Posted on 10/08/2009 11:36:56 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Augustine: young earth creationist--theistic evolutionists take Church Father out of context
--snip--
Augustine was not vague about the age of the earth, the historicity of Adam and Eve as our first ancestors, or the events in the Garden of Eden and the worldwide flood later in Genesis. However, his doctrine of creation was complex...
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
Ping!
St. Augustine of Hippo
We’ve learned a bit about God’s creation since then.
This doesn't help the literalist case any. Because whether the "day" is longer than 6 24-hour periods *or shorter*, it's still clear that Augustine was not hung up on defining the Genesis day as strictly as some today. Frankly, his interpretation of progressive revelations to the angels is even MORE an allegorical and symbolic reading than the day-age hypothesis, which at least makes the "days" lengths of time.
One of the chapters in his City of God bears the title “On the mistaken view of history that ascribes many thousands of years to the age of the earth.”
You know what made him argue that? There were rather ridiculous "sources" people were citing from the ancient Egyptians, etc. with totally fabulous chronologies of hundreds of thousands of years. He was taking issue with those. And yes, he was pretty firm in saying not more than 10,000 years. But he said it because there was frankly no evidence to the contrary in his day.
However, his doctrine of creation was complex. All matter, according to him, was created on the first day. Subsequently God created pregnant ideas that Augustine called rationes seminales, which were imbedded in creation. Some only came to fruition afterwards, even, it might be argued, after the Fall. Augustine thought that God could even have catered for the eventuality of the Fall of man into sin and the subsequent curse. But, all speculations set aside, Augustine did not teach a process of one kind changing into another.
This is largely true. He did not envision a process of one kind changing into another. I'd even argue that might even be confirmed in palaeontology--when we talk about evolution we talk about changes *from a primordial organism* that was largely undifferentiated into a more specific, differentiated organism. There is no question of an insect turning into a vertebrate. Latin changed into French, Italian, and Spanish, but you will never see *Italian* change into French or Spanish.
Anyway, Augustine's discussion of the phase of the moon at its creation and the spontaneous generation of flies from non-living matter show pretty clearly that he was not averse to some sort of development of creation according to already established laws and principles. I'll post when I get a chance.
His views on creation really are complex, and not easily translated to today's arguments.
Out of context, or in the context - who cares? The “orthodox creationism” cannot be reconciled with material evidence which we now know.
This “orthodox creationism”, which is mainly a Baptist enterprise, resembles the big mistake made by the Catholic Church 500 years ago. Back then, the Church used certain passages in the Bible to support the view that Sun orbits the Earth. The Bible, however, wasn’t intended as a textbook of astronomy, physics or biology. These subjects are tangential to the God’s word, and are presented in a purposefully symbolic or simplistic way, matching the cognitive abilities of people living 4,000 years ago.
"God, after all is the author and founder of things in their actual natures. Now whatever any single thing may in some way or other produce and unfold by its natural development through periods of time that are suited to it, it contained it beforehand as something hidden, if not in specific forms and bodily mass, at least by the force and reckoning of nature, unless of course a tree, void of fruit and stripped of its leaves throughout the winter, is then to be called imperfect, or unless again at its origins, when it had still not yet borne any fruit, its nature was also imperfect. It is not only about the tree, but about its seed also that this could not rightly be said; there everything that with the passage of time is somehow or other going to appear is already latent in invisible ways. Although, if God were to make anything imperfect, which he then would himself bring to perfection, what would be reprehensible about such an idea? But you would be quite within your rights to disapprove if what had been begun by him were said to be completed and perfected by another."The philosophical underpinnings of evolution are there, as long as we remember that we are not talking about changes from one kind to another but merely a perfection of an existing, undifferentiated type to a more differentiated one.
People say things like that to marginalize a plain reading of, and trust in, the Bible. But you are ignoring the evidence - such as that contained in this very article!
Here's a regular challenge I offer. I realize that Christians have varied in various ways in how they interpret Genesis over the ages. But the modern compromises with atheism are novelties that cannot be justified. If there were any validity to them from a biblical standpoint, we should expect _someone_ in the pre-modern era, within Christendom, to have espoused something consistent with old-earth beliefs. This we cannot do.
I challenge you or anyone else to find a Christian writer prior to the 17th century offering an unambiguous opinion that the world is older than, say, 10,000 years old. If young-earth creation is really such a marginal belief as you seem to think, then that ought to be an easy challenge to meet.
PS: I'm not a Baptist. Never have been, and expect I never will be.
