An Eastern Perspective on the Creation-Evolution Debate (1 of 2)
Theological Letters
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While the following is not technically a letter, it began as one. I was asked my thoughts on the Creation-Evolution Debate, and specifically what the Eastern Church Fathers might offer on this topic. My answer is that they offer quite a lot not found in the present discussion.
What I composed in place of a letter is a script for a video essay, which I plan to further expand into a refereed article and perhaps a short book down the road. Given that the following material was originally written to be read aloud, I have not included my usual footnotes — citations I will be sure to add before refereed publication. But for now, I trust that the theology to which I here refer can be traced to original sources with a survey of my other publications and other Googleable sources.
Be watching for Part 2 next week. In the meantime, enjoy!
Before Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, Victorian society was scandalized in 1844 by an anonymous bestseller that dared suggest that life could arise through natural processes without direct divine miracle.1 The embers of the claim were fanned into flames in 1859 by Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The firestorm took centerstage at Oxford the following year in the infamous debate between Thomas Huxley (nicknamed “Darwin’s Bulldog”) and Anglican Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. The Bishop mocked Huxley, asking which side of his family descended from apes, to which Huxley shot back that he would rather be related to apes than to a man who obscures the truth. The clash enfleshed a heated dispute over the origins of life that placed the Bible on one side and science on the other. By the 1920s, this academic debate became a political crusade in the notorious Scopes Trial, challenging a state law that forbade the teaching of evolution in the classroom. The legal fight turned into a media spectacle that birthed a culture war, leaving a clear impression on the public mind: One must choose between science and Christianity, between evolution and creation.
But why do Bible-believing Christians often oppose evolution? Surely an all-powerful Being could create a world that brings about life in the manner Darwin describes. What about the theory is thought to contradict the Bible?
The answer typically focuses on two things. The first is the age of the earth. Any child can read Genesis and see that God creates the cosmos in only six days. On the face of it, then, the Bible teaches that our world is rather young — only 6,000 years old, according to most Young Earth Creationists. Needless to say, there is a sizable gap between this estimate and the estimated 13.8 billion years offered by most Evolutionists. The difference is not just a matter of dates. Evolution requires this vast duration for life to emerge. 6,000 years simply is too short a time. The two stories about our world are thus incompatible.
A second thing that Evolution requires is death. The first two human beings, Adam and Eve, are warned that they will die if they eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Death was evidently not part of the creation from the start but rather, as Saint Paul tells us, entered the world when Adam sinned. But evolution tells a different story, a story about billions of years of life and death, a world red in tooth and claw, not because of sin but because the emergence of life requires these cycles of death. Once again, the two stories are incompatible: One teaches that death is natural, while the other teaches it is unnatural, only entering our world after the moral fall of our First Parents.
Now, plenty of Bible-believing Christians challenge the Young Earth reading. Some highlight that the Hebrew word for “day” (yôm) is not limited to solar days. Others note the parallels with Ancient Near Eastern literature, arguing the story is meant to correct the theology of competing myths, not offer a scientific textbook. Still others highlight the poetic genre of the narrative, which indicates a topical rather than literal structure.
Young Earth Creationists eye such readings with suspicion, however. Why? Because they see these as concessions to the scientific enterprise, one they view as antagonistic to biblical Christianity. The only reason a person would entertain such readings, they argue, is from a desire to exalt science over the Bible. Prior to Darwin, all Christians accepted the obvious biblical teaching that our world is only 6,000 years old.
But is this true? The present discussion about Young Earth Creationism is a largely Protestant one. As such, it tends to read the Bible in isolation, relying on “Scripture alone” rather than on historical Christianity, tradition, or the Fathers of the Church. And even those within the discussion who draw on Church history rarely draw on the Christian East. Most everyone in the debate is from a Western tradition — be it Protestant or Catholic — and therefore speaks from a distinctly Western perspective.
When considering this debate in the light of the Eastern Church Fathers, a very different perspective comes into focus. In what follows, I will scrutinize the above claims by Young Earth Creationism from an Eastern perspective. As we will see, the claims that set the foundations for the Young Earth case prove problematic when read in the light of the Eastern Fathers of the Church. And as we will also see, when these foundations crumble, new possibilities open up, rarely considered within the current debate.
