Bishop Barron on Genesis

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Exquisite theological poetry.

I've been quite critical of Bishop Robert Barron - the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles - a number of times before. If you're in the mood for punishment, see here and here.

Okay, also see here, here and here.

For the record, relative to many members of the extended Francis Junta, I don't think Barron is evil.

Rather, he is simply an incredibly annoying blatheramus.

More to the point, for all his faux-intellectualism, many of his arguments and views, far from being particularly profound or deep are merely shallow and silly.

Below is a transcript (I believe the first actual transcript) of a well-known YouTube video of Barron discussing the Book of Genesis. You may have seen it or heard of it, or you may have seen other videos of Barron making the same points.

Now, most people when they read Genesis (this is still me writing, we'll get to Barron's transcript in a moment) view it as in part a collection of stories. We start with the creation of the world including the creation of the first man from the dust of the earth and the creation of the first woman from his side. Then there is the Fall and man's exile from the Garden. Adam and Eve bear children, but their oldest son Cain commits the first murder and thereby receives a "mark." Years later, man's wickedness prompts God to send a Flood to destroy all the earth's creatures save a few members of the same family and a selection of animals given refuge in an ark whose exact dimensions are given in cubits. Soon after its narrow escape from that, humanity tempts God again by attempting to build a tower to the sky. God responds by creating the first foreign languages and scattering the newly confused peoples across the face of the earth. Then we meet Abraham, Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael. There is a Covenant. We hear of Mesopotamia, Canaan, Egypt and many other places and peoples. Next there is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah where these cities are destroyed and Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt. Abraham's son Isaac is almost sacrificed. At the end of the Book, we learn of Jacob, Joseph and the beginnings of the Jews' slavery in Egypt.

I've left a few things out. There are of course angels and other mysterious beings who come and go. Also people often seem to live an extremely long time. We learn this in part through three genealogies that track individuals and nations over many generations going back to Adam.

It's natural for readers to interpret Genesis as making certain claims about things that happened thousands of years ago. To that extent, much of Genesis is history, or at least purports to be. Or at least appears to purport to be.

It's also of course natural for cynical moderns (I'm one of them) to ask whether any of this history, including people coming from ribs, and floods and arks, and angels and giants, and God nuking entire habitations of unwelcoming rapists is true.

But Barron rejects that. According to Barron, not only does Genesis not relate actual history, it doesn't even intend to. Instead it's sort of an extended allegorical poem.

Here is the actual video:

And here is the transcript:        

You know, I'm continually amazed how often in my work of evangelization the problem of Genesis comes up. What I mean is people that are just balking over what seems to be the bad science on display in the book of Genesis. They say, look how can you possibly make sense of this text that says God made the world in six days, all the species came into being, you know, roughly at the same time, that light existed before the sun and moon. I mean, come on, how do you square this very naive mythological cosmology with the subtle work of Newton and Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Genesis is just bad science. Who can take it seriously today? 

Well, here's a way to get at it. When looking at the Bible - and Vatican 2 is real clear on this - you've got to be sensitive to genre. What kind of text are we dealing with? See, people make mistakes about that all the time. It would be, it would be a mistake to look at Moby Dick and expect it to be a 19th century history, a mistake to look at T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and expect it to be a spy novel. You have to know what kind of text you're dealing with. 

So, what is Genesis? If I can borrow a page from father George Coyne, the great Jesuit priest and astrophysicist, he said, look, modern science commences in the late 16th, early 17th century with Galileo and Descartes and Pascal and company. The last biblical book is written around the Year 100 A.D. There's just no way that the Bible is modern science. Modern science didn't exist yet. So whatever is going on in the Bible, it's not what we mean by modern science. What Newton and Stephen Hawking and Einstein and company were doing is just simply not what the biblical authors are doing. Newton and company are following the ideas and principles of modern science, namely to observe, to form hypotheses, to test them with experimentation, draw conclusions, etc. Okay, so don't look at Genesis as bad science. That's like looking at The Wasteland as a bad spy novel. It's not a spy novel at all. Genesis is not science at all. 

So what is it? I would call it theology, mysticism, spirituality. It's a theological reflection on the origin of all things. 

So, what are some of the insights we gain once we get this genre issue clear? Well, there are many, many. Genesis is so rich and so multivalent. I'll just pick out a couple. 

