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Genesis, Creation and Early Man
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Average Rating:  out of 7 Reviews
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Manufacturer: Saint Herman Pr
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EAN (European Article Number): 9781887904025
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Fr. Seraphim Rose
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Publisher: Saint Herman Pr
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Dewey Decimal Number: 231.7652
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Publication Date: 2000-03-16
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Reading Level: 712
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Description: Amidst the creation/evolution debate that is now raging, with evidence being offered for both sides, few have made use of what Fr. Seraphim Rose called "the missing evidence": the teaching of the ancient Orthodox Holy Fathers on the events of creation, the first-created world, the natures of created things, and the original nature of man. Now for the first time in the English language, this teaching has been gathered together and set forth in a thorough, detailed, and above all honest manner. Perhaps more than anyone else in our times, Fr. Seraphim Rose searched, studied, prayed and suffered to understand how the ancients noetically apprehended the creation in the light of the God-inspired book of Genesis. Having acquired their mind, he has presented to the modern world the harmonious Patristic vision of the cosmos. A vital answer to the contemporary "crisis of meaning," this book sheds startling new light on the mysteries of our origin. The Divine vision of the ancient Fathers opens up unforeseen dimensions of the creation: deeper levels of reality that cannot be reached through rational or scientific means.
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: A Beautiful vision |
Date: 2008-02-21 |
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Details: Fr. Seraphim presents a beautiful vision of Creation as clearly shown in the Bible and the Church Fathers. The book is very well thought out and written. He presents an undeniable witness from the writings of the Fathers on the Creation of the world. Although Fr. Seraphim is commonly rudely maligned by his critics, he was brave enought to stand for Truth. Which is refreshing after reading their spinless stances. The book is approched first with the fantastic vision of man and Creation as proclaimed by the Church, this if followed by a look at some "scientific" topics. Further the theory of evolution is traced back to its philosophical seeds planted well before Darwin. A wonderful read, a clear picture, a must have for the struggler in the modern age. |
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Review Summary: What does he mean? |
Date: 2007-12-30 |
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Details: Fr Rose is highly regarded by many zealous conservative Orthodox Christians. The characteristics of these Christians are often hyper-antiwesternism, xenophobia, and an unhealthy exaltation (and distortion) of the monastic life (monasticism is not synonymous with aceticism, which is a practice of ALL Christians, unique in practice to each invidual's life; monastcism and celibacy and starving one's self is not a "higher" form of the Christian life, marriage and good sex within that context is just as holy). Some even regard Seraphim Rose as saint!
Often in Rose's books, and in some of his followers I encounter online, they tend to flirt with neo-gnosticism, and often elevate the "spiritual" over the (apparently bad) "material", or Platonic ideas of the immortality of the soul. This unhealthy tendency is continued in this book. This is Seraphim Rose's worst book. Having read most of them, I can now truly say there is virtually no redeeming value in any of his books when much more competent and generous theologians have written on the same subjects with a much saner tone and objectivity when addressing the Fathers and Holy Tradition in response to the contemporary Western world.
This book is a failed attempt at disproving the compatibility of evolution with Eastern thought. What? When were the Fathers speaking about the post-Enlightenment materialist investigation into the reality of the natural world? Never. Like the many inspired authors of Genesis, the Fathers worked within their respective cultural and cosmological contingencies. They were not infallible speakers on the fundamental nature of atoms, quarks and gluons, or genetic mutation and punctuated equilibrium. Any attempt to disprove evolution by some overly ignorant and pseudo-pious attempt from "Tradition" is doomed to make Christians look backward and reactionary.
The horrible stench of fear seeps from the pages of Rose's books, and those who follow him. The Fathers embraced pagan philosophy to explain the Hebraic thoughts of the Old Testament and New Testament. To the secular historian they would see later Christian thought as foreign (or worse!)a perversion of the message of primitive Christianity. But to those illumined by the Church they see an organic growth and freedom the early Christians had in adapting pagan modes of thinking in order to explain the Gospel to their respective non-Jewish audiences. They were not restricted by Tradition; on the contrary they were free to adapt their thinking to different philosophical modes of engagement, while in living continuity with the Good News of the crucified, risen and exalted Messiah, Yehshua ben Yosef, Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God of Israel.
There is no competent or serious engagement with evolutionary biology, microbiology, quantum theory etc. in this book. There is not even an elementary grasp on the concepts of evolution, except some vague over generalizations. This is probably due to the miserable science education in the American school system that Eugene Rose grew up in.
