Modern Science and the Orthodox Tradition: An uneasy relationship (Science and Orthodox Christianity) 9782503576169, 2503576168

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ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY AND MODERN SCIENCE

Science and Orthodox Christianity 1

Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential

Edited by Vasilios N. Makrides – Gayle E. Woloschak

F

© 2019, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2019/0095/252 ISBN 978-2-503-57616-9 eISBN 978-2-503-57617-6 DOI 10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.113654 Printed on acid-free paper.

Contents

Notes on Contributors

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Preface 19 Relating Orthodox Christianity with Modern Science: An Introduction Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak

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Part I The Orthodox Christian Tradition and Modern Science: An Uneasy Relationship? Modern Science and Orthodox Theology: An Uneasy yet Profound Relationship Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki, Greece

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The Ambiguous Relationship between Orthodoxy and Science as Part of the Pending Discussion between Orthodoxy and Modernity: From the Polemic against the Enlightenment to the Debate over Homosexuality Pantelis Kalaitzidis

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Orthodox Tradition and Science: Modernity as a Mediator Vasileios Thermos

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Part II The Greek Patristic Heritage: Its Potential for the Orthodoxy-Science Dialogue The Patristic Idea of Cosmic Liturgy as the Basis of the Relationship between Orthodox Theology and Science Sergey S. Horujy

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Philosophical Foundations of Mediation/Dialogue between (Orthodox) Theology and Science Alexei Nesteruk

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Maximus the Confessor and the Contribution of Orthodoxy to the Dialogue on Science and Religion William R. Shea

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Using the Concept of Energy to Encounter Orthodox Theology with Physics: An Analogical Comparative Theological Approach (ACTA) Stoyan Tanev

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Science, Theology, and the Mind Christopher C. Knight

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God, the Great Writer and Great Computer Whizz: Comment on Christopher C. Knight’s Paper Athanasios N. Papathanasiou

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Part III Orthodox Christianity and Science: Local Settings and Specific Concerns in the Past and at Present Science–Religion Interface: Agreements and Tensions of Orthodox Christian Pastoral Concern in the Biomedical Sciences Gayle E. Woloschak

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The Science-Theology Dialogue through the Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee Archbishop Makarios of Australia

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Orthodoxy and Science in Bulgaria (Twentieth – Twenty First Century) Nina Dimitrova 191 A Theology of the World: Dumitru Stăniloae, the Traditional Worldview, and Contemporary Cosmology Doru Costache

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Evolution and Orthodox Theology in Russia: An Uneasy Way to the Dialogue Dimitry Kiryanov

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The Orthodox Tradition and a Personal View on the Universe ‘from Within’: A Russian Orthodox Perspective Kirill Kopeikin

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Theology in the Mirror: The Dictionary of Technology as Revival of Orthodox Culture in Serbia/Yugoslavia and Re-ideation of Technology Aleksandar Petrović and Aleksandra P. Stevanović 247 Orthodox Christian Physicians and Scholars in the Ottoman Court Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu

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Orthodox Christian Physicians and Scholars in the Ottoman Court: A Commentary John Hedley Brooke

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John Hedley Brooke taught the history of science at Lancaster University between 1969 and 1999. In 1995, with Geoffrey Cantor, he gave the Gifford Lectures at Glasgow University. From 1999 to 2006, he was the first Andreas Idreos Professor of Science & Religion at Oxford University, Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre and Fellow of Harris Manchester College. Following retirement, he was designated ‘Distinguished Fellow’ at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Durham (2007). He has been President of the British Society for the History of Science, the Historical Section of the British Science Association, the International Society for Science and Religion, and the UK Forum for Science & Religion. He has lectured worldwide on science and religion and is best known for his book Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (1991), republished in 2014 by Cambridge University Press in its ‘Canto Classics’ series. Other books include Thinking About Matter (1995) and (with Geoffrey Cantor) Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science & Religion (Edinburgh 1998). With Ronald Numbers, he coedited Science & Religion around the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) and was a Consultant Editor of The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology (2013). Protopresbyter Dr Doru Costache is Senior Lecturer in Patristic Studies at St Cyril’s Coptic Orthodox Theological College, a member institution of the Sydney College of Divinity, Australia. Over twenty years of tertiary experience (the University of Bucharest, 1995-2004; the Sydney College of Divinity, 2005-). Participant in the project ‘Science and Orthodoxy around the World’, hosted by the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece (2016-19). Honorary Associate of the Department of Studies in Religion, The University of Sydney (2017-19). Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Philosophy and Theology (Sydney), the University of Notre Dame Australia (2017-19). Durham International Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, United Kingdom (Epiphany Term, 2018). Over twenty years of ordained ministry. Parish priest of the Saint Gregory the Theologian’s Romanian Orthodox Mission in Sydney’s North Shore (2017-). Co-author of Dreams, Virtue and Divine Knowledge in Early Christian Egypt (forthcoming 2019), Sfinții Părinți despre Originile și Destinul Cosmosului și Omului (2003), Știință și Teologie: Preliminarii pentru Dialog (2001), Introducere în Dogmatica Ortodoxă (1997). Co-editor of Well-Being, Personal Wholeness and the Social Fabric (2017), John Chrysostom: Past, Present, Future (2017), Alexandrian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal (2015), Cappadocian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal (2013).

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Nina Dimitrova has a Master’s degree in philosophy and sociology from the University of Sofia and a PhD degree and a Doctor of Sciences degree from the Institute of Philosophy at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She is currently professor of philosophy at the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Areas of scientific research: History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophical Anthropology. Main publications (in Bulgarian): Existential Dimensions of the Zeitgeist (2014); The Prophets of the Possessed: Meaning and Faith in Russian Religious Philosophy (2013); Debating over the Gnosticism in Bulgaria (Twentieth Century) (2008); Religion and Nationalism. Religious Ideas in Bulgaria between the Two World Wars (2006); Social Religious Utopia in the Russian Intellectual Renaissance (2002). Sergey S. Horujy, philosopher, theologian, mathematician, theoretical physicist. Born in 1941 in Skopin, former USSR, he graduated from the Department of Physics of the Moscow State University in 1964 and received his PhD in Physics in 1967 and a Habilitation in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics in 1976 at the Steklov Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He worked in the field of axiomatic and algebraic methods of relativistic quantum field theory and, in parallel, in philosophy and theology. The latter work, which was underground until the end of the Soviet regime, resulted in the development of the synergic anthropology, a large project of post-classical anthropology conceived as a new episteme for the humanities and representing the human being as a set of self-consistent anthropological formations. In 2005, he founded the Institute of Synergic Anthropology in Moscow. He is also the principal researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Honorary Professor of UNESCO (the Chair of Comparative Studies of Religious Traditions), and Honorary Professor of the Russian Christian Academy for Humanities (St. Petersburg). He has published about 15 books and 250 articles in philosophy and theology. Website: www.synergia-isa.ru Prof. Dr Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu is a Turkish Academician, Diplomat, Member of the Turkish Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of Strasbourg, and the ninth Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) (2004-13). He earned a BS from Ain Shams University (Egypt), an MS from Al-Azhar University (Egypt), a PhD from Ankara University (Turkey), and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom). He taught and lectured in many leading universities in Europe and the USA. He has written numerous books, articles and papers in Turkish, English, Persian and Arabic on science, Islamic culture, Turkish culture, the relations between the Muslim and the Western world, and Turkish-Arab relations. Some of his books were published in English, Russian, Persian, Urdu, French, Japanese, Malay, Korean, Bosnian, Macedonian, Bengali, and Albanian. He was conferred with medals and decorations by kings and heads of states, as well as with honorary doctorates by a number of universities. He is also a member of different academies of sciences around the world. He was the founding Director General of the Research Center for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA) in İstanbul for 25 years, and the first professor and founding head of the Department of History of Science at Istanbul University and the Turkish Society for History of

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Science. He further served as the President of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science (2001-05). Dr Pantelis Kalaitzidis studied Theology in Thessaloniki and Philosophy in Paris, Sorbonne, and received his doctorate in Theology from the University of Thessaloniki. He has published many books and over 90 papers in the areas of the eschatological dimension of Christianity, the dialogue between Orthodoxy and modernity, theology and literature, religious nationalism, issues of renewal and reformation in Eastern Orthodoxy, contemporary Eastern and Western theology, political theology, as well as ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue. He is serving as the editor of the series ‘Doxa & Praxis: Exploring Orthodox Theology’ (WCC Publications). He has been a Research Fellow at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology (Brookline, MA), Princeton Theological Seminary and Princeton University (New Jersey), DePaul University (Chicago), and KU Leuven (Belgium), while he is a member of the Scientific Board of the Review of Ecumenical Studies (Sibiu), and of the Orthodox journal The Wheel (USA). For the last eighteen years he has been the Director of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies, a research centre linked to the local Metropolis of Demetrias in Volos and dealing with contemporary issues for Orthodoxy. He has taught Systematic Theology at the Hellenic Open University and the St Sergius Institute of Orthodox Theology in Paris (as Visiting Professor). He is a member of the Executive Committee of the European Academy of Religion (EuARe), Chair (together with Aristotle Papanikolaou) of the Political Theology Group of the International Orthodox Theological Association (IOTA), as well as member of the International Association of Orthodox Dogmatic Theologians (IAODT), the American Academy of Religion (AAR), and the Society of Christian Ethics (SCE). Rev. Dimitry Kiryanov is Associate Professor at the Tobolsk Orthodox Theological Seminary, Russia. He is a member of the Inter-Council Presence of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Synodal Biblical Theological Commission (since 2015). He received a diploma in Radio-Physics from Tyumen State University in 1994, a PhD in Orthodox Theology from the Moscow Orthodox Theological Academy in 2005, and a PhD in Philosophy from the Ural Federal University (Yekaterinburg) in 2009. His main fields of interest are twentieth-century Catholic philosophy and theology, fundamental theology, science and religion, and philosophy of religion. His postdoctoral work was on the philosophical theology of Bernard Lonergan at the Theological Institute of Postgraduate Studies of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is author of more than 50 articles, books and book chapters. Among them (in Russian): Twentieth-Century Thomist’s Philosophy (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2009); Actual Problems of the Dialogue between Science and Religion (Surgut: Surgut State University Press, 2010); ‘Science and Religion in Modern Western Theological Thought’, in Methodical Support of the Ministry in the Twenty-first Century, 2016, pp. 7-174; The Philosophical Theology of Bernard Lonergan (in press); Fundamental Theology (in press). Rev. Dr Christopher C. Knight, BSc, PhD, BTh, MA, is Senior Research Associate of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge (UK), and the parish priest

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of the Church of the Holy Transfiguration, Great Walsingham, Norfolk, England. Before his retirement, he worked as the Executive Secretary of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR). He has taught on science and religion for a number of colleges within the University of Cambridge (where he was at one time Chaplain, Fellow, and Director of Studies in Theology at Sidney Sussex College.). Having turned to theology after completing a PhD in Astrophysics, his main interests are in the relationship between theology and the sciences, divine action, religious language, and the psychology of religious experience. He became a member of the Orthodox Church in 2002, at the age of fifty, and has been a priest of that church since 2009. He has written numerous papers and two books in the Fortress Press’s ‘Theology and the Sciences’ series: Wrestling with the Divine: Religion, Science, and Revelation (2001) and The God of Nature: Incarnation and Contemporary Science (2007; also available in a Romanian translation published by Curtea Veche in 2009). These books were aimed mainly at a Western Christian audience, but a book is to be published for a predominantly Orthodox audience by the St Vladimir’s Seminary Press: Christianity and Science: An Eastern Orthodox View of the Science-Theology Dialogue. This third book will provide a critique of the current science-theology dialogue from an Orthodox perspective and is based in part on his chapter ‘Natural Theology and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition’ in the Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology (2013). Rev. Kirill Kopeikin is Associate Professor at the St. Petersburg Orthodox Theological Academy, Director of the Centre for Multidisciplinary Scientific and Theological Research of the St. Petersburg State University (http://scitheol.spbu.ru/), and Senior Priest of the St Peter and Paul Church at St. Petersburg State University. In 1982, he graduated from the Physics Faculty of St. Petersburg State University, and in 1986, he earned his PhD in Physics from the same University, where he was also employed between 1985 and 1990. In 1993, he was ordained a deacon and then a presbyter. In 1993, he also started his studies at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and graduated in 1997. He later earned his PhD in Theology and became a teacher. From 1999 to 2013, he was Secretary of the Academic Council and from 2016 to 2017 Vice-Rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. He is the author of two books and more than 50 articles and book chapters. His Eminence Archbishop Makarios of Australia was born in Heraklion, Crete, in 1973. He completed his early education in Crete and at the Athens Rizarios Ecclesiastical School (1987-1990). He later graduated from the Higher Ecclesiastical School of Athens and from the University of Athens, School of Theology. He pursued graduate studies in the field of Christian Ethics at Boston University, School of Theology, where he earned a Master of Sacred Theology (STM). He also earned a Master of Arts (MA) in the area of History of Science from Harvard University, School of Arts and Sciences. He also holds a Master of Bioethics from Monash University, School of Arts and Sciences. His doctoral dissertation was completed at the Medical School of the University of Crete - where he had studied medicine for four years - and was received with a score of ‘Excellent’. This work was later published under the title: Cloning: Social, Ethical and Theological Components. He was tonsured a monk and

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was ordained to the holy deaconate on October 18, 1993; he was ordained a priest on June 25, 1997; and received the title of ‘Archimandrite’ on April 23, 1998 at the Monastery of Saint George Epanosifis. On Easter Sunday of 2008, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew elevated him to the rank of ‘Archimandrite of the Ecumenical Throne’ at the Phanar in Istanbul. He was appointed Director of the Radio Station of the Holy Archdiocese of Crete (2002-2011). He served as a member of the Synodal Committee on Bioethics and Contemporary Issues of the Church of Crete (20052015); Chairman of the Executive Committee of the School of Byzantine Music of the Archdiocese of Crete (2006-2010); Chairman of the Office of the Ecclesiastical Education (2007-2015); Chairman of the Press Office of the Church of Crete and the Official Preacher of the Archdiocese of Crete (2002-present). He is the founder of the series Παντοδαπά τῆς Βιοηθικῆς (All Things Bioethics), which is under the auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Since 2003 he has taught at the Patriarchal Ecclesiastical Academy of Heraklion and has occasionally taught courses at various universities, including the Hellenic College (Brookline, MA, 2000) and the Medical Schools of the Universities of Crete (2002-2014), Thessaly (2007-2014) and Athens (2009-2014). He has also lectured at the Theological Seminary of St Platon of the Autonomous Church of Estonia (2010-2014), and in May 2015, he was elected Dean of the Orthodox School of Theology of Estonia. In 2009, the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate appointed him a member of the official representation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee, for which he was unanimously elected Secretary General at its first session in May 2011,whereas in 2018 he was elected President of the Synodal Committee of Bioethics at the Ecumenical Patriarchate. On April 27, 2015 he was elected Bishop of Christopolis by the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and was ordained a bishop on May 16, 2015. He participated at the Holy and Great Synod of the Orthodox Church in Crete in 2016. Today, along with his ecclesiastical ministry, he continues to teach, participates in scientific international conferences, and publishes articles, studies, and books. On May 9, 2019 he was elected Archbishop of Australia by the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Vasilios N. Makrides studied theology at the University of Athens (1979-83) and religious studies, history of religions and sociology of religion at Harvard University (1984-86), as well as at the University of Tübingen (1986-91), from where he obtained his doctorate. He has taught at the University of Thessaly in Volos (1995-98), and since 1999, he is Professor of Religious Studies (specializing in Orthodox Christianity) at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Erfurt (Germany). Main research interests: Comparative religious and cultural history and sociology of Orthodox Christianity; religious and cultural relations between Eastern and Western Europe; Orthodox Christianity, modernity and science. Selected book publications: Hellenic Temples and Christian Churches: A Concise History of the Religious Cultures of Greece from Antiquity to the Present (New York/London: New York University Press, 2009); Orthodox Christianity in Twenty First Century Greece: The Role of Religion in Culture, Ethnicity and Politics (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010) (co-edited with V. Roudometof); Културна историја православља и модерност. Одабрани радови (Belgrade: Konrad

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Adenauer Stiftung / Хришћански културни центар др Радован Биговић, 2014); Christentum und Menschenrechte in Europa. Perspektiven und Debatten in Ost und West (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016) (co-edited with J. Wasmuth and S. Kube); Current Developments within Orthodox Christianity – Dynamics between Tradition, Innovation, and Realpolitik (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019) (co-edited with S. Rimestad); Konversionen: Religion – Lebensführung – Weltanschauung (Münster: Aschendorff, 2019) (co-edited with S. Schmolinsky); The Panorthodox Council of 2016 – A New Era for the Orthodox Church? Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019) (co-edited with S. Rimestad). Alexei Nesteruk holds a PhD in Physics and Mathematics, as well as a DSc in Philosophy. He is a senior research lecturer at the University of Portsmouth (UK), a researcher and lecturer at the Russian Christian Academy of the Human Sciences, St. Petersburg, as well as a research associate of the Centre for Multidisciplinary Scientific and Theological Research at the St. Petersburg State University. He is the author of more than hundred papers on cosmology, philosophy of cosmology, science and theology, as well as of five books on science and Orthodox theology in English and Russian, and a book on philosophy of cosmology in Russian. His main conviction is that the dialogue between Eastern Orthodox theology and science is impossible without the mediating function of modern philosophy. He develops a new phenomenological approach to the dialogue between theology and science by placing the perennial question ‘What is the human being?’ at the centre of this dialogue. By linking Orthodox theology to science through a neo-patristic appropriation of modern philosophy, he also advances the philosophy of cosmology and the ‘metaphysics’ of the subject. Metropolitan Nikolaos (Chatzinikolaou) holds a BSc in Physics from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece; a Master of Arts (MA) in Astrophysics from Harvard University; and a Master of Sciences (MS) in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. His PhD studies in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics took place under the HST (Harvard-MIT joint program). For four consecutive years, he worked as a researcher at The Boston Children’s Hospital and Mass General Hospital, and as a space medical technology consultant for NASA and Arthur D. Little Company. He also received a Master in Theological Studies (MTS) and a Master of Theology (ThM) from the Holy Cross School of Theology, in Brookline, Mass, and a ThD in Bioethics from the University of Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2008, he was awarded the title of honorary doctor of Social Theology by the University of Athens. Ιn 1989 (upon his return from the USA), he was tonsured a monk on Mount Athos and then was ordained a deacon and a priest. He served for a number of years at the Metochion of the Holy Ascension, a dependency of the Simonos Petras Monastery in Athens, and in 2004, he was elected Metropolitan of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki in Greece. He is the founder and director of the Hellenic Center for Biomedical Ethics in Athens, Greece, and the chairman of the Bioethics Committee of the Church of Greece. He has also represented the Church of Greece in the Greek National Council for Research and Technology, the Hellenic National Transplant Organisation, and

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the National Committee of Deontology in Greece. He is the author of a number of theological and scientific articles and books and has participated in Greek and international conferences regarding a broad spectrum of bioethical issues and the relationship between Orthodox theology and modern science. Moreover, he has taught ‘Haemodynamic Pathophysiology of Vascular Diseases and Surgery’ at the Medical School of the University of Crete and is the co-author of the book Haemodynamics of the Great Vessels. His pioneer social work includes a broad spectrum of activities such as the founding of the first Palliative Care Unit in Greece by the name of ‘Galilee’, attending patients with advanced-stage cancer, or other life threatening illnesses, providing care for patients suffering from serious neuromascular diseases (e.g., Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/ALS), and organizing seminars on volunteer education. He is also the chairman of a charity fund that, among others, has sponsored the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at the ‘Evangelismos’ General Hospital in Athens. Athanasios N. Papathanasiou is a lay Orthodox theologian. He was born in Athens, Greece, in 1959. He holds a doctorate in Missiology (1991) and degrees in Theology (1986) and Law (1982). He teaches Missiology, History of Religions and Canon Law at the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens, as well as at the postgraduate Theological Programme of the Hellenic Open University. For many years, he served at the Secondary Education, while for some time he was dispatched at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Athens, as well as the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens. He obtained first-hand experience in short-term missionary work in Kenya (1995), Nigeria (2000) and Tanzania (2004). Since 1998 he has been the editor of the popular Greek theological quarterly Synaxis. He is also member of The European Society for Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies (ESITIS). He is the author of numerous books, articles and book chapters. His publications in English include: Future, the Background of History: Essays on Church Mission in an Age of Globalization (Montreal: Alexander Press, 2005); ‘The Politics as a Weak Force’, in Political Theologies in Orthodox Christianity: Common Challenges, Divergent Positions (London & New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), pp. 97-110. He lives in Athens with his wife Eleni and their son Alexandros-Arethas. Prof. Aleksandar Petrović is the Vice President of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the Head of the Department of Social Sciences at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade. He teaches General Theory of Culture and Civilization, History of Science in the nineteenth century, History of Theories on Climate Change, as well as Theory of Knowledge. He is a corresponding member of the Académie internationale d'histoire des sciences, President of the Serbian Society of the History of Science, member of the Scientific Council of the National Conservation Institute, and Fellow of the Social Department of Matica Srpska, the oldest cultural-scientific institution of Serbia. He initiated and established the journal Phlogiston specializing in the history of science and the edition of unpublished archival material and manuscripts of crucial cultural and historical importance. He is the author of the nine monographs and more than two hundred articles in

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scholarly journals worldwide. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of the following scholarly journals: Almagest. International Journal for the History of Scientific Ideas; European Journal for Geopolitics; People Say (Toronto, Canada); Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis (Cracow, Poland); Modern Research Studies (National Institute of Technology, University of Agartala); Newsletter for the History of Science in Southeastern Europe. William R. Shea is a world-renowned Canadian historian of science. He has studied in Ottawa, Rome and Cambridge and has taught at the University of Ottawa, at McGill University and at the University of Strasbourg prior to becoming from 2003 until 2012 Professor of the History of Science (Cattedra Galileiana di Storia della Scienza) at the University of Padova, Italy. He served as President of the International Academy of the History of Science und of the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science. He is a member of numerous Academies (Royal Society of Canada, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea, Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences) and the recipient of numerous awards and honours (including the Koyré Medal in 1993). His research interests include Galileo Galilei, the Scientific Revolution, the history of modern science, and bioethics. He has published extensively in these areas, and many of his works have been translated in numerous languages. Among his book publications: Galileo’s Intellectual Revolution: Middle Period 1610-1632 (1972); (ed.) Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Science (1976); (ed.) Nature Mathematized: Historical and Philosophical Case Studies in Classical Modern Natural Philosophy (1983); (ed.) Otto Hahn and the Rise of Nuclear Physics (1983); (ed.) Revolutions in Science: Their Meaning and Relevance (1989); The Magic of Numbers and Motion: The Scientific Career of René Descartes (1991); Storia delle scienze (1992); Galileo Galilei: An Astronomer at Work (1993); (ed.) Energy Needs in the Year 2000: Ethical and Environmental Perspectives (1994); Copernico: un rivoluzionario prudente (2001); (co-authored with M. Artigas) Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius (2003); (co-authored with M. Artigas) Galileo Observed: Science and the Politics of Belief (2006); Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius, or, A Sidereal Message (2009). Aleksandra P. Stevanović is a Research Scholar at the Centre for the Study of Language and Literature, Faculty of Philology and Arts, University of Kragujevac. Currently, she is a fourth-year PhD student at the Programme of Multidisciplinary Doctoral Studies of the Department of History and Philosophy of Natural Sciences and Technology, and a third-year PhD student at the Department of Cultural Studies of the Faculty of Philology – both at the University of Belgrade. In 2017, she spent one semester as a visiting research fellow at the University of Madras in Chennai, India, where she audited and delivered lectures at the Department of Women’s Studies and the Department of Christian Studies. In the frame of the SOW project, she co-organized the international scientific conference ‘Religion, Technology and Cultural Identity: An Exploration from a Multi-Polar Perspective’ in December 2017 in Chennai, India. She is currently a researcher in two national projects: ‘Social Crises and Contemporary Literature and Culture: National, Regional, European and Global Frames’, funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of the

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Republic of Serbia; and ‘Serbian-Indian Relations in Culture through History’, led by the Matica Srpska in Novi Sad, Serbia. She is also a member of the International Centre for Orthodox Studies, Niš. Dr Stoyan Tanev is an Associate Professor in the Technology Innovation Management Program, Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His research and teaching are related to technology entrepreneurship and innovation. He is also Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Theology at St Paul University in Ottawa and in the Faculty of Theology at Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria. He has a multidisciplinary background including: MSc in Physics (1989) from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria; PhD in Physics (1996) from the University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, France (co-awarded by the University of Sofia); MEng in Technology Management (2005) from Carleton University, Ottawa; MA in Theology (2009) from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada; and PhD in Theology (2012) from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria. His doctoral work in theology focused on the epistemological aspects of the concept of energy in Orthodox theology and quantum physics. It was published in Bulgarian by Sofia University Press (2013). He is also the author of the book Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics – From Controversy to Encounter (2017). Rev. Vasileios Thermos, MD, PhD, was born in 1957 at Lefkada, Greece. He studied at the Medical School and the Theological School of the University of Athens. He was specialized in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which he still practices in Athens. Following his ordination to priesthood in 1987, he has been engaged into training programs for clergy. In 1996-97 he was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Divinity School; he also took classes in Harvard School of Arts and Humanities, Boston College, Boston University, and Andover Newton Theological School. In 1997, he received his PhD in Pastoral Psychology from the Theological School of the University of Athens. In 2014, he worked for three months as a Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute of Medical Humanities of the Medical School of the University of Texas on a project about homosexuality and contemporary gender theories. He has also conducted a research on clergy health and burnout. He has written numerous books and articles in Greek; some of them have been translated into English, French, Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Spanish. He is the editor of a biannual journal in Greek Ψυχῆς δρόμοι (Ways of the Soul) on the relationship between theology/ religion and psychiatry/psychology. In 2004, a Master’s thesis on his total work was submitted by Peter Kazaku to the Theological School of Balamand University in Lebanon. This thesis in an updated and enriched form was published as a book titled Orthodoxy and Psychoanalysis: Dirge or Polychronion to the Centuries-old Tradition? (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013). During 2001-13 he was a Visiting Professor of Pastoral Psychology and Psychology of Religion at the Theological Academy of the Orthodox Church of Albania. Since 2013 he teaches Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Psychology in the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens, where he is now an Associate Professor.

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Gayle E. Woloschak is Professor of Radiation Oncology, Radiology, and Cell and Molecular Biology in the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. She received her PhD in Medical Sciences from the University of Toledo (Medical College of Ohio). She did her postdoctoral training at the Mayo Clinic, and then moved to Argonne National Laboratory until 2001. Her scientific interests are predominantly in the areas of molecular biology, radiation biology, and nanotechnology studies, and she has authored over 200 papers. She is editor-in-chief for the International Journal of Radiation Biology, is a member of various national and international committees and serves on the US delegation to the United National Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. She is also Associate Dean of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in The Graduate School at Northwestern University. She also received a DMin degree from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Eastern Christian Studies having worked in bioethical questions and science and religion issues. She is Adjunct Professor of Religion and Science at Lutheran School of Theology Chicago and Sessional Professor of Bioethics at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. Her research interests there include environmental issues, bioethical questions, and evolution.

Preface

The present volume inaugurates a new book series at Brepols Publishers entitled ‘Orthodox Christianity and Science’ and is devoted to the under-researched topic of the multifaceted relations between the Orthodox Christian tradition and (modern) science. The entire endeavour was made possible through the broad and ambitious, three-year (2016–19) research project ‘Science and Orthodoxy around the World’ (SOW), funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation. It aims at bringing an interdisciplinary team of numerous specialists from a large variety of countries and backgrounds together, working on issues pertaining to the dialogue between science and religion in the Orthodox Christian world. It is based at the Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens and is directed by Dr Efthymios Nicolaidis. Among the multiple activities of this research project, there are three large international conferences. This volume contains selected papers, written from various methodological and scholarly perspectives, from the First SOW International Conference on the topic ‘Modern Science and the Orthodox Tradition. An Uneasy Relationship?’, held at the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens (24–25 February 2017). The editors of this volume, who also function as project advisors and members of the international scientific committee of SOW, would like to thank all those who have contributed to the realization of the present publication: the director of SOW Efthymios Nicolaidis, not least for initiating such a valuable and extremely needed research project; the administration and coordination assistants of SOW, Nikos Livanos and Ersi Bakou for their multifaceted help; the various research associates of SOW, the participants in the SOW conferences, and the contributors to the present volume for discussions, suggestions, input and criticism; Krini Kafiris for her editorial work on the volume; Brepols Publishers for supporting this publication; and last, but not least, the Templeton World Charity Foundation for financing the SOW project and enabling its coming to being in the first place. It has thereby created a broad, well-conceived and organized international network of scholars and scientific institutions that will certainly have a lasting impact upon the future examination of the manifold relations between Orthodox Christianity and science around the world. Vasilios N. Makrides Gayle E. Woloschak

Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak

Relating Orthodox Christianity with Modern Science An Introduction

The broad research field on the relationship between science and religion, or more specifically between science and Christianity, examines a long and fruitful history and is visible today through a huge variety of activities, ranging from conferences and organizations to publications and international events. By looking more closely at the content of these multifaceted activities, though, one easily realizes that the lion’s share of the effort is taken on by a significant interest in the Western world, Western science and Western Christianity, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. Such a focus is perfectly justifiable and understandable for many reasons. Historically speaking, modern science is in many respects a ‘Western’ science. After all, the origins, the dissemination and the establishment of the so-called ‘Scientific Revolution’ (1543–1687) and the new scientific methods took place first in Western Europe. In addition, the latter has a very long and illustrious history of institutions of higher learning (universities, academies, organizations, etc.) promoting scientific knowledge since the High Middle Ages, which have an almost uninterrupted existence and progression until recent times. It was in this rich context that major problems and conflicts between science and religion appeared, which left their mark on the entire field; for example, regarding the Copernican world system or the Darwinian theory of evolution. In many cases, such tensions appeared due to the strong position, power structures and wide influence of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, which were gradually weakened and diminished in the course of modern times. All of this led to the gradual autonomization of modern science, which consequently turned against religion and decisively contributed to the growing secularization of modern times. On the Protestant side, relations with modern science were in general less conflicted, given that the Reformation was interpreted as being closely connected with tremendous social, political, intellectual and cultural changes including the rise of modern science; consider, for example, the well-known thesis of Robert K. Merton within the broader Weberian paradigm about the ‘ecclectic affinity’ between Vasilios N. Makrides  University of Erfurt, Germany Gayle E. Woloschak  Northwestern University, Chicago, U.S.A. Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 21–33. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116854

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the Reformation and modern science.1 Yet, strong clashes between specific Protestant milieus and modern science were not out of the ordinary. The conflict between creationism and evolutionary theory in US fundamentalist Christianity is a case in point.2 This all played a catalytic role during the last centuries (especially in the nineteenth century with the rise of scientism as an ideology) and led to a widespread notion that (Western) Christianity is basically incompatible and in conflict with modern science. This paradigm survived well into the twentieth century, and it was predominantly in the context of postmodernity when it was substantially revised and completed through the addition of other perspectives, pointing to the numerous fruitful mutual encounters between science and religion within a more holistic frame. This was not meant to deny that the inter-relationship of science and religion has been in many respects full of tension, but rather to avoid having a conflict model as the predominant approach for defining their relations. Another very important development was the expansion of the related research interest through the incorporation of other religions (e.g., Islam) and cultures (e.g., Asian, African) in the context of the relationship between science and religion. The aim was to overcome a tenacious provincialism focused more or even exclusively on Christianity and Europe by broadening the research agenda, taking into consideration numerous cases around the world and looking at the science-religion relations from diverse perspectives. The rise and the dissemination of postcolonial studies also contributed to this widening of viewpoints. Another characteristic was the growing interdisciplinary approach to science and religion discussions. Needless to say, an interest in the entire issue did not turn only to modern science and religion, but also considered their respective historical relations in the larger pre-modern context, which were not characterized by such a main conflict model. But what about Orthodox Christianity (commonly also called Orthodoxy) in its relation with (modern) science? Has it attracted significant scholarly attention during this long, extensive and wide preoccupation with the science-religion issue? In fact, a specific interest in the Orthodox Christian world with regard to science was not altogether absent. For example, the stance of the Cappadocian Church Fathers towards scientific knowledge, science and religion issues in Byzantium or in Russia, and various topics of tension and conflict between the two in the modern period have already become topics of scholarly inverstigation. The point is, however, that all the above research was accomplished by various specialists in a rather fragmentary and isolated way. In addition, the output of this research was not systematized and integrated into the wider international context. As a consequence, the Orthodox side of the topic was largely neglected in modern research, which concentrated almost

1 Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England [first edition 1938] (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). 2 Leslie Carlin, The Cultures of Creationism: Anti-Evolutionism in English-Speaking Countries (Milton: Taylor & Francis, 2017); Elizabeth Watts, Analysis of Creationism in the United States from Scopes (1925) to Kitzmiller (2005) and its Effect on the Nation´s Science Education System (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2018).

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exclusively on Western Christianity and never really differentiated between the Christian East and West. In addition, Orthodox scholars either largely avoided discussions on science and religion or endorsed the related Western Christian perspective on the topic. This combination led to an absence of Orthodox perspectives in the broad science-religion dialogue. It is characteristic thus that, aside from few exceptions,3 various recent and quite important collective volumes and compendia on science and religion/Christianity leave the Eastern Orthodox tradition completely or mostly out of the picture.4 As already mentioned, there are several historical reasons accounting for this stronger focus on Western Christianity. After all, modern science did not arise in the Orthodox East in the first place, but was later imported to it through various channels. The consequence thereof was that Orthodox Churches and Christians started questioning and having conflicts with scientific issues that had been solved in the West much earlier; for instance, the Copernican worldview came into question in the Orthodox world as late as the nineteenth century.5 A quite promising change and – better speaking – turning point in this question can be attributed, at least in part, to the radical socio-political changes that occured in the former Eastern Bloc (1989–1991), which had an immediate impact upon Orthodox Christianity, as well. Eastern and South Eastern Europe constituted historically a large geographical area, in which the majority of Orthodox Christians had lived for centuries and various Orthodox Churches were institutionalized. After the collapse of communism and the liberalization of the religious scene, numerous such churches and actors reemerged and started playing a significant role not only domestically, but also internationally. All of this went hand in hand with the rise of a new generation of Orthodox clerics, theologians and scholars, both from the former Eastern Bloc countries and from other contexts, who broke new ground in assessing past and current issues pertaining to the Orthodox world. This led to an original, fresh and influential presence of Orthodoxy on a global scale, whose voice was widely heard and also attracted in many cases greater attention among non-Orthodox or secular groups, organizations and institutions. Especially on the scholarly level, a huge proliferation of studies dealing with all possible aspects of Orthodox Christianity and culture from numerous disciplinary lenses emerged. The science-religion issue was also among those that were broadly discussed in this context and figured prominently



3 See, for example, Michael Welker (ed.), The Spirit in Creation and New Creation: Science and Theology in Western and Orthodox Realms (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge: W. E. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012). 4 See, for example, Peter Harrison (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); James W. Haag, Gregory R. Peterson, and Michael L. Spezio (eds), The Routledge Companion to Religion and Science (London/New York : Routledge, 2012); James B. Stump and Alan G. Padgett (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012); Paul Copan et al. (eds), Dictionary of Christianity and Science: The Definitive Reference for the Intersection of Christian Faith and Contemporary Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). 5 See Vasilios N. Makrides, Die religiöse Kritik am kopernikanischen Weltbild. Aspekte griechischorthodoxer Apologetik angesichts naturwissenschaftlicher Fortschritte (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995).

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many times on the Orthodox agenda. This led to monographs,6 collective volumes,7 scholarly articles,8 research projects,9 conferences,10 and many other activities.11 Characteristically, all this did not take place solely in the historical Orthodox lands, but also in various Western and other settings around the world. Scientists with an Orthodox background or those openly confessing their Orthodox convictions often participated and worked in various international fora and societies on issues pertaining to science and religion and promoted their views. All of this contributed to a greater awareness about the specificities of the Orthodox Christian tradition with regard to science issues,12 which should be clearly differentiated from Western Christianity and its own particular trajectories.13 In view of this very productive period for our topic, it comes as no surprise that a major international research project titled ‘Science and Orthodoxy around the World’ (SOW)14 came into being, financed by the Templeton World Charity Foundation for a period of three years (2016–19). Its aim is to systematize and promote interdisciplinary work on Orthodox Christianity and science that is done

6 To mention but a few: Gayle Woloschak, Beauty and Unity in Creation: The Evolution of Life (Minneapolis: Light and Life Publications, 1996); Alexei V. Nesteruk, Light from the East: Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003); Christopher C. Knight, The God of Nature: Incarnation and Contemporary Science (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007); Efthymios Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization, trans. by Susan Emanuel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011); Alexei V. Nesteruk, The Sense of the Universe: Philosophical Explication of Theological Commitment in Modern Cosmology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015); Stoyan Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics: From Controversy to Encounter (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017). 7 See, for example, Daniel Buxhoeveden and Gayle Woloschak (eds), Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); George D. Dragas, Pavel Pavlov and Stoyan Tanev (eds), Orthodox Theology & the Sciences: Glorifying God in His Marvelous Works (Sofia: Sofia University Press ‘St Kliment Ohridski’; Columbia, Missouri: Newrome Press LLC, 2016). 8 See, for example, Efthymios Nicolaidis et al., ‘Science and Orthodox Christianity: An Overview’, Isis. Journal of History of Science, 107/3 (September 2016), 542–66, as well as the various comments on this article by other experts in the same journal issue. 9 See, for example, the research project NARSES at the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens. See [All websites cited were accessed in September 2018]. 10 See, for example, the NARSES Project International Conference ‘Science and Religion’, Athens, 3–5 September 2015 at the National Hellenic Research Foundation. See also its proceedings at . 11 See, for example, various such activities in post-communist Russia, Romania and Bulgaria, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. 12 Cf. Vasilios N. Makrides, ‘In a Different Vein? Scientific Development in the Greek Orthodox East: Efthymios Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 46 (2013), 335–40. 13 Many of these Orthodox specificities became evident recently through a broader survey of the Pew Research Center: Religion & Public Life on ‘Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe’ (10 May 2017), particularly in the section 6 on ‘Science and Religion’. See . 14 See .

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around the world nowadays through a series of concerted actions (e.g., conferences, workshops, public lectures, interviews, publications, databases, electronic media). In addition, the project also tries not only to address the scholarly community, but also to raise wider public awareness about this crucial issue. Therefore, it is hoped that the project will create a useful basis for understanding this under-researched topic and for shaping the main contours for its future study. The present volume stems from the First International Conference of the SOW project, held in Athens on 24–25 February 2017, which brought numerous scholars from quite disparate disciplines and areas together, ranging from theology, philosophy and history of science to physics, astronomy, biology, and psychology. Hence, contributors come from quite diverse backgrounds and have at times different perspectives and objectives on the entire topic. Not least, one may locate various differences in the respective evaluations and suggestions. However, this should not occasion any surprise, for it reflects the plurality of orientations and opinions within the wider Orthodox world and beyond on how to deal with science in a valid and appropriate way. For instance, there are a group of scholars who emphasize specific particularities of the Orthodox Christian world in its historical development and formation and try to consider the emerging difficulties with modern science in this context. Aside from this, there are other scholars trying to locate the ways in which the Orthodox Christian tradition could offer fresh insights and fruitfully contribute to the encounter between science and religion. Characteristically, many of such suggestions originate from scholars who have training in both Orthodox theology and science or sometimes are even active as clerics in their respective Orthodox Churches. This particular combination is extremely useful, as such scholars have first-hand knowledge and experience of the areas under discussion, a fact that enables them to have a better view of the entire topic and to formulate their insights accordingly. But all of the above differences pertain more to the various foci in related perspectives taken, not to the very core of the matter; namely, to the question of how Orthodox Christianity was, is or should be related to modern science. Attempting to understand the specificities of the Orthodox Christian case in relation to modern science, we may thus locate some characteristic features, which are discussed and become evident – to a different degree, of course – in the various chapters of the present volume. There exists, first, the unavoidable historical dimension of the entire issue, especially as far as the broader relationship between Orthodox Christianity and modernity is concerned. Talking namely about modern science, it is clear from the outset that it is not possible to separate it from the overall project of modernity, which has shaped the world of today on a global scale. Exactly as in the case of modern science, modernity’s historical roots as a whole lie in Western Europe, whereas modernity acquired later a global dimension in the wake of West European oversees expansion and colonialism. This is – historically speaking – true, despite the fact that today there exist more flexible, adaptable and pluralist theoretical models to conceptualize modernity globally, such as the one about the ‘multiple modernities’ (Shmuel N. Eisenstadt). All of this was instrumental for the rise, dissemination and explosive development of modern science, as well. But exactly here lies the crux of the problems Orthodox Christianity has had or still has with modern science. There has never been a broad

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systematic and productive encounter between Orthodox Christianity and modernity, at least in the way this has happened with Protestantism or much later with Roman Catholicism. No doubt, modernity presented huge challenges for West European Christianity and questioned its authority, especially that of the Roman Catholic Church, a fact that led to enhanced tensions and conflicts as a result. Nevertheless, West European Christianity was able to profit from this difficult encounter in the long run and change its profile accordingly. This is, however, something that Orthodox Christianity did not manage to do out of various socio-historical reasons and hence had mostly a fragmentary and conflictual encounter with modernity. This is not to be understood as a blame, but represents a historical fact. Modernity was and is still regarded by the majority of the Orthodox as an exogenous phenomenon alien to their own spiritual and cultural tradition. The fact that modernity stems from the West made things even more complicated because of the tenacious Orthodox anti-Westernism, which traditionally viewed a priori suspiciously whatever came from this ‘fallen place’. Most importantly, this did not pertain to religious issues alone in the wake of the schism between Eastern and Western Christianity; it also pertained to non-religious issues, including modern science. Such problems were not only endemic in the past, but are still observable today to a large extent, for example, in the Russian Orthodox critique of modern human rights. Modern science, among other things, was basically imported from Western Europe to the Orthodox East, and this process created various problems of reception, acceptance and legitimation. In addition, conflicts between science and Christianity in Western Europe were also transferred to the Orthodox East (e.g., regarding the Copernican worldview and evolution theory). In many cases, even the Western theological problematic of such conflicts was copied by the Orthodox East. A case in point relates to the Protestant creationist literature from the USA, which is translated by various Orthodox circles and is disseminated among the believers as a way to combat evolution theory (see Dimitry Kyrianov’s chapter with regard to post-Soviet Russia). Analogous difficulties with modern science may be located in other contexts, both historically and at present, such as in Bulgaria (see Nina Dimitrova’s chapter). All of this points to eventual ‘deficits’ in Orthodox Christianity, especially as far as its often ambiguous stance towards modern science is concerned. This leads some scholars to reflect further on this phenomenon and to look for ways to overcome these difficulties, which are deemed to be in many respects problematic, as they inhibit a more fruitful encounter with modern science. This is especially pointed out in the chapters by Pantelis Kalaitzidis and Vasileios Thermos, who situate the problems Orthodoxy has with modern science within the broader canvas of Orthodoxy’s still pending constructive dialogue with modernity. In this context, they criticize various discourses widespread in Orthodox circles; for instance, about the alleged ideal and harmonious relationship between Orthodoxy and science by attributing the conflict model basically to Western Christianity and its historical faults. By looking, however, at the Enlightenment period in the Orthodox East or even later, one gets another picture, which poses the question and the need to proceed to an open and honest discussion of the various Orthodox attitudes towards modern scientific advances.

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Such a discussion may include numerous issues, ranging from those in theology and philology to those in natural sciences, modern electronic technology and issues of bioethics (also involving questions of gender and sexuality). The basic principles elaborated by modernity shaped modern science, as well, and Orthodox theology needs to enter into a serious epistemological dialogue with all this in order to come to terms with modern science, even if critically. Appropriating modernity as a whole can thus be very useful, rendering it a useful mediator in the relationship between science and Orthodoxy. Another point to raise in this context relates more broadly to the need to historicize the relations between Orthodox Christianity and modern science, even before attempting to address contemporary problems and looking for alternative models or potential solutions. We are thus referring to a very long period, which does not only concern modern times, but also extends to the era of Byzantium, when the first Orthodox Christian attitudes towards science were more or less crystallized. Certainly, one may locate some lines of continuity in the Orthodox Christian attitudes towards science from a longue durée perspective. But such a diachronic viewpoint should not obscure the specifics of each period, which are in many cases unique, particularly in areas where Orthodox Christianity was the dominant religion. This is the case with several predominantly Orthodox countries in Eastern and South Eastern Europe, which experienced a long communist rule inimical to religions and specifically to Orthodoxy. Among other things, they had to resist the polemics and the ‘scientific discrimination’ of religion in the frame of ‘scientific atheism’ (nauchnyi ateizm). Exactly this experience helps to better grasp the changes, trends and developments in the post-communist period. But again there is great variation in this large group of Orthodox local traditions, and each case should be examined and evaluated on its own terms. In Russia, for example, there is today a stronger tendency towards more conservative and traditionalist positions, as is evidenced by a widespread anti-evolutionist discourse, despite interesting counter-perspectives (see Dimitry Kyrianov’s chapter). In Bulgaria, on the other hand, there exist some innovative attempts to initiate a fresh and promising dialogue between Orthodox theology and modern science on a novel basis (see Nina Dimitrova’s chapter). In another characteristic case from the former Yugoslavia/Serbia, there was a rather unique attempt to critically discuss modern technology, its impact and its eschatological mythology through a Dictionary of Technology that appeared back in 1981. It was a hand-written and illuminated edition reminiscent of medieval manuscripts and converging postmodern culture with the Orthodox tradition (see Aleksandar Petrović’s and Aleksandra V. Stevanović’s chapter). All of this is indicative of the many particularities of these specific Orthodox milieus, which can be located in other cases, as well. Another related aspect that needs to be considered here is the broader contextualization of the relationship between Orthodoxy and modern science, namely as to include the geographical areas adjacent to the Orthodox heartlands. In the first place, this concerns the Islamic world, which had developed its own rich scientific tradition independently of Western science. As is well known, many Orthodox populations have lived (and still live) under Islam, while there were constant exchanges between

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the two religious cultures in a variety of domains, including science. In the concrete case of the multi-religious and multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, for instance, there were always cultural and scholarly interactions between Muslims and non-Muslim subjects that are still under-researched and need to be thoroughly examined. There was, thus, a Greek Orthodox contribution to Ottoman science, whereas both were also influenced by the broader dissemination of Western science to the East. The question is here whether religion, either Orthodoxy or Islam, has played a more specific role in scientific development and whether this has had an impact on the self-understanding and the self-appreciation of religious actors involved. Equally interesting are the cases of conversion from one religion to the other and their potential repercussions on scientific progress. The scientific debate between the Muslim Selefi Vanî Mehmet Efendi and the Greek Orthodox Panagiotis Nikousios is a characteristic case in point showing both the interactions and the limitations of the Orthodox-Islamic dialogue at that time (see Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu’s chapter and John Hedley Brooke’s commentary). Such topics pertaining to science in more than one culture can also be further examined through new methodological perspectives, for example, those of ‘entangled’ or ‘connected history’. A further prominent element in Orthodox Christian interactions with modern science concerns the heritage of the past tradition and especially of the Church Fathers. This is evident throughout this volume and the constant references to key patristic figures. It is about a central point of the related Orthodox argumentation and applies to many other issues besides science. In other words, tradition plays a cardinal role here, and certainly, Orthodox Christianity is more ‘tradition-bound’ than Roman Catholicism and especially Protestantism. There is also a clear distinction between the Greek and Latin patristic traditions, which are supposed to have taken different directions from an early point in history with far-reaching repercussions, not least in the realm of science. The patristic heritage has thus an undeniably strong and even normative presence in the minds and the orientations of the Orthodox and is a topic of constant reflection and reformulation (cf. the well-known ‘Neopatristic synthesis’ suggested by Fr Georges Florovsky). Nevertheless, it has also become a quite controversial issue in the last years, as many consider it as a hindrance to the further development of the Orthodox thought and ask for a ‘post-patristic era’ (albeit with all due respect to the past authorities). This is because in many cases the patristic heritage has been idealized, romanticized and considered as a perennial and diachronic solution to all possible problems and in attempts to find the authentic Christian truth. The question is whether such an approach can be a fruitful avenue for addressing the problems and challenges posed by modern science and technology. No doubt, a blind and arid attachment to the Church Fathers and past tradition is not supposed to help the further evolvement of the Orthodox thought. What is needed is a more creative and ingenious dealing with the past in view of the future. Specifically with regard to modern science, it is argued that some patristic concepts and orientations may prove beneficial for the current encounter between Orthodoxy and science and their potential dialogue. Especially interesting in this respect has been the broader interest in the works of the Byzantine theologian Maximus the Confessor. This is evidenced in many chapters of the present volume (see the

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chapter by Sergey S. Horujy on the idea of the ‘cosmic liturgy’ in Maximus and its re-actualization today including both science and theology; as well as, the comment by William R. Shea on Maximus’s world-affirming theology). Here it is more about a closer and inspired reading of the Church Fathers in view of the current challenges. They cannot offer ad hoc and final solutions to today’s problems and dilemmas, as they stem from another era, yet they still can offer useful perspectives, ideas and orientations to enliven the current science-religion encounter and discussion. A characteristic example of bringing past and present together is the case of the Romanian Orthodox theologian Dumitru Stăniloae (1903–93), who had a deep knowledge of the entire patristic tradition, which in turn permeated his thought and theological contributions. Among other things, he also addressed issues concerning the relations between the traditional representation of reality and the contemporary sciences in an attempt to bridge them. To this purpose, he struggled to articulate anew the traditional worldview with regard to modern cosmology and in conversation with the current scientific paradigm. His was a creative elaboration of the patristic heritage in an attempt to render it relevant and intelligible to a scientifically educated audience (see Doru Costache’s chapter). In another case, it is interesting to observe that a broad scientific field currently, namely the domain of psychological sciences, has early enough been brought into close connection with the Eastern patristic tradition. Both have namely reflected extensively on the ‘inner side’ of human beings, albeit from different angles and with other objectives respectively, and have thus a long and rich tradition of knowledge about the human psyche and everything related to it. All this forms undoubtedly a pertinent basis of mutual rapprochement, communication and exchange, so that we may talk in this case of a very productive encounter between the Orthodox tradition and modern science, which is absent from other scientific domains (see Vasileios Thermos’s chapter). The above examples make clear that the present dealing with the Church Fathers is far from being solely past-oriented, but also has a strong actual dimension and character with a view to the future. In connection to the previous comments, what is characteristic in this volume are the many contributions by scholars who are trained both in science and theology or belong also as scientists to the ordained ministry of the church. Based thus on their deep knowledge of and experience in both realms, this combination enables them to draw insights from both sides and integrate them meaningfully. As expected, this concerns in the first place the current encounter or even dialogue between Orthodoxy and modern science. We are talking here about vigorous and innovative attempts to contribute anew to the much-discussed issue of science and religion, as well as to explain the particular and hitherto neglected Orthodox contribution to the related debates. Such cases can be used as clear evidence against the common stereotype about the Orthodox thought that allegedly remains fixed to a distant past, lacks development, and constantly repeats itself ad nauseam. If one looks more closely at this or at other cases, one gets a completely different picture about the Orthodox religious system, its dynamics, and its ability to address new topics in an innovative way bridging the past and the present. To mention but a few cases: In Alexei V. Nesteruk’s chapter there is a systematic and highly elaborated attempt to bring philosophy as a mediator into the encounter

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between theology and science in order to facilitate it and create a new basis for their mutual understanding. In Stoyan Tanev’s chapter, there is another innovative attempt to bring together the meaning of the term ‘energy’ in Orthodox patristic theology and modern physics with the purpose of building various highly interesting bridges between them. All of this is done with due methodological care without confusing the identity of these two separate realms and their boundaries. In Christopher C. Knight’s chapter, there is an attempt to bridge the currently highly developing cognitive sciences with Orthodox theology, especially because the former have reinforced a non-dualistic view of human person by correlating the mental processes with the physical brain states. All of this has already been noticed and commented upon by the Western theological thought, yet in a particular way that put more emphasis upon the human rational abilities. Here the Eastern Orthodox tradition may certainly contribute with more traditional theological concepts and categories focusing on the nous and the soul that have been so far neglected and that can offer very promising alternatives for a dialogue with modern cognitive sciences (see also Athanasios N. Papathanasiou’s comment on Knight’s chapter). Another domain is that of the medical and biological sciences, which also experiences a tremendous and radical development in our days challenging traditional theological concepts and social conventionalities, thus creating a lot of questions and even bewilderment among Orthodox Christian communities. The chapter by Gayle E. Woloschak describes these difficulties focusing more on the USA and explains at length the massive changes that have happened in the last decades in these research areas, also highlighting what is to be expected in the near future. All of this is of course of great pastoral concern for the Orthodox Church, which cannot battle such undeniable scientific advances asking for a re-evaluation of concepts of sin and moral transgression (e.g., regarding homosexuality; cf. also Pantelis Kalaitzidis’s chapter). The church needs to be realistic and pragmatic regarding these changes in considering perspectives about human origins, the relationship of humanity with other species, human personhood, and other topics that cannot be overlooked or ignored. It should also accept diversity and plurality. If the church wants to remain vital and relevant for the faithful and in society at large, it must dare to address these changes and provide the appropriate and necessary guidance. The believers should be informed of what is going on in science by experts, not by bishops; for example, about the CRISPR, the new technology developed for gene editing, approved for editing the human genome predominantly (at least at this point) to alter genes associated with diseases. No doubt, there is a growing Orthodox interest in and preoccupation with bioethics, at least at the official church level. Bioethical issues are on the current agenda of numerous Orthodox Churches, and there exist attempts to institutionalize a concerted Inter-Orthodox and Pan-Orthodox voice on such issues (cf. Archbishop Makarios’s chapter). This is a quite promising sign, although still much remains to be done. All of the above hardly show that the Orthodox Churches or the Orthodox actors withdraw from society and avoid to follow the pace of the times. On the contrary, they constitute evidence that the Orthodox are ready to take into consideration the multiple challenges of modern science and technology and attempt to formulate their own particular answers, usually distinct from those of

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Western Churches and Christians. This is, in turn, an additional evidence that the Orthodox thought does not remain static and motionless, fixed to its own glorious past, but is constantly evolving by trying to remain in close touch with scientific knowledge and advances. Another vital point that needs to be especially underlined concerns the particular features of the Orthodox tradition that – interestingly enough – bring it closer to the broad current of postmodernity. Talking about modern science, we should not lose sight of the fact that we are currently living and experiencing its aftermath, namely postmodernity, which has brought with it significant changes affecting modernity. It was not about the end of the project of modernity, but about its radical re-conceptualization in some areas. For instance, postmodernity is more flexible, tolerant, pluralist and open in understanding reality and the human endeavours to grasp it than its predecessor. It avoids absolute and all-encompassing systems of thought and action, emphasizes alterity, diversity and deviation from fixed rules and prescriptions, supports alternative modes and codes of knowledge, favours holistic against dualistic patterns of thought, conceptualizes anew questions of scientific objectivity, subjectivity, and rationality, accepts human limitations, and acknowledges the relativity of the human discursive means, especially that of language. In addition, postmodernity is very tolerant towards religions and their worldviews in contrast to the critical tone of modernity towards them. What is striking here is that the Orthodox tradition has always put emphasis on ways of thinking and acting that present many analogies to the key orientations of postmodernity, including those with regard to the claims and the validity of modern science. For example, Orthodox apophaticism since the patristic period has always emphasized the relativity of language as a means to describe Divine reality. By extension, it became a critical tool to question all absolute claims and pretensions about earthly reality and the cosmos. Characteristically, postmodern thinkers (e.g., Jacques Derrida) have shown a great interest and even used the patristic apophatic tradition (e.g., the Corpus Areopagiticum), albeit from their own perspective and to their deconstructive purposes (e.g., against logocentrism). Further, the Orthodox tradition points to the limits and the inherent contingency of human knowledge and supports epistemological and general humility in trying to study and understand not only the Divine world, but the earthly reality, as well. It has also tried to provide theological answers to these fundamental questions by reference to the human condition after the Fall. In addition, Orthodoxy has put more emphasis on the use of both verbal and non-verbal media in its discourse (e.g., on visual media such as the icons and their significance), thus transcending a strongly rational and language-bound understanding of God. After all, the Orthodox tradition was never rationalized to the degree that the Western Christian tradition was. Orthodoxy was always open to mystery, riddles, ambiguities, ambivalences, and non-rational explanations, and preferred to leave many questions about God and the world without a final answer. In the Orthodox East, there was originally no ‘scientification of theology’, as was the case in Western Europe since the High Middle Ages. This is a much later phenomenon in the Orthodox world, namely during the modern era, and took place under the clear and formative Western influence, a fact that still creates today various discussions and tensions

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about the ‘proper’ way to do theology in an Orthodox manner. Finally, Orthodoxy noticeably favours an integral, non-dualistic view of the human being and the entire world and avoids giving priority solely to certain human abilities (e.g., reason). All of this fits perfectly well into the postmodern frame of thinking and renders the rapprochement between Orthodoxy and postmodernity quite easy and uncomplicated (not in a normative sense, though). To avoid namely misunderstandings: There are other crucial differences between Orthodoxy and postmodernity that should not be overlooked. For instance, postmodernity is highly relativistic towards all claims, religious and otherwise, and basically supports a policy of ‘anything goes’, which is not something that Orthodoxy can accept in such a form. The above Orthodox perspectives can be traced in various articulations throughout the present volume. They are especially prominent in the chapter by the Metropolitan of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki Nikolaos, who – on the basis of his early, intensive and long scientific training – offers a panorama of the marvellous and tremendous developments in numerous scientific and technological realms and explains how this changes our perception of the world and has practical consequences, as well. Despite this explosive growth of scientific knowledge, we still have the impression that we know far too little, not only about the world, but also about the human being as such, a fact pointing to the limitations of all human endeavours and to the need for a necessary humility. Such an attitude comes very close to the Orthodox tradition, which was always careful not to exceed human boundaries and limitations. For example, Orthodoxy never tried to prove God in a scientific way, which was often the case with the rational theological tradition in Western Christianity. For the Orthodox, God is a matter of personal encounter, communion and experience in the framework of the Church. The world and the universe still remain a mystery, and it seems that all of this exceeds the capacity of the human mind. Of course, scientific research should go on, but one should always proceed with due respect, admiration and wonder for the mystery of the human being and the entire cosmos and their final incomprehensibility. Accepting our ignorance and limits is not problematic as such. It helps us greatly to be realistic and set right priorities in life. Modern science should not consider itself self-sufficient, self-complacent and omnipotent. This is something that the Orthodox tradition and understanding of God always underlined. More specifically, in the chapter by Kirill Kopeikin, the question of the rational objectivity of scientific research with the use of the formal language of mathematics is put on another canvas through an examination of the personal, subjective and psychic side of the scientists, who produce these objective measurement methods to explain external reality. The mathematician, namely, creates an ‘internal’ mathematical model of the ‘external’ universe ‘out of nothing’ – exactly as God has created the universe in the first place. Despite the effectiveness and persuasiveness of the scientific representation of the world, its exact connection with the ‘internal’ side of those who create it still remains unknown and constitutes the main object of research of current big and ambitious transnational projects. But exactly this ‘personal’ dimension of scientific research is open to theological interpretation, which may fill the ‘cold’ mathematical model of the world with existential content and a sense of transcendence. Accepting human limitations in scientific knowledge is not a hindrance as such, but may pave the

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way for overcoming the fragmentary character of scientific research and incorporate it organically into a more holistic and meaningful theological picture of the world. Science describes and explains the processes in this world, whereas theology goes beyond that and tries to interpret things in a broader frame. To conclude: The present volume attempts to shed some light on the complex and multifaceted relations between Orthodox Christianity and modern science. No doubt, many issues and specific aspects of this immense topic have been left without consideration in this volume, yet this collection of papers offers a glimpse of the rich and fascinating encounter between the two. The reader may find the contributions in this volume differing in nature, scope and perspective. Some of them are critical of the deficits observed in Orthodoxy vis-à-vis modern science; other chapters put an emphasis on the potential of the Orthodox tradition to contribute in a fresh way to the science-religion dialogue on a broader basis; and other contributions are less normative and remain bound to historical facts and events. Some thoughts expressed may also appear to be rather traditionalist in orientation, whereas other ideas may seem to ask for a de-secularization of modern science. One may thus ponder whether such suggestions can create a realistic basis for a dialogue of Orthodoxy with modern science. However, this should not be regarded as a problem. It simply shows the sheer variety and plurality of perspectives on the topic, which do not necessarily exclude, but rather may well complement each other. No doubt, it would be excessive to claim or to expect that Orthodoxy will solve the problems between science and religion in the future; or that it has better ideas and keys to offer than Western Christianity, which should be largely blamed for the emergence of the initial misunderstandings with modern science in the first place. Such triumphalist, apologetic and self-complacent views, especially endemic in Orthodox rigorist/fundamentalist circles, will not do any good to the Church or the Orthodox identity. Orthodoxy is neither a panacea nor intends to play such a role. It is appropriate thus to approach the whole issue with humility – a perspective that, after all, is quite characteristic of the Orthodox tradition itself –, which acknowledges the inherent contingency and limitations of all human discursive practices. It is expected that this encounter between Orthodoxy and modern science will reveal the specific ways in which the Orthodox tradition may initiate a dialogue with modern science within a more holistic frame of reference. It is highly unlikely that this Orthodox contribution will persuade scholars, such as the ‘New Militant Atheists’ (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others), to abandon their anti-religious critique and views. But we are talking about an emerging global environment that forces all religious traditions to address and deal with the multiple challenges of science and technology. It goes without saying that Orthodoxy cannot afford to be absent from such an important endeavour and forum. The present volume, as well as the many other publications and activities in the context of the SOW project, aspire to contribute to this task, to stimulate further reflection on the topic, and to render the various Orthodox positions on modern science accessible to a wider public and audience.

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Part I

The Orthodox Christian Tradition and Modern Science An Uneasy Relationship?

Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki

Modern Science and Orthodox Theology An Uneasy yet Profound Relationship

Introduction In our days, there is a prevailing idea that modern science is set against faith and, as a result, this affects its relationship with the Christian Orthodox tradition. Indeed, how is it possible for science, which is so up to date and which dynamically opens new avenues for the future to go hand in hand with tradition, which seems to be so stagnant and old-fashioned? And how can science, which encompasses profound knowledge and undisputable proofs walk along with faith, which focuses on the mystery that is inscrutable and not proven? The first one deals with the nature of beings, the second with the reasons (λόγοι) of beings. The first one examines what is naturally perceivable and logically proven whereas the second one what truly exists, but is ‘beyond words and understanding’ and can only be inwardly experienced. Contemporary science has managed to make possible the impossible. Just only in the last century, namely in 1953, the DNA double helix was discovered; in 1968, the first heart transplantation took place; in 1978, artificial insemination was accomplished; on 13 April 2003, the mapping of the human genome was completed; on 11 February 2016, the discovery of gravitational waves was announced. In the meantime, the explosion of informatics and computer sciences inoculated everyday life with terms such as cyber-surgery, nano­technology, internet, Facebook, tweeting and many more, totally unknown a few years ago. At the same time, the theory of evolution is being promoted and issues such as artificial life, cloning, mechanistic interpretations of mental functions, theories of everything, trapping and storing of antimatter, the CERN experiment, and so-called transhumanism are being discussed widely. There is a fast-spreading viewpoint that the foundation of the world created and provided for by God is collapsing. When interpreting the world, the person of God is fading away and is being replaced by the word randomness and the historical structure of religion by the imposing construction of scientific triumph. It seems that scientific thought is being directed by the belief that since God cannot be proven, He does not exist. Religions struggle hopelessly to prove their necessity in Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki  Holy Metropolis of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki, Greece Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 37–46. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116855

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the modern scientific world. Do Orthodox Christian theology and tradition have to say something about all this? The title of this conference is truly thought-provoking, and I am very excited to elaborate on such a challenging theme. I will begin by reading a true story written by Dr Stylianos Antonarakis, Professor of Genetic Medicine at the University of Geneva:1 A young student of Medicine poses his existential questions to the middle-aged elder of the Monastery of Great Meteoron in Greece. The stillness and alluring atmosphere of the night, the exquisite frescoes of the chapel, the presence of the enlightened elder and the young man’s sincere quest for the truth transform the conversation into a contract of life. - Elder, up to which point do we hunt knowledge? - Up to its extreme limit, until the truth is revealed, he responded. - And if, ultimately, this truth is set against God? If it reveals that God does not exist? - If God exists, then He is not threatened by our research; however, if He does not exist, then it is good to know about it. The Orthodox tradition seeks the experience of the presence of God. It was never preoccupied with the question of His existence. God can be experienced, therefore He exists. He is partakable; He is true. A god, which cannot be communed of, is a questionable god. Therefore, allow me to avoid a direct answer to the question of this very interesting conference, but rather to reply indirectly by using as a key to the door of the subject under discussion the word communion (κοινωνία). The word communion, when it refers to human relationships, means close association, loving bond, spiritual union. When it refers to our relationship with God, it means partaking, inter-dwelling with God, resulting in adoption, revelation of truth and ‘extraordinary trans­formation’. When it refers to any other relation­ship, it means encountering, being on the same path, sharing, truly communicating. Respectively, I believe that although modern science and the Orthodox theology seem to be in opposition or at least incompatible, their relationship in some ways reflects the above characteristics.

The ‘Inconceivable’ of Numerical Reality A basic element of the created world, which springs from divine wisdom, is harmony. One can witness harmony rather than understand it; it is more perceivable and less comprehensible. It offers a satisfying feeling to our senses but not a satisfactory interpretation to our mind. In the world, we find not only one colour, one frequency or one species; there exists no photographical likeness or monotonous symmetry.



1 It is included in the prologue of the Greek edition Η Γλώσσα του Θεού. Ένας επιστήμονας δίνει μαρτυρία για τη πίστη (Athens: Papazisis, 2009), p. 14, of the famous book by Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006).

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There is instead an easing asymmetry, a beauty of difference, a balanced diversity, and a harmonious variety. This multiplicity is the melody and the harmony of the universe, it underlines the importance of complementarity and it reveals the uniqueness of each person. Diversity is a feature of the natural world; its cause and numerical expression surpass human understanding and go beyond the limits of the human mind. In the universe we speak of billions of galaxies that have many likenesses but no sameness; not one is the same as any other. Every galaxy has billions of stars that in turn have a wide spectrum of properties, colour, age, characteristics, different types of chemical composition, and nuclear content. In molecular chemistry, we meet a whole host of elements. As we penetrate into the depths of the subatomic world, we meet a great many elementary particles, each of which has its role and fulfills its distinct purpose. Some of those are material (such as quarks and leptons), others are carriers of the forces, while others are much heavier – the superparticles – and seem to complete the requisite symmetry. In the plant and animal kingdoms, one also sees a similar state of affairs. A huge number of species, each with its own characteristics and its genetic complexity and variety, contributes to and adorns the world in a unique way. Likewise, some tens of thousands of genes combine to give morphological characteristics and to determine the dynamics of the health of every person. The numbers that express genetic diversity are inconceivable. The power of diversity emerges also from the fact that we are all so different. Each person has 23 pairs of chromosomes, and at the fusion of a sperm and an ovum 232 different pairs can be formed. These when combined per 23 form an incredible genetic ‘mix’ that produces 1040 independent possibilities. This means that two parents could give birth to 1040 different children.2 That means that no two alike human beings exist nor will they ever exist.3 Although we observe all of the above, we are unable to understand their dimensions or distances, their history, sizes or causes. Numbers above 1010, namely more than 10 billion, cannot fit in the human mind. In order to count the earth’s population which amounts to seven billion people, we need 220 years (by counting one every second). When referring to the universe we speak about sizes up to 1087; this is how big its volume is in mm3. Every effort to grasp these numbers is futile. When we talk about time, we refer to 10–43 seconds. This number, so-called Planck time, defines the most remote moment from this very day and the closest moment to the big bang; a short time equal to the one that is required so that light, which covers the distance between earth and the moon within a second, travels a distance equal to the diameter of a proton. We can neither conceive of the great sizes nor the small ones. Ultimately, the accuracy of all these numbers is rather indicative, statistical and frequently asymptotic and cannot be numerically and logically proven. But even if



2 Claudine Guérin-Marchand, Les manipulations génétiques (Series ‘Que sais-je?’) (Paris: P.U.F., 1997), p. 28. 3 André Boué, La médecine du fœtus (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1995), p. 39.

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it is proven, comprehending these sizes is practically impossible. Our created world can be observed but cannot be understood.

Nature and its Hidden Secrets In this wonderful but strange world, opposites coexist: big and small, comprehensible and incomprehensible, knowledge and unknowability, magnificence and pettiness, good and evil, unity and dissimilarity. Some speak about the theory of everything, yet they declare that ‘we are a redistribution of nothing’; we speak about theories of ‘supersymmetry’, yet the theories, which we adopt with confidence nowadays, go under the names of ‘relativity’ and ‘uncertainty’. We believe that we are decoding the genetic secrets, yet we are unable to combat our great and small biological enemies. We may well be able to discover the secrets of our theories and describe our very first beginnings or end, or the details of the microcosm and macrocosm, yet we fail to deal with the present time reality. By using the conceptual tool of what is very small and infinitesimal in terms of time, we may be close to discovering the mystery of the origins of the world and the vastness of the universe, yet we succeed in making mountains out of molehills in our everyday life. It seems that the more we draw near to its heart, the more nature likes to withhold its secrets. We are nearing the point of the beginning of the world, we are only 10–43 seconds away from the Big Bang, and before we can seize upon this moment, our equations collapse and we are left with so-called singularity. ‘The Big Bang portrays our ignorance’,4 states the famous Greek physicist John Iliopoulos. We chase after the ends of the universe and we realize that the closer we approach, the faster they are drawing away from us (Hubble’s Law). The more our knowledge of the world increases, the more it reveals our expanding unknowability. This is also expressed with the Uncertainty Principle. We designate with accuracy a certain quality of nature, and at the same time we make an error on another one. The same applies to the universe: We carry on researching into it and we find black holes, dark matter and energy, hidden symmetry, unknown particles, strange entities, to which we give names that pertain to the metaphysical (i.e. the strange quark, God’s particle), and which conceal the most beautiful secrets. The world becomes very alluring, but is revealed to be tragically isolating. The great constants of physics have values that justify our existence as human beings (the Anthropic Principle), but necessarily lead to our isolation as beings. The universe is enormous and speeds are insuperably low. The speed of light, the greatest speed there is, the speed of communication, is at once both unsurpassable and finite. We can hear – receive stimuli –, we can speak – send messages – but we cannot develop a cosmic communication within the universe. We can only see with our telescopes 4 per cent of the entire universe. The remaining 23 per cent is dark matter and 73 per cent is dark



4 John Iliopoulos, ‘Ἀπὸ τὸ ἀπειροστὰ μικρὸ στὸ ἀπείρως μεγάλο’ [‘From the Very Small and Infinitesimal to the Infinitely Great’], Τὰ Μυστήρια τοῦ Σύμπαντος, 8 (February 2008), p. 22.

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energy. And this is where the secret of our world lies. We know so little and there is so much more that we are unaware of. Under specific conditions, physics and geometry are expressed in ways that conflict with our senses. Reality seems more like fantasy. In the large scale of the universe, space is being curved and Euclidean geometry collapses. In the very small and infinitesimal scale, space acquires multiplicity and natural dimensions – perhaps seven in total – entirely unknown and strange to our natural perception. In extra high velocities, time is expanded, length is contracted and our natural senses are infringed upon. In the dimensions of the nanoscale, that can be technologically processed, matter presents completely unusual qualities. However, while we work miracles with technology, even in the area of biosciences, new diseases appear and old ones still remain incurable. One more glance at our world persuades us that its truth and beauty co-exist with imperfections, disabilities, decay and death. After the ‘death’ of a star, from its remnants new stars are born. Along with supersymmetry in the early universe as big as 10–33  cm in diameter or 10–36 sec from the Big Bang, there is a great asymmetry in the world that we perceive with our senses and that is our home. The universe, despite its luminous stars, is very dark – with very few photons; despite its high temperatures it is very cold – just 2.7 K; despite its immeasurable stellar systems, it seems actually empty; dominated by cosmic vacuum; despite the unending movement of its galaxies, it looks static. The incomprehensibility of the cosmos results in the fact that some people try to armour their philosophical beliefs with scientific theories, which actually have a metaphysical nuance. Moreover, they hide them within worlds beyond the universe, behind unverified interpretations and incomprehensible speculation with scientific glamour. They love to overstress supersymmetries, or speak about multi-universes, imaginary theories, and exaggerated exponents of their quantitative estimations. Although they claim that they accept only what is proven, in reality they demand others to have faith in their theories. It seems that while the prestige of science is great, the allure of philosophical arbitrariness is stronger. Contemporary science uses terms that sound metaphysical, knowing that its means and instruments are in essence inaccessible. For example, infinity, which has a mathematical symbol, and eternity, namely timelessness, a term in use in modern physics, are used quite often. In expounding the latest theories, scientists are anxious to speak of perfection and a completeness of interpretations. Nevertheless, science in its effort to enrich our knowledge of the created world is led to the awareness of its inability to comprehend it.

The Mystery of the Human Being Apart from nature, it seems that our biological identity is also a mystery difficult to decipher. We open the book of the code of life, the sequence of DNA, and we find out that we cannot read it. We deal with numbers that we cannot comprehend and with probabilities that cannot be confirmed. We learn more about the genome in

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the hope that we are discovering the truth of our genetic identity, and we are led to the proteome, which confirms our greater ignorance. Before we can even get to grips with one alphabet, we are forced to learn an even more difficult language. As some forms of life disappear, more developed ones emerge. Within the genetic treasure of the human cell, even in the so-called junk DNA, precious secrets are hidden that play a very significant role in the hereditary process and the determination of the biological characteristics of each individual. Contemporary scientific fields such as neurophysiology and neurobiology lead to the conclusion that the organ of the mental functions is entirely unknown. We neither understand the mechanisms of the brain nor the dynamics of understanding. It seems that the real universe is the one of our unknowability, in which, however, we can enjoy scattered stars and galaxies, namely viewpoints and theories of an impressive yet partial knowledge ‘seen in a mirror dimly’ (I Corinthians 13. 12). Moreover, philosophical theories are also unable to help us understand how the long life of the universe can coexist with the extremely short lifespan of humans, or the wisdom and beauty of the cosmos with destructiveness, or human grandeur with pettiness, or love and kindness with evil. The fact that we live as thinking human beings, yet with limited knowledge; intellectually developed, yet physically weak; full of life, yet constantly chased by death; with an innate metaphysical quest, yet totally unable to discover what is beyond our logic, indicates that it is not only nature that is a mystery but the created human being as well. It seems that a human being is much more than a biological cell system. The variety of choices humans make, their characteristic otherness, the uniqueness of their psychology, the creativity of their intellect and the formation of their personhood are much more than just anatomical features and detectable biochemical processes. The biological beginning bears the weight of the onset of personhood, while the end refers to an unknown continuation in a higher state of being. The realization of the grandeur and uniqueness of each human being hints at his/her unending life and the sense of his/her eternal perspective. In that respect, the ‘if ’, ‘how’ and ‘when’ of the beginning and end of the life of every person is also of utmost importance for the Orthodox Church. In our modern age, we have the technology for preventing and terminating a pregnancy, and therefore we can determine whether someone will be conceived – that is, if he will come into being, and whether in the end he will be born – that is, if he will live. Our age can alter at will the form and the characteristics of life. It can also delay death, relieve pain and be invasive by using advanced technology and thus create new forms of life and novel conditions of dying. It can create the possibility of a vast number of choices. Nevertheless, it poses novel questions that cannot be answered and provokes new dilemmas that modern society tries in vain to undermine. The debate on the exact moment of the onset of life, on the status of the cryo-preserved embryos, on how our soul is connected with our body, on what is the ontology of the soul and what is death, although it is so exciting, does not reach any conclusions. Its consequences are tremendous, since at times they either lead to a logic justifying eugenics or euthanasia on seemingly ‘ethical’ criteria or to a code of ethics that appears to be very harsh and

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undesirable. On the basis of the arbitrary knowledge of the unknown, the world of ethics and values becomes truly distorted. The exact moment of the beginning or end of human life is not a mere scientific matter. It cannot be defined with exact terms, legal statements, social declarations, political decisions or statistics and numbers. The ‘how’ and ‘why’ of human life is an inscrutable mystery. The same applies to death. For these reasons, we do not view life as a right that belongs to us, but we respect it as a mystery that transcends us.

In Communion with the Uncreated Energies Everything attests that the created natural and material world shows very little but hides a great deal. Moreover, although to a certain degree it is understandable, it is not totally comprehensible. The world is not as we see it or perceive it. It is something beyond what is known and understood. There is a strong scientific intimation that there are other dimensions of existence, knowledge, and truth, which transcend us. This may be one of the most crucial findings of modern science. No doubt, we live in a unique era. The explosion of knowledge and informatics leads to a very significant and useful conclusion: in the end, we must admit that on the cosmic scale, we are very insignificant, extremely alone and our life span is all too short. Thus, we are incapable of knowing the very truth of the cosmos, of com­ prehending all its secrets and details and of communicating within it. The greatest speed of communication, the breathtaking speed of light, is finite, while the universe is inconceivably vast. That makes this extraordinary speed actually extremely low. While, accord­ing to Aristotle, we are social beings, we are destined to live so lonely in the universe.5 While, according to the same ancient Greek philo­ sopher, ‘all men, by nature, desire to know’, we are compelled to remain within limited knowledge.6 The inadequacy of science as well as of our technology thus becomes apparent. Our achieve­ments and knowledge are, in human terms incredible, yet, in cosmic terms they are meaningless, close to nothing and most likely erroneous. At the same time, we are so different and special within the universe. We are unique! We have logos in terms of reasoning, of our intellectual and thinking abilities, as well as in terms of the ability to express ourselves articulately. Nature and the material universe do not possess logos in the aforementioned sense; still we can observe rationality in the workings of both. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.’ (Psalms 19. 1) This cosmic rationality can be approached scientifically, while its truth is better revealed spiritually. Today, we use terms in physics such as supersymmetry, superstrings and super-universes, because we wish to show what is beyond human senses and logic; likewise, in Church, the prefix ‘super’ is used to express what is beyond our mind and understanding, and to stress the existence of a world that is above nature, and



5 William D. Ross, Aristotelis Politica (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957). 6 William D. Ross, Aristotelis, Post Naturalis, 922α, first line (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955).

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‘beyond’ all scientific ‘super’ terms. For instance, to describe the grace of the Theotokos, we use the word ‘Ὑπερ-ευλογημένη’, literally Super-blessed or Most-blessed; the otherworldli­ness of the angelic powers ‘Ὑπερ-κόσμιος’, namely Supra-mundane, beyond the natural world; the magnificence of God ‘Ὑπερ-ούσιος’, in other words Super-substantial, ‘He who is above all being’. Nevertheless, modern scientific philosophy is fixated on proving its self-sufficiency and therefore it questions the existence or disregards the presence of God, the reason probably being that it tries to compete with Him on the level of power. It does not want an almighty God; rather, it favours an all-powerful human. This explains why it looks for values that, according to its opinion, can stand better without God. Orthodox tradition, faith and theology are not concerned with the question of the existence of God, but with that of His revealed and experienced presence. Science fails to prove either the existence or the non-existence of God. Every attempt to prove His existence is pointless. God is an inscrutable mystery! Therefore, it is better to question His presence spiritually than to try to prove His existence rationally or scientifically. A god whose existence or non-existence can be logically proven does not exist. He is not the God! God as ‘HE WHO IS’ (Ο ΩΝ) appears to be unapproachable to creation; we look for Him and He hides Himself, He is not partakable in His essence, His existence is unprovable. On the contrary, God as ‘HE WHO IS PRESENT’ (O ΠΑΡΩΝ), is a friend and father to creation; He reveals Himself and is partakable in His uncreated energies. His presence can be experienced. Augustine proclaimed that we can see God with our mind or intellect (νοῦς) since our nous is akin to Him, and thus he led Western thought on a fruitless quest to comprehend the incomprehensible. On the other hand, the Fathers of the Eastern Church maintain that we can transcend the limitations of our created nature only through the Holy Spirit. God combines both that which is comprehensible and that which is not.7 The Orthodox Christian faith proclaims to the modern world that we know a lot less than we ignore; that what we comprehend is very little in regards to what is incomprehensible; and that, apart from the affirmative course towards knowledge, there is also the apophatic course; namely that the mystery exists, but even if it is incomprehensible, it can be communed of. God is not partakable in regards to His essence, but he is partakable in regards to His uncreated energies. The term ‘uncreated’ limits our knowledge but does not weaken the mystery, which we can partake of. God appears ‘as He is’ (I John 3.2); ‘to attain true vision and knowledge is to see and



7 ‘As I conceive, by that part of It which we can comprehend to draw us to itself (for that which is altogether incomprehensible is outside the bounds of hope, and not within the compass of endeavour), and by that part of It which we cannot comprehend to move our wonder, and as an object of wonder to become more an object of desire, and, being desired, to purify, and by purifying to make us like God, so that, when we have thus become like Himself, God may, I being united to us, and that perhaps to the same extent as He already knows those who are known to Him.’ Saint Gregory the Theologian, On Theophany, Homily 38, par. 7 (Ἕλληνες Πατέρες τῆς Ἐκκλησίας. Ἁγίου Γρηγορίου τοῦ Θεολόγου Ἅπαντα τὰ Ἔργα, vol. v), compiled and trans. by P. K. Christou (Thessaloniki: Ekdoseis Grigorios o Palamas, 1977), p. 46.

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know by not-seeing and unknowing, Him Who is above vision and knowledge’.8 Finally, one thing is comprehensible: the incompre­hensibility of God and of the world.9 The effort of the West to commune with God’s unpartakable essence, led to a vain struggle to prove His existence. The same applies to modern scientific philosophy. God, as experienced in the life of the Orthodox Church, is of course transcendent in His power, although He is transcendent mainly in His wisdom and love. He is Super-substantial, He is All-perfect; He remains not distant from us but always self-emptying for us; he does not punish us but is Himself crucified; it is not that we die and He lives, but that He dies in time for us to live eternally. He does not express His love to us by arrogantly demonstrating His power but by offering us the possibility of partaking in His uncreated energies and love. God is not an opponent that science should either ignore or extinguish but rather He is the God of love that science must on all accounts discover. God can also be communed through scientific knowledge, yet He reveals His wisdom and His truth to the ‘lowly in heart’. He conceals it from the arrogant. The way towards true knowledge is the acceptance of our limited knowledge. As Socrates claims, ‘I neither know nor think that I know. All I know is that I know nothing’, and concludes that ‘it is better to have honest ignorance than self-deceptive knowledge’.10 There are values that derive from our knowledge; however, there are values that spring from the way we reconcile ourselves with our limitations. The awareness of our ignorance, the still ‘vision’ of our inner ‘desert’, namely the deep humbleness constitute an ‘excellent way’ so as to experience the unknown and incomprehensible mystery of the world in which we live. The scientific way hides within it an air of despair, because while it is enchanting and stimulating, it creates a false anticipation: even though we think that we can wholly comprehend the created world, finally we are led to accept our own limits. The possibility of fully discovering the natural world is blocked. Ultimately, we can achieve a lot less than we wish to. On the contrary, the humble stance of the Eastern Orthodox theology before the secret mystery of God allows for our personal partaking in the revelation of the divine light. Communion with God is not a personal achievement that you can be proud of, but it is a divine revelation and gift that you have to be grateful for. An Orthodox faithful does not ask from God, who continually empties Himself, to reveal Himself. He does not hope for a reward neither does he have any special requests. In this way, he is offered greater knowledge, more than he can imagine or expect. He is granted ‘new’ knowledge, ‘other’ experience, ‘strange sight’; God is revealed to him as a person. Science can elevate humans to the higher step of knowledge, to the humble realization of their natural and intellectual limits. Theology can take humans from 8 Sancti Dionysii Aeropagitae, De Mystica Theologia, Caput II, Patrologia Graeca (PG) 3, 1025A. 9 Saint John Damascene, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book I, Chapter IV: ‘God then is infinite and incomprehensible and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility.’ (accessed February 2018). 10 Plato, Socrates’ Apology, 21d.



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this point and introduce to them the holy altar of divine revelation. Modern science leads us straight to the truth of the apophatic Orthodox theology. God has no relation with proofs, or with discoveries. God is revelation. One more thing; science is for some people. God is for everyone. Even for those who think they can take His place; even for those who wish to comprehend Him. He is the God of believers and non-believers, of brilliant scientists and simple people, of prominent theologians and unknown ascetics. Combining faith with scientific logic seems to be an uneasy way. However, if you finally succeed to bring them together, you will discover a unique and profound relationship.

Pantelis Kalaitzidis*

The Ambiguous Relationship between Orthodoxy and Science as Part of the Pending Discussion between Orthodoxy and Modernity From the Polemic against the Enlightenment to the Debate over Homosexuality

Introductory Remarks The dominant Orthodox discourse regarding the relationship of Orthodoxy to science claims that the former was never opposed to the latter, and that Orthodoxy was always open to scientific research and progress. Partly based on the theology of the late Fr John Romanides and Prof. Nikos Matsoukas, both of the University of Thessaloniki, such an optimistic approach to the issue under discussion maintains that the centrality and the radical character of the distinction between uncreated and created order promoted by patristic theology leave the field of created reality open to scientific research and experiments, thereby saving Orthodox theology from following the oppressive path of Inquisition and Western Christendom. A careful reading, however, of the encounter between Orthodoxy and science in the time of the Enlightenment, as well as the attitude adopted by many Orthodox to a wide range of crucial issues, such as the use of the historical-critical method in biblical and theological sciences, bioethical questions, the evolution theory or questions of gender and sexuality, calls for a reappraisal and a more critical and balanced evaluation of the relationship between Orthodoxy and science and for an honest discussion of the problems that this relationship involves. The present chapter seeks to engage in such a study from the hermeneutical angle of the still pending dialogue between Orthodoxy and modernity, focusing in particular on the encounter between Orthodoxy and science in the time of the Enlightenment, and on questions of gender and sexuality in today’s context. As is well known, the Orthodox world, mainly for historical reasons has not participated organically in the phenomenon of modernity. It has not lived through



* The ideas expressed in this chapter are the sole responsibility of the author. Pantelis Kalaitzidis  Volos Academy for Theological Studies, Volos, Greece Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 47–66. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116856

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the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, the Religious Wars, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, the emergence of the modern subject and of individuality, the modern human rights, and the religiously neutral nation-state. The fundamental achievements of modernity, which have been described as the autonomy of the subject, the affirmation of rational thought, and the wide use of the historico-critical method, seem to have remained essentially alien to Orthodoxy as a whole. Orthodox Christianity continues to have serious unresolved problems with modernity, a fact that to many people also explains the serious difficulties it has in communicating with today’s modern and postmodern world. It is therefore commonly concluded that modernity has been nothing more than an outside influence on the Orthodox East, which has come into contact with modernity and its fundamental achievements only on odd occasions and in a superficial way.1 Beyond these points, which are chiefly historical in nature, many often refer to those fundamental characteristics of modernity, which suggest a radical incompatibility with Orthodoxy. In other words, over the last three centuries a culture has taken shape in Europe (arising out of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment) with the following, among other, features:2



1 I follow here the analysis offered in Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Ορθοδοξία και Νεωτερικότητα. Προλεγόμενα [Orthodoxy and Modernity: Prolegomena], Volos Academy for Theological Studies (Athens: Indiktos, 2007); cf. Pantelis Kalaitzidis, ‘Orthodox Christianity and Islam: from Modernity to Globalization, from Fundamentalism to Multiculturalism and to the Ethics of Peace’, in Just Peace: Orthodox Perspectives, ed. by Semegnish Asfaw, Alexios Chehadeh, and Marian Gh. Simion (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2012), pp. 201–21, especially pp. 204–05; Pantelis Kalaitzidis, ‘Orthodoxie und Moderne’, Transit: Europäische Revue, 47 (2015), 76–89; Pantelis Kalaitzidis, ‘Orthodoxie et modernité: une relation en suspens?’, Travaux et Jours. Revue interdisciplinaire de l’Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth, 91 (Automne 2017), 27–46, especially pp. 27–29. Cf. also Vasilios N. Makrides, ‘Orthodoxes Christentum und Moderne: Inkompatibilität oder langfristige Anpassung?’, Una Sancta, 66 (2011), 15–30; Vasilios N. Makrides, ‘Orthodox Christianity, Modernity and Postmodernity: Overview, Analysis and Assessment’, Religion State and Society, 40 (2012), 248–85. For the broader topic of the imperative for a theological dialogue of Orthodoxy with Modernity, cf. Pantelis Kalaitzidis and Nikos Ntontos (eds), Ορθοδοξία και Νεωτερικότητα [Orthodox Christianity and Modernity], Volos Academy for Theological Studies (Athens: Indiktos, 2007); Assaad Elias Kattan and Fadi Georgi (eds), Thinking Modernity: Towards a Reconfiguration of the Relationship Between Orthodox Theology and Modern Culture (Balamand, Lebanon/Münster: St John of Damascus Institute of Theology, University of Balamand/ Center for Religious Studies, University of Münster, 2010); Assaad Elias Kattan, ‘La théologie orthodoxe interpelée par l’herméneutique moderne’, Contacts, 234 (2011), 180–96; Georges Nahas, ‘Théologie orthodoxe et modernité‘, Contacts, 234 (2011), 152–67. For the encounter of Orthodoxy with modernity in the Russian context, see Andreas E. Buss, The Russian-Orthodox Tradition and Modernity (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2003); Kristina Stoeckl, Community after Totalitarianism: The Russian Orthodox Intellectual Tradition and the Philosophical Discourse of Political Modernity (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008). Especially with regard to the issues of gender and sexuality in the Russian context, cf. Konstantin Mikhailov, ‘The Church and LGBTQ Issues: The Insurmountable Challenge of Modernity’, in ‘For I am Wonderfully Made’: Texts on Eastern Orthodoxy and LGBT Inclusion, ed. by Misha Cherniak, Olga Gerassimenko, and Michael Brinkschröder (Amsterdam: The European Forum of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Christian Groups, 2016), pp. 188–205. 2 For the fundamental characteristics of modernity, see, inter alia, Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben, Formation of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993); D’Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopaedia of Diderot, trans. by Richard M. Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995);

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– The gradual overturning of the prevailing natural and social order, which – with the aid of the Church’s official discourse – had been taken for granted and considered sacred, unchangeable and inviolable, and the resultant liberation of the individual capacities of the human being and the natural forces of the world. – The dominance of rational thought and the scientific critical paradigm, the disenchantment of nature and the demythologizing in the hermeneutics of sacred texts, whose results were the banishment of the sacred and the desacralization of the world. – The replacement of metaphysical thought about the first causes and the ultimate questions by anthropological, social and moral concerns. – The affirmation of the sensible and natural world, of corporeality and of our bodily nature, which sometimes went so far as to diffuse naturalism or even materialism and unavoidably led to ‘an ontological revaluation of the material world’. – The beginnings of women’s liberation and a recognition of their value as persons, the equality between men and women, the affirmation of sexual love, and a spiritual and not merely biological understanding of sexuality and sexual relations. – The idolization of technology, utilitarianism and the human domination of nature. – The transition from a traditional agrarian society and economy to an industrial society and a market economy involving accumulation of capital, investment and growth. – The universal declaration of the rights of the individual and the citizen, and the related move towards a more humane law. – The introduction of a distinction between the public and the private sphere. – The autonomy of the human being and the concomitant liberation from reference to metaphysics and religious ordinances, to the extent that humans no longer feel in need of God since they have themselves become masters of their own fate and creators both of works of art and of their own ‘biography’. – The secularization of society and the state, the gradual decline (to the point of disappearance) of Christian values and of the Church’s influence in the public sphere, while religion (and religious expression in every form) is relegated to the private realm. – The rejection of the theistic/theocratic and hierarchical model in constructing social reality, the decline of the religious understanding of the world characteristic of traditional societies, and the transition to an anthropocentric worldview, to democratic governance and to a society of citizens with strong elements of individual (rather than communal) self-determination.

Ernst Cassirer, La philosophie des Lumières, trans. by Pierre Quillet (Paris: Fayard, 1951). Cf. also Kalaitzidis, Ορθοδοξία και Νεωτερικότητα. Προλεγόμενα, pp. 43–44.

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The encounter between Orthodoxy and science, which took place in the Greek-speaking world at the time of the Enlightenment, was neither the first nor the unique meeting of this type. If we look, for example, at the attitude of the Cappadocian Fathers of the fourth century (namely St Basil of Caesarea [the Great], but also St Gregory of Nyssa3) towards the scientific knowledge of their time, we will find both a creative use and a bold reception of scientific and philosophical theories in their account of the creation of the world, and even an articulation and positive apprehension of an ‘evolution theory’ in a rudimentary form. Another early example of a positive encounter of Orthodox theology with the scientific mind is provided in the ninth century by the attempt of St Photius (a well-educated man and illustrious scholar, who was elected and ordained Bishop of Constantinople and enthroned as Ecumenical Patriarch directly from the order of lay people), at a scientific explanation of earthquakes. In fact, St Photius, who in many regards represents the spirit of Eastern Orthodoxy in its confrontation with the Latin West, attempted to overcome the religious-mythological explanation by trying to give a scientific account of the earthquakes, a terrible natural phenomenon quite frequent in Constantinople and the wider Eastern Mediterranean. Unlike the widespread idea propagated by ecclesiastical and more broadly by religious milieus, according to which earthquakes are a divine punishment due to the multitude of the sins of Christians, Photius maintains that the earthquakes are not related to any divine punishment, but to the plenitude and abundance of water, which causes turbulences in the bowels of the earth.4 What matters for our discussion is not the correctness of his particular scientific views on the natural phenomenon of the earthquakes, but the reasoning and the scientific explanatory process itself; in other words, the legitimacy, which was the result of the attempt of a great theologian and Patriarch of the prestigious throne of Constantinople, and therefore a high symbolic figure of Eastern Orthodoxy, to proceed to a scientific – and not a religious or theological – explanation of natural phenomena. Unfortunately, Photius’s attempt to explain the natural phenomena through the lens of the science of his time was not followed by the majority of his successors in the context of Eastern Orthodoxy. Consequently, Photius’s method did not experience a great legacy in the Christian East. Thus, while the Cappadocians (fourth century), Maximus the Confessor (sixth-seventh centuries), John of Damascus (seventh-eighth centuries), Photius (ninth century), and generally speaking the great Fathers of the Eastern Church considered it their duty to possess the scientific knowledge of their time and to dialogue with the then various scientific, philosophical and intellectual trends, apparently this was no longer the case during the following centuries.



3 Cf. mainly their works: St Basil, Homilies on the Hexaemeron; St Gregory of Nyssa, On the Hexaemeron and On the Making of Man. 4 Simeon Magister (Pseudo-Symeon), ‘Chronographia’, in Theophanes Continuatus, Ioannes Cameniata, Symeon Magister, Georgius Monachus, ed. by Immanuel Bekker (Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, 45) (Bonn: E. Weber, 1838), p. 673 (Patrologia Graeca, 109, 736 A).

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The Encounter between Orthodoxy and Science in the Context of the Greek Enlightenment This last remark has been confirmed in particular by the conditions under which the encounter between Orthodoxy and science took place in the time of the Enlightenment, which in the Greek context was mainly initiated by clerics or monks.5 Due to space limitations, I will omit the intermediate period of the almost ten centuries between Photius and the beginning of the Greek Enlightenment, by focusing more on the second half of the eighteenth century. During that period, although the exponents of the Enlightenment in the Greek-speaking world were mainly clerics (such as Eugenios Voulgaris, Methodios Anthrakites, Nicephoros Theotokes, Josephus Moisiodax, Stefanos Dougkas, Veniamin Lesvios, Anthimos Gazis, Daniel Philippides, and many others), the encounter between Orthodoxy, modern ideas, and science had finally led to conflict and to a gradual distancing and alienation among them. On the one hand, one could refer to figures such as Eugenios Voulgaris, who appealed to the Fathers of the Church, remaining thereby faithful to the tradition of Hesychasm and the teachings of St Gregory Palamas (fourteenth century) on the uncreated light and at the same time introduced – not without difficulties and persecutions – new philosophical and scientific ideas to Greek schools, run by the Church under Ottoman rule. On the other hand, however, one should refer to the considerable number of clerics, sometimes even at the highest levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy or in key positions in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which undermined this encounter between Orthodoxy and science and strongly opposed the teaching of modern physics in Greek schools, supporting thus the geocentric view of the universe and the governing authority of Aristotelian physics to decide on all matters relating to the sensible or created world, while at the same time persecuting or subjecting to humiliations the representatives of the new ideas, who incidentally were often themselves clerics, as well. The reaction of the official Church against the emerging new ideas and the challenge of the Enlightenment and modernity was not always and everywhere the same. If we take education as an example, where the partial acceptance and legalization of the new ideas were mainly achieved,6 we could observe – following Paschalis Kitromilides – that ‘the traditional concern of the Church for education, a concern chiefly understood as a component of its pastoral mission, led repeatedly to initiatives that paved the way to





5 From the abundant literature on this topic, see the recent volume by Paschalis M. Kitromilides (ed.), Enlightenment and Religion in the Orthodox World, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2016). In the following paragraphs I also profit from the analysis I have previously offered in Pantelis Kalaitzidis, ‘Ορθοδοξία και Διαφωτισμός: Το Ζήτημα της Ανεξιθρησκίας’ [‘Orthodox Christianity and the Enlightenment: The Issue of Religious Tolerance’], in Kalaitzidis and Ntontos (eds), Ορθοδοξία και Νεωτερικότητα, pp. 79–165. 6 Cf. Vasilios N. Makrides, ‘Ορθόδοξη Εκκλησία και φορείς του Διαφωτισμού στον ελληνικό χώρο: Ιδιαιτερότητες μιας σχέσης’ [‘The Orthodox Church and Bearers of the Enlightenment in the Greek Area: Aspects of a Particular Relationship’], Kleronomia, 29 (1997), 163–201 (pp. 176–77).

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the Enlightenment and its representatives’.7 Subsequently, however, a generally cautious and negative attitude prevailed. It consisted of a conservative redoubling due both to the atheistic, anti-Christian and certainly anti-clerical positions of the European Enlightenment, especially after the French Revolution, and the direction taken by the wide study and reception of Greek antiquity in Western Europe. The ‘Frankish world’ and the modern ideas coming from Western Europe started to be considered as a source of evil and the cause of all the problems and dangers for Orthodoxy and the (Greek) nation. It was the ultra-conservative cleric Athanasios Parios (1721–1813), who characteristically endorsed and expressed this perspective. In order to cope with the wave of the Enlightenment ideas, he highly recommended, inter alia, the censorship of the books printed abroad, as well as the burning ‘of these evil books’.8 He himself rejected any contact and relationship with the ‘Frankish world’, either ‘Europe’ or the West, which were supposed to end in ‘a chaos of loss’. His well-known aphorism had as follows: ‘Stay away from Europe! And even from those coming from Europe.’9 Parios taught, therefore, ‘against the expatriate Greek scientists coming from Europe’, since he had been strongly convinced that ‘anyone who was travelling to Europe was an atheist without the need of any further examination. Mathematics was a source of atheism, whose primary effect was the abolition of the practice of fasting’.10 It is also reported that Hierotheos Dendrinos, a hieromonk from Ithaca, who was teaching in Smyrna in Asia Minor and himself strongly opposed Josephus Moisiodax’s departure to Italy for further studies, ‘was screaming that all those, who study in the Frankish world, are atheists and after their return they lead also other people to atheism’.11 Furthermore, various collective bodies and individual exponents of the new ideas often became themselves a target of the Church criticism and were condemned. This situation resulted in the persecution and frequent removal of the teachers, who espoused the ideas of the Enlightenment, from the positions they held in ecclesiastical schools, or to the enforced public renunciation of their ideas and to the prohibition or in some cases the burning of their books and writings, often

7 Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Το όραμα της ελευθερίας στην ελληνική κοινωνία. Από την πολιτική σκέψη στην πολιτική πράξη [The Vision of Freedom in the Greek Society: From Political Thought to Political Action] (Athens: Poreia, 1992), pp. 21–22. Cf. Vasileios N. Tatakis (ed.), Σκούφος-Μηνιάτης-Βούλγαρις-Θεοτόκης [Skoufos-Miniates-Voulgaris-Theotokes] (Athens: Aetos Publications, 1953), pp. 25, 28. 8 Fr Georgios Metallinos, ‘Η Κολλυβαδική άποψη για το Διαφωτισμό. Μία χαρακτηριστική περίπτωση: Αθανάσιος Πάριος’ [‘The Kollyvades’ View on the Enlightenment: A Typical Case: Athanasios Parios’], Synaxi, 54 (1995), 21–29 (p. 28). In this article, Fr Metallinos tries to justify and explain with theological and historical arguments the overall negative attitude of Athanasios Parios, as well as his generally conservative attitude on other issues (e.g., a fundamentalist understanding of the Scripture, a reaction against modern science, a fixation to the Aristotelian philosophy, a defence of the political status of the Ottoman Empire). 9 Metallinos, ‘Η Κολλυβαδική άποψη’, p. 28. 10 Manouil Gedeon, Η πνευματική κίνησις του Γένους κατά τον ιη´ και ιθ´ αιώνα [The Intellectual Movement of the Greek Orthodox Genos during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries], edited by Alkis Aggelou and Philippos Eliou (Athens: Hermes, 1976), p. 105. 11 Josephus Moisiodax, Απολογία [Apology], ed. by Alkis Aggelou (Athens: Hermes, 1976), p. 153 n. 2; Gedeon, Η πνευματική κίνησις, p. 106.

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considered as atheistic or blasphemous. Not least, an Orthodox censorship was also established in order to control the content of books published in Greek language (a mutatis mutandis Orthodox index librorum prohibitorum). In this regard, Methodios Anthrakites (a cleric and teacher from Zagori, in Epirus) is a very typical example. In November 1723, in the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s courtyard, Anthrakites’ textbooks (on logic, physics, mathematics, Euclidean geometry) were publicly burned. After his condemnation, deposition, and prohibition of any teaching duties imposed by the Synod of the Patriarchate (‘the first, perhaps, suspending intervention of the Church in the content of the teaching of scholars at that time’, according to Alkis Aggelou12), Anthrakites was forced to submit a confession of faith while being subject to unbelievable humiliations in order to revoke his sentence. In the end, the only thing of which he was certainly accused, was the rejection of the relevance of the Aristotelian philosophy to the understanding of nature and the secular sciences in general, while the blasphemy against the Holy Scriptures and the authority of the Church Fathers in theology, as well as his supposed anti-Palamite attitude, were not confirmed.13 The distinguished scholar of patristic studies and editor of the works of St Gregory Palamas, the late Professor Panagiotis Chrestou, even maintains that Anthrakites was a ‘devotee of Orthodox hesychasm in its moderate form’, while ‘the common theological opinion of that time places Anthrakites exactly with the hesychasts’. Furthermore, the two preserved chapters of his Metaphysics are included in a collection of neptic and hesychastic texts.14 In the case of Anthrakites’ persecution, however, as in many other subsequent cases of trials and prosecutions, which almost always took place in the name of the defence of Orthodoxy and the ancestral faith, the selfish personal motives and the weakmindedness of the persecutors, as well as the desperate effort of his rivals, triggered by the interests of the guilds in the city of

12 Alkis Aggelou,, ‘Η δίκη του Μεθόδιου Ανθρακίτη (όπως την αφηγείται ο ίδιος)’ [‘Methodios Anthrakites’ trial (as narrated by himself)’], in Alkis Aggelou, Των Φώτων. Όψεις του Νεοελληνικού Διαφωτισμού [Of the Lights: Aspects of the Modern Greek Enlightenment] (Athens: Hermes, 1988) p. 23. Among the profane historians, there is a rigorous critique of the way in which academic theologians (such as Panagiotes Chrestou, Μεθόδιος Ανθρακίτης. Βίος-δράσις-ανέκδοτα έργα [Methodios Anthrakites: Life, Activity and Unpublished Works], Ioannina, 1953, offprint from Hepeirotiki Hestia) approach and interpret (with the purpose of playing down and sometimes of covering up) the details regarding Anthrakites’ prosecution and condemnation. Cf. Aggelou, ‘Η δίκη’, pp. 23–24 n. 1; Konstantinos Th. Dimaras, ‘Μεθόδιος Ανθρακίτης’ [‘Methodios Anthrakites’], in Konstantinos Th. Dimaras, Σύμμικτα Α´. Από την παιδεία στην λογοτεχνία [Miscellanea. Vol. i. From Education to Literature], edited by Alexis Polites (Athens: Spoudastirio Neou Ellenismou, 2000), pp. 68–70. 13 Gerhard Podskalsky, Griechische Theologie in der Zeit der Türkenherrschaft (1453–1821). Die Orthodoxie im Spannungsfeld der nachreformatorischen Konfessionen des Westens (München: C. H. Beck, 1988), pp. 312–17; Aggelou, ‘Η δίκη’, pp. 33–37; Nikos Psimmenos, Η ελληνική φιλοσοφία από το 1453 ώς το 1821 [Greek Philosophy from 1453 to 1821], vol. ii. Η επικράτηση της νεωτερικής φιλοσοφίας. Μετακορυδαλλική περίοδος [The Prevalence of Modern Philosophy: The Post-Corydallean Period] (Athens: Gnosi, 1989), pp. 16 ff.; The details concerning the trial, the condemnation, the deposition and finally the reinstatement of Anthrakites following his public profession of faith and renunciation of his alleged errors, see Psimmenos, Η ελληνική φιλοσοφία, vol. ii, pp. 421–55. 14 Panagiotes Chrestou, ‘Ησυχαστικαί αναζητήσεις εις τα Ιωάννινα περί το 1700’ [‘Hesychast Quests in Ioannina around 1700’], Kleronomia, 1 (1969), 337–54 (pp. 350, 349).

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Constantinople, to defend the validity and the impact of the established Aristotelian philosophy over the emerging dominance of modern scientific ideas, seems to have played a crucial role. Anthrakites himself, however, in a letter to the Greek Orthodox authorities of Ioannina, having described the content of the conflict, the trial and the sentence, referred to the terms and conditions under which he was finally ‘relieved’: So, I am in a hurry to confess bad things [his own writings, P.K.], because, while they were ready to stone me, they finally decided to burn them. I shouted at the Synod that I do not accept any philosophical school, nor do I consider any of them as the accurate one; and for the love of God to listen to me and let me confess in front of them the confession of my faith, and to do whatever they wanted to my textbooks, rip or burn them, I do not care. Once they accepted to read my confession in front of the members of the Synod and affirmed it as secure and healthy according to the Church, I finally kissed the hands of the Patriarchs, received their blessings and departed. This was the decision of the Synod. Whatever then followed by the Synod, is worthy of tears. Consider if they were driven by the zeal of faith and by the Holy Spirit when they gathered the books of logical and physical sciences and those of Euclides [geometry, P.K.] and other mathematics, and they kindled fire in the courtyard of the church, and they threw them into fire on Sunday, and many people outside like boatmen, shoemakers, and tailors, they reacted as if they were confronted with the heresy of Arius or the Pneumatomachoi [combators against the Holy Spirit, followers of Macedonius, P.K.]; books which are studied by the entire world and having nothing to do with faith […] Subsequently, I was given a confession to sign, where I had to argue that I was motivated to write by satanic synergy, deliberate malice and insanity, and for this reason I should have to condemn them as impious and full of blasphemy and avoid using them or similar works as teaching material. In general, I was asked to avoid teaching any philosophical or Christian topic or mathematics, either publicly or privately, or receiving the confession of any Christian, and if I would ever do this, I would be under the judgment of eternal condemnation.15 Beyond, however, the painful impression the case of Anthrakites mentioned above might give, we should further point to the emergence, already since 1723, of riot events and of a new population group, the so-called ‘indignant believers’ (‘boatmen, shoemakers, tailors’ – according to Anthrakites). These faithful, well prepared and mobilized by the Church leaders, not only took part in the events and decided the destiny of Anthrakites’ writings by throwing them into fire, but in line with the witness of Anthrakites’ persecutor, the hieromonk Hierotheos Ivirites, Anthrakites was forced to hide because he feared ‘the wrath of the pious hierarchs and lay people’.16 Along the same lines, in 1761–63, according to Josephus Moisiodax, Eugenios Voulgaris was also confronted with the mobilization of the various professional guilds of Constantinople against introducing modern Enlightenment ideas and teaching them

15 Cf. Psimmenos, Η ελληνική φιλοσοφία, vol. ii, pp. 448–49. 16 Aggelou, ‘Η δίκη’, p. 31.

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in schools.17 Paradoxically, almost the same situation was repeated at the beginning of the next century (1810) on the occasion of the dispute over the Philological High School (Gymnasium) in Smyrna, which, due to its progressive orientation, caused the suspicion and the hostility of the leadership of the local Church and of the conservative circles of the city. Here again the ‘shoemakers’, the ‘grocers’, the ‘gardeners’ and the ‘furriers’ took active part in the discussion about the future and ultimately forced the temporal closure of the High School.18 Once more in Smyrna, almost nine years later (1819), the riot events of the guilds and the ‘ordinary people’ supported by the local Church, if not mobilized by it, led to the definitive closure of the Philological High School, which was considered in the meantime a bastion of Enlightenment ideas. We are thus confronted here with an educational and broader ideological and socio-political conflict between the followers of the Enlightenment, namely the ‘philosophers’ and traders, on the one hand, and its opponents, the ‘anti-philosophers’, the popular masses, the guilds, and the local Church headed by Metropolitan Anthimos, on the other.19 A century later, in the free Greek state, another important – but not the last – instance of such a dispute between the official Church and the bearers of modernist educational ideas were the riots of the ‘indignant believers’, motivated and encouraged by the Bishop Germanos of Demetrias during the so-called ‘atheist incidents’ (Aθεϊκά) in Volos, which led in March 1911 to the closure of the Middle School of Girls, directed by Alexander Delmouzos.20 We should, however, contrast the unfortunate handling of the Anthrakites’ case21 and other obscurantist reactions with the more enlightened decisions and open-minded gestures of the then leadership of the Church, which led to an adoption of modern and reformist ideas. This was the case with the Patriarch Cyril V and the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which assigned the direction of the Athonite Academy to Eugenios Voulgaris (1753), the most progressive – and impressive – philosophical, theological and ecclesiastical figure of his era.22 This decision was interpreted as 17 Moisiodax, Απολογία, p. 80; cf. Gedeon, Η πνευματική κίνησις, pp. 101–03. 18 Paschalis M. Kitromilides, ‘Ιδεολογικές συνέπειες της κοινωνικής διαμάχης στη Σμύρνη (1809–1810)’ [‘Ideological Implications of the Social Conflict in Smyrna (1809–1810)’], Deltio Kentrou Mikrasiatikon Spoudon, 3 (1982), 9–39 (pp. 30–32). 19 Cf. Philippos Eliou, Κοινωνικοί αγώνες και Διαφωτισμός. Η περίπτωση της Σμύρνης (1819) [Social Struggles and the Enlightenment: The Case of Smyrna (1819)] (Athens: Hetaireia Meletes Neou Hellenismou – Mnemon, 21986), pp. 7–10, 20–21, 34–36, 38–52, where one can find detailed references to the sources. 20 For the so-called ‘atheist incidents’ in Volos, see, among others, Charalambos Charitos, Το Παρθεναγωγείο του Βόλου [The Girl’s School in Volos], vols i–ii (Athens: Historical Archives of the Greek Youth, General Secretariat of Youth, 1989). 21 For more recent bibliography on Anthrakites, see Vasiliki Mpompou-Stamati, ‘Ο Μεθόδιος Ανθρακίτης και τα “Τετράδια”’ [‘Methodios Anthrakites and the “Textbooks”’], Hellenika, 45 (1995), 111–27; Konstantinos Th. Petsios, Μεθόδιος Ανθρακίτης. Εισαγωγή στη σκέψη και το έργο του [Methodios Anthrakites: An Introduction to his Thought and Work] (Ioannina 2006). 22 From the most recent bibliography on Voulgaris, see Chariton Karanasios (ed.), Ευγένιος Βούλγαρης. Ο homo universalis του Nέου Ελληνισμού. 300 χρόνια από τη γέννησή του [Eugenios Voulgaris: The homo universalis of Modern Hellenism. 300 Years since his Birth], (Athens: Kentron Erevnis tou Mesaionikou kai Neou Ellenismou Akademias Athenon / Holy Monastery of Vatopedi, 2018).

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a gesture in support of the reform and modern tendencies, to the extent that the patriarchal decision regarding his nomination and appointment expressly authorized him to make ‘changes and reforms’ in the Academy’s curriculum.23 Moreover, it should not be forgotten, as Paschalis Kitromilides put it, that the starting point of the general movement of spiritual recovery that eventually culminated in the diverse expressions of the Enlightenment was due to the educational initiatives by the Phanariote rulers and the Church. This must be emphasized because there is often a tendency to stress the view that the Church was entirely negative to the Enlightenment. This was certainly the final outcome of an ideological opposition adopted by the Church during the various political circumstances.24 The final conflict and ideological confrontation, however, between the Church and the emerging new social bodies that appeared during the Enlightenment (which tried to untie to some degree the control of education from the Church’s authority), must not obscure the various stages of the historical development of this relationship. They also should not negate the overall importance of the work (in the field of education and elsewhere), which had been done until then by the Church, despite the mistakes or deficiencies of some of its representatives.25 Having described the origins of the various riot events motivated by the leadership of the Church in the first decades of the eighteenth century against the danger of the Enlightenment ideas, similar events will be repeated, less than a century later, in 1803. At that time, the Athonite monk, Veniamin Lesvios was condemned by the Patriarchal Synod, because he followed and taught the Copernican worldview. It is indeed indicative of the confusion between theological and ecclesiastical criteria prevailing during that period that the major persecutor of Veniamin because of his support of heliocentrism was the aforementioned Athanasios Parios. Such a scientific worldview was considered by Parios and the ultra-conservative Orthodox incompatible with the Orthodox doctrine and as a source of atheism and heresy!26 At this point, it is noteworthy to quote in length the insightful and acute observations and key questions posed by Vasilios N. Makrides in relation to the well-known insistence of Parios on the fidelity to the Orthodox tradition: Athanasios Parios, who […] is currently regarded as the chief exponent of Orthodox spirituality and the patristic tradition during the eighteenth century, was an open opponent of the West and harshly criticized the Copernican worldview and the new scientific developments, contributing to the persecution of many of their supporters 23 Paschalis M. Kitromilides, ‘Athos and the Enlightenment’, in Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism, ed. by Anthony Bryer and Mary Cunningham (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 1996), pp. 257–72 (pp. 258–59, 269). Cf. Archimandrite Eirinaios Delidimos, ‘Εισαγωγή’ [‘Introduction’], in Eugenios Voulgaris, Θεολογικόν ή Ιερά Θεολογία [Theologicon or Sacred Theology] (Thessaloniki: Rigopoulos, 21987), pp. 8–13. 24 Kitromilides, Το όραμα, pp. 21–22. 25 Cf. Makrides, ‘Ορθόδοξη Εκκλησία’, p. 159. Cf. Tatakis (ed.), Σκούφος, p. 28. 26 See Vasilios N. Makrides, Die religiöse Kritik am kopernikanischen Weltbild in Griechenland zwischen 1794 und 1821. Aspekte griechisch-orthodoxer Apologetik angesichts naturwissenschaftlicher Fortschritte (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995), especially pp. 147–85.

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and exponents in Greece. If, therefore, Parios had been so faithful to the genuine Orthodox patristic tradition and heritage, why then did he not follow the alleged ‘liberal’ attitude of the Church Fathers in his relationship to science? Why did he not adopt the distinction between the ‘created’ and ‘uncreated’ order and why did he not accept the Copernican worldview as a scientific discovery that basically pertained to the ‘created’ reality? Or, finally, why did he not succeed in addressing the Western influences on his own thinking, to the extent that he was boldly concerned with the preservation of Orthodoxy inviolate from any Western danger?27 The difficult encounter between Orthodoxy and the Enlightenment, part of the wider yet pending dialogue between Orthodoxy and modernity, was a crucial and decisive factor, which shaped to a great extent the problematic relationship of Orthodoxy with modern science. Orthodox theology is facing today new challenges and crucial questions, which pertain again to its relationship with modern science and the current scientific acquis. If Orthodox theology has thus the ambition of addressing the new difficult challenges coming from the natural, but also from the human sciences, it must first, with courage and sobriety, go beyond its purely academic and historical work in criticizing the Western influences upon Orthodoxy. Second, it should exercise self-critique for the unfortunate handlings, as well as the fearful and ultra-conservative reactions that have marked the stance of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and theology towards Enlightenment and other modern ideas in the Greek-speaking and the wider Orthodox world.

The Debate on Homosexuality: Relevant Scientific Data and the Challenge of their Reception by the Orthodox If the encounter of the Orthodox tradition with natural sciences and modern physics was at the centre of eighteenth-century debates, it seems that issues related to gender and sexuality (especially to homosexuality), and by implication the reception of the scientific data or findings on these issues by the Orthodox, are among those which lie at the centre of the current concerns. In fact, to stay only on the controversial issue of homosexuality, I will not say something new if I remind of the absolutely negative way in which homosexuality is usually viewed by the Orthodox.28 With the exception

27 Vasilios N. Makrides, ‘Ορθόδοξη Εκκλησία και Διαφωτισμός στην Ελλάδα: Θρησκευτικές ιδεολογικοποιήσεις μιας αντιπαράθεσης’ [‘The Orthodox Church and the Enlightenment in Greece: Religious Ideologizations of a Controversy’], Histor, 12 (2001), 157–88 (p. 171). 28 Following the links below, all accessed in September 2018, one can find statements, press releases, interviews, and other related material on the issue of homosexuality and its radical rejection by the primates or bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Church of Greece:

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of some moderate approaches, homosexual orientation and homosexual relations are categorically rejected and condemned, or even demonized by Orthodox clerics, monks, and lay theologians, while homosexuality is understood in terms of a ‘passion’, of a perversion against nature and natural law, as anomaly and insanity, a passion like avarice, greed, lickerishness, anger, blame, and so on. In most cases, the Orthodox refuse to accept the reality of homosexual orientation and think of homosexuality in terms of personal choice initiated by a ‘passion’. As noted by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, ‘until recent times, Orthodox thinkers did not make use of the concept of sexual orientation, as this is understood in contemporary psychology. More precisely, they assumed that there is only one orientation, and that is heterosexual. They considered that persons of homosexual inclination were such because of personal choice and were therefore willfully wicked’.29 In some extreme cases, like in the discourse and the recent public statements by some Greek bishops,30 homosexuality is characterized as the most repulsing and hideous sin, which is associated with paedophilia and bestiality!31 Therefore, homosexuals are called to fight against their ‘passion’ and to overcome it through repentance and spiritual struggle including fasting, prayer, and

. 29 Kallistos Ware, Metropolitan of Diokleia, ‘Foreword’, The Wheel, 13–14 (Spring-Summer 2018), 6–10 (p. 8). 30 Cf. the links mentioned above. 31 See, for example, [All websites accessed September 2018].

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genuflections, or to be helped in order to return to a ‘normal’ sexual life by conversion therapies. If conversion therapy fails, then the homosexual is called to follow a life of celibacy and permanent sexual abstinence. In the words of Fr Vasileios Thermos, ‘homosexuals are called to lead a celibate life, whether or not they feel a vocation for this’.32 At best, when homosexual orientation is not treated as abomination,33 as a deadly sin leading to the eternal condemnation of hell,34 homosexuals enjoy a specific pastoral care and are approached by some open-minded and compassionate clerics with understanding, friendly feelings, and Christian love.35 However, their sexuality and their way of life is not theologically justified and ecclesially accepted, even if in many of these cases with a friendly and compassionate pastoral care. This explains why, if homosexuals are not stigmatized and if in the meantime they have not broken their ties with the Church, in most cases they are not accepted in the Eucharist, while their integration in the parish life is also not secured. Certainly, this Orthodox rejection and condemnation of homosexuality has nothing specifically ‘Orthodox’, since it repeats the radical rejection of homosexuality adopted in the past by many Protestant Churches, and which is practiced up to now by the Roman Catholic Church. It also has much to do with a static and decontextualized interpretation of the well-known biblical evidence,36 as well as that of the patristic and canonical tradition.37 In addition, this Orthodox condemnation of homosexuality has little to do with any kind of critical engagement with the

32 Fr Vasileios Thermos, ‘The Orthodox Church, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity: From Embarrassment to Calling’, The Wheel, 13–14 (Spring-Summer 2018), 83–90 (p. 86). Cf. Ware, ‘Foreword’, p. 9. 33 Referring to Leviticus 18. 22, and the Greek term ‘βδέλυγμα’. 34 Cf. I Corinthians 6. 9–10; cf. also Jude 7. 35 Cf. for instance Fr Vasileios Thermos, Έλξη και Πάθος: Μια διεπιστημονική προσέγγιση της ομοφυλοφιλίας [Attraction and Passion: An Interdisciplinary Approach of Homosexuality] (Athens: En plo, 2016), pp. 469–512 (with rich bibliography); Thermos, ‘The Orthodox Church’, pp. 89–90; Fr Vasileios Chavatzas, ‘Στο πλάι ενός αγώνα…: Σκέψεις για την ποιμαντική αντιμετώπιση του ομοφυλόφιλου’ [‘At the Side of a Fight…: Reflections on the Pastoral Treatment of the Homosexual’], in Χριστιανική ζωή και σεξουαλικές σχέσεις [Christian Life and Sexual Relations], ed. by Vasilis Argyriadis and Christos Markopoulos (Athens: En plo, 2015), pp. 201–05; Marc-Antoine de Beauregard, Regard chrétien sur l’homosexualité (Paris: Editions de l’Oeuvre, 2013), pp. 103-13. A whole section of the volume edited by Cherniak, Gerassimenko, and Brinkschröder, ‘For I am Wonderfully Made’, pp. 231–95, is dedicated to ‘New Pastoral Approaches’. Cf. also John Breck and Lyn Breck, Stages on Life’s Way: Orthodox Thinking on Bioethics (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005); Thomas Hopko, Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections (Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press, 2006), pp. 111–22. 36 See Genesis 18. 20–19, 29; Leviticus 18. 22, 20. 13; Romans 1. 18–32; I Corinthians 6. 9–11; I Timothy 1. 9–10; Jude 7. 37 See, for example, Didache, 2: 2; Polycarpus of Smyrna, Seconde Letter to Philippians, 5: 3; Justin the Philosopher and Martyr, First Apologetic, 27; Clement of Alexandria, The Pedagogue, 6; 10; Tertullian, On Prudity, 4; Cyprian of Carthage, Letters, 1: 9; Novatian, Jewish Foods, 3; Eusebius of Caesarea, Evangelical Preparation, 4: 10; Apostolic Constitutions, 6: 11; Basil of Caesarea, Letters, 217: 62; John Chrysostom, Homily on the Epistle to Titus, 5: 4 and Homilies on the Epistle to the Romans, 4: 1 and 4: 2; Augustine, Confessions, III, 8: 15. See also the canons 7 and 62 of St Basil of Caesarea (The Great), and the canon 4 of St Gregory of Nyssa.

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works of the Church Fathers, and the discernment and the difference between the theological contribution of the Fathers and the influence of their cultural and social milieu they carry in their writings. As a consequence, it envelops all of their work with a mythological a-historic haze38 and fails to make the distinction between the cultural and the proper theological elements in sacred texts, namely between the Spirit-based, and culture-based influences or changes.39 The classical understanding of homosexuality under the angle of ‘passion’, which presupposes implicitly or explicitly the rejection or the conscious ignorance of the scientific data and the uncritical adoption of many stereotypes represent by far the majority opinion among the Orthodox and the Orthodox tradition on the issue of homosexuality. As noticed by Fr Vasileios Thermos: Since the Greco-Roman period, the dominant public opinion about homosexuality has been that it is a choice. People firmly believed that all were born heterosexual, and that some, in their perverse disposition for acquiring new pleasures, decided to deviate into homosexual practices. Homosexuality was considered a behaviour, not an identity as is the case today. Thus, it was thought of as a product of free volition, and consequently was judged by Christians to be the worst of all passions – a real rebellion against God. The biblical texts that are often cited in connection with homosexuality share this preconception, and thereby constitute weak arguments in the contemporary theological discussion. The authors of the New Testament, as well as the fathers, are no exception. They share a very strict attitude against homosexual behaviour, because they view it as epitomizing all the vices. This makes sense if homosexuality is thought of as the result of conscious rebellion against God’s will. It is in this light that the first chapter of the Letter to the Romans has to be read. Saint Paul has in mind someone who arrogantly rebels and becomes self-determining and even deliberately opposes God. Obviously, very few contemporary homosexuals would identify themselves by those descriptions. Discussion about passions stems out of this ancient yet resilient idea. Such views naturally lead to the conviction that homosexuality is a passion, among the worst. However, there is the clear patristic concord that the worst passion is narcissism (philautia, pride, vainglory). Furthermore, empirical evidence shows that all the passions are intertwined, mutually feeding and being fed by one another. Thus, while a person with same-sex attraction may of course have various passions, they are not necessarily connected with homosexuality. There is no passion that

38 Thermos, Έλξη και Πάθος, p. 17. 39 For the cultural conditioning of many of these biblical and patristic passages, cf. Thermos, Έλξη και Πάθος, pp. 357–402. For the overcoming of the cultural conditioning of the ecclesial event in favour of the Spirit-based changes, i.e., the changes founded and legitimated from an eschatological perspective and the coming Kingdom of God, cf. Pantelis Kalaitzidis, ‘The Eschatological Understanding of Tradition in Contemporary Orthodox Theology and its Relevance for Today’s Issues’, in The Shaping of Tradition: Context and Normativity, ed. by Colby Dickinson (Leuven/Paris/Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2013), pp. 297–312.

