In my reading for UCOR today I ran across something I had been told once but forgotten. Turns out that St. Augustine rejected biblical literalism. Specifically in regards to creation, he believed that God created the world instantly and that the days were representative of a “logical framework” not an actual time period.
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Comments ( 2 )
Mike Lam added these pithy words on Apr 05 07 at 2:35 pmAnd your analysis is…?
tim added these pithy words on Apr 06 07 at 5:36 amAnalysis? Why in the world would I want to critically analyze what I read? Silly rabbit… [/sarcasm]
Actually it seems pretty simple to me. If St. Augustine, a theologian who’s work is foundational to all Christians (Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox (mostly)), we should at least consider what he has to say and realize that biblical interpretation is not so cut and dry as some fundamentalist preachers might have us believe.
The obvious tie in with Augustine’s thinking here is the hot button topic of the day: evolution. I’ve actually heard some creationist thinkers try to claim Augustine for their own as a YEC. While that may be true (to my knowledge he believed the earth was “young” and created) it seems like a shaky claim given that he was willing to treat the days of Genesis as figurative. I wonder what he would have thought today with what “science” (dangerous word I know) has to say about origins.