Pravoslavlje i poreklo smrti?

[ИгорМ]

Kako onda satana i dalje postoji?

 

Како каже Свети Дамаскин, пад је за анђеле што и смрт за људе, јер после пада за њих нема покајања (као што га нема ни за људе после смрти).

То је онај бесповратни пад злих духова.

[ИгорМ]

Kako satana postoji kao krajnje otudjena licnost od Boga?Ako je smrt otudjenost od Boga.

 

Мислим да би ово могао бити одговор: (2. Пет 2,4)

Јер кад Бог не поштедје анђела који сагријешише, него их метну у окове мрака пакленога, и предаде да се чувају за суд;

 

И ово: (Јуд. 6)

И анђеле који не држаше својега старјешинства него оставише свој стан чува у вјечнијем оковима под мраком за суд великога дана. 

Измењено Март 8, 2015 од ИгорМ

[SHADOWS OF THE LIGHT]

Како каже Свети Дамаскин, пад је за анђеле што и смрт за људе, јер после пада за њих нема покајања (као што га нема ни за људе после смрти).

То је онај бесповратни пад злих духова.

Pa to onda nije fer prema andjelima.Mi nakon neposlusnosti dobijamo vreme da se pokajemo i vratimo Bogu a oni ne mogu.

[SHADOWS OF THE LIGHT]

Мислим да би ово могао бити одговор: (2. Пет 2,4)

Јер кад Бог не поштедје анђела који сагријешише, него их метну у окове мрака пакленога, и предаде да се чувају за суд;

 

И ово: (Јуд. 6)

И анђеле који не држаше својега старјешинства него оставише свој стан чува у вјечнијем оковима под мраком за суд великога дана. 

Al ih pusta po malo da nas kusaju.

[ИгорМ]

Pa to onda nije fer prema andjelima.Mi nakon neposlusnosti dobijamo vreme da se pokajemo i vratimo Bogu a oni ne mogu.

 

 

То је осуђено на 5. васељенском ако се добро сећам  (Ориген)

[ИгорМ]

Al ih pusta po malo da nas kusaju.

 

То (па баш и не мора али ај' ако је нама на корист - духовног сазревања)

[Deja Vu]

Pa to onda nije fer prema andjelima.Mi nakon neposlusnosti dobijamo vreme da se pokajemo i vratimo Bogu a oni ne mogu.

 

Da, voli tako Bog da deli nepravdu kako mu se prohte.

 

 

Svako od njih ima istu mogucnost da se pokaje i vrati ako hoce, ali poenta je da nece. Kod njih je pad toliki da je gotovo nemoguce da se vrate Bogu. Znas kako glasi ona izreka: I djavo zna sta je dobro, ali ga ne cini.  

 

U vezi pitanja za besmrtnost, mislim da Crkva ne uci da su oni besmrtni. Barem ako smrt posmatramo u onom ontoloskom smislu kao smrt licnosti. Zato su svi oni prikazani kao nakaze, crni ili pak bez lica, sto je slikovati prikaz da nemaju licnost, pa su samim tim vec sada zagazili u pakao i smrt. Zato su cesto prikazani kao stanovnici pakla koji muce ljude, sto je opet slikovati prikaz da je sva ona vatra slikoviti prikaz njihovog stanja, a takvo stanje mozemo i mi da dozivimo vec sada (kada smo u depresiji, u besu, u strastima itd.). Pakao je stanje, ne mesto u vezi odnosa sa Bogom. Ako ga imas, u raju si, ako nemas u paklu si i ne postojis (druga smrt kako je opisana) jer nemas odnos sa drugim licnostima koje te definisu. Povezi to sa onim kada ce Isus da kaze nekima: Idite od mene nikad vas nisam poznavao. 

