Greek Versions of the Bible.

The Hellenistic Jewish literature is the best evidence of the influence exercised by Greek thought upon the “people of the book.” The first urgent need of the Hellenistic Jews in Alexandria was a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

The strange legends which are connected with the origin of this translation, and which go back to the Letter of Aristeas, are discussed under Aristeas and Bible; it is sufficient to say that the whole translation was probably completed by the middle of the second century B.C. It was highly esteemed by the Hellenistic Jews. Philo (“De Vita Moysis,” ii., § 67) calls the translators not merely ἑρμηνεῖς [translators], but ίεροφάνται καὶ προφῆται [priests and prophets], who partook of the spirit of Moses. Even the prejudiced Palestinian teachers accepted it and praised the beauty of the Greek language (Soṭah vii. 3; Meg. i. 9). They permitted girls to study it, and declared it to be the only language into which the Torah might be translated (Yer. i. 1).

The Jews called themselves Palestinians in religion, but Hellenes in language (Philo, “De Congressu Quærendæ Erud.” § 8), and the terms ἡμεῐς (“we”) and Ἑβραῖοι (“the Hebrews”) were contrasted (idem, “De Confusione Linguarum,” § 26). The real Hellenes, however, could not understand the Greek of this Bible, for it was intermixed with many Hebrew expressions, and entirely new meanings were at times given to Greek phrases.

On the other hand, Judaism could not appreciate for any length of time the treasure it had acquired in the Greek Bible, and the preservation of the Septuagint is due to the Christian Church, which was first founded among Greek-speaking peoples. The mother church [Israel] did not altogether give up the Greek translation of the Bible; it merely attempted to prevent the Christians from forging a weapon from it.

After the second century it sought to replace the Septuagint with more correct translations. Aquila, a Jewish proselyte, endeavored to put an end to all quarrels with the Christians by slavishly following the original Hebrew in his new translation; Theodotion, following the Septuagint, sought to revise it by means of a thorough collation with the original.

As it became evident that the controversy could not be ended in this way, the Jews ceased to dispute with the Christians concerning the true religion, and forbade the study of Greek. They declared that the day on which the Bible had been translated into Greek was as fateful as that on which the golden calf had been worshiped (Soferim i.); that at the time when this translation was made darkness had come upon Egypt for three days (Ta” />

This passage is often called the “prologue of John.” Some scholars once theorized that this section was a Hymn inserted based on the uniqueness of certain terms (logos and grace in the prologue that appear nowhere else in the Book). This idea doesn’t take into account much of the significance of this passage to the whole. The prologue in John sets the stage for the rest of the book. It shows the areas of focus John takes in Gospel: A) Jesus’ Divine role, and B) the authority of those who believe in God.

Alan Culpepper (“The Pivot of John’s Prologue,” New Testament Studies 27, 1980, 1-31) believes that the prologue is a chiasmus with 12b at the center. I think he might be on to something take a look at the structure:

A vv.1-2 The Word as God and with God
. B v. 3 Creation came through the Word
. . C vv. 4-5 We have received life through the Word
. . . D vv. 6-8 John the Baptist is sent to testify
. . . . E vv. 9-10 Incarnation and the response of the world
. . . . . F v. 11 The Word and his own (Israel)
. . . . . . G v. 12a Those who accepted the Word
. . . . . . . . H v. 12b Authority to become children of God
. . . . . . G’ v. 12c Those who believed the Word
. . . . . F’ v. 13 The Word and his own (believers)
. . . . E’ v. 14 Incarnation and the response of the community
. . . D’ v. 15 The testimony of John the Baptist
. .C’ v. 16 We have received grace through the Word
. B’ v. 17 Grace and truth came through the Word
A’ v. 18 The Word as God and with God

The theme’s of John’s Gospel are laid out right from the get go! But it gets better…

More…

A stack of uninterpreted Bible quotes out of context is not a responsible way to assert or teach a Christian belief. But in this case I think it does make a fruitful meditation on what is true of the child of God who “abides in Him.” So here are the passages in the new Testament that describe the believer and Church that are in Christ:

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. — John 1:4

“For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, — John 5:26

“He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. — John 6:56

“but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.” — John 10:38

So, when he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him immediately.” — John 13:31,32

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. — John 15:5

being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, — Romans 3:24

Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 6:11

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 6:23

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. — Romans 8:1,2

nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 8:39

so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. — Romans 12:5

Therefore I have reason to glory in Christ Jesus in the things which pertain to God. — Romans 15:17

Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, — Romans 16:3

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my countrymen and my fellow prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me. — Romans 16:7

Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and Stachys, my beloved. Greet Apelles, approved in Christ. Greet those who are of the household of Aristobulus. — Romans 16:9,10

To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours: — 1 Cor 1:2

But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption — 1 Cor 1:30

And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. — 1 Cor 3:1

For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. — 1 Cor 4:15

For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church. — 1 Cor 4:17

Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. — 1 Cor 15:18,19

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. — 1 Cor 15:22

I affirm, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. — 1 Cor 15:31

My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. — 1 Cor 16:24

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us — by me, Silvanus, and Timothy — was not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes. For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, — 2 Cor 1:19-21

Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. — 2 Cor 2:14

For we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ. — 2 Cor 2:17

But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. — 2 Cor 3:14

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. — 2 Cor 5:17

that is that, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. — 2 Cor 5:19

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. — 2 Cor 5:21

But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. — 2 Cor 11:3

And I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea which were in Christ. — Galatians 1:22

And this occurred because of false brethren secretly brought in, who came in by stealth to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage, — Galatians 2:4

“knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified. — Galatians 2:16

that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. — Galatians 3:14

And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect. — Galatians 3:17

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. — Galatians 3:26

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. — Galatians 3:28

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love. — Galatians 5:6

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation. — Galatians 6:15

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus: — Ephesians 1:1

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, — Ephesians 1:3,4

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace — Ephesians 1:7

having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, — Ephesians 1:9-11

that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, — Ephesians 1:12,13

which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, — Ephesians 1:20

and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. — Ephesians 2:6,7

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. — Ephesians 2:10

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. — Ephesians 2:13

having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, — Ephesians 2:15

in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. — Ephesians 2:21,22

that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, — Ephesians 3:6

according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him. — Ephesians 3:11,12

And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you. — Ephesians 4:32

Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons: — Philippians 1:1

so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard, and to all the rest, that my chains are in Christ; — Philippians 1:13

Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, — Philippians 2:1

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, — Philippians 2:5

For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, — Philippians 3:3

and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; — Philippians 3:9

I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. — Philippians 3:14

Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren who are with me greet you. — Philippians 4:21

To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colosse: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. — Coloss 1:2

in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. — Coloss 1:14

And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. — Coloss 1:17

For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, — Coloss 1:19

Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. — Coloss 1:28

in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. — Coloss 2:3

As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, — Coloss 2:6

rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. — Coloss 2:7

For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, — Coloss 2:9-11

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. — 1 Thess 4:16

in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. — 1 Thess 5:18

that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. — 2 Thess 1:12

And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. — 1 Timothy 1:14

for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle — I am speaking the truth in Christ and not lying — a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. — 1 Timothy 2:7

For those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus. — 1 Timothy 3:13

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, — 2 Timothy 1:1

who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, — 2 Timothy 1:9

Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. — 2 Timothy 1:13

You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. — 2 Timothy 2:1

Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. — 2 Timothy 2:10

Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. — 2 Timothy 3:12

and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. — 2 Timothy 3:15

that the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgment of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. — Philemon 1:6

Therefore, though I might be very bold in Christ to command you what is fitting, — Philemon 1:8

Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, greets you, — Philemon 1:23

having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. — 1 Peter 3:16

Greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace to you all who are in Christ Jesus. Amen. — 1 Peter 5:14

This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. — 1 John 1:5

But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked. — 1 John 2:5,6

Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining. — 1 John 2:8

But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him. And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. — 1 John 2:27,28

And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. — 1 John 3:5,6

Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. — 1 John 3:24

By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. — 1 John 4:13

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. — 1 John 4:15,16

Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. — 1 John 5:14

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. — 1 John 5:20

Many churches in the U.S. draw heavily from the values and methods of secular businesses. When one pastor was confronted about this fact he replied, “So what? A principle is a principle and God created all of the principles.” His answer illustrates the degree to which Enlightenment thought has shaped our understanding of God and faith.

The worldview behind his statement is the same as that held by deism — God has created the cosmos with certain knowable and immutable laws. Among them are the laws of gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, and the laws of mathematics. But modern people have expanded the list to include other areas of life such as leadership, relationships, and business. In order to function properly, our task is to discover these laws and translate them into applicable principles. In this view God is the law-writer, the principle-creator, the watchmaker.

The problem with the world, this view argues, is that most people are not living by the right principles. They are trying to run a diesel truck on fruit juice — it just won’t work. Rather than applying the principles of life derived from scientists, political leaders, or Oprah Winfrey, people should be living by God’s principles. After all, as the Creator of all things, he knows what’s best, right?

This understanding of God informs how many contemporary Christians engage the Bible. They believe the Scriptures are a divine instruction manual for life; a resource to be culled for principles that may then be applied to any challenge or dilemma. I’ve heard church leaders joke that B-I-B-L-E stands for “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth,” and others have called it the “owner’s manual” for a human being. We may chuckle at these metaphors for the Bible, but behind them is a very un-Christian understanding of God and ironically an unbiblical one rooted in Enlightenment thinking.

When the Bible is primarily seen as a depository of divine principles for life, it fundamentally changes the way we engage God and his Word. Rather than a vehicle for knowing God and fostering our communion with him, we search the Scriptures for applicable principles that we may employ to control our world and life. This is not Christianity; this is Christian deism. In other words, we actually replace a relationship with God for a relationship with the Bible. If one has the repair manual, why bother with the expense of a mechanic?

Tim Keller, in his book “Counterfeit Gods,” defined idols as “good things turned into ultimate things.” I wonder if this definition applies to what some evangelicals have done to the Bible. Rather than making the Bible the means by which we discover and commune with God, they have made the Bible an end in itself. It has come to replace Jesus Christ as the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End of their faith.

I realize that in Christian traditions holding a very high view of the Scriptures, like my own, it may sound as if I am downgrading the importance of the Bible. That is not the case. I believe it is God’s Word, inspired by him, and the authority for our faith and lives. Through it we discover who he is — and what greater gift can there be? And it does contain many useful and applicable principles for life and faith. But in our zeal to honor the importance of the Bible and extol its usefulness, we may unintentionally do the opposite. We may reduce the Bible from God’s revelation of himself to merely a revelation of divine principles for life. And we are not the first to fall into this subtle trap.

The religious leaders in Jesus’ time were expert students of the Scriptures. They had memorized the entire Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament). And they had parsed every command, extracted every principle, and delineated every instruction it contained. But their mastery of Scripture had not resulted in actually knowing God or recognizing his Son when he stood right in front of them. Jesus said to these leaders, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”9

This is the sinister shortcoming of faith built upon principles, laws, and formulas. It causes us to reduce faith to divine instructions or godly self-help tips: five steps to a more godly marriage, how to raise kids God’s way, biblical laws of leadership, managing your finances with kingdom principles, etc. But discovering and applying these principles does not actually require a relationship with God. Instead, being a Christian simply means you have exchanged a worldly set of life principles for a new set taken from the Bible. But like an atheist or deist, the Christian deist can put these new principles into practice without God being involved. God can be set aside while we remain in control of our lives. He may be praised, thanked, and worshipped for giving us his wise precepts for life, but as with an absentee watchmaker, God’s present participation is altogether optional.

This posture is particularly tempting in affluent, professional communities where people are accustomed to off-the-shelf solutions and self-help manuals. Their education and wealth mean they are used to being in control of their lives, and a huge publishing industry has ensured they maintain this illusion. Many best sellers are self-help books advocating principles to overcome nearly any problem. While proven formulas might be expected for losing weight or growing a vegetable garden, we tend to apply scientific certainty to even the more mysterious areas of life. Perusing the shelves at the local bookstore can be a very comforting exercise. Knowing that there is a solution to any problem life throws at you provides a sense of control — it calms our fears. And if the answer cannot be found at the bookstore, we know there is always the pharmacy down the street.

