Creation and Evolution

18c_russiaThe crucifixion, death and resurrection of Christ is the proper beginning point for all Christian theology. Christ’s Pascha should be the source for all Christian reflection. It is clear that the disciples themselves did not understand the Scriptures nor Christ Himself until after the resurrection (Luke 24:45). We cannot approach Pascha as a midpoint in a historical narrative. It is the beginning. That which came before is only understood by reading backwards from Pascha (even though Pascha was before all things – Rev. 13:8). Everything subsequent to Christ’s resurrection is also understood only in the light of Pascha. Pascha is the meaning of all things. I offer this brief reminder of the true nature of theology as I continue my reflections on evolution and creation.

As I noted in the previous article, the age of the universe presses the question about the nature of the Biblical creation narrative in Genesis. Advocates for a 6,000 year-old earth based in a strict literalism find themselves having to resort to notions of a universe created in a manner to only “appear” old. A single, flawed reading of Scripture is preferred to the reliability of simple observation. With such caprice as dogma, Christianity would be embracing a literalist tyranny. Nothing in the world is reliable, only a narrow reading of the text. This narrow reading is a product of a false use of the notion of history

How did history come to triumph over all things? The answer is not far removed from Genesis and Adam.

The early chapters of Genesis were treated in a variety of ways by the early fathers. They by no means held universally to a literal interpretation. The Old Testament mentions Adam but once (other than a geneology) outside the book of Genesis. Adam as the progenitor of sin is nowhere an idea of importance (or even an idea) within the Old Testament. St. Paul raises Adam to a new level of consideration, recognizing in him a type of Christ, “the Second Adam.” But St. Paul’s Adam is arguably much like St. Paul’s Abraham (in Galatians), a story whose primary usefulness is the making of a theological point.

Nevertheless, St. Paul’s lead eventually becomes the pathway for history’s ascendancy. For while it is true that man’s breaking communion with God is the source of death, this is reduced to mere historical fact in the doctrine of Original Sin. For here Adam, as the first historical man, becomes infinitely guilty and deserving of punishment, and pays his juridical debt forward to all generations. This historical understanding of the fall, with inherited guilt, locks the Fall within historical necessity. It is among numerous reasons that Original Sin, as classically stated in the West, has not found a lasting place within Orthodox tradition.

Written into a diminished doctrine of the atonement, Adam as the historical source of the fall becomes a theological necessity. He also becomes an easy target for the enemies of the Christian faith. For even if the resurrection is beyond the reach of unbelief, a 6,000 year-old Adam is child’s play for those who would reduce the need for Christ’s redemption to the ridicule of a few ancient bones and Carbon-14 dating.

Some would reduce this historical danger by pushing Adam back in time. How long? And in what way? C.S. Lewis, wonderful Christian thinker, but still a man of his Western heritage, offers an account of an older Adam, merged with an evolutionary tale:

For long centuries, God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all of the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed in this state for ages before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof of its humanity. But it was only an animal because all its physical and psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say “I” and “me,” which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgments of truth, beauty and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past…. We do not know how many of these creatures God made, nor how long they continued in the Paradisal state. But sooner or later they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could become as gods…. They wanted some corner in this universe of which they could say to God, “This is our business, not yours.” But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives. We have no idea in what particular act, or series of acts, the self-contradictory, impossible wish found expression. For all I can see, it might have concerned the literal eating of a fruit, the question is of no consequence. (C.S. Lewis, Problem of Pain, 68-71)

This requirement to salvage some literal Adam somewhere, somehow, is not shared by the universal opinion of the fathers. Indeed, the treatment of the early chapters of Genesis is “all over the map,” sometimes even within the writings of a single father. The primary fathers of the East (if I may use such a term), Basil, the two Gregories, etc., are quite free with both historical and ahistorical treatments of Adam. Bouteneff, citing both Behr and Balthasar, notes that Gregory does not envisage a historic pre-fallen immortal state.

[Gregory] alludes twice in the Catechetical Oration to the fact that Moses is speaking through a story, or an allegory. The implication of this is that God’s addition of mortality is a part of his creation of humanity from the beginning, in foreknowledge of the ongoing fall. However, Gregory does not care to make this plain here. Nor does he ever develop a portraiture of an idealized pre-fallen Adam or Eve who would not have been subject to death and all that it entails for human life (Bouteneff, 164).

There is even an on-again-off-again treatment of paradise as a non-material existence. St. Basil uses the very interesting phrase: “In your righteous judgment, you, O God, sent him [man] forth from paradise into this world…”

St. Basil is far removed from the later Western account of Adam as the progenitor of sin. He wrote: “Evil has no other origin than our voluntary falls. . . . Each of us is the first author of his own vice; . . . you are the master of your actions” (In Hex. 2.5).

Bouteneff writes:

So strong was his sense of human free choice that Basil did not even consider an action sinful unless it was done consciously and voluntarily. He thus has no interest in blaming Adam for our sin, because freedom—a part of the divine image itself—trumps all determinism (138).

This does not deny humanity’s complicity in death. Rather, it is similar to Dostoevsky’s words: “Each man is guilty of the sins of the whole world.”

But does this mean that God created a world that has held death from the beginning? It would not be strange to say so, since Pascha was before the beginning. St. Paul states that creation was made “subject to futility” in view of man (but not with man as the cause). Creation is clearly “subject to futility” by God’s action.

What is damaged in such an account is the apparent integrity of a time line. But it has never been part of the Christian gospel that history is a closed system. That the faith redeems history is one thing, but it is not subject to it. Pascha triumphs over all things.

Adam’s breaking of communion with God brings death. Death as the “last enemy,” however, is not revealed until Christ’s resurrection. For though human beings have always died, death was by no means seen as the central point of the Old Testament faith. Indeed, death and life-after-death were handled in a variety of manners before Christ.

Just as Christ’s resurrection reveals life to the world, so His life also reveals death as the enemy. It is only in light of Christ’s death and resurrection that the story of Adam becomes interesting and universal in its meaning. Christ’s resurrection liberates the early chapters of Genesis from possible obscurity as Jewish creation myth into the most profound account of the crisis of human existence.

Death is a fact of our existence, thus the Fall is a fact of that existence. But the significance of our death is only made known to us in Christ. I personally remain skeptical of the efforts to describe the historical character of the Fall, even as I remain utterly aware of its reality in my life. Biological death, well known throughout our existence, is not yet the “fullness” of death revealed in Christ/Adam. We do not know death until Christ.

Science

There is a conflict between Christian believing and certain versions of evolutionary theory. Biology itself holds no contradictions for the Christian faith. However, meta-theories of biology are often grounded in ideologies that have no place within science. As theories of meaning, they are more “religious” than scientific in nature.

Biology can describe change, but the meaning of change, the purpose of change remains beyond its scope. Creation as the unfolding of “random chance” is the best that can be offered without reference to God (even if some chances are more likely than others). But this brings us to the same question that is confronted daily by believers (and others). God’s work remains opaque, we cannot see behind its results and watch the process of divine action. But the results are often so startling that randomness would seem absurd. And this applies profoundly to the unfolding of our universe.

Believers need not argue about the absurdity of a universe that some think to be random. For the resurrection is that one moment that shatters the silence of God and the opacity of His work. It is the voice of God explaining Himself (John 1:18).

We rightly hear in the language of “survival of the fittest” nothing more than the 19th century Christian heresy of Progress. Progress is a mere ideology, a secularized version of Christian eschatology. The 20th century endured the catastrophe of various brave new worlds. Progress, as an idea, belongs in the dustbin of history. History and evolution do not carry within them their own meaning. If a comet takes out human existence tomorrow, then all of the “progress” of the human race will have been a moot point. “Progress” begs the question: “progressing towards what?”

But there is a movement (kinesis) within creation and it is revealed in Christ/Adam. The created Adam, the significance of whose story is made known in Christ, is created as image and likeness of God. The fathers note that this creation is only fulfilled in Christ Himself, the Second Adam. For the first Adam does not become what he was made to be. Only the Second Adam is able to say on the Cross, “It is finished,” for man in the likeness of God is only revealed in the suffering and self-emptying of the Cross – the death-that-becomes-life.

Just as Christ’s resurrection reveals the meaning of Adam, so the resurrection reveals the meaning and purpose of creation itself. The resurrection alone offers transcendence and eternity to a universe of seeming chance and randomness. The movement of Creation is towards Christ’s Pascha, though we do not call that movement “evolution” nor imagine it unfolding through biology. But we do not imagine that the unfolding of the universe has nothing to do with the resurrection, for Creation shares a destiny with man:

…the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Rom 8:19-21 NKJ)

This is indeed the glory of God!

About Fr. Stephen Freeman

Fr. Stephen is a priest of the Orthodox Church in America, Pastor Emeritus of St. Anne Orthodox Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is also author of Everywhere Present and the Glory to God podcast series.


Comments

349 responses to “Creation and Evolution”

  1. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    Leonard,
    People will disagree, but I don’t hear the necessity or inference of Adam as a historical person in Romans 5. I hear the obvious conclusions. But I think people fail to hear St. Paul’s Rabbinical voice in the construct of this commentary.

  2. Anna Avatar
    Anna

    Father, bless!

    Again, I’m here to bring my little contribution, beginning with a paragraph of my previous comment:

    The problem, of course, is the age of the earth (or rather of the whole cosmos). Scientific conclusions in this respect make it embarassing for an educated person to support the idea of a young cosmos. However, a young cosmos (or at least a young life on earth) is the simplest solution to the problem of (animal) death before the Fall of Adam and Eve. A young earth which appears old need not be the work of a trickster god (I can’t even capitalize God in this situation). Someone mentioned the creation of Adam, which was created as an adult and not as a newborn baby. Also, there are many instances, of which I only mention now lenses and mirrors, which produce the appearance of a thing in a place where it is not. I see no reason why the Fall would not act like such a perception-distorting device and produce the appearance of an older universe. This is, of course, a stretch and a speculation; but being an educated person, I find it difficult to affirm the possibility of a young cosmos with simplicity.

    It seems it is also not fashionable to assert a historical Adam and a historical Eve. C.S. Lewis was ready to admit a literal fruit (something which the Fathers seem to find unnecessary), but not the existence of an actual Adam and an an actual Eve. Personally, I find it hard to believe that St. Paul would have made the parallel between the first (old) Adam and the second (new) Adam, had he not believed firmly in the existence of the old Adam.

    Orthodoxy may not be glamorous or relevant to the concerns of contemporary society, but is and always has been relevant to those who seek salvation and communion with Christ. In my (not so) humble opinion, those who seek Christ will accept Orthodoxy as is, while those who are not interested will find pretexts to avoid it, no matter what.

    An important point to make, of course, is that the literalism of the Fathers is not the same with the literalism of the American Fundamentalism and even less with that of the “scientific Creationism” — a trap in which even Fr. Seraphim Rose fell, unfortunately.

  3. […] That’s some of Father Stephen Freeman’s gravamen in his recent essays here and here. […]

  4. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    Perhaps it is also worth noting some wider issues St Paul is talking about in that entire passage. They are about selecting who do I want to be ‘planted together’ with, ‘grafted unto’ or ‘unified with’, the old or the new Adam?
    He is talking of a past “old Adam” and a past (having overturned the curse in the past tense) “new Adam”. However, he is really talking of now, who do we now become a part of? and paraenetically expounding on the need to be in Christ.

    Otherwise, if taken literally, Rom 1-14 would imply that death only existed from Adam to Moses(!) ‘death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.’

  5. SC Avatar
    SC

    Father, Bless

    Thank you for your post.

    Why is it that so many Christians these days appear to be going to great efforts to explain Christianity is a way that is compatible with evolution and modern cosmology? Keep in mind, however, that evolution and modern cosmology, however, are two different sets of propositions.

