The Early Church Fathers on the Age of the Earth

While I continue to disagree with the theory of evolution and find it incompatible with Scripture, I currently do accept the age of the earth as being 4.6 billion years old (and the universe even older).

Now, let's be clear - this debate among creationists is important - but it should not distract us from the higher callings of God's service.

With that said, I want to address a pet peeve: Over and over again I have been told by my young-earth friends that for centuries every Christian knew that the days in Genesis 1 were literal 24-hour days, and that it is only recently that some Christians have "compromised" to science and taken a different view. The fact is, this is utterly false. While some early church fathers certainly did hold to a literal 24-hour day, the majority did not. In fact, taking quite literally that "a day to the LORD is as a thousand years", men like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Cyprian held that we should read each day of creation as a separate period of a thousand years. Clement and St. Augustine took the more appropriate approach, I think, in simply pointing out that the nature of these days is probably a lot more than we can conceive. Among my other early church old-earth brethren are Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, and Jerome (who, of course, said that a minister needed to be at least 30 years old before he dares expound the first chapter of Genesis).

I haven't read this book yet, but I'm certainly planning to do so. It is written by one of the elders at City Reformed Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, PA (a PCA church).

JN