Why Realism Contradicts Evolution | Creationism & The Eastern Church Fathers (Part 2)

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Nathan Jacobs podcast. Before I jump into today's episode, which is part two of my interview with Chris Firestone about religion and science and the church fathers, I wanted to make you aware that this Friday we are beginning recording production on the East West series. So, those of you who follow this content regularly, you're familiar with a trailer that we've been offering here regularly, every single episode about the East West series. And this series is a multi-part lecture series that is aimed at illuminating the differences between the Christian East and the Christian West. And that series has been available for pre-sale for some months now as part of our fundraising efforts.

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But in the meantime, um I just want to again encourage you to go over to the eastwest.com and purchase that series in advance. Get behind it. support the series and uh I look forward to sharing more with you as we approach the release date at the close of October. Now, as for today's episode, which is our last episode before the break, you'll recall that last week on Tuesday, I released um part one of an interview with Chris Firestone where we talked about creation and evolution and the Eastern Church fathers. and you can go ahead and watch that episode in order to catch up. Uh, and today we are looking at part two of my conversation with Chris Firestone. So, that's coming at you today.

But before we jump in there, here's a trailer for the East West series. The Christian East and the Christian West share the same creed, the same scriptures, and yet they are worlds apart. The differences run deeper than Mary or icons or liturgy going to the very nature of God, the hope of salvation, and even what it means to be human. They use the same words, but their meanings could not be more different. As these two worlds collide in our contemporary culture, what's needed is a translator. I spent nearly two decades studying these two traditions, devoting myself to figures like Augustine, Aquinus, and the reformers in the West, but finding myself crossing the threshold of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

And now, I'm producing a 25-part lecture series to help bridge this gap, exploring the differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. Pre-order the series now at the lowest price that will ever be offered. Or support my efforts by becoming a series producer at the eastwestseries.com. That's the eastwestseries.com. I was just trying to think through the implications, mental gymnastic, the implications of this. So you could be a young earther from a theological standpoint. That is from God's perspectives just six days. But if you're going to press the solar days into how we must think about the historic past, right? Um then you're going to have some tensions here. Yeah.

Well, and this goes into a nuanced area of of petristic theology, Eastern Petristic theology, orthodox theology that I don't know if it's quite as well known. So a lot of people I think within the west and obviously we'll get back to your question about my stance on evolution but um but a lot of people in the the west I think have a sort of simplistic view of time and eternity that they really inherited largely from you know Thomas Aquinus almost uh but medieval scholasticism which is that like God is eternal and we're temporal and what that means is we experience this unfolding momentto moment sort of Um, but if you step outside of time, you're now in this static now, which is God's stuff, right?

And that's where God is. And so, he sees all the things at once. And um, you know, and you and and and that's it, right? Time, eternity, that sort of thing. And within the Eastern Fathers, you actually see a much more nuanced view of these things. So, first of all, they do say explicitly that time is a creature. And that's an interesting fact in itself because as Aristotle points out, Plato alone thought there was a start to time amongst the pagans, right? So it's a very unique position that they actually think time begins and is creative. Like that's wild that they even take that position. But then with that they also have this concept of eternity, right? But eternity is not what I described.

First of all, it's not static. And second of all, it's not native to God. Not in the way I described. Yes. Um and so their concept of eternity first of all is that it moves. It just moves differently than time. Yes. And why is because it's the movement of spirits. So C. Lewis had said this in uh his opening of Paralandra in the space trilogy where he talks about one of these guys ransom encounters um this this Eldil right this what is an angel. And he has this moment of realizing that as he's sitting here and he's waiting in the space between the conversation, his heart is beating, his blood is flowing, he realizes the thing is a nonbiological thing for whom they don't have that biological ticking clock.

Yes. And their experience of reality must be totally different, right? He has that realization, you know, in the way that Lewis only Lewis would weave into a narrative like that, right? Um, but that's important because one of the things you see is first of all, you know, there's this phrase that shows up often in Eastern uh texts. It shows up in the New Testament, Revelation 2, but unto ages of ages. Um, and that word age is the word for eternity. So this is like the eternities of the eternity. Right. Right. And um, and so John of Damascus draws analogy where he says his days are to time. So ages are to eternity. And the reason is because eternity does move. It has sequences.

It just moves differently than time. So the angels are said to be eternal by pseudoius. Well, he doesn't mean they weren't created. He just means that they're pure spirits. And so the way they experience reality is spiritual in nature. Um and we are meant to move from being an organic, you know, being to one that becomes spiritual. And so we transition to eternity. So in Genesis or in revelation, time stops but stuff keeps happening. Right. There comes an end to time but things keep on unfolding. Yes. Right. And so that's one of the things that you find in these eastern fathers. Well, and then what's interesting is for them eternity is itself a divine energy. Right.

And so these divine energies are it's a whole another topic. I've got an entire episode on that that people can listen to. But there's a distinction between God's essence and his energies. meaning um you might think of it as the difference between the nature of mind itself and the activity or operation of articulating things like I'm doing right now. So you're hearing the operative powers of mind at work. Right. Right. And there's a distinction like that's an extension of it in some ways but it's the articulation of that nature.

And so the eastern fathers drawing on this entire chain from Aristotle through you know the Alexandrian Judaism into the New Testament make this sort of distinction where there is a distinction between what God is in himself uh his nature which is beyond our grasp and the operative powers that exude or proceed from him that are what we encounter and by which we come to know him and eternity is one of those. Right? So this partis So the angels are actually participating in a divine energy something that's a divine expression an expression of God's spiritual nature. Yes. And yet then you find um in certain lurggical texts um like himnity for example you find references to God as the pre-eternal god.

And so what what on earth would that mean? Well, so what that means is that the Holy Trinity is not natively eternal in the sense of standing outside in a static now or something like that. First of all, that's not what eternity is. And second of all, eternity is an expression of God. But God is in and of himself transcends even that. And so you have this specific God time, right, for eternal. Now, the reason that's of course all important is because it does seem a precarious thing that if you're saying how God expresses himself is in the sequences and modes of eternal activity, but we're going to measure that presuming there's a one for one correlation with the creature called time.

Well, that seems rather problematic. It seems overly simplistic. It in fact seems to make God purely temporal in a way that he clearly is not. Yes. So, well, let me man, there's a lot of there's a lot of interesting stuff in there. Um, let me throw this out because I think some of the audience might have a similar question for you. Um, one of the things I heard early on in our conversation was that it doesn't it would be a act of deception hypothetically. Hypothetically, if God were to create the world 5 minutes ago with the appearance of age, right? Um, that I'm open to that critique that open to that critique of that possibility.

What if what if somebody, you know, someone with a more literalist understanding of scripture said the same thing applies to the Bible? Why would he write this with the appearance of it being young? Yeah, I think that's a great question. And and so why you know why? Tell me Dr. Jacobs, why aren't you being duplicitous on this thing? No, no. So this is this is a great question and this is where I think the Alexandrian hermeneutics are so important because if the Alexandrian hermeneutic was I know the Bible looks like it's saying this, but we're just telling you right it's not then you would have a real problem.

But the entire Alexandrian hermeneutic is that the text itself is providing it's bidding the reader to be careful. Yes. Because it's deep and rich. Yes. Because it's written by God, right? And and you know um and and for that reason it wants you to attend and ask hard questions of it. And it'll answer those questions if you press it on those. But it wants you to press it on those. Yes. Right. And so like I said with the way Gregory of Nissa and McCrina, St. McCrina read, you know, the the the talk of Hades and Christ's parable, everything about how they build that case is based on the text itself.