Yet, when it deals with those subjects, it is true and reliable. This, for instance......
Job 26: 7 & 8 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing. He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.
There's still the issue of where the ancients got that kind of knowledge from.
The explanations may be concise, but these verses, for example, do not deal with symbolic representations. Scripture is accurate scientifically even though brief in its explanations.
The question is much more complex than that, Liberty. You’re not going to find many early Christian writers who disagreed with the Genesis chronology *from the creation of Adam*, which came in under 10000 years.
But it’s the 6 “days” before that may well be the sticking point. The question is not easy to answer, but it is odd that the Fathers took a rather allegorical view of those days and even cited them in contexts of “thousands of years”. Is this a clear statement of an old earth? Of course not. But it isn’t a clear-cut case given their allegorizing.
http://www.catholic.com/library/Creation_and_Genesis.asp
Personally, I believe in God. Professionally, I am a PhD scientist (physical chemistry/biophysics) and I have to reconcile the objective facts with religion. It is possible, and actually the Catholic Church has learned from the Copernicus/Galileo/Giordano Bruno folly how to do this.
I challenge you or anyone else to find a Christian writer prior to the 17th century offering an unambiguous opinion
With all due respect, I do not care about such opinions. Now we have the material evidence, consisting of isotope compositions of minerals and live (or formerly live) matter. We have collections of fossils. We have the knowledge of protein sequences and genomes. And we need to either reconcile these hard data with the Faith (it is possible), or stick to literally interpreting the Bible, which wasn't meant to be a textbook of cosmology or biology (again, the example of the geocentric theory is relevant), and make fools of ourselves, just as the Catholic clergy 500 years ago did.
Not only that. If a biologist reads the Genesis, the order of appearance of living creatures is completely consistent with the theory of evolution! :) The Bible touches these subjects. It is, however, necessarily as accurate as accurate would be the attempts to explain procreation to a 4 year old.
Largely, yes. There are some issues, as in the appearance of the angiosperms (seeded plants) earlier than the vertebrates, but overall the pattern is there.
The Bible touches these subjects. It is, however, necessarily as accurate as accurate would be the attempts to explain procreation to a 4 year old.
Let's assume the Mosaic authorship of Genesis. Take Moses from 1500 B.C. into today and play for him a movie of how scientists believe the universe and the earth were formed and populated. He has no words for many of the things he sees, so he needs to describe them *in the language that he knows*--a language which was built around goats and huts and stars and sky and fire and water and wind.
That, I believe, is Genesis right there.
To be fair and give credit where credit is due - the Genesis creation matches what the Sumerians came up with earlier (mostly).
Genesis has two contradictory order of appearances of life.
First Account (Genesis 1:1-2:3) ,p> Genesis 1:25-27
(Humans were created after the other animals.)
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image.... So God created man in his own image.
Genesis 1:27
(The first man and woman were created simultaneously.)
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Genesis 2:18-19
(Humans were created before the other animals.)
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Genesis 2:18-22
(The man was created first, then the animals, then the woman from the man's rib.)
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.... And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
He did conflate the days of creation down to an instant,
_______
So he did not believe in the literal truth of Genesis, then? You tell us time and time again that it was 6 literal 24 hour days for creation. Augustine said something different, as your exegesis explicitly states, in fact you correct him.
Augustine is a saint and you are an anonymous internet poster. And we should believe an anonymous internet poster’s reading of the Bible more than a saint’s, because??????
Will my children’s children be studying St. GGG’s contribution to Christianity?
We now know that dead people don't come back to life, that bread and wine don't turn into flesh and blood, that virgin human females cannot gestate and give birth to children (short of some sort of artificial insemination) . . . there's just all sorts of stuff we know now that folks didn't know thousands of years ago! But you'd be surprised how many hypocrites there are who will let science tell them how the world originated who won't listen to it on the other subjects.
This “orthodox creationism”, which is mainly a Baptist enterprise, resembles the big mistake made by the Catholic Church 500 years ago.
Impossible! The Catholic Church doesn't make mistakes! Besides, it is well known that the Catholic Church has never interpreted the Bible literally a single time in two thousand solid years! Catholics have always believed the Bible is full of holes! Those people who persecuted Galileo were obviously Southern Baptists traveling in a time machine, because everyone knows that everyone has always believed in evolution until those evil, stupid rednecks got polluted by nineteenth century positivism which led them to invent a theretofore unknown and unheard of Biblical literalism. And naturally this caused them to found the Ku-Klux Klan and start lynching Black people (whom, everyone knows, are completely and totally free of the purely redneck abomination of Biblical literalism). Oh, and by the way, Charles Darwin freed the slaves, right?
