A Thinking Reed

St. Augustine, Notorious Theological Liberal

Written by

Lee M.

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In the course of a (well-justified) tirade against “young earth creationists,” Chris Williams at Here We Stand links to a good article from a geology prof at Calvin College discussing Augustine’s views on the interpretation of Genesis.

The Fathers were, as a rule, pretty undogmatic about how these early chapters should be interpreted. They certainly didn’t make any particular interpretation the litmus test of authentic Christianity.

In his essay “Genesis and Evolution” (found in his excellent book God, Mystery & Knowledge), philosopher Peter Van Inwagen suggests that a non-literal reading of Genesis is perfectly compatible with as high a doctrine of biblical inspiration as you’d like. The reason being that God would have good reasons to make sure that any account of creation whose purpose it was to convey important theological truths would be understandable by people throughout history, not just to scientifically educated 20th century (the book was published in 1995) people. A creation account that was “scientifically accurate” would have been incomprehensible to pretty much anyone living before the 20th century. Not to mention that what we take to be the last word in cosmology could itself become outdated some day.

Mr. Williams puts it well:

Honestly, scientists may be atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, even Christians. And I really don’t think we have anything to fear from “them”. The theory of evolution is not anti-God, nor anti-Christian, nor anti-Bible. If it is, then I guess so were the early Church. So no, you don’t need to be a liberal to think that the Genesis accounts are theological in nature, telling us about our relationship with God, each other, the world, and that something went wrong to place us in the condition we are now in, with God promising a Saviour.

Comments

16 responses to “St. Augustine, Notorious Theological Liberal”

  1. Chris Naron

    Could it be that they were silent on interpretations of Genesis because there weren’t any competeing cosmologies in which ID wasn’t necessary?

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  2. Marcus

    So far as I am aware, even those who shout most loudly for literalism are rarely, if ever, literalists about quite everything. Did God see that things were good? Did He walk in the garden? Is God a being who lives and acts in time like any creature? Does God have a body? Eyes? Feet? Legs? A back?

    Hobbes, for one, pointing to Bible passages just like these, insisted God literally does have a body. And I have no doubt that others called “Christians” have thought so and do to this day. And not only, though certainly, among the less educated.

    But between that extreme of literalism and atheist rejection of everything, there is a world of room for differences of opinion as to what should or should not be taken literally in Genesis, what are the valid theological points these stories should be read as supporting, and what it might mean for any of that to be “inspired.”

    One of those options is, surely, YEC. No?

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  3. Lee

    Sure YEC is a possible reading, but is it a good one? I think the early chapters of Genesis beg to be read as “myth” – which is not to say that they don’t point to something real. This is as much about literary sensibility as anything else.

    But my real beef with YEC is when its proponents set it up as the sine qua non of authentic Christianity, creating a stumbling block for believers and unbelievers alike.

    And, Chris, (thanks for commenting, btw!) it’s not that the Fathers were silent on interpretations of Genesis; they all had their own theories, after all. What they didn’t do was pronounce any particular interpretation as the correct one to be accepted on pain of heresy.

    Also, I think we need to distinguish between Intelligent Design (I assume that’s what your “ID” refers to?) and creationism. ID purports to be a theory about the origins of life based entirely on scientific evidence and argument (and therefore must be evaluated as such), not as an interpretation of Scripture, as I understand it.

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  4. Joshie

    On the countrary, marcus, Christians DO belive God had a back. That’s one of the things that’s so unique about Christianity. We belive in the “God Man” as Anselm put it. Our God was born, lived, ate, used the bathroom, had friends, was and was killed. But, as the first fruits of what God was doing for humanity, he was raised to life and taken to be with the father. That’s what I love so much about Christianity.

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  5. Chris Naron

    Lee,

    Unless you’re Ken Ham, I don’t think interpretations other than YEC are necessarily seen as heresy to day 🙂

    I disagree with the creation account begging to be read as a myth. My training as a historian is in ancient civilizations, so I’ve had the pleasure of reading creation accounts across time and cultures. None of them read like Genesis. What it lacks that all others have is the presence of explanations of nature easily disproven by observation. For instance, we can easily observe that the Earth does not sit on the back of a turtle. What it includes is an implied chronology that transitions to the rest of the histories. The chronology is problematic, but so is the geological time column.

