Retrieving Augustine's Doctrine of Creation - by Gavin Ortlund (Paperback)

About the Book

How might premodern exegesis of Genesis inform Christian debates about creation today? Pastor and theologian Gavin Ortlund retrieves Augustine's reading of Genesis 1-3 and considers how his premodern understanding of creation can help Christians today, shedding light on matters such as evolution, animal death, and the historical Adam and Eve.

Book Synopsis

How might premodern exegesis of Genesis inform Christian debates about creation today? Pastor and theologian Gavin Ortlund retrieves Augustine's reading of Genesis 1-3 and considers how his premodern understanding of creation can help Christians today, shedding light on matters such as evolution, animal death, and the historical Adam and Eve.

Review Quotes

"People from all sides of the church's discussion on origins have cherry-picked quotations from Augustine to bolster their views, without digging in to his actual doctrine of creation. In so doing, we attempt to cast Augustine in our own image. Ortlund has done us all a service by presenting a much more comprehensive understanding of Augustine's thought on creation and retrieving his voice from across the centuries. I predict that Ortlund's treatment of Augustine will also be disappointing to different kinds of people-those looking to him merely to prop up their own theories. He gives us a more complex, sophisticated, and surprising Augustine-one that makes me want to read more Augustine . . . and more from Ortlund."

"This remarkable book offers a finely textured yet accessible interpretation of Augustine's views on creation, at the same time relating his thought to contemporary issues in a way that is creative, responsible, and compelling. I commend this book with enthusiasm to any Christian in search of insight into debates about creation and science, to both scholars and students interested in Augustine's thinking on creation, and to all those who seek a first-rate model of humble, rigorous, and faithful theological scholarship for the sake of the church."

"What can the ancient bishop Augustine of Hippo contribute to contemporary debates regarding creation, the age of the earth, and evolution? A lot, as it turns out. Readers will find Gavin Ortlund's masterful study of Augustine's doctrine of creation to be a smart, humble, and immensely helpful exercise of theological reflection on a most vexing question."

"Gavin Ortlund's careful interpretive and critical reading of Augustine concerning Genesis and in particular human origins is a remarkably relevant contribution to the current, heated debate concerning the historical Adam. Contemporary investigators will find illuminating and thought-provoking insights in this important study."

"Like almost all the church fathers, Augustine was fixated on Genesis 1-3, which he rightly saw as the key to the Christian worldview. Dr. Ortlund takes us back to the man and his beliefs, at once so distant from and yet so near to our own concerns. Modern readers will be challenged by Augustine's insights, and by entering into dialogue with him, they may find answers to the dilemmas they confront. An exciting book on a key topic for our times."

"We need pastors like Gavin Ortlund, and we need books written by pastors like Gavin Ortlund! His opening chapter on humility sets the stage for a book that is contextually responsible, academically sound, and pastorally motivated. I highly recommend this book as a rewarding and promising retrieval of Augustine's doctrine of creation for the good of the church."

"What do we who live in the post-industrial revolution twenty-first century have to learn about creation from a fifth-century North African bishop? As it turns out, quite a lot. First and foremost, Augustine helps us learn how to think, not only what to think. In Retrieving Augustine's Doctrine of Creation, Gavin Ortlund invites us into a conversation with one of the greatest minds of late antiquity to explore together the fundamental distinction between 'nature' and 'creation'; the former being the idolatrous attempt to perceive our reality as independent, while the latter restoring what Ortlund terms 'a holistic framework for how to live as God's creatures in God's world.' This is a book that needs to be read slowly, for neither the topic nor the transformative effect can be rushed. And there is no better interlocutor than Augustine to help us move from our autonomous, self-referential idolatry to the Creator of all, whose image we bear. Ortlund has done us a great favor. Tolle, lege!"

About the Author

Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Ojai in Ojai, California. He was previously a research fellow for the Creation Project at the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the author of Finding the Right Hills to Die On, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals, and Anselm's Pursuit of Joy.