Review: Temples, A. V. Monkey and Adam: Can a Christian be an evolutionist? Moscow, Nikea, 2019. 216 p.

Abstract

The author of the book - palaeontologist and Orthodox Christian Alexander Khramov, creatively summarizing the ideas of a number of philosophers and theologians, offers a qualitatively different approach to the problem. Successively developed in the book, the model aims to preserve both the traditional view of the Church on creation and not to reject the modern scientific picture that reconstructs the history of the universe within the framework of the evolutionary process. Offering a classification of the types of "concordances" in the early 2000s, another Orthodox apologist, paleontologist A.V. Gomankov, suggested the name "alterism" (from Latin Alter - different, other) for this approach, the same terminology is used by A. Khramov. The model is based on the understanding of the phenomenon of matter-space-time in the context of the Church's teaching on the consequences of the Fall for man and the material world as a whole, the view of the universe as a "projection" of the primordial imperishable cosmos distorted by human sin, in which man, "the crown of creation" (Gen. 3:21), is clothed in the garments of death.