This same trend is evident in many other areas of contemporary Christian teaching. It is now possible to have a “Christian” marriage, a “Christian” business, and even a “Christian” nation without Christ actually being present. The fact that we employ principles derived from the Bible is enough to convince us that they are — and therefore we are — Christian.

This popular form of Christianity with its emphasis on working principles and worshiping the Bible rather than God, may be appealing because it is far more predictable and manageable than an actual relationship with God. Relationships, whether human or divine, are messy, time consuming, and often uncontrollable. But principles are comprehensible and clinical. Perhaps this explains why a 2005 study found that only 3 percent of pastors listed prayer as a priority in their ministry. If he’s already given you the watch, why bother maintaining a relationship with the watchmaker?

Skye Jethani is an ordained pastor in the Christian & Missionary Alliance denomination. 

Jethani’s article appeared recently at the Huffington Post. I’ve reproduced it here in full rather than linking to it (and will gladly remove it if Jethani or the HuffPo request) in hopes that readers will weigh his thoughts before automatically dismissing them as “typical HuffPo liberalism.” 

What daily practice may help American Christians become more concerned about issues of poverty, conservation and civil liberties?

Reading the Bible.

The answer may come as a surprise to those locked into viewing religious practices in ideological boxes. However, a new study by Baylor University researcher Aaron Franzen found frequent Bible reading predicted greater support for issues ranging from the compatibility of science and religion to more humane treatment of criminals.

The study, one of the first to examine the social consequences of reading Scripture, reveals the effects of Bible reading appear to transcend conservative-liberal boundaries.

Thus, even as opposition to same-sex marriage and legalized abortion tends to increase with more time spent with the Bible, so does the number of people who say it is important to actively seek social and economic justice, Franzen found.

It was not just liberal Christians who found their attitudes changing.

In many cases, even those who believe the Bible is literally true but rarely read the book found themselves at odds with their evangelical sisters and brothers who regularly read the holy text.

Keep reading…

Keep reading!

This excellent essay that reflects why I like my Bible and liturgy to require a little bit of effort, and not be so easy to read that we miss what the writer meant and how he said it.

Likewise this essay is not too easy to read; you’ll want to follow his hyperlinks, and Google or Wiki the scholars he names.

by Davis A. Young
Deptartment of Geology, Geography and Environmental Studies, Calvin College
From: Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 40.1:42-45 (3/1988)

A common impression exists among lay Christians and many non-Christians that the church interpreted Genesis 1-3 literally until the last two centuries. This allegedly traditional rendering includes the idea that God created the cosmos over a span of six ordinary 24-hour days, that there was no death in the world until the fall of Adam, and that at the time of the fall God introduced many other unpleasantries into the world-order as a punishment for sin. Included is the notion that thorns and thistles were not part of the original creation. Moreover, one encounters the suggestion that the church firmly held to these traditional ideas until the early 19th century, when geology proposed the concepts of an old earth and death before the appearance of man. The conclusion for many evangelicals is that these traditional ideas are the plain teaching of Scripture, and that attempts to avoid these plain teachings arose because of an unholy desire to accommodate biblical teaching to the dictates of an anti-Christian modern science.

That such a reading of church history is simplistic becomes clear when we consider the views of Augustine, the church’s greatest theologian between Paul and Aquinas, on Genesis 1-3. Although we can gain an inkling of Augustine’s approach to Genesis 1-3 from scattered comments in Confessions and The City of God, deeper insight is now possible for a wide audience with the recent publication of a fresh English translation of his great work, On the Literal Meaning of Genesis.’ The few studies of Augustine’s view of creation that are based on the Latin text are not widely accessible. It is my judgment that anyone seriously interested in the Genesis-science discussion should take the time to study this new translation. It is full of surprises. I wish to make a few observations about Augustine’s general approach and his specific interpretations of the text of Genesis 1-3.

General Comments About Interpretation

Intriguing as Augustine’s interpretations of specific texts may be, let’s first look at some general attitudes that Augustine displays towards the text and its interpretation.

1. Augustine stresses that his interpretation of Genesis 1-3 is literal and not metaphorical or allegorical

Augustine had tried his hand earlier at interpretation of Genesis (A Commentary on Genesis: Two Books against the Manichees) and adopted a more allegorical method. He later came to reject that method and in this more mature work, written in his late fifties just before The City of God, he is concerned “to discuss Sacred Scriptures according to the plain meaning of the historical facts, not according to future events which they foreshadow” (p. 39). Given his strong commitment to literal interpretation, it is fascinating to recognize that the outcome bears absolutely no resemblance to modern literal interpretations. For example, he concludes that in Genesis I the terms “light,” “day,” and “morning” bear a spiritual, rather than physical, meaning. Yet for Augustine, spiritual light is just as literal as physical light, and the creation of spiritual light is just as much a historical event or fact as the creation of physical light. What is literal for one person may not be literal for others.

2. Augustine claims that the interpretation of Genesis I is not at all obvious and is fraught with difficulties.

Commitment to a literal interpretation does not solve all problems, nor does it lock the exegete into only one reading of the text. Perhaps more than any other interpreter, Augustine was painfully aware of the difficulties of the text. On point after point he lays out the various possibilities and often does not know how to commit himself. He freely acknowledges the many problems and options. He says that he has

worked out and presented the statements of the book of Genesis in a variety of ways according to my ability; and, in interpreting words that have been written obscurely for the purpose of stimulating our thought, I have not rashly taken my stand on one side against a rival interpretation which might possibly be better. I have thought that each one, in keeping with his powers of understanding, should choose the interpretation that he can grasp. Where he cannot understand Holy Scripture, let him glorify and fear for himself. (pp. 43-44, emphasis mine)

He further observes that “It is a laborious and difficult task for the powers of our human understanding to see clearly the meaning of the sacred writer in the matter of these six days” (p. 103). How different is his attitude than those who, disregarding the labors of many of the church’s greatest minds over the past two millennia, have convinced themselves that the fundamental interpretation of Genesis 1-3 is perfectly obvious. If we follow Augustine’s lead, we will be very careful before using the words “the clear teaching of Scripture” in connection with these chapters.

3. Augustine claims that we ought to be willing to change our minds about the interpretation of Genesis 1-3,  particularly as new information comes to light.

Consistent with the claim that Genesis 1-3 is difficult and obscure, Augustine repeatedly urges restraint, flexibility, openness to new interpretations, and openness to new knowledge that may provide insight into the text. He says that “in matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision … we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture” (p. 41).

4. Augustine is particularly emphatic that we ought not to make absurd statements about what the Bible says when such statements flatly contradict what people already know from other reliable sources.

We ought not to rigidly and dogmatically commit Scripture to interpretations that can easily be shown to he false on the basis of physical evidence.

It seems to me that the following lengthy quotation cannot be heard enough because it is so terribly relevant to the present discussion about Genesis and earth history. Augustine says:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men…. Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. (pp. 42-43)

It seems to me that some of the young-earth, flood geology proponents of this century exemplify those whom Augustine had in mind. One can only guess at the damage done to evangelistic efforts among scientists by the persistent claims of Christians that the Bible teaches a young earth and a global deluge.

Augustine sees only trouble in committing Scripture to interpretations that supposedly provide information about the physical structure of the earth or the cosmos. Consider these two examples:

Let no one think that, because the Psalmist says, He established the earth above the water, we must use this testimony of Holy Scripture against these people who engage in learned discussions about the weight of the elements. They are not bound by the authority of our Bible; and, ignorant of the sense of these words, they will more readily scorn our sacred books than disavow the knowledge they have acquired by unassailable arguments or proved by the evidence of experience. (pp. 47-48)

And:

But someone may ask: “Is not Scripture opposed to those who hold that heaven is spherical, when it says, who stretches out heaven like a skin?” Let it be opposed indeed if their statement is false…. But if they are able to establish their doctrine with proofs that cannot be denied, we must show that this statement of Scripture about the skin is not opposed to the truth of their conclusions. (p. 59)

Augustine shows respect for scientific activity, and does not want to put Scripture in a situation of conflict with it.

5. Augustine is obviously interested in the science of his own day and interacts with it. He takes extra-biblical knowledge seriously.

For example, it is clear that he accepts spontaneous generation of organisms and the four elements of Greek thought. He expends considerable effort in relating Genesis I to the four elements and to the Greek theory of natural places: “One must surely not think that in this passage of Holy Scripture there has been an omission of any one of the four elements that are generally supposed to make up the world just because there seems to be no mention of air in the account of sky, water, and earth.” (p. 76).

From his general approach to this text, it would appear that Augustine, the great theologian, a man saturated in Holy Scripture, actually encourages the church not to cling dogmatically to specific renderings of the text but to rethink its interpretations in the light of genuine extra-biblical knowledge. Perhaps we should pay him serious attention.

Specific Interpretations

Now let’s look at some of Augustine’s specific interpretations of the first chapters of Genesis.

1. Augustine says that God created all things simultaneously.

There can be no mistaking that Augustine teaches that God created everything simultaneously in the beginning. Some things were made in fully developed form as we see them today, and other things were made in a potential form, so that in time they might become the way we see them now. Augustine went far beyond any superficial reading of the text by claiming that neither the creation nor the subsequent unfolding took place in six ordinary days. He is explicit that God did not create the world over the course of six temporal days. “The sacred writer was able to separate in the time of his narrative what God did not separate in time in His creative act” (p. 36).

2. Augustine says that the six-day creation structure has nothing to do with the passage of time during creation but is a logical framework

Augustine repeatedly stresses that the six days are not six successive ordinary days. They have nothing to do with time. For him, this is unequivocally the case for the first three days before the making of the sun, but he is equally inclined to say the same of the last three days. The days are repeatedly claimed to be arranged according to causes, order, and logic. For example: “These seven days of our time, although like the same days of creation in name and in numbering, follow one another in succession and mark off the division of time, but those first six days occurred in a form unfamiliar to us as intrinsic principles within things created” (p. 125). The days of creation “are beyond the experience and knowledge of us mortal earthbound men … we must bear in mind that these days indeed recall the days of creation but without in any way being really similar to them” (p. 135). Further, “we should not think of those days as solar days…. He made that which gave time its beginning, as He made all things together, disposing them in an order based not on intervals of time but on causal connections” (p. 154). And finally, “But in the beginning He created all things together and completed the whole in six days, when six times he brought the ’day’ which he made before the things which He made, not in a succession of periods of time but in a plan made known according to causes” (pp. 175-176). Why does the narrative employ the device of the six days? “The reason is that those who cannot understand the meaning of the text, He created all things together, cannot arrive at the meaning of Scripture unless the narrative proceeds slowly step by step” (p. 142).

As the six days have nothing to do with the passage of time, Augustine relates them to the knowledge that intellectual creatures-that is, angels-have of created things, both as they exist in the Word of God and as they exist in themselves. This knowledge was made known to the angels in the six ordering steps: “That day, which God has made, recurs in connection with His works not by a material passage of time but by a spiritual knowledge, when the blessed company of angels contemplate from the beginning in the Word of God the divine decree to create” (p. 134). Or, “The seven days … with which we are familiar … are like a shadow and a sign reminding us to seek those days wherein created spiritual light was able to be made present to all the works of God by the perfection of the number six” (p. 145). There is no doubt that Augustine’s view is strange and difficult to absorb, but he has a ready comment for us: “And when you hear that all things were made after day was made, you may possibly understand this sixfold or sevenfold repetition which took place without lapse of time. If you cannot yet understand it, you should leave the matter for the consideration of those who can” (p. 150).

3. Augustine does not envision the fall resulting in fundamental structural changes in the cosmos, or even the introduction of death into the animal realm.

