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“The faithful have little need for scientists now, the world is full of them! They are in need of holy men, of those who live the holy life; of those who can attract the Grace of God to them.” —Elder Justin (Pârvu) of Romania
“Once, when standing before a window at night, St. Barsanuphius (of Optina) pointed to the moon and said to his spiritual children:
"Look – what a picture! This is left to us as a consolation. It is no wonder the Prophet David said, ‘Thou hast gladdened me’, he says, although this is only a hint of that wondrous beauty, incomprehensible to human thought, which was originally created. We don't know what kind of moon there was then, what kind of sun, what kind of light… All of this changed after the fall."” —Fr. Seraphim Rose of Platina, Genesis, Creation, and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision, p. 44
“As for the ‘scientific’ information given in the book of Genesis – and since it talks about the formation of the world we know, there cannot but be some scientific information there – contrary to popular belief, there is nothing ‘out-of-date’ about it. Its observations, it is true, are all made as seen from earth and as affecting mankind; but they do not put forth any particular teaching, for example, on the nature of the heavenly bodies or their relative motions, and so the book can be read by each generation and understood in the light of its own scientific knowledge. The discovery in recent centuries of the vastness of space and the immensity of many of its heavenly bodies does nothing but add grandeur in our minds to the simple account of Genesis. When the Holy Fathers talk about Genesis, of course, they try to illustrate it with examples taken from the natural science of their time; we do the same thing today. All this illustrative material is open to scientific criticism, and some of it, in fact, has become out-of-date. But the text of Genesis itself is unaffected by such criticism, and we can only wonder at how fresh and timely it is to each new generation. And the theological commentary of the Holy Fathers on the text partakes of this same quality.” —Fr. Seraphim Rose of Platina, Genesis, Creation and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision, p. 87
