The icon reads: “Evolution is the key to the philosophy of Antichrist.”

rusmeister said:

But surely people can and do "write" icons of a declared saint with sayings that are not Orthodox dogma? (Although I think this one to truly be Orthodox dogma, but a shocking one to people with blind faith in the modern education which produces the scientists.

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(I know you know this, rus, so this one is for the lurkers). people can, but that doesn't make it Orthodox. Fr Seraphim does here, though, as he is in line with the consensus of the Church, especially a lot of modern saints.

Evolution in no way, shape, or form has any business as a belief dwelling within Orthodoxy. It’s not mere folly, but dangerous as a theological worldview. Zero compatibility with the Incarnation. It’s very core belief of constant change and continued adapting into something new makes Christ’s Incarnation insufficient. It negates our First Parents, introduces a randomness, affirms the worst machinations in the philosophies of eugenics freaks, and has a host of awful potential conclusions from which to draw. Idiotic.

rusmeister said:

But surely people can and do "write" icons of a declared saint with sayings that are not Orthodox dogma? (Although I think this one to truly be Orthodox dogma, but a shocking one to people with blind faith in the modern education which produces the scientists.

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hedrick said:

As a non-Orthodox I have to ask Orthodox participants: Is this truly regarded by Orthodox as a holy icon?

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It is common to have quotes from the saints on their icons so yes, as Fr. Matt said, if/when Fr. Seraphim is canonised this will be regarded as a holy icon.

If you are referring specifically to the content of the quote selected (as I imagine you are) its a little more complicated. In my experience in the UK at least there is a wide variety of Orthodox views on evolution, though I'm aware thats not the case everywhere. I imagine whether to have an anti-evolution quote on an icon would be something for the individual iconographer and local priest/bishop (if its being publicly displayed in a church) to decide. In some circles it would be seen as controversial, in others truth.

Nick T said:

It is common to have quotes from the saints on their icons so yes, as Fr. Matt said, if/when Fr. Seraphim is canonised this will be regarded as a holy icon.

If you are referring specifically to the content of the quote selected (as I imagine you are) its a little more complicated. In my experience in the UK at least there is a wide variety of Orthodox views on evolution, though I'm aware thats not the case everywhere. I imagine whether to have an anti-evolution quote on an icon would be something for the individual iconographer and local priest/bishop (if its being publicly displayed in a church) to decide. In some circles it would be seen as controversial, in others truth.

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The fact that there is a wide variety of views does not mean that that variety is therefore legitimate. I know of a wide variety of views in the Church, and even in my own parish, on sexual morality, yet the permissive ideas that make no-fault divorce between two practicing Orthodox Christians, fornication, same-sex sexual relations (even in "a monogamous context") and other such ideas acceptable within the Church as compatible with our Teaching are false and simply out of line with our teaching.

Thus it is with evolution. People believe it, but it is not compatible with Orthodox doctrine. We have a definite first father, Adam, who was a real and fully-formed man, formed without sin, and death did not exist in the world until a fully-formed man brought it in via sin. Such is affirmed by Scripture and the rest of Holy Tradition. The teaching of evolution as anything beyond observed changes (ie, macroevolution, evolution as a cosmic theory) denies this, though heaven knows how many contortions some believers go through to try to treat the science, knowledge, and education of this world as equal to holy Revelation.

rusmeister said:

The fact that there is a wide variety of views does not mean that that variety is therefore legitimate. I know of a wide variety of views in the Church, and even in my own parish, on sexual morality, yet the permissive ideas that make no-fault divorce between two practicing Orthodox Christians, fornication, same-sex sexual relations (even in "a monogamous context") and other such ideas acceptable within the Church as compatible with our Teaching are false and simply out of line with our teaching.

Thus it is with evolution. People believe it, but it is not compatible with Orthodox doctrine. We have a definite first father, Adam, who was a real and fully-formed man, formed without sin, and death did not exist in the world until a fully-formed man brought it in via sin. Such is affirmed by Scripture and the rest of Holy Tradition. The teaching of evolution as anything beyond observed changes (ie, macroevolution, evolution as a cosmic theory) denies this, though heaven knows how many contortions some believers go through to try to treat the science, knowledge, and education of this world as equal to holy Revelation.

