Creation and Early Man

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 712 pages
• Published by: Saint Herman Pr March 16, 2000
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1887904026
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1887904025
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Weighs: 2.2 pounds

Product Description
Amidst the creation/evolution debate that is now raging, with evidence being offered for both sides, few have made use of what Fr. Seraphim Rose called "the missing evidence": the teaching of the ancient Orthodox Holy Fathers on the events of creation, the first-created world, the natures of created things, and the original nature of man.

Now for the first time in the English language, this teaching has been gathered together and set forth in a thorough, detailed, and above all honest manner. Perhaps more than anyone else in our times, Fr. Seraphim Rose searched, studied, prayed and suffered to understand how the ancients noetically apprehended the creation in the light of the God-inspired book of Genesis. Having acquired their mind, he has presented to the modern world the harmonious Patristic vision of the cosmos.

A vital answer to the contemporary "crisis of meaning," this book sheds startling new light on the mysteries of our origin. The Divine vision of the ancient Fathers opens up unforeseen dimensions of the creation: deeper levels of reality that cannot be reached through rational or scientific means.

About The Author
Fr. Seraphim Rose (1934-1982) is a major Patristic philosopher and prophetic voice for our times. An Orthodox priest-monk who lived in the mountains of northern California, he has become one of the best-loved spiritual writers in Russia.

Reader Reviews
Here is a truly great book presenting the heart and soul of the Orthodox Christian doctrine of creation, the fruit of the research and study on the subject of creation and evolution done by Fr. Seraphim Rose during the last 15 years of his life. Disturbed by the easy if shallow acceptance of evolutionism by many modern Orthodox Christian authorities, Fr. Seraphim researched the subject of creation and evolution in depth in relation to Orthodox theology, and particularly in relation to patristic thought. Since the Orthodox Church considers the Church Fathers to be normative for its theology, Fr. Seraphim did a comparative study of all the available patristic commentaries on the Haexameron (the Six Days of Creation in Genesis): Origen, St.Basil the Great, St. Ambrose, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Blessed Augustine, and St. Ephrem the Syrian. This seems not to have been done before, at least not to so thorough an extent in modern times. What he found, by a thorough study of these sources, was that, contrary to the efforts of certain theologians to offer a "reading" of the Fathers that would support Darwinism, none of the Great Fathers of the Church can be claimed to support anything like current evolution theory. Even St. Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine, the two names most often mentioned in connection with doctrines that might support some form of evolution theory, are shown by Fr. Seraphim most convincingly to be thoroughly creationist in the Biblical and traditional sense. All of their more ambiguous remarks, when placed in context of their total thought, can in no way be claimed as some kind of ancient prefiguring of evolution. Any "reading" of any of the Fathers named above to support evolutionism is extremely far-fetched, and is the product of wishful thinking on the part of those Orthodox who want their church's theology to be more "up to date" and not at all in accord with the Patristic "phronema" (mind), which is supposed to be the hallmark of the Orthodox Church. The Patristic phronema cannot be said to be specifically anti-evolutionist in the strict sense of directly denying evolution as such, but only because transformism as a way of conceiving the origin of creatures was literally inconceivable, given their theistic and Trinitarian presuppositions and worldview. This remains a fact, claims Fr. Seraphim, whatever one might think about evolutionism as a theory of origins. The heart of the problem for Orthodox Christians, then, given this fact, is how to think about creation, origins, and the seemingly overwhelming unanimity (a false impression, in any case, as is proved by the recent surge of support for intelligent design in science) of scientific thought in support of the doctrine of evolution. Does this mean the Fathers are "creationists", in the currently understood meaning of that term, with its fundamentalist, or at least evangelical Protestant connotation? Not at all. They were creationists, certainly, but in a way that does not conform exactly to any contemporary notion, whether fundamentalist or evangelicalist or theistic-evolutionist. If neo-darwinist evolutionism can be said to be (prescinding from more recent non-gradual tweakings of the theory) horizontal, gradualist, randomly and blindly (unintelligently) caused, linear transformism, the Patristic doctrine of creation is vertically emergent, intelligently designed, hierarchically informed crystallization or condensation--ie, "And God said, let there be..., and it was so." This superb study of the Patristic interpretation of Genesis is accompanied by Fr. Seraphim's acute analysis of the kind of philosophy that underlies evolutionism in all its forms. He finds it to be a set of modernist, relativist, pluralist, secularist, empiricist presuppositions that is essentially incompatible with the true Orthodox ethos. There are a thousand books out there on creation and evolution, but among them, "Genesis, Creation and Early Man" is truly unique. Fr. Damascene Christensen, Fr. Seraphim's editor, contributes a thoughtful introduction and epilogue, and Philip Johnson contributes a forward that brings the creation-evolution debate up to the minute. There is simply nothing like this book elsewhere in the field. If you are interested in what the Fathers of the Church thought about the creation story of Genesis, and how they grappled with the science and philosophy of their time, and how their solution is relevant to us today, do not miss this wonderful and rewarding book.