A conventional Franciscan, the Rev Peter D. Fehlner, O.F.M., Conv., S.T.D.<\/p>\n
has a doctorate in dogmatic theology and has taught at the Seraphicum in Rome<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n 1987<\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Preface<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n For a number of years questions have been arising concerning the teaching of the Catholic Church on the origin of the world, of the species, and especially of the bodies of the first man and of the first woman. Unfortunately, that teaching has, more often than not, been seriously misrepresented, sometimes to the point of being unrecognizable, and this by persons claiming to represent the authentic teaching of the Church. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Two frequently met distortions are:<\/p>\n The teaching of the Church on creation and the origin of the world (teaching in the first article of the Creed) has no bearing whatsoever on the matter of teaching about origins in either parochial or public schools.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Superficially examined, the two distortions are quite contrary. The first makes religion and the teaching of the Church a merely private, personal affair vis-a-vis the public, visible world. The second ends by making the Deity immanent in the process of evolution. Both positions, however, even at a superficial level of examination, are directly opposed to the first article of the Creed as it has always been understood by the Church:<\/p>\n This common opposition to the first and most basic article of Catholic belief rests on two assumptions shared by the proponents of these distortions. The first is a notion of science as completely autonomous. The intelligibility of the object of scientific study is totally comprehensible to science or not intelligible. Any scientific theory, set forth under the name \"creation science,\" thus indicating a dimension of the object of science not entirely comprehensible by scientific means, becomes by definition \"unscientific.\"<\/p>\n Secondly, the teaching of the Church and the teachings of Revelation have nothing to contribute to the understanding, a parte rei<\/em> or objectively, of what science and philosophy study or of how this object came to be. Both assumptions are the direct opposite of the actual teaching of the Church since the beginning of her existence.<\/p>\n The objective of this essay is a correct statement of the teaching of the Church on the origin of the world and of the species, especially of the human species, and of the consistent policy based on this teaching and followed by the Church in assessing the results of philosophic and scientific study of these questions.<\/p>\n The exposition comprises five divisions. The first deals with a number of preliminary considerations indispensable to a correct interpretation of the creedal formulae of the Church. The next three are commentaries respectively on the three solemn definitions of the Church's belief in creation (the ancient creeds, the oldest and most frequently used being that known as The Apostles' Creed); the second being the definition of the Fourth Lateran Council, and the third being the definition of the First Vatican Council. A final section will treat the development of that teaching since Vatican I to the present. The conclusion will indicate application to the matter of teaching about origins in parochial and public schools.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Table of Contents<\/p>\n <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Preliminaries<\/a><\/a> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The Apostles' Creed<\/a><\/a> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Lateran IV<\/a><\/a> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Vatican I<\/a><\/a> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Conclusions<\/a><\/a> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Author's Biographical Sketch<\/a><\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n _________________________________________________<\/p>\n <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Preliminaries<\/a><\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n (<\/small>back to top)<\/small><\/a> The starting point of theology is our knowledge of God. Theology begins, writes St. Bonaventure1<\/a> , where philosophy, including all branches of natural intellectual endeavor, metaphysics, science or natural philosophy (as it was called by St. Bonaventure) leaves off (i.e., with God). Natural knowledge begins with the visible, the objects of the senses, and through their investigation and study, arrives at a knowledge and understanding of God, their Maker. Such knowledge of God cannot but be indirect, mediate, and very limited, especially when contrasted with that knowledge of God which begins with God, the invisible, the changeless, and from the knowledge of Him Who is Creator proceeds to a study of His creation, which is all else that is. For this kind of study St. Bonaventure reserves the name theology.<\/p>\n <\/a>This reflection of St. Bonaventure makes clear why belief in the Creator is the first and basic article of the Creed, the first truth revealed in Scripture.2<\/a> At once it assures both an unambiguous, distinct, clear, accurate notion of God Who can and will save His people, and a sound criterion for the correct interpretation of all those signs pointing to the Creator and to the possibility of some greater work on His part. So long as a person is in fact mistaken on either or both of these points, so long will his salvation be endangered, so long will his true temporal welfare be impeded. Thus, from the beginning of her existence the Catholic Church has insisted on an accurate exposition of the first article of the Creed as absolutely fundamental to her teaching mission and to the cultivation of theology.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Content of This Teaching<\/p>\n God<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/a>There is but one true God, not merely the first, but the only God, unlike any other being, although all others, to the extent that they are, are like Him. He is all powerful, all knowing, all good. Whatever can be done, He can do; and whatever he cannot do, cannot be. What is possible is what He knows to be possible, and what is not known to him is neither intelligible nor possible. And what actually comes to be outside Him comes to be because He wills it freely, as He wills it to be, or simply is not. This \"Fiat<\/em> \" -- let it be, and it comes to be -- is called a creative act, as distinct from the natural processes and actions of creatures, as is the Creator from creatures. Only God creates by a simple act of His will, without assistance (instruments), and without acting on any antecedent matter. God makes out of nothing. This notion of Creator reveals God to be utterly independent and sovereign, the beginning or source of all else, without beginning 3<\/a> , an eternal, necessary, infinite ocean of perfection; all else that is has a beginning in dependence on another, a beginning in time, and thus is shown to be finite and not divine.