{"id":5493,"date":"2019-11-09T05:21:36","date_gmt":"2019-11-09T05:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/?p=5493"},"modified":"2019-11-09T05:21:36","modified_gmt":"2019-11-09T05:21:36","slug":"the-firmiter-of-lateran-iv-in-its-historical-context-defines-the-fiat-creation-of-all-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/the-firmiter-of-lateran-iv-in-its-historical-context-defines-the-fiat-creation-of-all-things\/","title":{"rendered":"The Firmiter of Lateran IV in Its Historical Context Defines the Fiat Creation of All Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Hugh Owen<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1215 Pope Innocent III convened the Fourth Lateran Council to define fundamental doctrines of the Faith against heretical errors, to launch a Crusade for the liberation of the Holy Land and for the elimination of heretical strongholds in the South of France, and to spell out a comprehensive program of Church reform. \u00a0A top priority of the Council was to stop the spread of heresy, especially in southern France and northern Italy, where the Cathar-Albigensian and Waldensian heresies had lured many of the faithful away from the true Faith.\u00a0 The Pope and the Council Fathers framed a profession of faith specifically to affirm the doctrines of the Faith against the predominant heresies of the day, those that rejected the traditional doctrine of creation.\u00a0 An examination of the dominant errors of the principal heretical movements of the time reveals that the language of the Firmiter <\/em>was specifically designed to refute those errors in a way that excludes theistic evolution or progressive creation.[1]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Before examining the dogmatic decree on creation of Lateran IV in its historical context, it is important to acknowledge a deep division within contemporary Catholic academia in regard to dogmatic decrees.\u00a0 On the one hand, Catholic academia boasts a large number of members\u2014perhaps the majority\u2014who hold that the Church has often contradicted her authoritative teaching and that therefore it is of no great consequence whether the intended meaning of the Firmiter <\/em>excludes evolution and progressive creation or not.\u00a0 For this group of Catholic scholars, \u201cdevelopment of doctrine\u201d entails the possibility that a doctrine once taught at a high level of authority can evolve or develop into a contradictory form\u2014as, for example, in the recent alleged \u201cdevelopment\u201d of the teaching of the Church on capital punishment.[2]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

On the other hand, Catholic academia still numbers among its members a few who hold fast to the dogmatic teaching of Vatican I which anathematized anyone who holds that the doctrine of the faith develops and acquires a meaning different from that which the Church has assigned to it in the past.[3]<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0 It is to these faithful Catholic scholars that this paper is addressed, since the others have, willingly or inadvertently, abandoned the clear teaching of Vatican I and risked the anathema that it pronounces against those who depart from the traditional doctrine of the Church in the precise meaning that it has always possessed.<\/p>\n

The Historical Context of the Firmiter <\/em>of Lateran IV<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most important dogmatic statement on creation in the history of the Catholic Church was the Firmiter <\/em>decree of Lateran Council IV in 1215.\u00a0 According to this decree:<\/p>\n

Deus\u2026creator omnium visibilium et invisibilium, spiritualium et corporalium: qui sua omnipotenti virtute simul<\/u> ab initio temporis utramque de nihilo condidit creaturam, spiritualem et corporalem, angelicam videlicet et mundanam: ac deinde humanam, quasi communem ex spiritu et corpore constitutam.<\/p>\n

God\u2026creator of all visible and invisible things, of the spiritual and of the corporal; who by His own omnipotent power at once from the beginning of time created each creature from nothing, spiritual and corporal, namely, angelic and mundane, and finally the human, constituted as it were, alike of the spirit and the body (Denz 428).<\/p>\n

Eyewitness accounts of the proceedings of the Fourth Lateran Council confirm that the crusade against the Albigensian-Catharist heresy and its supporters in Languedoc[4]<\/span><\/span><\/a> stood at or near the top of the list of priorities for the Pope and the Council Fathers.\u00a0 In his opening sermon to the assembled Patriarchs, Bishops, and Abbots at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, at the commencement of the largest Ecumenical Council in the history of the Church up until that time, Pope Innocent III reminded the Council Fathers that \u201con the sixth day God completed [the creation] of heaven and earth and all their beauties.\u201d[5]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The Meaning of the Firmiter<\/em> Decree on Creation<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is important to establish the original meaning intended by the Lateran IV\u00a0Council Fathers regarding their dogmatic statement on creation. The argument that the Council wording does not exclude long ages, and therefore allows time for evolution or progressive creation to take place, is based principally on two words in the text, simul <\/em>and utramque. <\/em>These two terms will now be examined.<\/p>\n

Recent research has demonstrated that simul<\/em> in this dogmatic decree was understood to mean \u201cat once\u201d from the time of the Fourth Lateran Council until the rise of Lyellian geology in the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Only then did some theologians begin to try to find another meaning for simul<\/em> in Lateran IV so as to reconcile the traditional doctrine of creation with long ages of geologic time.[6]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The original, plain sense of simul<\/em> in Lateran IV indicated that God created all of the different kinds of corporeal and angelic creatures \u201cat once from the beginning of time.\u201d\u00a0 This was compatible with St. Augustine\u2019s speculative instantaneous creation or with the majority view of the Fathers who taught that everything was created in six natural days.\u00a0 But it was totally incompatible with a longer creation period.\u00a0 Even at the end of the nineteenth century, the editor of the Catholic Theological Dictionary, <\/em>Fr. A. Vacant, observed that \u201cThis meaning of simultaneity of date had been adopted, without any hesitation, by almost all the earlier theologians. Some, such as Sylvestre de Ferrare, claimed it should be held as de fide<\/em> since Lat. IV\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 As an example of simul<\/em> meaning a relative simultaneity of time, Fr. Vacant (Art. 205) referred to the verse For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and all that is in them<\/em> (Exod. 20:11).[8]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>Creation of All Things \u201cAt Once\u201d from the Beginning, or According to a Common Plan?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Catholic Theological Dictionary, <\/em>begun in \u00a01903 under the direction of Fr. Vacant, in its \u201cCreation\u201d article (165 columns, printed in 1908 for this volume), taught that the simultaneity of the creation of all things, spiritual and corporeal, was considered so well-established by Lateran IV\u00a0that leading commentators on the Council like Cardinal Mazzella\u00a0regarded those who contested this meaning as \u201ctemerarious.\u201d \u00a0The Dictionary <\/em>states:<\/p>\n

It seems clear that the text [of Lateran IV] affirms the simultaneity of the two creations\u2014[those of the spiritual and corporeal creatures]\u2014and most theologians interpret it that way.\u00a0 Indeed, many of them, like Suarez\u00a0in De Angelis<\/em>\u00a0and also it would seem Cardinal Mazzella\u00a0in De Deo Creante<\/em>,\u00a0regard those who contest this simultaneity of creation as \u201ctemerarious.\u201d[9]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Besides the commentators named by Fr. Vacant, there were others of even greater stature who taught that Lateran IV\u00a0had defined the relative simultaneity of the creation of all things.\u00a0 Perhaps the most authoritative was St. Lawrence of Brindisi\u00a0(1559-1619), a Doctor of the Church, and the foremost post-Lateran IV commentator on Genesis.\u00a0 In his commentary on Genesis 1, St. Lawrence rejects the opinion that the angels might have been created before the material universe and all of \u201cthe creatures of the world\u201d and writes:<\/p>\n

The Holy Roman Church determined in the Fourth Lateran Council that the angels along with the creatures of the world were at once created ex nihilo<\/em> from the beginning of time. (St. Lawrence of Brindisi, commentary on Genesis 1:1.)<\/p>\n

A contemporary of St. Lawrence, the highly esteemed Flemish Jesuit and exegete Cornelius a Lapide\u00a0(1537-1637), also taught that Lateran IV\u00a0taught de fide<\/em> that the angels were not created long before the corporeal creatures of the earth\u2014as some Church Fathers had speculated\u2014but at the same time.\u00a0 He writes:<\/p>\n

To be sure, the Lateran Council under Innocent III\u00a0declared: One must believe with firm faith that from the beginning of time God created from nothing both spiritual and corporeal creatures, viz., the angelic and the mundane . . . <\/em>.<\/p>\n

After answering a possible objection to this judgment, he adds:<\/p>\n

The Council\u2019s words seem too well expressed and clear to be twisted into another meaning. Wherefore, my opinion is no longer just probable, but is both certain and de fide<\/em>, for this is what the Council itself declares and defines.[10]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Traditional Theology Trumps Speculative Geology<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the nineteenth century Catholic theologians were being told that the science of geology had proved that the earth was enormously old and that fossils in the rocks proved that humans had existed for a much longer time than was recorded in the biblical genealogies.\u00a0 These theologians, therefore, looked again at the Church\u2019s teaching on the subject. In particular they examined the key infallible definition of creation from the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.\u00a0 In his 1893 report on Vatican I\u00a0(Etudes Th\u00e9ologiques sur les Constitutions du Concile du Vatican<\/em>), Fr. Vacant, also editor of the prestigious and comprehensive theological dictionary the Dictionnaire de th\u00e9ologie catholique<\/em>, examined the problem of reconciling the Council definition with geology. He wrote:<\/p>\n

The same text [Lateran IV] says that God created together (simul<\/em>), at the beginning of time, the angels and corporeal creatures, and afterwards man.<\/p>\n

The meaning of the word simul<\/em> presents a real difficulty and has been understood in several ways. It seems taken from this text of Sirach 18: 1: \u201cGod created all things together. Creavit omnia simul<\/em>\u201d, which itself received a great number of interpretations. Cornelius a Lapide mentions 10 of them. Some see simul<\/em> as meaning a simultaneousness of time; they consider it as a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 of this other text: \u201cfor in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them (omnia qu\u00e6 in eis sunt<\/em>)\u201d (Exod. 20:11). Others give to the word simul<\/em> one of the meanings of the Greek koine<\/em> which it translates. Accordingly, simul would mean \u201cin common\u201d, indicating that God had made all things equally or according to a single overall plan. It is this latter interpretation which is more commonly held today, because the other conforms less easily with the system of \u201cdays-periods\u201d, which allows for long centuries between the creation of the heavens and the earth and of man<\/strong> (emphasis added).[11]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The bolded words above clearly indicate that two meanings had been attached to the word simul <\/em>in the Lateran IV\u00a0text. Fr. Vacant\u2019s report goes on to say:<\/p>\n

In the texts of Lateran IV\u00a0and Vatican I, however, the word simul<\/em> hardly seems to lend itself to the second meaning. Indeed, it is followed by the words ab initio temporis<\/em> and deinde <\/em>which seem clearly to indicate that simul <\/em>should be understood as simultaneousness of time. On the face of it, this is what Lateran IV would have declared, that is, that the creation of the angels and corporeal creatures took place simultaneously at the beginning, and that the creation of man followed afterwards.[12]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The report continues:<\/p>\n

