Editor's Note: To submit a faith question to Catholic Exchange, email href=”mailto:faithquestions@catholicexchange.com”>faithquestions@catholicexchange.com. Please note that all email submitted to Catholic Exchange becomes the property of Catholic Exchange and may be published in this space. Published letters may be edited for length and clarity. Names and cities of letter writers may also be published. Email addresses of viewers will not normally be published.
Dear Mark Shea,
Thank you for your many insightful comments and articles, as well as your evident love for the Catholic Church. However, I do have reservations about the answer you gave regarding the Flood of Genesis.
What concerns me most is what you don't say: What exactly is it that we DO KNOW about Noah's flood and about Genesis? You stated, “Nor is the problem of a “world-destroying” flood so problematic if humanity was confined to a fairly small geographical area.” The “if” in this thought is mighty indeed.
What IF the world population was NOT contained in such a small area? What IF the population was spread out over the four corners of the land mass that existed in those days? What IF the mountains and terrain we see around us were not nearly so high or nearly so inhospitable as they are post-flood? Remember, Genesis recounts that the world God created was “very, very good” and one could easily surmise that the whole of it exceeds what we see today (i.e. the lush tropical vegetation now covered by snow and ice in the artic regions.)
This link is to an excellent analysis of Dr. Walter T. Brown Jr.'s book, In The Beginning. Could you, or another of your staff, comment on this topic after doing two things:
1. Reading Msgr. John McCarthy's analysis, and
2. Reading Dr. Brown's book in its entirety (it is available online at no charge or in a book you can purchase.)
Too often, I've heard many Catholic Apologists hide behind the notion that Genesis was not written as a science book. Accordingly, they totally ignore aspects of Genesis which may actually describe scientific realities. There are many, many levels to Scripture, as you well know, but the first one to be applied, unless the context precludes this interpretation (such as in a Parable by Jesus) is the literal interpretation.
If huge floods were common in Mesopotamia (no one disputes this is so), how does this square with God's promise in Genesis 6:11? “I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.” (emphasis mine) The obvious, literal meaning of this passage is that God obliterated the world once by a flood and it accomplished His purpose. Other floods may occur, but never again a world-wide, hydraulic cataclysm to destroy all life on earth.
One last thought is a question I posed to my parish priest. Starting with Jesus and working your way back to Genesis, at what point do the miracles written about cease to be “realities” of God's omnipotence and when do they start to become only “symbolisms” of this power? In other words, at which point can we say that these miracles “literally” occurred and when do we assert that they only “represent” a higher truth? I believe that, as we downgrade these first miracles of Scripture to mere “symbolism” where a literal interpretation is not precluded by the context of the passage, we then open the door for ALL miracles to be viewed as symbolic only.
Is it any wonder that so many Catholics doubt the True Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, as well as deny the authority of the Magisterium today?
Yours in Christ,
Paul J. Brown
P.S. I also saw this article on your website — 350-Million-Year-OldFossils Found in Pa.
If you can post links to incredibly speculative articles like this from anti-life, anti-Church ABC's website, could you not also post links to articles giving very possible biblical evidences about our origins, such as this one?
Paul:
Catholics are not bound to hold to any particular theory about the historicity of the Flood. My own background is in English, with an interest and avocation in theology. So I am in no position to judge the scientific merits of arguments surrounding the Flood. Nor is any of our staff, so we are in no position to recommend websites such as the one you recommend, particularly since such sites are typically not even written by people with a grounding in Catholic teaching.
I do know that a) the overwhelming majority of scientists, both Christian and non-Christian, accept the basic picture of the universe as being roughly 12 billion years old and the earth as about 4.5 billion years old. There is also a general consensus among many different scientific disciplines, that life on earth has evolved slowly over the course of about 3 billion years. John Paul II has acknowledged the evidence for this as persuasive — with certain caveats.
As to the matter of Genesis, it is the Catechism which tells us that, for instance, in the story of the Fall, “the account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event.”(CCC 390) The use of figurative language does not necessarily mean that what the language describes “never happened.” It can just mean that the way in which the story is told is not newspaper language (see, for instance, Nathan's story of the ewe lamb which he told to David in reference to David's sin with Bathsheba). David knew perfectly well that the story was about him. It was a true story, but not a story told in literalistic language.
Parts of Genesis, including the Flood story, may well be of this sort of storytelling too. I, at any rate, don't know.
As to the false dichotomy between our link to an ABC story and your demand that we endorse Some Guy With a Website who claims Genesis must be taken literally, we politely decline. Our site tries to hold to the teaching of the Church. The Church simply does not demand that we hold any particular theory about the Flood as dogma. If you wish to think the Genesis Flood description is a newspaper account, you are welcome to. But you cannot demand that all Catholics believe that. The ABC link we ran because, well, news comes from news outlets. We assume our readers understand that not everything they read in the newspaper is the Teaching of the Church. But neither is evidence of 350 million year old fossils particularly contrary to the teaching of the Church. It is only contrary to a particular fundamentalist reading of Scripture which the Church in no way imposes on the faithful.
Finally, as to the question you posed your priest, the Church again offers us a counsel of freedom rather than micromanaged interpretations. If, for instance, the data of science shows no evidence for a global flood, then the Church, realizing that truth does not contradict truth, is free to say, “Perhaps our understanding of Genesis is inadequate.” Similarly, when the text clearly tells us (and the Tradition of the Church affirms)that Jesus truly rose bodily from the dead, the Church notes that there are some things that science is powerless to decree as impossibilities. But between those two poles there exists a great deal that we simply do not understand and should beware of being too dogmatic about.
The Flood of Noah is one of these things. The Church has no hard and fast opinions here about the historicity or non-historicity of the Flood. Therefore, neither do we at Catholic Exchange.
Thanks for writing!
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