For many Christians, Genesis teaches that substantial changes occurred in the structure of creation at the time of Adam’s fall. There is widespread belief that thorns and thistles were specifically introduced into the world to be an annoyance to sinful human beings. Such plants, it is thought, did not exist in the original creation. That was certainly not Augustine’s view. He says:

We should not jump to the conclusion that it was only then that these plants came forth from the earth. For it could be that, in view of the many advantages found in different kinds of seeds, these plants had a place on earth without afflicting man in any way. But since they were growing in the fields in which man was now laboring in punishment for his sin, it is reasonable to suppose that they became one of the means of punishing him. For they might have grown elsewhere, for the nourishment of birds and beasts, or even for the use of man. Now this interpretation does not contradict what is said in the words, Thorns and thistler shall it bring forth to you if we understand that earth in producing them before the fall did not do so to afflict man but rather to provide proper nourishment for certain animals, since some animals find soft dry thistles a pleasant and nourishing food…. I do not mean that these plants once grew in other places and only afterwards in the fields where man planted and harvested his crops. They were in the same place before and after; formerly not for man, after- wards for man. And this is what is meant by the words to you. (p. 94)

It is a further surprise to note that Augustine does not even see animal death and corruption as a direct result of the fall. In answer to the question as to why animals eat each other, he claims that it is because that is the way they were made. Human sin is not considered as the cause. Moreover, it is because we are fallen that we perceive animal death and corruption as an evil.

One might ask why brute beasts inflict injury on one another, for there is no sin in them for which they could be a punishment, and they cannot acquire any virtue by such a trial. The answer, of course, is that one animal is the nourishment of another. To wish that it were otherwise would not be reason- able. For all creatures, as long as they exist, have their own measure, number, and order. (p. 92)

He also speaks of death as follows: “For He has wrought them all in His wisdom, which, reaching from end to end, governs all graciously; and he leaves not in an unformed state the very least of His creatures that are by their nature subject to corruption, whose dissolution is loathsome to us in our fallen state by reason of our own mortality” (p. 90, emphasis mine).

4. Augustine suggests that the bodies of Adam and Eve were created mortal

Augustine raises the interesting question: why would Adam and Eve have to eat if they were created immortal? “It is difficult to explain how man was created immortal and at the same time in company with the other living creatures was given for food the seed-bearing plant, the fruit tree, and the green crops. If it was by sin that he was made mortal, surely before sinning he did not need such food since his body could not corrupt for lack of it” (p. 97). His solution is that Adam and Eve were created with mortal bodies. Their death was the result of their sin, but Augustine suggests that, had they not sinned, they would have been given the spiritual bodies with which we will be endowed at the resurrection.

He was mortal … by the constitution of his natural body, and he was immortal by the gift of his Creator. For if it was a natural body he had, it was certainly mortal because it was able to die, at the same time immortal by reason of the fact that it was able not to die. Only a spiritual being is immortal by virtue of the fact that it cannot possibly die; and this condition is promised to us in the resurrection. Consequently, Adam’s body, a natural and therefore mortal body, which by justification would become spiritual and therefore truly immortal, in reality by sin was made not mortal (because it was that already) but rather a dead thing, which it would have been able not to be if Adam had not sinned. (pp. 204-205)

Those interested in the issue of human origins should take a closer look at Augustine’s views.

Conclusions

1. It is historically inaccurate to maintain that modern science alone forced the church to come up with ideas about Genesis 1-3 that differ from the allegedly traditional views. Many of Augustine’s interpretations are plainly at variance with what are commonly perceived in evangelicalism as traditional views of Genesis. And, I might add, he was never accused of heresy for his views. It is plain that we cannot accuse Augustine of departing from the plain meaning of Scripture in order to make peace with science as we know it. Obviously, Augustine was not looking over his shoulder at scientific geology or paleontology. It is therefore all the more remarkable and significant that he adopts positions generally not perceived as the traditional church positions.

2. Given that a theological thinker of Augustine’s genius arrived at the views he did after years of careful study of the text, it is incumbent upon us to approach the early chapters of Genesis with far less dogmatism and far more humility and caution than we often do. Augustine’s interpretations should help us guard against facile claims about the obvious meaning of these texts. The point here is not that we should adopt Augustine’s specific interpretations (I’ve got problems with some of them myself, but that we should recognize what Augustine recognized: namely, the early chapters of Genesis are in fact complex and do not tender easy, pat answers. Once the entire evangelical world comes to grips with that simple conclusion, we will have made some progress.

References

1. St. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, translated and annotated by John Hammond Taylor, S.J., 2 vols. (New York: Newman Press, 1982). All page references in the text of this paper are to pages in volume 1.

Father John Whiteford writes:

I have just gotten my hands on a copy of the new Psalter published by Holy Trinity Monastery: A Psalter for Prayer, edited by David James. The translation is based on the Coverdale Psalter, which is what you would find in an older (traditional) edition of the Book of Common Prayer, but is corrected with the Septuagint.

It also contains a great deal of instructional material and additional prayers found in Slavonic editions of the Psalter, but not in the Boston Psalter or most other editions published in English to date. For example, it has prayers at the end of each kathisma, and it has instructions on how to read the Psalter over the dead, with the prayers that are said according to Slavic practice in conjunction with that.

The quality of the printing is very high: the paper and binding are of similar quality to the Boston Psalter, but the cover looks better, the size is a bit larger, and it has two marker ribbons sewn into the binding. The translation is well done and beautiful, and I would say that it is worth having just for the additional material that it contains, and for those who have wanted an alternative to the Boston Psalter, here it is.

My copy of this translation is from David James’ earlier, self-published edition. While the King James Bible (outside the US, the Authorised Version) is the best known English translation from before the twentieth century, in its day the KJV was eclipsed in popularity by the 1560 Geneva Bible, which was standard for English Puritans. And in its Book of Common Prayer, the Church of England kept Miles Coverdale’s 1540 translation.

Since then — for about a quarter of the history of Christ’s Church — there has been an unbroken tradition of psalmody using Coverdale’s text among English-speaking Christians. What makes Coverdale so enduring is the spare elegance of his language, and the fact that his text is meant primarily to be read or sung aloud. A translation can be accurate but difficult to read or sing with beauty and clarity; Coverdale’s text maintains a pattern of stressed/unstressed syllables and enough vowels and voiced consonants so that it lends itself to singing, either in an eastern or western idiom.

Coverdale’s translation is also distinctive in that it includes content found in the Latin Vulgate but not in the modern Masoretic Text of the Hebrew. The fact that these phrases often reflect the Septuagint text underlying the Vulgate makes this translation problematic for some Protestants but attractive to Orthodox Christians, who read the Septuagint and who often prefer “traditional” language in their services and prayers.

David James has undertaken not only to normalize Coverdale’s text to the Septuagint Psalter as received by the Orthodox Church, but to do so while retaining the character and familiarity of the classic translation (see Psalm 50 below.) This Coverdale fan thinks he has succeeded, as do the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, who have given this edition their blessing.

A Psalter for Prayer
ISBN: 9780884651888
Publisher: Holy Trinity Publications
Order A Psalter for Prayer from Holy Trinity Monastery

Psalm 50

Psalm L. Miserere mei, Deus.

Unto the end, a Psalm of instruction by David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah.

Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great mercy, and according to the multitude of Thy compassions blot out my transgression.

Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgression, and my sin is ever before me.

Against Thee only have I sinned, and done evil before Thee, that Thou mightest be justified in Thy words, and prevail when Thou art judged.

For behold, I was conceived in wickedness, and in sins did my mother bear me.

For behold, Thou hast loved truth; the hidden and secret things of Thy wisdom hast Thou revealed unto me.

Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be made clean; Thou shalt wash me, and I shall become whiter than snow.

Thou shalt give joy and gladness to my hearing; the bones that have been humbled will rejoice.

Turn Thy face from my sins, and blot out all my misdeeds.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.

O give me the joy of Thy salvation, and stablish me with Thy governing Spirit.

Then shall I teach Thy ways unto the wicked, and the ungodly shall be converted unto Thee.

Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall rejoice in Thy righteousness.

O Lord, Thou shalt open my lips, and my mouth shall declare Thy praise.

For if Thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would have given it; but Thou delightest not in burnt offerings.

The sacrifice unto God is a contrite spirit; a contrite and humble heart God shall not despise.

O Lord, be favorable in Thy good will unto Zion, and let the walls of Jerusalem be builded up.

Then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with oblations and whole-burnt offerings; then shall they offer young bullocks upon Thine altar.

You may have hopes that you can open your Bible and get a quick dose of spiritual wisdom but the Bible wasn’t written to you. You may want to claim a verse like “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” but that verse isn’t a verse about parenting and its not about your children.

The Bible isn’t a fortune cookie that you can crack open and get out a pithy little message that’s going to help you through the day.

Keep reading…

The medieval theory of levels of meaning in the biblical text, with all its undoubted defects, flourished because it is true, while the modern theory of a single meaning, with all its demonstrable virtues is false. Until the historical – critical method becomes critical of its own theoretical foundations and develops a hermeneutical theory adequate to the nature of the text which it is interpreting, it will remain restricted – as it deserves to be – to the guild and the academy, where the question of truth can endlessly be deferred.

In 1859 Benjamin Jowett, then Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford, published a justly famous essay on the interpretation of Scripture.¹ Jowett argued that “Scripture has one meaning – the meaning which it had in the mind of the Prophet or Evangelist who first uttered or wrote, to the hearers or readers who first received it.”² Scripture should be interpreted like any other book and the later accretions and venerated traditions surrounding its interpretation should, for the most part, either be brushed aside or severely discounted. “The true use of interpretation is to get rid of interpretation, and leave us alone in company with the author.”³

Jowett did not foresee great difficulties in the way of the recovery of the original meaning of the text. Proper interpretation requires imagination, the ability to put oneself into an alien cultural situation, and knowledge of the language and history of the ancient people whose literature one sets out to interpret. In the case of the Bible, one has also to bear in mind the progressive nature of revelation and the superiority of certain later religious insights to certain earlier ones. But the interpreter, armed with the proper linguistic tools, will find that “… universal truth easily breaks through the accidents of time and place”⁴ and that such truth still speaks to the condition of the unchanging human heart.

Of course, critical biblical studies have made enormous strides since the time of Jowett. No reputable biblical scholar would agree today with Jowett’s reconstruction of the gospels in which Jesus appears as a “teacher… speaking to a group of serious, but not highly educated, working men, attempting to inculcate in them a loftier and sweeter morality.”⁵ Still, the quarrel between modern biblical scholarship and Benjamin Jowett is less a quarrel over his hermeneutical theory than it is a disagreement with him over the application of that theory in his exegetical practice. Biblical scholarship still hopes to recover the original intention of the author of a biblical text and still regards the pre – critical exegetical tradition as an obstacle to the proper understanding of the true meaning of that text. The most primitive meaning of the text is its only valid meaning, and the historical – critical method is the only key which can unlock it.

But is that hermeneutical theory true?

I think it is demonstrably false. In what follows I want to examine the pre – critical exegetical tradition at exactly the point at which Jowett regarded it to be most vulnerable – namely, in its refusal to bind the meaning of any pericope to the intention, whether explicit or merely half-formed, of its human author. Medieval theologians defended the proposition, so alien to modern biblical studies, that the meaning of Scripture in the mind of the prophet who first uttered it is only one of its possible meanings and may not, in certain circumstances, even be its primary or most important meaning. I want to show that this theory (in at least that respect) was superior to the theories which replaced it. When biblical scholarship shifted from the hermeneutical position of Origen to the hermeneutical position of Jowett, it gained something important and valuable. But it lost something as well, and it is the painful duty of critical scholarship to assess its losses as well as its gains.

I

Medieval hermeneutical theory took as its point of departure the words of St. Paul: “The letter kills but the spirit makes alive” (II Cor. 3:6). Augustine suggested that this text could be understood in either one of two ways. On the one hand, the distinction between letter and spirit could be a distinction between law and gospel, between demand and grace. The letter kills because it demands an obedience of the sinner which the sinner is powerless to render. The Spirit makes alive because it infuses the forgiven sinner with new power to meet the rigorous requirements of the law.

