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Evolution & Creationism
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Comments
Entertaining the possibility that Adam and Eve didn't exist in the historical and anthropological sense is in my estimation the spirit of the Antichrist who aims to shake the very historical remembrance and acknowledgment of the existence of an abstract history between God and man so that all else afterward is malleable and changeable. And when history is changeable, theology and faith change accordingly.
Furthermore, St Paul tell us in Romans "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned"
So St Paul doesn't disagree with you that all sinned through Adam. In fact the Church has always taught this, but not without the initial truth.
Now, who am I to act as a theologian or historian because i am not, but I believe just St Pishoy did, we ought to exit from our caves and abodes and fight any ideas that seek to dismember the very core of our faith.
This quote of course isn't directed at you nor am I calling you Antichrist, but we need to be careful the tides we choose to be swept with and the kind of ideas that very clearly go against some core history and faith.
There's certainly room in Orthodoxy for speculation and contemplation on certain issues but to be absolutely sure about something that cant be historically observed, tested in a lab, nor having the actual mechanism of it(evolution) being understood, as even admitted to by top scientists and chemists, is in my opinion a greater leap of faith, ironically, than anything discussed prior.
I want to make sure that we know what the difference between symbolism and allegory is. Symbolism is like the manna representing Christ as the Bread of Life, or the Ark of the Covenant symbolizing the Theotokos. Allegory on the other hand is a representation of an abstract or spiritual reality through concrete or material forms, in this case in the form of a story. Before you cry blasphemy, abstract in no way means less real but harder to understand, kind of like God being an abstract idea in the thought of people, who then becomes flesh to show Himself in a concrete way, though His flesh IS not the Divinity, but it is the means through which He shows us Himself (having fully united Himself to It). What are other examples of allegory that we take for granted? The Book of Revelation is full of allegory. We do not say that it is symbolic of ideas, but that it is the way that the Holy Spirit represents things which are not easy to understand. Does this mean that we go around like fundamentalist Protestants and say, no heaven REALLY has rainbows, and harps and palace of this exact size...well yes, but not in the way that we are thinking. This is merely the best way to represent in human language something that is very real but far beyond our experience.
Bringing this back to Genesis. The story of creation and the making of man is allegory in the sense that what happens there (length of days, method of creation etc) is very real but wrapped in mystery yet represented in concrete understandable human language. There are many hints of this. Genesis 1 is written in semi-poetic language, different sequence of creation is shown in other chapters, it is written in a naturalistic way not describing something supernatural (outside the natural order of the universe). In the same way we do not understand the Psalms and other passages literally, because the science is not indispensable to its message, we do not understand the whole creation story literally. In other cases the historical occurrence is indispensable to the message like the Resurrection and Incarnation. This is where context comes in and understanding that the message is infallible, not the human words employed.
As for Adam. Sin entered "through one man" yet Paul does not mean this numerically since that would mean Eve did not sin but only Adam. We must take the Scripture as a whole and come up with a congruent interpretation. As for Adam and Eve being the first humans, first of all, I am most certainly not denying that there were first humans, just as there was a first to everything. The moment God breathed His Image and Likeness into us, we became fully human. Evolution can never account for our spiritual component, our soul, reasoning, conscience, creativity etc. These things come from our being made in His Image and Likeness. Therefore the first humans to walk the earth, Adam and Eve (perhaps others as well, don't know and don't care) were given the grace of immortality by being put in communion with He Who is the Life of the Universe. When they turned away from Him through rebellion, death entered into our world since we fell from the grace of immortality. That which begins, and that which is created must end, as our holy Father St. Athanasius teaches. But God offers us humans, His creation, to become children by being in His Likeness, and thus being given immortality through communion with Him.
Sorry for the terribly long post, but I felt it was needed to get across this idea.
GB
I couldn't agree with you more!
A lot of time these days gets wasted on trying to prove or disprove scientific theories reading Scripture than understanding the underlying message of salvation behind it.
what did I or minasoliman change to "accommodate" science. I'd rather get my science from science than the Bible. I'd also rather get my teaching of salvation from the Church (and Bible) than from any philosopher.
Show me where in that post I was trying to prove evolution or where anything I said affected our theology.
