Attention Michael Baker of Australia

Truth is One, but because Reality is a Hierarchy of Being, which truths reflect, some truths are more important than others for our eternal salvation. At the same time, every truth in the Hierarchical Structure of Reality is most intimately related to every other truth, but most especially to the truth just above it and that truth just below it in the Hierarchy. Thus, mankind is most intimately related to the Angels just above him, because of his rational - spiritual - substantial soul, but also to the animals just below him - because of his sensate body needing nourishment from the plants of the Earth.

That is the vertical structure of reality which is static, unchanging. There is also the dynamic - historical Order of Generation, by which generations succeed one another in the Order of Time. Now let me refer you to the 2nd Way of proving God's Existence that St. Thomas Aquinas presents in the Summa, Q2, a3.

Unless you subscribe to an eternal world, which is an error against Faith, and commit to an infinite regress, you will accept St. Thomas' proof of God's Existence as Cause - First Efficient Cause of all things, but not the Creator. According to St. Thomas, belief in God as Creator of all things - ex nihilo and in toto (in their whole substance) was first defined by the 4th Lateran Council in 1215, (check my memory on this.) But Creation is the first article in all of the earliest Creeds. So it is, we must agree, a primary article of Faith and one very closely related to the natural knowledge of God's Existence as First Efficient Cause of all things. (Cf Romans, 1:20)

I am trying to determine, and am asking you to help me determine, just how important Creation is in the Hierarchy of Truths that must be believed in order to be saved.

The Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, have always, - that is - traditionally been known as the historical books, only to single them out as differing from the Wisdom books, the Prophets, and other more specific in topic and person books such as Ruth, Judith, Tobias, Job and 1st and 2nd Machabees. I left out Esther, Joshua and Judges. These are all histories in the truest sense, and treated so by the Father and Doctors of the Church. They only have the added dimension of supernatural typology - which begins with Adam and Eve, literally our first parents, but also proto-typical to Jesus Christ, Our Lord, the Second Adam, and Mary Immaculate, His Mother, the Second Eve. There is no true typology without a real-literal Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, and so on. All of this discussion leads to one inescapable conclusion, and that is this: Everything - theologically, meta-physically, physically and historically presupposes Creation. And I have spent a large part of my adult life in trying to demonstrate that the Catholic Creationist, both as to science and theology, has the firmest ground to stand upon.

 

In previous papers, I pointed out that the Council of Trent, the First Vatican Council in its Decree on Creation and/or Revelation, and Leo XIII's --- Providentissimus Deus - not to mention innumerable Fathers and Doctors, hold to a view of Scripture as "dictated by the Holy Spirit" - and a view of the literal sense as absolutely primary and historical in those books where recorded history is intended. Pope Benedict XV in his encyclical - Spiritus Paraclitus, - condemned the division of Scripture into primary and secondary meanings, what today, implicitly denying all previous magisterial teachings, is dividing Scripture into what pertains to "salvation history" and what is termed historical and scientific error. This is pure Modernist Heresy and the burden of proof is on you, Mr. Michael Baker - to prove that you are not a Modernist - whose primary doctrine is the law of evolution. So says the encyclical - Pascendi - and the Syllabus - Lamentabili - of Pope St. Pius X
 

I take my stand on these two documents - as well as on all the others cited and on the Ruling in 1909 of the Biblical Commission that assures me I am not in error or heresy if I take the word .....yom ....in Genesis One to mean a literal - natural - 24 hour day. How dare you take it upon yourself to accuse people like me of schismatic tendencies and jeopardizing the Faith because we obey this ruling of the PBC? If I have done so, myself, and I admit I have accused evolutionists of heresy and complicity in heresy, it is because of......Pascendi ...and ....Lamentabili. I suggest you read and study these magisterial documents, since it seems you have never heard of them. The existence of God with His Creation of all things, ex nihilo and in toto - are indispensable dogmas for salvation.

 

Please note: Lateran Council's use of the term, - in their whole substance - in toto - absolutely requires a literal, natural, 24 hour Day for the Days of Creation - the First Week of the World - just as narrated in Genesis One.

 

Creation is an Act of God - outside of time. Evolution is a process - entirely in the minds of certain - so-called scientists. Therefore, it is an ideology, and does not merit the name of philosophy.