However, some contemporary authors of real authority such as P. Hurter\u00a0(Theol. Dogm.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>6th<\/sup> edit., t. II, n.425\/6) and M. Jungmann\u00a0(De Deo Creatore<\/em>, 4th<\/sup> edit. n.77) admit that simul<\/em> taken from the text of the two councils could be understood in the sense, not of simultaneity of time for the creation, but of a unity of plan and a community of origin for the creatures. They allow the word here to have the second interpretation which is given in the text: Creavit omnia simul<\/em> of\u00a0Sirach<\/strong> 18:1<\/strong> (emphasis added).[13]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The \u201csecond\u201d\u2014incorrect\u2014\"interpretation,\u201d was selected because it allowed for long periods of time between the creations attributed to each of the Genesis \u201cdays.\u201d\u00a0 Fr Vacant\u00a0cites two authoritative theologians who opted for this different meaning of simul<\/em>, and indicates that because of the introduction of long ages the traditional meaning presented \u201ca real difficulty.\u201d He is referring, of course, to a difficulty for \u201ccontemporary\u201d<\/strong> theologians. These subscribed to the conventional wisdom of the theological community in the years immediately following the First Vatican Council. As practicing theologians of the day they would have been conversant with the then-recent dogmatic pronouncements of Vatican I\u00a0on creation reproducing the Lateran IV\u00a0definition of creation.\u00a0 These theologians would have examined the dogmas in detail to find some other way of resolving their \u201cdifficulty,\u201d some indication that they could accommodate an old earth and evolution. Having found none, they turned their attention to simul<\/em>.<\/p>\n

If no \u201csecond meaning\u201d of simul<\/em> had been suggested, the theologians would have been bound by the context of the Firmiter <\/em>and by the infallible nature of the Lateran IV\u00a0dogma to accept the meaning of \u201csimultaneous,\u201d \u201cat once\u201d or \u201call together\u201d which excluded long ages and therefore evolution. As Fr. Vacant\u00a0admits:<\/p>\n

\u2026 the word simul<\/em> hardly seems to lend itself to the second meaning\u2026On the face of it, Lateran IV\u00a0and Vatican I\u00a0would have declared, that the creation of the angels and corporeal creatures took place simultaneously at the beginning, and that the creation of man followed afterwards.[14]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

However, the belief that simul<\/em> could have the second meaning of \u201cin common\u201d (koin\u00e8<\/em> in Greek)\u2014without a temporal significance<\/strong>\u2014won the day. Consequently, the evolutionary speculations emanating from the new sciences of stratigraphy, paleontology and evolutionary biology, which conflicted with the biblical genealogies and the traditional teaching of the Fathers, were allowed to be taught in all places of learning within the Church.<\/p>\n

Recent research has demonstrated that this permission to teach evolution over long ages in contradiction to the traditional interpretation of the Firmiter <\/em>depended for its justification on two serious errors.\u00a0 In the first place, it has been shown that \u201csimul\u201d in the Firmiter <\/em>when cited by St. Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suarez, St. Lawrence of Brindisi, and other great commentators without reference to Sirach 18:1 mentioned above by Fr. Vacant\u2014<\/em>always refers to the whole work of creation, not just to the first moment of creation.[15]<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0 In the second place, the geological principles on which Charles Lyell, James Hutton and their disciples constructed the geological column as it exists as a purely theoretical construct in geology textbooks to this day, have been completely invalidated by empirical research in the field of sedimentology.[16]<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0 For both of these reasons, Catholic theologians are not justified in abandoning the traditional interpretation of simul <\/em>in the Firmiter.<\/em><\/p>\n

UTRAMQUE<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>The second term in the Firmiter <\/em>that has been used to accommodate theistic evolution and progressive creation is utramque <\/em>which appears in the text as follows:<\/p>\n

Deus\u2026simul ab initio temporis <\/em>utramque de nihilo<\/em> condidit creaturam, spiritualem et corporalem, angelicam videlicet et mundanam ac deinde humanam quasi communem ex spiritu et corpore constitutam<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The English equivalent is:<\/p>\n

God\u2026at once from the beginning of time created each creature from nothing, spiritual and corporal namely angelic and mundane (\u201cearthly\u201d CCC\u00a0327) finally the human, constituted as it were, alike of the spirit and the body (DZ<\/em>, 428).<\/p>\n

Those who disagree that Lateran IV\u00a0excludes theistic evolution point to the dictionary meaning of utramque<\/em> as meaning \u201ceach of two.\u201d\u00a0 Their argument is that the word each \u201ccreature\u201d refers to each of the angelic and mundane \u201corders,\u201d and does not mean the angels on one hand and each of the individual species of animals on the other. The term \u201ccreature,\u201d they quite correctly point out, does not necessarily refer to living things.\u00a0 It can just as well refer to inanimate things. In consequence they argue that Lateran IV is not declaring that all things were created from nothing, but only the heavens and the unadorned earth, created on Day One. This argument is invalid for several reasons:<\/p>\n

(a)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Lateran IV\u00a0is most certainly referring to the spiritual and corporal as two \u201ccreatures,\u201d (Vatican I, Session III, chapter I, uses the expression \"the twofold created order\")[17]<\/span><\/span><\/a> but the corporal (or mundane) \u201ccreature\u201d[18]<\/span><\/span><\/a> according to the Catholic Catechism<\/em>\u00a0(CCC<\/em>,<\/em> 327) includes all <\/strong>the \u201cearthly\u201d world. Hence the first words of the Lateran text \u201ccreator of all<\/strong> visible and invisible things\u201d refers to all things created from nothing at the beginning. This fact is confirmed by the Vatican I text which states:<\/p>\n

\u2026the world and all things which are contained in it both spiritual and material as regards their whole substance<\/strong>, have been produced by God from nothing (canon 5) (bold added).<\/p>\n

The CCC<\/em>\u2019s use of \u201cearthly\u201d (meaning mundane or corporal\u2014those things with bodies) is the equivalent of mundanam<\/em> or corporalem <\/em>in the original Latin text of Lateran IV. It is the opposite of spiritual and angelic things without a body (spiritualem <\/em>and angelicam<\/em>).<\/p>\n

According to dogmatic theologian Fr. Fehlner\u2019s essay In the Beginning<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>(Christ to the World, <\/em>1988) this canon teaches that:<\/p>\n

The essences of finite species, and the essential structure of world order are not the fruit of the activity of those species, but their necessary prerequisite, only possible in virtue of a distinctive, divine productive action.<\/em><\/p>\n

(b) In his 1895 commentary on the Vatican I\u00a0text, Fr. Vacant\u00a0makes it clear that the Council is not using the word utramque<\/em> in reference to the two \u201ccreatures\u201d heaven and earth of Genesis I, but to the \u201cmundane\u201d (as opposed to the angelic), i.e. all things created other than man. He writes:<\/p>\n

Our text [Dei Filius<\/em> in Vatican I] affirms the creation and consequently the existence and distinct nature of three classes of creatures. It also indicates the time of this creation. The three classes mentioned are the angels, material bodies, and men whose existence and nature are defined in chapter 1 and the fifth canon\u2026 [Our text] calls angels spirits, as opposed to bodies being of quite different species; thus it shows the spirits are not bodies. Moreover it compares angels to men composed of body and spirit\u2026The second class of creatures is composed of corporal or material beings which form the world. The Council mentions they are distinct from pure spirits and men\u2026Note here that the words \u201ccorporalem<\/em>\u201d and \u201cmateriales<\/em>\u201d designate not only \u201craw\u201d\u00a0 matter but also organised matter, even the \u201csensible\u201d beings deprived of intelligence and endowed with only sensitive faculties. It is clear here that the term must extend to all creatures inferior to angels and men\u2026<\/strong> The context of the chapter (Chapter 1 \u2013 Dei Filius Vat. 1<\/em>) shows the word \u201cmundanam<\/em>\u201d only applies to material creatures, whilst the word \u201cmundus<\/em>\u201d in the Canon corresponds to all creatures both spiritual and material\u2026The Council defines the three classes of creatures as having been produced from nothing in the totality of their substance. Without defining it as such, the Council says indirectly that the three classes are substances as opposed to simple accidents (bold added).[19]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The above excerpts from Fr. Vacant\u2019s study on Vatican I, prove that he has no doubt that the expression utramque de nihilo <\/em>(each creature from nothing) in the two Council texts refers to the prototypes of living kinds being specially created by God from nothing. Theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists assert that the only things not created from pre-existing matter were the heavens and earth, created on the first day of the hexameron<\/em>. They conclude therefore that the living matter produced subsequently was not created.\u00a0 Genesis 1, they rightly say, states that each species or kind was created from pre-existing matter. The plants and animals, for instance, were summoned into existence from the ground, Adam from the dust of the earth, and Eve from Adam\u2019s rib.<\/p>\n

To say that the things they came from were not part of or included in their substance seems to them illogical. This thinking comes from human experience that all living things come from other living things. Dogs come from dogs, cats from cats, and elephants from elephants. The concept of a living thing coming from a non-living thing is contrary to experience. All the living productions in Genesis 1, however, are reported as coming from non-living matter, i.e. water, earth or dust. To say that the water and earth contained atoms which could be used by God to produce living beings is like saying that an artist used a canvas to create a picture. The picture was not in the canvas it was a concept in the artist\u2019s mind. It was immaterial until the concept was transmitted by oils and paint to the canvas. God conceived the various species before giving them existence. They were conceptually in His mind until the concept was transmitted to the water, earth or dust; they were given materiality through God\u2019s word. Thus the dust, water, and earth contributed nothing to the creation of man, fish or trees; the latter were created<\/strong> immediately in their entire substance.\u00a0 According to St. Thomas\u00a0Aquinas:<\/p>\n

...the corporeal forms that bodies had when first produced came immediately from God, whose bidding alone matter obeys, as its own proper cause. To signify this, Moses prefaces each work with the words God said, Let this thing be, or that, to denote the formation of all things by the Word of God . . .<\/em>[20]<\/a><\/p>\n

Writing in 1845, the translator of an authoritative French edition of the Summa Theologica<\/em>, F. Lachat\u00a0comments as follows on the creation of corporeal creatures:<\/p>\n

Things are said to be composed in two cases: first when they enclose different entities or multiple parts, like bodies; second when they are constituted definitively, completely, by the unity of their principles. It is in the latter case that the article under discussion should be taken (ST<\/em>, I, q. 45, a. 4). On the other hand, things can, either subsist by themselves, and according to this hypothesis they are substances; or exist in the subject by adhesion, and then they are accidents. What should be understood by composed or subsisting things<\/em>? They should be understood as substances which are complete, finished, perfect which enclose all of their elements, matter, form and accidents.<\/p>\n