But Paul could also have in mind a distinction between what William Tyndale later called the “story – book” or narrative level of the Bible and the deeper theological meaning or spiritual significance implicit within it. This distinction was important for at least three reasons. Origen stated the first reason with unforgettable clarity:

Now what man of intelligence will believe that the first and the second and the third day, and the evening and the morning existed without the sun and moon and stars? And that the first day, if we may so call it, was even without a heaven? And who is so silly as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer, “planted a paradise eastward in Eden,” and set in it a visible and palpable “tree of life,” of such a sort that anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life; and again that one could partake of “good and evil” by masticating the fruit taken from the tree of that name? And when God is said to “walk in the paradise in the cool of the day” and Adam to hide himself behind a tree, I do not think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions which indicate certain mysteries through a semblance of history and not through actual event.⁶

Simply because a story purports to be a straightforward historical narrative does not mean that it is in fact what it claims to be. What appears to be history may be metaphor or figure instead and the interpreter who confuses metaphor with literal fact is an interpreter who is simply incompetent. Every biblical story means something, even if the narrative taken at face value contains absurdities or contradictions. The interpreter must demythologize the text in order to grasp the sacred mystery cloaked in the language of actual events.

The second reason for distinguishing between letter and spirit was the thorny question of the relationship between Israel and the church, between the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Bible. The church regarded itself as both continuous and discontinuous with ancient Israel. Because it claimed to be continuous, it felt an unavoidable obligation to interpret the Torah, the prophets, and the writings. But it was precisely this claim of continuity, absolutely essential to Christian identity, which created fresh hermeneutical problems for the church.

How was a French parish priest in 1150 to understand Psalm 137, which bemoans captivity in Babylon, makes rude remarks about Edomites, expresses an ineradicable longing for a glimpse of Jerusalem, and pronounces a blessing on anyone who avenges the destruction of the temple by dashing Babylonian children against a rock? The priest lives in Concale, not Babylon, has no personal quarrel with Edomites, cherishes no ambitions to visit Jerusalem (though he might fancy a holiday in Paris), and is expressly forbidden by Jesus to avenge himself on his enemies. Unless Psalm 137 has more than one possible meaning, it cannot be used as a prayer by the church and must be rejected as a lament belonging exclusively to the piety of ancient Israel.

A third reason for distinguishing letter from spirit was the conviction, expressed by Augustine, that while all Scripture was given for the edification of the church and the nurture of the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, not all the stories in the Bible are edifying as they stand. What is the spiritual point of the story of the drunkenness of Noah, the murder of Sisera, or the oxgoad of Shamgar, son of Anath? If it cannot be found on the level of narrative, then it must be found on the level of allegory, metaphor, and type.

That is not to say that patristic and medieval interpreters approved of arbitrary and undisciplined exegesis, which gave free rein to the imagination of the exegete. Augustine argued, for example, that the more obscure parts of Scripture should be interpreted in the light of its less difficult sections and that no allegorical interpretation could be accepted which was not supported by the “manifest testimonies” of other less ambiguous portions of the Bible. The literal sense of Scripture is basic to the spiritual and limits the range of possible allegorical meanings in those instances in which the literal meaning of a particular passage is absurd, undercuts the living relationship of the church to the Old Testament, or is spiritually barren.

II

From the time of John Cassian, the church subscribed to a theory of the fourfold sense of Scripture.⁷ The literal sense of Scripture could and usually did nurture the three theological virtues, but when it did not, the exegete could appeal to three additional spiritual senses, each sense corresponding to one of the virtues. The allegorical sense taught about the church and what it should believe, and so it corresponded to the virtue of faith. The tropological sense taught about individuals and what they should do, and so it corresponded to the virtue of love. The anagogical sense pointed to the future and wakened expectation, and so it corresponded to the virtue of hope. In the fourteenth century Nicholas of Lyra summarized this hermeneutical theory in a much quoted little rhyme:

Littera gesta docet,
Quid credas allegoria,
Moralis quid agas,
Quo tendas anagogia.

The literal sense teaches what happened,
The allegorical what you believe.
The moral what you should do,
The anagogical where you are going.

This hermeneutical device made it possible for the church to pray directly and without qualification even a troubling Psalm like 137. After all, Jerusalem was not merely a city in the Middle East; it was, according to the allegorical sense, the church; according to the tropological

ense, the faithful soul; and according to the anagogical sense, the center of God’s new creation. The Psalm became a lament of those who long for the establishment of God’s future kingdom and who are trapped in this disordered and troubled world, which with all its delights is still not their home. They seek an abiding city elsewhere. The imprecations against the Edomites and the Babylonians are transmuted into condemnations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. If you grant the fourfold sense of Scripture, David sings like a Christian.

III

Thomas Aquinas wanted to ground the spiritual sense of Scripture even more securely in the literal sense than it had been grounded in Patristic thought. Returning to the distinction between “things” and “signs” made by Augustine in De doctrina christiana (though Thomas preferred to use the Aristotelian terminology of “things” and “words”), Thomas argued that while words are the signs of things, things designated by words can themselves be the signs of other things. In all merely human sciences, words alone have a sign – character. But in Holy Scripture, the things designated by words can themselves have the character of a sign. The literal sense of Scripture has to do with the sign – character of words; the spiritual sense of Scripture has to do with the sign – character of things. By arguing this way, Thomas was able to show that the spiritual sense of Scripture is always based on the literal sense and derived from it.

Thomas also redefined the literal sense of Scripture as “the meaning of the text which the author intends.” Lest Thomas be confused with Jowett, I should hasten to point out that for Thomas the author was God, not the human prophet or apostle. In the fourteenth century, Nicholas of Lyra, a Franciscan exegete and one of the most impressive biblical scholars produced by the Christian church, built a new hermeneutical argument on the aphorism of Thomas. If the literal sense of Scripture is the meaning which the author intended (presupposing that the author whose intention finally matters is God), then is it possible to argue that Scripture contains a double literal sense? Is there a literal – historical sense (the original meaning of the words as spoken in their first historical setting) which includes and implies a literal – prophetic sense (the larger meaning of the words as perceived in later and changed circurnstances)?

Nicholas not only embraced a theory of the double literal sense of Scripture, but he was even willing to argue that in certain contexts the literal – prophetic sense takes precedence over the literal – historical. Commenting on Psalm 117, Lyra wrote: “The literal sense in this Psalm concerns Christ; for the literal sense is the sense primarily intended by the author.” Of the promise to Solomon in I Chronicles 17:13, Lyra observed: “The aforementioned authority was literally fulfilled in Solomon; however, it was fulfilled less perfectly, because Solomon was a son of God only by grace; but it was fulfilled more perfectly in Christ, who is the Son of God by nature.”

For most exegetes, the theory of Nicholas of Lyra bound the interpreter to the dual task of explaining the historical meaning of a text while elucidating its larger and later spiritual significance. The great French humanist, Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples, however, pushed the theory to absurd limits. He argued that the only possible meaning of a text was its literal – prophetic sense and that the literal – historical sense was a product of human fancy and idle imagination. The literal – historical sense is the “letter which kills.” It is advocated as the true meaning of Scripture only by carnal persons who have not been regenerated by the life – giving Spirit of God. The problem of the proper exegesis of Scripture is, when all is said and done, the problem of the regeneration of its interpreters.

IV

In this brief survey of medieval hermeneutical theory, there are certain dominant themes which recur with dogged persistence. Medieval exegetes admit that the words of Scripture had a meaning in the historical situation in which they were first uttered or written, but they deny that the meaning of those words is restricted to what the human author thought he said or what his first audience thought they heard. The stories and sayings of Scripture bear an implicit meaning only understood by a later audience. In some cases that implicit meaning is far more important than the restricted meaning intended by the author in his particular cultural setting.

Yet the text cannot mean anything a later audience wants it to mean. The language of the Bible opens up a field of possible meanings. Any interpretation which falls within that field is valid exegesis of the text, even though that interpretation was not intended by the author. Any interpretation which falls outside the limits of that field of possible meanings is probably eisegesis and should be rejected as unacceptable. Only by confessing the multiple sense of Scripture is it possible for the church to make use of the Hebrew Bible at all or to recapture the various levels of significance in the unfolding story of creation and redemption. The notion that Scripture has only one meaning is a fantastic idea and is certainly not advocated by the biblical writers themselves.

V

Having elucidated medieval hermeneutical theory, I should like to take some time to look at medieval exegetical practice. One could get the impression from Jowett that because medieval exegetes rejected the theory of the single meaning of Scripture so dear to Jowett’s heart, they let their exegetical imaginations run amok and exercised no discipline at all in clarifying the field of possible meanings opened by the biblical text. In fact, medieval interpreters, once you grant the presuppositions on which they operate, are as conservative and restrained in their approach to the Bible as any comparable group of modern scholars.

In order to test medieval exegetical practice I have chosen a terribly difficult passage from the Gospel of Matthew, the parable of the Good Employer or, as it is more frequently known, the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matt. 20:1 – 16). The story is a familiar one. An employer hired day laborers to work in his vineyard at dawn and promised them the standard wage of a denarius. Because he needed more workers, he returned to the market place at nine, noon, three, and five o’clock and hired any laborers he could find. He promised to pay the workers hired at nine, noon, and three what was fair. But the workers hired at the eleventh hour or five o’clock were sent into the vineyard without any particular promise concerning remuneration. The employer instructed his foreman to pay off the workers beginning with the laborers hired at five o’clock. These workers expected only one – twelfth of a denarius, but were given the full day’s wage instead. Indeed, all the workers who had worked part of the day were given one denarius. The workers who had been in the vineyard since dawn accordingly expected a bonus beyond the denarius, but they were disappointed to receive the same wage which had been given to the other, less deserving workers. When they grumbled, they were told by the employer that they had not been defrauded but had been paid according to an agreed contract. If the employer chose to be generous to the workers who had only worked part of the day, that was, in effect, none of their business. They should collect the denarius that was due them and go home like good fellows.

Jesus said the kingdom of God was like this story. What on earth could he have meant?

VI

The church has puzzled over this parable ever since it was included in Matthew’s Gospel. St. Thomas Aquinas in his Lectura super Evangelium Sancti Matthaei offered two interpretations of the parable, one going back in its lineage to Irenaeus and the other to Origen. The “day” mentioned in the parable can either refer to the life – span of an individual (the tradition of Origen), in which case the parable is a comment on the various ages at which one may be converted to Christ, or it is a reference to the history of salvation (the tradition of Irenaeus), in which case it is a comment on the relationship of Jew and Gentile.

If the story refers to the life span of a man or woman, then it is intended as an encouragement to people who are converted to Christ late in life. The workers in the story who begin at dawn are people who have served Christ and have devoted themselves to the love of God and neighbor since childhood. The other hours mentioned by Jesus refer to the various stages of human development from youth to old age. Whether one has served Christ for a long time or for a brief moment, one will still receive the gift of eternal life. Thomas qualifies this somewhat in order to allow for proportional rewards and a hierarchy in heaven. But he does not surrender the main point: eternal life is given to late converts with the same generosity it is given to early converts.

On the other hand, the story may refer to the history of salvation. Quite frankly, this is the interpretation which interests Thomas most. The hours mentioned in the parable are not stages in individual human development but epochs in the history of the world from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to David, and from David to Christ. The owner of the vineyard is the whole Trinity, the foreman is Christ, and the moment of reckoning is the resurrection from the dead. The workers who are hired at the eleventh hour are the Gentiles, whose complaint that no one has offered them work can be interpreted to mean that they had no prophets as the Jews have had. The workers who have borne the heat of the day are the Jews, who grumble about the favoritism shown to latecomers, but who are still given the denarius of eternal life. As a comment on the history of salvation, the parable means that the generosity of God undercuts any advantage which the Jews might have had over the Gentiles with respect to participation in the gifts and graces of God.