Here's the first one. God makes the whole world. Now translate this, philosophically, if you want, into the non-contingent ground of contingency gives rise to all things. Even here and now. So creation is happening now. Genesis is talking theologically about something that's happening even now. God is giving rise to the world. How? How - through a nonviolent act of speech. God says "let there be light," and there's light. God says "let the earth come forth," and it comes forth. In almost all the mythologies of the ancient world, all the ancient cosmologies, the world comes forth in a great act of violence. God or the gods battle with some opponent. They wrestle a rival into submission, and in that act order ensues. By the way, notice how that myth is very prevalent even to this day. We still tend to believe that order comes through violence, through the conquest of a rival. There's none of that, though, in Genesis. God brings forth the world not through violence, not through conquest, but through a sheerly generous nonviolent act of speech. Link it now, if you want, to the great ethical teachings of Jesus, about the love of enemies, about non-violence. What he's recommending is not just a more correct ethical path. He's recommending to fall into line with the deepest grain of the universe - that God makes the world through non-violent love. There's a first theological theme in Genesis. 

Here's a second one. People of that time, the time the Bible was written, worshiped all kinds of gods, right? Some worshiped the stars. Some worshiped the moon. Some worshipped the Sun. Some worshipped animals, right? All these different features of creation were worshipped as gods. Now, what does the author of Genesis say? God created the heavens and the earth. God created the stars. God created the planets and the moon and the sun. God created all the animals. You see what he's doing, is he is dethroning all these false claimants to divinity. He's saying none of these is in fact God. But they all come from God and they bear witness to God. But he's enunciating, if you want, a great anti-idolatry principle. Nothing in this world is God. The true God is the creator of all things. 

Relevant message today? You bet. I mean, we worship all kinds of things, you know, from pleasure, to money, to power etc. No, no. God makes all those things. They're all under the aegis of God, but they're not to be worshipped. It's a second theological point. 

Here's a third one, and again I could pick many, many, it's such a rich text. Adam - now don't read it literally, we're not talking about a literal figure, we're talking in theological poetry - Adam, the first human being, names all the animals. He catalogues them. Kata logon in the Greek means "according to the word." God has imbued all things with intelligibility. Adam, noticing the intelligibility, names them, gives them their proper title. Who is he? The Church Fathers, read him as the first scientist. He's the first philosopher. He's the human being in his proper role as the steward of creation, and the one who names and orders all things according to God's creative intention. This is the great humanism that's implicit in Genesis: eat of all the trees, right, we hear. The Church Fathers said that's the great permission of Genesis. Adam and Eve, who are kind of at play in the field of the Lord, that stands for science, for art for politics, for conversation, for friendship -  all these forms of human flourishing under the lordship of God. Genesis is a great humanistic text. 

Now, those are three insights I could garner many many more. Read great commentators on Genesis. Read the great spiritual and theological interpreters of it. Get over the problem of Genesis as bad science. It's not bad science. It's not science at all. Rather, it is exquisite theology.

For the record, relative to the long sweep of interpretive history, this is a very modern view. While a small minority of Fathers and Doctors of the Church made or entertained claims that a few portions of Genesis were merely figurative, no Catholic theologians until quite recently would have endorsed the thesis that the whole thing was merely figurative.

Though Barron doesn't acknowledge it, if this view of Biblical interpretation is correct, Catholics and Christians got the first part of the Bible wrong for close to 2,000 years.

What is Barron's argument for the view? On the surface, frankly, it's inane. He begins with the straw man that some have viewed Genesis as some sort of science textbook. Then "modern science" is tautologically defined as beginning 450 or so years ago. Thus, since Genesis was written 2,000 years ago (it was traditionally dated to more than 3,000 years ago), its genre is not history or quasi-history but "theology, mysticism, spirituality."

Thucydides came before Newton. Thus, the History of the Peloponnesian War is mysticism.

Wait, what?

As far as I can tell, Barron never explicitly denies that Genesis is history, Rather, he denies that it's science or "modern science." But what he really means is that it's not history. This kind of dishonest bait and switch is par for the course for the new evangelist. 

But let's move on. Barron wants to take our history away. But what does he wish to replace it with? Genesis isn't (according to Barron) telling us about actual events. What is it telling us?

1) Non-violence is (in some sense) the way of the universe.

Given the actual text, this claim is more than silly. It's insane. Non-violence? Genesis states that the first naturally born human being was a murderer. After that, killing - by human beings and God - seems to appear on almost every page. Indeed, the violence reaches such a point that God decides to kill everyone (by drowning) except for eight lucky people. He also kills almost all the animals.

Did all this actually happen? Perhaps not. An alternative account (presumably endorsed by Barron) is that for more than a billion years, the engine of God's creation was the "survival of the fittest," with trillions of creatures killing other creatures in a violent and deadly struggle for resources. And to emphasize, they didn't just do this on their own. Rather, God set the whole bloody mechanism up as his preferred method of creation. Xenocidal meteor strikes also occur with regularity.

