The healing of Malchus (Luke 22:50, 51)
87. Water made wine (John 2:1-11)
88. Cure of nobleman's son, Capernaum (John 4:46-54)
89. Impotent man at Bethsaida cured (John 5:1-9)
90. Man born blind cured (John 9:1-7)
91. Lazarus raised from the dead (John 11:38-44)
92. Draught of fishes (John 21:1-14)
93. Syrophoenician woman's daughter cured (Matt 15:28; Mark 7:24)
94. Four thousand fed (Matt 15:32; Mark 8:1)
95. Fig tree blasted (Matt 21:18; Mark 11:12)
96. Centurion's servant healed (Matt 8:5; Luke 7:1)
97. Blind and dumb demoniac cured (Matt 12:22; Luke 11:14)
98. Demoniac cured in synagogue at Capernaum (Mark 1:23; Luke 4:33)
99. Peter's wife's mother cured (Matt 8:14; Mark 1:30; Luke 4:38)
100. The tempest stilled (Matt 8:23; Mark 4:37; Luke 8:22)
101. Demoniacs of Gadara cured (Matt 8:28; Mark 5:1; Luke 8:26)
102. Swine rush into and drown (Mark 5:1-20)
103. Leper healed (Matt 8:2; Mark 1:40; Luke 5:12)
104. Jairus's daughter raised (Matt 9:23; Mark 5:23; Luke 8:41)
105. Woman's issue of blood cured (Matt 9:20; Mark 5:25; Luke 8:43)
106. Man sick of the palsy cured (Matt 9:2; Mark 2:3; Luke 5:18)
107. Man's withered hand cured (Matt 12:10; Mark 3:1; Luke 6:6)
108. A lunatic child cured (Matt 17:14; Mark 9:14; Luke 9:37)
109. Two blind men cured (Matt 20:29; Mark 10:46; Luke 18:35)
110. Jesus walks on the sea (Matt 14:25; Mark 6:48; John 6:15)
111. Jesus feeds 5,000 "in a desert place" (Matt 14:15; Mark 6:30; Luke 9:10; John 6:1-14)
112. Many fulfilled prophecies (also see: prophets)
113. The conception of Jesus Christ by the Holy Ghost (Luke 1:35)
114. Star of Bethlehem
115. The transfiguration (Matt 17:1-8)
116. The resurrection (John 21:1-14)
117. The ascension (Luke 2:42-51)
118. Peter and the healing of a the paralytic AEneas at Lydda (Acts 9:32, 35, 38)
119. Miraculous ability to speak and/or understand a foreign language (tongue) previously unknown to the speaker (See: Gift of tongues)
120. Inspiration of Scripture by God

[cmotherofpirl]

I have no problem with God working miracles
do you?

[Brother Adam]

The Sabbath is mentioned at the beginning of the creation: "And God made in six days the works of His hands, and made an end on the seventh day, and rested on it, and sanctified it." Attend, my children, to the meaning of this expression, "He finished in six days." This implieth that the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with Him a thousand years. And He Himself testifieth, saying, "Behold, to-day will be as a thousand years." Therefore, my children, in six days, that is, in six thousand years, all things will be finished. THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS p.146

And from what source did Plato draw the information that time was created along with the heavens? For he wrote thus: "Time, accordingly, was created along with the heavens; in order that, coming into being together, they might also be together dissolved, if ever their dissolution should take place." Had he not learned this from the divine history of Moses? For he knew that the creation of time had received its original constitution from days and months and years. Since, then, the first day which was created along with the heavens constituted the beginning of all time (for thus Moses wrote, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and then immediately subjoins, "And one day was made," as if he would designate the whole of time by one part of it), Plato names the day "time," lest, if he mentioned the "day," he should seem to lay himself open to the accusation of the Athenians, that he was completely adopting the expressions of Moses. And from what source did he derive what he has written regarding the dissolution of the heavens? Had he not learned this, too, from the sacred prophets, and did he not think that this was their doctrine?

JUSTIN'S HORTATORY ADDRESS TO THE GREEKS p. 287

Thus, then, in the day that they did eat, in the same did they die, and became death's debtors, since it was one day of the creation. For it is said, "There was made in the evening, and there was made in the morning, one day." Now in this same day that they did eat, in that also did they die. But according to the cycle and progress of the days, after which one is termed first, another second, and another third, if anybody seeks diligently to learn upon what day out of the seven it was that Adam died, he will find it by examining the dispensation of the Lord. For by summing up in Himself the whole human race from the beginning to the end, He has also summed up its death. From this it is clear that the Lord suffered death, in obedience to His Father, upon that day on which Adam died while he disobeyed God. Now he died on the same day in which he did eat. For God said, "In that day on which ye shall eat of it, ye shall die by death." The Lord, therefore, recapitulating in Himself this day, underwent His sufferings upon the day preceding the Sabbath, that is, the sixth day of the creation, on which day man was created; thus granting him a second creation by means of His passion, which is that out of death. And there are some, again, who relegate the death of Adam to the thousandth year; for since "a day of the Lord is as a thousand years," he did not overstep the thousand years, but died within them, thus bearing out the sentence of his sin. Whether, therefore, with respect to disobedience, which is death; whether that, on account of that, they were delivered over to death, and made debtors to it; whether with respect to one and the same day on which they ate they also died (for it is one day of the creation); whether, that, with respect to this cycle of days, they died on the day in which they did also eat, that is, the day of the preparation, which is termed "the pure supper," that is, the sixth day of the feast, which the Lord also exhibited when He suffered on that day; or whether that he (Adam) did not overstep the thousand years, but died within their limit,--it follows that, in regard to all these significations, God is indeed true. For they died who tasted of the tree; and the serpent is proved a liar and a murderer, as the Lord said of him: "For he is a murderer from the beginning, and the truth is not in him.Ó IRENAEUS AGAINST HERESIES BOOK V pp. 551-552

For in as many days as this world was made, in so many thousand years shall it be concluded. And for this reason the Scripture says: "Thus the heaven and the earth were finished, and all their adornment. And God brought to a conclusion upon the sixth day the works that He had made; and God rested upon the seventh day from all His works." This is an account of the things formerly created, as also it is a prophecy of what is to come. For the day of the Lord is as a thousand years; and in six days created things were completed: it is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end at the sixth thousand year. IRENAEUS AGAINST HERESIES BOOK 5 p. 557