Not everyone read the text as a gloss on Jewish-Christian relations or as a discussion of late conversion. In the fourteenth century the anonymous author of the Pearl, an elegy on the death of a young girl, applied the parable to infancy rather than to old age. What is important about the parable is not the chronological age at which one enters the vineyard, but the fact that some workers are only in the vineyard for the briefest possible moment. A child who dies at the age of two years is, in a sense, a worker who arrives at the eleventh hour. The parable is intended as a consolation for bereaved parents. A parent who has lost a small child can be comforted by the knowledge that God, who does not despise the service of persons converted in extreme old age, does not withhold his mercy from boys and girls whose eleventh hour came at dawn.

Probably the most original interpretation of the parable was offered by John Pupper of Goch, a Flemish theologian of the fifteenth century, who used the parable to attack the doctrine of proportionality, particularly as that doctrine bad been stated and defended by Thomas Aquinas. No one had ever argued that God gives rewards which match in exact quantity the weight of the good works done by a Christian. That is arithmetic equality and is simply not applicable to a relationship in which people perform temporal acts and receive eternal rewards. But most theologians did hold to a doctrine of proportionality; while there is a disproportion between the good works which Christians do and the rewards which they receive, there is a proportion as well. The reward is always much larger than the work which is rewarded, but the greater the work, the greater the reward.

As far as Goch is concerned, that doctrine is sheer nonsense. No one can take the message of the parable of the vineyard seriously and still hold to the doctrine of proportionality. Indeed, the only people in the vineyard who hold to the doctrine of proportionality are the first workers in the vineyard. They argue that twelve times the work should receive twelve times the payment. All they receive for their argument is a rebuke and a curt dismissal.

Martin Luther, in an early sermon preached before the Reformation in 1517, agreed with Goch that God gives equal reward for great and small works. It is not by the herculean size of our exertions but by the goodness of God that we receive any reward at all.

But Luther, unfortunately, spoiled his point by elaborating a thoroughly unconvincing argument in which he tried to show that the last workers in the vineyard were more humble than the first and therefore that one hour of their service was worth twelve hours of the mercenary service of the grumblers.

The parable, however, seems to make exactly the opposite point. The workers who began early were not more slothful or more selfish than the workers who began later in the day. Indeed, they were fairly representative of the kind of worker to be found hanging around the marketplace at any hour. They were angry, not because they had shirked their responsibilities, but because they had discharged them conscientiously.

In 1525 Luther offered a fresh interpretation of the parable, which attacked it from a slightly different angle. The parable has essentially one point: to celebrate the goodness of God which makes nonsense of a religion based on law-keeping and good works. God pays no attention to the proportionately greater efforts of the first workers in the vineyard, but to their consternation, God puts them on exactly the same level as the last and least productive workers. The parable shows that everyone in the vineyard is unworthy, though not always for the same reason. The workers who arrive after nine o’clock are unworthy because they are paid a salary incommensurate with their achievement in picking grapes. The workers who spent the entire day in the vineyard are unworthy because they are dissatisfied with what God has promised, think that their efforts deserve special consideration, and are jealous of their employer’s goodness to workers who accomplished less than they did. The parable teaches that salvation is not grounded in human merit and that there is no system of bookkeeping which can keep track of the relationship between God and humanity. Salvation depends utterly and absolutely on the goodness of God.

VII

The four medieval theologians I have mentioned – Thomas Aquinas, the author of the Pearl, the Flemish chaplain Goch, and the young Martin Luther – did not exhaust in their writings all the possible interpretations of the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. But they did see with considerable clarity that the parable is an assertion of God’s generosity and mercy to people who do not deserve it. It is only against the background of the generosity of God that one can understand the relationship of Jew and Gentile, the problem of late conversion, the meaning of the death of a young child, the question of proportional rewards, even the very definition of grace itself. Every question is qualified by the severe mercy of God, by the strange generosity of the owner of the vineyard who pays the non – productive latecomer the same wage as his oldest and most productive employees.

If you were to ask me which of these interpretations is valid, I should have to respond that they all are. They all fall within the field of possible meanings created by the story itself. How many of those meanings were in the conscious intention of Jesus or of the author of the Gospel of Matthew, I do not profess to know. I am inclined to agree with C. S. Lewis, who commented on his own book, Till We Have Faces: “An author doesn’t necessarily understand the meaning of his own story better than anyone else….”⁸ The act of creation confers no special privileges on authors when it comes to the distinctly different, if lesser task of interpretation. Wordsworth the critic is not in the same league with Wordsworth the poet, while Samuel Johnson the critic towers over Johnson the creative artist. Authors obviously have something in mind ‘when they write, but a work of historical or theological or aesthetic imagination has a life of its own.

VIII

Which brings us back to Benjamin Jowett. Jowett rejected medieval exegesis and insisted that the Bible should be read like any other book.⁹ I agree with Jowett that the Bible should be read like any other book. The question is: how does one read other books?

Take, for example, my own field of Reformation studies. Almost no historian that I know would answer the question of the meaning of the writings of Martin Luther by focusing solely on Luther’s explicit and conscious intention. Marxist interpreters of Luther from Friedrich Engels to Max Steinmetz have been interested in Luther’s writings as an expression of class interests, while psychological interpreters from Grisar to Erikson have focused on the theological writings as clues to the inner psychic tensions in the personality of Martin Luther. Even historians who reject Marxist and psychological interpretations of Luther find themselves asking how Luther was understood in the free imperial cities, by the German knights, by the landed aristocracy, by the various subgroups of German peasants, by the Catholic hierarchy, by lawyers, by university faculties – to name only a few of the more obvious groups who responded to Luther and left a written record of their response. Meaning involves a listener as well as a speaker, and when one asks the question of the relationship of Luther to his various audiences in early modern Europe, it becomes clear that there was not one Luther in the sixteenth century, but a battalion of Luthers.

Nor can the question of the meaning of Luther’s writings be answered by focusing solely on Luther’s contemporaries. Luther’s works were read and pondered in a variety of historical and cultural settings from his death in 1546 to the present. Those readings of Luther have had measurable historical effects on succeeding generations, whose particular situation in time and space could scarcely have been anticipated by Luther. Yet the social, political, economic, cultural, and religious history of those people belongs intrinsically and inseparably to the question of the meaning of the theology of Martin Luther. The meaning of historical texts cannot be separated from the complex problem of their reception and the notion that a text means only what its author intends it to mean is historically naive. Even to talk of the original setting in which words were spoken and heard is to talk of meanings rather than meaning. To attempt to understand those original meanings is the first step in the exegetical process, not the last and final step.

Modern literary criticism has challenged the notion that a text means only what its author intends it to mean far more radically than medieval exegetes ever dreamed of doing. Indeed, contemporary debunking of the author and the author’s explicit intentions has proceeded at such a pace that it seems at times as if literary criticism has become a jolly game of ripping out an author’s shirt – tail and setting fire to it. The reader and the literary work to the exclusion of the author have become the central preoccupation of the literary critic. Literary relativists of a fairly moderate sort insist that every generation has its own Shakespeare and Milton, and extreme relativists loudly proclaim that no reader reads the same work twice. Every change in the reader, however slight, is a change in the meaning of the text. Imagine what Thomas Aquinas or Nicholas of Lyra would have made of the famous statement of Northrop Frye:

It has been said of Boehme that his books are like a picnic to which the author brings the words and the reader the meaning. The remark may have been intended as a sneer at Boehme, but it is an exact description of all works of literary art without exception.¹⁰

Medieval exegetes held to the sober middle way, the position that the text (any literary text, but especially the Bible) contains both letter and spirit. The text is not all letter, as Jowett with others maintained, or all spirit, as the rather more enthusiastic literary critics in our own time are apt to argue. The original text as spoken and heard limits a field of possible meanings. Those possible meanings are not dragged by the hair, willy-nilly, into the text, but belong to the life of the Bible in the encounter between author and reader as they belong to the life of any act of the human imagination. Such a hermeneutical theory is capable of sober and disciplined application and avoids the Scylla of extreme subjectivism, on the one hand, and the Charybdis of historical positivism, on the other. To be sure, medieval exegetes made bad mistakes in the application of their theory, but they also scored notable and brilliant triumphs. Even at their worst they recognized that the intention of the author is only one element – and not always the most important element at that – in the complex phenomenon of the meaning of a text.

IX

The defenders of the single meaning theory usually concede that the medieval approach to the Bible met the religious needs of the Christian community, but that it did so at the unacceptable price of doing violence to the biblical text. The fact that the historical-critical method after two hundred years is still struggling for more than a precarious foothold in that same religious community is generally blamed on the ignorance and conservatism of the Christian laity and the sloth or moral cowardice of its pastors.

I should like to suggest an alternative hypothesis. The medieval theory of levels of meaning in the biblical text, with all its undoubted defects, flourished because it is true, while the modern theory of a single meaning, with all its demonstrable virtues, is false. Until the historical – critical method becomes critical of its own theoretical foundations and develops a hermeneutical theory adequate to the nature of the text which it is interpreting, it will remain restricted – as it deserves to be – to the guild and the academy, where the question of truth can endlessly be deferred.

Originally in Princeton Theological Seminary’s Theology Today (April 1980)

Notes

David C. Steinmetz is Professor of Church History and Doctrine at the Divinity School of Duke University and the author of Misericordia Dei: The Theology of Johannes von Staupitz in Its Late Medieval Selling (1968) and Reformers in the Wings (1971). He also contributed an article, “Reformation and Conversion,” to the April 1978 issue of THEOLOGY TODAY.

¹ Benjamin Jowett, “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” Essays and Reviews, 7th ed. (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 186 1), pp. 330 – 433.

² Ibid., p. 378.

³ Ibid., p. 384.

⁴ Ibid., p. 412.

⁵ Helen Gardner, The Business of Criticism (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 83.

⁶ Origen, On First Principles, ed. by G. W. Butterworth (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 288.

⁷ For a brief survey of medieval hermeneutical theory which takes into account recent historical research see James S. Preus, From Shadow to Promise (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 9 – 149; see also the useful bibliography, pp. 287 – 93.

⁸ W. H. Lewis, ed., Letters of C S. Lewis (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1966), P. 273.

⁹ Jowett, “Interpretation,” p. 377.

¹⁰ This quotation is cited by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 1, at the beginning of a chapter which sets out to elaborate an alternative theory.

Andrei Kuraev is professor and director of the Department of Theology and Apologetics at St. Tikhon Orthodox Theological Institute, and deacon at the Church of St. John the Forerunner in Moscow, Russia. In this article he responds to the recent influx of Young Earth creationist literature into Russia. As he notes in the article, this is not a topic on which the Church has ever seen a need for dogma, as there is considerable diversity among the early Fathers regarding the understanding of the six days of creation.

I’m posting his article, not because it is the One And Only True Interpretation Of The Six Days — far from it — but because it’s an example disproving popular media’s myth that biblical literalism must be opposed to science.

Related article: Augustine’s Origin of Species

by Deacon Andrei Kuraev

Protestant Creationism in Russia

Recently many books have appeared in Russia dedicated to the criticism of Darwinism. The majority of them are the work of American Protestant, creationist authors. The Orthodox, with a great joy of relief, have welcomed these books to their cathedrals and libraries since Darwinism was cultivated in the Soviet schools and institutes. Were we in a hurry to let this happen? Is it exclusively the position of the American fundamentalist Christian? Or, does it have a confessional justification which is not immediately obvious from the Orthodox point of view?

Creationist allegations are very absolute: they dispute not only the atheistic understanding of evolution but the possibility of any evolution as such. The world, before humans appeared, was six days old — not more than this. The Earth is not capable of evolutionary development, even as an answer to the call of the Creator.

This position is not new in the history of thought, including Christian. It was characteristic for pagan thought to reduce the notion of matter to the notion of non-existence. Only spirit can live and act. The world is inanimate, the world is material, the world is a shell for life and nothing else.