Back then, the Church used certain passages in the Bible to support the view that Sun orbits the Earth. The Bible, however, wasn’t intended as a textbook of astronomy, physics or biology. These subjects are tangential to the God’s word, and are presented in a purposefully symbolic or simplistic way, matching the cognitive abilities of people living 4,000 years ago.
Of course, the Bible is about "salvation" because it's a "chr*stian" book, and chr*stians get to reduce everything to "salvation," don't they? It's not as if the Torah were the verbatim Word of G-d dictated to Moses letter for letter. No sir, those wonderful chr*stians proved the documentary hypothesis a hundred years ago by simply assuming its truth (which is how they "prove" everything they believe).
That, I believe, is Genesis right there.
The Torah was not written by Moses. It was written in its entirety by G-d, 974 generations before the Creation of the World, and then dictated to Moses as a sequence of unpunctuated, unvocalized letters.
Of course you don't believe that, but foolish me, I try to help you.
From my readings of Augustine it is clear he sees Genesis as a spiritual description only.
Good point with this self-contradiction. The proponents of “reading literally what God wrote” have a problem there.
This is reconcilable, however, within the “God created humans using evolution” philosophy. The act of creation, if one necessarily has to define one, can be placed in time either at the moment of imposing the laws of physics, with the intention of starting the process that will eventually lead to humans, or the moment when actual humans appear.
How could Augustine see Genesis as strictly spiritual if A) He believed the world was created about 5,6000 B.C. B) the historicity of Adam and Eve C) the historicity of the Garden of Eden D) the historicity of the global flood of Noah, etc, etc?
“If a biologist reads the Genesis, the order of appearance of living creatures is completely consistent with the theory of evolution!”
That is not accurate. The timeline of evolution and the timeline of Creation are completely opposite. Please see here for a more detailed list.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0404order.asp
But the MOST important thing that evolution has out of order is that it places DEATH before man. The Bible says that DEATH was a result of SIN which came about after man was created. If it is true that death came before sin then death wasn’t a punishment Therefore the wages of sin is not death and we didn’t really need a Saviour to die on the cross for our sin.
The Catholic Church did, on the occasion of discussing astronomy. It proved idiotic. Silly me, I am trying to remind my Baptist friends about this mistake, because it is always better to learn on mistakes that were made by others.
PS You do know that Augustine came to interpret Genesis as more and more of an historical document the longer he was a Christian, right?
I should have elaborated my point. Modern man is attempting to use the way he thinks today - linear - with the ways of thinking so many thousands of years ago.
If you study and read Genesis in its historical context the way primitive people from the Fertile Crescent would have read or understood the document you would understand that the contradiction is meaningless because they are not producing a text book or a science book.
If you want to play the Bible as science than a scientifically trained mind can cut it up to pieces. The Bible is not meant to be read that way. People who read or before writing it - orally transmitted these words would place themselves in a sort of trance like state. Their words would flow. They were not in a trance but sort of a sing song state like Homer must have been when he would sing out the Illiad. It is epic poetry that in its telling has spiritual truth, I am not qualified to go beyond that explanation any further - it is the best I can explain it.
What's the difference between believing the universe was created in six days and believing in the virgin birth? You think the "new testament" is "better?"
Augustine was offering his opinion as best he could understand the words - Augustine’s saint hood does not mean his words are the law of the church. Only an ecumenical council can determine cannon and dogma.
Or a talking donkey in the Old Testament.....
http://www.bibleontheweb.com/Bible.asp First "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures". Biologists consider water the source of the first living organisms. Then "let birds fly above the earth". Then mammals (cattle) - what "creeping things" means is uncertain. Finally the man. Some things skipped, but the order is not opposite.
If you study and read Genesis in its historical context the way primitive people from the Fertile Crescent would have read or understood the document you would understand that the contradiction is meaningless because they are not producing a text book or a science book.
If you want to play the Bible as science than a scientifically trained mind can cut it up to pieces. The Bible is not meant to be read that way. People who read or before writing it - orally transmitted these words would place themselves in a sort of trance like state. Their words would flow. They were not in a trance but sort of a sing song state like Homer must have been when he would sing out the Illiad. It is epic poetry that in its telling has spiritual truth, I am not qualified to go beyond that explanation any further - it is the best I can explain it.
[sarcasm]Well, well, well. An Eastern Orthodox anti-literalists. I am so surprised.[/sarcasm]
What's the difference between believing the universe was created in six days and believing in the virgin birth?
