CREATION FORUM
Editor’s Note: The traditional Orthodox Christian view of Creation is voluminously documented by Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, as edited by Abbot Damascene Christiansen, in Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, now in a beautifully produced 3rd edition from St. Herman Press. However, debate continues, especially among some current-day Western Orthodox, about how or whether to accommodate modern secular scientific theory with Orthodox cosmology. This was a side topic of conversation at the Paideia Conference in 2024. Hieromonk Seraphim of blessed memory engaged in an exchange of letters with the “Orthodox theistic evolutionist” Prof. Alexander Kalomiros over these issues, which is reprinted in the above book. Here, in briefer form, we present a pair of articles by current-day Orthodox Christians with connections to Paideia, likewise from different standpoints. related to the issue of how and when death entered the world. One is by science historian Joshua Moritz, invited as a result of the Paideia conversation, seeking alignment with modern science, by arguing for the occurrence of death prior to the Fall among animals on a timeline consistent with current secular geoscience. Jesse Dominick, editor of the Russian-based orthochristian.com website, wrote his M.Div. thesis at St. Tikhon Orthodox Christian Seminary about Hieromonk Seraphim’s studies of Genesis, and a selection from his thesis here draws on the patristic teaching that death and carnivorousness entered Creation with the Fall of Adam and Eve, while supporting the view of the Church Fathers with regards to a different sense of time from modern secular geoscience.
- Geologic Time, Animal Death and the Testimony of “God’s Two Witnesses”
- Man’s Nature Before the Fall and the Origin of Death
MIDDLE-EAST FORUM
Editor’s note: The Hamas attack on the state of Israel in 2023 and the Israeli strike back against Hamas have hugely raised controversy worldwide on Palestinian-Israeli relations. Meanwhile the term Israel itself has historically been contested between modern-day Jews and Christians, and among partisans and opponents of the Jewish state of Israel. The traditional Orthodox Christian understanding is that the Church is the full realization of Israel. Jews view Israel as their ethno-national state, as Palestinians view Palestine, with overlapping claims to physical territories between them, while many Protestant Zionists support the modern state of Israel as having biblical significance. At the same time, many Palestinians are Orthodox Christians. In addition, worship and monastic and biblical sites in the Holy Land historically maintained by various Orthodox Churches are often physically contested in religious conflicts that also involve Muslims, historically across centuries. Even the term dhimmitude (second-class citizenship for Christians under Muslim rule) has become contested, with some Palestinian Orthodox claiming this to be the de facto case also under Jewish rule in Israeli territory, but historically the situation of large numbers of Christians under Islamic rule. Dr. Christopher Humphrey gave a paper at Paideia in 2024 offering one American Orthodox perspective on the current geopolitical conflict as it relates to Orthodox Christians. It is paired here with an older article by Priest John Morris of the Antiochian Archdiocese of America, which presents a traditional view of the Orthodox understanding of Israel as the Church. May the Lord give us wisdom and peace, and help the afflicted on all sides!