Is evolution really new theory or thought or has it really been around much, much longer? I will show that this thought is much older than most would like to admit.
The Epicurean, Lucretius from 98 B.C. wrote about origins in his book, On the Nature of Things. He believe the earth had spontaneously generated all living forms: "It remains, therefore, that the earth deserves the name of mother which she possesses, since from the earth all things have been produced;" and "of herself she created the human race." (W.K.C. Guthrie, In the Beginning: Some Greek Views on the Origins of Life and the Early State of Man)
The famous physician, Galen (c. 170), expressed Stoical views of creation in one of his medical works. Matter, he believed, was eternal and his god was not above the laws of nature. Galen wrote:
"It is precisely this point in which our own opinion and that of Plato and of the other Greeks who follow the right method in natural science differ from the position taken up by Moses. For the latter it seems enough to say that God simply willed the arrangement of matter and it was presently arranged in due order; for he believes everything to be possible with God, even should he wish to make a bull or a horse out of ashes. We, however, do not hold this; we say that certain things are impossible by nature and that God does not even attempt such things at all but that he [sic] chooses the best out of the possibility of becoming." (Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, 11.14, in Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale, 1984), pp. 86-87. )
These views were commonly found in the Greek culture and ones the Apostle Paul preached against. He told them "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition. . . ." He preached Jesus Christ as the one whom all things were created through. It was not through the earth that things were created. He told them that God created everything and from ONE man all men came from.
Justin Martyr the philosopher once also held the theory that the earth spontaneously produced life until he become converted. He then dismissed this view and took the view point of creation in six days only a few thousand years ago.
Romans 4:17, Paul talks about God calling into being what does not exist. Theophilus was a great defender of the faith in an apology to Autolycus. It contained extensive treatise on creation. This became a model for many church fathers.
The classical scholar and Bible translator, Jerome, included Theophilus in his Lives of Illustrious Men, which listed "those who have published any memorable writing on the Holy Scripture." Jerome described Theophilus' writings as "short and elegant treatises well fitted for the edification of the church."
Concerning Greek views of origins, Theophilus wrote:
"Some of the Stoics absolutely deny the existence of God. . . . Others say that everything happens spontaneously, that the universe is uncreated and that everything happens spontaneously, that the universe is uncreated and that nature is eternal . . . that God is only the individual's conscience. Plato and his followers . . . say that matter is as old as God. But if God is uncreated and matter is uncreated, then according to the Platonists God is not the Maker of the universe."
He explained, "They (the Greeks) made these statements (about origins) by conjecture and by human thought, not in accordance with the truth." Theophilus admonished Autolycus to search the Scriptures so that he might discover the truth. The harmony of all parts of Scripture concerning the origin of the world and man showed that God was its author. The "Spirit of God . . . came down into the prophets and spoke through them about the creation of the world and all the rest."
Like other fathers of this period, Theophilus saw many types and figures in Genesis 1, yet retained the literal interpretation. For example, he wrote,
"On the fourth day the luminaries came into existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he understood the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going to say that the things produced on earth came from the stars, so that they might set God aside. In order therefore that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds came into existence before the stars. For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it."
A later father who wrote on the six days was Basil, born about 330 into a Christian family. He was highly educated in Greek thought, yet by God's leading became an able and well-loved pastor in Cappadocia, where he preached a series of sermons on the six days of creation. The sermons were used by Ambrose of Milan, and have been translated into other languages. In them Basil admonished,
Let us hear . . . the words of truth expressed not in the persuasive language of human wisdom but in the teachings of the Spirit, whose end is not praise from those hearing, but the salvation of those taught. . . . The wise men of the Greeks wrote many works about nature, but not one account among them remained unaltered and firmly established, for the later account always overthrew the preceding one.
Basil's position on the length of the creation days is seen in his exposition of Genesis 1:5.
"And there was evening and morning, one day." Why did he say "one" and not "first"? . . . He said "one" because he was defining the measure of day and night . . . , since the twenty-four hours fill up the interval of one day.
As Davis Young concludes, "In general, the church fathers regarded the days of creation as ordinary days corresponding to our existing sun-measured, solar days."
Origen, the great theologian of the Greek churches, defended "the Mosaic account of the creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that."
And Augustine, the great bishop of the Latin churches, wrote, "the Scripture has paramount authority, to which we yield assent in all matters."
"That God made the world, we can believe from no one more safely than from God Himself."
On the age of man and the earth, Augustine wrote,
"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."
In his book, From the Greeks to Darwin, Henry Fairfield Osborn wrote,
"When I began the search for anticipations of the evolutionary theory . . . I was led back to the Greek natural philosophers and I was astonished to find how many of the pronounced and basic features of the Darwinian theory were anticipated even as far back as the seventh century B.C."
