Allen,
I think if you are accurately summarizing him, and I don't doubt you
are, your source Hasel's presentation of Augustine's views on Gen. 1, leaves
much to be desired. Augustine rejected the notion that days should be taken
literally for the same reason numerous others have, because the sun was not
created until the fourth day, so to him it makes no sense to take "day"
literally. Augustine speculated that the six days were a framework in which
God instructed the angels as to how he would create, or perhaps Moses wrote
the text this way to accomodate to the limited intellectual understanding of
most people. As for the views of Augustine and Basil on creation, I
recommend the article by Howard Van Till, "Basil, Augustine and the Doctrine
of Creation's Functional Integrity," in _Science and Christian Belief_ 8
(1996) 21-36. For Augustine on the nature of time, see _Confessions_, Book
XI in any modern translation.
Michael Robert can comment much better than I could on the geological
reasons (not the philosophy of uniformitarianism) by which numerous 19th
cent. geologists, including evangelicals, recognized that the evidence
demanded long periods of time for the age of the earth.
Bob
----- Original Message -----
From: "Allen Roy" <allenroy@peoplepc.com>
To: "Michael Roberts" <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>; <Cmekve@aol.com>;
<panterragroup@mindspring.com>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 2:40 AM
Subject: Re: History of 6000 Year old creation
> Here are some paragraphs from Gerhard F. Hasel, "The 'Days'of Creation in
> Genesis 1: Literal 'Days' or Figurative 'Periods/Epochs' of Time?" in
> "Creation, Catastrophe, and Calvary" edited by J. T. Baldwin, 2002, Review
> and Herald Publish Association.
>
> pg. 42
>
> Some Medieval Understandings of Creation 'Days'
>
> The Alexandrian curhc father Origen, an accomplished practitioner and
> defender of the allegorical method of interpretation, has received credt
for
> being the first to understand the creation "days" in an allegorical and
> nonliteral manner.
>
> Augustine, the most famous of the Latin fathers, followed Origen in
arguing
> that we should approach the creation "days" allegorically rather than
> literally. Scholars understand Augustine to teach that God created the
> world in a single flash of a moment.
>
> At this point it seems appropriate to reflect on some methodological
> matters. Neither Augustine nor Origen had any evolutionary concept in
mind.
> They took the creation 'days' as nonliteral, standing for something else,
> because it was philosophically mandatory to assign to God creation
activity
> unrelated to human time. Sine the 'days' of creation are God's work, they
> argued, such 'days' have to be representative of philosophical notions
> associated with God taken from their philosophical perspectives.
>
> Greek philosophy regards God as timeless. Since the creation 'days' are
> part of divine activity, the two church fathers assumed that they also
> should be understood in a timeless sense. Philosophy, not scientific
> speculation, influenced the thinking of Origen and Augustine, leading them
> to reinterpret the creation 'days.'
>
> What this approach has in common with modern attempts, which also take the
> creation 'days' to mean something other than what the face value of the
> terminology seems to suggest, is that both derive from influences outside
> the biblical text itself. Medieval theologican, who assumed the creation
> 'days' to be nonliteral, based in on nonbiblical, pagan philosophical mods
> of thinking.
>
> pg. 42
>
> Today still another influence from outside the biblical text leads
> interpreters to change what seems to be the plain meanding of 'days.' At
> present a naturlistically based scientific hypothesis, the modern theory
of
> evolution, prompts such changes.
>
> The Alexandrian allegorical method of interpretation shaped the thinking
of
> medieval CAtholic theologican. They adapted the fourfold sense of
Scripture
> for medieval times, one that still has support in current official Roman
> CAtholicism. The three nonliteral meanings of the fourfold sense of
> Scripture (i.e., allegory, anagogy, and tropology) dominated Christendom
for
> more than a millennium, providing the hermeneutical means for the
> reinterpretation of the literal sense of the creation 'days.'
>
> Reformation Understanding of Creation 'Days'
>
> The sixteenth-century Reformers agreed that the fourfold sense of
Scripture
> compromised the literal sense of the Bible, making its authority for faith
> and life null and void. They insisted that the single, true sense of
> Scripture is the literal sense, the plain meaning of the text.
>
> One of the major achievements of the Protestant Reformation was the return
> to Scripture itself. It meant that Scripture has no need of an external
key
> for interpretation--whether that key be the pope, the church councils,
> philosophy, or any other human authority. Scripture's prespicuity became
> the norm of the day. Protestantism considered a reading from within its
own
> context as paramount. We must not superimpose external meaning on it, as
> had been the practice during medieval Catholicism. Rather we should
> approach the Bible in its literal and grammatical sense.
>
> Martin Luther, accordingly, argued for the literal interpretation of the
> creation account: "We assert that Moses spoke in the literal sense, not
> allegorically or figuratively, i.e., that the world, with all its
creatures
> , was created within six days, as the words read." The other Reformers
> understood the creation 'days'
> in the same way. Such literal and grammatical interpretation, sometimes
> call the historical-grammatical method, remaind the norm for biblical
> interpretation more or less into the nineteenth century.
>
> Changes Under the Influence of Modernism
>
> As the concept of long time periods made its way into the understanding of
> earth's origins in the wake of the publications of James Hutton and
Charles
> Lyell, some Christian concordist interpreters started to interpret the
> Genesis 'days' of creation in a nonliteral manner. The Bible itself did
not
> demand it, but rather the new worldview of uniformitarianism and its
concept
> of origins that required long periods of time.
>
> pg. 43
>
> The understanding of the creation 'days' as 'days of restoration,' 'days
of
> revelation,' aside from taking a 'day' for an 'age' ('day-age' theory) or
an
> epoch/era, goes back to this period and the changes in time frames
required
> by the new geology. A nonliteral reinterpretation of 'days' was typical
of
> concordists who had accepted long ages for the origin of earth. In view
of
> such developments, we cannot avoid concluding that the need to provide for
> geological ages became the catalyst for the reinterpretation of the 'days'
> of creation.
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 11 2002 - 01:07:15 EDT