Or a talking donkey in the Old Testament.....
Indeed. I'll never understand you folks who pick and choose which supernatural phenomena you will dismiss out of hand and which you will accept with "child like faith."
No I don’t believe that, because too many times now when you correct me with such “facts” in the guise of an infallible rabbinic tradition, I go to the Talmud and find a whole range of views that say otherwise.
http://www.aishdas.org/toratemet/en_torah.html
In any case, I was making a point by analogy. I wasn’t stating definitively how the revealed text was revealed. Nor was I even remotely considering the whole pre-existent Torah idea that the rabbis expounded upon.
http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Genesis+1
Light is created AFTER flowers and trees and sea life was created after plant life. This contradicts science.
I find nothing in Genesis that seriously contradicts anything scientific.
I homeschooled my kids and when they were younger, I had to explain a LOT to them in terminology that they could understand and still tell them the truth. I didn’t lie, it wasn’t allegory or symbolism, but it certainly didn’t go into the detail that it could have.
So, when the Bible says that the earth was *formless and void* it tells everyone, everywhere all they really need to know.
Saying that the earth is suspended over nothing, will convey the same information to any one in any culture.
The other issue that arises, is that there’s this mindset that what we now know that is currently held scientific consensus is accurate and true and right, but we are nowhere near being able to determine that.
The mindset that when there’s a conflict between science and Scripture, science is *right* by default, reveals an incredible bias in the minds of those who are putting their faith in a system of investigation that is subject to change and revision as new data is collected.
Right now I am discussing the inconsistency of the theory of "creation in 6 days 6,000 years ago" with material evidence, and I am not particularly interested in expanding the topic. I am not tempted to dissect the Bible in search of passages that will prove or disprove my beliefs, and this is precisely because of the lesson learned by the Catholics 500 years ago with regard to astronomy.
'Ellu va'ellu divrey-'Eloqim Chayyim!
MY ANSWERS ARE IN CAPS SO YOU CAN READ THEM EASIER BETWEEN YOUR COMMENTS
Genesis has two contradictory order of appearances of life.
NO IT DOES NOT
First Account (Genesis 1:1-2:3) ,p> Genesis 1:25-27
(Humans were created after the other animals.)
HUMANS WERE CREATED ON THE SAME DAY AFTER THE LAND ANIMALS
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image.... So God created man in his own image.
Genesis 1:27
(The first man and woman were created simultaneously.)
THIS IS A SUM UP OF WHAT HE HAD DONE. HE CREATED ADAM FROM THE DUST OF THE GROUND, LATER IN CHAPTER TWO HE EXPLAINS HOW EVE WAS CREATED.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Genesis 2:18-19
(Humans were created before the other animals.)
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
THE VERB “FORMED” IS PLUPERFECT OR PAST OF PAST TENSE. IT IS BETTER READ HAD FORMED. THIS IS NOT A CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS IN THIS VERSE. IT ISN’T TELLING US THAT HE HAD JUST FORMED THEM.
Genesis 2:18-22
(The man was created first, then the animals, then the woman from the man’s rib.)
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.... And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
AGAIN HAD FORMED FOR THE ANIMALS AND JUST A MORE DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION OF THE WOMEN,
BASICALLY THE FIRST CHAPTER IS THE EXACT CHRONOLOGY AND THE SECOND CHAPTER GOES IN MORE DEPTH ABOUT THE DETAILS.
THERE IS NO CONTRADICTION WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND THE VERB USAGE.
That is the role you are playing - you equate Genesis happening LITERARILY but the Talking Donkey in Numbers you ascribe to a vision or figurative episode.
I argue that the Genesis accounts are the product of a vision produced through trances common to oral story tellers and that the Genesis authors (plural) are not creating a literal scientific document dumbed down for Stone?Bronze age primitives but an allegorical vision designed for spiritual purposes.
As I expanded my point at # 26
Modern man is attempting to use the way he thinks today - linear - with the ways of thinking so many thousands of years ago.
If you study and read Genesis in its historical context the way primitive people from the Fertile Crescent would have read or understood the document you would understand that the contradiction is meaningless because they are not producing a text book or a science book.
If you want to play the Bible as science than a scientifically trained mind can cut it up to pieces. The Bible is not meant to be read that way. People who read or before writing it - orally transmitted these words would place themselves in a sort of trance like state. Their words would flow. They were not in a trance but sort of a sing song state like Homer must have been when he would sing out the Illiad. It is epic poetry that in its telling has spiritual truth, I am not qualified to go beyond that explanation any further - it is the best I can explain it.