So what did God create? Some teachers reply that he created primary matter, with the elements mixed up, the poets call this unformed mass chaos . . . <\/em>then they say he drew from it the stars, the planets, the earth, the plants, the substances, the forms and accidents which make up the universe. In this system, the supreme Worker operates from the simple to the complex, moving by degrees in the accomplishment of his task, doing it in several successive operations, carefully underpinning it; obtaining the satisfaction of demonstrating the plagiarism of modern industrialists who claim to have invented division of labor, because they are not powerful enough to do the work in one go, nor wise enough to avoid useless detours.<\/p>\n

Such is not the case with the prince of the school. He says God created the substances and concreated the primary matter: he created the substances complete, as they exist in nature, together with their accidents, forms, principles, and the elements of which they are composed; he concreated the prime matter, for it is necessarily contained in the substances. It is in this way that Holy Scripture recounts creation. We read in Genesis 1:1 \u201cin the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.\u201d The Mother of the Maccabees says to her son (2 Mac. 7:28) \u201cI beseech you my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God created them from nothing. Thus also mankind came into being\u201d. And the [Fourth Lateran] Council . . . states: \u201cThe Creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporal, drew from nothing the spiritual and corporal creatures, the angels, the world, then man composed of a body and soul.\u201d Try to show that these words only refer to prime matter; all we can see are substances in their final completeness (italics in original).[21]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

This passage from an authoritative commentator on St. Thomas\u00a0from the pre-Darwinian period shows how the statements of Lateran IV\u00a0on creation, in conjunction with 2 Maccabees 7:28, were understood as teaching the creation by God alone of the complete substances of all kinds of corporal and spiritual beings,[22]<\/span><\/span><\/a> just as one would expect from a straightforward reading of Genesis, Chapters 1 and 2. The same commentary helps to explain the radical distinction between the transformation of, say, uranium into lead and the (imagined) transformation of a reptile into bird.\u00a0 In the former case, the transformation merely involves a rearrangement of the atomic building blocks of matter\u2014a rearrangement that can occur naturally, without generation.\u00a0 In the latter case, the transformation of one organic unity into another distinct organic unity involves the transformation of one irreducibly complex organic unity into another, totally distinct, irreducibly complex organic unity, and\u2014and this is an essential point\u2014without generation!<\/p>\n

According to Lachat, substances that possess this irreducibly complex organic unity are \u201ccomplete, finished, perfect substances, which enclose all of their elements, matter, form and accidents.\u201d Such substances cannot come into existence through non-generative natural processes, nor could they ever be generated unless their prototypes were first divinely created.\u00a0\u00a0 Indeed, even if the matter for the first birds, reptiles, mammals and other living things was not \u201cconcreated,\u201d the formation of these creatures would still be a divine act.\u00a0 As St. Thomas\u00a0teaches, God alone could create, ex nihilo<\/em>, the form of a bird or a whale and shape matter according to that form by his fiat.\u00a0 No natural process would result in the production of a whale from water or of a lion from the dust of the earth.\u00a0 The statements of Lateran IV and Vatican I\u00a0on creation are entirely consistent with the constant teaching of the Church that the formation of the prototypes of all kinds of living things was part of the creative work of God that ended with the creation of Adam and Eve.<\/p>\n

Heresies Excluded by the Firmiter <\/em>of Lateran IV<\/strong><\/p>\n

Contemporary descriptions of the beliefs of the principal heretical groups in Languedoc confirm that all of them rejected the traditional orthodox teaching of the Church on creation defined at Lateran IV and embraced one of two heretical doctrines regarding the origins of man and the material universe.\u00a0 The first group, usually designated as absolute dualists, believed in the existence of two principles of creation\u2014a good god who created all of the spiritual creatures, and an evil god who created all of the corporeal, or bodily, creatures.\u00a0 The second group, usually designated as mitigated dualists, believed in one God who created the spiritual creatures and the four elements, but held that the angel Lucifer made all of the different kinds of corporeal creatures as well as the human body from those four elements.\u00a0 According to both sects, created spirits were trapped in corporeal bodies as punishment for a primordial sin, and the purpose of life was to follow the authentic teaching of Christ who came into the world as a pure spirit disguised as a bodily man, to liberate men and women from their bodies so that they could return to their original state as pure spirits.<\/p>\n

These false beliefs in regard to creation shaped a Catharist anti-culture.\u00a0 These errors explain why the Catharist priests, or \u201cperfects,\u201d abstained from foods derived from animal bodies, despised sacraments\u2014including the Most Blessed Sacrament\u2014on account of their material elements, looked down on Holy Marriage and childbirth, and viewed the death of the body as a good thing.\u00a0 It is important to note that this anti-culture encompassed all of the Catharist heretics, both the absolute dualists and the mitigated dualists, since all of them shared the conviction that corporeal creatures\u2014and the human body itself\u2014were directly created by Lucifer or the evil god.\u00a0 This also helps to explain why the Catharist priests, or \u201cperfects,\u201d appeared so attractive to many lay Catholics, scandalized as they so often were by the worldliness of many Catholic clergy and religious.\u00a0 It also helps to explain why the new mendicant orders, especially the Dominicans, played such a key role in combating the Catharist movements in Languedoc and in northern Italy.\u00a0 St. Dominic and his followers recognized the goods of this world as good things but renounced them to an even greater degree than the Catharist heretics.<\/p>\n

The Scope of the Firmiter <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Among contemporary scholars who adhere to the correct teaching on the unchanging and unchangeable truth of defined Church dogmas, most seem to believe that the Firmiter <\/em>merely defined that God created the angels and some kind of primitive matter at the beginning of time, not all of the different kinds of spiritual and corporeal creatures\u2014and then man.\u00a0 However, the historical facts set forth in this article render this view completely untenable.\u00a0 The Catholic response to the Catharist anti-culture hinged on the fact that God had directly created all of the different kinds of spiritual creatures and all of the different kinds of corporeal creatures and then man, body and soul, who summed up in himself the spiritual and the corporeal orders.\u00a0 Thus, to argue that the Firmiter <\/em>merely defined that God created the angels and some primitive matter is to imagine that the Pope and the Council Fathers failed to contradict the most fundamental doctrine of the Catharist heresy by failing to define the doctrine of creation opposed to that false doctrine.\u00a0 As Quay has pointed out in his work on Lateran IV, the Firmiter\u2019s <\/em>account of what God created \u201cat once\u201d from the beginning of time is exhaustive\u2014that is, it includes every kind <\/em>of living creature that God created: the spiritual creatures, the corporeal creatures, and man.<\/p>\n

It is indeed certain that the Council was deeply concerned to defend God's being the unique and sole creator of all things without exception. Hence Firmiter<\/em> takes over the phrase \"creator of all things, visible and invisible,\" already utilized for just this purpose in Eastern professions of faith prior to 325 and consecrated by I Nicaea and I Constantinople. This would seem to take care of the universality of His creative activity as well as can be done, since it provides what logicians refer to as an adequate distinction (in the thirteenth century, disjunctio exclusiva<\/em>), one such that all possible beings can be assigned properly to one or the other of the two categories.[23]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Just as the phrase \u201cspiritual creatures\u201d encompasses all of the angels, each of them a distinct species according to Scholastic thought, so the phrase \u201ccorporeal\u201d must encompass all of the different kinds of corporeal creatures, other than man.<\/p>\n

Records of debates between Catholic preachers and Catharist heretics prove again and again that the phrase Creator of \u201call things visible and invisible\u201d for Catholics in contrast to Cathar heretics meant all of the different kinds of creatures in heaven, on the earth and in the sea and all that dwell within them.\u00a0 At the end of the twelfth century, a convert from the Catharist cult named Bonacursus revealed the doctrines of the cult in a published confession.\u00a0 He wrote that:<\/p>\n

Their heresy is, indeed, not only terrifying, but is, truly, too frightful and execrable to speak or hear about.\u00a0 For some of them say that God created all the elements, others say that the devil created these elements; but their common opinion is that the devil divided the elements. They state also that the same devil made Adam from the dust of the earth and with very great force imprisoned in him a certain angel of light . . .[24]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

At a public inquiry in Toulouse, France, in 1178, heretics were accused of teaching that<\/p>\n

There were two gods, one good, the other evil; the good had created only invisible things, those which could not be altered or corrupted; the evil one had formed the heavens, the earth, men, and other visible things.[25]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Nor is it possible to argue that the Firmiter <\/em>would allow Catholics to believe that God used angels or other secondary causes to produce the different kinds of corporeal creatures since the Cathar belief that something other than the Most Holy Trinity created the corporeal creatures always stood at the top of the list of errors to be refuted by Catholic speakers in public debates.\u00a0 Writing just five years after the proclamation of the Firmiter, <\/em>the Cistercian monk Caesarius of Heisterbach wrote an account of the Church\u2019s struggles against the Albigensian\/Catharist heresy and identified the principal error of the Cathars:<\/p>\n

Some of the heresiarchs selected tenets from the teaching of Manes, others chose from among the errors which Origen is said to have written in Peri archon . . . <\/em>With Manes, they believed in two principles, a good God and an evil one, the latter the devil, who, they say, created all bodies, just as the good God created all souls.<\/p>\n

To this, a novice replies in Caesarius\u2019 text:<\/p>\n

Moses proves that God created bodies and souls by saying, \u201cGod formed man,\u201d that is, the body, \u201cof the slime of the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life,\u201d which is the soul.<\/p>\n

To which Caesarius replies:<\/p>\n

If they would accept Moses and the prophets, they would not be heretics.[26]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Recalling the preaching of the heretics in 1205 forty years later, Peire Jocglar testified that he had \u201c\u2019heard the heretics saying errors about visible things\u2019 . . . namely, \u2018that God didn\u2019t make them.\u2019\u00a0 The sacred host, he remembered hearing, \u2018isn\u2019t the body of the Lord.\u2019\u201d[27]<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0 In what one historian calls the \u201cmost circumstantial report of heretical ideas [from the Albigensian-Cathar movement] that survives among records of inquisitorial processes before 1250,\u201d Franciscan Friar William Garcias deposed that when he mentioned the text from the beginning of St. John\u2019s Gospel, \u201cWithout Him was made nothing,\u201d the Catharist heretic Peter Garcias of Toulouse answered that \u201cthe word \u2018nothing\u2019 was used to designate visible things, which are nothing.\u201d[28]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAlso when Friar William Garcias spoke with Peter Garcias about the text, \u201cIn Him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,\u201d Peter said that it should be expounded:\u2019 visible to the heart and invisible to the eyes of the flesh\u2019 . . . and \u201cwhen Friar William Garcias spoke with Peter Garcias about the text, \u2018Preaching to you to be converted from these vain things [to the living God who made the heaven, the earth, and the sea and all that are in them],\u2019 Peter said that \u201cthe sea\u201d signified not the material sea where sea creatures lived but the \u201cprison,\u201d where heretics were unjustly confined.[29]<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0 In short, Peter Garcias completely rejected the literal and obvious sense of the sacred history of Genesis for a purely figurative interpretation that had no precedent in the writings of the Fathers of the Church.\u00a0 It was this kind of purely figurative interpretation which denied the direct creation by God of all of the different kinds of corporeal creatures, including the human body, that the Firmiter <\/em>was specifically intended to exclude.<\/p>\n

