Outlines of Proposed Studies

Editor’s Note

These two outlines were written by Fr. Seraphim at different times and represent separate attempts to summarize the points he wanted to cover. The first is dated September 1978; the second is undated.

Evolution

I. Introduction: approaches, methodology.

A. Evolution is a question that is controversial because of:

1. The implication for morality, worldview, etc., ofone view or other.
2. The inherent complexity of the subject, and its vastness.

B. The main difficulty:

1. The reconciliation of the evolutionary theory’s physical and metaphysical aspects.

2. Extremes:

   a. Projection of physical theories onto the metaphysical dimension of beginnings. Many scientists have not properly appreciated the limitation of science in this realm, which can say nothing whatever of beginnings, which are not observable or repeatable or predictable, but are miraculous by their very nature.

   b. Some fundamentalists have erred in the opposite direction, trying to dictate to physical science on the basis of personal interpretation of God’s revelation.

   c. Respect for truth in both physical (i.e., scientific) and metaphysical (i.e., religious revelation) realms is indispensable. One truth cannot contradict the other—but their intertwining is a complex subject. No fact, whether physical (science) or spiritual (theology—where truth and not speculation is involved) can be denied.

II. Critique of evolutionary theory.

A. Evolutionary theory is overdone—it has dominated scientific thinking for a century and has had enormous influence in nonscientific realms (morality, education, religion) totally out of proportion to the actual nature and certainty of its knowledge.

B. The history of it—the search for an explanation without God. This does not entirely discredit it, because actually almost all of our knowledge is distorted by biases and predispositions; but it already guarantees that the final outcome of this search will be one-sided and partial. Recent reaction against evolutionary theory among many scientists is a sign of this.

C. Basic evolutionist arguments are all inconclusive; there is no proof for or against.

D. History of the rise and decline of the evolutionary hypothesis (see [Henry] Morris, etc.)—the Scopes trial, fashions in thought, respectability. Many Orthodox people suffer from an “inferiority complex”; they want to be “up-to-date” and are fearful of being identified as “fundamentalists.” … We must be above this.

III. Answer:

A. Not the “Bible”—it needs interpretation.

B. Not “science”—it lacks the higher metaphysical dimension by its own nature.

C. Not “agnosticism”: science and religion in airtight compartments; they must come together.

D. Not “Christian evolutionism”: the false combination of “science” and “religion.” This means Christianity giving ground before evolutionism, allowing it to dictate dogma (Teilhard de Chardin, etc.)

E. The answer: the Orthodox Patristic view (i.e., the Orthodox interpretation of Scripture), with awareness of science. This is what Kireyevsky called for. Science must be enlightened and raised up in knowledge by faith and revelation. But no one in all the evolution controversy has made more than a token use of the Fathers. What do the Fathers teach?

F. The following is not “all the answer”; rather, it is an approach to the answers for Orthodox Christians by trying first of all to identify the question—where are the sources of harmony and conflict between contemporary science and the Holy Fathers?

G. To be avoided: “proof texts,” out of context statements from the Fathers, picking and choosing.

IV. Patristic sources (list chief ones) and their principles of interpretation of Scripture (“literal” but also “befitting God”—cf. St. John Chrysostom).

V. The basic question:

A. Beginnings.

1. Science has been mistaken in treading on this ground: it is beyond its scope. The beginning of life or of the universe can only be the subject of the wildest guesses, unless it has been revealed. Science has sought it because it threw out revelation—this was a fatal mistake which began the whole controversy. If society does not have a revelation or “model” of beginnings which scientists can accept, then scientists should be more humble in speculations and not try to supply this by means of groundless projections.

2. Beginnings by their very nature are metaphysical, miraculous. If we can know them at all, it is only by revelation. If we can’t know them, then don’t guess.

