Age of the Universe

Halbhh

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It can be fruitful from that point of view. There are others on the forum that are experts in such matters. I have to admit that while I was Protestant I was fascinated with "endings and beginnings" ... especially Genesis and Revelation. It's just that time is limited and I've found things I much more need to pay attention to. I'm not sure I can do it justice.

Off the top of my head, you know Origen is heretical on a number of matters and not safely trusted as a "Church Father"? And St. Augustine is not without certain errors. But I have to say I've never investigated either of them on this particular matter.

(By the way, iirc what Origen taught about souls was one of his worst heresies.)

However, there are proponents of Holy Tradition who do maintain an allegorical view of the creation account in some particulars. That's why I made the list of points. And I really don't like to argue either way.

The topic COULD stay here, and it could be fruitful. But I'm just saying that bringing into it what I saw glancing through is not aligned with this forum. It almost needs to be two separate discussions, I think.


(One thing I've learned about the Church Fathers is that we should never take a list of quotes (especially from someone with an agenda) and assume what they seem to say is the whole understanding of their view. I'm not saying that's what you have done. But what has happened is that it often takes dedicated days or even weeks to track down those arguments I found unlikely. I have learned a LOT in the process, but mostly to say that isolated quotes must be carefully considered. This is why I'm really not sure I can do this topic justice.)

The wiki makes it sound as if only Origen's views on the preexistence of souls stood out as rejected, and was one of only 2 especially notable views of that Origen actually did have (instead of only wrongly asserted about him) that were finally rejected (out of a huge number of theological insights and points from Origen, including many now basic ones which we all agree with it seems, such as basic aspects of what became the Trinity doctrine). Because he wrote so much and so many read it, there were a variety of people that objected to this or that, because so many read what Origen wrote. Origen was misrepresented by others, even Jerome on one prominent matter, but Origen responded to correct that misperception. Put it this way: if one disagreed with Origen broadly, they would be in error today about a lot of things it appears from this overview, since Origen wrote on so many things usefully, I get the impression, from the wiki.
 
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~Anastasia~

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The wiki makes it sound as if only Origen's views on the preexistence of souls stood out as rejected, and was one of only 2 especially notable views of that Origen actually did have (instead of only wrongly asserted about him) that were finally rejected (out of a huge number of theological insights and points from Origen, including many now basic ones which we all agree with it seems, such as basic aspects of what became the Trinity doctrine). Because he wrote so much and so many read it, there were a variety of people that objected to this or that, because so many read what Origen wrote. Origen was misrepresented by others, even Jerome on one prominent matter, but Origen responded to correct that misperception. Put it this way: if one disagreed with Origen broadly, they would be in error today about a lot of things it appears from this overview, since Origen wrote on so many things usefully, I get the impression, from the wiki.
Well, I've not made it my concern too much to sort out who held what errors. But what I can say is that Origen greatly desired to learn deep mysteries of God, and worked diligently to do so. Maybe a bit too deeply. He taught much that was good and true. (So yes, if we disagree with him broadly, we probably make a lot of errors.)

But he also had a number of errors. They did lead to even more error in others. And yes, there's confusion about what he actually taught and what often gets attributed to him as a result.

It's hard to know how right we may be just by comparing ourselves to Origen. Again, it depends on which doctrines.


I will say this ... MANY problem discussions seem to start out with "Origen and Turtullian say ..." When I see those two together, and none of the more trusted teachers, it always seems to head to a bad place.
 
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Halbhh

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Well, I've not made it my concern too much to sort out who held what errors. But what I can say is that Origen greatly desired to learn deep mysteries of God, and worked diligently to do so. Maybe a bit too deeply. He taught much that was good and true. (So yes, if we disagree with him broadly, we probably make a lot of errors.)

But he also had a number of errors. They did lead to even more error in others. And yes, there's confusion about what he actually taught and what often gets attributed to him as a result.

It's hard to know how right we may be just by comparing ourselves to Origen. Again, it depends on which doctrines.


I will say this ... MANY problem discussions seem to start out with "Origen and Turtullian say ..." When I see those two together, and none of the more trusted teachers, it always seems to head to a bad place.

What are some of the 'more trusted teachers' for you? Is Augustine? What others?
 
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What are some of the 'more trusted teachers' for you? Is Augustine? What others?
Augustine is slightly borderline. He is considered a Saint by many, but some of his writings led to trouble down the line and basically led to a lot of what the East regards as errors of the West.

