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Genesis, Creation, and Early Man

"Christian Evolutionism"

1. Introduction

There are forms of evolutionary philosophy, most notably the Marxist, which loudly proclaim themselves to be an all-sufficient philosophy of life, replacing the “disproved” philosophy of Christianity.1 The arguments of these atheist evolutionists are naive in the extreme and full of self-contradictions, and there is no need to concern ourselves with them; even many contemporary atheists (outside the Soviet orbit) realize that belief in God can neither be “proved” or “disproved,” but is arrived at—or rejected—by means of a kind of evidence quite different from scientific proof.

However, there is nothing in the evolutionary view of the world in itself which requires it to be atheistic, and in fact the evolutionary theory makes much more sense to normal human reason if one has faith in at least some kind of God who puts the process in motion, guides it, etc. The philosophy of the world as a “chance” play of atoms, which themselves came into existence by “chance,” is satisfying only to the most limited and stunted minds.

The outlook of the Orthodox Christian toward evolution, therefore, is by no means the simple one of the rejection of a philosophy which is openly anti-religious or anti-Christian; the more sophisticated evolutionists are all “religious” to some degree, and there are many “Christian evolutionists,” some of them even having the reputation of being “Orthodox theologians.” Here we shall examine the views of some of these “Christian evolutionists,” all of them either claiming to be Orthodox Christians or at least having their evolutionary views recommended by Orthodox Christians. In this way we shall be able to see the evolutionary philosophy at its best, “reconciled” with Orthodox theology, as it were; and so we shall be able to begin to see whether the philosophy of evolution is really compatible with Orthodox Christianity. Here we shall not subject the views of these “Christian evolutionists” to detailed criticism, but will rather look to see what questions these views raise for Orthodox faith. These questions will then be examined in detail in our final section on the Orthodox Patristic view of creation.

In the last few years there have been articles—small articles, and some longer ones—in the Orthodox press on this very question of evolution. The official Greek Archdiocese newspaper, The Orthodox Observer, printed several articles which are quite surprising in that they are so far from Orthodoxy. One of these, “Evolution: A Heresy?,” quotes the “well-known Orthodox theologian, Panagiotis Trempelas”:

It appears more glorious and divine-like and more in harmony with the regular methods of God which we daily see expressed in nature to have created the various forms by evolutionary methods, Himself remaining the first and supreme creative Cause of the secondary and immediate causes to which are owed the development of the variety of species.2

This is the view of all “Christian evolutionists,” and it raises the extremely important question of whether it is possible to attain knowledge of God’s creation by means of “the regular methods of God which we daily see expressed in nature”; this is by no means as simple a question as it might appear. And another, no less important question is raised by this view: What is it, then, that God created in the beginning (for evolution by definition is a process in time, and must have a beginning)? Did He create only the “cosmic blob” to which atheist philosophers reduce the origin of the evolutionary process? Or must we be totally agnostic about this “beginning,” as many atheist philosophers tell us we must be?

The article concludes:

As long as Christians recognize the creative power of God in the process of Evolution, it is both bold and hasty to call Evolution a heresy.

This conclusion reveals rather clearly the simple-minded approach to the whole question of the philosophy of evolution which prevails in “Christian evolutionists” who have not given serious and critical thought to the real problems which this philosophy presents for Orthodox faith. The whole point of this article, which seems to present the viewpoint of many of the Orthodox clergy in America (i.e., those who have been raised in an “evolutionary” atmosphere without giving much thought to it), is this: if “God” is added to the theory of evolution, it becomes acceptable to Orthodox Christians; we are only against evolution if it is atheistic. But this is surely a very naive answer to a rather complicated question! What of the philosophy of evolution itself? Is it compatible with Orthodox Christian theology and philosophy, even with “God” added to it? All of the great heretics of history have also believed in “God”: indeed, “the demons also believe, and tremble” (James 2:19). More rigorous thinking than this is required before an Orthodox Christian can know what to think of evolution.

The article in the Greek Archdiocese newspaper says that evolution cannot really be a heresy because there are many Christians who believe in it. Besides Trempelas, it refers to two other “Christian evolutionists”: Lecomte du Noüy and Teilhard de Chardin. Let us look for a moment at Lecomte du Noüy and his views.

2. Pierre Lecomte du Noüy

Pierre Lecomte du Noüy was born in Paris in 1883 and died in New York in 1947. A widely known and respected scientist, mathematician and physiologist, he wrote several books on scientific philosophy. His popular book, Human Destiny, sets forth his conclusions about evolution. It turns out he was not much of a Christian, for he believed that man created his own God, who is actually “a formidable fiction.”3 He was very patronizing toward Christianity: he believed that Christianity has been misunderstood and misinterpreted, but it is still good for the masses, and is a useful tool for man’s continuing evolution on a moral and ethical plane. It has no objective, absolute truth. Christ is not God, but He’s perfect man. Christian tradition, however, somehow helps to educate the race toward further evolution. He says:

We are at the beginning of the transformations which will end in the superior race. …4 Evolution continues in our time, no longer on the physiological or anatomical plane, but on the spiritual and moral plane. We are at the dawn of a new phase of evolution.5

It is difficult enough to find scientific evidence for physical evolution, but it is impossible to find evidence for spiritual evolution. Nevertheless, he believes in it. He says:

Our conclusions are identical with those expressed in the second chapter of Genesis, provided that this chapter is interpreted in a new way and considered as the highly symbolical expression of a truth which was intuitively perceived by its redactor or by the sages who communicated it to him.6

Of course, the book of Genesis was not written through mere human intuition. On the contrary, the Holy Fathers say that Moses heard from God the truths contained in it. St. John Chrysostom says the book of Genesis is a prophecy of the past; that is, Moses saw an exalted vision of what the world was in the beginning.

St. Isaac the Syrian describes how such a vision can take place: how the soul of a holy man can ascend to a vision of the beginning of things. Describing how such a soul is enraptured at the thought of the future age of incorruption, St. Isaac writes:

And from this one is already exalted in his mind to that which preceded the composition (making) of the world, when there was no creature, nor heaven, nor earth, nor angels, nothing of that which was brought into being, and to how God, solely by His good will, suddenly brought everything from non-being into being, and everything stood before Him in perfection.7

Monsieur Lecomte du Noüy continues:

Let us try … to analyze the sacred text as though it were a highly symbolical and cryptic description of scientific truths.8

This, of course, is extremely patronizing—as if poor Moses tried his best to get a scientific picture of the way things were, and all he came up with were these images.

Lecomte du Noüy explains:

The omnipotence of God is manifested by the fact that man, descended from the marine worms, is today capable of conceiving the future existence of a superior being and of wanting to be his ancestor. Christ brings us the proof that this is not an unrealizable dream but an accessible ideal.9

That is, Christ is some kind of Superman, and this is the ideal to which man is now evolving.

Lecomte du Noüy gives us a new “criterion of good and evil” which he says is “absolute with respect to Man”:

Good is that which contributes to the course of ascending evolution. … Evil is that which opposes evolution. … The respect of human personality is based on the recognition of man’s dignity as a worker for evolution, as a collaborator with God. …10 The only goal of man should be the attainment of human dignity with all its implications.11

He goes on to say that there are “thinking men” in all religions, and therefore all religions have a “unique inspiration,” a “spiritual kinship,” an “original identity.” He says:

The unity of religions must be sought in that which is divine, namely universal, in man.12 … No matter what our religion, we are all like people at the bottom of a valley who seek to climb a snowy peak that dominates the others. We all have our eyes fixed on the same goal. … Unfortunately we differ on what road to take. … One day, provided they never stop ascending, they must all meet at the top of the mountain … the road to it matters little.13

Of course, the top of the mountain is not the salvation of the soul; it is not the Kingdom of Heaven, but is precisely the chiliastic New Age.

