jckstraw72
Doin' that whole Orthodox thing
- Dec 9, 2005
- 10,160
- 1,145
- 41
- Faith
- Eastern Orthodox
- Marital Status
- Engaged
- Politics
- US-Republican
Upvote
0
Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
i believe the creative act of each day was instantaneous.What do you believe?
i can't reply now, but just wanted to say that you've made some good points. thanks for a thought-provoking reply.Christ said in a parable: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. And in another place: Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
In the first place a revelation, a vision. In the second place, a revelation, a vision. But the responsibility and the blessing is greater concerning the handed down commandments and the Gospel, respectively. So if the saints have erred in the commandments and the Gospel (and they have, from time to time, who would deny it?) this error is the greater error. And yet we would not call such errors saint-breaking delusion.
Knowing someone need not be made or broken upon a single instance, but upon the whole movment of a life or a communion. This is the difference between a mitzvah and a virtue, between a sin and a vice. So one sin or error or lack of knowledge need not break communion or prove its absence.
Surely the saints are not guilty until proven innocent! Do we have evidence of the repentance of Justinian for his crimes and supposed aphthartodocetism, for St. Isaac's Nestorianism, for St. Joseph Volotsky's teaching of violence against heretics, for what some see St. Maria of Paris's improper iconographic theology, for St. Cyril's words of hatred against St. John Chrysostom, for Czar Nicholas II's "what a pity so few" etc.? (surely one of these holds for you).
If we're in the business of saying: "Show me evidence of repentance or else no sainthood" we're going to lose some saints.
You are assuming that the saints did not have subconscious assumptions underlying their particular personalities which colored their perceptions. Perhaps we are at times unaware of how our own subconscious assumptions color our conclusions about the nature of sainthood, and whether this determines our willingness to believe that their thoughts on everything must always be accepted without question.no, it's the teaching of the saints. anyone with any assumptions can read their words. it's just a question of believing them or not.
regardless of time or place.
It's likely that heretics and ordinary sinful members of the Church shared the same interpretations. The beliefs held were par for the culture for the greater part of those 2000 years, and culture plays a major role in providing its constituents with underlying assumptions that shape beliefs.no one is claiming they knew everything ... but the problem is that evolution does not simply fill in the gaps, but rather contradicts. somehow Genesis has been a huge blind spot for the saints for 2000 years. and not only is it their blind spot where God is apparently not teaching, but they threw around their own private interpretations with remarkable consistency, regardless of time or place. it's a pretty amazing story!
It's likely that heretics and ordinary sinful members of the Church shared the same interpretations. The beliefs held were par for the culture for the greater part of those 2000 years, and culture plays a major role in providing its constituents with underlying assumptions that shape beliefs.
I am reading a book called "Sapiens" and it tells the story of humankind. So far most of it has been about neanderthals and the other species of humans who existed at the same time. Eventually, all but one species went extinct and homo sapiens (us) made it to the top of the food chain.
These species, such as neanderthals and homo erectus, existed two million years ago.
What is the Orthodox explanation of this?
Perhaps. I don't know though, because, now that I think about it, every heretic from Arius through Luther and Calvin to Charles Taze Russell interpreted the first chapters of the Book of Genesis just as our saints did. Might there be forces at work behind this consistency of unconscious assumptions about what is written in there other than the guidance of the Holy Spirit? Is it possible that there is a strong human element responsible for this?But I think this does not factor in the work of the Holy Spirit, Who was promised to lead us all into all Truth, which would include our origins and Fall.
Hi, Rodan, and welcome to TAW!A solid majority of Christians in the world accept the fact of evolution on our planet. Being "Christian" does not mean we have to check our brains in at the door when we attend church.
It's likely that heretics and ordinary sinful members of the Church shared the same interpretations. The beliefs held were par for the culture for the greater part of those 2000 years, and culture plays a major role in providing its constituents with underlying assumptions that shape beliefs.
Perhaps. I don't know though, because, now that I think about it, every heretic from Arius through Luther and Calvin to Charles Taze Russell interpreted the first chapters of the Book of Genesis just as our saints did. Might there be forces at work behind this consistency of unconscious assumptions about what is written in there other than the guidance of the Holy Spirit? Is it possible that there is a strong human element responsible for this?
What you are saying comes down to saying that the consensus of both heretics and non-heretics, consistent for two millennia, is now subject to be overturned because you know better, that it has not been the Holy Spirit leading everyone into the teaching of the special creation of Adam as a definite man and of death as not entering the cosmos until he sinned, a denial of the existence of a deathless cosmos in which man had existed.