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Creation<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n All that exists other than God, the invisible world of angels as well as the visible world of matter, came to be originally neither by an emanation from the divine substance, nor by development or evolution entailing natural processes of pre-existing agents not divine, but came to be out of nothing by an act of the divine will. Not every single individual existing now or in the past or in the future was made directly out of nothing in this way, nor is every change in the world to be explained directly in terms of creation. Nonetheless, before anything at all could exist or change, something was made by God out of nothing.<\/p>\n Not only did this creative act give existence to the world; it provided the world order and intelligibility, and this in two ways:<\/p>\n This order and intelligibility define the limits of the created order, and of each created agent, limits which can be modified temporarily or permanently only by the Creator's direct intervention, otherwise known as a miracle. Within those limits created agents can be the source of change and development, for better or for worse.<\/p>\n At each of these points, the world as a whole, the essences of things, and the overall rhythms or laws of nature, the impress of the Creator and His creative act can be discerned and at the same time distinguished from the creature and his natural actions. For neither the Creator nor His distinctive mode of acting ad extra<\/em> is continuous with, uniform, and comparable with the natural order and the processes which presuppose the creative action of God.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Summary<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n From the foregoing, it is quite evident that the Catholic understanding of the first article of the Creed includes a revelation of truths pertinent to all creation, and not only to the Creator. How many and to what extent these truths provide knowledge not otherwise accessible to the human mind, or merely confirm what could be known naturally, are separate questions. So too it is clear that a careful study of God's creation (the world) should lead to a knowledge not only of God as Creator, but to a realization of the world as created. Whether in fact without the help of Revelation the unaided human intellect ever could come to such a clear realization of the true character of the objects of our senses, or even to a faint realization of the notion of \"being created\", has often been answered negatively; but whatever the difficulties, or whatever final form the demonstration takes, the Creator can and should be known from the fact that this world, and what is in it, is created, finite.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source of This Teaching<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n In exercising her teaching office the Catholic Church does not claim the power to effect new revelations of divine mysteries, but only to set forth clearly, accurately, and consistently the \"deposit of faith\" entrusted to her by her Founder. The source, then, of this teaching concerning creation and the Creator is Revelation, as this is contained in the divinely inspired books of Scripture and Tradition of the Church. Further, the Church claims a divine guidance and protection in expounding the truths of salvation without error.<\/p>\n This does not preclude, on the part of philosophers and scientists, study of those points of Revelation falling in one way or another within the scope of their disciplines. And just as faith can be of great help in the advancement of knowledge in all areas, so natural study can also serve to confirm and deepen the understanding of Revelation and to help in distinguishing what is revealed from mere hasty inferences of the uninformed.<\/p>\n None of this is possible without universal recognition of the epistemological dimensions of questions concerning the origin of the world, and especially of mankind. What these dimensions are and what principles govern their adjustment and coordination will become apparent at several points in this exposition.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Terminology<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Every intellectual discipline develops a vocabulary and usage distinctive of its subject matter and method of study. Correct definition of terms at the outset, especially in a matter such as the question of origins, is indispensable to the fair appreciation of the teaching of the Church and of the theology resting on her authority.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Creative Act<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n The creative act is an action of God alone by which something which did not exist at all is made to exist. Strictly speaking, no process or passage from one state to another is involved, because no terminus a quo<\/em> existed. Such a creative act may be contrasted with the divine processions in which one divine Person proceeds from Another, but which is not a process of movement or change, because in this \"procession\" the divine nature of the Person proceeding neither comes to be, nor in any way is changed or divided, but is simply communicated from one Person to Another. Productive acts of creatures entail the management of instruments and the pre-existence of matter on which to act. This implies a real process and passage of time in the production of the terminus ad quem<\/em>, not existing prior to the process and change, both in the agent and in its effect.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Primary and Secondary Agents<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n God alone is said to be the primary Cause, because all other causes presuppose His creative action in some way in order to exist and continue to exist so as to act. All other agents are known as secondary causes (i.e., creatures).