Review of Chapter 1 The Church Fathers on Genesis, the Flood, and. the Age of the Earth
by James R. Mook
Hugh Ross wrote that “many of the early Church Fathers and other biblical scholars interpreted the creation days of Genesis 1 as long periods of time.”[1] However, the Church Fathers endorsed a six-twenty-four-day creation to combat “Greek thought [that] included kinds of evolutionary and uniformitarian concepts even before the time of Christ.”[2]
For example, Lactantius (c A.D. 250-325), a rhetorician who tutored Constantine’s son wrote, “Plato and many others of the philosophers, since their ignorance of the origin of all things, and of that primal period at which the world was made, said that many thousands of ages had passed since this beautiful arrangement of the world was completed .... Therefore let the philosophers, who enumerated thousands of ages from the beginning of the world, know that the six thousandth year is not yet completed.”[3]
Basil of Caesarea was one of the great theologians and defenders of the Nicene Trinitarianism. In his Hexaemeron (“six days”), he opposed the allegorists: “And the evening and the morning were one day.... 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.”[4]
Augustine believed in simultaneous creation not in six days: “Thou hast formed of formless matter; both, however, at the same time, so that the form should follow the matter with no interval of delay.”[5] He also believed that the creation was “not 6,000 years” old.[6]
Some Church Fathers held to the sex/septa-millenary typological eschatology of six days, which means they were premillennialists because of their typological view based on the six literal days of creation and 2 Peter 3:8 (“with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”). For example, the early systematic theologian, Irenaeus (c. 130-202) wrote: “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 years..... [this age will be followed by the seventh or the 1000 millennium] the rest, the hallowed seventh day; and restoring to Abraham the promised inheritance.”[7]
I want to complete the review of Chapter One by James R. Mook with four of his concluding thoughts:
The fathers wrote in an intellectual milieu that was filled with naturalistic cosmogonies, most of which held the earth to be either very old or even eternal. The fathers considered these thinkers to be atheistic, even if the philosophers phareosited an intelligent cause, because they did not believe in the God of the Bible.
Most of the fathers countered the naturalistic theories of origins of their day with the authoritative scriptural account of creation. The Alexandrians allowed for more use of scientific studies, but they still saw Scripture as having the final say on their view of the divine act of creation.
We have shown that most of the fathers held to the six days as being literal 24-hour days. At the very minimum, they all believed that creation was sudden. In strong contrast to the claims of Hugh Ross, we have demonstrated that no father proposed anything that could be taken as affirming deep time. It does not follow logically that if a father did not specify the exact length of each creation day, or even treated them as purely symbolic, then he would not see the time frame of creation as being important, or that deep time was a viable option. The oft-used counter examples of Clement, Origen, and Augustine, best understood through the lens of Alexandrian allegorical hermeneutics, all held that the creation had been fully completed in an instant.
Regardless of their differing hermeneutical approaches to Genesis 1, the fathers held to the sex/septa-millenary typological eschatology of the six days. The tradition among the fathers was that the creation occurred less than 6,000 years in the past, and the world would end or dramatically change at the Second Advent, which would occur at the end of the 6,000 years.[8]
[1] Hugh Ross, The Fingerprint of God (Orange, CA: Promise Publishers, 1992, 2nd ed.), p. 141.
[2] Terry Mortenson, Coming to Grips with Genesis (p. 26). Edition.
[3] Lactantius, Institutes 7.14, in ANF, vol. 7.
[4] Terry Mortenson, Coming to Grips with Genesis (p. 31).
[5] Augustine, Confessions 13.33.48.
[6] Augustine, The City of God12.10, in NPNF1, vol. 2.
[7] Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.28.2-3 in ANF, vol.1.
[8] Terry Mortenson, Coming to Grips with Genesis (pp. 50-52).