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Genesis, Creation, and Early Man

Questions and Answers

The Age of the Earth

FR. SERAPHIM:We have a few books on the subject which I will show you. There are a number of people in the last ten or twenty years who have begun to make a counterattack against people who are extremely sure about this theory. There is a group in San Diego called the Institute for Creation Research, and another up in Michigan called the Creation Research Society. They have come out with some quite scientific books, which go into this question: on what basis do people make their assumptions about these millions and billions of years? It turns out that there is a lot more hypothesis than fact in this theory.

There is a book by an evolutionist called Growth of a Prehistoric Time Scale Based on Organic Evolution,1 in which the author admits that to interpret the millions and billions of years, it has to be assumed that the fossilized creatures in the lower levels of rocks are the evolutionary ancestors of those in the higher levels. But, it often happens that these layers are in the wrong order according to evolutionary theory: the layers with more primitive organisms are on top.

Therefore, it’s like in the times of Copernicus. Then there was the Ptolemaic interpretation of the movement of the heavenly bodies, that the sun, planets and stars all go around the earth. The question arose: why don’t the planets correspond to the stars? Some of the ancients said it is because they are on different spheres. That is, the stars are further away and the planets are closer; therefore, the planets appear to go faster. But then why do the planets sometimes go forward, and sometimes backwards? In order to explain how they moved, the Ptolemaic astronomers had to say that they go around each other somehow in a very complex movement of cycles and epicycles as they swing around the earth. Some are going backwards, others are performing figure eights. It became so complex to follow the movements of these planets according to this Ptolemaic model that Copernicus got the idea that maybe they were all wrong—maybe the earth and the planets were going around the sun. He began making calculations on the basis of this idea, and his theory was much simpler. Finally we came to accept that theory as the true one.

Like the Ptolemaic astronomers, evolutionists who study strata containing fossils often find that they are upside down, in the wrong order, or too close together according to evolutionary ideas. They call these “disconformities,” “paraconformities” or “pseudoconformities.” They have to make allowances for the fact that everything is in the wrong order. If you ask them how they know what is the right order, they will admit that the only reason they know the right order is that they know evolution is true. You see there is something funny about it. They are supposed to prove the theory, and to prove the theory they have to start with the theory. Therefore it’s not as factual as it’s presented.

The scientific creationists, as they call themselves, have some interesting books about evidences of how old the earth is. It just depends on what kind of evidence you’re using. It’s a very hypothetical question. It’s not nearly as definite as the book of Genesis.

Carbon-14 Dating

FR. SERAPHIM:Carbon dating is only used on organic substances. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years, so obviously this method can’t go back too far. Some people think you can go back 20,000 years or more with it, but this involves so much guesswork that it cannot be accurate. Even people who defend it say that it is fairly reliable back to about 3,000 years ago, but if it goes back further than that it becomes more and more unreliable. The system is based on a whole set of assumptions.

According to the scientists, the most reliable dating system is not radiocarbon, but tree-ring dating.2 They were recently able to test a whole series of things, comparing radiocarbon dates with tree-ring dates, and they found out that the radiocarbon dating method was off more than they thought. The tree-ring counts have tended to give greater ages by several centuries than radiocarbon ages.

Other radiometric dating methods are used to get older ages of millions and billions of years: the potassium-argon method, etc. There are all kinds of assumptions involved in these methods, also; you have to accept these assumptions before the systems “work.” All of them go on the assumption that there was no contamination over the centuries between one element and the other, and that there was none of the end elements [“daughter” components] present at the beginning. The evolutionists don’t know that; they assume it was all uniformitarian, from zero to what we know now. If that’s true and the rate has been uniform, then we can calculate the age of the fossils somewhat accurately; but if it’s not true, the whole system could be very far off. And there have been notorious mistakes. People have done radiometric tests on rock which has just formed recently, and they have come up with ages of many millions of years.

Geological Strata

FR. SERAPHIM:There is a vast scientific question regarding these strata. The strata don’t have little signs that say, “I’m five million years old; I’m ten million years old.” There’s an excellent book on this subject, The Genesis Flood, by Henry Morris,3 in which he interprets these strata in terms of a single universal catastrophe, that is, Noah’s Flood. It is presented scientifically. You can examine it and see whether it makes sense or not.

I think more people should look at both of these sides of the picture and see which model makes more sense. There are many respects in which the evolutionary model about these strata has holes in it; in fact, the evolutionists themselves will probably tell you that. The question is: does the other model make more sense?

When it comes to something like these strata, of course, it is a scientific question. The deposition of the strata is obviously a scientific process that occurred in time. Therefore, it is different from the Six Days of Creation—it is a question of what happened after the Six Days. It is open to one’s own scientific approach.

A Matter of Models

FR. SERAPHIM:Scientists have what are called models. Yesterday we discussed the Ptolemaic model—that the earth is the center of the universe, and that all the stars and planets go around the earth. Since, according to what one can observe, the planets move around the earth at different speeds than the stars, the Ptolemaic astronomers had to have theories about how they went back and forth and formed figure eights, etc. Like right now you can see that, for the last six months or so, Saturn and Jupiter have been in the sky together. If you were observing, you could see that at first one went forward, then they both went backward, then Saturn became fainter and Jupiter became brighter. According to the Copernican model, you can explain that this is because they are in different phases in their orbits as they go around the sun. From our point of view they seem to get closer together, when actually they are simply going around the sun. Another example is Venus. Right now Venus has become once more an evening star low on the horizon. A few months ago, it was a morning star—it was there already in the morning before the sun rose.

The Ptolemaic model was found to be lacking because it did not explain the facts as well as the Copernican model. Copernicus said that if we interpret the earth and the other planets as going around the sun, then all these motions make sense; that is, they are mathematically very simple to explain. Eventually that was accepted. Now, by calculating according to the Copernican model, we can send rocket ships quite close to Saturn and not miss; in fact, it is astonishingly accurate. So obviously it seems to be true that all the planets do indeed go around the sun, even though, according to our observation, the sun goes around the earth.

Therefore, it is very important what kind of models you have of things. In this course, we are going to study the Patristic model of the Six Days of Creation.

