In my last post, I tried to show that Augustine held to the events of Genesis as literal and historical first, and secondly as allegorical (which he calls Prophetic) which was Christological and of obvious primary importance — BUT NOT in spite of or denial of the historical and literalness of the text. In other words, Augustine did NOT hold to “an allegorical only” view of Genesis and He did not just “permit” a literal view but defended it and praises those who hold to a literal view. In my last post I showed this fact from his first and earliest work, “On Genesis: The Refutation of the Manichees.”
Now I want to show it from one of his late “mature” works, the “City of God” which was completed only four years before he died – so this is the MATURE Augustine writing :
City of God, Book XVIII.XL
IN VAIN, then, do some BABBLE with most empty presumption, saying that Egypt has understood the reckoning of the stars for more than a hundred thousand years. For in what books have they collected that number who learned letters from Isis their mistress, not much more than two thousand years ago? Varro, who has declared this, is no small authority in history, and IT DOES NOT DISAGREE WITH THE TRUTH OF THE DIVINE BOOKS. For as IT IS NOT YET SIX THOUSAND YEARS SINCE THE FIRST MAN WHO IS CALLED ADAM, are not those to be RIDICULED RATHER THAN REFUTED who try to persuade us of anything regarding A SPACE OF TIME so different from, and contrary to, the ascertained truth? For what historian of the past should we credit more than Varro who has also predicted things to come which we now see fulfilled?
Augustine ends the chapter with :
“But we, being sustained by divine authority in the history of our religion, have no doubt that WHATEVER IS OPPOSED TO IT IS MOST FALSE, whatever may be the case regarding OTHER things in secular books, which, whether true or false, YIELD NOTHING of moment to our living rightly and happily.”
HUH? Earth Literally 6,000 years? Augustine died in 430 AD – which means according to Augustine the earth today is literally only around 7581 years old.
In other words, in Augustine’s literalness that he based on the text of scripture, there can not be Billions and Billions of years of “Darwin Condensed Soup-TO-lizards-TO-hominoid-TO-Humans” macro-evolution.
For Augustine, in summary, Adam is the literal and historical “First man called Adam” created less than six thousands years before he writes. And in regards to older “space of time” assertions of people – they are to “be ridiculed rather than refuted.” That is quite a strong statement of Augustine – again – completed only four years before his blessed repose. He really did not take Genesis and the other scriptures solely as “allegorical.”
I wonder why those today who, like the babblers in Egypt, want to claim an old earth? To allow for macro-evolution? According to Augustine he directly states, in light of “space of time” that your view is false.
[Again I say, I am not a big fan of Augustine. It just amuses me that those Christians who want to hold to billions and billions of years of macro-evolution want to claim Augustine as one who would support their view.]
PDF 
Hi Ras, I blogged and linked to your informative posts on this topic and highlighted an Augustian quote that I think is pertinent and demonstrates that Augustine would have allowed himself to reconsider the Scriptural text in light of modern science.
Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
Thanks for visiting Stuart. I read that quote also. We can not say what Augustine would do with a lot of modern scientism. I would not dare speculate. I did not post these two articles necessarily because I agree or disagree with him, I posted them to show that Augustine did not argue for an “allegorical only” viewpoint of Genesis and was not anti-literalist. He took the History and the events, and also saw the deeper Christological meanings in them – what he called the ‘prophetic sense’. That is Orthodox to do so.