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Of course diversity doesn't make legitimacy, but I didn't mean differing opinions in the sense of your other examples- where the clergy teach very clearly one thing but individuals take it upon themselves to dissent in private. I meant that I've generally never heard it asserted even by clergy that this is a dogmatic issue; it is quite simply not a matter in which conformity is demanded or sought, nor is it something generally taught from the pulpit.

And FWIW even as someone who leans towards a form Theistic Evolution (though I'm by no means certain on the issue), I actually agree with your main point of the necessity of a literal deathless Adam- though I'm not necessarily certain of the need for a deathless world outside Eden.

rusmeister said:

The fact that there is a wide variety of views does not mean that that variety is therefore legitimate. I know of a wide variety of views in the Church, and even in my own parish, on sexual morality, yet the permissive ideas that make no-fault divorce between two practicing Orthodox Christians, fornication, same-sex sexual relations (even in "a monogamous context") and other such ideas acceptable within the Church as compatible with our Teaching are false and simply out of line with our teaching.

Thus it is with evolution. People believe it, but it is not compatible with Orthodox doctrine. We have a definite first father, Adam, who was a real and fully-formed man, formed without sin, and death did not exist in the world until a fully-formed man brought it in via sin. Such is affirmed by Scripture and the rest of Holy Tradition. The teaching of evolution as anything beyond observed changes (ie, macroevolution, evolution as a cosmic theory) denies this, though heaven knows how many contortions some believers go through to try to treat the science, knowledge, and education of this world as equal to holy Revelation.

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plus, pretty much every post-Darwin saint rejects it as heresy.

Nick T said:

Of course diversity doesn't make legitimacy, but I didn't mean differing opinions in the sense of your other examples- where the clergy teach very clearly one thing but individuals take it upon themselves to dissent in private. I meant that I've generally never heard it asserted even by clergy that this is a dogmatic issue; it is quite simply not a matter in which conformity is demanded or sought, nor is it something generally taught from the pulpit.

And FWIW even as someone who leans towards a form Theistic Evolution (though I'm by no means certain on the issue), I actually agree with your main point of the necessity of a literal deathless Adam- though I'm not necessarily certain of the need for a deathless world outside Eden.

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I think the issue here is the glacial speed with which the Church moves to declare anything. How long were the ancient heresies a thing before a Council was finally moved to condemn them, and in the meantime held as the way the Faith should be understood by large portions of the Church? I think Romans 5:12 poses a huge challenge to any narrative that says that death existed without or prior to the Fall of Adam by sin. It's revelatory as to how death entered the world.

In the end, I think the Church MUST declare it a heresy, an outgrowth of Meliorism, the faith in modern education and science to tell us we know better than the fathers, that earthly claims of wisdom trump divine revelation, or that we are obligated to synthesize the two.

It may be a digression, but as a language guy, I am ready to kick people who doubt the story of the Tower of Babel. I can SEE the Tower in its towering effects on language. It is self-evident (to those with sufficient familiarity with the history and variety of language) that a catastrophic event occurred in antiquity that, far from indicating a natural evolution of language, caused a sudden and catastrophic mixing of what had been before (the proto-Indo-European language).

People are always trying to make the miraculous events in Scripture to be primarily or entirely allegory, and deny their literal occurrence. We've all seen news articles in which scientists discover that a mother's natural breast milk is better than baby formula formed by clever men. In "The Superstition of Divorce", Chesterton said this about the marriage vow, about scientists and educated people talking about "outdated" institutions like the family: "

But if it could be shown, as I think it can, that a long historical
view and a patient political experience can at last accumulate
solid scientific evidence of the vital need of such a vow, then I
can conceive no more tremendous tribute than this, to any faith,
which made a flaming affirmation from the darkest beginnings,
of what the latest enlightenment can only slowly discover in the end.