 

Da li su u bioloskom smislu mrtvi, to niko ne zna jer nemamo pojma sta su, da li imaju neku materiju ili ne, da li su u nekoj visoj dimenziji univerzuma ili u nekom drugom itd. No, to je za nas potpuno nebitno, vec je bitno da su kao deo tvorevine svakako besmrtni(=odvojeni od Boga), jer smrt=odvojenost. Svet je odvojen od Boga od samog momenta stvaranja=Svet je smrtan jer je stvoren. Zasto? Zato sto nije moguce stvoriti Boga, nelogicno i kontradiktorno. Ako bi stvorio besmrtan svet koji nije odvojen od Boga stvorio bi jos jednog Boga. No, to je nemoguce, jer se Bog ne moze stvoriti. Ako bi stvorio svet koji nije odvojen od Boga onda ne bi stvorio svet. Zapravo ne bi nista stvorio posto je tako nesto logicki nemoguce. Opet pitanje zasto? Zato sto je Bog zajednica Svete Trojice, a ta se zajednica zasniva na slobodi i ljubavi, sto znaci da je svako od njih u toj zajednici htenjem a ne moranjem. Da je Bog stvorio svet koji je od samog pocetka u zajednici sa Njim, onda bi taj svet bio lisen slobode i u zajednici bi bio moranjem. To onda automatski znaci da Bog nije Bog (slobodna zajednica). Zato je svet od samog pocetka stvoren odvojen od Boga, jer je nemoguce stvoriti ga u zajednici sa Njim. Da bi taj svet usao u tu zajednicu, on treba da ima slobodu i da to uradi htenjem, dakle da kaze: Da Boze, ja hocu u zajednicu sa tobom. I to je upravo cilj, jer je covek taj koji prinosu tu tvorevinu i kaze DA. O tome sam vec pisao, povezi i dobices jedan skladan i jasan sistem. 

 

Ovo je pravoslavno ucenje i shvatanje Boga. Ako ti se ne svidja mozes naci neko drugo shvatanje kod muslimana, Jevreja i njihovog Boga koji bi mozda i uveo tvorevinu u zajednicu sa sobom silom jer njima i ne smeta Bog koji sili i tera. Ili mozes naci kod protestanata, ali ces ako malo bolje razmislis uvideti razne protivurecnosti i besmislice kod takvih tumacenja. 

Nadam se da ti je malo jasnije. 

[Deja Vu]

Мислим да овде има нешто о томе кад говори о злу и греху http://www.verujem.org/teologija/ignatije_ontologija_i_etika.htm, ако се добро сећам.

 

E dobro je ovo, odlicno napisano. Tako da @@SHADOWS OF THE LIGHT, , ako hoces mozes ovo procitati i nacices manje-vise slicne odgovore. Eto na samom pocetku se pravi razlika izmedju grcke i hriscanske ontologije. Po grckoj istina je u proslosti, pa se besmrtno postojanje pronalazi kroz oslobadjanje duse od tela i vracanje na pocetak, dok je po hriscanskoj koju iznosi Maksim Ispovednik, istina na kraju u buducnosti pa se besrmtno postojanje pronalazi u njoj i to je Drugi dolazak Hrista. To ti automatski pokazuje da je svet stvoren smrtan i da svoju smrtnost prevazilazi u buducnosti. A ne da je stvoren besmrtan, pa onda jer je Adam pogresio pretvoren u smrtan. Nimalo se ne razlikuje od ovog Origenovog shvatanja koje je izneto po kom je Bog kaznio nekog sto se on odvojio od Njega.  Takav Bog ne moze biti kompatibilan sa Hristom. 

 

Uz to ovde lepo pise da Bog nije stvorio besmrtan svet navodeci citate iz dela Maksima Ispovednika. 

[Благовесник]

Pa to onda nije fer prema andjelima. Mi nakon neposlusnosti dobijamo vreme da se pokajemo i vratimo Bogu a oni ne mogu.

Isti je slucaj bio i s njima. Da li si se pitao: otkud pali andjeo u Rajskom vrtu?

[SHADOWS OF THE LIGHT]

Da, voli tako Bog da deli nepravdu kako mu se prohte.

 

 

Svako od njih ima istu mogucnost da se pokaje i vrati ako hoce, ali poenta je da nece. Kod njih je pad toliki da je gotovo nemoguce da se vrate Bogu. Znas kako glasi ona izreka: I djavo zna sta je dobro, ali ga ne cini.  