In a widely-circulated literary account of a debate between a Catholic and a dualist heretic, from around 1250, of which 28 manuscripts have been preserved, the principal point of contention between the Catholic and the heretic concerns the correct meaning of the \u201ccreation of all things.\u201d\u00a0 At the very beginning of the debate, the Catholic apologist interprets the words of St. John\u2019s Gospel, \u201cAll things were made by Him,\u201d to mean that God directly created \u201cheaven and earth and the sea and all things that are therein\u201d (Acts 17).\u00a0 To this, the heretic rejoins:<\/p>\n

I admit that God created all things.\u00a0 This means all good things, but He did not make the evil, vain, perishable, and visible things; a lesser creator, Lucifer, made them, whence the words of John, \u201cWithout Him was made nothing,\u201d\u00a0 Moreover, [we must] interpret the phrase, \u201cThe world was made by Him,\u201d as meaning worldly souls, namely, our own.\u00a0 But our bodies and all other visible things were made by a lesser creator, the devil.\u00a0 Yet God also created \u201cthe heavens,\u201d which are our heavenly souls; the earth which means the earthbound souls of all believer; \u201cthe sea,\u201d which means our souls, abounding with the water of doctrine; and \u201call things which are therein,\u201d which means our whole faith which is in these aforesaid souls.\u00a0 All these things God created.[30]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

It took a hundred years for the Inquisition to eradicate the Catharist heresy in the South of France, and the records of the Inquisition testify to the persistence of the principal errors of the sect.\u00a0 A few generations after the promulgation of the Firmiter <\/em>decree, the Bishop of Pamiers recorded the testimony of a woman who had been led astray by a Catholic priest who had secretly promoted the heresy in his diocese for many years.\u00a0 She told the Inquisition:<\/p>\n

This priest told me that God had only created spirits, those which can neither be corrupted or destroyed, because the world of God would live eternally. But all the bodies which one sees and one senses, that is to say the sky and the earth and all that is found therein, with the sole exception of spirits, these were created by the devil, who rules the world. Because it was he who made them all\u2014he who could not make anything stable and solid\u2014these things are the prey of corruption.[31]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

This testimony demonstrates that the principal errors condemned by the Firmiter <\/em>persisted into the fourteenth century and remained prominent among the tell-tale signs of heretical belief for inquisitors in the Catharist heartland.<\/p>\n

Contemporary Catholic Neo-Catharism<\/strong><\/p>\n

The mistaken belief that the Firmiter <\/em>only defined the creation by God of angels and some simple material elements at the beginning of time has prompted many Catholic intellectuals to try to reconcile the Firmiter <\/em>with the long ages of evolution and progressive creation.\u00a0 It is bitterly ironic to find Catholic scholars of the stature of Philip Trower even arguing that Satan was permitted to enter creation and engineer creatures like carnivorous dinosaurs when this is precisely the kind of falsehood propagated by the Catharist heretics\u2014a falsehood which the Firmiter <\/em>explicitly excluded by defining that the good God created all of the different kinds of corporeal creatures at once from the beginning of time!<\/p>\n

Using as a springboard Abbot Vonier\u2019s Thomistic view (derived from Greek philosophy rather than Scripture) that the heavenly bodies are moved by intelligent powers (cf. ST<\/em>, I, 70, a.3c), Mr. Trower hypothesizes that God appointed the angels<\/em> to be in some way engineers of biological evolution.[32]<\/span><\/span><\/a> He suggests that they \u201cwere to have much more than a supervisory role\u201d in the cosmos and were empowered \u201cto influence the evolutionary or transformative creative process\u201d. And when some of the angels rebelled and became God\u2019s enemies, he did not then terminate their role as agents of evolution any more than he terminates that of tyrants like Hitler and Stalin as agents of human history. Rather, Mr. Trower suggests, God allowed Satan and his cohorts to stay on the job, injecting their perverse, diabolical malice and cruelty into the evolving animal kingdom, presumably in competition with good angels doing their best to steer it in the direction of health, enjoyment, tranquility and beauty.[33]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

After summarizing Dr. Trower\u2019s hypothesis in these words, Fr. Brian Harrison explains why it cannot hold up under scrutiny:<\/p>\n

First, Mr. Trower tries to make this supposed pre-Adamic suffering more theologically acceptable by blending it with post-Adamic evil into a single grand evolutionary process: creation itself is depicted as an unfinished project in which good and evil together somehow prod the cosmos onward toward ultimate perfection. \u201cCreation\u201d, Mr. Trower asserts, \u201cis not something that came to an end or its climax with Adam and Eve. It is still going on.\u201d\u00a0 But how can this Teilhardian\/Hegelian-sounding thesis be reconciled with the Genesis account, according to which the creative process long ago reached a very definite \u201cend\u201d and \u201cclimax\u201d?\u00a0 We read in Gn. 2: 1-2: \u201cThus the heavens and the earth and all their array were completed<\/em>. Since on the seventh day God was finished<\/em> with the work he had been doing, he rested on the seventh day\u201d (emphasis added). And according to Catholic teaching, these early chapters of Genesis, while written in a simple, popular genre, are an ancient form of genuine history (cf. DS 3512-3519 = Dz 2121-2128; DS 3898 = Dz 2329).<\/p>\n

Likewise, Mr. Trower\u2019s scenario underestimates the central importance of the Fall: instead of the unique primal catastrophe that carved a sharp \u201cbefore-and-after\u201d division into our planetary history, Adam\u2019s sin now becomes just part and parcel of an ongoing dialectic between good and evil. This view conflicts with Gn. 2: 17-18, where God declares the earth \u201ccursed\u201d through Adam\u2019s disobedience, since it depicts the earth as already cursed for millions of years previously \u2013 and for reasons that had nothing to do with Adam. [34]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

While Fr. Harrison\u2019s arguments are sound, the same truths can also be defended from the Firmiter <\/em>of Lateran IV as it was intended to be understood by the Council Fathers\u2014and recent scholarship has demonstrated that the Angelic Doctor himself maintained this view.<\/p>\n

The Angelic Doctor Sheds New Light on the Firmiter<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In recent years, it has been possible to positively identify a very important early commentary on the Firmiter <\/em>as the work of St. Thomas Aquinas: his Expositio super primam et secundam decretalem ad archdiaconum Tudertinum<\/em>, a work which underscores the intention of the Firmiter <\/em>to define the direct creation by God of all of the different kinds of corporeal creatures, as well as the human body.\u00a0 According to one of the greatest living experts on the life and work of St. Thomas, Jean-Pierre Torrell:<\/p>\n

The exposition of these two decretals seems to be dedicated to Gifredus of Anagni, Archdeacon of Todi and socius <\/em>of the provost of Saint-Omer, Thomas\u2019s friend, Adenulf of Anagni.\u00a0 . . this dedication invites us to situate the opusculum during the Orvieto period (1261-1265). The first decretal on which St. Thomas presents a doctrinal commentary is the profession of faith known under the name Firmiter, <\/em>formulated by the Lateran Council in 1215.[35]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

In his commentary on the Firmiter, <\/em>St. Thomas teaches that:<\/p>\n

Another error was Origen's, positing that God, from the beginning, created spiritual creatures alone, and afterward, with some of them sinning, He created bodies to which the spiritual substances were bound, as if by some bonds: as if bodily creatures were not produced out of the principal intention of God because it was a good thing for them to exist, but only for punishing the sins of spiritual creatures, although notwithstanding it is said in Gen. 1.31 that \"God saw all the things that He had made, and they were very good.\" This being the case, in order to exclude this [notion], [the chapter Firmiter<\/em>] says that at the same time\u00a0<\/em>[simul<\/em>]\u00a0He created both creatures, namely spiritual and bodily, that is say, angelic and mundane.<\/em>[36]<\/a><\/p>\n

As demonstrated above, monk Caesarius of Heisterbach wrote an account of the Church\u2019s struggles against the Albigensian\/Catharist heresy a few years after Lateran IV and identified the principal error of the Cathars, stating that:<\/p>\n

Some of the heresiarchs selected tenets from the teaching of Manes, others chose from among the errors which Origen is said to have written in Peri archon . . . <\/em>With Manes, they believed in two principles, a good God and an evil one, the latter the devil, who, they say, created all bodies, just as the good God created all souls.[37]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Thus, St. Thomas joined the monk Caesarius in witnessing to the fact that the Firmiter <\/em>attributes the direct creation of all of the different kinds of bodies to God alone, and he teaches that God created all of the spiritual and corporeal creatures at the beginning of time\u2014not just the spiritual creatures who were then imprisoned in bodies at a later time.\u00a0 Moreover, by the words \u201cbodily creatures were . . . produced out of the principal intention of God\u201d St. Thomas means the special creation of the different kinds of bodily creatures.\u00a0 This is clear from his teaching on creation in Part I of the Summa<\/em>, composed at roughly the same time as his commentary on the Firmiter. <\/em>\u00a0There he writes that:<\/p>\n

The corporeal forms that bodies had when first produced came immediately from God<\/strong>, whose bidding alone matter obeys, as its own proper cause.\u00a0 To signify this, Moses prefaces each work with the words, \u201cGod said, \u2018Let this thing be,\u2019 or \u2018that,\u2019 to denote the formation of all things by the Word of God . . .[38]<\/span><\/span><\/a> (emphasis added)<\/p>\n

