In The Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall is a book for all Priests and Pastors. In four superb homilies and a concluding essay, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, provides a clear and inspiring exploration of the Genesis creation narratives.
While the stories of the world’s creation and the fall of humankind have often been subjected to reductionism of one sort or another – literalists treat the Bible as a science textbook whereas rationalists divorce God from creation – Ratzinger presents a rich, balanced Catholic understanding of these early biblical writings and attests to their enduring vitality.
Beginning each homily with a text selected from the first three chapters of Genesis, Ratzinger discusses, in turn, God the creator, the meaning of the biblical creation accounts, the creation of human beings, and sin and salvation; in the appendix he unpacks the consequences of a renewed faith in creation.