The text itself is providing the breadcrumbs that force you to think beyond the literalist reading of it. Yes. And as we pointed out, there's a bunch of things in Genesis that should force you in that direction. Yes. First of all, the primary point of view, the character you're following who is active, everybody else in the narrative is passive is God. Yeah. So, if we're going to say that for God a day is is a thousand years and a thousand years is a day, which is to say that time functions differently for him, like he is not a temporal being, right? Um he's the ancient of days, right? Well, then um then maybe this talk of days isn't so literal.

That if the sun doesn't show up until day four and it that's there for marking times and seasons in the way that we do, maybe the marking of times and seasons before it shows up isn't solar. Right. Right. Uh that's a clue. The days have a beginning and the end. It goes out of its way to add that and then omits it with day seven. Yeah. That's another clue. Right. Right. There's this peculiar warning. Yeah. The day you eat of it, you're going to die. Then you don't die. Yes. That's another clue. Right. And so it's not a duplicity.

This is where I think it's I think it's fair to say to raise the objection and say, "Look, if you think God can't be a deceiver, this text seems to be deceptive." I would say, well, it seems deceptive to the superficial reader, right? To the non-careful reader. But that's true of the Bible as a whole. Yeah, that's true. Everything about the Bible, the whole problem with proof texting, an extraordinarily careful reading. Yes. Um because the text is more deep and more rich and more layered than any other text you will ever encounter. And so I don't think that's deception.

Now, you could come back and say, "Well, I think the same thing is true of natural revelation, the book of revelation that is the cosmos, maybe." Now, this is where I'm going to admit I am not a scientist. Right. And so, I have a bunch of hearsay. Yes. About problems with evolution. I have a bunch of hearsay about evidence for evolution. Yes. But it's nothing more than hearsay. It's not my discipline. And so are is it true that there's a bunch of clues in nature that say, well, is that evidence as strong as it seems for the 13.8 or for this or for that? Right? I don't know. It's not my discipline. Am I open to the possibility that that's true?

That God, just like with scripture, is saying, "Here's the book of nature, but I'm going to provide a bunch of clues." I'm open to that possibility. Now, my suspicion is that the clues are not clues that the world is only 6,500 years old. My suspicion is the clues are this can't be happen stance. Right. Right. Like that. That's the clues that are there. Um that's my suspicion. But it's just a suspicion because I'm not a scientist. Yes. No, that's that's fascinating. I I think in a certain sense it's liberating as well. I mean, we know enough about the history of science to know that it hasn't always been pure. No, no, no. I mean, yeah. I mean, 100%.

And this is where like I don't want I don't want to let the young earth creationists be the only one who are subject to critique here, right? Right. Like there is a myth that says that science is philosophically and theologically neutral. We're just dealing with the facts. That is nonsense. Um, and it is nonsense. historically speaking. So like one of the first like first of all the entire mechanical philosophy which is the cruded form of the empirical sciences that gave rise to the empirical sciences as we know them. Yes. That was explicitly a speculative anti-aristilian movement. There was a bunch of empiricists who uh had a distaste for the aristoilian metaphysics. They didn't like talking about abstract forms and things like that.

They wanted stuff that you can grab and touch and taste. um these this empiricist insul. And so the original mechanical philosophy was nothing but bald speculation, right? People like Pierre Gassundi sitting there and saying, well, you know, maybe atoms coales in this way, some are some are squishy and some are ribbed and that's why they these stick together hard. And it wasn't based on any empirical science. It was it was just speculation. And even when people like Francis Bacon were like, "No, no, no. We've got to we've got to figure out a scientific method. We've got to push for this, right?" um it was still a tall order that people didn't think they could do.

And when you look at certain people like Robert Bole and became a rock star in this area specifically because he seemed to finally do it. If you look at his exper experiment, it's total nonsense, right? First of all, it's metaphysical in nature. It is about metaphysics. It's not philosophically neutral and it's false. But you know, it's basically that they had figured out how to create a vacuum. And so within Aristoilian thinking, light is a form and there must be subtle matter between us because that form is present between us. They believed in a plenum, the idea that there is no such thing as true empty space like void of like a complete void.

But the mechanical philosophy being ancient atomists who believed in a void and atoms is the composition of all things. They had to believe in a void. And so Robert Bole went ahead and he's like, "Oh, we can finally create a vacuum. If I can create a vacuum and shine light into it, I can demonstrate that light is not actually a form, abstract form that's carried in a plenum. He can disprove the plenum theory." And that was considered mind-blowing to people. Now, obviously, it's ridiculous. Like the idea that there's no material involved in the light being shown within there, right? Like that's it's not a true vacuum in the sense of a void, right? The way we would think of a void.

Um but my point in that is not to sort of debunk Bole's experiment. My point in that is to say that Bole was clearly the empirical sciences at their origin were clearly philosophically motive. They did clearly philosophically committed and clearly aimed at in their experiments making metaphysical points. Yes. Um and so first of all I would just say that I don't think the sciences are immune to this. I think scientists will often times prove to any observant philosopher that they think they're dealing in raw facts, but they're waiting into philosophy. Yes. And they're doing it poorly because they're not self-aware that they're doing it and they're not trained in philosophy.

And so this is one of the areas where I'm all for philosophical criticisms and reinterpretations of philosophy. I'd point people to Edward Faser here spelled like fesser f uh he's a toist right he's a Roman Catholic and so as a toist he has a very sort of classical metaphysic ariselian metaphysic one that I'm sympathetic to in many ways and he's done a lot of work like on Aristotle's revenge I think is what the book is where he's he's just pointing out the ways in which some of the sciences are starting to move back Aristotle's hot again right um because the view of matter that's starting to emerge in the in in the sciences uh has greater resonance with Aristotle's older view of matter and things like that and he provides an apparatus for taking accepting the conclusions of science the findings of science

but reinterpreting those through a different metaphysic and showing that you know the the the underlying tacid metaphysic the unstated metaphysic isn't the only possible way of reading this data that and I think that's really valuable. So I would definitely critique the empirical sciences and then I' I'd throw in one further critique and I think this is extremely valid. I think there's a lot of us myself and I say us and you know me as an outsider an armchair scientist who's not a scientist right I get the impression there are serious problems for the theory of evolution scientifically speaking. All right.

Um, and so I think I think the theory probably there probably shouldn't be a critical mass of information at this point that makes people say, "I'm not sure this is right." Right? But why won't science do that? Well, because it has an allergy to the god of the gaps. And if all of a sudden we say all this stuff, we don't have a mechanism for how it comes about. Once you let the religious, you know, camel's nose in the tent, right? We'll never get it out again. Yeah.

So, you suddenly are committed to the idea that, you know, the division of species is not something that emerges one species from another in the way that we've explained it and we have a Cambrian explosion where they're just all sort of there and that the differences across species seem to be accidental, not essential traits that would ever blur the lines between species. You open that door and now we've got a massive gap in our explanation. And that gap is one where a lot of people are just going to say God and we don't want that. And so it's better to have a bad theory, right, that's stumbling along than to have no theory. Yes. And I'm inclined to think that that suspicion is correct.

Um, and that's a fair criticism to say like look, are you is this just confirmation bias? Right? We need a purely naturalistic mechanism. Yes. Um because we're scientists, right, who are methodologically naturalists. Yes. Um and therefore that's going to blind us to certain evidences contrary to the things that we're currently saying. I think that's a completely fair criticism. Well, if I'm hearing you I mean accurately here, we have similar issues residing on both ends of the spectrum. We have the Capernicus and the Galileo incident which seemed to expose it in the West anyway dogmatic bias as it were that was unable to entertain scientific truths. on this other end with expel and other things that are happening in contemporary science where you're like, "Hold on a second.

You're actually being religious in how you approach scientific truth at this point, knowing full well that there's weaknesses here." And those weaknesses are adding up to such a degree that they should tip the scales. But if you open that door, you can't let you you can't let the God of the gaps back in. But if I'm hearing you correctly, we as as truth seekers, we and and and people who hold to a strong view of biblical uh authority that that's precisely where we need to live is in that in between area when we're talking about science, when we're talking about the age of the earth and other things. Um is that is that fair? I think it is fair. Right.

