Evolution and Orthodoxy
Can evolution and creationism be mixed to come up with a perfect answer to what happened in the beginning of the world? Can they peacefully coexist or is it like mixing oil and water?
Fr. John Matusiak writes on evolution, first published on OCA.org:
Evolution at the hands of God? The idea is not as foriegn as you might think. The November 2004 issue of National Geographic magazine published an article called "Was Darwin Wrong?" by David Quammen. Quammen's answer to this question was a literal big, fat "NO". However the article also shared the results of a Gallup poll taken in February 2001. The poll showed that while 45 percent of the people polled believed in creation, "37 percent of the polled Americans were satisfied with allowing room for both God and Darwin - that is, divine initiative to get thing started, evolution as the creative means. (This view, according to more than one papal pronouncement, is compatible with Roman Catholic dogma.)"
I am not sure just what exactly the evolution-as-the-tool-of-creation theory entails. Perhaps they only mean that God created animals and men to exist in the Garden of Eden, but having been banished from that "environment" they physically evolved to adapt to new environments? Perhaps it involves more or less than that - I don't know.
While this may be a popular idea, it is not swallowed whole-sale by the Orthodox. Christopher of Orrologion points out on his blog that the "generally favorable but agnostic-as-to-the-means position of many Orthodox on the theory of evolution... is not universal, however, and has been challenged by the late Fr. Seraphim Rose and the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood in the book "Genesis, Creation and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision" with its companion work, "The First-Formed Man" by St. Symeon the New Theologian. The theory of evolution in its present, common understanding has also been challenged more and more often in former Soviet Union and Warsaw pact countries since the fall of Communism - whose atheistic regime was a strong supporter of materialist evolutionism."
Our former Synod President A.L. Barry also agreed that it is dangerous to mix evolution and creation. He writes in a pamphlet, "Many aspects of evolutionary theory are directly contradictory to God’s Word. Evolution cannot be “baptized” to make it compatible with the Christian faith. Those who attempt inevitably wind up watering down the teachings of the Bible. Christians have no need to fear the findings of science, nor do they have any reason to give “science” more credence than they give the Word of God." In otherwords, you shouldn't believe in the evolution of all life from a single cell, slap God's name on it, and think everything is just fine - that method makes science your primary belief and not God's Word. Of course, you could say that if God is powerful enough to create ex nihilo then He is also powerful enough to create all things in the manner the scientists suggest, but I think that's pushing the line a little too far. God is all powerful and could create in whichever manner He wanted, but the question is not could He but did He? God spoke, and it was. His Word does not say God spoke, thereby causing a chain effect over several years, and then it was. When you try to nit-pick the mechanics of the "how" of creation, not only do you doubt God's Word, but you also inevitably risk losing sight of the "why" of creation, which is God's love for man. Darwin himself believed in a diety that created the world and set it spinning but not one that was personal, not one that loved mankind. I truly don't believe (or even mean to imply) the Roman Catholics or Orthodox have gone that far. I do think that it is a danger to put your trust in science and take your eyes away from Christ.
Let it be known that I am not trying to attack the Orthodox, and I'm a little hesitant to post this. It's one thing to poke at your own beliefs, but quite another to poke at someone else's beliefs. I don't want this to degenerate into a Orthodox verses Lutheran quarrel. I suppose I am just looking to understand their viewpoint a little better and to see if leaving room for science within creation is (really?!) representative of their actual beliefs. Hopefully some of my dear Orthodox readers who grace this blog from time to time will share their own insights.
Fr. John Matusiak writes on evolution, first published on OCA.org:
"[T]he Orthodox Church surely does not subscribe to evolution [if by evolution one is referring to the theories and teachings of Charles Darwin] in any manner. Orthodoxy firmly believes that God is the Creator of all things and that human beings, created in the image and likeness of God, are unique among all created beings. At the same time Orthodoxy is not literalist in its understanding of the accounts of creation in Genesis, and I have encountered writings by Orthodox Christians which attempt to balance the creation accounts with a certain ongoing -- evolutionary, if you will -- process which, on the one hand, affirms that while humans may have evolved physically under the direction and guidance and plan of the Creator, their souls could not have evolved any more than the powers of reasoning, speaking, or the ability to act creatively could have simply evolved. In such a scenario the Creator intervened by breathing His Spirit into man and giving him life, as stated in Genesis. Such thinking, however, while admitting the possibility that the Creator guided a process of physical evolution, is not identical with the theories of Charles Darwin, which in my limited understanding implies that man's soul also evolved and denies the active participation on the part of the Creator."
