HistoricalChristian.Faith
HistoricalChristian.Faith
Dates: c. 417 (City of God, Bk. 15–16) · Wikipedia
Summary: Augustine is the great patristic witness for reading the Flood as
history and allegory together. In the City of God he carries the sacred narrative as real
chronology — defending the antediluvians' 900-year lives as ordinary solar years, treating the genealogies of
Seth and Cain as the literal lines of his "two cities" — and then builds the figure of the ark (Christ and the
Church, the door in its side the spear-wound) atop that history. In 15.27 he lays the both/and down as
a rule, rejecting alike "those who receive the bare history but reject the allegorical interpretation" and "those
who maintain the figurative and not the historical meaning." He is the anchor witness for "allegory layered on
history, not substituted for it," and the chief authority behind the argument that patristic allegory of the Flood
was never a denial of it.
At present it is the history which I aim at defending, that Scripture may not be reckoned incredible when it relates that one man built a city at a time in which there seem to have been but four men upon earth, or rather indeed but three, after one brother slew the other,—to wit, the first man the father of all, and Cain himself, and his son Enoch, by whose name the city was itself called.
— The City of God, Book 15, ch. 8, source. Augustine's posture across Book 15 is that of a defender of the literal narrative against objectors who reckon it "incredible." The same chapter answers the objection that there were too few men to build a city by noting that "the writer of the sacred history does not necessarily mention all the men who might be alive at that time, but those only whom the scope of his work required him to name" — the antediluvian genealogies are abridged records of a real population, not a complete census. The whole apologetic of these books treats Genesis 4–9 as historia, against the Manichees and the cultured despisers alike.
It is plain that the day then was what it now is, a space of four-and-twenty hours, determined by the lapse of day and night; the month then equal to the month now, which is defined by the rise and completion of one moon; the year then equal to the year now, which is completed by twelve lunar months, with the addition of five days and a fourth to adjust it with the course of the sun.
— The City of God, Book 15, ch. 14, trans. Marcus Dods (NPNF1 2), newadvent.org / ccel.org. Augustine is refuting those who saved Scripture's credibility by shrinking its years — supposing the antediluvian "years" were short cycles of which ten made one of ours. He will have none of it: "those antediluvians lived more than 900 years, which were years as long as those which afterwards Abraham lived 175 of, and after him his son Isaac 180." Rather than allegorize the long lives away, he defends them as literal, ordinary, sun-measured years — the longevity of Genesis 5 is real history, not cipher.
…this is certainly a figure of the city of God sojourning in this world; that is to say, of the church, which is rescued by the wood on which hung the Mediator of God and men… And its having a door made in the side of it certainly signified the wound which was made when the side of the Crucified was pierced with the spear; for by this those who come to Him enter; for thence flowed the sacraments by which believers are initiated. And the fact that it was ordered to be made of squared timbers, signifies the immoveable steadiness of the life of the saints.
— The City of God, Book 15, ch. 26, trans. Marcus Dods (NPNF1 2), newadvent.org / ccel.org. The chapter is titled "That the Ark Which Noah Was Ordered to Make Figures in Every Respect Christ and the Church." Augustine reads even the proportions allegorically — "the length of the human body, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, is six times its breadth from side to side, and ten times its depth or thickness," matching the ark's 300×50×30 to the body in which Christ came. But this figural reading is layered onto a structure he takes to have been really built and to have really borne the eight survivors; the next chapter makes that explicit.
Yet no one ought to suppose either that these things were written for no purpose, or that we should study only the historical truth, apart from any allegorical meanings; or, on the contrary, that they are only allegories, and that there were no such facts at all… we must rather believe that there was a wise purpose in their being committed to memory and to writing, and that they did happen, and have a significance, and that this significance has a prophetic reference to the church.
— The City of God, Book 15, ch. 27, trans. Marcus Dods (NPNF1 2), newadvent.org / ccel.org. The chapter's full title states the rule it lays down: "that We Cannot Agree with Those Who Receive the Bare History, But Reject the Allegorical Interpretation, Nor with Those Who Maintain the Figurative and Not the Historical Meaning." Augustine condemns both errors and insists on "and that they did happen, and have a significance" — the events occurred and they prefigure. This single sentence is the load-bearing patristic statement that allegory of the Flood is built on its history, never offered in its place.