Early Christian Readings of Genesis One

Patristic Exegesis and Literal Interpretation

Craig D. Allert

2/5

"It was okay"

I previously read A High View of Scripture? by Craig D. Allert, and very much enjoyed it, so I decided to give Allert more of my time. Early Christian Readings of Genesis One delivered somewhat well on its title, which ended up being slightly disappointing, as the intricate details of how the early Christians read Genesis ended up being… less interesting than I imagined. I would have preferred a larger discussion of patterns amongst early Christians, and how various fathers fit into those categories. But, I think Allert would be disappointed with my request, as he writes:

…dividing early Christian interpreters into either literalists or allegorists fails to accurately understand the context, and results in inaccurate, misleading, and naive conclusions about their readings of Genesis 1.

— Craig D. Allert

I have literally attempted this exact task that Allert criticizes, and it’s taken time to humble myself and admit that things are complicated. It’s not easy to put myself in the shoes of these early Christians, who thought about Christ and our world in vastly different ways.

We prefer quick answers and easy conclusions rather than patient and humble deliberation. Reading the Fathers is not easy. It requires us to think differently… We need to let the church fathers speak for themselves rather than force our questions and controversies on them, as if they exist only to answer our modern concerns.

— Craig D. Allert

It seems that, in writing this book, Allert had an axe to grind against several modern Christian authors who try to use the early church fathers to prove that Young-Earth Creationism (the view that the Earth is 6000 years old and Genesis is literally true) is the obvious position of the early church. Towards this effort, Allert writes Early Christian Readings of Genesis One for two reasons (as I see it):

  1. To display how some early church fathers interpreted Genesis.
  2. To make a point: you shouldn’t use the early church fathers as ammunition in modern debates, unless you’re willing to engage in nuance.

Allert never says outright whether the early fathers would or would not fall into the YEC camp, which seems to be exactly his point: we shouldn’t go reading these fathers with an agenda in mind. As Allert says, “[the church fathers] cannot simply be mined for proofs showing how they agree with a particular side in the creation/evolution debate.”

Ultimately, I think this premise is well-argued, but not completely convincing. Throughout the book, Allert certainly does show the nuance of these early Christians, but the fact remains that most of them were reading Genesis in highly literal ways, even if they did layer that literal interpretation with additional interpretations of allegory and typology. To that extent, the church fathers are used somewhat justifiably by the YEC crowd. However, as mentioned, they also frequently interpreted using allegory, even when they claim to be using a “literal” interpretation (@Augustine). So, it’s just not that simple, and I see Allert’s point.

Why Consider the Church Fathers?

The church fathers guided the initial church and led to millennium of further tradition that continues to this day; yet, most Protestants have “willful amnesia”, preferring not to consider where their beliefs come from. My own experience is largely the same. It took me ~15 years of being a serious Protestant to start really considering where the Bible and our traditions come from, and most of my Christian peers don’t share that interest. Yet, we owe so much to these earliest Christians.

At a minimum, we should consider the early church because of its guiding impact on the eventual formation of a canon. When the church fathers were considering whether to include a specific book in the canon, one of the important questions they asked was “does this book fit into our existing orthodoxy?” In other words, our canon is based on the beliefs of these fathers and their churches!

In their days, before the “canon” existed, these church fathers used the rule of faith. It’s hard to pin down a definition, but the rule of faith included the “core tenets” of Christian faith, like the affirmation of the 3 members of the Holy Trinity and their roles, as well as a future judgement day. To put it into modern Christian terminology, the rule of faith delineated the “primary” doctrines. Allert writes that this rule of faith was the “guardian of doctrine and the proper interpretation of Scripture.” The early church’s interpretations were important prior to the canon formation, and they’re still important today. The creation of the canon does not make the church fathers obsolete.

If orthodoxy was a criterion for potential inclusion of documents in a closed New Testament, then there had to be an already existing standard of orthodoxy against which the documents could be measured. In many of the Christian writings that were eventually included in the New Testament, we can actually see this appeal. There is an explicit appeal to and exhortation for the believer to remain in and hold to the faith that the church had received. There is a progression of thought that moves from the teaching of Jesus, who hands it over to his apostles, who subsequently pass it on to the leaders of the church who are charged with guarding the pure teaching.

— Craig D. Allert

Consider Your Bias

Many modern Christians inappropriately use the church fathers as ammunition in modern debates. People love to claim the authority of a church father being on the side of their argument. All Christians are guilty of doing this from time to time, but Allert points out some obvious examples, like how Protestants will proof-text the church fathers, claiming that the earliest Christians “had it right”, before being corrupted into the Catholic church.