 

U vezi pitanja za besmrtnost, mislim da Crkva ne uci da su oni besmrtni. Barem ako smrt posmatramo u onom ontoloskom smislu kao smrt licnosti. Zato su svi oni prikazani kao nakaze, crni ili pak bez lica, sto je slikovati prikaz da nemaju licnost, pa su samim tim vec sada zagazili u pakao i smrt. Zato su cesto prikazani kao stanovnici pakla koji muce ljude, sto je opet slikovati prikaz da je sva ona vatra slikoviti prikaz njihovog stanja, a takvo stanje mozemo i mi da dozivimo vec sada (kada smo u depresiji, u besu, u strastima itd.). Pakao je stanje, ne mesto u vezi odnosa sa Bogom. Ako ga imas, u raju si, ako nemas u paklu si i ne postojis (druga smrt kako je opisana) jer nemas odnos sa drugim licnostima koje te definisu. Povezi to sa onim kada ce Isus da kaze nekima: Idite od mene nikad vas nisam poznavao. 

 

Da li su u bioloskom smislu mrtvi, to niko ne zna jer nemamo pojma sta su, da li imaju neku materiju ili ne, da li su u nekoj visoj dimenziji univerzuma ili u nekom drugom itd. No, to je za nas potpuno nebitno, vec je bitno da su kao deo tvorevine svakako besmrtni(=odvojeni od Boga), jer smrt=odvojenost. Svet je odvojen od Boga od samog momenta stvaranja=Svet je smrtan jer je stvoren. Zasto? Zato sto nije moguce stvoriti Boga, nelogicno i kontradiktorno. Ako bi stvorio besmrtan svet koji nije odvojen od Boga stvorio bi jos jednog Boga. No, to je nemoguce, jer se Bog ne moze stvoriti. Ako bi stvorio svet koji nije odvojen od Boga onda ne bi stvorio svet. Zapravo ne bi nista stvorio posto je tako nesto logicki nemoguce. Opet pitanje zasto? Zato sto je Bog zajednica Svete Trojice, a ta se zajednica zasniva na slobodi i ljubavi, sto znaci da je svako od njih u toj zajednici htenjem a ne moranjem. Da je Bog stvorio svet koji je od samog pocetka u zajednici sa Njim, onda bi taj svet bio lisen slobode i u zajednici bi bio moranjem. To onda automatski znaci da Bog nije Bog (slobodna zajednica). Zato je svet od samog pocetka stvoren odvojen od Boga, jer je nemoguce stvoriti ga u zajednici sa Njim. Da bi taj svet usao u tu zajednicu, on treba da ima slobodu i da to uradi htenjem, dakle da kaze: Da Boze, ja hocu u zajednicu sa tobom. I to je upravo cilj, jer je covek taj koji prinosu tu tvorevinu i kaze DA. O tome sam vec pisao, povezi i dobices jedan skladan i jasan sistem. 

 

Ovo je pravoslavno ucenje i shvatanje Boga. Ako ti se ne svidja mozes naci neko drugo shvatanje kod muslimana, Jevreja i njihovog Boga koji bi mozda i uveo tvorevinu u zajednicu sa sobom silom jer njima i ne smeta Bog koji sili i tera. Ili mozes naci kod protestanata, ali ces ako malo bolje razmislis uvideti razne protivurecnosti i besmislice kod takvih tumacenja. 

Nadam se da ti je malo jasnije. 

 

Преподобни Јован Дамаскин, сумирајући у 8. веку учење св. Отаца, својих претходника, каже: "Анђео је биће обдарено умом, увек у покрету, које поседује слободну вољу и служи Богу, бестелесно, по благодати, добивши као своју природу бесмртност, а томе бићу облик и својства зна само Саздатељ. Бестелеснима и невештаственима се Анђели називају у поређењу са нама, јер се у поређењу са Богом, који је Једини Неупоредив, они показују и груби и вештаствени, будући да је само Божанство одиста невештасвено и бестелесно". И даље он каже: "Они су описиви, јер када се налазе на Небесима, тада нису на земљи, а када их Бог пошаље на земљу, они не остају на Небесима - али они нису ограничени зидовима и вратима нити резама и печатима, јер за њих закони природе нису препрека. Слободни од Закона природе су зато што се онима који су достојни и којима Бог хоће да се они покажу, Анђели не показују онакви какви заиста јесу, него у оном измењеном обличју у коме их људи могу видети" ("Тачно изложење православне вере", II, 3).

