The original question was:
Why do you treat the Genesis days as 24 hours, when St. Augustine, and others, considered them to be indefinitely long periods of time?
Answer by John Mackay
Augustine, who lived AD 354 – 430, has to be one of the most misquoted church fathers on this issue you could find. So what did he believe about the age of the creation? Let him speak for himself as he comments on the ancient Greek beliefs about a very old earth. Augustine stated in De Civitate Dei (The City of God) Book 12, Chapter 10:
“Let us then omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the origin and nature of the human race…They are deceived too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give a history or many thousand years, though, reckoning, by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed, …”
Obviously anyone defending a “not yet 6000 years” old earth, based on acceptance of Old Testament texts as authoritative, had no concept of the days of creation as indefinitely long periods of time.
Two great DVDs from Creation Research World Veiw seminar As Western societies adopt values based on an evolutionary world view, Christians are finding themselves increasingly at odds with our culture. How can we respond? Available from the Creation Research Webshop
Illustration: excerpt from St. Augustine in His Study by Sandro Botticelli (c. 1480)
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