It may be seen with little difficulty that Lecomte du Noüy’s views are not at all Orthodox, or even vaguely Christian, but deistic. It is useful for us to know these views, however, because, behind the surface of a religious relativism which no Orthodox Christian can accept, du Noüy’s “evolutionary” views are by no means untypical of contemporary “Christian evolutionists,” including many Orthodox Christians, and they raise philosophical and religious questions which any thinking Orthodox Christian must be prepared to answer. Let us mention here two groups of these questions.

  1. As a corollary to the universality of evolution, which all evolutionists accept (everything in the world evolves, nothing is excepted from this natural process), he sees in the future of human evolution the coming of a “Superman” or “superior race.” Also, he speaks of the future of human evolution as on the “moral and spiritual” plane. Can an Orthodox Christian believe in such things? If not, what reason does he have to exempt man from the otherwise universal natural process?

  2. The book of Genesis, Lecomte du Noüy believes, must be “interpreted in a new way,” symbolically. Specifically, the transgression of Adam was not an historical event, but simply “the symbol of the dawn of human consciousness.” Can an Orthodox Christian believe this? How does Orthodox Christianity understand the book of Genesis?

3. Fr. Anthony Kosturos

Let us return now to the views on evolution of other Orthodox Christians. In another article of the Greek Archdiocese’s Orthodox Observer (Feb. 6, 1974), Fr. Anthony Kosturos answers a question sent in by a reader: “If Adam and Eve were the first humans, where did their son Cain get his wife? Does our Church shed any light on this question?” Fr. Kosturos replies:

Man’s origin is too far back in history for any person or group to know how man began. [What, then, is the book of Genesis for?] Science is still groping for answers. The word Adam denotes earth. The word Eve, life. Generally, and only generally, our traditional theologians take the view that all of us stem from one male and one female. … There are others who feel that humankind appeared in clusters, a few here and a few there. … No theologian has the definitive answer on the subject of man’s origin and his development. … The dawn of human history is a mystery.14

According to Fr. Kosturos, it is “science” that is trying to find the answer to this question. Evidently, the Orthodox interpretation of Genesis is quite symbolical and allegorical; we do not really know whether such a person as “Adam” ever existed. This is the view presented by the official Greek Archdiocese newspaper.

And what of the Orthodox theology of Adam the first-created man? What of the Orthodox feast devoted to Adam and the other Forefathers? What of those who have Adam for their patron Saint? Is it a matter of indifference to an Orthodox Christian that the Church, if the “Christian evolutionists” are correct, may have been mistaken all these centuries in her teaching on this subject, and that this teaching may now have to be revised if “science,” after all, does come up with the answer to the question of man’s origin? Is it an exaggeration to say that it is extremely important for an Orthodox Christian to have a very clear view of the Church’s teaching on the origin of man, as well as a clear understanding of the limits of science in exploring this question?

Later, in another answer to a reader’s question, Fr. Kosturos says:

Perhaps there are many Adams and Eves who appeared concurrencly in different areas, and then met. How man was created and how man procreated initially is a mystery. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Our Church gives you the opportunity to ponder the subjects you mention and come up with your own speculation about them.15

(The Orthodox answer to the question, “Where did Cain get his wife?” is actually very easy: Adam and Eve had many children who are not mentioned by name in Genesis. The account in Genesis is only the basic outline of the story.)

4. Karl Rahner

Fr. Kosturos mentions the possibility that “humankind appeared in clusters.”16 This is a reference to the evolutionary theory of “polygenism.” The prominent Jesuit “theologian” Karl Rahner (who until recently was rather “conservative” in his views on evolution) has examined this question and has made a “reconciliation” of the evolutionary view with the Christian doctrine in a way that will doubtless be imitated by “Orthodox evolutionists” in the future. (In general, the Orthodox modernists are always one step behind the Roman Catholics in this process of “updating” the Church’s views.) In an article entitled “Original Sin, Polygenism, and Freedom” (summarized in Theology Digest, Spring 1973), Rahner posed two questions:

  1. How is evolution compatible with the doctrine of Adam’s preternatural gifts?
  2. Can we seriously think that the first man to evolve was capable of the first sin …?

He answers:

Scientists prefer to conceive hominization [i.e., the making of man] as having taken place in many individuals—a “population”—rather than in a single pair.

(Actually, some scientists think that and some don’t.) He says that it is the first group of recognizable men (“original man”) that committed the first transgression:

Grace could be offered to the original group and, upon being rejected by that group’s free and yet mutually influencing choice, be lost to the whole of succeeding humanity.

Rahner then asks:

In the first man or group such as paleontology reveals to us, how could there have been a degree of freedom sufficiently developed to have made possible such a fateful choice as original sin? How can we attempt to reconcile the supernatural or preternatural paradise-situation of “Adam” (individual or group) with what we know of the origins of the biological, anthropological, cultural world?

He answers his question by saying:

It is not easy to determine precisely where and when an earthly creature actually became spirit and thus free. … We may serenely reckon with the fact that original sin really happened, but at a moment which cannot be more accurately determined. It was “sometime” within a fairly long time span during which many individuals may have been already existing and capable of performing the guilty act “simultaneously.”17

In other words, the whole thing becomes very vague. Obviously the next generation of thinkers is going to do away with some of this double-talk.

5. Stephanus Trooster

A recent book by another Jesuit sums up well the attitude of the “enlightened Christian” toward Adam and Paradise. Stephanus Trooster is a Dutch Jesuit who, in his book Evolution and the Doctrine of Original Sin, states forthrightly: “Those who take the scientific doctrine of evolution seriously can no longer accept [the] traditional presentation.” Therefore, we must find “an interpretation that is relevant to our times.”18

“The proponents of the doctrine of evolution,” he says,

visualize mankind as a reality which, in the course of history, only very gradually matured to achieve a degree of self-realization. Its earliest emergence must be conceived of as fumbling transitional forms appearing next to extremely primitive levels of human existence. Such primitive intermediate forms of human life still must have been intimately fused with their prehistoric animal state. … But in this evolutionary theory there is no room for a “paradisaical” existence of this prehistoric man. To place an extremely gifted and highly privileged spiritual man at the beginning of human life on earth appears in complete contradiction to modern scientific thought on this matter.19

This, of course, is true. Trooster continues:

Acceptance of the modern viewpoint, however, eliminates the possibility of accounting for the genesis of evil in the world on the basis of sin committed by the first man. After all, how could so primitive a human being have been in a position to refuse God’s offer of salvation; how could such a primitive being have been capable of a breach of covenant with God?20

Since for Trooster the fall of Adam is not an historical event, he “explains” the existence of evil by giving it a new name: “the phenomenon of cosmic immaturity.”21 Adam actually is not one man; he is “Everyman.”22 And the book of Genesis is:

an idealized image … of a world without sin; the author [of Genesis] knows quite well it does not correspond to reality. … He specifically did not mean to say that the original state of grace of Adam and Eve in all its purity was once upon a time an actual reality in the history of mankind.23

Of course, if you believe in evolution, it makes no sense to talk about Paradise. You’re only fooling yourself if you try to combine these two different forms of thinking.