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Translation for simpler minds: "The faith knew better than we thought we did"
and I think that in the end, evolution will join the fashionable ideas of the day on the scrap heap of history, along with the four elements.

I like Seraphim Rose, but I think he creates problems by mixing Orthodoxy with Protestant fundamentalist arguments against evolution.

Theistic evolution is problematic that is for sure, because mankind becomes a rising beast rather than in a fallen state. However there are ways to reconcile evolution and Genesis that account for evolution and still have humans in a fallen state. I've heard this model referred to as alterism.

Basically it posits that prior to the fall man was not likened to a beast, we did not need to eat, defecate, have sex and so on (as I understand it this idea has some patristic grounding), thus the fall in some way altered our physical bodies, making them more akin to beasts. Now where this reconciles everything is in the idea that evolution was the result of the fall, not the initial process of creation that God deemed good. That occurred in a realm that is now sealed from us because of our transgression. It cut us off from God and we now live in a death filled world that is not the one that God intended. This solves the rising beasts problem, because no matter how well evolved we might become, we are never going to match our pre fallen state. It also solves the issue of the creation narrative not chiming with modern science. The creation narrative is about a world we no longer have any access to because of our sins. We are now condemned to live like beasts in a world that is distanced from God, and thus reflects that in the way in which it appears to have formed. The Bible makes it clear that the fall changed the very nature of the ground itself, and I don't think it's a huge stretch to propose that it changed absolutely everything. Man being the centre of creation becoming altered by the fall, also by extension altered the entire order of nature to reflect their transgression.

Adopting fundamentalist Protestant creationism is detrimental to Orthodoxy. It needlessly provided a stumbling block for me. It requires that we live in a world where somehow God made it look as though we evolved which I don't think is in accord with an omnibenevolent creator. You have to spend time explaining the wealth of evidence away. Ultimately it will cause the extinction of Christianity if you put it at odds with evolution, and I think bringing creationism to Orthodoxy will be to it's detriment.

//Now where this reconciles everything is in the idea that evolution was the result of the fall, not the initial process of creation that God deemed good.//

That would mean man himself is not the product of evolution, which is irreconcilable with the "science."

Lawrence87 said:

Basically it posits that prior to the fall man was not likened to a beast, we did not need to eat, defecate, have sex and so on (as I understand it this idea has some patristic grounding), thus the fall in some way altered our physical bodies, making them more akin to beasts. Now where this reconciles everything is in the idea that evolution was the result of the fall, not the initial process of creation that God deemed good. That occurred in a realm that is now sealed from us because of our transgression. It cut us off from God and we now live in a death filled world that is not the one that God intended. This solves the rising beasts problem, because no matter how well evolved we might become, we are never going to match our pre fallen state. It also solves the issue of the creation narrative not chiming with modern science. The creation narrative is about a world we no longer have any access to because of our sins. We are now condemned to live like beasts in a world that is distanced from God, and thus reflects that in the way in which it appears to have formed. The Bible makes it clear that the fall changed the very nature of the ground itself, and I don't think it's a huge stretch to propose that it changed absolutely everything. Man being the centre of creation becoming altered by the fall, also by extension altered the entire order of nature to reflect their transgression.

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most young earth creationists I know, to include fundamentalists, hold this view. and most evolutionists I know reject it.

Platina said:

//Now where this reconciles everything is in the idea that evolution was the result of the fall, not the initial process of creation that God deemed good.//

That would mean man himself is not the product of evolution, which is irreconcilable with the "science."

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The argument would be that fallen man is the product of evolution, and that this fallen, more animalistic man is an echo of the more archetypal Adam of paradise. The process of evolution being the 'clothing us with garments of flesh'---which I believe is what some of the Church fathers interpreted as a physical transformation of our bodies brought about by the fall. This article sums up the argument far better than I can.

