Augustine of Hippo and the Big Bang/Evolution

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Oh, well I was under the impression that Augustine taught that God created all the creatures as they were in one instant.
 
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I’m looking at it again and I think I was probably confusing St. Clement with St. Augustine. In http://www.thomisticevolution.org/d...ing-genesis-1-with-the-fathers-of-the-church/ it says of St. Clement’s view
Along the same lines, but with deeper metaphysical considerations, St. Clement of Alexandria and Origen both recall Genesis 2:4: “In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,” as evidence that the “six days” are to be taken figuratively.9 In his Miscellanies, St. Clement notes that the creation could not have taken place in time because time itself was created.10 So, new things could be “generated” over a span of days, but creation itself did not transpire over a period of time but is rather the source of time.
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Origen argues similarly that “there was not yet time before the world existed,”11 and that the first days cannot be taken literally because you cannot have a day without a sun, a moon, and a sky.12 So, early in the third century Clement and Origen have already articulated the central difficulties in taking six ordinary days as the literal sense of Genesis 1.
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And earlier it makes the distinction of
A distinction that must be noted preliminarily is the difference between the act of creation properly speaking, which is to produce something where before there was simply nothing, and the act of making something more interesting out of basic elements that already exist. With the benefit of ancient Greek philosophy, some of the earliest Fathers already articulate this, observing that the act of creation properly speaking must be instantaneous, leaving the question of the six days to be a matter of interpreting the formation of the basic elements created out of nothing.
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And a notable thing on Augustine’s view it says is,
 
Augustine goes on to raise a host of possible interpretations of “heaven,” “the earth,” “darkness,” “the abyss,” and “let there be light”; and he will conclude that “heaven and earth” refer to formless matter.14 He explains that in a narration, you must give one thing before the other, but that doesn’t mean that there is a difference in time. So, the first day and the second day are not different times but different orders. He offers the example of speech: “But the speaker does not first utter a formless sound of his voice and later gather it together and shape it into words. Similarly, God the Creator did not first make unformed matter and later, as if after further reflection, form it according to the series of works He produced. He created formed matter.” Augustine clarifies that the material itself of a thing does in a certain sense precede the thing, as clay in a certain sense precedes a clay pot; but whatever shape the clay has at any time is simultaneous with its being clay.15
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In a manner reminiscent of Origen’s argument, Augustine doubts the counting of six ordinary days, pointing out that the sun would never set on God in his creation—for where would it go, to another universe?16 And not unlike Clement, Augustine insists that creation had to be instantaneous.
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So I’m guessing I remembered the clarification they made at the beginning, Church Fathers viewing the 6 days in a different light than 24 hour periods, and forgot that while Augustine might have used the distinction, it was still instantaneous in his view.
 
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