Metropolitan Kallistos Ware on evolution

they were created immortal (soul in body) insofar as they remained in communion with God.

ArmyMatt said:

they were created immortal (soul in body) insofar as they remained in communion with God.

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This then means that their state of existence before the fall was physical immortality. The communion with God provided this for them. The fall removed this physical immortality due to sin.

HardHead said:

This then means that their state of existence before the fall was physical immortality. The communion with God provided this for them. The fall removed this physical immortality due to sin.

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yep. when they sinned, they broke communion with God (spiritual death) Who is Life, and because of that they died physically.

ArmyMatt said:

yep. when they sinned, they broke communion with God (spiritual death) Who is Life, and because of that they died physically.

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Excellent. Thanks for your patience and for accommodating my questions.

That is my take on this topic as well. I really don't agree with the argument that states that they were created mortal.

The idea that they were mortal whether they sinned or not is just made up by modern people to try to harmonize theology with evolution. The Scriptures and saints unanimously teach that Adam and Eve died //because// they sinned.

Nick Moser said:

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He's quite right about it all, though certainly some less informed folks may disagree.

Macroevolution is heretical trash.

Orthodox Church

Genesis and Early Man

Fr.Seraphim Rose. Genesis, Creation and Early Man



.

gzt said:

He's quite right about it all, though certainly some less informed folks may disagree.

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You are, of course, quite welcome to expound on that opinion showing from the consensus of the saints in Holy Tradition how that is so.

rusmeister said:

You are, of course, quite welcome to expound on that opinion showing from the consensus of the saints in Holy Tradition how that is so.

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and with that point, there is the addition of more post-Darwin anti-evolution saints to the calendar.

I honestly do NOT want to put down people who have a quite understandable faith in modern science. It is easy to see how one can have faith in an understanding of the natural world that can produce working airplanes, smartphones, medical technology and so on.

But that faith goes too far regarding things that no one can ever observe. One of the main things people forget is that in current theories about the prehistoric past, is that all "knowledge" is based on assumptions and calculations based on evidence - and evidence is not proof. Evidence is something that can be seen. It can be rightly or wrongly interpreted. Does anyone remember the white glove in the OJ Simpson case? People forget that the scientists themselves are produced by an educational system - one with its roots in 18th century Prussia, one never designed to do what parents imagine it is supposed to do. That educational system now, by design, produces a nation of people that do not read; it is falling to pieces, bit by bit, as we watch, and is not producing a well-educated populace capable of reading and discussing the classics, conversant with Latin, Greek, the Trivium. It now produces narrow specialists who have not been "educato" into a holistic world view based on truth. These are the people that we now call scientists. Stephen Hawking is a prime example of a brilliant narrow specialist who wouldn't survive five minutes with Socrates or Plato.

Is that "ad hominem"? Yes, I suppose it is. The trouble is that the science is conducted by men - very flawed men with very poor education in any classical liberal sense. They cannot see that a claim whose truth cannot be verified by observation must be believed in - that one must believe in the calculations and assumptions. It may be that one could conduct a million such calculations, or a million scientists could conduct the same experiment. But if they all received, roughly speaking, the same kind of education, if they all left out the possibility of unknown variables, then it wouldn't matter, one study or a million. all would be liable to error.

And that's just one of the sides of the issue that never gets addressed. The central theological problem of positing a God-created world in which death already exists, a dog-eat-dog world of evolution, in which a being appears, also killing and being killed, that slowly becomes man, a man that somehow "falls", introducing death into a world where it, uh, already existed, contradicts Scripture and the consensus of Holy Tradition. It is a mental dissonance that places this highly fallen discipline called "science", and places its claims, knowledge, and assumed "knowledge" on the same level as the revelation that the martyrs died for.

And it's bootless and wrong to quarrel over these things if we leave out the central claim of Holy Tradition - that as by one (fully-formed and unFallen) man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men. It is that which "theistic evolution" denies - while pretending to affirm it. That is why it is so essential to speak to these claims out of our Tradition, something the defenders cannot do. They speak of a "living Tradition" by which they mean "changing", changling what Tradition teaches, affirming "truths" that later turn out to be mistaken, as if revelation to the Church (as opposed to individuals learning about it) were an ongoing thing, instead of ending with the revelation of Christ.

