EVOLUTION AND THE GENEALOGY OF CHRIST

Written by Vladimir Moss

EVOLUTION AND THE GENEALOGY OF CHRIST

 
     The Holy Apostle Peter says that no Holy Scripture can be interpreted privately, but only in accordance with the public interpretation of the Holy Church (II Peter 1.4). The question then arises: where are we to find the Church’s interpretation of Scripture? And the answer is: in Holy Tradition, which encompasses the writings of the Holy Fathers, the dogmatic and canonical definitions of the Ecumenical and Local Councils, the iconography of the Church, and especially the Church’s liturgical services.
 
    From the point of view of Scriptural interpretation, two of the most important liturgical services of the Church are those for the two Sundays just before Christmas – the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, and the Sunday of the Ancestors of Christ. These teach us three important dogmatic truths: first, that there was a “Church of the Gentiles” before that of the Jews; secondly, that Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and all the early patriarchs were real historical figures; and thirdly, that the origins of the human race go back some thousands, but certainly not millions of years. This witness of the Church’s liturgical tradition to the traditional Orthodox understanding of human origins is particularly important for us in view of the contemporary attack on it posed by the atheist theory of evolution and its supposedly Christian variety, “theological evolutionism”.
 
     It is usually agreed, even by sceptics, that Abraham was a historical figure. It is a different matter with Noah and the earlier patriarchs. However, the genealogy of Christ in the Gospel of Luke traces an uninterrupted line back from Abraham to Noah a few generations before, and from him back to Adam; the Lord Himself refers to Noah, as does the Apostle Peter; while Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Seth and Enoch are mentioned by the Lord and the Apostles John, Paul and Jude. There can be no doubt that these early patriarchs were real, living people for the holy apostles and for Him Who is Truth incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ. Anyone who believes, following “science falsely so-called” (I Timothy 6.20), that the Lord somehow “got it wrong”, or was ignorant of what Darwin and our clever modern scientists know, evidently does not believe that He is God Himself, “in Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2.3).
 
     The Orthodox Church has been slow to condemn the heresy of evolutionism. This is not because the saints have failed to say anything. On the contrary: already in the nineteenth century such saints as Nectarios of Aegina and Barsanuphius of Optina condemned Darwin’s teaching in no uncertain terms. More recently, Fr. Seraphim Rose has brilliantly exposed how it contradicts the teaching of the Holy Fathers. But to the knowledge of the present writer, no Council of Orthodox Fathers has yet condemned evolutionism – although it is condemned by implication (under the anathema against belief in chance) in the liturgical service for the Triumph of Orthodoxy.
 
 
     We can speculate about the reason for this surprising gap in the Church’s armoury against heresy. Perhaps there has simply not been time to fill it, in view of more pressing concerns about other heresies such as ecumenism and sergianism. Perhaps the twentieth-century hierarchs have modestly felt themselves to be not competent to discuss the matter in view of their lack of education in biological science – although, as we shall see, the heresy can and should be refuted on purely theological grounds. Perhaps they have sensed that very many laypeople, and even priests, actually believe in the heresy, and therefore any attempt to condemn it in a conciliar manner would open up a Pandora’s box of controversy and perhaps create a schism in the Church. Finally, the present writer has heard the following argument: that to condemn evolutionism would be place ourselves into the camp of the creationist scientists and thereby taint ourselves with Protestantism, because these scientists are Protestants.
 