It depends on what you're looking for.

Writings on the Early Church - I'd say St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Clement of Rome, St. Polycarp of Smyrna. St Justin Martyr. St. Athanasius was brilliant in his theological works on Christology. If you want commentaries, St. John Chrysostom is outstanding (though there are social criticisms of him). I love reading St. Maximos the Confessor (but it can be challenging as far as living it out). There are at least a dozen others that are very trustworthy.

I will say that Christianity has historically accepted as Truth what is a consensus of the Fathers and approved by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes anyone can be wrong. But the accepted Church Fathers won't have major heresies attached to them (unless maybe at some point it was an error they recanted on - but I can't think of that having actually happened).

I'm no expert though. But there are volumes and volumes of good and trusted writings, and then on top of that more good spiritual counsel than a person can live long enough to apply. So except to protect myself from known error, I don't have time to worry about what's wrong. I won't have years enough to exhaust what's good and right, so I hope to focus on that instead, for myself.
 
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Airaux

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Anastasia: Actually, when I said the bit about you maybe fearing looking at a subject, for fear of it leading you down a path down which you didn't want to go (or words to similar effect), I wondered if I'd stated it well and wondered if I'd stated it wrongly.
Maybe it seemed somewhat overcritical, which I didn't mean it to be. I'm aware of the need to be grounded in text and not engage in loose, even reasonable-seeming, extrapolation.
BTW - I'm not up with certain abbreviations. Could you tell me what "iirc" stands for?
 
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~Anastasia~

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Anastasia: Actually, when I said the bit about you maybe fearing looking at a subject, for fear of it leading you down a path down which you didn't want to go (or words to similar effect), I wondered if I'd stated it well and wondered if I'd stated it wrongly.
Maybe it seemed somewhat overcritical, which I didn't mean it to be. I'm aware of the need to be grounded in text and not engage in loose, even reasonable-seeming, extrapolation.
BTW - I'm not up with certain abbreviations. Could you tell me what "iirc" stands for?
No worries.

Snce tone is lacking in online communication, I try to always read things with a charitable tone. And try to keep from sounding critical myself. Unfortunately I fail sometimes. It's a weakness of online forums. And I see prodromos kindly stepped in and answered the question. :)
 
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prodromos

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prodromos: Thanks.
:)
I also did a quick search for a list of internet forum acronyms, but it turns out that the 'F' word is common as part of some of them so I decided not to post a link. If anyone knows of a site which avoids the more offensive acronyms, it would likely be appreciated.
 
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hedrick

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Thank you. That's helpful. So far, the posts in this thread have followed all those rules so far as I can see.
I think the concern was that the OP might have confused traditional with (Protestant) conservative. Traditional Christianity didn't always (or even most of the time) understand the Bible "literally." Indeed it was quite common to adopt allegorical understandings.

Until recently traditional cultures, and traditional Christianity, assumed what today we would consider a young earth. They had no reason to think otherwise. But the Church historically has normally accepted scientific information. Current YEC rejection of science, and in my opinion even the attempts to make a "literal" reading of the first creation story consistent with an old earth, aren't approaches that are particularly "traditional." In my view they're the flip side of the Enlightenment.

As previously noted, traditional Christians tend to be more concerned with things like what it means for creation and human beings to be called good, and the implications of the Fall.
 
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Halbhh

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I think the concern was that the OP might have confused traditional with (Protestant) conservative. Traditional Christianity didn't always (or even most of the time) understand the Bible "literally." Indeed it was quite common to adopt allegorical understandings.

Until recently traditional cultures, and traditional Christianity, assumed what today we would consider a young earth. They had no reason to think otherwise. But the Church historically has normally accepted scientific information. Current YEC rejection of science, and in my opinion even the attempts to make a "literal" reading of the first creation story consistent with an old earth, aren't approaches that are particularly "traditional." In my view they're the flip side of the Enlightenment.

As previously noted, traditional Christians tend to be more concerned with things like what it means for creation and human beings to be called good, and the implications of the Fall.
Useful things to consider (though I found reasons above to question some assumptions). Question: are you putting Augustine as after the 'traditional' time period? Or what is the time period?
 
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hedrick

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Useful things to consider (though I found reasons above to question some assumptions). Question: are you putting Augustine as after the 'traditional' time period? Or what is the time period?
yes, Augustine is surely part of the traditional church.
 
