if evolution is true then death is not a result of man's sin, because it necessarily predated man.
This assumes chronology in God, something that Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Dionysius, and Maximus were all quite loathe to do.
In short,
in wisdom (in the "principle" or "arche"; often translated as "beginning" in a way that de-facto short changes the semantic range of the greek word underlying Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1) God foreknew all things and already arranged the universe accordingly.
Otherwise, how can we say with Revelations that Christ was the Lamb slain
since the foundation of the world? Since that would be before human sin (chronologically speaking)
Was the Cross really just a "plan B"? A giant "whoopsie" on God's part? Of course not. God knew we would sin because God knows all things. Foreknowing that sin it is hardly a leap to say that death could exist within the created order
as a result of human sin even "before" (to our time-limited perspective) Adam and Eve existed.
St. Athanasius in
On the Incarnation even asserts the principle on an historical level, that animals are created to die and that humans only were meant for immortality if they maintained contemplation of God. The "death" which is strictly chronologically AFTER human sin is the 'second death' of human spiritual separation from God, which could not be a part of human existence prior to humans existing (in time).
The Fathers, obviously, never connect this to a theory like evolution, but it isn't hard to imagine how they might. On the Cross, God demonstrates that He can use death to create life. In Evolution, God creates life through death. Evolution becomes a 'typology' of the Cross, necessitated in the created order because of human sin, but foreknown by God long "before" that sin occurred and, thus, incorporated by God into His divine providence.
The Lamb slain since the foundation of the world.
The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Fathers following Wisdom and St. Paul, tell us clearly that God created nothing to die. St. Basil, in his Hexameron, says that He Who is Life could not have created death, for He created nothing evil. But if God used evolution, then He created and used death, and all that God created is good, so death is good.
See above for how an a-chronological perspective on God's foreknowledge (which is precisely the perspective the Father's had on God's creative work) undoes this argument.
so God contradicts Himself then by defeating death for the renewal of the entire cosmos. And to distinguish between human and animal death doesn't cut it, because the Fathers also teach that animals, and the entire cosmos, only took on corruption at man's sin. so while many people insist that they are compatible or that this issue doesn't matter, this is at least one of the burning issues that needs to be addressed coherently without sacrificing Orthodoxy.
I agree, but I think the issue is more burning for us because we have inherited the historicism of German Protestants and of modernity in general, and this makes it almost impossible for us to conceive of the full implications of God's foreknowledge.
I mean, to put it in shocking language, St. Irenaeus makes the claim that God created the world precisely because as Savior (that is, as the Crucified One) He made a world in which to be crucified and save. That's absolute blasphemy unless we understand that God already sees the eschaton and is still seeing the pre-created cosmos in His mind's eye. He's above time. To Him, human causality does not look like it does to us.
You mentioned you're writing a thesis on this (which is fantastic - I'd genuinely like to read that when you're done). I wrote a term paper on Origen's cosmology last semester that deals with this exact anti-chronological issue; it was misunderstood (I content) in Origen, but the same basic idea shows up in Irenaeus, Maximus, the Cappadocians, etc. In other words, the argument I make with respect to Origen is to bring Origen's cosmology more into line with
general patristic cosmology. If you'd like, I can try to get that paper to you as it goes into a lot more argumentative detail on this.
And I agree, in full, that the issue of death and the creation of life through death is absolutely central. I just think a Cross-centered vision transforms that from a problem to a beautiful proof of the Cross: the Cross, foreknown by God, is written into the very fabric of the cosmos. Through death, life.
has anyone ever harmonized evolution with the theology of the logoi? I'm only aware of one author who tackled the problem and he concluded that the two are incompatible.
You mean Maximus and his cosmology? Well, I think its pretty clear that the Fathers were unaware of any theory like evolution, so I wouldn't expect their comsological schema to match it.
What I do see, though, are principles of cosmology that make evolution not seem incompatible. The main problem (that of death) is the one you raise, and I think it is quite answerable given a proper reading of the Fathers.
there simply are too many issues that need to be worked through that just make it ridiculosu for people to simply proclaim that evolution is compatible. It really has to be demonstrated, not proclaimed.
Sure, but most people don't bother the other way either.
I think far more problematic, at least to me, is the issue of framework / first-principles (e.g. does natural selection become an all-encompassing first principle for schematizing and understanding other aspects of life and society)? This REALLY strongly differentiates naturalistic evolution (for which that is a danger) from theistic evolution (where it is less so because of the assertion of God's providence as the guiding principle).