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is specifically linked to homosexuality, while sexual perversions (psychiatrically known as paraphilias) are certainly accompanied by many.40 By expressing and formulating the above-mentioned ideas on homosexuality, many Orthodox are just repeating the well-known triumphalist rhetoric regarding the relationship between science and Orthodoxy, a rhetoric claiming that there is no problem or conflict between science and Orthodoxy. They thus refuse to open up the hermeneutical horizon of the latter by taking into account the theories and views, and even the present-day discoveries of many sciences and disciplines, such as biology, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, sociology, or cultural studies, on the issue of homosexuality. By doing so, Orthodox clerics, thinkers, and theologians are just repeating or following the pre-modern uncritical way of approaching the sacred texts by accepting as divinely given and inspired everything included in the Scriptures or in patristic writings. All this happens despite the obvious influences of the cultural milieu or the inaccurate scientific information of that pre-modern period upon the sacred texts; for example, the geocentric system; the tripartite division of the universe in heaven, earth, and the underworld; the chronology associated with the Bible, i.e., the idea that the world has been created about five thousand years before Christ, and so on. It is thus time for the Orthodox to admit that there are many scientific errors in the Bible and that the Bible is not divinely-inspired thanks to these errors, which bear the mark of the cultural milieu of a remote time. But it is divinely-inspired despite those errors, since Divine Revelation concerns the eternal truths about God, the world, and humankind, not the cultural perceptions and understandings of each era. In addition to being divinely-inspired, the Bible (and the Fathers, who in their great majority were not divinely-inspired, but interpreted the Bible) is also a human work. The Orthodox tradition at its best (and in any case, before the Enlightenment) was in permanent dialogue with the new scientific data of its time. It had no problem to review and to correct, having been informed by science and other disciplines such as philosophy, wrong ideas and perceptions related to the created world, insofar as they did not affect the basic doctrinal truths (the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas). With regard to our discussion, it would not be an exaggeration to argue that the rejection of today’s scientific data and findings on homosexuality is analogous to the conflict, in which the Orthodox Church was in opposition to the Enlightenment and the new scientific ideas (as we have seen in the previous section). The church leadership had refused at that time to accept the new scientific acquis and the ideas of modernity, while staying attached to the Aristotelian philosophy, to which it had granted the authority of the knowledge of the natural or created world. Today, we have the impression that insisting on an understanding of homosexuality from the angle of a ‘passion’ that one can overcome and get rid of through the spiritual struggle, is like fighting once again science and scientific findings regarding homosexuality. In the words again of Fr Thermos, ‘the language around homosexuality as a voluntary

40 Thermos, ‘The Orthodox Church’, pp. 83–84.

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or demonic condition to be hated no longer applies, because it is undermined by contemporary scientific knowledge. The Orthodox Church has already dealt with other situations in which issues were considered to be theological before modernity, but in modernity this judgment has proved to be erroneous’.41 Regarding our discussion, beyond specific scientific theories and hypotheses, there is today among scholars, scientists, and medical practitioners a certain common ground, a common understanding, that cannot be ignored if we pretend to be in dialogue with science. In fact, between the middle of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century homosexuality was considered a mental disease, whereas until the 1950s the word ‘homosexuality’ was clearly linked with sin, illness and crime.42 In 1973 homosexuality was removed from the official U.S. list of mental disorders,43 and as early as 1975 the American Psychological Society asked psychologists to lead the removal of the stigma of mental illness, which had long been associated with homosexuals. During the 1980s, policies about homosexuality matured, and the gay community was given the status of a recognized minority.44 Finally, in 1992, homosexuality was removed from the international classification of diseases (ICD-10) of the World Health Organization.45 There is no unanimity among scientists and scholars regarding the explanation and the reasons of homosexuality, although an increasing consensus seems to exist regarding the importance and involvement of a biological factor in homosexual orientation. Thus, on the one hand, there is the view emphasizing genetic and hormonal reasons, therefore maintaining that homosexuality is not a choice, and that gay or lesbians are not responsible for their homosexual orientation46, which cannot be changed by any kind of ‘conversion treatment’ or ‘re-orientation therapy’.47 On the other hand, there is also a view in favour of a more complex explanation of the phenomenon of homosexuality by supporting the idea that, in addition to genetic and hormonal causes, we should take into account socio-cultural factors and the influence of the familial context. The latter view (supported now by a decreasing number of scholars and medical practitioners) hence maintains that there is space for a change in sexual orientation through the so-called ‘conversion treatment’ or ‘re-orientation therapy’. I am neither a doctor nor a biologist or a psychologist, and I do not consider myself the appropriate person to decide about this ongoing scientific and academic discussion. However, if I correctly understood what qualified academics and scientists are saying, then I have to notice that both of the described

41 Thermos, ‘The Orthodox Church’, pp. 84–85. 42 Thermos, Έλξη και Πάθος, pp. 38–39. 43 Thermos, Έλξη και Πάθος, p. 43. 44 Thermos, Έλξη και Πάθος, pp. 41, 45. 45 Thermos, Έλξη και Πάθος, p. 44. 46 Ware (‘Foreword’, p. 9.) boldly noticed from his perspective: ‘But homosexual men and women are not personally guilty of their orientation, because this is not something they have chosen.’ 47 While considering homosexuality as condition related not exclusively to biological factors and praising a more complex explanation of it, Fr Thermos (‘The Orthodox Church’, pp. 86–87) has to admit from his side that ‘conversion therapies’ seem quite ineffective.

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perspectives do not allow us to consider homosexuality under the angle of the ‘passion’. This means that homosexual orientation cannot be changed through the lens of spiritual life and the ascetic practices or the struggle against passions; and that the Orthodox Church has to proceed to painful revisions in its understanding of homosexuality,48 exactly as it did some centuries ago due to the challenges posed by Copernicus, Galilei and Newton on the issue of the geocentric and heliocentric system – a scientific discovery in clear contradiction with the biblical texts and the scientific universe implied by the Bible. I cannot repeat here the very rich and interesting discussion, which goes on between scientists and academics of the two tendencies regarding the causes of homosexuality mentioned above. Fr Thermos did this in an exemplary way in his scientifically well-documented and theologically informed recent monumental study.49 After reviewing the scientific discussion, Fr Thermos concludes that homosexuality is neither a ‘passion’ nor a sexual perversion,50 but rather a unique condition that does not belong to any known category, either of spiritual life or psychiatric taxonomy.51 However, this statement does not prevent it, according Fr Thermos, from being a problem theologically, as he explains at the end of his study. The Greek priest and psychiatrist in his final say does not justify or legitimate theologically homosexuality, since the latter contradicts God’s plan, suggesting thus for Christian homosexuals a life of abstinence and to bear their cross and burden.52 Homosexuality is therefore for Fr Thermos a complex phenomenon, both for genetic and hormonal reasons, but also due to socio-cultural factors, the influence of the familial context, and certain circumstances, which favour (or do not favour) the coming out of the homosexual orientation, and the active gay or lesbian gender identity.

48 Such a timid, yet significant example of a revision on the issue of homosexuality seems to be the Pastoral Letter, issued in December 2017, by the Conference of the Orthodox Bishops in Germany. It was addressed to the Orthodox youth of the country and attempted to cope with the sensitive issues of love, sexuality, and marriage. The importance and novelty of this Letter, issued in German, English and different other languages (Greek, Arabic, Russian, Romanian, and Bulgarian) spoken by the Orthodox people living in Germany, resides in the fact that it is the first official Orthodox document, which does not condemn homosexuality, approaching it in a mere pastoral way, whereas it seems to be open to responsible pre-marital sexual relations. See the English version of the text: ‘A Letter from the Bishops of the Orthodox Church in Germany to Young People concerning Love – Sexuality – Marriage’, posted at the website of the Orthodox Bishops’ Conference in Germany: [accessed 3 March 2018]. 49 Thermos, Έλξη και Πάθος. In addition to this discussion, Fr Thermos offers in his book an excellent panorama (pp. 425–67) of the recent approaches to and interpretations on homosexuality by Orthodox priests, lay theologians, psychologists, and medical practitioners. 50 Fr Thermos first questioned the explanation of homosexuality as a ‘passion’ and as a perversion in his article ‘Ομοφυλοφιλία: Ένα “ασύμμετρο” πρόβλημα’ [‘Homosexuality: An “Asymmetric” Problem’], in Χριστιανική ζωή και σεξουαλικές σχέσεις [Christian Life and Sexual Relations], ed. by Vasilis Argyriadis and Christos Markopoulos (Athens: En plo, 2015), pp. 149–79. 51 Thermos, ‘The Orthodox Church’, p. 84. 52 Thermos, Έλξη και Πάθος, pp. 605–31, especially pp. 635–50. Cf. Thermos, ‘The Orthodox Church’, pp. 88–89.

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Without being a specialist, and of course without daring to compare my very elementary knowledge of the topic with that of Fr Thermos and other specialists, I would say that I am more and more convinced, on the basis of my limited readings, by the arguments suggesting an explanation of homosexuality via genetic and hormonal reasons. Due to space constraints, I will limit myself only to one such study, i.e., the work by Dr Jacques Balthazart, Professor of Behavioural Neuroendocrinology, and Director Emeritus of the Research Group in Behavioral Neurobiology at the GIGA Neurosciences of the University of Liège in Belgium. His now classic study, titled The Biology of Homosexuality, was first published in French, and then in English translation.53 The basic argument of that book can be summarized by the following points: – It seems well established that the sexual and social experiences of early childhood and adolescence have little or no effect on the development of homosexuality. Theories of homosexuality derived from psychoanalysis, behaviourism, or social constructivism, attributing a major role to early sexual experiences or relationships with parents, did not find any support in controlled scientific studies and are in fact at odds with many facts of observation.54 – Human (and animal) homosexuality is the result of an interaction between hormonal and genetic embryonic factors with perhaps a minor contribution of post-natal social and sexual experiences […] It is thus clear that none of the biological factors identified to date is able by itself to explain homosexuality. Three potential explanations are therefore possible. Either there are different types of homosexuality – some have a genetic origin, others a hormonal origin, still others result from the older brothers effect or from biological factors not yet identified – or the effects of different biological factors that have been identified interact with each other in a variable manner in each individual; and it is only when several of these predisposing factors are combined that homosexual orientation is observed, or finally, all the biological factors that I have described only produce a predisposition to become homosexual, and these predispositions can only develop in a specific set of psychosocial contexts that are not yet identified. But if this post-natal context is actually an important permissive factor, it is surprising that a quantitative study has been unable so far to identify aspects of the environment that are limiting.55 – It is clear that biological factors acting during prenatal life play a significant role in determining sexual orientation and that homosexuality is not, for most people, a choice of life. This orientation is often or always a reality that imposes itself on the individual during his or her teens or life as a young adult. The recognition of a nonconventional sexual orientation is very often the occasion of significant psychological suffering. It is important to remember that the suicide rate is three times higher during adolescence among homosexuals as compared to the general

53 Jacques Balthazart, The Biology of Homosexuality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 54 Balthazart, The Biology of Homosexuality, p. 157. 55 Balthazart, The Biology of Homosexuality, pp. 158–59.

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population. By contrast, the heterosexual orientation develops spontaneously, often while the individual does not truly realize it. It is not a matter of choice here. One does not choose to be homosexual any more than one chooses to be heterosexual. We can choose to accept this orientation, to act accordingly, and to reveal it or not to society, but the orientation itself is not in any way a deliberate choice […] There are probably sex perverts among homosexuals, just as there are among heterosexuals, but homosexuality itself is not a perversion. A large proportion of homosexuals are born with that sexual orientation, which is revealed to them in a very progressive way during development and is often accepted at the price of a significant psychological distress. It is for most of them not a choice […] Homosexuality is due neither to a perversity nor to inadequate parents. It is a biological variation of a complex behavioral trait whose control is obviously multifactorial.56 I am not in position to judge if Balthazart (and other scientists who share the same view) is right in his argument. But if he is, then the Church, as well as the overall Orthodox approach to the issue of homosexuality, has to proceed to radical and painful revisions. If it does not, it will be trapped once again in a defensive attitude and apologetics like those adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, or it will repeat the same mistakes perpetrated by the Orthodox in the second half of the eighteenth century, at the time of the encounter of Orthodoxy with the Enlightenment – a problematic encounter sketched in the first part of the present chapter. My intention in the second part of this chapter was not to discuss from a theological or Orthodox point of view the difficult and controversial issue of homosexuality. Undoubtedly, it is a timely discussion that should take place. But this is not the proper place for it.57 That is why I left out of my presentation the discussion about the ecclesial and theological rejection of homosexuality, the burning issue of gay marriages and civil unions, as well as the practice of ecclesial oikonomia and pastoral care. I skipped also a detailed discussion of the crucial theological question (which in many regards is also a theodicy question) of the non-responsibility of the homosexual for his/her homosexuality, for which Orthodox priests and theologians cannot offer

56 Balthazart, The Biology of Homosexuality, p. 159. 57 In addition to the works by Fr Vasileios Thermos, Fr Marc-Antoine Costa de Beauregard, and Fr Thomas Hopko mentioned above, the discussion on homosexuality and Orthodoxy is greatly enriched by some further recent publications: a) ‘For I am Wonderfully Made’: Texts on Eastern Orthodoxy and LGBT Inclusion, ed. by Misha Cherniak, Olga Gerassimenko, and Michael Brinkschröder (Amsterdam: The European Forum of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Christian Groups, 2016), with contributions by Bryce E. Rich, Natallia Vasilevich, Mark Stokoe, Misha Cherniak, Anastasios Kallis, Fr Robert Arida, Maria Guyn McDowell, Fr Jim Mulcahy, and others; and b) the issue 13–14 (Spring/Summer 2018) of the journal The Wheel, dedicated to the topic: ‘Being Human: Embodiment and Anthropology, Sex, Marriage, and Theosis’, with articles by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Fr Andrew Louth, Fr John Behr, Katherine Kelaidis, Beth Dunlop, Brandon Gallaher, Giacomo Sanfilippo, Christos Yannaras, Fr Vasileios Thermos, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Bradley Nassif, Marjorie Corbman, Steven Payne, Gregory Tucker, Fr John Jillions, and Fr Alexis Vinogradov.

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any other response except sexual abstinence – a quasi compulsory monastic life, but without a monastic vocation! –, and a life of pain, with a cross to bear, by way of participating in Christ’s cross. What drew my attention and concerned me here in the framework of a discussion on the relationship between science and Orthodoxy, was only the extent to which the Orthodox reflection on and overall attitude against homosexuality is aware of the current relevant academic and scholarly discussion, and if it takes into account the new scientific data and findings. With regard to this precise question, I am afraid that instead of a constructive and well-informed attitude, Orthodoxy is characterized today by a kind of moral panic, which in the case of the Orthodox Church of Greece, and more widely of Greek Orthodoxy, becomes particularly evident thanks to the public interventions and vociferous statements of bishops or monks. Some other territorial Orthodox Churches, like the Russian Orthodox Church, seem to be happy to use the issue of homosexuality for political reasons and to be instrumentalized for the sake of state policy by subscribing to a political agenda, which opposes the so-called decadent, corrupted, and effeminate secular West and supports the ‘traditional’ or ‘family’ values, and the hyper-masculinity and virility of the traditional Christian East. Similar positions can be observed in the Romanian, Georgian and other Orthodox Churches. Obviously, this is not the way to meet the requirements and the expectations of the dialogue between Orthodoxy and science, and by extension of the encounter between Orthodox Christianity and modernity/postmodernity.

Vasileios Thermos

Orthodox Tradition and Science Modernity as a Mediator

Orthodox Christianity and Science: The Patristic Heritage Orthodox tradition has its roots in the Holy Scripture and in the patristic body of theological work. Looking back at the Church Fathers’ opinions about science, we come upon an appreciation of all of the technical aspects for the improvement of life, especially medicine, although subjects such as those did not yet enjoy a scientific status in the way they do in the modern era. They were considered products of human knowledge and skills, definitely at a lower condition than that of philosophy. The ancient Orthodox theological tradition toward science is characterized by an attitude that would be called pragmatism. In the pre-modern era, philosophy was the only branch of thought invested with an autonomous existence vis-à-vis theology: For the Fathers, knowledge of nature was an integral part of the larger philosophical enterprise […] It is critical here to remember that many aspects of ancient scientific study were deeply grounded in philosophy which, in our modern understanding, formed a methodological framework for the study of nature.1 Yet, as we will see, philosophy produced knowledge; by no means had science been an alternative philosophy in terms of principles and method. No one could conceive that human activities such as astronomy, physics, medicine and architecture – let alone theoretical endeavours such as history – possessed the implicit qualities that would enable them to compete with theology or engage into a dialogue with it. The social and intellectual framework within which ancient scientists worked differed in certain fundamental respects from that of their modern counterparts. There was no acknowledged place in ancient thought or in ancient society for science, or for the scientist as such. These ‘investigators’ performed different social roles as doctors



1 Alexei Nesteruk, Light from the East: Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), pp. 14–15. Vasileios Thermos  University Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens, Greece Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 67–79. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116857

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or architects or teachers.2 To possess knowledge and skills that were useful did not endow one with a particular way of thinking, which differed from the mainstream religious mentality. According to the G. W. H. Lampe’s Greek Patristic Lexicon, among the vast patristic literature the word ἐπιστήμη (science) is used in a way similar to the contemporary one only by Clement of Alexandria: ‘It is the property of science to rest on general and defined principles’.3 Perhaps this is the only patristic use of the Greek term ἐπιστήμη in a sense that resembles the contemporary one. All other citations of ἐπιστήμη in patristic literature connote that it is considered as practice or art (τέχνη)4 dedicated to improving life and alleviating pain. John Chrysostom condenses this idea in various places in his works: sailors and other professions ‘make use of their own science/ art’5. Adeptness in governing and pastoring is bestowed the status of ἐπιστήμη too6; he also writes about Moses: ‘So too did his knowledge make him what he claimed to be. For ruling is an art, not merely a dignity, and an art above all arts. For if the rule of those without is an art and science superior to all other, much more this.’7 Larchet summarizes here: The modern idea of science did not exist in the Fathers […] The areas of knowledge which today belong to the sciences in the past took forms that we can call, using contemporary norms, non-scientific […] Some subjects that we consider today as sciences were in the past thought of as ‘arts’, that is as technical skills.8 To be pragmatic means that one acknowledges practices/arts as gifts from God, which are granted in order to make life more livable. There was no concern about specific methodological issues that science gives rise to, which might require study and consideration. As Nicolaidis puts it:





2 Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd, Greek Science after Aristotle (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), p. 176. 3 ‘Ἴδιον δὲ ἐπιστήμης καθολικοῖς ἐπερείδεσθαι θεωρήμασι καὶ ὡρισμένοις.’ Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 8, 8, Patrologia Graeca (PG) 9, 589A (Translation from [All websites cited were accessed in February 2018]. 4 See, for example, John Chrysostom, Homily on Genesis, 29, 3, PG 53, 264: ‘Ἕκαστος ὑπὸ τῆς παρὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ σοφίας ἐγκειμένης τῇ φύσει εὑρετὴς ἐκ προοιμίων τέχνης τινὸς γέγονε.’ (‘Each one has found a practice [profession] through the wisdom of God that has been inherent in nature.’) (My translation); idem, Homily on Matthew, 59, 7, PG 58, 584B: ‘Τῆς τέχνης ταύτης [τοῦ παιδαγωγοῦ, V. Th.] οὔκ ἐστιν ἄλλη μείζων.’ (‘And yet than this art there is not another greater.’) (Translation from ). 5 ‘Tὰ τῆς οἰκείας ἐπιστήμης μεταχειρίζει.’ John Chrysostom, Homily on Genesis, 6, 5, PG 53, 59A (My translation). 6 ‘Tοῦτο ἀρχή, τοῦτο ποιμαντικὴ ἐπιστήμη’. John Chrysostom, Homily on Psalm 113: 2, PG 55, 306B (My translation). 7 ‘Oὕτω καὶ τοῦτον ἡ ἐπιστήμη τοιοῦτον ἐποίησε […] ἡ τῶν ἔξωθεν ἀρχὴ τέχνη καὶ ἐπιστήμη πασῶν βελτίων ἐστί’. John Chrysostom, Homily on 2 Corinthians, 15, 3, PG 61, 506B (Translation from ). 8 Jean-Claude Larchet, ‘Patristic Views on the Nature and Status of Scientific Knowledge’, in Orthodox Theology and the Sciences: Glorifying God in His Marvelous Works, ed. by George Dragas, Pavel Pavlov and Stoyan Tanev (Columbia, Missouri: Newrome Press, 2013), pp. 51–67 (pp. 51, 52).

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This spirit leads to a ‘utilitarian’ approach to sciences, which are used for their effects, without necessarily testing the correspondence of scientific theory with absolute truth […] This tradition contributed to holding sciences in the Orthodox Byzantine world at a lower level than that of literature.9 Therefore, to say that no independent science existed before the modern era and that there were no methodological issues to be discussed would be a tautology. The two statements are in a dialectical interrelation and nowadays make two ways of articulating the same thing. Since no secular science equipped with an epistemological status except for philosophy existed, the question of an epistemological dialogue seemed rather meaningless. For an entity to engage into a dialogue with theology about principles, it has to be first elevated to the status of a distinct science, namely a distinct way of thought and a privileged path to truth about material realities.10 Under this definition the modern mind recognizes a wide range of scientific disciplines, each of which is accompanied by its own epistemological principles. Interdisciplinary dialogue among sciences, fruitful as it can be in terms of content, actually means a dialogue regarding their principles and assumptions as ways of thought and paths to truth. Theology, though not a typical science, has its own principles and engages in a dialogue with almost every discipline. This situation was not favored in the Byzantine Patristic era. Certainly, there was always a distinction between profane (θύραθεν) and Christian wisdom/truth, so tensions between the two could easily arise, and in fact did in various major or minor



9 Efthymios Nicolaidis, ‘Ορθοδοξία, “Θρησκευτικός Ουμανισμός”, και Διαφωτισμός. Οι επιστήμες στον Ελληνισμό του 18ου αιώνα’ [‘Orthodoxy, “Religious Humanism”, and Enlightenment. Sciences in the Hellenism of the Eighteenth Century’], Νefsis, 1 (1994), 99–120 (pp. 100–101). 10 Among the vast bibliography about Orthodox views of science, I will mention some works that are engaged in a discussion about scientific methodological principles and their relationship to theology and faith: 1) Philip Sherrard, The Eclipse of Man and Nature: An Enquiry into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science (West Stockbridge, MA: Inner Traditions Lindisfarne Press, 1987); 2) Gayle Woloschak, Beauty and Unity in Creation: The Evolution of Life (Minneapolis: Light and Life Publications, 1996); 3) Nesteruk, Light from the East; 4) Christos Yannaras, Postmodern Metaphysics, trans. by Norman Russell (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2004); 5) Petros Vasileiadis, ‘Θεολογία και Επιστήμη κατά τη Μετανεωτερικότητα’ [‘Theology and Science in Postmodernity’], in Πρακτικά Γ´ Συμποσίου Θεολογικών Σχολών Αθηνών - Θεσσαλονίκης, 9–10 Μαΐου 2006 [Proceedings of the 3rd Symposium of the Theological Schools of Athens and Thessaloniki, 9–10 May 2006] (Thessaloniki: Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, 2006), pp. 84–98; 6) Spyros Tsitsingos, Θρησκεία και Επιστήμη: Συμβολή στην Επιστημολογική Διαλεκτική Ακτίστου και Κτιστού [Religion and Science: A Contribution to the Epistemological Dialectics of the Uncreated and the Created] (Athens: Voutzoulidis, 2010); 7) Efthymios Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization, trans. by Susan Emanuel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011); 8) Daniel Buxhoeveden and Gayle Woloschak (eds), Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); 9) Bishop Maxim Vasiljevic, History, Truth, Holiness: Studies in Theological Ontology and Epistemology (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2011) (especially the chapter on biochemistry, pp. 67–118); 10) Stoyan Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics: From Controversy to Encounter (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017).

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forms. Yet, truth was pervasively considered as fundamentally religious and theology was its exclusive interpreter.

Modernity and Science: East and West In the West, the Church seemed to favor a close association of theology with the study of the natural world; on the contrary, the Orthodox Church tended to detach herself from a claim about an absolute truth.11 This specific difference may contribute to a higher institutional atheism linked to science in the West, as science appeared to be an antagonist of theology. For the Orthodox East, truth was fundamentally religious too, yet truth about the material realities (what corresponds to contemporary science) was not considered a part of theological truth as later was the case in Western scholasticism. Modernity has been a revolutionary landmark by having facilitated the emergence of various scientific branches, yet its impact is far from being only quantitative. For example, the contribution of psychology to the understanding of human behavior, the invisible included, proved to be highly critical, so that Vergote calls it ‘a new anthropology […] which paid a new and special attention to the subject’.12 Science, as we know it now, is inextricably intertwined with modernity; the latter is the former’s indispensable condition. As Braudel puts it: Every scientific approach is usually inscribed in a general explanation of the world. There cannot be conceived any progress or reason or fertile hypothesis if a general system of references does not exist, in relation to which one can position oneself and then be orientated.13 The critical change brought by modernity has been a qualitative one. It elevated each scientific branch to the status of an autonomous mode of thought, with its own principles and methods. Now they are no longer understood as mere artful contributions to human life; instead, they are conceived as respective ways of thought, a fact that awakens a curiosity about comparative ways of thought, namely about an interdisciplinary dialogue among sciences. This crucial shift has been feasible exactly because of the nature of modern times. Modernity, as an entirely new cultural stage, mediated the appearance of sciences with its own unique characteristics and the concomitant processes: rationality, secularity, individuality, emphasis on the self and self-determination, rebellion against collectivities, privatization of religion. These attributes of modernity have created quite a new landscape in the West. They changed the way we think, as well as the way we think we should think. They have established a specific imperative for the

11 Nicolaidis, ‘Ορθοδοξία’, pp. 117–18. 12 Antoine Vergote, Modernité et Christianisme (Paris: Cerf, 1999), pp. 91–92. 13 Fernand Braudel, Grammaire des Civilisations (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), p. 405. (My translation from the French original).

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well-being of human nature, which implicitly pertains to an obsession about the need for continuous progress. The characteristics of modernity have disseminated the measure to which all human activities must be assessed. Philip Sherrard had remarked that ‘[m]odern science presupposes a radical reshaping of our whole mental outlook. It involved a new approach to being, a new approach to nature, in short, a new philosophy’.14 Under these circumstances science very quickly gained high prestige in promising the means to achieve happiness and, furthermore, by providing a standard of validity. Now we have to think scientifically in order to succeed or to be reliable. In this way, science became a competitor with faith in terms of promoting a separate and distinct access to truth. It is not a coincidence that many years ago the vast majority of psychologists were atheists. Meanwhile the situation has changed […] The long history of misunderstandings (between psychology and theology) caused a delay in the renewal of theology, which human sciences were capable of activating.15 When theology and science started encountering each other in the intellectual universe of modernity, it was soon evident that the critical battle would not be in regard to the particular qualities and principles of each science, but that the overall attributes of modernity would themselves determine the type of encounter the two entities would have. Sciences are quite diverse as far as the content that unites them, yet the philosophical assumptions and methodologies they share in common constitute the main characteristics of modernity. Indeed, in Western Europe legendary conflicts took place exactly on the point of rationalism and its vicissitudes. Actually, what was happening was that modernity in the West had already been acknowledged as the critical mediator of everything, including the encounter of sciences with theology. Some historical conditions facilitated this development. First, modernity was indigenous to the West and not imported, thus rendering it more influential. In addition to this, Protestantism had already appeared as a predecessor of modernity, engaging reason and freedom of thought as religiously sanctioned bases. Besides, the claim that had prevailed for centuries in the West about secular knowledge being part of the theological one to which it submits, left an inheritance, which affected the new landscape; now an independent secular thought was dangerous for theology as it vindicated the same territory: the truth about the material world. What Western Christianity had preserved as a unique characteristic, namely when its theology claimed to hold the keys for ‘scientific’ knowledge as well, now turned to the reverse: it became a self-harming weapon that exposed the Western Church to a tough contest. For these and perhaps other reasons, Western Christianity quite early was engaged in a dialogue with modernity with a variety of outcomes, which is quite reasonable given that each religion and denomination is composed of a wide range of mentalities, from fundamentalist to liberal. In Western Christianity, hostile attitudes towards

14 Sherrard, The Eclipse, p. 63. 15 Vergote, Modernité et Christianisme, pp. 92, 97.

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science could thus coexist with clergymen being scientists themselves. The result of this historical process has been that in the West the dialogue unfolded on the level of the principles of modernity. Regardless if it was peaceful or conflictual, honest or mean, consistent or defensive, the dialogue in the West came to be epistemological. Modernity had already settled in society and could not be ignored. It had become the theatre and battlefield of this encounter. Αt stake were the principles of modernity without which science would not exist. In the Orthodox East, a different condition prevailed. Occupied by the Ottoman Turks (the Balkans) or absorbed in their own traditional self-sufficiency (Russia), the Orthodox peoples lacked the opportunity to meet with modernity and its principles at the level of a broad educational culture and system, let alone enjoy an educated clergy. They first saw scientific and technological achievements being imported, while modern ideas kept arriving in the Orthodox countries in the form of limited translations or of persons that had studied in the West and thus returned influenced by rationalism and atheism. With the exception of some Russian thinkers in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century until 1917, Orthodox theologians included, the view that modernity was experienced in the Orthodox countries (at least until the 1960s) as a new developmental stage of culture, as a wave which consistently permeated all aspects of life, never became a mainstream idea. Instead, it has been felt as atheism and anticlericalism closely connected with modern science. In spite of the efforts of a number of Greek Orthodox clergy (Methodios Anthrakites, Eugenios Voulgaris, Nicephoros Theotokes) and lay Orthodox thinkers who welcomed the Enlightenment and contributed to a fertile reception of its ideas into theological thought, the overall attitude of the Orthodox world seems reluctant to address epistemological aspects in a non-moralistic way. Secular scientists tended to be perceived, not as adopting alternative explanatory schemas of the world, but rather as arrogantly ignoring or showing contempt for the truth of the Church. Thus, the threat did not have the opportunity to be experienced at the level of principles. By saying this, I mean that sciences were perceived by the Orthodox folk tradition not as new epistemological paths, but as utilitarian means served basically by atheists. For the majority of the Orthodox, it is the particular scientists who decide to ignore faith or to oppose it. Ironically, the example of numerous faithful scientists, both in the West and the East, reasonably enhances this illusion. Consequently, the Orthodox world could not initiate an epistemological dialogue, simply because in their point of view, sciences did not bear epistemology with them as Western Christianity had assumed. (I have to explain here that by ‘Orthodox world’ I have in mind the Churches with their clergy and theologians; I do not include certain Orthodox scientists who were and still are able and willing to have such a dialogue, because they do so more as scientists and less as Orthodox. Indeed, they seem to be the only persons capable of bridging the gap.) So, by facing science without the mediation of modernity, the Orthodox tradition seems to adopt a splitting between the utilitarian function of science and its epistemological principles. This attitude allows us to find Orthodox scientists who may be experts in their own field, yet are unable to engage in an epistemological dialogue. Their scientific adeptness does not equip them to adequately address the

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problematic of methodology. This lack stems from the reluctance of the Orthodox folk tradition to see modernity as a new culture which has arrived here to stay, and consequently from its avoidance of the question about what can be received from modernity and how.16 Yet the epistemological status of science has to be respected by theologians, as Georgios Mantzaridis has put it, concerning social sciences. He suggests that their principles and methods have to be respected by theology, if the latter is to demand a mutual respect for its own principles.17 This position is important inasmuch as Mantzaridis is a well-known advocate of Hesychasm and neptic theology, who cannot be accused by conservatives of a ‘Westernized’ mentality. Is there any pre-modern historical example of Orthodox theology assuming science that can become a paradigm for the present and the future? As the Fathers of third and fourth centuries accepted whatever was healthy and worthy of Hellenism, they consequently included the science of the time. In spite of a conservative stream that existed and resisted secular knowledge, they proceeded to acknowledge the science of that time in the general frame of embracing Hellenism.18 Karras, in highlighting the reception of secular elements by the Fathers in order to edify theology and the Church, recalls Gregory of Nyssa’s hermeneutical guideline: Gregory, in his Life of Moses,19 allegorized Moses’ command to the Israelites to steal the gold of the Egyptians as an instruction for Christians to appropriate the scientific knowledge of Hellenistic culture – ‘moral and natural philosophy, geometry, astronomy, dialectic’ – for the edification of the church.20 It seems that the attitude of appreciation and reception by the Fathers is documented on a theological rationale. Scientific knowledge can and should be assumed because it is part of the divine revelation, which is ‘read’ in two ‘books’, Scripture and the world. Woloschak writes:

16 To continue approaching contemporary science as a variety of merely utilitarian techniques, apart from being an anachronism (by regressing to pre-modern mentalities), proves that the Orthodox who share this stance are fugitives from the era they live in. After the philosophical status of science was revealed, no one can pretend that this does not exist. On the other hand, if one admits that sciences really exist as applied aspects of Modernity, one has to accept and actively engage in a dialogue between science and theology, otherwise one has to be a contemporary Luddite, by refusing to use products of science and technology in everyday life. Obviously, the Orthodox are somehow entrapped; there is no alternative to respecting and discussing with science, if theology is not to be betrayed. 17 Georgios Mantzarides, ‘Ορθόδοξη θεολογία και κοινωνικές επιστήμες’ [‘Orthodox Theology and Social Sciences’], in idem, Ορθόδοξη θεολογία και κοινωνική ζωή [Orthodox Theology and Social Life], (Thessaloniki: Pournaras, 2nd edition, 1996), pp. 41–60. 18 Efthymios Nikolaidis, ‘Μικρό σημείωμα περί Χριστιανισμού και επιστημών στη βυζαντινή περίοδο’ [‘A Short Note on Christianity and Sciences in the Byzantine Era’], Utopia, 92 (2010), pp. 43–47. 19 Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, 2, 115–116, PG 44, 360BC. 20 Valerie Karras, ‘Science and the Cappadocians: Orthodoxy and Science in the Fourth Century’, in Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church, ed. by Daniel Buxhoeveden and Gayle Woloschak (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 29–40 (p. 31).

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Maximus truly claims that any of the laws when combined as they should lead to the same final destination – Christ in Whom these divisions are no longer meaningful […] Maximus’ claim that all things are united in Christ is one that is diametrically opposed to the dichotomy so abundant in the recent scholarship such as the NOMA (no overlapping magisteria) model. In Christ, there is no division between nature and Scripture, no division between physical and spiritual, and thus no division between science and religion. The two-books model is an artificial invention of humans to resolve an apparent and superficial difference that in Christ is no difference at all.21 Thus, the fundamental doctrine of Incarnation seems to make for a vital model to be pursued for any encounter of the Church with the world. According to Maximus, ‘the Word of God (Christ) wishes that the mystery of His Incarnation be realized in everything and always’.22 Instead of viewing the created world as a contestant (which would be irrational and disastrous), the Divine Logos approached it in love and synergistic disposition. I propose that this model can be of benefit for the issue of the relationship between Orthodox theology and science. According to this line, Nellas considers science, together with other creative activities, as ‘skin garments’, which definitely must not be autonomous; to the degree that they will ‘revolt’ and become ends in themselves they have to be strongly criticized by Orthodox theology. However, he argues, if they serve the doxology of God and salvation of human beings, they are assumed by the Church and its theology, thus becoming ‘functions of the Body of Christ’!23 Obviously, this is the highest status that science can enjoy, an ultimate ideal that still waits to be implemented. What could this wording mean? Orthodox theology is called to discern which of the elements of a given culture are worthy of being assumed and transformed, while some others are to be rejected according to its own revealed Truth. The classical paradigm of this discernment was inherent to the encounter between Christianity and Hellenism, which makes a monumentally bold and successful application of this principle of Incarnation. Since then, no other similar case has appeared. Modernity and the Scientific Revolution it brings with it are to me the perfect example for becoming the second historical case of reception and transformation. Nothing less than this is the calling for Orthodox scientists. I believe that, to the degree that theology can successfully handle modernity, all problems it has with science will be solved, or at least responsibly treated. This is because by doing so, modernity will not be an enemy anymore, but rather a partner (albeit, a partner in relation to whom one stands critically). By deciding which aspects of modernity are worthy of reception, theology will inevitably integrate parts of the

21 Gayle Woloschak, ‘The Broad Science–Religion Dialogue: Maximus, Augustine, and Others’, in Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church, ed. by Daniel Buxhoeveden and Gayle Woloschak (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 133–40 (pp. 138–39). 22 Maximus Confessor, On various questions, PG 91, 1084D. 23 Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), pp. 93–96.

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logic of modernity. This will change theology of course, but it is not expected to distort its very message if this reception is performed with the criteria of Incarnation. Let us not forget that Christianity itself changed after its encounter with Hellenism without betraying its message; it rather clarified and further enforced it. That paradigm of the reception and embedding of Greek elements in the past seems quite encouraging; actually, the distance between Hellenism and Christianity was much greater than the one between Christianity and modernity now. The reason is that Christianity and modernity have an affinity and share common aspects24; furthermore, modernity has more characteristics in common with Christian theology than Hellenism did. According to some thinkers,25 many of its aspects are close to Christian thought and have their predecessors in Christianity. Some prodromal signs of modernity in Christianity can be: emphasis on personal responsibility, individualized freedom of choice against collectivity, equality before God, introspection, voting in synods and councils, demystification of nature by accepting medicine, and the rational undoing of heretical arguments. We need also to stress here that it would be impossible for modern science to emerge and develop in a societal and cultural context not characterized by the above features as cultivated by modernity. It is not self-evident that other religious traditions would equally favor the emergence of contemporary science.26 It would be greatly beneficial if historical research showed how the infusion of ‘modern-type’ Christian ideas into modernity paved the way for facilitating the emergence of science.

Orthodox Theology and Psychological Sciences I would consider it worthy to apply what I have amplified so far in an example from the area I deal with. Indeed, it is quite promising to explore the Christian roots of psychology,27 as Christianity shared a serious concern about the deep structure of human beings, the conscious or unconscious conflicts that the psyche hosts, the

24 For example, see: Vasilios N. Makrides, ‘Υπάρχει ανάγκη και δυνατότητα θετικής αξιολόγησης του Διαφωτισμού από Ορθόδοξη σκοπιά; Κριτικές παρατηρήσεις και προτάσεις’ [‘Is it Necessary and Possible to Positively Assess the Enlightenment from an Orthodox Perspective? Critical Remarks and Suggestions’], in Ελληνικός και Ευρωπαϊκός Διαφωτισμός. Πρακτικά Δ´ Συνεδρίου, 1821–2021 [Greek and European Enlightenment: Proceedings of the 4th Conference, 1821–2021], ed. by the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece (Athens: Archonatriki, 2016), pp. 239–84 (pp. 249, 255–56). 25 See for example Frédéric Lenoir, Le Christ Philosophe (Paris: Plon, 2007). 26 For an advocacy about a predisposition of Christianity toward modern science, see Eric Johnson and Stanton Jones, ‘A History of Christians in Psychology’, in Psychology and Christianity: Four Views, ed. by Eric Johnson and Stanton Jones (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), pp. 11–53 (pp. 20–25). See also John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 27 Johnson and Jones, ‘A History’, pp. 26–36, as well as Harold Delaney and Carlo Clemente, ‘Psychology’s Roots: A Brief History of the Influence of Judeo-Christian Perspectives’, in JudeoChristian Perspectives on Psychology: Human Nature, Motivation, and Change, ed. by William Miller and Harold Delaney (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2005), pp. 31–54.

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emotional sources of religious beliefs, the secrets of decision-making in terms of morality, the passions and their interrelatedness, as well as the conditions that shape individual responsibility. Undoubtedly, Christian anthropology, distinct from the Islamic one and radically different from the Buddhist one, paved the way for the later explorations which contemporary psychology undertook. Obviously there are divergences between the human subjects perceived by Christian theology and psychology, yet those differences rather reflect the difference between the modern subject and the pre-modern one; the latter’s characteristics are usually mistaken as Christian properties, because the vast portion of Christian literature was produced during the pre-modern ages. My point is that the qualities nuancing the pre-modern subject were of a cultural nature, not of a theological one. Among all secular disciplines that keep encountering theology, psychology definitely prevails in the folk discourse, which I find quite reasonable given that human beings and the way they function have always been at the centre of scientific curiosity. Besides, it is the domain of the human psyche that triggers the most exciting public discussions. After all, contemporary perplexed subjects need an abundance of psychological knowledge in order to be thoroughly served in pastoral care. After all, what are the secular disciplines if not updated forms of the human effort to describe the reality of the world? In the case of psychology, provided is a systematic way of articulating all available empirical experience of what it means to be human, in terms of intellect, emotions, desire, unconscious, memory, imagination and behaviour. Bearing this in mind, psychology and psychotherapy seem to have become pleasantly accepted in the Orthodox Church and embedded into theological curricula, clergy training, ecclesiastical parents’ groups, writings and conferences. During the last decades, psychological knowledge, in spite of a few noisy fundamentalist objections, has been constructively integrated into a wide range of activities: from sermons to doctoral dissertations. To me, this development indicates an innate affinity between the two domains, although one has to be constantly alert in avoiding the risk of a secularized Protestant-type psychologism. By doing so, the Orthodox Church loyally follows the path of the Fathers and their monumental synthesis. First, they had accepted the healthy parts of philosophy, which was the prevalent and officially acknowledged branch of thought during their times. They accepted it critically of course, but they were bold enough to respect its achievements and not demand it to merge into theology. Therefore, they paved the way and created criteria for this encounter. Second, they recruited any psychological intuition they could, although it was not yet invested with the status of a separate discipline. For theology, to encounter a discipline and build a constructive relationship with it in the way of Incarnation, is more than difficult. Easier options wait at the corner, following the respective types of Christological heresies: psychologism as yielding and surrendering to secular knowledge plays the role of Nestorianism, and fundamentalism as rejection and polemics against psychology stands for Monophysitism. To establish a cooperation which derives the best from psychological sciences and practices for the benefit of Church and theology, while leaving their methods intact, is somehow difficult to capture. The human mind tends to perceive unilateral conditions more

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easily than those which make space for both entities. Simply put, indivisible and unconfused coexistence is part of the mystery that surrounds our entire life, the mystery of Incarnation. To conclude by returning to the title, the appropriately integrative encounter of psychology–psychotherapy with Orthodox theology is not achieved when a faithful psychologist or therapist is excellent in his/her clinical practice and simultaneously mentions saints or elders as models of human behaviour and psyche. Piety is valuable, but it cannot prevent science from theological irrelevance. The reason for this is that in the example mentioned a gap is still active, in that no correlation has been identified or advanced between the scientific and the religious domains. A true encounter is implemented when that clinician is able to articulate how theoretical discourse about mental health and theological principles can be combined in appropriate ways without violating either of them. In other words, the question has to do with how much the psychological methods of diagnosing and assessing can be reliable about the truth of human beings, and consequently with how to allow psychotherapy (which is a product of modernity after all) and spiritual life to converge in order to serve the human subject. Another way to put it is to face psychology and psychotherapy as paths for knowledge of the human subject and to compare them with the Orthodox path of ascetical and neptic psychology; or, even better, to discuss how the two paths can cooperate.28 A fertile dialogue between the two has already been launched in the Orthodox Church. Interestingly enough, such a dialogue is in a way unique, given that other sciences have not entered so far into a fruitful encounter with Orthodox theology. 28 This is a road already paved. Some works by Orthodox authors on this point are: 1) Stephen Muse, ‘Orthodoxy and Psychology: A Marriage Made in Heaven or a House Divided?’, in Personhood: Orthodox Christianity and the Connection Between Body, Mind, and Soul, ed. by John Chirban (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1996), pp. 67–82; 2) Jamie Moran, ‘Orthodoxy and Modern Depth Psychology’, in Living Orthodoxy in the Modern World: Orthodox Christianity and Society, ed. by Andrew Walker & Costa Carras (London: SPCK, 1996), pp. 131–58; 3) Christopher Cook, The Philokalia and the Inner Life: On Passions and Prayer (Cambridge, UK: James Clarke & Co, 2011); 4) Chrysostomos Tympas, Carl Jung and Maximus the Confessor on Psychic Development: The Dynamics Between the ‘Psychological’ and the ‘Spiritual’ (London: Routledge, 2014); 5) Michael Bakker, ‘Maximus and Modern Psychology’, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, ed. by Pauline Allen and Brownen Neil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 533–47. I will also mention here my works of an epistemological character: 1) Άνθρωπος στον ορίζοντα: Προσεγγίζοντας τη συνάντηση Ορθόδοξης Θεολογίας και επιστημών του ψυχισμού [Man at the Horizon! Approaching the Encounter between Orthodox Theology and Psychological Sciences], (Athens: Grigoris, 2006); Romanian translation: Om la orizont! (Bucharest: Sophia, 2010); 2) ‘Θεολογία, Νεωτερικότητα καί Επιστήμες του Ψυχισμού’ [‘Theology, Modernity, and Psychological Sciences’], in Ορθοδοξία και Νεωτερικότητα [Orthodoxy and Modernity], ed. by Pantelis Kalaitzidis and Nikos Ntontos (Athens: Indiktos, 2007)], pp. 293–322; 3) ‘In the End is Love: Reflections on the Epistemological Status of Psychoanalysis’, in Vasileios Thermos, Thirst for Love and Truth: Encounters of Orthodox Theology and Psychological Science (Montreal: Alexander Press, 2010), pp. 42–53; 4) ‘Can Pastoral Care Successfully Merge Secular Disciplines with Biblical Theology?’, Testamentum Imperium: An International Theological Journal focusing on the Eternal Security of the Christian, 5 (2016), 1–11 [Thematic Issue: ‘Can You Hear me Now?: Making Pastoral Theology Relevant in a Modern World’], .

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To the degree that the two domains really meet each other and are mutually enriched, a true interdisciplinary dialogue is fostered and the Orthodox tradition engages in a real encounter with the contemporary world. This desirable encounter includes as an indispensable presupposition a convergence of the two vocabularies in order to be compared and mutually clarified.29 Such an epistemological discussion has already begun in Greece, as well as in other traditionally Orthodox countries.

Concluding Remarks I have attempted to present the idea that the Orthodox world has to come to terms with modernity if it intends to establish a constructive relationship with science. A lack of mediation results in a lack of relevance. In spite of the limited academic production I have mentioned, the two entities, Orthodox tradition and science, do not actually discourse in the Orthodox context on a wide basis; rather they tend to avoid or misunderstand each other, because many Orthodox continue to ignore or fight modernity. Such a condition harms both domains. Science misses the opportunity for a humbler and more integrated approach to the human situation, which could be discovered through theology, while theology cannot benefit from the coherence and practical benefits of scientific thought and thus remains prone to logical gaps and arbitrary implications. To put it differently, theologians need to remember that they too are subject to human contingency and historicity, while scientists have to keep in mind that they serve a perplexity that will always exceed their own abilities. What I should add before finishing is that, in the postmodern context, a cooperation between modern science and theology will be more than valuable. An alliance between modernity and religion has the power to challenge postmodern relativism and fragmentation. Both modern science and theology are consistent in believing in the existence of truth, as well as that truth has a meaning; they also are against the postmodern lack of coherence. To me, apart from the epistemological dialogue I have elaborated on, an interesting field for synergy has appeared. This is a new opportunity that could not be predicted some decades ago, at a time when polemical dialogue prevailed between the groups.

29 On this crossing of the vocabularies by Orthodox authors, see: 1) Chrysostomos Tympas, Θεός Λόγος και ανθρώπινος λόγος [God the Word and Human Logos] (Holy Mountain Athos: Holy Monastery of Dionysiou, 1998), pp. 288–366; 2) Vasileios Thermos, In Search of the Person: True and False Self According to Donald Winnicott and Gregory Palamas, trans. by Dem. Kokkines (Montreal: Alexander Press, 2002); 3) Nikolaos Loudovikos, Ψυχανάλυση και Ορθόδοξη Θεολογία [Psychoanalysis and Orthodox Theology], (Athens: Armos, 2003), with an English concluding summary, pp. 103–14; 4) Alexis Trader, Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of Minds (New York: Peter Lang, 2011); 5) Vasileios Thermos, ‘Toward a Theological Understanding of Psychopathology and Therapy’, in Psychology in the Service of the Church: Theology and Psychology in Cooperation (Los Angeles: Sebastian Press, 2017), pp. 129–53.

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This presents one more lesson that we Christians are invited to be open to. Orthodox tradition should be recreated continuously; it has to keep being rewritten by embracing science. Father Stăniloae has articulated a widely cited idea that so far has enjoyed limited implementation in terms of its weight: The most important problem for Orthodox theology will be to reconcile the cosmic vision of the Fathers with a vision which grows out of the results of the natural sciences […] Theology today must remain open to embrace both humanity and the cosmos.30

30 Dimitru Staniloae, Theology and the Church, trans. by Robert Barringer (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), pp. 224, 226.

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Part II

The Greek Patristic Heritage Its Potential for the Orthodoxy-Science Dialogue

Sergey S. Horujy

The Patristic Idea of Cosmic Liturgy as the Basis of the Relationship between Orthodox Theology and Science

Discursive Preamble Planning to study the relationship between modern science and Orthodox theology, we need a conceptual and discursive preamble. The meaning of terms should be made more precise, since both science and theology are vast subject fields with rather ill-defined borders. As for science, there is the divergence between the Anglo-Saxon and continental usage of the term. In contrast to the German Wissenschaft, the French science or the Russian nauka, the corresponding English term is very often identified with ‘natural science’, thus implying the dichotomy ‘science – humanity’ in the set of disciplinary discourses. If we adopt this usage, we exclude from the scope of our study all problems of the relationship between Orthodox thought and modern anthropological, philosophical and other humanistic discourses, which would strongly and undesirably restrict this scope. Thus, I understand ‘science’ in the widest sense referring to all ‘branches or departments of systematized and verified knowledge’.1 The notion of theology needs some clarification, as well. In the Christian tradition it was defined by means of a great many formulas starting with Augustine’s ‘Verbo graeco significari intelligimus de divinitate rationem sive sermonem’ (a Greek term by which we mean to signify a reasoning or a discourse about divinity).2 Practically all formulas, both ancient and modern, characterize it as a certain theory or system, i.e. something close to science, and very often exactly as a science; consider, for example, the ‘Science of the Divinely revealed religious truths’3 or the ‘Wissenschaft von Gottes

1 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, ed. by Philip Babcock Gove (Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Company Publishers, 1966), vol. ii, p. 2032. 2 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, VIII, 1, Patrologia Latina (PL) 41, 225. 3 The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. by Frank L. Cross (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 1344. Sergey S. Horujy  Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 83–95. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116858

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Beziehung zur Welt und von der Beziehung des Menschen zu Gott’.4 If we join this line of argument, then the task of our project would be the study of the relationship between various elements in all these kinds of scientific knowledge. However, in the Orthodox tradition there is a quite different conception of theology. According to the Orthodox Christian view, theology is neither a theoretical and systematic discourse nor the presentation of some doctrine, but the direct account of personal experience of one’s communion with God. This unique experience should be achieved through the ascetic practice. This view originates in the spirituality of the Cappadocian Church Fathers and is clearly stated by Gregory the Theologian, who claimed that theologizing is the final stage of the ascetic way of life, which includes three stages in total: purification – contemplation – theology (katharsis – theoria – theologia). Later on, St Maximus the Confessor adopted this triad in a slightly modified form: praxis – theoria – theologia.5 The ascetic tradition insists on the direct connection between theology and prayer as it is presented in the well-known aphorisms by Evagrius Ponticus or in those words of Maximus the Confessor: ‘Principal mysteries granted by Him to people […] in the Lord’s Prayer are: theology […] It is the incarnated Word of God that teaches theology.’6 In the Modern Age, this view was forced out of the Orthodox tradition by the above-mentioned Western conception of theology, but it was never forgotten completely. It survived in the ascetic mentality and milieus and in the Hesychast tradition, while it was stated anew quite recently by one contemporary Hesychast teacher, Abbot Sophrony, who argued: ‘Theology is not an invention of the human mind or a result of a critical study, but the first-hand account of a being into which the person can be introduced through the action of the Holy Spirit.’7 Including both a strong experiential and ascetic component, Orthodox thought has been shaped by the synthesis of the patristic spirit with ascetic life. Such a synthesis was first unfolded explicitly in the work of Maximus the Confessor. Evidently, this authentically Orthodox and Hesychast conception of theology – in contrast to the Western view – has nothing to do with science. It is quite possible that theology of this kind and science represent two spheres completely unrelated to each other. In order to study their relationship, we thus need some common ground, some context and discourse embracing both (Orthodox) theology and science. In what follows my purpose is to show that such common ground can be provided by the ancient Orthodox idea of Cosmic Liturgy.



4 Rudolf Eissler, Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe (Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1910), vol. iii, p. 1503. 5 See, e.g., Gregory the Theologian, Oratio XXVII. Theologica prima, Patrologia Graeca (PG) 36, 13, 16; Maximus the Confessor, Capita theologiae et oeconomiae, I, 36–39, PG 90, 1097. 6 Maximus the Confessor, Expositio orationis dominicae, PG 90, 875. 7 Hieromonk Sophrony (Sakharov), Старец Силуан [Starets Siluan] (Мoscow: Voskresenie, 1991), p. 153. Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) (1896–1993), the Athonite monk and disciple of St Silouan of Athos, was the founder and abbot of the monastery of St John the Baptist at Tolleshunt Knights (Essex, England), which became one of the main centres of the Hesychast tradition in the West.

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The Paradigm of the Cosmic Liturgy and its Patristic Roots The now popular formula ‘Cosmic Liturgy’ was first used by the Swiss Catholic theologian and Patristics scholar Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88) as a general name for the panorama of the created world in its relation to God in the thought of Maximus the Confessor. It was soon found to be a very apt characteristic uniting in itself key features of the human destination and the world process as viewed by Maximus and Orthodox Patristics in general. At the same time, however, this formula was never turned into a well-defined concept, and its contents did not obtain any systematic and precise exposition. In the present state of expression, the cosmic liturgy represents not so much an integral conception as a rather loose set of ideas bringing together several broad subject fields, dogmatic and liturgical theology, anthropology, cosmology (in the theological, not scientific sense of the word). But Maximus’s thought is famous for its synthesizing power, and despite this looseness, what is called cosmic liturgy, represents a well-balanced and impressive body of ideas. These should be briefly explained, as they constitute well-known principles of patristic theology in general: 1) Continuing the tradition of his predecessors (Irenaeus, Gregory the Theologian and others), Maximus states that the destination of the human is the deification, theosis. Theosis is conceived by him as the perichoresis of human and divine nature. The human being ‘who became god in the deification’ is ‘one who shows himself as having only God acting in him […] who is as a whole entirely embraced (perichoresas) by whole God and became everything what is God, except the identification in essence, and entirely accepted the whole God into himself ’.8 As we see here, the deification does not mean the union with Divine essence: ‘For Maximus, human nature in the deification […] does not become Divine in its essence.’9 Because of the Fall, the necessary precondition of deification is the Incarnation of the Son of God, so that God’s design was ‘to become Man Himself […] and to make man god by means of the union with Himself ’.10 On the other hand, the final union with God is conceived in accordance with Irenaeus’s paradigm of the recapitulation (anakephalaiosis) as the coming to and partaking in Christ. As a result, Maximus’s view of the theosis is thoroughly and entirely Christocentric. 2) The deification has cosmic dimensions. Its first realization concerns the human nature of Christ, but it also involves the human person and all creatures, so that it is a synthetic concept, Christological, anthropological and cosmological at the same time. The cosmic aspect appears already in the work of Gregory the Theologian who states: ‘The human being is created […] in order to make everything filled with the Glory 8 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua ad Iohannem, II, XLI, PG 91, 1076 C, 1308 B. 9 Dionisii A. Pospelov, ‘Преподобный Максим Исповедник как историческое лицо и богослов’ [The Venerable Maximus the Confessor as a Historical Person and a Theologian’], in Диспут с Пирром: прп. Максим Исповедник и христологические споры VII столетия [Dispute with Pyrrhus: The Venerable Maximus the Confessor and the Christological Debates of the Seventh Century], ed. by D. A. Pospelov (Moscow: Khram Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei, 2004), pp. 15–321 (p. 56). 10 Maximus the Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium. Quaestionis XXII, PG 90, 317.

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of God.’11 But it is undoubtedly Maximus who gives the most striking description of this aspect. In Maximus’s discourse, there is a special concept representing the sum of all creatures, which is considered as a certain unity, a ‘New Human Being’ that has to be deified. ‘In Ambigua XLI Maximus points to the human being as a microcosm created […] with the task of uniting all the levels of the created world with God.’12 Maximus presents a well-developed cosmology based on his scheme of the five divisions of the created world (uncreated–created, intelligible–sensual, Heaven–Earth, Paradise–Oikoumene, masculine–feminine), and the cosmological aspect of the deification is nothing but the consecutive overcoming of all these divisions: ‘The sequence of divisions is followed by the sequence of unions.’13 Because of the Fall (see above), the human being is not capable of performing this overcoming; it is performed exclusively by Christ and in Christ.14 Thus, cosmology is completely integrated into soteriology and is entirely Christocentric, as well. 3) The Christocentric character of deification generates far-reaching parallels between deification and liturgy. Both these sacred phenomena and events are of soteriological nature and represent some forms of the partaking in Christ. Their connection is clearly stated and traced in detail by Maximus in his Mystagogy: The giving of the sacrament […] transforms those who take it properly and makes them […] possessors of everything that belongs to Him, so that they can by adoption and grace be and be called gods because the whole God has filled them entirely leaving nothing deprived of His presence.15 The treatise establishes the detailed and consecutive correspondence between the phases of the celebration of the liturgy and the course of the history of Salvation starting with the Incarnation of the Son of God. ‘The service of the Eucharist in all its phases recalls all the divine economy of Salvation […] All liturgical action is the representation of the eschatological drama and the prefiguration of the future.’16 The deifying essence of the liturgy is repeatedly affirmed: ‘During the Holy Assembly the grace of the Holy Spirit is always present, which changes, transfigures and truly deifies all those who are there.’17 Moreover, the Church hierarchy and priesthood are also integrated into the economy of the deification: ‘The goal […] of the true priesthood is the deification of himself and others.’18 The cosmic aspect of the deification is involved here, as well. According to Maximus, the human person, the

11 Gregory the Theologian. Oratio XXXIX, In Sancta Lumina, PG 36, 548. 12 Torstein T. Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor (London: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 228. 13 Valerii V. Petrov, Максим Исповедник. Онтология и метод в византийской философии VII века [Maximus the Confessor: Ontology and Method in the Byzantine Philosophy of the Seventh Century] (Moscow: Institut Filosofii RAN, 2007), p. 104. 14 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua XLI, 1308 D–1312 B. 15 Maximus the Confessor, Mystagogia, XXI, PG 91, 697. 16 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Liturgie cosmique. Maxime le Confesseur (Paris: Aubier, 1947), p. 246. 17 Maximus the Confessor, Mystagogia, XXIV, PG 91, 704. 18 Maximus the Confessor, Epistula XXXI, PG 91, 625.

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Church, and the cosmos all mutually reflect one another, so that the Church can be seen as an image of the cosmos.19 Thus, the deification is a cosmic process, and liturgy is the heart of this process, bringing forth the participation in the deification to the celebrants. Thus, one can argue that the liturgy has also some cosmic aspect and in this sense is a ‘cosmic liturgy’. This is one of the principal conclusions of the path-breaking study by Lars Thunberg: ‘The ascension and mediation […] is understood by Maximus as a “cosmic liturgy”, to use the […] title of the von Balthasar study. Maximus himself makes this very clear in his interpretation of liturgy, in which also the whole cosmic work of mediation is in fact described.’20 The formula ‘cosmic liturgy’ catches the connection between the cosmos and the liturgy, and this connection is mutual: The liturgy is, in a certain sense, cosmic, and the existence of the cosmos is, in the same sense, liturgical, since its course corresponds to the phases of the liturgy. Hence, the meaning of the formula is also double-edged: The ‘cosmic liturgy’ is both the liturgy considered in its cosmic implications, as well as the cosmos (namely, the sum of all created beings) considered in the liturgical contents of its existence. In other terms, it is the deification in its complex nature as a sacramental, anthropological, and cosmic (in this order!) event.

The Paradigm of the Cosmic Liturgy: A Modern (Re)interpretation Maximus’s conception of deification represents a broad and systematic synthesis that is very characteristic of his intellectual style. The initial Christian intuition of human destination as a (re)union with Christ is elaborated here into a sophisticated scheme of the five divisions of the created being and the successive overcoming of these divisions. As noted always by various scholars, such schemes of divisions followed by (re)unions are typical epistemological constructions of Neoplatonic metaphysics and dialectics, especially that of Proclus, corresponding to the paradigm of the epistrophe. As Valery Petrov puts it: ‘When Maximus writes how the sequence of divisions is followed by the sequence of unions, he regards this process as a “turn back”. Such a turn of the vector of the cosmic development is standard for Neoplatonists.’21 (A quotation from Proclus follows, and the closeness to the epistrophe and the Porphyrian tree is noted.) However, in the Christian thought such schemes change radically their nature shifting usually from the epistemological discourse into various specifically Christian discourses, like dogmatic theology, sacred history, and also ascetics. This 19 See Andrew Louth, ‘The Holy Spirit in Creation and Re-Creation: The Byzantine Fathers’, in The Spirit in Creation and New Creation: Science and Theology in Western and Orthodox Realms, ed. by Michael Welker (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge: W. E. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), pp. 171–78. 20 Lars Thunberg. Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, second edition (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1995), p. 398. 21 Petrov, Максим Исповедник, p. 104.

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change was a complicated process with a different course and various results in the respective subject fields. In the case of deification, one can argue – leaving aside the sophisticated dialectical interplay between distinctions (diaphora) and divisions (diairesis) – that Maximus makes the overcoming of the divisions an ontological event stating its close connection with Christ and liturgy. In this way, deification obtains a liturgical or symbolic dimension in addition to an epistemological one, and there arises the majestic image of the cosmic liturgy. It is worth noting that at this stage, as well as in the entire history of the doctrine of deification, Orthodoxy states firmly its ontological nature, while its reduction to a solely epistemological or moral principle is characteristic of deviations, as during the anti-Palamism of the fourteenth century: ‘The doctrine of the deification in the anti-Palamism was basically the statement of the moral resemblance to God. It stated the moral rather than the ontological perfection.’22 In the following centuries, the above conception was considerably developed and complemented. In the first place, the closest possible connection between deification and the ascetic (Hesychast) practice was realized. This connection is already almost explicitly present in the work of Maximus, the author of the great synthesis of the patristic and the ascetic tradition. He stressed the necessity of ascetic labours for the spiritual ascension and described this ascension by means of the triad Praxis – Theoria – Theologia, which came close to the ladder structure of the mature late Byzantine Hesychast practice. However, in the seventh century this practice was still at the early stages of its formation. Its connection with deification was fully disclosed through the Hesychast disputes of the mid-fourteenth century when the theology of Gregory Palamas provided the theological interpretation of the contemplation of the Light of Tabor experienced by Athonite monks at the higher steps of the Hesychast Ladder of spiritual ascension. It was recognized that the experience of the Hesychasts at these steps is essentially identical to the experience of the disciples of Christ in the event of the Transfiguration on Tabor. It is the experience, in which human energies achieve a synergy with Divine energies perceived as the Light of Tabor, and these energies begin to transfigure the whole human being, penetrating and filling all of it. Further, it was also acknowledged that the higher steps of the Hesychast Ladder are nothing but the beginning of the actual approach to deification by the human being. All this was an important complement to the concept of deification. In basic terms, the following two points were here added to it: First, the direct connection of the deification of humans with the Hesychast practice was established. It was identified with the final goal, the telos, of the Hesychast practice, the top of the Hesychast Ladder, already belonging not to the present earthly, but to the Divine

22 Dmitrii I. Makarov, ‘Третий этап исихастских споров: столкновение исихазма и схоластики’ [‘The Third Stage of the Hesychast Disputes: The Collision between Hesychasm and Scholasticism’], in Феномен человека в его эволюции и динамике [The Phenomenon of the Human Being in his/her Evolution and Dynamics], ed. by Sergey S. Horujy (Veliki Novgorod: Novgorodskii MION, 2013), pp. 246–79 (p. 278).