1. DEFINING “DEATH”
Key to the Young Earth case is that death had no place in the world prior to the sin of man. All creatures lived in perfect harmony with one another, free of violence, sorrow, sickness, suffering, and death. The claim, however, contains an ambiguous term, the very term in question — death (thanatos). If we look at the meaning of this word in the Eastern Church Fathers, we find that the word has four possible definitions.
First, the term can refer to decomposition — the process by which an organic body separates into its basic elements. Second, the word can refer to the separation of soul and body — the moment when life departs from a previously animated body. The third meaning is corruption — which is to say any divergence from proper formation, such as an eye losing sight or a limb developing improperly. The fourth meaning is closely related, referring to spiritual corruption — which is what occurs when a rational being chooses to sin and do evil.
Keeping in mind that “death” can indicate any of the above phenomena, we might ask: Were any of these forms of death present before the Fall of man? The answer is yes — three if not all four were present before Adam sinned.
Within the biblical narrative, Adam and Eve are given permission to eat of any seed-bearing plant in the garden. The point may sound mundane, but this permission means that two forms of death were permitted in Eden. As mentioned, one meaning of death is decomposition. The consumption of plants involves breaking down an organic body — de-composing it — which is one of the meanings of death in the Eastern Church Fathers.
The second type of death here permitted is less obvious to a modern reader. But the Eastern Church Fathers, like all ancient thinkers, understood the soul to be the life force of a body. In other words, any living body has a soul. This is not to say that every organism is sentient or rational, but every living body is ensouled, and this includes plants. Hence, we find in the Eastern Fathers references to the phytikos or vegetative soul. Plants, being living organisms, are ensouled bodies. And when they are killed, that life departs. Recall that this is the second meaning of “death” — the departure of a soul from a body. So, in Eden, we find at least two instances of permissible death.
Now, the key word is permissible — or perhaps it would be better to say suitable. The presence of these in Eden indicates that there is nothing unnatural about these modes of plant death. The other two meanings of death, which refer to corruption, are more problematic in the Christian narrative, since these are distortions of creation. Christianity, believing the creation is originally good, teaches that corruption only enters the world when free beings twist or distort creation.
However, we should keep in mind another important feature of the Christian narrative: Man is not the only rational being to sin. According to Christian tradition, a large number of celestial beings, called angels, also sinned and fell. The most notable of these, of course, is The Devil, who appears in the Eden narrative as the Tempter of Eve. The Eastern Church Fathers are not unanimous about precisely when the angels fell, but they are unanimous that the angels fell before the Fall of man. What this means is that spiritual corruption had entered the world before man sinned. For a large portion of the heavenly hosts had rebelled against their Maker, twisting themselves into what is called demons.
As for whether any other modes of corruption may have been present before the Fall of man, we’ll return to later. But for now, the point is this. Young Earth Creationism presumes that no form of death was present or permitted before the Fall of man. Yet, if we consider the various meanings of the word “death” as used by the Eastern Church Fathers, we find that at least three forms of death were in the world prior to man’s Fall — two of these being permissible or suitable, in the case of plant death, and one being a mode of corruption, namely, the Fall of angels.
In this light, whatever Saint Paul means when saying that death entered the world through Adam, he cannot mean this is the first time an organic body became subject to decomposition — plants were already. Nor can he mean this is the first time a soul and body would separate — such also transpired in plant death. Nor can he mean that man was the first creature to choose sin and bring spiritual corruption upon himself — the angels already had. Read in the light of the Eastern Fathers, then, Paul’s words do not require what the Young Earth Creationist presumes.
2. ON ANIMAL DEATH
When considering whether the death of plants might be acceptable in a world void of sin and evil, I presume few are troubled by the suggestion. Rarely does a person think of the death of a plant as evil. But animal death tends to strike a different chord in the human heart. Perhaps the reason is due to the prevalence of animal domestication and anthropomorphism — modern man projecting on irrational animals thoughts and feelings they simply do not have. But whether this unease with animal death is justified or not, there can be no doubt that animal death is more significant than plant death, since animals are sentient and higher in the “Chain of Being,” to use the classical term. So, is it possible that animal death could have been present before the Fall of man? Is it possible to say of animal death the same thing said about plant death, that it was suitable and permitted before the world was corrupted by moral evil?