So I have I I think it is a risky proposition to hand over everything to the sciences. Right? Mainly because science is always changing. Right. Right. And so to wed your theology to the sciences such that these if the science falls your theology falls I think is really problematic. Right. Right. I think it's a dangerous proposition because it misunderstands science and where it's at and what it offers. So I think there's that. But I think it's an equally dangerous proposition to stuff your fingers in your ears and close your eyes and start humming because you don't want to hear Yes. what the scientists are discovering, right?

And I think that middle ground is to be able to engage in them in an open-minded philosophical way and theological way um that understands that well this is this is what it is, right? this is just the this is data that's emerging that needs to be interpreted and um and there might be a certain interpretation of it that you disagree with um but to simply ignore it right and just say it's all a grand conspiracy is I think that's I think that's dangerous and is that is that a product of your realism your commitment to realism the sense that all truth is God's truth and the world is my far more intriguing, complex, and meaningful than we ever imagined it to be.

A product of an infinite allp power from God who's who sees time very differently than we do. Um and uh and so I mean that that seems to me to be a healthy theological corrective to the current way in which we think about how science is approaching these or how even how Christians who are embracing uh science think about these things. And so, um, I guess I'm I'm I'm I'm intrigued to go back then to where you're going with, uh, evolution theory and how you're going to sort of handle that one. How, if I'm trying to force Jacobs into a pigeon hole, I'm going to say, well, he's going to be at some kind of older maybe age.

I don't really because if you're not going to go with evolution Mhm. How do we get to someone like uh you know uh you know Meyer's position of intelligent design and of other things? How do how how do how does how do the church fathers get us to a substantive and nuanced and careful understanding of the of of these historic matters of uh yeah time and space and creation and the natur of the earth and all that. Yeah. So let me start with well let me offer a slight prelude um just to your question about whether it's a it's a product of my realism.

Uh then I'll move into uh the church fathers and what I think opens the door for not being you know opposed to these things in the way that some might be right and then I think we'll sort of move into I guess the evolution question. So let's see how brutally give us a teaser on that one for sure. Oh yeah. So in terms of the preamble I just say this I've always been interested. It's like my entire journey right I explored all sorts of possibilities. Um and I always wanted to remain open-minded even to things that I thought were horrifying because I thought it was important to being an honest broker. Right.

Um the whole reason I went into Kant was because I was inclined to think metaphysics is where it's at. and you were basically like no I can't do metaphysics after Khan and I was like well we'll see right and so I took very seriously that challenge at docon and so I think for myself I've always as part of my pursuit of truth I've never been the sort who has a sort of fundamentalist commitment that these things are plainly true all things are are false and now I I have an adversarial relationship with anything that might threaten that I've always had sort of an open-minded approach to it I with that realism, which is where I eventually came down because I wasn't always a realist.

I was a nominalist, a purist heretic, right? Um, and so, uh, I've put those words to it, but now that you mention it, yeah. Um, but I mean I came down on on realism and I do think there's a reason why um I I think when you're a realist you naturally are inclined to think well the underlying mind capital M that gives rise to all things as rational right and my mind is a small image of that that's part of what makes it possible for me to recognize these patterns within the world and it's it's part of the reason we can talk intell about, you know, about God and what God, you know, the omnipotence and these sorts of conversations, well, like qualified omnipotence and the sorts of philosophical and theological conversations you find not just in the philosophers,

but in the church fathers who are themselves philosophers um and properly defined and so um and so yes, I think there's a natural inclination to think that the world is intelligible. As a realist, I'm inclined to think that the world is intelligible. I think that's discernible to us. And so the idea of saying like I've got to I've got to close my eyes and stop my ears to what the world is telling me. Uh I don't mean the world like in the Bible sense of like the out outward powers of you know that are sailing this. I just mean the map of nature um would be crazy, right? Like I think that's I think that's that's lunacy.

Now I do I think that that means how it's interpreted is always derived by the sciences. No. And we've talked about that. But am I inclined to think that the world is a very good source of information? Like yes, I am I am inclined to think that. Uh so so I think that's true. Now in terms of the church fathers, let me talk a little bit about I'll just touch on some of the things that I I touched on in that video. um that I've also touched on on theological letters.

Like I said, if you go to theologicalletters.com, you can find two posts on evolution where I more meticulously map out the state points I may make in that video and then I actually do address the evolution question directly. Um, but I'll just say that, you know, a lot of the objections, putting aside objections about like if you think the church fathers are omnicient or you think they there's a consensus there, those sorts of things that I've already talked about that I think, you know, I'm I'm not sympathetic to those sorts of things because like I said, I see um I don't see gathering a series of texts where these five church fathers all think the world is 6,500 years old constitutes a substantive consensus of the fathers.

Uh and obviously I've talked about that I'm I'm not sympathetic to the idea that I have to be a geocentris because they are uh or that I have to believe in crystalline spheres or I have to hold that view of optics. Right? And we've already talked about those sorts of things. But I think the more substantive theological points and this goes to the thing that I said was problematic about carrying Protestant younger theology into an orthodox context is that so much of the the objection to uh to an orthodox or to a uh to an old earth is really sort of two things. One is obviously the days of Genesis.

Um that they just on the surface of it they seem to contradict an old earth. Um and then the second thing is death, right? And and the fact that once you have 13.8 billion years, don't you just have to have animals dying? And don't you if we're going to accept uh the paleontology are we going to accept also that you know there was disease and things like that sickness genetic mutations and problems in there and that's not possible you know prior to the fall of man uh and so normally the death boogeyman is is uh there quite prominently and my point one of the things that I made there with regard the church fathers is they have a much more nuanced view of death.

So if you track how they use the words like van thantos of florora, right, which are the words for like death and corruption, you find multiple definitions, right? It's these are versatile words. Um it can mean that you have an organic body that breaks apart, right? That would be a form of corruption. It can mean that a living thing, an animated body, you know, separates soul and body, right? So the body ceases to be animated. can mean bad. It can mean corruption, which is a distortion of nature. I gash my eye and all a sudden I can't see. Um, and it can also mean spiritual corruption. I'm supposed to be righteous and I become wicked by choice, right?

So, it can mean any number of those things. And so, the first question when you say that death enters the world, right? Or that God is not the author of death, right? Normally in Protestant circles, it's focused on St. Paul and talking about, you know, death and turning the world through sin. Um, in orthodox circles because you have wisdom of Solomon, you have, you know, God is not the author of death, right? And so these are sort of two different considerations and um and so one of the question so immediately it moves into the none of that can be present. But I think that's far too superficial.

Um, I think it's far too superficial because we have to actually ask like when when wisdom of Solomon is saying God's not the author of death, is it saying like nothing organic ever broke apart? Right. Um, or is it saying something else? Right. I'm more inclined to think based on the theology of the church fathers and what I know about the history of ideas that this text is more likely saying that God is not the author of corruption because within the pagan context distortions and corruptions were just a result of pesky matter right the fact that matter just can't cooperate with the forms and get us that right and so I I'm inclined to think that the context of wisdom Solomon is actually addressing the fact that corruption is a byproduct of the fall of man, that free creatures introduce distortions of nature, right?

And that God doesn't introduce distortions of nature. Okay? And that still leads open the question of is plants dying or animals dying a distortion of nature. I'll come back to that. Right? Um and similarly with St. Paul, right? when you talk about like all dying in Adam or death in you know death and entering the world through Adam again you have to ask ask in this context is he talking about is the old man or is it the cosmos right and so I think the first thing you just have to ask the reason I started with the question of death is to say when the biblical text is talking about these things is it saying there was no organic bodies that broke apart no souls ever left bodies No one had ever sinned.