The Origin of the Heavenly Bodies (Patristic Cosmogony)

FR. SERAPHIM:The Genesis account of the Fourth Day of Creation is very difficult to fit into the usual ideas of the evolution of the universe, because the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers state quite certainly that the sun was created on that Day, after the earth and the plants and the trees were already there. Furthermore, the Fathers say that the sun, the moon and the stars (and all the black holes and whatever is out there) were all created on the Fourth Day in one instant. God waved His hand and the whole thing came into being, trillions of miles away. Of course, God is bigger than the universe, so why wouldn’t He be able to do that? He has no problem.

This gives you a totally different outlook on the world. It is a whole cosmogony—the explanation of the beginning of things.

The modern evolutionary cosmogony, popularized by people like Carl Sagan, holds that there was a point which had a “big bang,” and then everything developed from that without any God. If you believe in that, it is natural to believe that the bigger body, the sun, came first, and that it somehow shot off the earth. There are all kinds of different theories about how it did that. Some think the sun was formed from a gas and dust cloud, and that its heat drove out the gas, leaving only the dust, which condensed and cooled down, forming the planets. Others think that the sun almost collided with a passing star, causing gasses to be torn off the solar surface, and that these gasses later formed into planets. These different theories are all speculation, because no one was around at that time, and those things are not happening now. They are perhaps in accordance with what we think should be true, because it seems the bigger bodies should be antecedent to the smaller bodies. But according to Genesis and the Holy Fathers, the earth—this small little thing, this speck in the universe—was first, and the tremendous sun came after it.

Nowadays atheist philosophers like to say that the relative size of the earth proves man is but a speck lost in the universe. They say, “The earth is so small, the universe is so big—so obviously the universe is more important than man, and God did not make everything for man.” But if you think in terms of what the Fathers say—that the sun was made after the earth had already been there—then it is clear that everything was made for man.

FR. SERAPHIM:No, because they knew less about the composition of the universe than we know now. And there is simply no practical reason to speak much about them, except to say that they are there and God created them. The only place we know man lives is right here.

FR. SERAPHIM:No, because there’s only one sun for us.

STUDENT:The other suns are stars.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes. For us they aren’t suns. The sun is a particular thing which is the center of our life, which gives us light and warmth, around which we grow, and without which we can’t live. The other stars aren’t central to us like that. If there were other suns with other earths, it would make things more complicated. We have no information that such a thing is true.

The Scriptures and the Fathers always look upon things as seen from the earth. You can’t place yourself in some hypothetical place, in some other galaxy, and look back on earth. That’s a totally abstract way of looking at things, since we aren’t there but right here. We’re told what we need to save our souls, and we’re not told a single thing about any of these other suns, planets, etc. If it were useful for us to know that, God would have told us.

In fact, it is a very interesting thing: from all the space probes to other planets so far, it looks as though there have been deliberate indications to show to us that the earth is the place where life is. Other places are dead bodies.

FR. SERAPHIM:People who look for beings on other planets get bound up with a whole occult philosophy of life: that there are higher beings who are coming to rescue us and help us out; we just bow down to them and they will give us all the powers we need. Actually, all these myths about beings on other planets correspond to what we know about demons and how they operate. When you start speculating about them and get involved with ideas about higher races of extraterrestrials—it all comes down to demons. Besides angels, the only kind of intelligent beings we know of is demons.

Creation Scientists

FR. SERAPHIM:There is a lot of literature nowadays concerning the question of creation and evolution. It has become quite a vital question especially in the last ten or twenty years.

Recently there was a very one-sided article in Time magazine which made fun of people who are against evolution; it made them look like cuckoos—imbeciles who were going back to the time before the Scopes Monkey Trial, and so forth.4 But if you read the literature of some of these creationist groups, it’s very interesting. There is one group in San Diego called the Institute for Creation Research which puts out some very interesting books. One is called Creation: Facts of Life,5 which goes into some of the scientific questions; another one is about fossils: Evolution: The Fossils Say No!6 There is an excellent book called Scientific Creationism,7 which is meant as a textbook for high schools. There is a good, sober book on dinosaurs which is not heavy-handed at all. It doesn’t mention anything about evolution, but just gives the story of dinosaurs. It’s for people who want to read without having all kinds of scientific hypotheses forced upon them.

This particular group is very good because they do not try to push the Bible; they have books (like Scientific Creationism) that present the material purely from the scientific point of view. And they present it not simply as anti-evolutionists. Instead, they present two models. Just like what we were saying about the Copernican model versus the Ptolemaic model, they present the creationist model versus the evolutionist model, and then they ask the question: which model better explains facts? The book Scientific Creationism gives you a whole series of facts, then gives you the explanation according to the creationist model and according to the evolutionist model. They think that the creationist model makes more sense because the evolutionists have to make all kinds of “cycles” and “epicycles” to explain all kinds of embarrassing things.

In 1960 the famous movie Inherit the Wind, about the Scopes Trial of 1925, greatly influenced how the general public regarded the creation/evolution debate. The movie depicted the famous atheist lawyer Clarence Darrow as a great hero because he stood for science, progress, the future of mankind, and so forth. It wasn’t quite so simple as all that. But after the movie came out, many people who were dubious about evolution got rather scared because they didn’t want to be accused of being anti-progress and anti-science.

Nevertheless, during the last twenty years there have been some very interesting scientific treatises written on the subject, bringing up the many “proofs” of evolution which are questionable. These proofs are often presented in high school textbooks as truth and fact, but when you look closely you find that they aren’t facts. For example, they bring up the so-called fact that a human embryo recapitulates its evolutionary ancestry, that there are gill slits on the throat and so forth. However, if you read any evolutionary textbook now on embryology, it will say this is a myth. The “gill-slits” have nothing to do with evolution or recapitulation; that’s simply the way the embryo develops. In fact, the development of the brain, the nerves, the heart, etc., inside the embryo totally contradicts the way it should be if it is only recapitulating evolutionary ancestry.

There are a number of points about evolutionism which, even if you don’t want to believe right away in one or the other view, make you stop and question and think a little more about the evidence for and against. It is the same with radiometric dating systems and the evolutionary/uniformitarian interpretation of geological strata.

The Institute puts out a monthly newsletter called Acts & Facts which describes what they’re doing, and in every issue they have a little filler which deals with some aspect of evolution or creation. They have been having a great number of debates during the last five years at universities, which have been very well attended; sometimes thousands of students come. The creation scientists are very well prepared—they have read all the latest literature—while the evolutionist scientists often are so confident that they don’t particularly keep up with the latest events. Therefore, in the last issue of the magazine Science, which is very evolutionist, one article says that it has become so bad now—the evolutionist scientists are so ill-prepared and are teaching their students so poorly—that all you have to do is have a creationist scientist with three or four facts from the last five years, and he will spin circles around the evolutionists. So the evolutionists have been waking up and saying that they have been neglecting their duty to raise up their offspring in the right spirit. They are trying to educate them better now to get back to the original principles of evolution.