In a similar fashion, the church fathers are frequently used by YEC-ers, who claim that the earliest Christians interpreted Genesis literally, so we should too. Ken Ham, a prominent YEC-er, will also claim that his literal reading of Genesis is the most plain reading, and the only reading which brings in zero external bias. I find this claim by Ham to be extremely tone-deaf: it’s impossible to read the Bible without bias! We all come to the text with preconceived notions about what God is like, and what the Bible should say.

Not only are our interpretations biased, but we use an English translation. We are separated from our sources by thousands of years, so we do our best to reconstruct the meaning of the original text, but there is inherent nuance and guesswork. I’m reminded of the word epiousios in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:11), which is traditionally translated as “daily” as in “give us this day our daily bread”. This translation is a total guess; this word is a hapax legomenon, which means it’s only used this 1 time in the Bible, and external sources don’t use it. Another example of guesswork is in the translation of Genesis 1:1, which includes an ambiguous phrase that could mean “In the beginning when God created…” or “When God began to create…” or “In the beginning God created”. These various translations have significant theological impacts!

The point here is that the simple act of reading the Bible, whether in the original language or in a translation, is already a mediated event. This mediation becomes layered when we factor in our own cultural location. The assumption that we can read the Bible, or anything for that matter, from a neutral stance is naive and misguided… If we think we are ignoring all that has gone before us, and coming to the biblical text in an unmediated form, we are deceiving ourselves. We simply cannot do it, nor should we try!

— Craig D. Allert

We must remember that the words of the Bible mean nothing when they simply exist as ink on a page. The meaning is created when humans read and interpret the Bible, and that process will always include bias. There are strategies that help overcome bias, but it’s always there. Simply asking a reader to “just read the Bible and do what it says” is an expression of flagrant ignorance regarding this fact. The earliest Christians, as well as the Reformers, recognized that a lone Christian reading the Bible without a guiding authority figure can easily arrive at heretical conclusions.

Early vs. Modern Interpretive Methods

There are two major interpretive methods used by modern Protestants: the historical-critical method, and the grammatical-historical method. Both methods aim to determine what the original author intended to communicate, and try to incorporate context; but, they end up diverging significantly. The historical-critical method is seen as the more “liberal” method, and the grammatical-historical method was created largely as a conservative reaction. The grammatical-historical method uses additional requirements, like assuming the verbal inspriration, inerrancy, and clarity of Scripture. It typically appeals to the most “plain” or “straightforward” reading of a text, only allowing an allegorical interpretation if a physical one doesn’t work.

Supporters of the grammatical-historical method often claim that it has a basis in Scripture, e.g. when Jesus quotes the Old Testament he will often say “Have you not read?” as if his newly introduced interpretation was clear from the outset. Allert easily deconstructs this argument, showing that the entire point of Jesus’s remark was that the Pharisees only looked at original context and did not understand a deeper, often more allegorical, meaning. Additionally, in Galations 4:21-26, Paul explicitly interprets a passage in Genesis as allegory, literally saying “Now, this is an allegory”. Paul ignores the original intent and avoids a “plain reading”. Again in 1 Corinthians 10:1-11, Paul points to Old Testament events (which are clearly written as historical events) and explicitly says “[these things] were written down to instruct us”. This is a much deeper and much more nuanced reading than just “the most straightforward”!

In a similar fashion to both Jesus and Paul, the church fathers did not see interpretation as either “literal” or “allegorical”. Typically, they interpreted using both methods at the same time. To further complicate matters, they used the word “literal” differently. The church fathers also commonly used typology to understand the Old Testament: essentially, the Scripture is seen as legitimate history, but also as spiritual allegory. For example, when interpreting Genesis, Theophilus speaks of the sun as being a “type” of God, because it is the source of light on Earth, and the moon is a “type” of man, because man is constantly changing.

Specific Church Fathers

Allert spends a good chunk of the book discussing some interpretations of Genesis, mostly from Origen, Augustine, Eustathius, Basil, Ephrem, and Theophilus. I’ll just list some of my highlights:

Conclusion

Allert aptly summarizes the nuance required to approach the church fathers and their interpretations:

One would be very hard pressed to find in the earliest interpreters of sacred Scripture an approach that is intent only on finding direct one-to-one correspondence with strictly historical occurrences. Instead, one finds Scripture interpreted in a manner that emphasizes a call to a deeper spiritual life wherein the salvation of humankind and the ultimate goal of seeing God (contemplation) are overarching.

— Craig D. Allert