However, in Christian tradition the main opposition to the antique philosophy “matter/spirit”  was replaced by the dyad “Creator/creation”, which is of a different nature. In this wayboth the creative spirit and the created materiality happened to be put in the same parentheses, becoming relative. There is no foundation to deny a value (it may be less, but nevertheless a value) of the corporeal, if one accepts a value that stands behind the creative spirit, behind the human soul. A human’s or an angel’s spirit is able to tremble when it hears the voice of the Creator; why then cannot mountains tremble, too? A human spirit is capable of rejoicing when hearing the Word, then why cannot rivers, waters, and seas experience the same joy?

In pagan cosmogony chthonic matter opposes the spirit, puts out its impulse; that is why between them there cannot be any positive dialogue. However, in the Bible, in the book of Genesis there is no war between God and chaos. The world is obedient to the Creator. Waters and abysses answer with gladness to the Creator’s command. Hence, there is no necessity to transfer the pagan idea of the animosity of matter toward God to the world of Bible.

God, in the book of Genesis, calls each creature by name. By this He calls them out of the abyss of non-existence. Metropolitan Philaret expressed this idea beautifully: “The Word pronounces the existence all creatures”. Here we have a dialogue, a call, and an answer. St. Basil the Great explains, “Let the earth sprout, let her produce what she never had, let her acquire what she does not have, because God imparts the power to act.” The seeds of life are not in the earth, but “God’s word creates the essence” and He puts them in the ground; the earth only “sprouts them”. The earth cannot deliver life all by herself, but it is not right to minimize her role, saying, “The earth should grow things without the necessity of an outsider’s assistance.” The life comes from the earth, but the life-giving power of matter is a gift to her from the Creator.

Hence, on the one hand, there is nothing like an alchemiy of materialism which follows the recipe of the sorcerer from “Anthony and Cleopatra” by Shakespeare: “Take a little bit of dirt, a little bit of the Sun, and you will get an Egyptian crocodile.” In the story about the six days of creation, it is underlined that when life began to appear on the earth, there was no where to get “a little of the Sun,” as the Sun appeared only on the fourth day, but life, one cosmic day earlier).

On the other hand, when one reads the Gospel without prejudice, it is impossible to miss that it leaves a little bit of activity for the created world. There are no words like “And God created grass”, but ” the earth brought forth”. Later God does not just simply create life but commands the elements to reveal themselves: “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures; Let the earth bring forth living creatures”.

The Appearance of Life in Genesis

The only creature that God does not entrust to creation by anyone else is man. Man is exclusively God’s creation. The independent activity of the earth is not unlimited: she cannot produce man. The decisive transition from an animal to the anthropomorphic creature is not taking place merely by God’s order but through his direct action: Bara. And even this will not be enough for the creation of man; after that, when God creates a bodily vessel by a special creative act which is able to be a vessel of consciousness and freedom, the second act of the biblical anthropogenic act will be needed: the act of birthing in the Spirit.

The appearance of life by Genesis is evolution (because the earth “produced” plants and simple organisms), and at the same time it is a “leap to life”, which took place by God’s command.

The earth is called to creativity, to the independent act by God’s word, and this is an acknowledgment of the existence of the inner motive forces, which belong to the earth. Certainly, here we do not have an indication of how and what are the limits of the earth’s answer to God’s call. Only one thing is clear: different periods in the history of genesis started from God’s call for the independent activity of “the earth”. The world, which is called to motion and growth, is becoming a co-worker with God. The theme of the creature’s cooperation with God has appeared in the Bible long before one directly starts talking about man.

The fact that the earth responds to the call of the Word and as a result she produces life in six days means that she is not a lifeless mass from which the outer force shapes something by overcoming the resistance of matter. The Bible is not the Vedanta. Hence matter is not a synonym for death and non-existence.

St. Basil describes this creative response in the following way: “Imagine this: that by a soft call, this cold and barren earth, all of a sudden, is moving closer to the time of birth. And, as if there drops down from her a sad and grievous cloth, she then vests herself in a bright robe, enjoying her attire, and brings forth thousands of plants”.

The Protestant Restoration of the Pagan Notion of Matter

Why then has a part of the Protestant world restored the pagan prejudice of identification of matter and passivity and made it an essential principal of their faith?

It seems to me there are there reasons for this:

The first one is connected with the distinctive tradition of Western Christianity. A very clear biblical picture of the gradual entrance into the world of different levels of existence, in Western Europe happened to be clouded by a lame Latin translation of the Bible. In the book of Sirach it is said that “He who lives for ever is the Creator of whole universe” (Sir. 18,1).

The Greek word koine means ‘together’, ‘joined together’, but Latin word simul means ‘simultaneously’. This particular part of Vulgate causes the resistance toward evolution in the West.

That is why even Augustine was already convinced that “God created everything simultaneously”. Protestants inherited this traditional conviction of the Western theological schools, however, they forgot that this statement is based, first of all, on the peculiarities of the Latin translation of non-canonical biblical books.

In order for this statement of a non-canonical book to be accepted by Protestants (usually non-canonical books are considered to be just apocrypha), it had to be given some kind of foundation. This foundation abides in the heart of the Protestant faith: in the doctrine of being “saved only by faith”, “only by grace”.

The word “synergy,” cooperation, co-working is not accepted by Protestant-fundamentalists ( in spite of the fact that one can find it in the Bible B 1 Cor. 3, 9). A man cannot be a participant in his own salvation. This is an exceptional gift, and man is only “being notified” of this by the Sacrifice of Golgotha, i.e., that their sins have been payed off.

Even in case a person cannot be a creator, cannot cooperate with God, how can we recognize this right of the world to exist before men? Hence, the Adventists theological textbook makes a transition to the criticism of evolution in the following way: “Even the Apostle Paul could not be virtuous by his own effort. He knew the perfect ideal of God’s Law but he could not live in accordance with it”. Then they conclude that “Golgotha denies the theory of evolution decisively”. This textbook regrets that “More and more Christians accept the atheistic theory of evolution, according to which God, while creating the world, used evolutionary process”. It is very strange that Adventists call those people who accept this theory atheists.

This doctrinal motive alone was not enough for them to simply keep their anti-evolutionist convictions in the quietness of their hearts and in their seminaries that are scandalously at odds with the opinion of science and education. In spite of this they continuously propagandize their convictions.. The reason for the persistence of the fundamentalists on this matter is already for social motives.

It became only in our situation, fin du siecle, possible for them to clash with scientific opinion. At the end of our century any anti-scientific statement can be made with impunity.

Astrologers, sorcerors, occultists are not shy about expressing the wildest ideas. It seems like the average man has became tired of the seriousness of science and responsibility and hence, is ready to listen to everything from the position of “why not?”. Now instead of argumentation people come to voluntaism: “I want it to be this way! I do not care about argumentation! It seems to me it should be this way! I like it like this!”. This mass ecstasy of irrationalism makes the Protestant’s over-literal rendering a marketable merchandise.

In Orthodoxy There is No Textual or Doctrinal Foundation Against Evolution

In Orthodoxy there is no textual or doctrinal foundation tearing away evolution. There is no sense for Orthodox people to indulge in the social fashion of irrationalism; any irrationalism in the end will work for occultism and against the Church..

Nevertheless, even among the Orthodox people, voices are heard calling for the radical tearing away of any form of evolution. First of all, one has to notice that the denial of evolution among the Orthodox is something new and cannot claim to be traditional.

First, even according to the opinion of the theologians of the very conservative Russian Church abroad, The days of creation cannot be understood literally (because “for God a thousand years is as yesterday”) but rather as periods.

Second, the idea of evolution, detached from an atheistic interpretation of evolution, was addressed in a positive manner in books by Orthodox writers. For example, the professor E. M. Andreiev who rejected the idea of the descent of man from primates, nevertheless wrote: “As for the rest of creation Darwinism is not opposed to the biblical teaching about the creation of animals because evolution does not answer the question: Who created the very first animals?”

Archbishop Michael (Mudyugin), a professor at St. Petersburg Theological Academy, writes: “There are many strikingly similar categories one can find in the Bible and on the pages of any biology textbook. The process of evolution of the organic world is one of them. The biblical terminology itself is located on the same plane. There it is said “Let the earth bring forth living creatures”, “Let the earth bring forth cattle and creeping things”.

Here the verb brings forth (“produce” in Slav. Translation) points to the connection between separate phases of the formation of the living world; moreover, it points to the connection between animate and inanimate matter”.

Professor of Moscow of Religious Academy A. E. Osipov writes, “for theology it is possible to accept the hypothesis of creationism and evolution as one condition. In both cases God is the Lawmaker and Constructor of the world, Who can create everything in this world by “days” at once in a finished form or slowly during several “days,” can “bring forth” from water and earth, from simple forms to the highest forms, by the law of nature that has been made by Him”.

Professor of St. Vladimir Seminary in New York, Protopresbyter Basil Zenkovski also underlines the biblical “independent activity” of the earth: “The biblical text is clearly telling us that God commands the earth to act by itself. This creative activity of nature, according to the expression of Bergson, élan vital, — desire to live — makes the fact of evolution of life on earth indisputable”.

One of the leading authors of the magazine Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate in the 1960′s-70′s, Protopresbyter Nickolai Ivanov agreed with the idea of evolution: “The act of the creation of the world, and the formation of its forms, for God, is an expression of His might, His will. But for nature, the fulfillment of this will is an act of formation — in other words it is a single and gradual process, that occurs over time. During the process of development it is possible for the appearance of transitional forms, which sometimes serve only as a step for the appearance of higher forms that are connected to eternity”.

Professor N. N. Pheoletov, who was a member of the 1917-1918 Sobor wrote that, “the idea of evolution itself cannot be viewed by Christians as something strange or contradictory to their consciousness.”  In 1917 the Holy Martyr, Protopresbyter Michael Meltchov, while discussing the question of the relationship between Christianity and science wrote that, ” A comprehensive and spiritual explanation and understanding of parts of the Bible contribute, at large, and destroy the misunderstanding between Christianity and science. One just has to read a little deeper into the text of Genesis then it immediately it becomes clear that the Bible does not give any foundation to consider that the day of the creation is a 24-hour period. Then the wall between biblical explanation and scientific data about the indeterminately long life of the earth before the existence of man is demolished”.

Even earlier, V.S. Solovyov clearly pointed to the way of a Christian interpretation of the idea of evolution. If I had been asked to find parallels between modern science and the worldview of Moses, I would say that his vision of the origin of life is very similar to the theory of directed evolution. The philosophical foundation of this theory which in biology was developed by L. Berg and Teilhard De Chardin, is expressed clearly by V. Solovyov: “The fact that higher forms or types of existence appear after lower ones does not mean that they are the essence of their production, or creation of these lower forms. The order of reality is not the same as the order of events. The higher, more complicated and full forms and conditions of being exist (metaphysically) before the lower though they appear and reveal themselves after them. One cannot deny evolution because of this. No one can deny it! It is a fact! To insist that evolution creates the higher orders wholly from the lower, in other words from nothing, means to replace facts by logical nonsense. The evolution of the lower orders of existence cannot create the higher by its own action, instead it produces material conditions or provides with accordance an environment so that the higher orders can reveal themselves. Hence, each appearance of a new type of existence is in a sense a new creation, but such that the least of all could be marked as a creation out of nothing, because, first of all, the previous type serves as a foundation for the appearance of a new type. Secondly, even its own positive essence of a new type does not appear new from nothing, but being in existence from the beginning of time, only enters (at a certain moment in the process) into a different sphere of existence, into the world of events. The conditions appear from the natural evolution of nature; that is revealed by God”.

The Philosopher V. N. Ilyin, the Serbian theologian Protopresbyter Stephan Lyashevski, Professor Lazar Milin, outstanding Romanian Theologian priest Dimitru Staniloe, Bishop Basil (Rodzyanko) did not consider the theory of evolution as anti-biblical or atheistic.

So, a calm attitude toward evolution is the tradition of Orthodox Academic Theology, what is new about this is the acceptance of the Protestant creationists position by Orthodox preachers.

Does Death Predate Adam?