Objections Refuted<\/strong><\/p>\n

These valuable contemporary records anticipate an objection often raised by modern scholars against the thesis that the Firmiter <\/em>was intended to define once and for all that God created all of the different kinds of corporeal creatures in the beginning of time.\u00a0 This objection rejects our thesis on the ground that the Firmiter <\/em>itself is rarely mentioned by theologians or Doctors of the Church in their writings against later errors in regard to the doctrine of creation.\u00a0 If the Firmiter <\/em>was intended to define the creation of all of the different kinds of corporeal creatures at the beginning of time, the argument goes, then later Doctors and preeminent theologians would have cited the Firmiter <\/em>as a kind of proof text against other later heretics who deviated from the true doctrine of creation.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this objection exemplifies the very attitude that makes it so hard for modern scholars to understand the thinking of the medieval doctors and the Firmiter <\/em>correctly\u2014an attitude of irreverence for Sacred Scripture as the totally inerrant, God-breathed Word of God.\u00a0 The Firmiter <\/em>was intended to correct heresies based on a rejection or misinterpretation of the first chapters of Genesis, but it was never intended to replace <\/em>Genesis as the primary source of information revealed by God about the creation of the world.\u00a0 The common notion among Catholic theologians today, that the content of Genesis 1-3 is not sufficient to prove that God created all of the different kinds of creatures by fiat at the beginning of time, would have been incomprehensible to Pope Innocent III and the fathers of Lateran IV.\u00a0 To repeat: The Firmiter <\/em>was meant to exclude erroneous teachings about creation based on the rejection or misinterpretation of Genesis, not to supplant Genesis as God\u2019s inerrant account of how He created all of the different kinds of spiritual and corporeal creatures for man at the beginning of time.\u00a0 Thus, for St. Thomas and the Church Doctors who came after him, it was sufficient to say, \u201caccording to Moses, God said X, Y, or Z,\u201d to settle an argument.\u00a0 No reference to a Church Council or papal document was necessary.\u00a0 This approach stands in direct opposition to the methodology of most contemporary Catholic theologians.<\/p>\n

Proof that the plain sense of Scripture had sufficient authority for the Fathers of Lateran IV to define doctrine can be found in the teaching of St. Thomas in the Summa Theologica<\/em> on transubstantiation.\u00a0 Since Lateran IV had just defined the dogma of transubstantiation for the first time, one might expect St. Thomas to cite the teaching of the Council in his treatment of the topic. But he does not.\u00a0 It is sufficient for him to cite the text of Scripture and to comment on it with the help of the Church Fathers.[39]<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0 The same is true of the Firmiter\u2019s<\/em> treatment of the doctrine of creation.\u00a0 It makes no mention of Genesis because it assumes that the literal and obvious sense of Genesis is true.\u00a0 It merely defines creation in a way that excludes any doctrine of creation that rejects or misinterprets the literal and obvious sense of the sacred history of Genesis\u2014and that includes the modern errors of progressive creation and theistic evolution.<\/p>\n

Marcionism Redux<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most destructive heresies of the early Church was the heresy of Marcion who denied the divine origin of the Old Testament and set up an opposition between the alleged evil god of the Old Testament and the good God of the New Testament.\u00a0 Although Marcion\u2019s errors were rejected and condemned in his lifetime, Marcion predicted that his heresy would divide the Church until the end of time, a prediction that history has unfortunately borne out to a great extent. Indeed, the interpretations of Genesis 1-3 and of the Firmiter <\/em>of Lateran IV commonly offered by contemporary Catholic theologians can only be described as neo-Marcion in their failure to recognize or affirm a consistent, continuous doctrine of creation in Genesis, in the writings of the Apostles, Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and in the conciliar teaching of Lateran IV and Vatican I and other authoritative Magisterial teachings on creation from the time of the Apostles until now.<\/p>\n

The neo-Marcion modernist sounds remarkably Albigensian as he sets up an opposition between the benevolent God of the New Testament and the cruel god of the Old; between the historically accurate New Testament Scriptures and the mythological, or, at least, non-historical, contents of the first five books of the Bible; between the \u201cprimitive\u201d creation account[s] in Genesis and the \u201cenlightened\u201d synthesis between faith and reason that advances in natural science have allowed theologians to formulate in the benevolent spirit of the New Testament.\u00a0 However, the neo-Marcions pose a much greater threat to the faithful than Marcion ever did, because so many of them speak in the name of the Church, even as doctors of theology, as bishops, even as Popes.\u00a0 Yet, at the end of the day, even Popes cannot change the defined doctrines of the faith, and God who has bound in heaven what was previously bound on earth by His lawful representatives will ultimately vindicate the Faith \u201conce delivered to the saints,\u201d as it has been defined and handed down to us from the Apostles.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is no coincidence that the recent change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church <\/em>declaring \u201ccapital punishment\u201d intrinsically evil in contradiction to the constant teaching of the Magisterium collided most spectacularly with a Profession of Faith promulgated by Pope Innocent III, the very Pope who convened the Fourth Lateran Council which defined the Firmiter <\/em>decree on creation in a way that completely excludes molecules-to-man evolution as a credible explanation for the origins of man and the universe.\u00a0 This providential \u201ccoincidence\u201d draws attention to the fact that the attempt to change the constant teaching of the Church on capital punishment can only be justified within a modernist \u201cevolutionary\u201d framework which holds that the Church\u2019s understanding of the Truth \u201cevolves\u201d into doctrinal understandings which directly contradict her prior understanding and teaching of the Faith.[40]<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0 It was largely to prevent this perversion of sound doctrine and right reason that Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi <\/em>warned that modernism was \u201cthe synthesis of all heresies\u201d and that \u201cevolution\u201d was among \u201cthe chief\u201d of the doctrines of the modernists.[41]<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0 Yet few, if any, of the valiant scholars who have resisted the proposed change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church <\/em>trace the revolutionary spirit behind this unlawful innovation to its true source in evolution-based modernism.<\/p>\n

It is high time that Catholic scholars faced up to the facts regarding the historical context of the Fourth Lateran Council and the intended meaning of the Firmiter <\/em>decree.\u00a0 Either they should accept the meaning of Lateran IV as intended\u2014as did St. Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suarez, St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Cornelius a Lapide, and the greatest commentators on the Firmiter <\/em>for six hundred years\u2014and reject theistic evolution and progressive creation; or they should deny the infallibility of dogmatic decrees as they were intended to be understood by the Popes and Council Fathers who promulgated them and confess that God allowed His Church to err in her understanding and teaching on creation from the beginning. In that case, they should also admit that He willed His Church leaders to receive the correct understanding of the origins of man and the universe, not from the saints and scholars among her members, but from godless scientists like Charles Lyell and T.H. Huxley who hated the Church and wanted to destroy Her. By the widespread acceptance of this blasphemous view of recent history within Catholic academia, \u201cmere anarchy\u201d has been \u201cloosed upon\u201d the Church as well as \u201cthe world,\u201d as God\u2019s own representatives have exalted the wild conjectures of fallible human science above God\u2019s inerrant Word as it has been understood in His Church from the beginning.<\/p>\n

Maranatha!\u00a0 Come, Lord Jesus!<\/p>\n

Appendix I<\/strong><\/p>\n

Table and Commentary on the Meaning of \u201cSimul\u201d in the Firmiter <\/em>of Lateran IV<\/strong><\/p>\n

The table below illustrates the views of various prominent Catholic commentators on the meaning of \u201csimul\u201d in the Firmiter <\/em>of Lateran IV and in relation to Sirach 18:1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
What was created \u201csimul\u201d? <\/strong><\/td>\n\n

Spirits and undifferentiated matter *<\/strong><\/p>\n

Creatio Prima<\/td>\n

\n

All spiritual and corporeal creatures <\/strong><\/p>\n

Creatio Prima and Creatio Secunda<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

<\/td>\nSt. Hildegard<\/td>\nSuarez<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nPeter Lombard<\/td>\nLachat<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nSt. Thomas Aquinas (Summa)<\/td>\nSt. Thomas Aquinas (Decretals)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/td>\nFerrara<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/td>\nSt. Lawrence<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/td>\nA Lapide<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/td>\nDe Charmes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
What does simul mean?<\/strong><\/td>\nInstantaneous<\/strong><\/td>\nAt the same time <\/strong><\/td>\nAccording to a common plan<\/strong><\/td>\nSix Day Creation or Instant<\/strong><\/td>\nCiting Firmiter<\/em> of Lateran IV<\/strong><\/td>\nCiting Sirach 18:1<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
St. Hildegard of Bingen<\/td>\n*<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\nNO<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Peter Lombard<\/td>\n*<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\nAn Instant for formless matter; Six Days for creation, adornment and distinction<\/td>\nNO<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
St. Thomas Aquinas (I)<\/td>\n*<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\nAn Instant for formless matter; Six Days for adornment and distinction<\/td>\nNO<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
St. Thomas Aquinas (II)<\/td>\n<\/td>\n*<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\nNO<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sylvester de Ferrara<\/td>\n<\/td>\n*<\/td>\n<\/td>\nSix Days<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\nNO<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Gabriel Vasquez<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n*<\/td>\n<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Cajetan<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n*<\/td>\n<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Francisco Suarez<\/td>\n<\/td>\n*<\/td>\n<\/td>\nSix Days<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\nNO<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Cornelius a Lapide<\/td>\n<\/td>\n*<\/td>\n<\/td>\nSix Days<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\nNO<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
St. Lawrence of Brindisi<\/td>\n<\/td>\n*<\/td>\n<\/td>\nSix Days<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\nNO<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Thomas de Charmes<\/td>\n<\/td>\n*<\/td>\n<\/td>\nSix Days<\/td>\nYES<\/td>\nNO<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here are the texts:<\/p>\n

St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)<\/strong><\/p>\n[S]ome clerics turned to Hildegard in this difficult matter: \u201cHow should one comprehend when reading: He who lives in eternity has created everything at once <\/em>[Sirach 18:1], when it is reported that God has divided up His works into six days?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Hildegard answered this question according to her vision:<\/p>\n

The almighty God, who is life without beginning and end and who knows about everything at all times, created the matter for everything heavenly and earthly at the same time, heaven as a shining matter and earth, which was of an opaque matter. The shining matter however radiated the splendor of eternity like a dense light that was shining over the opaque matter in such a way that it connected with it. And the two matters were created simultaneously and appeared in a sphere. For with the first 'Fiat' ('Let there be') angels came forth from the above mentioned shining matter in their appearance of light. And since God is God and man at once, He created the angels in the image of the Father; and man, whose garment He would put on, He created in His image and likeness. So also appeared, on the order of the almighty God, each and every creature of an opaque matter according to its nature.<\/p>\n

The six days are six works; for the beginning and completion of each work is called a day. Also, after the creation of the basic matters there was no break, but virtually instantly the Spirit of God moved upon the waters, and even after that there was no delay, but God said at once: \u201cLet there be light!\u201d - and there was light.\u201d (Letters)<\/p>\n

This answers the question of the works of the days. God created the world by expressing His Will. After the sounding of the order: \u201cLet there be!\u201d things took shape and form.<\/p>\n

God existed before the creation of the world, without beginning; for HE IS. He has been the light and all glory forever and always will be. He has always been life. When God then thought to create the world, he didn't have to do anything else; for in His Will all the matter of the world already existed. So when God's Will came out of Itself to create all of reality, the matter of the world, still unshaped and like a dark lump, came out of the Will itself and as God willed it (H. S. 11).<\/p>\n