I've tried to warn you before about the deadly danger of thinking we moderns today can know better than the fathers of the past because we have, as we imagine, certain scientific or technical knowledge. The real heresiarch IS the one who thinks he knows better, and introduces novel teaching into the Church, which is what the evolutionary narrative of Creation is.
Yes, it can be hard to surrender what we think we know, and the desire to synthesize all knowledge is clearly understandable. We're just saying that when you come up against complete contradiction, where you have to begin fabricating explanations more elaborate and incredible than those of the fathers that do actually contradict what they say, then invent complex talk of metaphor and allegory that they never intended, fully understanding the concepts as they did, in order to try to sew these two radically different cloths together, you have to choose, whether to continue to go down this rabbit hole of ever-more complicated and unbelievable explanations in order to aver your faith in science, or to accept that the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God.
One of these two ideas is really, really wrong. Yours says the consensus of the Church has been wrong until now, that you know better, that you can lead the Church into all truth. I may think I know better than you about something, but I will not think I know better than that consensus.
It's entirely a sidebar, and not an argument, but my favorites, Lewis and Chesterton, both accepted the idea of human evolution as young and intelligent men (Lewis held onto it even to middle age), but came to reject it as older, wiser men.
Not sure what the Orthodox thought is, but there could have been a lineage of both neanderthals and 'humans' prior to Adam and Eve. Consider if what made those two special was having God breathe the soul into them, not just being the 'first' homosapien'ish thing. Adam and Eve would be Human+, if you like, a step up in spiritual (rather than physical) evolution from whatever else was contemporary. After and outside the Garden there may have been intermingling between the lines of homosapien and Human+, but I would guess that Human+ is dominant. And then there's that Flood story. Suddenly we are back to just 1 lineage again, Noah and family are definitely from the line of Adam. This makes more sense to me.
After Cain murders his brother and is outcast, he is worried that "whoever finds me will kill me."
??
In the Human+ line I think there's only him, Adam and Eve left at the point of the murder. Is he worried about baby brothers coming for vengence that aren't even born yet? I might be wrong. But this makes more sense if there were other lines of humans that weren't created 'in the image of God' or neanderthal hold outs or similar, and he knew about and was afraid of them. He goes on to build a city somehow. Not a tent or a shack. A city.
With who?
He takes a wife. I don't think her name or her lineage are given at all. That's odd...
I don't think the first few chapters of Genesis were quite as lonely as they are sometimes depicted. Adam and Eve may have had plenty of company once they were outside the Garden.
Just some thoughts.
Humanity is tied to the capability to do agriculture?
Perhaps. I don't know though, because, now that I think about it, every heretic from Arius through Luther and Calvin to Charles Taze Russell interpreted the first chapters of the Book of Genesis just as our saints did. Might there be forces at work behind this consistency of unconscious assumptions about what is written in there other than the guidance of the Holy Spirit? Is it possible that there is a strong human element responsible for this?
To God, perhaps everything done is instantaneously, as God exists outside of time which is also a creation of His and waits for nothing -- everything is NOW. Genesis is His story, as He sees it. If what we observe with regard to how long things take to occur in nature on our side of things differs from that, it is not a contradiction, but a different way of experiencing it due to the difference between being human and being God.even though you keeping saying there are no contradictions, that doesn't make it so. the example of instantaneous acts of creation is of course a contradiction, and that's why you need your theory of special human assumptions that have been consistent everywhere and at all times in order to explain it away. you know that evolution CONTRADICTS this teaching, that's why you need a reason to sweep it away.
This is not actually what I am saying at all, and thanks for sharing the interesting sidebar. I wasn't aware of this.
Again, there are no contradictions. Only omissions of details not pertinent to Theological understandings. There is no need to fabricate "elaborate and incredible explanations". The simple, yet incredible explanations are provided by the very Scriptural text itself, which shows that the chronology is not laid out so as to give actual timelines, but to answer questions about relationships between things and between beings and between persons. It does just that, and in a way more incredible and miraculous than any "fabrication contrary to the consensus of the Church" that I could possibly invent myself.
There is a sense in which this is true.But it is equally true that any communication, including Scripture, has the aim of communicating something, and not speaking an alien language that no one can understand. The contradiction remains. It has been clearly communicated and affirmed many times that death entered the world by sin, into a world that had existed without death and sin, something that you seem to be expressly denying now.To God, perhaps everything done is instantaneously, as God exists outside of time which is also a creation of His and waits for nothing -- everything is NOW. Genesis is His story, as He sees it. If what we observe with regard to how long things take to occur in nature on our side of things differs from that, it is not a contradiction, but a different way of experiencing it due to the difference between being human and being God.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?