The Orthodox world would be much better off if Rose's mistaken views on nearly everything were not continually propagated in book form. It hurts our witness to the Western World, when we truly hold the fullness of the Church. A much better (although extremely scholarly) discussion of these ideas are found in Light from the East (Theology and the Sciences). Although unlike this sad book, the reader must at least have an introductory level to biology and physics, and a competent grasp of eastern theology. A proper engagment with the biological sciences from a Christian point of view should allow us to embrace nature more fully as we see how interconected everything is. It should allow us to appreciate the myth of the Genesis story more fully, as we see humanity's place in Creation. A proper understanding should allow us to be better witnesses to the world, and fill with more love of God and of nature, and biblical literalists are often neo-platonists/gnostics and anti-nature.
This book is NOT recommended for anyone, it is not spiritually edifying or enlightening.
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Review Summary: Genesis, Creation and Early Man? |
Date: 2005-11-23 |
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Details: Frithjof Schuon resembles religions to colored beams of light emanating from Heaven such that every nation or ethnicity would see God in the color that was given to them; for them, that light was God Himself and the opposing colors were not which did not mean that such beliefs were naive or intolerant but simply that people recognized the divine intention in its particular form that they had received through revelation and were necessarily devoted to that. These different manifestations of the sacred which are translations of the metaphysical or universal truth into humanly understandable dogmatic languages were not given to men as stumbling blocks, or reasons for frustrations, troubles and discord but simply because they were the only ways to make the invisible, visible, the transcendent, apparent, the esoteric, manifest and because every nation or ethnicity, according to its particular temperament, nature and spiritual make-up could see God only in that shape and form and in no other way. However, behind the colors, there is always the pure luminosity, the colorless essence of light--God's perennial, immutable and formless substance, the same for all His creatures.
Evidently, "the outward and readily exaggerated incompatibility of the different religious forms" eventually ends up discrediting everyone of them. In the Christian Orthodox realm, any attempt to question, let alone criticize Seraphim Rose's complexion which otherwise sticks rigorously to the exoteric aspects of the faith but is incapable to transcend them, would clearly be unwelcome. In a certain sense, Rose is right--ideally, believers should be oblivious to any other religions but their own and this was indeed the case in traditional societies. But the disastrous intermingling of castes, nations and ethnicities and man's inherent niggardly and petty nature could not help generating a protective reaction which requires the depiction of other religions as devilish heresies. Christianity had to promote a certain kind of confessional apartheid and its Orthodox branch did not escape the rigors of this paradoxical deformity. Overcoming this unworthy inclination requires a large intellectual breath and discernment combined with generosity and nobility of character which apparently Fr. Seraphim possessed not. Nevertheless, one should be allowed to trust that God endowed all his children with an equal opportunity for salvation; to imply otherwise would mean to accuse Him of an inexcusable bias and useless favoritism.
Here is a supplementary anecdote: at one point, Seraphim Rose emphatically declares that mankind appeared because the originary couple had "numerous children"--ergo, we are all inescapably the result of a massive and incestuous primeval promiscuity. The trouble with such absurdities is that they ridicule the faith and trivialize Christian dogma, exposing it to the malicious but not unjustified attacks of rationalism. In his sublime ignorance, the unfortunate seraphim did not realize that stupidity, like any other human failure can be exploited by the devil and that consequently, by his attempt to explain an ineffable reality in phenomenological terms, he already fell into the trap of rationalism and became guilty of sheer vanity.
One may disavow such sarcastic accusations and maintain that in spite of his elucubrations, Seraphim Rose was a God fearer and an honest man and certainly there aren't any reasons to believe otherwise. Had he striven to live a simple monastic life, pray for the salvation of mankind and resist the temptation of meaningless biblical exegeses and fruitless polemics, his life would have been more useful to God, to us and to himself.
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Review Summary: A few specific clarifications on this great book |
Date: 2005-07-08 |
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Details: Each time I read the book I found it really convincing and scientifically sound, although this is not a science book but only discusses some relevant science issues/claims.
While I cannot hope to tell the reader with regard for the words of God and of the Holy Fathers how truly great this book is (other reviews try this), I have to comment a little on a few statements of a review which does not accurately represent the book. Of course, I will not be dealing with the reviewer's personal beliefs but I will illustrate how the book actually answers issues like
1. "If it were true that all of these fossils were deposited by the flood, why do the strata have such a 'sequential' order to them? In other words, why are there no modern animals in very ancient strata?"