Perhaps surprisingly, the Eastern Church Fathers give reason to think the answer is yes. Let’s begin with a helpful distinction, not from the Eastern Fathers but from the Latin scholastics. These Latin writers differentiate two terms, privatio (or privation) and negatio (or negation). As mentioned, Christianity understands evil to enter our world as a distortion or corruption of nature. Latin writers referred to this as a privation of some suitable good. An eye, for example, is a seeing organ. If the eye is harmed and loses sight, this is a privation — the loss of a suitable good. The contrast is with a suitable absence. An ear, for example, lacks sight. But the ear is not a seeing organ. So this absence is not a privation but a negation: An ear does not have the good of sight, but it is not made to have this good.
The distinction is useful to the question of animal death. Let’s imagine that animals died prior to the Fall of man. Would this be an evil? To answer the question we must answer whether animals are supposed to be immortal. If the answer is no, then this lack of immortality is not an evil, anymore than an ear lacking sight is an evil. Or put more technically, their lack of immortality would be a negation, not a privation. In this case, animal death, like plant death, would be suitable and permissible before the Fall.
Several claims in the Eastern Church Fathers indicate that animal mortality is perfectly natural. The first is the way these Fathers categorized the creatures God has made. In John of Damascus we find what is sometimes called a “Porphyry Tree,” organizing the things of creation according to dichotomous genera, such as things that are alive and things that are not, things that have bodies and things that do not. One such division that John introduces is the natural division between the mortal and the immortal. And John places animals on the side of things mortal, indicating that animal mortality is suitable to this type of being.
We find something similar in how the Eastern Fathers generally read the making of man in Genesis. The Eastern Fathers commonly read the heavens and the earth, spoken of in the creation story, as representing the mortal (the earth) and the immortal (the heavens). Man, who is taken from the earth but breathed into from heaven, is thus a merger of the two, raising the question: Was man created mortal or immortal? We find this question in Jewish writer, Philo of Alexandria, and it echoes in the Fathers as early as Theophilus of Antioch. What is important for our purposes is that the question presumes that earthly things, in which animals are included, are naturally mortal.
A third consideration appears in Irenaeus, disciple of Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostle John. Irenaeus explains that animal bodies are not made to live forever, and this is why the human body must be transformed in the resurrection to experience immortality — here drawing on the writings of Saint Paul. The point, again, indicates that immortality is not natural to animals.
Two further Eastern teachings also point in this same direction. The first is the image-likeness distinction, common in these Fathers. The Eastern Fathers of the Church observe that, in Genesis, God sets out to make man in his own image and according to his likeness. He then creates man in his image — likeness is not repeated. They take the omission to be important. The image, these Fathers argue, refers to the rational spirit with its capacities of reason, free will, and communion with things divine. The likeness concerns the active imitation of God — freely using our higher nature to imitate God’s love, kindness, and other attributes, while also communing with God.
The importance of the point here is that these Fathers understand our active participation in God to be the means by which man attains eternal life. A favorite analogy of theirs is the relationship between iron and fire. Iron, when in communion with fire, glows and burns, taking the attributes (or energies) of fire into itself. And so it is with man and God. Man, as an image of God, is made to commune with God and be transformed, taking into himself divine attributes — including the attributes of immortality, incorruptibility, and eternal life.
I mentioned earlier a question about whether Adam was created mortal or immortal. The answer in the Eastern Fathers is neither: He was created potentially mortal and potentially immortal, his will functioning like the fulcrum of a balance scale, choosing whether to live and die like a mortal beast or to commune with God like the angels. The choice goes to the likeness of God. Bearing God’s image, man had the capacity for immortality, but he must actively cultivate this capacity by choosing to commune with God.
The reason I highlight this teaching is this. Notice that, according to this doctrine, Adam was not created immortal — only potentially immortal. In this light, if we ascribe natural immortality to the irrational animals, we elevate the beasts above Adam.