Since “Christian evolutionists” have thus far been fellow travelers with other modern evolutionists, Trooster doubtless represents the “next step” in the unfolding of “enlightened Christianity.” Doubtless others will soon begin to proclaim (as does the dust jacket of Trooster’s book) that “Eden did not exist and evolution proves it did not,” that “evolution has utterly destroyed the Eden-myth and the Adam-myth,” and that therefore man has not “fallen from perfection (Eden)” nor have “pain and death come into the world as the result of sin.”

“Theologians” like Trooster have drawn thoroughgoing conclusions from the message of evolution; is it possible to believe in evolution and not draw these conclusions?

6. The Roman Catholic View of Original Man

The Roman Catholics in the past have had some problems about knowing when man began, if one accepts evolution. There are different theories depending on what one thinks. I don’t know what is allowed now, but in the old days you were not allowed to believe that man’s soul could evolve from matter. You had to believe that man was given a soul at a particular moment. At that moment he became man, and therefore he was no longer subject to all the laws of evolution.

Obviously, this attempt to make evolutionary theory correspond with Christian belief is another case of sticking in an “epicycle.” Such a reconciliation does not work. Either you believe in evolution—in which case man was once a very primitive creature and came from the beasts24—or else you believe that man descended from a being who was greater than we are now, who was actually perfect man in his own way and was not subject to corruption. The Holy Fathers even tell us that Adam did not void faecal matter. He had the tree of life to eat from, but he did not eat as we do now.

In his “Conversation with Motovilov,” St. Seraphim of Sarov has a whole section on the state of Adam: how he was not subject to being injured or hurt. He was quite invulnerable to the elements, he could not be drowned, etc.

It is interesting that, even in the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas asked precisely these questions and tried to solve them: What was the state of Adam, did he void faecal matter, how was it that he could not be harmed? He has elaborate explanations. First of all, he says that Adam did void faecal matter because we cannot believe that he would be of a different material than we are now. Secondly, he was never harmed and was impervious to drowning not because it was impossible, but because God arranged to take all the boulders out of the way, never to have the stream rise too high, etc. In other words, God arranged the world correctly so that Adam walked very carefully and never happened to get hurt.

The Roman Catholics teach that the state of man in Paradise was a supernatural state, that man actually was just like we know him today—mortal man—but God gave him an extra gift, a special state of grace. When he fell, he simply fell away from that extra grace which had been added to him; and therefore his nature was not changed.

The Orthodox Church, on the other hand, believes that man was originally incorrupt and immortal according to his natural condition. Abba Dorotheus says this in the very first chapter of his discourses, where he sets forth for us the image of Adam, the first man, to give us an inspiration of what we have to strive for and get back to. We are meant to live eternally in the body, and that is the way it was in the beginning. Only after falling did we lose that natural condition—that blessed state in which Adam was beholding God. Our very nature was changed and ruined at the fall. Christ is the new Adam; and in Him we are restored to our old nature.

Some Fathers, like St. Symeon the New Theologian, discussed the question: Why, then, did we not immediately become immortal when Christ died and resurrected? St. Symeon gave this answer: “It is not fitting for the bodies of men to be clothed in the glory of the resurrection and to become incorrupt before the renewal of all creatures.”25 The creation is waiting for us to achieve our salvation, when it too will rise up to the state in which it was before the fall—in fact, even to a higher state.

All this is filled with mysteries; it’s beyond us, but still we know enough of it from the Holy Fathers. St. Symeon has a long passage on the state of man before the fall. The whole of creation, he says, was incorrupt just like man, and only after the fall did the creatures begin to die. When the new world comes, “the new heaven and the new earth” (Apoc. 21:1), then “the meek … will inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5). What earth is that? It is this earth you see right here, only it will be burned up and restored so that all the creatures now will be incorruptible. That is what the whole creation is striving for, what the creatures are groaning after. When St. Paul said they “were subject to futility” (Rom. 8:20), this means they were subject to corruption, through the fall of man.

7. Theodosius Dobzhansky

Let us turn now to an “Orthodox Christian evolutionist” whose ideas are quite in harmonywith recent Roman Catholic thought on the subject of evolution, and who brings up still other implications of the evolutionary theory which any Orthodox Christian must study closely.

Theodosius Dobzhansky is a Russian Orthodox scientist who is often quoted by other “Christian evolutionists.” A well-known geneticist, he is presently professor of genetics at the University of California at Davis. I think he still has his fruit flies, and is continuing to make experiments on them to prove evolution. He was born in Russia in the year of the canonization of St. Theodosius of Chernigov [1900], in answer to prayer from his parents; and that is why he was called Theodosius. He came to America in the twenties and has been an American since that time.

He has been absolutely prohibited in Soviet Russia, although the Soviet scientists know about him. Once when a film was accidentally presented at one scientific meeting in Russia which showed him in it, all the scientists cheered; but the film was withdrawn. He is considered nonexistent, a non-person because he left Russia.

Although he was baptized Orthodox, when his wife died he had her cremated, took the ashes and scattered them in the Sierras. As far as one can see, he never goes to church; he’s quite beyond religion. Nevertheless, for his Christian evolutionist views he was granted an honorary doctorate of theology by St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in New York in 1972. At the same time, he gave an address to the Second International Theological Conference of the Orthodox Theological Society ofAmerica, which was attended by all the renowned theologians of the various Orthodox bodies. His ideas on evolution, from what he and many official representatives of Orthodoxy in America apparently believe to be an Orthodox viewpoint, are set forth in two Orthodox periodicals, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, and Concern.

In an article which was well publicized and summarized without comment in many Orthodox periodicals in America, “Evolution: God’s Method of Creation” (Concern, Spring 1973), Dobzhansky says that opposition to the theory of evolution is blasphemous, since evolution is the way God brought everything into being. He says in this article:

Natural selection is a blind and a creative process. … Natural selection does not work according to a foreordained plan.

Dobzhansky notes the extraordinary variety of life on the earth, and calls it “whimsical and superfluous.” He says:

What a senseless operation to fabricate a multitude of species ex nihilo [from nothing] , and then let most of them die out! … What is the sense of having as many as two or three million species living on earth? … Was the Creator in a jocular mood? Is the Creator … playing practical jokes?

No, Dobzhansky reasons:

The organic diversity becomes, however, reasonable and understandable if the Creator has created the living world, not by gratuitous caprice but by evolution propelled by natural selection. It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives.

What he means by this is that it actually makes no difference whether you have a God or not. He says that God makes two or three million species by means of natural selection. Is that any less silly than saying He created the original kinds all at once?

According to Dobzhansky, there is no plan to it; it is all just a blind process. For an Orthodox Christian, this raises the question: Does God begin the process of evolution, and then have no control over its end? What of God’s Providence, without which not a hair of our head falls (cf. Matt. 10:29-30; Luke 12:6-7, 21:18)?

In this point of “Christian evolutionary” philosophy we see how false is the very question which the evolutionist is striving to answer. The creative activity of God is not a sufficient explanation for him of the diversity of the visible creation; there must be a better explanation—one based on the clearly un-Christian presupposition that God is not in control of His own creation, that His Providence does not exist! The “God” of this kind of evolutionary philosophy is clearly deistic, and the view of this “Christian evolutionist” is not to be distinguished from that of the “semi-Christian” (or non-Christian) Lecomte du Noüy.

