EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE 



the sacred historian selects those calculated to support truths 

 that bear on the foundations of religion. He does not propose 

 history as an end in itself, but utilizes history in view of a 

 religious end. 



The unique character of the history of origins narrated in 

 Genesis is recognized in the encyclical, Humani generis, issued 

 by Pius XII in 1950. The Holy Father points out that the 

 early chapters of Genesis, "while properly speaking not con- 

 forming to the historical method used by the great Greek and 

 Latin historians or by learned authors of our own day, yet 

 pertain to the genus of history in a true sense, which exegetes 

 have still to study and define. "^ These chapters must be 

 considered apart. Their subject, the origins of the world and 

 of man, belongs, not to scientific history, but to paleontology, 

 geology, and prehistory. The Bible has nothing to do with 

 these disciplines, and, if we should wish to compare it with 

 the data of such sciences, we should end up with an unreal 

 opposition or an artificial concordism. Genesis describes, in 

 a popular way, the origin of the human race; it relates, in a 

 simple and figurative style, such as is suitable for the mentality 

 of a people of slight culture, basic truths underlying the 

 economy of salvation:^ creation by God at the beginning of 

 time, God's special intervention in the production of the first 

 man and woman, an original state of moral integrity and 

 happiness, and the sin of the first parents. These truths, 

 guaranteed by the authority of Scripture, are certain, and the 

 facts are real. In this sense the first chapters of Genesis have 

 a historical character. ^ 



A religious idea dominates the sacred writer, and this idea 

 he tries to convey to his readers. He had no intention of 

 instructing us about natural history, much less about astronomy, 

 geology, or paleontology; he teaches us, not science in the 

 modern sense, but the arduous science of salvation. He uses 

 the naive scientific knowledge of his time merely as means to 

 bring out certain religious truths, to propose to his contem- 



1 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 42 (1950) 577. 



2 See the letter of J. M. Voste, O.P., secretary of the Pontifical Com- 

 mission for Biblical Studies, to Cardinal Suhard, January 16, 1948, in 

 Acta Apostolicae Sedi^ 40 (1948) 47. 



3 R. de Vaux, O.P., La Genese (Paris, 1953) 35. 



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