Creationism in the Fathers of the Church

This is a response of Hugh Owen to my response to his reply to one of my (Joseph Bolin's) first posts on creation and evolution. In what follows, his text is in blue, and the text he is citing from my post is in black. There is one correction (indicated by brackets) he made by e-mail after I asked him about St. Augustine on animal death before the fall. The formatting is more or less okay, but the footnote numbering came out strange in converting it to web format.

In your response to my reply, you argue that:

Regarding the Fathers and the permanence of species, I repeat again, the issue is not what the Fathers thought to be the natural facts about the world on the basis of the natural history and science available to them (facts which of course they will make use of also in commentaries on scripture, just as someone will make use of facts about lilies when commenting on a passage on lilies), but what they thought to be the divine teaching of Scripture.

But the teaching of the Fathers demonstrates that fixity of kinds is the divine teaching of Genesis. For example, in the passage I cited from St. Ambrose, he wrote:

The Word of God permeates every creature in the constitution of the world. Hence, as God had ordained, all kinds of living creatures were quickly produced from the earth. In compliance with a fixed law they all succeed each other from age to age according to their aspect and kind.

St. Ambrose is giving a commentary on Genesis 1 which teaches that God created creatures “according to their kinds.” He is not expounding the ideas of Aristotle or some other natural scientist; he is expounding the divine teaching of Genesis. The same thing is true of St. Basil the Great. You then argue that:

In regards to modern science on the issue of evolution, there are multiple problems with Dr. John Sanford's arguments. E.g., if the accumulation of mutations in men means that after a mere 10,000 years men would be extinct, then the accumulation of mutations in more rapidly reproducing creatures would mean that they would be extinct after some hundreds of years, which is not the case. In any case, my intent is not to address the empirical, modern scientific issues here, but the scriptural and theological issues.

Here you are attacking a straw man. I never said that all organisms would be extinct in 10,000 years. I pointed out that, according to Dr. Sanford’s research, at the current rate of genetic degradation, human beings would be in danger of extinction after 10,000 years. Cutting edge genetics shows that all genomes are degrading—devolving, not evolving. But I did not say that they are all devolving at the same rate, or that organisms that reproduce rapidly necessarily degrade more rapidly than human beings. I am also disappointed that you do not show more interest in reading Dr. Sanford’s book, as it is one of the most important books ever written in his field.

You argue that:

Quoting a text of Irenaeus to which one might be presume I referred (and had read) is not going to be enough to convince me to change my interpretation. I won't here pursue the question of the interpretation of that passage, as it is disputed, and is unlikely to be resolved in an exchange of this sort. The passage of Justin I was referring to is not where he speaks of the seventh day having no end, but of the day on which Adam lived as being one thousand years. "For as Adam was told that in the day he ate of the tree he would die, we know that he did not complete a thousand years. We have perceived, moreover, that the expression, ‘The day of the Lord is as a thousand years,’ is connected with this subject." (Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 81; https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01286.htm)

But the passage you have cited argues against your thesis. Adam’s life span of 930 years—almost one thousand years—unfolded after the creation period was finished. This offers no support for your view that the days of Genesis were longer than natural 24 days in Justin’s view. On the contrary, it is consistent with the interpretation of St. Irenaeus, Lactantius and other Fathers that the six days of creation week were to be followed by six thousand years of human history before the “times of the Kingdom” (cf. Against Heresies, Book Five). Moreover, you ignore St. Justin’s plain testimony in favor of the majority view of the Fathers in regard to the six days of creation when he speaks of Sunday as the “first day of creation, the day when God created the light.” Such a statement makes no sense if St. Justin does not understand the days of creation to be normal 24 hour days.

You argue that:

My point in noting that Origen and Augustine do not take the six days as a narrative of the historical order of creation at all, is that it follows from this that they do not take them as teaching any particular historical length of time, whether an instant, six periods of 24 hours, or any other definite length.

But St. Augustine most certainly did argue for an instantaneous creation of everything, although in typical Augustinian fashion he then spoke of the creation of Adam and Eve as having taken place after this “one day” of creation. In The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, Book Five, he writes:

The earlier narrative [Genesis 1] stated that all things were created and finished on six successive days, but now [Genesis 2] to one day everything is assigned, under the terms “heaven” and “earth,” with the addition also of “plants.” If, therefore, as I have already said, “day” were understood in its ordinary sense, the reader would be corrected when he recalled that God had ordered the earth to produce the green things of the field before the establishment of that day that is marked by the sun. Hence, I do not now appeal to another book of Holy Scripture to prove that God created all things together [Sirach 18:1]. But the very next page following the first narrative of creation testifies to this when it tell us, “When day was made, God made heaven and earth and every green thing of the field.” Hence you must understand that this day was seven times repeated, to make up the seven days (The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Bk 5, Ch 3, No 6).

