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Did the Church Fathers believe in a literal Genesis?

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
The belief that Genesis is literal does consider Creation taking place in either 7 days or 7 thousand years. Clearly I said the majority. As noted only one argued for a symbolic representation of Creation; St. John Chrysostom.

From: ECG: Creation and the Church Fathers

"These leaders were known as the Church Fathers and they wrote to encourage believers, mainly during the period of AD 96 – 430 (Clement to Augustine). Of the 24 Church Fathers that I examined, 14 clearly accepted the literal days of Creation; 9 did not mention their thoughts on this subject, and only one held to a clearly figurative belief, which he imbued from the Jewish liberal philosopher, Philo, who had, in turn, been greatly influenced by the pagan Greeks.

The first Church Father who mentions the days of Creation is Barnabas (not Paul’s companion) who wrote a letter in AD 130. He says:

“Now what is said at the very beginning of Creation about the Sabbath, is this: In six days God created the works of his hands, and finished them on the seventh day; and he rested on that day, and sanctified it. Notice particularly, my children, the significance of ‘he finished them in six days.’ What that means is, that He is going to bring the world to an end in six thousand years, since with Him one day means a thousand years; witness His own saying, ‘Behold, a day of the Lord shall be as a thousand years. Therefore, my children, in six days – six thousand years, that is – there is going to be an end of everything.” (The Epistle of Barnabas 15)2

Barnabas is referring here to the traditional view of both the Jewish Rabbis and the early church leaders, that the days of Creation were literal six days, but that Psalm 90:4 (and for the Christians, 2 Peter 3:8) prophetically pointed to the coming of the Messiah after 6,000 years (and for the Christians, the return of Christ).3 This is not to be confused with the modern idea in the church, which wrenches verses out of context and makes the days of Creation to be evolutionary billions of years. Such a view has nothing to do with traditional Christianity; it is an attempt to make the Bible palatable to the masses who have been indoctrinated by the pagan religion of evolutionism.

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (AD 120 – 202), was discipled by Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who had himself been taught by the Apostle John. He tells us clearly that a literal Adam and Eve were created and fell into sin on the literal first day of Creation (an idea influenced by the Rabbis). He writes:

“For it is said, 'There was made in the evening, and there was made in the morning, one day.' Now in this same day that they did eat, in that also did they die.”4

When he refers to Adam sinning and bringing death to the human race on the sixth day, he also points out that Christ also died on the sixth day in order to redeem us from the curse of sin. It is impossible to manipulate the text to make Irenaeus look as if he believed in the long-age days of the modernist theologians.

Agreeing with Barnabas, he explains that the literal six-day Creation points to six thousand years of history before Christ’s return:

“And God brought to a conclusion upon the sixth day the works that He had made; and God rested upon the seventh day from all His works. This is an account of the things formerly created, as also it is a prophecy of what is to come. For the day of the Lord is as a thousand years; and in six days created things were completed: it is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end at the sixth thousand year.”5

Hippolytus, Bishop of Portus, near Rome (AD 170 – 236), was trained in the faith by Irenaeus, and like his mentor, he held to literal Creation days. He writes:

“And six thousand years must needs be accomplished… for 'a day with the Lord is as a thousand years.' Since, then, in six days God made all things, it follows that 6,000 years must be fulfilled.”6

Lactantius, a Bible scholar (AD 260 – 330) who tutored Emperor Constantine’s son, Crispus, taught the official Christian doctrine of the traditional church. He wrote:

“To me, as I meditate and consider in my mind concerning the creation of this world in which we are kept enclosed, even such is the rapidity of that creation; as is contained in the book of Moses, which he wrote about its creation, and which is called Genesis. God produced that entire mass for the adornment of His majesty in six days…. In the beginning God made the light, and divided it in the exact measure of twelve hours by day and by night….”7

As with the other church leaders at the time, he accepted the prophetic days of 2 Peter 3:8, and tells us:

“Therefore, since all the works of God were completed in six days, the world must continue in its present state through six ages, that is, six thousand years.”8"

More to follow . . .
 
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Kemosloby

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Interesting line of thinking. But wait, didn't one of those Archbishops calculate the age of the Earth and say the world was 6,000 years old? So that would make the symbolic 6 days or 6,000 years about the time Jesus came, "God's rest". So like the real Apostles (the real church fathers) called Jesus Gods rest, you need Jesus.

Matt 11:28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Interesting line of thinking. But wait, didn't one of those Archbishops calculate the age of the Earth and say the world was 6,000 years old? So that would make the symbolic 6 days or 6,000 years about the time Jesus came, "God's rest". So like the real Apostles (the real church fathers) called Jesus Gods rest, you need Jesus.