Evolution at the hands of God? The idea is not as foriegn as you might think. The November 2004 issue of National Geographic magazine published an article called "Was Darwin Wrong?" by David Quammen. Quammen's answer to this question was a literal big, fat "NO". However the article also shared the results of a Gallup poll taken in February 2001. The poll showed that while 45 percent of the people polled believed in creation, "37 percent of the polled Americans were satisfied with allowing room for both God and Darwin - that is, divine initiative to get thing started, evolution as the creative means. (This view, according to more than one papal pronouncement, is compatible with Roman Catholic dogma.)"
I am not sure just what exactly the evolution-as-the-tool-of-creation theory entails. Perhaps they only mean that God created animals and men to exist in the Garden of Eden, but having been banished from that "environment" they physically evolved to adapt to new environments? Perhaps it involves more or less than that - I don't know.
While this may be a popular idea, it is not swallowed whole-sale by the Orthodox. Christopher of Orrologion points out on his blog that the "generally favorable but agnostic-as-to-the-means position of many Orthodox on the theory of evolution... is not universal, however, and has been challenged by the late Fr. Seraphim Rose and the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood in the book "Genesis, Creation and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision" with its companion work, "The First-Formed Man" by St. Symeon the New Theologian. The theory of evolution in its present, common understanding has also been challenged more and more often in former Soviet Union and Warsaw pact countries since the fall of Communism - whose atheistic regime was a strong supporter of materialist evolutionism."
Our former Synod President A.L. Barry also agreed that it is dangerous to mix evolution and creation. He writes in a pamphlet, "Many aspects of evolutionary theory are directly contradictory to God’s Word. Evolution cannot be “baptized” to make it compatible with the Christian faith. Those who attempt inevitably wind up watering down the teachings of the Bible. Christians have no need to fear the findings of science, nor do they have any reason to give “science” more credence than they give the Word of God." In otherwords, you shouldn't believe in the evolution of all life from a single cell, slap God's name on it, and think everything is just fine - that method makes science your primary belief and not God's Word. Of course, you could say that if God is powerful enough to create ex nihilo then He is also powerful enough to create all things in the manner the scientists suggest, but I think that's pushing the line a little too far. God is all powerful and could create in whichever manner He wanted, but the question is not could He but did He? God spoke, and it was. His Word does not say God spoke, thereby causing a chain effect over several years, and then it was. When you try to nit-pick the mechanics of the "how" of creation, not only do you doubt God's Word, but you also inevitably risk losing sight of the "why" of creation, which is God's love for man. Darwin himself believed in a diety that created the world and set it spinning but not one that was personal, not one that loved mankind. I truly don't believe (or even mean to imply) the Roman Catholics or Orthodox have gone that far. I do think that it is a danger to put your trust in science and take your eyes away from Christ.
Let it be known that I am not trying to attack the Orthodox, and I'm a little hesitant to post this. It's one thing to poke at your own beliefs, but quite another to poke at someone else's beliefs. I don't want this to degenerate into a Orthodox verses Lutheran quarrel. I suppose I am just looking to understand their viewpoint a little better and to see if leaving room for science within creation is (really?!) representative of their actual beliefs. Hopefully some of my dear Orthodox readers who grace this blog from time to time will share their own insights.
Comments
Scripture in Orthodoxy is simply a part of Holy Tradition, there are not two separate sources of authority (Scripture and Tradition) as Rome argued. Scripture hold pride of place, and is used EXTENSIVELY - more extensively in fact than in the WELS services I grew up in - in all of the services of the Orthodox Church. Obscure biblical references and allusions can even trip up this bibliphile - especially in the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete (thank goodness for the footnotes in the copy I have from Jordanville).
The other difference is that freedom in typology and allegory - the 'spiritual' meanings of Scripture - are not as drastically curtailed in Orthodoxy as they were by Luther and in Lutheranism. I was generally taught the rule that only those instances of OT allegory and typology specifically delineated in the NT are to be accepte, otherwise, the 'technique' is to be avoided and the literal accepted as the primary, intended meaning of the Holy Spirit. In Orthodoxy, following the Fathers, the literal is true, but not always the most important - or the controlling interpretation of the text. For instance, the prophecy in Isaiah regarding the virgin birth refers both to the Messiah, as well as relating to contemporary issues surrounding King Ahaz. There are multiple levels of meaning and prophecy in the Spirit-inspired text.
