Since you've linked to this, let's take a look at it.
I've put my comments in bold, with Patristics in italics:
On Reading the Story of Adam and Eve
Someone asked the other day how we should read Genesis 2-3, the story of Adam and Eve. Behind his question lay troubled concern over the apparent conflict between science and Scripture. “If we take the biblical account seriously,” he concluded, “then we have to reject evolutionary theory altogether and align ourselves with those ‘creationists’ who believe the Genesis account is to be taken literally, as an actual biological description of the way human life came to be.”
Of course here Fr. John is only quoting the person who asked the question, but it should be pointed out that this person does not really grasp the situation. The whole point of the Orthodox Creationist stance is that the Biblical account is in fact NOT a biological description of the creation of the world and man, for this was a period before the Fall, before corruption and death entered the world, and thus it is a time wholly unlike that which we know, that which we can study. This is the consistent teaching of the Fathers—that this time is in fact beyond the reach of science and philosophy, and known to us only by Divine revelation.
Conversely, it is actually the evolutionists who would have Genesis be a biological story, and thus they seek to simply fill in the gaps, or rework where necessary, with missing information they believe they have found through various scientific pursuits. For Creationists the period of Creation and Paradise are beyond science; for evolutionists they are just as subject to scientific investigation as anything in the modern world.
There are two closely intertwined issues here: the
meaning of the Genesis account, and God’s role in the process of creation. To address either one, it is necessary first of all to untangle and separate them. Here we will try to speak to the first question; then in a future column we will turn briefly to the debate over evolution and creationism.
It's unclear why these should be separated, but unfortunately it seems Fr. John never wrote the second piece, or at least I couldn’t find it.
Before we can consider the way we should read the story of Adam and Eve, we need to return to a point we have made before in this space. In today’s culture, we tend to confuse truth with fact. If a particular event could, at least in principle, have been tape-recorded or photographed, then we consider it to be true. This, though, is a very limited understanding of “truth.” It would exclude from the realm of truth such realities as love and spiritual longing, since these cannot be empirically verified. It would exclude all that occurs on the macro cosmic scale, where the laws of Euclidian geometry no longer apply (curved space, black holes); as it would much that occurs in the nanosphere, where conventional notions of time, space and material reality no longer hold (the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, antimatter). It would also exclude faith. We can bear witness to our belief and to its content, but we cannot
prove that we actually believe or that the content of our belief is real or true. Truth transcends fact in many ways. This is particularly evident in biblical narratives such as Jesus’ (non-historical) parables and in the story of Adam and Eve.
Essentially he’s criticizing those who fail to see beyond the bare physical facts, but he is simply making the mistake on the other side of the coin of denying the physical facts which are the grounding for the deeper realities. With this event that was photographed that he spoke of, positing the existence of deeper realities such as love and spiritual-longing presupposes that actual people with actual love and longing are being spoken of. No people—no love or longing.
Christ’s parables are clearly identified as such. The Adam and Eve story is nowhere in Scripture identified as such, nor by any Fathers.
The primary questions in dealing with the story recounted in Genesis 2-3 are these: what was the intention of the biblical writer (considered traditionally to be Moses) in composing the story, and what was God’s purpose in inspiring that writer to formulate the story as he did?
Indeed, but in our age of confusion there is another vital question—where will we look for the answers? Who do we trust to plumb the depths of Scripture?
Did the biblical writer himself consider the story of Adam and Eve to be “factual”? He certainly considered it to be “true,” insofar as it speaks eloquently about God’s creative activity in bringing humankind into existence, man’s rebellion against God’s will, and the suffering of human persons in their estrangement from God, their life “outside of Paradise.” Militating against a purely literal reading of the passage, however, are elements of the story such as Adam molded by God’s hands “of dust from the ground,” the image of God as a gardener who “plants a garden in Eden,” the formation of woman from man’s rib, the “sound of the Lord God walking in the garden,” the clothing of Adam and Eve with “garments of skin,” and the simultaneous existence of other people “in the land of Nod, east of Eden.”