     Let us look more closely at this last argument…
 
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     The first point that needs to be made is that there is no such thing as Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant science. There is only true science and false science (or “half-science”, as Dostoyevsky calls it) – that is, science that follows empirical method, not rejecting relevant data and not straying beyond the bounds of verifiability, and false science which errs against one or the other of these criteria. Darwinian science is false science according to both criteria, because it both ignores a vast amount of data that contradicts its theories, and makes unverifiable hypotheses about in principle unobservable things – such as the creation of the world. This has been pointed out by scientists and philosophers of all religious persuasions and none. Most creationist scientists are Protestants, true; but there are plenty who are Catholic, Orthodox, agnostic and atheist. Creationist science stands of falls on whether it satisfies purely scientific criteria, not on the private religious beliefs of the scientists themselves. Newton was also a Protestant, albeit an extremely unorthodox one who did not believe in the Holy Trinity; but nobody would reject his scientific achievement on those grounds…
 
     Secondly, even saints have not scorned to use “heterodox” science for apologetic purposes. Thus St. Nektary said to one of his disciples: "Once a man came to me who simply couldn't believe that there had been a flood. Then I told him that on very high mountains in the sand are found shells and other remains from the ocean floor, and how geology testifies to the flood, and he came to believe. You see how necessary learning is at times." 
 
     “Geology testifies to the flood…” Yes, but in our day, when so many “scoffers”, as St. Peter described them, have appeared on the summits of educational power, we would have to qualify this as follows: “Creationist geology testifies to the flood, but evolutionist geology rejects this testimony. For in order to promote its own theory that the order in which the fossils have been laid down testifies to evolution, it rejects the vast mass of data testifying to the flood, including the fact, cited here by St. Nektary, that fossils have been found on the tops of mountains. Creationist science, however, convincingly explains the order in which the fossils are laid down as what we would expect as the result of a universal flood.
 
     Thirdly, creationist science should not be treated as gospel, because, like all science, it is the product of fallen minds. However, it has this enormous advantage over evolutionist science, that in addition to taking account of many, many mundane facts that the evolutionists ignore, it is consistent with the facts adduced by Divine Revelation. Such, for example, is Vance Ferrell’s vast compendium of creationist science, Science vs. Evolution, whose details almost certainly will have to be corrected or supplemented in the course of time, but whose general line of argument, being consistent with the Word of God, is likely to remain without need of serious correction. 
 
     If we believe in Divine Revelation, we cannot treat the facts it adduces as irrelevant to science. If Christ God, the Truth incarnate, says that Noah and the ark existed (Matthew 24.38), then they existed. If St. Peter says that the whole world was engulfed by water (II Peter 3.6), then there was a universal flood. And if this means that the whole science of human origins and the origins of the universe will have to be rewritten, then so be it. Fortunately, there are already thousands of scientists in the United States alone who reject evolutionism, and are quite prepared to take on this huge task of scientific perestroika, even at the cost of being no longer deemed to be card-carrying “real” scientists… If we confess the truth of the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition, then we stand within the Holy Church upon the rock of truth without being in any danger of being crushed by it. If, on the other hand, we are ashamed to confess that truth, or try and combine the truth with a lie, like the ‘theological evolutionists”, then we shall find ourselves not on, but under the rock, and shall be crushed by it (Matthew 21.44). 
 
     One of the reasons why so many Orthodox believe in evolution in spite of the fact that it contradicts both Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition is a kind of intellectual vanity, a fear of being seen to be an uneducated hillbilly. Related to this is the fear of being labeled “fundamentalist” – the fear, once again, of Protestant contamination. However, it is important to realize that when it comes to Scriptural “fundamentalism”, some of the most famous and highly educated of the Holy Fathers must be categorized as “fundamentalists”. Thus St. Basil the Great writes: “Plainly it is a falling away from faith and an offence chargeable to pride, either to reject anything that is in Scripture, or to introduce anything that is not in Scripture”.  Again, St. Gregory the Theologian writes: “We who extend the accuracy of the Spirit to every letter and serif [of Scripture] will never admit, for it were impious to do so, that even the smallest matters were recorded in a careless and hasty manner by those who wrote them down.”  
 