Right. Right. You know, uh and and there were no like distortions of nature. Like is it saying all of those things or is it saying some of those things? Absolutely. Yeah. Now, the reason I I raise that is is because it's important to recognize that there's a fair bit of begging the question that happens here when when people will immediately hear that setup. Um, and obviously you know what begging the question means in a logical context. I don't think most people know what it means, right? But it's when you use your conclusion as one of your premises, right? Right.

There's no fall be there's no death before the fall and therefore this death can't be present before the fall because there's no death before the fall. Right. Like you're equivocation, right? Yeah. It's it becomes logical in some ways, right? It's it's just and and that's the whole thing is they can't use as the premise there's no deathy for the fall to address this question because that would be a circular form of reasoning or form of basically the question logical fallacy. Um and so that's why I'm raising that and one of the things that I point out and so I go through a series of things that indicate that that's probably not as it's probably not saying that none of these things were present before the fall.

So I point out for example in Genesis that um God says you can eat of any seedbearing plants you know for food. Well when you eat an organic body you are going to break it apart. The moment you bite into it you are breaking it apart. Yes. That's the first definition of death that you find. Yes. Right. Another thing that is very peculiar right to a lot of contemporary folks but it's relevant to this is that the church fathers believe they have an ancient view of soul. We have a very modern view. We because of influence of people like Deart we have a tendency to think of soul as mind. Yes. Right. And so dogs don't have souls and plants don't have souls.

But that's not how the ancient world thought. They thought the mind is more spirit. Right. They use that term for that. Um whereas soul just referred to the life force of a body. So any animated body has a soul. So yeah, animals have souls and plants have souls. And so that means that when you kill a plant, right, and you start to see it deteriorate, you've separated the life force from the body. You've separated soul from body. Yeah. Right. Um and so that's the second definition of death. Now, the reason that's relevant is because if you have an Eden that I can eat of plants and that's not a corruption, that's not a distortion of nature. Everything's still ideal.

Um, well, that means that plant death is perfectly natural, right? Uh, that the first two forms of death were present in Eden. So, Adam and Eve did cut the grass. I mean, I hate to put it that way. I mean, just the images seem laughable, but you know, like right so a certain kind of death is present, right? And I' and I've heard some people in the comments try to get around this, but I I truthfully I think all the ways of getting around it are either misunderstand the argument or they're absurd, right? And so a lot of people will just say like, "No, no, no, back then um they they eating wouldn't have killed it, right?" Or something like this.

But I but I'm sitting here going, "Okay, so what are we talking about?" So Adam plucks the a fruit, right? Um okay, first of all, he broke the stem. So the first definition of death of the breaking part of an organic body is already present. But okay, let's ignore that for a minute. It only needs to fall in food. Okay. So the just still means that there is a natural state of breaking apart of organic bodies. But let's just ignore that part. Um he what he opens his mouth wide. He doesn't bite it. He just like swallows it whole so that he doesn't break it apart. Yes.

U also by the way he's not going to absorb any of the nutrients which would involve breaking it apart. Right. He's it's just going to pass through his digestive system and come out the other end and then what? Go back to the tree. Like I look at that I'm like I don't know. And then I say I I look at that I go that's that's patently absurd. Like that's not even eating it. And in fact, from a natural law perspective, I would say to pass them through your digestive system that's not even going to provide nutrients. This is going to just come out the other end is probably a violation of the order of nature. It's evil.

Um, so u so I look at that I'm going like I this is an absurdity and why would I even believe that question begging, right? Because I can't say that there's any breaking apart of the organic fun. Other people have made appeals to uh saying, "Well, no, no, no. In in the early in Eden, the the plants willfully gave up, right, the fruit." Well, first of all, that's problematic for a couple of reasons. From an Orthodox perspective, the church fathers are very clear that plants only have a vegetative soul. They don't actually have an exercise of will, which is a higher order. Uh re self-determination is something that only rational beings have, which they don't have.

So yes, you might find language that seems anthropomorphic in somebody like Chrysum who's saying that the world like the earth was more cooperative with Adam, right? But Chrysum is plainly not saying that it has free will and it is willfully doing that. Second of all, I'm not even sure what the relevance would be. You know, sort of freely giving you its fruit. The problem isn't that you're taking its fruit without permission. We're just talking about whether when you take it, you break the stem. If you bite into it, you break apart the body. Whether in you absorbing the nutrients from it and things like that and dispelling it, whether you are separating the life of it from the body, right? That's what we're talking about.

And so, uh, and so one of those things, you know, and truthfully, you'd have to in order to find that, you'd have to actually appeal to second temple Jewish animistic practices, which are true in father. So anyway, like so all that's to say is that it's like you know these things they they're not relevant, right? At the end of the day, what we're simply talking about is the fact of the matter is when you break the stem, if you bite into it, if you absorb its nutrients, if you then dispel it, right, like the first two forms of death are present at least within the realm of plants. Yeah.

Now I think the thing is like um a lot of people are sort of thrown by that because they're like well I don't know how to process right that there could be death of a certain kind that's not evil because they're so accustomed to thinking of death as this evil that's introduced and this is where I introduced um a scholastic distinction that I find really helpful. Um, so this isn't from the Eastern Church fathers. Conceptually it's saying the Eastern Church fathers, but the terms I'm going to use are from the Latin West from the Schlastics, which they draw a distinction between privation and negation, right? Provio and negatio.

Um, privation as you're well familiar with from, you know, my work when I was doing all this different uh Latin stuff early on. you were there when I was studying Eston's scholastics and all that is um that refers to the a distortion of of nature that's corruption right I have an eye and I eye is a seed organ so seen sight is native to it and suitable to it I gash it and now it can't see that's a privation I have deprived it of a suitable good it's supposed to see negation is merely acknowledging that not every creature has every good. Right. So your ear doesn't have the good of sight. But that's not a privation cuz it's a hearing organ.

It's not supposed to see. Right. Right. So there's no distortion of nature. If your eye loses sight, that's a corruption. That's a privation. Yes. If your ear can't see, that's actually perfectly normal. Right. There's nothing corrupt about it. And the reason I think that's important is because the presumption that says there's no death in a very blanket set without even defining the term. There's no death right before the um and you start to apply that to plants and the animals and things like that. You're actually presuming that the good of immortality is something that every creature should have like by right and if it doesn't have it that's a distortion of nature. But that's the important question. Are plants supposed to be immortal? Right. Right.

And um and this is one of the things, you know, Lewis talks about this in the problem of pain where he's talking about specifically animal death, which we'll get to in a second, but he's like, I don't even know if to a centipede what would immortality even mean, right? Like is it even self-aware enough for its impending death or its immortality to be meaningful in any sort of way? Um, and so, so the thing is when I look at that, I go, "Well, I have no problem saying plants don't have immortality, but they're not supposed to have immortality, right?" And then that naturally raises the question of animal death, right? And saying, well, are animals supposed to be immortal?

Is it an evil that they die? Yeah. And I point out a series of petristic texts like Arrenaeus again to appeal to Arnaeus who is appealing to St. Paul, by the way, um that he actually says the reason the body has to be transfigured in the resurrection from the dead is because animal bodies are not made to be immortal. Right? So he acknowledges the organic animal body, it's not naturally suited to immortality. It has to be changed in order for that to happen. Uh, does that does that open the door then for the humans prefall being carnivorous? Uh, well, presumably not because God doesn't give them permission to eat animals, right? This is a sort of postnoatic, you know, phenomenon, right?