 

Ovo boldovano verovatno si hteo da kazes smrtni.Ali Andjeli,barem oni koji nisu pali su oni koji su vecnoj zajednici sa Bogom vrseci njegovu volju.Tako je i stvoreni svet bio u zajednici sa Bogom sve dok je Adam vrsio Boziju volju kroz zapovest i to ga je cinilo besmrtnim.Vrseci volju Boziju imao je pristup ,izvoru besmrtnosti,drvetu zivota.Tek nakon greha,krsenja zapovesti,suprostavljanja Bozijoj volji smrt ulazi u tvorevinu.Prvobitna zejednica je je razbijena od strane stvorenja i to odvajanje je za posledicu imalo ulazak smrti u tvorevinu.Greh je izmenio prvostvorenu prirodu.

Ili ti zapravo kazes da je Bog tvorac smrti?Samim tim sto je stvorio nesto on je stvorio i smrt?Ako je tvorevina smrtna samo zato sto je stvorena,a stvorena je po Bozijoj voji onda je logican zakljucak da je Bog tvorac smrti.

Sazdavsi coveka Bog kaze i dobro bese veoma.Ako je ovo tvoje tacno onda Bog vidi smrt sveta koji je stvorio od samoga pocetka i to naziva dobrim veoma.

I drugo ako je nesto besmrtno ne mora da znaci da je Bog.Andjeli imaju besmrtnost kao dar ali ih to ne cini bogovima.Oni kao deo stvorenoga sveta postoje u prostoru i vremenu za razliku od Boga.Bog postoji oduvek dok je stvoreni svet u jednom odredjenom trenutku usao u postojanje.On moze da bude besmrtan ali nije vecan jer je bilo vreme kada nije postojao.Ima svoj pocetak u vremenu.Bog nema pocetka.

[SHADOWS OF THE LIGHT]

Isti je slucaj bio i s njima. Da li si se pitao: otkud pali andjeo u Rajskom vrtu?

Pa valjda se tu nasao zato sto je pao od prvobitne slave koju je posedovao.Pitam se zasto mu je Bog dopustio da kusa coveka i da ga sunovrati u greh?

[grigorije22]

Мишљење епископа Александра Милеанта

Death: when did it appear?

Some people draw the conclusion from the Bible’s account of Adam and Eve that, before the fall of the first man, neither death nor decay existed in nature: life all over Earth flowed smoothly without storms or cataclysms, animals of prey fed on grass, and neither insects, fish, nor animals died, but rather all of them enjoyed immortality together with man. This idealization of the primitive world has no basis.

The very concept of death is full of human tragedy. Do we really have the right to apply the word death in the same sense to the plant or animal world? The departure of animals is not a death similar to the departure from life of Godlike man, who was made to be immortal. The division of a living cell, the loss of bacteria or an insect, or the halting of physiological processes in an ape is not the same thing as the demise of a human. Animals were not promised immortality, and they do not die because they broke the commandment. On the contrary, their death is just as natural a process as their birth. From the appearance of the first living cell in the world up until the creation of Adam, birth and death flowed in an uninterrupted stream. If it had been otherwise, the world would have become overpopulated with animals with nothing to feed upon soon after its creation. Only death and decay could pave the way for the birth of new creatures.

Adam was made to be immortal, not by his nature, but rather, conditionally, insofar as he was given access to the Tree of Life as a reward for fulfilling the commandment. In warning Adam about the danger of death, the Maker did not have in mind physical so much as spiritual death — that he would be deprived of the life-giving grace of the Holy Spirit. However, theoretically, Adam could have prolonged his physical life if he had eaten from the fruit of the Tree of Life after the Fall, too. It is specifically because God denied Adam access to the Tree of Life that he was doomed to physical death. Saint Gregory the Theologian explains that God fixed things so that the moral "evil [which entered Adam] did not become immortal." The fact that Adam was created outside of Eden already tells us that he must have been acquainted with death in the animal kingdom.

It may be assume that before the Fall of Adam there were no predators within the limits of Eden and only herbivores and harmless animals lived there. But beyond the limits of Eden, life flowed in its primordial rhythm. We know from paleontology that long before the birth of man there were predators even more fierce than today’s. From the very beginning, life and death alternated on all levels of existence — from microorganisms to the very largest animals. Just look at the skeleton of the prehistoric tyrannosaurus, whose teeth, sharp as a knife, reached lengths of 15 centimeters (6 inches). He certainly didn’t feed on grass!