The first argument, evolution presupposes the change of generations. The change of generations presupposes death. The essence of the problem is that if there were generations of developing animal forms before the appearance and fall of man then in this case we have to say that death was in the world before the appearance of sin! We know that death is the consequence of sin, and the sin of man. Hence, there was no sin in the world, before man than theologically it is impossible to presuppose the existence of death in it.

If death was in the world before the fall of man, then the universe became corrupted, not through man. This statement is against the biblical belief. Here, we have to stop and think hard about the meanings of the words “death” and “sin”.

The word “death” is too human; the word “death” is very rich with human tragedy. Can we apply the word “death,” that is so full, up to the brim with human meaning, to a non-human world? Death for a person is a tragedy, it is something outrageously wrong. It is not by chance that in Russian Philosophy the terrifying fear of death was taken as an experiential witness of its non-human origin. Suppose that man was a legitimate outcome of natural evolution and a struggle for survival; then he would not experience disgust towards that (death) which is so “natural.”

Undoubtedly the death of man entered into this world through sin. Death is evil and it was not created by God. This is also an axiom of Biblical Theology.

Hence, it seems to me, that only one conclusion should be drawn from this: the departure of animals is not death, and it is not the same as the departure of a man. When we say “The death of Socrates” we do not have a right to apply the same word to the phrase “The death of a dog”. The death of a star is a metaphor. We can use the same metaphor to say the “death” of an atom or a chair. Animals were disappearing from existence, they were going out of the world before the time of man. This was not death. Hence, it is impossible to talk about the phenomenon of death in a theological or philosophical meaning of the word, while applying this to a non-human world. The death of a lifeless star or atom, the splitting of a living cell or bacteria, and the discontinuance of a physiological process in monkeys: this is not the same is the death of man.

Yes, death is a consequence of sin! Sin is a violation of the will of the Creator. Can we be sure that the death of animals is also a violation of the Creative will? Did God create animals for eternal life? Did he want to create them as participants in eternity? Did he intend them to partake in the Bread of Life, and Eucharist?

If not — it means those temporary limitations of animals and their accessibility to decay is not a violation of the Plan of the Creator.

It is not a sin or distortion of the creative will. If the Eucharist is the only Bread of Life, and in our Cathedrals we do not administer communion to puppies, it means that this Bread is not for them and Eternity is not for them either. The death of animals is not a violation of the Plan of God. The Bible does not promise eternal life for our world. Only the human soul is prepared for Eternity. The Savior appeals to people, not to kittens, when he says: “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mathew 25:34). The rest will be burned up.

And if upon creation (not resurrection but exactly upon the new creation of a “new earth, and a new sky”) God will choose that they be inhabited by animals, then they will appear there. Those animals are not going to be the same animals of this earth. Everything will be new there, besides us. God did not create animals for immortality and that is why their departure from existence is not a violation of God’s Plan, and there is not sin. Saint Augustine writes directly that “animals were created by mortals”. Earlier St. Methodious Patarsky’s position was the same “what kind of producer; that is the kind of product”.

God is immortal, alive, and imperishable; man is God’s creation and that’s why the creation, man, is immortal. This is the reason why God created man by himself, but the rest of the world, like animals and plants, were created by air, earth, and water. Animals received their life by the means of air animation. Man got his soul from the eternal essence itself, because God breathes, in man’s face, the breath of life.

Since it is a fact that animals cannot receive God’s saving grace, they are not immortal. They are animated by elements from which they were produced, but elements are flaming up and fading down together with their outcomes.

The death of animals is not a violation of the will of the Creator and that is why it is not an evidence of profanation of the primordial good quality of the world. The will of God is violated only when the creature which is the image of the Creator reduces himself to the level of animals, and puts himself under the law of struggle, survival and dying — the laws that existed before the human world was made. It is exactly then that the violation of the will of God is taking place. It seems that we are already used to identifying ourselves with animals. We are used to doing this so much that non-Christians seem to identify and derive justification for their passions and lawlessness from this identification, while Christians, acquiring the gifts of the Holy Spirit, then spread them to the animal world.

In any case, can we describe the behavior of animals in categories of sin and virtue? If the word “sin” cannot be applied to the description of animals, then the relative word “death” cannot be applied to animals in a strict human-existential meaning.

The holy fathers tell us directly that sin came to the world through man and only man can sin in this world (we do not touch any of the events in the area of angels). “What is another evil act, besides the events happening between people you can point at?” St. Methodious rhetorically asked; “All the rest of the creatures are obedient to God by necessity, and none of them can do anything except what it was created for.” So there is no evil among animals, and the death of animals is not evil if it is not caused by a human. Killing among animals is not evil because they do not have moral freedom.

The “struggle for survival” in God’s plan makes good pedagogical sense, St. Augustine supposes that the fight between animals is edifying for man so by seeing how animals fight for their bodily life he could understand how tensely and passionately he has to fight for his spiritual salvation.

Does the Edenic Existence Apply to Animals?

The second argument of Orthodox anti-evolutionists is built on those writings by the holy fathers who deny the existence of suffering in the Garden of Eden. According to the Holy Father’s intuition not only man, but animals were in a blessed condition. That is why any suffering and death that is connected to evolution cannot be even imagined from the theological viewpoint.

I don’t think that even this argument is unquestionable.

First of all, those who championthis argument lose from their sight the fact that Eden is not the whole world. Paradise is not a synonym for the cosmos before the fall. Eden does not include the whole world. Those rivers are flowing from it, which are washing the garden where man is placed.

Russian word rai is a Jewish word which means “garden,” and “paradise” is of Greek origin (which is, in its turn, a Hellinized Persian word pardes meaning “park”) Eden means “a world of joy”. The word Eden comes from Akkadian ediny and means “step”. This primary pronunciation was already forgotten and for the Jewish ear this word “Eden” happened to be connected with the words pleasure or sweetness. So, when Sarah heard a promise about the birth of her son, she “laughed to herself saying, : after I have grown old, and my husband is old shall I have pleasure? (Gen. 18:12) Here pleasure is edena.

But in Jewish text the word “garden” has not only joyful associations. The Russian word “garden” does not contain the meaning of Hebrew gun, which came from the verb gunnon to defend. In other languages the connection between garden and fence or defense are also present: French jardin has a connection with the verb garder (to guard), English garden as well as German garten also goes back to the same roman root. The translation of the Hebrew word gun is better translated as “fenced and protected place”.

This place is not just protected by itself, but a commandment was given to man “to keep it” (Gen. 2:15) in this sense, the Garden of Eden was a fenced and protected place. Hence, there was something that the garden had to be protected against. Either the world should be protected from man, or man should be protected from the world. Man had to protect the garden, or the garden was providing protection for man. In any case Eden — joy and garden — the fortress where the man was settled, is not one and the same place ( because “a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden” Gene 2:10). Paradise was planted during the existence of Eden (paradeson en Eden — “paradise in Eden”), in this case, paradise in the sense of joy is Eden, but is not the garden.

The garden was given to the man so that it would become a subject for protection and it would also protect man; and Eden, so as to give joy to man. The man had not approached Eden, rather he was in the “Garden” part of Eden.

Hence, the Scripture does not say that the whole world lived according to the law of the Garden of Eden. Rather it was vice versa. The Bible does not describe directly the world outside of Eden, but it is quite clear that the protected zone was put in opposition to the wild uncultivated nature. This opposition was very cruel; this was the reason for having guards “to keep it”.

The fact that the created man was put into the protected place meant that he had to be protected from somebody or something. Now we already know that the fence of the Garden could not protect from Satan. Then there was something else, not spiritual but other that was a threat for the human novice on the planet Earth. In order to protect man from those threats, he was taken out of the Universal context and put into some kind of “play-pen” that had clear borders (four rivers).

It is quite possible that outside of the Garden of Eden all laws for survival already existed, whenGod warned man, “Do not eat… or you shall die” (Gen. 2, 17).

So, if God said this to them, then it means that people were familiar with the experience of death earlier (better to say they had already seen some kind of death). This tells us that death existed in non-human world, in the world of animals.

The man was protected up to a certain period of time. Once man had broken the fence of the Garden of Eden by his sin and the laws of the outer world, the laws of Darwin’s biology poured into the world of humans.

The connection between sin and death dogmatically is established by the words of the apostle Paul: “Therefore as sin came into the world through a man and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind because all men sinned”. (Rom. 5:12)

Sin came through man. Though humankind, sin spread death to all people. Judging by these words of the apostle Paul, one cannot conclude that animals were immortal before the sin of Adam. Better to conclude that death existed already in the world, but through human sin it came upon us.

One thing that cannot be argued in the biblical narration: the cosmos is in need of protection from the very beginning. Either Eden has to be protected from man (the “garden”, “paradise” is fortification by which God has protected Eden from man) or it is necessary to protect man from the outer world. In the last instance we have to admit that outer world contains something dangerous for man.

Eden is Limited in Space and Time

The second point which Orthodox anti-evolutionists do not take into consideration: Eden is not only limited in space but also in time.

The Garden of Eden is not the whole world, rather it appears after the creation of man. The history of the world does not start from Eden. Instead, it is brought forth after six days by a distinctive act of creation: “The Lord God planted garden in Eden in the East and there He put the man whom he had formed” (Gen. 2, 8).

Therefore, man was created before Eden and Eden was planted after the creation of the world. It was a created man who was put in a garden planted for him.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden” (Gen. 2:15). From where did God take man? (“Take” means select, the way Levites were selected from other tribes). Eden is not the place that we came from: this is the place of our destination.

Man was created outside of paradise. But where is this place: higher or lower in relation to paradise? Was man created in a higher order of being and then moved down? Or maybe he was created in a lower place and than raised up to the level of Eden? Where did man appear: in the world of the jungle, in the world where there was no reign of God’s love and then from there, from the world of anthropoids he was put into Eden?

The Biblical text inclines to the second explanation. The Biblical narration accentuates that the world from which man came cannot be the same as the world where man had to live and grow. Let us emphasize that in order to appear in Eden, man had to relocate himself: cross over the line between the wild nature and the Garden. This is not just a change of location but a change of an environment.

Man has to be protected from the world of his anthropogeny. Hence, the world where man is from (by its bodily geography) contains something destructive in itself. This is not moral evil, this is not sin (because sin did not exist before man). There is something in the law of nature, in its cycles, that is good for the cosmos and dangerous for man. There is something without which the development of the world “from the original dust of cosmos” to the world before man would have been impossible but now when the growth has reached its limit, the laws of evolution have to retreat.

The world cannot go to something without a decay of the old. Life cannot grow without constant renewal and without exceeding its limits, i.e. out of limits of life. There is no creation without destruction in the cosmos, but in the world of man. This polarity of creation and destruction, this harmony of cosmic creative-destructive cycles can be moderated, stopped and demolished at least there where man appears. He is above the cosmos and lives in the cosmos. Hence, the harmony of cosmic contradictions must not function in him. Man has to be protected from the dominant influence of cosmic laws. This protection can only come from a cosmic being from above who is the Creator of Cosmos.

Man, by denying His protection, made himself a part of this cosmos in which all pagan philosophical systems saw the inevitable unity between good and evil, birth and death. Yes, the world of man has been radically changed as a result of sin. Can we consider the world before man and without man being something different. Maybe man, by his act, simply obliterates the edge by which he was abundantly and supernaturally separated from the rest of the world?

Yes, in that world that Adam was introduced to, i.e. in the world before Eden, even the death of animals did not exist. Was it like this in the world from which Adam was “taken out”? Can we relate the starting point and the assigned point of the first Exodus? The Serbian theologian Stephan Lyashevsky supposes that there was no death only in Eden. During the time of creation of man “In Paradise a new world has been installed where blood already was not shed in the face of immortal Adam, violent death had disappeared among animals, ‘because God gave to all as food different plants and fruit in Paradise’ and all the animals were obedient to man.”

The atmosphere of heavenly abundance into which Adam was introduced, embraced Eden. What kind of world was outside of Eden that lies between the rivers, we do not know. The Bible does not say anything about the world outside or before Eden. In any case, it is incorrect to draw a conclusion about that world by what we suppose was in the Garden of Eden.

