Pre-Modern Christianity on Creation

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What was the view of creation BEFORE our modern time full of those darn creationists (Sarcasm)?

Some people on here, like Barb., have informed me that this idea of a young earth is a very new idea created by the crazy creationists. So, I decided to figure out what the good 'ole boys thought about creation.

People can add quotes/knowledge from the pre-creationist people, but this is NOT a place to debate creation, or it would have been posted in the science forum!

What did Luther think about Genesis and creation? I'll start with him and add more people as I find them.

These are from his own writings:

“We know from Moses that the world was not in existence before 6,000 years ago.â€

“He [Moses] calls 'a spade a spade,' i.e., he employs the terms 'day' and 'evening' without Allegory, just as we customarily do we assert that Moses spoke in the literal sense, not allegorically or figuratively, i.e., that the world, with all its creatures, was created within six days, as the words read. If we do not comprehend the reason for this, let us remain pupils and leave the job of teacher to the Holy Spirit.â€

From "Luther's Works"

 

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Theophilus of Antioch:

"There are not myriads of myriads of years, even though Plato said such a period had elapsed between the deluge and his own time, . . . The world is not uncreated nor is there spontaneous production of everything, as Pythagoras and the others have babbled; instead the world is created and is providentially governed by the God who made everything. And the whole period of time and the years can be demonstrated to those who wish to learn the truth. . . . The total number of years from the creation of the world is 5,695.29 ... If some period has escaped our notice, says 50 or 100 or even 200 years, at any rate it is not myriads, or thousands of years as it was for Plato . . . and the rest of those who wrote falsehoods. It may be that we do not know the exact total of all the years simply because the additional months and days are not recorded in the sacred books."

Augustine, in City of God:

"Some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself, that they have always been . . . . And when they are asked, how, . . . they reply that most, if not all lands, were so desolated at intervals by fire and flood, that men were greatly reduced in numbers, and . . . thus there was at intervals a new beginning made. . . . But they say what they think, not what they know. They are deceived . . . by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed."

Saint Augustine wrote an entire book on Genesis... here it is. You will see he believes Genesis is literal, and that the earth is young. http://college.holycross.edu/faculty/al ... nesis1.pdf

Even Mohammad, though a Muslim, interpreted Genesis to mean a LITERAL 6 day creation story.