VOLUME II

Of this six days' work no man can give a worthy explanation and description of all its parts, not though he had ten thousand tongues and ten thousand mouths; nay, though he were to live ten thousand years, sojourning in this life, not even so could he utter anything worthy of these things, on account of the exceeding greatness and riches of the wisdom of God which there is in the six days' work above narrated. THEOPHILUS TO AUTOLYCUS BOOK II p. 99

On the fourth day the luminaries were made; because God, who possesses foreknowledge, knew the follies of the vain philosophers, that they were going to say, that the things which grow on the earth are produced from the heavenly bodies, so as to exclude God. In order, therefore, that the truth might be obvious, the plants and seeds were produced prior to the heavenly bodies, for what is posterior cannot produce that which is prior. THEOPHILUS TO AUTOLYCUS BOOK II p. 100

And on the sixth day, God having made the quadrupeds, and wild beasts, and the land reptiles, pronounced no blessing upon them, reserving His blessing for man, whom He was about to create on the sixth day. THEOPHILUS TO AUTOLYCUS BOOK II p. 101

CHAP. XVIII.--ERRORS OF THE GREEKS ABOUT THE DELUGE. For Plato, as we said above, when he had demonstrated that a deluge had happened, said that it extended not over the whole earth, but only over the plains, and that those who fled to the highest hills saved themselves. But others say that there existed Deucalion and Pyrrha, and that they were preserved in a chest; and that Deucalion, after he came out of the chest, flung stones behind him, and that men were produced from the stones; from which circumstance they say that men in the mass are named "people." Others, again, say that Clymenus existed in a second flood. From what has already been said, it is evident that they who wrote such things and philosophized to so little purpose are miserable, and very profane and senseless persons. But Moses, our prophet and the servant of God, in giving an account of the genesis of the world, related in what manner the flood came upon the earth, telling us, besides, how the details of the flood came about, and relating no fable of Pyrrha nor of Deucalion or Clymenus; nor, forsooth, that only the plains were submerged, and that those only who escaped to the mountains were saved. CHAP. XIX.--ACCURATE ACCOUNT OF THE DELUGE. And neither does he make out that there was a second flood: on the contrary, he said that never again would there be a flood of water on the world; as neither indeed has there been, nor ever shall be. And he says that eight human beings were preserved in the ark, in that which had been prepared by God's direction, not by Deucalion, but by Noah; which Hebrew word means "rest," as we have elsewhere shown that Noah, when he announced to the men then alive that there was a flood coming, prophesied to them, saying, Come thither, God calls you to repentance. On this account he was fitly called Deucalion. And this Noah had three sons (as we mentioned in the second book), whose names were Shem, and Ham, and Japhet; and these had three wives, one wife each; each man and his wife. This man some have surnamed Eunuchus. All the eight persons, therefore, who were found in the ark were preserved. And Moses showed that the flood lasted forty days and forty nights, torrents pouring from heaven, and from the fountains of the deep breaking up, so that the water overtopped every high hill 15 cubits. And thus the race of all the men that then were was destroyed, and those only who were protected in the ark were saved; and these, we have already said, were eight. And of the ark, the remains are to this day to be seen in the Arabian mountains. This, then, is in sum the history of the deluge. THEOPHILUS TO AUTOLYCUS. BOOK III. pp. 116-117

For my purpose is not to furnish mere matter of much talk, but to throw light upon the number of years from the foundation of the world, and to condemn the empty labour and trifling of these authors, because there have neither been twenty thousand times ten thousand years from the flood to the present time, as Plato said, affirming that there had been so many years; nor yet 15 times 10,375 years, as we have already mentioned Apollonius the Egyptian gave out; nor is the world uncreated, nor is there a spontaneous production of all things, as Pythagoras and the rest dreamed; but, being indeed created, it is also governed by the providence of God, who made all things; and the whole course of time and the years are made plain to those who wish to obey the truth. THEOPHILUS TO AUTOLYCUS. BOOK III p. 119

And from the foundation of the world the whole time is thus traced, so far as its main epochs are concerned. From the creation of the world to the deluge were 2242 years. And from the deluge to the time when Abraham our forefather begat a son, 1036 years. And from Isaac, Abraham's son, to the time when the people dwelt with Moses in the desert, 660 years. And from the death of Moses and the rule of Joshua the son of Nun, to the death of the patriarch David, 498 years. And from the death of David and the reign of Solomon to the sojourning of the people in the land of Babylon, 518 years 6 months 10 days. And from the government of Cyrus to the death of the Emperor Aurelius Verus, 744 years. All the years from the creation of the world amount to a total of 5698 years, and the odd months and days. THEOPHILUS TO AUTOLYCUS. BOOK III p. 120

Wherefore, of all the circumcised tribes, those anointed to be high priests, and kings, and prophets, were reckoned more holy. Whence He commands them not to touch dead bodies, or approach the dead; not that the body was polluted, but that sin and disobedience were incarnate, and embodied, and dead, and therefore abominable. It was only, then, when a father and mother, a son and daughter died, that the priest was allowed to enter, because these were related only by flesh and seed, to whom the priest was indebted for the immediate cause of his entrance into life. And they purify themselves seven days, the period in which Creation was consummated. For on the seventh day the rest is celebrated; and on the eighth he brings a propitiation, as is written in Ezekiel, according to which propitiation the promise is to be received. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA THE STROMATA p.438

For the creation of the world was concluded in six days. For the motion of the sun from solstice to solstice is completed in six months--in the course of which, at one time the leaves fall, and at another plants bud and seeds come to maturity. And they say that the embryo is perfected exactly in the sixth month, that is, in one hundred and eighty days in addition to the two and a half, as Polybus the physician relates in his book On the Eighth Month, and Aristotle the philosopher in his book On Nature. Hence the Pythagoreans, as I think, reckon six the perfect number, from the creation of the world, according to the prophet, and call it Meseuthys and Marriage, from its being the middle of the even numbers, that is, of ten and two. For it is manifestly at an equal distance from both. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA THE STROMATA pp. 512-513

"This is the book of the generation: also of the things in them, when they were created in the day that God made heaven and earth." For the expression "when they were created" intimates an indefinite and dateless production. But the expression "in the day that God made," that is, in and by which God made "all things," and "without which not even one thing was made," points out the activity exerted by the Son. As David says, "This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us be glad and rejoice in it; " that is, in consequence of the knowledge imparted by Him, let us celebrate the divine festival; for the Word that throws light on things hidden, and by whom each created thing came into life and being, is called day. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA THE STROMATA p. 514

