you're saying you condemn the idea that the body existed before the soul? if evolution is true then the body obviously predates the soul ...
No, I'm condemning the idea that the soul predates the body. That's what Origen believed, or accused of believing.
right right, sorry i got mixed up there. however, i know that at least St. Gregory of Nyssa condemns the opposite idea that the body predates the soul.
well in that part St. John is speaking of Origenians -- perhaps Origen himself didn't actually believe it, I don't know. but St. John is talking about the tendency to turn everything in the story into an allegory and deny the literal level of it -- St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Ephraim, St. Augustine, St. Bede, and others also warn about the same tendency, but here it seems St. John has identified it as an actual heresy.
But the quote is talking about Paradise here. Frankly, if St. John Damascene has a problem with the Garden of Eden not being taken literally and instead calling it Paradise, his beef is also with St. Athanasius. In addition, St. Basil is one of the compilers of the Philocalia of Origen.
Yes, I agree over-allegorizing things is a danger, but I thought Paradise is a common tradition of the allegorizing of Garden of Eden in both the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches.
i dont know what you mean by Paradise is an allegorizing of the Garden of Eden -- from everything I've read they're synonymous. The entire earth was a sort of Paradise ie incorrupt, but the Garden was a distinct and special place that was Paradise. The Garden remained incorrupt even after man's sin and that is why he is kicked out of it, and for a while man could still see the Garden/Paradise and weep over his sins, but gradually the Garden was taken away, but Saints such as St. Euphrosynos have visited Paradise/the Garden.
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