     The usual method employed by “theological evolutionists” who want to reconcile evolution and Divine Revelation is allegory. But while allegory has an honoured place in Biblical interpretation, it operates within strict limits of unallegorized, stubborn, hard, historical fact. Once those limits have been breached, - and they have been breached in quite fantastical ways in the interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis, - then not only does allegory cease to be a credible tool of Biblical interpretation: faith in Divine Revelation is fatally undermined. And so every honest, consistent thinker will agree with Ferrell that “when it is accepted, evolutionary theory eliminates belief in Genesis 1 to 11.”  More than that, it eliminates belief in Christ as the Truth; for, as we have seen, it implies that Darwin knew better than Christ what really happened at the creation of the world…
 
     Instead of trying to reinterpret or allegorize the Word of God in order to make it conform to godless science, we should heed the words of St. Basil the Great in his commentary on Genesis 1: “I know the laws of allegory, though less by myself than from the works of others. There are those truly who do not admit the common sense of the Scriptures, for whom water is not water, but some other nature, who see in a plant, in a fish, what their fancy wishes, who change the nature of reptiles and of wild beasts to suit their allegories, like the interpreters of dreams who explain visions in sleep to make them serve their own ends. For me grass is grass; plant, fish, wild beast, domestic animal, I take all in a literal sense. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel… Shall I then prefer foolish wisdom to the oracles of the Holy Spirit? Shall I not rather exalt Him Who, not wishing to fill our minds with these vanities, has regulated all the economy of Scripture in view of the edification and the making perfect of our souls? It is this that those seem to me not to have understood, who, giving themselves up to the distorted meaning of allegory, have undertaken to give a majesty of their own invention to Scripture. It is to believe themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit, and to bring forth their own ideas under a pretext of exegesis. Let us hear Scripture as it has been written…” 
 
     Nor should we worry that if we “hear Scripture as it has been written” without giving ourselves up “to the distorted meaning of allegory”, we shall find ourselves living a kind of schizophrenic existence, believing Scripture in one half of our lives and science in the other. For, as Fr. Seraphim Rose writes: “Even though revealed knowledge is higher than natural knowledge, still we know that there can be no conflict between true revelation and true natural knowledge. But there can be conflict between revelation and human philosophy, which is often in error. There is thus no conflict between the knowledge of creation contained in Genesis, as interpreted for us by the Holy Fathers, and the true knowledge of creatures which modern science has acquired by observation; but there most certainly is an irreconcilable conflict between the knowledge contained in Genesis and the vain philosophical speculation of modern scientists, unenlightened by faith, about the state of the world in the Six Days of Creation.” 
 
     A more sophisticated attempt at “theological evolutionism” is provided by the famous new calendarist heretic, Fr. John Romanides. He argues, astoundingly, that the Holy Scriptures are not the Word of God, but only words about God. The true Word of God is only that which is heard in the wordless ecstasy of deification, theosis; the words of Scripture are created, and therefore at one remove from the uncreated and true Word of God. 
 
     Romanides continues: “Today Protestants and Roman Catholics are under the impression that God gave Holy Scripture to the Church. This idea has so greatly influenced modern Orthodox thought that the Orthodox even agree with Protestants and Roman Catholics on this point… 
 
     “But now the Orthodox Church has to face a certain paradox. When you read the Old Testament, the New Testament, and even writings from Tradition, you will run across opinions that science proved to be false at least 150 years ago, especially on account of the breakthroughs in research made in the exact sciences. Naturally, this creates a serious problem for someone who does not fully grasp what the Fathers mean when they speak about divine inspiration. This problem mainly applies to the study of the Bible.” 
 
     So the Bible is not the Word of God, according to Romanides, because it is contradicted by certain supposed findings of science…
 
     What are these sciences that we can trust, supposedly, more than the Holy Scriptures? First of all, palaeontology. “For we now know that there exist human bones which are proved to have existed for three and a half million years…”  
 
     A detailed refutation of Romanides is pointless. On the one hand, he believes that the Word of God in Scripture is not the infallible, God-inspired Word of God but created and fallible words – which contradicts the teaching of SS. Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian, as we have seen above. On the other hand, he is prepared to give the status of infallibility to scientific theories that last for a generation or two and are then cast out into the dustbin of history… As for his idea that only those in a state of deification can speak the Word of God, it should be pointed out that, according to the Holy Fathers, Moses was in precisely such a state when given the words of Genesis. Not in vain is he called “prophet and God-seer” by the Orthodox Church. 
 