Dobzhansky is filled with the usual liberal Christian ideas that Genesis is symbolical, that man’s awareness is the cause of the tragic meaninglessness in the world today, and that the only escape is for man to realize that he can cooperate with the enterprise of creation, for participation in this enterprise makes mortal man part of God’s eternal design. And he says:

The most gallant and by far the most nearly successful attempt to do this—cooperate with God’s eternal design-has been that of Teilhard de Chardin.26

8. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

We will now look into this last evolutionist, who is the great evolutionist “prophet” of our times: Teilhard de Chardin. He is obviously the “Christian evolutionist” of the twentieth century, widely revered by Orthodox, and considered by some “Orthodox theologians” (as we shall see) as being in the same spirit as the Orthodox Holy Fathers.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a French Jesuit priest, “theologian” and paleontologist, who was present at the discovery of many of the great fossil “men” of our century. He took part with two other people in the “discovery” of the fraudulent Piltdown Man. He discovered the tooth, which was dyed. It is not known whether he had a part in the fraud. One of the other men has been accused of being the one who fabricated the Piltdown Man; and it has been hushed up that Teilhard de Chardin had anything to do with it. But it is already known from the earlier books that he discovered the tooth.

Teilhard was present at the new discoveries of Java Man, and also at many discoveries of Peking Man, though not at the very beginning. He was also around when the fossils of Peking Man disappeared. We have no fossils of Peking Man left; only drawings and models exist.

Above all, Teilhard was the one who was chiefly responsible for the interpretation of all these findings. As he himself said,

I had the good fortune, unusual in a scientific career, of happening to be on the spot when … cardinal finds in the history of fossil men had come to light!27

He fit these together into evidence for human evolution. We won’t go into this evidence now, except to say that it is very shaky. One writer has said:

One of the prime difficulties is that really significant human fossil skulls are exceptionally rare: everything which has been found to date could be tucked away in a large coffin. All the rest must be referred to something else.28

And we just don’t know what the relation is of these pieces to each other.

Teilhard de Chardin was both a scientist and a “mystic.” The surprising thing is not so much that he was a combination of these two (he was a Jesuit, after all), but rather that he is quite respected both by theologians—Roman Catholic theologians, and in fact many Orthodox so-called theologians—and by scientists. His book The Phenomenon of Man has an introduction by Julian Huxley, the grandson of Darwin’s famous contemporary and proponent, T. H. Huxley. Julian Huxley is an absolute atheist evolutionist. He cannot fully agree with Teilhard’s attempt to reconcile Catholicism and evolution, but basically he agrees with his philosophy.

This brings us to a subject we discussed earlier: man’s expectation of the merging of religion and science. The earlier scientists in the West, at the birth of modern science during the Renaissance, were all mystically oriented. They were filled with Pythagorean philosophy. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who is considered a forerunner of modern science and philosophy, was a mystical pantheist. He believed that the whole world is God, that God is the soul of the world, and that “Nature is God in things.” His philosophy combined religion and science in a single pantheistic vision.

In the nineteenth century, the socialist prophet Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon said the time is coming when not only will the social order be a religious institution, but science and religion will come together, and science will no longer be atheistic. Teilhard de Chardin was the kind of thinker he was looking for: one who would bring together science and religion.

Also in the nineteenth century, the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke about the very same thing. Since he faced a situation in which man’s faith had been divorced from knowledge because of modern enlightenment, he called for the restoration of unity in man, and spoke of how we can get faith and knowledge back together. He says this in his essay “Nature”:

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is because man is disunited with himself He cannot be a naturalist until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit. Love is as much its demand as perception. … Deep calls unto deep. But in actual life, the marriage is not celebrated. There are innocent men who worship God after the tradition of their fathers, but their sense of duty has not yet extended to the use of all their faculties. [That is, they are dutiful to their own religion, but they do not dutifully pursue science and philosophy.] And there are patient naturalists, but they freeze their subject under the wintry light of the understanding. [That is, they divorce philosophy from religion.] … But when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go forth anew into the creation.29

Again, Teilhard de Chardin is a “prophet” who promises to fulfill these expectations, who discovers that science and religion are once more compatible.

In St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly and Concern, Theodosius Dobzhansky summarizes what Teilhard de Chardin tried to do in his books. Teilhard, he says, describes three stages through which evolutionary development has passed, making use of his own technical terms:

First, there is cosmogenesis, the evolution of inanimate nature; second, biogenesis, biological evolution; and, third, noogenesis, the development of human thought.

Teilhard also speaks of “spheres”: the “biosphere,” the sphere of life; and the “noosphere,” the sphere of thought. He says the whole of the globe now is being penetrated by a web of thought which he calls the “noosphere.”

“Up to here,” continues Dobzhansky,

Teilhard stands firmly on a foundation of demonstrable facts. To complete his theology of nature he then embarks on prophecy based on his religious faith. He speaks of his “conviction, strictly undemonstrable to science, that the universe has a direction and that it could—indeed, if we are faithful, it should—result in some sort of irreversible perfection.”30

Dobzhansky quotes with approval the following statement of Teilhard de Chardin about what evolution is:

Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more—it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow—this is what evolution is.31

That is, evolution becomes in Teilhard’s thought—which many, many people follow, whether they’re Christian, atheist, or whatever—a kind of new universal revelation for mankind. And everything, including religion, must be understood in terms of evolution.

The writings of Teilhard de Chardin are so filled with a jargon of his own invention that it is easy to dismiss—or accept—him without understanding the full significance of his thought. Above all, one must understand what it is that has inspired his thought, for it is this basic inspiration and worldview that has captured the fancy of the modern intellectual, “Christian” and atheist alike, despite the difficulty of his language.

That which inspired Teilhard de Chardin, and inspires his followers, is a certain unitary view of reality, a joining of God and the world, of the spiritual and the secular, into a single harmonious and all-encompassing process which can not only be grasped by the modern intellectual, but can be felt by the sensitive soul that is in close contact with the spirit of modern life; indeed, the next step of the process can be anticipated by the “modern man,” and that is why Teilhard de Chardin is so readily accepted as a “prophet” even by people who do not believe in God: he announces, in a very “mystical” way, the future which every thinking man today (save for conscious Orthodox Christians) hopes for.32

There are two sides to this unitary thought of Teilhard de Chardin: the worldly (by which he attracts and holds even total atheists such as Julian Huxley), and the spiritual (by which he attracts “Christians” and gives a “religion” to unbelievers).

Teilhard’s own words leave no doubt that first and foremost he was passionately in love with the world, with the earth:

The world (its value, its infallibility, and its goodness)-that, when all is said and done, is the first, the last, and the only thing in which I believe.33

Now the earth can certainly clasp me in her giant arms. She can swell me with her life, or take me back in to her dust. She can deck herself out for me with every charm, with every horror, with every mystery. She can intoxicate me with her perfume of tangibility and unity.34

In this belief he certainly leaves Orthodox Christianity behind. He believed, as one of his biographers accurately reports, that “salvation was no longer to be sought in ‘abandoning the world,’ but in active ‘participation’ in building it up.”35 He consciously abandoned the “old” forms of Christian spirituality in favor of new, secular ones. He disdained:

all those goody-goody romances about the saints and the martyrs! Whatever normal child would want to spend an eternity in such boring company?36

He believed that “what we are all more or less lacking at this moment is a new definition of holiness.”37 He wrote:

The modern world is a world in evolution; hence, the static concepts of the spiritual life must be rethought and the classical teachings of Christ must be reinterpreted.38

This is a reflection of the overthrowing of the old universe of Newton. Teilhard wants to put Christianity into the same category, because it also is bound up with the classical, static way of thinking. Now we have a new way of thinking; and therefore, just as we have a new physics, we must have a new Christianity.