VOLUME III

But inasmuch as birth is also completed with the seventh month, I more readily recognize in this number than in the eighth the honour of a numerical agreement with the sabbatical period; so that the month in which God's image is sometimes produced in a human birth, shall in its number tally with the day on which God's creation was completed and hallowed. A TREATISE ON THE SOUL BY TERTULLIAN p.218

VOLUME IV

Such is the objection which they are accustomed to make to our statement that this world had its beginning at a certain time, and that, agreeably to our belief in Scripture, we can calculate the years of its past duration. To these propositions I consider that none of the heretics can easily return an answer that will be in conformity with the nature of their opinions. ORIGEN DE PRINCIPIIS p.341

After these statements, Celsus, from a secret desire to cast discredit upon the Mosaic account of the creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that, while concealing his wish, intimates his agreement with those who hold that the world is uncreated. For, maintaining that there have been, from all eternity, many conflagrations and many deluges, and that the flood which lately took place in the time of Deucalion is comparatively modern, he clearly demonstrates to those who are able to understand him, that, in his opinion, the world was uncreated. But let this assailant of the Christian faith tell us by what arguments he was compelled to accept the statement that there have been many conflagrations and many cataclysms, and that the flood which occurred in the time of Deucalion, and the conflagration in that of Phaethon, were more recent than any others. ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS p. 404

In the next place, Celsus, after heaping together, simply as mere assertions, the varying opinions of some of the ancients regarding the world, and the origin of man, alleges that "Moses and the prophets, who have left to us our books, not knowing at all what the nature of the world is, and of man, have woven together a web of sheer nonsense." If he had shown, now, how it appeared to him that the holy Scriptures contained "sheer nonsense," we should have tried to demolish the arguments which appeared to him to establish their nonsensical character; but on the present occasion, following his own example, we also sportively give it as our opinion that Celsus, knowing nothing at all about the nature of the meaning and language of the prophets, composed a work which contained "sheer nonsense," and boastfully gave it the title of a "true discourse." And since he makes the statements about the "days of creation" ground of accusation,--as if he understood them clearly and correctly, some of which elapsed before the creation of light and heaven, and sun, and moon, and stars, and some of them after the creation of these,--we shall only make this observation, that Moses must then have forgotten that he had said a little before, "that in six days the creation of the world had been finished," and that in consequence of this act of forgetfulness he subjoins to these words the following: "This is the book of the creation of man, in the day when God made the heaven and the earth!" But it is not in the least credible, that after what he had said respecting, the six days, Moses should immediately add, without a special meaning, the words, "in the day that God made the heavens and the earth;" and if any one thinks that these words may be referred to the statement, "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth," let him observe that before the words, "Let there be light, and there was light," and these, "God called the light day," it has been stated that "in the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS p. 596

But after this investigation of his assertions, as if his object were to swell his book by many words, he repeats, in different language, the same charges which we have examined a little ago, saying: "By far the most silly thing is the distribution of the creation of the world over certain days, before days existed: for, as the heaven was not yet created, nor the foundation of the earth yet laid, nor the sun yet revolving, how could there be days?" Now, what difference is there between these words and the following: "Moreover, taking and looking at these things from the beginning, would it not be absurd in the first and greatest God to issue the command, Let this (first thing) come into existence, and this second thing, and this (third); and after accomplishing so much on the first day, to do so much more again on the second, and third, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth?" We answered to the best of our ability this objection to God's "commanding this first, second, and third thing to be created," when we quoted the words, "He said, and it was done; He commanded, and all things stood fast;" remarking that the immediate Creator, and, as it were, very Maker of the world was the Word, the Son of God; while the Father of the Word, by commanding His own Son--the Word--to create the world, is primarily Creator. And with regard to the creation of the light upon the first day, and of the firmament upon the second, and of the gathering together of the waters that are under the heaven into their several reservoirs on the third (the earth thus causing to sprout forth those (fruits) which are under the control of nature alone, and of the (great) lights and stars upon the fourth, and of aquatic animals upon the fifth, and of land animals and man upon the sixth, we have treated to the best of our ability in our notes upon Genesis, as well as in the foregoing pages, when we found fault with those who, taking the words in their apparent signification, said that the time of six days was occupied in the creation of the world, and quoted the words: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens." CHAP. LXI. Again, not understanding the meaning of the words, "And God ended on the sixth day His works which He had made, and ceased on the seventh day from all His works which He had made: and God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it, because on it He had ceased from all His works which He had begun to make;" and imagining the expression," He ceased on the seventh day," to be the same as this, "He rested on the seventh day," he makes the remark: "After this, indeed, he is weary, like a very bad workman, who stands in need of rest to refresh himself!" For he knows nothing of the day of the Sabbath and rest of God, which follows the completion of the world's creation, and which lasts during the duration of the world, and in which all those will keep festival with God who have done all their works in their six days, and who, because they have omitted none of their duties, will ascend to the contemplation (of celestial things), and to the assembly of righteous and blessed beings. ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS pp. 600-601

VOLUME V

He did not say "night and day," but "one day," with reference to the name of the light. He did not say the "first day;" for if he had said the "first" day, he would also have had to say that the "second" day was made. But it was right to speak not of the "first day," but of "one day," in order that by saying "one," he might show that it returns on its orbit and, while it remains one, makes up the week. THE EXTANT WORKS AND FRAGMENTS OF HIPPOLYTUS p. 163

VOLUME VI

The Egyptians, indeed, with their boastful notions of their own antiquity, have put forth a sort of account of it by the hand of their astrologers in cycles and myriads of years; which some of those who have had the repute of studying such subjects profoundly have in a summary way called lunar years; and inclining no less than others to the mythical, they think they fall in with the eight or nine thousands of years which the Egyptian priests in Plato falsely reckon up to Solon. (And after some other matter:) For why should I speak of the three myriad years of the Phoenicians, or of the follies of the Chaldeans, their forty-eight myriads? For the Jews, deriving their origin from them as descendants of Abraham, having been taught a modest mind, and one such as becomes men, together with the truth by the spirit of Moses, have handed down to us, by their extant Hebrew histories, the number of 5500 years as the period up to the advent of the Word of salvation, that was announced to the world in the time of the sway of the Caesars. JULIUS AFRICANUS pp. 130-131

