Let me admit it up front, the title to this post is a little misleading. Gregory of Nyssa (335-394 AD) was an early Church Father and, along with Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus, was one of the three Cappadocian Fathers—these three men helped formulate the official doctrine of the Trinity. So, to quote Ron Burgundy, in terms of Church history, if you met Gregory of Nyssa, he would be entirely justified if he said, “I don’t know how to put this…but I’m kind of a big deal.”
That being said, no, Gregory of Nyssa was not a supporter of evolution, namely because the theory of evolution did not exist back then. But in light of the recurring mantra of young earth creationists like Ken Ham, that everyone in Church history believed in a young earth, and that God created everything in a literal six days, until the 19th century, when Christians started “compromising” Scripture to fit with evolutionary ideas, any study of how the early Church Fathers read the early chapters of Genesis summarily destroys that YEC claim. Early Church Fathers spoke quite a lot of the early chapters of Genesis, but one thing is for sure: they certainly weren’t advocating a 21st century, modern scientific-historical interpretation of them.
And this brings us to Gregory of Nyssa. Recently, I have been reading the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Genesis 1-11—a collection of the writings of the early Church Fathers on Genesis 1-11. In the section covering Genesis 1:26 and the creation of humanity, they quote Gregory of Nyssa from his work, On the Soul and the Resurrection. He writes the following:
“Scripture informs us that the Deity proceeded by a sort of graduated and ordered advance to the creation of man. After the foundations of the universe were laid, as the history records, man did not appear on the earth at once, but the creation of the brutes preceded him, and the plants preceded them. Thereby Scripture shows that the vital forces blended with the world of matter according to a gradation; first it infused itself into insensate nature; and in continuation of this advanced into the sentient world; and then ascended to intelligent and rational beings….
“The creation of man is related as coming last, as of one who took up into himself every single form of life, both that of plants and that which is seen in brutes. His nourishment and growth he derives from vegetable live; for even in vegetables such processes are to be seen when aliment is being drawn in by their roots and given off in fruit and leaves. His sentient organization he derives from the brute creation. But his faculty of thought and reason is incommunicable, and a peculiar gift in our nature.”
Commentary and Observations
Let me be clear: it would be just as wrong to say, “Gregory of Nyssa is advocating for evolution over time” as it would be to say, “Gregory of Nyssa is advocating for a literal 6-day creation week because he’s just saying plants were created on day 3, sea creatures on day 5, and beasts right before Adam on day 6.”
As I said before, Gregory of Nyssa is not putting forth what could be considered the idea of evolution. He had did not have the scientific knowledge regarding dating methods, genetics, DNA, etc. that we do today.
At the same time, he clearly doesn’t not endorse a literal interpretation of Genesis 1. First, he is saying there is a “graduated and ordered advance to the creation of man.” Young earth creationism does not allow for this. It basically says, “Day 3: plants miraculously appeared—BAM!” Then “Day 5: sea creatures just appeared, fully formed, in the course of one day, with absolutely no relation or connection with plants—BAM!” Then “Day 6: God made the beasts in the morning, then in the afternoon created the first man in history—BAM!”
But Gregory of Nyssa doesn’t say this, does he? He not only is emphasizing the creation of mankind in general, he is emphasizing the relationship and natural connection mankind has with the rest of creation, most notably plants and animals. He even says that with the “creation of man” there is a “taking up of every form of life” from the plant and animal world.
In short, he is emphasizing at the same time the uniqueness of human beings, and yet their natural, biological connection with the rest of the created order. He is not emphasizing some sort of literal, miraculous “poofing into existence” of the entire cosmos, every distinct “kind” of plants and animals, and then one literal man, a mere 6,000 years ago, all within the span of a week.
Yes, the language of Genesis 1 uses the word “day” and yes, there are verses throughout the Bible that talk about the importance of observing the Sabbath because God created in six days and then rested on the seventh. But it is obvious that language is not meant to be taken as a literal description creation happening in that exact, literal way, 6,000 years ago. That’s simply not what is being emphasized, and early Church Fathers like Gregory of Nyssa knew that full well.
As it is said in the introduction of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, “The Fathers read the first chapters of the Bible as unfolding a theological understanding of the human condition.” They did not read them as literal descriptions of actual events that happened exactly that way within history.
The Genre of Genesis 1-11, and the Scientific Knowledge of the Early Church Fathers
And this is the problem with young earth creationism. As can be seen in articles like “The Early Church on Creation,” they will quote figures in Church history, like the early Church Fathers, where they talk about Genesis 1-11, and then young earth creationists will turn around, do a bit of a shell game, and say, “Since so-and-so quotes Genesis 1, therefore he must be taking it as an actual historical account, because look, he’s quoting it.”
But it’s a really bad shell game to anyone who pays enough attention and keeps his eye on the ball. The fact is, in its original context, Genesis 1-11 is clearly in the genre of ancient Near Eastern myth. Indeed, it does something radically different than the other ancient Near Eastern myths, but that’s the genre nonetheless.
What we see with the early Church Fathers is that they take Genesis 1-11 and interpret it in such a way as to confront certain errors and assumptions within Greek philosophy—that that is an entirely legitimate thing to do. But what they simply are not doing is interpreting Genesis 1-11 in the way 21st century young earth creationism claims.
For the sake of argument, let’s say the early Church Fathers assumed Genesis 1-11 to really be historically accurate. If they did, I would say they assumed that much in the same way they assumed the sun went around the earth, or that when a man and woman had sex, that a man was shooting tiny human beings into the woman, and that the woman contributed nothing—she was simply the “fertile soil” that the man “planted his seed.”
They might have assumed all those things, but they were simply making statements based on a lack of scientific knowledge, and advances in science are now able to give a more detailed and accurate explanation regarding the development of the natural order, the rotation of planets around the sun, and the existence of sperm and eggs. And, here’s the point, the advances in scientific knowledge we now know in relation to those things in no way diminishes the theological/philosophical points early Church Fathers like Gregory of Nyssa were making. I have to think that if Gregory of Nyssa time traveled to today, and it was explained to him the theory of evolution, he’d look at what he had written in his work, On the Soul and the Resurrection, and then say, “Wow! What I wrote was even truer than I had thought! Praise God! Sure, I said that human beings are related to the natural world around them, but wow—that evolution thing is amazing!”
So, I’m sorry, one simply cannot claim the early Church Fathers were young earth creationists—they weren’t. Their theological, philosophical, and yes even rudimentary scientific observations could easily incorporate modern evolutionary theory.
The theory of evolution existed already before the time of Christianity, except for the proposal of natural selection being responsible for the survival of some inherited characteristics. Just no one among the classical philosophers had put everything together within a single treatise in the way Charles Darwin did. Charles Darwin was aware of the origins of the theory and mentions it in the Origin of the Species.