But Teilhard’s philosophy is no mere secularization of Christianity; his most powerful and influential vision is that of the spiritualization of the world and worldly activity. Teilhard was not merely in love with the world and all “modern progress” and scientific development; his distinguishing mark was that he gave these things a distinctly “religious” significance. He wrote:

Then, is it really true, Lord? By helping on the spread of science and freedom, I can increase the density of the divine atmosphere, in itself as well as for me: that atmosphere in which it is always my one desire to be immersed? By laying hold of the earth I enable myself to cling closely to you. … May the world’s energies, mastered by us, bow down before us and accept the yoke of our power. May the race of men, grown to fuller consciousness and great strength, become grouped into rich and happy organisms in which life shall be put to better use and bring in a hundredfold return.39

“God,” for him, is to be found only in the midst of the world:

I am not speaking metaphorically when I say that it is throughout the length and breadth and depth of the world in movement that man can attain the experience and vision of his god.40

In perfect harmony with his secular yet “searching” times, he declares that:

the time has passed in which God could simply impose Himself on us from without, as master and owner of the estate. Henceforth the world will kneel down only before the organic center of its own evolution.41

“Evolution” for him is not an idea destructive to religion, but a religious idea in itself:

Christianity and evolution are not two irreconcilable visions, but two perspectives destined to fit together and complement each other.42

He ardently believed and taught that “evolution has come to infuse new blood, so to speak, into the perspectives and aspirations of Christianity.”43 “Evolution,” indeed, according to Teilhard, is preparing the way for a new revelation of God:

The earth … can cast me to my knees in expectation of what is maturing in her breast. … She has become for me, over and above herself, the body of him who is and of him who is coming.44

Evolution, for Teilhard, is a process which involves the “building of the cosmic body of Christ in which all things are united with God.”45

A faithful son of the Roman Catholic church, Teilhard expresses his vision of the union of God and the world in terms of Latin theology, offering a “new development” in Catholic thought in his striking idea of the “Transubstantiation of the earth”:46

As our humanity assimilates the material world, and as the Host [i.e., the Roman Catholic eucharist] assimilates our humanity, the eucharistic transformation goes beyond and completes the transubstantiation of the bread on the altar. Step by step it irresistibly invades the universe. … The sacramental Species are formed by the totality of the world, and the duration of the creation is the time needed for its consecration.47

In this process of evolution, the “Body of Christ” is being formed in the world—not the Christ of Orthodoxy, but the “universal Christ” or “Super-Christ,” which Teilhard defines as “a synthesis of Christ and the universe.”48 This “evolving Christ” will bring about the unity of all religions:

A general convergence of religions upon a universal Christ who fundamentally satisfies them all: this seems to me the only possible conversion of the world, and the only form in which a religion of the future can be conceived.49

Christianity for him is not the unique Truth, but only “an emerging phylum of evolution,”50 subject to change and transformation like everything else in the “evolving” world. Like recent popes, Teilhard does not wish to “convert” the world, but only to offer the papacy as a kind of mystical center of man’s religious quest, a superdenominational Delphic Oracle. As one of his admirers summarizes his view:

If Christianity … is indeed to be the religion of tomorrow, there is only one way in which it can hope to come up to the measure of today’s great humanitarian trends and assimilate them; and that is through the axis, living and organic, of its Catholicism centered on Rome.51

At the same time that the universe is “evolving” into the “Body of Christ,” man himself is reaching the pinnacle of his evolutionary development: “Super-humanity.” Teilhard writes:

Evidence obliges our reason to accept that something greater than the man of today is in gestation upon the earth.

Like Lecomte du Noüy, and indeed all thinkers who have a “religious” view of evolution, Teilhard identifies the evolving “Superhumanity” with Christ, and conversely, interprets Christ in terms of “Super-humanity”:

In order to be able to continue to worship as before we must be able to say to ourselves, as we look at the Son of man [not “Apparuit humanitas,” but] “Apparuit Super-Humanitas’ [“Super-Humanity has appeared”].52

Here Teilhard’s thought becomes “mystical,” and he does not state clearly whether human personality is preserved in “Super-humanity,” or whether it is simply merged in the universal “Super-Christ.” In the words of his biographer:

Humanity would reach a point of development when it would detach itself altogether from the earth and unite with Omega. … “A phenomenon outwardly similar to death perhaps (writes Teilhard), but in reality, simple metamorphosis and accession to the supreme synthesis.”53

The “supreme synthesis,” the pinnacle of this evolutionary-spiritual process, is what Teilhard called the “Point Omega”:

One day, the Gospel tells us, the tension gradually accumulating between humanity and God will touch the limits prescribed by the possibilities of the world. And then will come the end. Then the presence of Christ, which has been silently accruing in things, will suddenly be revealed—like a flash of light from pole to pole. The spiritual atoms of the world will be borne along by a force generated by the powers of cohesion proper to the universe itself, and will occupy, whether within Christ or without Christ (but always under the influence of Christ), the happiness or pain designated for them by the living structure of the Pleroma [the fullness of things].54

This “Point Omega” is not an otherworldly goal, but is only the end of “the movement of the universe to its evolutionary goal”; “the climax of evolution is identified … with the risen Christ of the Parousia.”55 All men, Teilhard believes, should desire this goal, for it “is an accumulation of desires that should cause the Pleroma to burst upon us.”56 Again, he writes:

To cooperate in total cosmic evolution is the only deliberate act that can adequately express our devotion to an evolutive and universal Christ.57

Nevertheless, with or without man’s will, the Parousia will come, for it is the culmination of a natural process:

The unique business of the world is the physical incorporation of the faithful in Christ, who is of God. This major task is pursued with the rigor and harmony of a natural process of evolution.58

Of course, he is completely doing away with all ideas of Christianity which have existed hitherto. Christianity is not an individual trying to save his soul; it is everybody in the world evolving by a natural process up to the Omega Point.

Christians should not fear the natural process of evolution, Teilhard believes, because it only brings them inexorably to God:

Though frightened for a moment by evolution, the Christian now perceives that what it offers him is nothing but a magnificent means of feeling more at one with God and of giving himself more to him. In a pluralistic and static Nature, the universal domination of Christ could, strictly speaking, still be regarded as an extrinsic and superimposed power. In a spiritually converging world, this “Christie” energy acquires an urgency and intensity of another order altogether.59

9. The Chiliasm of Teilhard de Chardin

There are a few more views of Teilhard de Chardin which we should mention. Interestingly, he looks for a state which will take us beyond the dead end of Communism. During World War II he wrote that Communism, fascism, and democracy were all fighting each other, and that we must go beyond that:

The great affair for modern mankind is to break its way out by forcing some threshold of greater consciousness. Whether Christians or not, the men who are animated by this conviction form a homogeneous category. … The great event which we are awaiting [is] the discovery of a synthetic act of adoration in which are allied and mutually exalted the passionate desire to conquer the World, and the passionate desire to unite ourselves with God; the vital act, specifically new, corresponding to a new age of Earth.60

One can see that, in Teilhard, chiliasm is very strong: the New Age emerges. He writes that:

in Communism, at any rate in its origins, faith in a universal human organism reached a magnificent state of exaltation. … On the other hand, in its unbalanced admiration for the tangible powers of the Universe, it has systematically excluded from its hopes the possibility of a spiritual metamorphosis of the Universe.61

In other words, if you add spirituality to Communism, you have the answer. Teilhard goes on to say:

We must unite. No more political fronts, but one great crusade for human advancement. … The democrat, the communist, and the fascist must jettison the deviations and limitations of their systems and pursue to the full the positive aspirations which inspire their enthusiasm, and then, quite naturally, the new spirit will burst the exclusive bonds which still imprison it; the three currents will find themselves merging in the conception of a common task; namely, to promote the spiritual future of the World. … The function of man is to build and direct the whole of the Earth. … We shall end by perceiving that the great object unconsciously pursued by science is nothing else than the discovery of God.62

That is how mysticism comes right into the middle of science. Science nowadays is losing all of its bearings; it has become indeterminate, positing a whole universe of antimatter, which mixes scientists up. It all ends in mysticism.