    Evolution is a hypothesis (no, not a theory) about the origin of different forms of life. In the McLean vs Arkansas trial, it was ruled that Creationism should not be taught in schools because it is not scientific, i.e. it is not falsifiable or verifiable. However, evolution is not falsifiable or verifiable (and hence, is not a theory, as such); it is a way of understanding natural phenomena based on certain presuppositions, and, hence, is closer to being a worldview than a theory (and, therefore, the difference between evolution and Creationism lies in the presuppositions, and not the data). One of the presuppositions that underlie evolution is uniformitarianism (i.e. that the current natural processes allow us to determine past natural processes). For example, current patterns of sediment deposition explain previous patterns of sediment deposition. One of the presuppositions of Creationism is catastrophism, i.e. that at some points in history, natural processes may have been different to those at present. For example, if there had been a flood, sediment deposition may have occurred at a rate faster than that at which is currently occurs, meaning that geology may point to a young earth, even if, when based on uniformitarian presuppositions, it may look old (notice the difference lies in the presuppositions). Notwithstanding, there is some sedimentary evidence of a flood a few thousand years ago, and it is uncanny that almost every culture has a flood myth (e.g. one native Australian myth I heard of was that the god of the tribe, in the beginning, created three sons who, when he had formed them on earth, had not left any dry land for them, and, subsequently, saved them from drowning in the waters that, in the beginning of this god’s creation, covered all the dry land–?Noah’s three sons).

    To be honest, very few of us understand the actual scientific processes of evolution and the big bang ourselves. Most of those who believe in evolution and the big bang do so by faith—faith in the scientists who tell them that these events are true. Am I going to have faith in modern scientists who may be coming to wrong conclusions based on those presuppositions (i.e. not that they are bad scientists collecting the wrong data, but that they are misunderstanding the data presented to them, a bit like viewing the world wrongly because they may be wearing the wrong pair of glasses) or am I going to have faith in what has been the general consensus of the church until the last 150 years.

    Furthermore, I understand, Father, your comment that searching for relics of the flood or Eden can had sinful motivations, but this cannot be presented as an argument against their veracity—St Helen found the true cross, but I am sure someone could have searched for it with sinful motives as a means of converting infidels.

    “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Are we, by striving to defend the evolutionary/big bang cosmology view of “the whole world”, losing our own soul? Evolution erodes the idea of a concrete human nature; where do apes end and humans begin? Where is a creature not made in the image of God and then made in the image of God? If someone went back in time, could they have killed Adam’s father for food if they were starving, but not Adam? How can we argue to the modern bioethicist, who sees the foetus as similar in structure to an animal, and the dolphin as superior to the Down’s syndrome patient, that a foetus and a Down’s syndrome patient are made in the image of God? Are they not all along an evolutionary spectrum? What differentiates them? Mental capacities (but a dolphin may have more than a foetus or a Down’s syndrome patient)? Degree of evolution (but could some races be more “evolved” i.e. Nazism). The presence of a soul (but when did ape-men first get a soul)? Only if man is a distinct creation with a unique nature who is created in the image of God are we able to preserve the idea of human dignity are are to withstand the attacks of those who would undermine the dignity of our children and our grandparents. It is more profitable to have a concrete understanding of what humanity is, while leaving it as a holy mystery why the stars appear 14 billion light-years away (although some have offered interesting arguments to try to explain this), than vice-versa.

    I have stated before on your blog that I believe evolution is erroneous because it would require the Christian to hold that God used death to create man and because Adam would have died anyway, regardless of whether or not he had sinned. The book of the Wisdom of Solomon states that God did not create death, but created him to be immortal, and that it was because of the devil that death came into the world (i.e. the fall). You have responded that Adam (or the group of beings that he represents), by sinning, may have caused effects of the fall to occur earlier in history, prior to actual fall. However:
    • If sin can have retrospective effects on history (i.e. death occurring back in time), should not the resurrection have an even more powerful retrospective effect on history (people no longer dying or being raised again prior to the resurrection), or at least a present resurrecting effect on history (i.e. people rising from the dead now)?
    • The council of Carthage in 419 A.D. stated “That whosoever says that Adam, the first man, was created mortal, so that whether he had sinned or not, he would have died in body— that is, he would have gone forth of the body, not because his sin merited this, but by natural necessity, let him be anathema”.
    • For those Catholics reading this, the Council of Trent, fifth session, states that “If any one does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema.”

    Lastly, if Rublev’s icon of the Trinity is evidence for the existence of the Trinity, cannot the Paschal icon of the harrowing of hades be evidence for the existence of Adam and Eve (i.e. the icon illustrates Christ raising Adam and Eve out of their tombs while standing on the demolished gates of hades)?

    Father, forgive me for any lack of humility offering these arguments back to you, and may Jesus have mercy on me, a sinner.

  6. Brian McDonald Avatar
    Brian McDonald

    Fr. Stephen,

    In a response to a post of mine you wrote: “I did my senior thesis in seminary on Owen Barfield’s Doctrine of God (one of the hardest papers I ever wrote. To this day I barely understand it when I read it, and I wrote it!)”

    You went one better than me. I read Barfield in seminary, when a professor recommended Saving the Appearances. I didn’t understand him enough even to attempt a paper.

    Quote from a post by aka (Feb. 10) “We need theological reflection on what Genesis 2:17 and 3:3, Romans 5, and 1 Corinthians 15:21 mean if death existed prior to Adam and Eve’s Fall (whether they were real historical figures or whether they are allegorical or metaphorical).”

    Archdeacon Kuraev (or Kurayev) has a thoughtful discussion of this in an article “Orthodoxy and Creation” http://solzemli.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/orthodoxy-and-creationism-by-deacon-andrew-kuraev/ He argues that death properly speaking is a phenomenon that properly speaking applies only to human beings. (In the article this makes more sense that this bald statement.)

    Quote from Anna on Feb 13: “However, a young cosmos (or at least a young life on earth) is the simplest solution to the problem of (animal) death before the Fall of Adam and Eve”

    What is the “solution” (or is that a presumptuous word?) to the problem of animal death before the Fall? Unlike Archdeacon Kuraev, I still find animal death (and suffering) a problem. Outside C.S. Lewis’s attempt to deal with that in “The Problem of Pain,” and Kalomiros’s “Six Dawns of Creation” (which I believe an earlier poster referenced) I haven’t seen a lot of discussion on this from those who reject the young earth position. Kuraev and Lewis relate animal pain to the fall (using different lines of reasoning.

    The most powerful realization I got out of Fr.’s original post is that any discussion of the evolution/creation issues should start with the risen Christ, whose conquest of death is a revelation of the original human purpose, ultimate human destiny, and anticipation of the ultimate fulfillment of the ‘groaning creation.” With our eyes fixed on this truth, we may have confidence that there must be answers to any tormenting philosophical/scientific questions—as well as a recognition that our faith doesn’t depend upon someone’s ability to solve any of the intellectual or spiritual problems that arise.

    Nevertheless, I sure would be interested in any reflections on animal pain that seem (even if only in the form of a “not unlikely” Socratic myth) to throw light on this issue.

  7. Scott Morizot Avatar

    SC wrote:
    “However, evolution is not falsifiable or verifiable”

    First, while I have no doubt those terms were used in a legal case, that’s not really the best description of “theory” from a scientific perspective. One pretty good description in lay terms that springs to mind is Stephen Hawking’s in, if I recall correctly, “A Brief History of Time”.

    Even with that note, however, the above assertion is simply false. Evolution (and “modern cosmology” for that matter) is most definitely a scientific theory with an abundant and ever-growing body of evidence. Nor is that evidence particularly difficult for a reasonably well-educated and intelligent person to grasp. I’m an information technology guy, but my father and aunt are both biologists/geneticists and I’ve never had a problem following the gist of their research. In the past, I’ve helped my father in the past build datasets to track and determine speciation for different studies. (He was primarily a cancer researcher, but did a number of other things as well.)

    While people can and do believe anything they wish, patently false assertions like that do absolutely nothing to advance Christian faith and much to harm it. And it’s ironic, really. When you study the history of ancient Christianity in a pagan world, it’s notable how firmly grounded in a contingent reality revealed in Christ and a reality that was not capricious and could be understood to be stable and comprehensible. Christianity wasn’t the only such force, of course, but it was a significant one laying the groundwork that allowed modern science to develop.

  8. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    SC
    You make a number of theological assertions that should be examined.

    It is certainly the teaching of the Church that death for humanity begins with Adam. This is also to say that there has never been a man who was not subject to death (Christ voluntarily). It is well within the fathers (Ireneaus, Nyssa, et al) to see Adam as “adolescent” – created to become image and likeness, but he does not fulfill this. It is only fulfilled in Christ. Nicholas Cabasilas says:

    It was for the New Man that human nature was created at the beginning. . . . It was not the old Adam who was the model for the new, but the new Adam for the old. . . . For those who have known him first, the old Adam is the archetype because of our fallen nature. But for him who sees all things before they exist, the first Adam is the imitation of the second. (The Life in Christ 6.91-94)

    But Adam refuses and turns away from the gift of immortality (we are not immortal by nature but only by grace). Immortality is fulfilled only in Christ.

    Nor is it wrong to think of creation “made subject to futility” (Romans 8), as having been made subject to futility (i.e. death and decay) from its inception. This is a “proleptic” act of God, who makes creation “subject to futility” in light of the choice that will be made in Adam. We do not need to hold to an immortal creation which falls into death. Paradise is clearly separated from “this world.”

    There are even a few obscure musings within early fathers in which Paradise and the Fall occur within the mind of God before creation. This, of course, is a stretch and has its own problems. It never became the normative teaching in the fathers. But it should point to the scope of possibilities that we enter when we contemplate beginnings and paradise and the like.

    There are some today, who, far from being concerned about our unlikeness to other animals, see in the evolutionary account of relatedness (shared DNA, etc.) a representation of the doctrine as man as “microcosm.” We are the whole universe in microcosm according to St. Maximus. We are the summation of creation. It would seem that this theological assertion is only strengthened if we indeed share much commonality with everything that came before us. According to physicists, many of the minerals and elements found within us and our world were birth in Supernovae (“we are stardust” in the words of a 60’s song).

    This does not diminish human beings –

    But you ask the question: “Why is it that so many Christians these days appear to be going to great efforts to explain Christianity is a way that is compatible with evolution and modern cosmology?”

    Because this is the world we live in. The meta-narrative of evolution (“survival of the fittest” etc) is certainly a major debating point even within science. But the mechanics of evolution (DNA, etc.) strongly favors the change/connectedness, etc. that belong to that model. On the micro-level of virus’s, etc. where change occurs very quickly, we see constant change and “evolving” (antibiotic resistance, etc.).

    As Christians we in no way would hold to a blind/chance, random evolutionary theory. At most, we would accept or profess a model of “directed” evolution. But that would fall under the heading of “causelessly causing” – something we believe because we believe in God, but not something that we could prove. What we can do, however, is, as with the Big Bang, point to the problem of “something from nothing.” Evolution, and its present point (Us!) also points to something more than randomness.

    But, as I said, it is because we live in a world in which biology, and physics raise serious questions. We are not in the 19th century talking to Darwin. We’re in the 21st century dealing with genome mapping, Higgs Bosons and the like.

    But like CS Lewis’ grumpy dwarves in The Last Battle, we too easily spend our time grumbling about “theory” and “hypothesis” and not engaging what is happening all around us. I serve a parish in a city where one of the National Labs is centered. My congregation is rooted in science and technology, some of it at extremely profound levels. I have to engage these things at a very serious level.

    My observation is that many have internalized a version of the Church’s teaching that leaves them stuck. It becomes rigid and loses its wonder. A lot of energy is invested in defending positions and fighting. Much less energy is put into prayer accompanied by wonder with the fruit of theoria – in which we push and see what we have not seen before.

    If this series of articles pushes people to their boundaries and increases wonder – then it has been worth it. I do not mean to create angst or doubt – though a little angst and doubt can be useful if it drives us to pray.

    My advice to us all: ask more questions, draw fewer conclusions.

  9. guy Avatar
    guy

    Father,

    Well, i guess i understand the Flatland metaphor (Isn’t that what the book was called?), but i still don’t see how it answers some of the questions i asked.

    i take it you’re claiming the difference between a religious 2-story view and an Orthodox 1-story view has something to do with the connection relationship. 2-story entails some sort of separation. And i guess i’ve heard you talk about it like this before–all those divine entities and events are “up there” but not “here”–as though there’s some other “place” for them to be or to be happening.

    i guess that doesn’t ring true for me though. My religious upbringing is filled with talk of the divine being here and now. –that God is providentially at work in everything. –that spiritual warfare takes place all around us. i even remember meeting charismatics who thought every good parking spot in bad weather they ever got was the Holy Spirit’s doing. i even met high church protestants who believed in a real presence in the Eucharist. (i suppose i did meet a fair number of Christians who at the end of the day were deists when it came to God’s involvement in the world, if that’s who you’ve been talking about the whole time.)

    i guess i do start to see the difference you’re describing about symbols; i take it you do mean that metaphysically robust sense of “make present” i described earlier. i’d like to ask you more about that–especially about how this applies to icons and scriptures–but my questions would be tangential at this point i think (maybe i’m wrong about that though).