Various Evolutionary Ideas

FR. SERAPHIM:There is so much interpretation involved in evolutionary theory that if you ask evolutionists to explain how evolution occurs, they cannot agree on an answer. They used to say it happens by natural selection coupled with mutation: small changes which, after a certain number of generations, finally result in a new kind of creature. But it so happens that mutations are so universally harmful that you can’t explain any kind of upward progress by mutations. Right now there’s a big debate going on over whether to throw out Darwinian gradualism altogether and have some other theory. The latest idea they have gone back to—an idea devised forty years ago—is called the “hopeful monster” theory. The prominent geneticist Richard Goldschmidt [of the University of California at Berkeley] came up with this idea because he saw that the accumulation of natural selection and mutation could not produce complex structures. You cannot explain, for example, the eye by a series of gradual changes, because either you have an eye or you don’t have an eye. The organism that suddenly gets a retina or some other part of an eye will have no use for it. It has to mate with a creature with the same characteristic, and then that characteristic must be preserved until it develops into a higher form and finally the whole eye develops. This simply can’t happen; it doesn’t make any sense. You have to have the eye all of a sudden come into existence. Therefore, Goldschmidt proposed that evolution occurs in jumps—large-scale mutations resulting in a “hopeful monster” that is able to survive and reproduce.

Goldschmidt invoked this theory to explain the origin of birds. A bird wing is a tremendous thing. If a reptile simply has a bone sticking out of its back, it is not very well adapted to survive. It must have two whole wings which work, and there must be a female and male with the same wings in order to reproduce them. Therefore, the “hopeful monster” idea proposed that a reptile laid an egg and out hatched a bird! People now are seriously returning to this idea and trying to find a balance between it and Darwinism, because they realize that small changes cannot produce these tremendously complex structures.

These ideas are for scientists to discuss, but it’s interesting for us to be aware of what they are discussing.

The Limits of Biological Change

FR. SERAPHIM:Whatever species is still around today comes down in an unbroken link from the same kind of creature in the past. There are many species that are no longer around; but until they became extinct they were the same kind of thing that they were from the beginning.

You can see great numbers of changes within each kind of creature. For example, the dachshund, the German shepherd, and so on, all come from the same kind, but they’re all dogs, and they can mate and reproduce. So too with the “races” of men: although they look quite different, they are all of the same kind.

Those who call themselves creationists do not say that there are no changes. There are lots of changes in nature, but they are all within certain limits. That’s what the whole debate over evolution and creation is all about: whether the limits are strictly defined according to “kinds”—which might not be quite the same as “species”—or whether everything comes from an original glob of organic matter which developed into all the different kinds of things. Everything we know now about the genetic code seems to be against the latter idea. An organism cannot “evolve” into something that is not in agreement with its genetic code. Much of the debate between evolutionists now centers on how this could be possible. We have not found out how.

”Human Evolution”

FR. SERAPHIM:Many theories have been coming out in recent years. The Leakeys in Africa have been making all kinds of discoveries each year. Of course, each person who is making discoveries wants his “man” to be the ancestor of all mankind; so he wants to overthrow all the previous ideas, come up with a new one, and claim he has found the “missing link.” So we always take with a grain of salt what these people say.

In 1959 Louis and Mary Leakey discovered a skull of an extinct ape, Australopithecus (“Southern Ape”), which was generally supposed to be the ape ancestor of all the fossil men—of Homo erectus, etc. The Leakeys later announced that they found Homo erectus fossils in the same bed as those of Australopithecus. This threw the whole scenario of human evolution back, because an evolutionary ancestor cannot be in the same bed as its descendant.

Of course, these are all guesses. There are so many holes and difficulties in the various theories, and there is so much that each evolutionist tries to push through his or her own claims.

There are even outright hoaxes. When I studied zoology in college in the 1950s, one of the proofs of the evolution of man was the “Piltdown Man.” From the 1890s onwards there had been a concerted search to find the missing link, which was expected to be half ape and half man. So in 1911 a very clever man in England named Charles Dawson took a human skull, combined it with the jawbone of an ape, and filed down the ape teeth. A year later Teilhard de Chardin discovered the missing canine tooth. With its very primitive jaw and very advanced skull, this “Piltdown Man” was taken to be an evolutionary ancestor of man. Some scientists did question it and had big discussions, but the vast majority accepted it. Finally in the 1950s, some scientists tested it by means of the carbon-14 method of dating, which gives fairly accurate results back to 2,000-3,000 years. They found that one part was more ancient, one part was more modern, and so it was obviously two different creatures. Therefore the whole thing was discredited.

FR. SERAPHIM:The Neanderthal Man is now accepted as Homo sapiens: same species as man, different variety—no more different from man than Englishmen are different from the Chinese.

Actually, the fossil men are very few in number. And, of course, everything is based on your interpretation: is it an ape or a man? It is not particularly simple to find something in between both of them. In any fossil that you see, either of “primitive” men or “advanced” apes, it does not say, “I am the ancestor ofpeople today.” So you cannot tell whether it is an ancestor, a cousin, or not related at all. It’s your interpretation. So far there is actually no persuasive ancient man that really looks as though it is halfway between man and ape. There are different kinds of fossil men, some “primitive,” some with large skulls, some with small skulls; but they are no more different from each other than are the different men who live today. So the burden of proof in this, I think, is still upon those who want to prove that one comes from the other.

Of course, this whole question of whether one comes from the other raises a whole lot of questions in the text of Genesis—about the genealogies, for example. If man is millions of years old, you have to make some big epicycles to account for the genealogies of the Patriarchs. In fact, some say that Patriarchs aren’t really people: they’re really just names for vast ages.

The Limits of Scientific Inquiry

FR. SERAPHIM:Well, it all depends on your presuppositions, because often those presuppositions are very strong.

STUDENT:What I’m saying is that generally what happens in science is that they are going along and they have a theory, and then they find that their suppositions are incorrect, as you said. And then they have to change their theory and there is a step, an improvement in knowledge, in science.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes. And there are certain weak points in the theory of evolution itself as it is put forth now. Of course, we have to understand there are different meanings for that word. The evolution of a particular variety of finch or something—that’s not what we are talking about. That’s simply a change within a single nature. But evolution as a theory about the origin of the world—that’s beyond the realm of science. That’s speculation about the beginnings, just like the ancient Greek speculations about whether the world was infinite or always existed, etc.