Now the fact that St. Augustine clearly argued for an instantaneous creation does not mean that he put forward his minority view with great confidence or that he did not contradict it in favor of the majority (six days of creation) view of the Fathers elsewhere. As Robert Sungenis has pointed out in one of his articles:

Here again, however, not knowing any of the Hebrew language, Augustine draws conclusions that are simply not supported by the original text. The specific phrasing of Genesis 2:4 “in the day,” from the Hebrew beyom (~AyB.), creates a Hebrew idiom meaning “when God made,” and thus, on strict grammatical grounds, this would disallow Genesis 2:4's “day” from disqualifying Genesis 1:5's “day” from being a twenty-four hour day.

In addition, whenever the Hebrew yom (“day”) is used with an ordinal number in Scripture, it never refers to an indefinite or long period of time. In Genesis 1, there are six ordinal numbers enumerated: “the first day...the second day...the third day...” and so on until the sixth day. In contrast, Genesis 2:4's “day” does not have an ordinal number attached to it, which would eliminate it from comparison to Genesis 1.

Further, Augustine’s objection can be answered by focusing on the particular words used in Genesis 2 that are not used in Genesis 1. Genesis 2:5 refers to the “shrub” (x;yfi) of the field, but this word does not appear in Genesis 1:11-12 or 1:29-30.⁴⁷ Rather, Genesis 1:11-12 refers to the “herb” (bf,[e)⁴⁸ and the “tree producing fruit” (yrIP. hf,[).⁴⁹ Hence, the first distinction between Genesis 1:11-12 and Genesis 2:5 is that the former indicates only two kinds of vegetation, whereas Genesis 2:5 adds a third. Apparently, the two plants of Genesis 1:11-12 served as food for Adam and Eve described in Genesis 1:29-30.

Secondly, Genesis 2:5 specifies that “not every herb of the field had yet sprung up,” which would mean there were some that had sprung up on the third day of creation, and some which sprung up on or after the sixth day of creation.

Thirdly, Genesis 2:5 says the “shrubs” and “herbs” had not yet “sprung up” or “produced” (xm'c.yI ; tsemach) which contrasts with the “growth”(av,D, ; dashah) of Genesis 1:11-12. The word tsemach refers to a budding for the next generation,⁵⁰ while dashah refers to an original sprouting of the first generation of fruits. Hence, Adam and Eve’s food, on the first day of their creation, was the original fruit of the two plants in Genesis 1:11-12, while the “shrubs” and the budding plants of Genesis 2:5 would have to wait until the appropriate time for growth.

All in all, the reason we can levy these critiques on Augustine’s view of Genesis is that he invited such criticism himself. In The Literal Meaning of Genesis he writes:

Whoever, then, does not accept the meaning that my limited powers have been able to discover of conjecture but seeks in the enumeration of the days of creation a different meaning, which might be understood not in a prophetical or figurative sense, but literally and more aptly, in interpreting the works of creation, let him search and find a solution with God’s help. I myself may possibly discover some other meaning more in harmony with the words of Scripture. I certainly do not advance the interpretation given above in such a way as to imply that no better one can ever be found, although I do maintain that Sacred Scripture does not tell us that God rested after feeling weariness and fatigue (Bk 4, Ch 28, No 45). (Robert Sungenis, “The Fathers of the Church on Genesis 1-11,” First International Catholic Symposium on Creation, Rome, Italy, October 23-24, 2002).

As Robert Sungenis goes on to point out, St. Augustine was very tentative about this exegesis of the days of Genesis and in other writings he interpreted the days of Genesis in the same way as the rest of the Fathers. For example, in the Confessions he wrote:

For very wonderful is this corporeal heaven, of which firmament, between water and water, the second day after the creation of light, Thou saidst, Let it be made, and it was made. Which firmament Thou calledst heaven, that is, the heaven of this earth and sea, which Thou madest on the third day (Confessions, Bk XII, Ch 8).

