God as the Almighty and Free Creator
Vol. 1 - Chapter 2.2 - Orthodox Teachings on Creation and the Theory of Evolution
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Orthodox Teachings on Creation and the Theory of Evolution
Chapter 2.2 — God as the Almighty and Free Creator
In the Orthodox tradition, God has always been honored as the Almighty, as He is called in the Bible. God appeared to Abram and said to him: "I am God Almighty "(Hebrew: אל שדי , El Shaddai) (Genesis 17:1). With this sacred Name, Isaac blessed Jacob: "But God Almighty ( אל שדי ) bless you" (Gen. 28:3).
Evolutionism diminishes God's omnipotence by denying God the ability to create the world in six days. What is "difficult" and "impossible" for God to accomplish in one week, evolutionists help Him to accomplish by stretching the process over billions of years. By denying Church Tradition and distorting the meaning of Scripture, they impose an evolutionary method of "creation" on God and force Him to fit into a man-made framework and timeline. God is not omnipotent to create the world as He wishes and as He revealed to the prophet Moses.
Teilhard de Chardin wrote:
"If we consider the evolution of matter in its central, clearest part, it is reduced, according to modern theories, to the gradual formation, by increasing complication, of the various elements revealed by physico-chemistry... Matter from the very beginning obeys in its own way the great biological law of 'complication'" [185, с. 48, 49].
None of the Holy Fathers wrote about such a "biological law", and none of the teachers of the Church said that matter in the days of Creation developed "by itself" or "by creative inertia". Yet some of the "orthodox evolutionists" write about it in such a way:
"God gives the impulse at the breakthrough, the appearance of some new form of being of the universe. Then, according to the creative inertia given by God, during the next creative day that part of being, which He touched, develops itself" [85, p. 21].
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But the Orthodox Church perceives Creation quite differently:
Our God in heaven and on earth created all things as He willed (Ps. 113:11).
St. John Chrysostom:
"Do not measure the power of God by your own considerations, as a weak man. Do not think that God can do only what you can conceive. If He can only do what I can think, then I can safely say that God is far less than thought, because my thought has measured Him. But He surpasses thought and overcomes reason; untraceable is the Creator, and incomprehensible are His works." [62, с. 762].
Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose):
"'The 'God' of Christian evolution is such a god 'who is not sufficient to do all the work'; and the very reason why the doctrine of evolution was invented was to explain the universe on the assumption that either God does not exist, or He is incapable of creating the world or bringing it into being in six days by a single word of His. Evolution would never have been thought of by people who believe in the God whom Orthodox Christians worship." [135, p. 507].
Archbishop Macarius (Bulgakov) notes that the doctrine of creation "belongs among the distinctive truths of Divine Revelation, which not only the simple pagans, but also their very sages did not know: for some of them recognized that the world is eternal; others admitted its outflow from God; others taught that the world was formed by itself, by chance, from eternal chaos, or atoms; others that it was formed by God from matter coexistent to Himself, and no one could rise to the notion of the production of the world from nothing by the almighty power of God " [92, с. 351].
It is characteristic that these four doctrines, alien to the Church, are varieties of evolutionist theories. The biblical viewpoint alone, in contrast to all of them, is purely creationist, i.e., it does not contain the idea of the evolution of the created world, but speaks of the creative acts of the Living God.
In these variants of distortion of the Divine Revelation, evolution, as a creative force, either acts instead of God, or is a kind of intermediary, a "demiurge", an inferior direct creator.
Instead of God, evolution appears as the driving mechanism of development in the first and third concepts, according to which the world is "eternal" or "formed by itself". As an intermediary of God in Creation, evolution appears in the second and fourth concepts, which speak of the "outflow" of matter from God and of matter "consubstantial" with God.
All these concepts are fundamentally irreconcilable with Orthodox doctrine, according to which the only co-creators with the Heavenly Father are the Son and the Holy Spirit: "By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power" (Ps. 32, 6).
The confession of the Triune God implies the recognition of His complete freedom, and the assumption that He has a "helper" (in the form of impersonal evolution or other intermediaries) certainly limits the Creator's freedom.
God is the Lawgiver, and realizing free creation, He does not limit Himself within the framework of natural laws. He cannot be subject to any external laws at all. In such a free act as Creation, God Himself must neither depend on the "law of evolution", nor be limited by the framework of its "obligatory" use.