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Halbhh

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yes, Augustine is surely part of the traditional church.
This I was just reading was pretty interesting. Augustine had...complex and interesting views. Just look at this --
Did Augustine Read Genesis 1 Literally? | Henry Center

But if I read it right, he wasn't rigidly insisting his views of what actually happened were the absolute only way either. I have seen at least one of his ideas though repeated widely in many modern discussions, where people try to account for the light in day 1 as angelic or such, as one way to reconcile with their own idea that the appearance of the sun, moon and stars on day 4 is actually their springing into being (instead of their revealing, such as the first truly clear-sky day for example). Any case, we can see (if we look) the purpose of the sun, moon and stars is aligned to the message repeated 7 times in the chapter: all of these many different aspects of creation are all "good" -- "very good" -- as a wonderful home, here, for us. This key message of the chapter is sort of what all the days are about, though the language is meant to lift our minds closer to God, if we will simply hear without analytical thinking, at some time. But so far as trying to figure out the small details of creation like mere time duration, ala Augustine, we are when only looking to scripture at some point beginning to be guessing at the mysteries, as God chose not to reveal all such.
 
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hedrick

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This I was just reading was pretty interesting. Augustine had...complex and interesting views. Just look at this --
Did Augustine Read Genesis 1 Literally? | Henry Center

But if I read it right, he wasn't rigidly insisting his views of what actually happened were the absolute only way either. I have seen at least one of his ideas though repeated widely in many modern discussions, where people try to account for the light in day 1 as angelic or such, as one way to reconcile with their own idea that the appearance of the sun, moon and stars on day 4 is actually their springing into being (instead of their revealing, such as the first truly clear-sky day for example). Any case, we can see (if we look) the purpose of the sun, moon and stars is aligned to the message repeated 7 times in the chapter: all of these many different aspects of creation are all "good" -- "very good" -- as a wonderful home, here, for us. This key message of the chapter is sort of what all the days are about, though the language is meant to lift our minds closer to God, if we will simply hear without analytical thinking, at some time. But so far as trying to figure out the small details of creation like mere time duration, ala Augustine, we are when only looking to scripture at some point beginning to be guessing at the mysteries, as God chose not to reveal all such.
Right. The modern concept of "literal" interpretation comes from concerns that are fairly recent. It's not quite the same as Augustine's meaning. I think the modern version is
  • an attempt to answer Catholic accusations that sola scriptura was meaningless unless everyone could agree on what it meant. The hope was that a sufficient literal methodology could produce agreement. I'll leave it to our readers to judge how successful that has been
  • an attempt to answer Enlightenment views and things that followed them, e.g. evolution
Of course there's nothing wrong with engaging current issues such as these (though I disagree with the modern "literal" answer to those questions). Christians have done that since the beginning.

But we should reserve much of our attention for the kind of point you make, that creation is good. This is actually one difference between traditional theology and some of what you read in CF.
 
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Halbhh

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Hedrick: As I said in my original post, I didn't know whether this particular forum was the appropriate one and now believe another would have been more appropriate.

We know that in scripture, God chose not to reveal how much older the heavens (universe) are compared to Earth, nor even how much time passed before verse 2 of Genesis chapter 1 either (thus how old Earth was even before the special days of creation in the chapter). People do argue about those topics a lot here on CF, and many try not to argue also :) . While I could offer a view based on truly listening to scripture and having read all the bible (and also being familiar with all the mainstream science theories also), and even help show that several of the leading mainstream science views actually fit to scripture, that would be a modern type of view, instead of a 'traditional one', about those comparing to science parts, of course.

I did learn a lot (with much fine details) about various traditional views of early church fathers in the last couple of days that was interesting.

One thing that you realize as you read a lot about their views: they have quite a range of viewpoints!

That's like today: there is today also quite a range of viewpoints about the small details of creation which God chose not to reveal anywhere in scripture.

Often I try to point out to people this lack of scriptural information about these small details shows that those details are not the subject of the chapters, and I try to encourage them to instead truly listen to the chapters, so as to be lifted up by the wonderful wordings and drawn closer to God thereby.

There may be some for whom knowing how mainstream leading science theories seems to affirm scripture would help, and so I'm often wondering just how to present what I've learned without it becoming a mere ball batted about in some contest.

Just saying that is helping me some -- it just came to me a new way to present it.
 
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