Religious Views On Evolution

[Thomas]

Because the church fathers viewed the universe as an anti-God principle.

Really? Are you sure? Just because a state transcends a different state (analogically speaking) does not mean that one state is anti the other.

 

[hoghead1]

Yes, I am very sure. The early church fathers looked to Hellenic philosophy to provide them with a metaphysical system. The Greeks had trouble with the world of time and change. In certain predominant schools, the world of time, change, and movement was seen as a big illusion and the source of all evil. Incorporated into the church, this meant God was described as void of body, parts, passions, compassion, wholly immutable, wholly independent, etc. Creaturely, finite attributes could not be attributed to God. Hence, we could say only was God was not, not what God was, as St. Thomas emphasized. In the latter, God is was to be outside the whole order of creation. For God to be present meant God could be affected by things, whereas God is totally immutable, static. I can send you more on this subject if you want.

 

[StevePame]

I can send you more on this subject if you want.

I would be interested in seeing more on this as well.

 

[hoghead1]

OK, Steve, what I am going to do is include here a brief synopsis from my dissertation. Incidentally, the latter was published as a book through a legit university press. I don't mean to toot my own horn. I'm just trying to show I'm legit . Let me know if this material helps. I put it together pretty fast, had to leave out key material, so you may have some further questions.












To provide some relevant background, most Christians assume there is only one model of God, one official picture of what God is like in his own nature. At present, that is definitely not true. There are at least two, classical theism and neo-classical theism, also termed process theology. Most Christians assume the traditional Christian model of God (classical theism) came directly out to the pages of Scripture. Absolutely not true. Let's go way back in history for a moment. The Greeks had a real appetite for metaphysics, for inquiring into what is the basic structure of reality. Is it all mind? Matter? It it changeable? In contrast, metaphysics was of little or no interest to the ancient Hebrews. The Bible, for example, tells us very little of how God is actually built. Is God all immaterial? Material? What? As the church worked its way up into the educated classes of the Greco-Roman world, it had to provide some kind of metaphysical system and level of discussion in order to survive. So the church fathers freely incorporated Hellenic concepts into their description of God. Although there were many different schools of Hellenic philosophy, the Greeks as a whole had real trouble wit the physical world of time, change,relativity, and matter. More than one major school argued that change in any form, most especially movement, was a logical impossibility and therefore does not exist. Plato was a dominant force here, arguing that the world of time and change is just a big illusion and the major source of all suffering and evil. The truly divine, “the really real,” was a wholly immaterial world of static perfection, totally immutable, wholly simple, wholly detached form the evil world of time and change.


Once these Hellenic notions were incorporated into Christianity, God was defined as void of body, parts, passions, compassion, wholly immutable, omnipotent, without even the shadow of motion, the supreme cause, never the effect. I am listing almost verbatim here the description form the major creeds, such as the Westminster Confession, and the writings of the major church fathers, such as Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, etc. Granted, they spoke of God's love, but it was a totally cold, unemotional love. Both Anselm and Aquinas insisted that although God might seem to us to be compassionate, he defiantly is not, in his own nature. Since God has no passion (emotion), then he could have no compassion, either. Unlike human love, God's love was totally minus any sympathy or empathy. God could have no emotion, because emotions are changes in bodily state, and God does not have a body and God does not change. Not to suffer is better than to suffer; hence, God, as the most perfect being, was wholly incapable of suffering, or experiencing any other negative emotion. Suggesting in any way the the Father suffered was ruled out as a major heresy.