In order to accept the evolutionary theory of origins as it is usually presented now, one has to accept that the Six Days of Creation are not a supernatural act, that is, an act that is different in kind from what is happening now. According to the interpretation of the Church, it is very distinct: there were Six Days of Creation in which God made the whole world, and He is not doing that any more. Therefore you cannot deduce what they were like. Maybe you can deduce back almost to that point, but you can’t deduce what the actual beginning was. So I think in that respect scientists should be much less dogmatic in looking at and discussing the very beginning.

The text of Genesis is quite clear that these six acts were quite outside of our sphere of knowledge today. We can’t know about them at all, except as God Himself has chosen to reveal them. That is why I would say that scientists are off if they try to deduce the beginning from what is happening now. You can take the idea of uniformitarianism (i.e., that everything has happened at the same rate as it is happening now) up to a certain point—a few thousand years perhaps. Before that it is very dubious that everything has been happening at the same rate.

The Biblical Chronology

FR. SERAPHIM:There actually are questions about this. The Greek (Septuagint) and the Hebrew (Masoretic) texts of Genesis are different. According to the Septuagint, the world is about 7,500 years old; according to the Hebrew text, it’s about 6,000 years old. It’s an obvious discrepancy. How do we solve problems like that? The Fathers admit that there can be a little mistake that is handed down; there are simply miscopyings and so forth. In fact, Blessed Augustine has a whole chapter on this question. Perhaps some scribes added or subtracted a hundred years here and there when they were copying the text. There’s no particular Patristic teaching that we have to define the world as being exactly 7,490 years old. It could be a little more or a little less: it’s not an important question.

But whether Adam lived either seven or eight thousand years ago, or whether he lived millions of years ago—that is an important question. That is a big subject that affects the whole text of Genesis. We have to understand who Adam was—whether he was a person or not, and so forth. If he lived millions of years ago, there are a whole lot of questions that you have to ask about how tradition has interpreted mankind since that time.

The Preexistence of Souls, “Reincarnation,” and Evolution

FR. SERAPHIM:He was under the influence of philosophies which said that matter is evil. People look around and see that sins come because of the flesh, and therefore the idea was developed, especially among the Manichaeans and similar teachers, that matter itself is evil and that the soul is a noble thing which is imprisoned in matter. From this they developed the idea that the soul has for aeons past been in some other realm.

FR. SERAPHIM:According to Origen, it was because they sinned in that other realm.

This represents a dualistic view of the universe: there is one good aspect—the soul, and one evil aspect—matter, the body. The Christian view, on the other hand, sees the soul and the body together, with the knowledge that the body will actually be transformed. In fact, we will see in our study of Genesis that the body in the beginning was different from the way it was after the fall.

FR. SERAPHIM:Undoubtedly. People came from India to Alexandria, where Origen lived, and they taught there.

STUDENT:The idea of the preexistence of souls is similar to what Hinduism teaches on the transmigration of souls or “reincarnation.”

FR. SERAPHIM:Right.

STUDENT:And how is that related to evolution?

FR. SERAPHIM:The idea behind the cosmogony of evolution is that everything comes from a single filament: in the beginning there was one blob, and from that comes all living things: animals, insects, plants, etc. (Of course, there are immense difficulties in that theory because you have to show how within that original blob the genetic code and the means of translating it appeared simultaneously; then you have to show how the information was added to produce the genetic code for man and all the different creatures. This has never been done.)

The idea of “reincarnation” is similar in that, according to the ancient Buddhist, Hindu, Greek, and Roman understanding, it involved transmigration into different creatures: beasts, insects, and even plants. (In modern times people have changed that idea: they assume that in their “previous lives” they were human beings, because they don’t like the idea of having been a monkey or a tree or something. People like to think that they were Napoleon or Julius Caesar, but they don’t like to think that they were an oak beam in Rome someplace. They are flattering themselves.)

In general, we can say that this idea that everything is one—like one “Chain of Light” which can be divided into different kinds of beings—is not accepted at all by the Holy Fathers. They say that in the beginning all the different kinds of creatures were present, and that from them the seed produces the same kinds of creatures until the end of time.

The Nature of Paradise

FR. SERAPHIM:Before we begin a new chapter, can anyone give a resume of what the earthly Paradise was?

STUDENT:It’s not the material world as we know it, but then again it is not in the noetic realm, but somewhere in between. It is a more rarefied physical place.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes. And was it on the earth or in heaven?

STUDENT:Neither. I thought it was elevated above the earth.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes, but actually in the beginning it was part of the earth, even though it might have been in a higher place. And now?

STUDENT:It’s actually a place, but you can’t get there in a worldly geographical way.

FR. SERAPHIM:Has anyone been there in the last few thousand years?

STUDENT:The thiefon the cross [cf. Luke 23:43].

FR. SERAPHIM:That’s right, but he didn’t come back to tell us. Did anyone come back?

STUDENT:St. Andrew the Fool for Christ of Constantinople.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes. Who else?

STUDENT:There was a cook in a monastery.

FR. SERAPHIM:Right, St. Euphrosynus the Cook.

STUDENT:Are there any mentioned in the book The Soul after Death?

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes, there are several mentioned there who came back to tell us. They always say, like St. Paul, that they can’t really express what they saw [cf. 2 Cor. 12:2-4]. They do give some descriptions of Paradise (St. Andrew, for example, talks about the plants, a beautiful garden, and above that heaven itself), but this is so far outside of our normal experience that they can’t talk about it very much. They saw the state in which we are to be in the age to come.

Paradise was a special place on this earth which was created, according to St. Ephraim, together with the plants on the Third Day. On the Sixth Day God placed man in it. It was originally a place of the earth, as if to show that man was meant to ascend from earth to heaven. It was not entirely material; it was of refined matter which we don’t understand. But because of man’s fall, it was as if this heavenly aspect of earth—a special part of the original earth—went up and out of our sight, though we are still able to get back to it. At the same time, after the fall, the original earth fell into corruption.