Fr. John seems to be misunderstanding the Creationist position, in feeling that he must point out passages in Genesis that are not purely literal. What Orthodox Creationist would claim otherwise? We do not advocate a hermeneutic of all literal all the time, but rather of following the Fathers. The Fathers already tell us that there are passages here that are not literally true. However, Fr. John mixes and matches his examples—some accurate, some clearly not.
Indeed, the molding by God’s hands and God walking in the Garden are not to be taken literally, but these are easy and obvious targets. That the pre-Incarnate God did not have a body is obvious to everyone, and in no way speaks either way to the literal value of Adam and Eve and the rest of the story. The Fathers are quite clear that such statements are anthropomorphisms and are to be understood in a manner befitting of God, but those same Fathers never therefore say the whole story lacks literal value. If I say “swing and a miss” to indicate that someone attempted something but failed, that doesn’t rob the story of its literal value.
But Fr. John is confusing matters here. Indeed God does not have a body or hands, but He is certainly the One responsible for the Garden in Eden. On the creation of Eve from the rib of Adam—what Father denies that this is precisely how it happened? For instance, St. Ambrose, On Paradise 10.48:
Nor is it a matter of indifference that the woman was not formed of the same clay from which Adam was made, but was made from the rib of Adam himself, so that we might know that the flesh of man and woman is of but one nature, and that there is but one source of the human race. Therefore at the beginning it is not that two are made, man and woman, nor two men, nor two women, but first man is made, and then woman from him. For God willed to settle one nature upon mankind, and starting from the origin of this creature, he snatched away the possibility of numerous and disparate natures.
Clothing Adam and Eve in garments of skin—and why is this not historical? Again, what Father denies this? In wanting this to be merely figurative Fr. John is closer to Origenism than Patristic theology. St. Athanasius the Great, in his On the Passion and Crucifixion of the Lord, PG 28.221A, rightly teaches us that the coats are both literal and figurative, which is the typical Patristic understanding for this whole account, anthropomorphisms of God accepting:
When he [Adam] sinned, and hence was going to die, he received garments of skin, which were from dead animals, and which were a symbol of the mortality that through sin was added to him.
He uses the example of the simultaneous existence of people in the land of Nod, but nowhere does the Scripture say that they existed simultaneously. We simply are not given a detailed timeline here. We do not know when Nod was founded and how many people were born by this point. The Fathers address this point already and tell us that these other people were simply his relatives. With people living hundreds of years and potentially having hundreds of children each, it doesn’t take long for there to be thousands of people.
All of the issues raised by evolutionists have already been addressed by the Fathers—we need only to read them.
This anthropomorphic image of God, together with logical inconsistencies in the narrative, require interpretation, as the Fathers of the Church well knew.
The Fathers are clear that the Scriptures never contradict themselves. There are no inconsistencies but only seeming inconsistencies. We are the problem—we do not have the proper spiritual vision to see the harmony of God’s word with itself. St. John Chrysostom says in his fourth homily on Genesis:
Don't worry, dearly beloved, don't think Sacred Scripture ever contradicts itself, learn instead the truth of what it says, hold fast what it teaches in truth, and close your ears to those who speak against it.
And in the Philokalia, St. Peter of Damascus tells us that those with yet darkened nouses see contradictions, while those who have begun on the path of purification see harmony.
As the Fathers also made clear, the entire narrative is to be understood in the technical sense as historical mythology: not a “fable,” a made-up folk-tale, but a narrative element of Israel’s sacred history that speaks of the ineffable interaction between God and His human creatures, a relationship that can best be described by symbolic language. (Consider, for example, the Hebrew terms
‘adam, ‘adama, which signify “man” / “earth”; and
‘eden,which means “bliss,” “delight,” a virtual synonym of “Paradise,” as in Isa 51:3; Ezek 28:13; 31:9,15-18, where the underlying mythological element is quite evident.)
And what Father made that clear? What the Fathers have actually said is that no amount of figurative interpretations can ever cancel out the historical interpretation and they specifically warn us that denying the historical layer of Genesis is dangerous. This teaching is harmonious between the Antiochian and Alexandrian schools, and eastern and western Fathers.
We cannot know the mind of the biblical author, of course.
This is a fundamental error. Yes. We can. The saints have the same, and greater spiritual experiences and gain the same mind of Christ and speak by the same Spirit as did Moses.
