This collection of essays grew out of a major public lecture series hosted by the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham. The series as a whole aims to bring together biblical scholars, historians of science, and theologians engaged with the doctrine of creation and the interface between science and religion. For the contributors and topics, see Durham site.

Product Description
What are we missing when we look at the creation narratives of Genesis only or primarily through the lens of modern discourse about science and religion? Theologian Peter Bouteneff explores how first-millennium Christian understandings of creation can inform current thought in the church and in the public square. He reaches back into the earliest centuries of our era to recover the meanings that early Jewish and Christian writers found in the stories of the six days of creation and of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Readers will find that their forbears in the faith saw in the Genesis narrative not simply an account of origins but also a rich teaching about the righteousness of God, the saving mission of Christ, and the destiny of the human creature.

From the Back Cover
"This wonderfully researched and elegantly written book provides the reader with a compelling and trustworthy portrait of how the fathers of the church read the story of Adam and Eve. As Bouteneff tells that story we see that the tale of the fall is always contextualized within a narrative that celebrates the restoration and redemption of the human race."--Gary Anderson, professor of Old Testament, University of Notre Dame

"Beginnings takes us back to the beginning of the scriptural creation narrative and to the beginning of the Christian appropriation of this narrative. The reader is initiated into precursors of the Christian tradition (especially the Septuagint and Philo) and then guided through the early Christian thinkers (especially Origen) whose writings underpin current theological reflection on Genesis 1-3. Beginnings allows twenty-first-century readers to wrestle with issues ranging from creation and the image of God to anthropology and gender--all in the context of the community of faith that found its beginning, middle, and end in Jesus Christ. Peter Bouteneff has done the church a valuable service in this focused study."--Joel C. Elowsky, managing editor, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Drew University

"The question of the origin of humankind and the cosmos has perhaps never been so hotly debated as nowadays, with 'evolution' and 'creationism' presenting themselves as polar opposites. In this fine book, Peter Bouteneff presents a carefully researched and scholarly reading of early Christian readings of the creation account in Genesis. What emerges is a range of interlocking insights into God's creative purpose and the human place in the cosmos. Genesis 1-3 is seen as neither a myth nor an outdated scientific account, but a poem of creation, yielding deeper meanings upon closer ponderings. Bouteneff unveils the often surprising riches of our patristic inheritance with a rare intelligence and passion."--Andrew Louth, professor of patristic and Byzantine studies, University of Durham

Excerpt from the Preface

The biblical creation narratives are evocative, authoritative, and important to people of several great religious traditions, and yet—like much of Scripture—there are debates and disputes among members of the same tradition and between members of different traditions about how they are to be read and what their narrative details mean. It is all the more difficult to understand them or even to take them seriously in our day, given how much baggage has been laid on them over the centuries by both high art and popular culture-from the Sistine Chapel ceiling to National Lampoon's Adam and Eve. Then there are the politicized debates that pit "evolution" against "creation," categories that an increasing number of people consider simplistic. Theological discourse, too, looks to the creation narratives for answers to more questions than they can possibly bear-questions about the cosmos, humanity, gender, theodicy. It would be useful to see how they were read before the accretion of so many layers of interpretation.

Within the Christian tradition alone, the exegesis of Genesis 1-3 has a long and varied history. It is worth inquiring how the creation narratives were read when they were first beginning to be considered authoritative foundational texts, particularly by those instrumental in shaping Christian theology. Although this question may be relevant to anyone studying the history of ideas, it is of particular concern to traditions that vest authority in patristic witness. But the evolution of the early Christian interpretation of Genesis 1-3 is of more than antiquarian interest: like all good history, it has the potential to illuminate the present. In this regard, one feature becomes clear from even a cursory study of this period: we do not find a univocal reading or a single method (which might confound those who would impose a single fixed framework on these narratives). We do, however, find a consistent and coherent pattern of reading, whose theological character is considerably different from the modern mainstream. And even if this pattern cannot be adopted wholesale by contemporary readers of all predilections, it may at least point them to something more substantive, constructive, and meaningful than the results of either atheological modern criticism or overwrought theological analysis. 

Review
"K. E. Greene-McCreight's book Ad Litteram engages a theological issue that lies at the very heart of the modern hermeneutical debate over Scripture. She explores with great learning and penetrating insight the relation of the literal sense of the text to the church's Rule of Faith. Using the exegesis of Augustine, Calvin, and Barth as an initial guide she offers a profound and persuasive proposal for a faithful Christian reading of the Bible for today." -- Brevard S. Childs, Yale University

"This book builds well on previous scholarship and advances our understanding of biblical interpretation in the West to a new level of insight and sophistication. By focusing on how three pre-eminent theologians from very different periods, but with a common commitment to the Rule of Faith, treated a single neuralgic topic in a specific important text, the author succeeds in probing more deeply and in more detail than any previous writer into the surprising combination of flexibility and continuity in the mainstream exegetical tradition. Not only the tradition as a whole is thereby illuminated, but also each of the three major figures, and not only their treatments of the plain sense of Genesis 1-3, but the totality of their hermeneutical and theological outlooks. Both historians and theologians will find this study instructive and stimulating." -- George A. Lindbeck, Yale University

Product Description
One of the most complex problems in Christian interpretation of the Bible is the question of what constitutes a "plain sense" reading of scripture. This study breaks fresh ground by examining understandings of the plain sense of scripture along a trajectory represented by Augustine, John Calvin, and Karl Barth. Analyzing their readings of Genesis 1-3, Professor Greene-McCreight focuses on Augustine's De Genesi ad Litteram, libri XII, Calvin's Commentary on the First Book of Moses, and Barth's Church Dogmatics 3.1. The results of this investigation urge an ecumenically significant understanding of the plain sense of scripture: within this theological trajectory, reading according to the plain sense involves a negotiation between the constraints of verbal sense and the Rule of Faith.

Scholars Explore Non-concordism 

Theologies of Creation