FR. SERAPHIM:Hell wasn’t really created, just like evil wasn’t really created. Hell is simply the state and the place into which the fallen angels fell. In other words, in a sense, they made it themselves. The Scriptures speak of the place “prepared for the devil and his angels” [Matt. 25:41], but they do not mention how it came into being. We aren’t told in detail about the angels either, nor about their fall; there are just brief references here and there. It’s obvious that it happened before the serpent appears in Genesis.

Any other questions? Is it difficult to understand this concept of something which is not exactly material, not exactly spiritual?

STUDENT:We’re very used to thinking dualistically: material vs. spiritual.

FR. SERAPHIM:That’s right. In the future age we will have bodies, but the bodies will be spiritual. It will be a realm similar to the original Paradise, although Paradise was evidently “cruder,” that is, comparatively material. The future realm will be a spiritual dwelling, but at the same time there will be bodies in it. What was the first example of such a body?

STUDENT:Christ resurrected.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes—the resurrected body of Christ, which was able to go through closed doors and walls. He was able to give the appearance of eating although He did not need to eat; He had wounds that could be touched, and yet He looked so different that the disciples did not recognize Him when they saw Him. It is a very mysterious kind of state. Nonetheless, it is bound up with the body.

FR. SERAPHIM:Theoretically, you could think like that. Whether Christ would have come anyway is a different question. God knew what He wanted to do beforehand, and He knew the way things would be. And the way things were was that Christ did come. But He would not have needed to come to redeem us if Adam had not sinned.

Of course, this is all very deep and profound. Later I’ll quote a few of the services which talk about these things. The theology of the Church is constantly given to us in the services because that is what keeps us in remembrance of where we came from and where we are going.

Free Will

FR. SERAPHIM:Once he disobeyed, he realized he was naked, he saw that he was running away from God, and he began to make excuses. In other words, the whole path which is the consequence of sin was opened up to him. So he saw this depth in himself—that he was able to choose evil even though he really did not intend to.

FR. SERAPHIM:Well, the Fathers say that, although he was adult in body and very exalted in mind, he was still very simple because he was untested. He was in a state of goodness without being tested by evil.

FR. SERAPHIM:He knew one thing: that there was a commandment. But he was not tested in obeying the commandments yet, and in his simplicity he fell.

FR. SERAPHIM:I think that when he observed there were temptations, that would have been for him the opening of the awareness of evil. Had he not fallen, that awareness in itself could have been for him like tasting of the tree without falling. When he was mature and ready, he could have known the consequences of evil without falling into evil himself.

That, however, is my idea. The Fathers don’t talk about that particular aspect [of the question], but they do say that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is something which is only for mature people.

(None of the Holy Fathers say the fruit was an apple, by the way. Some people think it was a fig. It is a Western idea that it was an apple. We are not given particular information about that; it was just a tree with fruit.)

The Creation of Adam and Eve

FR. SERAPHIM:He created the whole human nature in one man—the first man, Adam—and out of his flesh took the first woman. From them comes the rest of mankind.

FR. SERAPHIM:We aren’t told. He gave her whatever quality He needed to give her, starting from the rib. The rib of a man does not produce a woman; therefore, it’s a miracle. God took the part from Adam simply to show that the origin of mankind is one.

The whole of mankind is already present in the original man. Everyone produced after that—from this one man—has the same nature, the same image of God, which is seen in the soul.

FR. SERAPHIM:No. If Adam had not died, we would not need to talk about body and soul, because the body would itself become refined and soul-like. In the end we would have the state of the spiritual body.

FR. SERAPHIM:In whatever way He knows, He gave her the same thing He gave Adam. We are not told details like that. The whole thing is simply a miracle of God.

FR. SERAPHIM:We are the offspring of Adam. Even if Adam had not fallen and the animal mode of reproduction had not been instituted, there would have been some means of generation from this one man. All men come from Adam, and therefore Adam is like humanity. Adam ruined the whole plan for mankind, but God was “smarter” because He had already “figured out” how to bring this plan about without Adam. Therefore, the One through Whom man’s original nature is restored, through Whom we have the opportunity to be in Paradise once more, is called the Second Adam.

FR. SERAPHIM:That’s right, death came from one man and life comes from One Man. Because Adam tasted of the tree, our nature was changed. Therefore, when the Holy Fathers speak about the nature of man, sometimes they refer to the fallen, corrupted nature we have as a result of the fall; but sometimes they (for example, Abba Dorotheus) speak about the original nature of mankind, in order to give an image of what we are supposed to get back to.

The Roman Catholic idea, by the way, is different. They say that in the beginning man was “natural,” and that he had extra grace which made him supernatural; and then when he fell, he lost the grace and went back to the state he was made in. That is a whole different conception, and it fits in with evolution, because it sounds as though the whole creation was “natural” to begin with, and God didn’t create everything incorrupt. In the Roman Catholic view, Adam was not made immortal; he became immortal when God added grace to him. But in the Orthodox view, man was created immortal; his whole nature was different, and when he fell that nature was twisted and changed. We can still get back to the original state, of course, but only if the grace of God through Christ Himself raises us up.

STUDENT:But the state we’re striving for is not the state that Adam was in; it’s the state that Adam was meant to be in.

FR. SERAPHIM:Right. But the original state is an image of that other state, because it was close to it already.

The Mind of Adam

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes. When the animals came before him he did not know about them. He instantly gave whatever God placed in his mind.

STUDENT:It was all spiritual.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes. It was a very exalted thing. We have an image of that when a clairvoyant elder looks at somebody for the first time, tells his name, tells his sin, and tells him what to do to save his soul. It’s exactly the same kind of thing. It’s his doing, but only through God’s grace. His mind is giving this startling information, but it’s only because he is in direct contact with God that he can do it.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes.

STUDENT:Imagination is so much a part ofour thinking now.

FR. SERAPHIM:Right.

FR. SERAPHIM:It was a state called sobriety: nepsis in Greek. In other words, he looked at things and saw them the way they were. There was no “double thought.” In fact, he not only looked at them and saw them the way they were, but he also named all the creatures as they came before him.

STUDENT:But I’ve heard people say that imagination has to do with our creative powers, which are a reflection of God’s creative powers. That’s a good thing; that’s how we make beautiful things. …

FR. SERAPHIM:That depends upon what you mean by the word “imagination.” There are several aspects of it. One aspect is the creative faculty, which is part of our original nature.

FR. SERAPHIM:Right. But in our fallen state this creative talent becomes mixed up with double-thinking: looking at things and imagining something else. So the word “imagination” does have two meanings, but in our fallen state it is always bound up with double-thinking.