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being. This identification means that the higher steps of the Hesychast practice signify the beginning of deification, and by consequence that the deification of humans also possesses an ascetic dimension – in addition to the symbolic one. Both dimensions are in perfect accordance with each other, and the former is an organic continuation of the latter: ‘The sacraments and the “ordeal” – these are two indissoluble and indivisible factors of Christian life […] The gifts which are given in the sacraments must be kept and nurtured.’23 Second, the deification of humans obtained a new interpretation in terms of the Divine energies. The way to deification was represented as the process, in which the Divine energies are transmitted to humans, penetrate and fill them, so that the deification as such is the perfect and complete union of all energies of their whole being with the Divine energies. This interpretation allows us to see the inner mechanism of the connection between the deification and the liturgy. The liturgy can also be interpreted in terms of the Divine energies since in the celebration of the liturgy the priest by virtue of his charisma transmits the gifts of God’s grace, namely the Divine energies, to the community of celebrants. Thus, in late Byzantine Hesychasm the concept of deification obtained new elements. It was recognized that, in addition to sacramental practices of the liturgy, the practices of the higher steps of the Hesychast Ladder belonged also to the economy of the deification. Through these practices the Hesychasts achieved the union of the human energies with the Divine energies, which perform the deification of the human being. As a result, the anthropological dimension of the deification is constituted by two major components, the sacramental and the ascetic respectively. As for the cosmic dimension of deification, the interpretation of the latter in terms of the Divine energies implies that this dimension is constituted by means of the transmission of the Divine energies into the entire created cosmos. In the sacramental and symbolic sense, such a transmission takes place in the context of the liturgy. But a component of another kind is possible here as well, at least in principle: The transmission of the deifying Divine energies into the world can a priori take place in some human practices in this world. Indeed, it is through the ascetic practices that humans can unite their own energies with the Divine energies, which begin acting in them. Hence, it follows that they a priori could be capable of transmitting such Divine energies into the world by means of their practices that deal with the things of the world. Such activity represents a natural extension of the phenomenon of the ‘return’ in Hesychasm, described by Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) as follows: St Anthony’s spiritual path takes the form of a flight followed by a return […] Such is the sequence: first withdrawal, then involvement […] Exactly the same pattern, of a flight followed by a return, recurs again and again in […] Christian

23 Georges V. Florovsky, Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century (Collected Works, IX) (Belmont: Nordland Press, 1986), p. 151.

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monasticism […] it characterizes the hesychast movement and helps us to appreciate what kind of contribution hesychasm has made to Byzantine culture.24 Thus, it is common that well-tried Hesychasts return to the secular world as elders transmitting Hesychast experience and principles of life to all people. It is quite logical to expect that this Hesychast return can be directed not only to social activity, but also to other spheres of life dealing with the things of the world. Such practices of ‘return’ can be considered as a kind of extending the Church liturgy.25 In the liturgy, the priest by virtue of his charisma transmits the gifts of God’s grace to the community of Christians. Similarly, those humans, who have won God’s grace, could transmit the deifying Divine Energies into the world. But to mention a cardinal difference: The things of the world are not supposed to participate in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, hence the human being as the actor of the cosmic deification does not need to have the charisma of the priest. Clearly, the above description of a cosmic deification adds a new side to the idea of the cosmic liturgy and is fully in accordance with Maximus’s vision of the human being as the mediator within the entire creation. It is worth adding that the human being is the only possible mediator: It is the only created entity having the Covenant with God and capable of acquiring the grace necessary for the cosmic deification. However, we should keep in mind that deification means the transfiguration of the cosmos and the transcending of the created being, a process that changes its fundamental predicates. In the past, all available human practices could not produce such global and radical changes, and hence, irrespective of their relation to the deification of humans, they could not contribute to the cosmic deification. But the present is surely the time of accelerating anthropological and historical dynamics. Humans have changed and continue to change, and their relations with the surrounding world have changed drastically too. New practices have emerged, which grow vigorously, produce cardinal changes in the human environment, and advance further and further into the worlds of both micro-systems and cosmic systems. These practices are already coming close to the limits, where they can affect 24 Kallistos Ware, Bishop of Diokleia, ‘Act out of Stillness’: The Influence of Fourteenth-Century Hesychasm on Byzantine and Slav Civilization (The ‘Byzantine Heritage’ Annual Lecture, May 28, 1995), ed. Daniel J. Sahas (Toronto: The Hellenic Canadian Association of Constantinople and the Thessalonikean Society of Metro Toronto, 1995), p. 15–16. (Author’s italics.) A copy of this text has been sent to me by the author with his manuscript editing. A Russian translation of this text by myself was published in Symbol 52 (Paris-Moscow 2007), 51–71. 25 The idea that human practices in the created world can and must be a sui generis extension of the liturgy, or an ‘out-of-temple liturgy’ (внехрамовая литургия), was actively promoted in Russian religious philosophy and especially in the so-called Russian cosmism. But usually the development of this idea deviated far from the Orthodox tradition. There is also a certain resemblance between the idea of the cosmic liturgy and Russian sophiology, especially, the theology of the Godmanhood by Father Sergius Bulgakov. Here the important problem of the relationship between the deification and the apocalyptic scenario is discussed. One can also mention here that various extensions or modifications of the concept of liturgy were repeatedly propounded in Christian thought; for example, the liturgy celebrated by the mind in the heart (by St Gregory Sinaites), or the celestial liturgy with the participation of angels (by Francisco Suarez in Roman Catholicism).

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basic predicates of our world and the very existence of it. As René Girard puts it, ‘now people become capable to destroy their Universe’.26 It means that, in contrast to the patristic or late Byzantine era, the fundamental divisions of the created world get now involved into the orbit of human practices and start to respond to human actions. Thus, in addition to the symbolic overcoming of these divisions, their actual changes in human practices become possible. As a result, human practices can now, at least in principle, affect what happens in the cosmic dimension of the deification, and a priori they can do it in both ways: They can contribute to the cosmic deification by intensifying the overcoming of the divisions or they can prevent this overcoming. Such prospects open the way to many new questions and problems in the old patristic topic of deification. As for the cosmic liturgy, this formula of von Balthasar, which was initially conceived as quasi-metaphorical, represents now a complex ontological drama combining symbolic, anthropological and technological dimensions.

Theology, Science and Technology through the Prism of the Cosmic Liturgy First of all, we notice that in our extended interpretation the paradigm of the cosmic liturgy fits well into the modern philosophical and anthropological discourse, which describes anthropological reality as an ensemble of practices of all kinds. Our discussion has led us to certain new kinds of practices, which can be called practices of the cosmic liturgy or of the cosmic deification. They belong to human practices in the outer world and need to be analyzed in more detail. The deification process embraces the entire created world, and consequently the practices of the cosmic liturgy must deal, in principle, with all its spheres. Thus, the set of these practices is a large ensemble including practices of all kinds, namely religious, anthropological, social, cultural, scientific and technological. All of them have a special mission. As liturgical practices transmitting God’s grace to communicants, these practices must transmit to the world the deifying God’s energies. These energies are radically different from the natural energies acting in physical phenomena and processes. They are the grace that is the love of Christ, and it is the power of this love that overcomes the fundamental divisions of the world. Of course, usual practices dealing with the phenomena of the outer world and belonging mostly to the spheres of technology and science do not perform such a mission. The practices of the cosmic liturgy must be singled out in their character and significance by means of certain selection and transformation criteria. The overcoming of the fundamental divisions of the created world leads to a certain harmonious order of things, which includes the perfect accord between humans and their environment, as well as the whole world of nature. Leading to such an order of things, the practices of the cosmic liturgy have much in common with ecological practices directed to the establishment of ecological harmony. The parallel between 26 René Girard, Achéver Clausewitz (Paris: Flammarion, 2007), p. 362.

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the principles of the cosmic liturgy and those of ecology deserves special attention. Evidently, the cosmic liturgy includes the achievement of ecological harmony, but its goal, the deification, demands the transfiguration of the world, which goes far beyond this achievement. The transfiguration is to be performed on the cosmic and not just planetary scale. It is performed by the power of love of Christ, which is transmitted into the world by those humans who win God’s grace by means of ascetic labours. Hence, it follows that the practices of the cosmic liturgy use principles and unite practices of ecology and ascesis. The idea of the affinity and union of ecology and ascesis is actively discussed today, as in the statements of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew and Pope Francis. In the Papal Encyclical Laudato Si (18 June 2015),27 such union was given the name ‘integral ecology’. The cosmic liturgy can be thus considered as a sui generis cosmic extension of integral ecology. The connection with integral ecology makes it possible to define more precisely the practices of the cosmic liturgy. The ensemble of these practices has basically a double structure that includes the ecological (in an extended sense) part and the ascetic part. On the one hand, the ecological or cosmic-ecological component is constituted by practices of technology and science, which deal directly with the phenomena of the outer world. On the other hand, the ascetic component is constituted by the practices of the Hesychast ascesis. Ascetic practices represent a strictly ordered set having the structure of a ladder, and this ‘Ladder of Paradise’ is usually divided into three big blocks, which are called by Maximus Praxis – Theoria – Theologia. Thus, in our interpretation of the cosmic liturgy, theology and science appear as two classes of practices, which both take part in this all-embracing cosmic action. This is a new conceptual configuration, which implies a new type of their relationship. In this configuration, theology is the highest stage of the Hesychast practice. On this stage, the synergy is already achieved and, as Abbot Sophrony argues, humans present the first-hand account of the being into which they were introduced by the action of the Holy Spirit.28 But this account of the direct personal experience is in no way a bare and simple empirical discourse. Coming after both Praxis and Theoria, Hesychast theology is both an experiential and theoretical discourse, and this results in its phenomenological character. Far-reaching connections between this theology and philosophical phenomenology were reconstructed in detail in my book To the Phenomenology of Ascesis (1998). Hesychast practice includes built-in methodological reflection, and its core, the art of the incessant Jesus Prayer, is a subtle holistic practice, which was called the ‘Method’ by the Hesychasts themselves. In its subject matter, Hesychast theology embraces the most part of traditional themes of Orthodox theology treating them in the prism of the Christocentric deifying experience and ordering them in accordance with the Hesychast Ladder. Thus, they advance from anthropologically oriented subjects, such as repentance and struggle with passions, to the complex problems of the incessant prayer and then to subjects concerning

27 (accessed December 2017). 28 Sophrony, Старец Силуан, p. 153.

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the Divine reality, such as the Essence and Energy in God, the grace and deification, the Transfiguration, and the Light of Tabor. In sum, this theology is evidently very different from the classical academic theology of the doctrinal type. But in spite of this, it is a sound and self-consistent theological formation, which has the cardinal advantage of being thoroughly rooted in the quintessential Christian experience of the communion with God. As a part of the cosmic liturgy, theology has also a certain special function. It is in its practices that the Divine energies (namely the grace and the love of Christ) are present, which are to be transmitted into the world. This transmission can take place, when theology comes into contact with the human practices present and acting in the outer world. Such practices become included in the cosmic liturgy, if they are moved by the love of Christ or, in other terms, if they serve the overcoming of the fundamental divisions of the world. And it is the function of theology to ascertain whether concrete practices under consideration satisfy these conditions. It means that theology must formulate the criteria, which may single out the practices for the overcoming of the fundamental divisions, and apply these criteria to concrete classes of practices. Seen in this way, theology works as a specific practice of the evaluation of practices and of bringing them into contact with the love of Christ. Now, what about science? Human practices in the environment and the cosmic space are based on science, which cultivates knowledge, and on technology, which cultivates skills. As already stated, they belong to the practices of the cosmic liturgy, if they are in contact with theology (in the Hesychast sense). What kind of relationship can be established in this contact? In the case of science, it is evident that the task of the cosmic liturgy – that is, the overcoming of the fundamental divisions of the world – needs profound and completely reliable knowledge. It means that scientific practices and in particular those of natural science, which explore and study the outer world, represent a necessary integral part of the cosmic liturgy. As for the relationship between theology and science, in the present framework it turns out to be correlative to the relationship between love and knowledge. This relationship is very different from the habitual relationship between theology and science considered as (sets of) disciplinary discourses based on essentialist conceptual constructions. Now science and theology appear as two kinds of practices participating in the cosmic liturgy and working in the same field: One kind represents practices cultivating knowledge, and the other practices moved by the love of Christ. Thus, their relationship is determined by that between knowledge and love, and in the Orthodox tradition the nature of this relationship is free from subordination or domination. But there is a certain heuristic primacy of love: love precedes knowledge. According to Gregory Palamas, ‘Divine love demands that the human being would consider and analyse all bodily actions and psychic forces looking for something that helps the communion with God’.29 Following Maximus with his cosmic vision representing

29 Gregory Palamas, Triads in the Defence of the Holy Hesychasts, I, 3, 4 (from a Russian edition: Moscow: Kanun, 1995), pp. 107–08.

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the whole creature as a ‘New Human Being’,30 we conclude that the cosmic liturgy establishes the same successive order of love and knowledge – theology and science, respectively. This order implies that if science is a sphere of practices of pure knowledge, it takes part in the cosmic liturgy preserving its autonomy and not needing any special transformations or intrusions from outside. The partaking is already implied by its own essence and nature. This is exactly the message of the Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh: ‘I graduated from the faculty of natural science […] and I experienced the study of physics, chemistry, biology […] as a part of theology, a part of knowledge of what God has created.’31 Clearly, in this context, ‘theology’ is synonymous to ‘cosmic liturgy’. One can further argue that in such a relationship the following ‘rule of the sovereignty’ holds, as formulated by Étienne Gilson: ‘Conflicts and contradictions emerge from delusions of scientists interfering with purely theological questions or from errors of theologians trying to solve purely scientific problems.’32 But it is not science as such, but only pure or fundamental science that cultivates exclusively pure knowledge. Today science can hardly be discussed separately from technology, because there are no borders between pure and applied science, as well as between applied science and technology. ‘Pure science’ is only an idealization, and the relationship between theology and technology is quite different from that between theology and this idealization. As a rule, existing technological practices do not correspond to the principles of either the cosmic liturgy or even usual ecology. Ecology, integral ecology, and cosmic liturgy – they all assert the necessity of the radical transformation of the technological sphere including the change of its basic principles. The most profound analysis of the character of this change was made by Heidegger, who described the change needed as the conversion of technology into a new paradigm characterized by a special concept of techne. Techne is a practice of a special type, which is craft and art at the same time, and in addition, actualizes and reveals the essence of things and their relation to being. According to Heidegger, such a practice combining technological, aesthetical and ontological functions was developed in ancient Greece, and the only way to overcome the crisis of modern civilization is to bring technology back to techne. Evidently, there is a parallel between the conversion of technology into techne and the cosmic liturgy. Like Heidegger’s techne,33 the idea of the cosmic liturgy also presents an ontological reassessment of modern technology and science. In the prism of the cosmic liturgy, technology must also be converted into a new paradigm, which should combine technological and ontological functions. Thus, we could use the same term techne for this new paradigm, but now it will be a quite different techne. The Greek or Heideggerian techne could perform the ontological function due to the presence of the aesthetic element. But in the Christian techne, technological practices

30 31 32 33

Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua ad Iohannem. II, XLI, PG 91, 1309 C. Metropolit Antonii Surozhskii, Труды [Works] (Moscow: Praktika, 2002), p. 398. Étienne Gilson, Философ и теология [The Philosopher and Theology] (Moscow: Gnozis, 1995), p. 177. Martin Heidegger, ‘Die Frage nach der Technik’, in Martin Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, part I (Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1967), pp. 5–36.

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should be reassessed and rearranged in accordance with the love of Christ – that is, they would acquire an ethical, personalistic and Christocentric element. This new techne is not so much confronting the Greek one as including and transcending it. Indeed, the Hesychasts always considered their practice as a sui generis spiritual art stressing its aesthetic aspects. Thus, the relationship between the two formations of the techne is in accordance with the paradigm of a ‘Christianized Hellenism’ introduced by Father Georges Florovsky. Today, we still cannot argue that such a kind of transformation is taking place already. But there are many phenomena such as the ecological and anthropological turn, which can be regarded as signs of a movement in this direction. As a small illustration, allow me to finish my text with the mention of one recent episode: During one American space flight, a very dangerous situation occurred. On the verge of a catastrophe in the cosmos, the astronauts were rescued. When they were at last safely back on Earth, their first action was to pray together.34

34 For the story of the rescue of the crew members of the space mission Apollo 13 in April 1970, see: (accessed December 2017).

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Philosophical Foundations of Mediation/ Dialogue between (Orthodox) Theology and Science

Introduction One observes a particular and characteristic feature pertaining to varieties of discussions on the relation between science and religion, which have taken place during the last thirty years: no visible progress and no change in their content. For many years, conferences and published papers either consider scientific and educational ideas through the perspective of historical Christianity or, alternatively, theological truths are adjusted to the standards of new forms of scientific thought. The main result of such discussions is that scientists continue their research as if the ‘dialogue’ between science and theology did not exist at all, whereas theologians, being conscious of their limited capacity in the advancement of theology in view of modern scientifically based secularization, sometimes defend their convictions in a narrowly historical and linguistic fashion, effectively forced into such a dialogue by the implicitly atheistic stance of its opponents. Sometimes the ‘dialogue’ resembles not an attempt of reconciliation of science and theology, but a more articulate and precise demarcation between two types of experience, where the scientific component becomes a criterion of this demarcation. In other words, the ‘dialogue’ transforms into a more detailed description of the difficulties of conducting such a ‘dialogue’ in general. The language employed in all discussions by theologians and scientists sometimes seems to be manifestly different, appealing implicitly to some premises, which either cannot be linked to each other or have no common ground. What is the reason for that? From our point of view, it must be sought in the lack of philosophical clarification of the very possibility of that which is called ‘dialogue’ or ‘mediation’ between science and theology, or science and religious experience in general. In this chapter, we explicate the difference between scientific and religious experience in philosophical terms by demonstrating that this difference pertains to the basic characteristic of the human condition and that the intended overcoming Alexei Nesteruk  University of Portsmouth, UK, and Russian Christian Academy of the Human Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 97–121. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116859

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of this difference under the disguise of ‘dialogue’ represents, in fact, an existentially untenable enterprise. Discussions on the differences in experience of the world and experience of God are profoundly timely for further articulation of the sense of the human condition, but not for its change. At the very inception point of the problem of science and religion, or the dialogue (mediation) between science and theology, the very possibility of relation of the scientifically given (data) and that which can be qualified as the given in experience of the Divine, is implicitly assumed.1 Usually, such a possibility finds its foundation in a mundane approach to the problem linked to the natural desire to establish a hierarchy of sensible images and intellectual representations of reality in a single consciousness, without making delicate distinctions in the means of access to these givens and the degree of their rationality – that is, in the modes of their phenomenality. One must take into account that such a philosophical insensitivity to various modes of representation of experience can lead to a reaction, where the very possibility of comparison or mediation between scientific ideas and theological representations will be rejected as having no sense because the comparison is applied to the fundamentally ‘non-uniform things’, thus having only an abstract character, comparable with the exercise of imagination, and no existential meaning. Such a reaction could be evinced by sceptically oriented scientists, as well as by sincerely believing Christians. However, the stance on mediation, as well as that one which rejects its possibility, both contain a hidden philosophical premise, whose content is not spelled out, but implicitly predetermines the result of comparison of theology and science. All those who deny the legitimacy of religious experience and its comparison with science implicitly justify their position by adopting a certain ontological commitment with respect to being of the world and being of God which, as such remains unclarified. In contradistinction to them, all those who employ the arguments based in religious experience remain unable to express their position by using philosophical language that neutralises the objection of ‘atheists’. However, both approaches, whether the first one that denies the importance of theology, or the second one, alternative to this, which diminishes the necessity of taking into account rational arguments from the positive sciences in order to strengthen the properly religious conviction, are both weak from a philosophical point of view – that is, from the point of view of the rational representation of the holistic structure of the living experience of humanity manifesting itself through the difference between science and theology. In order to clarify the latter point, one can consider the situation where the fervent apologists of faith pose the question of the following kind: Why must one take into account physical ideas whilst studying and developing theology? Theology (especially in the Orthodox Christian tradition) deals with the specifically human



1 We use the terminology of the ‘given’ (instead of ‘data’) in order from the beginning to underline the fact of the presence of human subjectivity in the detection, identification and articulation of phenomena in the form of ‘data’. The ‘given’ is not a dispassionate and neutral imposing of the world or God upon a human subject, but the ‘gift’ granted to the human being as a part of Being in general in order to comprehend existence.

M e d i at i o n / D i alo g u e b e t w e en Theo lo gy and Sci e nce

way of existence – the mystical, the experiential, the liturgical life and the Church, the ideal of salvation – and is not reduced simply to a mythology of the world. To what extent must a Christian be acquainted with the scope of knowledge of the physical world in order to be deified? One can employ a simple empirical response to this question by pointing out that the very possibility of theology as experience of the Divine (independently of how the givens of this experience are treated), the reality of its own existence, and the existence of its representations are determined by the possibility of the existence of the incarnate carriers of this theology (namely human persons). Consequently, in order to theologise one must have necessary physical and biological conditions for the existence of theologians, the conditions which, as it is not difficult to understand, are ultimately rooted in cosmic conditions. Cosmology and earthly physics (together with biology) explicate these necessary conditions. From this, one infers a simple conclusion that any theological proposition (in thought or speech), expressing experience of the Divine, contains explicitly a truth about the world as such, that world where this experience takes place. It is not difficult to see that the argument employed by us is ontological in the sense that it appeals to physical matter as the ground of existence, which justifies the contingent facticity of theology. If now sceptically motivated scientists reverse the previous question and ask as to ‘Why one needs theology for physics?’, the response will be as follows. Physics, in its cosmic dimension, argues about the factual state of affairs in the universe without clarifying the sense of its contingent facticity – that is, without clarifying the sense of the sufficient conditions responsible not only for the outcomes of the physical laws, in order to have a given display of the universe, but also for the very possibility of knowledge and explication of the universe by human beings. Physics operates without giving an account as to how and why the study of the world (from micro-particles to cosmological scales) forms a gift to a physically limited humanity. Theology, although it does not explain this fact, at least interprets it by pointing out that it is only human beings who have the rational capacity of transcending the physically finite – that is, of going beyond their own bodies and immediate life-world by integrating in their finite consciousness the representation of the infinite and intransient. Consciousness and reason form such characteristics of the human condition in the universe that cannot be explained by reducing them to the physical (ontological) and their elucidation and interpretation is possible only through the appeal to the theological anthropology of the Divine image. This leads the argument for the justification of theology beyond the world order and its ontology. Correspondingly, any cosmological vision of the world is implicitly imbued with theology, for it is based on a Divine gift of faith in the reality of good creation by a benevolent God, as well as on the gift of the possibility of thought and linguistic articulation of the universe as a thanksgiving offering of the creation back to the Creator. The ontological argument for the very possibility of theology, employed by us whilst responding to the first question, is typical for any metaphysical justification based on the principle of causality (consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the physical), or on the principle of sufficient reason. One also needs to add the principle of knowability, that is, a transcendental stance on the finitude of knowledge – knowledge is limited by the conditions of corporeality (embodiment) – and the limits of access to infinity.

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As to the response to the second, opposite question implying the existence of consciousness and its rationality linked to the idea of God, it does not have the same philosophical clarity as it did in the first case. Namely, the appeal to the idea of God implies a propensity to faith which is not evident and convincing in the context of the transcendental stance on the possibility of knowledge. Here one introduces a theological argument which appeals to those givens of experience that are radically different in comparison with what is given in physics and cosmology. These givens of experience are related to the fact of the human existence understood not only at the physical (natural) level, but also as personal (hypostatic) consciousness. Here one implicitly appeals to a modus of experience which is not rooted in the natural (ontological), but is related to a different modus of the given. This is the difference in the modus of the given, revealed by us in the course of the argument in favour of the impossibility of avoiding cosmological insights in theology on the one hand, and in the implicit appeal to the theology of communion (for the possibility of cosmology), where the very fact of life turns out to be an inaugural revelation, on the other hand. This difference points towards an asymmetric relation between the metaphysical interpretation of the possibility of theology as an empirical and discursive representation of the living experience (based in the power of scientific arguments) and the properly ‘theological justification’ of science on the basis of the immediate givens of the human existence. The metaphysical instability (as passivity and affectivity by nature, time, flesh, etc.) and transcendence (as an attempt to unfold life’s hidden foundation) of human existence turns out to be a phenomenological pointer to the realm of the Word and Spirit, lying in the foundation of life as such. The ‘dialogue’ between science and theology thus becomes a discourse of clarification and explication of the difference in the ways of appearance and access to the givens in science and theology in one and the same human subject.

How to Philosophically Make the Distinction in the Modes of the Given in the Natural Sciences and Theology and What are the Limits of Such a Distinction? The philosophical criterion of the difference in the modes of the given in the natural sciences and theology can be formulated in the following way. Any scientific research and any theory assume the acceptance (whether explicitly or unconsciously) of the system of metaphysics (metaphysica generalis) – that is, ontology (ontologia) –, so that such a research implies that it studies an object which must exist beforehand, which is an existent (ens). This requirement holds for every specialized metaphysics, that is, for specific sciences, as well as for the representation of God in philosophical theology (theologia rationalis) – which is distinct from theology understood as experience of communion with God, that is, from the theology of Revelation. On the one hand, metaphysics deals with the issue of the existence of God (and here the whole drama of the possible proofs of this is unfolded), whereas, on the other hand, there is a question about the essence of God. One notes that the requirement for the metaphysical certainty can also be applied to theology understood as historical

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or linguistic tradition (whose foundation is in communion). For example, there can be a metaphysical demand for the existence of biblical events in order for the latter to be justified from the point of view of the historical sciences. Similarly, the corresponding fragments of the sacred texts must receive their interpretation and thus objectivization through their qualification by the rules of linguistics and the sciences of the languages. However, when we use the term ‘theology’ in a proper sense, we depart from the metaphysically defined definition of its subject as if it is positioned in a sort of underlying “substance”. One means theology as communion with God, so that in this case the most burning question is how to establish the difference on the metaphysical basis between philosophical theology and theology of communion. The provisional response to this question can be formulated like this: The difference consists in the extent of appearance (phenomenality or presence, display) of beings (existents) (that is, their ‘positivity’) concerned, and of the ways of ontic verifications in philosophical theology and theology of communion. Here one can recall Heidegger who in his famous article Phänomenologie und Theologie of 1928 considered theology (including also a non-philosophical theology) as ‘wholly autonomous ontic science’ because of its ‘positivity’; and then, as a consequence, its dependence on the analytics of Dasein as a fundamental ontology. This, according to Heidegger, confirms the primacy of ontology with respect to theology, as well as with respect to all special sciences.2 In general terms, one can argue that the difference between ontic sciences (the majority of the human sciences) and ontological sciences (for example, physics, whose ontology is based in physical substance and rubrics of space and time, which constitute the precondition for any articulations of reality) presupposes the difference in ontology behind these sciences. As a result, the hierarchy of these sciences follows from the ‘hierarchy’ of ontologies (assuming that one can define one ontology as more fundamental than another). Physics is modest in claiming that its ontology is associated with the corporeal function of man. Then there is a question as to whether such a philosophical system exists that could assert the universal ontology, which can be placed in the foundation of both the sciences and theology, that ontology which could subordinate either theology of communion or philosophical theology. One can rephrase this question in a paradoxical way: Since ontology (and its primacy with respect to the ontic sciences) has sense in a metaphysical system, what can be left of such an ontology at the era of the ‘end of metaphysics’? One can refer to Heidegger who stopped using the term ‘metaphysics’ in order ‘to think Being without beings’, that is, to ‘think Being without regard to metaphysics’3, when he refused being in





2 Martin Heidegger, ‘Phenomenology and Theology,’ in Martin Heidegger, Pathmarks, ed. by William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 39–62 (p. 50). Cf. with a passage in Sein und Zeit, § 7, where Heidegger places theology on the same level as other disciplines dealing with the phenomena which are analysed by phenomenology: Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 58. 3 Martin Heidegger, ‘Time and Being’, in Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being (New York: Harper & Row 1972), pp. 1–24 (p. 24).

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favour of event (Ereignis) (‘Being vanishes in event’4, ‘Being would be a species of event, and not the other way around’5).6 Essentially, he says that one cannot treat the theology of Revelation (as events of communion with God) in the context of the ontic status of these events as if they would be only specific historical events. If previously the notion of event was shadowed by metaphysics, so that an event needed an original ontology in order to take place (for example, in physics, there must be space-time for events to happen, and these events form the structure of the former), the modern development of phenomenology leads an event beyond the existent, beyond being. One cannot assign the modus of the already conceived existence to an event. Event can be described as the consummation of that whose essence did not give the possibility of its foreseeing as if one could foresee the inconceivable impossible from the perspective of the conceivable possible – that is, from within metaphysics with its principle of causality.7 Finally, if even the ontology of the Dasein is questioned as a pretender for the universal ontology, what kind of an alternative could be proposed as the foundation of theology? If the very development of philosophy and the mutable character of the fundamental physical structures in the natural sciences place human beings and their thought into the ‘non-metaphysical’ (or post-metaphysical) situation, can this thought use an ontological criterion in order to carry out the distinction between science and its philosophical appropriation on the one hand, and theology of communion on the other? The implied answer is ‘no’, so that philosophy as such must extend towards appropriating phenomena with the event-like structure, which cannot be appropriated within the frame of metaphysics. Here one approaches new possibilities of a philosophical reflection upon that which is metaphysically impossible. The essence of event is that it predetermines and redefines all possibilities of existents in their being, and it is in this sense that it can be assigned an ontological status. It follows from here that the more a phenomenon takes place in its phenomenality as an event, the more it doubts its metaphysical modus of being, for its sheer possibility follows from its effective metaphysically understood impossibility. The theology of communion confirms this, for it deals with the events whose impossibility witnesses what is expressed in the Bible in the words ‘nothing is impossible for God’ (Genesis 18. 14; Luke 1. 37). One implies here the events such as the creation of the world out of nothing, the Incarnation of the Word-Logos of God in flesh or the Resurrection. These events resist the possibility of their non-contradictory comprehension (in a metaphysical sense) preventing the



4 Heidegger, ‘Time and Being’, p. 22 (translation corrected). 5 Heidegger, ‘Time and Being’, p. 21 (translation corrected). 6 On a non-trivial and ambiguous sense of the term Ereignis in later Heidegger, distinct from the modern hermeneutics of events, see Claude Romano, L’aventure temporelle. Trois essais pour introduire à l’herméneutique événemential (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2010), pp. 20–27. 7 See details on the phenomenology of events in Claude Romano, L’événement et le monde (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998). A careful distinction of the phenomenality of objects and the phenomenality of events is discussed in Jean-Luc Marion, Certitudes négatives (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2010), pp. 243–308.

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formulation of their identity status (on the grounds of the principle of contradiction) – that is, in different words, they challenge ontology and its definition of being. The ‘essence’ of the events of the creation of the world (the Incarnation and Resurrection) is exactly that that they do not reduce to that which follows ontological law patterns. These events make possible that which is not presented on the ontological level, which is not identical to itself and whose existence contradicts its essence. One can express the same by saying that the ‘essence’ of these events contradicts itself, by referring to a biblical case when God ‘calls into being things that are not’ – that is, calls into being non-existent as existent, as if non-existent would exist (Romans 4. 17). It is in this latter sense that such events, creation, Incarnation and Resurrection, par excellence, acquire a ‘meta-ontological status’, because they (events and all existents involved in them) contradict the laws implied by ontology. The world of things (the universe) receives a new interpretation in accordance with that which grants being, so that the world acquires being in that moment (event) that exceeds the measure of any possible definition of the existent. Being created, the existent receives its being from God, not as a result of the laws, outlined by thought in rubrics of ontology. In light of such a reversal, when ontology (as the possible) becomes subordinated to events (as sheer impossibility), the relation between theology of communion and metaphysics experiences an inversion, so that the latter becomes to be determined by the former. By this, one neutralizes an ontological criterion in establishing a relation between philosophy, philosophy of science and theology, by the introduction ‘into play’ of another criterion, dealing with the difference between the possible and impossible – that is, the difference between that which can be a matter of experience and that which cannot. The implied criterion is based on the assumption that one can a priori state the limits of rationality, that is, formulate conditions for the possibility and impossibility of experience. It is because of the Copernican turn by Kant that the finite reason defines the infinite, claiming impossible its knowledge on the grounds of the limited cognitive capabilities. The finitude and limitedness of reason thus assume the functioning of the principle of a transcendental a priori. If the finite structure of consciousness does not have a transcendental status, it cannot legitimately make a distinction between what is possible and what is impossible. It follows from here that the difference between scientific philosophy and philosophy in general, on the one hand, and theology, on the other, on the basis of the distinction between the possible and impossible, can be articulated in principle only if philosophy and the corresponding philosophy of science function as part of the transcendental discourse – that is, according to the assumption of the transcendental subject who exercises such an articulation. This transcendental stance finds its justification in that trend in philosophy of science, which shows that the formation of views on the structure of physical reality is intimately linked to the conditions of access to this reality through experiment and mathematical expressibility.8 Since the transcendental stance is present in the fabric of phenomenology, it is the latter that can be chosen



8 See, in this context, Michel Bitbol, Pierre Kerszberg and Jean Petitot (eds), Constituting Objectivity: Transcendental Perspectives on Modern Physics (Berlin: Springer, 2009).

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as a methodology for making an enquiry into the theoretical legitimacy of theology. Phenomenology is an efficient method (among other philosophical trends) of maintaining the difference between philosophy (and methodology of science) and theology and is capable of supporting this status unless the inherent transcendentalism is not itself subjected to a historical and epistemological correction. Thus, one cannot conduct a reasonable demarcation between the subject matter of science and theology without an appeal either to ontology or transcendental interpretation of possibility of experience, that is, of the subject of knowledge. All other possible ways of demarcating turn out to be arbitrary and transient, as they have no existential foundation. Since the era of the ‘end of metaphysics’ questions the possibility of universal metaphysics as the basis for the demarcation of philosophy and theology, one is left with the question of whether the transcendental principle remains valid, so that it may be the basis of such a demarcation. If the latter is impossible for events of communion, as well as for some phenomena in modern natural sciences, anthropology and the human sciences, then the transcendental argument for delimiting and making a distinction between science, philosophy and theology turns out to be impotent and philosophy is challenged by the necessity of developing new methods for dealing with situations where human knowledge and experience encounter the infinite and fundamentally impossible. Coming back to the purpose of our discussion, that of establishing the difference in the modus of the given in the natural sciences and theology (answering as well in passim as to why one needs physics for theology): We proposed a metaphysical and transcendental argument that all givens of consciousness and experience of the Divine depend on the difference in the underlying ontology in the sciences (physical substance and biological formations) versus ontology of events – that is, modes of phenomenality following from structures of subjectivity and adapted to the material environment. By so doing, we have implicitly established delimiters between science and theology pointing out that, in spite of the explicitly ontic features of theological knowledge, as distinct from the ontologically rooted natural sciences, the very ontic needs to have an ontological basis (as a corporeal basis of a subject), whereas the ontological condition must be elucidated through the structural path of its constitution by subjectivity (that cannot be accounted on the level of ontology). Thus, the strict demarcation between science and theology on the basis of the opposition between ontic and ontological can hardly be achieved. This contributes to the argument that a naïve positing of experience of the Divine outside the material conditions of the possibility of this expression represents de facto faith without reason, whose existential and soteriological meaning remains obscure, whereas any physical reductionism in the constitution of humanity also fails without an appeal to the theology of human creation. However, the use of metaphysical and transcendental arguments for the justification of theology encounters a difficulty consisting in the fact that the very dialogue between science and theology does not represent any metaphysical or transcendental necessity, but has features of events of life pertaining to human reason and free will that cannot be as such deduced on the grounds of causality to any ontology. Here one deals with such event-like phenomena that relate to life’s self-affectivity, so that their interpretation demands a new philosophy that deals

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first of all with the phenomenon of human being understood as an event of life, the phenomenon that has a ‘meta-ontological’ status, blessing and justifying the possibility of the philosophical as well as scientific knowledge of the world.

How to Make a Theological Distinction in the Modes of the Given in the Natural Sciences and Theology? If in the previous section we have established that theology, unlike philosophy and the sciences, deals with event-like phenomena denying ontology to the impossible and thus exceeding the capacity of transcendental delimiters, then the question arises: How is theology possible at all? To discuss this issue, one inevitably enters the realms of theological anthropology since the answer to this question ultimately refers to the reality of the human. The patristic model differs from the modern, widely accepted understanding of the human person as a being endowed with a reasoning brain, consciousness, will, and emotions. The early Church Fathers considered the human person not only in the light of the dualism between body and discursive reason (dianoia, or intellect in its contemporary sense, the mind). They made a subtle distinction between dianoia and nous, where the latter stands for the faculty of apprehending truth, which is superior to discursive reason. Nous can be broadly explained in modern language as spiritual insight or as spiritual intellect where logic cannot be used. Dianoia (reason, mind) functions as the discursive, conceptualizing, logical faculty in man; it employs such particular cognitive operations as dissection, analysis, measurement, and the use of mathematics. The function of dianoia is to collect information about phenomena in the phenomenality of objects. The limits of dianoia are outlined by its ability to draw conclusions (by syllogistic deduction) and to formulate concepts (by induction). Dianoia is similar to object-orientated thinking, which by definition aims to obtain knowledge of an object, posed in thought as an external object, by means of the logical formulas ‘A is B’ or ‘A is not B’. It has been clear, since the early Church Fathers, that dianoia can be applied only to things that allow rational thinking, that is, to things of the created world. St. Maximus the Confessor comments thus: ‘Created beings are termed intelligible [that is, they can be grasped by reason (dianoia), A.N.] because each of them has an origin that can be known rationally [that is, discursively, A.N.]. But God cannot be termed intelligible, while from our apprehension of intelligible beings we can do no more than believe that He exists.’9 Rational thinking (that is, dianoia) cannot be used in theologia, in the immediate vision and experience of God. Knowledge based on the dianoia does not imply any direct apprehension or perception of the inner essences



9 Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Texts on Theology and the Incarnate Dispensation of the Son of God, 1.8, from The Philokalia. The Complete Text compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth, trans. from the Greek and edited by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware, vol. ii (London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1981), pp. 114–63 (p. 115).

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or principles of created beings, still less of divine truth itself. The apprehension in the latter sense is made possible only by nous and is beyond the scope of reason. In contradistinction to dianoia, the nous works by direct apprehension. Its subject matter is not simply outside itself. It does not reason from premises to conclusions by strict logical steps; rather, it apprehends the truth through a kind of inner vision through which it knows God or the inner essences or principles of created things by means of direct apprehension or spiritual perception. According to Maximus the Confessor: ‘The intellect [nous, A. N.] is the organ of wisdom, the intelligence that of spiritual knowledge.’10 ‘It also possesses the capacity for a union that transcends its nature and that unites it with what is beyond its natural scope. It is through this union that divine realities are apprehended, not by means of our own natural capacities, but by virtue of the fact that we entirely transcend ourselves and belong entirely to God.’11 This aspect of transcendence exercised by nous closely resembles that which could be simply called faith. One can conjecture that nous provides conditions for faith to be intentional: One who wants to find God through reason can do it, theoretically speaking, by developing one’s nous. At the same time, it is clear that the exercise of rational faculties in order to develop nous requires one, in a sense, to deny the rational faculties that one starts with. Faith sometimes is juxtaposed with knowledge. In our context, this juxtaposition means one of nous with dianoia. The nous thus provides a foundation for reason to infer from the created things to the existence of God – that is, to experience the foundation of all things in their otherness (that they are created). This inference constitutes faith in the existence of God and is granted to a believer by God himself: ‘Faith is true knowledge, the principles of which are beyond rational demonstration; for faith makes real for us things beyond intellect [mind, A.N.] and reason’ (cf. Hebrews 11. 1).12 Faith, whose organ is nous, allows us to transcend general conditions of knowledge imposed by mind and reason with respect to things of this age and ‘see’ not only the intelligible realities, but also the underlying principles of existence of all things leading to God. So how is theologia possible? The answer so far is that theologia as experience of God is possible because humans have the faculty of nous, which allows them in principle to have experience of God – that is, to be in communion with God. It is clear for any careful reader that the logic of our argument is based, in fact, on the acceptance of the Christian patristic model of the human person, which is part of Orthodox theology. It is important also to realize that the affirmation that nous makes theologia possible assumes, in fact, not only that this faculty is present in human composite, but also that nous is related to the essence of the human person, to that individual, distinct link that a person has with God and which makes one person different from another. This clearly indicates that there is something in nous that

10 Maximus the Confessor, Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice, 3.33, in The Philokalia, vol. ii, pp. 164–284 (p. 217). 11 Maximus the Confessor, Various Texts on Theology, 5.68, in The Philokalia, vol. ii, pp. 164–284 (p. 276). 12 Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Texts on Theology, 1.9, in The Philokalia, vol. ii, pp. 114–63 (p. 116).

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transcends the natural aspects of the human person (the body and soul). In patristic thought, body and soul constitute the natural composition, which is held in human hypostasis. Maximus compares the human composite with Christ. The unity of body and soul in Christ is purely hypostatic (that is, non-natural), whereas in humans the same unity is not only hypostatic but also natural.13 It is exactly this unity that, according to Maximus the Confessor, constitutes a person. Realizing one’s potential toward full existence makes a challenge for nous; if humans succeed in this – that is, if they manage to establish ultimate personhood, their nous will fit for theologia, for the mystical contemplation of God to the extent that is possible for humans.14 Thus, philosophy as a modus of consciousness related to the faculty of dianoia, can deal only with things from the created nature. God exceeds its capacity and thus is inaccessible to dianoia. However, theologians (in contradistinction to philosophers) know about the defect of nature and of the natural in man (related to the Fall) and recognise the necessity of the transfiguration of nature – that is, its perfection in the image of the supernatural. In other words, if philosophy and science interpret beings only in the measure they see in them the natural, theology remains that which either does not possess nature at all or exceeds the limits of the latter. Here the problem arises: How natural humans can achieve Divine grace in the vision of God, that is, transcend their own natural faculties, that is to employ that which is present in them latently, that is, nous. The problem is whether the natural formation can develop a desire to access something, which cannot be achieved in the limits of this nature. The answer is ‘yes’, humans can develop such a desire, first of all when they question their own essence. Indeed, one cannot know human essence in a metaphysical sense for, according to theological definitions, humans must remain undefinable as carriers in their essence and hypostasis of the image of the undefinable God15 (indefinability of the essence of God deprives man of the essence, which can be defined). It is exactly this that inspires man for the acquisition of grace as the supernatural Good in order to try to understand the sense of himself. Thus, dianoia (dealing with knowable aspects of man’s physical existence) and nous (as having an insight on the insufficiency of dianoia’s knowledge of man) cannot be separated in a real man, as both function in parallel, although the advance of one with respect to another depends on a particular personality. It follows from this observation that the strict separation of the cognitive faculties into philosophical and theological modes 13 See Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), p. 105. 14 Maximus the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love, 4.50, in The Philokalia, vol. ii, pp. 52–113 (p. 106). 15 The fact that human nature is unknowable follows from its being an image and likeness of God, that is, the one Who is unknowable. A classical excerpt from patristic texts is one of Gregory of Nyssa: ‘Since the nature of our mind, which is the likeness of the Creator, evades our knowledge, it has an accurate resemblance to the superior nature, figuring by its own unknowableness the incomprehensible Nature.’ Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio [On the Making of Man], in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. by P. Schaff and H. Wace, (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), vol. v, pp. 387–427 (p. 397). See also an article by Jean-Luc Marion, ‘Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Privilege of Unknowing’, The Journal of Religion, 85 (2005), 1–24, as well as a chapter from Marion, Certitudes négatives, pp. 21–86.

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cannot be applied to man without distorting the fundamental feature of the human condition, namely man’s unknowability of himself. The difference between the natural (the realm of dianoia) and super- or trans-natural (the realm of nous), which one could, by way of a historical analogy, apply for the demarcation of science, philosophy and theology, fails irrevocably in the case of human beings who, by the fact of their existence, represent a synthesis of the natural and supernatural. The natural dimension in man, in the corporeal setting of being, cannot be detached from his consciousness, it cannot be reduced to the natural on the basis of the laws of causality (which are necessary for the human condition, but not sufficient). The consciousness, which as a distinctive feature of his definition, as made in the image of God, cannot be explained by man himself. It is man (as a generalized notion of humanity) that forms the major concern and subject matter of theology where the natural and supernatural cannot be clearly separated and detached from each other. The impossibility of knowing the essence of man shows that a possible ontological response (referring to the substance of the world of which man is made) to the question as to why theology needs cosmology, is not sufficient, for the human phenomenon exceeds the boundaries of the scientific and philosophical and needs a super-natural (theological) elucidation. Correspondingly, the contingent facticity of physics and cosmology, which accounts for the foundation of the natural condition of man, cannot receive explanation from themselves in the same manner, as the essential aspects of the human condition cannot account for themselves. Since the very fact of human existence, which exceeds its own naturalness and possesses its own hypostasis cannot be accounted for through cosmological theories, the fact remains, beyond the circle of causality pertaining to the world’s ontology, that man deals with himself as an event saturated with the intuition of communion with the source of life. Thus, cosmology needs theology to ‘justify’ the very possibility of cosmology as a modus of human existence. However, here, the implied argument is not ontological, but appeals to the event-like phenomenon of a particular human life, the phenomenon which saturates intuition to such an extent that it cannot be accounted for on the grounds of causality and within the limits of the transcendental cognitive faculties. This event-like phenomenon has an extensive content, starting from the actual event of birth and finishing with particularities of life unfolding into the future, that which has been given as a gift of life at the moment of birth. It is not difficult to see that the modus of the given in the phenomenon of man as a centre of disclosure and manifestation of the relations between the world and God turns out to be fundamentally different in comparison with science and philosophy: The essence and structure of the outer reality (as the givens in the representation of consciousness) receive their ‘meta-ontological’ justification in inaugural (opening) events such as an event of human life, humankind-event, an event of creation (birth) of man,16 whose

16 ‘Le monde est en suspens dans l’événement; il s’origine depuis toujours pour nous dans des événements inauguraux, à commencer par celui – insigne – de la naissance.’ (‘The world is hanging in the event; it always originates for us in inaugural events, beginning with the most privileged one – our birth.’) (Romano, L’aventure temporelle, p. 121).

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phenomenality is not that of objects studied by the sciences. Cosmology needs theology in order to realize that the approach to seeing the universe as a physical object, typical for cosmology, is based in an event of the life of a hypostatic human being; an event which cannot be subjected to a purely ontological description, but receives its interpretation from theology as such an understanding where man was brought into existence by the will of the invisible origin. In this case, cosmology as a consequence of the event of life, receives its justification from the theology of communion dealing with the inaugural (opening) events, first of all with the event of birth. The image of the world is built in the conditions of the presence of the divine image in man in these inaugural events. However, this image remains limited and unaccomplished since the sense of the divine image in man remains hidden and unknowable for man himself. This happens, theologically speaking, because the divine image in man remains only an image and not a likeness, lost after the Fall. The very knowledge of the world as an adaptation and the arrangement of man’s place in creation forms a constitutive element of that which is named the Fall.17 Thus, the indefinability of man and his unknowability of himself, as interpreted theologically, forms the precondition for the actual limited knowability of the world (this is not a transcendental condition related to the embodied human faculties). This implies that cosmology follows the same apophatic pattern of explanation, which is typical of the theological anthropology of the divine image.18 The difference in the status of the phenomenality of ‘things’ in cosmology and theology amounts first of all to the limited scope of cosmology and unknowability of the universe understood as creation (and not as a fragment of the physically observed cosmos), for the sphere of its phenomenality (linked to astronomical objects and inferred theoretical

17 See a detailed discussion of this statement in my book The Sense of the Universe: Philosophical Explication of Theological Commitment in Modern Cosmology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), pp. 73–81. 18 Christos Yannaras describes as ‘apophatic’ that linguistic semantics and attitude to cognition, which refuse to exhaust the content of knowledge in its formulation and the reality of things signified in the logic of signifiers (C. Yannaras, Postmodern Metaphysics (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2004), p. 84). In philosophy, for example, it originates from an epistemological argument pertaining to a sort of linguistic reformulation of the Kantian transcendentalism (which is typical of poststructuralism) that language conditions the accessibility and intelligibility of reality. According to this view, there is no access to the referent outside the linguistic effect, but the linguistic effect is not the same as that referent it attempts but fails to capture. This situation entails, in analogy with theology, a variety of ways of making such a reference, where none of which can claim exclusiveness and true accessibility to what the reference is made. The range of cognitive situations, which fall under the scope of apophaticism, can be found in the works of Jean-Luc Marion under the name of ‘saturated phenomenon’ (see his Du sucroît. Études sur les phénomènes saturés (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001)). Theology, on the other hand, affirms that any knowledge of God, if it pretends to be real and true, cannot escape the conditions of incongruence between human knowing and the reality of God. This incongruence is the immanent feature of any serious theologising: One cannot raise questions on the reality of God from some position, which excludes a particular feature of the Divine manifestation, which is included in the very irreducibility of any speech about God to that reality, which is predicated through this speech. See, for example, Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), pp. 52–55.

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constructs) does not take into account the event-like essence of man: Knowledge of the world unfolds as if consciousness of this world exists without any recourse to the event of corporeal persons coming into existence. By neglecting the foundation of knowledge in events of human existence, cosmology deprives itself of realising that the structure of the given in cosmology is ultimately determined by the present facticity of consciousness having a sense of revelation for man himself, theologically treated as the Revelation of God. In such a vision, the fact of life, as well as knowledge in philosophy and science (as modi operandi of life), are seen as outcomes of the Revelation understood as the given in the event-like phenomenality, incorporating all specific forms of philosophical and scientific knowledge – although the very givens of Revelation are not accessible in a non-mediated form, that is, without a special procedure of their appropriation. One may focus a bit on the latter point by making a historical reference to what was implied in mediation between the givens of Revelation and knowledge, theology and philosophy. Theology proposed some special epistemological conditions of justification and appropriation of the phenomena of communion by extending rationality towards such existential notions as faith and love. Clement of Alexandria, for example, declares that knowledge is possible only because of faith and that faith is a condition for knowledge of any kind. Conversely, knowledge helps make affirmations of faith demonstrable and thus, according to Clement, more scientific. The faith that is true knowledge of Revelation becomes a more scientific faith when supported by philosophy, and in this way, it becomes gnosis.19 Clement emphasizes that to enable faith to overcome the lack of necessity and rigor of mere opinion, one must appeal to the methods used in the sciences. Since knowledge is based on demonstration, emerging from the first principles that cannot themselves be demonstrated, knowledge itself cannot be demonstrated. This in turn implies that the very possibility of knowledge requires the acceptance of first principles – that is, faith in them (to use scientific methods for the study of the world one should believe in the possibility of these methods, this is to believe in man as an empirical and unknowable fact of the Divine Revelation). In this way, knowledge depends on something that is not knowledge; it is faith: ‘For knowledge is a state of mind that results from demonstration; but faith is a grace which from what is indemonstrable conducts to what is universal and simple, something that is neither with matter, nor matter, nor under matter’.20 It is faith, therefore, that allows one to formulate the first principles in a proper way and to perceive things that are not seen in the course of demonstrable knowledge. Demonstration then follows after faith, but not the other way around. Then a demonstration based on reasoned knowledge produces faith in those who wish to learn of God (and man) by examining the Scriptures. Clement calls this faith that is supported by philosophical methods (that is, inclusion of events of communion into the philosophical sphere) a considered faith (that is, a gnosis),

19 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 1.2, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, vol. ii (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1962). 20 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 2.4.

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and according to Clement, it forms the subject matter of theology. If existential faith is in the foundation of any knowledge, this faith concerns man as having access to the knowledge of God and the world. Faith (as belief distinct from certainty of knowledge) becomes in this case an epistemological equivalent of the indefinability and unknowability of man of himself that, as empirical facts, require their acceptance as a particular but inaugural Revelation of God to man. Another example of how the given of Revelation are appropriated in knowledge can be found in St Augustine, who promoted the view that from the very beginning Christianity denied any comparison with ancient religions (theologia civilis and theologia fabulosa), making possible its encounter only with theologia naturalis, which attempts to study the Divine from the movement of the heavenly bodies. Augustine insists on the only adequate use of the term theologia for the Christian faith as the true knowledge of the Divine. Since one speaks of truth, ‘comparison must be made with philosophy’ (cum philosophis est habenda conlatio). Thus, philosophy must deal with faith, for, as Augustine concludes ‘a true philosopher is the lover God’ (verus philosophus est amator Dei).21 Love for God that is laid by Augustine in the foundation of true theology presupposes communion as an empirical source of any proposition and rational thinking about God. Philosophy as a rational ‘response’ to Revelation must acquire a shape adjusted for the appropriation of those phenomena from the realm of Revelation, which a priori do not fit the schemes of metaphysica generalis and transcendental epistemology. In both cases, in the Greek East and Latin West, the sense of theology implied the acceptance of principles of the immediacy of communion, whose givenness in the experiential and empirical knowledge of God was not immediately evident and verified, universally inaccessible to all, and following from the mysterious a posteriori remained real and true in its given facticity. Speaking of communion, one implies first of all events of relationship between God and the world, the creation of the world, the Incarnation of God in flesh, the Resurrection, and other personal events of saints and ascetics, all given in the unforeseeable experience, in the sense of an absolutely impossible from the point of view of their scientific-like explanation in the limits of metaphysics – as if one could determine beforehand the anticipating horizon of these events. In the same vein, one cannot define a priori that transcendental subject whose cognitive faculties would correspond to the possibility of placing the events of communion (as unrepeatable, devoid of their ontological definition and propensity of their objective representation) in the limits of experience. Communion allows one to open a possibility of a new type of understanding of inaccessible and metaphysically impossible phenomena by extending the limits of rationality as such. If human rationality is understood as a natural reaction of understanding to form a response to the events of communion, it is the task of philosophy to comprehend how the new givens of these events do fit into the framework of rationality. It is the main challenge to philosophy from theology of communion and, correspondingly,

21 Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei, VIII, 1 (from H. Betteson, Augustine: Concerning the City of God against Pagans (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), p. 298).

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to the dialogue of theology with the rationalism of scientific understanding. Namely, philosophy must extend by appropriating, through non-metaphysical philosophising, theological experience and, as a result, undertake a philosophical demarcation between scientific experience and experience of communion. How does rationality succeed in appropriating experience of communion and how do its paths differ from rationality’s modus operandi in the sciences? In order to recognise that theology as such, as well as its relationship with science lead necessarily to taking into account the events of communion not only as new, but as truly givens, which require epistemological qualification, one first needs to recognise the fact of their existence, their reality and unavoidable origin in the event of life in general. For a naturalistically oriented scientist, any link between the experience of living (with its intrinsic codification of the event of creation of the whole world, in which the possibility of the corporeal existence is granted), the event of the Incarnation of the Word of God (so that knowledge of the universe is possible in the archetype of the Divine image), the very moral teaching of Christ (for civilization to escape chaos and destruction), and the Resurrection (that gives hope to man and determines the goals of knowledge) – all these events involving a new type of givenness do not possess any certainty and validity. From the point of view of such a scientist, the acceptance of the abovementioned events (and those similar to them) in the scope of epistemologically extended rationality implies an element of faith (that is, an opinion or judgement), so that the incorporation of such events in the scope of rationality has sense only for believers. However, in this distinction between faith and non-faith (believing or not believing, between doxa and episteme), there is an element of metaphysical thinking present implying the distinction between faith and knowledge on the ontological level and within the transcendental setting. But, as we have already stated, these criteria of distinction cannot be applied to man himself, who is the source and origin of such a distinction. Consequently, by denying or abandoning an aspect of faith in respect to knowledge of man, one means the intentional denial of his unknowability of himself – that is, the distortion in representation of the sense of the human condition, and thus the distortion of truth in general. It follows from here that the primary given of events of communion, which requires a rational reaction and epistemological qualification, is the givenness of man to himself – that is, the mysteriousness of life as self-affectivity, as life from Life, that which is in the foundation of man’s faith in the reality of his own life. Communion, unlike mundane wisdom, happens on the initiative of that which is beyond any metaphysical and transcendental conditionality of that wisdom in man. It is the transcendent (event-like) character of communion that makes it possible to maintain a clear-cut distinction between that which is disclosed in Revelation and that which is constituted as an object of knowledge. By quoting a fragment from the Epistle to Hebrews 4. 12, ‘The word of God is alive and active. It cuts more keenly that any two-edged sword, piercing so deeply that it divides soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it discriminates among the purpose and thoughts of the heart’, one can conclude the following: It is the Word of God (as the Logos, that is, reason) that is capable of discriminating between knowledge which belongs to man and which originates in God, that is, which is revealed. One can object again by saying that this

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criterion implies faith and hence aims at believers, so that the distinction between human knowledge of the world and thinking of God implies that there is something given in communion that (depending on a particular person) is either accepted or not; namely the Word of God – that is, reason (Logos), that is, something enters or not into the realm of the experienced or thought. If that which is given in communion is accepted, then theology receives its justification by the inclusion of these givens in the sphere of phenomena, in its rights the same as all other givens, but requiring a special epistemological justification within the extended rationality. If, alternatively, the givens of communion are not included in the sphere of phenomena, they remain inarticulate and metaphysically impossible. As we have seen above, faith was that condition of acceptance of the givens of communion into the sphere of phenomena, which could be appropriated on the grounds of rationality extended through this faith. Faith, being a condition for accepting the givens of communion, being one of the virtues, according to I Corinthians 1. 13, is inseparable from hope and love, where love is supreme and ‘remaining to the end’. This is the reason why the acceptance of the givens of communion implies that that which is received and That Who gives is not just an ‘object’ of contemplation, but, first of all, the ‘object’ of love as love for truth. In communion, love changes the modalities of knowledge – that is, the epistemological criteria of reception of the givens in communion as the manifestation of love to truth. According to Augustine, love is the condition that what is being known is true: ‘The only way to truth is by love’.22 In other words, truth is rooted in love as its epistemological condition, not because truth cannot be fully disclosed without love, but because it is love itself – that is, the ultimate and only foundation for the possibility of seeing and grasping truth.23 Pascal expressed a similar thought differently: ‘au lieu qu’en parlant de chose humaines on dit qu’il faut les connaître avant que de les aimer […] les saints au contraire dissent en parlant des choses divine qu’il faut les aimer pour les connaître, et qu’on n’entre dans la vérité que par la charité’ (‘With respect to human things it is said that it is necessary to know them in order to love […] the saints, on the contrary, say, of divine things, that they must be loved in order to be known and that truth is manifested only through love’).24 Love, however, is not that which is simply commensurable with the experience of mundane reality. It demands one to overcome the sense of despair and futility of human existence, which was articulated by Pascal in his Pensées, and to acquire love of God: ‘Qu’il y a loin de la connaissance de Dieu à l’aimer.’ (‘What a great distance between knowledge of God and love of him.’).25 It is only this love which can guarantee an access to the ‘great reason’, for it is love given to us in the Revelation of the Word – that is, the Logos, which reveals itself as logos, namely as rationality, which makes it possible to approach the phenomena, which are closer and 22 Augustine of Hippo, Contra Faustum, Book 32, 18 (The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. by P. Schaff and H. Wace, Ser. 1, vol. iv (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), p. 581). 23 Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, 12, XI (16) (On the Trinity, ed. by G. E. Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 94). 24 Blaise Pascal, De l’art de persuader (Paris: Éditions mille et une nuits, 2001), p. 8. 25 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 377, ed. by Louis Lafuma (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962), p. 161.

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more intrinsic to us, those which are experienced by the spirit-bearing human flesh and exceed the capacity of being grasped by discursive thinking. Here one means, first of all, the knowing of a human person of himself, including the facticity of the all-encompassing consciousness manifesting life. Then one can speak of knowledge of the universe as a whole, as creation being ‘coincident’ with life and every person through an instantaneous intellectual synthesis. One can overcome the feeling of non-attunement with the universe, one’s solitude in it and anxiety of non-sense of being, with the aid of that ‘great reason’ which incorporates these mysteries into the scope of its givens, whose reality and truth are guaranteed by love to life and its Creator. The ‘great reason’ implies the mind of Christ-Logos, by whom and through whom the universe was created and for whom, after the Incarnation in flesh, the whole universe was intelligibly given in its fullness as an instance of Divine love, and who remains the Lord of the worlds ( John 1. 16). The creation of the universe manifests the perfect love – that is, the unconditional supremacy of love in relation to being: God created the universe out of love and does not expect its recognition from the created, for God is above and beyond of that which he created. Knowledge of the universe as a creation implies the hidden knowledge of Divine love and not only that which was created. Thus, the contemplation and understanding of the universe as the event coincident with the event of life – that is, the perception of the universe as given at the moment of the beginning of life – requires following the same unconditional love with respect to life as such that was in God creating the world out of nothing. Christian love justifies the very possibility of true knowledge, for that who loves and believes in God, everything is possible, including the knowledge of truth. The loving human being has the same privilege which God has (Mark 10. 27). Christian love makes possible the ‘impossible knowledge’ of man of himself, although in a reduced form, as the sensing of one’s own centrality in creation and as the God-given ability to know oneself through knowledge of God. To know truly, one should be known by God and for this one must love God (I Corinthians 8. 3). To know oneself truly and to know the universe truly means to have knowledge not by one’s own thought, but by the thought of Him, who discloses himself only to those who love him. Knowledge of the universe as self-knowledge, in order to be true, requires the acquisition, as its archetype, of the ‘mind of God’ through love of him. But this is not what is given to humanity in its natural propensity. To know through love and to know through God’s ‘mind and eyes’ requires one to exercise one’s will. Christian love means the ability to approach things and to see in them the divine presence contrary to their compelling empirical evidence – that is, to see that presence, which can only be manifested to humanity as a carrier of free will and love. To know things through love and will means not their passive contemplation, but active participation in them, a sort of communion with them, which allows one to get access to an otherwise inconceivable transcendence of other creatures and essences. Here love takes responsibility for that which is affirmed in philosophy and science because it Christologically reinstates the definition of philosophy, and hence the sciences, to their proper sense as ‘love of wisdom’ or ‘love of truth’. It thus leads them beyond their metaphysical limitations and appeals to a new epistemological exploration of those phenomena that are

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possible, contrary to their seeming metaphysical impossibility and exceeding the limits of their transcendental definitions. Without love, human reason is limited in interpreting the world by transforming it into objects of possession and hence in dealing only with their deficient phenomenality. Christian love aspires for such a metanoia in the state of the human mind that the created world appears to it as it is, contemplated through the ‘eyes’ of the Logos through whom and by whom all is. It is because of this metanoia that in spite of scientific persuasions about the insignificance of our place in the universe, to the extent that one could detest life because of its absurdity and ontological homelessness, the love for the truth of life itself (as an entrance into the mysterious and extraordinary state of being alive) gives one the power of recognising in man a glimpse of truth of its origin from Life, which is not seen at the empirical level and is metaphysically inexpressible. One means Life that ‘was life, and that life was the light of mankind’ that was in the Word, that was in the beginning; and ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never mastered it’ ( John 1. 1–5). Man in his present condition cannot ‘see’ this light, not because this light is ‘weak’ and ‘dim’ so that there is the lack of its phenomenality to man, but, on the contrary, because this light of life is given to man in an absolute excess by ‘overexposing’ – that is, saturating intuition to such an extent that the source of life as its origin becomes invisible. The unknowability of man of himself originates in his presence in front of such an excess of life that it blocks the possibility of any ultimate comprehension of man by himself in categories of the understanding and by reason. The Christian love is capable of leading man to the recognition and acceptance of the fact of the unconditional givenness of life as a gift originating in Life in the Word. By analysing the special epistemological conditions for the justification of phenomena of communion (where the first one is the revelation of life to man), namely the conditions which explicate the extended rationality, one can infer that the ambivalence of the human place in creation forms the basis of the difference between theology and science, so that the very problem of relation and mediation between theology and science manifests the inevitability of this ambivalence in the core of the human condition.