A second teaching of note concerns the reason God created a merger of the heavens and the earth. The Eastern Fathers refer to man as a microcosm, seeing him as a union of everything God has made. But why make such a microcosm? According to these Fathers, the reason is so that man might mediate divine communion to the lower things of nature.
Perhaps an analogy might help. Imagine several musical instruments — a cello, a timpani, and a triangle. Each of these instruments has an innate capacity for music. If a master musician, like Johann Sebastian Bach, were to pick up these instruments, they would become a vehicle for his musical genius. But each instrument has innate limitations. A cello has a greater capacity to participate in Bach’s genius than a timpani or a triangle. However, when a timpani or a triangle is part of an orchestra, it transcends its innate limitations, participating in Bach’s genius to a greater degree than it could otherwise.
This, argue the Eastern Fathers, is why God creates the microcosm of man. Rational spirits, like angels, are naturally God-like, far more capable of communing with God by imitation than a rock or a plant. But when the organic world is merged with an icon of God — as happens in man — then the things of earth are raised up, becoming part of the orchestra that is the human person. In short, man is created to serve as a bridge between God and the lower things of nature, enabling the realm of animals and plants to commune with God in a way they otherwise could not.
Like the image-likeness doctrine, this teaching means that neither plants nor animals are naturally immortal. Lacking the image of God, they have no natural means of partaking of the divine nature and attaining immortality. The creation of man alone is what creates this possibility. But notice that this possibility never came to pass. For man chose to sin, choosing to live and die like the beasts, which means the beasts never crossed this bridge, partaking of immortality. And here, we can understand why Saint Paul tells us that creation groans for the unveiling of the sons of God: For man is the only hope the natural world has to commune with God, and through this communion escape corruption and transcend its innate mortality.
Considering this train of doctrines — from the place of animals in creation to the doctrine of resurrection to the image-likeness distinction to man as microcosm — the Eastern Church Fathers offer ample reason to reject the idea that animals were naturally immortal before the Fall. In this light, the lack of immortality amongst beasts would be a negation, not a privation or corruption: Their lack of immortality is perfectly natural and part of the original created order.
3. ON ANIMAL PREDATION AND DISEASE
The suggestion that animals were mortal before the Fall is one thing, but what about animal predation and disease? Evolutionists do not suggest that animals simply died peacefully due to old age. They claim animals preyed upon one another, killing and eating one another. Paleopathology suggests that animals were subject to cancer, arthritis, and infections. Can such violence and disease really be deemed natural and suitable before the Fall of man?
The most obvious reason to think predation and disease were absent before the sin of Adam is the belief that no creatures died before the Fall. But we have already seen that both plants and animals are naturally mortal — before our First Parents sinned.
Another reason is the presumption that many Westerners share, namely, that Christian hope is about a return to Eden. In other words, many Western Christians believe that Eden represents the paradise lost to which we hope to return in the eschaton. For this reason, things said about the paradise that awaits are presumed to be true about the paradise lost. The visions of the New Heavens and the New Earth in the Bible describe a place with no death, pain, sickness, or sorrow. We also find talk of the wolf laying down with the lamb and the lion eating straw like the ox, indicating the end of animal violence and predation. So, many presume that this picture of what will be is also a picture of what was in Eden.
But is this so? Do these prophecies indicate that animals were free of predation and disease before the Fall of Adam? Drawing again on the Eastern Church Fathers, we have reason to think this may not be the case.
First, recall that man was made in the image of God but not in his likeness. The likeness was something our First Parents had to achieve by freely communing with their Maker, but they chose to reject this path for the life of beasts. In this light, Adam and Eve are not the picture of what man is made to become. They had the potential to become likeness-bearers but never did. The likeness of God first manifests in a human person in the Resurrected Christ. Keeping this in mind, we can see that the Christian narrative is linear, not cyclical. We are not striving to return to Eden but transcend it, attaining something our First Parents never did. And for this reason, we should not presume that the eschatological visions of the New Heavens and the New Earth mirror Eden. More likely, they transcend it.