FR. SERAPHIM:That just seems to be a natural part of our fallen state. No longer do we look at things directly the way they are, for we are weak—we are, in a way, incapacitated. We look at things and don’t quite see the way they are. When we sober up, we do; but usually we are not in that state.

STUDENT:“Now we see through a glass, darkly” [1 Cor. 13:12].

FR. SERAPHIM:That’s right. Adam saw the whole creation clearly, both the creation below and the creation above. And, therefore, he was in full possession of the facts about everything, only he needed experience in order to be tested.

STUDENT:I read somewhere that imagination is used by people in their striving to regain that image of Paradise they lost.

FR. SERAPHIM:Well, you could say that, because it’s obvious that man, once he fell, is striving for happiness. Even unbelievers and people who think they don’t believe in God and wouldn’t accept Paradise or anything like that—they are all striving for happiness. And of course, only in the Church do we receive the fullness of that happiness and find the way to it, which is through following Christ on the Cross. If you’re just going to write poetry, you’ll be very exalted for one day and the next day down in the dumps. You simply can’t get beyond your nature that way. For you to get beyond your fallen nature, obviously Someone from above has to lift you up. The One Who made the nature Himself has to change you.

STUDENT:I’m interested to hear more about how Adam named the animals.

FR. SERAPHIM:Since Adam was originally in a state of dispassion, his mind was in an extremely exalted state when God brought the animals before him in Paradise in order for him to name them. Adam gave the animals names in accordance with their qualities. In other words, he had some kind of supernatural faculty; his mind was crystal-clear, so that he instantly saw what were the qualities of each creature and what name it should have. Of course, we have lost that language he spoke. We don’t have that clarity of mind; it’s totally beyond us.

St. Symeon the New Theologian says that Adam was “an immortal king over an incorrupt world, not only over Paradise, but also over the whole of creation which was under the heavens.”8 Of course, Paradise was made for his dwelling. He had been created outside of Paradise, on the earth, and then led into Paradise, his home. The animals were not directly in Paradise; they were “brought” there. To us they would look like paradisal creatures, but they were actually outside the boundaries of Paradise and were brought into it when Adam named them.

When Adam fell, he went back to the earth from which he came. He was sent outside again to live on the earth by the sweat of his brow.

Paradise and Heaven

FR. SERAPHIM:From our point of view, who are so far away, it’s all the same. If you get into one you should give thanks to God. But apparently there will be distinctions because there are “many mansions” [John 14:2], and different places; that is, some saints attain to great freedom, great familiarity with God, and others barely get in.

“The meek shall inherit the earth” [Ps. 36:11; cf. Matt. 5:5]. St. Symeon the New Theologian says this means the meek will inherit this very earth here.9 So apparently some will be on earth with the ability to go up higher; others will be on higher levels. The whole thing is not revealed to us; we’re just given a glimpse. If we enter into that state, then we will see exactly what happens.

This whole creation—what was meant in the beginning—will be again. Whether the same particular beasts will be there (since each individual creature has a different “personality”)—we aren’t told. But the same creatures will be there. Apparently, even that very serpent will be there, only now we will be friendly with him. Even the scorpions and everything else … if they can’t harm you, then there’s no terror in all these animals.

FR. SERAPHIM:All we have to go on is the visions of various people, like St. Salvius [of Albi] who died and went to heaven. Usually when it is specifically Paradise, green growing things are seen. But St. Salvius went to some other place where there were no green growing things but just multitudes of people in white: saints, martyrs. In other words, they are in heaven. St. Andrew the Fool for Christ, when he went to Paradise, didn’t see people there, but he saw people in heaven. We are not told in detail about things like that.

The Devil

FR. SERAPHIM:The devil is superior because he is an intellectual being. He is not subject to the body. The body is a lower element; therefore, he is superior. But man is going to get that which the devil lost, that is, Paradise and heaven. And that is why, to this day, the devil is just plain angry.

Even according to human psychology, you can figure out the devil. Just think: you had immortal life and you knew that you were damned to hell. Then there is this other being who is lower than you, who is not worth even spitting on, and he is going to get that which you lost. Of course, you are going to be terribly envious, because there is no repentance for you. You are going to be trying every possible way to get him in the same state you are in.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes. You can give many interpretations of that particular phrase. It means that the devil does not have power to do much.

If he were upright, then he would be a dangerous foe; he would be bit­ ing us in every place.

FR. SERAPHIM:If we have the grace of God and are not cooperating with the devil, he can’t. It’s only when we ourselves allow our will to be drawn away by the devil.

Actually, we can allow ourselves to be drawn away just like Adam was, even without the devil. Adam could have sinned without Satan, because he saw the pleasant aspect of the forbidden fruit and there was already a temptation for him to want it for himself outside the commandment of God.

FR. SERAPHIM:There is something very symptomatic in the fact that they are involved with that kind of a creature in the first place. It shows that there are demons at work somewhere there. Just in general, you can say that much about it.

FR. SERAPHIM:Whoa! That is a profound question.

STUDENT:You know how God let Satan tempt Job.

FR. SERAPHIM:That’s right. We do not believe in a dualism: that there’s a God and there’s a devil, and they are fighting each other—like the Manichaeans believe. We believe that actually God is in charge of everything; and even when things go against Him, He uses that either for His greater glory or to bring men to salvation. So everything in the world happens either because God wills it that way or because He allows it that way due to the presence of freedom, in order to bring about a greater good.

Satan has an independent personality, but in the long run he loses out. Even when he causes some terrible thing like the Russian Revolution, out of it come the New Martyrs, a tremendous inspiration for men. You can imagine what would have happened to Russia without the Revolution, the way it was going. Probably it would have become a frightful place of worldliness, only pretending to be Orthodox—but instead it was chastised. Therefore, a good thing actually came out of the Revolution despite the fact that the devil meant evil. The devil is independent, he can do evil, but God always brings good out of it to those whose wills want good.

FR. SERAPHIM:No, he can’t. When we say that the devil is bound for a thousand years—the whole time between the first and second comings of Christ—that doesn’t mean that he can’t do anything. It means he can do only what God allows. When a person is walking in the grace of Christ, then only if he himself falls away from that can the devil do anything to him at all. When we have temptations, they are exactly like the serpent bruising the heel: they are a small thing, and we should shake them off. Only if we allow ourselves to be overcome by them do we fall into despondency and anger and all kinds of sins. So the devil’s power is very limited.