Paleontology has counted about ten cases of relatively short periods from 500 to 65 million years ago during which massive extinctions of an enormous quantity of animal and plant species occurred. Perhaps the most grandiose massive extinction took place about 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, when 50 to 90 percent of the species inhabiting Earth, or about 200 of 400 known families, were wiped off the face of the Earth. Another massive extinction of apocalyptic proportions occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, which led to the death of all dinosaurs and ammonites.

But in that case, how are we to interpret the words of the Apostle Paul: "For the earnest expectation of the creature eagerly awaits for the revealing of the sons of God... For the creature

was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope;.. because the creature itself also wall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. Chapter 8:19-21)?

Is the Apostle not indicating here that death and decay in the world were the result of the Fall of Adam? It seems to us that here he is talking not about the past, but about the future. The Apostle’s basic idea is that nature is imperfect and perishable because man, the crown of creation, was expected to perfect himself spiritually. But since man fell morally, nature remained perishable and imperfect without reaching the ideal state it was destined for. When the faithful part of mankind is honored with immortality after the universal resurrection from the dead, then the rest of the physical world will be transformed into new heavens and a new earth (see II Pet. 3:13). On the "day" after the universal resurrection, all of nature will be renewed, and the lowest creature, together with man, will be free from the laws of decay and destruction. What will nature look like then, and will it still have the plants and animals we know? The Apostle does not answer these questions. There are hints in the Bible that there will be something similar in the new world to what we see here (Is. 11:6-9, Is. 65:17-25; Rev. ch. 21-22). However, it is useless to try to imagine now what that spiritual world will look like, because time itself, space, and all the laws of nature will have completely new substance.

We have already cursorily mentioned the misunderstanding concerning Earth’s position in the galaxy. Since Moses describes everything from the point of view of an observer on earth, the impression is created that Earth is the center of the universe. Roman Catholic theologians defended this view with much pathos: "It is not fitting for the Earth, to which the Lord had to descend, to spin around in space like a child’s top." Fortunately, with time good sense triumphed and now no one can seriously repeat the old error about the universe’s rotation around Earth. This case vividly illustrates the problem that a biased understanding of some expressions in the Bible can cause when one is unaware of or ignores basic scientific data.

http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/creation_man_a_mileant_e.htm 

 

Размишљање ђакона Андреја Курајева

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 edge, 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 that 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, he would not then 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, oh blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Mathew 25:34). The rest will be burned.

And if upon creation (not resurrection but exactly upon the new creation of a "new Earth, and a new sky") God will decide to inhabit them by animals, 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 Gods 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 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 in evidence of profanation of primordial good quality of the world. The will of God is violated only when the creature which is the image of the Creator is reducing 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, where Christians, acquiring the gifts of the Holy Spirit, then spread them to the animal world.

Besides, 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" (to the word "sin") cannot be applied to animals in a strict human-existential meaning.

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? B 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 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.

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 irreproachable.

First of all, this advocate loses from his sight, 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 it's 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 Jewish "gun". Jewish "gun" came from the verb "gunnon" to defend. In other languages the connection between garden and fence, 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 Jewish 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. 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 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 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. More over, it was vice- versa. Though 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.

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, God 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 saw somebody's death before). 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 human 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.

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 "levits" 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 antropogenez. 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[ living] something out of 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, in which Adam was introduced, embraced Eden. What kind of world was outside of Eden that lies between two 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.

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, these words of God were said? The thing is that Genesis narrates twice about the creation of man B 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. Let us suppose that 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 Holy Father's witnesses about the order of co-habitation of man and animals, which was established for the Garden of Paradise.

[grigorije22]

акође Курајев

http://www.sullivan-county.com/id4/ort_creation.htm

Inconsistency of

Protestant Creationist Views

Acceptance of the arguments of Protestant Creationists by Protestant-influenced Orthodox preachers is a clear innovation, while a calm attitude towards evolutionism is an established tradition of orthodox academic theology. Perhaps the best known writer who criticized the very idea of evolution was the late hieromonk Fr. Seraphim (Rose).

His first argument: evolution implies a change of generations. A change of generations implies death. The heart of the matter is this: if death existed prior to the creation of man and his fall, we would have to say that death was present in the world prior to human sin. But death is a consequence of sin, and of human sin in particular. As there was no sin in the pre-human world, it is theologically impossible to suggest the presence of death there either.