Thus, to take an example, after God had made the world, and all things that are in it, in the space of six days, He rested on the seventh day from all His works by which statement I do not mean to affirm that He rested because He was fatigued, but that He did so as having brought to its perfection every creature which He had resolved to introduce. And yet in the sequel it, the new law, says: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Does that mean, then, that He is still making heaven, or sun, or man, or animals, or trees, or any such thing? Nay; but the meaning is, that when these visible objects were perfectly finished, He rested from that kind of work; while, however, He still continues to work at objects invisible with an inward mode of action, and saves men. MALCHION p. 203

For if, according to the Word of salvation, He who made what is without, made also that which is within, He certainly, by one operation, and at the same time, made both, on that day, indeed, on which God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;" whence it is manifest that man was not formed by a conjunction of the body with a certain pre-existent type. For if the earth, at the bidding of the Creator, brought forth the other animals endowed with life, much rather did the dust which God took from the earth receive a vital energy from the will and operation of God. PETER, BISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA p. 283

And first let us speak of the sixty. I imagine that He named under the sixty queens, those who had pleased God from the first-made man in succession to Noah, for this reason, since these had no need of precepts and laws for their salvation, the creation of the world in six days being still recent. For they remembered that in six days God formed the creation, and those things which were made in paradise; and how man, receiving a command not to touch the tree of knowledge, ran aground, the author of evil having led him astray. Thence he gave the symbolical name of sixty queens to those souls who, from the creation of the world, in succession chose God as the object of their love, and were almost, so to speak, the offspring of the first age, and neighbours of the great six days' work, from their having been born, as I said, immediately after the six days. For these had great honour, being associated with the angels, and often seeing God manifested visibly, and not in a dream. For consider what confidence Seth had towards God, and Abel, and Enos, and Enoch, and Methuselah, and Noah, the first lovers of righteousness, and the first of the first-born children who are written in heaven, being thought worthy of the kingdom, as a kind of first-fruits of the plants for salvation, coming out as early fruit to God. And so much may suffice concerning these. METHODIUS DISCOURSE VII.--PROCILLA p. 333

Moreover, it is evident that the creation of the world was accomplished in harmony with this number, God having made heaven and earth, and the things which are in them, in six days; the word of creative power containing the number six, in accordance with which the Trinity is the maker of bodies. For length, and breadth, and depth make up a body. And the number six is composed of triangles. METHODIUS DISCOURSE VIII.--THEKLA p. 339

For since in six days God made the heaven and the earth, and finished the whole world, and rested on the seventh day from all His works which He had made, and blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, so by a figure in the seventh month, when the fruits of the earth have been gathered in, we are commanded to keep the feast to the Lord, which signifies that, when this world shall be terminated at the seventh thousand years, when God shall have completed the world, He shall rejoice in us. METHODIUS DISCOURSE IX.--TUSIANE p. 344

He says that Origen, after having fabled many things concerning the eternity of the universe, adds this also: Nor yet from Adam, as some say, did man, previously not existing, first take his existence and come into the world. Nor again did the world begin to be made six days before the creation of Adam. But if any one should prefer to differ in these points, let him first say, whether a period of time be not easily reckoned from the creation of the world, according to the Book of Moses, to those who so receive it, the voice of prophecy here proclaiming: "Thou art God from everlasting, and world without end. . . . For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday: seeing that is past as a watch in the night." For when a thousand years are reckoned as one day in the sight of God, and from the creation of the world to His rest is six days, so also to our time, six days are defined, as those say who are clever arithmeticians. Therefore, they say that an age of six thousand years extends from Adam to our time. For they say that the judgment will come on the seventh day, that is in the seventh thousand years. Therefore, all the days from our time to that which was in the beginning, in which God created the heaven and the earth, are computed to be thirteen days; before which God, because he had as yet created nothing according to their folly, is stripped of His name of Father and Almighty. But if there are thirteen days in the sight of God from the creation of the world, how can Wisdom say, in the Book of the Son of Sirach: "Who can number the sand of the sea, and the drops of rain, and the days of eternity ?" This is what Origen says seriously, and mark how he trifles. METHODIUS p. 381

VOLUME VII

God completed the world and this admirable work of nature in the space of six days, as is contained in the secrets of Holy Scripture, and consecrated the seventh day, on which He had rested from His works. But this is the Sabbath-day, which in the language of the Hebrews received its name from the number, whence the seventh is the legitimate and complete number. For there are seven days, by the revolutions of which in order the circles of years are made up; and there are seven stars which do not set, and seven luminaries which are called planets, whose differing and unequal movements are believed to cause the varieties of circumstances and times. Therefore, since all the works of God were completed in six days, the world must continue in its present state through six ages, that is, six thousand years. For the great day of God is limited by a circle of a thousand years, as the prophet shows, who says "In Thy sight, O Lord, a thousand years are as one day." And as God laboured during those six days in creating such great works, so His religion and truth must labour during these six thousand years, while wickedness prevails and bears rule. And again, since God, having finished His works, rested the seventh day and blessed it, at the end of the six thousandth year all wickedness must be abolished from the earth, and righteousness reign for a thousand years; and there must be tranquillity and rest from the labours which the world now has long endured. LACTANTIUS BOOK VII p. 211

To me, as I meditate and consider in my mind concerning the creation of this world in which we are kept enclosed, even such is the rapidity of that creation; as is contained in the book of Moses, which he wrote about its creation, and which is called Genesis. God produced that entire mass for the adornment of His majesty in six days; on the seventh to which He consecrated it . VICTORINUS ON THE CREATION OF THE WORLD p. 341

VOLUME X

But if any one disbelieves the swiftness of the power of God in regard to these matters, he has not yet had a true conception of the God who made the universe, who did not require times to make the vast creation of heaven and earth and the things in them; for, though He may seem to have made these things in six days, there is need of understanding to comprehend in what sense the words "in six days" are said, on account of this, "This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth," etc. Therefore it may be boldly affirmed that the season of the expected judgment does not require times, but as the resurrection is said to take place "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," so I think will the judgment also be. ORIGEN BOOK XIV p. 500


