Evolution and an Orthodox Patristic understanding of Genesis

[Cyprian]

"Adam, the special creation, described with the same Herbrew verb that was used only in reference to the original creation of the cosmos, was similarly brought into existence by God, like all mammals, from his mother's womb."

So you confess that Adam had a mother, and that he proceeded forth from his mother's womb. Is it correct to presume that he proceeded forth from his mother's womb in the infantile state? Certainly you are not suggesting that Adam's mother bore him as a full-grown adult.

Would you now please clarify for us whether you confess Adam to have had a father as well?

According to your understanding, did the conception of Adam take place upon the union of his two parents, when seed was implanted into his mother by his father?

Short and direct answers will suffice.

Cyprian

[Pravoslavnik]

Cyprian,

Code: Select all

    Please read what I have written carefully this time.  [i]The[/i] Adam was of the "adamah" before the Lord breathed the Holy Spirit into him.  You have not understood, nor have you answered my questions, which I asked in order to clarify some issues about your literal approach to interpreting the first and second chapters  of [i]Genesis[/i].  I understand your point of view, but you have not understood what I have written.

  If Seth and Cain procreated with their own sisters to create the human race, as you claim, their offspring--including us-- would all have identical mitochondrial DNA in their cells, because mitochondrial DNA is inherited from our mothers. Modern biologists, like Brian Sykes at Oxford, have shown that--on the basis of mitochondrial DNA analysis-- most modern Europeans, for example, were descended from one of several different mothers, as described in his book The Seven Daughters of Eve (and we're not talking about Protestant Fundamentalist pseudo-scientific garbage like Hovind or Morris, here, but quality scientific scholoarship.) How do you explain the multiple mothers evidence of modern science using your simplistic, literal interpretation of Genesis?

  Who were these 'giant" Demigods--similar to the Demigods of Hellenic mythology that was contemporaneous with the Torah--created by "the sons of God" through copulation with the "daughters of men"? Where did they live, and where is the evidence of their existence? There is an Orthodox tradition that Seth was the father of the "spiritual people," but who were these giant Demigods in anthropological history? And did God create what we call a "rainbow"--the refraction of sunlight through atmospheric water droplets--as a sign to Noah that He would not flood the world again? Or, conversely, is it possible that the ancient Hebrew text of Genesis contains elements of myth and "just so" stories like the stories of other religions of the world--attempts to explain how things in the world came into existence?

   There are two separate and somewhat different accounts of God's creation of man in Genesis. The term "adamah"--"meaning from the earth"--is used to describe God's creation of humankind. And, of course, all life on earth originally came from the elements of the earth, with carbon as the basic elemental building block of organic molecules. Genesis does not talk about the hows and wherefores of evolution and the molecular biology which is the complex basis of all life, but simply describes God bringing life into existence from the elements of the earth. Adam, the special creation, described with the same Hebrew verb that was used only in reference to the original creation of the cosmos, was similarly brought into existence by God, like all mammals, from his mother's womb. After he was thus "created" by God, the Holy Spirit of God was breathed into him, as described by Genesis and St. Seraphim of Sarov, and [b]he became the first formed man endowed with the Holy Spirit.[/b] In this state, he was placed in the mystical paradise of Eden for a time--a paradaisical state achieved since that time by some of the Orthodox saints, including St. Seraphim, himself, who fed bears from his hand in the forests of Sarov.

    His surviving sons intermarried outside of the (lost) mystical paradise of Eden with the daughers of the adamah--the homo sapiens who had come into existence on the heels of the hominid homo erectus during the previous million years of earth history. That is why we modern homo sapiens, based on scientific analysis, do not all descend from a single woman, as the literal interpretation of Genesis claims.

[jckstraw72]

you assume that bc adamah is the Hebrew word for mankind that therefore Adam is just a figurative representative for mankind, but i ask you, why is the Hebrew word for mankind adamah? its bc the first created man had the name Adam.

its like ppl who say God just used a 7 day creation period bc that is what the Jews understood. but then the question is why do Jews understand and live in 7 day periods? well, its bc God created in 7 days, thus structuring the world that way.

[Pravoslavnik]

Dear Jackstraw,

Code: Select all

 Please think about what I have written before misrepresenting what I have said, repeatedly.  You did the same thing with the point I made about the theory of relativity, cosmic time, and the [i]Hexameron.[/i]  [i]Genesis[/i] describes both the creation of the adamah and God's "special" creation (using a different Hebrew verb for "create") of Adam--the first of the adamah into whom God breathed His Holy Spirit.

[jckstraw72]

Please read what I have written carefully this time. The Adam was of the "adamah" before the Lord breathed the Holy Spirit into him.

but the Patristic witness is that the body and soul were created simultaneously, as the creative act of each day was instantaneous.

[Pravoslavnik]

Jackstraw;

Code: Select all

   You are certainly correct regarding the Orhodox Patristic teaching that man is created with an integrated body and soul.  The Orthodox Fathers--e.g. St. Gregory Palamas--have also taught that there is a noetic faculty of the soul, based upon the Divine archetype of the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, which is capable of mystical union with God.  I do not understand these mysteries, but I do wonder if it was this [i]noetic faculty [/i]of the soul which was imparted by God to [i]the[/i] Adam, as described by St. Seraphim of Sarov.

    Regarding the data of modern anthropology, we know that homo sapiens--which I believe to be the "adamah" described in the first chapter of [i]Genesis[/i]--were "fruitful and multiplied" upon the earth for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the neolithic era of Mesopotamia where the generations of Adam commenced.  As examples, we know that homo sapiens from Papua New Guinea migrated on foot to Australia and Tasmania prior to the end of the last Ice Age, and are the ancestors of the aboriginal Australians.  Similarly, paleolithic homo sapiens crossed into Alaska from Siberia prior to the end of the last Ice Age, and the natives of North, Meso-, and South America descended from these paleolithic nomads.  Modern Europeans are descended from several genetically unrelated women.  Modern Indo-European languages--from Gaelic to Sanskrit-probably originated in the region of modern day Lithuania as a result of the original domestication of the horse in that region.  Much of this data is described in the writings of Jared Diamond; [i]The Third Chimpanzee[/i], [i]Guns, Germs, and Steel[/i], and [i]Collapse[/i].

     If we believe, as I do, that both science and Orthodoxy are representations of the ultimate truth, how do we integrate the revealed truths of Orthodox Christianity with the data of modern science?  St. Basil the Great tried to do this with the Aristotelian "science" of the fourth century which he had studied at the Academy in Athens.  Certainly the cosmic concept of relativistic time, properly applied to the [i]Hexameron[/i], offers a remarkable model for this integration.

[ChristosVoskrese]

Evolution is not science. Science is what is observable, testable, and demonstrable. Evolution has never been observed. Cats have never given birth to puppies. No creature has ever produced another creature that was not of it's kind. Scientists zapped fruit flies in a laboratory to try to induce evolution, but they remained fruit flies.

Evolution is a religion - I believe that God created Adam and Eve about 7,515 years ago. Evolutionists believe that life came from a primordial soup billions of years ago. Neither of these can be proven scientifically - we must believe them by faith. I place my faith in God.