Do not misunderstand my point. I'm not claiming here that God endorses violence per se in Genesis or anywhere else. He'd have a bit more to say about that in Exodus of course. But using Genesis to, as it were, find Gandhi in "every grain of the universe" is an insult to hidden meanings.

If you've read some of his other writings, you would know that Barron very much likes (and wants you very much to know that he very much likes) Gandhi and Martin Luther King. But still.    

Finally, and not to rub it in, it's just not true to assert that all alternative religious creation stories feature violence as an essential component. I know a bit about this. It just isn't and they don't. Indeed, that's an insult to other religions that Barron, an arch-ecumenist, should be ashamed of. Actually, many creation stories, including one that was quite popular in the ancient middle-east, use sex. (I wonder why, the cynic might rhetorically ask.) The Chinese even have a rooster.

Exquisite. Theological. Poetry.

2) The moon is not God. Etc.

32,000 words to say that? Exquisite.

3) Adam was the first scientist.

Since, according to Barron, modern science didn't start until the Enlightenment, Adam was presumably a pre-modern scientist, which I guess means he didn't do repeatable experiments and probably put too much emphasis on Thomistic analogies.

But to be serious, since Barron does not think of Adam as a literal or historical figure, what Barron is really saying is that man or mankind was made to do science. Too bad it took him thousands of years to get past the allegory. 

Man was also apparently meant for politics, which if you think about it is pretty sick. And if Barron is implying that politics is also embedded in the deepest grain of the universe, I'm now going to get a bit violent...

4) Many, many others...

It's funny, though. In all the interviews and talks I've seen, he only mentions the above three. It's almost as if he has the lecture notes from some liberal 1980's seminary class up his sleeve. 

Enough.

This is the "new evangelization."

It's also religion for idiots.

If you're wondering why atheism or quasi-atheism seems to be currently in the ascendence, you need to look no further than Barron and his like.

Or for that matter, if allegory is all there is, why not just go Pagan? At least it would be more fun.

Or to put it another way, if allegory is all there is, why not just pick the allegory (from the sacred texts of any religion) that one likes best? If Genesis merely expresses theological truth, how do we know it is the truth?

Perhaps because it was Jesus' favorite, though, according to the text, Jesus did not believe Genesis to be mere allegory.

Of course, as we'll see next, Barron appears to believe that much of the Gospels are mere allegory as well...

The Biblical Literalism of English Catholic George Leo Haydock

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George Leo Haydock (1774-1849) was an English Catholic priest and Bible scholar who edited and annotated the most popular and widely-used English Catholic Bible of the 19th century. His Haydock Catholic Bible Commentary, originally appearing with that version, is one of the most important and influential Catholic Bible commentaries of the modern era. In 2007, the 1859 edition was made available online.

The Old Testament commentary was the fruit of many years of research and study. I should note, however, that while the New Testament portion is quite useful, it apparently was not written by Haydock himself. 

Haydock's Commentary gives us a window into 19th century Catholic views on the interpretation of Scripture in general and Genesis in particular. While Haydock, following standard historical Catholic practice, often expounded on the figurative and prophetic meanings of the text, he at the same time interpreted the relevant parts of the text precisely literally, also following standard Catholic practice.

Keeping in mind the obvious theological points of disagreement, a typical 21st century Protestant fundamentalist would be quite comfortable with 98% of Haydock's work. Update the language slightly, and any of the below could have been written by the creationist evangelist Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis.

Thus, the view expressed by some contemporary Catholics that Catholic thinkers have always had a much more "sophisticated" theological (but non-literal) approach to interpreting the first book of the Old Testament and that, thus, creationism - the literal interpretation of the creation story of Genesis - is nothing more than a modern Protestant phenomenon is false.

To be blunt, those making that claim are either ignorant (often culpably) or dishonest.

You can decide what that makes Word on Fire's Bishop Robert Barron.

Among other things, mainstream early- to mid-19th Catholic thinkers and authors were creationists. And their 19th century Catholic readers would have found this unremarkable.   

Here are some excerpts from Haydock's Commentary, which I have in most cases prefaced by the verse or verses of Genesis that are referenced. (The translations are from the 1899 Douay-Rheims American Edition). In his pronouncements and speculations on the literal meanings of the text, notice how Haydock often cites other Catholic authorities, from the Fathers and Doctors of the Church to his peers and contemporaries.

