Fathers and Fundamentalists: Interpreting the Days of Creation with Origen and Augustine

Abstract

Fathers and Fundamentalists: Interpreting the Days of Creation with Origen and Augustine Hugh O’Donnell (bio) “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” 2 Peter 3:8 The nineteenth-century English biologist Thomas H. Huxley once wrote, “Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain.”1 For many, this mythological allusion of Huxley aptly describes the steady ascent of science over faith accomplished in modern times. Beginning with the Galileo Affair and its controversies surrounding heliocentrism (c. 1610–1633) and reaching a certain fever-pitch in the last two centuries with the hegemony of Darwinian evolution, the “great divorce” between knowledge and belief, reason and religion, scripture and science, seems irreversible for many today.2 Although one could cite numerous historical, sociological, and cultural factors that contributed to this steady cleaving, one of the more critical sources of division was a theological error, namely, an extreme form of biblical literalism. This mode of interpretation achieved a certain [End Page 253] prominence with the advent of Christian Fundamentalism, a movement founded in the late nineteenth century in reaction to both theological modernism and biological evolution.3 Among the many points of acrimony in the ensuing drama between scientists and fundamentalists, the creation account in the opening chapter of Genesis, specifically, the sequence of the first seven days, took center stage. On the one hand, biblical fundamentalists firmly asserted their belief in a “young earth,” interpreting these days strictly as twenty-four-hour time periods and searching for scientific proof to bolster their claims. On the other hand, cosmolo-gist, geologists, and biologists—and not a few theologians—decried this assertion, declaring it was patently contrary to empirical data. Unfortunately, some denominations of Christianity gave way to an anti-rational bent, resulting, whether implicitly or explicitly, in fideism, an error which, in the words of Pope John Paul II, “fails to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for the understanding of faith” (Fides et Ratio 55).4 Reason or revelation? Science or scripture? Unfortunately, such false dichotomies have persisted and characterize where many men and women of faith stand today. What, then, is to be done? How can Christians collectively overcome this impasse and resolve this tragedy? The urgency of answering such questions seems especially pressing in the area of catechesis where the verbum Dei serves as the primary source from which Christians are to draw the message of salvation (cf. General Directory for Catechesis 94–96). And in our day and age, the importance of presenting the divine Word—including the Hebrew Scripture—in a manner that is cogent and convincing is perhaps more critical than ever. Here Christian revelation must be offered as a message that transcends human reason yet is in no way antithetical to it. This includes the creation account which is so often misunderstood. Though a full engagement with this issue is well-beyond the scope of this essay, I hope to offer some illumination through a return ad fontes, that is, a return to the sources, to those early Christian authors who decisively forged and fashioned the Church’s theological tradition (cf. GDC 105, 129). In this context, I will engage the exegesis of two patristic luminaries, Origen and Augustine, and examine how their interpretation of Genesis 1 was profoundly different [End Page 254] from that of Christian Fundamentalism. Although admittedly limited, the selection of these two fathers, I believe, will prove highly informative for two reasons. First of all, these two authors are very different, both culturally and historically. Origen is an ante-Nicene Greek father who lived in the East and developed his theology at a time well before ecumenical creeds or councils, when the regula fidei was still in an early stage of development.5 Augustine, on the other hand, is a post-Nicene Latin father who lived in...