You argue that:

In interpreting Origen, a false dichotomy is set up between an indefinitely long period of creation, and instantaneous creation. "Origen's creation is instantaneous. We can be sure of this because Origen says that the Mosaic account gives much less than ten thousand years since the creation of the world. This is only possible if he considers the Genesis genealogies as beginning at creation." In fact, Origen does not believe that everything in the world was created instantaneously (an illustrative text is below), and yet he is convinced that there are less than ten thousand years since the creation of the world. How is this possible? There are several things Origen may be thinking. First, the "ten thousand years" may refer to the end of the period of creation. Secondly, and more likely, Origen thinks that the period of creation was a relatively short one--e.g., in any case no more than the lifespan of a human being.

I have not set up a false dichotomy. How can Origen’s statement that the Mosaic account of creation “teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that” (Against Celsus, 1:19) refer to the period of time until the end of the period of creation when he clearly teaches elsewhere that the creation period is finished? On the contrary, his statement is much more consistent with our thesis that the material universe came into existence immediately. If Origen did not believe that the creation of the world was virtually instantaneous he would not be able to say that the Mosaic account of creation teaches that “the world is not yet ten thousand years old but very much under that,” because he would have no idea in that case how old the world is. If your interpretation were correct, Origen would have to have written “the world since the end of creation is not yet ten thousand years old.” But he does not do that. On the contrary, he uses the same proof text that St. Augustine, following him, uses, Genesis 2:4, to argue that all of creation was made in one day, at one time. That is why he can be sure that the world from its beginning until his day was much less than ten thousand years old—just as all of the Fathers taught, without exception.

Like all of the other Fathers, Origen teaches that the creation period is finished, and speaks of “the day of the Sabbath and rest of God, which follows the completion of the world's creation” (Against Celsus, Book vi. chap. 1xi.) But no one measures the age of something from its end but from its beginning. Since Origen appeals to Genesis as measuring human history from Adam to the patristic period as “much less than ten thousand years,” he can only assign the same age to the world, if the creation of the world and the creation of Adam occur at the same time.

You are right to point out that in Origen’s erroneous view the angels came first, then fell, and inhabited bodies. (And, as you know, because of certain unusual views like this, Origen is sometimes referred to as "an ecclesiastical author" and not as a Church Father.) But there is not necessarily any contradiction between this particular view and an instantaneous or virtually instantaneous creation, since the fall of the angels did not require a prolonged period of probation as did the fall of Adam and Eve. The test of the angels has long been viewed in Catholic Tradition as something that happened instantaneously immediately after the angels were created. Origen writes:

The specific points which are clearly handed down by the apostolic preaching are these: First, that there is one God who created and arranged all things, and who, when nothing existed, called all things into existence (The Fundamental Doctrines, 1, preface, 4)

There is absolutely no indication in this passage of any passage of time from the creation of one thing to the creation of another—which is perfectly consistent with Origen’s confidence that the age of the world—and not just the age of mankind—can be known from the Mosaic account. That this is so becomes apparent if one reflects on the chronology in the Roman martyrology which is still recited at Midnight Mass for Christmas:

In the 5199^th year of the creation of the world, from the time when in the beginning God created heaven and earth; from the flood, the 2957^th year; from the birth of Abraham, the 2015^th year; from Moses and the going-out of the people of Israel from Egypt, the 1510^th year; from the anointing of David as king, the 1032^nd year; in the 65^th week according to the prophecy of Daniel; in the 194^th Olympiad; from the founding of the city of Rome, the 752^nd year; in the 42^nd year of the rule of Octavian Augustus, when the whole world was at peace, in the sixth age of the world: Jesus Christ, the eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to sanctify the world by His most merciful coming, having been conceived by the Holy Ghost, and nine months having passed since His conception was born in Bethlehem of Juda of the Virgin Mary, having become man. (emphasis added)

This text teaches that Jesus became man in the 5199^th year “of the creation of the world” because the text of Genesis gives the number of years from the beginning of creation to other events in the Bible that establish a chronology from Creation to the Incarnation. The fact that the Church did not set in stone the number of years from Creation to the Incarnation does not change the fact that a chronology of the world was only possible because the Creation of the world and of Adam took place in the same year. And this is precisely why Origen is able to state confidently that “much less than ten thousand years” have elapsed from the creation of the world to his day.