But it seems likely that he developed the story of Adam and Eve (on the basis of ancient oral tradition) as a kind of “etiological parable”: a story that explains, via mythological imagery, the activity of God from the creation of the world to specific realities and experiences in our daily life. His aim was to answer questions such as these: How did man and woman come to be? Why is there human sin and why is there death? Why do women suffer pain in childbirth, and why do men have to labor by the sweat of their brow in order to provide life’s essentials?
The Fathers teach that God showed all these things to Moses in spiritual vision, not that he craftily molded mythology to fit his purposes. The underlying assumption here is that the way in which God created does not actually answer these questions, and thus we need stories to fulfill our longing for knowledge. The Creationist position is that the acts of God and history of the world actually answer these questions. God acts in history, not simply through literature.
To answer questions of this kind, the author of Genesis 2-3 allowed himself to be inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit, to create the profound and beautiful story of Adam and Eve. To interpret that story correctly, we need to read it allegorically, symbolically.
The Fathers say to interpret it correctly we must remember and maintain its historical truth.
We need to look beyond any particular historical event (Paradise, after all, is trans-historical, beyond time and space, as witnessed by Jesus’ word to the “Good Thief”), in order to perceive in the midst of early human history the presence and activity of God, who is the Creator and Sustainer of all that exists.
The Fathers actually say that the whole point of details in Genesis such as God planting the garden in the east is to locate Paradise precisely on earth. Of course it is a spiritual place, but we do not sharply divide between spiritual and physical. The Fathers even tell us that man continued to live near the Garden for a time after being kicked out. The Venerable Bede, in his book on Genesis, gives us the correct interpretation:
And we cannot doubt that the paradise in which the first man was placed, although it is a type both of the present Church and of the fatherland to come, must nevertheless be understood in its proper literal sense, namely as a very pleasant place, shaded with fruitful groves, and also great and fertile with a great spring.
St. Hippolytus of Rome says in his Hexaemeron:
Now these things we are under the necessity of setting forth at length, in order to disprove the supposition of others. For some choose to maintain that Paradise is in Heaven, and forms no part of the system of creation. But since we see with our eyes the rivers that go forth from it which are open, indeed, even in our day, to the inspection of any who choose, let every one conclude from this that it did not belong to Heaven, but was in reality planted in the created system. And, in truth, it is a locality in the east, and a place select.
This suggests the motive behind the inspirational work of the Spirit in guiding composition of the biblical narrative. By means of the story of Adam and Eve, God reveals Himself as Creator, Judge and Redeemer, who has supreme authority over life and death. His purpose is not thwarted by human sin or demonic influence, a point made clear not only by events in the garden, but also by His protection of Cain. Preserved by a divine mark, this fratricidal son of Adam becomes a prophetic image of the people of Israel, also sinful, also rebellious, yet also loved and preserved by the covenantal Lord against all who would destroy them.
Everything he said here is taught by the literal level of Genesis.
The story of Adam and Eve is in fact the story of each one of us. Because of our own rebellion, we have been expelled from Paradise, and a flaming sword now bars us from the life of beauty, peace and joy for which God fashioned us. In our garments of skin, we wander the earth, longing to rediscover and reenter the Garden in which and for which we were created.
Indeed, because this is actually our history. St. Macarius the Great says precisely this about the flaming sword, and yet, he also insists that there truly was an angel with a flaming sword standing outside the actual garden on the actual earth.
The true end and fulfillment of the Genesis story is articulated most eloquently by the paschal icon of Christ’s descent into Sheol. While His body reposes in another garden, the Son of God, the Second Adam, penetrates the realm of the dead, to liberate us from the power of death that holds us in bondage and exile. There He grasps the hands of Adam and Eve, and with them He embraces each of us, to raise us with Himself and restore us to full communion with the God of Life and Love. The final meaning of this story, then, is summed up in the simple yet profound words of St Ephrem the Syrian: “Adam’s Lord came out to seek him; / He entered Sheol and found him there, / then led and brought him out / to set him once more in Paradise”
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No argument here—that’s precisely what the Creationists teach. 
