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second accusation is one of Origenism, based on Men’s ‘teaching of the human
as a transfigured monkey’. He also draws parallels with the Moscow
Patriarchate’s condemnation of Fr. Sergei Bulgakov as a heretic on 7.12.1935,
where his evolutionary views were considered ‘outside’ of Church teaching. In
his fourth accusation, Sysoev tells us that Men rejects church teaching by
dissociating human sin from the death caused by it, and in his fifth, Men is
accused of bringing the Kabbalist teaching of Adam Kadmon into the church
by rejecting the reality of a personal Adam.
It is the purpose of this essay to understand both how Alexander Men
explains the presence of evil in the world, given his evolutionary outlook, and
why this explanation provokes the accusations of his critics. In the first part of
the essay, we shall look at other Christian evolutionist writers – Teilhard de
Chardin, Solovyov, Berdyaev and Bulgakov – who significantly influenced his
thought, and with whom Men is criticised. We shall briefly consider their
answers to the question of evil and attempt to understand Men’s own critical
relation to them. In the second part we shall look at Men’s own theology of
creation and the origins of evil as demonstrated in his writings and lectures.
This will include a consideration of his interpretations of relevant passages in
both Old and New Testaments, and Men’s metaphysics. Finally, in the third
part of this essay, we shall consider Men’s critics, and determine the strengths
and most important aspects of these criticisms. Our thesis is that the real issue
is one of evolutionary creationism (Men) set against a literal interpretation of
Genesis (his critics), rather than any ‘heresies’ resulting from Men’s attempts to
explain the problem of evil in an evolutionary context. The accusations of
‘heresy’ betray a rhetorical rather than academic intent.
In the course of our discussion we shall refer to a number of different
writings and lectures from different periods of Men’s life. Before we continue,
we need to consider the nature of these sources and the methodological issues
surrounding them.
The most important among these are the first two volumes of In Search
of the Way, the Truth and the Life, written in the 1970s, Origins of Religion (Vol. 1)
and Magicism and Monotheism (Vol. 2). These books contain a mass of varied
material and have very large bibliographies. The frequent use of citation by
Men in his writing leads us to two methodological issues when attempting to
determine his own views. Firstly, his own arguments are often composed as a
collage of the views of other writers. This means that in order to understand
Men, we have to consider the views of the writers and thinkers he cites. This in
no small measure makes Part 1 of this essay invaluable, as Men frequently cites

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