Metropolitan Kallistos Ware Preaches Evolution Heresy

[Maria]

OK, I take your points. I would be careful about actively looking for heresies in everything he says, which is a trap I think we can often fall into. Since many of these ecumenists choose their words carefully, I often feel like it's a challenge to pick out anything overtly heretical. It doesn't help that ecumenism is so nebulous. You can actually get the same thing with heretics of old, like Severus of Antioch: they just keep redefining all the terms so that you can't point the finger at anything (try arguing with a Monophysite now!).

At some point, you need to step back and not get sucked in to the quicksand. I am usually satisfied with the bad feelings I have about all the ecumenical activities going on. They don't feel right, and they certainly don't make sense for a body, such as the Church, that claims to offer the Truth. If conservative NCists feel the need to come up with all their convoluted arguments as to why Patriarch Bartholomew isn't really a heretic, I am content to leave them to their delusion. Either they just don't feel it, as I do, in which case they're beyond my help, or they're actively suppressing that feeling, in which case, I hope, it's a matter of time before they come round, but still beyond my immediate help.

I was in that boat.

While I was with the New Calendarists, I did respect Metropolitan Kallistos and I still do, but I felt uneasy about his discussions which apparently support women's ordination. I was terribly uneasy about the statements that Patriarch Bartholomew made in favor of abortion. The fact that Met. Kallistos was under the EP also bothered me. However, that uneasy feeling was not enough for me to leave the New Calendarists. What finally nudged me in that direction was the information that Met. Moses and Bishop Sergios, whom I had met in Pomona in the early 2000's, had finally left HOCNA and were now in the GOC. I had never heard of the GOC, so I started asking questions, wrote an email to Father Anastasios and the rest was history.

[Matthew]

Im pretty much with you in all you said.

[Maria]

Regarding Evolution:

Jckstraw72 (a former poster here) posted this tidbit regarding evolution at http://www.christianforums.com/t7686529-3/#post62479318

• St. Ambrose of Optina called it nonsense.
  St. Barsanuphius of Optina called it a bestial philosophy.
  Fr. George Caclciu called it a game of non-intelligence.
  St. John of Kronstadt says it is the half-educated and over-educated who believe in evolution.
  Elder Joseph the Hesychast detected a foul spiritual odor on a certain theologian because of his belief in evolution.
  St. Justin Popovich says it is New Age and a self-negation that has no place for the Church.
  St. Nektarios says it is mythology.
  St. Nikolai Velimirovich say it is shameful.
  Elder Paisios says it is blasphemy.
  Elder Paisios Olaru of Sihastria says Darwin's theory makes him a madman.
  Elder Sophrony says it is absurd.
  St. Theophan the Recluse says it is more of a childish fable than Greek mythology.
  St. Vladimir Bogoyavlensky says it is a degrading and insulting, audacious philosophy.

  At the very least, Fr. Seraphim certainly spoke no stronger than did every other Saint or elder who spoke on the matter.

Our Saints and Holy Fathers have condemned Evolution as absurd, theories of madmen, and childish fables.

Yet how quickly certain folks in World Orthodoxy condemn Roman Catholics for trying to explain certain Holy Mysteries, such as their doctrines of the Immaculate Conception, Transubstantiation, and Purgatory, while at the same time these same Orthodox Christians accept the THEORY of evolution as an attempt to explain God's Holy Mystery of Creation. Is not this rather hypocritical?

There is a serious lack of consistency here. Our Holy Mysteries cannot be explained. Creation is one of those Holy Mysteries. All we can do is stand back in awe at the birth of a baby and give thanks.

Now Met. Kallistos carefully tiptoes around the Roman Catholic doctrines of the Immaculate Conception, Transubstantiation, and Purgatory, by saying that an Orthodox Christian could believe these things, and he also says that one could believe in Evolution. Thus, he sounds like he is becoming more Roman Catholic and would probably accept reunion with the Roman Catholic Church without first obtaining a real unity of faith.

[Matthew]

Yes, good points in your closing comments, Maria. Thank you for the excellent quotes, as well.