Origen cannot be drummed into service for theistic evolution or progressive creation because both of these models hold that God is still evolving new kinds of organisms through the same natural processes by which he brought the earlier ones into existence (in the case of theistic evolution) or that God continued to bring new kinds of creatures into existence by fiat in the midst of the same order of nature that we see today (in the case of progressive creation). But Origen, as we have shown, upholds the universal teaching of the Fathers that God created all things in the beginning and that the creation of new kinds of creatures ceased at that time. Thus, you have failed to provide any patristic support for either progressive creation or theistic evolution.

The claim that Origen sees creation as all happening instantaneously because of the affirmation of creation ex nihilo, he says God "when nothing existed, called all things into existence", rests on a misunderstanding of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. The point is that God did not use pre-existing matter for creation, not that there is no process of change through which the various elements of creation were formed.

On the contrary, all of the Fathers teach—as does St. Thomas—that creation is without process. Whether God creates immediately ex nihilo, as when He created light on the first day, or mediately ex nihilo, as when He created man from the slime of the earth, in both cases God is the only Actor and the creature produced is created without the participation of any secondary cause. For example, St. Thomas teaches:

The first formation of the human body could not be by the instrumentality of any created power, but was immediately from God. . . Now God, though He is absolutely immaterial, can alone by His own power produce matter by creation: wherefore He alone can produce a form in matter, without the aid of any preceding material form . . . Therefore as no pre-existing body had been formed whereby another body of the same species could be generated, the first human body was of necessity made immediately by God (ST, I, q. 91, a. 2.)

Where is “the process of change” in the creation of Adam? What is the order of creation as Origen sees it? First, spiritual beings were created. Some of these sinned, and consequently were attached to matter and bodies, and in this process the concrete material universe was formed. But there is an order among these, e.g., the devil is the first. It was not all simultaneous.

90 ..."The term 'beginning'... has multiple meanings even in divine discourse.' 91 One of these meanings refers to a commencement... 95. There is also a 'beginning' in the sense of coming into existence attested in 'In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth' (Gen. 1:1). I believe this sense is indicated even more clearly in Job where it says: 'This is the beginning of the Lord's fashioning, made as a sport for his angels' (Job 17:19 LXX). 96. Someone might assume that 'heaven and earth' were made 'in the beginning' of those things that existed when the world came to be, but it is better to say, as in our second citation, that of the many things that came to be in bodies, the first of those in the body was the so-called 'dragon,' also named somewhere 'great whale,' which the Lord subdued (see Job 3:8; 2 Pet. 2:4). 103...Third is the sense of 'beginning from which,' as in beginning from underlying matter. This is proposed by those who believe that matter is ingenerate, but not by us who believe that God made the things that are from things that are not, as the mother of the seven martyrs in Maccabees (2 Mac. 7:28) and as the angel of repentance in Shephard taught (Hermas, Mand. 1,1; Vis. 1.1.6).

Below I have pasted a detailed schedule of the Fathers’ teachings on creation and the early history of mankind. If there were any Fathers who did not interpret Genesis as teaching the creation of the whole material universe and man in six natural days several thousand years ago, perhaps you would have some justification for trying to shoehorn Origen’s statements into the framework of theistic evolution or progressive creation. But in view of the overwhelming testimony of the Fathers in favor of fiat creation in six days, the burden of proof is clearly on you, if you are going to make any credible case for Origen as an apologist for a longer creation period.

