The participants on this thread deserve to be disabused of the notion that any of the Fathers gave credence to evolutionary theories. They did not.
Well, you have a number of problems with your posts. First, you failed to notice that I spoke of St. Augustine’s
rationis seminalis ideas as philosophical and theological, not scientific. It is you who have falsely equated the notion to scientific evolution and then replied to your own misinterpretation by saying the Father gave no credence to evolutionary theories. It looks like a straw man fallacy to me.
The creation of things in their
rationis seminalis does not mean that Augustine was an evolutionist in the scientific sense of the term, and I did not say that he was, but it does mean that all life forms did not appear at once or within six days, according to St. Augustine.
Apparently you have never read where St. Gregory of Nyssa taught that God created matter and endowed it with its fundamental properties, in which all of the qualities of the world in which we know were potential. Accordingly, the world resulted from the gradual development of matter according to its potential, *creatio in rationes seminales, *rather than by a series of explicit acts of creation.
St. Augustine’s interpretation of creation in
Genesis changed over the years. Augustine, after a number of years admitted that an interpretation of
Genesis 1 that says there was a direct creation in six literal days does not work. Compare his commentary on
Genesis with what he says in
De Trinitate
St. Augustine expanded Gregory’s idea of
creatio in rationis seminales much further by applying it to animal life. This means that the Creator permitted the development of some organisms by means of natural laws.
Since the idea of *creatio in rationis seminales *is consistent with a scientific theory of evolution, I can legitimately extend the principle beyond what St. Augustine himself taught and thus apply it to all of creation.
The problems are, first, you have not fully grasped the doctrines of St. Gregory and St. Augustine but resorted to sources that are not reliable. Second, if I choose to extend the doctrine to include all of creation then it does not mean that I am in any way implying that Gregory or Augustine likewise extended the idea of
creatio in rationis seminales. Third, I have theoretically applied
creatio in rationis seminalis to the physics of the Big Bang. Had you known that, you would try to disabuse everyone on CAF of the notion that the Fathers did not endorse the 20th century theory of Big Bang. LOL
Hence, your objections are ill founded. I will further address in another post more of your reckless misinterpretations.
I am not concerned at all. Real scientific debates occur all the time.
Where do these bizarre interpretations come from? No reputable Biblical scholar, Jew or Christian would say any such thing.