CONCORDISMO. — Method employed by those concerned to determine the lines of a positive concord between the Bible and the modern sciences. With the emergence of the natural sciences, especially geology and paleontology, the effort to find in the Bible the new data for scientific hypotheses led to the elaboration of a new system of interpretation of the Hexameron (Gen. 1:1–2:3) and related passages. Because of its attempt to demonstrate concord between the Bible and science, it was called c.; while, in reference to the more important question under debate, namely the geological epochs and periods, it was also called “periodism.” Its beginnings may be traced back to Cuvier (1821).
The periods of geology were identified with the “days” of creation, by giving the word jōm the meaning of period or epoch, and adducing in support certain passages of the Bible where jōm signifies an indeterminate period of time (Gen. 2:3, 4; Ex. 10:6; Lev. 7:35, 36; etc.). To overcome the difficulties in the biblical account, attempts were made to demonstrate that the light which appeared before the stars was to be understood as Laplace’s nebula; and that the creation of the sun and the moon in the fourth period or “day” (while the plants had already been created on the third) corresponded to the dissipation, through aqueous precipitation, of dense layers of vapor. Such an effort, which at first appeared praiseworthy and successful, was destined to fail. In fact, as the sciences progressed,
the concordist exegetes found themselves compelled to modify their exegesis in order to adapt it to the new scientific hypotheses. The fundamental error of this system, both in its more rigid form and in its more moderate one (opposed in our country by A. Stoppani), is that of reading the Bible as a book of science, whereas St. Agostino had already warned against such a criterion (De Genesi ad litt.). It may now be regarded as having definitively disappeared.