Teilhard writes:

The only truly natural and real human Unity is the Spirit of the Earth. … A conquering passion begins to show itself, which will sweep away or transform what has hitherto been the immaturity of the Earth. … The call towards the great Union [i.e., the universal unity of mankind] whose realization is the only business now afoot in Nature. …—On this hypothesis, under which (in conformity with the findings of psychoanalysis) Love is the primitive and universal psychic energy, does not everything around us become clear? … The Sense of Earth is the irresistible pressure which will come at the right moment to unite them [all humanity] in a common passion. … The Age of Nations is past. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to shake off our ancient prejudices, and to build the Earth. … The great conflict from which we shall have emerged will merely have consolidated in the World the need to believe. Having reached a higher degree of self-mastery, the Spirit of Earth will experience an increasingly vital need to adore; out of universal evolution God emerges in our consciousness as greater and more necessary than ever. … At what moment in the Noosphere has there been a more urgent need to find a Faith, a Hope to give meaning and soul to the immense organism we are building?63

Here he means that the whole modern revolution has lost itself. When it tries to build a new Paradise, it destroys everything; therefore, it needs to have a religious meaning added to it; and this Teilhard provides. All the things in modern life, he says, are good. Only add to them this: the idea that they are all heading for a new, spiritual kingdom.

Teilhard says further:

In us the evolution of the World towards the spirit becomes conscious. … We cannot yet understand exactly where it will lead us, but it would be absurd for us to doubt that it will lead us towards some end of supreme value.64

In this he is trying to be a prophet, but he is not really quite sure where it is all going.

The generating principle of our unification is not finally to be found in the single contemplation of the same Truth or in the single desire awakened by Something, but in the single attraction exercised by the same Someone. …65 In spite of all the apparent improbabilities, we are inevitably approaching a new age in which the World will cast off its chains, to give itself up at last to the power of its internal affinities. … With two thousand years of mystic experience [of Roman Catholicism] behind us, the contact which we can make with the personal Focus of the Universe has gained just as much explicit richness as the contact we can make, after two thousand years of Science, with the natural spheres of the World. Regarded as a “phylum” of love, Christianity is so living that, at this very moment, we can see it undergoing an extraordinary mutation by elevating itself to a firmer consciousness of its universal value. Is there not now under way one further metamorphosis, the ultimate, the realization of God at the heart of the Noosphere [the mental world] , the passage of the circles [i.e., of all the spheres] to their common Center, the apparition at last of the “Theosphere” [i.e. , when man and the world become God]?66

This longing is very deep in modern man—this is what he wants. All modern philosophical, chiliastic, socialistic systems have as their end the idea that God is thrown out, Christianity is thrown out, and the world is Divine. The world is somehow the body of God, and man wants to be a god. Now man has lost God; God is dead; the Superman wants to be born. Teilhard expresses modern man’s desire for what Dostoyevsky depicted in “The Grand Inquisitor.” He tries to unite the spiritual side with the scientific side, and with a New Order which will be political. He is a prophet of Antichrist.

And so with this, the modern rationalism in our time comes to an end. Reason finally comes to doubt or even to deny itself: Science is upset; it does not know what matter is, what it can know and what it cannot know. Relativism pervades all spheres. For some, this doubt and relativism lead to the philosophy of the absurd.

It turns out that, having gone through all these experiments of the apostasy, man cannot develop anything more for himself. He tried everything and each time he was confident that he had finally found the answer. As he did this, however, he overthrew more and more from the past. And always whatever he made was overthrown by the next generation. Now he comes finally to doubting even whether the world exists, and what he is. Many people commit suicide. Many destroy. What is left for man? There is nothing left except to wait for a new revelation. And modern man is in such a state—having no value system and no religion of his own—that he cannot but accept whatever comes as being this new revelation.

10. Teilhardism in the Light of Orthodoxy

The evolutionary philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin is, strictly speaking, the product of the meeting of modern philosophy with Roman Catholicism. However strongly Teilhardism might seem to break with certain aspects of the ultramontane Roman Catholicism of yesterday, there can be no doubt that it is in profound harmony with and admirably expresses the deepest “spiritual” current of apostate Rome: the use of “otherworldliness” for a this-worldly, chiliastic end, or as recent popes have expressed it, the “sanctification of the world. ” Within Roman Catholicism, Teilhardism is a new “revelation” quite as justified and as “traditional” as the revelation of several centuries ago of the “Sacred Heart of Jesus,” which itself inspired one of Teilhard’s “mystical” meditations in a monologue with God:

Two centuries ago, your Church [Roman Catholicism] began to feel the particular power of your heart. … But now [we are becoming] aware that your main purpose in this revealing to us ofyour heart was to enable our love to escape from the constrictions of the too narrow, too precise, too limited image ofyou which we had fashioned for ourselves. What I discern in your breast is simply a furnace of fire; and the more I fix my gaze on its ardency the more it seems to me that all around it the contours ofyour body melt away and become enlarged beyond all measure, till the only features I can distinguish in you are those of the face of the world which has burst into flame.67

The “revelation” of the “Sacred Heart,” in this view, is thus merely a preparation for the still more universal revelation of “evolution” in our own times. Even in the nineteenth century, the “reactionary” Pope Pius IX, far from condemning the evolutionary views of St. George Jackson Mivart, conferred on him an honorary doctorate of philosophy after their publication (1876).68

In Teilhardism, Roman Catholicism has come virtually to the farthest limit of its blasphemy against the true teaching of the Church of Christ. That which is called “Christ” in this philosophy is precisely what the Orthodox Church knows as Antichrist: the “emerging” pseudo-Christ who promises mankind a “spiritual” kingdom of this world. In this philosophy the concept of and taste for the other world, the possession of which distinguishes Orthodox Christians from other men, is totally obliterated.

As we have seen, Teilhard is deeply in harmony both with the modern outlook and with Roman Catholicism, both of which are now “converging” in a new worldview. He rightly saw that evolution, if it is true, cannot be kept in one compartment of human thought, but profoundly affects the whole of thought. He was unconcerned to “reconcile” evolution with single points of Christian tradition and dogma, because he rightly saw that there is no possible reconciliation. Evolution is a “new revelation” to man, and it is the single most important part of the worldview of the “Third Age of the Holy Spirit” which is now coming upon the last humanity. In the light of evolution everything must change—not just the “static worldview” of Holy Scripture and the Holy Fathers, but one’s whole outlook toward life, God, and the Church.