NICENE AND POST-NICENE FATHERS

Series I

St. Augustine Volumes

VOLUME I

For very wonderful is this corporeal heaven, of which firmament, between water and water, the second day after the creation of light, Thou saidst, Let it be made, and it was made? Which firmament Thou calledst heaven, that is, the heaven of this earth and sea, which Thou madest on the third day, by giving a visible shape to the formless matter which Thou madest before all days. For even already hadst Thou made a heaven before all days, but that was the heaven of this heaven; because in the beginning Thou hadst made heaven and earth. But the earth itself which Thou hadst made was formless matter, because it was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep. AUGUSTINE BOOK XII p. 178

Which things considered as much as Thou givest, O my God, as much as Thou excitest me to "knock," and as much as Thou openest unto me when I knock, two things I find which Thou hast made, not within the compass of time, since neither is co-eternal with Thee. One, which is so formed that, without any failing of contemplation, without any interval of change, although changeable, yet not changed, it may fully enjoy Thy eternity and unchangeableness; the other, which was so formless, that it had not that by which it could be changed from one form into another, either of motion or of repose, whereby it i might be subject unto time. But this Thou didst not leave to be formless, since before all days, in the beginning Thou createdst heaven and earth,--these two things of which I spoke. But the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep.n By which words its shapelessness is conveyed unto us,that by degrees those minds may be drawn on which cannot wholly conceive the privation of all form without coming to nothing,--whence another heaven might be created, and another earth visible and well-formed, and water beautifully ordered, and whatever besides is, in the formation of this world, recorded to have been, not without days, created; because such things are so that in them the vicissitudes of times may take place, on account of the appointed changes of motions and of forms. AUGUSTINE BOOK XII p. 179

Meanwhile I conceive this, O my God, when I hear Thy Scripture speak, saying, In the beginning God made heaven and earth; but the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, and not stating on what day Thou didst create these things. Thus, meanwhile, do I conceive, that it is on account of that heaven of heavens, that intellectual heaven, where to understand is to know all at once,--not "in part," not "darkly," not "through a glass," but as a whole, in manifestation, "face to face;" not this thing now, that anon, but (as has been said) to know at once without any change of times; and on account of the invisible and formless earth, without any change of times; which change is wont to have "this thing now, that anon," because, where there is no form there can be no distinction between "this" or "that; "--it is, then, on account of these two,--a primitively formed, and a wholly formless; the one heaven, but the heaven of heavens, the other earth, but the earth invisible and formless ;--on account of these two do I meanwhile conceive that Thy Scripture said without mention of days, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." For immediately it added of what earth it spake. And when on the second day the firmament is recorded to have been created, and called heaven, it suggests to us of which heaven He spake before without mention of days. AUGUSTINE BOOK XII p. 179-180

For example, some think that they urge a conclusive argument against this opinion when they ask, how God finished all His works an the sixth day and rested on the seventh day, if He is still creating new souls. If we meet them with the quotation from the gospel (given by you in the letter to Marcellinus already mentioned), "My Father worketh hitherto," they answer that He "worketh" in maintaining those natures which He has created, not in creating new natures; otherwise, this statement would contradict the words of Scripture in Genesis, where it is most plainly declared that God finished all His works. Moreover, the words of Scripture, that He rested, are unquestionably to be understood of His resting from creating new creatures not from governing those which He had created for at that time He made things which previously did not exist, and from making these He rested because He had finished all the creatures which before they existed He saw necessary to be created, so that thenceforward He did not create and make things which previously did not exist, but made and fashioned out of things already existing whatever He did make. Thus the statements, "He rested from His works," and, "He worketh hitherto," are both true, for the gospel could not contradict Genesis. When, however, these things are brought forward by persons who advance them as conclusive against the opinion that God now creates new souls as He created the soul of the first man, and who hold either that He forms them from that one soul which existed before He rested from creation, or that He now sends them forth into bodies from some reservoir or storehouse of souls which He then created, it is easy to turn aside their argument by answering, that even in the six days God formed many things out of those natures which He had already created, as, for example, the birds and fishes were formed from the waters, and the trees, the grass, and the animals from the earth, and yet it is undeniable that He was then making things which did not exist before. AUGUSTINE LETTER CLXVI. pp. 526-527

VOLUME II

But simultaneously with time the world was made, if in the world's creation change and motion were created, as seems evident from the order of the first six or seven days. For in these days the morning and evening are counted, until, on the sixth day, all things which God then made were finished, and on the seventh the rest of God was mysteriously and sublimely signalized. What kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say! CHAP. 7 We see, indeed, that our ordinary days have no evening but by the setting, and no morning but by the rising, of the sun; but the first three days of all were passed without sun, since it is reported to have been made on the fourth day. And first of all, indeed, light was made by the word of God, and God, we read, separated it from the darkness, and called the light Day, and the darkness Night; but what kind of light that was, and by what periodic movement it made evening and morning, is beyond the reach of our senses; neither can we understand how it was, and yet must unhesitatingly believe it. AUGUSTINE CITY OF GOD BOOK XI p. 208

Who, then, will be bold enough to suggest that the angels were made after the six days' creation? If any one is so foolish, his folly is disposed of by a scripture of like authority, where God says, "When the stars were made, the angels praised me with a loud voice." The angels therefore existed before the stars; and the stars were made the fourth day. Shall we then say that they were made the third day? Far from it; for we know what was made that day. The earth was separated from the water, and each element took its own distinct form, and the earth produced all that grows on it. On the second day, then? Not even on this; for on it the firmament was made between the waters above and beneath, and was called "Heaven," in which firmament the stars were made on the fourth day. There is no question, then, that if the angels are included in the works of God during these six days, they are that light which was called "Day," and whose unity Scripture signalizes by calling that day not the "first day," but "one day." For the second day, the third, and the rest are not other days; but the same "one" day is repeated to complete the number six or seven, so that there should be knowledge both of God's works and of His rest. AUGUSTINE CITY OF GOD BOOK XI p. 210

These works are recorded to have been completed in six days (the same day being six times repeated), because six is a perfect number,--not because God required a protracted time, as if He could not at once create all things, which then should mark the course of time by the movements proper to them, but because the perfection of the works was signified by the number six. AUGUSTINE CITY OF GOD BOOK XI p. 222

They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed. AUGUSTINE CITY OF GOD BOOK XI p. 232