3. All “scientific” hypotheses about beginnings are only a cheap imitation of theology—no “God,” but a “cosmic tapioca” instead; no “creation,” but a “big bang” instead—this is ridiculous. Scientists don’t realize the ridiculousness of it because they have no theological awareness. Beginnings are “off bounds” to scientists—they seek them only because of the crisis of religious awareness and knowledge in modern times, which has led the secular sciences to usurp the role of theology, and human guesses to usurp the role of revelation.

4. Once the miraculousness of beginnings is admitted, then other questions in evolution take on new light. The conflict between “gradual evolution” and “Six-Day creation” is seen in a new light—either one is equally thinkable (cf. Julian Huxley: “I can conceive of a six-day creation—but there is no God to do it!”). Then the question becomes, not whether one is proved by present scientific findings (neither one is—science can’t do it!) but: how can I make the best whole picture, incorporating true scientific findings and true knowledge of revelation?

B. The Six Days.

1. False ideas of Day-Age: “1,000 years = 1 day.” This is too low a level of “reconciliation”; it does not remove the main problem.

2. The Patristic view: the Holy Fathers didn’t really discuss the question as we see it because the evolutionary idea wasn’t present. It seems assumed that the days are very short—cf. Gregory the Theologian on the “newly created earth” for Adam, St. Ephraim the Syrian, etc.

3. But a much more fundamental question is the corruption of the world in those Six Days—cf. St. Symeon the New Theologian. The most consistent interpretation of the Holy Fathers is that the world knew no corruption until Adam’s fall. If this is accepted, then the greater part of evolution’s schema of prehistory is thrown out. Some (e.g., Kalomiros) would elaborately justify the evolutionary view, taking St. Gregory of Nyssa’s “two creations,” etc., and showing the “full agreement” of the Fathers with the idea that the world was corrupt from the very beginning—this is obviously exaggerated.

4. Science enlightened by faith does not need to force any interpretation on the Six Days which would contradict scientific uniformitarian assumptions—but at least it will withhold certainty of opinions in the face of the possibility of a radically different world before Adam’s fall. This is also bound up with the question of beginnings. Those Six Days are part of the Creation (i.e., the metaphysical realm, miraculous), and hence all the more unknowable in detail.

C. “Fixity of Species”—“Special Creation.”

1. There has been much unnecessary controversy on this question. “Kinds” vs. “species.” The popular mind accepts mere “variation” as proof of a much bigger question of “evolution.” We leave it to scientists to define the limits of change observable to them. By its grandiose conception, evolution as such cannot be proved by the small variations observable by science today.

2. But revelation and the Patristic witness definitely have something to say on this point: St. Basil (an “eagle always produces an eagle”), St. Ambrose (the mule, a donkey-horse hybrid, is infertile; this is a sign to man: “Man, don’t interfere”) . Science, of course, does not deny the stability and the fixity of kinds (and the sterility of hybrids) in present experience; but evolutionary belief requires that the ultimate ancestors of living creatures are not many but one. But why?—Because theology (the question of “beginnings” again!) has intruded into science. This is beyond proof and science is faced with the fact that an immense number of “links” are missing between kinds, both today and in fossils.

3. A philosophical point: quote St. Gregory of Nyssa on the “confusion of natures” that occurs if reincarnation is accepted; it is the same if one accepts evolution.

4. Let scientists define the limits of variation, and let them use the word and concept of “evolution” in explaining change—but let them abandon metaphysical schemes which strive to extrapolate small changes into an all-encompassing principle. If this latter is true, let it come naturally from the data without forcing an interpretation on facts.

D. The “first-formed man.”

1. Here a whole series of questions arise, and perhaps this is the one area where there is a serious clash between the evolutionary hypothesis and revealed knowledge. Let us carefully separate the different questions involved.

2. “From the dust.”

   a. There have been attempts to explain this by quoting St. Athanasius (“all men are from the dust”)—i.e., there is “nothing special” about this creation.

   b. But the Fathers precisely emphasize the specialness of man’s creation (cf. St. Basil)—of course, not by the literal hand of God, but separate from all other acts of creation; it is something higher.

