Of course, I recognize that logic need not apply to a question like this.

Um, sure, why not?

You mean in the sense that theistic evolution is the process where God creates first creation and then allows creation to be creative, whereas transubstantiation does not allow creation creativity because God has to dictate that creativity without using “natural” means?

Rick, not exactly… By transubstantiation, I mean believing by faith that the elements of the Eucharist change after consecration from bread and wine to Flesh and Blood. By evolution, I mean theistic or otherwise. In other words, the former, as a doctrine of the Church, is believed despite the senses, whereas, with evolution, we are allowed to let the senses and science overrule faith in a literal creation in seven days.

I don’t think they are mutually exclusive. The only orthodox view is that God created Adam from the dust of the earth. Other than that, how long a “day” was during the creation is not de fide. The creation ordinance of the week/sabbath and redemption ordinance of a sunday lord’s day still apply whether one is theistic evolutionist or not.
I kind of understand what you are getting at but I think it’s a false dilemma. If six 24 hr day creation is a fact, then senses and science will support that view, anyway. Then where are you with the transubstantiation faith-despite-senses argument?
Cute, but no cigar.

Granted, biology/anthropology/archeology and I are not on the most intimate terms, but I’m not sure that it necessary follows that a fact like the creation of the universe has to be empirically verifiable by people that don’t believe in the creator of said universe.

Logic: not holding either.

Gosh, it’s been an eternity since I’ve commented. Hello. I’m just back from a wedding in England.

But anyway, I don’t see an logical inconsistency here at al, though there’s a good point here. Aquinas argued that the Scriptures were true, and if we could prove that they were false, this merely meant that it was our understanding of them was false!

So is this being principle being applied consistency to transubstantiation and evolution?

It seems to me that the early Church took Our Lord at his word on the Eucharist. Allowing that Scripture isn’t always unambiguous, I think we have to admit that Biblical references to the Eucharist could be intended symbolically or literally. We can legitimately argue, based on the Bible alone, that consecration literally changes the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, in some sense, or that consecration heralds a symbolic change only. Fair enough.

However, allowing for that what I think we have to accept is that the earliest Christians other than the Biblical authors were utterly certain that consecration changed the bread and wine in a sense that was very real, not merely symbolic. Ignatius is admanant on this point, and Justin, writing a presentation of mainstream Church belief and practice around the time that the Church first starts to grapple with the question of what books ought to be classed as fit for reading in Church, describes the host as being most definitely the body of the Lord in a very real sense. So while we might be able to read Scripture on a literal or a symbolic level, I don’t think there’s any getting away from the fact that those taught directly by the Apostles are utterly adamant that belief in the Eucharist as the literal body and blood of the Lord. In other words, if the Church misunderstood Jesus’ teaching with regard to the one thing he specifically asked us to do for him, they pretty much got it wrong from the start.

The real question for mainstream Christians for the first 1,500 years of Christianity wasn’t whether the elements of the Eucharist changed, it was how they changed. After all, Jesus had assured us of the change, and he’d hardly have lied! And yet… they clearly are the same.

Various explanations were proposed and eventually transubstantiation was adopted as the best. Catholics, contrary to popular belief, aren’t actually obliged to believe in it, though. We’re obliged to believe in the fact of the Eucharist being the body and blood of the Lord; we’re not obliged to believe in any theory of how this might happen.

So.

Is this inconsistent with a belief in evolution? There seems no room for evolution in Scripture, after all, whether we see evolution as providentially guided or as entirely Darwinian. And yet, whatever version of Evolution we consider, I think we have to concede that there’s not a shred of scientific truth in the Biblical creation story. After all, if things really took place as described in Genesis we’re inplicitly imagining God as a trickster who planted evidence to contradict his Scriptures. After all, the Scriptures may have been God-breathed, but so, Genesis tells us, was creation itself - it is the breath of God that hovers over the waters! The question then is how we can reconcile Scripture with Creation.

We have enough Biblical evidence, I think, to argue that Augustine was right in his belief that the New Testament is contained in the Old, and I think that may be the key here, along with Peter’s warning about the each of misinterpreting Scripture and Philip’s conversation with the confused Ethiopian; this isn’t as simple as we’d like it to be.

While they reached different conclusions about questions such as the length of the divine days, the likes of Origen and Augustine were convinced that the significance of the creation account in Genesis lay in how it stressed the fact of creation of a divine act, and how that creation went wrong, if you like. They didn’t have any hang-ups on its literal meaning, which they were inclined to doubt.

Does this help at all? I know I’ve massively overwritten, but unfortunately you got me thinking, and not in a particularly structured way.

Hope you’re well, anyway!

Greg.

Sarah H., I didn’t really catch the meaning of the first part of your response until earlier. I was probably just in a hurry to be clever, don’t you know? But I do understand it now, especially after Greg’s elaboration, so thank you. That does clear up much of the inconsistency.

Greg, I very much appreciate your willingness to elaborate at such length. My studies in church history have yet to hit upon the argument of creation, so my knowledge of various theses held by the Fathers is very much limited. I hope you’re well, too!

Scientifically, I tend to believe that the wrong sort of questions have been asked re “the evidence” for a long time, but that’s a bit off-topic, so I’ll leave it for another time.