In the increasingly current debate about creation and evolution,
I recently heard a speaker say that we should take Genesis 1-11
symbolically and that the Catholic Church teaches that too.
If we want to disprove this speaker's first statement, we must
then look for statements of the divine Trinity in Gen. 12 and
later in the Bible, which depict the events of Gen. Cite 1-11 as
literally happened. After all, for Christians Jesus is 'the Way,
the Truth and the Life' and God is the Source of good, true and
beautiful. I found three.
First, the statement of Jesus in Matt. 24:37-39, in which He
quotes the flood, Noah, the ark, and the perishing of all men: “
Just as in the days before the flood men continued to eat and
drink, marry and give in marriage, until the day when Noah entered
the ark, and they knew nothing, until the flood came and snatched
them all away: so shall it be also at the coming of the Son of
man. ”
Second, a chapter earlier, as Jesus delivers his punitive sermon
against the Pharisees (Matt. 23:35): “ …that upon you may fall all
the innocent blood that was shed upon the earth, from the blood of
innocent Abel to the blood of Zacharias the son of Berechiah, whom
you killed between the temple and the altar." If Abel would not
have really existed, Jesus wouldn't have said this.
Third, God speaks literally of His creation of the world in six
days in His proclamation of the Ten Commandments to Moses (Ex.
20:11). “ For in six days Yahweh made the heavens, the earth, the
sea, and all that is in them." Here God is speaking of himself. If
God did not make the world in six days with one day rest, then we
do not have to work six days and rest one day either. And if this
sentence cannot be taken literally, we don't need to take the rest
of the Ten Commandments literally either.
This article is reproduced with permission of the author from the
Katholiek Nieuwsblad. The full source reference is: Leushuis,
JGAM, 2009, creation/evolution , Katholiek Nieuwsblad 2009 (9):
18.