Did the early church teach that God performed the first animal sacrifice in Gen 3:21?
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Among the Church Fathers who discuss the coverings that God made for Adam and Eve, most are concerned with what type of skin was involved. It does not appear than any of them saw the coverings as a sacrifice per se. Among the suggestions:
- their physical bodies (Origen)
- the bark of trees (Gregory Nazianzen)
- miraculously-fashioned apparel (Grotius)
Ephrem the Syrian (b. 306) comes the closest when he speculates, after suggesting that God miraculously transformed leaves into animal skins:
Or were, perhaps, some animals killed before them, so that they could nourish themselves with their flesh, cover up their nakedness with their skins, and in their deaths see the death of their own bodies?
This, however, is not a sacrifice, but merely a slaughter. The best answer may have been given by Theodoret of Cyrus:
It strikes me as futile to pry into the way God came by skins and to imagine a novel form of clothing. We should be content with the text, acknowledge that there is no task beyond the Creator of the universe, and admire the unlimited goodness of God who, taking care for sinners, did not overlook their need for clothing when they were naked.
Conclusion: a search for an apostolic or post-apostolic age writer who suggested that Gen. 3:21 was sacrifice performed by God has proved futile so far. Since several church fathers discuss the skins, we can conclude that they preserved no teaching to the effect that the clothing represented a sacrifice.
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Source: stackoverflow.com
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