The Heavens and the Earth were created in six literal days:

1:1 In the beginning God created heaven, and earth. 

...The first cause of all things must be God, who, in a moment, spoke, and heaven and earth were made, heaven with all the Angels; and the whole mass of the elements, in a state of confusion, and blended together, out of which the beautiful order, which was afterwards so admirable, arose in the space of six days...

The sun and moon were created on the fourth day, but light of some kind was created on the first day:

1:3 And God said: Be light made. And light was made. 

Light. The sun was made on the fourth day, and placed in the firmament to distinguish the seasons, &c.; but the particles of fire were created on the first day, and by their, or the earth's motion, served to discriminate day from the preceding night, or darkness, which was upon the face of the deep. H. --- Perhaps this body of light might resemble the bright cloud which accompanied the Israelites, Ex. xiv. 19, or the three first days might have a kind of imperfect sun, or be like one of our cloudy days. Nothing can be defined with certainty respecting the nature of this primeval light. C.

One may even speculate on the precise date (in terms if modern calendars) of the third day of creation:

1:11 And he said: Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, which may have seed in itself upon the earth. And it was so done. 

...At the creation, trees were covered with fruit in Armenia, while in the more northern regions they would not even have leaves: Calmet hence justly observes, that the question concerning the season of the year when the world began, must be understood only with reference to that climate in which Adam dwelt. Scaliger asserts, that the first day corresponds with our 26th of October, while others, particularly the Greeks, fix it upon the 25th of March, on which day Christ was conceived; and, as some Greeks say, was born and nailed to the cross. The great part of respectable authors declare for the vernal equinox, when the year is in all its youth and beauty. H. See T. and Salien's Annals, B.C. Christ 4053. 

Scripture is not a treatise on natural history, but neither does it ever assert anything false:

1:16 And God made two great lights: a greater light to rule the day; and a lesser light to rule the night: and the stars. 

But we must remember, that the sacred writings were given to instruct us in the way to heaven, and not to unfold to us the systems of natural history; and hence God generally addresses us in a manner best suited to our conceptions, and speaks of nature as it appears to the generality of mankind. At the same time, we may confidently asset, that the Scriptures never assert what is false. If we judge, with the vulgar, that the sun, moon, and stars are no larger than they appear to our naked eye, we shall still have sufficient reason to admire the works of God; but, if we are enabled to discover that the sun's diameter, for example, is 763 thousand miles, and its distance from our earth about 95 million miles, and the fixed stars (as they are called, though probably all in motion) much more remote, what astonishment must fill our breast!

Men (and probably beasts) were originally vegetarians:

1:29 And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat: 

1:30 And to all beasts of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to all that move upon the earth, and wherein there is life, that they may have to feed upon. And it was so done. 

Every herb, &c. As God does not here express leave to eat flesh-meat, which he did after the deluge, it is supposed that the more religious part of mankind, at least, abstained from it, and from wine, till after that event, when they became more necessary to support decayed nature. H. M. --- In the golden age, spontaneous fruits were the food of happy mortals. C.

The Garden of Eden was a real place, located in actual geographical space:

2:8 And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed. 

Paradise lay probably to the east of Palestine, or of that country where Moses wrote. The precise situation cannot be ascertained. Calmet places it in Armenia, others near Babylon, &c. Some assert that this beautiful garden is still in being, the residence of Henoch and Elias. But God will not permit the curiosity of man to be gratified by the discovery of it. C. iii. 24. How great might be its extent we do not know. If the sources of the Ganges, Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates, be not now changed, and if these be the rivers which sprung from the fountains of Paradise, (both which are points undecided) the garden must have comprised a great part of the world, H., as the Ganges rises in Judea, and the Nile about the middle of Africa. T.

The tree of life and the tree of knowledge were literal entities:

2:9 And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

The tree of life. So called, because it had that quality, that by eating of the fruit of it, man would have been preserved in a constant state of health, vigour, and strength, and would not have died at all. The tree of knowledge. To which the deceitful serpent falsely attributed the power of imparting a superior kind of knowledge beyond that which God was pleased to give. Ch. --- Of what species these two wonderful trees were, the learned are not agreed. The tree of knowledge, could not communicate any wisdom to man; but, by eating of its forbidden fruit, Adam dearly purchased the knowledge of evil, to which he was before a stranger. Some say it was the fig-tree, others an apple-tree. Cant. viii. 5. But it probably agreed with no species of trees with which we are acquainted, nor was there perhaps any of the same kind in paradise. T.

Adam lived to the age of 930, but from the moment he ate the fruit, his body had started to decay:

2:17 But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death. 