The creation accounts were, for the most part, taken as literal, but some Fathers focused primarily on the spiritual meaning of the creation account without ever commenting on the literal account or its historicism. This leaves open to the 'mind of the Church' the possibility that the Scriptural text may in fact more rightly be read as a spiritual metaphor - likely in in comparison and contrast to the quite different cosmologies and resulting theologies of the nations surrounding the Hebrews.
The great challenge is in determining how one draws the line between the historicism of the Resurrection and the 'spiritual metaphor' of Genesis. The mind of the Church, which is the divino-human Body of Christ Himself, and the precedent of the Fathers in the Church is of greater use in Orthodoxy in this regard however. Protestantism, and much/most of Lutheranism (especially those following the Wauwatosa theology of WELS), must look primarily at the biblical text and then individually determine whether Church history and precedent, the witness of the Fathers and the Church's liturgy, is in accordance with his/her own reading of the Biblical text. Orthodoxy always reads the biblical text through the lens of her Divine Worship and the sensus Patrum. 'New' enunciations and understandings of Scripture are chewed on and mulled over time to ascertain whether this newly faced challenge is being properly addressed in line with the Fathers. A prime example is how the Church came together and hammered out the proper understanding of the Trinity and Christ; and example of the derivative nature of theology from the dogmatic specifics of triadology and christology is how the question of iconoclasm was related to the incarnation and christology - and not simply on proof-texting from various Fathers that approved or disapproved of images for a variety of reasons that had not yet been connected to a witness to the Incarnation.
"Now in this same day that they did eat, in that also did they die. But according to the cycle and progress of the days, after which one is termed first, another second, and another third, if anybody seeks diligently to learn upon what day out of the seven it was that Adam died, he will find it by examining the dispensation of the Lord. For by summing up in Himself the whole human race from the beginning to the end, He has also summed up its death. From this it is clear that the Lord suffered death, in obedience to His Father, upon that day on which Adam died while he disobeyed God. Now he died on the same day in which he did eat. For God said, 'In that day on which ye shall eat of it, ye shall die by death.' The Lord, therefore, recapitulating in Himself this day, underwent His sufferings upon the day preceding the Sabbath, that is, the sixth day of the creation, on which day man was created; thus granting him a second creation by means of His passion, which is that [creation] out of death." (Against Heresies [5] 5.23.2.)
Here are a few examples of the creation account as literal and otherwise:
"Saint Augustine (4th century)... on theological grounds, argued that everything in the universe was created by God in the same instant, and not in seven days as a plain account of Genesis would require...
Early Christians seem to have been divided over whether to interpret the days of creation in Genesis 1 as literal days, or to understand them allegorically.
"For example, St. Basil rejected an allegorical interpretation in his Hexaëmeron, and affirmed 24-hour creation days:
"I know the laws of allegory, though less by myself than from the works of others. There are those truly, who do not admit the common sense of the Scriptures, for whom water is not water, but some other nature, who see in a plant, in a fish, what their fancy wishes, who change the nature of reptiles and of wild beasts to suit their allegories, like the interpreters of dreams who explain visions in sleep to make them serve their own ends. For me grass is grass; plant, fish, wild beast, domestic animal, I take all in the literal sense. 'For I am not ashamed of the Gospel' [Romans 1:16]." ( Homily IX:1)
"'And there was evening and there was morning: one day.' And the evening and the morning were one day. Why does Scripture say 'one day the first day'? Before speaking to us of the second, the third, and the fourth days, would it not have been more natural to call that one the first which began the series? If it therefore says 'one day,' it is from a wish to determine the measure of day and night, and to combine the time that they contain. Now twenty-four hours fill up the space of one day -- we mean of a day and of a night; and if, at the time of the solstices, they have not both an equal length, the time marked by Scripture does not the less circumscribe their duration. It is as though it said: twenty-four hours measure the space of a day, or that, in reality a day is the time that the heavens starting from one point take to return there. Thus, every time that, in the revolution of the sun, evening and morning occupy the world, their periodical succession never exceeds the space of one day." ( Homily II:8)
"Justin Martyr, on the other hand, argued that the days of creation must refer to much longer time spans:
"For as Adam was told that in the day he ate of the tree he would die, we know that he did not complete a thousand years. We have perceived, moreover, that the expression, 'The day of the Lord is as a thousand years,' is connected with this subject." (Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 81)
"Origen, in a passage that was later chosen by Gregory of Nazianzus for inclusion in the Philocalia, an anthology of some of his most important texts, made the following very modern-sounding remarks:
"What intelligent person will suppose that there was a first, a second and a third day, that there was evening and morning without the existence of the sun and moon and stars? Or that there was a first day without a sky? Who could be so silly as to think that God planted a paradise in Eden in the East the way a human gardener does, and that he made in this garden a visible and palpable tree of life, so that by tasting its fruit with one’s bodily teeth one should receive life? And in the same way, that someone could partake of good and evil by chewing what was taken from this tree? If God is represented as walking in the garden in the evening, or Adam as hiding under the tree, I do not think anyone can doubt that these things, by means of a story which did not in fact materially occur, are intended to express certain mysteries in a metaphorical way." (De Principiis IV, 3, 1 [6])
"And in another passage, writing in response to the pagan intellectual Celsus, he said:
"And with regard to the creation of the light upon the first day, and of the firmament upon the second, and of the gathering together of the waters that are under the heaven into their several reservoirs on the third (the earth thus causing to sprout forth those (fruits) which are under the control of nature alone, and of the (great) lights and stars upon the fourth, and of aquatic animals upon the fifth, and of land animals and man upon the sixth, we have treated to the best of our ability in our notes upon Genesis, as well as in the foregoing pages, when we found fault with those who, taking the words in their apparent signification, said that the time of six days was occupied in the creation of the world." (Contra Celsus 6.60)...
"St. Augustine, one of the most influential theologians of the Catholic Church, suggested that the Biblical text should not be interpreted literally if it contradicts what we know from science and our God-given reason. From an important passage on his "The Literal Interpretation of Genesis" (early fifth century, AD), St. Augustine wrote:
"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation." (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20, Chapt. 19 [AD 408])
"With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation." (ibid, 2:9)
"In the book, Augustine took the view that everything in the universe was created simultaneously by God, and not in seven days like a plain account of Genesis would require. He argues that the six-day structure of creation presented in the book of Genesis represents a logical framework, rather than the passage of time in a physical way. Augustine also doesn’t envisage original sin as originating structural changes in the universe, and even suggests that the bodies of Adam and Eve were already created mortal before the Fall. Apart from his specific views, Augustine recognizes that the interpretation of the creation story is difficult, and remarks that we should be willing to change our mind about it as new information comes up."
- See "Allegorical interpretations of Genesis" on Wikipedia
IF God created through evolution, then (in those millions of years) creatures died. Those creatures died before man was created, and thus before man sinned.
So, is death what mankind earned for his sin? Was the creation subjected to futility because of man's sin? Or did God set up this fallen world in anticipation that man would sin?
My husband has been reading about Orthodoxy recently, and was surprised to see that many EO theologians allow for the possibility of God's having created through the evolutionary process. Some of my friends have suggested that Orthodoxy does not have as serious a view of sin as do Lutherans. Of course, my EO friends who were once Lutheran disagree. But allowing for evolution (that is, thinking that there could've been death prior to the Fall) might indicate a less serious take on the sinful nature.
You are correct to point out the difficulties that arise if evolution is accepted as is. If death entered the world through sin, then how do we explain what would be the necessary deaths of a Darwinian evolution based on natural selection and the survival of the fittest (and which requires the extinction of the less fit as its corollary)? This is a point that Fr. Seraphim makes, in fact. So, too, the fact that the majority of the Fathers assume the Creation account to be accurate and historical in addition to being typological and allegorical. Origen is not a highly regarded source, after all, nor is St. Justin as pure a source as St. Basil the Great.
One potential answer is that it is important to remember that Time is a creation of God's and does not follow the uniformitarian assumption we make of how things worked 'then'. This is an assumption shared by creationists and evolutionists, that everything 'worked' the same then as now. There are also hints in the more mystical visions of the Fathers concerning Adam and Eve that they were created somehow 'above' this world and that only after the Fall did they take on the full heaviness and mortality of the rest of the physical creation. Analogically, just as angels are equally a part of creation, they did not suffer mortality as a result of Adam and Eve's disobedience because they were 'above' our mixed spiritual and material nature having materiality of a kind but not being earthly, being more 'spiritual'. So, Adam and Eve could have been 'in Heaven' and outside of Time while a purely evolving earth was slowly forming, at their Fall Time could then have drastically sped up (non-uniformitarity) with a profusion of death driving the evolution of life. St. Gregory of Nyssa and other talk about the 'garments of skin' being our fleshly bodies and that these heavy bodies were given us after the Fall - which could have happened as Time then slowed back down for us to be wrapped the 'animal flesh' of the immediate precursors to homo sapiens. This would also account for the dual account of creation and allow for a degree of 'spiritual' allegory for events seen IN VISION by the Prophet Moses, and not from first-hand account in the way that Paul spoke of his conversion on the road to Damascus.