But if, on the contrary, the pre-human world knew death, this would indicate that "contrary to biblical faith," the Universe suffered a fall not through man. So, was there death in the pre-human world? I would say that both of these alternative answers are incorrect.

Here we must contemplate the meanings of the words death and sin as applied to man and to animals and plants. The word death is full of uniquely human tragic meaning. Can we really apply this word, with its human implications, to the non-human world? Death is, for humans, a tragedy, something that clearly "should not happen." It is not surprising that in Russian philosophy the human fear of death is perceived as empirical evidence of our "otherworldly" origin and destination: if man appeared as a result of natural evolution and of the struggle for survival, he would not find so repulsive that which is "natural." Death has entered the human world through sin — this is certain. Death is evil and was not created by God — this is also an axiom of biblical theology.

It seems to me there is only one possible conclusion that can be drawn from this: the "death" of animals is not similar to human death. If we say "Socrates died," the meaning and implications of this are quite dissimilar to such expressions as the "death of a dog" or the "death of a star" or the "death of a chair." Animals terminate their being, "died," but in application to them, this word is used in a metaphoric sense, and termination of the physiological processes in, say, a monkey, is not the same thing as human death. Animals did cease to exist in the pre-human world. But this is not death — in theology and philosophy we can not discuss the phenomenon of death in the non-human world.

Yes, death is a consequence of sin. But what is sin? It is the violation of the will of the Creator. Can we be sure that the death of animals is a violation of the Creator’s will? Did God create animals for immortality? Was it His will to make them the communicants of eternity? Did He offer them the Bread of Life and the Eucharist?

If not, then the temporal finiteness of animal (and plant, bacterial, and fungal) life is not a violation of the design of the Creator, and is neither a sin nor a distortion of the Creator’s will. If Holy Communion is the only Bread of Life, and yet, obviously, we do not see animals receiving it in churches, this Bread, and this Eternity — are not meant for them. The death of animals is not a violation of the Divine will also because the Bible does not promise eternity to this world in general either; only humans inherit eternity, and the words of the Saviour in Mat. 25:34, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world," are addressed to them, and not to animals or other living beings. The rest will burn away, and if upon the new creation (not resurrection, but creation of the "new earth and new heavens") God will want to plant animals there too, they will appear as well, but they will not necessarily be the "immortalized" animals of our current world.

God did not create animals for immortality — and this is why there is no violation of the will of God, no sin — in their departure from existence. St. Augistine wrote, "Animals were created mortal." Prior to him, a similar view is characteristic of St. Methodios of Patara.

"There is usually similarity between the one that produces something and the product. God is immortality, life, and incorruption: a man is a creature of God, and, being produced by immortality, man is immortal as well. This is why God has directly produced man, while He gave orders to the air, earth, and waters to produce the other types of animals . . . and while animals received the ability to live from air, Adam received it from the immortal Being, for He breathed into him the breath of life."

Not being a violation of the Divine will, the death of animals does not imply some defect in the goodness of the original, created world. It is only after the only creature that truly is made in the image and likeness of the Creator, man, himself steps down to the level of the animal world and makes himself subject to the laws of the struggle for existence, life and death, that are present in the pre-human world — this is when we see the violation of the will of God. It seems that we got used to equalizing ourselves to animals too much — to the extent that non-Christians make out of it reasons to justify their own passions and lawlessness, while Christians are inclined to extend the gifts of the Holy Spirit, granted to them, to the animal world . . .

Besides, can we describe the behavior of animals in terms of "sin" and "virtue"? If the word sin is inapplicable to descriptions of animal life, a related word, death, can not be strictly applied to them either, in the sense derived from human existence.

The Fathers clearly say that sin has entered the world through man and that only man can sin in the world (for the present we are not discussing the angelic beings). St. Methodios asks: "What other evil act, besides what is happening among men, can you find? All the other creatures by necessity obey the Divine will, and none of them can do anything beyond what it was created for." This means that there is no evil in the animal world, and the death of animals, unless humans cause it, is not an evil, because animals have no freedom in that.

It can be pointed out that the "struggle for survival" can be given, in God's plan, a positive and pedagogic sense — at least St. Augustine says that witnessing the struggle for life among animals may serve a human as an example of how he himself should struggle for his spiritual salvation.

