A large stumbling block for many people is that the book of Genesis doesn’t appear to agree with science.
Genesis appears to claim that the world was created in seven “days” and does not explain how Adam and Eve were products of millions of years of evolution.
Which is wrong, the Bible or my high school science teacher?
While I don’t know your high school science teacher, it’s possible that he or she taught the truth and that the Bible also teaches truth.
The key is to understand the purpose of the book of Genesis and the style of literature it was originally written in.
A love poem from God
The Catholic Church and most biblical scholars agree that the book of Genesis in particular was written as a “poetic” narrative of creation.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this viewpoint:
Among all the Scriptural texts about creation, the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint these texts may have had diverse sources. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation — its origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation.
CCC 289
God was not interested in providing for us a scientific textbook, revealing to us all of the mechanical ways of his creative power. Instead, he wrote us a love poem.
Can poems speak truth? Yes, they can. Does it diminish the truth spoken in Genesis? No, not at all.
God wanted to show us his love for us and how we fit into his divine plan in Genesis. He didn’t want us to get caught-up into all the mechanics of how he created the world. So he gave us a poem.
It can be difficult, as we have a modern tendency to think that stories are “fiction” and somehow unscientific. Yet, truth can still be taught through stories.
St. John Paul II explained in a general audience in 1980, “The first chapters of Genesis introduce us to the mystery of creation, that is, the beginning of the world by the will of God, who is omnipotence and love. Consequently, every creature bears within it the sign of the original and fundamental gift.”
The main point of the book of Genesis is to communicate to us his love, not to formulate a scientific theory.
The key in learning about science is to always trace the world’s creation back to God. There is a lot that God doesn’t tell us in Genesis and we have some freedom in believing what science teaches us.
However, we do need to reject the ideas that science tells the whole picture and that it somehow disproves the Bible.
All science can tell us is how the world was created. The Bible tells us why the world was created.
The good news is that science and faith can live together and that science can help us get an idea of how the world around us developed over time.
We just need to remember that it was God who created the world. and when we read the book of Genesis we are brought into the mystery of God’s love.
Science and the Bible can be both true, though they may use different words to explain the same event that happened in the past.
And today we celebrate...