    What is more important is that i don’t see how the Flatland metaphor answers my final question about “true” and “real.” It seems to me you’ve just restated the same argument:

    1. If “true” and “real” presuppose a worldview i don’t hold, then i cannot use them in a non-self-defeating way.
    2. “True” and “real” do presuppose a worldview i don’t hold.
    3. Therefore, i cannot use them in a non-self-defeating way.

    i hear you now to be saying, “Well, it’s kinda like only having 2-dimnesional talk when i mean to be referencing a 3rd dimension.” i understand that’s what you’re claiming, but i still don’t see any evidence for that claim. It seems to me the conventional sense of “true” and “real” do not make any relevant presuppositions such that they preclude anything you’ve claimed or described so far. If we’re talking squares or cubes, i don’t see any problem with saying that a proposition P is still true in virtue of the accuracy with which it resembles a feature of squares or cubes to which it corresponds. i don’t how the concept would fail to serve its function no matter how many dimensions are introduced (perhaps a 4th–perdurance through time).

    Now, i get that you might hold that there are propositions for which that accuracy cannot obtain. Okay. But that’s just the same as saying those propositions are false. For instance, the claim that “A symbol is a mere idea.” Your account so far entails that this claim is false. Or consider the claim “The literal details of the Genesis account ought to be understood to correspond to historical events.” i take it you think that claim is false. Or again, “Pascha is that in virtue of which any historical event is relevant or meaningful.” i take it you think that claim is true. But these are all still true or false in the conventional sense of “true” or “false.” i don’t see how anything you’ve said so far entails that there is something inimical to the conventional concept of “true” itself (i haven’t picked on the term “real,” but i think the same could easily be said for it as well.)

    It seems to me that it would be easy to communicate with the one-dimensional talkers (the non-religious who don’t even acknowledge the existence of squares). You just think there is far more furniture in the room than they do. (Our metaphors abound.)

  10. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    SC,
    even if nature provided all the scientific proofs to the contrary, someone would create a chimera of man and animal -even if it lasted for a few seconds – and the adversary would use this to produce a whirlpool of thoughts on the differentiation of man and beast, soul and soul-less etc.

  11. guy Avatar
    guy

    Father,

    Thinking a little more–all i can figure is that when you criticize the conventional conception of “true,” either you must have in mind a concept more robust than the simple correspondence definition i’ve given, or what you’re really criticizing is the conventional *methodology* by which the concept is applied rather than the concept itself. Yes? No? Maybe?

  12. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    Dino,

    Isn’t it evident from the context that St. Paul is speaking in terms of the law of Moses when he speaks of death “nevertheless” reigning from Adam to Moses (that is, even though there was no law to transgress)? Is he not merely demonstrating the reality that the problem of death is far deeper than the law?

  13. Shane Avatar
    Shane

    Father bless, what do the Church Fathers have to say about the fall of Lucifer and how/if that relates to the fall of Adam? For many of us, the concept of pain, suffering, and death is incompatible with a good creation from the “good God and lover of mankind”, similar to your previous articles on an Orthodox understanding of Hell vs distorted images of an angry and vengeful god. Could Lucifer’s fall be related to the chaos hinted at in the Genesis creation story or to death outside of Paradise?

  14. Robert Bearer Avatar
    Robert Bearer

    Father, bless. I have really benefitted from your ongoing conversation with Guy. (Have also appreciated remarks of many others here, including Brian and SC who, it seems to me–notwithstanding Scott’s rebuttal–raised some important point, including the devastating consequances for society that have been exacerbated by 150 years of teaching survivial of the fittest.

    In your own reply to SC you said, in passing, “On the micro-level of virus’s, etc. where change occurs very quickly, we see constant change and ‘evolving’ (antibiotic resistance, etc.).” Your quotes around “evolving” are tell-tale, since this is an example of adaptation and not the synthesis of anythign like a new species or “form” and hence is not, prima facie, an example of evolution at all. But the modern mind sees evolution everywhere . . . As you say in your article, it is a symptom of “the 19th Century heresy of Progress . . . a secularized version of Christian eschatology.”

    Much of what you say in Creation and Evolution is profound and powerful–the more so when it does not digress to make light of young earth creationists by confining them to people believing a 6,000 year-old cosmos. This is an oversimplification of the young-earth position and and of the make-up of its advocates–many of whom are also scientists or engineers of one type or another.

    Furthermore, leavning aside the age of the earth controvery, there are plenty in the scientifie community who have pointed out the problems of irreducible complexity that seem to make evolution as conventionally understood and popularly taught an impossible fairy-tale.

    As you also say in one of your comments: at bottom every Christian must be a creationist a fact born out by the centrality of Pascha.

    Christ is in our midst.
    rlb

  15. meshell2001 Avatar
    meshell2001

    If I’m understanding correctly, Father Stephen has concluded that the creation account in Genesis is to be considered a myth (in the sense of the word he has previously provided) because the book of Genesis presents it as a myth. Thus, it is perfectly Orthodox to accept the creation account as myth, as opposed to historic fact, because that’s how Holy Scripture reveals it to us.

    This is very enlightening to me because I am not sharp enough to detect the literary traits that distinguish the mythological from the purely historical when it comes to Scripture. For instance, the genealogies in both Genesis 5:1-32, and Luke 3:23-38 mention presumably this same Adam from the mythological creation account. Does this follow that these genealogies should be viewed as mythological? Like I said, I’m not very sharp, but to me these genealogies should also be taken as real historical accounts. I’m mean, aren’t they presented as the actual familial histories of real persons? Maybe the creation account is not historical per se, but is referencing and using the historical Adam as its main character.

    Father Stephen also stated, “It is certainly the teaching of the Church that death for humanity begins with Adam. This is also to say that there has never been a man who was not subject to death (Christ voluntarily). It is well within the fathers (Ireneaus, Nyssa, et al) to see Adam as “adolescent” – created to become image and likeness, but he does not fulfill this.” It seems to me everything in this statement can be maintained while holding to a mythological understanding of Adam, even to the point that Adam need not be historical at all. BUT, if the genealogies stated above reveal a historical Adam, then we may not want to push Adam into the sphere of pure fiction.

  16. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    Meshell,
    Only in the nuanced meaning of “myth.” The fathers generally hold to a historic Adam. I have pushed what I think is a crack in the door to say otherwise – where I think the otherwise may very well be important in the contemporary presentation of the gospel. That is, is there a way for a believing Orthodox Christian to hold to a 14 billion year-old universe and humanity derived from earlier forms and still confess the gospel and the Scriptures? If that’s not an issue for you, then ignore me. If it is an issue, as it is for many, what I’ve said might be helpful.

    But by no means have I offered the only proper take for an Orthodox Christian. I do, however, raise questions for various forms of literalism (some quite problematic) on other grounds – I’ve raised those questions many other times and in other settings as well.

    The geneologies are not present in Luke and Matthew in order to give a careful bloodline for Christ’s human descent. They have other theological purposes.

    It is interesting to me that Orthodox Christians (readers of the blog) have in some cases as many problems about things like “fiction” and the like as some conservative protestants (fundamentalists). The services of the Church are dominantly poetic. Every service of the Vigil has wonderful theological poetry which sings many things for which we have no historical reason at all. But these hymns are true. Beginning to understand the depth of what truth means, transcending (though not eliminating) the literal, is, I think, important in the spiritual life.

    But enjoying all of those hymns as “fiction” and “just poetry,” in my experience will deaden their intent and weaken their force in our lives. When I read in the Psalms about “trees clapping their hands,” I have to admit (to a literalist) that I’ve never seen a tree with hands or seen one clapping. But if I dismiss the words as “merely” poetic (fiction), then I will likely deaden the possibility that I will noetically hear the sound of nature. “All of creation rejoices in thee…” etc.

    It has been a task of mine, for the past 7 years, to repeatedly push people beyond the literal and towards the noetic. I have done this with work on types and allegory, on understanding the nature and shape of creation.

    Orthodoxy with the Bible of my fundamentalist childhood, only now with a fundamentalist reading of the fathers to boot, will be, I suspect, about as deadly as its Protestant form.

    The answer is not to the left nor the right – but deeper.

    Adam, whether historical or no, may have a story that is “mythic” in its shape. But Adam is not fictional.

  17. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    meshell2001:

    Myth is not necessarily fiction properly understood. Myth can be quite real if not, by modern standards, ‘factual’. To consider myth as opposed to fact and history is a creature of the modern mind.

    Myth is the way a tribe, society and culture order themselves, transmit their truths and proclaim transcendent reality.

    Every culture has myth even our own empirical one, i.e. progress. The human race cannot exist without myth and be truly human. Some myths, however, are destructive. I have studied the myth of progress most of my adult life and have concluded that its hope is specious and it is essentially nihilist delusion that only brings destruction.

    It is a tragedy of the empiricist mind and a product of that destruction that myth has been relegated to mere fanciful legend without ground in truth.

    The ground of myth is what is important. The ground of the mythos of Genesis is the revealed nature and action of God. That mythos is only made clear and given concrete reality in the Incarnation. Genesis and all of the Old Testament point to the Incarnation as Christ Himself made clear to His disciples on the road to Emmaus.

    He is the Alpha and Omega. He is the one who reveals Himself both in works of His word and His hands. He is the one who prepares the way into His Kingdom and stands there to welcome us in every Divine Liturgy and in His whole glory in the fullness of time.

    His work is of profound and deep wonder and beauty–a wonder that can never be exhausted or fully plumbed. Empiricism is ugly and quickly exhausted producing no lasting fruits only the destruction of continual ‘change’.

    The Genesis account certainly has a great deal of history that can be adduced from it as Alice Lindsey can attest. However, like all good myth, it is more than history (a linear recounting of what ‘actually happened’ [as if we could ever know]). It is the story of life in all of life’s dimensions. In many cases it is far more true than any ‘factual’ delineation can ever be.

    Man’s stories, our myths, are either icons or idols. The myth of progress is an idol. The Genesis account is an icon.

  18. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    Michael,
    Extremely well-said.

  19. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Each created thing is made ‘after its kind’ and continues ‘after its kind’. We are the only creature made in His image and likeness molded by His hands. There are no prior forms.

    Viruses remain viruses. Fruit flies remain fruit flies. Humans have always been humans. Because we prefer darkness over light, we create delusions that allow us to be less than human. Because we are full of pride we like to ascribe ourselves to other than God so that we may ‘be like Him’. Death is always the result of such arrogance.

    The physical body may change and adapt, that is of no consequence, but we have always been human and will always remain human called to realize the fullness of that humanity in the hypostatic union with our Creator.

  20. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    “Evolution is a hypothesis (no, not a theory) about the origin of different forms of life. In the McLean vs Arkansas trial, it was ruled that Creationism should not be taught in schools because it is not scientific, i.e. it is not falsifiable or verifiable. However, evolution is not falsifiable or verifiable (and hence, is not a theory, as such);”

    Evolution is both theory and fact. The theory corresponds to how we model evolution (always an approximation) and the fact of common ancestry of all species. The fact of evolution is supported so overwhelmingly by such a broad range of convergent evidence that there really is no point in arguing it – those who believe that evolution doesn’t happen are not concerned with evidence or science. But since evolution is the underlying framework not only of all biology but of medicine and pharmaceutical development, it’s worth noting that most fundamentalists are at least functional evolutionists (there is no real distinction between “macro” and “micro” evolution – the idea that speciation doesn’t occur is fantastical).

    And of course many aspects of evolutionary science are both testable and more importantly falsifiable – this should be obvious since so much of what we know with such certainty is based on microbiology and genetics, but it bears repeating nonetheless, that this is true even of fossil appearances.

    These aren’t matters of opinion – this is akin to arguing that gravity doesn’t exist for example. In fact we have a better understanding of how evolution works than we do for gravity. It would not be misleading to speak of evolution as a better substantiated theory.

    Also the claim that the Fathers require Biblical literalism is just wrong – in the Life of Moses, for example, Gregory of Nyssa tells us we mustn’t believe the narrative of the killing of the first born really happened, for example.

