Augustine On Creation Story

Augustine On Old Earth and Creation Story

“For through Wisdom all things were made, and the motion we now see in creatures, measured by the lapse of time, as each one fulfills its proper function, comes to creatures from those causal reasons implanted in them, which God scattered as seeds at the moment of creation when He spoke and they were made, He commanded and they were created. Creation, therefore, did not take place slowly in order that a slow development might be implanted in those things that are slow by nature; nor were the ages established at plodding pace which they now pass.”

[St. Augustine of Hippo; The Literal Meaning of Genesis, translated by John Hammond Taylor (1982), Vol. 1, Book 4, Caput 33, Par. 51-52, p.141]

“For the present question, it is enough that, according to our versions, the men of that age had lives so long as to make it quite possible that, during the lifetime of the first-born of the two sole parents then on earth, the human race multiplied sufficiently to form a community.”

[St. Augustine of Hippo; The City of God, Book 15, Caput 11-12, pp. 436-440]

“Unbelievers are also deceived by false documents which ascribe to history many thousand years, although we can calculate from Sacred Scripture that not 6,000 years have passed since the creation of man.”

[St. Augustine of Hippo; The City of God, translated by G. G. Walsh and G. Monahan (1952), Book 12, Caput 11, p. 263, Catholic University of America Press]