Metropolitan Kallistos Ware Preaches Evolution Heresy

[Matthew]

I hear you, Jonathan. But don't you think that just the same insistence was made by Nestorius when he felt his reason forced him to choose his position against the title Theotokos, considering his position more reasonable and true and fitting "the evidence" best? Of course he did. Hence the Church and Holy Fathers have long taught that we must choose FAITH over REASON. Yet you are arguing just the opposite in this case regarding modern theories of evolution. I must insist that Evolution has never been proven and a great number of non-religious scientific specialists in their fields are defecting from evolution in favour of Intelligent Design. You speak as though everything has been decided as facts of science rather than evolution being an unproven theory. I personally cannot help but feel you are on dangerous ground. And just because Christian faith in Intelligent Design might be rejected by some people does not mean we should become evolutionists, especially when a great number (very significant minority) of young people, adults, and world class scientists do believe in intelligent design and make a very good and convincing case for it. Christ said many would not follow him because of hard sayings, but he did not soften it or adopt more "reasonable" ideas to keep them following Him. No, he let them go. He is looking for the ones who will TRUST HIM and not their own powers of reason, unlike the sincere but gravely mistaken reject Nestorius.

[jgress]

I think it's possible to distinguish between doctrines we need to believe to be saved, and doctrines we don't need to believe to be saved. For example, I don't think we need to believe that the world was created in 6 days 7500 years ago to be saved. If you feel you personally must believe that to make it all work, then that's fine for you, but don't insist that everyone else follow you; I know TO believers who oppose evolution but admit that the science overwhelmingly supports a universal age of several billion years. Just as they are not convinced by young earth geology, even if that is what the Bible literally teaches, just so am I not convinced by the scientific arguments against evolution, and I don't accept the argument that this is incompatible with my faith.

When it comes to Nestorianism, I don't think the analogy works at all. Nestorius found himself unable to accept a certain doctrine because of his own erroneous theological reasoning, but that had nothing to do with science. Nothing in that dispute depended on the findings of biology, geology, astronomy etc. With evolution it's different, as I think the evidence that life has evolved over millions of years is overwhelming, so for me there is really no choice but to interpret Genesis in a figurative fashion.

Let's just cut to the dogmatic issues, since that is really the important issue at stake. Here are the supposed dogmatic objections to evolution, with my answers:

Objection: Evolution teaches that death existed before the Fall (i.e. before the first humans), but the Church teaches that the Fall brought about death.

Answer: The causal connection between sin and death need not involve a rigid, temporal sequence. I believe that death is a consequence of our sinful state, but I don't accept that this requires me to believe there was no animal death before humans existed.

Objection: Evolution teaches that Creation is the product of chance.

Answer: This is not really true. It is clear that underlying all evolution are fixed laws of physics that point to an intelligent Creator. Evolution always proceeds in accordance with these laws. Furthermore, I see every reason to believe that evolution proceeded with a purpose, namely ourselves as the pinnacle of creation.

Objection: Evolution teaches that there is no immortal soul.

Answer: Actually, evolution cannot account for some basic psychological facts, such as free will. It can account for other psychological facts that are more clearly grounded in our material nature, such as our basic drives, but consciousness remains an insoluble paradox. The existence of this paradox is enough to convince me the soul is real, and there's nothing in evolution that teaches me I must reject this.

[Matthew]

I appreciate the points you have made, but you have not actually faced my objections. It is irrelevant that Nestorius was not talking about biology etc. My point was simply that he insisted on his position because his commitment to his personal powers of REASON made him unable to accept the position of the other Church fathers. Whatever the topic is, when the general position of the historic Church says I am wrong, I should set aside my views and submit to the Church's position.

Again, you have not tried to counter my claim that a retroactive backwards in time projection of the effects of the fall goes against the grain of God's ways in response to human sin, and besides it makes gibberish out of the prefall Garden. When God told Adam and Eve that they would die they had never seen death so the keeping of the commandment was an act of faith in God's word which if they had obeyed their eyes would have been opened and their faith would have saved them when by resisting the serpent's temptation they would have experienced the knowledge of Good and Evil making them morally perfect creatures "like God". The very thing Satan said God wanted to keep from us was exactly what God wanted and was trying to give to them, not by committing sin, but by resisting it. But either way their eyes would be opened.

Secondly, you said earlier that my point about thorns on flowers AFTER the fall as proof that no retroactive death happened is wrong because they have found fossilized plants with thorns on them "millions of years old" long before Adam and Eve. However, if that is true you have yet to explain why the Holy Spirit who is the author of inerrant Scripture LIED in Genesis and says they were not produced until after the Fall. This is the point, rather than reflexively assuming there then must be something wrong with modern scientific conclusions, and methods of carbon dating, and other age setting techniques about the age of rocks and fossils, you assume that the fault is with the age of the Earth and the order of events in the biological world as testified in the God-authored Holy Scriptures. Do you not see the dangerous and blasphemous path of unbelief and secular humanist thinking that such ideas put one on? Blasphemous because we quickly and unconsciously blame God rather than fallible secular "scientific" men and their theories that make no account of God (for to them everything should be explainable by naturalistic means and mechanisms which is precisely why they formed the theories now popular and required in schools).

