Chapter II: The Universal Flood

The second grave event of which the Bible informs us is the flood. Sacred history presents this cataclysm to us as a miraculous fact produced by a supernatural action, as a terrible punishment inflicted upon the guilty earth.¹ This is the general sentiment of the Fathers, and this point of departure forestalls many objections. Nevertheless, this fact, admitted more or less completely by all the pagan theogonies, and confirmed by the monuments and traditions of peoples, as well as by the data of science, is still contested today by Christian scholars, not in its reality, but in its universality.

Now, this question, which some writers claim to be of secondary interest, seems to us, on the contrary, to present all the characteristics proper to giving it the highest gravity. If the most elevated points were sheltered from this frightful inundation, if there were places on the globe that it did not cover with its waters, what are those places, what are the mountains that escaped its ravages? What are the countries that the scourge overturned? What are those that it spared? If these privileged regions were able, as is said, to offer refuge to a multitude of animals, why would men not have profited from them? Is it not known that man reaches heights to which the most agile of quadrupeds and reptiles could not attain? Thus all men, with the exception of Noah’s family, would not have perished in the flood, contrary to the formal text of Scripture, which relates the universality of the disaster, and above all the destruction of the human race, in clear, forceful terms, repeated several times, without the least restrictive circumstance, and in such a way that, to express absolute universality, Moses could not have spoken in a more precise and more intelligible manner. May we be permitted in this connection to recall his account:

“In the six-hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the springs of the great

abyss were broken open; and the cataracts of heaven were opened; and rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.

“The waters, having increased, raised the ark above the earth; they inundated and covered all the surface of the earth. The waters increased and swelled prodigiously above the earth, and all the highest mountains that are beneath all the extent of heaven were covered. The water, having reached the summit of the mountains, rose yet fifteen cubits higher. All flesh that moves upon the earth was destroyed; all the birds, all the animals, all the beasts, and all that creeps upon the earth. All men died, and generally all that has life and breathes upon the earth. All the creatures that were upon the earth, from man to the beasts, both those that creep and those that fly in the air, all perished from upon the earth; there remained only Noah and those who were with him in the ark. And the waters covered all the earth for one hundred and fifty days.²

The apostle Saint Peter anticipated the objection made against the absolute sense of these expressions, all flesh, by giving it only a restricted sense when he designates the number of persons whom the flood did not engulf, saying: “Jesus Christ went to preach to the spirits who were held in prison, who, formerly unbelieving, had, in the time of Noah, counted upon the patience of God while he was building the ark, in which few persons—that is, only eight—were saved amid the waters.³”

Geological science came, in its time, to confirm the divine teachings. Buckland ends his book Reliquiæ diluvianæ [Relics of the Flood] with these conclusions: “Thus have we demonstrated,” he says, “by facts, that an all-powerful flood burst unexpectedly upon the earth, inundated it in its entirety, covered the highest

mountains, and engulfed in its waves all that lived, with the exception of those whom God willed to save in the ark. We do not know how it pleased the Lord to bring this immeasurable mass of water and to raise its waves over the surface of the globe; but its formidable traces are before our eyes, and all the elements seem to have taken part in it.”

But it is by relying upon the language, so clear and so plain, of the holy book that the great majority of the Fathers and theologians has always affirmed that the flood was universal—that is, that the waters had invaded the whole earth without any exception. And as for tradition, Bossuet summarized it by saying: “The tradition of the universal flood is found throughout the whole earth.⁴”

Against these testimonies, the defense of Vossius by Mabillon and the silence of the Congregation of the Index are cited. “Theologians teach that the flood was not of an absolute universality (one ought to cite these theologians!). It is known that Father Mabillon maintained this thesis before the Congregation of the Index at Rome, and that the assembly, composed of nine cardinals, sided with the opinion of the able defender of Vossius.⁵”

Father Tournemine says, on the contrary, that Mabillon’s counsel

was not followed, and that Rome condemned the opinion of Vossius.⁶

In order better to elucidate this question, concerning which the various accounts we have read lack exactitude, we are going to give one that presents every guarantee of truth: the one that Monsieur the Chevalier Drach copied at Rome while he was fulfilling there the functions of librarian of the Propaganda.

Note on the Votum Joannis Mabillionii [Opinion of John Mabillon] concerning the question of the Universality of the flood.

Mabillon was in Rome at the time when the various writings of Vossius against the universality of the flood were attracting the attention of the learned world in 1685. The consultors of the Sacred Congregation of the Index asked Mabillon to draw up for them a memorandum on the opinion of Vossius.

The learned Benedictine set forth to them the reasons that could be alleged against Vossius, and at the same time those that could be adduced to excuse him. He observed that his opinion contains no capital error, either against the faith or against good morals; that Vossius proposed this system only in order to answer more easily the objections of unbelievers who make use of what is said about the universality of the flood to destroy the authority of the Holy Scriptures;

that Vossius says nothing insulting against the Catholic Church or against the opinion he combats, but that he simply proposes his own as more probable; that it is useful to receive in the Church, or at least to tolerate, diverse senses in the explanation of Scripture, provided that they are not contrary to the manifest authority of the holy books and of the Church; that these expressions—the whole earth, all the mountains, all flesh—may be taken restrictively, and are taken so often enough in Scripture; that certain Catholic Doctors, such as Cajetan, believed that the mountain upon which they suppose the terrestrial paradise to be situated was not covered by the waters of the flood; that this opinion of Vossius, having until now caused no disturbance among Catholics, and having been attacked only by Protestants, presents no danger in being tolerated, and that it is better to leave it uncensured than to involve oneself in the disputes in which the Protestants engage; that, in any event, if the Congregation wishes to stigmatize this opinion by a censure, it must also censure the refutation of it made by Georges Hornius, on account of the insulting discourses he holds against the Catholic Church and the sovereign pontiff.

