You do know that church fathers also stated they saw Genesis as allegory? I forget who it was but I am sure someone knows who it was.
In any case.
You must not know that the Orthodox Church only accepts the pronouncements of at least the first 7 Ecumenical Councils as infallible.
The Church fathers are guides, etc but are not treated as gurus. That was the heretical error of Paulines.
Augustine said that the creation account in Genesis was a condescension to our limited understanding.
Obviously, he was influenced by 19th Century German liberal Protestants in this. As everyone knows.
I appreciate the pings, it’s an interesting discussion.
If I had a dollar for every Nestorian declaration posted in earnest on FR, I’d end the Freepathon right now.
So? Something does not have to be a-historical to have allegorical meanings. But for some reasons you Orthodox and Catholics seem to insist that these things simply did not happen.
And which part of Genesis is allegory, btw? All of it? The first eleven chapters? The first 25 chapters? It seems to me that you only reject what constitutes "things that just don't happen." May I point out that people don't rise from the dead or get conceived without male sperm either? I guess that means that your J*sus wasn't born of a virgin and didn't rise from the dead either. That was all an allegory. Unless you want to be a hypocrite, of course. BTW, I find it ironic that you defend the Moscow Patriarchate to Tailgunner Joe, considering that that Patriarchate is notoriously "creationist."
The Church fathers are guides, etc but are not treated as gurus. That was the heretical error of Paulines.
Then I suggest you stop berating the Fundamentalists for not accepting them as gurus. Your hypocrisy is palpable.
See what I mean, Mr. Rogers?
That doesn't matter around here.
Here is the preferred version of history as portrayed by most anti-Catholic/Orthodox:
In the early Church, they all read their Bibles every day. The Epistles and Gospels were widely reproduced and Saint Timothy (who some here believe wrote the Epistle addressed to him) told them what order to put everything in and then they were bound together.
On Sundays, they would eat crackers and grape juice while thinking about Jesus. Sometimes, they would jump in the water and this was called baptism, but this really wasn't that important. They ALL understood that Jesus really didn't care all that much for His mother and simply told John to look after her as an afterthought. They also knew that Jesus enjoyed mocking his Disciples, He did this by switching from Aramaic to Greek in order to confuse them.
During this time, the city of Babylon was actually the greatest threat to Christianity, not Rome. So Peter went to Babylon.
Everything was going well and everyone knew how to interpret Scripture until the year 325 when the Emperor Constantine declared himself pope and incorporated the ROMAN Catholic church. He then held a council where he said that everything the "Bible-believing" Christians was wrong and he said they were heretics.