Summa summae S. Thomae sive compendium theologiae

[I answer in the negative, and with the most learned J. Perrone¹ I say: Neither from geological or physical, nor from astronomical observations is anything elicited whereby the Mosaic cosmogony could be weakened.

After what was set forth in the preceding article, the stated proposition scarcely needs proof.

For either the things that are put forward from geology, from physics, and from astronomy are such as can be reconciled with the more common exposition, or they are not. If the former, then the Mosaic cosmogony is wrongly represented as contrary to new observations of this kind; if the latter is said, this one thing alone can follow, namely, that one must depart from that more common interpretation, which belongs to private persons, not however to the Church, which has never in any way sanctioned it by a solemn judgment. Moreover it must be observed that there is not even a unanimous consensus of the Fathers concerning this interpretation. The truth of the Mosaic cosmogony, therefore, will always stand firm.

It is useful, however, to note some things here. And 1° nearly all those geological systems that were introduced up to nearly these times have become obsolete, of which more than eighty seemed to be opposed to the Mosaic cosmogony. 2° Many, and these the most learned, physicists and geologists — among them Hensler, de Luc, André, Buckland, and others — contend that the Mosaic cosmogony agrees very well with their own observations (several of which do not depart from the common interpretation), and therefore denounce as dreamers all who had dared to charge the Mosaic history of creation with falsity, whether from the internal structure of the earth, or from its surface. 3° A great affinity between the series of operations that are set forth in the first chapter of Genesis and that

which they believe is deduced from natural observations, the learned geologists Brocchi, Demerson, and Boubée have noted. 4° Certain of the things that are opposed to the common interpretation, the more learned naturalists admit to be of no importance. 5° Some phenomena that seemed to require a great series of centuries are either quite conveniently accounted for by the Noachic cataclysm, to which are probably owed not a few of the bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, etc., which are found in many places just beneath the very surface of the earth; or they are sufficiently explained if we grant, with de Luc and other learned men, that the less elevated lands, which are now inhabited, were covered by the waters of the sea up until the time of the flood.

As to astronomy, moreover, after Euler, La Place, La Grange, and other most skilled astronomers, it has been established that the motion of the ecliptic² — from which the difficulty was drawn — is not progressive but oscillatory, and indeed within the narrow space of one degree. The same may likewise be said of the phenomena of the precession of the equinoxes³ and of the nutation of the axis of the earth, of the moon, and of the planets, from which unbelievers boasted that they were drawing so many inescapable arguments against the Mosaic cosmogony.

So certain is it that the progress of the sciences, far from harming the Christian religion, always adds to it new firmness and strength; nor can anything be elicited, whether from geological or physical, or from astronomical observations, whereby the Mosaic cosmogony could be harmed or weakened in the least, as it was our purpose to show.

Another argument against the Mosaic cosmogony unbelievers attempt to draw from the chronology of the same author. But they wander outside the matter; for cosmogony and chronology differ entirely. Cosmogony treats of the creation and shaping of heaven and earth, and also, if one wishes, of the production of plants and animals; the Mosaic chronology, however, takes its beginning from the creation of man, since Moses numbers only the years of Adam and the rest of the Patriarchs, from which the age of the human race is computed. According to the Hebrew truth and the Latin version of the Pentateuch, about six thousand years would have elapsed from the creation of the first man down to us, but seven and more according to the Greek Alexandrian, or Septuagint, version, and the Samaritan codex admits a middle epoch. These matters can be freely discussed, the question of the origin of the world remaining untouched. But when God brought forth matter from nothing, and when He clothed it with the forms which we behold, neither Sacred Scripture nor the Church determines. All, therefore, who beg arguments from chronology against the Mosaic cosmogony wander outside the question, and we rightly and deservedly pass over the objections drawn from it, as foreign to the present question.

It is worthwhile to note only the following things, in order to demonstrate the emptiness of the arguments heaped up by adversaries on this head: 1° It is certain that Moses composed a single chronology, and that all chronologers and copyists, both Jewish and Christian, have always held it as true. If, therefore, the Mosaic codex had not perished, all difficulties would vanish, all errors would be corrected. 2° The differences observed in the computation of years, therefore, arise either from the blameless carelessness or inadvertence

of the copyists, or from the fact that different chronologers computed the Mosaic years differently, some understanding them, relative to our own manner of computing, as longer, others as shorter. 3° — The truth of chronologies is to be sought not so much from fidelity in enumerating the years, months, and days, as from the fact that all the historical events, especially those of great moment, are properly coordinated, are assigned to their own time broadly taken, and are fitted together with other public events and monuments, as well as with scientific observations; otherwise there would be scarcely any chronology that would not be branded with the mark of falsity, no nation whose history would be held as authentic. But all the sacred chronologies, although differing in the reckoning of years, nevertheless report the same events, especially the two most eminent — namely, the creation of man and the flood — and compose and arrange the same generations, and agree in these with the Hebrew truth. Therefore.]