Alister McGrath on Augustine on Origins

Alister McGrath, ‘Augustine’s Origin of Species: How the Great Theologian Might Weigh in on the Darwin Debate’, Christianity Today (May 2009).

I’d read somewhere previously that Augustine (354-430) was embarrassed by the ‘days’ in Genesis 1: why would it take God as long as six days to create the world?

Alister McGrath provides a brief summary of Augustine’s thinking here, based on the latter’s Literal Meaning of Genesis. McGrath writes of Augustine:

‘God brought everything into existence in a single moment of creation. Yet the created order is not static. God endowed it with the capacity to develop. Augustine uses the image of a dormant seed to help his readers grasp this point. God creates seeds which will grow and develop at the right time.’

However, Augustine has no place ‘for any notion of random or arbitrary changes within creation’, and God’s creation ‘is always subject to God’s sovereign providence’.

For Augustine, the six days of Genesis 1 are ‘a way of categorizing God’s work in creation. God created the world in an instant but continues to develop and mold it, even to the present day’.

McGrath notes that although Augustine does not necessarily answer the questions raised by Darwin and evolution, ‘he does help us see that the real issue here is not the authority of the Bible, but its right interpretation’.