Detailed Schedule Of Fathers Beliefs

Church Father (D) denotes a Church Doctor	Meaning of yom (day)	Adam’s Creation Date BC	Belief In Global Flood	Young Univ.
1. St. Justin Martyr 100-165	24 hrs 1.First Apology in Defense of the Christians 2. Hortatory Address to the Greeks, XXXIII		Yes Dialogue, 138	Yes
2. St. Irenaeus of Lyons 140-202	24 hrs Against the Heresies 5,28,3			Yes
3. St. Clement of Alexandria 150-216	24 hrs Stromata, Book VI, Chp 16	5,592 Miscellanies 1.21	Yes ANF, Vol 2, p.332	Yes
4. St. Hippolytus of Rome 160-235	24 hrs Genesis 1:5,1:6; ANF, vol.5. p.163	5,500 Daniel 4		Yes
5. Julius Africanus 160-240	24hrs Fragment III	5,500 Chronology, Fragment 1	Yes Extant Fragment IV,V	Yes
6. St. Theophilus of Antioch circa 185-191	24 hrs Autolycus 2,12	5,698 Autolycus, 3:28	Yes Autolycus 3.18-19	Yes
7. Lactantius 250-317	24 hrs Divine Institutes 7,14			Yes
8. St. Archelaus of Cascus d.280	24 hrs Disputation with the Heretic Manes, 31			Yes
9. St. Athanasius (D) 295-373	24 hrs Against the Arians, Discourse II, 19, 48; NPNF@, vol.4, pp.374-375			Yes
10. Marius Victorinus 305-365	24hrs NPNF1, vol 7, pp341-343			Yes
11. St. Ephraem the Syrian 306-373 (D)	24 hrs Commentary on Genesis 1:1, FC 91:74			Yes
12. St Peter of Alexandria d.311	24 hrs Fragment, Of the Soul and Body			Yes
13. St. Methodius of Olympus d.311	24 hrs Banquet of the Ten Virgins, Discourse III, Ch2. Symposium, Discourse 7:5			Yes
14. St. Hilary of Poitiers (D) 315-368	24 hrs On the Trinity, 12:16, 40			Yes
15. St. Cyril of Jerusalem (D) 315-387	24 hrs Catechetical Lectures 12:5			Yes
16. St. Epiphanius of Salamis 315-403	24 hrs Panarion 1:1			Yes

Church Father (D) denotes a Church Doctor	Meaning of yom (day)	Adam’s Creation Date BC	Belief In Global Flood	Young Univ.
17. St. Basil of Caesarea (D) 329-379	24 hrs Hexaemeron 2,8		Yes The Orthodox Faith Book 4, Chap 24	Yes
18. St. Gregory of Nazianzus 329-389 (D)	24 hrs Oration XLIII, Panegyric on St. Basil, 67		Yes 2nd Theol. Orat.18	Yes
19. St. Gregory of Nyssa 335-394	24 hrs Hexaemeron PG 44:68-69			Yes
20. St. Ambrose of Milan (D) 340-397	24 hrs Hexaemeron 1:37 FC 42:42		Yes Duties of the clergy Book 1, Chap 25	Yes
21. St. John Chrysostom (D) 344-407	24 hrs PG, Homily 3, col 35 Commentary on Genesis 1:6-8,9-19		Yes Genesis, 25.10	Yes
22. St Jerome (D) 347-420	24 hrs Commentary On The Epistle to Titus, Praise of St. Basil’s writings.		Yes Jurgens, vol 2, p.184	Yes
23. St. Augustine of Hippo (D) 354-430	figurative Literal Meaning of Genesis Book 5, Ch3	5,600 City of God,Book 12, Chp 10,12	Yes City of God Book 15, Chp 14	Yes
24. St Cyril of Alexandria (D) 376-444	24 hrs Against Julian the Apostate, 2:27-28	<10,000 Jurgens, vol 3, p.221	Yes Cat Lec, 2, 8	Yes
25. Theodoret of Cyrus 393-457	24 hrs Dialogue II, Eranistes			Yes
26. St. Peter Chrysologus (D) 400-450	24 hrs Sermon extract, The Liturgy of Hours According Roman Rite, Vol.III			Yes
27. Pope St. Leo the Great (D) 400-461	24 hrs Sermon On the Feast of the Nativity, 27:5	<10,000> Jurgens, vol 3, p.278		Yes
28. St. Gregory the Great (D) 540-604	24 hrs Moralia in Iob, XXXII, xii, 16	<10,000 Job, Bk 4, Sect 4	Yes Epistles, Book 11, Epistle 1	Yes
29. St. Isidore of Seville (D) 560-636	24 hrs Brehaut transl p.118 Chronicron First age of the world.	<10,000 Brehaut p.167 Chronicron Second age of w.	Yes Brehaut p.156	Yes
30. St. John Damascene (D) 676-749	24 hrs Exact Composition of the Orthodox Faith, 2:7	<10,000 Jurgens, vol 3, p.336		Yes

Ecclesiastical Writers/(Fathers?):

31. Tertullian 160-225	24 hrs A Treatise On The Soul, 37		Yes Pallium,2;Women,3	Yes
32. Origen of Alexandria 185-254	figurative Against Celsus Book 6, Chp LX	<10,000> Against Celsus Book 1, Chp XIX	Yes Against Celsus Book 6, Chp LVIII	Yes
33. Eusebius of Caesarea 263-339	24 hrs Praeparatio Evangelica, 13:12	5,228 Chronicle		Yes

Commentary on John, Book I. Translation from Origen (The Early Church Fathers) by Joseph W. Trigg.