These naturalistic explanations that remove against the flow of scripture and God's just manner of dealing with us (not punishing retroactively because "He knows we are going to sin in the future" are unacceptable and counter to how a compassionate, merciful and just God deals with His creatures. Yes there are mysteries about why do people suffer, why does all of creation suffer because of one couple's sin, and so on. But theistic evolution adds yet more such things to the list, even though a great many things about God show that these are exceptions, for usually as with ananias and sapphira and a host of other examples down through history, God's punishments overwhelmingly FOLLOW and do not precede sins.

[Matthew]

Oh, and one more point, it seems clear to me that people who accept insistently the teachings and conclusions and methods of scientific speculation and theorizing and so forth leading to Evolution and darwinism and yet are also TOC believers are in a state of denial. I mean, here you admit and complain and stand opposed to the fact that ungodly forces that are decidedly anti-christ, that the world whether in 20 years or in 500 years is definitely getting more and more godless, and that government, banking, arts, music, media, public education, social structures like marriage and other institutions (think homosexual marriage, and homosexual couple child adoptions now legal across canada), (and the list goes on) are all marching onwards towards the foretold end. If you accept all this, why do you say that this little island called physical sciences has not been significantly infected with the same depth of errors and delusion as the rest of society's structures and institutions? Let me ask you, and dont mull over this too long and confuse yourself, simply answer, "If I didn't know any better, I would say such a claim that all society in every field and institution -- even including and especially so the Christian Churches -- was being lead astray and away from God, except for dvinely protected Physical Sciences, is unreasonable."

[Matthew]

I think it's possible to distinguish between doctrines we need to believe to be saved, and doctrines we don't need to believe to be saved.....

It wouldn't even occur to me to start carving up the faith into, what pertains to salvation or not. It is like asking, "How close to the edge of the cliff can I drive the car on this mountain road without going over." We ought to come to the faith like little children, and accept all of it without modification, doubt, or scrutiny. For to scrutinize the faith suggests a trust in ourselves rather than in the aggregate testimony of multitudes of the greatest minds of the last 2000 years, a kind of unquestioning faith in ourselves and in our idea of reason. To go further and to then prefer the explanations of the by far greatly secularist Evolutionist scientists is definitely to cross the line and side with the enemies of Christ. This is not conscious or on purpose, I do not say that. It is something you are doing without realising it. For, as Fr Steven Allen discussed very wonderfully in his recent study series, "Ideas have consequences." You need to consider and compare the spiritual consequences of Evolutionary pre fall death claims as opposed to the consequences spiritually for our souls for adhering to the traditional 6-24 hour day Divine and miraculous Creation by a loving compassionate and just God. Picking and choosing dispensible doctrines and feeling at liberty to dump "non-salvation significant" traditions and teachings because they are "scientifically unfashionable" in our modern atheist society is eroding the shoulder of the road, and the attitude of pick and choose itself is contributing to a growing weakness of faith that could send one over the spiritual cliff, even though the doctrines being presently ejected are in themselves bearing the appearance of not being "Salvation related", but they are the rocks that shore up the edge of our spiritual road and make it strong. Weaken it as you are doing, and you stand a far greater chance of going over the edge. People who humble themselves like little children with regard to maintaining the faith, are far more likely to have the wherewithal to weather and stand tall in the storms that are growing around us, and that certainly will come if our society continues on this path of spiritual and societal self-destruction.

Anyone who buys into the Evolution lie is marching into uncharted waters spiritually, for no one can deny that Christian societies, and certainly Orthodox ones have traditionally and historically believed in a miraculous Genesis Account creation. And our Orthodox societies have demonstrated by the facts of history that that faith in a literal 6 day creation did not bring social or spiritual evils. This you cannot say about evolution, in fact the evidence has rolled in several times over on a catastrophic scale that evolution does destroy faith and justify racism and genocide by the evolution believing "racial superior races" - I am thinking of Hitler, Stalin, and the like who clearly took darwininan evolution seriously and it was the philosophy and proof they needed to carry out their hateful crimes against others they considered inferior. Sorry, but that is a fact of recent history. There is no denying the direct connexion between the two. And the point is not, but such ideas are just piggybacking on the a morally neutral evolution which "doesn't necessitate such conclusions" The salient point and the practical fact is that this is precisely the historical fallout from Darwinian evolution and you are defending it and trying to rehabilitate it. All very dangerous.

[Cyprian]

Friends, do not be deceived. One cannot believe in the pseudo-scientific theories propounded by the evolutionists and be an Orthodox Christian. Those who call themselves "true Orthodox" and believe such nonsense are deluded; captivated by vain and worldly philosophy.

Furthermore, I have yet to encounter even one holy father who applies the saying, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years," to the historical account of the six days of creation, arguing that each day figuratively stands for millions or billions of years. If the six days were meant to be applied figuratively, then the holy fathers would have interpreted them as such. On the contrary, the holy fathers interpreted them as literal 24 hour days, and not ages.

Now, certain holy fathers have associated "one day will be as a thousand years" with the six days of creation in a prophetic sense, saying that God will make a finish to all things in six thousand years, and others treated the hexaemeron as a type or emblem of the six ages that unfold in the history of mankind.

Finally, God created time, not man. God created everything.

P.S. What proof do we have that the phoenix bird was not real? I would be curious to see...

Cyprian

[Matthew]

You are right Cyprian, I must modify my statement. There is no hard evidence that the Phoenix bird ever existed. But yes, it is possible it existed. I only wanted to say that some of the fathers writings included anecdotal comments that included popularly accepted ideas of the time in which they lived, but that later for which no conclusive evidence was found.