Matt 11:28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

I already stated that a literal understanding of Genesis includes the calculation of the age of the universe and the earth as ~6,000 years old.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Did the Church Fathers believe in a literal Genesis?

Way back then, I assume they did.

It would be normal for most people to believe this at the time, but not today.

By far almost all still did up until the mid nineteenth century, and even today a plurality if not a majority of Christians still believe in some form of a literal Genesis including most of President Trumps cabinet.
 
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shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
From: ECG: Creation and the Church Fathers

Origen, Clement of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo

Usually liberal Christians refer to these three church leaders to support their ideas. However, we must understand that these three scholars never even thought about interpreting the days of Genesis in a way that today’s liberals understand. To try and do this is a violation of their teaching.

Firstly, even these three leaders who interpreted Scripture in a more symbolic way than the others, never once tried to mix the long ages of the pagan philosophers like Plato with their teaching. Every single person among the Christian leaders who spoke about Creation said it had happened much less than 10,000 years ago. Augustine (AD 354 – 430) could write:

“fewer than 6,000 years have passed since man’s first origin,”

and he referred to the pagans’

“fairy-tales about reputed antiquity, which our opponents may decide to produce in attempts to controvert the authority of our sacred books....”9

Liberals are keen to get Augustine on their side because apparently he believed that the days of Creation were symbolic, and not literal. He tells us in his City of God what he understood about the Creation days:

“The world was in fact made with time, if at the time of its creation change and motion came into existence. This is clearly the situation in the order of the first six or seven days, in which morning and evening are named, until God’s creation was finished on the sixth day, and on the seventh day God’s rest is emphasized as something conveying a mystic meaning. What kind of days these are is difficult or even impossible for us to imagine, to say nothing of describing them.

In our experience, of course, the days with which we are familiar only have an evening because the sun sets, and a morning because the sun rises; whereas those first three days passed without the sun, which was made, we are told, on the fourth day. The narrative does indeed tell that light was created by God…. But what kind of light that was, and with what alternating movement the distinction was made, and what was the nature of this evening and this morning; these are questions beyond the scope of our sensible experience. We cannot understand what happened as it is presented to us; and yet we must believe it without hesitation.”10

From this we realise that Augustine held to a literal interpretation of the Creation days, although he admitted he had to take it by faith, rather than by reason. In his earlier book (AD 397 – 398), Confessions, he does spiritualize the Genesis account of Creation to communicate with a different audience, but his City of God was completed only four years before his death, and, as shown above, this later book shows a literal understanding of the days of Genesis.

He did teach an idea known as the “seminal principle,” which some liberals have jumped on with glee, stating that Augustine was a theistic evolutionist. This is, however, reading too much into his work from a post-Darwin mindset. He simply believed that all living things contained within them seeds, which grew to form the complete species, but that all kinds of living things had fixed boundaries. These seeds, he believed, grew rapidly into fully mature living forms during the creation process – there was no thought about millions of years in between each stage of the days of Genesis.11

Origen (AD 185 – 230/254) was one of the most prolific Christian writers in the Early Church, and was used by God to lead many into the Christian faith. He was recognised as one of the greatest scholars of the church at that time. He led a Bible school in Alexandria, and in order to become a better missionary to the pagan philosophers, he attended the lectures of Ammonius Saccas, who had founded the school of Neo-Platonism in Alexandria. Sadly, it was the influence of pagan philosophy that led Origen astray in some of his Scriptural interpretations.

Origen started preaching that human souls had already existed and that they were waiting to be put into bodies. This heresy was known as the “Pre-existence of the Soul”, and it was totally rejected by the church. He also taught that the stars possessed their own souls. This belief he adopted from the pagan scientists of the day. He began to explain away Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden as figurative, and he also bought into a pagan understanding of the Creation days. He believed that “the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that”,12 but saw the six days of Creation as figurative.

The reason why he struggled with a literal understanding of the six days is because he could not understand how light could exist, and the earth rotate in a 24-hour cycle before the sun had been created. He appealed to Genesis 2:4 in order to give a figurative meaning to the six days of Creation and wrote:

“We found fault with those who, taking the words in their apparent signification, said that the time of six days was occupied in the creation of the world, and quoted the words: 'These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.'”13

Of course today we know that the sun is one among many stars, and that light radiation existed before they were created. The problem of a 24-hour earth cycle before the sun was made is not a difficulty for God; it is just that we do not yet understand it. When Origen quoted Genesis 2:4 to give a figurative foundation for the days of Creation, he did not realise that traditional rabbinical understanding of this verse was that the “generations” meant “the account of” and “the day” meant “at the time when”.14 Thus he is guilty of twisting Scripture.