    I hope I am not giving offense, but I am genuinely dismayed by the counter factual comments that are showing up here.

  21. meshell2001 Avatar
    meshell2001

    Michael, and Father Stephen,

    I wasn’t trying to use the word myth as a “mere fanciful legend without ground in truth,” but rather as Father Stephen described it when he said, “such a story can reveal depths of reality that cannot be reached in other ways. It can have layers, some fictional, some historical.” So I think we are all in agreement as to the nature of the creation myth. But, just because this understanding of myth CAN have layers doesn’t necessitate that it MUST have layers. So, the creation myth could potentially have no historical layer pertaining to it. I thought that the genealogies might have been a clue to the creation myth having also a historical layer in it as well, namely the historical person, Adam.

    I guess Im trying to salvage a “historical layer” within the myth because I resonate with Guy when he said, “…If the historical doesn’t matter, then neither do i so far as i can tell. And if whether the historicity of the events really doesn’t matter, then i don’t see why i need to think the resurrection was historical.” If there’s no Adam, then why not no Abraham, no Noah, no David, etc. How about the possibility that the overwhelming majority of people and events in Scripture are not historical? Well, if one were to take it that far then I definitely would have to disagree with them.

    Plus, Im emotionally attached to the lives of those found in Scripture. To be honest the idea of Adam not being real is kind of heart breaking, because through my Christian walk Ive grown to know and to love Adam (as well as Abraham, Jacob, David, etc, etc.) Ive thought of these people as a part of the Church, real concrete members of the same Body that I am a member of.

    A 14-billion year old universe doesn’t bother me in the least. And finding out that people were formed from a different species isn’t heart breaking. Being told I will not be meeting Adam in the resurrection makes me a little emotional though.

  22. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Clearly there are many historical layers. To deny that is gnostic IMO. The difficult thing with history is realizing its limitations and that it is always being reinterpreted depending on the prevailing mythos.

  23. meshell2001 Avatar
    meshell2001

    I used to be a young earth creation literalist, and I couldn’t fathom how it could be possible to believe in evolution without hurting the “relationship” I had gained with Adam and Eve through the creation story in Genesis. I also couldn’t couldn’t figure out how to uphold God’s integrity in my mind if the creation story wasn’t “true.” But I have learned a lot since that time. The creation story is absolutely true, but that does not necessitate it to be literal.

  24. Robert Bearer Avatar
    Robert Bearer

    Dear to Christ Greg, I believe your statements go too far. As I understand it there are many reputable scientists who would disagree with you in your broad assertion that there is no difference between micro evolution (which can be observed) and macro evolution which never, as I understand it, has been and probably cannot be. I believe they would say that you are mixing the categories of genetics and adaptation with evolution proper which posits the development (i.e. transformation) of one species into another of the natural production of new kinds from different existing ones. By no means do all scientists believe this to be possible your assertion to the contrary notwithstanding. Such changes can only occur by the Word of God, as the mythical account in Genesis teaches when it says that God said, “Let the earth bring forth . . . ” and “Let the waters breing forth abundantly . . .” and, of course, “Let us make Adam in Our image, and after Our likeness; . . . so God created Adam in His own image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them.”

    Now that I look carefully at this deeply mythical and instructive text, I note that it says “In the beginning God CREATED the heavens and the the earth” (bara et ha shamayim et ha arets). This was, if you will, even before He said “Let there be light” and what would become yom echad “one day.” On the “afternoon” of what became the sixth day, He CREATED (bara) again. This time it was Adam, whom He created male and female. In between these two “creations” we have God speaking, dividing and making and commanding the earth and the waters to bring forth. So, yes, creation participates in the work of God by responding to His Word. But before the start of the “creation week” and at its very end end He engages in direct creatiion. It was thereafter that He saw everything that He had MADE (asah), and behold it was tov meod (very good) and He rested on the seventh day–a rest He completed in Hades as He was about to harrow it and break its bonds leading captivity captive, trampling down Death by death.

    Our friend and brother Father Stephen has given us so much to ponder and rejoice in. Thank God and glory to Him for all things.

    Christ is in our midst.
    rlb

  25. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Greg can you please name on piece of concrete factual evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt a link, any direct link that one form of life changed into another form of life?

    Not just typological or even genetic similarities, but an actual, verifiable, testable change that does not rely on the assumption of change to prove the reality?

    If the evidence is so overwhelming it ought to be easy to do. Utilitarian arguments are insufficient.

  26. Dean Avatar
    Dean

    Father Stephen
    I can’t follow all the nuanced meanings of those who comment on the blog. However, the truth of Orthodoxy pulses through every fiber of my being in the liturgy and other services of the Church. Its poetry and prayers are sublime such as St. Nikolai’s Akathist “Jesus Conqueror of Death.” A beautiful line reads, “…the longer I listen to the noise of the world, the less I hear the noise of the world and the more I hear Thy still voice….” So more than the well reasoned arguments, which I do appreciate, far more does my spirit resonate with the spirit in which you write, Fr. Stephen, which does move me toward wonder, of our glorious God in Trinity, his Church and the beauty of his world which at times moves this old man to tears.

  27. Albert Avatar
    Albert

    Reading this site is such a benefit for me, such a blessing. I am truly grateful. Like Dean, I sometimes struggle to follow along, but it is well worth the effort. Thank you, Fr Stephen, for your work here. And many thanks to all comment-makers.

  28. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    “Greg can you please name on piece of concrete factual evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt a link, any direct link that one form of life changed into another form of life? ”

    The basic question misunderstands evolution. This is fundamentally important: what you are asking for doesn’t have any relationship to evolution per se. You don’t have a hominid of say “type” Australopithecus and then one day discover that you have a hominid of “type” Homo Habilus. Evolution is accumulated gradual changed. As populations separate incremental, gradual change results in “speciation.”

    That said, I am not sure how to answer your question in a way that could hope to satisfy you – you don’t want genetic evidence on relationships, which is utterly compelling, and we have a clear fossil record of development over geologic time of differentiated life: descent and common ancestors. Maybe you could spell out what doesn’t seem to be compelling to you?

  29. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Robert, evolution is just incremental/gradual change. There is no such thing as macro evolution per se, at least in the sense you seem to be contemplating it – there is just the long, slow march of genetic variation within populations.

  30. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Incidentally – on Biblical literalism this talk from David Bentley Hart is helpful to put Genesis is context (both in the Patristic sense and modern fundamentalism). I think one thing that is particularly helpful here is the reminder that the Genesis narrative isn’t read “literally” by the literalists. If it was read literally, you’d be talking about a henotheistic narrative that included an explanation of how a snake lost its legs.

  31. SC Avatar
    SC

    Thank you, Father, for your reply.

    In regards to your comments, Scott Morizot, I will quote the highly reliable and evidence-based source of Wikipedia:

    Wikipedia (scientific theory): “The defining characteristic of all scientific knowledge, including theories, is the ability to make falsifiable or testable predictions”. A theory “makes falsifiable predictions with consistent accuracy across a broad area of scientific enquiry”. Popper [the father of modern scientific theory] summarized these statements by saying that the central criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its “falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.” Echoing this, Stephen Hawking states, “A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.” He also discusses the “unprovable but falsifiable” nature of theories, which is a necessary consequence of inductive logic, and that “you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory.”

    What observation, if found, would falsify evolution, and not be interpreted by its followers as supporting evolution? Waiting a million years and ensuring that humans/apes/fish hadn’t evolved into other species? As with Creationism, most observations can be interpreted by supporters of evolution as fitting with the theory. Neither view is fully falsifiable; your presuppositions determine which you believe.

    I am not arguing that evolutionary/big bang “science” is unintelligible; I appreciate that you and your parents must have a very good grasp of science. I am arguing that few people come to their support of evolution because they have thoroughly reviewed scientific data and come to the conclusion that it is more in support of evolution than creation. Most people I know who support evolution do so because authorities they trust (e.g. teachers, scientists, friends) believe in evolution.

    My fear, therefore, is that many Christians feel that they are left with no choice but to support evolution because authorities say that the data points to evolution/the big bang, when, in fact, the data may be interpreted differently, based on the presuppositions that are used to interpret the data (which is the case with a worldview, not a theory).

  32. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    “What observation, if found, would falsify evolution, and not be interpreted by its followers as supporting evolution?” I can literally think of a thousand point examples, but the simplest would be the appearance of a life form at the wrong stage of geologic time. That would falsify both the idea of development via incremental change. What is remarkable is that this never happens.

  33. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    ” I am arguing that few people come to their support of evolution because they have thoroughly reviewed scientific data and come to the conclusion that it is more in support of evolution than creation.”

    Putting aside the false dichotomy “evolution versus creation”, this is obviously not true. Talk with any biologist who grew up in the American south. The evidence for evolution is so deep and broad across so many dimensions and without contradiction that I would venture to say that for several generations of Americans, most trained scientists had exactly the experience you are denying.

    I mean this with all due respect, but you should at least read up on the topic.

  34. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    SC,
    I see the “fact” cited frequently about scientists who don’t accept evolutionary theory. This is always cited by non-scientists, or simply by scientists who don’t accept evolutionary theory. My experience in the academy and in relationships with scientists at the National Lab has not produced such scientists. Instead it produced the rolling of eyes when it’s repeated. I sometimes feel like it’s an urban myth.

    Now my hometown, Greenville, SC, has Bob Jones Univ. (independent, protestant, fundamentalist). Their “science” people would support anti-evolutionary theory. But their science people also taught me when I was a child of 10, that blacks were genetically inferior to whites. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth for their science.

    I am personally skeptical of a science that is driven by theological theory – since – as I myself am evidence for – theological theory is not so rigid (even in its Orthodox form). I do not find in theological problems with the mechanics of evolutionary change (the movement between species for example is, I think, not demanded by the Tradition). Kalomiros’ article on the 6 days of creation is a good treatment of this. And although Fr. Seraphim Rose disagreed with him, he could not, I think, effectively argue that Kalomiros’ take on things was not thoroughly Orthodox. Kalomiros was an Old-Calendarist Greek disciple of Fr. Romanides, which gives him impeccable “conservative” or “traditional” credentials.

    As Greg noted – evolution is a hypothesis, not a theory.

  35. SC Avatar
    SC

    Thank you for your reply, Father. It is saddening that proponents of both Creationism and evolution have at times allowed their views to become entangled with ungodly attitudes. May we all seek God’s glory first and seek to love Him above all else.

  36. Matt Avatar
    Matt

    Father,

    I’ve been lurking the comment pages of your blog for a while. Your words have been and are a constant inspiration. Having grown up in and fallen away from a textbook fundamentalist Protestant young-earth-creationist church and finding every liberal alternative wanting, I must say it has been a personal revelation to discover that a Church exists that is both deeply invested in original tradition and able to accommodate ordinary science without requiring me to believe the historicity of something that to the best of my knowledge is historically false as a non-negotiable condition of the faith.

    Something has been bothering me about this discussion enough that I wanted to post, and I think it’s best characterized by this part of an exchange between Michael Bauman and Greg:

    The basic question misunderstands evolution. This is fundamentally important: what you are asking for doesn’t have any relationship to evolution per se. You don’t have a hominid of say “type” Australopithecus and then one day discover that you have a hominid of “type” Homo Habilus. Evolution is accumulated gradual changed. As populations separate incremental, gradual change results in “speciation.” …

    This hits me as a matter of realism vs. nominalism – i.e., whether or not the “type” has its own reality that cannot be ignored (the way it often – I think inevitably – is when you get to the really nitty-gritty bits of evolutionary theory and taxonomical problems). Is there anything in Orthodox doctrine that requires one to adhere to the former, and if so why?

    This bothers me as belief in the former seems like such a prevalent trait among the faithful where it’s mentioned that it almost seems like part and parcel of the faith, and it seems to intuitively follow from “In the beginning was the Word” and the transsubstantiation, but everything I regularly experience and intuit seems to draw the opposite conclusion. (I am a lawyer by trade, linguistics major from school (with focus on grammar and semantics) and sometimes programmer by hobby who frequently deals with people with very different cultural and class-based assumptions about what does or does not naturally imply something else, so the notion of our categories having any fixed, objective reality of their own is something the contrary evidence of which I have had to deal with every day for a long time.) I do not want to see another YEC-esque deal-breaker, but neither do I wish to stay blinded in what may be nothing but a personal prejudice – or make a deal-breaker out of something that doesn’t even matter at all.

