Date of Creation and Age of the Earth

[Pravoslavnik]

The Irish Anglican Bishop James Ussher (1581`-1656), a Calvinist sympathizer, published a famous, widely respected treatise in which he calculated a date 4004 B.C. for the earth's Creation. Bishop James can hardly be considered a Holy Father of the Church, but, to his credit, he authenticated the seven extant letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch.

[Pravoslavnik]

Dear C.V.,

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   I did some research on your Patristics question this afternoon.  The two earliest Orthodox Christian estimates of the date of creation were made by Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, and Julius Africanus in the mid-second and third centuries.  Both references can be found in the Eerdman's Ante-Nicene Fathers anthology (Vol II, p 118, and Vol VI p. 130.)  St. Augustine of Hippo also commented upon the subject in the [i]City of God.[/i]  These early Church Fathers estimated the date of creation at about 5,500 B.C. using basic arithmetic calculations from the generations of the Hebrew Patriarchs in the text of [i]Genesis.[/i]  I looked at the primary sources, which are also referenced in [i]Genesis, Creation, and Early Man[/i] by Father Seraphim Rose (St. Herman's Press 2000. p. 236)

[joasia]

I looked at the primary sources, which are also referenced in Genesis, Creation, and Early Man by Father Seraphim Rose (St. Herman's Press 2000. p. 236)

Oh, for the love of truth!! I can't find this book available anywhere! All the major on-line bookstores are out of stock.

I just took out my copy of The City of God. It was the first Orthodox book I bought, for a class in university. I just opened it and came to Book XI;Chapter 5. He definitely wrote about God creating the world, universe and man. I have to read this book again.

Thanks Provaslavnik for adding the references. It saves time in searching the sources. What page is St. Augustine's reference?

[Pravoslavnik]

The reference for The City of God is 12:10, P.232 in the Eerdman's edition, where St. Augustine estimated the age of the earth at "not more than 6,000 years."

[jckstraw72]

Oh, for the love of truth!! I can't find this book available anywhere! All the major on-line bookstores are out of stock.

i hear ya -- i found a bookstore with only one copy left. but i hear a new edition is to be coming out.

as for the date being dogma -- well it depends on how you look at dogma i guess. as far as i know, baptism is the only sacrament mentioned in an official ecumenical act from a council (but i could very well be wrong) but surely the other sacraments are dogmas. so the date of the earth may have never been ecumenically proclaimed at a council, but all this really means is that the date wasnt disupted in the age of the councils. the entire Church used a calendar that now puts us at 7515 since creation. the mind of the Church accepted it for over a thousand years, and its only now with atheistic science that ppl are questioning it -- to me that sounds like a dogma.