Clement of Alexandria (AD 153 – 217), was famous as a Bible teacher, and he taught Origen. Although some evangelicals think he held to a liberal view on Creation, he actually had a mixed approach. He has an historical date for Creation of 5592 BC (Stromata, or Miscellanies 1:21) and he said about the Creation days:

“For the creation of the world was concluded in six days ...Wherefore also man is said to have been made on the sixth day ... Some such thing also is indicated by the sixth hour in the scheme of salvation, in which man was made perfect.”15

Although the context of the above passage is indeed figurative, it is clear that Clement was referring to a literal six-day Creation with man being “made perfect” in the sixth hour of the sixth day. Clement was influenced by the rabbinical teaching of the six hours in which God completed man, an idea which goes beyond the bounds of Scripture, but yet demonstrates a literalist view.16

In conclusion, my investigation clearly demonstrated to me that the Church Fathers were almost unanimous on the twin beliefs of a literal six-day Creation and a “young earth”. Origen, who was influenced by pagan views and held to some heretical ideas, was the main exception to the rule. Although the Church Fathers were literalists, it is true that they also used Genesis in a figurative way to point prophetically to the return of Christ, and to draw out spiritual messages for their audiences, as do literal creationists today."

The belief in a Literal Genesis authored by Moses is an important point in 'Sola Scriptora' during the times of the Church Fathers, and today.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
No, only 6,000 years since Adam ate the fruit, how long before that is unknown.

That is one view, but not the view of the Church Fathers that believed in one version or another concerning the Creation of our existence.

St. Augustine believed in an instantaneous Creation declared at the beginning of Genesis.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Did the Church Fathers believe in a literal Genesis?

Way back then, I assume they did.

An interesting side note is the Church Fathers often railed against the pagans for what they believed concerning the Creation and/or origins of our physical existence. The question is what did they believe that was so objectionable?

Actually at least one pagan came close to getting in right in the first century BCE; Lucretius, who would have been known by most theologians and philosophers of the time.

From: De rerum natura - Wikipedia

De rerum natura (Latin: [deː ˈreːrũːm naːˈtuːraː]; On the Nature of Things) is a first-century BC didactic poem by the Romanpoet and philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. The poem, written in some 7,400 dactylic hexameters, is divided into six untitled books, and explores Epicurean physics through richly poetic language and metaphors.[1]

Lucretius presents the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena.

The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna ("chance"), and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities."

He also described our solar system, and that other stars also had solar systems.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
No, only 6,000 years since Adam ate the fruit, how long before that is unknown.

From: Allegorical interpretations of Genesis - Wikipedia

St. Basil rejected an allegorical interpretation in his Hexaëmeron, and affirmed 24-hour creation days:

"I know the laws of allegory, though less by myself than from the works of others. There are those truly, who do not admit the common sense of the Scriptures, for whom water is not water, but some other nature, who see in a plant, in a fish, what their fancy wishes, who change the nature of reptiles and of wild beasts to suit their allegories, like the interpreters of dreams who explain visions in sleep to make them serve their own ends. For me grass is grass; plant, fish, wild beast, domestic animal, I take all in the literal sense. 'For I am not ashamed of the Gospel' [Romans 1:16].[12]

'And there was evening and there was morning: one day.' And the evening and the morning were one day. Why does Scripture say 'one day the first day'? Before speaking to us of the second, the third, and the fourth days, would it not have been more natural to call that one the first which began the series? If it therefore says 'one day,' it is from a wish to determine the measure of day and night, and to combine the time that they contain. Now twenty-four hours fill up the space of one day -- we mean of a day and of a night; and if, at the time of the solstices, they have not both an equal length, the time marked by Scripture does not the less circumscribe their duration. It is as though it said: twenty-four hours measure the space of a day, or that, in reality a day is the time that the heavens starting from one point take to return there. Thus, every time that, in the revolution of the sun, evening and morning occupy the world, their periodical succession never exceeds the space of one day."

Some like Origen described both a literal and allegorical meaning for Creation.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Did the Church Fathers believe in a literal Genesis?

Way back then, I assume they did.
I agree, but that doesn't mean that we have to, especially since we have so much more evidence dealing with the age of the Earth and the evolution of life.

I grew up in a fundamentalist Protestant church that taught that the belief in evolution was evil, but when I asked a Catholic priest way back when I was in high school if one could accept evolution and still be a Catholic, and he said yes, as long as it is understood that God was behind it all. However, his response confused me even more because I didn't know which was more likely to be correct.