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Equivocal and Univocal Causes<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n The Creator in the traditional terminology is said to be an \"equivocal Cause,\" not because He acts deceptively, but because none of the effects He produces is fully like Him, or need be exactly like each other. Thus the Creator is capable of making a variety of species, each different from its Maker and from each other in degree of perfection. A \"univocal\" cause is said to be one which produces effects always identical in nature with their cause. Rational creatures to a certain extent are \"equivocal\" causes to the extent they are capable of artistic work. Only the Creator is an \"equivocal\" Cause without limitation. This point is an important one in assessing the relative stability of the order of nature and of the possibility of a miracle. The Creator, in the teaching of the Church, most certainly established a relatively stable system of nature. Within those limits rational creatures are capable of directing a certain development of the World; but only the Creator is capable of modifying those limits temporarily or permanently, or of totally annihilating His work .<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/a>Two points pertinent to modern theories of upward evolution of the species may be noted:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Principal and Instrumental Cause<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n The principal cause is the agent directly responsible for the specific effect produced, and is contrasted with instrumental cause, the agent responsible only in a subordinate way. Principal cause is not to be confused with primary cause, as is so often the case in explanations of origins known as theistic evolution. When a creature acts as principle cause of some effect, God is also involved as the primary Cause conserving and concurring with that action. When, however, God is said to be Creator, He and He alone is the principal Cause. When He is said to work a miracle, He may or may not utilize an instrumental cause, He may or may not act on pre-existing creatures. Although in some cases a miracle may appear to be like a natural process, it is in fact not a natural process at all, because the principal Agent is not a natural agent, and therefore, the process is not uniform or measurable in those terms. For this reason the term evolution, to avoid ambiguities and equivocations, should be restricted to natural processes wherein the principal agent is a creature. In the work of creation, the six days of Genesis, the Church has always understood God to be the principal Agent, although each of His actions during that period may not have been creative in the strictest sense, but only in the broader sense of miraculous. He may have used instruments already created, or acted Himself on pre-existent matter as in the case of Adam's body \"from the slime of the earth.\" In any case, although individual creatures once created may have acted before the end of the sixth day when God \"rested,\" they did so directly under the creative power of God, and only after completion of the entire work did the world begin to function with a relative autonomy in the sense of secondary, principal causality.<\/p>\n The importance of this distinction can be illustrated with the popular objection to the creation of the heavenly bodies in a single day of 24 hours. It is claimed in the objection that the formation of these bodies would have postulated a duration of enormous length, since such is the time required for light from these bodies to reach the earth at present, and that light was observed by the first man on his appearance (according to Genesis). The objection, however, begs the question. It assumes as certain what in fact the proponents of evolutionary theory should prove, that the processes now observed in the transmission of light from the heavenly bodies to earth - and the duration needed to traverse the distance between them - are the same by which they were made to shine initially. Where the Creator is the principal Cause, there is no reason why He cannot do all this without the aid of natural processes and with or without any duration pleasing Him and appropriate to His ends (24 hours as Genesis tells us). Nor should it be said that the appearance of long \"light-years\" is a deception. Appearances are deceptive only where no key to their interpretation is provided. Thus what looks like bread and smells like wine is bread and wine except where those elements have been \"transubstantiated\" into the Body and Blood of Christ by the consecratory action of a priest. There the appearances of bread and wine, real enough, indicate not bread and wine, but the Body and Blood of the Savior. This is known because God has told us so, that such power has been given to an ordained priest. So too in this case, the Creator, being the only witness to what happened in the beginning, has told us He made the stars and made them shine within a period of 24 hours, thus providing a key to the interpretation of the appearances \"in the beginning.\"<\/p>\n Thus, the divine creative act is distinguished from His conservative act, both of which, though identical in God with His power, have different terms outside God. The second conserving act presupposes the completion of the \"founding\" of the world, and is directed to its relatively autonomous operation. The first is a reflection of what Catholic theologians subsequently called God's absolute powers, by which He not only made the world, but can destroy it, modify it, or temporarily interrupt its ordinary rhythms, as in the case of a miracle. The full extent of this power we cannot know simply from what He has already done, for He can always do something more. The second reflects His ordered power and is known from nature and the laws of nature discerned in creation.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Apostles' Creed<\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n (<\/small>back to top)<\/small><\/a> <\/p>\n Textual Observations<\/p>\n Creator-Maker<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n The terms are synonyms when predicated on God. When He creates, He indeed produces an effect outside Himself utterly dependent for its existence and nature on that productive act. The divine making is different from the productive act of the creature precisely because it is creative.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Uniqueness<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Only God can make in a creative way, because He alone is omnipotent. Therefore all things, invisible as well as visible, owe their existence and nature to this unique kind of productivity. The natures and actions of the created order will reflect partly the nature and action of the Creator; but the unique character of the Creator and His creative act cannot be defined in terms of that natural order and the processes stemming from created agents. Creation as an act of God is incomparable, discontinuous with, and different from natural activities in which it is reflected.