Were Animals Predatory Before the Fall?

The third argument of the anti-evolutionists is based on Gen. 2:30 “and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so”. In the eyes of the anti-evolutionists it means that before the fall of man there were no predators and there could not be. Hence, all scientific evolutionist theories are in direct contradiction with the Bible.

The main question then, is this: When exactly and where, were these words of God said? The thing is that Genesis narrates twice about the creation of man, in the first and second chapters. One of the traditionally most difficult tasks of Biblical exegesis consisted in finding an agreement between these two stories. So, did God have any relationship with man before the creation of the Garden of Eden and out of it? Did the creator pronounce those words in the Garden of Eden or out of it, before its creation? Could they be the part of His speech already in Eden, where He commanded to eat fruit from each tree and forbade eating fruit from the tree of knowledge? If God’s ascertainment related to the world around Eden, then it was not in contradiction with the opinion of science. Science cannot explore the experience of Eden. Science studies Eden’s outer world and in this it does not enter in contradiction with Biblical and the holy fathers’ witnesses about the order of co-habitation of man and animals, which was established for the Garden of Paradise.

So, the supposition of evolution and the connected disappearance of animals do not contradict neither the meaning nor the letter of Revelation. Scripture does not describe the technology of the birth of life and of its development and that is why there is no reason to enter into conflict with Science.

We can say the same about our Church Tradition. There are a number of ancient and medieval, natural and philosophical positions which can be found in Middle Age commentaries about the six days of creation that do not have faith teaching importance. St. Basil the Great used the encyclopedic knowledge of his time. For us it means, not that natural philosophy of the fourth century was enlightened by the name of the great saint forever and through this had to become a part of theology, but it means that such a daring attempt of the Church to have a dialogue with the world of secular thought and knowledge is blessed by the authority of the great Cappadocian. St. John of Damascus in his “Precise Description of the Orthodox Faith” includes a description of scientific doctrine of his time, it only means that the interest in cognition of the God created world was not foreign to Orthodox thought. Given the reality that the Fathers included in their text, facts from their contemporary science, does not mean that we have to become enemies of our contemporary science.

There are only three characteristics that could not be thought to be out of the Biblical context; life (the same way as the whole world) appears gradually; that the world is capable of answering creatively to God’s call; the evolution of the creation of the world would not have brought any results without a directive Intellect.

Matter is not immortal. It was created, and that is why it received an incentive from the outside. Only because it was created by this incentive does it preserve its creative impulse. That is why the world is capable of movement and development. Another balanced opinion is also true: though the world is able to develop itself, it gets its creative impulses from the outside.

The change from one kingdom to another in the Bible is described as unexplainable only from the inner evolution of the world: this is a breakthrough that took place by the will of the Creator. Exactly in this situation one can use the word bara: the appearance of matter from nonexistence; then the appearance of the first life — fish and at last man. However, the lack of the word bara during the step from the non-organic world to the plant world can mean that this border can be over come by nature itself.

God does not create the world the way a sculptor makes a sculpture. In the last case the material is absolutely passive and is changed only by the direct coercion of a cutter, under the direct coercion of the artist. Whereas, the earth, primitive matter and water took very active participation in its design during the creation of the world. They fulfilled the commands of the Creator and not the commands fulfilled themselves in them.

Hence, the matter is active and there is no aggression against God in its activity, the scripture does not describe how exactly the earth answered the creators call. But it is very clear that the earth responded readily without opposition.

In this way, Orthodoxy — unlike paganism that demonizes matter, or Protestantism that deprives the created world its right to participate in creation — has no foundation to reject the thesis that the Creator created matter capable of good development.

The essence of the unrolling process of the word does not depend on its speed. Those people are naïve for whom it vaguely seems that God would not have been necessary if we stretch the process of creation. Equally naïve are those people, who suppose that the creation of the world over more than six days reduces the greatness of the Creator. We have to remember that nothing withstood or limited the creative action. Everything (before the appearance of sin) was happening by the will of the Creator. Did this will involve creating the world instantly or in six days, or in six thousand years, or in myriad of centuries? We don’t know, because “who can count the days of eternity?” As far as the [“Young Earth” creationist] position of Father Seraphim Rose is concerned, I cannot say that his position was mistaken. Simply, this is not the only position which an Orthodox person can adhere to.

Orthodox Theology and Differences of Opinion

In Orthodox theology it is acceptable to have questions on which there cannot be differences in opinion, to approach it from a different angle: What does it mean “for us people and for our salvation”? In such a case, if a certain thesis does not have a soterological use, and at the same time it: a) is not condemned by the mind of the Church in Council; b) does not lead through its logical revealing to opposition with the clearly stated dogmas of Church teaching; c) differs from the opinions of some of the Fathers; d) has at least some support of some witnesses of the Church tradition; then, one can keep this opinion — with one condition” that it will not be presented as a “Church-must” dogmatic statement.

Private theological opinions can contradict each other. Besides the well-known words of the Apostle Paul about this (“for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized” (1Cor. 11,19) one can bring the words of the Church historian V.V. Bolotov: “Nobody has the power to forbid to keep theologumen as my private theological opinion, that has been expressed at least by one of the Fathers of the Church, if it has not been proven that a competent Church council has already declared that the view as a mistaken one. On the other hand, nobody has the power to demand from me that I accept, as my theological opinion, a theologumen that has been uttered by several Church Fathers, because this theologumen does not fascinate me by its sublime theological beauty, does not win my heart by understanding, or even appeal to my mind, by its majestic power of argumentation”.

Hence, the idea of evolution could be proved unacceptable for Orthodox theological thinking if one can explain in what way allowing the change of the animal generations in and before the human world, in or out of the world of Eden can damage the conscious participation of a Christian in the Church sacraments. Direct referrals that “Bible teaches but you are saying” cannot be accepted for examination (“Proof-texting”). Orthodox Tradition knows how complicated and different the interpretation of Scripture can be. (especially the Old Testament). That is why, before one can accept this or that interpretation, he should first ask a question: “For what reason am I inclined to accept this interpretation?”  When one rejects it, again, try to find a motivation: What is it exactly that could not be accepted? When one condemns something, a question should be asked: What is so damaging for the salvation of people in this opinion?

I cannot accept the opinions and methods of argumentation of the radical creationists because they are trying to use their own scientific material and they do it very unprofessionally causing well deserved censure from the people who are professional scientists. Here there is a great danger that a biologist after reading a book could say that this is “pot-boiler” and transfer this opinion to the whole Christian world.

Once I was invited to read a lecture for the students of biological faculty of the Moscow State University. Usually I have good relationship with the students of MSU. This time I was shocked by the coldness of these students. After the first lecture I asked my colleagues who invited me: “Did I behave in a wrong way? Why is their attitude was so strange?” The answer was: “Oh, excuse us, Fr. Andrew, but the week before your lecture there were Baptists from America here. They were trying to prove to the students that there was no evolution and the world was created in six days. One student (not to even mention our professors) caught them in a manipulation of the scientific facts, in a very biased selection of one group of facts and ignoring hushing-up others. So, our students have decided that it is considered acceptable for all Christians to manipulate the facts of science. They assume that you are a person who holds the same view. This is the reason for their attitude towards you.” Only after the second lecture, when I explained to them that in Orthodoxy there is a possibility for a different interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, after that the relationship with the students was improved and the conversation about the Scripture and Orthodoxy went on with great attention and understanding.

So I have a missionary interest not to accept controversial judgments of creationists, and I try to find an evolutionist reading of the six days of creation. I do not have a personal problem believing that either God created the world in six days or instantly. There is no problem for me in expressing my opinion that is wittingly unacceptable in this particular auditory (I have to do this very often). I simply think that it is not good for a priest to burden people with something that is too heavy for them. Yes, in Christianity there are moments when one has to practice [bring] a “sacrifice of the intellect”. Nevertheless it seems to me that this sacrifice has to be brought to the dogma about the Trinitarian Unity of God, and not to “dogma” about the precise number of hours of the creation of the world.

Finally, it is useful to look closely to your own inner motives which urge you to accept this or that opinion. It is a favorite hobby for a lot of people now in our parishes, monasteries, and even seminaries to prove to each other their arch-orthodoxy. It is a very suitable reason for them to expose and condemn those “heretic-evolutionists” for these purposes. However, if a person is not preoccupied with getting a reputation for arch-orthodoxy in the circle of his witty like-minded acquaintances, but rather how to bring to the Church door those people who are still far away from it, then it is better to sacrifice the joy of the sense of your own strong objection and also the joy from the exposing and condemning the next “heretic.” After all: theology exists in order to present Christ to people and not to make stronger the authority of theologians. That is why in my opinion the question about, Do we except evolutionary interpretation of the first Old Testament pages, or Do we interpret them in the framework of strict creationism, is not a question. How do we understand the ancient pages of history? This is a question about our future. Do we want to see our Church missionary work active and open? Or, the whole life of the Church and thought narrowed down to the repetition of citations from the past centuries?

When I was in graduate school, I used to chuckle that my more theologically conservative classmates, the ones who were quietly ridiculed for taking the Bible “literally,” were the ones who understood literature more thoroughly as a symbolic artform that communicated on multiple levels. The ones who thought that the Bible was a “nice story” that shouldn’t be taken literally all tended to view literature in a way that was almost slavishly literal. In the end, they would aver “This is what the story means to me,” sort of giving their own personal testimony about the story, where they discovered an interesting version of themselves in the text. I often say that what lies at the heart of most lovers of literature is a single impulse: “Let me read a story about someone who is unique and interesting, someone just like me.” Ego-centrism, to a great extent, is the highest form of literalism.

More…

Considering that his book “Misquoting Jesus” explored the issue of variant readings in New Testament manuscripts it may be surprising to some that Bart Ehrman’s book itself contains millions and millions of variants.

Following are some examples of the variants:

On p. 13 reference is made to “Timothy LeHaye and Philip Jenkins” as the authors of the Left Behind series of novels. However, the authors of the series are Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Thus, error 1. Tim has never published as “Timothy,” error 2. his last name is not LeHaye but LaHaye and error 3. Jenkins’s first name is not Philip but Jerry.

On p. 110 error 4. “Timothy” is used as LaHaye’s last name.

In the index Timothy’s name is error 5. again spelled as “LeHaye.”

On p. 110 Hal Lindsey’s name is error 6. misspelled as “Hal Lindsay.”

On p. 70 Desiderius Erasmus is error 7. misspelled as “Desiderus Erasmus.”

…[snip]…

Now, if you are paying attention—or are you like me and simply cannot afford to pay attention? :o)—you may be thinking 1) that is only 16 errors, 2) they are mostly merely misspellings, 3) they do not affect the contents of the text and certainly do not affect any major point which the book seeks to make.
As for 2) and 3); thank you for noticing as this is precisely, word for word, how many of us feel about Bart Ehrman’s criticisms of the New Testament manuscripts.

As for 1) how do 16 equal my assertion of there being millions and millions of variants? Well, let us learn some methodology, the sort that allows Ehrman claim, “Put it this way: There are more variances among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.”

I do not know how many copies Misquoting Jesus has sold but it is reported that “Within the first three months, more than 100,000 copies were sold.”

The way it works is as simple as it is deceptive: you multiply the 16 variants by how many times they have been reproduced. As the 16 have been reproduced 100,000 (in three months alone) you multiply these and so the total of variants in Misquoting Jesus equals: 1,600,000.

And that, boys and girls, is how Bart Ehrman manages to make sensational claims that gain him notoriety and quite a few shekels.

Keep reading…

The great power and theological depth of the Scripture is found within these points of tension, and again within the tension between our lives today and the various parts of this ancient collection of books.  The Bible is like a stringed instrument in this respect.  It only works because of great tension.  Stop trying to take the tension out of the Bible.  If you take away the tension, smoothing over and dumbing down and making everything instructions and promises, all you get is a poorly tuned instrument and really bad music.

Read on…