How did the church fathers understand and interpret Charles Darwin and evolutionary science? Well that is easy, because Charles Darwin was not even born until some 1500 years after the church fathers! The church fathers obviously did not even know about Charles Darwin and his evolutionary thinking!
One of the things that I learned in seminary and has been reinforced since graduating is the importance of church history. I have found it extremely helpful in things that I am studying or things that I might be thinking through to ask the question; “what did the church fathers believe on this?” or to ask “how did the church fathers interpret this?”
As I have been reading for an upcoming class on biblical creationism one of the books that I am reading is called Coming to Grips with Genesis: Biblical Authority and the Age of the Earth
Understanding how the church fathers understood something can give us insight into how we could perhaps interpret or understand something. Mook, quite wisely, had this to say about using the church fathers for our interpreation:
“Christians should be aware of the great cloud of witnesses in Church history, and a judicious use of the fathers can be both relevant and edifying. And even though the Christian’s highest and final authority should always be Scripture, the more knowledge of Church history one has, the better. In being tutored by the fathers, we will be better armed to discern and respond to the novel theological heterodoxies in their day and ours.” (pg. 25)
Let me point you to one resource that is extremely helpful in processing all that the church fathers had to say and write. InterVarsity Press has published the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. The set is not yet complete, but for the volumes that are available, they look at how the church fathers responded and interpreted the Text of Scripture. Take a look at it on the IVP site and you’ll get a better understanding for what I am talking about. (These resources are also available through Logos 
).