In the 20-century, this model began to be seriously questioned. If it is true that finite, creaturely attributes cannot be describe to God, then we can say only what God is not, not what God is, a point recognized by the classical theists themselves. Therefore, God emerges as an undefined blank. But who can believe in just an undefined X? If we don't give God some content, the whole concept of God is meaningless. And then much of Scripture is also meaningless, as Scripture provides an essentially anthropomorphic image of God as having genuine emotion, capable of change, and implies, in many places, that God is a physical being, by assigning just about every body part to God. Such projection is not the problem, it is the solution. All knowing is analogous knowing; we must generalize from the unfamiliar to the familiar. Now, if there is one sphere of reality we are most familiar with, it is human existence. Hence, unless there is some genuine likeness, some genuine analogy between ourselves and the rest of reality, and this most especially includes God, we haven't even but one clue as to what is going on. Furthermore, the classical model appears to represent a very lopsided view of perfection. It is as if the church fathers went down a list of seemingly contrary adjectives, such as being vs. becoming, cause vs. effect, indifference vs. sensitivity, cause vs. effect, static vs. dynamic , etc., and assigned only side to God, the side agreeing with their Hellenic concepts of perfection. But all of our experience teaches us that no actual being can be described with reference to only one side or pole here. Also, each side can be shown to be a perfection. If it is a virtue to say full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes, it is also a virtue to be deeply moved and and affected by the feelings of others. Furthermore, the classical model does not seem at all compatible with a God of love. Love means at a minimum to emphatically share in the feelings of others and also to derive part of the content of your being, from them. At best, the classical model presents a picture of God as a Ruthless Moralist, Ruling Caesar, and Unmoved Mover. Also, it seems incompatible with out modern understanding of realty, the really real, as in a constant state of flux and also relativistic,where entities are not ever solitary, but emerge out of their relationships with others. The Greeks enshrined the values of the immune and the immutable, and this also is in question. Why should it be seen as a weakness that we have needs? Why should God be seen as weak if he or she also has needs? What's wrong with God experiencing genuine pain and suffering? How can anyone other than a suffering God help? If God can't change in any way whatsoever, then saint or sinner, it's all the same to God,who remains blissfully indifferent to the world. But who can put any real faith in an indifferent Deity? If God could be just as happy,whole, and complete without a universe as with one,then why did he bother to create one and how is it to have any real significance in the life of God, when it contributes absolutely nothing to him?


The result was a new model of God in which God and the universe are mutually interrelated. God grows as the world goes. God is the supreme effect as well as cause. My favorite metaphor here is that the universe is the body of God. I can't find any other that does justice to God's radical sensitivity to all things. There is a direct, immediate flow of all creaturely feelings into God, and a direct, immediate flow of God's feelings into creatures. Hence, God radically transcends us, as we are total strangers to the empathic responsiveness exhibited by God. Now, there is much more to say here, but I feel I should stop for now. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

 

[shunyadragon]

Really? Are you sure? Just because a state transcends a different state (analogically speaking) does not mean that one state is anti the other.

The evidence specifically supports the problem, because the Church Fathers who by far the majority endorsed a more or less literal view of Genesis, which was instrumental in developing the foundation doctrines and dogma of Christianity.

 

[hoghead1]

I disagree, Shuny. St. Augustine wrote a major work, "Genesis in the Literal Sense," in which he argued we cannot interpret Genesis literally. One of the main reasons is that he argued God does not work through time, though successive movements. Hence, creation was done in an instant, poof, like that. Since we are inferior beings, and have to think in terms of time, God accommodated us by presenting a temporal account of creation. Calvin also comes close to Augustine. In his commentary on Genesis, he argued that God did not intend Scripture to give us an astronomy lesson. God accommodates himself to speaking in a way the common folk can understand.

 

[A Cup Of Tea]

I don't mean to toot my own horn. I'm just trying to show I'm legit

There is no need for that, who we say we are have very little meaning here, your statements will be judged on their own merit. In deeper analysis of texts people here often explain from which tradition they argue, as you said some place, we bring a lot with us to the texts themselves.

Welcome to the board, it's nice to see some activity to this sleepy corner of the internet.

 

[Thomas]

The evidence specifically supports the problem, because the Church Fathers who by far the majority endorsed a more or less literal view of Genesis, which was instrumental in developing the foundation doctrines and dogma of Christianity.

This is so wrong! Where are you getting your data on Christian doctrine?

There are actually broad discussions regarding the interpretation of Genesis, and many of the Fathers, and Christian doctrine, teaches that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are symbolic and analogical. St Basil (4thC) discusses the issue in the context of pastoral rather than intellectual concerns. But really the Fathers saw Genesis as metaphysics ...

 

[hoghead1]

I'm not sure I agree with that, Cup of Tea. I think we should always bear in mind the kind of person we are talking to.

 

[Devils' Advocate]

Agreed. It matters to me what a person's bonafides are. Not that it will cause me to agree with them necessarily - it will cause me to give their comments more weight. I appreciate knowing that Thomas is so deeply studied in his faith. That Shuny & Hoghead have the educational background they do. Most of us here are religious amateurs; I sure am.

What interests me is that even the learned in the group have radically different views on the subject. That to me is very interesting.

These people also help keep me on my toes; trying to make sure of what I go on about has some research behind my comments.

