On the topic of Biblical chronology, it is at first glance very apparent that "they were all young earth" ... the most famous example against six literal days, St. Augustine of Hippo in books IV to VI of De Genesi ad Literam libri XII, is actually a good example for Young Earth Creationism, if not modern Creation Science, since the alternative he gave was a one-moment creation, making the time before Adam died at age 930 six days shorter than the other fathers, mostly, who believed in six literal days, like St. Basil.
Yet, there are Old-Earthers who do say they are Christians. How do they take historic Christians? Here are a few categories, and some answers to them.
- It doesn't matter what historic Christians thought, we today are the Church of God, we may have our own mistakes, but if they are not called out, we are not accountable, and neither were they, "Christ didn't promise infallibility to the Church."
- It does matter what historic Christians thought, but not on scientific matters, since they were Geocentrics, sometimes even flat earth, and believed the four humours. Infallibility or similar exists, but not about science.
- Their thoughts on science were taken from the science of their time. That being so, they would support us believing the science of our times. Their Young Earth Creationism is actually support for our Old Earth Creationism or Theistic Evolutionism.
"It doesn't matter what historic Christians thought" — well, actually, He did promise infallibility to the Church. Matthew 28:16—20. So, this is a take one can expect from extremely ahistoric versions of Protestantism. "In the fourth century someone clearly attested to believing the real presence in the Eucharist" — "Doesn't matter, they were reading the Bible wrong, just like my neighbour across the road." Obviously, this is not the kind of person I'm adressing in this essay, and as obviously, he can do this in favour of any reading of Genesis. If he's heard the urban legend that Church Fathers were Old Earthers, he'll defend Young Earth this way. Luckily, for him, the Church Fathers actually agreed with him. If he's a believer in Hislop, he'll defend a reading of Genesis 10 and 11 according to which Nimrod:
- originated pagan worship and religious practises
- and these much more clearly than the Roman or Greek ones precursors of Roman Catholicism.
The Christians of the fourth century didn't believe that? Doesn't matter. They were wrong, just as the Roman Catholic neighbour already mentioned across the road. It never bothers them to say Christians in the past were wrong. The same attitude also exists in favour of Old Earth. They never feel obliged to seek out what Christians in a past century were right, fulfilling Matthew 28:16—20. They may admit there must have been some, but they could well be invisible (contrary to Matthew 5:15).
Most Christians would agree this would be a fairly counter-productive way of saving any position, once it's known it's unhistoric, and would reject this approach. I would say a Young Earther who is not Hislop-style anti-Catholic and who has wrongly been told the Church Fathers were "none of them" Young Earth Creationists is lucky in being right despite the wrong approach. As a pre-teen, I was nearly prepared to go this route, but never thought all people except "my own sect" (no such thing, I was a Church-hopper) were wrong. I later have learned that this was not the actual position of the Church Fathers, they were in fact all of them Young Earth Creationist.
It does matter what historic Christians thought, but not on scientific matters — this take is much more wide-spread, both among anti-Catholics (to whom the Geocentric takes of past Christians prove the Catholic Church wrong) and among Catholics (who think a passage in Vatican I explicitly excludes scientific matters from falling under either Biblical or Ecclesiastic inerrancy or infallibility).
To the former club, I think one may count both Ellen Gould White and lots of Pentecostals.
To the latter, I think it is good to take up what the actual wording was:
Vatican I
Session 3, 24.IV.1870, chapter 2 on Revelation
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm
Now since the decree on the interpretation of holy scripture, profitably made by the council of Trent, with the intention of constraining rash speculation, has been wrongly interpreted by some, we renew that
decree and declare its meaning to be as follows: that
in matters of faith and morals,
belonging as they do to the establishing of christian doctrine,
that meaning of holy scripture must be held to be the true one,
which holy mother church held and holds,
since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of holy scripture.