Um, if you're going to, you know, if you're going to, if they're going to die anyway, right? like we only eat the fruit that falls and maybe animals that fall. Um, roadkill but um well let's so but but so I think it's fine to say that that you know animals you know died and were not eaten by man or something like that and man didn't go about killing animals or something like that. But um the idea that animals are inherently mortal I think is a thing that the church fathers open up. As I said, Araneaeus, there's other things um within uh the Genesis account, the realm of the earth is associated with the realm of the mortal.

Things come from the earth and they return to the earth, right? That's the picture of death, right? And the animals are come from the earth in the narrative. And it's interesting because one of the things they find in the Eastern church fathers is that they recognize that in the Genesis creation account, man is taken from the earth and breathed it into from heaven. So, not just the Eastern Church fathers, it's the Alexandrian school in general. file of Alexandria recognizes the same issue and that naturally raises a question for them. Is man mortal or is he immortal? Because when you merge the immortal things with the mortal things, what do you have? So, so in the image of God, we have reason.

But do we have immortality, right, built into it and that's the natural question that they're asking. And what's interesting is that the standard answer that emerges in Pho of Alexandria and that is echo in very early church fathers the offis of Antioch right like it's very early in eastern petristic thought um is neither that's fascinating so you don't have a bification yeah he's what they say is that having a mortal body and an immortal soul makes him potentially mortal, right, or potentially immortal with his free will functioning as the fulcrum of a balance scale to decide which nature will win out. That's interesting. Yeah.

Now, the reason that's important though is because put aside man, yes, if we're just talking about animals, that means that they think that the animals are part of the realm of the mortal, things that are naturally mortal. They're not talking about the fall. This is a whole free fall just the nature of things taught you. down in Damascus there's a profier tree where he's you know organizing things according to Janera right things that are bodily and not bodily right things that are rational not rational living not living and lo and behold he puts on the side he puts animals on the side of things mortal and he's not talking about postfall he's just talking about an organization of nature so you have a number of these things in the church fathers that seem to presume that animals are naturally mortal.

And again, like that that doesn't require that that's a distortion of nature because it goes to the question of saying, well, are they supposed to be immoral? Right? Because when we're talking about corruption, we're talking about distortions of nature. Yes. That's the thing God didn't create, right? Um so the question is for a plant if it's not supposed to be immortal, right? is not naturally immoral anyway. Um, is it a distortion of nature that dies? Well, no. No more than it's a distortion of nature that your ear can't see. Yes. And it would seem that animals dying according to the church fathers, the eastern church fathers, wouldn't actually be a distortion of nature. Yes. Because they are not innately immortal beings.

It is not part of their nature to be immortal. And this is one of the things that CS Lewis goes into in the problem of pain when he talks about that very thing that I talked to him about where he's like I'm not even sure where he's exploring it immortality. He's like I'm not even sure that it would be meaningful to an animal to tell them that they're immortal cuz they're not self-aware enough or sentient enough to actually to you know embrace that it's meaningful. Um now there's another interesting thing here if we look at the eastern fathers and that is that amongst the eastern fathers their understanding of immortality in man is that immortality is a product of partaking of the divine nature. Okay.

So this would get into if I gave a full exposition of this deification things like that it would be much too long. Um but suffice it to say um and people could check out my piece on resurrection, right? My episode on resurrection if they wanted a glimpse of that. Um but suffice it to say that Paul says something very interesting. God alone is immortal. He actually says that to Timothy in one of his letters. And yet then he talks about us becoming immortal, putting off mortality for immortality. And how do you put those two things together? And how the eastern fathers put them together is what St. Peter says in his writings, which is you, we escape the corruption that has come upon the world by partaking of the divine nature.

In other words, when Christ offers you eternal life, he's offering you something divine. Yes. a portion of God so to speak right and this goes into the divine energies and that whole thing that I talked about the distinction between what God is in himself and how that is expressed or articulated and immortality being one of these now the reason that's important is because for the eastern fathers the only reason man is capable of immortality of partaking of God in that way is because we are rational spirits right because we are rational beings in the image of God We have the capacity to partake of the divine nature and attain immortality, you know, and I'd mentioned like that the soul was immortal.

That's really just sort of uh stated in a relative sense. Anyway, I've got a whole article on on anthropology and the immortality of the soul in the Eastern fathers if people want to see the more nuanced take on that. Right. Um but the type of immortality when we're talking about immortality that's offered to Adam and Eve, yes, it's not innate to them by nature. It is something that is uniquely divine that they can only have by ongoing communion with God. Yes. The reason that's important is because the animals are not images of God, which means they are not capable of immortality, right? Not innately. Now, there is a doctrine that I talk about, you can see my episode on do all dogs go to heaven.

Um where with the eastern fathers they they do believe that the purpose of man being a microcosm, a merger of the heavens and the earth is so that the lower things of earth can be raised up through man. Yes. And so there is this sort of interesting question of whether or not immortality cascades from man to the other parts of creation. And obviously that's hinted at when you see in stories of saints plants growing weirdly or animals behaving differently and things like that. And the question is, of course, how far does that go? Do animals actually become immortal or something like that. Um, and the church fathers are silent on that. They don't tell us the answer to that question.

Um, but the point here is to say that the idea that somehow animals would just be innately immortal is really problematic. If immortality is uniquely divine and a being like man can only attain it through communion with the divine and we can only commune with God in that way because we're images of God and they are not. Yes. All of that points in the direction of saying the idea that animals would not be immortal doesn't seem to be problematic. and in fact seems to be more likely because if you say that they're naturally immortal but Adam's not then you've said that they're some way ontologically superior to him. Yes.

Um and so this is where I I look at those sorts of things and I say all those doctrines and those are dogmas. That's the thing. Those are dogmas of the Eastern fathers. Right. That is part of the faith handed down. Yeah. Right. All of those point in the direction of saying it's possible that animals lacking immortality is a negation, not a privation. It's not a distortion of nature. And so when I look at that, I go, I don't I don't see any problem with the idea that plants died, you know, prior to the fall of man, right? I don't see a problem with animals being mortal and dying prior to the fall of creation.

Now, of course, people get weirded out about disease and animal predation, animals eating each other, and they're like, "Well, is that natural?" And I'm kind of agnostic about that. I'm like, once you have a mortal ecosystem, I don't know that carniv carnivorous behavior is problematic. But let's just pretend that it is. There is a doctrine that would account for it, and that's the doctrine of the fall of angels. Right? So angels are identified in scripture as ministering spirits. And when you look at the eastern fathers and you trace what the church fathers say about that sort of thing, what you find is that that means they minister to planets. They minister, they are are caretakers of the elements.

They are caretakers of individual humans, of nations, and yes, even of the animals. Yes. Uh and so once you introduce that and then you introduce the fall of angels and this is another important point that I'll come back to in a second but you introduce the fall of angels which takes place before the fall of man. You open the door to the possibility that the animals were corrupted by the fallen angels prior to the fall. May have been something stirring in Eden even prior to him showing up. Well let me say something on that. Um, first of all, in terms of Eden, again, this goes to the more allegorical reading. The Eastern fathers don't see Eden primarily as a place, right?

So, again, this is part of the very direct literal naive sort of way of reading Genesis where it's a garden, you know, that is a physical location and it's the beauty and delight of the garden that makes it paradise, right? As O Cesaria says explicitly, Adam was immediately out of paradise when he sinned. Why? Because the paradise of God uh the paradise of Eden was the divine vision, the communion with God. Right. The moment you broke that, your feet are in the same location, but you are out of paradise. I see. Yeah. Fascinating.

And so so that's again like I think there's a tendency to say like there's this pocket in the world that you know was idyllic in a physical sense similar to like the geocentric thing right like the earth is the center of the cosmos spatially as opposed to saying theologically. Uh and I think in the eastern fathers you definitely find this impulse towards saying Eden is primarily the fact that they had divine vision. They had communion with God in a way that made their existence paradise wherever they went. didn't matter where they went. So I I would just I would everybody can identify with that.