STUDENT:But it wasn’t that way before Christ.

FR. SERAPHIM:Before the coming of Christ, Satan had much more power because everyone was bowing down to idols, which were demonic.

STUDENT:But in the whole scheme of things, it was all within God’s plan.

FR. SERAPHIM:Well, yes, but it’s a very mystical thing. Everything is within the plan, and yet each person freely does what he wants in that plan. And God brings goodness and good order out of the whole thing, no matter how many demons or men want to do evil.

Christ’s Spiritual Body

FR. SERAPHIM:Jesus Christ is God.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes, He still has His body. St. Andrew [the Fool for Christ], for example, saw Christ on the throne in heaven.

STUDENT:But He is the Essence of God, and we commune with Him spiritually.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes, God is everywhere. He is the Light. But Christ is also there in heaven in His resurrected body.

How it works in practice, we are not worthy of knowing: that is, whether we will be walking about and talking with Him. But just think—He walked about the earth with His disciples.

STUDENT:That explains it. He is the Essence of God, but…

FR. SERAPHIM:But He took flesh. He became like us, and therefore that flesh is there in the other world. In heaven we will have contact with God spiritually, and also with Him in His body.

FR. SERAPHIM:No. There is a teaching of St. Gregory Palamas on the Essence and Energies of God. We do not have any direct contact with God in His Essence, but we know Him in His Energies (grace).

FR. SERAPHIM:No, they have contact through the Energies, and so they are become participants in God. We can’t think like God: we can’t think His thoughts or think what He was doing before the world was made, or anything like that. We can only participate according as He allows us, by His grace.

The Firmament

FR. SERAPHIM:Very interesting question. Let me briefly summarize it. The text of Genesis said there was a firmament that “separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament” (Gen. 1:7). Later on, in ancient Greece, there arose the theory that the universe was composed often spheres, with the earth, the moon, and each planet occupying its own sphere. Some people, under the influence of this theory, thought that the text of Genesis taught there was a kind ofglass bowl over the earth. St. Basil the Great specifically discussed this question, and he said there was no such thing: there was simply a force of nature which kept the waters above—that is, some kind of more rarefied waters—from the waters beneath.

In the time of Noah, when the Flood began, the windows of heaven were opened and the waters came in. In other words, it seems that the firmament “cracked,” so that power of nature holding those waters above was loosened somehow. That is one of the reasons why the Flood was a universal disaster. The waters from underneath the earth came up, and at the same time the waters which before had been above the firmament came down.

It is a very challenging theory that some people have put forward in connection with the fact that the rainbow was given to Noah as a sign there would be no more flood, suggesting that the rainbow was seen then for the first time. It is likely that the waters above the firmament were actually a cloud layer over the whole earth, which produced a greenhouse effect. Fossil remains everywhere in the world testify to the fact that in the past the earth had a universally warm climate, with ample moisture for abundant plant and animal life. Beside the fossil evidence, there is evidence from the fact that there are remnants of animals in frozen soils on the Arctic islands north of Siberia—areas that could never support such animals under present climatic conditions.

The “Location” of Paradise

FR. SERAPHIM:The connection between Paradise and our contemporary world is a very profound one because in the beginning Paradise was part of earth—an elevated place like a mountain. When Adam was cast out of Paradise he went lower down the slope and began living there. Then Cain had to go still lower down.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes. Four rivers are mentioned, which are usually interpreted as the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile and the Ganges. There are various interpretations.

FR. SERAPHIM:No. You see, what we have now is a different reality. For one thing, the Flood of Noah came, and apparently there were tremendous cataclysms during that time—probably volcanoes erupting, mountains rising up—of which we see the results now. It is very likely that before Noah there were not the five continents we know now—there was a tremendously different earth. Maybe there was one continent. We have no idea, actually; we are not told about that. The earth became so completely different that today we cannot say. Right now those four rivers do not come from the same source; they have been changed. Nevertheless, you can point and say that in that area is the cradle of ancient civilization; it is apparently where we all came from.

Now, of course, Paradise has been separated from the earth. But people still go to Paradise. We know of people who have been there, like St. Euphrosynus the Cook. He brought back apples, which people ate like holy bread. He actually experienced Paradise as if it was something physical, but it was different from our everyday material reality. You can only get there in a state of exaltation; you have to be out of yourself. Paradise is now gone from us, because Adam was originally different from what we are now. He was of a higher nature. In fact, the Fathers say that he was of flesh, but it was a flesh somehow halfway between what we know as flesh and spirit. It’s a whole different thing.

Between the Fall and the Flood

FR. SERAPHIM:Adam was cast out from Paradise, but it says that he sat there looking at it. It was still visible, and even Cain could still see Paradise. One of the Fathers says that perhaps until the Flood people could still see Paradise. They could not get to it because there were two angels there guarding it, but we know they were somehow closer because God was constantly talking to the Patriarchs. Then there was a whole different state which is very difficult for us to imagine now, because after Noah this new period enters when we do not have contact with God that way. Before the Flood, God came and talked directly even to Cain, the sinner.

The Flood

FR. SERAPHIM:That would be a local flood. But what is described in Scripture is a universal Flood, over the whole earth.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes. Of course, that is also due to the mountains rising up.

The question of what mountains were before the Flood and how high the Flood rose cannot be solved conclusively, because it is very likely the cataclysm was so extreme that the whole earth was quite different then. All the mountains may have risen up at that time. Entirely different geographical and geological features would have been created. Those people who accept the idea of the Flood in their studies of geology—like Henry Morris, in The Genesis Flood—say that most of the layers were formed during and right after the time of the Flood, not over millions of years. Read the book.

Patristic Interpretation vs. Modern “Higher” Criticism

FR. SERAPHIM:When it says at the beginning “the book of Moses,” etc., it means “by Moses, in his tradition.” One of the books (Deuteronomy) mentions Moses’ death; therefore he did not write that part. In the same way, the Psalms of David were not written all by David. Maybe half were written by him, and others were written by other people. The Orthodox Church is not so concerned that every word is written by that person to whom it is ascribed. We are not that concerned because we have the idea of tradition; that is, this is the book of Moses, “in the tradition of” Moses. The basic part comes from the hand itself; other parts were added later, which are all in the tradition of Moses.