Self-affectivity of Life as an Inaugural Saturated Phenomenon and the Ultimate Foundation of the Dialogue between Science and Theology The logic of our discussion brought us to the conclusion that the difference between science and theology can be qualified as a different philosophical reflection on the one hand, upon that which can be presented in the phenomenality of objects; and on the other hand, upon event-like phenomena, whose phenomenality exceeds the boundaries of metaphysical definitions grounded in substantiality, causality, foreseeability, in the opposition of the possible and impossible. If such a distinction and difference of phenomenality were absolute, no dialogue between science and theology would seem to be possible at all. This remains true in what concerns such

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singular events of communion as the Incarnation, Resurrection and Ascension or the hypostatic descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles. Despite the ongoing infinite historical, linguistic and theological hermeneutics of these events, they remain fundamentally irreducible to any sort of worldly causality. However, in order for these events to be articulated rationally in response to their transcendent ‘appeal’, one needs a receptive being, that is, man. Generalising, one needs life, which is ‘light to men’. This life, proceeding from the Word, appears to man dualistically: on the one hand, as life in the body in rubrics of space and time, when man is positioned as an object in terms of scales of the universe; and, on the other hand, as an inexpressible mystery of conscious existence from which the whole universe is articulated. Classical philosophy detected this ambivalence in the position of humanity in numerous ways and named it the ‘paradox of human subjectivity in the world’.26 This paradox gives an example of the twofold interpretation of one and the same phenomenon of man: On the one hand, man appears in the phenomenality of objects as one physical object among the many; on the other hand, he is present as articulating consciousness, in which the whole universe in the totality of its space and time is brought to its recapitulation through the instant intellectual synthesis in the event of life of this consciousness. In other words, the phenomenality of man receives a different status depending on interpretation, that is, on hermeneutics, thus showing that there is no phenomenal gulf between how he is presented in consciousness in the first and second case. One can speak of a variation in the modus of phenomenality as a consequence of the hermeneutic variation. A historical and philosophical pointer towards this link can be found in the Critique of Practical Reason, where Kant speculates as to how, in the case of man, to reconcile the seeming contradiction between human freedom and the mechanism of nature, to which man is subordinated because of his corporeal condition. He writes: We must remember what was said in the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, or what follows therefrom: that the necessity of nature, which cannot co-exist with the freedom of the subject, appertains only to the attributes of the thing that is subject to time-conditions, consequently only to those of the acting subject as a phenomenon […] But the very same subject being on the other side conscious of himself as a thing in himself […] regards himself as only determinable by laws which he gives himself through reason; and in this, his existence, nothing is antecedent to the determination of his will […] the whole series of his existence as a sensible being, is in the consciousness of his supersensible existence nothing but the result […] of his causality as a noumenon.27 In other words, causality and other categories determine necessarily only the natural mechanism responsible for the actions of subjects as phenomena, but are not applicable

26 David Carr, Paradox of Subjectivity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Nesteruk, The Sense of the Universe, pp. 135–53. 27 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason [229], trans. by T. K. Abbott (London: Longmans, 1959), p. 191.

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to them as things in themselves. Moral freedom and natural necessity are harmonized in one and the same ‘object’, namely man, by means of variation of the modus of phenomenality, the variation which became possible because of the hermeneutical variation in one and the same ‘object’ – that is, man, as phenomenon and noumenon. The entry of hermeneutics into the criterion of distinction between the modes of phenomenality – for example, between the phenomenality of objects (in science) and phenomenality of events (in theology) – points to that the difference in ‘view’ of one and the same phenomenon originates in man, namely in variation of his intuition. For example, the transition from a perception of the universe as a physical spatio-temporal object to its contemplation as the event coincident with human life corresponds to the transition from the phenomenon of the universe with poor intuition to the universe as a saturated phenomenon with an excess of intuition.28 Then, one can conjecture that the difference in interpretation of phenomena on the basis of scientific rationality and the extended rationality of theology has its origin in the human being as such. Consequently, the difference between the scientific worldview and the perception of the world in the context of religious experience is linked to that intrinsic variability and flexibility of the human cognitive faculties from which this difference and possible forms of its explication (either conflict or consonance) arise. The paradox of human subjectivity in the world gives an example of an ineluctable dichotomy in representation of the living experience of the world: namely its objective representation (man as a part of the universe) and its event-like interpretation (when the whole universe is articulated in human consciousness). The mystery of this dichotomy (that is, an ambivalent appearance of man to himself) remains and, being irrevocable in any knowledge of being, becomes a characteristic element of the human condition. Since, as we have discussed previously, one cannot produce a metaphysical ‘basis’ for the phenomenon of man, the sense of the abovementioned dichotomy in perception of the human place in the universe remains also metaphysically inexplicable, so that the split in the scientific and theological perception of reality manifests the difference in the modes of phenomenality. The problem of relation between science and theology, seen in the perspective of history, sociology and even anthropology, becomes an inalienable characteristic of man and his unknowability of himself. One concludes then that any hope for establishing such

28 Les phénomènes saturés – the so called ‘saturated phenomena’ stand for the group of phenomena, which cannot be represented in the phenomenality of objects, that is, in rubrics of quantity, quality, relation and modality. The issue is that certain phenomena do not manifest themselves in the mode of objects and yet still do manifest themselves. These phenomena undergo saturation by the excess of intuition over the concept or signification in them. Correspondingly, the saturated phenomena cannot be constituted because they are saturated. The experience of the saturated phenomena cannot be predetermined by a transcendental subject: It is to the extent that ego cannot comprehend the phenomenon that this ego is constituted by it. The examples of the saturated phenomena can be found in various fields of human activity: painting, revelation of the Divine, the givenness of truth, events of life, experience of flesh, the erotic phenomenon, and so on. The theory of the saturated phenomena was advanced by the French philosopher Marion in his books Du sucroît and Le phénomène érotique (Paris: Grasset, 2003).

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a dialogue between science and theology that could reconcile science and theology in a sort of unity is existentially futile.29 Thus, one needs to state that the major driving aspect of all discussions on science and theology is the incomprehensible facticity of man, his life and life as such. Both science and theology (together with philosophy) receive their ultimate foundation in events of life, originating from life as such. But since, in coherence with our previous argument, one cannot establish an ontological (metaphysical) foundation for the phenomenon of life, one cannot consider life on the same level with the rest of reality of nature, for life transcends the capacity of being presented in the phenomenality of objects by manifesting itself in the event of its sheer facticity as the possibility of all further phenomenalizations. The world thus becomes grasped and hence phenomenalized within the life-event horizon. The facticity of life and man that are treated theologically as the willing of the Word and the Spirit to create man in the image of the Holy Trinity (being de facto the givens of the theology of communion), challenge philosophy by forcing it to develop the hermeneutics and phenomenology of that which is not apparent – that is, of that which does not show itself, but is in the foundation of distinction between that which is alive (man) and which is not. Such a philosophy will have to rationally appropriate the experience of communion as the faculty of thought and speech, following an ideal of freedom from slavery to nature and society, the unconditional acceptance of love as an ultimate principle of communion and being. The invisible and indemonstrable phenomenon of life as such is explicated dramatically in the problem of man’s birth, treated phenomenologically. By referring the reader to details on this subject elsewhere30, we just would like to point out that the phenomenological inaccessibility to the event of birth as a hidden mystery of life in general, being implicitly present in all discussions on science and theology, explicates itself indirectly in both historically and literary narrated events of Christian history, such the Incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus Christ, as well as in the scientific narrative of the beginning of the universe or of the inaugural event of biological evolution. Then, since according to the modern scientific world-view, the whole physical world had its origin in the singular event in the past of the universe – the event whose contingent facticity is not elucidated by science itself –, science ultimately appeals to the same intuition of ‘beginning’, which pertains to the unknowability of man of himself – that unknowability which constitutes the initial and final point in the problem of science and theology. However, in analogy with the

29 One can quote Semyon L. Frank, who opined that any attempt to remove this dichotomy in man or explain it away by means of a materialistic regress in thinking leads ineluctably to a distorted anthropology and hence cosmology: Man has a ‘dual nature, and every theory of life which fails to account of both aspects of his being is bound to be inadequate […] The structure of our being is complex and antinomic, and all artificial simplification distorts it’. Semyon L. Frank, Reality and Man, trans. by Natalie Duddington (New York: Taplinger, 1966), pp. 34–35. 30 Romano, L’événement et le monde, pp. 95–112; Jean-Luc Marion, ‘The Event, the Phenomenon and the Revealed’, in Transcendence in Philosophy and Religion, ed. by James E. Faulconer (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 87–105; Marion, Certitudes négatives, pp. 291–99.

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phenomenology of birth, , the coming of the universe into being is not simply the ‘birth’ of the dead physical world from something that either logically or temporally preceded it, but rather represents the origin of a certain phenomenality of the world as a result of coming into the existence of life. It is this that forms the beginning of theology understood not as ‘speculations of the human mind or a result of a critical study, but as a revelation of that being to which man was introduced by the operation of the Holy Spirit’.31 It is the theology of the living presence of God rehabilitating the human subject, ‘sustaining him in his personal relations with God and with his fellow creatures’.32 In the theological activity as a modus of life, human reason finds itself posited with a given reality that is not a dumb or inert object of knowledge but the Holy Spirit speaking the Word of God and in that Word presenting the very Being of God as the creative source and objective ground of our knowledge of Him.33 If, thus, the problem of the origin of human life constitutes the core of the dialogue between theology and science, and this problem is theological by definition, it becomes clear that the relationship between science and theology cannot be ‘symmetric’, so that the very positioning of this relationship as a relation ‘between’ science and theology represents a misunderstanding. The very possibility of science as a consequence of the facticity of life constitutes a theological problem, for one must first of all pose a question on the possibility of the scientific description of the world and its representation in the phenomenality of objects. This ultimately leads to a question of ‘the Giver of life’ (as ‘the Giver of science’), that is, to true theology as the willing of the Holy Spirit. Here, theology again challenges philosophy by initiating a rational response to such a gift of life, a new understanding of phenomenality of that (the ‘Giver of life’) which is not transparent in rubrics of space and time. The introduction of a pneumatological dimension into the discourse on science and theology must appear strange and irrelevant to scientists. If the reflection upon the logical structure of the world can at least touch upon the Christological problematic, for the Logos is present in the world in its intelligible laws and in consubstantiality with the universe as the body of the incarnate Christ, a reflection upon the Holy Spirit becomes much more problematic, for the latter has never been present in the rubrics of space and time (apart from the event of Pentecost), despite the fact that He invisibly and inalienably was ‘present’ behind the actualization of the Incarnation in the physical world. It is because of this that it becomes a difficult task (even for theology) to detect the ‘presence’ of the Spirit in the universe through his action upon history. The conceptual arrangement of theology thus needs philosophical methods dealing with the phenomenality of that which is not transparent, not shown, but that which implicitly is present in the foundation of the very possibility of stating this

31 Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), Старец Силуан [Starets Siluan] (Moscow: St Trinity and Sergius Lavra, 1999), p. 171. 32 Thomas F. Torrance, God and Rationality (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), p. 188. 33 Torrance, God and Rationality, p. 182.

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non-transparency. One implies again a situation, where the intuitive content of that which is not apparent exceeds the discursive capacity of its constitution – that is, the encounter with the saturated phenomenon with the event-like phenomenality. As it was expressed by T. F. Torrance, we encounter the Spirit ‘always as the Lord of implacable objectivity of His divine Being, objecting to our objectifying modes of thought and imparting Himself to us in accordance with the modes of His own self-revealing through the Word’;34 that is, by granting to us the proceeding from Him of forms of His acquisition, when true knowledge of things becomes knowledge not in the perspective of our nature, but from the disclosed self-affectivity of life as a pointer beyond its own limits. Paradoxically, the Spirit points toward the impossibility of apprehending his presence in forms of thought and speech, by exercising thus the possibility of grasping this impossibility. It is exactly this which places us under the constant bedazzling gaze of the Spirit that cannot be looked at. At the same time, the vision of the sense of those realities, which man encounters in the event-like experience of the Divine, is achieved through the actions of the Holy Spirit upon history, referring thus the content of our thought and speech pertaining to events of communion beyond their space-time context. The Spirit is that action and operation of God with respect to us which makes our concepts and cognitive forms open to that which is not apparent, but lies in the foundation of our capacity of detecting and apprehending the events of communion. Scientific activity and articulation of the universe also have in their modi operandi the implicit presence of the ‘giver of life’, so that the philosophical explication of scientific theories as originating in the event of life will make it possible to shed light on the pneumatological dimension of science as such, as well as on the pneumatological dimension of the relation between science and theology of communion.

Instead of a Conclusion The immediacy of the given in the theology of communion entails that this theology cannot acquire a metaphysical form, and thus demands the extension of philosophy beyond metaphysics. Philosophy has to incorporate into its scope the unobjectified phenomena and those aspects of human experience as birth, love to the other, the sensibility of one’s own flesh as consubstantial to the universe or the perception of events. These saturated phenomena, by evading the rubrics of metaphysical description, slip away from any scientific interpretation. However, if one needs to relate (hermeneutically) these phenomena to the scientific ones, one must at least attempt to apprehend them philosophically. Here theology provides an example for philosophy: The extension of the latter is possible if one includes in its scope the givens of communion. Such an extension of philosophy, implying the refusal of the transcendental stance in knowledge, brings it to a purely empirical sphere, by disregarding an initial question on what can be known and what cannot. By being 34 Torrance, God and Rationality, 173.

M e d i at i o n / D i alo g u e b e t w e en Theo lo gy and Sci e nce

empirical and because of its dependence on the transcendent, theology precedes philosophy in the sense that it formulates new challenges for philosophy in the conditions where the metaphysical and transcendental matrix of thinking can no longer be employed. It is in this sense that one can talk of the rationality of theology in a more complicated and efficacious sense than in philosophy. The same can be said of theology in its ‘dialogue’ (mediation) with special scientific disciplines, when the latter ambitiously pretend to know the universe and man as if they are ontologically rooted in some primordial substance of the world. Here, theology gently points out that there is the transcendent foundation of the contingent facticity of the human world, whose presence is ‘sensed’ as an incredible unknowability of the world, not in the sense of a lack of knowledge or time to apprehend it, but in the sense of excess making every mysterious and extraordinary instance of human life a ‘bedazzling event’ of the presence of light of the Life from the Word, the Word Who was with God and Who was God.

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William R. Shea

Maximus the Confessor and the Contribution of Orthodoxy to the Dialogue on Science and Religion

My comments are inspired by the address of His Eminence Nikolaos, Metropolitan of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki, as well as the scholarly presentation of Sergey S. Horujy and the learned comment of Alexei Nesteruk. I see their contribution as an extended commentary on two biblical texts. The first is from the Gospel According to St John: 1. 1-3: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. The second is from St Paul’s Letter to the Colossians 1. 15–16: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations or principalities or authorities – all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together. The Greek Fathers combined the biblical account of creation in the book of Genesis with the Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence of Forms. This harmony, binding together the atom and the galaxies, is expressed in a cosmic system brought about by the magnificence of the Creator-Logos. I am not an expert on Orthodox Christian issues, and I dare not bring water to the well. If I had to, it would be a very small pail indeed. Allow me therefore to indulge in the more modest task of saying why I began to read the Greek Fathers. It is linked with a growing interest in the relationship between science and religion, which is not fuelled, I regret, by a rediscovery of the relevance of religion to the understanding of the cosmos – which I would personally welcome – but by the way the Abrahamic religions, and more specifically, the Muslim tradition, can be exploited to foster aims that would preclude genuine progress in science and society. If His Eminence Nikolaos will kindly allow me to be ecumenical, I will speak from a Roman Catholic perspective, which is open to the lessons of the Orthodox tradition but is William R. Shea  University of Padua, Italy Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 123–126. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116860

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sadly obsessed by the condemnation of Galileo. Historians of science are deluged with requests to speak about this incident. Galileo was condemned in 1633. ‘Who was the second scientist to be condemned?’ I regularly ask my audience. The answer is, ‘No one’. I take this as an indication that even the Vatican can learn something. Galileo was quite clear on how the world should be interpreted. ‘Philosophy’, he wrote in The Assayer, is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continuously open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth.1 At the beginning of his masterpiece, the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo goes further and declares: I know very well that the Pythagoreans held the science of numbers in high esteem, and that Plato himself admired the human intellect and considered it to partake of divinity simply because it understood the nature of numbers. I would not be far from making the same claim myself.2 At the end of the First Day of the Dialogue, when the use of mathematics has been vindicated in a variety of ways, Galileo returns to the theme of ‘divine’ mathematical knowledge to argue that, although the human mind is restricted in many respects, it can attain certainty in the pure mathematical sciences, that is, geometry and arithmetic, of which the divine intellect indeed knows infinitely more propositions, since it knows them all. But with regard to the few that the human intellect understands, I believe that its knowledge equals the divine in objective certainty, for it succeeds in grasping their necessity. For God, the apprehension of the essence of a thing means the immediate comprehension, without temporal reasoning, of all its infinite implications. We must work our way from one conclusion to the next, but the unity of all things in the mind of God ‘is not entirely unknown to the human intellect, although it is clouded in deep and thick mist’.3 The haze is dispersed when a mathematical proposition is so well mastered that it can be run over rapidly and with ease. What the divine intellect perceives in a flash, the mortal mind fits together piece by piece. Hence, God thinks 1 Galileo Galilei, Opere di Galileo, ed. by Antonio Favaro, 20 volumes (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1890–1909), vol. vi (1896), p. 232. This is the standard edition of Galileo’s Works and will henceforth be cited as Opere di Galileo. 2 Opere di Galileo, vol. vii (1897), p. 35; English translation by Stillman Drake, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems – Ptolemaic & Copernican (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), p. 11. 3 Opere di Galileo, vol. vii, pp. 128–29 (Drake translation, p. 103).

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into the world the rigorous mathematical necessity that we can only laboriously reach through difficult demonstrations. God is a geometrician in his creative labours. He makes the world through and through a mathematical system. As we can see, Galileo’s theology is narrowly epistemological, and it seemed to him to be no less than a straightforward application of the aphorism in the Wisdom of Solomon (11. 20) that reads: ‘You have disposed all things by measure and number and weight.’ In the Latin Vulgate: ‘Omnia in mensura, et numero et pondere disposuisti’. Galileo would not have been troubled with his conception of human knowledge and might have lived in peace had he not felt compelled to show that the motion of the earth was not at variance with Scripture. Whether a passage is literal or metaphorical had long been debated, but by theologians, and that a professional astronomer should claim to teach them something was resented. The passages in the Bible that speak of the Earth as fixed and immovable are not numerous and come mainly from the psalms. Here are some instances: Psalm 93. 1: ‘Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm’; Psalm 96. 10: ‘He has fixed the earth firm, immovable’; Psalm 104. 5: ‘Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken’; Isaiah 45. 18: ‘He made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast’; I Chronicles 16. 30: ‘He has fixed the earth firm, immovable.’ The most striking biblical passage concerns the way the Israelites were said to have secured victory over the Amorites: On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.” So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a human being. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel! ( Joshua 10. 12–14). How Galileo felt about this passage is clear in a letter to Christina, the mother of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who was both devout and not unwilling to dab in theology. Manuscript copies of Galileo’s letter were widely circulated, and a Latin translation was published outside Italy in 1636. Galileo quotes from a large number of theologians who argued that the Bible ‘teaches how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go’ (this saying is borrowed from Cardinal Cesare Baronio, who was Galileo’s student at the University of Padua). The authorities invoked include two Latin Fathers, St Augustine and St Jerome, the mediaeval theologians Petrus Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and Alonso Fernandez de Madrigal, known as ‘Tostado’. Among Galileo’s contemporaries, we only find the name of the Jesuit Benedict Pereira. The only Apostolic Father who is quoted is the Pseudo-Dionysius, the sixth-century writer who was identified with Dionysius, the Athenian convert of Paul mentioned in Acts 17. 34. This false attribution to the earliest decades of Christianity resulted in the work being given great authority in subsequent theological writing in both East and West. Its influence decreased in the West with the fifteenth-century demonstration of its later dating. Until recently, it had been taken for granted that Galileo had gone to considerable trouble to find support for his non-literal interpretation of geocentric passages in

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the Bible, but we now know that his ammunition was provided by a monk from the Barnabite convent of San Frediano in Pisa. On 6 January 1605, Galileo’s former assistant, Benedetto Castelli, wrote to him: ‘I have been in touch with the Preacher of the Barnabite Order, who is very fond of your views, and he has promised me certain passages from St Augustine and other doctors that confirm your interpretation of Joshua.’4 In all likelihood, the priest’s name was Pomponio Tartaglia.5 So Western theology, at the time, took only two things into consideration. First, the epistemological claim that God’s knowledge is essentially mathematical and the implication that mathematicians are the ones who can share it. Second, the fact that the status of biblical passages, which describe the nature of physical and astronomical phenomena were controversial. This can hardly be called a rich theology of the natural world. In recent years, I have been asked, mainly by students in the Catholic seminaries where I have taught, whether there is a deeper theological approach. Given the popularity of the writings of Hans Urs von Balthazar in some theological milieux it was somewhat natural to turn to his Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor. I soon discovered that there was a veritable host of books and articles on Maximus, and the shelves in my library began to groan beneath their weight. Several members of the audience have contributed to this growing industry, and I welcome the opportunity to thank them. What struck the students of theology was the way Maximus presents the Church as lying in the midst of the natural and supernatural cosmos like a source of light that sets all things revolving around itself. At one level the Church represents everything symbolically; at another she is also an effective guarantee of the transformation of the whole universe. This is why the liturgy, for Maximus, is more than a mere symbol: it effects a transformation of the world into a divinized existence. For that reason, as von Balthazar puts it, ‘the liturgy is ultimately always a “cosmic liturgy”, a way of drawing the entire world into the hypostatic union, because both world and liturgy share a Christological foundation’.6 The liturgy shares in the breath of life that created the world, and it is now at work recreating and restoring. It helps the Church ascend towards God and strive towards the unity of all believers. When truly grasped, it unites man with God and human beings with one another. It discloses the eschatological sense of human existence.7 The Eucharistic liturgy is an emphatic form of the liturgy in the cosmos and the visible celebration of the eternal heavenly liturgy, a foretaste of the happiness of the kingdom of heaven. It brings us closer to God and fellow believers, thereby unveiling the eschatological meaning of human existence.

4 Opere di Galileo, vol. xii (1902), pp. 126–27. 5 See Paolo Ponzio, ‘Patristic Theology in the Copernican Letters of Galileo’, in Religious Values and the Rise of Science in Europe, ed. by John Brooke and Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (İstanbul: IRCICA, 2005), pp. 131–43. 6 See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), p. 322. 7 See Ciprian Streza, ‘Saint Maximus the Confessor’s Mystagogia as a Complex Liturgical Commentary’, International Journal of Orthodox Theology, 4/1 (2013), 63–82.

Stoyan Tanev

Using the Concept of Energy to Encounter Orthodox Theology with Physics An Analogical Comparative Theological Approach (ACTA)

Introduction Dealing systematically with the encounter of theology with physics could be both a substantial and a subtle challenge. One of the reasons for the existence of this challenge is the realization that the interaction between theology and physics takes place, literally, in the form of an encounter; i.e. not as a dialogue, but as a kind of confrontation and struggle.1 Even when they could be considered in the context of a constructive interaction, theology and physics always find themselves engaged in a dialogical struggle, which is rooted in the lack of contextual fit between the ultimate directions of their exploratory concerns as well as in their own unique challenges of dealing with the unknown and the unexpected. And this is true for almost all generative domains that could offer a basis for the interface between theology and science – creation and cosmology, the fundamental nature of reality, anthropology, epistemology, and eschatology. It is not by accident that recent voices in Orthodox theology and science tend to question the dialogical perspective on the interaction between theology and science: [I]n order to incorporate the givens of theology (the ‘data’ of religious experience) into a philosophical framework one needs to extend philosophy beyond its metaphysical and transcendental setting. This extension inevitably leads to the recognition of the fact that the foundation of both science and theology originates in human beings having an ambiguous position in the universe which cannot be explicated on metaphysical grounds. The phenomenon of man remains inexplicable to man himself thus creating an ultimate reference point of the contingent facticity of both science and theology. The so-called dialogue between science

1 One of the meanings of the noun encounter is ‘a confrontation or unpleasant struggle’. The origin of the noun is from Old French encontrer (verb) / encontre (noun), based on Latin in- ‘in’ + contra ‘against’: [All websites cited were accessed in June 2018]. Stoyan Tanev  Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 127–146. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116861

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and theology demonstrates that the difference in hermeneutics of representation of the world in the phenomenality of objects and the inaugural events of human life and religious experience pertains to the basic characteristic of the human condition and that the intended overcoming of this difference under the disguise of the ‘dialogue’ represents, in fact, an existentially untenable enterprise.2 Michael Heller has also emphasized the delicate nature of any potential dialogue, arguing that the interface between science and theology must be based on extremely ‘fine–tuned’ principles. According to him, this is because the ‘so-called “building bridges” between science and theology without any balanced methodological care easily results in doctrinal anarchy, and even deepens the existing conflict between them’.3 I do fully agree with Michael Heller about the need and the challenge of adopting an appropriate methodological perspective in exploring the encounter between theology and science. In this paper, I suggest a combination of two comparative methods as a basis for the articulation of a constructive approach to the exploration of such encounter. I suggest calling it ‘Analogical Comparative Theological Approach’ (ACTA).

The Method of Analogical Isomorphism The first method is analogical isomorphism,4 in which the parallels between two supposedly similar issues, concepts or relations in two different domains of human experience are explored by, first, examining how these issues, concepts or relations emerge and operate within their own natural conceptual environment and, second, using the examination as an exploratory lens focusing on the constructive identification of differences or parallels in their meanings and contexts. The method explores the analogical isomorphism between the sets of interrelated terms describing the two similar concepts or relations in the way they appear in the two different experiential domains.5 It neither affirms nor denies the similarity between the terms. It focuses on examining whether and in what way the relations within one set of terms are similar to the relations in the other set of terms. If, for example, the first set involves the terms A and B, and the second set – P and Q, the set (A, B) is said to be analogically isomorphic to the set (P, Q) if the relation of A to B is similar to the relation of P

2 Alexei Nesteruk, ‘Philosophical Foundations of the Dialogue between Science and Theology’, Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences, 2/11 (2018), 276–98, (p. 276). See also his contribution in the present volume. 3 Michael Heller, ‘Where Physics Meets Metaphysics’, in On Space and Time, ed. by Alain Connes et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 238–77 (p. 241). 4 Stoyan Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics: From Controversy to Encounter (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017). 5 Bernard Lonergan, ‘Isomorphism of Thomist and Scientific Thought’, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan – Collection, ed. by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Lonergan Research Institute of Regis College, 1988), pp. 133–41 (p. 133).

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to Q. According to Bernard Lonergan, if such analogy is grasped, it could help in realizing that the conceptual differences between the terms are less significant than what they seem to be when considered alone, i.e. when the relational structure of the two sets is not taken into account.6 Lonergan’s insights were found to be quite valuable in exploring the parallels of the distinction between essence and energy in theology and physics.7 The method of analogical isomorphism suggests identifying the (A, B) set of terms with the concepts of essence and energy in Orthodox theology and the (P, Q) set of terms with the concepts of essence and energy in physics. Such identification fits very well the ontology underlying the nature of the realities behind the terms since the term essence, which is the initial term of both sets (A, B) and (P, Q), is inherently ontological in nature. On the other hand, the term energy, i.e. the second term in both sets (A, B) and (P, Q), plays an epistemological role, thus providing a proper setting for the exploration of the relationship between ontological and epistemological considerations.

The Comparative Theological Approach The second method is borrowed from the field of comparative theology – an emerging or rather renewed discipline within theology, which explores the creative tension between the comparative and the theological aspects of inter-religious endeavors.8 It represents a special type of theological practice committed to deep inter-religious learning while staying rooted in a particular religious tradition. According to Francis Clooney, a leading figure in this field, comparative theology marks acts of faith seeking understanding which are rooted in a particular faith tradition but which, from that foundation, venture into learning from one or more other faith traditions. This learning is sought for the sake of fresh theological insights that are indebted to the newly encountered tradition/s as well as the home tradition.9 Clooney emphasizes the distinctive legitimacy of comparative theology by comparing it with comparative religion, theology of religions, and inter-religious dialogue. In contrast to comparative religion, comparative theology focuses on the theological



6 The exploration of the technicalities of the application of the method of analogical isomorphism to matters related to Divine-human communion is a study in its own and deserves a separate treatment. The variety of such methods was recently discussed by Yann Schmitt, L’Être de Dieu. Ontologie du théisme (Paris: Ithaque, 2016). 7 Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics. 8 Francis Clooney, Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders (Chichester, England: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010); Klaus von Stosch, ‘Comparative Theology as Challenge for the Theology of the 21st Century’, Religious Inquiries, 1/2 (2012), 5–26; Paul Hedges, Comparative Theology: A Critical Methodological Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2017). 9 Clooney, Comparative Theology, p. 15.

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reflection of one’s own religion in light of the insights from another religious tradition. In this sense, it is a fundamentally theological enterprise and not just a subject of religious studies. Rather than emphasizing a religiously-detached or neutral position, comparative theology is deeply rooted in a particular religious tradition.10 In contrast to theology of religions, comparative theology is a theology of religious learning which emphasizes an in-depth study of the particularities of other religious traditions instead of basing itself on general descriptions. It is ‘not primarily about which religion is the true one, but about learning across religious borders in a way that discloses the truth of my faith, in the light of their faith’.11 In this sense, it is more than an attempt to clarify the relationship between Christian faith and other religious traditions by focusing on how other religions can be understood in light of the normative claims of the Christian faith. Last but not least, comparative theology shares with inter-religious dialogue a commitment to engage in dialogue and listen carefully to the religious other. At the same time, ‘[t]he comparative theologian must do more than listen to others explain their faith; she must be willing to study their traditions deeply alongside her own, taking both to heart’.12 The generative principles of comparative theology were systematically presented by Klaus von Stosch.13 First, comparative theology is characterized by its micro-logical approach and the attention to the particular. It acknowledges that the adoption of particular language games affects the meaning and expression of religious convictions as well as the encounter between different religious traditions. In this sense, comparative theology can never result in a universal theory about religions and truth. The meanings of basic religious beliefs within particular traditions are generically heterogenic and can lead to a fruitful discussion only by a focus upon an inter-religious and intercultural comparison of exactly-specified theological, literary or confessional writings, concrete rituals, defined beliefs, certain theological concepts within limited contexts and historical appointed eras. Every act of comparison follows an interior logic and provides theology with interesting insights by addressing the concrete.14 Second, comparative theology is concerned with contemporary problems and intends to give an orientation on actual relevant questions. However, the selection of such questions cannot be arbitrary. It should focus on theological problems and concerns related to lay questions about sense, ultimate purpose, salvation and truth, in addition to issues raised by academics and specialists. It should be very careful of not missing the pursuit of relevance by slipping into meticulous comparisons on existentially irrelevant subjects.

10 Clooney, Comparative Theology, p. 15. 11 Clooney, Comparative Theology, pp. 15–16. 12 Clooney, Comparative Theology, p. 13. 13 Von Stosch, ‘Comparative Theology as Challenge’. The summary of the comparative theological principles presented here follows von Stosch’s logic. 14 Von Stosch, ‘Comparative Theology’, p. 12.

using the concept of energy to encounter orthodox theology with physics

Third, comparative theologians deal with specific religious beliefs but, at the same time, they attempt to incorporate their deeper understanding of the position of the other into their own theology. They are also open to the possibility that the other can do the same with respect to their own theology. According to J. Fredericks, Doing theology comparatively means crossing over into the world of another religious believer and learning the truths that animate the life of that believer. Doing theology comparatively also means coming back to Christianity transformed by these truths, now able to ask new questions about Christian faith and its meaning for today.15 In this sense, doing comparative theology requires the detailed knowledge of one’s own theological position in addition to those of others. Ideally, comparative theologians should have studied more than one theology and would be able to switch back and forth between the inherent confessional perspectives.16 Fourth, comparative theology needs the instance of a third position – an issue, a problem or concern that comes to the two religious traditions as a challenge from the outside while, at the same time, offering an opportunity for the two traditions to engage dialogically by using the potential of their internal resources. ‘At least to some extent, the instance of a third position could be established by the position of a philosophical, autonomous, critical, external perspective.’17 However, it cannot simply be an abstract philosophical point or principle. It must be concrete and able to provide a reference to the dialogue of the other two as a controlling instance. It could be either atheistic or agnostic but also engaging enough to enable the emergence of the two theological standpoints in an active and distinctive way. Fifth, comparative theology always focuses on praxis followed by reflection – the praxis of different religious traditions and a reflection upon further developments within the inter-religious dialogue. It follows the idea that the cognitive content of religious convictions is understood fully only if examined in the context of its ‘depth grammar’. The manifold and vivid dialogue among specific traditions, persons and theologies is a basis and corrective for comparative theology. Comparative theology is not a theology for dialogue, but a theology of dialogue […] It is a cooperative concept wherein followers of other religious traditions are to be included. It is not simply reduced to writings and scriptures, but requires a concrete dialogue between people of other world-pictures in order to find and develop adequate access towards their own level of world-pictures along with those of others.18

15 James Fredericks, Buddhists and Christians: Through Comparative Theology to Solidarity (New York: Orbis Books, 2004), p. xii. 16 Von Stosch, ‘Comparative Theology’, p. 13. 17 Von Stosch, ‘Comparative Theology’, p. 15. 18 Von Stosch, ‘Comparative Theology’, p. 16.

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Sixth, the dialogical open-mindedness should make comparative theologians aware of their own vulnerability and the reversibility and fallibility of their judgements. Such vulnerability emerges from the language game bondage of all speech and thought, and not just from the adoption of an open-ended hermeneutics in the context of discussing, for example, eschatological matters, neither from the epistemic ambivalence of realities that could be seen in the light of both religious and philosophical perspectives.19 Last but not least, the vulnerability of theological judgements could be also associated with the fact that every religious tradition usually has its own competing varieties of theological interpretations. This however should be seen as an opportunity because a rigorous application of the comparative theological principles could enable a constructive reflection on the controversies within one’s own tradition in a way that is impossible to do otherwise.

The Analogical Comparative Theological Approach (ACTA) I should point out that in my previous work on the interface of theology and physics I have referred only to the potential of the method of analogical isomorphism to address issues on the interface of theology and science.20 In this paper, I will focus on discussing the potential of the ACTA approach which appears to be more comprehensive in terms of its applicability in the context of the encounter between theology and physics. But how to apply comparative theological principles to examining the encounter between theology and physics? The usual application of the comparative theological approach in a science and religion context would have required the use of a science issue as a third position providing a reference for the encounter of two different religious traditions. An example of such a third position could be the dominant cosmological understanding of the creation of the universe. In this sense, the usual way of applying the comparative theological approach needs to be adjusted in a way that fits the context of the encounter between theology and physics. The first adjustment is that, in this new context, physics needs to take the place of one of the traditions, i.e. the encounter will be between the theological perspective of a particular religious tradition and the scientific understanding of a particular concept or issue. The second adjustment is that the (third) position, which provides the comparative background for the encounter, needs to be specific and highly relevant for both theology and physics. If we take again as an example the creation of the universe, the encounter will be between the articulation of the doctrine of creation in a specific religious tradition and the emergence of one of the dominant scientific (cosmological) understandings of creation. In this sense, the role of the third position is taken by the concept of creation itself, which is now

19 Von Stosch, ‘Comparative Theology’, p. 16. 20 Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics.

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considered from the viewpoint of the two different perspectives – the theological and the scientific one.21

The Concept of Energy in an ACTA Perspective The best way to illustrate the applicability of ACTA is to use an example – its application to the distinction between essence and energy which I explored in my book Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics – From Controversy to Encounter.22 The first four chapters of my book provide a detailed analysis of the context of the theological rediscovery of the concept and its relevance for Orthodox theology in general. I believe that the analysis offers valuable insights that help in uncovering the origin and the logic of the emergence of some of the key themes in twentieth-century Orthodox theology. What is most important for the present discussion is that the analysis of the theological context of the rediscovery of the concept of energy was motivated by the adoption of the specific comparative approach to theology and physics which is the basis for the methodological considerations provided above. The discussion provided in the rest of this text will focus on a review of the concept in physics and Orthodox theology, followed by a deeper engagement with the theological contributions of Christos Yannaras as an example of a constructive approach to the contextual encounter of the ways of using the concept of energy in quantum mechanics and Orthodox theology. In this sense, the rest of the text does not offer a rigorous application of the ACTA approach. The ACTA approach should be considered as methodological background anticipating the co-creative engagement and intuition of the reader in working out the emergence of cross-disciplinary insights. The Concept of Energy in Physics

My interest in the concept of energy has a long history. I have never been satisfied with textbook definitions of energy in physics – neither during the time of my MSc and PhD studies, nor during my years as a professor of physics. Most of these definitions tend to adopt an instrumentalist approach to its meaning, thus avoiding the discussion of any ontological presuppositions. It is surprising that many physicists, including many great ones, do not seem to appreciate what they would call ‘philosophical’ questions. Yet, the concept of energy has a fundamental place in physics. I found some comfort in the fact that other physicists have also struggled with its definition. According to Eugene Hecht, the concept of energy ‘influences our thinking about every branch of physics, indeed, about every aspect of our existence. Yet there is

21 It should be noted that the concept of creation could be explored from the perspectives of other scientific disciplines, in addition to physics or cosmology, such as, for example, evolutionary biology or anthropology. 22 Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics. The discussion that follows is based on parts of this book. However, it should be considered in the new light of the more comprehensive ACTA approach.

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no completely satisfactory definition of energy. ‘Even so,’ continues Hecht, ‘we will quantify its various manifestations as we struggle to define it’.23 From the perspective of physics, energy is a property of matter which is observed indirectly through changes in the speed, mass, state or position of physical objects. The change in the energy of a system, which is all we can ever measure in an experiment, is a measure of the physical change in that system. Force is the agent of change, whereas energy is the measure of change. Because a system can change through the action of different forces in different ways, there could be multiple distinct manifestations of energy. By observing the changing behavior of matter, we ‘infer’ the presence of one form or another of energy. Still, energy is not an entity in and of itself – there is no such thing as pure energy. Energy is always the energy of something. The concept of energy provides a means of quantitatively accounting for physical change. When a material system manifests an observable change due to some interaction, we associate an amount of energy with the extent of that change. Interaction is crucial; if matter did not interact, the concept of energy would be superfluous.24 Historically the concept of kinetic energy was introduced first. The introduction of potential energy provided continuity to the idea of energy but its relevance to the development of physics was found to be significantly more important: The concept of kinetic energy, as it stands, is a derivative concept since it is directly definable in terms of observables, namely mass and velocity. To this extent its usefulness is limited, and it affords no deeper understanding of the nature of mechanical systems; its logical distance from observation is too slight. But the value and significance of the concept are immeasurably increased, both for mechanics and as it turns out for physical science as a whole, by the introduction of the additional concept of potential energy. This move at one stroke places energy among the most important of physical concepts. The new notion of energy thus created, represents a considerable conceptual sophistication of the old one; its logical distance from observation is now very much greater, and the concept casts its net more widely.25 The relevance of the concept of potential energy is inherently associated with the emergence of the field concept. For example, one electron causes a second electron, located at some distance away from the first electron, to experience a certain force. It appears that there is no visible local cause for the force experienced by the second electron. The introduction of the field concept by Michael Faraday enabled electric interactions to satisfy spatio-temporal locality and explain the action at a distance, i.e. that the electric force acting on the second electron at a given moment in time is caused by the electrical field of the first electron. The field is invisible; it becomes

23 Eugene Hecht, Physics: Calculus, vol. i, Second edition (Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole, 2000), p. 222. 24 Hecht, Physics, vol. i, p. 223. 25 D.W. Theobald, The Concept of Energy (London: E. & F. N. Spon Ltd, 1966), p. 39.

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visible by its effects. Its energy is manifested by the visible effect of the electrical field force, which moves the charge away at a given distance. Even such simple exposition of the field theory clearly shows in what sense the concepts of energy and field are interrelated. Energy ‘becomes the basic “substance” of field physics, as matter was the basic “substance” of Newtonian physics. Energy is not a way of characterizing particles, but a way of characterizing processes in the field’.26 ‘It is so because the field is characterized by the presence of energy […] A field is nothing more than a spatial distribution of energy which varies with time. Energy has thus been freed from its dependence upon physical vehicles such as particles; it has achieved the status of independent scientific existence.’27 The idea of the quantum of energy was introduced as a kind of energetic atomism, in which energy could not be divided into arbitrarily small amounts but existed as discrete, tiny packets.28 From the very beginning of quantum theory there was a major epistemological breakthrough that was considered as a major achievement of Max Planck, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr – the demonstration that the discrete behaviour of light quanta and their energetic manifestations could be directly associated with the composition of atoms and the structure of matter in general. The dynamic inner structure of matter is manifested and made known to the observer by the mode of appearance of its smallest quantities of energy. One of the most important differences between classical and quantum physics is that the exchange and transformation of energy is not regarded as a continuous process. In classical physics the use of the energy concept is process-driven and descriptive in nature. It presupposes continuity and does not fit the realm of quantum physics.29 But the law of energy conservation, which does not require following the actual process of change, is still valid in quantum theory. In other words, the radical newness of quantum theory is associated with the way it describes the states of systems without discussing the processes by which new quantum states are actualized. This does not mean that nothing ever happens; it simply means that continuous processes escape the conceptual apparatus of quantum theory. In quantum physics, the concept of energy is associated with a deeper split between visible manifestations and invisible realities. This is due to two reasons: First, in addition to the invisible nature of the quantum objects, there is also a radically different scale of dimensions – the sub-atomic. Second, quantum objects are not only invisible but also unimaginable – the fundamental concepts of quantum physics are not accessible to human imagination. This second reason leads to the need and the challenges of interpretation. This new physics deals again with the energetic manifestations of physical realities, which are invoked or actualized in acts of observation performed in a way suitable to the dynamics of their inner nature, 26 Theobald, The Concept of Energy, p. 50. 27 Theobald, The Concept of Energy, p. 98. 28 For an insightful description of the early stages of the emergence of quantum physics, see Peter Dear, The Intelligibility of Nature – How Science Makes Sense of the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 142. 29 Theobald, The Concept of Energy, p. 117.

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i.e. to observe the activity of a quantum object, you must disturb it.30 Although impersonal (i.e. there is no such thing as will or consciousness of quantum objects), its energy is hypostatic in the sense of Byzantine Church Fathers because it is always the energy of a (some)thing, representing a particular instance of all things having the same essence or nature. The unimaginability of this thing makes the need of the interpretation of its energetic manifestations unavoidable. Such an interpretation could happen only within the framework of activities of a given scientific community driven by its historically developed language and by its ontological and epistemological presuppositions. In contrast to classical physics, physical description at the quantum level operates by means of two languages – the classical (referring to the macro-world) and the quantum (referring to the micro-world). One must use one or the other language, but clearly not both at once. This implies a categorical distinction between the micro- and macro-descriptions, which is based on the necessity of using classical concepts together with an appropriate discontinuous quantum mechanical conceptual ‘correction’ or ‘upgrade’. Such discontinuity leads to the necessity of a new logical framework corresponding to the antinomic nature of quantum objects. All these quantum ‘features’ lead to the need for a more subtle understanding of the relationship between the quantum nature or essence of microphysical entities and their energetic manifestations. The Concept of Energy in Orthodox Theology

The concept of energy goes right through the heart of Orthodox theology and affects the whole body of Christian doctrine. According to Vladimir Lossky, ‘[w]holly unknowable in His essence, God wholly reveals Himself in His energies […] The doctrine of the energies, ineffably distinct from the essence, is the dogmatic basis of the real character of all mystical experience’.31 This is a striking message. First, it makes perfect sense for a physicist, who was systematically trained that the only way to explore invisible physical realities is by enabling the natural energetic manifestations of their inner structures. Second, it turns upside down the dominant understanding of religion as the adoption of a coherent system of obligatory beliefs associated with specific institutions and rituals, concerning a supernatural God who governs the world as a kind of natural law, having little to do with a personal relationship to human beings. Third, it puts the question of God into an epistemological context by emphasizing that He can actually be known. But not only that, the concept refers to a knowledge that is deeply related to the words of the Lord in the Gospel of John (17. 3) ‘And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’

30 Frank Wilczek, The Lightness of Being – Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces (New York: Basic Books, 2008), p. 74. 31 Vladimir Lossky, ‘Uncreated Energies’ (Ch. 4), in Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, trans. by members of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius (Cambridge: St James Clark & Co, 1957) (reprinted in 1968, 1973, 1991, 2005).

using the concept of energy to encounter orthodox theology with physics

The concept was articulated theologically by St Gregory Palamas at the Church Councils that took place in Constantinople in 1341, 1347, 1351 and 1368.32 For him, the distinction between essence and energy is not just conceptual, but it is not real, either, in the sense of the scholastic terminology, where distinctio realis means a difference in substance. Energy is not an independent substance. The word reality (originating from the Latin word res) presupposes a difference in substance and it is difficult to express it in Greek. The Greek pragma means ‘something existing’, but not necessarily an independent substance or essence. It belongs to the same group as the concept praksis and also means ‘something actual’. In this sense, St Gregory Palamas usually calls the energies ‘things’. He talks about an ‘actual distinction’ (pragmatike diakrisis), opposing it, on the one hand, to the ‘actual division’ that would remove the Divine unity and simplicity and, on the other hand, to a simple mental distinction (diakrisis kat’ epinoian).33 The focus on the distinction between essence and energy in St Gregory Palamas is directly associated with his theological point of departure – the real possibility for the knowledge of God and the deification of man.34 The deification of man implies the participation of man in the uncreated life of God,35 but God’s essence remains transcendent and totally unparticipable.36 For Palamas, the energy differs from the essence but is not separated from it. The term essence refers to the immanent, self-identical being of God, while using the term energy with respect to God means that God acts willingly. Divine energy does not denote something other in God than His essence; it refers to the Divine being as active ad extra.37 This activity ad extra includes God’s works such as creating, sustaining, providing and deifying. ‘When the activity is spoken “objectively” as a divine work (ergon) or being […] we are not to imagine a something existing between the divine essence and creatures. The terms work and being denote […] the reality of God’s activity as a powerful presence’.38 God’s works represent his energies in relation to His creatures and God, as He is in Himself, should be distinguished from how He relates to something or someone other than Himself.

32 George Dragas, ‘Book Review of Koutsourês, Demetrios G., Synods and Theology Connected with Hêsychasm: The Synodical Procedure Followed in the Hêsychastic Disputes. Athens: Sacred Metropolis of Thebes and Levadeia, 1997’, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 45 (2000), 631–46. 33 Basil Krivoshein, ‘The Ascetic and Theological Teaching of Gregory Palamas’, The Eastern Churches Quarterly 3 (1938–1939), 26–84, 138–56 and 193–214. This work was published earlier in Russian: Монах Василий (Кривошеин), Аскетическое и богословское учение св. Григория Паламы (Сборник статей по археологии и византиноведению, издаваемый Институтом имени Н.П.Кондакова, VIII) (Prague 1936), pp. 99–151 (p. 132). 34 Torstein Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 140. 35 See the Gospel of John 17. 3: ‘And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’ 36 John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974), p. 186. 37 Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology, p. 141. 38 Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology, p. 141.

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God would have manifested Himself beyond His essence even if creatures did not exist. Indeed, as Vladimir Lossky pointed out, ‘expressions, such as “manifest Himself ” and “beyond” are really inappropriate, for the “beyond” in question only begins to exist with the creation, and “manifestation” is only conceivable when there is some realm foreign to Him Who is manifested. In using such defective expressions, such inadequate images, we acknowledge the absolute, non-relative character of the natural and eternal expansive energy, proper to God’.39 The Divine energies provide the personal dynamics of the Divine–human relationship but ‘God is infinitely beyond all his operations – both essentially and as a personal reality’.40 In his discussion of the Transfiguration, St Gregory follows St Maximus the Confessor, pointing out that it was not Christ who was transfigured when he was seen in glory but the disciples, who were momentarily enabled to see him as He truly and eternally is. ‘They passed over from flesh to spirit before they had put aside this fleshly life, by the change in the activities of sense that the Spirit worked in them, lifting the veils of the passions from the intellectual power that was in them.’41 There are several important messages here: i) The divine energies are both relational (intentionally directed towards us) and non-relative (existing beyond any relation and independently of us); ii) The perception of the Divine presence in the world is a Divine initiative but requires cooperation, ascetical struggle and liberation from the passions; iii) The personal relationship between God and man could be described as synergy – a two-fold understanding of the Divine and human energies as an activity that can be shared, and as the natural accompaniment and manifestation of the inner personal being of the one who acts. At the same time, this synergy is characterized with a certain asymmetry because it is always enabled by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We can speak therefore of an ontologically enabled epistemology because natural human capacities need to be transformed by the Divine energies in order for human persons to be able to know God; iv) The synergetic understanding of the Divine energies could explain both our potential for deification and our inability to reach deification on our own or without proper spiritual preparation. The nature of the Divine energies cannot be grasped but dynamically, as a result of God’s personal activity and will. It is exactly this Divine personal dynamics that makes the invisible God visibly present in the world. In a way similar to the situation in quantum physics, this dynamic personal (hypostatic) presence and manifestations cannot be considered apart from us. We are part of this interaction to the measure of our personal participation and cooperation which are borne within the specific context and status of our spiritual sensitivity and the authenticity of our sacramental life. The personal character of Divine–human communion and ‘energetic cooperation’

39 Lossky, The Mystical Theology, p. 74. 40 Kevin Berger, Towards a Theological Gnoseology: The Synthesis of Fr Dumitru Staniloae, PhD Dissertation (Washington: Catholic University of America, 2003), p. 221. 41 Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 109 (Difficulty 10, 1128A).

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bears the signs of personal specificity, historicity and spiritual conditioning. The Divine energies are ‘God for us’ as persons to the measure of each and every one’s personal response and receptivity, ascetic struggle, humility and love. Bishop Kallistos Ware, one of the distinguished Orthodox theologians today, provides important additional details: But God’s energies, which are God himself, fill the whole world, and by grace all may come to participate in them. The God who is ‘essentially’ unknowable is thus ‘existentially’ or ‘energetically’ revealed. This doctrine of the immanent energies implies an intensively dynamic vision of the relationship between God and world. The whole cosmos is a vast burning bush, permeated but not consumed by the uncreated fire of the Divine energies. These energies are ‘God with us’. They are the power of God at work within man, the life of God in which he shares. Because of the omnipresence of the Divine energies, each of us can know himself as made in the image of God. Through the Divine energies, Jesus Christ ceases to be for us an historical figure from the distant past, with whose story we are familiar from the books, and he becomes an immediate presence, our personal Saviour. Through the Divine energies we know him not merely as a human teacher but as the pre-eternal Logos.42 It is important to point out that one of the fundamental reasons for using the distinction between essence and energies in Orthodox Theology is to underline the reality of the personal relationship between God and man and the deeply ontological nature of the human participation in the Divine: Cette distinction veut suggérer deux choses: d’une part, que Dieu n’est pas un objet qui se présenterait de soi et indépendamment de son libre vouloir aux intelligences créées, et que celles-ci ne pourront jamais le connaitre comme il se connait lui-même, ni fusionner avec lui. Toute connaissance de son Être et toute participation sont entièrement dépendantes de sa libre initiative, mesurée a la capacité actuelle de la créature, et tendant à élever celle-ci a un plus haut degré de participation, sans que soit jamais épuisé l’abîme sans fond de la divinité. D’autre part, cette distinction entre l’essence divine et les énergies signifie que l’homme peut participer réellement à une réalité incréée, au rayonnement de l’Être divin, à ce que l’Écriture appelle sa gloire.43 Energy in Theology and Physics – Encounter and Synergy

My exploration was inspired by a specific insight of Christos Yannaras, for whom one of the key characteristics of postmodernity is the emergence of a new language in dealing with ontology and reality, a language that, according to him, emerges from two 42 Kallistos Ware, ‘God Hidden and Revealed: The Apophatic Way and the Essence-Energies Distinction’, The Eastern Churches Review, 7/2 (1975), 125–36. 43 Placide Deseille, Certitude de l’invisible – Éléments de doctrine chrétienne selon la tradition de l'Église orthodoxe (Paris: Presse Saint Serge, 2002), p. 64.

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different scientific disciplines – quantum mechanics and post-Freudian psychology.44 Yannaras sees the postmodern duty of the Church in the creative appropriation (and not simply adoption) of this new language aiming at linking the salvific message of the Gospel to linguistic categories that could be more efficient in the interpretation of ‘the reality of existence, the appearance and disclosure of being’,45 and more specifically, in the articulation of the experiential mode of the relationship between God, world, and man.46 According to Yannaras, such appropriation could become the source of a new proposal coming from the Church to deal with postmodernity and not just to modernize herself. The way Yannaras speaks about language in quantum physics and theology is similar to the way Niels Bohr spoke about quantum mechanics. Bohr’s student and Nobel Prize Winner Werner Heisenberg noted several times that Bohr was actually inventing a new language. In this process, he ‘tried to keep the words and the pictures without keeping the meanings of the words and of the pictures, having been from his youth interested in the limitation of our way of expression, the limitation of words, the problem of talking about things when one knows that the words do not really get hold of the things’.47 In Bohr’s own words: ‘We here come upon a fundamental feature in the general problem of knowledge, and we must realize that by the very nature of the matter, we shall always have last recourse to a word picture, in which the words themselves are not further analyzed.’48 This attitude to language is one of the sources of Yannaras’s excitement with quantum mechanics – the apophatic nature of its language and its continuous struggle to find the proper ways of describing quantum phenomena. In his terminology apophatism refers to a specific linguistic semantics or attitude to cognition, ‘which refuses to exhaust the content of knowledge in its formulation, which refuses to exhaust the reality of the things signified in the logic of the signifiers’ and ‘consequently refuses to verify knowledge merely by controlling the correct representational logic of the signifiers’.49 An apophatic semantic formulation has a relative, indicative and referential character. It suggests a reality but does not necessarily represent it in a definitive and exhaustive manner. According to Yannaras, ‘[w]e are unable to speak even one word about the eschatological hope of the Church, if we do not struggle to keep the radical apophatism of the ecclesial language’. And the price of losing apophatism is very high since ‘[i]f we refuse the apophatic word and want to be fair and consistent with the language of common human experience, 44 Christos Yannaras, ‘Christos Yannaras in a Conversation with Kalin Yanakiev, Fr Nikolay Neshkov and Georgi Tenev’, Christianity and Culture, 3 (2003); in Bulgarian: ‘Христос Янарас в разговор с Калин Янакиев, о. Николай Нешков и Георги Тенев’, Християнство и Култура, 3 (2003), . 45 Christos Yannaras, Elements of Faith: An Introduction to Orthodox Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), Ch. 6. 46 Yannaras, ‘Christos Yannaras in a conversation with Kalin Yanakiev’. 47 Yannaras, ‘Christos Yannaras in a conversation with Kalin Yanakiev’. 48 Niels Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), p. 20. 49 Christos Yannaras, Postmodern Metaphysics, trans. by Norman Russell (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2004), p. 84.

using the concept of energy to encounter orthodox theology with physics

then we have to compromise with a modest agnosticism’.50 Yannaras emphasizes that, in a similar way, the interpretation of physical phenomena could be challenging in situations where the empirical approach to reality is not directly possible, for example, in the case of phenomena happening at the subatomic scale when all physical entities become practically invisible. In such situations, the semantics of the hermeneutic propositions is relativized even further due to an additional factor – the impossibility of separating the method from the means of the indirect approach to the things under study. In these situations whatever the epistemological method is, it should refuse to function and be imposed as a methodologically correct and uniquely valid cognitive code.51 And this is the second aspect of similarity that was pointed out by Yannaras as a way of comparing quantum mechanics and theology – in both cases ‘methodology functions as a methodical approach to knowledge, free from subjection to the codification of the methodicity’ and without claiming exclusive rights to methodological correctness.52 For Yannaras, modern physics provides a picture of matter and of the world, as a totality of dynamically uncertain active relations. The new picture of the world emerged within the context of Bohr’s new epistemological paradigm. Modern philosophers of science recognize Bohr’s contribution to human knowledge through the articulation of an epistemological lesson from the development of quantum mechanics – the conviction that the description of nature is dependent on the words we use and, more specifically, on the ways we use these words to unambiguously describe our experience with nature. ‘We can speak of nature as experienced only, i.e. structured on the basis of those conditions for description (and for thinking as well) which we are subjected to as part of the world.’53 The source of the epistemological approach of Niels Bohr can be found in what he called the epistemological paradox of quantum theory: ‘On the one hand, there is an apparent incompatibility between ordinary language and the requirements for an unambiguous description of the atomic processes; on the other hand, we need ordinary language to communicate, specifically we need classical concepts to “relate the symbolism of the quantum theory to the data of experience.”’54 All our ordinary verbal expressions are reflections of our customary forms of perception from the point of view of which the existence of the quantum phenomena is completely irrational. ‘In consequence of this state of affairs, even words like “to be” and “to know” lose their unambiguous meaning.’55 For Bohr even ‘reality’ is just a concept meaning that when we discuss what is real in

50 Christos Yannaras, The Meaning of Reality: Essays on Existence and Communion, Eros and History (Los Angeles: Sebastian & Indiktos, 2011), p. 9. 51 Yannaras, Postmodern Metaphysics, p. 85. 52 Yannaras, Postmodern Metaphysics, p. 85. 53 David Favrholdt, ‘Niels Bohr and Realism’, in Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. by Jan Faye and Henry J. Folse (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1994), pp. 77–96 (p. 83). 54 Catherine Chevalley, ‘Niels Bohr’s Words and the Atlantis of Kantianism’, in Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. by Jan Faye and Henry J. Folse (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1994), pp. 33–55 (p. 39). 55 Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, p. 90.

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the quantum world, we are actually trying to learn how to use the concept ‘reality’ in a correct way. Nature escapes the grasp of words and the only way to say anything about it is through the symbolic language of quantum theory: ‘It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out what nature is. Physics concerns what we could say about nature.’56 According to Yannaras, the language of modern physics is based on a semantics suggesting a new way of conceptualizing what is real and existing. It demonstrates the adoption of an ontological attitude to existence that is free of rationalistic biases and superstitions. The words and expressions used by contemporary physics witness forms of existence and reality that do not conform to human rationality and human representational constructions. In such situations, it is impossible to clearly distinguish between phenomena of existence and the epistemological acts of approaching reality. In other words, modern quantum physics adopts ‘a middle ground that is neither purely ontological nor purely epistemological. Instead, it suggests that a separation between reality and information, between existing and being known, and between ontology and epistemology, should be abandoned’.57 In this way, reality becomes rooted in the relation between us humans and the logos of the nature of created things which is manifested in their particular mode of existence. The logos of the nature of every single thing should be seen as an invitation-for-relation with human beings. Humanity becomes the only bearer of consciousness in the Universe, which can turn quantum phenomena into facts of existence. Thus, we cannot speak anymore of some objectively existing properties of quantum objects independently of the experimental set-up and the intentional cognitive attitude of the human observer. According to Yannaras, this is the real meaning of the ‘anthropic principle’, which is very often discussed by both theologians and scientists – the idea that the shape of reality presupposes human consciousness.58 But how is the analysis of modern physics suggested by Yannaras relevant to theology? The main question for Yannaras is: What is the potential link between the ontological maturity of the language of modern physics and the language of the answers provided by ecclesial experience to its own ontological questions?59 For him, the ecclesial attitude to the ontological problematics is of particular relevance since it appears to be the only one outside of the scientific domain that works from within an experiential perspective on truth. The ecclesial experience is based on an apophatic attitude to language and reality that is similar to the one that has emerged within

56 Aage Petersen, ‘The Philosophy of Niels Bohr’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 19 (1963), 8–14 (p. 12). 57 Anton Zeilinger, ‘Quantum Physics: Ontology or Epistemology?’ In Trinity and an Entangled World – Relationality in Physical Science and Theology, ed. by John Polkinghorne (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 32–40 (pp. 38–39). 58 Yannaras, The Meaning of Reality, p. 23. The specific chapter in the book is titled ‘The Reality of the Person in Postmodernity’. The present section follows the Bulgarian translation of Yannaras’s original paper: Янарас, ‘Постмодерната актуалност на понятието личност’. The original version of the paper in Greek and its Bulgarian translation appear to have some important differences with the English version. 59 Yannaras, The Meaning of Reality, p. 64.

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the context of modern physics. This is a perspective which makes modern physics and theology co-workers in the field of the human encounter with reality. And it is magnificently expressed in the apophatic realism of the Church’s ontology which can be summarized in the semantics of the term ‘person’. For Yannaras, this is a keyword, which presupposes the proper ontological interpretation of any scientific fact as well as the shaping of both, a systematic cosmology and anthropology. For the Fathers, a ‘person’ was never a definite reality; persons cannot be defined. Personhood is a reality totally other – it is characterized by ‘otherness’. That is why we know a human person only though relationship. We may describe a person, but we can never provide a precise description. The human person is an existential reality approached through relationship: relationship is a concrete but undefinable event.60 According to Yannaras, in quantum physics it became evident that the result of the observation of the micro-world is related to the specific type of instruments, and also with the specific method of observation and description. ‘Quantum theory tells us that nothing can be measured or observed without disturbing it, so that the role of the observer is crucial in the understanding of physical processes.’61 ‘What this means is that the nature of existing reality is not independent of human action, yet the answer Nature gives us as the result of the individual measurement is random. The result is beyond our control, which indicates an independent physical reality.’62 According to Yannaras, ‘when we speak of relations in quantum mechanics, we do not refer to predictable correlations […] we refer to a mode of correlation, referentiality and coordination which has the character of the unpredictable, of the probable, of the possible, and which could be compared only with the dynamic freedom of interpersonal human relations’.63 This is a key point suggesting that we may actually get closer to a better understanding of quantum realities if we describe them in terms of the theological terminology of essence, nature, hypostasis and energy. It appears therefore that the ontology of quantum mechanics will significantly benefit from the adoption of the term hypostasis with its inherent relational connotation. Niels Bohr distinguishes between the unique identity or hypostasis of the quantum object and the specific complementary ways of its energetic manifestation. This distinction is crucial for Bohr in insisting on the reality of the quantum world while at the same time accepting that it does not make sense to speak about its ‘being in a certain way’ independently of the interaction with a specific experimental arrangement. Such a view does not conform to the classical understanding of realism. It suggests

60 Yanarras, The Meaning of Reality, p. 23. I should point out that Yannaras’s understanding of the relation between person and nature has been the subject of criticism by other well-known contemporary Orthodox theologians such as Jean-Claude Larchet, Personne et nature: La Trinité – Le Christ – L’Homme (Paris: Cerf, 2011), and Fr Nicholas Loudovikos, ‘Hell and Heaven, Nature and Person: Chr. Yannaras, D. Stăniloae and Maximus the Confessor’, International Journal of Orthodox Theology, 5 (2014), 9–32. I will not go into the details of this critique since it does not seem to affect the present discussion. 61 Yannaras, Postmodern Metaphysics, pp. 90–93. 62 Zeilinger, ‘Quantum Physics: Ontology or Epistemology?’, pp. 38–39. 63 Yannaras, Postmodern Metaphysics, pp. 90–93.