It says "in matters of faith and morals" ... it does NOT say "in matters of faith and morals, but not in matters of science" or any other such exception. The idea of non-overlapping magisteria cannot be extracted from this wording, it's applied to them via an eisegesis (alas now pretty common among presumed Catholics, and some may be in good faith and their souls may be enjoying the virtue of faith, so that they are actually Catholic rather than heretic).
But some would not go as far as to say that anything the men of the Church has to say on science is outside its scope, but they will only go for things like Geocentrism and Young Earth Creationism.
Their thoughts on science were taken from the science of their time. — This is probably the most common take.
St. Augustine was a Young Earth Creationist, not so much because he was totally fallible in scientific matters, as because this was supported by the "science of his time" ... he was a Geocentric for the exact same reason, they would say. In the case of Geocentrism, I'll grant them a point. The antique proponents of Heliocentrism were not just dead, but belonged to philosophical schools that were dead, by the time of St. Augustine. So, in a sense, and I'll come back to the qualifications, one could say that the Geocentrism of St. Augustine (book I of De Genesis ad Literam libri XII) actually was completely supported by "the science of his time" ...
To further support this, one could say all schools of philosophy supported Globe Earth and he was a Globist, not a Flattist, a Round-Earther, not a Flat-Earther. So, on that one too, he went along with "the science of his time" ...
Part of the idea is, if Geocentrism also comes within the apparent spontaneously most direct approach to Scripture in certain places, so does Flat Earth. I don't think it does. Circles are not automatically only rims of flat and round-disc objects, they are also dimensions of ball-shaped objects. Four corners in Apocalypse 7:1 refers to corners of continents. Unknown to Europeans in the time of St. Augustine, I'll enumerate them for you.
- Alaska
- Sakhalin
- Tasmania
- Cape Horn.
Continental discs may be somewhat rounded over the globe, but they do have rims. And these rims do have corners.
So, by accepting Round Earth, St. Augustine was in fact NOT giving a precedent of putting the best science of his day over Biblical litteralism. But even more. There were Church Fathers who were Flat Earth, I think this was the case with St. Hippolytus of Rome, and it was the case with the ecclesiastic writer (not canonised Church Father) Lactantius. They give precendent for putting (apparent) Biblical litteralism above science. There also was St. Basil who said "it doesn't matter, since Moses didn't tell" ... he was conscious the Biblical texts were compatible with both views. No matter how literalistically you took them.
But again, what exactly was natural science?
It was most definitely NOT some kind of magisterium. Oh, outside very applied fields, medicine and engineering. There certainly were ideas of an order we would term "scientific" on which there was consensus. Round Earth? Platonics, Aristotelics, perhaps even Stoics and Epicureans all agree. Geocentrism? Aristotelics, Epicureans, perhaps Stoics, certainly most Platonics agreed, and Neo-Pythagoreans for some while didn't, but they were already gone by the time of St. Augustine. So, yes, on both issues there was consensus. There was if you like a kind of "scientific core curriculum" in philosophy.
But how would you access this core curriculum?
You could access it through the Aristotelians. Then you would also access forms inherent in material things. You could access it through Platonics. Then you would also access forms (or ideas) as pre-existing material things. That is, you could access it through the divers sects of Philosophy. There was no institution of study that upheld just the core curriculum, and you would learn the difference between your own sect and another one only by debating people from it. You would not learn from the Platonic that Round Earth was and Pre-Existing Ideas weren't shared by Aristotelians. You would not learns from the Aristotelians that Round Earth was and Inherent Forms weren't shared by Platonics. You could learn it as a side issue, but you would learn it in the format:
"the Aristotelians are right about less important matters, like Round Earth, but wrong about more important ones, like the Idea of Good pre-existing all Good Things and all Good Actions"
"the Platonics are right about less important matters, like Geocentrism, but wrong about more important ones, like the Form of Horse not existing other than in actual Horses, any more than actual Horses existing without the Form of Horse"
Was there really no-where you could learn the core curriculum without engaging yourself to the Platonic or Aristotelic school? In fact there were a few such places. But none of them could qualify as Scientific institutions still extant in St. Augustine's day.