So while this heresy which could be called "meliorism" ("we are just as good as the fathers, we know better than the fathers because of modern education, science, iPhones, etc") must be condemned, and the changeless truth of the gospel of Christ reaffirmed, and we must admit that the wisdom of this world will all come to naught, I would not kick people who have hitherto believed that these incompatible ideas are compatible, and that we ought to respect science. We DO respect science - in its proper place. But here, in its effective denial of death entering a hitherto unFallen world as a result of the actions of fully-formed humans, the conclusions of the scientists, formed by a system that taught them to see and think in terms that however subtly, deny faith, betray their Fallen error - well-meaning, error in all earnestness, undertaken carefully, with great methods and calculations, but error nonetheless. And we have turned human reason from a servant into a master. We need to desire to acquire the mind of the Church, not to impose our own mind in its stead.

David Neos said:

Don't people who believe in Evolution cite St. Augustine or Origen to say it is not necessary to believe in a literal 7 days of Creation?

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Augustine believed Chapter 1 was an in-depth description of an instantaneous event. He believed that Genesis Chapter 2 and onward was absolutely historical.

His interpretation of Genesis 1 came from (usually considered to be) a misinterpretation of a verse in Jeremiah. Even still, Augustine considered the instant of creation to be historical. So, by Augustinian theology, that instant was a true instant and not merely a metaphorical instant.

Evolution is explicitly not instantaneous and, therefore, outside of the Augustinian view of creation theology. Now, if we presume that evolution was instantaneous rather than taking billions of years, then you could say that evolution might be covered by Augustinian creation theology.

This view of instantaneous creation (as opposed to seven day) is seemingly unique to Augustine.

Origen was specifically condemned by Council, including ecumenical council, for refusing the historicity of Genesis - and not merely condemned for his strange metaphysical ideas of Genesis (like the pre-existence of souls.)

Nick Moser said:

Yea I am unsure about evolution. I am not smart enough

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To those who cannot engage with the controversy intellectually, it is sufficient to merely follow the teachings of the Fathers in good faith. What they have written on the matter is easy to find. If you can, read them in their pure form and not through commentary. See what they have to say and pray to God for enlightenment. If you cannot read the Fathers, then pray to God for enlightenment. Look at the fallen world which is sentenced to be burned and look at the liturgy, and pray that God would show you about evolution.

"God is the Lord who has revealed himself to us. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."

We know through revelation, not through academia. God speaks to the pure in heart, the child-like, and the simple. By grace may we know anything.

Jude1:3Contendforthefaith said:

Macroevolution is heretical trash.

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Well, yes, it is, but the important thing is seeing why it matters. And why it matters is that if one accepts it, it means that modern and quite worldly people who wear white coats and work in a lab can correct the consensus of the Church fathers. It means that the Church must bow to whatever claims are made in the name of science.

And this also goes to show how a bishop, speaking outside of that consensus of the fathers, can go wrong, and lead others wrong. That’s why it is so vital to show harmony with, and not challenge to that consensus. Everything shown here shows that the fathers reject evolution, reject slow development of man in a world in which death existed before there was any man to even fall and introduce death.

GZT, you can make your pronouncements, but you can never produce that consensus of the fathers to support the modern consensus of scientists. The problem there is that you, like the rest of us, can see what that consensus of the fathers is, but you reject it, choosing faith in modern scientists over faith in the fathers and saints. That’s not an Orthodox attitude, but one alien to it. A childlike faith would suit us all better, though sophisticated minds can grasp that God can do quickly what they can only imagine slowly.

Besides science, Church has revelation through Holy Tradition which includes Fathers, Scripture etc.. If we do not have any revelation on a certain topic, we say „it might be like this” having always in mind that the science is relative.
Tied to this very topic, we have some revelations post-Darwin.