As to those who are always asking why man was not created during these countless ages of the infinitely extended past, and came into being so lately that, according to Scripture, less than 6000 years have elapsed since He began to be, I would reply to them regarding the creation of man, just as I replied regarding the origin of the world to those who will not believe that it is not eternal, but had a beginning, which even Plato himself most plainly declares, though some think his statement was not consistent with his real opinion. If it offends them that the time that has elapsed since the creation of man is so short, and his years so few according to our authorities, let them take this into consideration, that nothing that has a limit is long, and that all the ages of time being finite, are very little, or indeed nothing at all, when compared to the interminable eternity. Consequently, if there had elapsed since the creation of man, I do not say five or six, but even sixty or six hundred thousand years, or sixty times as many, or six hundred or six hundred thousand times as many, or this sum multiplied until it could no longer be expressed in numbers, the same question could still be put, Why was he not made before? AUGUSTINE CITY OF GOD BOOK XI p. 233

Let us now see how it can be plainly made out that in the enormously protracted lives of those men the years were not so short that ten of their years were equal to only one of ours, but were of as great length as our own, which are measured by the course of the sun. It is proved by this, that Scripture states that the flood occurred in the six hundredth year of Noah's life. But why in the same place is it also written, "The waters of the flood were upon the earth in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the twenty-seventh day of the month," if that very brief year (of which it took ten to make one of ours) consisted of thirty-six days? For so scant a year, if the ancient usage dignified it with the name of year, either has not months, or this month must be three days, so that it may have twelve of them. How then was it here said, "In the six hundredth year, the second month, the twenty-seventh day of the month," unless the months then were of the same length as the months now? For how else could it be said that the flood began on the twenty-seventh day of the second month? Then afterwards, at the end of the flood, it is thus written: "And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the eleventh month: on the first day of the month were the tops of the mountains seen." But if the months were such as we have, then so were the years. And certainly months of three days each could not have a twenty-seventh day. Or if every measure of time was diminished in proportion, and a thirtieth part of three days was then called a day, then that great deluge, which is recorded to have lasted forty clays and forty nights, was really over in less than four of our days. Who can away with such foolishness and absurdity? Far be this error from us,--an error which seeks to build up our faith in the divine Scriptures on false conjecture only to demolish our faith at another point. It is plain that the day then was what it now is, a space of four-and-twenty hours, determined by the lapse of day and night; the month then equal to the month now, which is defined by the rise and completion of one moon; the year then equal to the year now, which is completed by twelve lunar months, with the addition of five days and a fourth to adjust it with the course of the sun. It was a year of this length which was reckoned the six hundredth of Noah's life, and in the second month, the twenty-seventh day of the month, the flood began,--a flood which, as is recorded, was caused by heavy rains continuing for forty days, which days had not only two hours and a little more, but four, and-twenty hours, completing a night and a day. And consequently those antediluvians lived more than 900 years, which were years as long as those which afterwards Abraham lived 175 of, and after him his son Isaac 180, and his son Jacob nearly 150, and some time after, Moses 120, and men now seventy or eighty, or not much longer, of which years it is said, "their strength is labor and sorrow." AUGUSTINE CITY OF GOD BOOK XV p. 295

Yet no one ought to suppose either that these things were written for no purpose, or that we should study only the historical truth, apart from any allegorical meanings; or, on the contrary, that they are only allegories, and that there were no such facts at all, or that, whether it be so or no, there is here no prophecy of the church. For what right-minded man will contend that books so religiously preserved during thousands of years, and transmitted by so orderly a succession, were written without an object, or that only the bare historical facts are to be considered when we read them? For, not to mention other instances, if the number of the animals entailed the construction of an ark of great size, where was the necessity of sending into it two unclean and seven clean animals of each species, when both could have been preserved in equal numbers? Or could not God, who ordered them to be preserved in order to replenish the race, restore them in the same way He had created them?

But they who contend that these things never happened, but are only figures setting forth other things, in the first place suppose that there could not be a flood so great that the water should rise fifteen cubits above the highest mountains, because it is said that clouds cannot rise above the top of Mount Olympus, because it reaches the sky where there is none of that thicker atmosphere in which winds, clouds, and rains have their origin. They do not reflect that the densest element of all, earth, can exist there; or perhaps they deny that the top of the mountain is earth. Why, then, do these measurers and weighers of the elements contend that earth can be raised to those aerial altitudes, and that water cannot, while they admit that water is lighter, and liker to ascend than earth? What reason do they adduce why earth, the heavier and lower element, has for so many ages scaled to the tranquil ether, while water, the lighter, and more likely to ascend, is not suffered to do the same even for a brief space of time?

They say, too, that the area of that ark could not contain so many kinds of animals of both sexes, two of the unclean and seven of the clean. But they seem to me to reckon only one area of 300 cubits long and 50 broad, and not to remember that there was another similar in the story above, and yet another as large in the story above that again; and that there was consequently an area of 900 cubits by 150. And if we accept what Origen has with some appropriateness suggested, that Moses the man of God, being, as it is written, "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," who delighted in geometry, may have meant geometrical cubits, of which they say that one is equal to six of our cubits, then who does not see what a capacity these dimensions give to the ark? For as to their objection that an ark of such size could not be built, it is a very silly calumny; for they are aware that huge cities have been built, and they should remember that the ark was an hundred years in building. Or, perhaps, though stone can adhere to stone when cemented with nothing but lime, so that a wall of several miles may be constructed, yet plank cannot be riveted to plank by mortices, bolts, nails, and pitch-glue, so as to construct an ark which was not made with curved ribs but straight timbers, which was not to be launched by its builders, but to be lifted by the natural pressure of the water when it reached it, and which was to be preserved from shipwreck as it floated about rather by divine oversight than by human skill.