Augustine, too, did not believe in an instantaneous creation, in the sense in which this would be incompatible with theistic evolution (though there are other senses in which he believed in an instantaneous creation--e.g., within the spiritual creation]). Augustine believed in continuous creation: God is the creator of everything that comes into being, both because he gave to creation the power from which they come into being, and because he actualizes this power.

Causaliter ergo tunc dictum est produxisse terram herbam et lignum, id est producendi accepisse uirtutem. In ea quippe iam tamquam in radicibus, ut ita dixerim, temporum facta erant, quae per tempora futura erant; nam utique postea plantauit deus paradisum iuxta orientem et eiecit ibi de terra omne lignum speciosum ad aspectum et bonum ad escam. ... non solum tunc plantauit paradisum, sed etiam nunc omnia, quae nascuntur. Quis enim alius etiam nunc ista creat, nisi qui usque nunc operatur? Sed creat haec modo ex his, quae iam sunt; tunc autem ab illo, cum omnino nulla essent, creata sunt, cum factus et dies ille, qui etiam ipse omnino non erat, spiritalis uidelicet atque intellectualis creatura. The earth is said to have produced plants and trees causally, i.e., it received the power to produce them. In it those temporal things that were to come to be in the future were made as in their roots, so to speak; for indeed God afterwards planted Paradise and drove up from the earth every tree beautiful to look at and good for food.... he planted not only the Paradise at that time, but also now all the things that are born. For who else creates those now, except he who works even now? But now he creates from things that already are, while then things were created when they had not been at all, when that day was made that had not been at all, namely the spiritual and intellectual creature. (On Genesis According to the Letter V, 4).

In a thorough study of “rationes seminales” in the writings of St. Augustine, Robert Sungenis observes that when:

St. Augustine mentions the “seminales” he speaks of “hidden seeds” that God placed in each living thing, seeds that were the cause of their distinction and growth. In De Trinitate he writes:

But, in truth, some hidden seeds of all things that are born corporeally and visibly, are concealed in the corporeal elements of this world. For those seeds that are visible now to our eyes from fruits and living things, are quite distinct from the hidden seeds of those former seeds; from which, at the bidding of the Creator, the water produced the first swimming creatures and fowl, and the earth the first buds after their kind, and the first living creatures after their kind. . . For the Creator of these invisible seeds is the Creator of all things Himself; since whatever comes forth to our sight by being born, receives the first beginnings of its course from hidden seeds, and takes the successive increments of its proper size and its distinctive forms from these as it were original rules. As therefore we do not call parents the creators of men, nor farmers the creators of corn, although it is by the outward application of their actions that the power of God operates within for the creating these things... (On the Trinity, Book III, Chapter 8, 13).

Here we see that the operative force of the “hidden seeds” has no connection to the evolution of one organism to a totally different organism, but to what Augustine calls “the successive increments of its proper size and its distinctive forms from these as it were original rules.” His objective is merely to show that a husband and wife, for example, are not the “creators of men” but the real creators are the “hidden seeds” that God has placed in them and in all life forms. We know these seeds today as male spermatoza and a female ovum. We can actually see fertilization occur by means of an endoscope. We assign names to the developing stages such as zygote and blastula, we call the process of growth gestation.

Sungenis concludes that:

Augustine’s “rationes seminales” offers no foundation or precedent for theistic evolutionists. The only reasons for Augustine’s advancement of the concept of “seminal principles” was to offer: (a) some explanation for the then widely held but erroneous belief in spontaneous generation; (b) a reason why a living being could develop from infancy to adulthood; and (c) a possible reason why demons, who we know do not possess creative power, can appear to create various things. Today, both theology and science have taught us that only option (b) deserves any credence.[1][1]

If you read all of the passages where St. Augustine discusses rationes seminales, it is clear that he understands them as determining a specific kind of creature, He does not see them as having the potential to evolve into a different kind of creature through any kind of natural process. Moreover, he teaches that all of these specific kinds of creatures were created in the beginning, before the Sabbath rest of the Lord, when the order of providence began. For example, in Contra Faustus, he writes:

In the creation God finished His works in six days, and rested on the seventh. (Contra Faustus, 400 AD, Bk XII, 8.)