The Epicurean, Lucretius from 98 B.C. wrote about origins in his book, On the Nature of Things. He believe the earth had spontaneously generated all living forms: "It remains, therefore, that the earth deserves the name of mother which she possesses, since from the earth all things have been produced;" and "of herself she created the human race." (W.K.C. Guthrie, In the Beginning: Some Greek Views on the Origins of Life and the Early State of Man)
The famous physician, Galen (c. 170), expressed Stoical views of creation in one of his medical works. Matter, he believed, was eternal and his god was not above the laws of nature. Galen wrote:
"It is precisely this point in which our own opinion and that of Plato and of the other Greeks who follow the right method in natural science differ from the position taken up by Moses. For the latter it seems enough to say that God simply willed the arrangement of matter and it was presently arranged in due order; for he believes everything to be possible with God, even should he wish to make a bull or a horse out of ashes. We, however, do not hold this; we say that certain things are impossible by nature and that God does not even attempt such things at all but that he [sic] chooses the best out of the possibility of becoming." (Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, 11.14, in Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale, 1984), pp. 86-87. )
These views were commonly found in the Greek culture and ones the Apostle Paul preached against. He told them "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition. . . ." He preached Jesus Christ as the one whom all things were created through. It was not through the earth that things were created. He told them that God created everything and from ONE man all men came from.
Justin Martyr the philosopher once also held the theory that the earth spontaneously produced life until he become converted. He then dismissed this view and took the view point of creation in six days only a few thousand years ago.
Romans 4:17, Paul talks about God calling into being what does not exist. Theophilus was a great defender of the faith in an apology to Autolycus. It contained extensive treatise on creation. This became a model for many church fathers.
The classical scholar and Bible translator, Jerome, included Theophilus in his Lives of Illustrious Men, which listed "those who have published any memorable writing on the Holy Scripture." Jerome described Theophilus' writings as "short and elegant treatises well fitted for the edification of the church."
Concerning Greek views of origins, Theophilus wrote:
"Some of the Stoics absolutely deny the existence of God. . . . Others say that everything happens spontaneously, that the universe is uncreated and that everything happens spontaneously, that the universe is uncreated and that nature is eternal . . . that God is only the individual's conscience. Plato and his followers . . . say that matter is as old as God. But if God is uncreated and matter is uncreated, then according to the Platonists God is not the Maker of the universe."
He explained, "They (the Greeks) made these statements (about origins) by conjecture and by human thought, not in accordance with the truth." Theophilus admonished Autolycus to search the Scriptures so that he might discover the truth. The harmony of all parts of Scripture concerning the origin of the world and man showed that God was its author. The "Spirit of God . . . came down into the prophets and spoke through them about the creation of the world and all the rest."
Like other fathers of this period, Theophilus saw many types and figures in Genesis 1, yet retained the literal interpretation. For example, he wrote,
"On the fourth day the luminaries came into existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he understood the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going to say that the things produced on earth came from the stars, so that they might set God aside. In order therefore that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds came into existence before the stars. For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it."
A later father who wrote on the six days was Basil, born about 330 into a Christian family. He was highly educated in Greek thought, yet by God's leading became an able and well-loved pastor in Cappadocia, where he preached a series of sermons on the six days of creation. The sermons were used by Ambrose of Milan, and have been translated into other languages. In them Basil admonished,
Let us hear . . . the words of truth expressed not in the persuasive language of human wisdom but in the teachings of the Spirit, whose end is not praise from those hearing, but the salvation of those taught. . . . The wise men of the Greeks wrote many works about nature, but not one account among them remained unaltered and firmly established, for the later account always overthrew the preceding one.
Basil's position on the length of the creation days is seen in his exposition of Genesis 1:5.
"And there was evening and morning, one day." Why did he say "one" and not "first"? . . . He said "one" because he was defining the measure of day and night . . . , since the twenty-four hours fill up the interval of one day.
As Davis Young concludes, "In general, the church fathers regarded the days of creation as ordinary days corresponding to our existing sun-measured, solar days."
Origen, the great theologian of the Greek churches, defended "the Mosaic account of the creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that."
And Augustine, the great bishop of the Latin churches, wrote, "the Scripture has paramount authority, to which we yield assent in all matters."
"That God made the world, we can believe from no one more safely than from God Himself."
On the age of man and the earth, Augustine wrote,
"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."
In his book, From the Greeks to Darwin, Henry Fairfield Osborn wrote,
"When I began the search for anticipations of the evolutionary theory . . . I was led back to the Greek natural philosophers and I was astonished to find how many of the pronounced and basic features of the Darwinian theory were anticipated even as far back as the seventh century B.C."
