What is the Church's position on Creation/Evolution

Platina said:

I was also responding about geocentrism. If the Fathers taught incorrectly about it, the question is, so what? It's irrelevant to theology as far as I can see, and they openly admit that in those cases they were leaning on the science of their time.

That's rather different than when St. Basil explicitly tells us he is giving the teaching of the Church in his Hexameron, or when he introduces teachings by saying things like "Nothing is truer than this..."

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plus, even as our scientific knowledge has grown and developed, the saints have still been consistent in the understanding that death and corruption entered in at the Fall.

I believe I see the nature of the misunderstanding.
The fathers spoke as everyone did in the ancient world, and of course, spoke of the sun as “moving” and so on. That was how everybody talked, even the people who realized very early on that the Earth was probably a globe. But that doesn’t mean they were “teaching” it as a doctrine. They were speaking in terms of how everyone perceived the world. One could say that the things they TAUGHT were the things that were NOT common knowledge. They DID teach that Adam and Eve were real people, and that the human race originated from them. In all events, it still becomes irrelevant that the fathers spoke in terms of geocentrism as we understand it.

Next, we’ll have to pound on the idea of what we think we know via our education, and what the public schools, and vast majority of private ones that mirror the public structures and methods, actually produce.

You guys always crack me up on this subject. 5500 BC to present, go...LOL! It's one thing to accept a theory as probable based on overwhelming evidence, it's entirely another to reject it based on none. I do give credence to Rus's point on the nature of Man wrt to evolution. As beings created in the image and likeness of God, anthropology must have a theological component to be complete. I don't see much connection between YEC and theology though. The age of the earth is relatively unimportant theologically unless it's vitally important for you to take the first creation narrative as 100% literal, but then what do you do with the second? On the physical evidence side, there is really no contest - YEC has 0 just like geocentrism, and that is the point.

Kristos said:

You guys always crack me up on this subject. 5500 BC to present, go...LOL! It's one thing to accept a theory as probable based on overwhelming evidence, it's entirely another to reject it based on none. I do give credence to Rus's point on the nature of Man wrt to evolution. As beings created in the image and likeness of God, anthropology must have a theological component to be complete. I don't see much connection between YEC and theology though. The age of the earth is relatively unimportant theologically unless it's vitally important for you to take the first creation narrative as 100% literal, but then what do you do with the second? On the physical evidence side, there is really no contest - YEC has 0 just like geocentrism, and that is the point.

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the age of the earth isn't the issue per say, it's death. because creation's corruption does have to do with our understanding of anthropology.

indeed, it's the evolutionists within Orthodoxy who are far more concerned about the age of the earth, whereas the Creationists focus on anthropology and soteriology.

What Fr Matt and Platina said.

gzt said:

Not going to watch a 38 minute video - at which point in there does he say he's been received into the Church?

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Hate to bump this thread, but I've found out that Mr Dyer has recently been received into the Church. Many years, congratulations, may God lead him on a level path, and I was (as always) right all along.

Why on earth is this thread being resurrected???

What an odd thing to say.

If I thought I knew the exact age of the Earth, give or take seventy million years, I reckon I’d be pretty confident in everything else I thought I knew. Of course, all knowledge depends on the basis on which we think we know it and believe it to be true. It all comes down to faith in one authority or another, in one narrative or another.

The chief thing I would encourage Orthodox Christians to do would be to confine themselves to acknowledged authority within their own Church. The one thing we should never do is to appeal to non-Orthodox authority to try to establish or impose our own version or understanding.

This should be in St Justin Martyr’s not in the TAW main forum.

gurneyhalleck1 said:

Why on earth is this thread being resurrected??

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How about: "Why is what the Bible says brought up again and again ? "
It is a lot older than any thread, after all, right ?

yeshuaslavejeff said:

How about: "Why is what the Bible says brought up again and again ? "
It is a lot older than any thread, after all, right ?

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what?

ArmyMatt said:

what?

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Just passing thru/ saw that one post --
saw
others in the past 'complain' 'why are old threads brought up' ?

Noted that SCRIPTURE IS BROUGHT UP DAILY, and SCRIPTURE is older than the oldest threads....

Seconded

ArmyMatt said:

what?

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yeshuaslavejeff said:

Just passing thru/ saw that one post --
saw
others in the past 'complain' 'why are old threads brought up' ?

Noted that SCRIPTURE IS BROUGHT UP DAILY, and SCRIPTURE is older than the oldest threads....

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again, what? sorry I don't follow, but that has nothing to do with this thread.

ArmyMatt said:

again, what? sorry I don't follow, but that has nothing to do with this thread.

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It was only a reply to the one post wondering why an "old" (so-called) thread was brought up .

If that is a problem, (an old (so-called) thread) being brought up,

then why is bringing up Scripture, (much much older than any thread) ,

not a problem ?

yeshuaslavejeff said:

It was only a reply to the one post wondering why an "old" (so-called) thread was brought up .

If that is a problem, (an old (so-called) thread) being brought up,

then why is bringing up Scripture, (much much older than any thread) ,

not a problem ?

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what do they have to do with each other?

ArmyMatt said:

what do they have to do with each other?

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Something old.

Why complain or note one and not the other ?