I can’t give you exact details of when actually the books were written down. A lot was preserved in oral tradition. The basic text of Genesis was revealed to the Prophet Moses. We are not even concerned that every single word is actually correct according to the way he received it. The Protestants can become very upset about this question. It doesn’t bother us because, if it is interpreted in the Church, the Church itself is the guarantee that it will be preserved in the right spirit. The Hebrew and Greek texts disagree in a lot of specific and small points—the ages of the Patriarchs, for example.

FR. SERAPHIM:No, it is simply a retelling of the story from a different point of view. One account concerns the origin of Man himself; the other concerns the specific origin of the first people, Adam and Eve.

Modern scholars like to say, “Aha! that means there were two different authors, and you have to separate them and examine the viewpoint of each one—what were they trying to say?” This is not required, because even if the text was handed down somehow in corrupt form, still the basic text has come to us and we know that it all relates to truth.

Therefore, the interpretation of the Church is our key to understanding how the two accounts fit together. When we come across things like this, we simply say that the same story is being told from two different points of view—of emphasis. There is actually no basic problem.

This idea that there must be two different authors or that there are three Isaiahs because there are three different periods spoken about—this is very childish. The modern scholars operate on the assumption that no one could talk about the future. Of course, with that idea you would have to cast out all the prophets.

FR. SERAPHIM:Yes, and that is purely their assumption. According to our faith, we simply cannot accept that because we believe that there are prophets. There is one book with prophecies which are not fulfilled yet: the book of the Apocalypse. According to some modern scholars, it does not talk about future events. We believe, however, that we are going to see the fulfillment of those events ahead of us, always in a form which is a little hidden. We cannot say precisely that the world is going to end in 2005 or some such date; but as we see the events being fulfilled, we see the profound meaning of this prophecy which was written ahead of the event.

Even if it could be that different parts of the book of Genesis were written down by different scribes at different times, that might account for some difference of language, but it is totally a secondary question which does not affect the main point. The main point is: What is the truth spoken about in these texts? That is the basic thing we have to keep in mind in interpreting any sacred text: What is the text talking about, what is the meaning of it? All these little questions of when it was written down and how many different ways it was written down (scholars even analyze it to figure how many times different words are used, separating out particular synonyms to show that there were different authors, etc.)—all that is a waste of time, actually. The main question is, again: What is the truth contained in it? And our key to understanding what is the truth in the book of Genesis or any of the books of Scripture is the teaching of the Church handed down from the Holy Fathers.

The important thing is that we accept that the text itself is a whole, and that it is speaking about truth; and we should have utmost respect for it as the word of God. When we come to something that seems to be a contradiction, we have to look deeper and see how the Holy Fathers resolved this contradiction. Once in a while we can come up with a little interpretation ourselves. For example, we discussed this idea about the firmament: no Holy Father talks specifically about this theory. Modern people have thought about it, and it has weight as a theory, but it is not in the same category as a revealed truth. It is simply a help to interpret the text.

The Ages of the Patriarchs

FR. SERAPHIM:In Genesis 47:9 we read: “And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days and the years of my life … are an hundred and thirty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life; they have not attained to the days of the life of my fathers.”

Jacob lived to be a hundred thirty years old, yet he complained that he was not living very long, as did his forefathers. This is another indication that the earlier Patriarchs indeed lived a very long time. The later descendants were very aware of that.

Different Interpretations

FR. SERAPHIM:Tertullian, St. Justin Martyr, Athenagoras [of Athens] , and Lactantius, the minor Latin writer. These are the earlier Fathers. Major Fathers such as St. John Chrysostom and St. Ephraim the Syrian say that the “sons of God” had bodies and that therefore they could not be angels.

This leads to the question of different interpretations of Scripture. In this course we are giving the standard interpretation of the Church Fathers, but of course there are different Fathers who might give different interpretations. The question is: What do we think of the various interpretations? Sometimes they might even seem to conflict.

We should keep in mind that the Scripture is a very rich source, which is not exhausted by one interpretation. Usually there are at least two interpretations: a literal interpretation and a figurative or allegorical one. Sometimes there is also a mystical interpretation.

Therefore, different interpretations are possible. But there are rules:

  1. Where it is opinion, it should not be held dogmatically or used to fight another opinion.

  2. This opinion must have a serious foundation, and not be simply based on the latest intellectual fashion. For example, we should not simply fall into the latest fashion of science fiction and come up with the idea that the “sons of God” could be outer-space beings; there is no serious foundation for that.

  3. It must make sense with the rest of Scripture.

  4. There are some opinions which are inadmissible; and there are certain interpretations which conflict with the teaching of the Church. For example, we know that the “sons of God” cannot be angels, for this goes against the Orthodox doctrine of angels.

At other times, there is simply no need to have a different interpretation. For example, we might be tempted to think, on the basis of our own opinion today, that the Patriarchs could not live nine hundred years. We cannot reinterpret the Scripture that way, however, unless we have a substantial basis for this. We must be able to show, in Scripture or the writings of the Fathers, that it makes sense to have this interpretation. As for this particular opinion, the Fathers all agree that the Patriarchs did live nine hundred years. As we have seen, the Patriarch Jacob was aware that a hundred and thirty years was quite a young age compared to that of the fathers before him. The world was so different and so new then that it is quite plausible that people lived that long, though it is quite foreign to our experience. We cannot overturn what they said.

Footnotes

  1. William B. N. Berry, Growth of a Prehistoric Time Scale Based on Organic Evolution (1968). ↩

  2. Dendrochronology (or tree-ring dating) is the scientific method of dating tree rings (also called growth rings) to the exact year they were formed in a tree. ↩

  3. John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications (1961). ↩

  4. “Putting Darwin Back in the Dock: ‘Scientific’ Creationists Challenge the Theory of Evolution,” Time, March 16, 1981, pp. 80-82. ↩

  5. Gary Parker, Creation: Facts of Life (1979) [revised and updated ed., 2006]. ↩

  6. Duane T. Gish, Evolution: The Fossils Say No! (1978) [revised ed.: Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No! (1995)]. ↩

  7. Henry M. Morris, ed., Scientific Creationism (1974) [revised ed., 1985]. ↩

  8. St. Symeon the New Theologian, Homily 45.1, in The Sin of Adam, p. 67, [Fr. Seraphim Rose, trans. St. Symeon the New Theologian: The First-Created Man, p. 90. St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1994. Originally published in 1979 under the title The Sin of Adam and Our Redemption]. ↩

  9. Ibid. 45.5, in The Sin of Adam, pp. 76-77 [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, pp. 104-105]. ↩