3. Apology for evolution:

   a. The idea that Adam came last, and therefore “descended” from the rest of creation. Quote St. Gregory the Theologian on why he came last; St. Gregory of Nyssa. Nothing can be inferred from the Scriptures or the Fathers favoring the evolution of man—you must project this belief into the texts.

   b. The very narrative of Genesis says the body came first, then the soul—cf. St. John Chrysostom (Adam was first a “dummy”) and St. Seraphim (Adam was first a “living creature”)—some base their whole evolutionist argument on this nineteenth-century Father! But we must dearly distinguish between the truth and the way it is described owing to the limitations of human language. Sts. Chrysostom and Seraphim are not discussing the chronological creation of man, but the composite nature of man, on which they do not (incidentally) disagree but only have a different perspective. But quote St. John Damascene and St. Gregory of Nyssa on the simultaneous creation of man.

   c. Some, wishing to preserve both the Scripture and evolution, insert the “divine” act of man’s creation rather arbitrarily into the evolutionary history of man (as Teilhard de Chardin said might be done). Some would have man evolved from lower beasts, but with a separate ”———”; others would have him a beast until God breathed in his “soul” or “grace.”—All such arguments are artificial: science does not need them to explain man as it thinks he is, and from the theological side it is arbitrary to stick a human soul into an otherwise “natural” process.

4. Can Adam have non-human ancestors?

   a. Evolution says yes—so much so that if you deny this point you really do away with evolution, which is nothing if it is not universal.

   b. Quote the Fathers on the first-formed man with no father or mother. The Fathers clearly believed him to have no ancestors of any kind.

5. A related question: the age of man, the antiquity of Adam.

   a. All the Fathers accept the Old Testament chronology, ca. 7,500 years. One writer [Dr. Kalomiros] says this is “Jewish rationalism”; others point out the discrepancy between the Greek and Hebrew texts. Quote Blessed Augustine on this point—the Fathers were not “literal,” but said “more or less.” Latest Protestant apologists also have become less literal on this, but point out the difference between a man millions of years old, and some 6,000-10,000 years.

   b. Genealogies of Christ show that Adam is the “son of God.” The Fathers are very concerned to reconcile discrepancies and show that this is a literal genealogy, not a list of “symbolic ancestors.” Thus, man is some thousands of years old, not millions.

6. One Adam or many?

   a. “Polygenism”—commonly accepted in evolutionist circles—makes no sense for man. Adam is a person.

7. The creation of Eve.

   a. This is a stumbling block for evolutionists. If this is “literal,” then the evolutionary hypothesis does not apply to man; ifhe is “evolved” then he is already male and female like all the rest of “evolved” nature.

   b. Quote the Fathers—Sts. John Chrysostom, Ephraim the Syrian, and others.

   c. Again, it is a question of “beginnings” which science itself is unprepared to handle. If scientists regard it as “absurd,” it is primarily on nonscientific grounds.

8. The nature of the first-formed man—Paradise.

   a. A real place? or symbolism? All the Fathers assume Paradise is a reality. If Paradise is unreal, and Adam never had a state unfallen—then heaven itself becomes dubious, and the transfigured state of man is open to question.

9. The fall of man.

   a. Again, let’s not get bogged down in details.

   b. Is it an historical act?

   c. The consequences—sin and death are passed to us.

VI. Conclusions.

A. Give the Orthodox Patristic “model” of creation.

B. Science is afraid of it because, under the influence not of purely scientific consideration but rather shaped by the modern philosophical mentality, it fears the metaphysical or supernatural. But its own speculations on beginnings are also metaphysical and supernatural.

C. The weakness of the theory of evolution as a sweeping theory (as opposed to its applications on small areas) lies in the fact that it refuses to admit the metaphysical where it naturally belongs. If we can know beginnings, it is only through revelation. If not, it’s all guesses. Here revelation and faith must come to the aid of science and raise it up to see better.