Such is the summary of the celebrated religious’s Votum.

“It would be easy to show,” the learned Hebraist continues, “that all of Vossius’s objections against the universality of the flood can be opposed to his own system. The universality of the flood is

a tradition of the ancient Church, as also of that established by our divine Savior. A logical man will always prefer the obvious sense of the texts to all the subtleties that make him shrug his shoulders.

“Father de Ligny laid down an excellent rule in replying to certain contentious minds: ‘Can one say more explicitly that the Word was God than by saying: And the Word was God? Likewise, can one say more clearly that the flood was universal both for the whole earth and for the destruction of men than in the following texts: And the waters, having increased, raised the ark on high above the earth. They covered the whole surface of the earth. All the highest mountains that are beneath the whole extent of heaven were covered. The water, having reached the summit of the mountains, rose yet fifteen cubits higher. All the creatures that were upon the earth, from man to the beasts, all perished from upon the earth; there remained only Noah and those who were with him in the ark.

“‘It is notorious that at the beginning, as the Psalmist says poetically (chap. IV, 6.—I follow the Hebrew text), the abyss enveloped the earth like a garment, and that the waters stood above the mountains. Half of these waters was raised above the firmament. To form the flood, the master of the earth therefore had only to restore the earth to the state of the first Genesial day. And, indeed, not only were the seas given permission to cross the limits that had been set for them, but

the cataracts of heaven gave passage to the waters retained above the firmament. Be silent, then, gentlemen physicists; here your science is nothing, and all your dissertations fall into the water.’”

But although the universality of the flood has been the object of several attacks, we do not believe that any of our adversaries has sought to give himself a proper account of the effects of this general inundation with respect to geological phenomena, particularly the formation of sedimentary mountains and that of fossils. One nevertheless remains convinced that it played a great role therein when one studies in all its details this event unique in history.

Let us first represent to ourselves these vast oceans issuing from their bed and spreading violently over the continents: Vehementes enim inundaverunt aquæ [For the waters inundated mightily]; this enormous mass of the upper and lower waters united, and holding in solution or suspension innumerable siliceous, calcareous, argillaceous, and carbonaceous elements; carrying, with its impetuous waves, stones of all kinds and all sizes, sands, marine and terrestrial shells, plants, and the drowned cadavers of all the inhabitants of the earth, men and animals; and this immense tide, eight to ten kilometers in height, rising and falling laden with this prodigious quantity of materials, of rocks of outpouring, of mountain debris, of diluted earths, of old deposits formed within it, invading the globe in every

direction: Euntes et redeuntes aquæ [The waters going and returning], through a thousand crevasses, for nearly two hundred days; for they did not begin to diminish until after one hundred and fifty days: Et aquæ cœperunt minui post centum et quinquaginta dies [And the waters began to diminish after one hundred and fifty days].

These upheavals would attain an even greater development if one admitted what is not devoid of probability, and what serious authors maintain, namely that the physical cause of the flood was the stopping of the globe’s rotation upon its axis.⁷

Indeed, God himself seems to indicate it to us,

when, renewing his covenant with men, he reassures them concerning the future and says to them: “As long as the earth subsists, sowings and harvests, cold and heat, summer and winter, night and day, will succeed one another without interruption.⁸” This was to say openly that this succession had been suspended during the flood, and consequently also the movement and rotation of the earth, which is its sole cause. But if this stoppage had been the cause of the flood, its effects must necessarily have been incalculable. It is known that, by virtue of this rotation, the earth is not exactly round; its diameter at the equator is thirteen or fourteen leagues greater than the diameter that goes from one pole to the other; that, consequently, in order to resume its spherical form, the globe must swell by six to seven leagues at each pole and sink by as much in the equatorial region; and that, on the contrary, in order to return to its state of flattened spheroid, it must swell in its equinoctial region and sink in the same proportion at the two poles. The stopping of the diurnal movement therefore caused the swelling of the globe at the equator to disappear, while at the same time it raised the poles; and hence a movement of lowering and rising by which the earth tended to resume its primitive spherical form. The solid crust

sank seven leagues upon the equatorial line in going toward the poles; there, on the contrary, it swelled by as much. Between the equator and the poles there was therefore an immense series of crevasses, sinkings, upheavals, dislocations, materials cast from the interior to the surface or precipitated from the surface into the interior. And if one attends to the fact that these effects occurred at the same time as the oceans, driven from their bed, were spreading violently over the continents, one will be able to form an idea of the transformation that its physiognomy must have undergone.⁹

It is necessary to observe, in the second place, the nature of the diluvial waters, and not to assimilate them to the waters of the present seas: this would be a great error. The convulsions of the globe at that epoch must have produced a multitude of crevasses through which gases and acids of every kind escaped, along with solutions of sulfur, magnesia, silica, etc., which, in identifying themselves with the waters, also raised their

temperature. The waters of the flood were therefore in the same condition as volcanic and mineral waters; and since hard rocks are formed daily in these waters, some must likewise have formed in the waters of the universal flood.

In studying this great fact under these aspects and under still others, one will naturally be led to recognize it as the cause—not the sole, but the principal cause—of the formation of our sedimentary rocks, through the deposits of minerals, plants, and animals that the waters left upon the continent during and after their sojourn. If the hardness of these rocks, which the diluvial deposits could not have attained, is objected, let it be recalled that all calcareous formations, even the most marly and the least compact, contain silica, whose lapidifying property was demonstrated by Berzelius in his fine study of this mineral, and by the architects who use it every day for constructions in water; cements and various mortars owe only to silica this facility of hardening even under water. In 1828, silicon was found in its native state in Carrara marble, which solidified instantaneously upon contact with the air.