On page 303 one finds "Since often these strata are 'upside down' according to the evolutionary model {footnote: The Encyclopedia Britannica (11th ed.) admits that in some fields all the strata are 'upside down' [i.e., primitive creatures are found at a higher level than more 'highly evoloved' ones].}...". Also, part of the footnote on page 304 reads "Dr. Raup, who is considered the world's greatest living paleontologist, is an evolutionist, but he acknowledges that one could fit just about any theory one likes to the fossil record. He says that the fossils could just as well have been deposited stochastically (randomly), as far as any order is concerned..." There is more convincing information about this in the text, but to me this appears enough. Also, please note that Fr. Seraphim does not claim the work of the creationist scientists to be without problems and to answer all questions, he just mentions somewhere that their model appears to have less problems and hence to appear more natural than the competing evolution model.
The second and last observation will be to
2. "In other words, the Fathers understanding of the passages relating to the rotation of the heavens was influenced by the science of the day. The same is true for their understanding of Gen.1 and the age of the earth the flood. Had they known what we know now perhaps they would have interpreted it very differently."
Let me say first that Fr. Seraphim says many times in the book that the Saints' understanding of these supernatural acts of creation is NOT influenced by scientific speculations, but it's essence comes from God's revelation, while the science of the day is only used as a side tool for illustrating some parts of the revelation, to the degree that these 'facts' support it. Therefore, it is missleading to believe that acquintance with today's science would make St Moses, St Basil the Great and many others interpret God's revelation in a different way, but it's true that they might have used other examples taken from science to relate to the core of the revealed knowledge. The whole section beginning on page 88 deals with the nature of the revealed knowledge the Fathers possessed but, this being too lengthy to quote here, I am cheating a little and offer instead a famous quotation of St Basil the Great (I believe not to be found in the book) advising those who lack the proper closeness to God (and hence lack access to Divinely revealed knowledge) on their dealings with the science of the day: "If there is anything in this system which might appear probable to you, keep your admiration for the source of such perfect order, for the wisdom of God. Grand phenomena do not strike us the less when we have discovered something of their wonderful mechanism. Is it otherwise here? At all events let us prefer the simplicity of faith to the demonstrations of reason."
To sum up, after re-reading the book, partly because of Athanasius' review (thank you, Athanasius!), I still find it truly great, scientifically objective and sound, and a must read for any Christian. |
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Review Summary: Back to the Future |
Date: 2004-03-29 |
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Details: _Genesis, Creation and Early Man_ by Father Seraphim Rose is a sizable tome which containing his studies on the Patristic writings on the creation of the world. This book was compiled and edited from among Fr. Seraphim's many papers, articles and letters that he had written on the subject, much of it in response to questions concerning the place of the evolutionary origins of humanity in Orthodox teaching. The primary sources Fr. Seraphim uses are from the ancient Fathers St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, St. Ambrose and St. Ephraim. The basic patristic doctrine concerning the creation of the world is that it was originally a Paradise, totally different from the fallen, disunited world of today. The Genesis record (according to tradition revealed by God to Moses) is a divine revelation; the true origins of the world cannot be fathomed and totally explained by rational science. Human reason alone cannot give us a glimpse into our primordial origin because disobedience and sin have clouded the eyes of man. The species of animals and plants were created all at once, in different varieties, and the Genesis record notes that the plants were created before the sun was formed. The meaning of this is that since the plants grew without the sun, then God, not the sun, is the true origin of Life. God also created humans into male and female, itself in anticipation of the fall. Fr. Seraphim quotes the writings of the Fathers stating that before the fall from Paradise, mankind would have been able to reproduce itself without sexual intercourse. Thus, differences between male and female will exist, along with the sacrament of marriage until the resurrection. Death was also unknown to primordial man, and physical decay is also a result of sin. After the fall, the entire world was radically changed. As man became more and more corrupt, life spans decreased and the world was transformed again by the waters of the great Flood. At the tower of Babel, man also became disparate in all parts of the world, members of different races, nationalities and languages. In this scheme, Fr. Seraphim brings into question many presuppositions of modern science. Evolutionism holds that the various species of life, plants and animals, evolved from a common source hundreds of millions of years ago. Therefore, man apparently evolved from form of ape in the past couple hundred thousands of years. The fossil record and similar genetics and traits are touted as evidence of evolutionary origins. However, the question is not settled as to where this primordial ooze that we evolved came from. There can be variations within different species and different "breeds" like cats and dogs as well as different human races. Also, Fr. Seraphim demonstrates how fossil dating techniques are arbitrary and designed by the scientists who support evolutionary theory in the first place. Current rock formations may indeed be the work of a cataclysm like the Flood, an event that Genesis describes as having radical environmental consequences (the rainbow). _Genesis, Creation and Early Man_ is an excellent resource for an introduction to the philosophy of the more predominant Fathers of the Church and a critique of popular scientific beliefs. Fr. Seraphim demonstrates that there is no real conflict between objective science and religion as long as the science is not used to answer fundamental questions of human existence. |
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