    Forgive me, a sinner.

  37. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    SC et all,

    I pray for God’s protection, purification and illumination in all matters including this.Having heard the very extremes of both sides in my life time (by believers that is) makes me unable to hold to one or another. Besides, there are far more pressing matters to occupy our attention with.
    One of the strongest anti-eveloution stances, I only just recalled, was Elder Joseph the Hesychast’s who, as documented in the book ‘my elder Joseph the Hesychast and cave-dweller’ once remarked that a certain pilgrim metaphorically’ ‘stank’ (based on his charisma of discernment) of darwinianism.
    One of the strongest pro-evolution explanation’s was (theistic evolution proponent and head of the Human genome project) Collins’ words that: it is not just the 98% similarity between humans and lower forms that points to evolution (God could have made us with even greater similarity), but the fact that the very special, unnecessary (random wrong code) accumulated DNA that is part of the slow process is 100% the same, (and can be analysed) which cannot have another explanation.

  38. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    Matt,
    Very good question. I do not think it’s a deal-breaker. However, I confess to being a committed Realist (in some fashion). My reasons for this are spiritual rather than intellectual (that’s really a lousy way of expressing it). And the sacrament has much to do with it. Orthodoxy has never truly embraced “transubstantiation” (with the exception of the Jerusalem Council that has been critiqued in many ways). But we believe that the bread and wine truly and really become the Body and Blood of Christ. And this is far more than mental or nominal.

    My spiritual instinct about this, as strong as my faith in the resurrection, is that this is so. Having said that is perhaps to state a direction of my life and thought. It is not so much an idea to be defended (who cares?). It is a reality to be pursued. It is following a trail of faith that others have blazed and, I think, substantiated as true by the manifestation of the divine in their lives.

    It is a Realism that binds everything together – such that belief and sacrament are one. Thus in Baptism, I am truly united to Christ (not just in loyalty or mentally). And it is that true union that is salvific. It is that true union that runs through everything in the Orthodox Christian life.

    Having said that – it is not at all the same as requiring some philosophical conversion. That is just mental gymnastics. Give some time to the question of the journey it suggests.

  39. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    “This hits me as a matter of realism vs. nominalism – i.e., whether or not the “type” has its own reality that cannot be ignored (the way it often – I think inevitably – is when you get to the really nitty-gritty bits of evolutionary theory and taxonomical problems). Is there anything in Orthodox doctrine that requires one to adhere to the former, and if so why?”

    I do want to point out that my answer was limited to the specific topic of speciation as a process. I do not think that has a material bearing on the philosophical problems of universals. More specifically, I think Michael’s anxiety is that there must really be a unique human essence. I think he is absolutely right in that regard.

  40. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    Sorry, I just realised how little sense my description of Francis Colins’ (a Christian Theist) words (from the top of my head) makes, here it is proper: “Finding a precisely truncated ARE [Ancient Repetitive Element damaged copy] in the same place in both human and mouse genomes is compelling evidence that this insertion event must have occurred in an ancestor that was common to both the human and the mouse.” (p.135).
    “Unless one is willing to take the position that God has placed these decapitated AREs in these precise positions to confuse and mislead us, the conclusion of a common ancestor for humans and mice is virtually inescapable. This kind of recent genome data thus presents an overwhelming challenge to those who hold to the idea that all species were created ex nihilo.” (p.136-137 of “The Language of God”).

    Father,
    I don’t know what to make of some ‘prophecies’ of certain truly charismatic Fathers that there will come a time when science will itself abandon evolution theory…?

  41. George Avatar
    George

    One thing that strikes me as odd about this debate among Orthodox Christians who quote the Fathers is its focus on biology. A broader reading of the Fathers beyond convenient excerpts drawn from modern patristic studies like Beuteneff or Seraphim Rose reveals that the biology of the Fathers, aside from concepts like spontaneous generation and preformationism, was rather good compared to their physics. Obviously their astronomy was limited – geocentric with only 7 planetary spheres including the sun and moon, 8 if you include the fixed sphere of stars. Their chemistry is terrible – only 4 elements to work with, 5 if you include the aether. Even their geography is off – demonstrably incorrect, sometimes even by the standards of their own day. Why is this? Simply because they were using the common notions of their audiences about how creation works in order to teach transcendent, eternal truths.

    Someone point me to a place where the Fathers actually do science, even in the classical sense as Aristotle did. Explain to me why we have to take the biology of Fathers at face value and not their physics and chemistry. Show me where the Fathers reject the science of their own day like fundamentalist Christians reject the theory of evolution.

  42. Matt Avatar
    Matt

    Give some time to the question of the journey it suggests.

    Thank you Father.

    It is now Saturday morning and I’ve had something reasonably resembling 8 hours of sleep. Doing more reading it seems the problem is both much more complicated and, for that very complication, less intractable than I felt it to be when I posted last night.

    Perhaps I’m better off, instead of trying to come to any conclusions based on abstract reasoning, focus on a specific example that can be a (second) starting point. (And of course the same problem for species may apply to trying to define an individual member of a species as well – ironically, a growing disillusionment with the notion of the human individual (in the Modern, self-interested-rational-actor sense as well as the biologically naïve discrete-biological-unit-with-one-set-of-genes sense) is one of the things that draw me to the faith now.)

    On another note, perhaps more closely related to the original discussion, the majority of people I’ve known who has worked in the life sciences in one form or another believes in some form of Christianity, while the people I know who are most vocal about using evolution to deny God have little if anything to do with biology in their work. (I can only think of one notable exception to both of these, and both exceptions are one and the same person.) Meanwhile, I have never met anyone who has voiced the standard objections to old Earth and evolution (sediments come from Flood, irreducible complexity) who did not also turn out to have some collateral doctrinal or political reason for such opposition (cannot admit physical death before the Fall, is a Republican, believe the Beringian theory undermines their people’s status as a true First Nation of the Americas, believe that evolutionary biology necessitates “social Darwinism”, has been brought up to associate evolutionary biology with eugenics-talk about superior and inferior races, etc.) My motivation for making this observation is all ad hominem and heuristics, rather than any attempt at all to engage the “scientific language” you see in the debates, but I think some comfort in knowing that belief in X will not require your support of capricious and merciless torturers can go a long way.

  43. Matt Avatar
    Matt

    Oops, broken link! Father if you can fix that last one to http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/KalomirosRiverFire.php it would be appreciated, though I suspect the URL and text in the link itself already imply the intended content well enough.

  44. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    Father,

    Other than a brief general reply during your late night several days ago, you never returned to my question concerning the personal nature of humanity. I understand that you want “to see if there is crack in the door through which we might see something better,” and indeed there is far more than a flat, literal reading can provide. Even so, this question is not tangential to the subject at hand.

    I repeat the thought/question here:

    ———————————————————–

    Finally, there is another aspect of this question that relates directly to the Apostle’s words that “as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin.” While willful sin is never private or ‘individual’ (in the sense that it affects only the sinner), it is always personal (in the sense that it is the choice of a human person). ‘Humanity’ only exists in human persons (Mary, Sally, George). You said this yourself only recently. Thus, the nature of a person participates in the sin of the person because a person does not exist apart from his nature. But only persons can sin willfully. Only persons can love God or refuse to love. How is it, then, possible for a non-specific, impersonal, generalized ‘humanity’ to fall away from union with God and subject all mankind to the condition of death? Only persons are capable of refusing to love the Persons of God. Only a person whose human nature once freely shared the eternal life of God by his personal communion in the divine Persons could bring about the subjection of his nature to the corruption of death by choosing (albeit in the ignorance of an ‘innocent’ state) to sever himself from that communion and thereby sin against the One who is his life. How, then, can it not be that a person, a person in a position to father the entire race of man in his own corrupted likeness, after his corrupted image (Genesis 5:3), is cause of death (and therefore the propensity toward sin) being transmitted to all human nature?

    ————————————————————

    It is sometimes said that Adam’s fall from (or, for that matter, rise to) union with God is not merely an event in ‘history,’ but rather something that occurs in each one of us. Here Adam is understood as each of us personally. There is truth in this that should not be ignored, but it is inadequate as an answer to the question of the origin of death. It assumes the ability of all persons to choose freely, a capacity that infants or others born with disabilities lack but who are nevertheless born subject to death as all others are.

    It is also said (again rightly) that man is mortal by nature, that only God is immortal and that man’s immortality is wholly dependent on union with God. But this, too, is inadequate in terms of why those lacking the capacity to choose die nevertheless.

    I speak here not only of so-called ‘spiritual’ death, but of physical death (the two seem ultimately inseparable to me) – the death that is “the last enemy” overcome, the death that Christ overcame in the flesh by His resurrection, the death that will be no more in the age to come.

    All this is not unrelated to the creation itself. In Orthodox Christian anthropology man (the fullness of which is revealed in the Man, Christ Jesus) is the king and priest of creation, a microcosm of all creation, a summing up in his person of its meaning and destiny, the means by which all of creation is united to God. And so it is written of the God-man: “…that He might fill all things.” “For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”

    This union of God with His creation is not accomplished or “finished” in a merely ‘spiritual’ way (although all things, including physical matter are spiritual). They are “finished” in the organic personal physical union of God and man in the Incarnation of Christ. He doesn’t ‘drop from the heavens’ as God (who is spirit). He is incarnate of the Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary (who, while ever-blessed, blameless, and most pure, was nevertheless subject to death in Adam as all of us are) and was made man. This is to say that the union is organic, real – more real, to be sure, than a mere flat reading of the “myth” (understood as you have expounded upon it) of the creation narrative. It is “that which we have seen and heard that we have touched and our hands have handled.” But is this union not real and organic in precisely the same sense that Adam’s (and I speak here of a person) fall from union with God and his death is equally personal, real, and physical as well as ‘spiritual’?

    So while I thoroughly understand the need to “crack open a door” so we don’t locked into flat, strictly literal reading and miss the greater truth, and while I ‘get’ that Adam is, in a very true allegorical sense, all of us, I still fail to grasp how Adam can be seen as STRICTLY mythical and whose actual personhood is irrelevant to us.

    I couldn’t care less what all this may mean in terms of science. This is not within the realm of science. It is shifting sand, ever in the process of discovery and revision. It is to be highly valued and has a place. But it also has a realm within which it must remain if it is to continue to rightly be called science. It will never lead us to the truth of things. I suspect that in the end we will understand that the creation narrative is altogether true – although, like the visions of the end which “eye has not seen nor ear heard,” in a way we could never have imagined or figured out.

  45. Robert Bearer Avatar
    Robert Bearer

    My dear brother, Greg, and dear to Christ,

    You say, “Evolution is accumulated gradual changed(sic). As populations separate incremental, gradual change results in “speciation.”

    [There is] “. . . genetic evidence on relationships, which is utterly compelling, and we have a clear fossil record of development over geologic time of differentiated life: descent and common ancestors.”

    Forgive me, but from what I read from a rather large number of sources on both sides of the debate, what you assert here is false. Without the assumption that evolution must be true, the genetic evidence is NOT compelling and in any event we do NOT had a clear fossil record of development. Rather we have the so called Cambrian explosion, when everything “suddenly” so to speak appears. We have NO record of transitional forms. In a number of cases, the evidence in favor of evolution has been fabricated and in some cases evidence against it has been hidden. See e.g. The Science of God by Gerald Schroeder, graduate of MIT and when he wrote this book at the Technion in Israel. An Orthodox Jewish man and scientist as I understand it and certainly not a fundamentalist Protestant. In fact a later book of his which I have also read, discuss the idea of chance and randomness based on quantum physics and the suggestion that free will is programmed into creation itself which has “participated” in God’s act of creation.

    I do thank you for you comments–and Father for your pieces–which I invariably pass on to family and friends, many of whom attest to being deeply edified by them.

    This very discussion has opened by eyes to the probability that death was programmed into creation from the start in view of and because of Adam’s (i.e. our) coming refusal of communion with God and the treason that comes from desiring ourselves to be God rather than performing out task as a holy race and royal priesthood called to show forth His glory in gratitude, joy and compassion for each other and all that Christ has created and made.