So I would say that but I would also just say that you know then the idea that maybe there was some sort of corruption that was if if it could be demonstrated and I'm not convinced right I'm not convinced that animals who are innately mortal experiencing disease or you know engaging in carnivorous behavior that that's inherently a sign of evil right um I think that's entirely possible that a mortal ecosystem could have those sorts of you know those sorts of dynamics but even if we could demonstrate that those are a corruption of nature. Um I think you know their demonology could account for it and incidentally CS Lewis toys with these sorts of things all over the place.

Uh if you read Perilandra right um or spec or out of the silent planet you read the space trilogy you'll find that he talks about our planet being the silent planet because our you know our eldil right or you know um or oursa uh the the archangel that oversees the planet rebelled and then in rebelling he actually made war with other parts of the cosmos he made certain species extinct right like Lewis and and then he's eventually banished to this planet to limit his corrupting influence and so on. Lewis is toy clearly toying with those sorts of ideas. He also flirts with the idea in his chapter on animal immortality or mortality.

Uh the same sort of point that hypothetically they could be corrupted uh by the demons and so on. But that gets to another really really important point. The church fathers are all clear that the angels fall before man. And one of those shows up in the Genesis narrative. Yes. Which means and and and and this is an important thing to get. Unless you're thinking about the world like we have a clockwork and spiritual stuff is not part of our world, which is not how the church fathers think. The devil and the angels are the angels are part of our world. They are part of the cosmic system. Yes. And it's clear that that fourth type of corruption I mentioned, becoming wicked, happens before man falls.

So death was already that form of death, spiritual corruption was already in the cosmos before man sinned. Yes. Because one of those corrupt beings shows up in Eden and is important to the narrative. Yes. Right. And so the entire idea that somehow no no before man falls there's no forms of death I think is just theologically problematic. And that's where my point in in pointing all that stuff out wasn't to say and that's why you'll find that all the church fathers think the world is you know the cosmos is 13.8 billion years old. Like no I actually acknowledge like a lot of them think it's pretty young. Yes.

But when I had said that if you're going to be a young earth person who is orthodox, right, who affirms the eastern church fathers, you better not carry this bad theology into it. The bad theology that says animals are innately immortal, plants are innately immortal, man was innately immortal. Um, you know, that, you know, that there was no forms of uh corruption, including the fall of the angels before man sinned. Oh, I see where you're going now. Full circle on that. Yeah. Right. that that that's all bad theology. Yeah. And so you could still go ahead and say I'm going to go with a young earth position, right? But you better correct all of that theology cuz that's really bad theology, right?

That needs to be rejected. It creates unnecessarily unnecessary wobbles in the theological system if you're bringing all that in with it. Yeah. And so, however you read say Paul on death entering the world, it it better not sort of move contrary to these sorts of things. I don't know how to read them other than talking about you know death coming to all of man. And in this sense man becoming corrupted tears down the bridge of the hope of the rest of nature to commune in God with God through man. Right. There is there is a you know a cascading effect that happens there. Yes. Um but he surely can't mean that's the first time any creature rebelled. The angels had already rebelled. Yes.

And he surely can't mean that's the first time organic body started breaking down. Right. the plants are allowed to, you know, they're given permission to eat. That gives us all sorts of cognitive space, if you will, to coherently think about prefall. Yeah. postfall um uh u you know realization that plants and and humans have different capacities or potentialities and what's natural to one may or may not or is it partially natural to one and one might be open to immortality in a different sort of way that's all fascinating stuff I my mind immediately goes and I'm going to resist taking us there but to the implication of what what is justice and what What does the end look like because of these things?

Um, and you know, does that does that open to annihilation? Does that open to various other aspects of thinking about those things? We're going to resist that one. Let me let me give a twominut just sort of teaser on that. Okay. Which is to say, I do think there's an important east west difference. I think a lot of people in the west tend to think of Eden as the ideal that we're trying to get back to. Right. Right. In the Eastern fathers, that's not true. Right. In the eastern fathers, man is made in God's image with the intent of him bearing his likeness, but the likeness is something that has to be actively appropriated.

And so when man sins, he never becomes what he's made to be. Yes, Adam is not your ideal. Christ is. That's the first time the making of man is complete with the resurrected Christ. Now we see what man is supposed to be. And so the reason I think that's important is because rather than saying, "Well, Eden is the picture of what the escaton is supposed to be and we're just circling around. We've just taken a detour to get back there." For the Eastern fathers, the end transcends the beginning. Right. Right. Like what things become man in Eden is not complete. Yes. He's not yet what he is made to be. So man in the escaton is superior to Adam. Yeah. Right. it.

And so, and so in the same way, I'm inclined to think, and so would be for the rest of nature. If nature has hope of communing with God, the end should transcend the beginning as opposed to just being a full circle return to it. As if this was just a bad detour just to get back to where we started. Yeah. Well, that does seem like it has some affinities with Lewis as well, the Middle Earth concept that this is not at all the culmination of creation that there's this new creation that we're awaiting this eighth day and that unfolding. Um, that that's that's fascinating stuff. So, wow. Uh, yeah. Well, what else evolution? Well, that's where I would like to go back. We've teased it.

We've teased it. How do you how do we land that ship now with regards to you know uh Darwin and and and the claim in science that evolution is uh you know self-organizing through this quest for survival and you know is that something that uh we can entertain in any sense? Yeah. As Christians. Well, I'll I'll give you my so I gave a spoiler. I'm not an evolutionist and I'll give you my reasons for rejecting evolution. And those reasons are first philosophical, but by extension I do think um they apply to the Eastern church fathers. And this is what I mean. The argument I would give against evolution is primarily due to realism.

It's my realism, my realist commitments that make me opposed to evolution, which are philosophical. But of course, I do believe the Eastern fathers are dogmatically realists. That that is part of the faith given over to the saints. If I'm correct that evolution is at odds with realism, then there is something in the Eastern church fathers that would oppose evolution. Might not oppose that animals died. It might not oppose that plants died. It might not oppose that the world could be and by world I'm using the entire cosmos could be exceedingly old. But evolution as a theory where you have, you know, one species giving rise to other species, I think that's actually the thing that's that's problematic and you run into something that's problematic.

So here's here's my criticism of evolution and this is sort of thing as I said you could read in the theological letters. Um, but with evolution just if I'm going to frame what the theory is, right? Um and I'll I'll frame it using uh the distinction between essential and accidental properties. So for people who are unfamiliar with this distinction standard sort of logical and aristelian distinction um when we talk about a square right that it has four sides that's essential to it. You don't have a square without that. That it's got right angles, right? That's that's essential to a square. That is blue, that is 2 ft wide, right? Like those are all accidental, right?

Can still be a square and be not 2 ft wide, right? Um it can not be blue and you still have a square, right? So that's the distinction between essential and accidental properties. And and essentially the theory of evolution, if I'm going to frame it in those terms, is that compounding accidental properties eventually give rise to a change in essential properties. Yes. But by definition, accidental properties have no bearing on the essential properties. Yes, that's what makes them accidental, that they're subject to change without affecting the essential properties of the thing. So immediately on the surface I'm suspicious of the theory once I look at it in that light.

Right now the other thing that I think is problematic is that when I sort of flesh out evolution, I run into what I think is a slight of hand with the theory. So I'm going to weave a little bit of a tail, pun intended, uh here about uh about the theory of evolution. So let's talk about, you know, this this being the hominy dib, right? This one particular type of entity. And um dibs are tailless. And one day there is a a hominy dib who's born with some sort of mutation, a growth on its backside, right? And then that one ends up continuing to procreate and its progenies start to also have this growth.

