Reddit reviews 41. St. Augustine, Vol. 1: The Literal Meaning of Genesis (Ancient Christian Writers)
We found 5 Reddit comments about 41. St. Augustine, Vol. 1: The Literal Meaning of Genesis (Ancient Christian Writers). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Here's my reading list on Reformed Perspectives on Creation. I don't agree with everything written by all of the authors, but they are all worth reading. The also aren't all written from a Reformed perspective, but many of them are. If you are looking more for a Scientific perspective I'd particularly recommend Collins, Jelsma, and Haarsma since those are the ones written by scientists instead of theologians. If you didn't see it already, I also listed a number of other resources by Collins yesterday in the post about his AMA.
> round earth, and evolution
People in the Middle Ages knew the Earth was round, and the Catholic church never condemned that knowledge. We've known since antiquity the shape and relative size of the Earth and did not lose that knowledge with the fall of Rome. Columbus did not sail in hopes of proving that the Earth was round, but rather in hopes of proving that it was much smaller than everyone else thought-- small enough that he could circumnavigate the globe without running out of food or water. The idea that superstitious clerics thought the Earth was flat in the middle ages was in fact an Enlightenment error. Washington Irving's Biography of Columbus especially did a lot of damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth
The Catholic church also never opposed Evolution. Its first official statement on the matter was that it was permissible for Catholics to believe in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humani_generis
> or worshipping a book that has the Genesis in it
Biblical literalism is a recent phenomena tied to American fundamentalist protestantism. Augustine (possibly the most important Catholic thinker; possibly only second after Aquinas) was already in the fourth century arguing that one should not read Genesis literally suggesting that the Earth was fashioned in seven days.
https://www.amazon.com/41-St-Augustine-Vol-Christian/dp/0809103265
> They were doing good science despite the church, not because of it.
Sed Contra, as Augustine Says:
> Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions… and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.
> The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learned from experience and the light of reason?
Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although "they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions".
Respondeo: The Catholic Church's epistemology encourages scientific inquiry; the founders of our Western scientific tradition (men like Roger Bacon and William of Ockham) built on rather than rejected Catholic-Scholastic approaches to understanding the world. The Scholastics saw God as the ultimate rational being and thus determined that His creation must itself be knowable through rational investigation and, even further, that such investigation was very praiseworthy as investigation of creation necessarily lead to knowledge of Creator. Creation was seen as almost a second scripture. This attitude continued right on down to John Paul II's Fides et Ratio.
TLDR: The Catholic Church never opposed a round earth. It never opposed evolution. Anyone who thinks that either is the case is incredibly historically ignorant. The Western Scientific Tradition does not begin with Enlightenment Deists rejecting all that the previous epoch stood before-- rather, Medieval and Early Modern thinkers built off of Catholic/Scholastic philosophical traditions. To this day, the Catholic Church remains a major proponent of science, not just in the abstract, but practically:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Observatory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifical_Academy_of_Sciences
Qualifier: I'm not addressing the Galileo Affair above. It's complicated. Others are discussing it throughout this thread. I also did not address comments about purgatory/indulgences, since that seems to have little to do with science, nor with contraception and abortion, since the Church's opinions there concern morality, not science.
St. Augustine: The Literal Meaning of Genesis
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]
Listen, GhastlyGirl, I just want to say that the book I am recommending although it is written by the Pope, is absolutely essential reading for anyone considering creationism. Or anyone really, who wants to seriously consider the story of creation and the fall. There is nothing exceptionally "Catholic" about the book. Just think of it as a book by an exceptionally talented theologian who has a brillant understanding of the topic.
The link is Here
Excerpts can be found here
----------
Now that I have given suggestions, please, please, please listen to me on this point. Taking a literal interpretation of Genesis is a dangerous, dangerous theological position. Indeed, it is a position that will have you going against thousands of years of Christian tradition and thought. Although, going against tradition may not, in and of itself, be problematic for you, perhaps think for a moment that maybe the saints victorious have something to offer us.
I am not here to convince you, but I do feel the need to warn you that this maybe a problematic stance, that in my mind, is essentially allowing Christianity to revert to the "God of the gaps" arguments.
On the topic of what the early Christians believed why not also read St. Augustine's book on the subject here. You maybe surprised to find that many of the early Church Fathers did not take a literal interpretation of Genesis.
I hope you find whatever answers you are looking for.
There are whole books written by Church Fathers about how to interpret the creation story, because it was obvious then just like it's obvious now that a naive material literalism applied to scripture is false. From that book:
> It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are.
Bluntly, the American Fundamentalist groups you seem to have been affiliated with are in the position of "a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters".