christian roots

            Grant describes, on page 132, St. Augustine’s commentary on the Book of Genesis. It is in these writings that Augustine approaches a contradiction between the “six day creation” and a passage in the book of Ecclesiasticus that states, “He that lives forever created all things together.” Augustine’s rationalization of this inconsistency in doctrine is, at least to me, as interesting as it is surprising. He states that God, in an instant, did in fact create all things simultaneously as it was told in Ecclesiasticus. Initially, Augustine reasoned that the purpose of the “six day” narrative in Genesis was to help readers better understand the process of the creation by presenting it in a slow, step by step, format. This, in itself, struck me as a monumental event in the interpretation of doctrine in that Augustine seems to have been forced, in a way, to bend the literal meaning of the book of Genesis in order to reconcile conflicting statements in Holy Scripture.

            St. Augustine, in the following chapter of his writings, attempts to rationalize this further by presenting a theory called the “seminal reasons.” This theory suggests that what God had created “instantly and simultaneously” were “seeds” that would develop into the plants and animals described in the order described in the “six day” creation. Once again, Augustine seems to take unprecedented liberty in doctrinal interpretation by projecting, onto scripture, a theory that was a product of his own mind and had no basis in revelation. Despite this fact, Grant states that this idea of creation was “the most widely held” throughout the middle ages.

            My questions are the following: Why was St. Augustine able to take such liberty in his interpretation of scripture and still have such a powerful influence throughout the Christian World?

            Grant states that “God conferred upon nature a capacity for continuous development and in this sense seems to have given nature various powers for self-development.” Does this not leave the door wide open for evolutionary theory to flourish along side Christianity? Did the Christian World come to reject the ideas of St. Augustine?