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a subtle way of looking at reality allowing for a self-subsisting object to manifest mutually exclusive types of, i.e. complementary, natural properties depending on the specific circumstances of the interaction between the observer and the object. Yannaras provides an insightful theological interpretation of space and time by focusing on a discussion of the nature of personal relationships.64 For him, the experience of space is a consciousness of the other and the other defines a referential separateness which is located as opposite to us and therefore within spatial dimensions. In his own words, ‘[w]e recognize the person fundamentally as the unique power of ‘being–opposite’ to other beings, as a presupposition of the referential disclosure of beings and consequently as a presupposition of the cognition of space’. In other words, ‘we recognize space as the accommodation of personal reference, as a fact of relation’.65 The replacement of the inherent referentiality of the person with a purely intellectual understanding of the disclosure of beings as objects leads to the objectification of space. The objectification of space within the bounds of locally perceivable dimensions does not negate the experience of space in terms of interpersonal relation. The referentiality of persons is a fact that transcends the categories of measurable space. The power of personal relations negates the measurable dimensions of here and there, of nearer and farther, and refers to both presence and absence as the experience of non-dimensional nearness.66 Byzantine theologians saw in personal energy the non-dimensional place of both the human person and of the Person of God. Yannaras refers to John of Damascus who defines the place of God through the personal disclosure of His energy: ‘What is called the place of God is where his energy becomes manifest.’67 And God’s personal energy becomes manifest primarily in the reality of cosmic space. In this way, the world is revealed to humanity through the intimacy of Divine personal energy. Thus, it is not the world that accommodates God or His personal energy, but it is the divine will and energy, which accommodate or give space and meaning to the world, a space outside God, which is simultaneously God’s place, the place for the disclosure of the non-dimensional immediacy of His personal energy. God as personal reality exists on two existential planes – eternity and time.68 His personal relations with us on both these planes are effectuated through His uncreated energies. ‘The plane of time and the plane of eternity are two modes of existence which are interrelated, and not only can the person exist on both, but the very planes themselves would not be understood outside of the person.’69 God offers the reality

64 The logic of this section follows closely the logic of Christos Yannaras, Person and Eros (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2007), pp. 116–18. 65 Yannaras, Person and Eros, p. 105. 66 Yannaras, Person and Eros, p. 107. 67 John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 1.13. 68 See the sections focusing on the discussion of eternity in ‘The Super-Essential Attributes of God’ (Ch. 8), in Dumitru Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology – the Experience of God, vol. i: Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God, trans. by Robert Barringer (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998), pp. 150–71. 69 Berger, Towards a Theological Gnoseology, p. 177.

using the concept of energy to encounter orthodox theology with physics

of being as a gift to all created things and persons, and sustains their development through His uncreated energies. In this sense, time came out of His eternity and He is present in it by opening the realm of His eternity to man. Time is ‘a kind of ladder’ extended by God towards the created world in anticipation of its rejoining and deification through the synergetic cooperation with the Divine. Saint Gregory Palamas, quoting Saint Maximus, also says that one who has been deified becomes ‘without beginning’ and ‘without end.’ He also quotes Saint Basil the great who says that ‘one shares in the grace of Christ […] shares in his eternal glory’; and Saint Gregory of Nyssa who observes that man who participates in grace ‘transcends his own nature, he who was subject to corruption in his mortality, becomes immune from it in his immortality, eternal from being fixed in time – in a word, a god from a man.’70 God created man and the world for eternity. But eternity is won through a movement towards God which comes about in time and implies the need of both space and time.71 Time is the ladder extended by the eternity of God and placed at our disposal, according to each one’s own measure, through the Divine energies which are carried out on each one’s proper level. It becomes the condition for the dynamic interpersonal relationship and union with the eternal God as well as a road towards eternity. In relation to us the eternal God takes a position of anticipation and expectant waiting.72 There is therefore an actual distance between us and Him. This distance, however, has a place within the plan of salvation as an expression of the Divine love. ‘The distance is time understood both as an expectant waiting for an eternity that is directed towards creatures and the hope of the creature towards eternity. This distance will be overcome only in the full final union between us and God.’73 On this road to eternity, God shares with us the experience of expectant waiting and the experience of time, putting on a single plane His energies and our relationship with Him. Time, therefore, cannot be thought on a plane other than the plane of God’s interpersonal energies.

Conclusion The present text introduces and applies the Analogical Comparative Theological Approach (ACTA) to an exploration of the encounter of theology with physics. The approach represents a synergetic integration of the methods of analogical isomorphism and comparative theology. One of the key features of the comparative theological approach requires the focus on a point of discussion that is specific, relevant and engaging. At the same time, the point of discussion is used as an opportunity for

70 Quoted by Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. i, p. 154. 71 Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. i, p. 154. 72 Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. i, p. 158. 73 Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. i, p. 158.

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the unfolding of theological and scientific insights in a way that could enable a cross-disciplinary enrichment. The ACTA approach was applied to exploring the cross-disciplinary potential of the concept of energy, which has a prominent role in both Orthodox theology and physics. The concept has been the subject of multiple discussions and controversies in twentieth-century Orthodox theology and physics. What is interesting is that both theology and physics have rediscovered it in the first quarter of the twentieth century. In this sense, the concept of energy offers a good example of a point of comparison (third position) that fits very well the methodological spirit of the ACTA approach. At the same time, the present work should not be considered as offering a thorough and systematic application of the ACTA approach. It is rather an attempt to look at previous works and use them as a basis for the shaping of a methodological opportunity with great potential for the mutual terminological enrichment of both theology and science.

Christopher C. Knight

Science, Theology, and the Mind*

Introduction In this paper, I shall explore some of the implications of an ancient Greek concept that has been central to the theological anthropology of Eastern Christianity from the patristic period up to the present day. This concept is that there exists in all human beings an intuitive mental faculty called the nous. I shall suggest that taking seriously the possibility that this faculty exists has implications for two aspects of the science–theology dialogue as it has developed in the West: our understanding of the relationship between mind and matter and our thinking about the human state in the ‘world to come’. One problem with an exploration of this kind is that the concept of nous has no place in modern scientific psychology as explored in the academy. However, for the theological scholar interested in science, there is arguably still a good reason for taking the nous seriously, since it has the potential to provide a non-reductionist understanding of religious faith of a kind that is not otherwise available.1 Another



* A fuller version of the arguments presented here may be found in Christopher C. Knight, ‘The Human Mind in This World and the Next: Scientific and Early Theological Perspectives’, Theology and Science, 16 (2018), 151-165 . Both that publication and this have been produced within the framework of the project ‘Science & Orthodoxy around the World’ (SOW), which was made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SOW Project and the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. 1 If a coherent understanding of faith is to be developed, something is needed that provides a nonreductionist link between it and other aspects of human psychology. The concept of nous constitutes a helpful starting point for thinking about such a link. The understanding of Saint Gregory of Nyssa is particularly valuable in this respect. At one level, Gregory’s framework manifests very clear parallels with that to be found in the neo-Platonic thinking of Plotinus about the role of the nous in spiritual development. Both Gregory and Plotinus employ the Platonic motif of the mind’s ascent to the Incomprehensible, placing a distinct faculty of union at the apex of this ascent. This summit is seen as being reached only through a process in which the discursive reasoning ability eventually gives way to the direct contemplation that is the function of the nous. (As Plotinus puts it, ‘we put aside all learning’, or as Gregory puts it, ‘every form of comprehension’ is abandoned.) However, a Christopher C. Knight  Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, UK Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 147–159. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116862

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problem is that the term nous is not readily understandable, even in principle, by those who do not speak Greek, since translations of the term tend all too often, to distort its meaning. In English, for example, the term nous is usually translated as intellect. However, it refers to something different in character from what is commonly now understood by that word. The nous was seen, in ancient and medieval times, not as the seat of discursive reasoning, but as the direct intuitive faculty that is necessary for understanding what is true or real. There were, in fact, many slightly different, if related, understandings of the term to be found in different ancient and medieval authors.2 In a religious context – both Christian and Islamic3 – one of these included seeing the nous as the organ of contemplation, the source of true wisdom. Indeed, in many strands of theological thinking, the nous was seen as central to the relationship between the human person and God: the point at which the human mind was in some sense in direct contact with the divine mind. Particularly in Christian theology, however, the nous was usually seen as having been diminished in its abilities by the Fall, so that the spiritual journey in this life was understood as one of increasingly returning the nous to its pre-lapsarian capabilities. I shall begin this exploration, not by considering the notion of nous directly, but in an indirect way, by noting an interesting aspect of recent Western Christian thinking. This is the tendency to reject the kind of dualism once common, in which body and mind were seen as distinct entities in some kind of loose association. Accompanying this anti-dualistic tendency there has been a revival of a more traditional Christian anthropological understanding, in which body and mind are seen as components of





major difference between Plotinus and Gregory is that this ascent is seen by Gregory, not only in terms of Plotinus’s neo-Platonic understanding of the nous, but also in terms of the central Christian concept of faith. Gregory uses the term faith (pistis), not as it had been used in much early Greek philosophy, in which it had denoted the lowest form of knowledge. Instead, he ascribes to faith qualities, which Neoplatonism would reserve for the crest of the wave of nous. He goes beyond neoPlatonic understanding to stress relationship with God, focusing on biblical texts and emphasizing the sacramental origin and development of faith as well as the transforming character of divine union. There was, in his understanding, both a focus on explicitly Christian concepts and a very clear link between the experience of religious faith and those aspects of the ordinary functioning of the mind that were seen by his non-Christian contemporaries as having their origin in the capacities of the nous. For a discussion of all these factors see Martin Laird, Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith: Union, Knowledge and Divine Presence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). We may, of course, judge that we now need a different way of expressing these capacities. Nevertheless, Gregory’s use of the notion of the nous suggests that some comparable concept may be able to provide for Christians a basis for combatting reductionism in relation to the link between mental functioning and religious faith. Even if only for this reason, therefore, the concept seems worthy of consideration. 2 The variety to be found was due in part to differences in the use of the term nous in the works of Aristotle and Plato. Depending on the Aristotelian or Neoplatonic assumptions of late antique and medieval writers, different understandings and emphases are to be found, though these do not significantly alter the conclusions of the present essay. 3 Among many others in the mediaeval Islamic world, the concept of nous was important for Al Farabi, Avicenna and Ibn Rushd (better known in the Western world as Averroes).

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a unified being. This revival – particularly evident in the science-theology dialogue4 – has come about in part because the analysis of brain damage and of brain scanning results have led cognitive scientists more and more to emphasize and elucidate the physical basis of human mental functioning. This functioning, while not being seen as reducible to brain states (so that it still has autonomous characteristics) is nevertheless usually now seen as an ‘emergent property’ of the physical brain.5

The ‘Software’ Analogy and Eternal Life In relation to this perspective, some have suggested that it is helpful to think about the distinction between the body and the mind in terms of the distinction between hardware and software in a computer. Without the software/mind, they say, the hardware/body has no real purpose; but without the hardware/body, the software/ soul has no natural means of functioning. This may not, as we shall note, be an entirely helpful analogy for us. It has been useful, nevertheless, in providing for many a plausible reason for upholding the traditional Christian understanding that eternal life will not consist of being a disembodied mind or soul, but will involve a ‘resurrection body’ of some kind. Just as, in a computer, software can operate only through appropriate hardware, so, according to this analogy, the human mind will, in its eternal life, require a resurrection body of some kind in order to function. However, just as different types of computer hardware can be used to operate any particular software, so, according to this analogy, our resurrection bodies need not be identical to our present, earthly ones. Within the modern science theology dialogue, it has perhaps been John Polkinghorne who has focused most clearly on the way in which the traditional understanding of the resurrection of the body is now reinforced by scientific insights of this kind. Our natural state – both in this world and in the age to come – is not, he has argued, one in which our ‘software’ alone can constitute our being. Our earthly bodies and our resurrection bodies are both appropriate to our created nature, constituting the proper and normal ‘hardware’ through which our ‘software’ functions can operate.6





4 See, for example, Mancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 5 Within the science-theology dialogue, philosophical analysis of this issue has tended to focus on the concept of the emergence of the mental from the physical. According to this understanding, the reality of mental experience should not be denied, as it is in some kinds of ontological reductionism. ‘Bottom up’ causality – the only causality acknowledged in reductionist analysis – is seen as being supplemented by ‘top down’ causal effects, so that the relationship between mind and brain is seen in terms of complex feedback loops. According to this view, the qualities traditionally associated with the term soul – thought, the sense of free will, and so on – are not simply to be dismissed as epiphenomena with no ultimate reality. 6 See, for example John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World (London: SPCK, 2002).

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Idealism and Science This eschatological aspect of our thinking does, however, raise important questions about the way in which the concept of the emergence of the mental from the physical has been used by Polkinghorne and by other Western participants in the science– theology dialogue. For it is observable that most of these participants speak, almost instinctively, in a way that accepts uncritically an aspect of the materialist framework of our current scientific culture. They focus on how the human mind emerges from the matter of the brain but not on how, in a theological perspective, matter has its origin in the ‘mind of God’. This means that they have rejected any form of idealism, in which mind is given ontological priority over matter. In certain respects, the prevalence of this anti-idealistic view within the dialogue is rather odd, since it is not an attitude that is entailed by science and it has not always been typical of modern scientists.7 Nevertheless, most current scientists – even if their instincts are of an idealist kind – have become wary of trespassing on philosophical territory in which they have little or no formal training.8 Western theological scholars have often followed them in this wariness, but not always because of an awareness of the need for philosophical expertise. More often it seems that their wariness of idealism has its roots in the assumption that they have enough philosophical expertise to know what the term entails. That this assumption is often unjustified is shown by their frequent identification of the term with a common misunderstanding of the views of the most famous idealist of the modern era, the eighteenth-century Anglican bishop, George Berkeley. This misunderstanding of Berkeley’s position has been pointed out by Keith Ward, who has analysed the way in which people like Polkinghorne, by seeing it as necessary to avoid ‘retreating into Bishop Berkeley’s idealist castle’,9 in fact take up a stance that does not sit easily with classical Christian theism. Ward explains that Berkeley did not claim – as many think he did – that ‘physical objects do not exist, and that everything is in human minds, so that the world disappears when humans are not looking at it’. This view may constitute one form of idealism but, as Ward comments, to assume that Berkeley thought in this way is ‘a complete misunderstanding’. Berkeley, in assuming that physical objects cannot exist without some perceiving mind, was, says Ward, essentially saying that ‘if there is a physical world independent of humans, it must exist in the mind of God […] though not exactly as it is perceived by humans’. This position is, he observes, certainly idealist in the sense that matter ‘exists as the content of mental acts, and could not exist on its own’. Nevertheless, he goes on, this position ‘is not very far, if it is any distance

7 The early-twentieth century astrophysicists James Jeans and Arthur Eddington, for example, independently wrote popular books that interpreted science in an idealistic spirit, arguing that modern physics seemed to require such an interpretation. 8 A significant factor in creating a wariness of the views of Jeans and Eddingtom among later scientists was the publication of a widely-read philosophical criticism of their books made by L. Susan Stebbing, God and the Physicists (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1937). 9 John Polkinghorne, One World : The Interaction of Science and Theology (London: SPCK, 1986), p. 109.

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at all, from classical Christian theism’, since the Christian believes that ‘God who is not material, can exist without a material universe, but matter cannot exist without God. If God is anything like a mind – and God is said to know, to act, to have purposes and to be wise – then Christians must believe that mind can exist without matter’.10

Idealism and Eschatology Ward does not, we should note, ignore the scientific evidence that leads people to speak of the emergence of mind from matter in created beings. He points out, however, that what this evidence entails – what Polkinghorne calls ‘the psychosomatic integrity of human beings’11 – may preclude certain types of dualism but it does not require quite the kind of simplistic anti-dualism that Polkinghorne and many others seem to suppose it does.12 Ward points out – as Polkinghorne does also – that the traditional Christian eschatological hope (at least as usually interpreted) is for the existence of a mind in a resurrection body, and that this resurrection body will in some respects be discontinuous with the body of our present existence. (It will not, for instance, be prone to decay.) Where he differs from Polkinghorne is in his use of this hope as an argument for a kind of dualism. The Christian eschatological understanding, Ward argues, constitutes ‘one reason why a dualistic view is so important, because it allows my mental properties to be transferred to a different form of embodiment’ in the world to come. The only relevant form of close similarity here, he argues is mental, not bodily. Embodiment may be essential to being fully human, but [in the Christian eschatological understanding, C. C. K.] there are different forms of embodiment possible for the same person. It follows that my mental properties and capacities cannot be wholly dependent on the structure of this brain, since this brain will certainly cease to exist and will not simply be replicated in the world to come.13

10 Keith Ward, ‘Bishop Berkeley’s Castle: John Polkinghorne on the Soul’, in God and the Scientist: Exploring the Work of John Polkinghorne, ed. by Fraser Watts and Christopher C. Knight (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 127–38 (p. 127). 11 Polkinghorne, One World, p. 91. 12 Ward points out that even Descartes – often thought of as the dualist par excellence – insisted that body and mind form a unity. For Descartes, he says, ‘body and mind form a […] compound unity, just as water is a compound unity of hydrogen and oxygen. As hydrogen and oxygen are quite different from each other, but combine together to form water, so body and mind are quite different, but combine to form a human person’. That, Ward goes on, ‘is Descartes’s form of dualism, although it is one of the most widely misunderstood doctrines in the history of philosophy’. Properly understood, he goes on, ‘Cartesian dualism is in fact the doctrine that body and mind are different in kind, but are substantially integrated and unified to form one entity, a human person’. (Ward, ‘Bishop Berkeley’s Castle’, p. 129). 13 Ward, ‘Bishop Berkeley’s Castle’, p. 130.

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Ward compares the view that arises from this insight to the ‘dual aspect monism’ that philosophers like John Searle have advocated. Ward judges this form of monism to be ambiguous, however, since ‘it is consistent with the belief that matter is the real causal basis of mind’. Even if it is acknowledged that minds are different from brains, he argues, dual–aspect monism is not in itself incompatible with the view that ‘minds cannot exist without the brains that give rise to them, and minds cannot simply be decoupled and transferred to other forms of embodiment’. Instead of permitting this ambiguity, Ward prefers to speak of dual–aspect idealism, which postulates that minds can exist without brains, can be transferred to other forms of embodiment, and indeed that matter exists primarily to enable certain sorts of mental properties to be expressed, so that in the end minds have causal and ontological priority over matter […] What matters is that matter has been created to enable minds to emerge and to exist, as natural parts of the cosmic process.14

A Patristic View of Matter: Saint Gregory of Nyssa In assessing these views, we need to recognise that, in trying to rehabilitate a kind of neo-Berkeleyan scheme, Ward is attempting to develop an understanding comparable to that held by at least some Christians in the patristic period. A figure particularly relevant here is the fourth-century writer, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, whose thought – as Joshua Schooping has recently shown – exhibits interesting parallels, not only with Berkeleyan idealism, but also with the quasi-idealist metaphysics of the quantum physicist, David Bohm.15 Gregory was not, of course, attempting to answer the questions arising from quantum mechanics that Bohm tackled. He was concerned with a question much asked in his own time: that of how an immaterial principle, God, could create the material universe. As George Karamanolis puts it, Gregory’s answer to this question was ‘that the question itself is misguided, because the world is not material at all’. Rather, for Gregory, the world ‘is constituted of reasons or qualities […] which are generated in the divine mind and are recognized in the human mind. This does not mean that Gregory denies the existence of material entities. All he denies is the independent existence to matter’.16 Gregory’s understanding is not one that can now be accepted in an unqualified way because it is based on the notion that what ultimately exists is related directly to the ‘qualities’ we perceive in created things. For Gregory these exist – and always have existed – in God’s mind. God, he says, ‘established for the creation of beings all things through which matter is constituted: light, heavy, dense, rare, soft, resistant, humid, dry, cold, hot, colour, shape, outline, extension. All these are in themselves 14 Ward, ‘Bishop Berkeley’s Castle’, p. 130. 15 Joshua Schooping, ‘Touching the Mind of God: Patristic Christian Thought on the Nature of Matter’, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 50 (2015), 583–603. 16 George Karamanolis, The Philosophy of Early Christianity (Durham: Acumen, 2013), p. 106.

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concepts [ennoiai] and bare thoughts [psila noemata]. None of them is matter on its own, but they become matter when they combine with each other’.17 As Karamanolis notes, this focus on qualities is ‘not an ad hoc answer to the question of the nature of matter but rather part of a fairly sophisticated theory that permeates Gregory’s entire work’.18 In some of his works, Gregory calls these qualities logoi — a term that later (as we shall note) became central, through the work of Saint Maximos the Confessor, to Eastern Christianity’s characteristic Christological understanding of the cosmos. For Gregory, none of the things that pertains to the body on its own [is] a body, not shape, not colour, not weight, not extension, not size, nor any of the other things regarded as qualities, but each of them is a logos and their combination and unity with each other makes a body […] these qualities which complement the body are grasped by the intellect and not by sense perception.19 In this passage, Karamanolis observes: Gregory makes clear that bodies are intelligible to the extent that they are made up of intelligible entities, the qualities or logoi, which are hosted by the divine intellect but also by the human intellect. While creation of sensible, corporeal entities amounts to the combination of the logoi of God, we, humans, in turn get to know these entities by combining the logoi that make them up.20

Can we Accept a Version of Gregory’s Understanding? Two aspects of Gregory’s thinking here will inevitably seem problematic for the scientifically–literate Christian of the present day. One is his stress on ‘qualities’ of a kind that we now think of as the outcome of factors explicable by ‘laws of nature’ rather than as things in themselves or mental ideas. (Colours, for example, we see in terms of particular distributions of intensity of electromagnetic radiation at various wavelengths.) However, this problem is not entirely destructive of Gregory’s picture since, if we put aside his specific examples of what he calls qualities or logoi, it is still possible to interpret these logoi as incorporating what we now call the laws of nature and the inner essences of created things. This will especially be the case if we take into account the later expansion of the notion of logoi to be found in the work of Maximos the Confessor, for whom the logos of each created thing is seen as being, in some sense, a manifestation of the divine Logos [Word], through which, in the beginning, ‘all things came into being’ ( John 1. 3). This understanding of the logoi is clearly related to our current understanding of inner essences and the laws of nature since,

17 Gregory of Nyssa, Apology for Hexameron, 69C (in the translation given in Karamanolis, The Philosophy, p. 102). 18 Karamanolis, The Philosophy, p. 102. 19 Quoted by Karamanolis, The Philosophy, p. 103. 20 Karamanolis, The Philosophy, p. 103.

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as one recent commentator has put it, for Maximos, ‘Christ, the creator Logos, has implanted in every thing a characteristic logos, a “thought” or “word” which is God’s intention for that thing, its inner essence which makes it distinctively itself […]’21 The second aspect of Gregory’s understanding that may seem difficult to us is his focus on the human mind as what makes perception possible. At first sight, this focus seems to ignore the sense perception that is so important to the usual understanding of scientific objectivity. However, we need to recognize that Gregory’s anthropology is one in which what he calls the soul proper (kyrios psyche) or true soul (alethes psyche), while intellectual in nature, mixes with our material nature through the senses. For Gregory, it is not the senses that perceive, but rather the nous that perceives through the senses. Even from a purely scientific perspective we should not dismiss this notion, since we can see clear reflections of it in the modern psychology of perception, which stresses the way in which our perceptions rely not just on our sensory capacities but also on the mind’s way of interpreting the data that comes through those capacities. However, in Gregory’s understanding we find something more distinctly philosophical and theological than this. He believes, as Karamanolis puts it, that ‘the intellect, nous, pervades all sense organs and permeates the entire body and renders the entire human nature rational, and in this sense, similar to God’.22 This understanding is – as Karamanolis notes – rooted in the secular philosophy of Gregory’s time, displaying ‘striking affinities with the views of Plotinus and Porphyry’.23 This ancient philosophical framework does not, of course, appeal to all presentday Christians. However, as always when theological thought is expressed in terms of the philosophy of the writer’s time, it is perhaps helpful to make a distinction between what is central to what is being expressed – the theological ‘instinct’ so to speak – and the philosophical framework and (sometimes flawed) reasoning through which that instinct is expressed.24 The philosophical framework that Gregory adopted

21 Kallistos Ware, Bishop of Diokleia, ‘God Immanent yet Transcendent: The Divine Energies According to Saint Gregory Palamas’, in In Whom We Live and Move and Have our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. by Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 157–68 (p. 160). This intimate connection between the logoi of created things and the laws of nature that govern them is, we might note, central to the approach to divine action developed in Christopher C. Knight, The God of Nature: Incarnation and Contemporary Science (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007). 22 Karamanolis, The Philosophy, p. 212 (referring to Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio, 140A). 23 Karamanolis, The Philosophy, p. 105. 24 This distinction is important for understanding and working out the consequences of the Orthodox concept of Tradition. To be true to Tradition it is not appropriate simply to parrot the arguments and verbal formule of the past. Rather, as Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia has put it, ‘loyalty to Tradition, properly understood, is not something mechanical, a passive and automatic process of transmitting the accepted wisdom of an era in the distant past. An Orthodox thinker must see Tradition from within, he must enter into its inner spirit, he must re-experience the meaning of Tradition in a manner that is exploratory, courageous, and full of imaginative creativity’. Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, revised edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993), p. 198.

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and adapted may, for many, have little appeal now, but the theological instinct that he seems to want to express arguably remains an interesting one for three reasons.

Reasons for Taking a Revised Version Seriously One is that there are clear resemblances between Gregory’s understanding of reality and the much later understanding of George Berkeley,25 which has been defended by Keith Ward as consonant with modern scientific perspectives. The second is that even if the human mind should, at one level, be seen as an emergent property of matter, it has characteristics that do not straightforwardly fit into the usual emergentist and evolutionary frameworks, at least in their usual ‘blind watchmaker’ form. Our abstract mathematical ability, for example, has often been seen as something that is difficult to fit into the framework provided by evolutionary psychology, since that ability seems to go far beyond what was appropriate for the survival of our ancestors,26 and may be seen as indicating an affinity between the human mind and the mind of God. The third reason for examining the human mind more closely in relation to questions about idealism is, however, possibly the most important, at least from the perspective of those involved in the science–theology dialogue. It is that scientific perspectives suggest that – even if no acceptable form of idealism has yet been developed – something akin to what Ward calls ‘dual–aspect idealism’ may still be required. The point here is that the role of the observer in ‘creating’ physical reality is a major issue in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. While astonishingly fruitful in making predictions at the sub-atomic level, this branch of physics has proved extremely difficult to interpret philosophically. It seems to suggest that the world, until observed, consists not of matter in a particular physical state but rather of multiple potentialities described by a wave function. Only one of these potentialities is actuated through the action of an observer, who is said to ‘collapse the wave function’. This understanding leads, however, to counter-intuitive situations, of the sort famously illustrated by the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat.27

25 Karamanolis himself actually sees more resemblances in certain respects to the perspectives of John Locke. However, other historians of philosophy have seen Gregory much more in terms of his anticipation of the Berkeleyan understanding. See, for example, the different views expressed in: Darren Hibbs, ‘Was Gregory of Nyssa a Berkeleyan Idealist?’, British Journal of Philosophy, 13 (2005), 425–35; Jonathan Hill, ‘Gregory of Nyssa, Material Substance and Berkeleyan Idealism’, British Journal of Philosophy, 17 (2009), 653–83. 26 This observation does not imply that an evolutionary framework must be abandoned, but it does suggest either some kind of ‘guiding’ of the evolurtionary processs or else some kind of framework in which the predictability of that framework is seen as part of God’s initial design of the whole cosmos, as advocated in terms of evolutionary convergence in Knight, The God of Nature. 27 As Erwin Schrödinger famously asked, how are we to understand the situation of a cat, put into a box that has been set up in such a way that there is a fifty per cent probability that the cat will die before the box is opened and the situation observed? Quantum mechanics suggests, counter-intuitively, that the cat is in fact in two states just before the box’s opening: one in which it is dead and one in which it

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In the judgment of some, this philosophical problem of the role of the observer in quantum mechanics has only been dealt with in a coherent way through the quasi-idealist notion of ‘the implicate order’ that David Bohm has offered.28 The widespread rejection of this notion by most of Bohm’s fellow physicists is not due to its being incompatible with quantum mechanics, on which Bohm was an acknowledged expert. It has been rejected largely, it would seem, because of its metaphysical overtones. Paradox (or an unfalsifiable ‘many worlds’ interpretation) is generally preferred to the notion that mind and matter should be reinterpreted in a way that is not essentially materialist.

The Problem of an Abstract Concept of ‘Mind’ As these factors suggest, Ward’s attempt to defend a kind of neo-Berkeleyan scheme not only echoes an important aspect of the thinking of the early centuries of the Christian era, but also manifests interesting parallels with aspects of current scientific thinking. However, it is important to note that in attempting to defend a view comparable to that of the strand of patristic thinking that I have highlighted, Ward is not in complete accord with that thinking. In particular, when speaking of the kind of mind that can clearly, in theistic perspective, exist without embodiment – God’s mind – Ward seems to think that human minds are effectively identical to it in their nature, if not in their capacities. It is true that there is, in this identification, something that reflects an aspect of the thinking of Gregory of Nyssa, for whom – as we have noted – the logoi of created things have their origin in the mind of God and are recognized by human minds. Nevertheless, we need to interpret Gregory’s understanding in terms of the attitude to be found in his own writings and in those of many others of his time, which made them averse to comparing God with created things in any but essentially apophatic terms.29 Ward’s rhetorical ‘if God is anything like a mind’ is, from this perspective, highly questionable, since for Orthodoxy God is not ‘like’ anything in the created order. The mind of God and the human mind may be linked, but to assume that this

is alive. Only when the observation is made is one of these two potentialities brought into being. 28 David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 1980). I describe Bohm’s views as ‘quasi-idealist’ since they are not idealist in the sense that mind is given ontological priority over matter. Rather, both mind and matter are seen as based on a ‘common ground’ (p. 197) in a way that seems comparable to Carl G. Jung’s speculation – based of quite different considerations – about a total reality ‘grounded on an as yet unknown substrate possessing matrial and at the same time psychic qualities’. Carl G. Jung, Flying Saucers: A Myth of Things Seen in the Sky (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959), p. 145. 29 As Gregory put it, the concepts we form ‘in accordance with the understanding and the judgement which are natural to us, basing ourselves on an intelligible representation, create idols of God instead of revealing to us God Himself ’, quoted in Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957), p. 33. This kind of apophaticism remains strong among the Eastern Orthodox inheritors of the Greek patristic tradition; who tend to believe, as Lossky notes (p. 40), that the terms that we apply to God in cataphatic theology ‘are not rational notions which we

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linkage may be understood in terms of an abstract concept of ‘mind’, based on our experience of the human mind, is, from an Orthodox perspective, extremely dubious. Thus, although Ward may validly be pointing us towards the need for an alternative to the frameworks that he rejects, his own version of that alternative may well be flawed. Admittedly, it remains to be seen whether a better approach could arise through other approaches, such as an attempt to combine Bohmian metaphysics with a view of the relationship between God and the world that is rooted in the patristic notion of the logoi of created things. Whatever view we take of this possibility, however, one thing seems clear. This is that Ward is correct in believing that any framework for thinking about the concept of mind, in which the origin of the universe in the mind of God is effectively ignored, can hardly be an adequate one from a theological perspective.

The Nature of the Resurrection Mind Another point about Ward’s argument also needs to be questioned. This is his assumption – with which Polkinghorne seems to agree – that while the earthly body may be very significantly modified when it is transformed into a resurrection body, the earthly mind will continue much as it is in this life, differing only insofar as certain faculties, such as memory, may be made perfect rather than being – as in this life – incomplete and fallible. This assumption ignores two factors, one scientific and one theological. The scientific one is that most cognitive scientists no longer accept in any straightforward way the analogy in which mental processes constitute ‘software’ that will give the same results whatever the hardware that enables it to function. What we call the mind is, they increasingly stress, conditioned by the physical substrate from which it emerges. This seems to be true not only in relation to the very specific way in which the brain works, but also – if certain formulations of the notion of ‘embodied cognition’ are accepted30 – in relation to the interactions between the mind and the rest of the body

formulate, the concepts with which our intellect constructs a positive science of the divine nature’. Rather, they are ‘images or ideas intended to guide us and fit our faculties for the contemplation of that which passes all understanding’. 30 Embodied Cognition is a growing research program in cognitive science that emphasizes the formative role the environment plays in the development of cognitive processes, based on a general theory that cognitive processes develop when a tightly coupled system emerges from real-time, goaldirected interactions between organisms and their environment. The nature of these interactions, it is believed, influences the formation and further specifies the nature of the developing cognitive capacities. Since embodied accounts of cognition have been formulated in a variety of different ways in each of the sub-fields comprising cognitive science, a rich interdisciplinary research program is emerging. The different conceptions arising from different sub-fields are all based, however, on the belief that one necessary condition for cognition is embodiment, where the basic notion of embodiment is broadly understood as the unique way an organism’s sensorimotor capacities enable it to successfully interact with its environmental niche. All share a quest for cognitive explanations that capture the manner in which mind, body, and world mutually interact and influence one another to promote an organism’s adaptive success.

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and between the mind and the world beyond the body. If we accept this framework, then – unless the resurrection body and its surroundings are assumed to be identical to those we experience in this life – the ‘resurrection mind’ that will be associated with the new situation will inevitably be rather different to our earthly mind. The related theological issue here is that the continuity of the mind in its transition from this life to eternal life – assumed by both Ward and Polkinghorne – was not taken for granted in early Christian thinking. The eastern patristic tradition, in particular, made a firm distinction between our present, biological state – in mythical terms viewed as the result of the ‘Fall’31 – and the state for which we were originally made and are ultimately destined. In this kind of view, the ‘original’ and eschatological human state is something that has, in some sense, been ‘covered up’ by our present biological state – a view often expressed in the patristic period in terms of an allegorical interpretation of the way in which, in Genesis 3. 21 God is reported to have given ‘garments of skin’ to those expelled from Eden.32 A useful modern exploration of this aspect of patristic thinking is that of Panayiotis Nellas, who makes the interesting point that the patristic interpretation of our ‘garments of skin’ relates not only to the physical body – as some scholars have supposed – but also to the soul. What such scholars overlook, Nellas notes, is that patristic writers like Gregory of Nyssa use the term garments of skin to refer to ‘the entire post-lapsarian psychosomatic clothing of the human person’.33 For Gregory, he stresses, the Fall has brought about a situation in which the ‘functions of the soul […] have also become “corporeal” along with the body […] [they] form together with the body “the veil of the heart […] the fleshy covering of the old man”’.34 A corollary of this perspective is that both the body and the soul are to be transformed when the ‘garments of skin’ are thrown off in our eternal life.35 (Something of this kind seems, we might note,

31 Patristic thinking did not, we should note, always think of the Genesis account of the Fall in straightforward historical terms. Especially for those strongly influenced by the Origenist tradition, it was often seen as meta-historical, with the Fall being a fall into our present space-time universe and biological state. 32 For an exploration of how this view has implications for the current science-theology dialogue, see Christopher C. Knight, ‘The Fallen Cosmos: An Aspect of Eastern Christian Thought and its Relevance to the Dialogue Between Science and Theology’, Theology and Science, 6 (2008), 305–17. 33 Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: The Nature of the Human Person (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), p. 50 n. 92. 34 Nellas, Deification, pp. 50–51. Nellas goes on to examine this perspective as it was developed later in the work of Maximos the Confessor, for whom human rebellion against God ‘reversed the way in which [the human] psychosomatic organism functioned’ (p. 57). 35 For many Christians of the present time, the particular way in which this discontinuity was perceived in the patristic period may seem unpersuasive. As we have already noted, however, the ‘theological instinct’ that lies behind patristic understandings may still be worthy of attention even when the particular way in which that instinct was expressed no longer seems to have any persuasive power. In this case, the need for attentiveness to that instinct arises from the scientific insight that our minds are not only inextricably linked to our bodies, but also strongly conditioned by them. If this is the case, then it seems to follow that a resurrection body that is significantly different from our earthly one implies an associated mind that is also significantly different to that which we now possess.

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to be hinted at in some of the most well-known New Testament passages that refer to our eschatological state.)36

Conclusion We have seen, then, that patristic notions about both the nature of material things and the character of eternal life – both expressed in terms of the nous – provide a radical challenge to some of the ways in which our culture leads us to think about the mind. We have seen too that current scientific understandings reinforce this undermining of our quasi-instinctive thinking. We are, in short, being forced to look once again at the roots of our tradition and to re-think our notion of what it is to have a mind, both in this world and the next.

Another aspect of patristic thinking perhaps provides a further important insight. This is the notion that what we nowadays tend to think of as constitutive of our minds and personalities – our discursive rational faculty and our memories – may in fact be no more than servants, in this world, of something more central to our being: what in Greek is termed nous. As we have noted, this term is usually translated as intellect, but it refers in fact to something that is quite distinct from the intellect as we now commonly understand that term. The nous was seen, in the patristic era, not as the seat of discursive reasoning – for which a different term (dianoia) was used – but as a direct intuitive faculty, the organ of contemplation. This poses the question of whether we should see the functioning of our ‘resurrection minds’ essentially as an extension of what, in the view of many in the patristic era, is the prime spiritual task that we are called to undertake in this life. This task is the cleansing of the nous, which was often described as the ‘eye’ of the soul (psyche). Might the emergence of our resurrection minds in fact involve shedding all that is other than the direct intuitive knowledge that arises from the perfected nous? If this speculation is valid, then we need to recognize that in our eschatological state we may not know about anything or even ‘think’ in the sense in which we usually use that term. Instead we may simply know – directly and intuitively – in the way that mystics, in their most sublime moments, are said to know. Our eschatological state in its mental dimension will not be simply a continuation of our personalities and mental properties as we experience them now. Rather, while it will involve true continuity in our existence as unique persons, it will involve a transformation of our whole being. 36 In the Johannine literature, for example, there is a strong sense that eternal life is something that the believer can experience, not only in the future, but also now, in our knowledge of God. This is often expressed in terms of the verb meno – to abide and – in passages such as I John 3. 15 there is a strong sense that eternal life abides in the true believer at present. Indeed, in the fourth gospel there is the report that Jesus himself not only described but also defined eternal life as the state in which we ‘know […] the only true God and Jesus Christ’ ( John 14. 3). In the Pauline strand of New Testament teaching, the emphasis is, admittedly, different, with a stronger sense of eternal life as belonging to the future. There is also, however, a sense that we are unable in this life to anticipate what our eschatological state will be, and that our knowledge in that state will not simply be an extension of the type of knowledge we have now, but in some sense it will be knowledge in a mode akin to that of God’s knowledge. What ‘God has prepared for those who love him’, says Paul, is something that ‘no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived’ (I Corinthians 2.9). In this life ‘we see in a mirror dimly’, but in eternal life ‘we will see face to face’, knowing ‘fully’, even as we ‘have been fully known’ (I Corinthians 13. 12).

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God, the Great Writer and Great Computer Whizz Comment on Christopher C. Knight’s Paper

Reflecting on Reverend Knight’s paper – a paper of prolific knowledge and alluring challenges – is certainly a challenge and will be here attempted from the viewpoint of a theologian, albeit one with intense interest in the relationship between science and theology, yet without particular scientific background. The first issue posed (or rather implied) by Knight is the capacity for theological reflection. In my opinion, the related stance of both the great Orthodox theologian Fr Dumitru Stăniloae, as well as Anglican archbishop Rowan Williams is particularly fitting and commendable, a stance characterized as a ‘minimalist approach to theological engagement with contemporary science’.1 A ‘minimalist approach’ means that theological ideas are not ultimately dependent upon prior scientific frameworks or ideas. The basis of this stance ‘is the assumption long made by many Christian theologians […] that the created order is comprised of finite causes held in being and made active by an infinite creator. This assumption cannot be undermined by new developments in the sciences, because the sciences themselves can only interrogate finite entities and their causal characteristics and behaviors’.2





1 Peter N. Jordan, ‘Minimalist Engagement: Rowan Williams on Christianity and Science’, Zygon, 51/2 (2016), 387–404 (p. 388). For Father Dimitru Staniloae’s stance, see Ciprian Florin Apetrei, Theology of Creation in the Thought of Father Dimitru Stăniloae and the Conceptions of Modern Cosmology (English summary of a doctoral thesis, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania 2011), [accessed 29 December 2017)]. 2 Jordan, ‘Minimalist Engagement’, p. 402. These theologians try to build on the theological radical distinction between the ‘created’ (the universe) and the ‘uncreated’ (God alone), a distinction to which there are further references later on. Apparently, they do not intend to interrogate the nature of the scientifically confirmed infiniteness of the universe and time. The said theologians would simply state that there is a fundamental difference between the created infinite and the uncreated infinite, however it is impossible to deal with this issue here in more detail. My own attempt to express this sort of minimalist approach can be found in my contribution: ‘Μια θεολογία έξω από 'δω ή Μια θεολογία του εξαποδώ; Δοκιμές για τη συνδιάλεξη Φυσικών και Θεολόγων’ [‘A Theology Outside of Commonplace, or a Theology of him who Should be Outside Human Life [the Devil]? Some Thoughts on the Dialogue between Scientists and Theologians’], in Φιόρα Τιμής για τον μητροπολίτη Athanasios N. Papathanasiou  University Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens, Greece Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 161–165. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116863

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So there is special importance in Knight’s conclusion that ‘we are […] being forced to look once again at the roots of our tradition’ in order to shape sustainable theological responses to scientific findings, but also – I would add – to clarify what are really the maxims that make the Christian faith Christian. As is well known, Christianity holds that revelation has always been manifested through human languages (verbal, symbolic, and mythical languages, the worldview of each era, etc.), so Christians have the arduous task of discerning between the content or essence of revelation and the language used in a particular time and place. Dialogue with science comes to facilitate this theological task. Knight’s paper contributes to such an investigation of the sound criteria of Christian faith that have to accompany theology in its encounter with scientific postulates. Regarding the structure of Knight’s paper, it would be perhaps easier for the reader in my view if the references to the holistic anthropology of the Greek theologian Panayiotis Nellas (1936–1986) (whose disciple I happen to be) were placed at the beginning. What is particularly important for the argument of the paper are the philosophical categories used by Saint Gregory of Nyssa: It is […] helpful to make a distinction between what is central to what is being expressed – the theological ‘instinct’ so to speak – and the philosophical framework […] through which that instinct is expressed. The philosophical framework that Gregory adopted and adapted may, for many, have little appeal now, but the theological instinct that he seems to want to express arguably remains an interesting one. Further, of similar importance is the critique of Keith Ward. For example, Ward’s assumption that human minds are effectively identical to God in their nature is rightly judged as ‘highly questionable, since for Orthodoxy God is not “like” anything in the created order’. Likewise, Ward’s argument that in the Resurrection the earthly body may be very significantly modified while the earthly mind not, is deeply questionable, too. Knight is right in criticizing all these positions, but his critique could be extended and eventually directed also to the rest of the idealism sustained by Ward and, at least partly, by Knight himself. It is important to realize that Ward’s lapsi mentioned above are due precisely to his idealistic emphasis, which has been emblematically expressed by recent trends toward a justification of Descartes’s dualism. The statement that ‘Cartesian dualism is in fact the doctrine that body and mind are different in kind, but are substantially integrated and unified to form one entity, a human person’ may be misleading. The issue at stake is not whether two different entities can combine, but if each of these elements can wonderfully exist autonomously. Idealism can hardly avoid emphasis on the self-sufficiency of the spiritual element. On this point, I thus tend to agree with

Ζακύνθου Χρυσόστομο Β´ Συνετό (Festschrift for Chrysostom II Synetos, Metropolitan of Zante) (Zante, Greece 2009), pp. 769–88. Also Athanasios N. Papathanasiou, Religion, Ideology and Science (Montreal: Alexander Press, 2004).

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Stephen Gaukroger that ‘the way in which Descartes sets out the independence of the soul in respect to the body has a striking similarity to his account of the independence of God in respect to His creation’.3 This observation is particularly apt for our conversation here. I am not sure whether the notion of a ‘dual-aspect idealism’ eventually offers much. Why not a ‘dual-aspect materialism’? We know that physics speaks of a dual-aspect reality, i.e. of the distinction between material realities (which have mass) and non-material realities (such as electromagnetic radiation). Of course, there is a relationship between energy and matter, nevertheless from the perspective of this distinction, yes, the world is not exclusively material. Moreover, today there are scientists who argue that our material hypostasis is nothing else than the curving of space, and that the real reality is the non-material bubbling energy of the universe.4 Sixty-two years ago, Werner Heisenberg spoke about the crisis of materialism, a crisis born out of the research on electricity in the second half of the nineteenth century.5 But for Orthodox theology, all these distinctions concern one (though multiform) ontological category, the Created. Briefly put, the Orthodox tradition has spoken about a dual-aspect monism, regardless of how we term it. The human soul and body have been defined as different realities. But, at the same time, the Orthodox tradition has emphasized that all cosmic/worldly entities (the human soul and spiritual beings, including, for example, angels) have a sort of materiality, meaning creativeness in patristic vocabulary.6 Maybe I have misunderstood the above arguments in favour of an idealism, but I honestly can hardly find any essential difference between a dual-aspect idealism and a dual-aspect materialism. In any event, the certain dual-aspect cosmic monism is fascinating, meaning that material and immaterial entities are both aspects of the Creation, which (Creation) bears the fingerprints of God, but not ‘parts’ of God himself. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo ensures that the world is not co-eternal and co-substantial with God. This has been stressed by Christian theologians even before Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor. Remember, for example, Athanasius the Great refuting Origen (who tended to accept the world as ever





3 Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes. An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 199. Gaukroger argues that Descartes clearly did not hold the doctrine of the resurrection of the body at the Last Judgment, a doctrine, ‘which seems to have gone out of theological fashion by the seventeenth century’. Cf. Georges Dicker, Descartes: An Analytical and Historical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 267. 4 ‘Μ. Δανέζης για το “σωματίδιο του Θεού” και τη νέα πραγματικότητα άνευ θανάτου’ [‘M. Danezis Speaking about “God’s Particle” and the New Reality Without Death’], [accessed 16 July 2012]. 5 Werner Heisenberg, The Physicist’s Conception of Nature (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1958), pp. 12–16, 140–44. 6 In my ‘Μια θεολογία’, I refer the reader to many such ecclesiastical sources all the way from the first centuries to the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 and Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain in early nineteenth century.

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existing).7 Seen in this way, the logoi of God do not pertain only to intelligible entities, but also to the natural laws. In short, the ontological priority of God over the cosmos does not necessarily imply ontological priority of human mind over matter. In other words, the ontological priority of God over the cosmos cannot be threatened, even if there is ontological priority of matter over the human mind. It would not matter to me at all if God has enabled matter to evolve to spirit. In any event, what matters (and matters a lot) is the ontological otherness of God and the world. This otherness means that the world does not exist out of necessity, but has come to existence by a free and loving decision. Freedom and love thus become cosmic foundations. On this point, there is a key issue, which deserves an encounter between scientific and theological argumentation: the personal continuation of human beings. In other words, the tantalizing question is not the eternity of energy in impersonal forms or in occasional embodiments. If we are talking specifically about Christianity – not about Hinduism and reincarnation – we have to take into account faith in the ‘eternalization’ of every concrete human person. One should consider, for example, the much discussed role of the observer in quantum mechanics, in the framework of the conclusion that the world as multiple potentialities implies a fluidity, a transition between wave function and physical state. The role of the observer has been the favourite citation of many theologians. It seems, as Knight aptly puts it, ‘that the world, until observed, consists not of matter in a particular physical state but rather of multiple potentialities described by a wave function. Only one of these potentialities is actuated through the action of an observer, who is said to “collapse the wave function”’. At the same time, Knight is well aware that ‘this understanding leads, however, to counter-intuitive situations, of the sort famously illustrated by the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat’. Here it should only be noted that this issue may signify not only a so-to-speak victory against materialistic determinism. It may also signify the fluidity of everything, the human subject included. Is it – I wonder – by chance Schrödinger’s strong interest in certain currents of Eastern religions, which maintain the dissolution or the annihilation of human subject (especially Hindu Vedanta and forms of Buddhism, which are usually described as atheistic religions) and pantheism?8 But the core of the Christian faith is the conviction that personal identity will be granted eternity. Needless to say, many questions remain open. My hint is that the ‘nous’ theory could play a considerable role in showing that these questions are legitimately being posed. The Patristic concept of ‘nous’ may be a helpful tool in order to approach this question of the personal continuation of a human being. An example I often use in class is the relationship between the books in printed form and books in



7 Georges Florovsky, Aspects of Church History (Collected Works, 4) (Belmond, Mass.: Nordland, 1975), pp. 39–62. 8 Walter Moore, A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), especially pp. 86–88, 127–29, 317.

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cyberspace, either in the form of a pdf or online. In all cases (i.e. even in the form of energy, when online), the individual identity of the book is preserved. A ‘nous’ is keeping the letters, the words and the syntax in a unique combination, which at the same time comprises a transformed embodiment. But, what is needed for that is a user outside the text as well outside the computer. God is a great writer and a great computer whizz.

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Part III

Orthodox Christianity and Science Local Settings and Specific Concerns in the Past and at Present

Gayle E. Woloschak

Science–Religion Interface Agreements and Tensions of Orthodox Christian Pastoral Concern in the Biomedical Sciences

Introduction The goal of this work is to address issues of science and religion including areas of agreement and areas of conflict for the Orthodox Church. Perspectives expressed in this essay will be from the views of a practising scientist and an Orthodox Christian in the US and therefore reflect issues of pastoral concern experienced predominantly in the US; discussions with others in western Europe suggests that the issues are not so different there. This paper will address the relationship of science and religion, issues that arise when topics at this interface need to be addressed among the faithful and the ways in which these can mould pastoral practice. The specific examples chosen for this paper have broad applications not only to science–religion discussions but also to experiences in pastoral and parish life in many parishes in the US and perhaps in Western Europe today. In addition, these contemporary issues are especially felt as relevant by young people in many parishes, college students active in the Orthodox Campus Fellowship and other similar programs; the same questions recurred whenever broad dialogue with Orthodox Christians in general are engaged in science discussions. These perspectives are expressed predominantly from the vantage point of a practising scientist and an Orthodox Christian. The outline for this paper is as follows: – It is not a war: choosing between science and religion should be a false dilemma – Culture wars have influence on parishes – Discoveries made in science will impact (and continue to impact) religion – Reflection (and resolution) is needed

Gayle E. Woloschak  Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, U.S.A. Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 169–180. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116864

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It is not a War: Choosing between Science and Religion Should Be a False Dilemma Several months ago, The National Geographic Magazine ran the cover story ‘The War on Science’ and documented many representations (although far from all) of this war. Religion was included among those at war against science.1 Similarly, the Pew Foundation conducted the National Study of Youth and Religion and asked youth the following question: Do you agree with the statement that the teachings of science and religion are often in conflict with one another? Seventy per cent of young adults aged 18–23 agreed with this statement. Nevertheless, in reality only eleven per cent of Americans belong to a religion that denies the findings of modern science and only forty per cent of scientists are non-believers.2 If we look at Orthodox parishes in the US, we find that Orthodox attitudes toward science are widely disparate: some of the faithful are in total agreement with science, some note a tension, and still others think the issue is irrelevant to Orthodoxy. Science is often misrepresented and misunderstood not only at the parish level, but even among the bishops and clergy of the Church. On a single issue such as In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), there have been many attitudes among bishops in the US, although these have not been documented in an official statement; in addition, there have been many concerns expressed that reflect a total misunderstanding of the science by many of the hierarchs. This is perhaps natural, as scientific knowledge about this topic is not in the realm of most seminary education, but it can be very damaging when parishioners are looking for advice on science related issues or when the Church is looking for broad guidance on a matter at hand. It should be noted that many parishes are involved in the same cultural wars that are ongoing in the broader national and international discussions. In the US Orthodox practice, some people abnegate any possibility for discussion by claiming that some view should ‘always’ be the Orthodox attitude […] many parishioners and clergy alike conclude that ‘yes, that is conservative, that’s what the Orthodox attitude should be’.3 This type of a mistake is severely limiting for the Church. Orthodox Christians are expected to consider all issues and questions based on discernment and reflection and not succumb to simplistic syllogisms such us ‘this is not conservative hence it is not Orthodox’. On one hand, the notions of conservativism (or liberalism, or any such ideological term) change over the ages; on the other hand, Christ’s continual fight against established traditions could hardly be considered as an ideology such as conservativism by His contemporaries. Effort

1 The National Geographic Magazine, March 2015. The entire issue was devoted to ‘The War on Science’, examining such issues as evolution, climate change, vaccinations, genetically modified crops, and others. 2 Pew Research Study on Religion. A summary can be accessed at [all websites cited were accessed in December 2017]. 3 Discussion about conservativism as an ideology and the dangers of ideologies that undermine dialogue are discussed elsewhere. See Gayle E. Woloschak, ‘Have We Traded the Holy Spirit for Ideology?’, The Wheel, 4 (Winter 2016), pp. 5–10.

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needs to be put into understanding the complexities of all novel ideas and to weigh the issues on a fine scale that is fitting as an Orthodox approach and not based on political views or pre-determined arguments. These are complex issues that require much discussion and reflection. For many of these science–religion issues, there has been little reflection from an Orthodox perspective and little attempt to provide a systematic and balanced Orthodox basis for the dialogue. The final result of this is a painful confusion among youth, parishioners and even scholars on these issues. There have been two traditional models that people have used in examining the relationship of science and religion, neither of which is a good model.4 The one expounded by The National Geographic Magazine and a good part of the popular press is the ‘war model’, which states that science and religion are at war with each other and that the two have no real basis for dialogue or discussion. Most modern scholars consider that Augustine first introduced the idea of nature as a ‘book of God’ when he argued that (fallen) creation is essentially good when fighting the Manichaean claim that the material world is intrinsically evil.5 This troubling model was possibly best described first by Sir Francis Bacon who wrote: ‘God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called Creation: ‘Let no man […] maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, or the book of God’s works.’6 Luther and Calvin also picked up the idea and claimed that the physicals–scientific interpretation of the book of nature (which can be defined as humanity’s experience in the realms of physical and biological reality) should be coupled directly with a hermeneutical understanding of the Book of the Bible. In this ‘two books’ model, neither book is really related to each other, and they are both independent from each other. Maximus the Confessor, also known as Maximus of Constantinople (c. 580–662), was a monk drawn into the monothelitistic controversy and supported the Chalcedonian formulation that Christ had both a human and a divine will; he was eventually persecuted for his views. He wrote numerous works on theological themes, some of which can be easily applied to today’s science and religion dialogue. With regard to understanding nature, Maximus propounded not two laws or books, but three – the law of nature, the written law (the Scripture), and the law of grace. For the law of nature he said:



4 Many have attempted to refine these divisions with subtypes between the two models, but these are predominantly nuanced differences. For example, Ted Peters, (Science Theology and Ethics, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003) acknowledges six types of categories of relationships between science and theology. 5 Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 120; Augustine, Contra Faustum Manichaean [Against Faustus the Manichean] (written c. 400 A.D.), Section 32.20 (Christian Classics Ethereal Library). 6 Sir Francis Bacon, American Scientific Affiliation, . The entire history of the war between science and religion is covered by Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, vols i–ii (New York: Dover, 1896; and many later editions).

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The first (law) is engraved in nature – not simply in the human soul, but in the whole cosmos and in every one of its parts. Through the contemplation of nature the wise person acquires a natural knowledge of God, of his righteousness, wisdom, and goodness, and this knowledge is in the true sense a kind of ‘vision’, a ‘contemplation’.7 This view of the law of nature is much deeper than the one defined by Augustine and other modern scholars noted earlier. While it does include an understanding of the physical world around us, it also includes the history of humanity and a deeper understanding of the physical nature of humanity and nature extending even into the psychological dimensions of human behaviour, human choices, and so on. For Maximus, the law of grace is in unity with the two prior laws (those of nature and Scripture) through Christ the Logos. As Maximus wrote, Christ is present to all things from within […] whether through nature or positive law or grace. For the Logos of God is the Creator of all nature, every law, every bond, all order; He is the judge of all things that have a nature and a law and relationships and order, and without promulgation by the Word, there is no law […] In Christ […] the natural law, the law of Scripture, and the law of grace all come together as one.8 Elsewhere, Maximus claims that the first two laws are made valid in and through the third. It is through contemplation of nature that conforms to the Spirit or through a deeper understanding of Scripture through the Spirit that one reaches the same place.9 Therefore, in Maximus’s view, the two books of nature and Scripture both equally depend on the law of grace and only united by the law of grace they reach their true meaning and value; they both require presence of the Spirit to reach the fulfilment, which is in both cases the same – oneness with Christ. Maximus, in this approach to understanding the natural world, attempted to have a more unified understanding than those purported by Western scholars.

Culture Wars Influence Parishes While many people think that science is very separated from ethical thinking and ethical decisions, one obvious example of the intertwined nature of the two disciplines was the use of science to drive the ethics of management of HIV patients. In the early days of the HIV outbreak, physicians were unclear as to how to handle infected patients – should they consider quarantine or even placing the HIV-infected into



7 Maximus as quoted and translated by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), pp. 291–314 (from Maximus’s work Mystagogia, a commentary and meditation on the Eucharistic liturgy). 8 Maximus Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium, 19 (Library of Latin Texts, Series A). 9 Maximus Confessor, Ambigua, 91 (Maximus the Confessor: Selected Writings, The Classics of Western Spirituality Series), translation and notes by George C. Berthold (New York: Paulist Press, 1985).

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camps to protect the healthy? When science determined how HIV was spread and that there is no danger of cohabiting with an infected member of the household, then considering isolation of HIV-infected patients was no longer ethical. Facts shaped the understanding of the disease and therefore the ethical treatment of patients.10 There are misunderstandings that result from poor communication and even poor understanding of scientific approaches by the broad public community. It is often not clear to the public, but science cannot test or prove (or disprove) the existence of God using scientific methods. The scientific method has clear (self-imposed) limitations so that it can really test matters only within the material realm. (Thus, Maximus’s Book of Nature that involves the material world may be studied by science but it can be contemplated only through Spirit.) Science works by theory, but the theory is a tool by which to test facts and ideas about the material realm; sometimes the theory is corrected by new data and is challenged by alternative models. As more and more facts come to light, sometimes the theory becomes so important that few facts exist that argue against it, and then it becomes a major theory of science like the Theory of Gravity or the Theory of Evolution. Many times, these ideas can become divisive when the surrounding culture does not understand the scientific underpinnings of a scientific theory or chooses to ignore them altogether. One aspect of this scientific method however, is that scientific theory cannot be decided by a majority vote or by a court of law – it is decided only by science and scientific approaches.11 Scientists themselves sometimes forget these limitations and believe that the scientific method can be used to test all things. In the crusade for materialism and atheism, they mistakenly (and deliberately?) forget the intent of the professional–scientific ideal of not invoking supernatural action in science and choose to proselytize against anything supernatural. One can find scientists who make claims about religion (e.g., ethics or teachings) and have no training in it, often incorrectly asserting concepts to religion that are foreign to it. The idea of scientism (the idea that modern natural sciences provide our only access to the world and give the only kind of ‘truth’) has become more pervasive in our culture in large part because of the scientists’ expounding the concept. In response to this, I like the following quote from another scientist and member of the National Academy of Sciences of the US – Francisco J. Ayala, who is also a Roman Catholic who won the Templeton Prize for the study of religion and science a few years ago: ‘[S]cience is a way of knowing, but it is not the only way. Knowledge also derives from other sources, such as common sense, artistic and religious experience, and philosophical reflection.’12 Alternatively, we can find similar narrowness of thinking in our Orthodox parishes and among the faithful. Many parish members view the Orthodox Church as ‘being ancient’ with such reverence that the age of faith has almost become a god

10 This concept is discussed in greater detail in Gayle E. Woloschak, ‘HIV: How Science Shaped the Ethics’, Zygon, 38 (2003), 163–167. 11 This is described in many texts including Peter Kosso, A Summary of Scientific Method (Springerbriefs in Philosophy Series), vol. i (New York: Springer Books, 2011). 12 Francisco J. Ayala, ‘Intelligent Design: The Original Version’, Theology and Science, 1 (2003), 9–32.

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to be revered and adored in challenge to the True God. This view leaves little room for dialogue or discussion on issues that affect today’s world. The prejudice ‘if you can’t find it in the Church Fathers, you shouldn’t be dealing with it’ is often made to avoid exploring new questions. The result is a closed-mindedness, a narrowness, and a failure to support dialogue or discussion. While it is true that literalism can be found in the patristic literature, in many cases today this can be associated with an imported biblical literalism that has been brought into parishes by the surrounding culture. Both perspectives – the scientism and the non-Orthodox biblical literalism – are fundamentalist. They are centred on a failure to question prejudice and re-investigate the basis of preconceived notions. Despite the apparent discord there is common ground between the disciplines when they are at their best – both religion and science accept mystery, the idea that there are things that cannot be explained with what we know today. There is a recognition that our perceptions come with limitations and that there may be ‘more to the story’ than we can understand. It is also interesting that both disciplines have the concept of ‘mentorship’ as a key goal. For scientists, a student learns by being associated with a mentor who trains the student not only by learning facts, but by watching and learning ‘how’ the science is done and absorbing the ethos of scientific rigour. For Orthodox, there exists a concept of spiritual mentorship where one learns about the depth of the faith by working with a spiritual mentor who trains the student in prayer, discipline, and the spiritual life. While these practices are not directly related or comparable, they point to the idea that discernment is needed in both areas and that simple knowledge of facts will not necessarily put the person on the right path. The test of success in both fields is not a final exam but an ability to live the experience of striving for the spiritual life and truth or performing studies and attaining truths about nature. Finally, as noted earlier, the validity of neither spiritual nor scientific approaches is determined by a majority vote or a court of law.

Scientific Discoveries Will Impact Religion Recent years have seen the recording of a number of scientific questions or areas of investigation that are viewed as conflicts between science and religion:13 – Which is right, evolution or creation? – Is humanness defined by our genes, our morality, our love for others, all of the above? – What is the proper balance for ecological issues, exploitation vs. conservation? – Is behaviour defined predominantly by our psyche, our genes, our morality? – What is a ‘genetic variation’ and what is ‘disease’?

13 This is discussed in many references, especially in the volume Theological Foundations in an Age of Biological Intervention, ed. by David C. Ratke (Minneapolis, MN: Lutheran University Press, 2008); see also my contribution there: Gayle E. Woloschak, ‘What is on the Horizon? What is Science Likely to be Doing in the Upcoming Years?’, pp. 25–40.