    Perhaps you can answer something my Anthro professor couldn’t: how do we date strata independent of fossils?

    As for ID/Creationism distiction, I hope ID doesn’t think it can scientifically prove its assumptions anymore than athieistic macro evolution can. Neither are provable through observation. One may be a better model within which to process observed data, but I can’t see how either is provable.

    (Feel free to share your thoughts at my blog as well: The Conservative Mindcleaner)

    Reply
  6. Joshie

    The creation stories in the bible do bear a resemblence to Mesopotamian creation stories where marduk opens up Tiamat and seperates her halves into the earth and the sky, in a similar way to how Yahweh divides the waters below from the waters above. Psalm 74 describes Elohim/Yahweh’s crushing of the head of Rahab/Leviathan (a chaos monster like Tiamat) and using its body for creating the earth, skies and sea.

    There is an interesting parallel in the Epic of Gilgamesh too, where a snake robs our intripid hero of the secret of eternal life.

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  7. Joshie

    And unless you really belive there are waters above the sky I don’t see how you can say the cosmology of Gensis is not able to be disproven.

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  8. Chris Naron

    Exactly, but look at what the Genesis account is missing. There’s a clear separation of the natural from its Creator.

    Upnapishtim is clearly Noah, but he may also be a composite of Adam and Methuselah.

    I’m having a hard time explaining what I mean. It’s true that when you become a school teacher, your brain turns to mush. I’ve got a paper on the subject somewhere…

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  9. Joshie

    I would be interested to hear you go into more detail on that point. Let me know when you unmushify your brain!

    Reply
  10. Chris Naron

    From what I can cobble together from memory:

    1. the tone throughout Genesis does not change. The narrative regarding the Creation, the Flood and the chronicles of the patriarchs reads the same. The Enuma elish, for example differs greatly from the tablets dealing with the histories of the kings. There’s a clear difference in tone.

    2. God, in Genesis, is only anthropomorphized as much as needed to convey the concepts. The gods of the Meopotamian myths are highly anthropomorphized. They eat, drink, have sex, plot, murder and assassinate. When reading Genesis, it is easy to distinguish between language meant to convey God’s thoughts or actions as being explained in a way we can understand and the parts that are meant to be taken at face value. The Mesopotamian myths contain no such characteristics.

    3. Passages such as Exodus 20:11 make no attempt to explain the six days as symbolic, so the notion that the writers of the Bible never meant Genesis to be taken literaly has no support in scripture. All the descriptions of days being as a thousand years to God merely tell us that He exists outside of time. They are meant to convey his eternal nature.

    4. Jesus never alluded to the Creation account with anything less than authority. And Jesus claimed to be the Creator Himself.

    These are my mushybrained recolections of much deeper insights I once had, but they’re a start.

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  11. Lee

    Sure the Genesis story is more constrained compared to other creation stories. But still, a man named “man,” a woman named “life,” a talking serpent, a fruit that gives knowledge of good and evil? Sounds a heck of a lot like a symbolic narrative to me.

    To be clear, I do think there are problems with evolutionary theory as presently constituted. Marcus pointed out some of the issues w/r/t consciousness & free will on his blog. I’m skeptical that random mutation & natural selection can account for the whole process (so are many secular scientists for that matter).

    But my point is simply that evolution per se doesn’t affect my faith b/c I think it’s perfectly compatible with an orthodox Christian theology and a high understanding of the authority of Scripture. Evolution stands or falls on its own terms; I don’t think we can use the Bible as a textbook of science.

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  12. Joshie

    A (hopefully) brief response.

    1) The tone in Genesis does change quite a bit. I am sure you are aware of the notrious JEPD idea of the narrative strands in the penteteuch. While I am far from a doctrinaire JEPD-guy, the hypothesis of those different stands in the penteteuch arose from real differences in “tone” and viewpoint.

    The transitions are quite awkward in points, especially from Adam & Eve to Cain & Abel, to Noah to Abraham & Sarah. The only things holding those stories together are the geneologies, and even then they do a fairly poor job. Genesis does not read like a consisant narrative in any conventional sense.

