A lecture given as part of the Calvin College Christian Perspectives in Science Seminar Series, March 30, 2011.

Abstract: In conversations about origins, Augustine is sometimes painted as a fundamentalist in the way he read Scripture (he wasn’t), as someone who corrupted the Hebrew worldview of the Bible with Hellenism (he didn’t), and as the source of a distorted understanding of sin and salvation that needs to be overcome (it needn’t).  Given how central Augustine has been to the development of Christian thought in the west, especially (though by no means exclusively) to the development of the Reformed tradition, we should dig a little deeper and get a fuller understanding of what he actually says about human origins, about human freedom and responsibility, about the nature of sin, about the goodness of creation and the goodness of God.