PeterTheAleut said:
jckstraw72 said:
PeterTheAleut said:
jckstraw72 said:
Please note that the Theokritoffs are not suggesting that we must follow Fr Seraphim's example of reading Genesis exactly as the Fathers did, merely that he comes to honest and logical conclusions regarding the committment to young earth creationism. How is this all an Orthodox needs to know? Are you elevating Fr Seraphim's opinion to the status of infallibility; and one that all Orthodox believers should follow? Where does the Church teach that the Orthodox believer must read Genesis in such a way?
no im not elevating Fr. Seraphim to infallibility -- but rather the concensus of the Church Fathers.
Why do we need to elevate ANY authority found within the Church and make it an authority external to ourselves and to which we must assent without question? Catholics have the infallible Pope, and Protestants have the infallible Scriptures. And the Orthodox have the infallible
patristic consensus? ??? Last I understood, only the Church is infallible; the consensus of the Fathers may indeed be a very good witness to the mind of the Church, but I would not distill the infallibility of the Church down to this. To do so is to embrace the model of an external, overarching infallible authority that I abandoned when I left the Protestant/Catholic world to become Orthodox.
correct, only the Church is infallible. What I meant is that when the Fathers speak with one mind we see it as the mind of the Church. Am i incorrect in this understanding? -- because that is essentially what converted me to Orthodoxy
But even this understanding of patristic wisdom I would criticize as essentially an attempt to distill the infallible authority of the Church down to just one or two of its components--in this case, patristic consensus. We should not regard the Fathers as a magisterium whose authority, when they speak of one mind, is incapable of error and therefore irreformable (the definition of infallible). We do not receive the unanimous witness of the Fathers without question and without criticism merely because those whom we call "the Fathers" spoke in one accord. Rather, when we receive the teachings of the Fathers as true, we do so because their wisdom resonates with what we the faithful experience to be true. This requires that we be active participants in all the other aspects of Holy Tradition--i.e., the Divine Liturgy and other services of prayer, the daily reading of Scripture and the Fathers, the writing and veneration of icons, works of mercy to our brothers and sisters and the less fortunate among us, etc. We can't just study the texts of the Fathers and look for a consensus that we can proclaim as "the united mind of the Fathers" to which all must adhere to be able to consider ourselves Orthodox.
ok, i agree with you here. when i have spoken of the concensus of the Fathers have i spoken too narrowly. however, i have provided Scripture, Patristics, modern Saints, canons, the Church calendar, and icons altogether. when i said the concensus of the Fathers i was thinking of how this is played out in the whole life of the Church, and not
only the Fathers' writings.
jckstraw72 said:
PeterTheAleut said:
jckstraw72 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems now you are agreeing that if we simply accept the Fathers at their word we will believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis? This is what I have been trying to get at.
And the Church at least teaches us to believe in a literal Adam and Eve who were immortal physically before sin -- this is taught by the Council of Laodicea and ratified by the 6th and 7th Ecumenical Councils. Also icons show us that Adam and Eve and their descendants are literal people.
Have you ever seen an iconographic depiction of an historical Adam and Eve?
absolutely. There are several in Fr. Seraphim's book, and I have seen many in person. Have you seen a Pascha icon with Christ pulling Adam and Eve out of Hades with halos on them? I know my parish has one. I have also seen icons of just Adam, the first-created man. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=37996998&l=f009ef9f4b&id=9316336 there you can see one from the Orthodox orphanage in Guatemala city, and here: http://www.comeandseeicons.com/a/inp28.htm is another. St. Irenaeus tells us that it is heresy to say Adam was NOT saved. This of course requires him to be real.
Yes, Adam is real, but not necessarily in the strictly historic sense that he was a flesh and blood individual just like you and me. We can recognize Adam as being the whole of mankind and still recognize Adam to be real.
but if Adam is real only in a symbolic sense, why would he have a halo. if we represents all of mankind, then giving him a halo means all of mankind is definitely redeemed.
BTW, I also happened to notice that both the icons to which you posted links are signed by their writers, which is NOT a canonical practice--icons are NOT to be signed by their writers, who are to remain completely anonymous. One of the icons I even recognize to be published by Monastery Icons, a known producer of signed and canonically dubious icons--I have one of them, having purchased it when I was yet an ignorant inquirer. Thus, I really have to question whether these two icons truly represent the Orthodox iconographic tradition and should even be seen as presenting what we believe as Orthodox. I'm inclined now to think not. Maybe LBK can step in and verify what I've just seen and concluded.
that might very well be ... i don't know about rules for icons and all that. however, in Fr. Seraphim's books there are much older icons included from ancient Churches and monasteries ... if i can figure out how to use the scanners on campus i can scan some of them. also, the wikipedia page i provided mentions that Adam and Eve are in the All Saints icons with halos, and there are in many Paschal icons with halos, although I know some don't have them with halos.
and what of people who have Adam, or other early Genesis figures as their patron Saints? do they just not have actual patrons?
jckstraw72 said:
PeterTheAleut said:
jckstraw72 said:
If this were an issue like the toll-houses where there really is no concensus on whether they exist, or even if they do, how to understand them -- there have been people on both sides throughout history -- i could understand going either way and asking where does the Church definitively teach the tollhouses. but on this issue there really is a consistent line of teaching -- where do we see another way of interpreting the whole of the Adam and Eve story (not just the length of the days)?
Again, why do we need to see an infallible consensus?
how else do we know the truth? if you take away infallibility you consent to denominations.
I'm not taking away infallibility, since I do recognize infallibility as the possession of the whole Church. Do you remember me saying this? I just oppose any attempt to condense infallibility to just one aspect of the Holy Spirit's guidance of the Church so as to make this aspect an external authority to whom we bow down and offer blind assent and obedience. The whole Church includes the Fathers, but it also includes bishops, priests, deacons, and all the faithful worshiping the Holy Trinity and celebrating the risen Christ's presence in the Eucharist throughout all ages. Thus, the Spirit-guided charism of knowing and teaching the truth is not the sole property of the papacy, the Scriptures, nor the "consensus" of the Fathers. We are all to know (i.e., experience) the Truth and bear witness to Him.
so the question is, who in the Orthodox Church bore witness against a literal understanding of Genesis before the influence of evolution came around? Did anyone at all? and just bc some question it now does not necessarily mean that is the mind of the Church beginning to express itself, since we know that all kinds of errors and heresies have begun within the Church and taken time to weed out -- such as Iconoclasm. im not saying you guys are heretics, just trying to point out that not every movement within the Church actually belongs properly to the Church. 1900 yrs of consistent teaching (Scripture, Fathers, Saints, icons, canons, calendar, hymns, etc) is much more reliable, unless ya'll are just willing to say that the Church just didnt really know Genesis until science enlightened us.
St. Bede the Venerable, in his commentary on Genesis, said it is ok to employ allegorical interpretations (the 4 rivers are the 4 Gospels, etc) which he did to a great extent, as long as you do not lose the explicit faith that is based in the history of Genesis (quoted in Jaroslav Pelikan's
The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 3: The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300) ) which is the same thing that St. Augustine said.
so you are all correct -- there is a definite place for allegorical interpretations of Genesis within the Church -- but they are meant to draw mystical, theological, and moral implications (such as seeing the angel with the flaming sword as representing the loss of Paradise in every person's soul), and not for denying the literal truth of the Scripture (St. Macarius says the angel with the sword was literally at the gate of the Garden). that simply has no precedent in the Church.