Everything we can see with science is the post fallen world, we cannot see beyond the fall back to paradise. I think this makes more sense than positing that the 'good' world of Genesis was created via evolution, and the idea that science has to fit the narrative literally put forth in Genesis, because it doesn't. Protestant Fundamentalist Creationism is basically post-hoc rationalisations of how the evidence for evolution is either false, or misinterpreted. It doesn't really do a good job of putting forth its own comprehensive theory in place of evolution. You end up living in a world where God has deceptively laid fossils in the Earth in order to confuse people, and/or there is a complete conspiracy where all scientists are pushing for, and fabricating evidence in favour of a massive lie. If you posit that evolution was the result of the fall, and was triggered by man's sin in the now inaccessible paradise, the process by which we acquired these fleshy garments and animalistic tendencies as a result of the fall, then in my view you achieve a reconciliation between the science and Genesis that does not have the problems that proposing evolution was God's intended means of creation or creationism has.

At the very least I think we would benefit from being less dogmatic on the issue. Telling someone that belief in evolution is anathema is most likely going to result in people choosing the material realities that they can see and study over the unseen realities of the spiritual realm, and that would be a great loss. In equating evolution with atheism you just end up creating atheists.

Evolution is like the precursor of the super hero narrative, where radiation and genetic mutations give you super powers rather than killing you slowly and horribly.

So I say this: “or that we are obligated to synthesize the two.”

AND... someone comes and implies that we are so obligated.

Modern education produces people who believe that abortion is not murder, but a legitimate choice, that a man can sexually mate with a man and that there is nothing wrong with that, in short, insanity. Why should I specially trust their claims, not about things they can observe and conduct the scientific method on, but on things which no one can observe, only assume things about? If modern chemists make medicines in error, people will die and they can correct their error. If modern physicists make an error in aeronautics, their plane or space shuttle will fall out of the sky and crash and reveal the error. But if even a million biologists make an error about our alleged arboreal simian ancestors, they will not fall out of their trees. There is no reliable consequence to correct such errors. The problem is philosophical, to say nothing of theological: that modern education produces a wholly unphilosophical people, including its scientists. They are narrow specialists who are mistaken for the great minds of the past who were in fact taught philosophy, as well as useful things like logic, dialectic, and rhetoric. Thus in our time we have scientism, the effective worship of science, theories like evolution being dogma, and the scientists who promote it as their education taught them to are its priests, and those who challenge it - heretics to be burned at the stake, or at least shamed and fired.

As to the idea of special Creation of Man as opposed to evolution (setting aside issues like the alleged age of the earth), calling it “Protestant” is sheer ignorance of what the Church fathers had to say about it, that they had a consensus which affirmed it, and that all post-Darwin saints affirm the patristic view.

It is the idea snuck into our heads by our execrable education that we MUST trust whatever modern scientists claim, that if they have a consensus, that it MUST be AS TRUE AND CERTAIN as our flaming affirmation that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that earthly knowledge or what people imagine to be knowledge is just as reliable as divine revelation. This is the assumption that tells people that the patristic view MUST be mistaken, “evidence of their ignorance relative to us, that we now know better”, that “the idea that God actually created the world in six 24-hr days is impossible and therefor must be rejected as primitive ignorance”. That the Virgin Birth is equally impossible gets a pass with the Christian Synthesist, who is forced to try to juggle inconsistent ideas in his head and rationalize them like a Star Trek fan trying to rationalize two different Kirks or Zephram Cochranes. And it is notable that those that embrace synthesism sooner or later begin to reject other Scriptural claims of the miraculous, culminating in the rejection of the Virgin Birth. We have seen what has happened to the Episcopal Church and other actual Protestant divisions.

But okay, if evolution only began when man sinned, then sin couldn't have simply changed man's nature -- it would have had to completley wipe him out, because in the evolutionary scheme, there's no such thing as man for billions of years. So there could be no such thing as fallen Adam. There's pre-fallen Adam, then he poofs out of existence when he sins, and then man, which was initially created by the special command of God, then comes into existence again via a supposedly natural process of evolution billions of years later.