Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers Volume 22 Issue 5 Article 14 12-1-2005 The Six Days of Creation: Some Disregarded Dimensions Vladimir Shokhin Follow this and additional works at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy Recommended Citation Shokhin, Vladimir (2005) "The Six Days of Creation: Some Disregarded Dimensions," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 22 : Iss. 5 , Article 14. DOI: 10.5840/faithphil200522528 Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol22/iss5/14 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers by an authorized editor of ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION: SOME DISREGARDED DIMENSIONS Vladimir Shokhin One of the most fascinating phenomena in the cultural and spiritual life of Russia in the last decade and a half has been the fact that, after seventy years of the official state-implanted materialistic atheism, the witness of the Bible about our world is openly and widely discussed by scholars and theologians. This paper will survey certain features of those debates in which Orthodox authors participate, and also aspects of the understanding of the Hexaemeron (The Six Days of Creation) that are not reflected in those debates but which are brought to light by several eminent Russian theologians of the XIX century and which to my mind have a great significance. One of the most fascinating phenomena in the cultural and spiritual life of Russia in the last decade and a half has been the fact that, after seventy years of the official state-implanted materialistic atheism (which, as Paul Tillich accurately noted, had all the features of “quasi-religion” aimed to take over the traditional religion), the witness of the Bible about our world is openly and widely discussed by scholars and theologians and even is taught in some secular schools. I do not intend to analyze the details of those debates here; merely to analyze all the conferences, seminars, round-tables, and pub - lications in which the subject of the Bible and Science is being currently dis - cussed by secular authors as well as by representatives of churches active in Russia would require a paper of its own. I will confine myself to surveying certain features of those debates in which Orthodox authors participate, and also aspects of the understanding of the Hexaemeron (The Six Days of Creation) that are not reflected in those debates (as well as in the similar Western discussions that have been taking place for a long time), but which are brought to light by several eminent Russian theologians of the XIX centu - ry and to my mind have a great significance. 1. There are two major directions of the Orthodox apologetics in the cur - rent Russian debates on the subject of Bible and Science. The first one is a polemical dialogue with the former state-established, but not yet aban - doned, naturalistic-evolutionist worldview. The latter worldview is not nor - mally set out in the conservative Soviet ideological model of Marxist- Darwinism, but rather is modernized (under the pressure of criticism from all sides) as the anthropologic-cosmological principle (explaining the exis - 1 tence of life on Earth) or the synthetic theory of evolution (clarifying the 2 mechanisms of evolution’s final stages). The second direction is the debate FAITH AND PHILOSOPHY Vol. 22 No. 5 Special Issue 2005 687 All rights reserved 688 Faith and Philosophy between Orthodox theology and the theistic cosmologies of the other Christian churches, especially Protestant ones. Here, the issue is not whether the world has a Creator, but how long it took Him to create; and whether and how far after creating life on Earth, he put the natural mecha - nisms (such as natural selection) into play in order to complete His “work.” The first direction of the Orthodox apologetics — anti-atheistic — was significantly stimulated by eminent Protestant creationists such as Henry Morris and Dwain Gish whose books were translated into Russian, and also by the populists of scientific-creationism (such as K. Ham, A. Snelling, K. Willand) who sought to rebut Naturalist Evolutionism from the per - spective of modern scientific knowledge. The translations of the other for - eign Orthodox authors, such as, for instance, Serbian priest and geologist Stephan Lyashevsky, are also very popular in Russia. The distinction between Russian clerical-apologists and the authors of the latter books mostly consists in the widespread citing of the Church 3 Fathers who commented on the Hexaemeron by the former. As for the lay Orthodox authors, the most competent among them efficiently utilize modern scientific knowledge as much to refute the possibility of a chance origin of the universe and conscious beings on Earth, as to show how the statements of the Bible’s first book have proven true by scientific discover - ies of the twentieth century. So, some of the Orthodox authors rely on the investigations by the Russian physicist, A. Freidman (1922), the American astronomer A. Hubble (1928), and the other scientists whose work led to the formulation of the standard cosmological model of the universe expanding from the initial atom of matter with maximum density and tem - perature, and compare the creation of the universe with the first verse of the Bible, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth . The same authors rebut the possibility of “fortunate coincidences” in the earliest stages of the world starting from the optimal density of matter required for the velocity of expansion of the Universe and finishing with the correlation between the constants of gravity and electromagnetic interaction required for the possibility of inhabited planets. The authors also draw attention to several concrete parallels between the verses of the Hexaemeron and scien - tific discoveries about cosmic evolution: elementary particles and radiation — protons, neutrons, and electrons — the nucleus of hydrogen and helium (“the epoch before stars”) — atoms of hydrogen and helium — atoms of 4 elements — molecules — plants — animals (“the epoch of stars”). The other authors, after Fr. Stephan Lyashevsky, try to correlate every day of creation (starting with the third one) with the concrete geological epochs. So, the third day corresponds to Paleozoic era, the fourth to Archaic, the 5 fifth to Mesozoic, the sixth to Neozoic and further periods. Inter-confessional cosmological controversy is closely associated with the international debates. I should mention first of all the polemical writings of the American Orthodox publicist Fr. Seraphim Rose (died 1982), which were translated into Russian, against the Greek theologian Alexander Kalamiros. The latter insists, explicitly that “one who denies evolution, denies the Holy Scripture, also.” In his detailed letter to Kalamiros, Fr. Seraphim insists that the Bible and its interpretation by the Holy Fathers are incompatible both with classical Darwinism and also with the theory of THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION 689 Anthropogenesis of Teilhard de Chardin, in which he saw an adaptation of 6 religion to pseudo-science comfortable for an average modern man. Although Father Seraphim is one of the most authoritative figures in the Russian Orthodoxy (even more than in American Orthodoxy), his consis - tent anti-evolutionism is associated by many Russians with the similar posi - 7 tions advocated by Protestant authors on which, in fact, he partly relied. Hostile to Protestant and pro-Protestant influence in Russia, some of the Orthodox authors anxiously seek to formulate a theistic cosmology and anthropology that would be scientifically based and at the same time (and that is most importantly for them) “native” and not “imported.” In this respect, the showcase is the collection of articles inspired by the popular 8 Orthodox publicist Deacon Andrei Kuraev. The main theses of these authors (who refer to the other authoritative Orthodox theologians) are the following: (1) Protestant “scientific creationism” is in fact scientifically groundless (all the “serious scientists,” as they put it, seem to agree on this), and represents after all an anti-scientific faith in the literal six-days creation of all the world once and for all without any further changes in it. (Deacon Andrei Kuraev sees the origin of the Scientific Creationism in the Protestant concept of matter understood as an absolutely passive substance not suited for synergy with God; in his opinion this understanding follows from the Protestant anthropology that treats a man as a passive recipient of divine 9 grace); (2) from the fact that atheistic evolutionism was officially propagat - ed in the Soviet Union it does not follow that any form of evolutionism is false. (Alexei Gomankov considers that even Darwinian Evolutionism does 10 not contradict the doctrine of the divine creation of the world), and more - over theistically interpreted evolutionism as a matter of fact is the modern scientific equivalent of the Hexaemeron; (3) between the biblical Hexaemeron and modern scientific knowledge there are only differences of detail. So, Orthodox Evolutionists are puzzled by the questions: how the plants (the third day of creation) could appear before the creation of the sun necessary for their growth (the fourth