The second argument of Orthodox anti-evolutionists is built around some patristic texts that deny the existence of sufferings and death in the Garden of Eden. According to patristic tradition, there not only man but also animals were in a blessed state, and there, suffering and death, implied by the process of evolution, are theologically untenable.

This argument against evolution is also weak.

First, the Garden of Eden was certainly not the whole world. Paradise is not the synonym of the world prior to the Fall. Eden did not involve all of the world — rivers that water the Garden, in which man is placed, are flowing from Eden. Neither is that Garden and Eden one and the same thing. "And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed" (Gen. 2:8).

Linguistic analysis shows that the Hebrew word gan comes from the verb ganon, to protect. Similarly, in English garden — a protected and enclosed place — is related to the verb guard. Other languages also have this link between garden and protection — in French, jardin and the verb garder, to protect, and in German — Garten.

This is not only an enclosed Garden, but the man placed there is given the task of "keeping it" ("And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it," Gen. 2:15). The garden near Eden is a protected place — to keep against what? To keep the world safe from man, or to keep the man safe from the world? Man gave protection to the garden, or the garden gave protection to man? Eden means "joy"; from it flowed the river for the watering of this "paradise" — the "garden" that was planted at Eden ("paradeison an Eden"), and while the "paradise" was meant for man to live in and to keep him (man), Eden was meant to give joy. Man did not enter Eden but was in a garden by Eden.

So Scripture is not saying that the rest of the world lived according to the laws of the Garden of Eden. And while the Bible is not describing directly the world beyond it, this "kept" zone is perceived in opposition to the wild, unkept one — to the point of the need for protection. From whom was this protection and separation meant? As we know, it did not protect against spiritual danger, such as the Devil. There were perhaps some non-spiritual threats to the newly-created man, for the protection against which he is taken from the rest of the world and placed in a sort of "cradle," having strict spatial limits according to the four rivers.

It is quite possible that beyond these borders of Eden, the laws of struggle for existence already worked at that time. God is warning man that he shall die if he eats of the tree ("But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," Gen 2:17). And if God spoke just so — it means that the experience of death was known to people (more exactly — the observation of the death of others). Man could have been familiar with the meaning of it from observing the death of animals. And this then means that death existed in the pre-human world, in the world of animals.

Yet man was, for the time being, protected from all of it, and only by his sin did he destroy the protection of the Garden of Eden and did the laws of the external world, of Darwinian biology, then gush into the world of man.

The connection of sin and death is dogmatically established by the words of the Apostle Paul ("Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned," Rom. 5:12). Sin came through man: through human sin, death fell upon humans. However, it does not at all follow from this that prior to Adam's sin animals were immortal.

Orthodox opponents of evolution do not take another thing into account: Eden is not only limited in space, but also in time. Not only is the Garden of Eden not the whole world, but it was planted after the creation of man. Already after the Six Days, by a special act did God plant the garden at Eden and place there Adam, whom He had created. An already-created man is placed into the specially-planted garden ("And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed," Gen. 2:8. "And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it," Gen. 2:15), — man is "taken," selected (as Levites were "selected" from other tribes), and the garden of Eden is not a place of our origination, but our destination.

According to the Bible, upon his creation, man was taken from the world where he was created; he was moved from nature, into the garden.

Perhaps man needs to be protected from the world in which he was created; perhaps that world contains something destructive, something that is not sin and not moral evil (this is still a pre-Fall world), perhaps there is something in the laws and cycles of the greater world that is good for that world but dangerous for man. Maybe there is something there without which the development of the world all the way to pre-human times was impossible — but that man must be exempt from, now that this type of growth has reached its limits.

The world can not produce new things without the decay of the old. Life can not grow without constant renovation and leaving something outside of its limits, the limits of life. The world knows no building up without destroying. But this is only in the cosmos — and not in the world of man. Man must be protected from this — and such protection can only come from the One above the world, the Creator of it. Having rejected Him, we came down and became part of the world in which all the pagan philosophers saw inevitable unity of good and evil, birth and death. Yes, the human world has radically changed as a result of our sin. But must we believe that the non-human and pre-human world was different prior to that? Could it be that by his sin, Adam erased that border of grace that separated and super-naturally kept him from the rest of the world?

