No, I don't mean John the Baptist or John the Beloved. I mean Augustine of Hippo.
I was listening to a podcast on The Church and Evolution. Distractly, but still. It's 89 on The Catholic History Trek.
I am not confident that they are right to say that to Maimonides the days in Genesis 1 could be long periods, but they were certainly wrong to suggest that Christianity came out of Maimonides' type of Judaism and that therefore Christianity from the first would have held that too. Whether or not it's even "too" ...
I then came to John Augustine Zahm (a priest) and how his book Evolution and Dogma was nearly put on the Index, except he withdrew it.
I checked his biography on wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Augustine_Zahm
I found also:
J. A. Zahm (1896), Scientific theory and Catholic doctrine, Chicago: D. H. McBride & Co., OL 7187109M (Full Text)
The link in "Full Text" is to the cover of the book. Here is a specific page:
https://archive.org/details/scientifictheory00zahmuoft/page/126/mode/2up
Click to enlarge to read, I lifted up the lower part of page 126 to the top, visibly intruding on the text actually on top, so as to show I am making a shortcut:
On page 127, he speaks of seeds laying dormant for long aeons:
They lay dormant as it were, until long aeons after the creation of matter ...
Here is a quote from On the Trinity, Book III, chapter 8, quoting all of § 13 but leaving out §§14 and 15:
13. Yet it is not on this account to be thought that the matter of visible things is subservient to the bidding of those wicked angels; but rather to that of God, by whom this power is given, just so far as He, who is unchangeable, determines in His lofty and spiritual abode to give it. For water and fire and earth are subservient even to wicked men, who are condemned to the mines, in order that they may do therewith what they will, but only so far as is permitted. Nor, in truth, are those evil angels to be called creators, because by their means the magicians, withstanding the servant of God, made frogs and serpents; for it was not they who created them. But, in truth, some hidden seeds of all things that are born corporeally and visibly, are concealed in the corporeal elements of this world. For those seeds that are visible now to our eyes from fruits and living things, are quite distinct from the hidden seeds of those former seeds; from which, at the bidding of the Creator, the water produced the first swimming creatures and fowl, and the earth the first buds after their kind, and the first living creatures after their kind. For neither at that time were those seeds so drawn forth into products of their several kinds, as that the power of production was exhausted in those products; but oftentimes, suitable combinations of circumstances are wanting, whereby they may be enabled to burst forth and complete their species. For, consider, the very least shoot is a seed; for, if fitly consigned to the earth, it produces a tree. But of this shoot there is a yet more subtle seed in some grain of the same species, and this is visible even to us. But of this grain also there is further still a seed, which, although we are unable to see it with our eyes, yet we can conjecture its existence from our reason; because, except there were some such power in those elements, there would not so frequently be produced from the earth things which had not been sown there; nor yet so many animals, without any previous commixture of male and female; whether on the land, or in the water, which yet grow, and by commingling bring forth others, while themselves sprang up without any union of parents. And certainly bees do not conceive the seeds of their young by commixture, but gather them as they lie scattered over the earth with their mouth. For the Creator of these invisible seeds is the Creator of all things Himself; since whatever comes forth to our sight by being born, receives the first beginnings of its course from hidden seeds, and takes the successive increments of its proper size and its distinctive forms from these as it were original rules. As therefore we do not call parents the creators of men, nor farmers the creators of grain — although it is by the outward application of their actions that the power of God operates within for the creating these things — so it is not right to think not only the bad but even the good angels to be creators, if, through the subtlety of their perception and body, they know the seeds of things which to us are more hidden, and scatter them secretly through fit temperings of the elements, and so furnish opportunities of producing things, and of accelerating their increase. But neither do the good angels do these things, except as far as God commands, nor do the evil ones do them wrongfully, except as far as He righteously permits. For the malignity of the wicked one makes his own will wrongful; but the power to do so, he receives rightfully, whether for his own punishment, or, in the case of others, for the punishment of the wicked, or for the praise of the good.
The quote contains most of what John Augustine Zahm actually said in the quoted paragraph. But it does - let's insist on it - not contain the word "aeons" - and also, it is pretty clear that what St. Augustine is saying is God created embryonic beings, and brought embrya miraculously to fruition in fully matured examples, presumably on the creation days.
It's really dishonest to quotemine St. Augustine of Hippo to "prove" he approved of Evolution.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Joseph Workman
1.V.2023
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