Peter Lombard (1100-1160)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Deinde elementa\u00a0distinxit<\/em>\u00a0Deus et species proprias atque distinctas singulis rebus secundum genus suum dedit, qu\u00e6 non\u00a0simul<\/em>, ut quibusdam sanctorum Patrum placuit, sed\u00a0per intervalla temporum<\/em>\u00a0ac sex volumina dierum, ut aliis visum est, formavit.<\/p>\n

Then God distinguished the elements and gave to each separate thing its proper and distinct appearance according to its own genus; He formed those things not at once (simul<\/em>), as\u00a0was the opinion of\u00a0certain holy Fathers, but\u00a0through intervals of times\u00a0<\/em>and through the changes of the Six Days, as it seemed to others.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alii quidem tradiderunt, omnia simul in materia et forma fuisse creata; quod Augustinus2<\/sup><\/strong>\u00a0sensisse videtur.\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 Alii vero hoc magis probaverunt atque asseruerunt, ut primum materia rudis atque informis, quatuor elementorum commixtionem atque confusionem tenens, creata sit; postmodum vero per intervalla sex dierum ex illa materia rerum corporalium genera sint formata secundum species proprias.<\/p>\n

Some have related that all things were created at once\u00a0<\/strong>(simul<\/em>) in matter and form \u2013 what Augustine seems to have thought. But others have to a greater extent proved and\u00a0maintained that at first matter raw and formless, containing a mixture and combination of the four elements, was created; afterwards, however, through the intervals of the Six Days, from that matter the genera of bodily things were formed according to their proper species (<\/strong>Peter Lombard's\u00a0Sentences<\/em>\u00a0(IV, 2, d. 12).<\/p>\n

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Summa<\/strong><\/p>\n

Objection 2:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Further, it is said (Sirach 18:1): \"He that liveth for ever, created all things together.\" But this would not be the case if the days of these works were more than one. Therefore they are not many but one only.<\/p>\n

Reply to Objection 2:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0God created all things together so far as regards their substance in some measure formless. But He did not create all things together, so far as regards that formation of things which lies in distinction and adornment. Hence the word \"creation\" is significant.<\/p>\n

Commentary: <\/strong>Please note the similarity<\/strong> between St. Thomas\u2019s answer here and the statements of St. Hildegard and Peter Lombard.\u00a0 Notice the difference<\/strong> between the extent of the things created <\/strong>in the passage above from the Summa and in the commentary on the Decretals below.<\/p>\n

Decretals<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alius error fuit Origenis ponentis quod Deus a principio creavit solas spirituales creaturas, et postea quibusdam earum peccantibus creavit corpora quibus quasi quibusdam vinculis spirituales substantiae alligarnetur: ac si corporales creaturae non fuerint ex principali Dei intentione productae quia bonum erat eas esse, sed solum ad punienda peccata spiritualium creaturarum, cum tamen dicatur Gen. 1.31 \u00abVidit Deus cuncta quae fecerat et erant valde bona\u00bb ; Unde ad hoc excludendum dicit quod simul condidit utramque creaturam, scilicet spiritualem et corporalem, angelicam videlicet et mundanam.<\/em><\/p>\n

Another error was Origen's, positing that God, from the beginning, created spiritual creatures alone, and afterward, with some of them sinning, He created bodies to which the spiritual substances were bound, as if by some bonds: as if bodily creatures were not produced out of the principal intention of God because it was a good thing for them to exist, but only for punishing the sins of spiritual creatures, although notwithstanding it is said in Gen. 1.31 that \"God saw all the things that He had made, and they were very good.\" This being the case, in order to exclude this [notion], [the chapter Firmiter<\/em>] says that at the same time\u00a0<\/em>[simul<\/em>]\u00a0He created both creatures, namely spiritual and bodily, that is say, angelic and mundane.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

From the 1969 edition of the Leonine Aquinas, vol. 40, published in Rome by the St. Thomas Aquinas Foundation: Super Decretales:<\/em>\u00a0Expositio super primam et secundam decretalem ad archdiaconum Tudertinum<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Commentary: <\/strong>Note that in the passage from the Summa St. Thomas says that the ONLY things created \u201csimul\u201d\u2014at the \u201csame instant\u201d\u2014were spiritual creatures and formless matter.\u00a0 However, in the passage from the Decretals where St. Thomas explicitly mentions the Firmiter, <\/em>he says that the spiritual and corporeal creatures were all<\/em><\/strong> made \u201cat the same time\u201d (\u201csimul\u201d)\u2014not the spiritual before the corporeal creatures.<\/p>\n

Sylvester de Ferrara (1474-1528)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The position that \u00a0both souls <\/strong>and other immaterial natures<\/u><\/strong><\/em> had <\/strong>not been produced before<\/u><\/strong><\/em> bodies is in agreement with the Catholic Faith, and it has been determined by the Church, as is clear in the chapter \u00a0Firmiter<\/em><\/strong> credimus: extra de Sum. Trin. et fid. cathol<\/em>.\u00a0 And St. Thomas did not ignore this decision\u00a0of the Church, because he interpreted that decretal, if\u00a0the monographs (opuscula<\/em>)\u00a0of the saint, which are in circulation,\u00a0be genuine.<\/p>\n

It also can be answered that the Church determines that the angels were created simul cum <\/em>(\u201cat once, along with,\u201d \u201ctogether with\u201d, etc.) bodily creation<\/strong>, as indeed it must necessarily be held, as it is contrary to the opinion of Origen,\u2026 (De Anima<\/em> [\"On the Soul\"], p. 488 of volume 2, Book II, ch. 83,\u00a0in a discussion of Origen's position that souls were created before the body).<\/p>\n

The word \"extra\" in the reference to Firmiter<\/em>, viz.\u00a0 Firmiter credimus: extra de Sum. <\/em>Trin. et fid. cathol. <\/em>is not a preposition but an abbreviation for the Decretals <\/em>of Gregory IX (Extra<\/em> Decretum Gratiani [conciliar decisions and papal letters \"Outside the Decretal of Gratian\"] ). This is significant because Ferrara, the Master General of the Dominican Order, is showing that St. Thomas himself attributed the meaning of \u201cat the same time\u201d to simul <\/em>in the Firmiter<\/em> with the above explanation.<\/p>\n

Gabriel Vasquez (1549 [51]-1604)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This very verse (of Ecclesiasticus) demonstrates against Nazianzenus (Gregorius) that angels were made (conditos<\/em>) together with corporeal creatures, and not before: it proves even that all the bodies of the elements, and the living beings, were created at the same time, as wanted by Augustine whose sentence in this matter is commonly rejected by all: because we all must interpret this verse in the following way: that it does not prove<\/strong> that all bodies, and angels with all bodies, were produced at the same time. The Doctors indeed understand differently this testimony (of Scripture). (\u2026) For Gregorius (32 Lib. Moralium<\/em>. C.9-10) \u201cGod said that He made all things at the same time <\/em>(simul), because all that are made after, are made from these two <\/em>(heaven and earth).\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 With this particle \u201csimul\u201d, Gregorius refers not to corporeal and spiritual things (in general), but to those that were made after by propagation: but they can be said made at the same time in their cause. Stars were indeed made after the Heavens, living beings indeed made from water and from earth, as writes Gen.1, following the interpretation of saint Thomas in Ia Qu. 74, art.2 ad. 2*<\/span><\/a>. Therefore I consider, as both explanations of this verse are possible, that nothing can be proved<\/strong> here against Nazianzenus. (\u2026) Moreover one can explain this verse of Ecclesiasticus in a much simpler way, considering that the particle \u201csimul\u201d does not refer to a length of time, nor implies that all things were made by God at the same time (eodem tempore<\/em>), but means the same thing than \u201cpariter<\/em>\u201d or \u201ccommuniter<\/em>\u201d<\/strong>. In this way it means the grouping of numerous things. Then the meaning becomes: \u201cHe who lives from ever, created all things evenly (pariter<\/em>); He created all things, none excepted but Himself. And the Greek adverb \u03ba\u03bf\u03b9\u03bd\u03b7 (koine<\/em>), which our Vulgate translates \u201csimul<\/em>\u201d, has this meaning <\/strong>(emphasis added) (translation by Dominique Tassot).<\/p>\n

Thomas Cajetan (1469-1534)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIf\u00a0 this particle \u201csimul\u201d, that used the Lateran\u2019s Council in its definition, denotes the length of time, and therefore that angels have been created at the same time than bodies, we cannot refuse to affirm, this coming from the Pope, that it was defined as a dogma of faith, as it begins with the formula: \u201cFirmiter credidimus, et simpliciter confitemur, etc.\u201d<\/em> And in the same way is added: \u201cDeum utramque de nihilo simul condidisse creaturam\u201d.<\/em> With such a wording one understands plainly that a dogma has been defined by the Council. But I consider that the Council did not define that angels have been created at the same moment than corporeal creatures, because the particle \u201csimul\u201d, which is seen to mean this, does not always refer to a length of time, but has sometimes the same meaning than \u201cpariter\u201d, as we have noted in cap. II. We can therefore explain the intention and the words of the Council as we explained in cap. II\u00a0 the verse of Ecclesiast. \u201cCreavit omnia simul\u201d.<\/em>\u00a0 And this interpretation is for me the best one, because absolutely nothing in this Symbol shows that the Council wanted to announce a definition, new at that time, according to which both creatures were created by God at the same moment. Both creature were created equally (pariter<\/em>), this is what is the most important to explain the article \u201cDei omnipotentis, et creatoris\u201d. As the Council had no strong basis to define that all things were created at the same moment (as we have shown in cap. III), we should not estimate that it wanted to define that. <\/strong>Regarding the fact that the Council said: \u201csimul ab initio temporis<\/strong> utramque de nihilo condidit creaturam\u201d, it nevertheless did not say \u201cat the same moment\u201d (simul tempore<\/em>), so as to define (only) that both creatures had\u00a0 <\/strong>equally (pariter<\/em>) a beginning to their existence, although not necessarily at the same moment (simul), meaning the same point in time. In the same way we have explained (cf. infra) the particle \u201ctecum\u201d in Job 40 (Ecce Behemot, quem feci tecum: Here is Behemot, that I have made with you<\/em>). We can see this particle tecum<\/em>, absolutely similar to simul<\/em>, with a meaning of time\u201d (emphasis added) (translation by Dominique Tassot).<\/p>\n

Francisco Suarez (1548-1617)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The aforementioned chapter Firmiter . . . <\/em>says that God created each nature, spiritual and corporal, at the same time<\/strong><\/em> (The Works of the Six Days<\/em>, Book I, Chapter I, 14).<\/p>\n