This is evidenced by the Bible when it states the "strange" and "unscientific" fact that the waters produced life on the fifth day, and that the earth produced life on the sixth day. It happened not according to laws known to us, but in fulfillment of the incomprehensible and omnipotent word of the Creator. And God said, "Let the waters bring forth..." (Genesis 1:20). And God said, “Let the earth bring forth..." (Genesis 1:24).
The Holy Fathers and Orthodox theologians speak about this.
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem:
“From a single earth come creeping things, and beasts, and cattle, and trees, and food, and gold, and silver, and copper, and iron, and stone... Water is of one nature, but from it are born fish and birds; and as those swim in the waters, so do these fly in the air” [79, p. 117].
Lev Tikhomirov noted that the recognition of the creation of the world testifies to the recognition of the complete freedom of the Creator, a truly Divine freedom:
“When the mind proceeds from the observation of the laws of matter, it can in no way admit the fact of creation. It knows only the generation of one phenomenon from another. The idea of creation could only have come from the revelation of the One Who stands outside the laws of matter, Who Himself created matter, not in the sense that He composed it out of nothing, but in the sense that in place of nothing He created something, created some being where there was no being. To this being called forth from non-being the Creator gave certain laws, as He pleased, just as He could have created something completely different, with completely different laws. For the human mind, which has never observed such a creation, but knows only the generation, evolution, and transformation of what exists, the idea of creating being in place of non-being is completely unthinkable; it could not even have occurred to it; it is, so to speak, absurd, contrary to everything that we know, that we can think” [153, pp. 28–29].
Alexey Stepanovich Khomyakov wrote in a similar vein:
“In the language of religion, which transfers to the invisible sky the laws by which the visible world of the earth and its visible ruler man are governed, freedom is expressed by creation, and necessity by birth. It is hardly possible to find symbols more faithful to the personification of these abstract ideas. Birth represents to the crudest mind the inseparable nature of necessity and the lack of will, just as the act of creation represents the most living and clear evidence of spiritual freedom, or better to say, will (for freedom is a negative concept, and will is positive)” [179, p. 217].
Recognizing the validity of the above judgments of Russian philosophers, we note that the Orthodox Church confesses God as a Being who has absolute freedom and unlimited expression of will [2].
The evolutionary doctrine encroaches on this divine freedom, denies the Lord the right to be the Almighty Creator, which He certainly is. By limiting God in His freedom and omnipotence, evolutionism deprives Him of the most important divine attributes [186, pp. 252–263], [13, pp. 89–97].
Manifesting His omnipotence and freedom, God produced each living species not by “natural” birth from a pre-existing species, but by creation. At the same time, the first representatives of all species of flora and fauna had no ancestors, and appeared immediately as fully grown adults. The chicken appeared before the egg.
St. Ephraim the Syrian:
“The grains, at the time of their creation, were the offspring of one moment, but in appearance they seemed to be the offspring of months. The trees also, at the time of their creation, were the offspring of a single day, but in their perfection and in the fruits that burdened their branches, they seemed to be the offspring of years" [42, pp. 222–223].
"As trees, grasses, animals, birds, and man were all together both old and young: old in the form of their members and compositions, young in the time of their creation; so the moon was both old and young; young because it had barely been created, old because it was full, as on the fifteenth day" [42, p. 224].
It is completely senseless to determine the age of the first created beings by the day of their creation, since yesterday they did not exist, and today they already look like they are of full age. It is impossible in principle to evaluate the first representatives of the plant and animal world, like their descendants, by the signs known to science (trees - by annual rings, animals - by the shoots on the horns or by the characteristics of the teeth).
The above also applies fully to the first representative of the species Homo sapiens — Adam. He, like Eve, who was created from him, was created as an adult.
St. Ephraim the Syrian:
“The commandment given to our first parents testifies to their mature age” [42, p. 235].
Not a boy, but a man was able to name animals.
Adam did not survive infancy. It was not a baby who was entrusted with making and keeping the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:15).
The omnipotence of God was also manifested in the fact that everything He created was very graceful and perfect. God did not create any ugly or "unfinished" forms: "And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31). For example, the plants created on the third day were immediately adorned with flowers and fruits.
Saint Gregory of Nyssa:
“Everything was crowned with fresh grass and the varied beauty of trees that had just emerged from the earth, immediately attaining perfect beauty” [26, p. 12].
The grace and beauty of the world as a whole and in each of its individual parts accompany the actions of the Almighty Creator.
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