The death of the soul, and become obnoxious to that of the body; thou shalt become a mortal and lose all the privileges of innocence. Though Adam lived 930 years after this, he was dying daily; he carried along with him the seeds of death, as we do, from our very conception.

Eve was literally created from Adam's rib:

2:21 Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it. 

2:22 And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman: and brought her to Adam. 

2:23 And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. 

Of my flesh. God did not, therefore, take a rib without flesh, nor perhaps did he replace flesh without a rib in Adam's side, though S. Aug. thinks he did. These words of Adam are attributed to God, Matthew xix, because they were inspired by him. --- Woman. As this word is derived from man, so in Hebrew Isha (or Asse) comes from Iish or Aiss; Latin vira woman, and virago comes from vir. H. --- But we do not find this allusion so sensible in any of the Oriental languages, as in the Hebrew, whence another proof arises of this being the original language. C.

The Fall changed the actual properties of nature:

3:17 And to Adam he said: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. 

3:18 Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth. 

Thorns, &c. These were created at first, but they would have easily been kept under: now they grow with surprising luxuriancy, and the necessaries of life can be procured only with much labour.

Much of Genesis is comprised of literal eyewitness accounts (beginning with those of Adam), and their authority is guaranteed by God: 

[Comment on 3:24]...Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. H.

Men before the Flood often lived extremely long lives. Less than 6,000 years elapsed between the creation of Adam and the birth of Jesus (note that these estimates are 1,200 to 1,600 years longer than some of the Protestant estimates of the time):

5:5 And all the time that Adam lived came to nine hundred and thirty years, and he died. 

He died...God prolonged the lives of the patriarchs to a more advanced age, that the world might be sooner filled. Their constitution was then more excellent, the fruits of the earth more nourishing, &c. But the sole satisfactory reason for their living almost a thousand years, while we can hardly arrive at 70, is, because so it pleased God, in whose hands are all our lots. There is a great difference in the number of years assigned by the Hebrew and Vulgate, from that which the Samaritan copy mentions; and the Sept. differs from both. Whether the difference be real, or only apparent, we shall not pretend to determine. The Church has not decided which system of chronology is the most accurate. In the Martyrology, she adopts that of the Sept. and placed the birth of Christ in 5199, after Eusebius and Bede, though Riccioli calculates the Sept. at 5634 years. H...

Men before the Flood were probably larger physically - akin to giants - but there also existed actual giants:

6:4 Now giants were upon the earth in those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, and they brought forth children, these are the mighty men of old, men of renown. 

Giants. It is likely the generality of men before the flood were of a gigantic stature, in comparison with what men now are. But these here spoken of, are called giants, as being not only tall in stature, but violent and savage in their dispositions, and mere monsters of cruelty and lust. Ch. --- Yet we need not imagine, that they were such as the poets describe, tearing up mountains, and hurling them against heaven. Being offspring of men, who had lived hitherto with great temperance, but now gave full scope to their passions, and the love of the fair daughters whom they chose, we need not wonder that they should be amazingly strong and violent. Nephilim, rushing on, as Ag. translates. That there have been giants of an unusual size, all historians testify. Og, Goliah, &c. are mentioned in Scripture, and the sons of Enac are represented as much above the common size, as the Hebrews were greater than grasshoppers. Num. xiii. 34. If we should suppose they were four or five times our size, would that be more wonderful that they should live nine or ten times as long as we do? See S. Aug. C. D. xv. 9. 23. Calmet's Dissert. &c. Delrio affirms, that in 1572 he saw at Rouen, a native of Piedmont, above nine feet high. H. --- Of old. The corruption of morals had commenced many ages ago, and some of the sons of Seth had given way to their lusts; so that we are not to suppose, that these giants were all born within a hundred years of the flood, as some might suppose from their being mentioned here, after specifying the age of Noe. C. v. 31. H.

Here are Haydock's speculations on the physical design of the Ark, extrapolated from the instructions given to Noah by God in Genesis 6:14-16:

Timber planks. Heb. "gopher wood," which is no where else mentioned in Scripture. It was probably a sort of wood full of rosin, and being besmeared with something like our pitch, was capable of resisting the fury of the ensuing tremendous storm, for a length of time. C. H. --- Rooms to separate the birds, various animals, provisions, &c. --- Pitch, lit. "besmear it with bitumen," which has a very strong smell, able to counteract the disagreeable odours arising from beasts confined. M. --- It might be mixed with some other ingredients, naphtha, pitch, &c. C. 