Cornelius a Lapide<\/strong><\/p>\n

You will ask, Where and when were the angels created? Some have thought that they were created before the world<\/strong>. This was the opinion of Origen, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus,\u00a0 Ambrose, Jerome, and Hilary. Others such as Acacius and Gennadius (in the Catena) <\/em>have thought that they were created before the world<\/strong>. However,<\/u> I hold that they were created together with the world<\/u><\/em> in the beginning of time . . . My opinion is no longer just probable, but is both certain and de fide<\/em>,<\/u> for this is what the Council itself declares and defines<\/u><\/strong>.<\/u><\/p>\n

St. Lawrence of Brindisi<\/strong><\/p>\n

Verum Sancta Romana Eccleasia in Laterano magno Concilio determinavit angelos simul cum mundana creatura initio temporis ex nihilo esse creatos; nec tamen crediderim pr\u00e6fatos Doctores sensisse ante omnem corpoream creaturam fuisse creatos; nam temporis initio, quando angeli creati sunt, invisibilis omnino erat hic mundus. Et ita videtur intellexisse D. Gregorius, qui tractans illud B. Iob: Ubi eras cum me laudarent...astra matutina? <\/em>sic inquit: <<Quia enim prima in tempore condita natura rationabilium spirituum creditur, non immerito matutina astra angeli vocantur. Quod si ita est, dum terra esset invisibilis et incomposita, dum tenebrae essent super abyssum, venturum diem subsequentis saeculi per lucem sapientiae existendo praevenerunt>>. Atque ita nos et cum mundana creatura et ante visibilem mundum angelos esse creatos dicere possumus. Ergo, ad propositum revertentes, per c\u0153lum<\/em> hic angelos cum c\u0153lo empyreo vel, quod idem est, c\u0153lum empyreum cum angelis debemus intelligere.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding these opinions,<\/strong> the Holy Roman Church determined in the Fourth Lateran Council that the angels along with the creatures of the world were at once created ex nihilo<\/em> from the beginning of time.<\/strong> Nevertheless, I should not be inclined to believe that the aforementioned Doctors thought that the angels were created before every corporeal creature; for<\/strong> at the beginning of time, when the angels were created, the world was completely invisible<\/u><\/em><\/strong>. This seems to have been St. Gregory\u2019s understanding. In his discussion of that verse in Job (viz. Where were you when I founded the earth\u2026when the morning stars sang in chorus<\/em>), he says, \u201cSince the created nature of rational spirits is supposed to be first in time, the morning stars are not without reason called angels. If that is so, while the earth was invisible and unformed, while the darkness was upon the deep, the stars by being visible anticipated the day of the subsequent time that was about to come by means of the light of Wisdom.\u201d Therefore, we can say that along with the creatures of the world, the angels were created before the visible world. <\/u><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Note on the above commentary of St. Lawrence: St. Lawrence argues that since there was evening and then morning, the first day, the heavens and the earth were created in darkness and were at first (for the first part of the first day) \u201cinvisible.\u201d\u00a0 Thus, he argues that the opinion of St. Gregory that the angels were created before the \u201cvisible creatures\u201d can still be reconciled with the plain sense of the Firmiter <\/em>that the corporeal and spiritual creatures were created (\u201csimul\u201d) at the same time.<\/p>\n

Thomas de Charmes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fr. Thomas de Charmes (1703-1765), Compendium Theologi\u00e6 Univers\u00e6 ad usum Examinandorum<\/em><\/p>\n

This Compendium <\/em>was used throughout Europe for more than a hundred years.\u00a0 After initial publication in Vienna and Nancy in 1750, new editions were published in Nancy 1755, Nancy 1760, Madrid 1824, Milano 1872, Augsburg 1780, Paris 1859, Paris 1872, Paris, 1876, 1885, 1886,<\/p>\n

This Theologia universalis\u00a0ad usum S. Theologi\u00e6 candidatorum<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0gives (in the 4th edition, Nancy, 1765):<\/p>\n

Tomus 2<\/strong>: De Deo trino et Creatore<\/p>\n

Tractatus De Deo creatore<\/p>\n

Dissertatio 1 : De Angelis<\/p>\n

Caput 1: De existentia Angelorum<\/p>\n

Quaeres 1: Quo tempore Angeli fuerint creati? (p. 515)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Resp. Simul cum mundo creati sunt, nec ante, ut constat ex cap. Firmiter <\/em>, et prob. ex Genes. 1 in principio creavit Deus c\u0153lum et terram<\/em>, ubi sub nomine c\u0153li comprehendit Angelos, ut explicatur Exodi 20. Sex diebus<\/strong><\/em> fecit Dominus c\u0153lum et terram, et omnia qu\u00e6 in eis sunt<\/em>; ergo et Angelos qui in c\u0153lis continentur.<\/p>\n

Commentary: <\/strong>Fr. de Charmes notes that the Firmiter <\/em>harmonizes with Exodus 20: \u201cIn six days<\/strong> God created the heavens and the earth and all they contain,<\/strong>\u201d and he concludes that \u201cas the angels are also contained in the heavens,\u201d it follows from this that the angels were created simul cum mundo <\/em>(at the same time as the material universe), that is to say during the same brief creation period (the \u201csix days\u201d) and \u201cnot before\u201d (nec ante<\/em>) the creation of the material universe.<\/p>\n

CONCLUSION<\/strong><\/p>\n

The table posted above sheds abundant light on the intended meaning of \u201csimul\u201d in the Firmiter <\/em>of Lateran IV.\u00a0 Of greatest significance is the fact that ALL of the statements re: \u201csimul\u201d that understand it to mean \u201cinstantaneous\u201d AND which apply it exclusively to \u201cformless matter\u201d ALSO make reference to Sirach 18:1.\u00a0 On the other hand, ALL of the statements re: \u201csimul\u201d that understand it to mean \u201cat the same time\u201d in the sense of \u201cin the same short period of time\u201d\u2014i.e. the six days\u2014do NOT mention Sirach 18:1 and DO mention the Firmiter <\/em>explicitly.\u00a0 Finally, it is fascinating to discover that Vasquez and Cajetan are the ONLY commentators cited above who cite Sirach 18:1 AND the Firmiter <\/em>to arrive at an interpretation of simul <\/em>different from \u201cat the same time.\u201d\u00a0 Vasquez did so out of respect for St. Gregory of Nazianzus and other Fathers who believed that the angels existed for a long time before the creation of the material universe.\u00a0 However, as St. Lawrence of Brindisi demonstrates in his commentary, it is not necessary to do violence to the plain sense of \u201csimul\u201d in the Firmiter <\/em>by invoking Sirach 18:1 to achieve this reconciliation.\u00a0 Cajetan broke from the constant tradition of the Church by denying the literal historical truth of the first three chapters of the sacred history of Genesis.\u00a0 He rejected the literal historical truth of the Mosaic account of the creation of Eve from Adam\u2019s rib on the grounds that this would entail the initial creation of an \u201cextra\u201d rib for Adam\u2014in spite of the fact that the Angelic Doctor had resolved this apparent \u201ccontradiction\u201d centuries earlier by pointing out that Adam\u2019s \u201crib\u201d was created to be given away to give life to Eve, just as all men are endowed with life-giving seed so that it can be given away for the procreation of children, according to God\u2019s Holy Will.<\/p>\n

It should now be apparent that \u201csimul\u201d in relation to the doctrine of creation has been understood in three different ways by leading commentators: first, as \u201cat the same time\u201d in the sense of \u201cinstantaneous\u201d (always with reference to Sirach 18:1 and NEVER\u2014except for Vasquez and Cajetan\u2014with explicit reference to the Firmiter<\/em>); secondly, as \u201cat the same time,\u201d in the sense of \u201cin six days\u201d (as in St. Lawrence, Lapide, De Charmes et al., WITH EXPLICIT REFERENCE TO THE FIRMITER<\/em> and WITHOUT reference to Sirach 18:1): and thirdly, in the sense of \u201caccording to a common plan\u201d which was the deviant interpretation first proposed by Vasquez and Cajetan and welcomed by the modernists of our day.\u00a0 It should be apparent from the historical context of Lateran IV explained above, that it was entirely gratuitous for Vasquez and Cajetan to invoke Sirach 18:1 to explain the meaning of \u201csimul\u201d in the Firmiter <\/em>of Lateran IV, and so it remains for post-Vatican I theologians.<\/p>\n

Even if \u201csimul\u201d in the Firmiter <\/em>merely meant that God created the angels and some material elements \u201cin the beginning,\u201d this would still refute evolution, because only God could form the different kinds of corporeal creatures from undifferentiated matter or from some simple material elements.\u00a0 As St. Thomas wrote in the Summa:<\/p>\n

Divine Power, being infinite, can produce things of the same species out of any matter, such as a man from the slime of the earth, and a woman from out of man.[42]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

However, the table demonstrates conclusively that orthodox authorities have consistently interpreted \u201csimul\u201d in the Firmiter <\/em>as \u201cat the same time\u201d NOT in the sense of \u201cinstantaneous\u201d but in the sense of \u201cin the same short period of time\u201d which they understood to be compatible with the six days of creation but not with a longer creation period.\u00a0 The Latin Vulgate in use at the time of Lateran IV contains many examples of the use of \u201csimul\u201d in the sense of \u201crelatively simultaneous,\u201d or \u201cin the same short period of time.\u201d\u00a0 For example, Joshua 10:5\u00a0: \u00abCongregati igitur ascenderunt quinque reges Amorreorum rex Hierusalem rex Hebron rex Hieremoth rex Lachis rex Eglon simul cum exercitibus suis et castrametati sunt circa Gabaon obpugnantes eam.\u00a0\u00bb \u00ab\u00a0So the five kings of the Amorrhites being assembled together went up: the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jerimoth, the king of Lachis, the king of Eglon, they and their armies, and camped about Gabaon, laying siege to it.\u201d In other words, the five kings went up together (simul<\/em>) not at the same instant but in a coordinated series of movements.\u00a0 In the same way, God made all things simul<\/em> in a coordinated relatively simultaneous series of creative acts.<\/p>\n

