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Adam has ‘evolved’
from the other cave
people. Ugly’s family
fight with each other,
and they go out
headhunting. From
this we understand
that Men believes
death and suffering
existed before the Fall,
so with renewed
urgency he needs to
explain how evil came
to be.
Fr Alexander
Men lived in the USSR
and worked in the
t h e o l o g i c a l l y
conservative Moscow
Patriarchate of the
Russian Orthodox
Church, before his
murder in 1990. The Fr Men
evolutionary aspect –
and specific ‘heresies’
resulting from it – of Men’s thought alarmed some Orthodox theologians and
writers within Russia, as they believed his views were incompatible with the
teachings of Scripture and the Church Fathers. For example, Orthodox priest
Fr. Daniil Sysoev published a list of nine points where in his understanding the
teachings of Alexander Men did not correspond with the teachings of the
church. Four of these are relevant to the way in which Men resolves the
problem of evil in an evolutionary context, and therefore relevant to our
discussion. The first is an accusation of Manichaeism, which Sysoev
characterises as ‘the teaching of the co-involvement of Satan in the creation of
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the world, the result of which was apparently the realisation of evolution’. The

5 Sysoev, Daniel. About Archpriest Alexander Men. Сысоев, Даниил. Об протоиерее Александре
Мене. Web source available e.g. http://daniilsysoev.livejournal.com/11329.html 2012

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