Three hundred cubits, &c. The ark, according to the dimensions here set down, contained four hundred and fifty thousand square cubits; which were more than enough to contain all the kinds of living creatures, with all necessary provisions: even supposing the cubits here spoken of to have been only a foot and a half each, which was the least kind of cubits. Ch. --- It is therefore unnecessary for us to have recourse, with Cappel, to the sacred cubit, which was twice as large as the common one, but which seems not to have been in use among the Jews before the Babylonian captivity. Still less need we adopt the geometrical cubit, which contains six ordinary ones, as we might be authorised to do by the great names of Origen and S. Aug. de C. D. xv. 27. q. in Gen. i. 4. These dimensions would make the ark as large as a city. Moses always speaks of the same sort of cubit, used probably in Egypt. Apelles and other heretics, with some modern infidels, have attempted to shew, that this account of Moses is fabulous. But they have been amply refuted by able calculators, John Buteo, Pelletier, &c. This amazing structure, for which God himself gave the plan, was divided with three stories, besides the lower part of the vessel, which might serve to keep fresh water. The different species of animals are not so numerous, as some imagine. Fishes, and such creatures as can live in water, would not need to come into the ark. Animals deprived of exercise, and allowed barely what may support nature, will live upon a very little. Even an ox, according to Columella, will live on 30 pounds of hay, or on a cubic foot, a whole day, so that 400 of these large creatures might be supported on 146,000 cubic feet. The middle story, for provisions, would alone contain 150,000 cubits. Noe's family, and the birds, would probably occupy the room above, in which was a window all around, of the height of a cubit, without glass or crystal, which were not yet invented, but defended with lattice work of wood, like our dairy rooms. H. 

In a cubit. This is understood by some, of the height of the window; by others, of the roof, which would be almost flat, like the top of a coach. Menoch supposes, that the whole ark was to be measured with the cubit in every part, from the bottom to the top; and the words of it, properly refer to the ark. --- Side, or at the end, about the middle way, that the animals might be coveyed easily to their stalls. The door would open into the story allotted to the beasts, and all things might enter it by a sort of bridge, or by sloping planks. C. --- Ordure might be thrown down into the lowest part of the ark, separated from the reservoir of fresh water, or might be brought up with ropes and buckets to the window at the top, which would easily open. T.

I'm going to stop here. But one could go on to cite Haydock's treatment of virtually everything else in Genesis as literal history.

I encourage those who are interested to mark Haydock as a possible reference for their other Bible readings.

Was There a Biblical Flood?

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Is this what really happened?

One might be forgiven the impression that the Catholic Church has given up on the story of Noah and the Flood as anything more than that, a story. After all, it's the Protestant evangelicals who are enthusiastically building full-scale ark replicas, mounting search expeditions to Mt. Ararat and all the rest. While on the Catholic side we have to make do with the likes of Bishop Barron and his ironically named "Word on Fire" lectures arguing that a good portion of the Old Testament is mere allegory containing no more literal truth than the novel Moby Dick.

While I suspect it's true that the majority of post-Vatican II Catholic laypeople and prelates do not anymore believe in an historical Noah, to the extent that there is an official current Church position on the matter it is that Noah was a real person and the Flood - a massive cataclysm that wiped out all but eight human beings - was a real event.

Noah and the Flood are mentioned in five sections of the 1993 Catholic Catechism. Following longstanding interpretive tradition, the flood is said to prefigure baptism, with the dove sent by Noah representing the Holy Spirit. Christ is in a sense the new Ark. But there's no indication that the Catechism authors do not mean it also to be taken literally. Among other things, a mere allegorical Covenant would have no meaning.

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) reports that virtually all Catholic theologians up to that time believed that the Flood was a real event.

The New Testament refers to Noah in many places. Among other things, he appears in the standard genealogies as well as the well-known warning spoken by our Lord Himself:

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

And, of course, the references to Noah and the Flood in Genesis and other places in the Old Testament are written in a manner that appears to describe real events, including relating the exact dimensions of the Ark.

It should also be added that stories of a massive and perhaps worldwide flood are ubiquitous in the myths of perhaps the majority of world cultures.

However, among those 20th and 21st century Catholic theologians who subscribe to the orthodox literalist position, it's also true to say that many if not most believe that the Flood was not a global event but merely local to the Middle-East. The Catholic Encyclopedia itself leans in this direction, while admitting that this (in 1913) was a relatively new interpretation brought about by the scientific evidence or lack of it, for a worldwide flood. 

