The Book of Genesis
Problems and Questions Involved in Approaching the Creation of Man
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following text was delivered orally as a course on Genesis during the St. Herman Pilgrimage, Platina, California, in August, 1981. As he read from the text, Fr. Seraphim would at times add illuminating impromptu remarks. Some of these remarks the editors have transcribed from cassette tapes and included in the main body of the text and in the footnotes.
Chapter One: How to Read Genesis
1. Approach
In a sense, none of us knows how to approach this book. Modern science and philosophy have filled our minds with so many theories and supposed facts about the beginnings of the universe and man that we inevitably come to this book with preconceived notions. Some want it to agree with their particular scientific theories; others look for it to disagree. Both of these look to it as having something scientific to say; but others look on it as sheer poetry, a product of religious imagination having nothing to do with science.
The central question that causes our difficulties in understanding this book is: how “literally” are we to read it?
Some Protestant Fundamentalists tell us it is all (or virtually all) “literal.” But such a view places us in some impossible difficulties: quite apart from our literal or non-literal interpretation of various passages, the very nature of the reality which is described in the first chapters of Genesis (the very creation of all things) makes it quite impossible for everything to be understood “literally”; we don’t even have words, for example, to describe “literally” how something can come out of nothing. How does God “speak”?—does He make a noise which resounds in an atmosphere that doesn’t yet exist? This explanation is obviously a little too simple—the reality is more complex.
Then there is the opposite extreme. Some people would like to interpret this book (at least the earliest chapters which give the most difficulty) as being an allegory, a poetic way of describing something that is really much closer to our experience. Roman Catholic thinkers in recent years, for example, have come up with some ingenious ways of “explaining away” Paradise and the fall of man; but in reading these interpretations one has the impression that they have so little respect for the text of Genesis that they treat it as a primitive commentary on some recent scientific theories. This is also an extreme. St. John Damascene, the 8th-century Father whose views generally sum up the Patristic opinion of the first Christian centuries, specifically states that the allegorical interpretation of Paradise is part of an early heresy and does not belong to the Church.
One encounters often today a common way out between these two views. The statement of a Roman Catholic nun (who is also a teacher) was recently publicized widely under the title: “God helped create evolution.” She says: “The biblical story of creation has a religious purpose. It contains, but does not teach, errors. The evolutionary theory of creation, in contrast, has a scientific purpose, and the search for truth is the province of astronomers, geologists, biologists and the like. Those two purposes are distinct, and both offer truth to the human mind and heart.” She states that Genesis comes from oral traditions which were limited by the scientific views of that time.
According to this view, Genesis belongs in one category, and scientific truth or reality in another; Genesis has little if anything to do with any kind of truth, whether literal or allegorical. Therefore, one doesn’t really need to think about the question: you read Genesis for spiritual uplift or poetry, and the scientists will tell you what you need to know about the facts of the world’s and man’s beginning.
In one form or another this is a very common view today—but what it actually amounts to is a failure to look at the question at all; it does not take Genesis seriously. But our very purpose in studying Genesis is to take it seriously, to see what it actually says. None of these approaches we have mentioned can do this. We must look elsewhere for the “key” to understanding Genesis.
In approaching Genesis we must try to avoid pitfalls such as we have mentioned above by a certain degree of self-awareness: what kind of prejudices or predispositions might we have in approaching the text?
We have already mentioned that some of us may be too anxious to have the meaning of Genesis agree (or disagree) with some particular scientific theory. Let us state a more general principle as to how we, with our 20th-century mentality, tend to do this. In reaction to the extreme literalness of our scientific outlook (a literalness which is required by the very nature of science), when we turn to non-scientific texts of literature or theology we are very much predisposed to find non-literal or “universal” meanings. And this is natural: we want to save these texts from appearing ridiculous in the eyes of scientifically trained men. But we must realize that with this predisposition we often leap to conclusions which we have not really thought over very seriously.
To take an obvious example: When we hear of the “six days” of creation, most of us automatically adjust these “days” to accord with what contemporary science teaches of the gradual growth and development of creatures. “These must be some indefinitely long periods of time,” our 20th— century mind tells us; “all those geological strata, all those fossils—they couldn’t have been formed in a literal ‘day.’ ” And if we hear that a Fundamentalist in Texas or southern California is once more loudly insisting that these days are positively 24 hours long and no longer, we can even become indignant and wonder how people can be so dense and anti-scientific.
In this course I don’t intend to tell you how long those days were. But I think we should be aware that our natural, almost subconscious tendency to regard them as indefinitely long periods, thereby thinking that we have solved the “problem” they present, is not really a thought-out answer to this problem, but more of a predisposition or prejudice which we have picked up out of the intellectual air in which we live. When we look at these “days” more closely, however, we will see that the whole question is not so simple and that our natural predisposition in this as in many other cases tends more to cloud than to clarify the real question.
We will look at this specific question later. For now I would urge us to be not too certain of our accustomed ways of looking at Genesis, and to open ourselves to the wisdom of the God-bearing men of the past who have devoted so much intellectual effort to understanding the text of Genesis as it was meant to be understood. These Holy Fathers are our key to understanding Genesis.
01. How To Approach The Book Of Genesis
02. The 1st 2nd and 3rd Days of Creation
03. The 4th 5th and 6th Days of Creation
04. The Sixth Day of Mans Fall From Paradise
05. The Fall of Man from Paradise
The Orthodox Word, Vol. 26, No. 5 (154), September-October, 1990, pp. 281–301
Bibliography
Ambrose of Milan, Hexaemeron (The Six Days), in The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 42. New York: The Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1961.
Athanasius the Great, St., Four Discourses Against the Arians, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. IV. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, reprinted 1987.
Basil the Great, St., Hexaemeron (The Six Days), in The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 46. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963.
Ephraim the Syrian, St., Commentary on Genesis [in Russian], in The Works of Our Father among the Saints, Ephraim the Syrian, vol. 6. Sergiev Posad: Moscow Theological Academy, 1887. [New English translation: St. Ephrem the Syrian. Selected Prose Works. The Fathers of the Church, vol. 91. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994. Also contains St. Ephraim’s Commentary on Exodus]
Gregory Palamas, St., Defense of the Holy Hesychasts [in French]. Louvain : Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1959.
Gregory the Theologian, St., “Homily on the Theophany,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. VII. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, reprinted 1974.
Isaac the Syrian, St., Ascetical Homilies [in Russian], Second Edition. Sergiev Posad, 1893. [New English translation: Boston, Massachusetts: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1984.]
John Chrysostom, St., Homilies on Genesis [in Russian], in The Works of St. John Chrysostom, Vol. IV. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Spiritual Academy, 1898. [New English translation: The Fathers of the Church, vol. 74 (Homiles 1-17), vol. 82 (Homilies 17-45), and vol. 87 (Homilies 46-67). Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986, 1990, 1992.]
Macarius the Great, St., Fifty Spiritual Homilies; Seven Homilies (in Russian). In Spiritual Discourses, Epistles and Homilies, Fourth Edition. Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, 1904. [English translations, not used by Fr. Seraphim: (I) Fifty Spiritual Homilies. Willits, Calif.: Eastern Orthodox Books, 1974. (2) Fifty Spiritual Homilies, and the Great Letter. George A. Maloney, trans. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1992.]
Philokalia – in English: Early Fathers from the Philokalia. London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1978.
St. Seraphim of Platina – The Book of Genesis: Problems and Questions Involved in Approaching the Creation of Man
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