Then again, the Church has never actually spoken on the matter, and what is an allowable theologoumena before an accepted, conciliar decree is heresy afterwards. St. Gregory the Theologian stated that to be orthodox at Nicea was to be only slightly in error - but after Nicea and then after Constantinople I to be orthodox meant you could not accept 'hazy' triadology any longer.
Personally, I remain agnostic on either side. I believe that God could have created the world in 6 days by His Word and that scientific evidence for Darwinian evolution is based on a series of plausible though radically flawed assumptions seeking after a godless world. I also believe that God's ways are higher than my ways and that I look through a glass darkly now not being able to understand the mysteries of God and how he could have created us in a way consistent with both the Genesis account and science - in a way similar to the abject shock that Jews had to face when God's real plan for the Messiah came in the person of Jesus Christ when they took from the OT a completely different picture of the Messiah. I am uncomfortable with the simple acceptance of the conclusions of materialist science and think many Orthodox simply haven't thought too deeply about it being less worried about the foundation (an essential for Protestants born of such conflict with Rome) and more concerned with living within the structure and working out their salvation. I think this is naive. Fr. Seraphim gives a good presentation of his move from generally pro-evolution to anti-evolution through his reading of the Fathers - whose witness is often left to the side unaddressed by many modern Orthodox, mainly through a lack of familiarity. I am also wary of overly literalist interpretations that assume that my ability to understand the text and my preference for literalism is the criterion within which God must have acted. The more allegorical understandings of Scripture are too prevalent in all of the services of the Church, in her prayers, in the rest of Scripture and in the non-literalist way in which the Apostles and the Church saw definitive 'evidence' for every aspect of Jesus' life and work in the OT (something a purely literalist reading did not give most Jews of the day and whose hermeneutic would not satisfy creationist's reading of Genesis) to be wholly dismissed. I am still in the position of the Ethiopian eunuch needing a Phillip to expoind these foundational and yet so little known allegorical and typological meanings of Scripture (which until the 200s meant primarily/only the OT).
This is a very different kind of Fall than in the West, as influenced by excesses in St Augustine.
The other allegorical understanding of Genesis is that we relive the story of Adam and Eve, personally. It is also a story of our own lives and falls and excuses. Each 'character' in the Bible refers both to themselves, to Christ and to us. This is clear in many of the hymns of the Church. See especially the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete that is used in Great Lent where biblical events and characters are referred to as metaphors and similes for ourselves and our spiritual lives.
We have lost our imagination and assume the past is pretty much like things are now, because we cannot imagine anything different. Reading Genesis, we view Adam and Eve as pretty much just like you and your spouse, but somehow sinless, in a garden much nicer than your backyard, though similar. A snake appears, they eat the apple, and God kills some animals and puts pelts on them.
The Fathers, even at their most literal, wondered at these "garments of skin"--if they did not in fact refer to our skin. In this case the "spiritual body" discussion of 1 Cor. 15 makes more sense, in that we may not have skin and bones in the resurrection in the traditional sense, but some other kind of body like Adam had before.
Crazy. Yet Luther wondered the same in his Genesis commentary (which I don't have next me). The point being, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
In our attempt to affirm the inspiration and divinity of Scripture against the liberal moderns, we Lutherans have sided too much with the barren imaginations and understandings of the fundamentalists, who likewise share this modern view that humans are capable of rational, scientific investigation into the truth of God. If indeed His Word is Spirit and Truth, then it is Spirit, and its depth and meaning cannot be exhausted with a literal, rational view of the text.
I do teach Creation. I do teach six-day creation; Scripture says this. But I do teach that we do not have all the answers. I also point out to children and adults that Darwinism is bad philosophy and science, which is the real issue.
Wow, thanks for citing so many examples (that must have taken some time to write!). I think this helps explain what Fr. Matusiak wrote.
The interpretation of Genesis is not a "closed" matter when it comes to Tradition, so it would seem that the Orthodox neither claim evolution to be impossible nor endorse it as the only interpretation.