Thus, from around 1800 to 1900, a time when geology was still in its infancy, many orthodox Catholics stopped believing in a global Flood. Why this happened is an interesting question but I will not answer it in detail here. My own view is that it was as much due to a new critical attitude towards the interpretation of Scripture, as well as sympathy with certain philosophical or pseudo-scientific premises popular at the time - such as uniformitarianism - rather than any explicit clash with the empirical evidence per se.

It is important to note, however, that the view that the Flood was local went along with, and still goes along with the orthodox understanding that it nevertheless wiped out all of humanity except for Noah and his family. Thus, the new more "scientific" view carried with it a premise that could later be theoretically disproved by science - that at the time of the Flood, mankind had not yet spread out past a relatively small area in the lands of the Bible.

Contemporary proponents of the local theory must grapple with the fact that modern science seems to show that the human population was diffused around the world many tens of thousands of years ago. If we are to take the orthodox but local theory seriously, then we would have to believe that out of a pre-civilized population who, when it came to technology, were primarily focused on slowly coming up with a better axe-head, there came one family with the knowledge and means to construct a massive boat, 500 feet long.

This, in my view, is another example where a supposedly more "scientific" and believable theory, meant to make Scripture consistent with the alleged discoveries of modern science, ends up in fact looking ad hoc and preposterous.

Proponents of the local theory believe that their account is more realistic when it comes to the diversity of animals taken on the Ark and rescued. How would Noah have had the time or space to save all those Arctic animals and jungle animals, etc.? But if the question is flipped, it becomes devastating in the opposite direction. Why would God want Noah to go to extravagant lengths to merely carry the Middle-Eastern creatures, virtually all of whom, or at least their close relatives, would have survived anyway, elsewhere?

Most "young-earth" creationists believe that the Flood was global and occurred sometime in the mid- to early third millennium before Christ. This appears to assume a massive telescoping of human history, at least as most now understand it, with the Biblical attempt to erect the Tower of Babel and the historical beginnings of Egyptian civilization - its gigantic monuments soon to follow - being apparently squeezed into just a few hundred years. On the face of it, this seems ridiculous. We should note, however, that the written histories - the records of dynasties and so forth, as opposed to mere archaeological extrapolations - "coincidentally" go back to around that time and no further.

Those who do not believe in the Biblical account of the Flood cite a lack of geological and other evidence. The "old-earth" local Flood camp must somehow contend with this as well as the technological question: If civilization is really much older, and intercontinental migrations go back much farther than the Biblical literalists suggest (and old-earth creationists generally accept the premises involved in carbon-dating, the fossil record claims for early man and so on), then how can one make sense of such a high-tech project as the Ark in, say, 50,000 B.C.? That the fact that it didn't happen is not provable by modern science seems small consolation. Indeed, to me, it emphasizes the desperate nature of the view.

But the young-earth creationists at least have a consistent story - consistent within its own terms, that is. In response to the alleged lack of evidence for a worldwide flood, they claim that the evidence is in fact everywhere. The fossil stratification and geological phenomena supposedly pointing to great age is reinterpreted by them as evidence for a cataclysmic event. The unprecedented physical force of the Flood killed most land creatures - including probably the dinosaurs - created shale-oil deposits, disgorged the fossils of sea creatures on land while creating the "layering" often found in the fossil record, carved out massive canyons and other formations, destroyed and created continents, and changed the very climate, perhaps ushering in a mini-Ice Age as the waters receded.

The "science" of Flood Geology is relatively new, but in one sense it's merely a new version of catastrophism, perhaps the dominant view of proto-geologists until the early 19th century. Catastrophism would then be rejected by many 19th century scientists on a priori or philosophical grounds more than anything else - isn't it simply more reasonable to believe in slow and gradual change? - and later, the contrary uniformitarian view would be seen to have the added bonus of being a necessary premise for making the new theory of Darwinian evolution - requiring millions of years of gradual biological change - to work.

Ironically, catastrophism would make a comeback in mainstream science in the latter half of the 20th century, though without, of course, any Biblical associations. No longer would it be assumed, for example, that all natural geological formations were created in a slow and gradual manner.

Is the young-earth creationist account believable? As stated a few days ago, it's obviously quite unbelievable for most moderns, as it would necessitate rejecting what much of current science tells us is now beyond rational debate, such as the basic assumptions underlying radiometric and carbon-dating, among other things.

But for a Catholic who believes in a literal Flood, the alternatives are also unbelievable or at least untenable. At the least, I think that faithful Catholics who take both Catholic doctrine and logical and empirical considerations seriously owe young-earth creationism a second look.