[jgress]

I'll take a risk and offer a contrary opinion here. I don't see the theory of evolution as any more demeaning to human nature than the perfectly Biblical teaching that we are made out of clay and dust. Evolution, if true as an account for how we came about as a species, does not mean that we aren't made in the image of God, that we don't have free will, or that our sense of morality and our conscience is an illusion. That seems to be the bulk of the argument against evolution, but to me that is argument against the naturalistic fallacy, namely the idea that because we have evolved by natural selection, we should let that be our philosophy of life and govern all our moral choices.

What is clear is that evolution will never be the whole story: we can't explain the fact of human free will and conscience with a purely deterministic, mechanistic theory of origins. At best, evolution may explain part of who we are, but not everything, just as in the Bible, we are materially just clay and dust, but somehow God made something much greater with that simple material. I am Orthodox because I know in my heart that our purpose in this world is more than just surviving.

I'm not going to insist that everyone agree with me on this, but I just want to show that there is a difference of opinion. I've met other True Orthodox who accept evolution as a scientific theory. I know it's popular among some of us to look for heresies under every rock, and you may take this as an opportunity to accuse me, but I only ask that we keep the disagreements civil. Let's focus on the arguments themselves.

[Matthew]

Have no fear, Jonathan. You will get no vitriolic speeches from me. I do believe, after much study and consideration and having passed a time as a theistic evolutionist myself, that it is, in my opinion, a heresy. However, I will not insist on this here. I will definitely declare without equivocation that it is at least a false doctrine. For me, the strongest and primary argument against it is not the dignity, etc., that it supposedly robs man of, nor is it forced upon us to adopt, as you rightly noted, an evolutionist philosophy or social ethic by extension; though I have a lot of reasons to say that though not deterministically leading to such evil social ideas, it is definitely a lot harder to overthrow people who do make that conclusion (Hitler, racists, eugenists, abortionists, euthanasia advocates, social darwinsts, etc.) if you both agree that evolution is the historical mechanism by which we all got here. You do actually arm them with arguments from nature, which philosophers and even our legal system acknowledge as powerful arguments.

No, for me the greatest argument is this:

Evolution depends entirely upon the premise that death itself is the major, natural, and amoral agent of change, and that death pre-existed Adam and Eve, and that there is no observable or substantive connection between the Fall and death entering the world as a following consequence of the spiritual fall. If we look at Scripture, which definitely states in no uncertain or debatable terms, that sin FIRST entered the world by Adam and Eve, and then, AFTER that, death followed not only on humanity but upon all creation including plant life (thorns etc), and if you look at the entire theology of Christ, Saint Paul, and the Church Fathers on the moral and spiritual meaning of death as a fruit of man's sin, you totally overthrow this. There is no room for reversing things by projecting backwards in time the death caused by sin upon a sinless, pre-Adamic world. And if the truth is that disparate with the Biblical record, why not simply have stated that such retroaction was the case in the Scriptures to begin with? I confess that if were the case, then that would HAVE TO have been written in Scripture. But that it is precisely the opposite in the Biblical timeline of events, this proves that evolution, and natural selection are entirely false, and but mere fantasy. After all, do we not confess that the pen was held by Moses, but the words were uttered by the Spirit of TRUTH?

No, the quagmire of the theistic evolutionists is so deep and irreconcilable with the Biblical and patristic theology and confession that it is entirely insupportable.

[jgress]

The way I reconcile it is by not equating the causal relationship between sin and death with a rigid, temporal sequence. Basically, death in the world came about retroactively as a causal consequence of man's sin. Maybe it's a stretch, but since it's all mysterious anyway (why should the whole world be cursed because of Adam, for instance?), I'm not too bothered intellectually. Unfortunately, I can't get myself to buy the notion that Biblical creation is literally true in every particular; the evidence is just too much against it. Possibly it's all a great deception and actually the evidence goes the other way, but I'm underwhelmed by creationist science, to put it mildly, and you have to wonder why God wouldn't have arranged the evidence to point much more clearly to a literal interpretation of Genesis.

I don't see the scientific theory of evolution as a matter of faith, so if you find you can't believe in it, I don't see any reason, spiritually, why you should. Maybe we could have a discussion of the scientific arguments in another thread. But I guess I wouldn't agree that Met Kallistos is a heretic simply by virtue of accepting evolution.