Lutherans like to put four walls around an issue and seal it off for all time, so the amorphous boundaries the Orthodox put around Genesis is enough to spook any Lutheran. I agree with Rev. Hall that we needn't be so stiff.
I'm almost done reading Elert's book, so maybe I'll put one of the Fathers on my reading list.
As an Orthodox christian, I do not much care whether you accept the Genesis accounts literally or not. ISTM that if they aren't literally true, they may as well be.
I mean, geneticists have now traced human ancestry to a single couple. If the man wasn't Adam, he was still the first "Adam", a name which simply means, "man". If the woman wasn't called Eve, she was Eve anyway, because "Eve" means "mother of all the living." They are generic names!
If our first parents didn't eat any literal fruit, they still sinned. And their sin still consisted of what all sin consists of, trashing their relationship with God. If there wasn't a tree labelled, "The Knowledge of Good and Evil," our first parents still acquired the knowledge of evil illictly, namely by committing it. (Until they had done that, there was no need for them to know anything about evil.) And their sin still tranformed their world in a tragic way. And they lost their chance for immortality.
And so on and so forth. You can't find as true an account of our first parents anywhere -- whether or not it is literal!
So go ahead and accept it as literal. Why not? Or go ahead and accept it as non-literal, but still absolutely true.
If you accept evolution, you will have to customize it some to make it fit Christianity. My own (ignorant!) opinion is you will have to customize it a great deal more to make it into respectable science. As it stands now, the theory of evolution requires as much credulity to accept as some people think the Genesis acccounts require.
Anastasia
So go ahead and accept it as literal. Why not? Or go ahead and accept it as non-literal, but still absolutely true.
I don't think that I could ever believe that God works through evolution. Evolution doesn't look and smell like the Good Shepherd. I am willing to accept that there is also a "foreshadowing" in the text, as the Old Testament points forward to Christ.
I do think science requires it's own credulity or faith. So I guess I'll add my own (ignorant) opinion to yours. :)
I don't think that I could ever believe that God works through evolution.
If five sparrows are sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God, and if the very hairs of our head are all numbered, then I think that God can keep track of how genes mutate and how His creatures adapt to the changing environment. All things work together for good for those who love God, and I think "all things" must include even the details of biology.
When "evolution" says that living things change over time by natural selection, it is on pretty solid ground, because there is ample scientific evidence to support it. When "evolution" concludes from that, that living things (and the rest of the material universe) have somehow "created themselves," and that there is no God, it has gone way beyond both science and logic. That sort of "evolution" is not science at all, but false and demonic theology dressed up as science.
You are right. I ought to qualify/explain my previous statement. I disagree with macroevolution and not mircoevolution.
What else can I say? You summed up everything on my mind in a way more eloquent than I could have done.
When one starts getting into the physics of cosmology it also opens up so many complexities regarding dimesions, time, space, etc. that one can very easily assume that there is space for Genesis to be as good a version of what 'literally' happened as can be had by our earth-bound, terrestrial minds. I remember my astrophysics professor in college decrying the 'assumed' reality of black holes as a cop-out, when they are accepted now as absolutely proven and necessary. There was also a huge controversy between whether the universe was slowing down and ever-expanding or slowing down and destined to collapse - it turns out the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating! Physicists used to assume they understood the building blocks of nature as either particles or energy - not it turns out that 95%% of the mass of the universe is composed of Dark Matter than can't be detected and Dark Energy that can't be explained, with the remaining 5% as particles composing planets and stars, etc. This is leaving aside the oddities of relativity, quantum and string theories - and all their competing opposites.
I prefer to leave it very much like Rev. Hall shared.
First of all, thanks for highlighting this conversation on your blog!
I hadn't heard of the term "evolutionism" before, but it makes good sense to call it by that name.
It's always interesting how science is constantly proving itself wrong about terrestial matters (take all the false scientifically proven theories behind the "Iceman" for example), how much more so with things we can't see or touch (like "Strings" and black holes). On the contrary, God's Word in Genesis has never changed. I'll stick with that. :)
So, I'm perfectly fine with people that stick with Genesis. I am also fine with people using evolution theory to help predict genetic and biological changes, attempt explanations of things, etc. as long as we understand that God is still involved and that we likely do not understand everything we think we understand.
Science is like rehearsing Chekhov (I was an actor): the floor will fall out from beneath you at any minute.
It is written by a former Episcopal priest, Alice Linsley, who left the ECUSA and disavowed her ordination and joined the Orthodox Church within the past year.