I agree with Sungenis's criticism (
FEFW p. 259) of Fr. Jaki's Modernist claims that "higher criticism" shows Genesis 1 is "post-exilic" (
it is Catholic doctrine that Moses authored the Pentateuch), but degree with Sungenis that Fr. Jaki's criticism of "concordism" ("applying proven scientific facts to the Bible") is incorrect, on the grounds that "Geneis 1's separation of the Light of Gn 1:3 and the sun and stars of Gn 1:14-17 is a scientific 'contradiction'". St. Thomas answers Sungenis's objection (
Summa Theologica I q. 70 a. 1 arg. 2):
Objection 2: Further, the luminaries are, as it were, vessels of light. But light was made on the first day. The luminaries, therefore, should have been made on the first day, not on the fourth.
by saying (
ibid. ad 2):
Reply to Objection 1: In Augustine's opinion there is no difficulty here; for he does not hold a succession of time in these works, and so there was no need for the matter of the lights to exist under another form. Nor is there any difficulty in the opinion of those who hold the heavenly bodies to be of the nature of the four elements, for it may be said that they were formed out of matter already existing, as animals and plants were formed. For those, however, who hold the heavenly bodies to be of another nature from the elements, and naturally incorruptible, the answer must be that the lights were substantially created at the beginning, but that their substance, at first formless, is formed on this day, by receiving not its substantial form, but a determination of power. As to the fact that the lights are not mentioned as existing from the beginning, but only as made on the fourth day, Chrysostom (Hom. vi in Gen.) explains this by the need of guarding the people from the danger of idolatry: since the lights are proved not to be gods, by the fact that they were not from the beginning.
Topic: Dr. Robert Sungenis Debuts New Book: Flat Earth, Flat Wrong (Read 9537 times)