And in later generations, as things move along, that growth gets larger and larger, more pronounced. And eventually it gets so pronounced in certain later generations that it becomes advantageous to balance um and other aspects of survival. And so what happens is over time the ones that don't have this growth right end up dying off but the ones who have this growth end up surviving. And lo and behold, now we have tailed harmony dibs because natural selection, right? That's a sort of common, very simplistic evolutionary tale, right? That we might offer. Again, pun intended. Um, now here's the problem that I have with it as a realist. A tale is something, right? There is a difference between a growth and a tail.

And within this narrative, I performed a little magic trick where I got you to forget we were talking about a growth and before you knew it, we were talking about a tail. Yes. And I slid that in there at some point. Right now, the problem is as much as the imagination is providing a gradation, a smooth transition. Yes. At some point there's a leap. We had a species that's tailless and now it's tail and that is binary. That is a leap that's going to take place.

Now the problem of course is that macro evolution um there was there was a theory of punctuated evolution you know chicken lays an egg and a lizard comes out right like but that fell out of favor in favor of what we have now as terms of the gradual macroevolutionary processes. And so the problem I have is that gradual process has to slip in. It it it only functionally it it has to at some point introduce a macro jump. Yes. Right. And it's sort of hiding that with the slight of hand of the story. Yes. Of transitional stages. Now I think there's a couple of issues here that like immediately I could anticipate as a response. Right.

One of those is that this is a line drawing fallacy. Right. Well, you're saying there's no difference between a beard and the stages before it's a beard, right? You know, when does a beard become a beard? And if you can't tell me, there's no such thing as a beard, right? Something like that. But of course, from a realist perspective, the realist can account for that with the category of potential, right? That you are potentially bearded, right? And as that moves into being, there are gradations of that until you have a beard. Yes. And so in this sense what you're talking about is the gradations are a byproduct of the reality of it. The fact that you are bearded in potential. Right. Right.

Well, if in the narrative we're going to say that homd dibs are actually tailed by nature but only in potential and over time this is generationally developing as opposed to developing over the course of the lifetime of just one of them. Well, then we have a very different story, right? But that's not the story that evolution is telling, right? So, we could account for the gradation by an appeal to a potential actual distinction, but that's not possible um given the nature of the narrative. Yes. So, the alternative is nominalism. And the nominalist stance is probably the stance that most evolutionists would take, which is to say, well, look, nub, tail, these are just names that we apply. There's not really a difference, right?

We're just talking about lumps of cell and some are bigger and some are are smaller and we just sort of just sit here and we brand one this and we brand the other that and so on. Yep, you could do that and try to make the problem go away. I get rid of realism and now you've you've gotten rid of the problem. But here's the problem that I have with that. I mean obviously I am a committed re realist and I'm a committed realist because I think all of logic and language and and perception and everything else requires realism. But here's the problem for science. Scientific induction becomes facious without realism. So I'll give you an example of scientific induction in defense of evolution, right?

Uh so there's a thing called a tieumir, right? Which is the sort of terminus of a DNA strand. And one of the cases for evolution is to say like look a tie is is the terminus of DNA strand. We have examples of fused tieamir. DNA strand that has uh two tieumir you know at some point in it that are fused which indicates at one point these were two different you know DNA strands that came together right okay fascinating observation but here's the problem everything about that functions on realist principles what I've identified is a species of thing tieamir I've identified its final cause to serve as the terminus of DNA strand and From that I'm able to infer inductively the anomaly. Right?

Now the thing is let's do a little bit of basic logic. Right? Square of opposition. Right? This this tool in logic where you examine the relationship between different types of claims. All P is Q. No P is Q. Some P is Q. Some P is not Q. Um one of the things that's really clear about that is you can't move from a sum claim to an all claim. Right? Right? That would be logically facious. I can't say this car is blue, therefore all cars are blue. Can't do that. Now, I can go from an all claim to a sum claim. All cars are blue. This is car, therefore this is blue. That would be that would be valid, right? That would work.

And the thing is though, scientific induction works. If I'm a realist who can say when I talk about tieamir, I'm talking about all tie are this. I'm making a universal claim because I'm dealing in universals. But if I'm a nominalist and there is no connection between this thing I call a tie and that thing I call a tie because there are no universals then every scientific observation is an eye claim. Some bits of things that look like this are this way right and I can't make any universal inferences from that.

And so to sit there and say, "Yeah, sometimes this thing is at the end of a DNA strand and sometimes it's in the middle as anomalous, I would just have to accept that or I'd move into a facious form of reasoning because I'm just dealing in a series of individuated, you know, instances, some claims. Only if I'm a realist can I say the nature of a tie is to be the termness, yes, of a DNA strand. And so when I find it not at the terminus, that's an anomaly. Yes. Right. In other words, what I think the problem is is that scientific induction in order to avoid being facious has to be realist. Yes.

And so if the only way of defending evolution is to jettison realism. I think with it you jettison all the evidence you have for evolution. Yes. In other words, I think it falls into incoherence. to make the the theory function, I have to get rid of realism. But the only reason to believe the theory is realism, realist inductions. Yes. And so that's my problem with it. Um, and that's one of the reasons why I'm inclined to think it just doesn't work. Um, now I'll also say this, as I said, this cascades into the church fathers. So are the church fathers realists? Yes. Are they happen stance non-substantive realists? like you know the way they have a some of them have a certain view of optics.

No, it's woven into the Aryan dispute when they talk about the nature of God and the nature of creatures and common natures and the natures of Christ. That's all committed forms of realism. So the Eastern fathers are realists. And so if I'm correct that realism is incompatible with evolution, then there is something in the church fathers that's incompatible with evolution. namely their realism. And this is the sort of thing I some people did raise these sorts of of things, you know, when they were objecting to me under the presumption I was an evolutionist. Um, which is ironic cuz they're raising things that I'm saying right now.

Um, which is, you know, they'll point out, well, in Genesis it says each one is made according to its kind, right? Meaning its form or its essence or its nature, right? So Genesis presumes that things have certain stable natures. I agree. Right? And that's a realist claim. Right? Or they talk about the logo doctrine which has a similar sort of thing. That's a specifically eastern petristic thing related to creation that each thing has a logo or a divine word that brings it about um which has a similar sort of realist connotations. I agree. Right. And so when I look at that, I sit there and I say like I do think there's an incompatibility between realism and evolution. And that's actually why I reject evolution.

And I do think the Eastern fathers are committed to realism. So I think that part of their theology is at odds with evolution. I actually do think that. Yes. Well, that will hopefully take down a few barriers, a few concerns for some folks. M um so you're going to make this claim in more detail. You already have on your substack and so forth. Um will you go to step three? What's step three? Well, what is actually the case in terms of the age of the earth and the and the uh um issues surrounding um you know I don't know um where where all this goes. I mean Mhm.

Are you are you interested in waiting into these contemporary debates between the young and oldthers or the evolutionists or creationists or uh Lord have mercy. I mean look I'm not interested in if you're not an evolutionist are you a creationist? Well, yeah. So, if we're defining creationists as I believe there is a God and I believe that he is the author of the cosmos. Yes. And I believe that this is all organized according to, you know, his designs. Like, yeah, of course I am. And I this is one of the things where I'm like, yeah, are are the church fathers uh creationists? Like, of course they are.

Like this is the thing that I'd mentioned with Basil of Cesaria where he says how God does it we leave to those on the outside but that God does it is the thing that we're insistent upon. Yeah. And I think that's I think that captures it quite perfectly. Now as you might expect um I'm somewhat circumspect on a lot of these things because I don't think they require dogmatic commitment. The thatness is orthodoxy the howness is is not. Right. That's right. Now, does that mean that all hs are equally viable? Like, no. So, this is where I pointed out, well, a certain form of evolutionism, right, I think is incompatible with both sound reason, realism, and the church fathers.