 

[hoghead1]

You touched on an important point, Devils'Advocate, that the "learned" have different views. This has been the case historically. It's been said that if you ask two clergypersons, you get 4 different answers. Many people naively assume that Christianity is a monolithic religion, just one way. Forget it. Way too simple. Christianity is a rich tapestry of divergent POV's which often can and do conflict. It had been that way since Day One. There really was no "early church." In reality there were any number of sects which often feuded very bitterly with one another. Emperor Julian said that Christians fight with each other like wild animals. Many today are upset by this, by all the diversity. Some have gone into a state of "spiritual confusion" over this. Incidentally, "spiritual confusion" is now recognized in the DSM-V, that's the big diagnostic manual for psychiatric problems. For me, I like it, I love it, I want some more of it. To me, the plurality of Christianity means we have freedom, choices, we're not stuck with just one way. If one church doesn't fill your spiritual needs, you can go find another that maybe does.

 

[shunyadragon]

The evidence supports the problem specifically the Church Fathers who by far the majority endorsed a more or less literal view of Genesis, which was instrumental in developing the foundation doctrines and dogma of Christianity.

I disagree, Shuny. St. Augustine wrote a major work, "Genesis in the Literal Sense," in which he argued we cannot interpret Genesis literally. One of the main reasons is that he argued God does not work through time, though successive movements. Hence, creation was done in an instant, poof, like that. Since we are inferior beings, and have to think in terms of time, God accommodated us by presenting a temporal account of creation. Calvin also comes close to Augustine. In his commentary on Genesis, he argued that God did not intend Scripture to give us an astronomy lesson. God accommodates himself to speaking in a way the common folk can understand.

I said the majority, and that does not include St. Augustine.

Creation and the Church Fathers
Recently I was rather shocked to read the following words from two leading British evangelical Christians:

“There is, unfortunately, a common misconception that Christians all used to take it [Creation] fairly literally, and that in a post-Copernican and Darwinian age some of us are now trying to cobble together some kind of non-literal understanding. This is simply not true. At no stage in the history of Christian interpretation of Genesis 1 – 3 has there been a ‘purely literal’ understanding.”1

According to these two scholars the traditional and orthodox understanding throughout church history has been that the days of Creation are symbolic. But is this really true? This article is an attempt to put the record straight by referring to the earliest writings of Christian leaders. 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.

 

[hoghead1]

Interesting material Shuny. I'm pretty sure Origin, a major early father, took an allegorical approach to Genies., so, too, St. Thomas Aquinas.

 

[shunyadragon]

Interesting material Shuny. I'm pretty sure Origin, a major early father, took an allegorical approach to Genies., so, too, St. Thomas Aquinas.

Let's take them one by one:

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.

There is a range somewhat on the time issue, but the interpretation of most remains literal.

 

[hoghead1]

I'm sorry, Shuny, I don't follow you at all here on Barnabas. He sure seem to me to be saying that creation took six-thousand years. Anyhow, I'm not sure what your point is here. I never said all the fathers argued for an purely allegorical interpretation of Genesis. However, it is interesting to review them, as many as we can.

 

[shunyadragon]

I'm sorry, Shuny, I don't follow you at all here on Barnabas. He sure seem to me to be saying that creation took six-thousand years. Anyhow, I'm not sure what your point is here. I never said all the fathers argued for an purely allegorical interpretation of Genesis. However, it is interesting to review them, as many as we can.

He sure seems is correct, maybe . . . He refers to the end of the world in six thousand after Adam. He still made it clear Creation was in six days. I already made it clear that the literal interpretation has varied times within the strict Biblical interpretation, and is still literal today as 2000 years ago. The citation 'a day is as a thousand years' is the one today that those believe in a literal interpretation as it was in the past. Some do propose that the Creation of six days is six thousand years, but not Barnabas.

Also among those who believe in a literal Creation they limit the period since Adam to ~6000 years.

 

[shunyadragon]

Next . . .

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

 

[hoghead1]

Thanks for the info. on Irenaeus. I'm inclined to think the P source, author of Genesis, had six 24-hour days in mind, as I believe Gen. 1 was intended as a liturgy, one that would attack polytheism, by saying we should follow the same God every day of tehe week.

 

[shunyadragon]

Next . . .

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.”

 

[hoghead1]

Huh? Lactantius seems to me to be saying that God created the world in six 24-hour days and that this symbolizes the fact the world will last six thousand years. 'And divided it in the exact measure of twelve hours by day and night"? Sure looks to me like he has a 24-hour day in mind. Same with Hippolytus. In both cases, the six-thousand years appears to apply only to how long the earth lasts. I may be wrong, but that's how it seems to me.