Theology and Geology

I am fascinated by geology and the study of the Earth’s geological processes.  If I hadn’t studied human history in college, I may have studied geology instead.  

 
There is so much about the natural world that fascinates me.  For example, one can hike down the Grand Canyon and pass through 2 billion years of the Earth’s geological history.  Where I live in South Jersey was the floor of the Atlantic Ocean during the late Cretaceous Period.  My house sits upon approximately 80 feet of sediment that eroded and washed down from the Appalachian Mountains in what is now North Jersey.  The Earth’s crust is divided into massive plates that essentially float on the Mantle and are always moving around, albeit very, very slowly.  Over the course of the Earth’s 4.54-billion-year history, these plates have arranged and re-arranged the continents in a number of different configurations.  California is located on both the North American and Pacific Plates, each of which is moving several inches per year in opposite directions.   Water and wind have shaped the Utah landscape into some of the most amazing geological features on our planet, like those in Arches National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park.  At various times, Utah has been sea floor, an inland sea, coastal swamps, sand dunes, desert and rugged mountains.  Deep beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, the sea floor is spreading at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, pushing Europe and Africa farther apart from North and South America.  

 
If we look deeper into these geological processes, we see the hand of God.  God created the Earth and the Universe and He ordered the forces that shape our world physically.  Studying geology gives us insight into God’s Creation.  Studying geology can give us a glimpse into how God created the world and how He continues to shape it every day in amazing ways.  The Book of Genesis relates how God created the world in six days simply by willing it into being.   I do not take the six-day timeframe literally as some Protestants do.  The key point here is not how long God took to create the Earth and the Universe.  The key point is that God created the Earth, the Universe and everything in them simply by willing it into being.  “Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light.”  (Genesis 1:3). 

 
One of the persons who played an important role in our knowledge of how the Earth works is actually a Lutheran convert to Catholicism, Nicholas Steno (Niels Stensen).  Nicholas Steno (1638–1686) was raised and educated as a Lutheran in Denmark, studied the natural world and theology, converted to Catholicism and later became a priest and a bishop.  His life is a most intriguing life lived in the pursuit of knowledge guided by the Holy Spirit.  “Despite a relatively brief scientific career, Nicholas Steno's work on the formation of rock layers and the fossils they contain was crucial to the development of modern geology,” writes the University of California Berkeley Museum of Paleontology. “The principles he stated continue to be used today by geologists and paleontologists.”   On its website, NASA’s Earth Observatory writes, “Steno was among the first to realize what seems obvious today, that fossils result from once-living organisms.”

 
Among his many contributions to science, Nicholas Steno originated the Law of Superposition.  This law states that rock layers are laid down in a relative time sequence with the oldest rocks at the bottom and the youngest rocks at the top, unless a subsequent process or force disrupts this sequence.  

It is often claimed that faith and science are incompatible and that the Catholic Church has historically been hostile to science.  This is demonstrably wrong.  Some of science’s most important discoveries have been made by Catholic priests and devout Catholic scientists.   The Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel is recognized as the Father of Modern Genetics.  Father Georges Lemaître proposed the Big Bang Theory to scientifically explain the origin of the Universe.  

 
After converting to Catholicism, Nicholas Steno was ordained a priest and later became a bishop.  As bishop, Nicholas was known for his extraordinary piety, his church reforms, his compassion for the poor and his asceticism.  On 23 October 1988, he was beatified in a Mass offered by Pope Saint John Paul II.  Of Blessed Niels (Nicholas), the Pope said, “His life followed a double course: he was a keen observer of the human body and of inanimate nature, and at the same time he was a deeply believing Christian who placed himself at the service of God’s will in a humble, decisive and fearless way.”  See https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1988/october/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19881022_beatificazione-stensen.html  

 
As a scientist, Blessed Niels taught the world a new way to look at the world; as a Catholic priest and bishop, Blessed Niels teaches us an extraordinary way to look at God and to serve God and humanity.