A similar point appears in the doctrine of man as microcosm, already discussed. Recall the reason for creating this microcosm, according to the Eastern Fathers: The lower things in creation that do not bear the image of God, such as plants and animals, cannot partake of God to the degree a rational spirit can. The union of the heavens and the earth in man is so that earthly things might commune with God to a greater degree than they otherwise could. But just as man never attained the likeness of God, so man never mediated divine life to the lower things of nature. The prophets offer a picture of a New Heavens and New Earth where animals transcend their bestial nature, true, but according to the microcosm doctrine, such transcendence is only possible through man’s own transformation through communion with God — something that never occurred in Eden.
Granting these doctrines, we should expect discontinuity between Eden and the eschaton. Whatever it means for the lower things of creation to transcend their natural state by communion with God is something that has yet to take place. We catch glimpses of it in the aforementioned prophecies, and we see small manifestations of it in the lives of Saints, where plants grow strangely or animals conduct themselves in less bestial ways around holy people. But these small flickers are glimpses of something to come, not of something lost. At creation, they are, after all, referred to as “wild” beasts.2
Now, some may object that there are indeed Eastern Church Fathers who presume that the animals were not carnivorous before the Fall. That’s true. Basil of Caesarea says as much. However, Irenaeus, who also shares this opinion, records an equally important fact: This opinion was not held by all early Christians. Many understood the prophecy about the wolf laying down with the lamb as applying to the eschaton only, not Eden. And others did not take the prophecy to be about animals at all, reading it allegorically as the taming of man’s bestial nature. Thus, while we find this opinion amongst some Church Fathers, we also find testimony that it was neither dogma nor universal.
The sole question, then, is whether animal predation and disease is a corruption of nature or whether these are natural extensions of animal mortality. For my part, I see no problem with the idea that sickness naturally arises in organisms that are destined to die or that predation is natural to an ecosystem of mortal creatures.
But let’s entertain the idea that either disease or predation or both are corruptions of nature. Does this concession require that neither were present before the Fall of man? I don’t think it does, and the reason, once again, is found in the Eastern Fathers of the Church.
When exploring the various meanings of death, I reminded us of an important feature of the Christian narrative: Man is not the first creature to Fall. But why would the Fall of angels be relevant to the animal kingdom? The reason is this. According to Scripture, angels are ministering spirits. What this means, according to the Eastern Fathers, is that they occupy a host of ministering roles within the cosmos — some tending to men, some to nations, others to the elements, and, yes, some are entrusted with the care of animals.
Central to Eastern patristic demonology is that demons strive to distort creation. The most obvious example is the Fall of man, where the Devil sought to lead man into sin and through sin enslave him to corrupt passions and drag him into sickness, sorrow, death, and alienation from God. But the Eastern Fathers do not limit demonic distortions to man. They see such schemes in other aspects of creation also under angelic care, such as in the natural elements. And we might add to this the fact that, according to many Eastern Fathers, these fallen spirits even produced biological abominations, namely, the Nephilim or giants. Such doctrines make it entirely plausible that the demonic corruptions of nature include things in the animal kingdom, at least some of which have been placed in angelic care. The claim is not made directly by the Fathers, but the required premises are all present. Hence, were we to conclude that corruptions of the animal kingdom existed before the Fall of man, I would think it perfectly reasonable to ascribe such malformations to the fallen angels.
Now, as I said, I don’t think it’s obvious that animal sickness or predation is a corruption, given that animals are naturally and suitably mortal. But could one prove that such things are corruptions of the animal world, Eastern Patristic demonology offers an explanation for why such corruptions might appear before the Fall of man.
To be continued in Part 2
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Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. The author of the anonymous work is Robert Chambers. Chambers was not an atheist but a deist. His theory still held that the natural processes that gave rise to life were divinely ordained. He simply did not believe God must “tinker” with nature in order to bring about life.
This occurs in both Genesis 1:24–25 and 2:19-20 (LXX), where the story names the “wild beasts”: e.g., “every wild beast of the field” (πᾶν θηρίον τοῦ ἀγροῦ), θήρια being the Greek term for wild beasts, as contrasted with flocks, cattle, or domesticated animals.