    I see what I should have known or had forgotten that Adam sometimes means a man and at the same time Man(kind). Both realities are true and sometime indistinguishable, reflecting the reality of Christ God, Who is both Theanthropos, God and Man, at once a man and also the head of the Church, His Body, of which we who have been grafted into Him are all members in particular and hence members of one another. He is the New Adam, but in Him so are we collectively, so to speak.

    Christ is our midst. Forgive me, a sinner.
    rlb

  46. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    As some one who has studied history all of my life I see in these discussions from the various points of view how powerful the assumed narrative is in interpreting the pieces of data held up as facts.

    Of course it is really easy for me to see that as work in Greg because I don’t share his narrative. And Greg you explanation to me relied solely on your belief in your narrative.

    Facts don’t prove anything. Their importance lies in whether or not they sustain one’s narrative or not. Consequently, people tend to ignore or trivialize pieces of days that seem to contradict the narrative. Those pieces of data are no longer ‘facts’

    However my greatest concern lies in the manner in which science is taught in our schools, evolution in particularly. It is used as a bludgeon to force people of faith into non-faith.

  47. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    I would quibble with your use of the term “narrative” here – “paradigm” might be a more helpful term for an approach to a scientific theory, esp. if you find Kuhn’s work to be compelling (as I do), though I don’t know why you state my response is entirely dependent on my commitment to that paradigm. However, I do agree that facts require contextualization and interpretation: one of the great myths/misunderstanding of popular scientism is that empiricism and raw facts are interchangeable – whereas in fact they are opposed.

    It happens to be the case that the evolutionary paradigm both explains a tremendous variety of convergent facts and is not contradicted by any facts. If you don’t find that compelling and prefer instead to adopt a view that is contradicted by facts, I can’t possibly see what basis there would be for arriving at a coherent view of biology.

    “However my greatest concern lies in the manner in which science is taught in our schools, evolution in particularly. It is used as a bludgeon to force people of faith into non-faith.”

    While I have personally never experienced this, I wonder, though, if the tension would exist at all if fundamentalist forms of Christianity weren’t so prevalent. I would reiterate that in my opinion the bigger threat to Faith is a false, fundamentalist narrative that is impossible to sustain in the light of observable facts. My motivation for commenting here is to strengthen the Faith of Orthodox Christians and encourage inquirers to understand that Orthodoxy is about truth – in fact the Truth. Our best theologians and teachers support truth in history, theology and science.

  48. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    Brian,
    I find that it can help if when reading your (great) comment we hold the notion that Adam did not exactly fall from a fully realised perfection. Adam’s fall is from a calling, the high calling that we saw realised in Christ’s Pascha.
    It also helps a little to keep this other notion in mind: the creation narrative is intensely experienced by every saint, St Silouan’s ‘Adam’s lament’ is a perfect example…

  49. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    Brian,
    Yes, the personal is important. And I would agree that regardless of how we are to understand the manifestation of Adam in time, it cannot simply be in a generic sense. There is Adam. But I am willing, if required, to be very fluid about the flow of time. Since the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the earth, and there was as yet no sin (in time) for which to die, it must mean something about how all of this relates to time and is manifest in time.

    Another aspect of personal, however, is that personal is not the equivalent of individual (self-contained) or private. Many die (children in the womb) who have made no choice. My choice, my personal existence is equally bound to the existence of all. Adam is in every man, and every man is in Adam. Else, how could those be saved who have made no choice (children in the womb)? We are fearfully connected and wonderfully connected. Our sin is a rupture of union, but our capacity for union is not lost. Our salvation is through the restoration of union and the capacity is brought to its fullness.

    I would never want to say Adam is STRICTLY mythical without an actual personhood. The story as we have it is mythical, it has the universal structure and power of mythos. How the story it manifest in an Adam is beyond my ability to know. I can imagine it in any number of satisfactory manners, but knowing it belongs to a union with God that is well beyond me. I appreciate Dino’s mention again of Adam’s Lament (St. Silouan). I think we can know Adam (even personally), even if we cannot access that knowledge in the normal manner of history.

  50. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    OK Greg, God bless you. Don’t you see the fallacy in what you said?

    If there were no formal opposition to the de-humanizing secular nonsense their would still be tension but you persist in framing the discussion as a dichotomy between the straw man of fundamentalism and the straw man of enlightened science.

    That is not even the discussion.

    Evolution as taught and hammered at in the public schools is flawed in its assumptions about the nature of the physical world, humanity and our interrelationship with God. It assumes God does not exist and will brook no opposition from any one on that assumption.

    What you term fundamentalism ( as nearly as I can understand what you mean) shares many of the same deficiencies. Unfortunately you persist in the fallacy that anybody who disagrees with you is a fundamentalist. That seems to be fundamental to your thinking.

    Even the mouse DNA example of Dr. Collins (which you did not bring up) need not be interpreted as he does. It is simply the power of the narrative that leads him to rule out other possibilities.

    Science dies not define God. Every scientist I have heard talk on the matter essentially believes it does.

    In the end it won’t matter a bit. If you are able to maintain a wall between your reverse gnostic science and the presence of the living God in your ljfe., that’s great. I don’t doubt your faith. I just don’t know how you do it.

    Personally I’ll never understand why you want to.

    All life is connected at a common source. God.

    BTW it is historically accurate that Darwin was looking for an explanation of the natural world that ruled out the Christian God.

  51. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    Father and Dino,

    Agreed all around. And thank you.

  52. Matt Avatar
    Matt

    Michael:

    Evolution as taught and hammered at in the public schools is flawed in its assumptions about the nature of the physical world, humanity and our interrelationship with God. It assumes God does not exist and will brook no opposition from any one on that assumption.

    You’ve asserted this a few times before, both on this and other threads. For the benefit of those of us who have never seen this actually happen, can you describe a specific, anecdotal example that illustrates this? I was studying evolution long before it was ever taught in school so I never paid much attention in class, and it’s been a long time since I’ve heard any high school biology lecture, so I personally have no recollection either way, but have no idea how what you’re describing would actually be implemented.

    (For what it’s worth, I do not consider merely positing a naturalistic mechanism for something, or the reliance on random chance as the beginning of a change, to be inherently atheistic propositions, cf. Joseph being sold into slavery and saving his family, and for a modern-day pagan one-storeyism, the story of the termites.)

  53. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Michael, I am not really sure what you are talking about, what is troubling you about science per se, or why you believe it to be some kind of reverse gnosticism. You would need to really spell out what you are trying to say more explicitly for me to understand.

    Whatever kind of connections you are implying seem to be quite unnecessary and I am quite it does not apply to myself, nor to any of the Bishops, theologians, priests and philosophers in the Orthodox Church that understand biological evolution to be a part of the natural world. Once again, I recommend Dr. Hart’s book the Experience of God for a discussion of reductive naturalism, science, and theism as a useful and excellent corrective to some of the confusion that seems to swirl around these topics.

  54. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    As an aside, for anyone interested in an artistic interpretation of St Siluoan’s Adam’s Lament – which has been mentioned several times – Arvo Part’s 24 minute piece is a must experience: utterly moving.

  55. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Apologies – pushed submit too soon. I meant to include a comment on the piece by Part: ” “The name Adam is like a collective term which comprises humankind in its entirety and each individual person alike, irrespective of time, epochs, social strata and confession. We could say that he is all of us who bear his legacy and we, Adam, have been suffering and lamenting for thousands of years on Earth.”

  56. Dr. Ben Marston Avatar
    Dr. Ben Marston

    Yet the Apostle Paul does not have Christ recapitulating all of humanity in Elder Sophrony but in Adam.

  57. Dr. Ben Marston Avatar
    Dr. Ben Marston

    St. John Chrysostom in His Commentary on Romans 5finds Adam quite historical.
    After the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of Him that was to come. Now this is why Adam is a type of Christ. How a type? It will be said. Why in that, as the former became to those who were sprung from him, although they had not eaten of the tree, the cause of that death which by his eating was introduced; thus also did Christ become to those sprung from Him, even though they had not wrought righteousness, the Provider of that righteousness which through His Cross He graciously bestowed on us all. For this reason, at every turn he keeps to the one, and is continually bringing it before us, when he says, As by one man sin entered into the world— and, If through the offense of one many be dead: and, Not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift; and, The judgment was by one to condemnation: and again, If by one (or, the one) man’s offense death reigned by one; and Therefore as by the offense of one. And again, As by one man’s disobedience many (or, the many) were made sinners. And so he lets not go of the one, that when the Jew says to you, How came it, that by the well-doing of this one Person, Christ, the world was saved? You might be able to say to him, How by the disobedience of this one person, Adam, came it to be condemned? And yet sin and grace are not equivalents, death and life are not equivalents, the Devil and God are not equivalents, but there is a boundless space between them. When then as well from the nature of the thing as from the power of Him that transacts it, and from the very suitableness thereof (for it suits much better with God to save than to punish), the preëminence and victory is upon this side, what one word have you to say for unbelief, tell me? However, that what had been done was reasonable, he shows in the following words.

  58. Dr. Ben Marston Avatar
    Dr. Ben Marston

    Concerning Fr. Rose falling into the ‘trap’ of young earth creationism, in his book, he took pains to demonstrate that he had not taken a Fundamentalist tack. However, one might also note that a significant Orthodox minority of eminent Russian scientists as well as Alex II in his endorsement of a biology text for Russian students with a Patristic and young earth perspective, also approved by the Russian Ministry of Education, have taken the same position as Fr. Seraphim. One must also emphasize that while the Fathers are not Protestant Fundamentalists, neither are they Protestant Demythologizers on the order of Bultmann, et al.

  59. Dr. Ben Marston Avatar
    Dr. Ben Marston

    while it may not be wrong to think of death existing before Adam as a proleptic act of God, do the Fathers think of it so? I have not seen evidence of that.

  60. Dr. Ben Marston Avatar
    Dr. Ben Marston

    Father,
    forgive me.
    I have a great inner resistance to the idea of introducing ‘myth’ into the Christian conversation about Scripture and Truth. I do not have any problem with pressing into the noetic. I have no problem in taking typology, allergory into the noetic. I have no problem is taking the Symbol of the faith and insisting that the reality of the Faith is that to which the Creed points in the noetic. But the idea and usage of myth as a medium of Christian revelation I find great discomfort with. It is also an idea that I do not find in the Fathers. God spoke to Moses face to face we are told and not in riddles (Numbers 12:8). Myth falls under the characteristic of riddles. Moses was revealed salvation proto-history and not salvation proto-mythology. We find our selves in deep trouble when we introduce myth. Once we do that there is nothing to stop us from doing that to the coming ages and to the Incarnation and death and resurrection of our Lord as well.

  61. Dr. Ben Marston Avatar
    Dr. Ben Marston

    Dear brother,
    When Stephen J. Gould who was the dean of American evolutionists until his recent death, tells us that there is no evidence of transition forms in the fossil record, and that fixity of species is what is observed; when Dean Kenyon, who wrote the textbook that was THE Standard for biochemical evolution in the eighties, decides he was wrong and retracts his position and becomes a young earth creationist, and when world-class Russian geneticists are saying the same thing, I would suggest your certainty about what the evidence demonstrates is not as air-tight as you put forward!

  62. Dr. Ben Marston Avatar
    Dr. Ben Marston

    Once again, Stephen J. Gould, the dean of American evolutionist paleo-biologists, of Harvard tenure, until his death, concluded that the thing that was observable in the fossil record was stasis of species, and no transition forms. He was forced to abandon gradual and incremental change for a theory called punctuated equilibrium, which is, sudden and abrupt appearance of new species so fast that they leave no record in the fossil record.

  63. Dr. Ben Marston Avatar
    Dr. Ben Marston

    The Scylla to the Charybdis of literalism, is demythologization. The answer to both is in the Fathers, for the faith was delivered in fullness to the Apostles and passed on unsullied by them. Literalism consigns all meaning to be embedded within history. Pure demythologization has all meaning as an upper storey. The incarnation teaches us that both are involved as human beings seek to find the truth. But myth I do not see in any consensus of the Fathers, despite a quote from Gregory of Nyssa who is known to have had Origenist tendencies. Lord have mercy on me a sinner.

  64. Dr. Ben Marston Avatar
    Dr. Ben Marston

    The human heart including that of the scientist is desperately wicked and totally lacks the dispassion to find truth with respect to origins. God gives those who worship the creature more than the creator over to strong delusions to believe lies.