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– What is the contribution of genes vs. family/environment/morality to our behaviour, our attitudes, our interactions? – Homosexuality is not ‘abnormal’, what is the Church’s perspective? – Should we be thinking about living on earth forever instead of eternal life (transhumanism)? – How far should we edit the human genome? Scientific developments have led to new technologies that have been incorporated into human survival since humanity began. Among recent technologies are practices like the introduction of the use of antibiotics to fight infectious disease, a technology that changed the human life span from thirty-some to seventy-some years. Other medical treatments such as radiotherapy and cancer chemotherapy were originally challenged by the Church as ‘poisons’ that were later shown to have significant benefit to humanity in treatment of disease and in allowing for longer disease-free lifespans.14 In even more recent times, controversial methodologies have included the use of organ transplants to deal with organ-specific diseases like kidney or heart disease. While initially facing some controversy among Orthodox (and yet still a few communities have issues with heart transplantation), transplantation has come to be viewed as a ‘loving donation from the heart’ to give the gift of life to others15. Much more controversial have been the use of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) technologies to facilitate pregnancies in those who have not been able to have children and stem cell technologies for treatment of diseases. St Basil the Great was the founder of hospitals and spent much effort looking for ways to relieve human suffering from disease. He often saw physicians using various herbs and potions to treat their patients and based on this, he noted: ‘Medicine is a gift from God even if some people do not make the right use of it. Granted, it would be stupid to put all hope of a cure in the hands of doctors, yet there are people who stubbornly refuse their help altogether.’ In another text, he stated: All the different sciences and techniques have been given us by God to make up for the deficiencies of nature […] Not by chance does the earth produce plants that have healing properties. It is clearly evident that the Creator wants to give them to us to use.16 Based on these words it seems that St Basil accepted basic science as a means of developing new tools and technologies for therapies. Of course, we must use discernment when applying such tools to human health.

14 Anecdotal evidence from discussions with Orthodox physicians has indicated that many Orthodox were not accepting of most forms of chemotherapy because they were poisons, and it was better to prepare spiritually for death than to poison the body. H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. (The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, Lisse: Swetz and Zeitlinger, 2000, p. 317) notes that St Basil of Caesarea advised that, if a medication includes a great deal of trouble, then it could be understood as inappropriate. 15 Stanley Harakas, For the Health of Body and Soul: An Eastern Orthodox Introduction to Bioethics (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1980). 16 Basil the Great, The Long Rules, 55 (trans. by M. Monica Wagner CSC, Boston, MA: Daughters of St Paul Press, 1962).

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An important aspect of technology development is the fact that new technologies are increasing the number of decision points in people’s lives. For example, years ago, when a couple could not have a child, the only question on the table for them was whether to adopt or not. Now there are more questions and more decisions: do we adopt, do we have IVF, do we have a surrogate mother, do we freeze the embryos, how many eggs do we use, and so on? Many families do not consult their spiritual mentor or priest or bishop when making these decisions and perhaps the reasons for this should be explored. Nevertheless, for those that do, spiritual guides are often challenged by these questions, particularly if they have little background in the technology. In this extremity, some of the clergy gave arbitrary rather than thought-through advice to the family. Certainly, this suggests that more collaboration among clergy, scientists, physicians, and others is needed. A broad issue associated with technology development is also the change that we have seen in the reaction of the broad culture to technology. From the scientific perspective, we now see that the movement from technology development to application is very rapid. While technology provides new tools that are useful to humanity, there is little time or effort that is placed in evaluating which applications of the technology might be appropriate and which should perhaps be delayed until additional consideration can be made. Safety is rarely discussed early in technology development and in some cases human volunteers are even used to test technologies that are untried. In addition, there is often little opportunity for public response on these safety issues, and in many cases the full safety ramifications are not clearly defined before they are tested. For example, in the US phase zero clinical trials are used in cancer patients who are dying to attempt an untried technology with the goal of determining if a treatment can be tolerated by the patient. There is no hope of a cure in these trials; it is only the testing of a technology in a human being that is dying or for whom there is little hope of a cure. These phase-zero trials are approved by an Institutional Review Board and follow the standards of ethical care that are used in the US, the patient must be told of the intention, but again the intention is not to cure the disease but merely to test the safety of a technology.17 From a cultural perspective, there are also problems that come with technology. Many people do not want to worry about ecological concerns because humanity will come up with some technology to solve the problem. Technology will solve all problems eventually and thus there is no need for restraint, reflection or discernment; as a consequence, all technology is ever-changing, beneficial, and leads to the advancement of humanity. Society is divided into those who ‘can’ or ‘do’ a particularly technology and those who ‘can’t’ or ‘don’t’ – from Facebook and snapchat to Skype calling to designer babies. A company in California offers couples the opportunity to select the eggs and sperm of their to-be in vitro fertilized eggs so that they can

17 The National Comprehensive Cancer Network provides a definition of the various different clinical trials types at .

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have children with green eyes, blonde hair, and all sorts of other features.18 Biological enhancements are on the way now and while in the past they have included drugs like steroids for sports enhancement and Ritalin for improved performance on exams, they are likely to include the ability to move a cursor with a thought and drugs that increase stimulus response times among others. One of the most significant achievements of technology during the past 20+ years has been the evolution of sequencing technology to permit the sequencing of genomes from different species and human individuals with great speed and accuracy. As of today, 24,200 different species have had their genomes entered into GenBank as complete sequences. When counting up the number of human genomes that are currently completed, this question is more difficult because about 10,000 are planned to be completed soon, but many more have had sequences done for those regions of the genome that encode protein. There has been a focus on genes associated with diseases, genes that are changed in cancer, mutations that are associated with different carcinogens and others. There has been an especially large interest in genomic sequences by the behaviour community. By doing comparison work among different species, it is possible to examine gene sequences that are important for certain human behaviours. For example, by studying the fruit fly and its passage through a lab instrument called an ‘inebriator’ where the fruit fly moves down the device through increasingly higher concentrations of alcohol, one can identify those flies that are ‘alcohol tolerant’ and perhaps through genetic similarities with humans identify genes important in human alcohol dependency.19 Through understanding genes associated with dog social behaviours (herding behaviours, compulsive behaviours, etc.) it may be possible to identify similar traits in humans. Over years of such study, a large number of genes have been found to be associated with particular behaviours:20 – Hand skill, relative (handedness) – Hand clasping pattern – Arm folding preference – Ears, ability to move – Tongue curling, folding, or rolling – Musical perfect pitch – Novelty seeking personality trait – Stuttering – Tobacco addiction – Alcoholism – Homosexuality 18 A variety of newspaper and other articles in the mass media have comments on the ability to create tailor-made children and its ethics. One example is at . 19 Nigel S. Atkinson, ‘Tolerance in Drosophila’, Journal of Neurogenetics, 23 (2009), 293–302. 20 For an overview of genetics and the social sciences, there are several texts available, most notably Gregory Carey, Human Genetics for the Social Sciences (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003). For twin studies, see the 6th edition of the volume Behavioral Genetics, ed. by Robert Plomin, John C. DeFries, Valerie S. Knopik and Jenae M. Neiderhiser (New York, NY: Worth Publishers, 2014).

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Some of these traits can be altered with changes in habit (and I would argue may be necessary for good health) – stuttering, tobacco and alcohol addiction. Others perhaps can be changed with behavioural changes (e.g., handedness) but with a consequence to the person who has been forced to alter their behaviour. Others however cannot be changed – musical perfect pitch, tongue curling. The medical and psychological communities have considered that homosexuality is one of these complex genetic traits that cannot be changed with training or alterations in behaviours; this has implications for the Church and will be discussed below.

Need for Reflection and Resolution for Orthodox Christians There are some issues with apparent but perhaps not real tensions in parishes and in the Orthodox community that can be dealt with through dialogue and reasonable discussion in the framework of the Church today. Included in this list might be transplantation (where only a few communities or groups see a tension with this issue), evolution (which is fully compatible with Orthodox teaching and requires only improved communication)21, environment (for which most concerns are more motivated by politics rather than theology)22, and technologies (where discernment needs to be at work to better define Orthodox perspectives). There is another category of issues that are tension-ridden for science and Orthodoxy, but this may be more because there has been so little discussion on them than because there are true disagreements in the disciplines. These would include topics like the role of IVF in family life (for which there are disagreements among clergy and hierarchs), genetic counselling (which probably involves more preparation of families to handle difficult decisions than decisions about abortions), and gene editing (which will change drastically in the coming days of CRISPR-Cas9).23 These issues too would benefit from more discussion and interface between those involved in pastoral work and scientists and physicians. Finally, there is a group of topics that I consider are ‘real tensions’ that would require more than words but probably actions to achieve balance. These include: Miscarriages: Most miscarriages are the result of a genetic abnormality that could not be corrected so that the offspring could not be brought to term; this is not the result of the mother’s ‘inappropriate behaviour’ during pregnancy. Prayers and perspectives need to be changed.24

21 Gayle E. Woloschak, Beauty and Unity in Creation: The Evolution of Life (Minneapolis, MN, Light and Life Publishing Co., 1996); Gayle E. Woloschak, ‘The Compatibility of the Principles of Evolution with Eastern Orthodoxy’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 55 (2011), 209–31. 22 Gayle E. Woloschak, ‘God of Life: Contemplating Evolution, Ecology, Extinction’, The Ecumenical Review, 65 (2013), 145–59. 23 CRISPR stands for Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. 24 This issue is discussed by Carrie Frost, ‘The Need for Liturgical Rites for Miscarriage and Infant Death’, Orthodox Christian Association of Medicine Psychology and Religion Newsletter, 2016.

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Is a single fertilized human cell out of the womb an embryo? It cannot be brought to term and ‘what if ’ questions do not resolve the issue. For most scientists, single cells in a culture plate do not make a human being. Many in the Church feel differently.25 Homosexuality: For medicine and science, homosexuality is a ‘variant of normal behaviour’ that cannot be changed with training or drugs. Forcing change leads to dangerous repression and difficulties. Many in the Church feel differently.26 For this latter category, it is not clear that discussion can resolve the issues, but dialogue as a first step would be important. For the issue of miscarriage, some discussion has begun and some individual jurisdictions have changed the prayers for miscarriage to not fault the mother.27 For other topics on the list, though, there has been little discussion and little hope for resolution.28 St Maximus the Confessor made the point that there should be no conflict among the different books, if we accept his model. This implies then that there should be no conflict between the truth we seek as scientists working in the world and the larger Truth we all seek as individual Christians. These should not be in conflict, so the Church must work to resolve these issues. One other point that needs to be made involves the concept of ‘bad genes’. Are some of these genes we mentioned just ‘bad genes’? If so, how can they be explained in a good creation? From the scientist’s perspective, there can be genes that contribute mutations into the population, but these are really neither good nor bad unless they are understood in a given environment – the question the scientist asks is whether a particular gene makes a population better suited for a particular environment. Perhaps an example could help explain this. Sickle cell anemia is caused by two copies of a mutant globin gene. Those with two normal copies of the gene of course have no problems. People with two copies of the mutant gene have sickle cell anemia. Why would this gene exist in the human population? Those with one copy of the normal gene and one copy of the mutant gene do not have sickle cell anemia, but they have an added benefit if they live in Africa – they are resistant to some forms of malaria. The importance of these genes to human development cannot be underestimated. Without the presence of this gene in the human population, it is quite likely that humans would have succumbed to malaria in Africa and never made it out of Africa to populate the rest of the world. Do we know the origin of other difficult mutations in the population?29 25 Gayle E. Woloschak, ‘In Vitro Fertilization and the Beginning of Life’, The Wheel, 11 (Fall 2017), 11–16. 26 Fr Thomas Hopko discusses the Orthodox Christian understanding of homosexuality at . 27 The Orthodox Christian Association of Medicine Psychology and Religion held a conference on this topic in 2012 in Chicago and much discussion at the conference emphasized the need for changes to existing prayers where possible. 28 Several websites have provided opportunities for public discourse on these issues. For example, has offered many different perspectives on some of these topics. 29 Ana Ferreira et al., ‘Sickle Hemoglobin Confers Tolerance to Plasmodium Infection’, Cell, 145 (2011), 398–409.

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If we examine genetic differences between modern humans and Neanderthals, for example, we find many genes that are different particularly regarding food digestion and metabolism, skeletal structure, and cognition.30 The latter topic is perhaps the most interesting. Among those genes are those involved in human diseases of today, including schizophrenia, autism and others. For most of these genes (and for schizophrenia there are at least 120 genes that are thought to be involved), the exact function is not known. What we do know is that anomalies of cognition come about only because we have cognitive function in the first place and thus diseases of cognition are the result of our cognition. What does this mean for humanity? Those who suffer from cognitive dysfunction (and indeed from every ‘disease’ that involves the misfunctioning of a normal gene) suffer at least in part so that the remainder of humanity may survive. Perhaps in all cases we are called to use discernment to weigh Orthodox perspectives on these difficult issues. This is an especially difficult task because as Metropolitan of Sourozh Anthony Bloom has stated, we cannot just pick up what the Church Fathers have said and apply it today. He says: Our task is not merely to imitate what was done by the saints of previous eras, but somehow to appropriate at a much deeper level the way in which they engage their own historical environment, seeking to respond as they would have responded had they lived in our day.31 We are called to difficult tasks for difficult times; let us hope we are up to the challenge.

Conclusions The Church Fathers as well as modern scholars have discussed the consistency that should exist between the truth of nature and the universal Truth that one finds in the Church. Those dialogues that require a choice between science and religion are based in an inappropriate understanding of both the faith and the science, based more on culture wars than on reality. Discoveries made in science have already had a strong influence on religion, impacting thinking about human origins, the relationship of humanity with other species, human personhood, and others. As science and technology continue to expand their knowledge base and capabilities, the Church must be prepared to step forward with perspectives that can be helpful in guiding the faithful for correct decision-making; technology is drastically changing the number of decision points in people’s lives, and too often the Church’s response is delayed, inappropriate, and/or without impact. 30 There are several papers that have examined this issue including: Richard E. Green, Johannes Krause, Susan E. Ptak, Adrian W. Briggs, Michael T. Ronan, Jan F. Simons, Lei Du, Michael Egholm, Jonathan M. Rothberg, Maja Paunovic and Svante Pääbo, ‘Analysis of One Million Base Pairs of Neanderthal DNA’, Nature, 444 (2006), 330–36; Richard E. Green et al., ‘A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Genome’, Science, 328 (2010), 710–22. 31 Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Final Encyclical, .

Archbishop Makarios of Australi a

The Science-Theology Dialogue through the Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee

Introduction The importance and diversity of new ethical problems arising from the development of science have contributed to the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘bioethics’ becoming almost synonymous in medical language. In the past, of course, progress was founded on the doctrines of science and ethics. Therefore, the two noblest missions for humans were the acquisition of knowledge and its use for the good of society. However, with the rapid progress of science a third mission emerges: We must learn the proper use of achievements – because there is also a wrong one –, something that implies the responsibility to prevent side effects.1 This mission or need pushed biology and medicine to collaborate with other disciplines. The culmination of this collaboration was the new discipline of bioethics. The new discipline of bioethics is neither solely metaphysical nor solely pragmatic. It is not considered only philosophical or theological nor only scientific or practical. The bioethics expert is not isolated in his philosophical tower or his theological cell; neither is he resting away in his research laboratory. Bioethics establishes its presence as an interdisciplinary science, since it embraces all sciences, moving simultaneously and comfortably between philosophy and law, as well as medicine, biology, technology and even geography.2



1 Jean Bernard, Βιοηθική [Bioethics] (Original Title: La Bioéthique), trans. by Eleni Spanou (Athens: P. Travlos – E. Kostarakis, 1996), p. 9. 2 Apostolos Nikolaidis, Ἀπό τή Γένεση στή Γενετική. Ἐγχειρίδιο Βιοηθικῆς [From Genesis to Genetics. A Handbook of Bioethics] (Athens: Grigoris, 2006), p. 19. Archbishop Makarios of Australia  Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia, Sydney, Australia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 181–189. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116865

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Bioethics and Christian Theology This cooperation does not exclude the discipline of theology, which holds an important place in bioethics. Indeed, some argue that theology when it deals with aspects of human ontology is bioethics, while others point out that we cannot make bioethics decisions without using the language of theology.3 We should, of course, note the concerns which are often rightly raised by theologians and others: Does theology have the necessary means to answer questions, which are urgently raised by today’s scientific research? Does it have the knowledge to simply comprehend the evolution of medical biotechnology? Is Church morality outdated and ineffective, unable to cope with the new data and the rapid development referring to the biological existence and function of humans? Is its word only relevant to the spiritual existence of humans while it ignores their physical needs and reality? Have the doctrine and faith of the Church imposed a standardized ethos, which is characterized by stiffness, inflexibility and inability to adapt to the new achievements of science? And, finally, has theology something new to offer to science and modern humans?4 It is true that theology remains silent on certain issues. This perhaps can be explained, since with biotechnology challenges we are now moving away from the era of traditional problems and concerns and are entering into new kinds of ethical concerns. ‘The question is no longer whether we have a good or a bad person, which was the main concern of traditional ethics, but whether we have a human or not.’5 The rapid development and the numerous and new data may have found theology unprepared, since it certainly does not have answers for the newly emerged scientific issues. Within the framework of mutual respect, coexistence and understanding of theology and bioethics, we realize that the first objective is to inform and promote dialogue. The existence of these two worlds is given. However, science and theology are existing in a space where, while they are aware of each other’s existence, they ignore, each from its own side, the language, the course, the work, and the proposals of the other. Thus, despite this situation, communication and dialogue constitute a request, followed by a challenge: listening to a voice, which is different from ours and perhaps getting out of our comfort zone, in which we have conveniently arranged fixed perceptions on things. Moreover, this does not contradict the mission of theology, since we know that the word of theology has always had one purpose: to convince people that what is missing in the world, is the renovation of the universe and the definitive elimination of death. This means that theology does not perceive





3 Anestis Keselopoulos, Ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τήν ζωήν – Θεολογική προσέγγιση στίς προκλήσεις τῆς βιοηθικῆς [From Death to Life – A Theological Approach to the Challenges of Bioethics] (Thessaloniki: Pournaras, 2003), p. 51. See also Father John Breck, ‘Βιοηθικά διλήμματα καί Ὀρθοδοξία’ [‘Bioethical Dilemmas and Orthodoxy’], Synaxi, 68 (1998), 5–20 (p. 6). 4 Konstantinos Skouteris, ‘Βιοηθική καί τό Ἦθος τῆς Ὀρθοδοξίας’ [‘Bioethics and the Ethos of Orthodoxy’], Episkepsis, Year 30, issue 575 (October 1999), 22–31 (p. 24). 5 John (Zizioulas), Metropolitan of Pergamon, ‘Τό Πρόσωπο καί οἱ Γενετικές Παρεμβάσεις’ [‘The Person and the Genetic Interventions’], Indiktos, 14 (2001), 63–72.

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matter, history, people, love, progress and achievements as bad, but considers them as subjugated to wear (corruption).6 It is a fact that the persistent preoccupation of science only with the biological side of humans leads to decay. Such a science will not only be unable to provide answers to fundamental questions, but instead it will lead to permanent deadlocks. To provide solutions, a properly structured anthropology must be clearly set in our thoughts and in our consciousness, which will allow us to see humans not only as biological beings, but as beings with eternal perspective. Then, following the fact of existence and the request for dialogue, the contribution of theology is important: to convince that humans consist not only of flesh and bones, nerves and juice, but that they form psychosomatic entities. This will help us understand that humans are not confined in watertight boundaries of earthly life, but extend to eschatological glory. In this case and in these conditions, we are talking about spiritual, rather than secular, bioethics. Then we can understand that each new method of medicine and every progress of biotechnology are blessed, if aimed at the whole human being who lives in this century, but is marching to the future. On the contrary, every discovery of science, which imprisons humans in the watertight boundaries of their biological life, regardless of how much this helps their earthly life and rests the human body, conceals a tragedy.7 Certainly, at this point, we should clarify which theology we are talking about. Theology today seems fragmented, like Christianity, being preached differently by the Orthodox and Catholics, or the Protestants. Roman Catholics are taking a position on bioethics in a conservative spirit and this is very obvious if one studies their decisions on IVF. Consequently, they are forced to decide again and again on issues which they had already decided on in the past. This, however, makes them completely unreliable since they have to retract their previous decisions. Protestants, on the other hand, are struggling with their internal divisions between liberal and traditional groups. We note, however, that most of them were lost in unbridled modernization. They turned away from the Bible, the patristic texts, from Tradition and Holy Canons, and, thus, through their liberation, they feel completely unfree and hopeless. When we talk about theology in the Orthodox Church, we refer to the truth, which is a basic requirement for making a decision. Knowing our truth liberates us.8 And this truth can often be hard, but it certainly is liberating. It may not fit perfectly with the ecumenical spirit, or rather the spirit of globalization, or it may be considered annoying in the eyes of a secular human, but it offers peace because it lifts the internal tragedy. Bioethics for the Orthodox theologian is a science that is considered and examined in the light of hagiographic and patristic teaching, but also through personal and empirical experience. The Church does not examine bioethical issues through an



6 Thanasis N. Papathanasiou, Θρησκεία, Ἰδεολογία, Ἐπιστήμη [Religion, Ideology, Science] (Chalkis: Porthmos, 2001], pp. 18 and 33. 7 Skouteris, ‘Βιοηθική’, p. 24. 8 ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall free you.’ ( John 8. 32).

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academic prism but empirically. And those who grapple with bioethical issues will not help if their theology is only academic and epistemological. Only theology which is experienced and which is leading to the experience of God can offer solutions and rid us of impasses. The solutions of Orthodox bioethics are the results of God’s light and divine grace. The usefulness and importance of the theological intervention in bioethics is felt more when basic concepts are distorted or become immoral when they are negotiated by secular bioethics. Even though theology has no ready-made answers, as mentioned above, it offers timeless criteria and principles for their development.9 Its contribution, therefore, but also its responsibility, is to provide the foundation and axioms to study issues using a different logic and a different eschatological orientation. If bioethics refuses to make use of the theological criteria, which are stable and reliable, and above all, true, then its language will be compromised, will be variable, will not cure, will not offer peace; on the contrary, it will serve research, economic and selfish interests. Today we need a bioethics that is more aimed at changing the way of our life, of our research, the way we face and manage the achievements of science. Because, at the end of the day, it is tiring to have secular morality offering solutions for all human problems and always proposing fixed systems of rules and moral values, tailored to excuse and tolerate everything. In this context, we see solutions being offered which, on one hand, are dealing with a problem and, on the other hand, are causing more issues. For Orthodox theology bioethics must be processed into art, so that we can find every time the right way to put science and progress to good use, because ‘good is not good, if it is not well accomplished’.10 With regard to the above, we should clarify the obvious: theology is not only interested in life after death nor is it trying to cover only the metaphysical questions of humans. Theology deals with humans as a whole. This reality is particularly evidenced by the incarnation of the Word of God: God becomes human in order to render humans God. For the salvation of humans, God takes flesh and bone, releasing humans from wear and sin, and goes up on the cross, God sends the Holy Spirit offering a continuous opportunity for renewal. The secularization of modern ethics has naturally influenced bioethics as well, and actually to a large extent. Therefore, there are issues on which sometimes there can be no common approach. For example, for a secular human it is normal that a woman can have an abortion, because in the alternative, her rights are violated. For the Orthodox bioethics, however, this is a problem, because women’s rights cannot eliminate the foetus’s rights, especially when it comes to a right to life. Such disputes, which may be numerous in a bioethical debate, lead us to another impasse. While until now we were concerned about which theology we should embrace in order to answer the ethical dilemmas, now we should be concerned

9 Nicolaidis, ‘Ἀπό τή Γένεση’, p. 42. 10 Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 27. The First Theological against the Eunomians, 4, Patrologia Graeca (PG) 36, 16 C–D.

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about what moral value system we should adopt in order to study the emerging problems. Moral guidance available up till now seems contradictory, insufficient and sometimes arbitrary. What system of moral values would one embrace and what are the selection criteria? Common benefit? Progress? Relief from pain? But again, we have to ask if all this will finally lead us to the light and the truth or whether it will push us further away from it, leading to stagnation and chaos. In our times, the criteria for what is morally acceptable vary according to the prevailing philosophical, religious and social conditions. Specifically, in the area of Western culture they seem to be determined by the independent humanistic morality, shaped by the Enlightenment and some subsequent postmodern ideas. According to those criteria, morality is what serves and promotes the happiness of the individual. The human being is approached as an individual, whose rights constitute the ultimate criterion of morality: anything that serves the happiness of the individual is moral.11 Secular Kant believes in immortality and an ‘as if God’ idea, Hegel defends the necessity of logic, and Kierkegaard bases faith on an act of will. But ultimately, neither Kant nor Hegel or Kierkegaard manage to unite morality or to convince that their morality is based on the highest morality of an absolutely transcendent and personal God. Hence, we realize that most systems of moral values today are approaching – and probably ‘rest on’ – the ethics of consensus and acceptance, which creates the morality of comfort and compromise. This, however, inevitably leads to liberal and secular approaches to issues and to an ethic that recognizes autonomy and individual choice (supposedly freedom) as a supreme value.12 The ethics of the Orthodox Church is not an independent concept, but an extension of theology. If therefore, the Orthodox theology wants to have a word on the issues of bioethics, then it has to theologically justify the positions it supports.13 However, we must note that today’s society would benefit from a theology that produces fewer conditions, fewer quotes, fewer prohibitions, while discovering the requirements for decision-making, not so much of religious but more of theological nature. Starting this effort from the common points – points that unite us –, theology through its prophetic service has a way to positively influence the challenges of ordinary humans and can better highlight the timeless values of life, and propose alternatives which do not survive outside the Church, since we know that many traditions and spiritual aspects of life are neglected today by secular humans and modern scientists.14

11 John (Zizioulas), Metropolitan of Pergamon, ‘Opening Speech at the First Meeting of the InterOrthodox Bioethics Committee’, 24 May 2011, (unpublished), p. 3. 12 H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr, Τά θεμέλια τῆς Βιοηθικῆς. Μιά Χριστιανική θεώρηση [The Foundations of Christian Bioethics], trans. by Polyxeni Tsaliki-Kiosoglou (Athens: Armos, 2007), p. 39. 13 John (Zizioulas), ‘Opening Speech’, p. 4. 14 Lisa Sowle Cahill, ‘Can Theology Have a Role in Public Bioethical Discourse?’, in On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, ed. by Stephen E. Lammers and Allen Verhey, 2nd Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), pp. 57–62 (p. 62).

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The Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee It is a fact that there is a weakness on the Orthodox side in reaching unanimous decisions in general, and specifically on bioethical issues. To address this issue the Synaxis of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches, held in Phanar in Constantinople between 9 and 12 October 2008 under the chairmanship of His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, reaffirmed ‘the decision to proceed to the necessary actions to establish a Inter-Orthodox Committee to study bioethical issues, on which the world is waiting for Orthodoxy to take a stand’.15 To reach this decision the Ecumenical Patriarch sent letters to the Beatitudes Primates, inviting them to nominate representatives, which ultimately was achieved with Synodical decisions of the local Churches, which designated representative bishops, clergy, and non-clergy scientists.16 In this way, the Committee took an inter-Orthodox official character and through its work was asked to undertake a significant and difficult task, namely that of the coordinating body of the Orthodox Church on bioethics issues. Any decisions and recommendations of the Committee will have an advisory role, since to have these decisions as established values of the Orthodox Church they should be approved by an Ecumenical Council or the Holy and Great Council. But certainly, these decisions – because they will just come from an official inter-Orthodox

15 Message of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches, Phanar of Constantinople, 12 October 2008, (accessed May 2017). 16 The Representatives of the worldwide Orthodox Churches, who form the Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee are: 1. Ecumenical Patriarchate: His Eminence Metropolitan of Pergamon Ioannis, Chairman of the Committee, the Very Reverend Archimandrite of the Ecumenical Throne Makarios Griniezakis, Secretary of the Committee and the Reverend Stylianos Antonarakis, Professor at the University of Geneva; 2. Patriarchate of Alexandria: His Eminence Metropolitan of Zimbabwe Serafim, the Right Reverend Bishop of Brazzaville and Gabon Panteleimon and the Reverend Gregorios Liandas, Professor at the Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki; 3. Patriarchate of Antioch: His Eminence Metropolitan of Halep Pavlos, 4. Patriarchate of Jerusalem: His Eminence Archbishop of Lydda Demetrios and the Reverend Konstantinos Niarchos, Professor at the University of Athens; 5. Church of Russia: His Eminence Archbishop of Berlin and Germany Theofanis and the Reverend Igor Vakhrushkin; 6. Church of Serbia: The Reverend Father Deacon Dr Petar Dabic, MD, and the Reverend Dr Stamenko Susak, MD; 7. Church of Romania: The Right Reverend Bishop of Oradea Sofronios, the Reverend Presbyter Fr Vasile Raduca, Professor, and the Reverend Father Christian Rus; 8. Church of Bulgaria (Representatives of the Bulgarian Church did not attend the first meeting of the Inter-Orthodox Committee of Bioethics); 9. Church of Georgia: His Eminence Metropolitan Zugdidi and Tsaishi Gerasimos, the Very Reverend Archbishop Adam (Vakhtang Akhaladze), the Reverend Father Deacon Bregvadze and the Reverend Zaza Ejibishvili; 10. Church of Cyprus: His Excellency Metropolitan of Pafos Georgios and the Reverend Dr Andreas Prokopiou, MD; 11. Church of Greece: His Eminence Metropolitan of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki Nikolaos and the Reverend Serafim Nanas, Professor at the University of Athens; 12. Church of Poland: His Eminence Archbishop of Bialystok and Gdansk Iakovos and the Reverend Dr Fr Artur Aleksiejuk; 13. Church of Albania: His Eminence Metropolitan of Berat Ignatios, the Very Reverend Father Archbishop Nektarios Tsekouras and the Very Reverend Father Presbyter Vassilios Thermos, child psychiatrist and Professor; 14. Church of Czech and Slovakia: The Reverend Fr Alexander Lapin, Professor.

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ecclesiastical body, but mainly because the members who will make these decisions have the knowledge and scientific expertise of medical and theological aspects of the subject – will have scientific validity and theological reliability, which means that it will not be possible for an Ecumenical decision of Orthodoxy on bioethical issues not to be taken seriously into consideration. The Chairman of the Committee, His Eminence Metropolitan Ioannis ( John) of Pergamon, in his opening speech at the first meeting of the Committee, referred to the reasons, which led to the creation of the discipline of bioethics and the role to be undertaken by the Church in this new scientific field. He emphasized that humans must be served by science and therefore, as sacred and respected as the latter may be, it cannot be an end in itself in life. However, the Church blesses the work of science, when it is sacred. The question arises, however, when science is doing good and ethical work and, consequently, there is the issue of criteria relating to the meaning of ‘ethical’. The need to develop the appropriate criteria is thus driving the Church and theology, in cooperation with the discipline of bioethics. Specifically, His Eminence Chairman of the Committee and renowned theologian of the Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Ioannis ( John) of Pergamon, noted: Bioethics has emerged in our days as a natural consequence of the rapid progress of science and technology, a progress, which has caused serious ethical dilemmas regarding the implementation of the results of this progress in people’s life. We all look in admiration at this progress, which actually has no precedent in history with regard to the speed and the significance of its achievements, but also with awe, wonder, and quite often with concern on the potential impact that this progress may have for the moral behaviour of people. Given that, according to the known saying, ‘science separated from virtue appears as cunning’, science, as sacred and respected as it may be, cannot be an end in itself in the life of man. Rather, science should be a servant of higher objectives for the good of the people. Paraphrasing a known evangelical saying on Saturday, ‘science was made for man, and not man for science’.17 And indeed, if we put aside some arrogant servants of our science, who are indifferent to the impact of scientific knowledge on our life, scientists toil and fight for the good of humankind, a superior living standard, health, extending our lifespan, and generally improving our lives. The aim therefore of scientific research is holy, and the Church can only bless it. But the issue becomes complicated when the following question arises: What is really good and beneficial for humans, and therefore what is morally acceptable? The question is not simply if a certain scientific achievement is moral when implemented, but what is and is not moral in every single case. There is, therefore, the subject of criteria used to define morality, and it is at this point that the role of the Church is involved.

17 John (Zizioulas), ‘Opening Speech’, p. 2.

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Based on the above points made by His Eminence Chairman of the Committee, the course of the role of the Church in bioethics was plotted, and is expected to be a leading one. Clearly, the Church is not called to criticize the scientific achievements or annul the progress of science and its evidence and it certainly does not intend to examine and reject science. However, its role in shaping moral criteria is necessary, since the Church’s teaching and experience involve genuine and timeless moral values. On the basis of this truth is defined the purpose assigned to the Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee: through the teaching of the Fathers and their dealing with ethical issues, through the way the Church approaches humans and their moral conduct, the Commission aims to shape Orthodox bioethics, which will be based on Orthodox theological criteria. For the purpose and destination of the Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee we stressed also that: Everything leads to the need for a thorough and very careful study of the Orthodox tradition on the formation of the Orthodox position on bioethics issues. How are Church Fathers using the Holy Bible to rule on issues related to ethics? How is man and his moral behaviour approached by the long pastoral tradition of the Orthodox Church? How does Orthodoxy prioritize between compliance with a moral authority and human interest? These and other similar questions are the ones we will have to work on in the scope of our Committee. Our aim is to shape not Catholic or Protestant, but Orthodox bioethics. In each specific case we will be called to seek that Orthodox criteria as such are formed in the long tradition of our Church. Without theological criteria, it is not possible to establish Orthodox bioethics.18 The first meeting of the Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee was held in Crete at the premises of the Orthodox Academy of Crete in Kolymbari, Kissamos, from 24 to 27 May 2011. In its first meeting the Committee did not make any specific decisions on any bioethical issue, however, it dealt with how it will apply methodology in its work and what will be the process of decision-making. In the joint communique of the Committee, which is quite informative, it is stated that: The Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee held its first meeting in Kolymbari in the Orthodox Academy of Crete, from 23 to 26 May 2011, as guests of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, with the participation of all the worldwide autocephalous Orthodox Churches. Representatives of the Bulgarian Church were not able to attend. The Bioethics Committee was established upon suggestion of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and the unanimous decision of the Primates of Orthodox Churches during their Synaxis in Phanar in October 2008. The Inter-Orthodox Committee was chaired by the Metropolitan of Pergamon Ioannis, representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, while the Secretary duties were performed by Reverend Archimandrite of the Ecumenical Throne Makarios

18 John (Zizioulas), ‘Opening Speech’, p. 5.

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Griniezakis. The Committee, after the opening speech of the Chairman, examined the process and the issues that will be on its agenda in order to achieve a consistent position of the Orthodox Church on the bioethics issues. The Commission decided to examine in each one of its meetings a specific bioethics issue, which will be chosen by priority depending on pastoral, ecclesiological, theological and social needs. Given that the issue of reproduction constitutes one of the most vital and pressing issues, which creates major bioethical dilemmas in the pastoral field of the Church, the Committee decided that in its next meeting it will study this issue, and has assigned to rapporteurs from within its members to present the scientific and theological side of it. His Eminence Metropolitan of Kissamos and Selinos Amfilohios, Chairman of the Orthodox Academy of Crete, hosted a dinner at the table of the Foundation in honour of the participants, attended by His Eminence Archbishop of Crete Eirinaios and Synodical Metropolitans from Crete. The Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee, which will meet again after one year, is looking forward, with the grace of the Church of Jesus Christ, to producing fruit for the glory of the Lord and fulfilling the duty and the mission of the Orthodox Church in the Modern World.19 It should be noted, of course, that some Autocephalous Churches have taken positions on some bioethical issues, especially those that concern the pastoral field of the members of the Church. For example, on IVF there are decisions and recommendations from the Churches of Russia, Serbia, Romania, Cyprus and Greece. In addition, some Churches have ruled on the issue of transplantations. The important thing for Orthodoxy, however, is the recommendation of the Committee, which will have to answer on many vital bioethical issues united with one voice, introducing another logic to the world and to the human being. Unlike other Christian Churches, the Orthodox Church held no councils (cf. the Second Vatican Council) in order to form a new ethos or to introduce into society a new, more practical and utilitarian morality. The Orthodox Church is still relying on the decisions of the seven Ecumenical Councils, the Holy Bible and the Holy Tradition. This means that everything stated by the Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee should be in accordance with what has been said in the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils of the Church Fathers. The Orthodox Church is not going to refuse values and beliefs that add meaning to our lives, in the name of liberal secular ethics and a secularized spirit of compromise. Seen in this way, it takes courage and bravery, because the answers given by the Church may not be liked by many. We must not forget, however, that the work of the Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee for this reason is special and unique. It is called upon to apply eternal principles to finite situations.

19 Official Statement of the Inter-Orthodox Bioethics Committee, 26 May 2011.

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Orthodoxy and Science in Bulgaria (Twentieth – Twenty First Century)

The present brief overview aims to outline the basic points in the history of the relations between Orthodoxy and science in Bulgaria from the 1920s (when the Faculty of Theology at Sofia University was founded) until the present. The basic participants in this discussion on the mutual connections between religion and the exact sciences are mainly scholars in the fields of philosophy and theology in Bulgaria; moreover, the institutional ties between these two professional groups within the human sciences were very close at the time.1

The Interwar Period The staff of the Faculty of Theology (created in 1923) consisted of Bulgarian intellectuals to whom philosophy was the closest field of knowledge. The views of Bulgarian theologians in the first half of the twentieth century on the topics of our discussion can be summarized as follows: Philosophy is a mediator between science and religion, and the three types of knowledge – philosophy, theology, and science – are equally necessary for the formation of a complete worldview. Philosophy begins where the exact sciences end; theology begins where philosophy ends – this was the outlook indicated by Bulgarian theology; an outlook that ascribed relations of coordination, not subordination, to the ‘three pillars’, the three components, of the worldview a modern person needs. That these types of knowledge are mutually compatible was what Bulgarian Orthodox thinkers tried to assert in their public statements and frequently in debates with representatives of the other two types of knowledge, which



1 Starting from the early years of the twentieth century, the discipline ‘philosophy and religion’ was part of the curriculum of the discipline of philosophy at Sofia University. For instance, the philosopher Spiridon Kazandjiev offered a course entitled ‘Science of Religious Consciousness’. Nina Dimitrova  Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 191–204. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116866

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were understood to be autonomous yet complementary areas. Being tolerant towards philosophy, Bulgarian theology was also tolerant towards science. Science certainly enjoyed an authoritative status in post-liberation Bulgaria, a country that was trying to make up for a centuries-long lag behind the developed countries. It was also an important factor of modernization in the interwar years, a very fertile period of cultural development. The inevitable enthusiasm for scientism and positivism was what disturbed not only theologians and the clergy in Bulgaria at that time, but also a large part of the intelligentsia in the field of the humanities. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the Ecclesiastical Journal, of which he was briefly the editor, the scientist (physicist, mathematician, and philosopher) Ivan Gyuzelev asserted that, of all young societies on the Balkan Peninsula, the anti-religious current was most strongly manifest precisely in Bulgarian society.2 A variety of publications appeared as a kind of response to the disdainful and negative attitude towards religion. The authors of these works were philosophers, or thinkers in other human disciplines, who, most generally, called for religion and science to draw closer to each other and who sought a confirmation of this closeness in the new scientific discoveries of that time. Among these publications were Knowledge and Faith in Scientific Cognition by the philosopher Spiridon Kazandjiev (1922), Science and Religion by the philosopher Stefan Gidikov (1926), certain works by the philosopher Athanas Iliev3, and even some texts appearing in the Philosophical Review, a journal of otherwise positivist leanings. A quotation from Constantine Paskalev’s article sums up these moods: Glavnata prichina za sporovete mezhdu religiata i naukata se koreni v nedostatâchnoto razgranichavane i iziasniavane na tehnite obekti i na pâtishtata za dostiganeto na tezi obekti. Religiata i naukata sa dve oblasti ot duhovnata proiava na choveka, koito, ako bâdat dobre shvanati i razbrani, nikoga ne biha se izpravili edna sreshtu druga, zashtoto v svoiata sâshtina te sa v harmonyja i edinstvo.4 (The main cause of these disputes between religion and science is rooted in the insufficient differentiation and clarification of their objects and of the paths for reaching those objects. Religion and science are two areas of man’s spiritual expression that, if well grasped and understood, would never stand up against each other because, in their essences, they are in harmony and unity.) As concerns the preference for science at the expense of religion, the basic problem facing Bulgarian theologians and clergymen in the interwar period was related to education, specifically, to the parallel study of religion and natural science and the doubts voiced by students regarding the need for this coexistence. One high school teacher of religion found that the methods of ‘harmonizing apologetics’, which ‘brush

2 See Ivan Gyuzelev, ‘Antireligioznoto dvizhenie’ [‘The Anti-religious Movement’], Tzârkoven Vestnik [Ecclesiastical Journal], 27 (1904), 4. 3 See Athanas Iliev, ‘Religia i nauka’ [‘Religion and Science’], Duhovna Kultura [Spiritual Culture], 63 (1935), 95–110. 4 Constantine Paskalev, ‘Religia i nauka’ [‘Religion and Science’], Filosofski Pregled [Philosophical Review], 2 (1932), 147–151 (p. 151).

Orthodoxy and Science in Bulgaria (Twentieth – Twenty First Century)

over’ the contradictions between modern science and the Christian doctrine of creation for instance, do not satisfy the alert and critically minded school children. He believed that much work was left to be done for the defense of faith before contemporary intelligent Bulgarians in the context of the modern scientific view of the world.5 Thus, a large share of theological works dealing with the relation of religion to science were motivated by the authors’ desire to contribute to the solution of a fundamental issue for every nation – the formation of the coming generation. In view of this, it is important once again to stress that the Bulgarian theologians and clerics of the period in question were highly educated and erudite, usually holding a doctoral degree in philosophy as well, acquired at one of the European intellectual centres. They were familiar with the latest achievements of the exact sciences, but also with the various philosophical (and theological) interpretations of those achievements. They took an active stance in public debates on this theme, displaying their knowledge in areas outside their specialty. As one of them pointed out, their own errors, the false way of teaching the truths of Christianity and the insufficient familiarity with the topics of debate nourished the nests of doubt in religion.6 Let us present them briefly: Archimandrite Evtimiy7, Metropolitan Bishop Stefan of Sofia8, Ivan Panchovski9, Ivan Markovski10, Boris Marinov11, Gancho Pashev12, and Dimitâr Penov13. We should specially point out that, in expressing the Orthodox standpoint on the relation between religion and science, the Bulgarian theologians and clergymen did not consider it necessary to dissociate themselves explicitly from the viewpoint of Western Christianity. In this dispute, it was far more important and urgent for them to uphold the prestige of Christianity in general.



5 See Stoyan Manev, ‘Obuchenieto po religia v gimnaziite’ [‘The Secondary School Religious Education’], Duhovna kultura [Spiritual Culture], 1 (1943), 31–41 (p. 40). 6 See Archimandrite Evtimiy, ‘Gnezda na sâmnenie vâv viarata’ [‘Nests of Doubt in Faith’], Godishnik na Sofijskiya Universitet. Bogoslovski Fakultet [Annual of Sofia University. Faculty of Theology], 19 (1942), 1–36. 7 Archimandrite Evtimiy (1884–1943) studied philosophy in Germany, graduated with a doctoral degree in philosophy, and became an archimandrite in 1917. He was also a professor in the Faculty of Theology at Sofia University. 8 Metropolitan Bishop Stefan of Sofia (1878–1957) was a high ranking Bulgarian clergyman and exarch from 1945 to 1948, who held the title Exarch Stefan І. He specialized in theology and philosophy at Fribourg University (Switzerland) and graduated with a doctoral degree in philosophy. 9 Ivan Panchovski (1913–87) received a doctoral degree in philosophy in Leipzig. He was a professor in the Faculty of Theology at Sofia University. 10 Ivan Markovski (1885–1972) was a professor from 1933 onwards in the Faculty of Theology at Sofia University, a doctor of divinity, a dean of the faculty for many years and editor of the journal Tzârkoven Vestnik [Ecclesiastical Journal]. 11 Boris Marinov (1895–1980) was a professor in the Faculty of Theology at Sofia University and a doctor of divinity. 12 Gancho Pashev (1885–1962) graduated from the Kiev Religious Academy and maintained close relations with the Russian émigrés in Paris. He was a doctor of moral theology in the Faculty of Theology at Sofia University. 13 Dimitâr Penov (1903–83) specialized in theology and philosophy in Berne and Jena. He was a doctor of philosophy from Jena University and a professor in the Faculty of Theology at Sofia University.

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Before presenting the standpoints of Bulgarian theologians of the interwar period, some of the more important developments in Bulgarian philosophy related to the topic under discussion will be pointed out. This concerns the different interpretations of the fundamental discoveries that occurred in physics at the beginning of the twentieth century and their importance for the new understanding of the link between religion and science. In 1931, Ivan Sarâiliev, professor of history of philosophy at Sofia University, published his lecture ‘Modern science and religion’, in which he situated the topic in the context of recent scientific discoveries. The message of the lecture was that science is not capable of grasping the deepest essence of things or of encompassing all spheres of reality. The concept of science that had been dominant in the nineteenth century and which was destructive of religion, was completely outlived. The current understanding of science had come as a result of the discoveries made in physics (especially quantum mechanics) in the early twentieth century. The author claimed that, after a period of the full predomination of scientism, the question of reconciling science and religion, one of the most important achievements of the human spirit, was again on the agenda. At that time, the 1930s, the most authoritative philosophical school was that of Johannes Rehmke’s (1848–1930) ‘basic science’ (Grundwissenschaft) and its proponent Dimitâr Mihalchev. The school was strictly rationalistic and not inclined to make any compromises between science and religion; it viewed the two areas as incompatible. Provoked by Sarâiliev, Mihalchev published a withering criticism of the thesis that science could be harmonized with religion. The debate continued with responses from the two opponents. Due to the predominant influence of Rehmkeanism in Bulgaria, the intellectual activities of philosophy and theology were practically separated. The main issues raised in the debate and on which the Bulgarian Orthodox thinkers of the interwar period took a stand, can be divided into two large groups. The first is of methodological importance, while the second refers to specific theological interpretations of the challenges coming from particular sciences.

The Overall Relationship between Religion and Science The harmonization between scientific knowledge and faith (respectively, between science and religion) was considered by Archimandrite Evtimiy to be an impending task for theology in general.14 The problem of the relation of religion (specifically of Eastern Orthodoxy) to science was of special interest to him and was the topic of the numerous public lectures and various articles he published in Bulgarian periodicals in the interwar period. In his view, religion and science, these two spiritual institutions, meant to lead humankind forward, since several centuries have not been in the mutual

14 See Archimandrite Evtimiy, ‘Dvanadesette glavni nauchni vâprosi za religiata i neinata svrâhnauchna sâshtina’ [‘The Twelve Main Scientific Questions of Religion and its Super Scientific Essence’], Godishnik na Sofijskiya Universitet. Bogoslovski Fakultet [Annual of Sofia University. Faculty of Theology], 13 (1936), 1–58 (p. 58).

Orthodoxy and Science in Bulgaria (Twentieth – Twenty First Century)

closeness and harmony that their common goal requires. We may take these words as expressing the most general opinion of Bulgarian Orthodox thinkers that the relationship between religion and science is one of mutual harmony, of perichoresis and of coexistence between two areas of human interest. In his introductory university lecture read in 1923, Evtimiy purposed to clarify that the widespread understanding among the Bulgarian intelligentsia at that time regarding the relation between religion and science was fatal to progress. The Bulgarian theologian undertook to explain the epistemological causes of this attitude and invited his audience to clarify for themselves the different meanings of the word faith – faith in reason, religious faith, intuition as faith, and so on. His idea was that faith lies at the foundation of reason itself and that reason is possible because of faith. The understanding that rational knowledge is penetrated by faith is a precondition to understanding the link between religion and science. In the same vein were the views expressed by the theologian Gancho Pashev. He saw that science and the scientific outlook were important factors for exerting an impact on the people and the intelligentsia. In view of this, he proposed that the dissemination of Orthodox views be pursued on the basis of science. He emphasized with even greater clarity the close proximity between these two cultural spheres. Far from being mutually exclusive, scientific erudition and the religious attitude are both part of the intellectual baggage of the complex and penetrating human nature. Pashev quoted the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900), who believed that asserting the past existence of the plesiosaurus does not at all contradict true religious piety.15 The claims of natural science are neither refuted nor proven by religion, since the levels of science and religion are quite different and independent of each other.16 Religion is supra-scientific insofar as no science is able to give us information about the transcendent. But, if one can experience along mystical channels the presence, the value and the supra-empirical character of the religious objects situated beyond this world, then one can systematize, clarify, support, and complement these experiences with the help of the methods and achievements of science in the realm of the this-worldly.17 The deeply ingrained conviction in the minds of people that natural science conflicts with religion must be uprooted. The causes of this situation are due to the negative popular attitudes towards Christianity in general and to the fact that ‘the representatives of religion today are not up to the mark’. Comparing the scientific and religious experiences of famous religious and secular thinkers of the past, the

15 See Gancho Pashev, ‘Neobhodimost ot nauchna obrabotka na pravoslavno-hristiyanskoto uchenie za nravstvenostta’ [‘The Need for a Scientific Treatment of the Orthodox Ethical Teaching’], Godishnik na Sofijskiya Universitet. Bogoslovski Fakultet [Annual of Sofia University. Faculty of Theology], 3 (1926), 1–72 (p. 64). 16 See Archimandrite Evtimiy, ‘Dvanadesette glavni nauchni vaprosi za religiata i neinata svrâhnauchna sâshtina’, p. 5. 17 Archimandrite Evtimiy, ‘Elementi na viara v osnovite na nasheto poznanie’ [‘Elements of Faith in the Grounds of our Knowledge’], Godishnik na Sofijskiya universitet. Bogoslovski Fakultet [Annual of Sofia University. Faculty of Theology], 1 (1924), 1–25 (pp. 7–8).

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theologian Ivan Panchovski firmly asserted that in scientific experience and in religious experience we observe two equally true keys that reveal to us the secrets of the whole reality, placing us in communion with it.18 Along these two independent paths, we reach the entire spectrum of reality. Natural science and religion are seen as being in mutual opposition by people who are not knowledgeable of at least one of the two and maybe of both. Science and religion are two fields that are connected in the depths of human nature, and exist divided only for the one-sidedly developed human mind – such was the conviction of Metropolitan Bishop Stefan of Sofia, author of a work especially devoted to the topic.19 They constitute two mutually autonomous areas, whereas the goal of Bulgarian Orthodox thinkers in the interwar period was to testify to the possibility of their mutual harmonization. Thus, Bulgarian theologians asserted that the fundamental discoveries in physics offered the possibility of bringing about a new correlation between religion and science. For instance, in his article ‘Religion and Science’, the theologian Dimitâr Dyulgerov expressed the conviction that the support coming from physics and astronomy consisted in proving that science and religion not only do not contradict each other, but also that they are mutually complementary. They are like two sisters – science provides people with chances and means, while religion builds humans spiritually.20 To conclude: Bulgarian Orthodox theologians and clerics were consistent in their assertion of the necessity to establish mutual harmony between religion and science. The relation between the two fields was described […] e kato otnoshenie na dve protivorechashti edna na druga oblasti (kakto gi predstaviashe Hekel), ne i kato dve razdeleni edna ot druga s neprohodima propast oblasti na poznavaemoto, a kato otnoshenie na dve srodni, no po metodi korenno razlichni oblasti, ot koito ednata pochva tam, kâdeto drugata se e zamislila vârhu korenite na naj-osnovopolozhnite si istini. Tezi osnovopolozhni istini ne v po-malka stepen prinadlezhat i kâm religiata.21 ([…] not as a relation between two mutually contradictory regions (as Haeckel presented them), nor as two areas of the knowable that are mutually separated by an unbridgeable gulf, but as a relation between two kindred, yet – with regard to their methods – radically different domains, of which one begins where the other reflects upon the roots of the most foundational truths. These foundational truths belong to religion, as well.)

18 Ivan Panchovski, Estestvena nauka i religia [Natural Science and Religion] (Sofia: Hudozhnik, 1941), p. 42. 19 See Stefan Sofiyski, Religia i nauka [Religion and Science] (Sofia: T. T. Dragiev, 1934), p. 5. 20 See Dimitâr Diulgerov, Nauka i religia [Science and Religion] (Sofia: The Holy Synod, 1946), p. 12. 21 Archimandrite Evtimiy, ‘Sâs skeptika mladezh pri Hekel’ [‘In the Company of Haeckel with the Young Sceptic’], Godishnik na Sofijskiya Universitet. Bogoslovski Fakultet [Annual of Sofia University. Faculty of Theology], 7 (1930), 178–218 (p. 135).

Orthodoxy and Science in Bulgaria (Twentieth – Twenty First Century)

The Bible and Natural Science Ivan Markovski had a special interest in this problem field and the basic principles of his convictions, which parried the easy refutations, were the following: First, the biblical narrative cannot pretend to have a scientific status; in fact, it cannot replace scientific narrative. The biblical account of the creation is a colossal construction of a poetic and artistic sort, created over a long period of time. Markovski was inclined to an allegorical-symbolical interpretation of the biblical text (an approach that was not at all original, having been especially popular already in the nineteenth century). If not taken literally, it could be brought in harmony with the findings of modern natural science. In his view, the contradictions with science were due to misunderstandings and an incorrect interpretation of the biblical text.22 These ideas regarding the non-contradiction between the exact sciences and the Old Testament cosmology were shared by Boris Marinov, who reminded the reader that the Bible is not only the word of God, but also a human creation, a fact that explains its numerous inaccuracies and errors.23 More importantly, the narrative on creation serves a moral-religious purpose; it does not compete with the scientific interpretation of the world, and its study has a different aim from that of science. As a result, the Bible should not be regarded as a compendium of the whole of knowledge and is not authoritative on all questions; otherwise, this would be pernicious not only for science, but equally for religion: ‘We must always and firmly remember that the Bible is not a textbook in astronomy, geology, paleontology, biology, physics, chemistry, etc.’24 Various misunderstandings may arise between scientists and theologians because they forget the fact that they are viewing things from differing sides; after all, different research perspectives yield different results. Equally unacceptable is the scientist’s intransigence towards the biblical text viewed as a naïve narrative about the world. The same holds true for the fanatical, impure and partial religious faith that blindly rejects scientific approaches alternative to it. In many cases, this attitude indicates that the theologoumena (private, non-normative theological views) dominate over the official and canonical standpoints. In the works of Bulgarian Orthodox thinkers of the period in question, we cannot find specific statements pertaining to the fields of physics, biology or other sciences. Evidently, it was much more important for them to make people understand that science and religion are two areas of spiritual life that do not exclude each other and whose coexistence is fruitful for society as a whole. In an article published as a special supplement to the journal Duhovna kultura (Spiritual Culture), Athanas Iliev

22 Ivan Markovski, Proizhod i ustrojstvo na sveta spored Bibliata i naukata [The Origin and Structure of the World According to the Bible and Science] (Sofia: Otec Paisij, 1933), p. 21. 23 Boris Marinov, Proizhod na sveta i istoria na zemjata spored naukata i Bibliata [The Origin of the World and the History of the Earth According to Science and the Bible] (Sofia: S. M. Stajkov, 1941), p. 22. 24 Boris Marinov, ‘Iz metodologiyata na hristiyanskata apologetika vâv vrazka s temata Biblia i nauka’ [‘Science and Scripture: Christian Apologetic Methods’], Godishnik na Sofijskiya Universitet. Bogoslovski Fakultet [Annual of Sofia University. Faculty of Theology], 23 (1946), 1–32 (p. 9).

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summed up the dominant attitudes among religious thinkers: Religion is capable of giving impetus to the intellectual development of humanity in kato razdvizhva skritite sili na dushata i razkriva pred duhovniya pogled na choveka novi cennosti, ot koito se razhda novo otnoshenie kâm sveta, a zaedno s tova i nova nasoka na intelektualniya razmisâl. Pri tova tia pripomnia na ucheniya, che postignatoto nauchno poznanie ne izcherpva vsichki tajni na vselenata, che pâtiat na poznanieto e bezkraen. Taka tia smiriava gordostta na ucheniya, namaliava samodovolstvoto mu i zapalva v dushata mu ogânia na vechnoto târsene.25 (setting in motion the hidden powers of the soul and revealing to the spiritual eye of man new values, from which a new attitude to the world is born, and together with this, a new direction of intellectual reflection. Moreover, it reminds the scientist that the achieved scientific knowledge does not exhaust all the secrets of the universe and that the road to knowledge is endless. Thus, it humbles the pride of the scientist, reduces his complacency, and kindles in his soul the flame of eternal search.)

The Age of Atheism After World War II, in a completely different socio-political context under a MarxistLeninist understanding of religion as a form of social consciousness that was predicted to wither away soon, the topic of the relationship between religion/Orthodoxy and science was formulated in a completely different way by the new generation of Bulgarian philosophers. To begin with, various collective interdisciplinary studies were made, attempting to prove that the religiosity of Bulgarians under conditions of transition to socialism had drastically declined and was practically no longer part of the people’s worldview. The first large-scale social survey on religiosity in Bulgaria was conducted in 1962 under the patronage of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and aimed to proclaim the tendency towards the soon-to-come full overcoming of religion. Second, these researchers set themselves the aim of proving – likewise on the basis of national psychological studies – that Bulgarians were basically anti-religious.26 The Bulgarian Communist state assigned to science the role of an immediate productive force and of a spiritually transformative factor. Considerable budget funds were allocated for the development of science, and implementing a scientific worldview was made a priority task, accompanied by attempts at spreading atheism on a mass scale among the population. In the perspective of the mutual relations between religion and science, the socialist period was characteristically scientist, anti-religious, and under the predominance of scientific atheism. Science was viewed as

25 Athanas Iliev, ‘Religia i nauka’[‘Religion and Science’], Duhovna kultura, 63 (1935), 210–15 (p. 215). 26 See Nikolai Mizov, Antireligioznite vâzgledi i tradicii na bulgarskiya narod [The Anti-religious Views and Traditions of the Bulgarian People] (Sofia: Profizdat, 1960); Todor Stoichev, Ateistichni tradicii na bulgarskiya narod [The Atheistic Traditions of the Bulgarian People] (Sofia: Partizdat, 1973); Vasil Subashki, Bezbozhieto na bulgarina [The Godlessness of the Bulgarian] (Sofia: Partizdat, 1985).

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the most important alternative to religion, and the Church was assessed as performing a reactionary role in society. The teaching of religion in schools was discontinued, religion being considered completely incompatible with science, as proclaimed in the first state documents on education in 1945–46.27 In view of the exceptional importance that the Marxist-Leninist ideology in Bulgaria attached to science (in alignment with Soviet practice), the label unscientific attached to religion was enough to utterly demolish it. A dialogue between religion and science became impossible and even unthinkable. The Bulgarian philosophers of the time drew from Lenin’s ideology their arguments against the theological attitude to science. A typical example of this was the article ‘The Anti-scientific Nature of the Religious Worldview’ (1958) by Nikolay Mizov, a well-known theorist of scientific atheism. Mizov opposed the concern expressed in theological circles that the scientific-technological growth was uncontrollable and might lead to dehumanization. These attitudes were described by Mizov as miserable and reactionary preaching that called for the destruction of science and technology in order for religion to triumph.28 The conclusion was that religion, as an enemy of science, stands in the way of social progress. In the article ‘Nauka i religia’ (‘Science and Religion’),29 published in 1963 by Petar Tsvetkov in the strongly ideological journal Philosophical Thought, the author set the task of unmasking the theological tactics of reconciling religion and science as a veiled form of attack against science. The author’s view was that religion is a parasite on science and presents a false interpretation of scientific achievements. The theories of relativity and that of the expanding universe were assessed as improper arguments for proving the compatibility between science and religion. In addition, the philosopher Krâstyo Krâstev, in one of his studies on religion, touched upon the way in which Orthodox thinkers in Bulgaria viewed the relation between science and religion, and was critical of the theological thesis that there was no contradiction between the two spheres.30 In the mid-1970s, the Institute of Philosophy at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences published a ‘theoretical-historical explanation’ of Orthodoxy in Bulgaria. In this collection of articles, the question was raised as to the contradiction observed in the religious consciousness of Orthodox believers in Bulgaria, whose views were judged contrary to science. The work rejected the idea that science and religion were drawing closer to each other, a tendency claimed to exist by theologians and viewed by them as a socialization of Orthodoxy or a Christianization of science. The authors of the

27 See Stephan Chureshki, Pravoslavieto i komunizmât v Bulgaria 1944–1960 [The Orthodox Church and the Communist Era in Bulgaria 1944–1960] (Sofia: Prosveta, 2004), p. 118. 28 See Nikolai Mizov, ‘Antinauchnata sâshtnost na religiozniya mirogled’ [‘The Anti-scientific Essence of the Religious Worldview’], Filosofska misâl [Philosophical Thought], 4 (1958), 61–79 (р. 73). 29 See Petâr Cvetkov, ‘Nauka i religia’ [‘Science and Religion’], Filosofska misâl [Philosophical Thought], 3 (1963), 119–35. 30 See Krâstyo Krâstev, Religia, mirogled, cennosti [Religion, Worldview, Values] (Sofia: Partizdat, 1978), p. 14.

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collection expressed hope that the triumph of socialist ideology would definitively dislodge religious ideas. The attempts of Orthodox theology in Bulgaria to achieve a ‘union’ with science were viewed as an adaptive tendency and part of the modernization policy of Orthodoxy. One of the authors, Petâr Tsvetkov, pointed out that this tendency to renew Orthodox theology was not original, but was nevertheless indicative. It did not openly oppose science and was willing in fact to recognize it, but only in substituting the materialist foundation of science.31 Here I must point out that the author had some justification to criticize the ‘adjustment’ of biblical tenets to natural science, undertaken by theologians at that time, probably as a way to deal with scientism. It should be noted that during the period 1951–1991 the Faculty of Theology was taken out of Sofia University and transformed into the Theological Academy. As for studies on the relation of Orthodoxy to science, in view of the predominant scientism of the era, they were few and very cautious. In that period, philosophy, theology and science in Bulgaria developed as disciplines that were total strangers to one another. The connection between them, after a long interruption, was restored only at the beginning of the 1990s.

After the 1990s This is the third stage in the history of the relations between Orthodoxy and science in Bulgaria reflected by the emerging Orthodox elite (which does not only include theologians and clergymen) and by philosophers and scientists. In the first years of this period, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church had to deal with many challenges, including political ones, so it was only in the early twenty-first century that it devoted special attention to its relation to science. The period since the 1990s has often been viewed by social analysts as one involving a cultural restoration of the interwar period. The age of atheism (and of the exclusive authority of science) has been surmounted. Postmodernity, however, has led to religious emancipation and religious liberalism, which is yet another challenge to Orthodox Christianity. On the other hand, the character of science has changed significantly: Post-non-classical science, as modern science is often called, presents a different kind of provocation to the supporters of religion. Philosophers are especially active in the debate on science and religion, some of them assuming a very different standpoint. Ivan Slanikov is a philosopher who deals specially with the interconnection between religion, science and philosophy in the new context of Bulgaria’s integration into Europe. In his view, the differences between the three fields (in terms of subject matter and mode of knowledge) do not prevent them from interacting and mutually enriching one another. Slanikov, an expert in

31 See Petâr Cvetkov, ‘Modernizatziyata na pravoslavieto v Bulgaria’ [‘The Modernization of Orthodoxy in Bulgaria’], in Pravoslavieto v Bulgaria [Orthodoxy in Bulgaria] (Sofia: Academic Publishing House, 1974), pp. 257–74 (p. 270).

