St. Augustine vs Jimmy Akin (on one topic)

Levi J. Pingleton is

with Robert Sungenis and 4 others

Someone is WAY OFF....keep twisting, Jimmy. Theistic Evolution has NO congruence with the teachings of St. Augustine...NONE. https://youtu.be/ptQ8GsoBPzk?si=6PbyLlgqzp7AsjHb

I

LA = undisclosed, HGL = Hans-Georg Lundahl, abbreviated for balance.

LA

Can’t stand Jimmy

HGL

LA I find him excellent apart from one or two issues, likes Deep Time, Evolution or Heliocentrism (that's three).

LA

HGL he’s so arrogant and dismissive of those who disagree. I can’t stand listening to him even on Catholic Answers.

HGL

Matter of taste, I suppose.

II

Johnny Proctor

This guy adores science. In fact, the entire "Catholic Answers" enterprise adores science.

Levi J. Pingleton

Johnny Proctor they adore their own prideful arrogance and denial of Truth due to their lack of knowledge. I've noticed Catholic Answers guys speak as though they have authority in these subjects, yet have studied little to nothing in them. They aren't experts on everything...most certainly lacking in the science realm.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Catholic Answers started out with Karl Keating defending the Blessed Sacrament against a Protestant accusation in San Diego. One tract became two, three, six, twelve, 24, 48.

Somewhere in the 48 tracts he added support for Evolution to the actually Catholic positions.

And that's been their take since.

III

Joe Hofnug

The Catholic Church approves theistic evolution as an allowable theological view. I think the debate is over at this point.

Read the Bible Commission decision of 1909 (De charactere historico trium priorum capitum Geneseos, Concerning the historical nature of the first three chapters of Genesis (June 30, 1909))

Ludwig Ott paragraphs 11 and 12

I believe Jimmy Akin is referring to this theory of St. Augustine:

Btw, 1909 was the pontificate of Pope St. Pius X, the anti-modernist pope. There is zero room to argue that theistic evolution is a modernist innovation.

Johnny Proctor

"To finish with this whole question of faith and its shoots, it remains to be seen, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about their development. First 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. 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.

... Consequently, the formulae too, which we call dogmas, must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. An immense collection of sophisms this, that ruins and destroys all religion. Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and as clearly flows from their principles."

Pope St. Pius X, ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS

Joe Hofnug

Johnny Proctor What is clear from his pontificate is the effort to maintain the truth of the book of Genesis. He is fighting against the notion that the book of Genesis can be discarded or dismissed as pure fiction because of the doctrine of evolution. But there is also a preoccupation on the one hnd with distinguishing what is essential for Christian belief and on the other hand making sure we understand that the book of Genesis is not a scientific account of how creation came to be, meaning that legitimate diversity of opinion is allowable on these matters (e.g., as the biblical comission document of 1909 says, the six "days" can be interpreted as much longer periods of time). Again, the Catholic Church has consistently approved theistic evolution as a valid view.

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/pcb_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19090630_genesi_it.html

Johnny Proctor

Joe, I am not picking on you, but the point must be made emphatically that theology IS science -- the science of divinity -- and no quarter can be given to the opinion that it has to stay within the limits of it's intellectual ghetto and let the natural sciences dictate to the Church what can and cannot be true in revelation. The knowledge of the creation of the world has NOT come down to us through biology or astronomy or physics; it has come down to us through divine revelation and tradition. Neither is the biblical creation account as always interpreted by the Church at odds with any credible natural science.

Vatican I teaches:
6. If anyone says that
• the condition of the faithful and those who have not yet attained to the only true faith is alike, so that
• Catholics may have a just cause for calling in doubt, by suspending their assent, the faith which they have already received from the teaching of the church, until they have completed a scientific demonstration of the credibility and truth of their faith:
let him be anathema.
Chapter III, Canons of Vatican I (1869-1870)

<<Thereupon from the origin of the human race even to Moses revelation was at first given by God the creator and sanctifier, concerning divine worship and divine law. Even more, revelations were preserved about the future life, about angels both good and bad, and especially on the one who was going to come to renew the human race, even without any Scripture.>>

Cardinal Franzelin, On Divine Tradition, Thesis XX

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Joe Hofnug Ludwig Ott is not 1909.

The seed powers referred to by St. Augustine would be the first embryo of each kind, not first adult ancestors of diverse kinds.

I regularly reread the 1909 judgement, and no, modern "science" is not allowed for in it on more than one issue.

But please distinguish the actual 1909 judgement from Ott in 1952 referring to diverse prequels to Humani Generis and maybe mixing them a bit.

"But there is also a preoccupation on the one hnd with distinguishing what is essential for Christian belief and on the other hand making sure we understand that the book of Genesis is not a scientific account of how creation came to be,"

First, you are misrepresenting Young Earth Creationism.

We don't say Genesis 1 is a scientific account of creation, we say it is a historical one.

But second, you can't make the judement of Fulcran Vigouroux for the Biblical commission the sole criterium for what Pope St. Pius X thought on the matter.

Fulcran Vigouroux 1) had other ideas he was not allowed to judge in favour of, namely a) limited Flood (he was a species fixist, not a baraminologist), b) possibly gaps in the Genesis 11 genealogy; and 2) actually thought mankind was 7000 to 10 000 years old, with Adam as the VERY first man.

Fulcran Vigouroux judged in favour of the position currently held by JW, not the position held by Jimmy Akin.

But on top of that, in 1909, the same pope canonised Clemens Maria Hofbauer. What's the significance? Well, his VERY close friend (and physician) Johann Emmanuel Veith wrote in 1865 a book that's basically Creation Science (about mankind) and he held to strict young earth, so Adam was created adult with 168 normal hours of the creation of heaven and earth.

"the biblical comission document of 1909 says, the six "days" can be interpreted as much longer periods of time"

This is not a final definition, the decision left the matter open for discussion. You can't treat this as dogmatising "long periods is fine" when in fact the judgement specifically allows exegetes to argue on both sides.

Confer answer VIII and the last phrase of the question answered by "si", namely:

"ed è lecito agli esegeti disputare liberamente di questa questione?"

So, while people agreeing back then with Fulcran Vigouroux 😊 ( = now with JWs, not with Jimmy Akin) were free to forward that opinion, so were the strict young earthers, and literal-six-dayers.

Otherwise there would have been no "disputare liberamente", meaning the answer to question VIII is not a dogmatic definition, it's a disciplinary (and as such revocable) licence.