As to another customary inquiry of the scrupulous about the very minute creatures, not only such as mice and lizards, but also locusts, beetles, flies, fleas, and so forth, whether there were not in the ark a larger number of them than was determined by God in His command, those persons who are moved by this difficulty are to be reminded that the words "every creeping thing of the earth" only indicate that it was not needful to preserve in the ark the animals that can live in the water, whether the fishes that live submerged in it, or the sea-birds that swim on its surface. Then, when it is said "male and female," no doubt reference is made to the repairing of the races, and consequently there was no need for those creatures being in the ark which are born without the union of the sexes from inanimate things, or from their corruption; or if they were in the ark, they might be there as they commonly are in houses, not in any determinate numbers; or if it was necessary that there should be a definite number of all those animals that cannot naturally live in the water, that so the most sacred mystery which was being enacted might be bodied forth and perfectly figured in actual realities, still this was not the care of Noah or his sons, but of God. For Noah did not catch the animals and put them into the ark, but gave them entrance as they came seeking it. For this is the force of the words, "They shall come unto thee,"--not, that is to say, by man's effort, but by God's will. But certainly we are not required to believe that those which have no sex also came; for it is expressly and definitely said, "They shall be male and female."' For there are some animals which are born out of corruption, but yet afterwards they themselves copulate and produce offspring, as flies; but others, which have no sex, like bees. Then, as to those animals which have sex, but without ability to propagate their kind, like mules and shemules, it is probable that they were not in the ark, but that it was counted sufficient to preserve their parents, to wit, the horse and the ass; and this applies to all hybrids. Yet, if it was necessary for the completeness of the mystery, they were there; for even this species has "male and female."

Another question is commonly raised regarding the food of the carnivorous animals,--whether, without transgressing the command which fixed the number to be preserved, there were necessarily others included in the ark for their sustenance; or, as is more probable, there might be some food which was not flesh, and which yet suited all. For we know how many animals whose food is flesh eat also vegetable products and fruits. especially figs and chestnuts. What wonder is it, therefore, if that wise and just man was instructed by God what would suit each, so that without flesh he prepared and stored provision fit for every species? And what is there which hunger would not make animals eat? Or what could not be made sweet and wholesome by God, who, with a divine facility, might have enabled them to do without food at all, had it not been requisite to the completeness of so great a mystery that they should be fed? But none but a contentious man can suppose that there was no prefiguring of the church in so manifold and circumstantial a detail. For the nations have already so filled the church, and are comprehended in the framework of its unity, the clean and unclean together, until the appointed end, that this one very manifest fulfillment leaves no doubt how we should interpret even those others which are somewhat more obscure, and which cannot so readily be discerned. And since this is so, if not even the most audacious will presume to assert that these things were written without a purpose, or that though the events really happened they mean nothing, or that they did not really happen, but are only allegory, or that at all events they are far from having any figurative reference to the church; if it has been made out that, on the other hand, we must rather believe that there was a wise purpose in their being committed to memory and to writing, and that they did happen, and have a significance, and that this significance has a prophetic reference to the church, then this book, having served this purpose, may now be closed, that we may go on to trace in the history subsequent to the deluge the courses of the two cities,--the earthly, that lives according to men, and the heavenly, that lives according to God. AUGUSTINE CITY OF GOD BOOK XV pp. 307-308

VOLUME III

"Now, on the subject of this rest Scripture is significant, and refrains not to speak, when it tells us how at the beginning of the world, and at the time when God made heaven and earth and all things which are in them, He worked during six days, and rested on the seventh day. For it was in the power of the Almighty to make all things even in one moment of time. For He had not labored in the view that He might enjoy (a needful) rest, since indeed "He spake, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created;" but that He might signify how, after six ages of this world, in a seventh age, as on the seventh day, He will rest in His saints; inasmuch as these same saints shall rest also in Him after all the good works in which they have served Him,--which He Himself, indeed, works in them, who calls them, and instructs them, and puts away the offenses that are past, and justifies the man who previously was ungodly. AUGUSTINE ON THE CATECHISING OF THE UNINSTRUCTED pp. 301-302

VOLUME IV

In the creation God finished His works in six days, and rested on the seventh. The history of the world contains six periods marked by the dealings of God with men. The first period is from Adam to Noah; the second, from Noah to Abraham; the third, from Abraham to David; the fourth, from David to the captivity in Babylon; the fifth, from the captivity to the advent of lowliness of our Lord Jesus Christ; the sixth is now in progress, and will end in the coming of the exalted Saviour to judgment. What answers to the seventh day is the rest of the saints,-not in this life, but in another, where the rich man saw Lazarus at rest while he was tormented in hell; where there is no evening, because there is no decay. On the sixth day, in Genesis, man is formed after the image of God; in the sixth period of the world there is the clear discovery of our transformation in the renewing of our mind, according to the image of Him who created us, as the apostle says. AUGUSTINE BOOK XII pp. 185-186

VOLUME V

Call to mind the ordering of the creation. God spake, the waters brought forth swimming creatures, great whales, fish, birds, and such like things. Did all the birds come of one bird? Did all vultures come of one vulture? Did all doves come of one dove? Did all snakes come of one snake? or all gilt-heads of one gilt-head? or all sheep of one sheep? No, the earth assuredly brought forth all these kinds together. But when it came to man, the earth did not bring forth man. One father was made for us; not even two, father and mother: one father, I say, was made for us, not even two, father and mother; but out of the one father came the one mother; the one father came from none, but was made by God, and the one mother came out of him. Mark then the nature of our race: we flowed out of one fountain; and because that one was turned to bitterness, we all became from a good, a wild olive tree. And so grace came also. One begat us unto sin and death, yet as one race, yet as neighbours one to another, yet as not merely like, but related to each other. There came One against one; against the one who scattered, One who gathereth. Thus against the one who slayeth, is the One who maketh alive. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." AUGUSTINE SERMON XL p. 395

But in that sabbath, in which it is said that God rested from all His works, in the Rest of God our rest was signified; because the sabbath of this world shall be, when the six ages shall have passed away. The six days as it were of the world are passing away. One day hath passed away, from Adam unto Noe; another from the deluge unto Abraham; the third from Abraham unto David; the fourth from David unto the carrying away into Babylon; the fifth froth the carrying away into Babylon unto the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now the sixth day is in passing. We are in the sixth age, in the sixth day. Let us then be reformed after the image of God, because that on the sixth day man was made after the image of God. What formation did then, let reformation do in us, and what creation did there, let creating-anew do in us. After this day in which we now are, after this age, the rest which is promised to the saints and prefigured in those days, shall come. Because in very truth too, after all things which He made in the world, He hath made nothing new in creation afterwards. AUGUSTINE SERMON LXXV p. 477