     The third of the three holy hierarchs, St. John Chrysostom, confirms this. As Fr. Seraphim writes: “St. John Chrysostom in his Homilies on Genesis comes back again and again to the statement that every word of the Scripture is Divinely inspired and has a profound meaning - that it is not Moses' words, but God's: ‘Let us see now what we are taught by the blessed Moses, who speaks not of himself but by the inspiration of the grace of the Spirit.’
 
     “He then has a fascinating description of how Moses does this. We know that the Old Testament prophets foretold the coming of the Messiah. In the Book of the Apocalypse (Revelation), St. John the Theologian prophesied about the events of the end of the world and the future of the Church. How did they know what was going to happen? Obviously, God revealed it to them. St. John Chrysostom says that, just as St. John the Theologian was a prophet of things of the future, Moses was a prophet of things of the past. He says the following: ‘All the other prophets spoke either of what was to occur after a long time or of what was about to happen then; but he, the blessed (Moses), who lived many generations after (the creation of the world), was vouchsafed by the guidance of the right hand of the Most High to utter what had been done by the Lord before his own birth. It is for this reason that he begins to speak thus: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," as if calling out to us all with a loud voice: it is not by the instruction of men that I say this; He Who called them (heaven and earth) out of non-being into being - it is He Who has roused my tongue to relate of them. And therefore I entreat you, let us pay heed to these words as if we heard not Moses but the very Lord of the universe Who speaks through the tongue of Moses, and let us take leave for good of our own opinions.’
 
     “Thus, we should approach the early chapters of Genesis as we would a book of prophecy, knowing that it is actual events being described, but knowing also that - because of their remoteness to us and because of their very nature as the very first events in the history of the world - we will be able to understand them only imperfectly, even as we have a very imperfect understanding of the events at the very end of the world as set forth in the Apocalypse and other New Testament Scriptures. St. John Chrysostom himself warns us not to think we understand too much about the creation: ‘With great gratitude let us accept what is related (by Moses), not stepping out of our own limitations, and not testing what is above us as the enemies of the truth did when, wishing to comprehend everything with their minds, they did not realize that human nature cannot comprehend the creation of God.’
 
     “Let us then try to enter the world of the Holy Fathers and their understanding of the Divinely inspired text of Genesis. Let us love and respect their writings, which in our confused times are a beacon of clarity which shines most clearly on the inspired text itself. Let us not be quick to think we ‘know better’ than they, and if we think we have some understanding they did not see, let us be humble and hesitant about offering it, knowing the poverty and fallibility of our own minds…” 
 
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     Finally, let us look at some quotations from the services to the Holy Forefathers and Ancestors of Christ, that they may seal in us the Church’s true interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis:-
 
     “Let us honour the first Adam, who was honored by the hand of the Creator, and who is the forefather of us all and resteth with all the elect in the mansions of heaven”.
 
     “Let us bless Enoch with sacred utterances, for, having been well-pleasing unto the Lord, he was translated in glory, being shown to be greater than death, as it hath been written, since he had been a most earnest servant of God.”
 
     “With hymns let us piously bless Noah, who preserved the Law of God intact; who alone among all his generation, was found to be righteous, and of old saved the species of the animals with an ark of gopher wood at the command of Him that accomplisheth all things.”
 
     “Rejoicing today, Adam is adorned with the glory of divine communion, as the foundation and confirmation of the wise forefathers, and with him Abel doth leap for joy and Enoch is glad, and Seth danceth together with Noah; the all-praised Abraham doth chant with the patriarchs, and from on high Melchizedek doth behold a birth wherein a father had no part. Wherefore, celebrating the divine memory of the forefathers of Christ, we beseech Him that our souls be saved.”
 
December 17/30, 2013.
Holy Prophet Daniel.
 
     
 
     
 
 
     
 

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