How do we explain Neanderthals?

gzt said:

1. Acknowledged these visions
2. Accept these visions as true
3. Required assent to the truth of these visions

Click to expand...

good thing it's not simply the visions that the Church looks to.

gzt said:

4. Recognized your interpretation of these visions
5. Required assent to your interpretation of these visions as true.

Click to expand...

good thing it's not my interpretation. unless there actually is a large number of Saints who have written evolution is true or compatible with the Church teaching. guys with PhDs are not the authority of the Church.

Those are interesting thoughts but there are a number of bishops, priests, and theologians who disagree.

But I digress - we're going in circles! There are certainly modern Orthodox Christians who hold to a 7500-year-old earth, just as there are certainly modern Orthodox Christians who hold to evolution. Both are acceptable Orthodox viewpoints and the Church has declined to mandate the evolutionary viewpoint yet as there is still theological work to be done, so we do have to allow the "young earth" viewpoint for now. What more is there to be said that we haven't yet? Perhaps the argument should be closed here as these events are still shrouded in mystery and have not been revealed conclusively.

gzt said:

Those are interesting thoughts but there are a number of bishops, priests, and theologians who disagree.

Click to expand...

since the saints are the true theologians, they are the ones we should look to. they are the ones who know God, and God is the only One Who saw it all play out.

I mean, I am intrigued by this idea we've been having over the past 300+ comments where people keep trying to say that Orthodox Christians who bleieve the world is very old must somehow be unfaithful. I commend to you all this rather interesting article as a parting shot: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2014/02/11/creation-and-evolution/

gzt said:

I mean, I am intrigued by this idea we've been having over the past 300+ comments where people keep trying to say that Orthodox Christians who bleieve the world is very old must somehow be unfaithful. I commend to you all this rather interesting article as a parting shot:

Click to expand...

I actually never said that. I actually said a few posts ago that there are many Orthodox who were noted theologians, died in peace with the Church, contributed much to the articulation of our Faith, and were wrong on certain issues because they did not fall in line with the consensus of the Church.

and I noticed Fr Steven does not actually really address what the Fathers have said, especially not stuff jckstraw posted.

This is true, I'm considering other posters there. Though I note that here we're not necessarily dealing with an issue where people are wrong - the right answer hasn't been revealed! The people teaching evolution may well be correct.

again, it has been revealed. the saints affirm that the our origins are as Genesis shows. we are to interpret every word of the OT in a Christological sense. so it is not either/or when it comes to reading Genesis allegorically/literally/morally/etc., but if they all point to Christ, the Church confesses that as true.

That's a stronger assertion th an what the Church has required.

Not according to the saints

Luke 21:36

Some appear to have, but that's necessary and not sufficient - most commentary isn't focused on that point. The case is somewhat open.

gzt said:

I certainly don't think we can reject the historical aspects of Scripture by any means.

Click to expand...

Even though that is exactly what you are doing here, by dismissing what is said as "poetry", even though there is nothing more prosaic than "the evening and the morning were the first day" (which kills the idea of seeing a day as an age).

It comes down to you promoting an individualist view that has no support in Holy Tradition. It is fully allied with the world, and not at all with the saints and fathers. Jackstraw is giving the only evidence that matters: - a plethora of what the Church fathers had to say. You can't match him in that. You speak of a future in which the fathers will support the currently popular secular view when in the actuality of the present you have a lot that condemn it. You are saying that the Church is really going to change its consensus about something really important. That sounds like the exact opposite of the careful preservation of the Faith and witness of the Church. You're saying, "Be patient, and the Church will come around to what I believe."

saying "that's more than the Church has required/demand" is just an assertion, based on simply ignoring the data. reducing the voice of the Church to Ecumenical Councils is just the Orthodox version of the Protestantism absurdity of Sola Scriptura. But, then again, you have to reduce the faith to even less than the Councils, since the Councils themselves teach that death is unnatural, and the Councils themselves teach us to FOLLOW THE FATHERS. So in your mind, the voice of the Church is an incredibly constrained thing, and is apparently bound in by whatever secular academia is saying at that time.

Of course, we have saints, giving us the exact opposite principles, but i'm sure the bulk of my post will be ignored as it always is, cause why address the content, when you can simply invoke "a number of bishops, priests, and theologians"?

St. Theophan the Recluse, Nastavleniya v duhovnoi zhisni. - Pskov-Pechery Monastery of Holy Dormition: Mosc. Patriarchate Publ., 1994, http://creatio.orthodoxy.ru/sbornik/sbufeev_whynot_english.html
The positive teaching of the Church serves to know whether a concept is from the Truth. This is a litmus test for all teachings. Whatever agrees with it, you should accept it, whatever does not- - reject. One can do it without further deliberations.


Nastavleniya v duhovnoi zhisni. - Pskov-Pechery Monastery of Holy Dormition: Mosc. Patriarchate Publ., 1994, http://creatio.orthodoxy.ru/sbornik/sbufeev_whynot_english.html
Believers have the right to measure the material things with spiritual ones, when materialists get into the realm of the spiritual without a slightest scruple... We have wisdom as our partner, while theirs is foolishness. Material things can be neither the power nor the purpose. They are just the means and the field of activity of spiritual powers by the action of the spiritual beginning of all things (Creator)"


Sozertsanie I razmyshlenie. Moscow, Pravilo very, 1998, http://creatio.orthodoxy.ru/sbornik/sbufeev_whynot_english.html
Science goes forward fast, let it do so. But if they infer something inconsistent with the Divine Revelation, they are definitely off the right path in life, do not follow them.