The world into which Adam was placed, the garden at Eden, may have been free from animal death — but this is not necessarily the case with the world from which he was taken. We need not confuse the point of destination with the point of origination. The Serbian theologian Fr. Stefan Lyashevskij wrote that death was absent only in Eden. Upon the creation of man, "a new world has appeared in Paradise, where blood no longer flowed before the face of immortal Adam, and violent death among the animals has disappeared, for God has given everyone in Paradise grass and fruits, and all the animals were obedient to man."

The atmosphere of grace into which the first man was lead embraced Eden. But we do not know what the world was like beyond the borders of Paradise, as the Bible speaks nothing in detail about the world prior to, or outside of, Eden. Making guesses about this world based on what we think of Eden is hardly correct.

The third argument of the opponents to evolution is based on Gen. 1:30, "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein [there is] life, every green herb for meat: and it was so." It means, in their eyes, that prior to the human fall, the world had no carnivores, and this means that scientific theories are in direct conflict with the Bible.

The main question here is, where were these words pronounced, and when? The Book of Genesis speaks about the creation of man twice, in the first and the second chapters, and one of the traditionally complicated tasks of biblical exegesis is the coordination of these two stories. Did the Creator speak to Adam prior to creating Eden — or after, and in Paradise? If we take these words as said at Eden, there is no conflict with science, as science can study only the world outside of Eden.

The concept of evolution and the associated disappearance of animals is thus not in conflict with either the letter or the sense of Revelation. The Scriptures do not describe the details of the development of life, and we have no reason to be in conflict with science over this.

The same thing can be said about Church Tradition, and a number of the ideas in the natural philosophy of antiquity and of the Middle Ages that we see in Medieval commentaries on the Six Days have no bearing on our confession of faith. That St. Basil made use of the encyclopedic knowledge of his day and age does not mean that the natural sciences of the forth century must be sanctified by the name of the great saint and be forever enshrined as part of Orthodox theology — rather, that the faith-driven attempts at a "churching" dialogue with the world of secular thought and knowledge is blessed by the example of the great Cappadocian Father. Likewise, St. John of Damascus also included some views of the science of his time in his "Precise Exposition . . . " — but this only means that Orthodox thought is interested in knowledge of the God-created world as well. From the fact that Fathers did let into their works the data of contemporary science, does not at all follow that we must be enemies to our contemporary science.

As to the details of biogenesis, in the nineteenth century Count A. K. Tolstoy already wrote — (from the "epistle to M. Loginov on Darwinism")

"Sposob, kak tvoril Sozdatel'

Chto schital On bol'e kstati

Znat' ne mozhet predsedatel'

Komiteta po pechati."

("The way, how the Creator worked, and what He considered to be better, can not be known to the chairman of the censorship committee.")

Three features are inherent in the biblical account of Creation:

Life appears (as the rest of the world) gradually.
The world is capable of responding to God's call.
Without the guiding Reason, evolution by itself would lead nowhere.
[translator’s note: Given that God is omnipresent, and the Holy Spirit is "everywhere and fillest all . . . the Giver of Life," the world simply can not exist "by itself," as our world and everything in it exists by God.]

Matter is not eternal, it is created, and thus it needs an external push. And precisely because it is created by this push, matter keeps the creative stimulus. And therefore the world is capable of movement and development. However, the balancing judgment is true and different: although the world is capable of development, it receives the creative impulses from without.

The transition from one kingdom to another in the Bible is depicted as inexplicable by the internal development of the world. This discontinuity is produced by the will of the Creator.

The very essence of the process of the unfolding of Creation remains the same regardless of the speed with which it happens. The view of some, that if we extend the process of Creation in time, "God will become unnecessary" is as naive as that of others who think that creation in anything more than six regular days diminishes the glory of the Creator. We must only remember that nothing stood in the way or limited the creative action, and everything happened according to the will of the Creator. We do not know whether this will consisted in creating the world in one moment, or in six days, or six thousand years, or billions. For "who can number . . . the days of eternity?" (Sirach 1:2).

[SHADOWS OF THE LIGHT]

Daj brate nesto na srpskom.

[grigorije22]

A mozda je resenje ovo, Edenski vrt nije obuhvatao celu planetu, kada su pra roditelji sagresili van raja je pocelo medjusobno istrebljenje zivotinja. Vreme u Edenu je bilo drugacije, tako da je od trenutka sagresenja pa do izgnanja iz raja za Adama i Evu proslo na primer 15 minuta. A za ostatak planete su to bili stotine miliona godina.