  65. Dr. Ben Marston Avatar
    Dr. Ben Marston

    The abandonment of evolution is happening to some extent in Russia and in Korea. One can be a young earth creationist and a first rate scientist in Russia. Russian world class scientist are writing and editing biology text for schools that treat favorabvly a young earth, Patristic position

  66. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    Dr. Marston,
    I think you misunderstand my use of “myth.” Nevertheless, the point is well taken. Interestingly, Bouteneff discourages use of the word and notes the Tradition’s hesitance with it.

    It has a particular, even common usage in modern academic study. Thus my own usage of the term and personal comfort with it. But my experience is what it is, and understandably is more specialized than the experience of others. “Myth” is more description of the “form” of a story than otherwise.

    I think your identification of myth with “riddle” is incorrect and mischaracterizes the nature of such a story. If you or I are less than comfortable with something (myth, etc.) really makes no difference. Things are what they are.

    I dare say I would create screams of shock among some if I were to suggest that the books of Moses show clear evidence of multiple authors. But the literary study of the Scripture has long been the playground of liberal scholariship. But it is not unknown to Orthodox scholars, nor is it taboo. Again, its misuse by some has made it anathema to others.

    However, the contention that the Genesis account must be literal history because God told it to Moses face to face is fraught with difficulties in and of itself. It’s far more than I wish to go into.

  67. leonard nugent Avatar
    leonard nugent

    As far as I know evolution has never explained the gap between the animals who developed string theory and wrote symphonies and all the other animals who basically lie in the sun and scratch themselves. A physics theory would be required to offer an explanation of why there isn’t more in between.

  68. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    ” But myth I do not see in any consensus of the Fathers, despite a quote from Gregory of Nyssa who is known to have had Origenist tendencies. ”

    Neither the quote nor the comment suggest that St Gregory characterized the Exodus story as “myth”. And being dismissive of Fathers with “Origenist tendencies” – whatever that means – seems highly problematic, not least with reference to the Father of Fathers, if I can borrow a Roman Catholic accolade.

  69. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    At this point, surely we’ve heard from all sides. Argument is never very useful. Questions things that move the conversation along are welcome. But I will be trimming the comments for a while.

  70. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    Saint Nicholas Kavasilas who was mentioned above says something pretty striking concerning the words in Genesis, that God saw that everything was very good indeed – it is in his talk on the Dormition. He says that these words were concerning the Mother of God and Her spiritual beauty. many Fahers have said that She was the ultimate and unobstructed purpose of Creation. It opens up new dimensions to how we see these matters.

  71. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    Dino,
    It is the interplay of such things that (it has always seemed to me) makes the “flat” account of literalism unworkable. It is not that the literal is not important, or that it does not take place. But it is the nature of Providence (with which the fathers were deeply concerned) that the earlier is often a reflection of the later. In the common “flat” model of cause and effect (through time), there can be a kind of slavish predestination that devalues the past. Thus, as Cabasilas will note, the Mother of God is seen from before the beginning. We can rightly say that God had always seen her birth. But if the typical temporal version of cause and effect is assumed, then everything that happens before her are just means to an end, but become “mere” stepping stones, means to and end. It even necessarily impinges on their freedom. It’s the nightmare of Calvin’s form of predestination. In the “flat” model of temporal cause and effect, there can be no compatibility between freedom and predestination. And so we get the perversion of those who don’t care about freedom, only the sovereignty of God.

    But temporal cause and effect is not the proper model. In Christ the Beginning and the End are identical – and this model underlies all of creation as well. We see, for instance, that the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the earth. Pascha, like Christ Himself, was also at the beginning. And just as there is Pascha, so there must be the Mother of God. It is an Incarnate Lamb, born of a Virgin, that is the Paschal Lamb.

    The foundation of creation was the End of Creation. This is well known within the fathers. Aristotle had long before taught that something is not what it “was,” but what it is going to be. The “telos” of a thing (it’s end or goal) is its truth. In St. Maximus the Confessor, these are called the “logoi” of things. Reflections of the Logos (Christ the Word), the logoi are the ends, the direction towards which all things move. It is what St. Paul describes in Ephesians 1:

    that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth– in Him. (Eph 1:10 NKJ)

    All things are gathered together because from the Beginning, the logoi are icons of the Logos, towards which everything tends and is drawn.

    The First Adam is only Adam, because he is icon of the Second Adam, the Last Adam. And as icon he tends towards the true Adam, Christ, the Prototype. And for each of us, Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve, the logoi of our existence mean that we tend towards Christ the Logos. He is our End. And so we say that sin is “missing the mark” (hamartia). St. Maximus makes much of this kenesis and direction in his writings. But it works because it is not a model in the “flat” and “linear” notion of cause and effect.

    As I’ve noted, many have an anxiety regarding origins, feeling that the answer must always be placed there (for so a linear model requires). But if the truth of something is found in its End, then however God has appointed for the Origin to take place or be manifest, it was always the logoi of man, the image of the Image, the Logos, Christ God. Adam is always in Adam.

    Just some further thoughts on this Sunday afternoon.

  72. Dr. Ben Marston Avatar
    Dr. Ben Marston

    Fr. Stephen,
    Thank you for the thoughtful response. In the interpretation of Scripture it is my understanding that the type of literature that is being interpreted is of first importance. In the case of early Genesis it seems that it is not ‘myth’ according to your definition, but a Covenant made by the God who is with the Adam who is and all who were to follow him.
    Since the MIddle eastern covenants of the time of Moses did not involve a Revelation from the God who is, their covenants so elaborated would necessarily involve ‘myth’, and myth would be the legitimate category for those. But not early Genesis.
    My discomfort with ‘myth’ I would describe as noetic, not intellectual and not emotional, and therefore as the substance of a dispute with things as they really are and not as they seem.

  73. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    Father,
    thank you for your thoughts, they do make perfect sense to me, most especially once we include the eschatological understanding of ‘logoi’. (Dr. Ben Marston, this could be included in your notion of covenant in fact).
    I often reflect that in both a linear AND a non-linear sense, the first fall of the angels also needs to be a part of this discussion.

    What can be discomforting sometimes is the vehement words of certain Saints or Elders against current scientific theories of origins (I mentioned Elder Joseph the Hesychast earlier) – but then again this is not really the point of the theology-anthrololgy described here, it is a talk on scientific matters made confusing due to the vehemently negative statements coming out of the mouths of otherwise clairvoyant Fathers.
    Truth be told, our origins questions discussed in these comments are far far more about the ‘how’ rather than the ‘who’ so we cannot have all the answers in the way we do in theology. It is really a scientific matter.
    Metropolitan (and scientist) Nikoloas of Mesogaia has a great talk on the “unknowability” of the created physical world, and the “communicability” of the uncreated Creator.

  74. Gene B Avatar
    Gene B

    This has been a very interesting thread. But what can you say about the Byzantines (and the Jews for that matter) that number years based on the date the world was created? In both cases they point to a world less than 6000 years old. Numbering years in this method also shows that the basic cultural understanding of the age of the world was in fact 6000 years, whether directly described by the fathers or not. This year numbering system is still used on Mt. Athos. Is this not also part of the Orthodox tradition?

    In my work career, I work with a large range of engineers and scientists performing basic research on many topics. On the front lines, what we know is often determined by our hypotheses and experiments that try to generate observable data. It many ways, they are like children in a complicated playground, trying to get things to work. In my experience, what we know is so much less than we think. We use methods (such as radio carbon dating among many others) to direct our conclusions but so much rests on extrapolating our short life span’s experience over a much longer time frame. I am not sure we know enough to know. I have seen scientific arguments that can bolster both sides of the creation debate and even more in the “do not know” category.

    The most difficult part of what is happening here in this conversation is that it has become much more complicated for simple folk to understand. By the quality and depth of the responses, I am sure most of the posters here are highly educated, probably many with Masters Degrees. Bringing the conversation to this level will cause most people in the world to leave it – it’s over their heads. I am speaking this as someone who has been burdened with an above average IQ. I struggle with relating to the concerns and interests of most people. Father Stephen is trying hard to bridge the gaps but in doing to it is going far being the ability of the average person to understand and therefore the average person’s response it that it no longer concerns them. We have forged an engineer’s technical Christianity.

    I think when the end of the world comes we will be surprised. I think we should be much more humble about what we know collectively as a species and trust God more. The danger is that we cause many to lose their faith.

  75. TLO Avatar
    TLO

    …while it is true that man’s breaking communion with God is the source of death…</blockquote

    This is a question that needs answering: Is this actually truth? If so, by what means does one arrive at that truth?

    Am I correct in saying that the Fall of Man narrative is the Christian's means by which one arrives at this conclusion? Or if we remove the Fall of Man story entirely, as if it never existed, what other evidence could one present that would lead to the same conclusion?

  76. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    TLO,
    Very good question indeed…
    The first thing that comes to mind for an Orthodox, I think, is that physical death – as understood secularly – is part of createdness, regardless of any fall (human or angelic).
    Immortality -‘Life’ as we would call it, call “Him” rather – is a potential. It is a potential, but, it is far more than that when we say it is why God created man:
    for the purpose of eternal union with Him.
    This is the deepest desire of human nature (irrespective of any fall) – a perception of which is to be found in every single soul.
    All physical death however, -of all creatures that is-, is transcendable through the allmightly power of grace that was (and is) to act THROUGH Man.

  77. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    TLO
    The only way to approach the truth of these things is from the resurrection of Christ. If Christ has been raised from the dead…then the story of Adam has the meaning given to it in the Christian Tradition. If Christ is not raised from the dead, then it really doesn’t matter.

    But the normal linear, historical, logical arguments simply will not do.

    The resurrection is the single, total game-changer.

    If Christ is raised from the dead, then the God who raised Him is the God who gives us the story of the fall (regardless of its relationship with history). But the resurrection is still the only place to start.

  78. Jesse Avatar
    Jesse

    Dino,

    I do think we need to be careful when we speak of immortality as a potential. All men, simply by virtue of existing have eternal-being (whether saved or not), and Adam in his pre-fallen state according to nature had well-being. The state he was created in knew no suffering, pain, corruption, etc – he was not naturally heading towards the grave. In this sense immortality was an actuality. what is the potential is to combine ever-being and well-being into ever-well-being and this is where Adam failed, but nevertheless he once knew life free from corruption and death.

  79. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    Jesse,
    well-put! As long as we remember that this knowledge (asFather reminds us here), (the knowledge of the ‘eighth day’), -even though it has clear precursors (as in the unflinching martyrdom of the maccabbes for instance)-, comes to us in full from that historical Pascha of all on the 25th of March 33.
    Potential is not the right word for the ‘logoi’ theologically, was using it for simplicity’s sake

  80. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    It is equally important to remember that immortality was not given to us by nature but according to grace. It is nonetheless real and true though only realized in Christ himself.

  81. TLO Avatar
    TLO

    Fr. Stephen:

    If Christ has been raised from the dead…then the story of Adam has the meaning

    But does Christ resurrection have meaning without the story of Adam?

    The resurrection is a solution. The Fall is the problem that the resurrection solves.

    Without a problem, a solution makes no sense and the resurrection becomes a neat magic trick.

    If there was no story of Adam, would you still arrive at the conclusion that “man’s breaking communion with God is the source of death”?

    The problem with the Fall, as I see it, is that it places guilt upon humans because a choice was made by humans.

    It is this Once Perfect -> Chose Death -> Redemption that encapsulates the message, is it not?

    Whether you write the equation

    Need for Redemption = Once Perfect + Chose Death

    or

    Once Perfect + Chose Death = Need for Redemption

    makes no difference. Where you start has no bearing on the component necessary for this truth to be arrived at.

  82. mary benton Avatar
    mary benton

    Hi TLO (nice to “see” you again)

    I do not have the wisdom to answer for Fr. Stephen but I will share a couple of thoughts.

    If there is a God who is source of all Life and who is goodness Itself, then to break communion with Him would have to be death. (Not referring specifically to physical death but non-being, ultimate death.) There can be no Life outside of Life.

    Whether the story of Adam was told as is…not so important as the “story” or realization that humans did and do actually break communion with God. It would be hard to argue that we have not done this – assuming one believes there is a God to break communion with. (The story of Adam and Eve sums it up pretty well but if the same truth were told in a different story that wouldn’t matter a lot to me.)

