Very Interesting Words of the Pope

Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, wrote a bit about the issue of literal interpretation of the biblical creation story in Genesis, particularly when a modern scientific view would seem to be in conflict with the Bible.

I think it's very interesting that he seems to show a much more reasonable point of view (i.e., less insistent on the literal truth of the Bible) than your average Protestant fundamentalist.

It [i.e., Genesis] says that the Bible is not a natural science textbook, nor does it intend to be such. It is a religious book, and consequently one cannot obtain information about the natural sciences from it.
………..
And so the suspicion grows that ultimately perhaps this way of viewing things is only a trick of the church and of theologians who have run out of solutions but do not want to admit it, and now they are looking for something to hind [hide?] behind. And on the whole the impression is given that the history of Christianity in the last 400 years has been a constant rearguard action as the assertions of the faith and of theology have been dismantled piece by piece. (Source: http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p81.htm)

Of course I tend to think it is "a trick of the church and of theologians" and a "rearguard action," etc.--but I must say, I'm impressed that he anticipates that point of view.

He also says, vis-à-vis the conflict between creation and evolution,

We cannot say: creation or evolution, inasmuch as these two things respond to two different realities. The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the "project" of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary -- rather than mutually exclusive -- realities.

The view I am trying to express here is surprise: I don't think of the Catholic Church, and especially the present pope, as liberal.

On the other hand, over the centuries, the Church has shown a certain wisdom, or at least a well-developed survival instinct, in that it has managed to have the flexibility to change when confronted by successive challenges from science: First the Copernican revolution (even though they tried to suppress it; the story of the Church's silencing of Galileo is well known), which made the Earth no longer the center of the solar system, as the Church had taught. Then the advent of geology, which showed the great age of the Earth, as opposed to, for example, the reckoning by a certain English bishop that the Earth was 5400 years old. Then Darwin and his theory of evolution—all these seeming to contradict the creation story in Genesis.

Now the present pope, I think rather deftly—whether convincingly is up to the individual reader—endeavors to save the theological view once again.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein