Chapter I: The question which occupies us is much more scriptural than geological

We have now reached the culminating point of our thesis.

When one seeks to account for the more or less erroneous, more or less false assessments which the proponents of the periods have doctrinally established in their works, one cannot refrain from experiencing a singular astonishment at the assurance with which mere laymen believe themselves permitted to interpret Holy Scripture, and at the authority with which they pronounce

in the last resort upon the sense which must be given to this or that passage. Thus, we have just seen how the illustrious author of the Studies on Christianity imposes, with all the authority of his word, the duty of concurring in his view, the only one acceptable to a reflective mind.

The Review of the Catholic World, in one of its articles on the origin of things, reproduces nearly the same language, “and calls the attention of its readers to the sacred text: and the evening and the morning was the first day; these words seem to it, indeed, not to have been sufficiently understood until now.¹”

Mr. Grevin, in his study on the first chapter of Genesis, does not fear to affirm “that by demonstrating that the word dies presents only the idea of light,² he has destroyed, at their foundations, all the reasoning of those who see only periods of twenty-four hours in each of the phases of creation.³”

Mr. Godefroy, in his Cosmogony, is still more affirmative: “Let us not be unbelieving toward the word of the Lord,” he exclaims; non sis incredulus verbo illius [do not be unbelieving toward his word]; “let us believe firmly, since it is God himself who has spoken; let us believe that it was only in the fourth

epoch, the fourth day of Genesis, that the earth had luminaries to make the distinction between day and night and to mark the days, the years, and the seasons.⁴” A Doctor of the Church would not speak otherwise.

Mr. Marcel de Serres, in order to explain his thought, informs us that: “Little satisfied with the translation of the Vulgate and even with that of the Septuagint—so much the worse for Saint Jerome and the Septuagint!—we sought to account for the thought of the legislator of the Hebrews, and here is how we grasped it.⁵”

Mr. Buckland pronounces as a theologian: “The system of periods,” he says, “is philologically and theologically unassailable.⁶”

We ask pardon of these honorable scholars; they mistake the object of their studies and the role which those studies confer upon them. They imagine themselves discoursing upon a profane history, as they would discourse upon that of Livy, Thucydides, or Xenophon; they are mistaken. Moses is a historian, it is true; but a sacred historian. He wrote his book, not only with the assistance, but under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. The right to interpret it therefore does not belong to laymen, especially with so much assurance, even if it were to bring it into harmony with what they call the requirements of science. The Church alone, to which the deposit of revealed truths was entrusted, is invested with this right; and the Church speaks not only through her councils and her decrees, but also through the organ of the Fathers, doctors, and interpreters, according to Bellarmine, who says: “From this passage of Saint Peter: No prophecy of Scripture is explained by a private interpretation, it evidently follows that no private individual is the judge of the true sense of Scripture. We must therefore recognize only the Church as judge. Now, the Church speaks only through the mouth of the pastors and doctors, and especially when they are assembled in general council.⁷”

This obligation to follow the teachings of the interpreters of Scripture recognized by the Church is imposed even upon priests by the profession of faith prescribed by Pius IV in his constitution Injunctum nobis. Here is its formula: “I, N…, admit with firm faith Holy Scripture in the sense which our holy mother the Church teaches and has always taught,

to whom it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures; and I shall never receive or interpret it except according to the unanimous opinion of the Fathers.⁸”

This reserve is, moreover, entirely natural; for is the right to explain and comment upon the civil code recognized in anyone other than advocates and jurisconsults?

And let no one come to object to us that an article of faith and morals is not in question here. What is in question here is, first, texts of Holy Scripture, whose interpretation belongs to the Church, like that of all the others. What is in question, in the second place, is the foundation, the keystone of the whole edifice of Christianity, the chapter of Scripture to which all theological truths are attached and which separates Christian science from that which is not Christian. Ah! Our enemies know it well. In attacking the book of Moses, they are not unaware that they undermine the Christian religion at its base; and it is by resting upon the arbitrary interpretation of his word that they have come to proclaim the eternity of matter and pantheism in all its degrees.

Thus the Fathers and the doctors of all the centuries have studied the cosmogony of Moses with an attention, a perseverance, and a zeal which reveal the importance that they attached to it. It is with the aid of their learned commentaries that we must seek the sense of the sacred text. This text is the expression of revelation and of tradition; its precise sense is entrusted to the Church and to her interpreters, who alone have the mission of determining it. It is therefore to be completely ignorant of the rules of biblical exegesis to say: “The simplest common sense indicates that Moses cannot be responsible for the errors of his commentators; and that there can be no kind of solidarity between the cosmogony of Genesis and that of the holy Fathers.⁹”