I argue that the Genesis accounts are the product of a vision produced through trances common to oral story tellers and that the Genesis authors (plural) are not creating a literal scientific document dumbed down for Stone?Bronze age primitives but an allegorical vision designed for spiritual purposes.
I don’t mean trance as in spiritual possession but a state of mind that zones out the world as it concentrates on something.
It reads that God had created animals; and after He created man, He placed him in the garden and brought him all the animals He had created.
Gen 2: 4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- 7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
It says that certain plants had not yet appeared as man had not been created to work the ground (farm). That doesn't contradict that the rest of the plant kingdom had been created, and it doesn't contradict that the seeds for these plants weren't in the ground.
Gen 2:8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
This is specifically the Garden of Eden, which again, does not mean that there weren't plants on the rest of the earth.
Gen 2:19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
That doesn't necessarily mean that God created animals after man, when it says that He had created them, past participle.
It certainly could mean that God created them beforehand and then after He put man in the Garden, then brought the animals to Adam to name.
Nikas, actually, I argue here, quite consistently, that the Bible needs to be read symbolically, not literally. But I see no reason not to note that the Genesis paints a picture quite consistent with the theory of evolution.
LOL..I had to look that up, but indeed.
Evolutionist think that birds evoloved from the dinosaur (a land animal). Genesis say birds on day 5 and land animals on day 6. All the sea creatures were created on day 5 and that would include sea mammals. All of that is opposite the scriputure. Did you look at the link for a complete list? Never mind I will post it and you can refute it point for point since it was your assertion that the order matches.
Evolution has the:
Sun before earth
Dry land before sea
Atmosphere before sea
Sun before light on earth
Stars before earth
Earth at same time as planets
Sea creatures before land plants
Earthworms before starfish
Land animals before trees
Death before man
Thorns and thistles before man
TB pathogens & cancer before man (dinosaurs had TB and cancer)
Reptiles before birds
Land mammals before whales
Simple plants before fruit trees
Insects before mammals
Land mammals before bats
Dinosaurs before birds
Insects before flowering plants
Sun before plants
Dinosaurs before dolphins
Land reptiles before pterosaurs
Land insects before flying insects
Genesis has the:
Earth before sun
Sea before dry land
Sea before atmosphere
Light on earth before sun
Earth before stars
Earth before other planets
Land plants before sea creatures
Starfish before earthworms
Trees before land animals
Man before death
Man before thorns and thistles
Man before TB pathogens and cancer
Birds before reptiles
Whales before land animals
Fruit trees before other plants*
Mammals (cattle) before “creeping things”*
Bats before land animals
Birds before dinosaurs
Flowering plants before insects
Plants before sun
Dolphins before dinosaurs
Pterosaurs before land reptiles
Flying insects before land insects
If you want to believe in evolution that is fine but it is not compatible with the creation account in Genesis.
Except for this pesky verse, that more than clearly implies that man was not a living being until God created him from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
If God went into such detail to show how He created Eve, using Adam's rib, why would He not be as precise if He *evolved* Adam from some other animal in the animal kingdom?
Actually light was created on day one before flowers and trees on day three. The sun however was created on day four after the flowers and trees.
Excuse me, but when did I ever say that the Talking Donkey episode was "figurative?" I have never said any such thing and have always preferred to take it simply and literally. I did elucidate to you the opinions of RaMBa"M (a rationalist who believed that angels do not exist in our world at all and always appear only as dreams or visions) and of RaMBa"N (who believed that angels are either invisible to all or else visible to all but never invisible to one and visible to another, therefore he takes it as occurring during a vision). I also said that the idea of a vision is not impossible and that it helps to explain some kinks in the story, but I still take it literally. At any rate, even if it was only a vision it still actually happened. It's not a parable or a fable of any kind.
I argue that the Genesis accounts are the product of a vision produced through trances common to oral story tellers and that the Genesis authors (plural) are not creating a literal scientific document dumbed down for Stone?Bronze age primitives but an allegorical vision designed for spiritual purposes.
Genesis (and the rest of the Torah) was written in its entirety by G-d in "letters of black fire upon a scroll of white fire" 974 generations before the Creation. It is the "logos," the DNA, the blueprint of the Creation and necessarily pre-existed it. The universe is derived from the Torah, not vice versa. In fact there are some mystical traditions that G-d actually used the words of Genesis to bring the universe into being.
Does this help?
asexual mitosis?
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