Similarly, in Numbers 6:17, Moses writes: \u201carietem vero immolabit hostiam pacificam Domino offerens simul canistrum azymorum et libamenta qu\u00e6 ex more debentur.\u201d \u201c<\/span>But the ram he shall immolate for a sacrifice of peace offering to the Lord, offering at the same time (simul<\/em>) the basket of unleavened bread, and the libations that are due by custom.\u201d\u00a0 In this instance, these items are not offered at the same instant, but in a coordinated series, with relative simultaneity, like the fiats of the Hexameron in Genesis Chapter One.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Theistic evolutionism holds that God created matter and natural laws in the beginning, and then used billions of years of natural processes, including death, destruction, mutations, and disease, to produce the various kinds of living things, including the human body.\u00a0 Generally speaking, theistic evolutionists deny the historicity of Genesis 1-11 and believe that Noah\u2019s Flood was a local flood, that the Tower of Babel incident never actually happened, and that human languages evolved from primitive to more complex over long periods of time. Progressive creation can be defined as the view that God created all of the different kinds of creatures supernaturally by fiat but spread out the work of creation over billions of years.\u00a0 History attests that no Father or Doctor of the Church ever held either of these views and that they were invented by theologians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to reconcile the dogma of creation with the alleged \u201cirrefutable evidence\u201d that the Earth and the universe were billions of years old and that the different kinds of living things either evolved from a common ancestor over hundreds of millions of years or were specially created by God through periodic interventions over the same vast ages of time.\u00a0 Of course, the Council Fathers did not have the concept of theistic evolution or progressive creation in mind when they promulgated the Firmiter, <\/em>but, as will be demonstrated below, the meaning they intended to affirm, in and of itself, contradicts these errors.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Pope Francis recently ordered a revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church <\/em>to reflect his opinion that the death penalty must be considered \u201cin itself contrary to the Gospel\u201d (\u201cin s\u00e9 stessa contraria al Vangelo<\/em>\u201d).\u00a0 Yet the same Pope who convened the Fourth Lateran Council, Pope Innocent III, in 1210 added the following statement to a 1208 Profession of Faith: \u201cRegarding the secular power, we assert that it may without mortal sin exercise the death penalty, provided this is imposed through justice, not hatred, and proceeds after due consultation, not incautiously.\u201d (De potestate saeculari asserimus, quod sine peccato mortali potest iudicium sanguinis exercere, dummodo ad inferendam vindictam non odio, sed iudicio, non incaute, sed consulte procedat. DS 795 = Dz 425, emphasis added.)<\/p>\n

[3]<\/span><\/span><\/a> If anyone says that<\/em> it is possible that to the dogmas declared by the Church a meaning must sometimes be attributed according to the progress of science, different from that which the Church has understood and understands, let him be anathema <\/em>(Vatican Council I, Faith and Reason \u2013 Canon 4; 3).<\/p>\n

[4]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Languedoc refers to the south of France where the Catharist-Albigensian believers lived in fairly large numbers.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Pope Innocent III, Between God and Man: Six Sermons on the Priestly Office <\/em>(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), p. 61.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Cf. Tassot et al, Creation and Time, <\/em>(2014). In order to provide the necessary context, the sections of this paper up to \u201cHeresies Excluded by the Firmiter <\/em>of Lateran IV\u201d are taken from Creation and Time.<\/em><\/p>\n

[7]<\/span><\/span><\/a> A Vacant, Etudes Th\u00e9ologiques sur les Constitutions du Vatican d\u2019apr\u00e8s les actes du Concile,<\/em> Art. 224.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Ibid, Art. 205.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Dictionnaire de Th\u00e9ologie Catholique (DTC<\/em>) (sous la direction de A. Vacant\u00a0et E. Mangenot, Paris, Letouzey, 1903, Art. Ange, col 1269,1270).\u00a0 \u201cTemerarious\u201d was a theological note signifying opposition to \"a truth authentically taught by the Ordinary Magisterium but not as revealed or intimately connected with revelation\" or\u00a0\"a truth unanimously held by all schools of theologians which is derived from revealed truth, but by more than one step of reasoning.\"\u00a0 Such temerity was considered a \u201cmortal sin indirectly against the faith\u201d \u2013 or \u2013 \u201cusually a mortal sin\u201d according to the work On the Value of Theological Notes and the Criteria for Discerning Them<\/em><\/strong> by Father Sixtus Cartechini S.J. (Rome, 1951), a work which was drafted for use by auditors of the Roman Congregations.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0 Cornelius a Lapide, Commentary on Genesis<\/em> 1:1.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/span><\/span><\/a> A. Vacant, Etudes Th\u00e9ologiques sur les Constitutions du Concile du Vatican<\/em>, Paris-Lyon, Delhomme et Briguet\u00a0 1895, T. 1, p. 224,\u00a0n. 205.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Cf. Appendix I to this article: \u201cTable and Commentary on the Meaning of \u2018Simul\u2019 in the Firmiter <\/em>of Lateran IV.\u201d<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Cf. Berthault, G., \u201cAnalysis of the Main Principles of Stratigraphy on the Basis of Experimental Data,\u201d Journal of Lithology and Mineral Resources<\/em>, Institute of Geology, Russian Academy of Sciences (Vol. 37 September\/October 2002, pp 442-446).<\/p>\n

[17]<\/span><\/span><\/a> This translation of \u201ccreaturam\u201d is found in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Volume Two, ed. Norman\u00a0P.\u00a0Tanner,\u00a0S.J. (Georgetown University Press,\u00a01990).<\/p>\n

[18]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Fr. Vacant\u00a0explains that the term \u201ccreature\u201d is attributed to man, as it is to the angels and bodies (corps), and (the text) declares that man was made from nothing LIKE the other creatures \u2013 de nihilo condidit<\/em> (Art. 208).<\/p>\n

[19]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Fr. A. Vacant, Etudes Th\u00e9ologiques sur les Constitutions du Vatican d\u2019apr\u00e8s les actes du Concile<\/em>, Art.<\/em> 199-202.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/span><\/span><\/a> St. Thomas\u00a0Aquinas, ST<\/em>,1 Q.65 a.4.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/span><\/span><\/a> F. Lachat, Commentary on ST<\/em>, I, q. 45, a. 4. Lachat inadvertently attributes this quotation from Lateran IV\u00a0to the Council of Florence.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Commentary by F. Lachat who translated St. Thomas\u2019s Summa <\/em>from Latin into French (Parish, Vivier, 1855).<\/p>\n

[23]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Paul M. Quay, S.J, \u201cAngels and Demons: The Teaching of IV Lateran\u201d (Saint Louis University), p.23.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans, Editors, Heresies of the High Middle Ages <\/em>(New York: Columbia University Press,1991), p. 171.<\/p>\n

[25]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Op cit., p. 198.<\/p>\n

[26]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Walter L. Wakefield, Heresy, Crusade, and Inquisition in Southern France 1150-1200 <\/em>(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 195-196.<\/p>\n

[27]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Mark Gregory Pegg, A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom <\/em>(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 46.<\/p>\n

[28]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Op. Cit, p. 243.<\/p>\n

[29]<\/span><\/span><\/a> P. 244.<\/p>\n

[30]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans, Editors, Heresies of the High Middle Ages <\/em>(New York: Columbia University Press,1991), pp. 290-291.<\/p>\n

[31]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Inquisition Records of Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers, 1312-1325; Confessions of Beatrice de Planissoles.
\nOriginal Electronic Text <\/a>at the web site Nancy P. Stork, English Department , San Jose State University.<\/p>\n

[32]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Philip Trower, \u201cCreation, The CCC, Evolution and Angels,\u201d The Wanderer<\/em>, July 13, 2017, p. 8B.<\/p>\n

[33]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Fr. Brian W. Harrison, O.S., \u201cDid Demons \u2018Help\u2019 God Create The World?\u201d The <\/em>Wanderer, <\/em>September 6, 2017.<\/p>\n

[34]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[35]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Jean-Pierre Torrell, St. Thomas: The Person and his Work<\/a><\/em>, Vol. I, Revised Edition, Translated by Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), page 352 (accessed 8-20-14)<\/p>\n

[36]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Ibid.\u00a0 In N. 206 of Etudes Th\u00e9ologiques sur les Constitutions du Concile du Vatican<\/em> (Paris-Lyon, Delhomme et Briguet\u00a0 1895), T. 1, Vacant proposes that St Thomas in the decretal gives simul<\/em> the meaning \u201caccording to a common plan,\u201d but he later admits that both interpretations are not contradictory. For the Lateran Fathers who used Latin as an everyday language, there was no need to appeal to Sirach 18:1 to grasp the meaning of \u201csimul\u201d as \u201cat once\u201d in the same sentence with the temporal terms \u201cdeinde\u201d and \u201cab initio temporis,\u201d but it is hardly surprising that the \u201cconcordist\u201d Vacant would try to find support from St. Thomas for his day-age theory.<\/p>\n

[37]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Walter L. Wakefield, Heresy, Crusade, and Inquisition in Southern France 1150-1200 <\/em>(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 195-196.<\/p>\n

[38]<\/span><\/span><\/a> ST<\/em>, I, q. 65, a. 4.\u00a0 .<\/p>\n

[39]<\/span><\/span><\/a> ST<\/em>, III, Q. 75 http:\/\/www.newadvent.org\/summa\/4075.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

[40]<\/span><\/span><\/a> Cf. the excellent article by Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S., \u201cCan Doctrinal \u2018Development\u2019 Flout the Laws of Logic?<\/a>\u201d (October 18, 2017) in which he quotes and exposes the fatal flaws in the following statement by Pope Francis on capital punishment:\u00a0 \u201cHere we are not in the presence of any kind of contradiction with the teaching of the past, because the defense of the dignity of human life from the first moment of conception until natural death has always found its coherent and authoritative voice in the teaching of the Church. The harmonious development of doctrine, however, requires us to cease defending arguments which now appear decisively contrary to the new understanding of Christian truth<\/strong>\u201d (bold added). Pope Francis made these comments at a conference promoting the New Evangelization, in Rome, on October 11th<\/sup>, 2017. The words in bold would certainly seem to contradict the solemn teaching of Vatican Council I: \u201dThe doctrine of the faith which God has revealed has not been proposed to human intelligences to be perfected by them as if it were a philosophical system, but as a divine deposit entrusted to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence also that sense of the sacred dogmas is to be perpetually retained which our Holy Mother the Church has once declared, nor is this sense ever to be abandoned on plea or pretext of a more profound comprehension of the truth<\/strong>\u201d (Vatican Council I, Constitution Dei Filius<\/em>, cap. 4.) (emphasis added).<\/p>\n

[41]<\/span><\/span><\/a> \u201cFirst of all they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must change, and in this way they pass to what may be said to be, among the chief of their doctrines, that of Evolution<\/em>. To the laws of evolution everything is subject - dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself, and the penalty of disobedience is death\u201d (Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi dominici gregis, <\/em>28.)<\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/a> This qu\u00e6stio discusses God\u2019s rest after the Hexameron.<\/p>\n

[42]<\/span><\/span><\/a> ST,<\/em> I, q. 92, a. 2, ad 2. \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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