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a>Sources of the Creedal Formu1ae<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Some dogmas of Catholic faith are only made explicit, or given a definitive formulation after the passage of some time. An example of this is the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God. Unlike some of these other dogmas, this article of faith, which is in the Creed, appeared, as it were, fully elaborated with the Church herself. The key elements, always regarded as synthesized in the classic form of the ancient symbols of faith V. supra<\/em>, can easily be located in the recorded teaching of Christ and his Apostles. Thus the importance always assigned this article by the Church for the foundation not only of Catholic theology, but of Christian philosophy and science, is rooted in the stress laid on this point by the Son of God through Whom all things were made, and without Whom nothing that came to be was made. 6<\/a> Several examples will make this clear.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a>In the Beginning<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n \"In the beginning (en arche, in principio<\/em>) was the Word and the Word was with God...\"7<\/a> The \"beginning\" of the prologue of the Gospel according to St. John, the beginning which is without beginning (eternal) is contrasted with the \"beginning\" of Genesis 1,1, which refers to the world which is not eternal (infinite). The Word or Son of God, only begotten God,8<\/a> comes from the Father not by a creative act, but by an act of generation as eternal as the Father. Thus, the Word conceived in the womb of the Virgin virginally is not to be confused with a creature dependent on and subordinate to the Creator, but identified as the One Who before His beginning in time at the moment of His conception, pre-existed as the equal of the Father from eternity, and as the One through Whom what He later became was made.<\/p>\n <\/a>Elsewhere in the Gospel according to St. John, our Lord, the Founder of the Church, and her Teacher, is clearly recorded as defining the difference between Creator-creature, eternity-time, creative act - natural act, 9<\/a> and asserting the possession of creative power or omnipotence, alone capable of effecting the resurrection of a human corpse by Himself as the Word made flesh10<\/a> for which resurrection the teaching of the Church has always required the exercise of a power capable of drafting out of nothing, the power of working a miracle, a power belonging to God alone.11<\/a> The constant belief of the Church in the reality of Christ's physical miracles (e.g., walking on water, multiplication of loaves, transfiguration) entails a belief in the source of their possibility and inner intelligibility, in the power of the Creator to modify and correct for higher ends the created order and its laws originally established by Him. And this power, in virtue of His divinity, was possessed by the Son of Mary.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Adam and Eve<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Not only does the cosmos as a whole, before it begins to develop with a certain apparent autonomy, have a beginning in time which is the immediate effect of a creative act of God, but the principal work of the sixth day, Adam and Eve, has a specific beginning on the sixth day and not before. It is not ascribed to the antecedent action of principal causes as merely creatures, but to the direct principal action and intervention of the Creator, touching not only both the material as well as spiritual components of that nature defined as human, but also the differentiation of male and female. In the Gospel according to St. Matthew (19,4), Christ refers to this specific beginning of man and woman as the basis of the distinctive, unchangeable (i.e., non-evolving) nature of marriage. This fundamental difference between the human and non-human among living creatures is present not only in the soul as in its root, but also in the human body, differentiating it from that of any other animal, however perfect. This difference<\/p>\n <\/a>However the particulars of this action are described, it is not the equivalent of a natural process, as this is observable in the interaction of created agents already constituted in esse<\/em>. In this century it is a point made by Pius XII,12<\/a> but little noted by recent commentators on the theology of human origins.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a>Nature, Grace, and Glory<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n There are parallels between the intervention of Creator qua Creator<\/em> in the order of nature, of grace, and of glory. St. Paul, in the letter to the Ephesians,13<\/a> formulates the principle explaining the nature of that link which correlates these three orders, a principle for the rest illustrated graphically in the many miracles of our Lord. The power at work now in the Christian (the grace received in baptismal regeneration), he writes, is the same that was at work in Christ Jesus raising Him from the dead (order of glory). This power ( dynamis, virtus<\/em>) is nothing other than the divine omnipotence by which all things were created (order of nature). The difference between the creative act, prerequisite for the foundation of the world and subsequent activity within it, is the exact measure of the difference between the action of God prerequisite for the establishment of the orders of grace and glory and their coordination, and the activities within them subsequent to their foundation. Pelagianism, the radical denial of the difference between grace and nature, results from a failure to acknowledge this precise difference.<\/p>\n The denial of the need for grace in order to act in a salutary manner, for a supernatural end, leads logically to a denial of any need for an omnipotent \"Fiat<\/em>\" to originate the world and each of the species within it. However different from Pantheism (Polytheism, Syncretism) that Pelagianism may seem, it rests on the same intellectual and psychological assumptions as does Pantheism, the equation of the creature and the \"created will\" with the Creator and the divine will.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a>Relative Uniformity of Nature<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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Belief in the Creator<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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