Q & A: Why Is There No Official Orthodox Position on the Issue of Evolution and Origins?

I received the following important question in an email a few years back for which I have been given permission to reprint, along with my answer, below:

Question:

I am having difficulties with a particular issue; the issue of understanding Evolution and its place in the Eastern Orthodox Church today.

I am a "cradle" Orthodox and so my experience, through the Orthodox Church, on this topic has been that "Christ is not a decendant of monkeys/apes". I have been taught to be loyal to these matters and I have always considered it disrespectful to even want to consider Christ as an ape. In fact, Elder Paisios has boldly stated that it is "blasphemous" to think in this way (this comment can be found in his "Epistles"). I place much trust in these Saints and Elders of our Church, since I have also experienced their divine wisdom first hand and so this is the line of thinking I have comfortably adopted without questioning it using man's rational mind.

What I have come to understand is that our modern day Church is in fact divided on this matter. There are two groups, those who are compatabilist or those who are incompatabilist (cf. OrthodoxWiki for an explanation of terms).

Not dwelling on Patristics (since I am not a theologian), I can think of a modern day example of Father Seraphim Rose who holds the position of an incompatablist (ie. he does not support the idea that Christ is a descendant of a monkey).

My dilemma is, and what is eating me I suppose, why does the administrative Orthodox Church not hold a position on this matter when it is clear that many of our Saints do? Is there "room for everyone on this matter" (as a new convert boldly stated to me) when only one group can be right. In Orthodoxy (or even philosophy) there can only ever be One Truth so both groups can not be right and, like I mentioned I prefer to place my trust in divine revelation than man made proofs.

I understand from Scripture that, being challenged by the Pharisees as to whether he is from the devil or from God, that Christ announces that a house divided can not stand ... so then, why is our Orthodox church allowing itself to be divided on this topic please?

Further, for someone like myself, who places a huge trust and emphasis on the enlightened words of not just ordinary Orthodox but amazing saints like Elder Porphyrios ... am I sinning for standing up and defending Christ's image? I have been called an ideologist (which I am not).

I hope I make some sense, once upon a time the Church had no answers with regards to the Arian controversy and was divided. Then God revealed through miraculous means that there could only be "one truth" (on that matter) through miraculous means ... This topic for me IS a modern day controversy and though some people think - what does it have to do with salvation, I wonder how important it is to defend the "Tree of Life" from the "Tree of Death" (Darwinism and its variations).

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Answer:

The Mysteries of the Universe

By His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos

of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

The discovery of the Higgs boson gave an opportunity for newspapers and magazines to interview scientists and to popularize our knowledge of the world and the universe.

Such an interview was given by the eminent physicist and astronomer Dionysios Simopoulos, director of the Eugenides Planetarium in Athens, who has received many honorary distinctions. We will mention below certain points from this interview about our mysterious universe.

Elder Epiphanios Theodoropoulos on Science

Elder Epiphanios Theodoropoulos

- "Natural sciences in essence describe and certify. They don't explain."

Patristic Cosmology and Scientific Cosmology

By Vladimir Lossky

The cosmology of the Greek Fathers is necessarily expressed in terms of the conception of the universe which prevailed in their own age; a fact which takes nothing whatever away from the properly theological basis of their commentaries upon the Biblical narrative of the creation. The theology of the Orthodox Church, constantly soteriological in its emphasis, has never entered into alliance with philosophy in any attempt at a doctrinal synthesis: despite all its richness, the religious thought of the East has never had a scholasticism. If it does contain certain elements of Christian gnosis, as in the writings of St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus, or in the Physical and Theological Chapters of St. Gregory Palamas, the speculation is always dominated by the central idea of union with God and never acquires the character of a system. Having no philosophical preferences, the Church always freely makes use of philosophy and the sciences for apologetic purposes, but she never has any cause to defend these relative and changing truths as she defends the unchangeable truth of her doctrines. This is why ancient or more modern cosmological theories cannot affect in any way the more fundamental truth which is revealed to the Church: 'the truth of Holy Scripture is far deeper than the limits of our understanding', as Philaret of Moscow says.1 In the face of the vision of the universe which the human race has gained since the period of the renaissance, in which the earth is represented as an atom lost in infinite space amid innumerable other worlds, there is no need for theology to change anything whatever in the narrative of Genesis; any more than it is its business to be concerned over the question of the salvation of the inhabitants of Mars. Revelation remains for theology essentially geocentric, for it is addressed to men and confers upon them the truth as it is relative to their salvation under the conditions which belong to the reality of life on earth. The Fathers saw in the parable of the Good Shepherd, coming down to seek one erring sheep from the mountains where he has left the remaining ninety-nine of his flock, an allusion to the smallness of the fallen world compared with the cosmos as a whole, and with the angelic aeons in particular.2

Why It's So Hard For Scientists To Believe In God

Recorded September 13, 2010

Francis Collins Interviewed by David Hirschman

Question: Why is it so difficult for scientists to believe in a higher power?

Francis Collins: Science is about trying to get rigorous answers to questions about how nature works. And it’s a very important process that’s actually quite reliable if carried out correctly with generation of hypotheses and testing of those by accumulation of data and then drawing conclusions that are continually revisited to be sure they are right. So if you want to answer questions about how nature works, how biology works, for instance, science is the way to get there. Scientists believe in that they are very troubled by a suggestion that other kinds of approaches can be taken to derive truth about nature. And some I think have seen faith as therefore a threat to the scientific method and therefore it to be resisted.