The simple Orthodox believer who may accept the idea of “evolution” innocently because he has been told it is “scientific,” will doubtless be bewildered at the Teilhardian idea of “evolution” and wonder what possible connection it has with the “scientific facts” which “everyone accepts” today. It is time, then, finally, to approach the answers to the questions about evolution and Christian faith which this study of “Christian evolutionism” has raised. Not everyone who believes in some form of evolution can accept the pseudo-mysticism of Teilhard de Chardin; but this blasphemous “mysticism” is only a most logical deduction from views whose full implications are entirely unrealized by those who accept evolution “in some form.” Unknown to most Orthodox Christians, the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church have set forth a clear teaching on the nature of the world, God’s creation, and the first-created man which answers all the questions that modernist Orthodox “theologians” think are so uncertain and difficult.

Teilhard’s monstrous view of the “Omega” was made possible precisely because evolutionary philosophy first obscured the ”Alpha”—that is, the Orthodox doctrine of the creation of the world and man. Orthodox theology in our own time has come so much under the influence of this modern philosophy that most “Orthodox theologians” no longer teach the Orthodox doctrine of God’s creation. The ideas expressed in the official organ of the Greek Archdiocese of America, by the “conservative” theologian Panagiotis Trempelas (if he has been correctly quoted), and by Theodosius Dobzhansky and St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary which awarded him an honorary doctorate—are so far from Orthodoxy that one can only marvel at the “Western captivity” that has enchained these Orthodox Christians who are, after all, free to read the Holy Fathers and think for themselves.

Before approaching the teaching of the Holy Fathers themselves, let us examine briefly the views of “Orthodox theologians” who accept even the teaching of Teilhard de Chardin himself as “Orthodox,” and reveal thereby their captivation by a teaching totally and utterly foreign to Holy Orthodoxy.

11. “Orthodox” Followers of Teilhard de Chardin

Teilhardism seems to have made a deep impression on Russian Orthodox “liberals” after the translation and publication (significant in itself) of The Phenomenon of Man in Moscow in 1965—the first book of a “Christian thinker” (if one excepts the propaganda volume of Hewlett Johnson, the “Red Dean of Canterbury”) to be published in the USSR. After this publication, Fr. John Meyendorff of the American Metropolia [Orthodox Church in America] wrote:

The Christocentric understanding of man and the world which, according to Teilhard, are in a state of constant change and striving towards the “Omega Point,” that is, the highest point of being and evolution, which is identified by the author with God Himself, connects Teilhard with the profound intuition of the Orthodox Fathers of the Church.69

More specifically, the editor (presumably Nikita Struve) of the Orthodox periodical from Paris, Messenger of the Russian Student Christian Movement, writes: “It should be noted that the chief characteristic of Teilhardism is not at all the acceptance of evolution—this has been no novelty for a long time among theologians and religious philosophers. The soul of the teaching of the French thinker is a new approach to the problem of the world and creation.” In his teaching on this Teilhard “only sets forth in contemporary language the teaching of the Apostle Paul concerning nature, which is not excluded from the plan of Salvation. ” When reflecting on “the Mass of the World” Teilhard’s experiences “were for him something like a cosmic Liturgy which is invisibly performed in the world. Here is the very heart of the Teilhardian proclamation, which restores to us the forgotten, immemorially Christian understanding of the universe and the Divine Incarnation. Precisely it illuminated for Teilhard the meaning of evolution as the movement of the whole cosmos toward the Kingdom of God and enabled him to overcome the negative approach to the world which is deeply rooted among Christians.”70

The Messenger’s major “Orthodox” article on Teilhardism is by a Polish Orthodox priest, Fr. George Klinger, and is entitled “Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and Orthodox Tradition.”71 This author finds that Teilhard’s “thought so often uncovers points of approach to the best traditions of Orthodoxy,” 68 and he then proceeds to quote these “best traditions of Orthodoxy,”72 which are: the third-century heresy of Montanism (“the evolutionism of Eastern thought is confirmed in the study of Montanism, which saw the appearance of the three Hypostases of the Holy Trinity in three successive epochs of human history”);73 the twelfth-century Latin monk Joachim of Fiore, with his prophecy of the coming “Third Age of the Holy Spirit” to replace the ages of the Old and New Testaments; and the whole “Paris-modern” school of Bulgakov, Berdyaev, and their followers. (He does quote a few genuine Fathers also; but not one of these quotes is supportive of the idea ofevolution.) Indeed, no one will doubt that there is a kinship between these sources and evolutionary philosophy, nor that the whole charismatic-ecumenical “new Christianity” of our own times has deep roots precisely in the doctrine of evolution—but all this has nothing whatever to do with Orthodoxy and the Holy Fathers of the Church! Fr. George Klinger is so far from Orthodoxy that he does not hesitate to follow Teilhard de Chardin into his dizzying vision of the “cosmic” or “super” Christ:

Fr. Teilhard speaks much on the cosmic role of Christ, of the Divine Milieu, and very little of the Church. In this case too he “converges” with tendencies akin to him in Orthodox theology. … In Fr. Teilhard, the Church is identified with the working of Christ in the cosmos.74

And again:

According to Fr. Teilhard, through communion of the Holy Mysteries the world being sanctified becomes the Body of Christ. … These thoughts are possibly the profoundest that have been said in recent times on the question of the central sacrament of Christianity.75

Enough has been said to show how far the “Orthodox” followers of Teilhard de Chardin wander from sound Orthodox doctrine. The Patristic illiteracy of our own day is so great that any “theologian” can say virtually anything and attribute it to a “Holy Father” and not be corrected. Particularly with regard to evolution it is allowed to make extremely vague statements which seem to give a “Patristic” justification for belief in this modern doctrine. “The Greek Fathers had a cosmic view”—which makes them akin to Teilhard de Chardin! “The Fathers didn’t interpret Genesis literally”—which means we are free to interpret it in terms of evolution! “Genesis lends itself to an evolutionary interpretation”—according to our modern wise men who do not know the Fathers! “The Hexaemeron of St. Basil is favorable to evolution.” One could multiply such examples of loose thinking.

We have seen enough of these feeble speculations of modern thinkers; it is time now to go to the Fathers themselves to reveal what they have to say on the questions affecting the doctrine and philosophy of evolution. What are the spheres of science and theology? How must an Orthodox Christian interpret the book of Genesis? Who was the first man, when did he live, what was his origin and nature? What was the state of the first-created world? Who is able to see things as they were “in the beginning”? We shall seek answers to such questions not of one or two of the Fathers only, not of dubious Fathers or in obscure works, not by taking quotes out of context so as to fit preconceived notions. Rather, we shall ask the Fathers of undisputed authority in the Orthodox Church and seek to find what the “Patristic mind” is on this question. We shall investigate the commentaries on Genesis of St. John Chrysostom and St. Ephraim the Syrian; the commentaries on the Six Days of Creation by St. Basil the Great and St. Ambrose of Milan; the catechetical works of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. John Damascene; the Homilies on Adam and the first-created world by St. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory the Sinaite; the theological writings of St. Macarius the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Abba Dorotheus, St. Gregory Palamas, and other Fathers; as well as the witness of the Divine services of the Orthodox Church. We shall find there much that is new to many Orthodox Christians, especially since many of these writings have not been translated into English. We shall find there not just many “details” concerning things which are beyond us, but a precise and coherent doctrine of that which we need to know. We shall find that the most pressing questions raised by the doctrine of evolution are answered for us. We shall find there the inspiring Patristic doctrine of the first creation, the nature of Adam, and the final state of all creatures—which makes repulsive and vain for us the “Omega” of Teilhard de Chardin and all the empty speculations of those who have not that knowledge of the first and last things which God has revealed to His chosen people, Orthodox Christians.