    2) God is much less anthropomorphic in the penteteuch than the gods and goddesses in the Ennuma Elish, but he is still pretty much depicted in anthropomorphic terms in Genesis and throughout the penteteuch. Moses sees God’s back, God walks in the graden, etc. I think saying the biblical authors only anthropomorphize enough to put the point across is to put the mind of a modern, or at least hellenistic person, in the mind of an ancient Hebrew. Any interpretation MUST have as its starting point an interpretation that would make sense to its first hearers. That’s just basic exegetical technique.

    3) You’re starting with your conclusions here. Nothing in scripture says The Genesis creation should be taken literally either. But more importantly I doubt the Biblical writers really cared about whether something was “factual” or “historical”. The idea of objective standards of truth is an enlightenment idea. Again, to put those categories into the mind of an ancient Hebrew is, at best, to do a great diservice to the text and its human authors.

    4) You’re confusing authority with historicity. I believe Genesis is authoritative. That doesn’t mean I think it is all historical. Some of it may be historical, but I think worrying about whether it is historical or not is to miss the point. The novel Anna Kareninna is fiction, but it still contains a lot of truth and speaks with authority on human relationships. Just because its not historical doesn’t mean its not authoritative.

    Having said all this, though, calling something a “myth” in literary terms is in no way a judgement of whether something is factual or not. The stories of Jesus, Peter and Paul in the NT are mythical in the sense that they are foundational narratives of the Christian Community. The same could be said of the life of of St. Francis for the Francsican order or for the Revoluionary war for the American people, even though St. Francis’ career and the Revolution were historical events.

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  13. Lee

    Great comments, Josh. I would add that the NT gives us the authoritative (for Christians, anyway) interpretation of certain historical events. Events don’t necessarily wear their significance on their sleeve – they have to be interpreted by human beings.

    I wrote a bit more about that here: http://verbumipsum.blogspot.com/2004/12/revelation-inspiration-and.html

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  14. Joshie

    Excellent point yourself! I would also add that the catholic (note the small c) theological tradition of the church (the three creeds and Nicea I, Constantonople I and Chalcedon) is the authoratative interpretation of the NT.

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  15. Chris Naron

    I’ve heard the three author idea, if that’s what you mean. I haven’t heard any good reasons to buy it. As for the transitions, are they anymore awkward than if you picked up and wrote at a different time in your life? Again, we can speculate all kinds od things, but is there any good reason not to take it as history?

    I think we’re both working backwards from a conclusion unless I’ve missed something you’re offered as evidence (not to be confused with the speculation we’ve both engaged in).

    Can you tell me, then, what the Hebrew mindset was and how I’m misunderstanding how they would see the creation account? Are you saying they wrote with less symbolism than their Near Eastern neigbors yet still meant for the entire package to be taken as metaphor?

    What we have, with Genesis 1-11, if the answers are “yes” is the attempt to mix history with metaphor unique among all other Creation/Deluge stories.

    I agree that “myth” does not mean untrue. And it would be nice if those who denigrate the Bible would not say Genesis is “just” a myth. It would also help to hold Genesis above the other “myths.” The fact that we sometimes lump it in with the others causes some to react in a knee jerk fashion. Just as none of you would accept that we should read Genesis literally just because we need it to be held higher, you shouldn’t accept the notion that it’s not historical because it shares similarities with other creation stories.

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  16. Joshie

    I have never heard of a “three author idea” , what I was refering to is the theory of a “Yahweh”, “Elohim”, Priestly and Deuteronomy strands in the penteteuch.

    Genesis (and the rest of the penteteuch) is not all by the same hand, written at different times of life or not. Teachers can tell when a student is plagerizing because there are certain elements of an individual’s writing style syntax, sentence structure, etc that are always present or absent no matter what context or time of life a person is in. Genesis is all over the place in this regard.

    All the other things you ask about I think I pretty much explained in my previous post. The issue is not whether somebody is writing with symbolism or not, the issue is that we misread the text when we try to read it like a modern history book or a piece of journalism. These things did not exist in antiqity and if we want to understand a Biblical text properly we need to start with an interpretation that would make sense to its original hearers.

    I want to thank you for a nice, civil discussion, and I hope this doesn’t sound patronizing but if you haven’t considered going to a good seminary, I think you would benefit greatly from some seminary work.

    Reply

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