- Church Fathers were as eclectic and hanging loose on Philosophy as they were stringent on adhering to Scripture
- the lectures on Homer or on Virgil would include references to those things
- Pyrrhonism, in order to subvert certainty, would normally feature conflicts between schools, and as such also probably feature non-conflicts — but arguably they weren't there in St. Augustine's time.
This latter point needs some defense, by now, since on wikipedia (Pyrrhonism) I find this info:
Although Julian the Apostate[27] mentions that Pyrrhonism had died out at the time of his writings, other writers mention the existence of later Pyrrhonists. Pseudo-Clement, writing around the same time (c. 300-320 CE) mentions Pyrrhonists in his Homilies[28] and Agathias even reports a Pyrrhonist named Uranius as late as the middle of the 6th century CE.[29]
Julian the Apostate: Epistles lxxxix 301C; Pseudo-Clement, Homilies, 13.7, Agathias II 29-32, cited in Jonathan Barnes, Mantissa 2015 p. 652.
Uranius can have been a late adherent to an already dead movement. I don't think Uranius was able to revive it. Julian the Apostate supports my case. So, what about Pseudo-Clement, writing about this time?
The term Pseudo-Clement on wikipedia redirects to Clementine Literature.
Though lost, the original survives in two recensions known as the Clementine Homilies and the Clementine Recognitions. The overlap between the two has been used to produce a provisional reconstruction of the Circuits of Peter.[4] Respectively, the original titles for these two texts were the Klementia and the Recognitions of the Roman Clement.[3] Both were composed in the fourth-century. In turn, there was plausibly a second-century document (referred to as the Kerygmata Petrou or "Preaching of Peter") that was used a source for the original Clementine literature text. The Kerygma are thought to consist of a letter from Peter to James, lectures and debates of Peter, and James's testimony about the letters recipients.[5]
In other words, my only warrant for Pseudo-Clement being first of all Pseudo and second writing in the fourth century is modern scholarship denying the writings really come from a source close to St. Peter, therefore in the first century (when Pyrrhonism certainly existed).
Was "modern scholarship" of the type Higher Criticism also one of the areas in which the Church had no own say compared to "Science"? I don't think so, the Acts from the Pontifical Biblical Commission under St. Pius X say the exact opposite. So, if the method is faulty when applied to Biblical books, is it somehow guaranteed to be good when applied to all other books? I obviously find this ludicrous.
In other words, St. Augustine (who never mentioned Pyrrhonism as a philosophy in either book VIII or book XIX of City of God*) with very fair certainty did not have access to the Pyrrhonic school either for "scientific core curriculum" ...
His views were relying on amateur Platonism, on Cicero, on literature and commentary, on Church Fathers, and in general on anything BUT neutral scientific experts. There simply was no such thing as an institution upholding any kind of scientific core curriculum he could appeal to or bow down to. Both on Round Earth and on Geocentrism, he was using his own personal judgement, even if you like private interpretation, of what the Bible allowed or demanded, and what the observations and correct conclusions allowed and demanded. There simply was no such thing as "the science of his day" to bow down to.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
XXIInd L.D. after Pentecost
20.X.2024
* On the main page of The City of God I do an F-search for "philosopher" and find references in books 8 and 19, on each of these, The City of God (Book VIII) and The City of God (Book XIX) I do an F-search on "Pyrrho" which would also cover "Pyrrhonism" ... but even if I found Pyrrhonism under the alternative term Scepticism or Sceptics, book XIX uses Varro, who lived centuries earlier. St. Augustine wanting to be complete did not just take the philosophical schools of his own day, but covered positions which hadn't been adhered to for quite some time. C. S. Lewis made a point of how it was usually a fairly hazardous thing to affirm a universal negative about a corpus, but in fact, I can now use the F-Search.
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