Column: Nothing new in pope’s speech

Pope Francis made headlines last week by simply stating the obvious.

In a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Monday, the pontiff said: “The Big Bang, which today is held as the beginning of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator, but requires it. Evolution in nature is not at odds with the notion of creation because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.”

The pope’s comments denouncing a literal interpretation of the creation account found in Genesis is a long-standing church position dating to the earliest days of Christianity.

The church fathers were followers of the Platonic commitment to reason. This is evidenced by early Christian writings.

Justin Martyr, a church leader who lived in the early part of the second century, said, “The Gospel and the best elements in Plato and the Stoics are almost identical ways of apprehending the same truth.”

Because of this, he referred to Plato as a “Christian before Christ.”

Justin pointed out that Greek philosophy and Christianity are similar because both rest on the divine gift of reason and that because this was God’s greatest gift, then Christian revelation must be compatible with “the highest Reason.”

It was in this vein that St. Augustine of Hippo, one of Christianity’s greatest theologians, a man honored by Catholics and Protestants alike, including Lutherans, Anglicans and Calvinists, specifically rejected a literal view of creationism in the early fifth century.

In his exegetical commentaries on the Book of Genesis, the church father wrote: “In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.”

Augustine cautioned Christians against using the Bible as a science book and taking a dogmatic approach to a literal interpretation of Genesis.

He criticized those who used Scripture to contradict 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.”

To Augustine, reason was indispensable to faith: “Heaven forbid that God should hate in us that by which he made us superior to the animals! Heaven forbid that we should believe in such a way as not to accept or seek reasons, since we could not even believe if we did not possess rational souls.”

Indeed, faith without reason is but a rudderless ship.

Another speaker at the conference, Rafael Vicuna, professor of molecular genetics and molecular biology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, said it would be a mistake for religion to try to solve the mysteries in nature by making God “responsible for a natural process that escapes scientific explanation.”

He pointed to the intelligent design movement and rejected its claims that God must have guided the development of evolution through the eons because of its complexity.

Not only are intelligent-design proponents “denying nature’s autonomy, but they are also revealing some degree of ingenuousness, because science has already provided explanations for the development” of structures they had considered to be too complex to occur naturally, he said.

Early philosophers such as Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine all felt nature’s wonder and beauty reflected the beauty and perfection of their maker, Vicuna said.

So, when Francis told the academy the Big Bang theory and evolution do not eliminate the existence of God, he was not saying anything new or newsworthy. He was merely expressing centuries of Christian teaching and demonstrating that divine gift of reason.