Um, and so that how is problematic, right? Right. Um, and so I do have objections to that on philosophical grounds and on theological grounds. Um but you know but does that mean that I now have an alternative how to give you? Right. Right. And the answer is no I don't. Right. And so in certain things where I see no theological issues like the cosmos being 13.8 billion years I'm inclined to just shrug and say I don't know if all of this science is irrefutable on that. But, you know, since that seems to be the current scientific consensus, I tend to default to it cuz I don't see anything theologically problematic about it.

And what little I know about the science behind it seems to be reasonable, right? And so, I I tend in that direction. Um, on the other aspects of things, I immediately see a philosophical problem which then also is a theological problem. And for that reason I have a tendency for that reason I have a tendency to say like well no this particular how the evolution macro evolution I have a problem with and that's where I'm sympathetic then to other scientists who want to say well the Cambrian explosion creates a problem for this or whatever it might be right certain mathematical objections to it which again are not my area but I listen to them and because they align with where I've landed philosophically yes with the problems with the theory I'm inclined to you know my priors It's hard to say no.

I'm I'm inclined to think that these objections probably do have some validity to them. Yeah. Um now I will say that and I I've I've said this before. I say this in my Substack, right? Is there a form of evolution that that I could accept? And there's a kind of that I offered to it, right? And and this is where the kind of that I said was basically the idea that the cosmos is a giant organism, right? That bas basically over time expands and goes through cell division and and out of that cell division certain things emerge out of other certain things, right? Until finally you have a fully formed, fully realized cosmos. Um and this would be similar to you or to me, right?

So within a realist perspective when you're talking about an embryo uh a fertile like this this this embryo you already have a human person in potential right like as in the nature is already present and the reason matter is going to cell divide and grow and develop into this is because the nature is driving it forward the coding is already there so to speak and so that's why matter starts to organize in the way that it does and So I have no objection looking at the cosmos and saying the cosmos large is one creature. So you do find these sort of interesting statements, right? Mathious talking about the cosmos being like one creature. Um that God makes one thing.

Now he's not denying that God, you know, that there are differences between cats and dogs just like there's a difference between your heart and your lungs, but that the cosmos is one giant created system, right? like one thing in a certain sense is true. Um that's why I had said for example the angels are part of that system. You can't sort of bracket them on the outside or something. They're part of that system. Um and so when you look at that I think you do find statements in the church fathers that would advocate that way of looking at the cosmos that it's like one giant creature.

Um you do see in Gregory of Nissa for example when he describes the development of things he's thinking in that poor fiery tree of certain things developing out of others and sharing things with others and so on. Um, now the thing is I think a lot of people will immediately have an aversion where they're like, "Well, wait, wait a second. Doesn't how can you say that each one is made according to its kind if they were originally sort of like primordally primordial uh unified and then started splitting into all this sort of stuff?" Well, the same way I do it with you, right?

Like you implicitly had lungs and a heart and a liver and a soul, like all these, you implicitly have all of those different things, right? Um, and it's the coding that drives matter forward to develop into all of those different components. Yes. That move from potential to actual, articulating the coding that's already there. So in the coding, there's a difference between your heart and your lungs. But that's an implicit thing because those things have not yet developed into concrete reality. And so as matter develops and it maps and it makes concretely real the coding that's within it, you get the division between lungs and heart and brain and so on. Yeah.

And so could I accept that the cosmos itself has sort of a primordial embryionic sort of state that explodes and develops over time and all of the coding of all the different species of things are already in it. Yes. and it moves through this sort of developmental process just like you and I moved through a development process.

I could absolutely accept that and in fact I could accept that as something that has to be almost dogmatically true about creatures and the reason is because within the Aryan dispute which I mentioned um when they're talking about the nature of creatures one of the baseline you know dogmas of the eastern fathers is that what a creature is is something that moves from potential to actual right something that was a possibility that became in a concrete reality and that that is a movement and a change that involves mutation, right? Like they describe that. Now, does that mean that that movement had to be really slow? No. Right? Could be really fast. But that that is part of the nature of creaturliness is true.

Now, here's the problem. The reason I said sort of with regard to evolution is because that's not evolution, right? From the outside it might look kind of like evolution because you have all of you have this sort of primordial developments and out of that primordial development all these different species unfolding and things like that. Yeah. So it might look like evolution but if evolution is the view that one species of thing turns into another species of thing and the mechanism for that is random mutation aimed at survival or something like that. Uh that's a very different claim than saying the coding for the thing is already in there and it's just moving from potential to actual.

And so um the potential to actual picture that says look the cosmos is a giant organism that's already all this is coded in it and we're just watching the unfolding and it might unfold over 13.8 billion years that I can accept. But what I can't accept is the random mutation aimed at survival that um that where one species turns into another species over time or something like that. That's something that I would reject. So, but and so that's where I'd said like, well, that other thing I guess I could accept as a form of evolution. I'm just not sure it's a form of evolution, right? Wow. That's that's pretty good.

And I I think we're all going to be looking forward to the next uh release. I'm not sure all of us. Well, you know, I like I like how you've come back to that as a possibility. Again, we're just talking about possibilities here and um that it might be uh an original potentiality, a seed, right? That grew into a tree. No, you really love this tree metaphor. I think that has unfolded here and it's still unfolding and um and that's I think that's very very helpful to loosen up the grip of this bifurcation that seems to be getting all this air time with you have two interestingly uh uh similar mentalities as it were for different reasons.

One coming from science, one coming from a very strict uh interpretation of scripture and so forth. But uh what I'm hearing from you is a far more nuanced, far more um uh open to conversation view about how these things are to be understood over time, integrated in in in our quest to seek the truth, right? And uh that's one of our highest orders as being truly human is that we want to know, you know, the way things actually are. What is how is reality speaking to us. I think that that's what's so good about the work that you do. Thanks.

Is uh your your ability to help us with the categories to begin to parse that out and I think we've seen a lot of that here in this conversation. Um so u thank you for that and uh is there any any last words that you want to have because we probably long form here. No no I think we've gone quite long. No I no I think I think you you summarize it quite well. Um, so yeah, I mean, inevitably with a topic like this, my mind is racing through all sorts of different things that I'd love to love to throw out there. Lord willing, you know, we'll be able to hear those from you in the years to come because the great conversations ongoing.

We didn't know we were stepping right into it in our last one. No, but we did. Yeah. And my hunch is we probably stepped into something here again. My hunch is we've stepped into it. Well, um, thank you again for your time and for putting up with, uh, my questions and, uh, helping me clarify some things that I'm going to be doing a lot of thinking about in the days to come. So, uh, really appreciate that. Well, that's it for the Firestone Files for now and the the Nathan Jacobs podcast and, uh, thank you guys for listening and do chime in.

We'd love to hear from you because that obviously that impacts what we talk about in the days ahead. and uh certainly would love to hear more from Dr. Jacobs. Uh that's it for now. Take care. All right. So, there you have it. That's my interview with Chris Firestone. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm Nathan Jacobs and this is the Nathan Jacobs podcast. The Christian East and the Christian West share the same creed, the same scriptures, and yet they are worlds apart. The differences run deeper than Mary or icons or liturgy going to the very nature of God, the hope of salvation, and even what it means to be human. They use the same words, but their meanings could not be more different.

As these two worlds collide in our contemporary culture, what's needed is a translator. I spent nearly two decades studying these two traditions, devoting myself to figures like Augustine, Aquinas, and the reformers in the West, but finding myself crossing the threshold of the Eastern Orthodox Church. And now I'm producing a 25-part lecture series to help bridge this gap, exploring the differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. Pre-order the series now at the lowest price that will ever be offered or support my efforts by becoming a series producer at the eastwestseries.com. That's the eastwestseries.com.