During my undergrad years, I stopped going to church because of this and some other questions I had, but then I ran across this Catholic woman who got me interested in Catholicism, and over time I eventually married another Catholic woman, whereas I began to study theology enough to realize that there's no reason why one has to accept the creation accounts as being literal. I had long rejected the literalist approach to the Bible anyway, so it all began to fit in with a way I felt was quite logical-- at least to me.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
I agree, but that doesn't mean that we have to, especially since we have so much more evidence dealing with the age of the Earth and the evolution of life.
Oh no, I definitely don't think we need to accept the literal Genesis as science, In fact, I have recently had reasons from my study of New Age (for lack of a better term) sources to increase my appraisal of some of the ideas in Genesis. I am still unclear about that.

But anyway, when the OP presented this question, I thought the surface answer, of yes they would have believed the Genesis accounts, was an easy answer but the real question I was having is what point was the question trying to address.
I grew up in a fundamentalist Protestant church
metis, unless I am confused you are a man with 9 spiritual lives. Fundamentalist Christian, Catholic, Jew, Native American, and on and on. Am I mixing you up or have you just been around a few blocks in your day.:)
I grew up in a fundamentalist Protestant church that taught that the belief in evolution was evil, but when I asked a Catholic priest way back when I was in high school if one could accept evolution and still be a Catholic, and he said yes, as long as it is understood that God was behind it all.
I like the priest's answer to your question .
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
metis, unless I am confused you are a man with 9 spiritual lives. Fundamentalist Christian, Catholic, Jew, Native American, and on and on. Am I mixing you up or have just been around a few blocks in your day.:)
Well, even in this area I am "a jack of all trades but a master of none". I'm not affiliated with any denomination or religion, but I do have respect for many denominations and religions to the point whereas I feel free to walk into any place of worship and feel pretty much at home-- at least to a degree-- and I have done this many times over.

In anthropology, religion is considered one of he "five basic institutions" that all societies have, so with my studies I have "been around the block a few times", needless to say.

But I admit that I'm at least somewhat of an odd-ball: many have a religious faith minus being involved in organized religion, whereas I've been heavily involved in organized religion but don't have much religious faith. OK, so I'm not normal!!! :p
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Well, even in this area I am "a jack of all trades but a master of none". I'm not affiliated with any denomination or religion, but I do have respect for many denominations and religions to the point whereas I feel free to walk into any place of worship and feel pretty much at home-- at least to a degree-- and I have done this many times over.

In anthropology, religion is considered one of he "five basic institutions" that all societies have, so with my studies I have "been around the block a few times", needless to say.

But I admit that I'm at least somewhat of an odd-ball: many have a religious faith minus being involved in organized religion, whereas I've been heavily involved in organized religion but don't have much religious faith. OK, so I'm not normal!!! :p
Have you gone eastern/Hindu or New Age?
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Not New Age but I have been to a couple of Hindu services. Very interesting-- plus a great vegetarian meal afterward. :)
I found Hinduism to be completely confusing on first appraisal. I had to seriously try to understand some things before finding my home in non-dualism = (God and creation are not-two) (Advaita) thought.

You got to love the food at the Fischer Mansion!
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
I found Hinduism to be completely confusing on first appraisal. I had to seriously try to understand some things before finding my home in non-dualism = (God and creation are not-two) (Advaita) thought.
Ever read anything about or by Baruch Spinoza? "A Book Forged In Hell" by Nadler is one of the most thought provoking and interesting theological books I have ever read. BTW, Spinoza often used "Nature" as another name for God.

You got to love the food at the Fischer Mansion!
I ate there several times, and the other temple I was at, whereas I went to the service and ate, is on Adams road just east of I-75.

BTW, ever been to Ashoka (on Rochester btw Big Beaver and Wattles) to eat? It's my favorite restaurant of any cuisine anywhere.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Ever read anything about or by Baruch Spinoza? "A Book Forged In Hell" by Nadler is one of the most thought provoking and interesting theological books I have ever read.
Never read him, but just heard about him.
BTW, Spinoza often used "Nature" as another name for God.
In advaita, I would say 'Consciousness' is more another name for God.
BTW, ever been to Ashoka (on Rochester btw Big Beaver and Wattles) to eat? It's my favorite restaurant of any cuisine anywhere.

Only about a couple hundred times over like 10 years. In fact today I ate right across the street from Ashoka's today; a joint called Royal Indian Cuisine.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Only about a couple hundred times over like 10 years. In fact today I ate right across the street from Ashoka's today; a joint called Royal Indian Cuisine.
Now try this place: Phulkari Punjabi Kitchen on Dequindre btw, 11 & 12 Mi. Rds. We actually go there more often nowadays, and it is Sikh owned.

We've been up at our place near Marquette all summer, but I'm anxious to get back to some serious Indian dining in about two more weeks. However, I'm really gonna miss being here in da north woods-- pasty country-- let me tell ya.
 
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