Add to Blessed Augustine’s insistence on the non-literal character of the narrative in Genesis, St. Gregory of Nyssa’s description of the first two chapters as “doctrine in the guise of a narrative”. Medieval Jewish commenators, notably Maimonides, also, without any impetus from a supposed contradiction with modern science, similarly discounted literal readings of anything beyond “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Even St. Basil the Great, whose Hexameron is aduced as a patristic support for a literal reading of Genesis says “it matters not whether you say day or aeon, the thought is the same.”
Biblical literalism hardly has the support of the consensus patrium, and seems to me to be as much a rationalistic phenomenon as the materialism it so often quarrels with.
Very well said. St. Basil’s nine homilies on the hexaemeron is a great read for anyone interested in this subject. But I didn’t know about Gregory of Nyssa...do you have a citation handy? I definitely want to check that out!
Genesis 1 was so challenging to the Fathers and the Jewish rabbis because of the curious language and seeming contradictions right in the text. There’s light, evening, morning, and days—yet the sun appears only in day 4. The first day is actually not “the first day” but “one day”—and like you said, ancient commentators—with no help from modern science—sometimes saw these days as literal 24-hour periods and sometimes saw them as “days of the Lord” of a thousand years.
But like you said, lots of people are into rationalism—everything cut and dry in a nice neat package. People are uncomfortable with mystery anymore!
“Biblical literalism hardly has the support of the consensus patrium,”
You seem to have an incorrect definition of Biblical literalism. Biblical literalism makes allowences for the poetic, the allegorical & metaphorical nature of Scripture - when it is clear from the context that such are required.
But what do you think of the major miracles of the Bible - the flood, Jonah, Jesus’ walking on water and the resurrection?
Are they nonliteral?