VOLUME VII

And we know that the law extends from the time of which we have record, that is, from the beginning of the world: "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.' Thence down to the time in which we are now living are six ages, this being the sixth, as you have often heard and know. The first age is reckoned from Adam to Noah; the second, from Noah to Abraham; and, as Matthew the evangelist duly follows and distinguishes, the third, from Abraham to David; the fourth, from David to the carrying away into Babylon; the fifth, from the carrying away into Babylon to John the Baptist; the sixth, from John the Baptist to the end of the world. Moreover, God made man after His own image on the sixth day, because in this sixth age is manifested the renewing of our mind through the gospel, after the image of Him who created us; and the water is turned into wine, that we may taste of Christ, now manifested in the law and the prophets, Hence "there were there six water-pots," which He bade be filled with water. Now the six water-pots signify the six ages, which were not without prophecy. And those six periods, divided and separated as it were by joints, would be as empty vessels unless they were filled by Christ. Why did I say, the periods which would run fruit-lessly on, unless the Lord Jesus were preached in them ? Prophecies are fulfilled, the water-pots are full; but that the water may be turned into wine, Christ must be understood in that whole prophecy. AUGUSTINE TRACTATE IX p. 65

For God sanctified not the first day, when He made the light; nor the second, when He made the firmament; nor the third, when He separated the sea from the land, and the land brought forth grass and timber; nor the fourth, wherein the stars were created; nor the fifth, wherein were created the animals that live in the waters or fly in the air; nor the sixth, when the terrestrial living soul and man himself were created; but He sanctified the seventh day, wherein He rested from all His works. AUGUSTINE TRACTATE CXXII p. 442

VOLUME VIII

Wherefore also "on the fifth of the sabbath"? What is this? Let us go back to the first works of God, if perchance we may not there find somewhat in which we may also understand a mystery. For the sabbath is the seventh day, on which "God rested from all His works," intimating the great mystery of our future resting from all our works. First of the sabbath then is called that first day, which we also call the Lord's day; second of the sabbath, the second day; ... and the sabbath itself the seventh day. See ye therefore to whom this Psalm speaketh. For it seems to me that it speaketh to the baptized. For on the fifth day God from the waters created animals: on the fifth day, that

is, on the "fifth of the sabbath," God said, "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls." See ye, therefore, ye in whom the waters have already brought forth creeping things of living souls. For ye belong to the presses, and in you, whom the waters have brought forth, one thing is strained out, another is thrown away. For there are many that live not worthily of the baptism which they have received. For how many that are baptized have chosen rather to be filling the Circus than this Basilica! How many that are baptized are either making booths in the streets, or complaining that they are not made! AUGUSTINE PSALM LXXXI pp. 390-391

It is entitled, "The Song of praise of David himself, on the day before the Sabbath, when the earth was rounded." Remembering then what God did through all those days, when He made and ordained all things, from the first up to the sixth day (for the seventh He sanctified, because He rested on that day after all the works, which He made very good), we find that He created on the sixth day (which day is here mentioned, in that he saith, "before the Sabbath") all animals on the earth; lastly, He on that very day created man in His own likeness and image. For these days were not without l reason ordained in such order, but for that ages also were to run in a like course, before we rest in God. AUGUSTINE PSALM XCIII p. 456

Let us therefore recall from the holy Scripture in Genesis, what was created on the first day; we find light: what was created on the second day; we find the firmament, which God called heaven: what was created on the third day; we find the form of earth and sea, and their separation, that all the gathering together of the waters was called sea, and all that was dry, the earth. On the fourth day, the Lord made the lights in heaven: "The sun to rule the day: the moon and stars to govern the night:" this was the work of the fourth day. What then is the reason that the Psalm hath taken its title from the fourth day: the Psalm in which patience is enjoined against the prosperity of the wicked, and the sufferings of the good. Thou findest the Apostle Paul speaking. "Do all things without murmurings and disputings: that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life. AUGUSTINE PSALM XCIV p. 460

Such was, assuredly, the conduct of the Psalmist, who saith, "Seven times a day do I praise Thee, because of Thy righteous judgments" (ver. 164). The words "seven times a day," signify "evermore." For this number is wont to be a symbol of universality; because after six days of the divine work of creation, a seventh of rest was added; and all times roll on through a revolving cycle of seven days. AUGUSTINE PSALM CXIX p. 187

St. Chrysostom Volumes

VOLUME XII

For with God nothing is difficult: but as the painter who has made one likeness will make ten thousand with ease, so also with God it is easy to make worlds without number and end. Rather, as it is easy for you to conceive a city and worlds without bound, so unto God is it easy to make them; or rather again it is easier by far. For thou consumest time, brief though it be, in thy conception; but God not even this, but as much as stones are heavier than any of the lightest things, yea even than our minds; so much is our mind surpassed by the rapidity of God's work of creation. Do you marvel at His power on the earth? Think again how the heaven was made, not yet being; how the innumerable stars, how the sun, how the moon; and all these things not yet being. Again, tell me how after they were made they stood fast, and upon what? What foundation have they? and what the earth? What comes next to the earth? and again, what after that which came next to the earth? Do you see into what an eddy the eye of your mind is plunged, unless you quickly take refuge in faith and the incomprehensible power of the Maker? JOHN CHRYSOSTOM HOMILY XVII p. 98


NICENE AND POST-NICENE FATHERS, Series II

VOLUME III

Let us also look at the matter in this way. Do we say that the divine Word is Creator of the Universe?

Eran.--So we have learnt to believe from the divine Scriptures.

Orth.--And how many days after the creation of heaven and earth are we told that Adam was formed?

Eran.--On the sixth day.

Orth.--And from Adam to Abraham

how many generations went by?

Eran.--I think twenty. THEODORET DIALOGUES p. 193

He [Rhodo] also composed elegant treatises On the six days of creation and a notable work against the Phrygians. p. 371 . . . CANDIDUS under the above mentioned emperors published most admirable treatises On the six days of creation. p. 372 . . . Appion under the emperor Severus likewise wrote treatises On the six days of creation. p. 373 . . . He [Hippolytus] wrote Some commentaries on the Scriptures, among which are the following: On the six days of creation p. 375 . . . Basil, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, the city formerly called Mazaca, composed admirable carefully written books Against Eunomius, a volume On the Holy Spirit, and nine homilies On the six

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Mar 22 2006, 01:44 PM']I have no problem with God working miracles
do you?
[right][snapback]918102[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]

Ah, so you are saying that you don't reject a world wide flood?

[cmotherofpirl]

the underline and bold functions work well.

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Mar 22 2006, 01:48 PM']the underline and bold functions work well.
[right][snapback]918113[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]

You didn't underline or bold anything, and posted two very long articles. I read through both of them.