A "God of the Gaps" forcing Catholics to continually retreat to ad hoc stories of cavemen building Arks to save camels and Arabian leopards in an unverifiable past is not an attractive option. And, of course, rejecting the historical truth of some kind of Flood is firmly against both Scripture, tradition and current Church teaching.

FLASHBACK: When a German Bishops Council Attacked the New Theory of Darwin

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Pope Leo XIII

Yes, it was a German bishops council.

As Cardinal Tobin might put it, we've come a long way, baby.

Charles Darwin first published the Origin of Species in 1859. While there would soon be some attempts by Catholic authors to harmonize Darwin's theory with Catholic doctrine, it's fair to say that the initial general response by Catholic prelates and theologians, at least among the hierarchy, was quite negative.

Among the first responders were the German Catholic Bishops, who in their Provincial Council of Cologne (1860) condemned the proposition that Adam and Eve evolved from lower creatures:

Our first parents were formed immediately by God. Therefore we declare that the opinion of those who do not fear to assert that this human being, man as regards his body, emerged finally from the spontaneous continuous change of imperfect nature to the more perfect, is clearly opposed to Sacred Scripture and to the Faith.

The now somewhat hidden history of the Church's initial reactions to Darwin and the theory of evolution is chronicled by Father Brian Harrison in two fascinating papers, "Early Vatican Responses to Evolutionist Theology" (2001) and "Did the Human Body Evolve Naturally? A Forgotten Papal Declaration" (1998).

In the second paper, Fr. Harrison analyzes the 1880 Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII Arcanum (On Christian Marriage). Here is the Pope on the relation between the literal interpretation of God's creation of Adam and Eve and Christian marriage and sexuality:

What is the true origin of marriage? That, Venerable Brethren, is a matter of common knowledge. For although the detractors of the Christian faith shrink from acknowledging the Church's permanent doctrine on this matter, and persist in their long-standing efforts to erase the history of all nations and all ages, they have nonetheless been unable to extinguish, or even to weaken, the strength and light of the truth. We call to mind facts well-known to all and doubtful to no-one: after He formed man from the slime of the earth on the sixth day of creation, and breathed into his face the breath of life, God willed to give him a female companion, whom He drew forth wondrously from the man's side as he slept. In bringing this about, God, in His supreme Providence, willed that this spousal couple should be the natural origin of all men: in other words, that from this pair the human race should be propagated and preserved in every age by a succession of procreative acts which would never be interrupted. And so that this union of man and woman might correspond more aptly to the most wise counsels of God, it has manifested from that time onward, deeply impressed or engraved, as it were, within itself, two preeminent and most noble properties: unity and perpetuity (Arcanum, para. 5, English translation by Harrison).

"He formed man from from the slime of the earth," and Eve was "(drawn) forth wondrously from the man's side as he slept."

Pope Leo was a creationist.

Harrison argues that the Church's initial reactions to Darwin were actually similar to its earlier responses to the claims of Galileo and Copernicus:

In the first place, we are in a position to correct a widespread popular perception about the history of the Church’s relations with science. It is commonly held that while the Vatican notoriously blundered in the seventeenth century by condemning Galileo and proscribing all works propagating the Copernican worldview, Rome ‘learned her lesson’ from having ‘burnt her fingers’ during that first great outburst of tension between traditional faith and modern scientific theories, and therefore ‘prudently’ abstained from intervening with similar condemnations the next time around, when evolution became the new bone of contention, even though many theologians were shrilly calling for Darwin’s head on a plate. Indeed, it is not uncommon to hear statements to the effect that the Catholic Church "has never had a problem with evolution". 

In fact, the record shows great similarities between the initial Vatican responses in both historic controversies. As Galileo was called in and rebuked by the Holy Office, so were Fr. Caverni and Fr. Léroy [Catholic authors who were sympathetic to Darwin]. As, in the seventeenth century, works defending the Copernican system were placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, so, in the nineteenth, were works defending human evolution — by Caverni, Mivart, Léroy (and possibly others). The main difference seems to have been that, for whatever reason, these anti-Darwinian censures emanating from Rome never received nearly as much publicity as the Galileo case. 

There was in fact a consistent, if relatively quiet, rejection of human evolution on the part of the See of Peter throughout the last three decades of the nineteenth century...

I suppose one could add, the responses were similar for better or worse, as atheists and liberal Catholics would presumably crack their knuckles with glee at this. See how stuffy and ignorant the pre-Vatican II Church was.

We've come a long way, baby.

What would then happen in the 20th century is of course a crucial part of the story.

Next: The (Vatican II) Cardinal was a Creationist.