Note that if one is interpreting evolution in another way than as God bringing things actually into existence from the power he previously bestowed on creation, one is not speaking of theistic evolution, but of materialistic, Hegelian, or some other interpretation of evolution.

Here again you are not recognizing that theistic evolution and progressive creation both collide with the universal teaching of the Fathers and Doctors that creation of new kinds of creatures came to an end with the creation of Adam and Eve. After the creation of Adam and Eve, the universe was complete in all of its parts because God had spoken them all into existence in perfect harmony with man and with each other. St. Thomas summarizes the patristic teaching on the original creation when he states that:

the first perfection is the completeness of the universe at its first founding, and this is what is ascribed to the seventh day (ST, I, q. 73, a. 1).

Theistic evolution and progressive creation both deny that the universe has ever been in a state of completeness with all the different kinds of creatures present together in harmony at one time with and for man.

Postscript

...[Some paragraphs removed]

In all of the Fathers of the Church “the beginning” or “foundation of the world” is identified with the beginning of human history. Hence, the Acts of Archelaus from the time of the Council of Nicea state that “From the creation of the world He has always been with just men. . . .” Pope St. Leo the Great held that:

God did not take care of human affairs by a new plan, or by late mercy, but from the foundation of the world He established one and the same cause of salvation for all. For the grace of God by which the totality of the saints always has been justified was increased when Christ was born, but did not begin [then].

The Council of Arles in 475 taught that:

From the beginning of the world, they [men] were not set free from the original slavery [of Original Sin] except by the intercession of the sacred blood (DZ 160b –Council of Arles 475)

I could go on and on with examples that demonstrate that all of the Fathers of the Church believed and taught that all of the different kinds of creatures were spoken into existence by God “in the beginning” and that God created a perfectly harmonious world for our first parents Adam and Eve—a world without deformities, death, or disease. [St. Augustine is an exception; he held that animal death belonged in the order of the original creation.] Jesus Himself showed precisely the same understanding when He said in reference to divorce that “in the beginning it was not so,” and when He spoke of all of the blood of the prophets that had been shed “from the foundation of the world.”

The consequences of abandoning the unanimous teaching of the Fathers on this point are enormous. As soon as one denies the supernatural creation of all things in perfect harmony—for mankind—by God “in the beginning,” and replaces it with a leisurely evolution of all things from some “primitive” matter over billions of years, one immediately attributes death, deformity and disease to the deliberate plan of God and no longer rightly identifies them as the consequence of man’s sin. In this way, God becomes the Author of violence, death, disease, and deformity long before man comes on the scene and sins against Him. This in turn creates a false tension between the revelation of the perfect goodness of God in Jesus Christ and the apparent introduction of violence, cruelty and deformity in creation by God, long before Adam and Eve sinned.

What is particularly ironic about this situation is that 21^st century natural science doesn’t even support the evolutionary hypothesis. Biologists are discovering that natural processes do not generate biological information, and where genetic information already exists geneticists are learning that mutations do not add new specifically complex information to the genome—as would be necessary to transform land mammals into whales or reptiles into birds. Although the geological time scale in the textbooks was invented by Charles Lyell et al almost 150 years ago based on arm-chair theorizing about extremely limited geological data, today cutting edge research in sedimentology shows that huge sedimentary rock formations, like the Tonto Group in the Grand Canyon, were formed in a matter of weeks rather than over tens of millions of years. Moreover, cutting edge natural science observes evidence of devolution throughout the universe, but no evidence for evolution. And this is precisely what St. Paul and the Church Fathers taught when they wrote of the universe’s “bondage to decay” since the Fall of Adam in Romans 8. The theistic evolutionist must hold that God used billions of years of death, disease, deformities, and mostly negative mutations to evolve the body of the first human beings from pond scum—although such a concept would have been anathema to the Fathers and Doctors of the first 1800 years of the Christian era.

Adam and Eve were not evolved apes who received a soul into evolved ape bodies but special creations made to the image and likeness of God from the beginning. In their original state of holiness, they lived in perfect harmony with God, with each other, and with the whole natural world. According to all of the Fathers, it was this original state of harmony that Jesus came to restore. No integrated Biblical defense of the absolute goodness of God can afford to neglect the importance of the original order of creation as a reflection of the goodness of God from whence we came and to which, through Christ, we are returning by the power of the Holy Spirit.