I don't think you really got what I was saying in my arguments. You read points but you didn't get the jist of the whole spiel. So let me break it down for you. I don't care to prove or disprove evolution, I would go to scientists to do that, not Scriptures which are not concerned with it at all or teach us about it. The Church's job is not teach us HOW the world and humanity was created but WHY it was created. This is fundamentally where your confusion lies.
You're going to get upset at me. But I don't think you understand what the word 'allegory' means. I hate to have to stress this again, but the Holy Spirit who presented the story of Adam and Eve to us through the Bible is not concerned with teaching scientific theory (or any form of it). Rather He is giving a tangible story to represent a reality far harder to grasp. When it says God walks about in the garden, are we to assume that He had legs? Or when He planted Trees in the garden that He was like a farmer going about putting seeds?
As for the number of humans. Again, I don't presume to know the amount, and in fact nowhere does Genesis explicitly state that Adam and Eve were the only humans. The moral of the story is that as humanity we fall and rise together. Think about your question about how it might be unfair if others didn't sin in Paradise. Your question breaks down because that applies to you too. You never chose to inherit a corrupt nature, but by merit of being human and related to Adam we all shared in corruption.
Just to be clear, there will always be "first humans" (that's a logical certainty since we are not eternal). If there were first humans, then most certainly an Adam and Eve existed (whether there were others is another thing but does not change anything).
The reason atheism is so high these days is because how Zoxsasi and others view Scriptures in a "carnal" way. We do not eat from the Word spiritually to learn and understand the message given, but are focused on the shallow letters and details of Scriptures. Such a way of reading the Bible is completely against how the early Church did it (regardless of how Sunday School teaches it now). Read the Fathers and see how they approached everything Christologically and see Spiritual truths signified everywhere. What does St. Paul teach about being carnally minded?
Wisdom 1:13
For God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the loss of the living.
That's right. That is the jist of it. Except God creates with or without evolution. He can use any method He wants, science is merely the honest search for that method.
Let me share a passage from On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius with you. I feel it would clear up a lot of things:
"For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing; but he bears also the Likeness of Him Who is, and if he preserves that Likeness through constant contemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt. So is it affirmed in Wisdom: "The keeping of His laws is the assurance of incorruption."[8] And being incorrupt, he would be henceforth as God, as Holy Scripture says, "I have said, Ye are gods and sons of the Highest all of you: but ye die as men and fall as one of the princes."[9]
(5) This, then, was the plight of men. God had not only made them out of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word. Then, turning from eternal things to things corruptible, by counsel of the devil, they had become the cause of their own corruption in death; for, as I said before, though they were by nature subject to corruption, the grace of their union with the Word made them capable of escaping from the natural law, provided that they retained the beauty of innocence with which they were created. That is to say, the presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption, as also Wisdom says: God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world."
"Upon them, therefore, upon men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked—namely the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself, so that, reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even as He does, though in limited degree they might continue for ever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise. But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon two things—namely, a law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption."
God Bless
1 This is he,who was formed by God, the father of the world, who was alone when created; she (wisdom) preserved him.
2 and led him out of his offense, and gave him the power to maintain all things.
I will say this however. Christ was incarnate and destroyed death not to take away the battle but to give us victory over it. "In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
So just as the Israelites are freed from slavery but must first pass through the wilderness and fight off enemies to reach the promised land, so the Christian passes through the Red Sea of Baptism, puts on Christ and is given a new life, dying to sin and the world. Through this new life we are constantly battling the old corrupt nature that keeps trying to come back for we can choose to return to it so long as we have free will. Just like when the Israelites kept complaining about the "comfort" of slavery, so we are constant being tempted to fall back into the sin of our corrupt nature. If we do, we repent to bring back the one baptism we were given and to reactivate the regeneration we have.
Christ came to make us follow the same path that He did. Just as He fought sin and temptation and remained righteous all His life by proving Himself like it says in Hebrews and died to the world on the Cross and also rose on the third day and ascended into the heavens, so we as Christians through Theosis follow these footsteps of the firstborn over all creation, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Your chance of being in union with God is no less or greater than that of Adam and Eve. God gives each person the talents in the situation they are in. We are born into a tougher situation perhaps where there is corruption. Christ is still fair and will ask of you not more than what you can handle. The question applies to why are some children born in Africa starving while we have food, how is that fair?
In the end, it will all make sense through God's Providence. In the mean time know that you have the same opportunity as Adam to be in communion with the Trinity.
God Bless