YCGP said:

The bible is to be read and preached through allegory. Still, the exact writings are to be looked at as literal. Through science we will make a connection between faith and human logic.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this - read and preached through allegory? It should be read and preached as history and as figurative, which is what the Fathers did. St. Basil the Great preached a commentary on the days of creation called the Hexaemeron -- it is the Church's definitive work on the matter -- and his interpretation is thoroughly historical-literal. God Himself actually works in history -- history itself preaches salvation to us. God really did tell Eve about the enmity and the serpent and the seed - thus all mankind, from the first sin, already had a prophecy of its redemption. If this didn't actually happen then mankind was left without guidance, God was silent. He waited, instead, millennia, to tell us a nice story.

jckstraw72 said:

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this - read and preached through allegory? It should be read and preached as history and as figurative, which is what the Fathers did. St. Basil the Great preached a commentary on the days of creation called the Hexaemeron -- it is the Church's definitive work on the matter -- and his interpretation is thoroughly historical-literal. God Himself actually works in history -- history itself preaches salvation to us. God really did tell Eve about the enmity and the serpent and the seed - thus all mankind, from the first sin, already had a prophecy of its redemption. If this didn't actually happen then mankind was left without guidance, God was silent. He waited, instead, millennia, to tell us a nice story.

Click to expand...

I just wish to confirm that you are aware that St. Basil, in his Hexaemeron, acknowledges that animal death is a pre-fall reality of the natural order created by God. Did you know this?

truefiction1 said:

I just wish to confirm that you are aware that St. Basil, in his Hexaemeron, acknowledges that animal death is a pre-fall reality of the natural order created by God. Did you know this?

Click to expand...

can you provide the quote? i'd be interested in seeing it. In his follow up work, On the Origin of Man, he explicitly teaches that animal death is NOT a pre-fall reality:


On the Origin of Man, 2:6-7:

‘Let the Church neglect nothing; everything is a law. God did not say: “I have given you the fishes for food, I have given you the cattle, the reptiles, the quadrupeds.” It is not for this that He created, says the Scripture. In fact, the first legislation allowed the use of fruits, for we were still judged worthy of Paradise.

‘What is the mystery which is concealed for you under this?

‘To you, to the wild animals and the birds, says the Scripture, fruits, vegetation and herbs (are given) … We see, however, many wild animals which do not eat fruits. what fruit does the panther accept to nourish itself? What fruit can the lion satisfy himself with?

‘Nevertheless, these beings, submitting to the law of natures, were nourished by fruits. But when man changed his way of life and departed from the limit which had been assigned him, the Lord, after the Flood, knowing that men were wasteful, allowed them the use of all foods; “eat all that in the same was as edible plants” (Gen. 9:3). By this allowance, the other animals also received the liberty to eat them.

‘Since then the lion is a carnivore, since then also vultures watch for carrion. For the vultures were not yet looking over the earth at the very moment when the animals were born; in fact, nothing of what had received designation or existence had yet died so that the vultures might eat them. Nature had not yet divided, for it was all in its freshness: hunters did not capture, for such was not yet the practice of men; the beasts, for their part, did not yet tear their prey, for they were not carnivores … But all followed the way of the swans, and all grazed on the grass of the meadow …

‘Such was the first creation, and such will be the restoration after this. Man will return to his ancient constitution in rejecting malice, a life weighed down with cares, the slavery of the soul with regard to daily worries. When he has renounced all this, he will return to that paradisal life which was not enslaved to the passions of the flesh, which is free, the life of closeness to God, a partaker of the life of the angels.’

“Thus was created, of a nature analogous to that of this world and the animals and plants which live thereon, the succession of time, for ever pressing on and passing away and never stopping in its course... And such also is the nature of the creature which lives in time - condemned to grow or to perish without rest and without certain stability. It is therefore fit that the bodies of animals and plants, obliged to follow a sort of current, and carried away by the motion which leads them to birth or to death, should live in the midst of surroundings whose nature is in accord with beings subject to change” (Hex 1.5).

ahh, yes, ok. thank you for that quote - it gives opportunity to make an important clarification. that man and all the cosmos were in a state of incorruption is of course not due to their own makeup - God alone possesses these qualities in and of Himself. as St. Basil points out here, as beings coming into existence from non-existence, they are already beings rooted in change, in instability. in this sense all things are naturally mortal. but when we broaden our understanding of nature to include mode of existence then we see something different. then we see natural mortality being staved off by grace -- this is how St. Athanasius puts it about man - naturally mortal but sustained against this mortality by grace. creation does not naturally possess immortality in and of itself, but then again, it's natural job is to be a vessel of grace. man is even mortal in nature but yet receives grace and mediates it to all of creation. so while in the Hexaemeron St. Basil can speak about how the life of animals and plants naturally head towards death (for they are not the microcosm and mediator), in On the Origin of Man we can see that this mortality had no influence, no effect, no power, until nature divided against itself by cause of man's sin, and in this there is no contradiction.