Early Church Fathers and Creation

There are professing Christians that seem somehow compelled to malign biblical creation, finding excuses to deny the plain reading of Genesis — despite the rest of biblical context. Why do they need to insert long ages into the Bible? This was unknown until the nineteenth century.

Some of those who compromise with atheistic interpretations of science have denied the history of understanding six-day recent creation, and even make false accusations regarding the Church Fathers. As usual, claiming special insight that has been missed for thousands of years should be a red flag.

Creation, Pixabay / Beate Bachmann

One can often find an outlier or crackpot that agrees with strange views, which is an appeal to dubious authority. Almost all of the Church Fathers of note believed in recent creation in six days, the Genesis Flood (which is usually rejected or changed to suit the views of old earthers), and so on. They also held to other major Christian doctrines.

Some critics of biblical (‘young-earth’) creation dishonestly claim that it is a novel view. Anti-creationist historian Ronald Numbers claimed that it was invented by Ellen White, the founder of Seventh-day Adventism. This fallacy unfortunately gained traction amongst a lot of old-earth advocates. . . .

In reality, most Christian interpreters in history understood that the Bible taught that the earth was c.6,000 years old. They also accepted a global Flood, and the majority believed in six consecutive 24-hour creation days. Contrary to the anti-creationist attack, long-age views are the novelty.

The entire article is found at "Early church fathers and creation — Refuting misleading claims." Also of interest, "The Appeal to Augustine Fallacy?"