What Did Early Christians Believe?

From an article by Michael Jones

In the second century AD, St. Irenaeus of Lyons wrote a book responding to gnostic heretics. Various gnostic sects believed the God of the old testament is a different god from Jesus and was not actually the ultimate creator of all things. Often they would argue that God was evil and lied to Adam and Eve, because the Gnostics read Genesis 2 to mean that God told Adam that if they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil he would die the same day that he ate, thus interpreting the word for day to mean a literal 24-hour day. However, in Genesis 3, it is clear Adam and Eve did not die on the same day they ate from the tree.

St. Irenaeus responded by stating that the days in Genesis were not literal 24-hour days, by drawing from 2 Peter 3:8, where it states the days in Genesis were periods of 1000 years (Against Heresies 5.23.2). Since Adam did not live more than a thousand years, God did not lie when he said Adam would die in the same day that he ate. However, St. Irenaeus also states he thought the days of Genesis 1 were also one thousand year periods:

My Comments

Please Note:

Eusibius (who I am currently reading, and you should too!) quoted heavily from Irenaeus when he wrote The Church History in 325 AD. Eusibius is the first history of Christianity ever to be written. The understanding of the early church held by Catholicism and Protestantism is based on it. When YEC believers tell me that Christians have always believed from the very beginning that Genesis taught literal 24 hour days I do not believe them because St. Irenaeus argued against the idea.