    Should we not feel “guilt” for having done so? I’m not talking about neurotic, paralyzing, unhealthy, self-loathing guilt but rather acceptance of responsibility and true contrition.

    I cannot accept redemption if I do not accept that I need it.

    (I apologize in advance if any of my comments miss the point; I haven’t followed the entire thread of commentary.)

  83. TLO Avatar
    TLO

    Hi Mary!

    If there is a God who is source of all Life and who is goodness Itself

    I think you leave out an important component. “If there is a personal God who is source of all Life and who is goodness Itself and who cares about human beings.

    (As an aside, it seems to me highly narcissistic to realize that this universe contains a billion galaxies, each with a billion stars and quadrillions of planets and to think that he cares about the morality of one species on this little dot. Everything we suppose about this creator was penned by bronze-age people in a region of this planet that is roughly the size of New England. I find it highly improbable that they really had the inside story.)

    I have no problem with “a God who is source of all Life and who is goodness itself.” In fact, it occurred to me that if such a being exists and he took the trouble to read what the Bible has to say about him, he’d be insulted.

    You are a good person. Would you require a bloody animal or human sacrifice before you would reconcile with someone?

    The very idea of this separation from god requiring such a remedy does not fit the definition of “good.” Why couldn’t god just say, “I forgive you”, end of story?

    I left Christianity because I could not look on the Christian god as being “goodness itself.” I simply cannot think that poorly of such a being. I prefer to hope for a god who is better than you or I.

  84. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    TLO
    Can’t write at length on my phone. But. The resurrection stands with or without the story of Adam. The Christianity you have rejected is deeply flawed. Guilt is not an issue. Your understanding of sacrifice is flawed as well. It’s not Christianity you reject but a child’s version of Sunday School theology. Death is the problem. And I live out Adams story every day. And the resurrection responds.

  85. Robert Bearer Avatar
    Robert Bearer

    Dear to Christ, TLO,

    Father Stephen is right and I’m sure he will have more to say when freed from participation in the Pastoral Conference in TX. (Father, I wish I had been able to stay to hear your talk on Saving the Atonement.)

    Meanwhile, let me say that God couldn’t, and cannot, simply say “I forgive you,” because our dilemma as persons made in His image is not one of the transgression of a prohibition and of some way to escape a penalty. No, it is one of a volunatary,if not always conscious, ontological separation from Him Who is the sole Source of Life, Joy and Love. It is an illness with willful aspect to it.

    Since the separation is voluntary–and the illness is one of the heart–it cannot be undone by divine diktat.

    Instead, to keep us from returning to the nothingness from which we are made, Christ God emptied Himself and became a man–He became human as we are, so that we might, by participation in grace, become divine as He is.

    He has personally showed us, and led, the way to Life through self-emptying death–not by word only but in deed–and He has sent us the Divine Spirit preceeding from the Father, of Whom He is the sole Begotten–and Who is one with Him and the Father–so that through Baptism into His death and the immersion into Him it implies, and the Great Thanksgiving(Eucharist)and communion in His Body and Blood (and various other means of grace) we may experience and actualize, in fact, the reality of the transformation from participation in the first Adam, the mortal man of dust, into a participation in the immortal Second Adam, Christ God, the Theanthropos, Who as St. Paul says,is the Divine and Life-giving Spirit. so that we may be able to say with the Apostle that it is no longe we who live, but Christ Who lives in us.

    Forgive me, a sinner.

    Christ is in our midst, and may He be magnified in us and made visible to the world.

    rlb

  86. TLO Avatar
    TLO

    Hi Robert,

    Thanks for the reply. The difficulty I have with this idea of a voluntary separation is this: one has to be aware of something in order for one to voluntarily avoid it.

    If one is born in Arizona, do you then say that they voluntarily avoid the ocean?

    No matter how it’s presented, this “voluntary separation” sounds to me like simply another way of saying “people don’t always choose to do good.”

    By what methods does one arrive at the conclusion you make or that “Death is the problem”? It is certainly not self-evident.

  87. TLO Avatar
    TLO

    Father Stephen, I can wait for a reply.

    You said:

    Death is the problem. And I live out Adam’s story every day. And the resurrection responds.

    Having said so, I don’t understand why you would post anything about Creation vs. Evolution. It seems to me that neither of them really matters.

    Would it be correct of me to say that Orthodox theology stands apart from any evidentiary examination?

  88. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    TLO
    Evidentiary? Other than the resurrection?

  89. TLO Avatar
    TLO

    Correct. The resurrection is the only aspect that requires any actual evidence. Once that is established, the rest is pretty much fluff, isn’t it? Said another way, you could randomly pull out entire books of the Bible without is having any bearing whatsoever on Orthodox theology, right?

  90. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    TLO,
    There are many things that are said and affirmed in the theology of the faith. But everything flows from the resurrection of Christ. There are some who might try to start everywhere, but they’re mistaken. The disciples don’t get it, until they get the resurrection. And the resurrection of Christ was not what they thought they were waiting for. If you will, the answer came first, and the answer revealed the question.

    For that reason, we understand Adam, and anything else in the OT through the lens of Christ’s Pascha. I would agree that the Creation/evolution debate doesn’t matter much – except that God created all things – this is revealed to us in Christ’s resurrection. But there is no necessary commitment to how that Creation unfolds. Again, some might argue otherwise, but they are mistaken.

    There can certainly be an examination of the “evidence” for the resurrection. I would suggest Gary Habermas’ work on the evidence for the resurrection. I find his work to be solid. Why, as a believer in the resurrection of Christ am I also an Orthodox Christian? That is perhaps another question – though not unconnected for me.

  91. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    TLO,
    The resurrection having been established in the faith of the Church – everything within Scripture is taken up into the theology of the Church – not so much by force of itself – but by force of the resurrection. For that matter, everything in the world gets taken up by the resurrection. CS Lewis even said of the old pagan myths that they were like “good dreams sent to us to prepare for the coming of Christ.” Obviously, they are not treated as true – but – they served to some degree to “baptize” the imagination. Both Lewis and Tolkien thought of myth (Tolkien saw himself as a writer of myth rather than mere fiction) as a baptism of the imagination. And they both saw imagination as a component of faith. The faith isn’t true because we imagine it – but confronted with the resurrection – we find ourselves able to imagine the world in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

    Orthodoxy is the historic, living witness to the resurrection. It is not the consequence of OT teaching – but the place where the OT is read in light of the resurrection. It is the place where everything is read in the light of the resurrection.

  92. TLO Avatar
    TLO

    Hi Fr. Stephen – While there are many writings surrounding the resurrection that amplify it, the removal of any one set of writings would not alter the fundamental idea of the resurrection. Would that be an accurate statement?

    The the life and death of Christ as it is described in the Gospels is what one must accept as factual and accurate. I think I am understanding that correctly.

  93. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    I would agree.

  94. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    TLO,

    the removal of any one set of writings would not alter the fundamental idea of the resurrection. Would that be an accurate statement?

    one could go further still – as St Silouan illustrates – and claim that, even if all Scripture, (100% of it) was somehow lost, those who have the Spirit of God dwelling in their purified and illumined hearts, which are devoted solely to Christ, would be able to rewrite it all again with few differences from the lost originals.

    The saints that were unlettered or destitute of all books (like the famous Anthony the Great or Mary of Egypt) were proof of this.
    I have personally met Elders who knew and saw things no one could possibly know; in the past, in the future, inside the depths of your soul, and inside the entirety of scripture without this being due to having memorised it in any way…

    I must admit that at the time none of it works like a ‘sign’ (this is true for most people that meet these Saintly rare persons). Our doubts stay with us. We don’t particularly believe in it all even though it stares us in the face. It might be totally astonishing to think back on. But the insatiable desire to confirm this stuff from an investigative point of view ruins our chances of wonder and acceptance. The multiplication of questions, does not increase our faith. Few are the people that have a sudden change because of any such ‘sign’, the change (for those that do suddenly change – and then hopefully assimilate this over many arduous years) is always because of their humility attracting God’s grace at the same time…
    The “sign” that I am asking for also can’t change much on its own at all – even believers remain colder than the Pharaoh or the thief on the left.

    Even with all reasons to the contrary destroyed, faith still cannot enter until the humble repentance on a personal level brings a touch of God’s grace – enough to explain what is going on with the trillions of stars and the trillions of nerve connections in a way that is diametrically opposed to what the reasoning mind demands.
    Christ’s words “you will ask me nothing” start making sense then, when everything falls into place, when we actually have a relationship with God from our side too. Up to then it seems to always be ‘His problem’ (that we haven’t enough proof, enough communion, enough perception of Him) but after that we discover it was ‘my’ problem, and we start accepting it as such too.
    Grace reveals this darkness in our souls softly when we are inclined to abandon (or at least recognise) the ultra refined strains of self-justification that run deep in our psyches’… however, the crazy thing is that all this can also get buried under a great deal of distraction, laziness, forgetfulness and thought processes after a while too; Even if Grace gives us something extremely special and life changing – and this is very painful indeed.

    Once blessed with this experience though, the reasoning faculty of the intellect normally becomes useful again – as a slave to the Spirit-filled noetic faculty, not the other way round.

  95. TLO Avatar
    TLO

    Father Stephen – Thank you. I truly value simplicity.

    Dino – What I really need is something simple. All this personal-relationship-Jesus-in-my-heart stuff is how Evangelicals justify their warped theology and intellectual laziness. (I cannot tell you how often the I have been berated by evangelicals that I was never a True-Christian™.)

    We have narrowed it down to one simple equation: Is the the life and death of Christ as it is described in the Gospels factual and accurate?

    I am not here to discuss that question, only to understand what is the one question upon which Orthodox Christianity is founded.

  96. fatherstephen Avatar
    fatherstephen

    TLO
    Frankly, on my hardest or worst days, it is just as simple for me as you asked. The whole of my present life rests solely on the resurrection of Christ. And occasionally, I have to strip everything else away and stand just there. Just there.

  97. TLO Avatar
    TLO

    I appreciate your non-muttonheaddedness. 🙂

  98. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    oops sorry TLO. it’s amazing how words have the potential to sound one way or another – even ‘evangelical sounding’. And it does make even more sense in this world of extreme cross-cultural conversation we live in though…
    Yes the resurrection of Christ, of course, is what our faith, joy, love is founded on.

    It’s just that – to me – I find this having the potential to leave me both: untouched, as well as rocked to the very core.

    St Silouan’s experience of Christ (not your usual “personal-relationship-Jesus-in-my-heart stuff that Evangelicals justify their warped theology and intellectual laziness with) was described as communing in Christ’s resurrection by his disciple.

  99. TLO Avatar
    TLO

    I find this having the potential to leave me both: untouched, as well as rocked to the very core.

    Well, I would answer that if this is the way that God did things, it was intentional. He would have to know that some would believe and be rocked to the core while others would be incredulous and untouched. The purpose behind this? God only knows.

    I’m at rest with it. If I am destined for hell due to honest incredulity, so be it. I prefer that to abdicating my reason in order to believe something that I find unbelievable. That sounds arrogant and judgmental but it isn’t. I almost envy those who do not find it unbelievable.

    But there’s a third option as well – incredulous and touched. There are a lot of fictional stories that touch us. Frodo returning to the Shire and never being able to fit in then leaving his faithful Sam is a beautiful picture of something that I think holds deep meaning for us all. The idea that the creator of the multiverse would care enough about our one pathetic little species is a beautiful story whether you take it to be real or fiction.

    At least the Orthodox stance makes sense. Evangelical theology is replete with things that are unbelievable simply because their ideas are idiotic.

    The evangelicals have done a great disservice to Christians everywhere. They have made Christianity a political force and a corporate franchise. Personally, I think that if there were only Orthodox Christians and not Papists and Evangelicals, this would be a much better world to live in.

    Nice to chat with you again, btw.

  100. Dino Avatar
    Dino

    TLO,
    there is also a fourth option you missed above, that of believing yet being untouched. This is what I meant above: that even after having been touched to the point that our life has been turned around, we still have the crazy ability to bury the whole experience…
    St Peter was at the Transfiguration, he saw the meaning of the “multiverse” in a Person in front of him, he had all the proof one could ask for, yet he still betrayed that person later. I would argue that Peter’s own (upside down) crucifixion was as great, no, an even greater communion actually with the resurrected Christ than when he was answering Him, ‘yes I do love you’ seeing Him resurrected at lake Galilee…

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