Footnotes

  1. See Editor’s Note, Genesis, Creation, and Early Man: The Orthodox Vision, 2nd ed., p. 558:
    This chapter is a composite drawn from three sources:
    (1) a transcription of a lecture that Fr. Seraphim gave during his “Orthodox Survival Course” in 1975 (a continuation of the lecture contained in the preceding chapter);
    (2) Fr. Seraphim’s writings for a chapter on *“Christian Evolutionism” *that he was working on with Alexey Young; and
    (3) Fr. Seraphim’s miscellaneous notes on Teilhard de Chardin. While giving his lecture for the “Orthodox Survival Course,” Fr. Seraphim relied heavily on Alexey Young’s contribution to the “Christian Evolutionism” chapter. In this regard, the present chapter may be seen as a collaborative effort of Fr. Seraphim and Alexey. ↩

  2. “Evolution: A Heresy?,” Orthodox Observer, no. 666 (Aug. 8, 1973), p. 3. ↩

  3. Pierre Lecomte du Noüy, Human Destiny, p. 167. ↩

  4. Ibid., p. 177. ↩

  5. Ibid., p. 104. ↩

  6. Ibid., p. 112. ↩

  7. St. Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies 21, Tvoreniya, p. 108 [trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Homily 37, p. 180] [Homily 85 in the printed Greek text edited by Nikephoros Theotokis (1770)]. ↩

  8. Lecomte du Noüy, Human Destiny, p. 113. ↩

  9. Ibid., p. 197. ↩

  10. Ibid., p. 133. ↩

  11. Ibid., p. 244. ↩

  12. Ibid. ↩

  13. Ibid., p. 180. ↩

  14. Fr. Anthony Kosturos, “Questions and Answers,” Orthodox Observer, Feb. 6, 1974. ↩

  15. Fr. Anthony Kosturos, “Questions and Answers,” Orthodox Observer, Feb. 20, 1974. ↩

  16. Fr. Anthony Kosturos, “Questions and Answers,” Orthodox Observer, Feb. 6, 1974. ↩

  17. Karl Rahner, S.J., “Original Sin, Polygenism, and Freedom,” Theology Digest, vol. 21, no. 1 (Spring 1973). ↩

  18. Stephanus Trooster, S.J., Evolution and the Doctrine of Original Sin, pp. 2-3. ↩

  19. Ibid., p. 18. ↩

  20. Ibid. ↩

  21. Ibid., p. 130. ↩

  22. Ibid., p. 44. ↩

  23. Ibid., pp. 54-55, 132. ↩

  24. This is a definite view. The textbooks on evolution will tell you that man still has the savage inside of him, and all the pictures show him evolving from a monkey-like creature. — Bl. Seraphim ↩

  25. St. Symeon the New Theologian, Homily 45.3, in Slova prepodobnago Simeona novago bogoslova 1, p. 378 [Fr. Seraphim Rose, trans. St. Symeon the New Theologian: The First-Created Man. St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1994. Originally published in 1979 under the title The Sin of Adam and Our Redemption, p. 100; also in Ethical Discourses 1.3, Pocket Patristics Series. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977—., 14, p. 35]. ↩

  26. Theodosius Dobzhansky, “On Human Life,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, vol. 17, nos. 1-2 (1973), p. 102. ↩

  27. Quoted in Charles E. Raven, Teilhard de Chardin: Scientist and Seer, p. 125. ↩

  28. John Hillaby, “A Geography of Genesis,” New Scientist, March 25, 1965, p. 798. ↩

  29. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature,” chap. 8, in The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 38. ↩

  30. Theodosius Dobzhansky, “On Human Life,” p. 103. ↩

  31. Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Evolution: God’s Method of Creation,” Concern, Spring 1973. ↩

  32. That is, every person who is in the tradition of rationalism, coming from the age of the Enlightenment, and ultimately from the Middle Ages in the West after the Schism. — Bl. Seraphim ↩

  33. Teilhard de Chardin, How I Believe, p. 11. ↩

  34. Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, p. 154. ↩

  35. Pierre Leroy, S.J., “Teilhard de Chardin: The Man,” foreword to The Divine Milieu, p. 22. ↩

  36. Quoted in Robert Speaight, Teilhard de Chardin: A Biography, p. 27. ↩

  37. Teilhard de Chardin, Human Energy, p. 110. ↩

  38. Frank N. Magill, ed., Masterpieces of Catholic Literature in Summary Form, p. 1054. ↩

  39. Teilhard de Chardin, The Mystical Milieu: Writings in Time of War, pp. 138-39. ↩

  40. Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, p. 36. ↩

  41. Teilhard de Chardin, Human Energy, p. 10. ↩

  42. Teilhard de Chardin, The Mystical Milieu, p. 125. ↩

  43. Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, p. 297. ↩

  44. Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, pp. 154-55. ↩

  45. Frank Magill, ed., Masterpieces of Catholic Literature, p. 1058. ↩

  46. Teilhard wrote about this while in China in 1926-1927, after having celebrated Mass in the Gobi Desert. — Bl. Seraphim ↩

  47. Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, pp. 125-26. ↩

  48. Teilhard de Chardin, How I Believe, p. 37. ↩

  49. Ibid., p. 41. ↩

  50. Frank Magill, ed., Masterpieces of Catholic Literature, p. 1021. ↩

  51. Thomas Corbishly, The Spirituality of Teilhard de Chardin, p. 100. ↩

  52. Teilhard de Chardin, Science and Christ, p. 164. ↩

  53. Speaight, Teilhard de Chardin: A Biography, p. 266. ↩

  54. Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, pp. 150-51. ↩

  55. Speaight, Teilhard de Chardin: A Biography, pp. 335, 337. ↩

  56. Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, p. 151. ↩

  57. Teilhard de Chardin, Science and Christ, p. 169. ↩

  58. Teilhard de Chardin, La Vie Cosmique, quoted by the editor in Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, p. 304. ↩

  59. Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, pp. 296-97. ↩

  60. Teilhard de Chardin, Building the Earth, p. 20. ↩

  61. Ibid., pp. 21-22. ↩

  62. Ibid., pp. 23-24. ↩

  63. Ibid., pp. 24-27. ↩

  64. Ibid., pp. 27-28. ↩

  65. Ibid., p. 19. ↩

  66. Ibid., p. 32. ↩

  67. Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe, p. 34. ↩

  68. See Frank N. Magill, ed., Masterpieces of Catholic Literature, pp. 684-85. ↩

  69. Protopresbyter John Meyendorff, “Teyar de Sharden: Predvaritel’naya zametka” (Teilhard de Chardin: A preparatory note), in Vestnik Russkogo Studencheskogo Khristianskogo Dvizheniya (Messenger of the Russian Student Christian Movement) (Paris), nos. 95-96 (1970), p. 32. ↩

  70. Editor’s preface to “O. Teyar de Sharden i pravoslavnaya traditsiya” (Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and Orthodox tradition), by Fr. George Klinger, in Vestnik Russkogo Studencheskogo Khristianskogo Dvizheniya, no. 106 (1972), pp. 110-11. ↩

  71. Fr. George Klinger, “O. Teyar de Sharden i pravoslavnaya traditsiya” (Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and Orthodox tradition), in Vestnik Russkogo Studencheskogo Khristianskogo Dvizheniya, no. 106 (1972), pp. 111-32. ↩

  72. Ibid., p. 111. ↩

  73. Ibid., p. 113. ↩

  74. Ibid., p. 128. ↩

  75. Ibid., pp. 124-25. ↩