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religious studies, definitely believes that the three can cooperate fruitfully and achieve an adequate spiritual synthesis only if each of them interacts in strict accordance with its specific nature and place in the hierarchy of spiritual values. Slanikov asserts that religion certainly holds a central place in this hierarchy.32 The first years of the twenty-first century marked the formation of an Orthodox intelligentsia in Bulgaria and were characterized by the creation of Internet sites (large Orthodox portals), in which religious people, including theologians, philosophers and scientists, could express themselves. An interesting feature of these internet discussions is that they are always pursued jointly by people from various academic groups. Clarifying the harmfulness of the opposition (and outright hostility) between Orthodoxy and science in the contemporary context is the main purpose of Bulgarian theologians dealing with the relations between these two domains. In one of the most recent works on this problem, the author’s discussion is based on a depiction of the conflict between the Holy Writ and the scientific-technological progress: Za sâvremennija chovek, izkushen ot postizheniyata na tehnologiyata, opleten ot mrezhata na informacionnijya potok, Sveshtenoto Pisanie ne e taka lesno razbiraemo. Atakuvano ot kvazinauchni pozicii, ot poluistini i drugi religiozni viarvaniya, opredeleno se iziskvat usiliya to da bade razbrano i usvoeno […] Edno ot najvazhnite neshta, koito triabva da se imat predvid, e, che v Sveshtenoto Pisanie se sâdârzha Otkrovenieto, zapisano na choveshki ezici, spored choveshkoto znanie na avtora, negovata obrazovanost, choveshki kachestva. To e pisano za choveka, kojto zhivee na Zemiata. V tozi smisâl to e geocentrichno i sâotvetno antropocentrichno […] V Bibliata ne se otdelia vnimanie na kosmologiya, na geografiya, na biologiya i pr.33 (For the modern man, who is enthusiastic about the achievements of technology and entangled in the net of the information stream, the Holy Writ is not so easy to understand. As it is attacked from quasi-scientific standpoints, by half-truths and other religious beliefs, efforts are definitely needed to understand and assimilate it […] One of the most important things to consider is that the Holy Writ contains the Revelation written in human languages and in accordance with the human knowledge of the author, his education, and his human qualities. It is written by someone who lived on Earth. In this sense, it is geocentric and respectively anthropocentric […] The Bible does not devote attention to cosmology, geography, biology, etc.) In November 2005 and April 2006, two symposiums were held in Bulgaria on the topic of science and religion. The meetings were inspired by a scientist, the physicist Athanas Strigachev, who works in the field of philosophy of physics. His discussion 32 See Ivan Slanikov, ‘Sintezât religia – nauka – filosofia v duha na Evropa’ [‘The Synthesis Religion – Science – Philosophy in the Spirit of Europe’], in Religiozni i geostrategicheski paradigmi i bâdeshteto na Evropejskiya sâyuz [Religious and Geostrategic Paradigms and the Future of the European Union], ed. by Stephan Penov (Sofia: Ivan Rilski, 2009), pp. 108–29 (p. 120). 33 Dimitâr Popmarinov, Mezhdu viarata i razuma [Between Faith and Reason] (Sofia: Pokrov Bogorodichen, 2016), pp. 85–86.

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on the compatibility between science and religion is one of the first in the new period of Bulgarian history. In brief, he thinks that religious and scientific knowledge not only have no common platform, but are mutually contrary in principle and therefore incompatible. This is why the attempts to ground religion through science or, in reverse, to argue in support of science by referring to God, are unsuccessful. Physics would be in a sorry plight, he argues, if it was in need of God to create laws for it, but even more wretched would be a religious faith that had to justify itself by physical laws.34 His general suggestion is that science and religion are two great areas of knowledge that should be recognized as mutually complementary. Another joint event was the 2011 conference ‘Humanism, Science, Religion: For the Benefit of Society’, organized by the National Council of Religious Communities in Bulgaria with the support of the Directorate of Religious Confessions at the Council of Ministers. The participants in the conference were academic theologians and philosophers from Bulgaria and representatives of other Christian confessions. Various topics in the field of bioethics found a place in the discussions.35 Further, two recent books should be mentioned, which also shed light on the understanding of the connection between religion and science in Bulgaria. In his book Christianity, Atheism, Postmodern Philosophy, Ivan Spirov discusses the incommensurability and mutual irreducibility of the natural sciences and theology. In view of this essential difference between the two areas, the naive creationism of certain Protestant circles in the West (especially in the US), which interpret the first chapters of the Book of Genesis literally, is judged by the author to be an irrational intervention in the sphere of natural science.36 The numerous texts (mostly by Protestant thinkers) attempting to achieve a ‘correspondence’ between science and religion fall into the trap of scientism. For Spirov, God is not a scientific hypothesis, and any empirical state of things is irrelevant with respect to the question of God’s existence. Here the author of the book stands in opposition to celebrities like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking. Another monograph, that by Valentin Velchev titled Faith and Science,37 is especially devoted to questions of compatibility between science and religion. The book is very informative, drawing upon a wide set of views, both of scientists and religious thinkers, in support of the belief that science and faith are reconcilable. It

34 See Athanas Strigachev, ‘Sâvmestimi li sa nauka i religia?’ [‘Are Science and Religion Compatible?’], in Dokladi ot simpoziumite ‘Nauka i religia’ [Proceedings of the Symposia ‘Science and Religion’] (Sofia: TEMTO, 2006), pp. 28–35 (p. 33). 35 See Stephan Penov (ed.) Humanisâm, nauka, religia: duhovnite cennosti v polza na obshtestvoto [Humanism, Science, Religion: For the Wellbeing of Society] (Sofia: Academic Publishing, 2014). 36 See Ivan Spirov, Hristiyanstvo, ateizâm, postmodernost [Christianity, Atheism, Post-modernity] (Sofia: Avangard Prima, 2015), p. 39. Although the ramifications of the intelligent design theory directly concern the relations between religion and science, at present it is mostly philosophers and representatives of specific sciences – rather than theologians – who discuss this topic in Bulgaria. My impression is that the Orthodox viewpoint characterizes this theory, taught in the USA as an alternative to Darwinism, as pseudo-scientific. What is rejected is not evolutionism as a principle, but precisely the theory about an intelligent design. However, due to the scarcity of expressed viewpoints, my conclusion is risky. 37 See Valentin Velchev, Viara i nauka [Faith and Science] (Sofia: Pokrov Bogorodichen, 2010).

Orthodoxy and Science in Bulgaria (Twentieth – Twenty First Century)

becomes then obvious that the views on science and religion have not significantly changed since the interwar period. New questions, however, arise, whose solution requires not only the sufficient familiarity with the Orthodox Christian tradition, but also a considerable amount of specialized scientific knowledge.38 Against this backdrop, it is important to highlight a recent study by the physicist Stoyan Tanev, defended as a doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of Theology of Sofia University titled Theology of the Divine Energies in Twentieth-Century Orthodox Thought (2012). It attempts to outline a specifically Orthodox approach to the dialogue between science and Christianity. Considering that the doctrine of divine energies is central to Orthodoxy, this study compares the meaning of the concept of energy in physics and in Orthodox theology, in the hope that these two areas of knowledge may mutually enrich each other. As a reviewer noted, ‘[t]he originality of his approach can be seen in his choice of the particular context: the history and major issues associated with two debates: that between Barlaam and Palamas and that between Bohr and Einstein’.39 The dissertation has been published40 and highly commended: Tanev, sam profesionalen fizik, provezhda usporeden analiz na poniatieto za energiya vâv fizikata, po-tochno kvantovata fizika, i pravoslavieto, otstoiavajki metoda na analogichniya izomorfizam. Taka toj pravi prakticheska stâpka napred v edna avangardna sfera, koiato bi sledvalo da se tâlkuva kato naj-moshtnoto nastâplenie v sâvremennata nauka ot strana na metodi i pozicii, razrabotvani v konteksta na vizantijskata filosofia i pravoslavnoto bogoslovie.41 (Tanev, a professional physicist, has conducted a parallel analysis of the concept of energy in physics, specifically in quantum physics, and in Orthodoxy, upholding the method of analogical isomorphism. Thus, he has taken a practical step forward in 38 Attitudes towards bioethics, a comparatively new field of applied ethics (arising in the 1970s), have been expressed – sporadically on various occasions – by Bulgarian theologians and clergymen, as well as by Orthodox intellectuals. Even if a Panorthodox position on bioethics needs to be formulated, many authors refer to the ‘Social Concept’ issued by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. See, for instance, Kostadin Nushev, ‘Pravoslavnata Cârkva i otnoshenieto mezhdu religia i nauka v nachaloto na XXI vek’ [‘The Orthodox Church and the Relationship Between Religion and Science at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century’], in Religia, cennosti, orthodoksalnost. Religiata i naukata v XXI vek [Religion, Values, Orthodoxy: Religion and Science in the Twenty-first Century], ed. by Stephan Penov (Sofia: Propeler, 2014), pp. 287–304. 39 Georgi Kapriev, ‘The Axiomatic Foundations and Reception of Byzantine Philosophy’, in Orthodox Theology & the Sciences: Glorifying God in His Marvelous Works, ed. by Protopresbyter George D. Dragas, Pavel Pavlov and Stoyan Tanev (Sofia: Sofia University Press ‘St Kliment Ohridski’; Columbia, Missouri: Newrome Press LLC, 2016), pp. 203–11 (p. 207). 40 See Stoyan Tanev, Ti, koito si navsjakâde i vsichko izpâlvash: sâshtnost i energia v pravoslavnoto bogoslovie i vâv fizikata [Thou, Who arе Everywhere and Fillest all Things: Essence and Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics] (Sofia: Sofia University Press ‘St Kliment Ohridski’, 2013). English Edition: Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics: From Controversy to Encounter (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017). 41 Georgi Kapriev, ‘Sâvremennoto pravoslavno bogoslovie, visshite mu niva’ [‘The Contemporary Orthodox Theology, its High Levels’], 2014, available at [accessed January 2018].

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a vanguard sphere that should be seen as the most powerful advance in modern science made by methods and stances elaborated in the context of Byzantine philosophy and Orthodox theology.) And of course, in discussing the connections between Orthodoxy and science, it is impossible not to point out the most important event with Bulgarian participation – the international conference ‘Orthodox Theology and the Sciences’, conducted in 2011.42 Representatives of more than ten countries took part in this event, held as part of a broader international project. Among the numerous Bulgarian participants were philosophers, theologians and scientists, such as Svetoslav Ribolov, Georgi Kapriev, Marian Stoyadinov, Todor Velchev, Pavel Pavlov, Stefan Stefanov, Tinko Evtimov, and the above mentioned Stoyan Tanev. This was the most outstanding display of the expertise of Bulgarian scholars in the broader debate on the relations between Orthodoxy and science. What is encouraging here is the growing interest shown in the topic by Bulgarian scholars, some of whom are of international renown. In expectation of further expert studies on the connection between Orthodoxy and science, it is pertinent to conclude with the words of the Bulgarian physicist Plamen Fiziev: Science is great. It is the biggest challenge for all human beings who work in it. Science gives us knowledge, wisdom, a lot of new ideas, exciting discoveries, new dreams and new possibilities, Science is not able to tell us, however, what is good and what is evil, or how to solve moral or ethical issues, or simply how to find meaning as human beings. There is no contradiction or conflict between Science and Faith. They have independent and different designations, purposes, goals, methods, and approaches. All the same, a healthy and meaningful dialogue between Science and Faith can help human beings in appreciating their unique place in the Universe.43

42 See Protopresbyter George D. Dragas, Pavel Pavlov and Stoyan Tanev (eds), Orthodox Theology & the Sciences: Glorifying God in His Marvelous Works (Sofia: Sofia University Press ‘St Kliment Ohridski’; Columbia, Missouri: Newrome Press LLC, 2016). 43 Plamen Fiziev, ‘The Big Opening Questions in Physics’, in Orthodox Theology & the Sciences. Glorifying God in His Marvelous Works, ed. by Protopresbyter George D. Dragas, Pavel Pavlov and Stoyan Tanev (Sofia: Sofia University Press ‘St Kliment Ohridski’; Columbia, Missouri: Newrome Press LLC, 2016), pp. 330–47 (pp. 346–47).

Doru Costache

A Theology of the World Dumitru Stăniloae, the Traditional Worldview, and Contemporary Cosmology

Introduction The greatest Romanian Orthodox theologian ever, Father Dumitru Stăniloae (d. 1993) was a traditional thinker guided by patristic wisdom, whose theological enterprise, ecclesially minded, was ultimately motivated by the pursuit of holiness. Scholars have emphasized his holistic cast of mind and nuanced approach to all things, together with his contributions to a variety of fields.1 Given the complexity of his thinking, it is difficult to shelve his innumerable works according to current disciplinary taxonomies.2 In the footsteps of the Church Fathers whom he so loved,



1 Maciej Bielawski, The Philokalical Vision of the World in the Theology of Dumitru Stăniloae (Bygdoszcz: Homini, 1997); Olivier Clément, ‘Allocution à la remise du diplôme de Docteur honoris causa au P. Dumitru Staniloae à l’Institut de Théologie orthodoxe Saint-Serge, le 29 mai 1981’, La Pensée Orthodoxe, vol. iii (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1983), pp. 117–26; Marc-Antoine Costa de Beauregard, Dumitru Staniloae: Ose comprendre que je t’aime. Témoins spirituels d’aujourd’hui (Paris: Cerf, 1983); Andrew Louth, ‘The Orthodox Dogmatic Theology of Dumitru Stăniloae’, Modern Theology, 13/2 (1997), 253–67; Danut Manastireanu, A Perichoretic Model of the Church: The Trinitarian Ecclesiology of Dumitru Staniloae (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012); Charles Miller, The Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Stăniloae (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000); Dumitru Popescu, ‘Dumitru Stăniloae: Omul, opera și impactul ei contemporan’ [‘Dumitru Stăniloae: The Man, His Work, and Its Contemporary Impact’], Caietele Universității ‘Sextil Pușcariu’ Brașov, 2/2 (2002), 16–25; Ștefan L. Toma, ‘Father Dumitru Stăniloae (1903–1993) and his Contribution to Theology: Recognitions and Commentaries’, Review of Ecumenical Studies, 6/1 (2014), pp. 8–27; Ștefan Lucian Toma, π. Δημήτριος Στανιλοάε: Ο πατερικός Θεολόγος της Οικουμένης [Father Dumitru Stăniloae: The Patristic Theologian of the Oecumene] (Collecta Academica, 14) (Thessaloniki: Ostracon Publishing, 2014). 2 For an exhaustive list of Stăniloae’s published output before 1993, see Gheorghe Anghelescu and Ioan I. Ică Jr, ‘Părintele Prof. Acad. Dumitru Stăniloae: Bibliografie sistematică’ [‘Father Prof. Acad. Dumitru Stăniloae: A Systematic Bibliography’], in Persoană şi comuniune: Prinos de cinsitire Părintelui Profesor Academician Dumitru Stăniloae la împlinirea vârstei de 90 de ani [Person and Communion: Essays in Honour of Father Prof. Acad. Dumitru Stăniloae on Reaching 90 Years of Age], ed. by Ioan I. Ică, Jr (Sibiu: Editura Arhiepiscopiei Ortodoxe a Sibiului, 1993), pp. 15–66. See also the list under Doru Costache  St Cyril’s Coptic Orthodox Theological College • Sydney College of Divinity, Sydney, Australia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 205–222. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116867

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apart from his earliest publications he had never written systematic theology purely and simply – or history, or biblical theology, or spirituality, or liturgical theology for that matter, though he contributed to all these areas and more. In what follows we shall discover several proofs of his encompassing vision. In addressing matters of science and theology, of interest here, he followed the same interdisciplinary and multilayered approach, consistent with his overall complex outlook. Notwithstanding his traditional cast of mind, he was a man of his time, who paid attention, like other Neopatristic theologians with whom he held much in common, particularly Vladimir Lossky (d. 1958), Paul Evdokimov (d. 1970), Panayiotis Nellas (d. 1986), John Meyendorff (d. 1992), Olivier Clément (d. 2009), and Christos Yannaras (b. 1935), to trends in society and culture.3 Given the scope of this volume, namely, the Orthodox engagement of contemporary science from various cultural traditions and perspectives, below I refer to his approach to scientific knowledge. This thread is fairly well represented in his imposing corpus of writings. His interest in bridging the worlds of science and theology did not escape careful observers,4 but, to date, no extensive analysis of this aspect of his creativity has become available. Stăniloae, however, openly stated his appreciation for the potential of contemporary science to facilitate a deepened human awareness of the world and an enriched experience of it – or towards erecting what he called ‘a theology of the world’.5 The fact of the matter is that his writings abundantly display direct and indirect references to chemistry, relativity, quantum physics, complexity, the expansion of the universe, evolutionary biology, and the anthropic cosmological principle.6 By means of the available scientific information he translated into contemporary idiom elements pertaining to the traditional patristic discourse about the world, life, and humankind.



3



4



5



6

‘Stăniloae, Dumitru’, which contains many of his posthumously republished works together with various studies on his contributions, in Mircea Păcurariu, Dicționarul teologilor români [Dictionary of Romanian Theologians] (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică, 2002), pp. 456–60. See Metropolitan Daniel Ciobotea, ‘O dogmatică pentru omul de azi’ [‘Dogmatics for the Modern Man’], in Dumitru Stăniloae sau Paradoxul Teologiei [Dumitru Staniloae or The Paradox of Theology], ed. by Theodor Baconsky and Bogdan Tătaru-Cazaban (Bucharest: Anastasia, 2003), pp. 87–107. Clément, ‘Allocution’, p. 123; Louth, ‘The Orthodox Dogmatic Theology’, p. 262; Miller, The Gift of the World, pp. 61–62, 67; Popescu, ‘Dumitru Stăniloae’, p. 21; Toma, ‘Father Dumitru Stăniloae’, pp. 15, 16, 26; Toma, π. Δημήτριος Στανιλοάε, pp. 22, 35, 36, 64, 86, 89. Dumitru Stăniloae, Theology and the Church, trans. by Robert Barringer (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), pp. 216, 224–26. His position was reiterated by Christos Yannaras, Elements of Faith: An Introduction to Orthodox Theology, trans. by Keith Schram (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), p. 38. Alongside the scientific references discussed below, see, for example, Dumitru Stăniloae, Sfânta Treime sau La început a fost iubirea [The Holy Trinity or In the Beginning was Love] (Bucharest: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 1993), pp. 58–59. For a broader overview, see Doru Costache, ‘At the Crossroads of Contemporary Cosmology and the Patristic Worldview: Movement, Rationality and Purpose in Father Dumitru Stăniloae’, Studii Teologice (3rd series), 9/2 (2013), 141–63, and the Romanian, shortened, version of the same, ‘Raționalitate și Mișcare la Părintele Dumitru Stăniloae’ [‘Rationality and Movement in Father Dumitru Stăniloae’], Tabor, 7/11 (2013), 59–69.

A THEO LO GY O F THE WORLD: DUMI TRU STĂNI LOAE

Nevertheless, like his confrères in the Neopatristic movement, Stăniloae never indulged in doing science. Nor did he quote scientific works. A particularity of his way of handling scientific information, with which I cannot deal at length here, is that he preferred to make use of it unobtrusively, referring to it as a contextual given and readily including it into his otherwise traditional discourse. The result was not a syncretism. Theology and science are harmoniously integrated in his thinking, but there is no trace of confusion between them in his works. This achievement discloses something fundamental about his method. More specifically, he seems to have worked with a distinction between the theological core of the ecclesial message, anchored in patristic wisdom, and the channels by which this message was to be disseminated to contemporary audiences, represented by the scientific data. In so doing, he consistently applied, particularly in matters of the Christian representation of reality, criteria already sketched by Lossky for related matters and which Nellas successfully implemented in anthropology.7 Of course, this method entailed, from beginning to end, an assessment of new data within the framework of Stăniloae’s theological thinking. In short, by referring to the contemporary sciences both consistently and inconspicuously, he illustrated a way in which the Orthodox should appropriate scientific knowledge, discerningly, for the sake of the Church’s mission today. Appropriation entailed the assessment and interpretation of the relevant data from a theological vantage point. It likewise demanded a reappraisal of the ways in which the theological message was supposed to be communicated to contemporary audiences. This methodology would deserve an analysis of its own. In what follows I am interested however only in discussing the outcomes of these presuppositions with reference to the Christian worldview, of immediate interest here. I consider Stăniloae’s approach to the cosmological topics of motion and change, the rationality of the universe, and the anthropic principle, which resonated with his appreciation for the early Christian worldview sketched by patristic theologians such as Saint Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and Saint Maximus. His interest in such topics originated, according to Clément, in his notion of le sens cosmique du christianisme (‘the cosmic sense of Christianity’).8 I propose that in bridging the theological worldview and scientific cosmology, Stăniloae proved to be a genuine heir of patristic wisdom. His contributions in this area represent a perfect embodiment of the spirit of the Orthodox tradition in the parameters of contemporary culture – an achievement to be appreciated and emulated.



7 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), pp. 104–06; Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), pp. 41–42, 97–104. 8 Clément, ‘Allocution’, p. 118.

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The Movement of the Universe Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike understand the Orthodox representation of reality as primarily, if not entirely, conditioned by transcendent and eschatological considerations. This perception has to do with its customary interest in things above and beyond the current frame of reference, which it draws from its Byzantine roots. Also, because of the emphasis of the ascetic tradition on stillness and deification, the same Orthodox worldview is taken, again by Orthodox and others, as wholly interiorized and static. When they have to give account for these underpinnings, namely, regarding the transcendental, eschatological, and static figures, the supporters of such views point to Origen and Evagrius Ponticus who seem to have judged movement as evil.9 I am not interested in discussing what Origen and Evagrius actually meant when they condemned movement and praised stillness. Relevant is that, against this backdrop, an Orthodox representation of reality able to accommodate the contemporary notion of universal movement, as Meyendorff advocated,10 or to ‘Christify’ movement, as Nellas suggested,11 would be unthinkable in many quarters. Yet Stăniloae maintained just that possibility. In what follows, I consider aspects of his theology of the world, specifically, his musings on movement, bringing to the fore the skilful integration of patristic theology and contemporary science which his thinking illustrates. In the introductory study to his Romanian translation of Athanasius’s Against the Gentiles, Stăniloae observed that the Alexandrian saint (d. 373) proposed the dynamic vision of the cosmos that moved towards eschatological fullness.12 There, likewise, he suggested that the Athanasian thinking on movement and nature anticipated contemporary cosmology, which describes a universe fundamentally unstable, contingent, and in perpetual motion.13 Within the same context, furthermore, he pointed out that the Alexandrian’s intuitions and those of other Church Fathers



9 Recent scholars have offered useful overviews of such misrepresentations of the Orthodox worldview and its Byzantine roots. Archbishop Chrysostomos and Hieromonk Patapios, ‘Science and Knowledge in the Patristic and Monastic Traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church’, Transdisciplinarity in Science and Religion, 2 (2007), 183–94; Peter Harrison, ‘Science, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism’, Isis, 107/3 (2016), 587–91; Peter Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth: Genesis 1, Early Modern Science, and the Exploitation of Nature’, Journal of Religion, 79 (1999), 86–109; Alexei V. Nesteruk, ‘Eastern Orthodox Theological Commitment in the Modern ScienceReligion Debate’, Transdisciplinarity in Science and Religion, 4 (2008), 225–47; Efthymios Nicolaidis and others, ‘Science and Orthodox Christianity: An Overview’, Isis, 107/3 (2016), 542–66; Efthymios Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization, trans. by Susan Emanuel (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). 10 John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979), pp. 132–34. 11 Nellas, Deification in Christ, pp. 124–30. 12 Dumitru Stăniloae, ‘Introduction’ to Sfântul Atanasie cel Mare: Scrieri [St Athanasius the Great: Writings], first part, Părinţi şi Scriitori Bisericeşti Series [Church Fathers and Writers Series] (henceforth: PSB), vol. xv (Bucharest: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 1987), pp. 5–26, esp. p. 24. All translations from Romanian are mine. 13 Stăniloae, ‘Introduction’ (PSB XV), pp. 19–25.

A THEO LO GY O F THE WORLD: DUMI TRU STĂNI LOAE

deserved to be developed into a contemporary theology of movement – as a way to bridge the ecclesial worldview and scientific cosmology. In his words, Se impune ca o sarcină pentru gândirea de mâine dezvoltarea unei teologii a mișcării, ca o explicație teologică a ei, după ce științele naturii au pus în evidență importanța universală a mișcării și a energiilor care o susțin în legile descoperite de ea în toată realitatea creată.14 (Subsequent to the highlighting, by the natural sciences, of the universal importance of movement and the energies that sustain it within the laws which they have discovered throughout the created reality, a task for the thinkers of tomorrow is to develop a theology of movement, its theological appraisal.) The report in this passage, together with its context, runs entirely opposite to the perception that the Orthodox worldview is inescapably static, wholly focused on things transcendent and eschatological. The passage, furthermore, alludes to the author’s conviction that contemporary science could have a positive impact upon the understanding of patristic thinking: the current dynamic paradigm elicits a new appreciation for the pioneering work of certain Church Fathers on the theology of movement. In addition, since what he discussed within this context were the Athanasian musings on nature and movement, the traditional Orthodox worldview cannot be reduced to the picture of a petrified world and an interest in things above and beyond the here and now. As we have seen in the above excerpt, Stăniloae expressed in unequivocal terms his appreciation for the scientific research of his time, particularly the discovery that the universe experiences a continuous movement, evolution, and development. Here and elsewhere, we shall soon see, there is no sign that he had any qualms with the evolutionary paradigm of the universe’s expansion and the motion of all things. Instead, taking it as a given, he alerted the next generation of theologians that in order to find a common ground with contemporary science they must develop an appropriate interface for the dialogue, namely, a theology of movement. That said, although he identified relevant foundations for such a theology within the Athanasian work he considered, as well as in the thought of Maximus, to whom he referred just before the quoted passage, in the remaining part of the study he did not elaborate on this topic further. He addressed the matter in various other places, however, depicting the cosmos, life, and humankind as moving and changing through the ages, on their way to the eschatological fulfilment.15 In so doing, he actually produced a mature

14 Stăniloae, ‘Introduction’ (PSB XV), p. 24. 15 Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă [Orthodox Dogmatic Theology], three vols, third edition (Bucharest: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 2003; first edition 1978), vol. i, pp. 344, 346–47, 350, 389. Stăniloae’s friend, Nellas, reached the same evolutionary understanding in anthropology. See Doru Costache, ‘Ὁλισμός, δυναμισμὸς καὶ σύνθεση: Ἡ ἀνθρωπολογικὴ σκέψη τοῦ Παναγιώτη Νέλλα’ [‘Holism, Dynamism, and Synthesis: The Anthropological Thought of Panayiotis Nellas’], Synaxi, 140 (October-December 2016), 30–40 (esp. pp. 37–39).

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theology of movement, built on a positive assessment of nature as God’s creation.16 To the latter I must now turn. The positive assessment of nature is obvious within the same introduction, where Stăniloae affirmed that the existence of the universe was grounded in gândirea, puterea și voința lui Dumnezeu (‘God’s thinking, power, and will’), without which it cannot be.17 This view was consistent with Athanasius’s own theocentric cosmology, where the ῥευστή τις καὶ ἀσθενὴς καὶ θνητή (‘fluid, weak, and mortal’) or again ῥευστὴν […] καὶ διαλυομένην (‘fluid and dissolving’) universe depended on the ongoing providential activity of the Logos in order to exist and move.18 Stăniloae surmised from here that, since natural phenomena were divinely supported, then motion and change were positive occurrences.19 This realization led him to another, that whereas God was active throughout the movement of the world in time,20 nature itself was dynamic, efficient, and fertile.21 The latter conclusion was consistent with his commitment to the scientific concept of natural laws. In referring to this concept, he pointed out that the constants of nature performed a double function, namely, to sustain the very existence of the universe and to facilitate its ongoing progress. In his words, legile conservă și dezvoltă în mod dinamic creația (‘the laws preserve and develop the creation in a dynamic way’).22 Natural agency was as important as the divine input with which it synergized. In emphasizing the generative power of the universe and the synergy between the created and the uncreated, more than on Athanasius, he perhaps drew on Basil (d. 379),23 certainly on Maximus (d. 662).24 What matters is that he made no allowance for the reductionist views discernible behind the contemporary 16 Stăniloae, Theology and the Church, p. 225. For a discussion of the ontological optimism of Stăniloae, see Ivana Noble, ‘Doctrine of Creation within the Theological Project of Dumitru Staniloae’, Communio viatorum, 49/2 (2007), 185–209 (esp. pp. 192–94). 17 Stăniloae, ‘Introduction’ (PSB XV), p. 20; cf. also pp. 21–22. See also Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 347. 18 See Athanasius, Against the Gentiles, 41.10–12, 16–17, in Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed. and trans. by Robert W. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 112, 114. For older studies of Athanasian cosmology, see Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius (The Early Church Fathers) (London/ New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 32–35, 49–51, and Athanasius: The Coherence of his Thought (London/New York: Routledge, 1998). More recently, Doru Costache, ‘Worldview and Melodic Imagery in the Alexandrian Tradition and Certain Patristic Antecedents’, in Alexandrian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal, ed. by Doru Costache, Philip Kariatlis, and Mario Baghos (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), pp. 282–321, esp. pp. 310–19. 19 Stăniloae, ‘Introduction’ (PSB XV), p. 22. See also Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 349. 20 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 346. 21 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 339 and vol. ii, p. 7. 22 Stăniloae, ‘Introduction’ (PSB XV), p. 24. 23 Basil’s dynamic and synergetic theology is fairly well researched. Doru Costache, ‘Christian Worldview: Understandings from St Basil the Great’, in Cappadocian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal, ed. by Doru Costache and Philip Kariatlis (Sydney: St Andrew’s Orthodox Press, 2013), pp. 97–126, esp. pp. 119–22; Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy, p. 22; Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, pp. 133–34. 24 Dumitru Stăniloae, ‘Natură și har în teologia bizantină’ [‘Nature and Grace in Byzantine Theology’], Ortodoxia, 26/3 (1974), 392–439 (esp. pp. 392–93).

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warfare of creationism and evolutionism, especially the notion that either the divine or the natural is inactive. Stăniloae believed that the rapport between God and the cosmos presupposed that active are și creatul și necreatul (‘the created as well as the uncreated’).25 Said otherwise, the synergy between created and uncreated forces operated everywhere in the cosmos. Significant is that, echoing the contemporary paradigm of the universe’s expansion and evolution, for him onticul e dinamic (‘existence is dynamic’).26 The created being is characterized by ongoing movement and change. Continuous movement entailed innumerable transformations of, and within, the universe. Stăniloae was convinced that neither the cosmos nor humankind can exist forever în forma lor actuală, sau în cea în care pot evolua prin ei înșiși (‘in their present form or that into which they could evolve by themselves’).27 This was tantamount to saying that, notwithstanding that they depended on divine agency for their existence, created beings did evolve naturally în ordini noi de existență (‘in new orders of existence’).28 Evolution meant progressive change and the attainment of further complexity – a phenomenon that continued throughout the universe’s journey towards the eschaton. Indeed, according to the testimony of Marc-Antoine Costa de Beauregard, Stăniloae was convinced that the world’s creation was not yet achieved.29 Stăniloae believed that evolution and transformation characterized all things created within the universe, including life. In a scholion referring to Maximus’s vision of the Logos diversified into the λόγοι (reasons to be, principles) of all things, which branched out into the informational structure of all creation, he pointed out that o anumită evoluție a animalelor se poate explica prin implicarea potențială a unor specii noi în cele vechi (‘a certain evolution of animals could be explained by the potential presence of new species within the old ones’).30 Here, obviously, the Romanian theologian attempted to make sense of evolution and the emergence of new species in the parameters of the Maximian worldview. He therefore agreed with the contemporary theory of natural evolution,31 which he interpreted in patristic fashion

25 Stăniloae, ‘Introduction’ (PSB XV), p. 22. 26 Stăniloae, ‘Introduction’ (PSB XV), p. 24. 27 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 342. See also Stăniloae, Theology and the Church, p. 226, and ‘Natură și har’, p. 393. He believed that humankind and the cosmos shared the same eschatological destination. See the personal testimony of Marc-Antoine Costa de Beauregard, ‘Le Cosmos et la Croix’, in Dumitru Stăniloae: Tradition and Modernity in Theology, ed. by. Lucian Turcescu (Iași/Oxford: The Centre for Romanian Studies, 2002), pp. 147–66, esp. pp. 151–52. For the anthropocosmic continuum in Stăniloae, see also Louth, ‘The Orthodox Dogmatic Theology’, p. 262, and Noble, ‘Doctrine of Creation’, pp. 192–93. 28 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 347. 29 Costa de Beauregard, ‘Le Cosmos et la Croix’, p. 152. See for instance Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, pp. 347. 30 Sfântul Maxim Mărturisitorul: Scrieri [St Maximus the Confessor: Writings], first part, PSB, vol. lxxx (Bucharest: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 1983), p. 294 n. 369. 31 My understanding corresponds to the testimony of Costa de Beauregard, ‘Le Cosmos et la Croix’, p. 155.

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by offering the hypothesis of a divine blueprint which prescribed and regulated the natural emergence of species from other species. Furthermore, given the divine parameters in which movement unfolded, evolution was not a theologically irrelevant, purposeless happening. The universe aimed to reach a deified state at the eschaton. But, again, this was impossible without divine support. In his words, tot dinamismul sau mișcarea creației spre îndumnezeire își are cauza în dinamismul lucrărilor dumnezeiești (‘the whole dynamism or movement of the creation towards deification has its cause in the dynamism of the divine energies’).32 He entwined here natural evolution and the theological perspective of a divinely guided, cosmic trajectory towards the final perfection. This was another illustration of the synergetic forces at work within the universe. For him, therefore, cosmic evolution was how a divinely sustained and eschatologically driven creation marshalled towards perfection – from forma actuală a lumii (‘the current form of the world’) to un plan de existență superior (‘a higher plane of existence’).33 Apart from its theological overtones, by and large Stăniloae’s dynamic worldview was consistent with contemporary cosmology. Instead of clinging to the ancient image of a static cosmos to be left behind by the soaring soul, he incorporated the scientific description of a moving universe, which he reinterpreted within the theological framework of a purposeful cosmos, full of divine presence and intention. What made possible this integration of theology and science was the patristic notion that the ongoing dynamism of the cosmos unfolded in the parameters of God’s wisdom – or due to the universe’s divine rationality. To this aspect I must now turn.

The Rationality of the Universe In the above we have seen that, alongside depicting a universe of continuous movement and change, Stăniloae maintained, paradoxically, that divine parameters conditioned existence from within, including nature’s random occurrences. Whereas the evolving cosmos continued its dramatic race towards the eschaton and further complexity, it remained fundamentally ordered, rational, and meaningful – the universe was lume (‘world’, from Lat. lumen, ‘light’). It was enlightened, structured beauty.34 Taking a different route, by assessing the outcomes of contemporary physics, more recently Yannaras observed, similarly, that matter was energy and therefore light.35 Although the Greek thinker seems to have not been aware of Stăniloae’s musings about the cosmos as light, their efforts correspond in that they bring to the fore the dynamic order of reality. Apart from the Romanian etymology, Stăniloae’s understanding 32 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 154. 33 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 343. 34 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 362. See also his Reflecţii despre spiritualitatea poporului roman [Reflections on the Spirituality of the Romanian People] (Craiova: Scrisul românesc, 1992), p. 161, and Iisus Hristos, lumina lumii şi îndumnezeitorul omului [Jesus Christ, the Light of the World and the Deifier of Man] (Bucharest: Anastasia, 1993), pp. 27–28, 31. 35 Yannaras, Elements of Faith, p. 39.

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of the ordered universe primarily depended on the wisdom of Maximus, which, according to Andrew Louth, he creatively appropriated and developed.36 He shared in common with Yannaras both an appreciation for the thinking of Maximus and an interest in contemporary physics. We shall see immediately below that, indeed, his development of Maximus’s insights took place in the parameters of quantum physics. A comparison between his and Yannaras’s ways of handling Maximus’s wisdom is, however, beyond the scope of this study. Before I turn to Stăniloae’s understanding of cosmic rationality, a summary of the Maximian worldview is in order. Maximus proposed a vision of the divine Logos that permeated the creation through the constitutive principles of beings, the λόγοι, the ultimate informational ground of the cosmos. As ontological parameters, the divine principles determined the universe’s structure and movement, defining the eschatological purpose of its becoming. More than information, the principles were energies, divine thoughts that enlivened and shaped the universe from within. In turn, the cosmos experienced a continuous tension between its natural possibilities, the divine energies that suffused it, and the movement which led it – through successive extensions and contractions – to the actualization of its potential. The universe experienced therefore movement and morphological changes during a process that was framed by rational principles and fuelled by the active presence of God. In so depicting reality, Maximus achieved a synthesis of logos/thought/information and becoming/energy/movement, thus depicting a complex universe.37 Taking this Maximian synthesis as his framework, Stăniloae undertook to integrate aspects pertaining to contemporary science, particularly quantum physics, into his thoroughly theological worldview. Given the precedent set by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Lars Thunberg suggested the possibility of bridging certain

36 Andrew Louth, ‘The patristic revival and its protagonists’, in The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology, ed. by Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 188–202, esp. p. 197. This aspect has not escaped the attention of contemporary scholars. Adrian Marinescu, ‘Logos şi logoi: Gândirea teologică a Sf. Maxim Mărturisitorul († 662) cu privire la raţiunile dumnezeieşti (plasticizate), potrivit comentariului său la rugăciunea “Tatăl nostru”, şi receptarea ei la Pr. Dumitru Stăniloae’ [‘Logos and logoi: The Theological Thinking of St Maximus the Confessor († 662) on the Divine (concretized) Reasons, according to his Commentary on the Prayer “Our Father”, and its Reception by Fr Dumitru Stăniloae’], Tabor, 7/11 (2013), 78–93; Toma, π. Δημήτριος Στανιλοάε, pp. 84–90. 37 See Maximus, Difficulties, 7, in Maximos the Confessor: On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, two vols, ed. and trans. by Nicholas Constas (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library) (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2014), vol. i, pp. 74–141. For recent overviews of Maximian cosmology, see Torstein T. Tollefsen, ‘Christocentric Cosmology’, and Doru Costache, ‘Mapping Reality Within the Experience of Holiness’, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, ed. by Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 307–21 and pp. 378–95. See also Doru Costache, ‘Being, Well-being, Being for Ever: Creation’s Existential Trajectory in Patristic Tradition’, in Well-being, Personal Wholeness and the Social Fabric, ed. by Doru Costache, Darren Cronshaw and James Harrison (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), pp. 55–87, esp. pp. 71–85. For a broader analysis, see Paul M. Blowers, Maximus the Confessor: Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World (Christian Theology in Context) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 101–283.

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Maximian intuitions and contemporary physics.38 Whether or not in response to his suggestion, Stăniloae consistently translated Maximus’s vision of reality in terms that evoke quantum mechanics. The untold presupposition of his endeavour must have been the conviction that, even though methodologically incommensurable, the Maximian worldview and quantum physics were compatible in their outlook of reality. What matters is that, at the crossroads of the Maximian worldview and quantum physics he construed a rational and dynamic universe, emergent of a natural energie care are în ea un sens sau o complexitate de sensuri și include tendințele unor indefinite interferări producătoare ale atâtor unități legate între ele (‘energy that contains a sense or a complexity of meanings, open to indefinite connections which produce many interrelated units’),39 namely, the created beings. Thus, the energetic, rational, and relational infrastructure of the universe – corresponding both to the Maximian λόγοι and the quantum reality of contemporary physics – became the inextricable web and prodigious polymorphism of created beings at a macrocosmic level. In turn, the beings moved and changed in harmony with the rational patterns the Logos established for them, advancing towards further interaction, coherence, and complexity. In Stăniloae’s words, Lucrurile sunt chipurile create ale rațiunilor divine plasticizate, chipuri pline de putere și purtate de tendința unor nenumărate referiri între ele. În starea lor plasticizată se reflectă sensul, puterea și viața rațiunilor divine în unitatea lor din Logosul divin.40 (The beings are created images of the plasticized divine principles, yet images full of power and moved by the tendency of innumerable mutual references. Their plasticized state manifests the meaning, the power, and the life of the divine principles in their unity within the divine Logos.) The phrase rațiuni plasticizate (‘plasticized principles’) borrows from Gregory of Nyssa’s (d. after 395) perception that, on a fundamental level, matter consists of ideal or immaterial qualities41 – a quantum-like intuition of reality. Whether Stăniloae found this concept directly in Gregory or borrowed it from Maximus is of no consequence here.42 Relevant is that for him matter was, infrastructurally, information and power, or energy, a flexible medium endowed with indefinite potentialities or, as he preferred,

38 See Lars Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos: The Vision of St Maximus the Confessor (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), pp. 136–37. For a more recent attempt to draw parallels between the Maximian worldview and contemporary cosmology, see Alexei V. Nesteruk, The Sense of the Universe: Philosophical Explication of Theological Commitment in Modern Cosmology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), pp. 417–23. 39 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. ii, p. 7. 40 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. ii, p. 7. 41 Doru Costache, ‘Making Sense of the World: Theology and Science in St Gregory of Nyssa’s An Apology for the Hexaemeron’, Phronema, 28/1 (2013), 1–28 (esp. pp. 17–22); Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy, p. 15; Susan Wessel, ‘The Reception of Greek Science in Gregory of Nyssa’s De Hominis Opificio’, Vigiliae Christianae, 63 (2009), 24–46. 42 Maximus developed a similar theory of matter, very likely inspired by Gregory. See Maximus, Difficulties, 41, ed. Constas, vol. ii, pp. 114–19. For the relevant views of the two Church Fathers, succinctly, see Yannaras, Elements of Faith, pp. 39–40.

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virtualities,43 the field of ineffable interactions between created and uncreated factors conditioned by divinely established rational parameters. These parameters coincided, we have seen already, with the natural laws of the cosmos. The universe emerged out of these ‘rational’ interactions; it was their very embodiment. It is transparent that, alongside the theological dimension, namely, the reference of all strands of reality to the Logos, Stăniloae’s statement quoted above echoes the contemporary quantum perception for which the energy, the movement, and the interactions occurring at the fundamental level of the universe are governed by algorithms that make possible the existence of order and complexity at the grand scale of the macrocosm, including our own existence.44 Faithful to his custom, earlier discussed, he made use of this scientific insight without referring to it explicitly, or its sources, or its technical vocabulary. Instead, he assimilated this information within the framework of the patristic worldview, particularly the contributions of Maximus, as a matter of common knowledge. What matters, once again, is that at some level quantum cosmology and the traditional Christian worldview were for him compatible. Given this sense of compatibility, he rendered the intuitions of Maximus in an intelligible manner for contemporary audiences and also interpreted the scientific representation of the universe through the lens of patristic cosmology. And so, together with offering a theological interpretation of quantum cosmology, Stăniloae redrafted the patristic worldview along the lines of that very paradigm. In a passage where he focused on the revolutionary approach of the early Church Fathers to ancient science, he came very close to disclosing the fact that his grasp of this contribution was conditioned by his awareness of contemporary science, particularly quantum physics. Here is the text: Pentru Sfinții Părinți, materia era o masă amorfă, întru totul neluminată, a cărei transfigurare era greu de înțeles. Ei moșteniseră din filosofia elină noțiunea unei materii opusă Logosului divin, deci oricărui logos. Unii dintre ei – ca Sfântul Maxim Mărturisitorul – au ajuns totuși la idea rațiunilor lucrurilor cu originea lor în Logosul divin. Astăzi noi vedem raționalitatea deplină și totuși maleabilă a materiei, transparența ei rațională, capacitatea ei de a fi flexionată de rațiunea și fapta conștientă umană – asemenea metalului căruia i se pot da multe forme – și descoperită în lumina ei de această rațiune.45 (For the Holy Fathers, matter was an amorphous mass, wholly unenlightened, whose transfiguration was difficult to comprehend. They inherited from Greek philosophy the notion of a matter that was opposite to the divine Logos, and to any logos at that. Nevertheless, some of them – like Saint Maximus the Confessor – reached the notion of the

43 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, pp. 374–91. 44 John D. Barrow, The Origin of the Universe (Science Masters Series) (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. xiv; Paul Davies, The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning (London: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 69; Henry P. Stapp, Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2011), pp. 6–7, 11–12. 45 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 376. See also Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. iii, pp. 404–20. For further notes on this matter, see Costache, ‘At the Crossroads’, pp. 154–55.

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principles of beings that have their origin in the divine Logos. Today, we are able to see the rationality, both full and flexible, of matter, its rational transparency, its capacity to be moulded by the conscious human reason and action – like a metal that can be given many shapes – and whose light is discovered by this reason.) The passage discusses the redefinition of matter by Maximus and other Church Fathers, among whom we should include, we have seen in the foregoing, Gregory of Nyssa. The early Christian theologians inherited from the classical culture a philosophical concept of matter disconnected from the rational or intelligible aspect of reality, so phrased in Platonic idiom. This concept represented an obstacle for the proper articulation of the mystery of incarnation, resurrection, and transfiguration. We know from at least Athanasius how difficult it was in some philosophical quarters to accept that the Logos took flesh.46 Nevertheless, compelled by the evidence of Christ’s glorified body and the enlightenment of the saints, as we read little after the above passage in Stăniloae’s work,47 the early Christian theologians redefined the ancient concept of matter so that it accounted for the experience of transfiguration. For him, indeed, it is primarily in the light of the transfigured, risen, and glorified Christ that the Fathers revisited the ancient concept of matter and proceeded to redefine it. This achievement, I would suggest, matched their reinterpretation of Hebrew Scripture as a prophecy about Jesus Christ, post hoc, that is in the light of the ecclesial experience with the Lord.48 In so doing, abandoning the ancient dualism of reason and matter, the Church Fathers have arrived at a view of matter as rationally structured and flexible. It is to this redefined concept that Stăniloae referred by way of his catchphrase, plasticized principles or rationality, but through the lens of quantum physics. In the last sentence of the above passage the allusion to a quantum perception of reality is undeniable. He echoed there something like Heisenberg’s perception that reality emerges from the interaction between the subject and the object or between humankind and the quantum virtualities of fundamental reality.49 This nuance leads to the final stage of my analysis. To conclude this section, I propose that, for Stăniloae, the theological worldview of Maximus and quantum cosmology agreed in that they represented the universe as both emergent and rationally structured. By establishing a rapport between theology and science, he seems to have conveyed that as much as quantum physics can facilitate the understanding of Maximian cosmology, Maximus’s intuitions about the nature of the universe anticipated the contemporary representation of reality. His approach was not far-fetched. Closer to our days, Paul Davies asserted the relation between certain cosmological ideas of our age and medieval intuitions.50 But what matters is

46 Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 41.17–30 (ed. Thomson, p. 236). 47 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, pp. 376–77. 48 For the patristic reinterpretation of Hebrew Scripture, see John Behr, The Formation of Christian Theology, vol. i: The Way to Nicaea (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), pp. 17–48. 49 See Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1971), pp. 55, 127. 50 Barrow, The Origin of the Universe, pp. 109–10.

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that for him matter and the universe in its entirety were characterized by rationality. On this note, I turn to the construal of the universe’s purpose and its relation with the anthropic principle.

The Anthropic Dimension of the Universe Drawing on the above, one may confidently infer that the world contemplated by Stăniloae was ordered, meaningful, and purposeful – denoting an ‘underlying rationality’ which, as Barrow had it, transcended the material universe.51 Founded on divine principles and being tantamount to plasticized rationality, his universe and everything within it was not the Cartesian res extensa, measurable only in quantitative terms and terrifying to human conscience. His universe, once again, was lume (‘light’). Created beings were complex accretions of energy and information, embodied manifestations of divine principles, structures of potentiality on their way towards full actualization, engaged in innumerable mutual references, and ultimately pointing to the transcendent Logos. The rational infrastructure of the universe became obvious through dynamic qualities by virtue of which, naturally yet within God, the creation experienced movement and change. The movement of the universe was a purposeful one, aiming to reach further complexity and immortality, conditioned by the divine principles, the parameters of nature, and, of immediate interest here, the human factor.52 For Stăniloae, as for Nellas,53 the movement of the universe reached a peak when it arrived at a level of complexity that allowed for a conscious expression in the form of humankind.54 The latter, in turn and very likely drawing from Maximus’s views,55 was the mouthpiece of the cosmos before God.56 He believed that the purpose of creation was to communicate with God and to participate in God’s life, and so be granted immortality.57 This purpose was not achievable without a cosmic representative – namely, humankind engaged in conversation and communion with

51 Barrow, The Origin of the Universe, p. 45. 52 This summary is based on my previous explorations of Stăniloae’s cosmological thinking. See my ‘Colocviul fără sfârșit: Rațiunea de a fi a creației în gândirea Părintelui Dumitru Stăniloae’ [ʽThe Endless Conversation: Creation’s Reason to Be in the Thought of Father Dumitru Stăniloaeʼ], in Dumitru Stăniloae sau Paradoxul Teologiei, pp. 183–241, esp. pp. 187–89; ‘Virtualitate şi actualitate: De la ontologia cuantică la cosmologia antropică a Părintelui Dumitru Stăniloae’ [ʽVirtuality and Actuality: From Quantum Ontology to the Anthropic Cosmology of Father Dumitru Stăniloaeʼ], in Dumitru Popescu, Doru Costache, and others, Știință și Teologie: Preliminarii pentru Dialog [Science and Theology: Preliminaries for a Dialogue] (Bucharest: XXI Eonul dogmatic, 2001), pp. 202–20, esp. pp. 212–19. 53 Nellas, Deification in Christ, pp. 31–32. See also Costache, ‘Ὁλισμός, δυναμισμὸς καὶ σύνθεση’, pp. 31–32. 54 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 378. 55 See Costache, ‘Mapping Reality’, pp. 383, 388–90. 56 Stăniloae, ‘Introduction’ (PSB XV), p. 19; Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, pp. 352–54, 379–80. 57 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, pp. 353–54.

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God58 – a representative which, paraphrasing John Wheeler, was as much adapted to the universe as the universe to it.59 He articulated these understandings in the following dynamic, that is, evolutionary, description of the history of creation from inorganic to conscious existence and from the latter’s mere existence to its dialogue with the uncreated. Conştiinţa creată este adusă la existenţă în legătură ontologică cu raţionalitatea plasticizată a lumii, pe care Logosul, după creare, continuă să o gândească efici­ent şi să o conducă spre starea în care conştiinţa umană va putea să existe şi să funcţioneze în ea. El se foloseşte spre aceasta şi de un impuls de dezvoltare pus în însăşi raţionalitatea plasticizată a lumii. Creaţia ajunge astfel la starea de organi­zare complexă, apropiată celei a trupului adecvat sufletului conştient adus la existenţă de Spiritul conştient suprem. Atunci sufletul con­ştient este adus la existenţă prin actul special creator şi iniţiator al dialogului Logosului cu el. Scopul crea­­ţiunii se împli­neşte astfel prin aducerea la existenţă a persoanei conştiente create, pentru că şi Creatorul este persoană şi pentru că creaţiunea are ca scop realizarea unui dialog între persoana supremă şi persoanele create.60 (Created consciousness is brought into existence in an ontological connection with the plasticized rationality of the world, which the Logos continues to think efficiently after creation and to lead towards a state in which human consciousness is able to exist and function within it. For this reason, he [i.e., the Logos: D.C.] also makes use of an impulse of development infused in the very plasticized rationality of the world. This is how the creation reaches a state of complex organization, close to that of a body suitable to the conscious soul, which [in turn: D.C.] is brought into existence by the supreme conscious Spirit. Then the conscious soul is brought into existence through a special act of the Logos, which also initiates a dialogue with it. The purpose of the creation is achieved therefore through the bringing into existence of the created conscious person, since the Creator is likewise a Person and since the creation has as a goal a dialogue between the supreme Person and the created persons.) Apart from outlining the history of the universe as ongoing creation under the divine Logos, which lends further substance to Costa de Beauregard’s view that Stăniloae believed in a world still in the making, the above passage addresses the anthropic potential of the cosmos. True, he mentioned the special divine act by which the human ‘conscious person’ was brought into existence, but he was more interested in pointing out, on the one hand, that the calling of humankind into being amounted to an invitation to dialogue with the creator, and, on the other hand, that humankind 58 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, pp. 337–38, 387. See also Costa de Beauregard, ‘Le Cosmos et la Croix’, p. 162, and Costache, ‘Colocviul fără sfârșit’, pp. 194–201. 59 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, pp. 394–95. See also John A. Wheeler, ‘Foreword’, in John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. vi–ix, esp. p. vii. 60 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, pp. 394–95. For another way of stating the same, see Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 349.

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was ontologically linked with the universe. Thus, whereas he affirmed the theological dimension of human existence and its prominent position within creation, he subscribed to the patristic standpoint concerning the anthropocosmic continuum, a notion that resonates with the current scientific representation of reality.61 More specifically, in tune with a point made by Nellas,62 Stăniloae expressed the view that the universe endowed with an ‘impulse of development’ was designed to evolve in the parameters of divine rationality and to be led by the Source of this rationality. The immediate goal of cosmic evolution was the rise of human consciousness, which in turn, was to attain the ultimate goal of creation – the eschatological perfection and union with God.63 The achievement of the cosmic purpose therefore depended on what contemporary cosmologists call the anthropic principle, which is in fact typical of Stăniloae’s theanthropocosmic thinking.64 Seemingly aware of the various formulations of the anthropic cosmological principle,65 Stăniloae affirmed a connection between the human presence and the parameters or the constants of the universe, and so the human conditioning of the cosmos. He referred to this conditioning as anthropocentrically effected. His notion of anthropocentrism is not akin to the modern ideology known as anthropocentrism; it denotes the shaping of the universe by and with reference to human existence. For example, echoing the strong formulation of the anthropic principle,66 he affirmed: Lumea ca natură e creată pentru subiectele umane. Ea are un caracter antropocentric. Numai în ele își descoperă și-și împlinește lumea sensul ei (‘The world as nature is created for the human subjects. It has an anthropocentric character. Only in them [i.e. the human subjects] the world manifests and accomplishes its purpose’).67 Elsewhere and in the same vein, he added: Raţionalitatea lumii este pentru om şi culminează în om; nu omul este pentru raţionalitatea lumii. O persoană s-a gândit la persoana omului când a creat lumea (‘the rationality of the world is for the human being and culminates in the human being; it is not the human being that exists for the rationality of the world. A person [i.e. God] thought of the human person upon creating the world’).68 61 For the compatibility between the patristic notion of anthropocosmic continuum and contemporary science, see Doru Costache, ‘The King, the Palace, and the Kingdom: Anthropic Thinking in Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, and Other Witnesses’, in John Chrysostom: Past, Present, Future, ed. by Doru Costache and Mario Baghos (Sydney: AIOCS Press, 2017), pp. 235–65. 62 Talking about the making of humankind in Genesis 1–2, Nellas observed: ‘Created matter, the “dust of the earth”, was thus organized for the first time theologically; the material creation acquired a form and structure in the image of God; life on earth became conscious, free and personal.’ Nellas, Deification in Christ, p. 32. 63 See Costache, ‘Virtualitate şi actualitate’, pp. 214–15. 64 Costache, ‘Colocviul fără sfârșit’, pp. 201–07; Costache, ‘Virtualitate şi actualitate’, pp. 214–15. 65 Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, pp. 15–23; Brandon Carter, ‘Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology’, in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data, ed. by M. S. Longair (Dordrecht/Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1974), pp. 291–98; Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 354, 433–44. 66 Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, pp. 21–23. 67 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 354. See also Stăniloae, Iisus Hristos, pp. 31–32. 68 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 366 (italics in original).

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This is no anthropocentrism in the conventional sense. Throughout his works, Stăniloae discussed the theme of the human conditioning of the creation within the framework of the evolving, rational, and complex universe of contemporary cosmology, a universe that was nevertheless theocentric and divinely led. In addition to this theological backdrop, which represents the ultimate qualifier of Stăniloae’s entire discourse, his notion of anthropocentrism as anthropocosmism must have once again originated in the wisdom of Maximus, who defined the centrality of humankind in the cosmos as a task and function, not a privilege. For Maximus human beings were by nature related to everything within the universe and endowed with a unifying capacity, for this reason being called to cooperate with God and so bring the universe to unity and harmony. In the footsteps of Christ, this task was performed by the saints, who worked in agreement with the informational background of the universe, the principles, which secured the capacity of the cosmos for coherence. However, for Maximus, the full impact of human agency on the universe was to become obvious only in the eschaton.69 It is noteworthy that the contemporary promoters of the anthropic principle suggest, similarly, the possibility of a macrocosmic impact of our race in the distant future.70 No wonder, therefore, that Stăniloae, who believed that humankind had already left its mark in the universe, not only at the eschaton,71 found in Maximus an excellent platform for his theological integration of contemporary anthropic cosmology. Thus, he shared with Maximus the conviction that, although the world was created în vederea omului (‘in view of the human being’),72 the anthropic conditioning could not be reduced to the creation of the universe for humankind. Even though the latter represented an immediate goal of the cosmic evolution, humankind itself performed an active function within the cosmos and for it. That said, precisely given the assimilation of certain elements pertaining to contemporary physics within his theanthropic cosmology, the understanding of Stăniloae went beyond that of Maximus. He noted, legile au în ele o posibilitate elastică sau contingentă pusă la dispoziția omului pentru a o actualiza în diverse moduri, conform trebuințelor și conținutului de sensuri la care el a ajuns (‘the [natural] laws possess an adaptable potential or a contingency that serve the human being, so that one can variously actualize them according to one’s needs and the understandings that one has reached’).73 Corresponding to Heisenberg’s ontology, earlier mentioned, here Stăniloae asserted the impact of human presence upon the universe as facilitated by the very matrix of reality. But, faithful to Maximus’s ascetic theology and perhaps echoing his emphasis on the need of virtue for the achievement of the human task,74 he pointed out the importance of one’s awareness of reality and manner of handling things – ‘according to one’s needs and the understandings that one has reached’. 69 Maximus, Difficulties, 41 (ed. Constas, vol. ii, pp. 104–08). See also Costache, ‘Mapping Reality’, pp. 381–85. 70 Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, pp. 22–23, 613–25, 658–77. 71 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. iii, pp. 371–73. 72 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 349. 73 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 378. 74 Costache, ‘Mapping Reality’, pp. 383–84, 392–93, 394.

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Somewhere else, Stăniloae expressed this conviction in a clearer way, namely, that at least in part human beings made the world anew only when they recreated themselves spiritually.75 Therefore, the anthropic principle worked in his case both ways: from the fundamental strands of reality towards humankind and from the latter to the former. Once again, this correspondence echoes Wheeler’s point about a universe adapted to humankind and a humankind adapted to the universe. In fact, Stăniloae emphasized that omul nu se poate concepe în afara naturii cosmice (‘the human being cannot be considered outside cosmic nature’) and likewise that nici natura nu-și împlinește rostul ei fără om (‘neither can nature fulfil its purpose without the human being’).76 Behind the traditional, theological, and ascetic grounds of Stăniloae’s thinking, one can recognise in the above, if not certainties, at least the hopes of a growing body of scientists who no longer feel comfortable with a cosmology insensitive to humankind, particularly a humankind concerned with spiritual matters. By his anthropic elaborations, Stăniloae presented himself as an ally of those scientists – not unlike the early Christian apologists who, in borrowing concepts from classical philosophy in order to better articulate and communicate the Christian worldview, catalyzed, for instance, the philosophical quest for the Logos through their own elaborations on the topic. Through the contributions considered above, the anthropic principle, the rationality of the cosmos, and the movement of the universe, Stăniloae proved to be a worthy heir of patristic wisdom that prescribes the need for the Christian worldview to be ever rephrased in conversation with the scientific theories of the day, for the purpose of disseminating more efficiently the message of traditional theology. That he consciously and purposely worked according to this standard – shared by other Neopatristic thinkers of last century, but implemented as consistently as he did by none other – appears with clarity in the preface of his monumental treatise, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. Here is the relevant passage: Ne-am silit să înțelegem învățătura Bisericii în spiritul Părinților, dar în același timp să o înțelegem așa cum credem că ar fi înțeles-o ei astăzi. Căci ei n-ar fi făcut abstracție de timpul nostru, așa cum n-au făcut de al lor.77 (We have endeavoured to understand the teaching of the Church in the spirit of the Fathers, but also to understand it the way we believe that they would have understood it today. For they would have not ignored our time, the way they did not ignore their own.) This study offered glimpses of where this eminently patristic and therefore traditional method led Father Dumitru Stăniloae, particularly in terms of his approach to contemporary science. His engagement of science resulted in a new translation of old ecclesial stances in contemporary idiom. In turn, this retranslation meant also 75 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, p. 375. See also my ‘Virtualitate şi actualitate’, p. 217. See also the comments of Clément, ‘Allocution’, p. 123. 76 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. i, pp. 337–38. 77 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. I, p. 6. In adopting this approach, he gave a concrete example of how to proceed further, which he programmatically announced in Theology and the Church, p. 224.

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a deepening and enrichment of traditional wisdom.78 His interdisciplinary effort resulted in a profound theology of the world, which he submitted to the attention of his successors as a task to continue.79 His contributions are yet to be digested by theologians and scientists alike. One thing is clear however, namely, that considered through his eyes there is nothing uneasy about the rapport between the Orthodox representation of reality and the contemporary sciences.

78 Stăniloae, Theology and the Church, p. 216. 79 Stăniloae, Theology and the Church, p. 225; Stăniloae, ‘Introduction’ (PSB XV), p. 24.

Dimitry Kiryanov

Evolution and Orthodox Theology in Russia An Uneasy Way to the Dialogue

Introduction One of the sharpest controversies in modern Christian thought has been the question about the relationship between religion and science in general, and Christian belief and evolutionary theory in particular. Despite the fact that more than 150 years have passed since the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, the question of the relationship between the Christian faith and evolutionary theory continues to be the subject of theological discussions and in some cases of political debates, as well. Darwin’s theory of evolution was the apex of a long process of reflections concerning questions about the origin of species. This theory was a direct realization of Charles Lyell’s uniformism in biology. Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species offered an explanation for the variety among living beings using natural selection. During the twentieth century, Darwin’s approach was modified through the incorporation of the theory of heredity and genetics. There are many scientific theories combined with an evolutionary approach, which subsequently form a coherent picture; for example, the theory of chaos, complexity and self-organization, which were developed thanks to the works of Ilya Prigozine, Isabelle Stengers, Stuart Kaufmann, and others.1 Some theological consequences of the Darwinian theory were obvious to its creator when he was writing his work On the Origin of Species. After publishing the first edition, he wrote a letter to his friend and colleague Asa Gray (1810–1898) from Harvard University. Gray approached the theory of evolution with enthusiasm, and at the same time he was a strong supporter of natural theology, namely of the belief that research on nature opens for humans a way to goodness and an awareness of the omnipotence of God. In his letter from 22 May 1860, Darwin touched upon this sensitive issue. He noticed that he ‘had no intention to write atheistically’, and at the



1 See, e.g., Niels H. Gregersen, From Complexity to Life: On the Emergence of Life and Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Dimitry Kiryanov  Tobolsk Orthodox Theological Seminary, Tobolsk, Russia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 223–235. © FHG10.148/M.SOC-EB.5.117932

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same time he commented that this question caused him pain.2 Darwin could not agree with Gray and the theologians that an attentive study of nature gives ‘evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us’.3 However, Darwin spoke also about himself: ‘In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.’4 In another letter, Darwin wrote to Gray: ‘I can see no reason why a man, or other animal, may not have been expressly designed by an omniscient Creator, who foresaw every future event and consequence.’5 The Darwinian approach to the origin of the species brings up serious questions in relation to a static comprehension of the biological order. The strict scientific approach to the origins of life supposes that life on earth can be explained solely and exclusively in naturalistic terms. For example, in an evaluation of Darwinian evolution geneticist Francisco J. Ayala writes: ‘It was Darwin’s greatest accomplishment to show that the directive organization of living beings can be explained as the result of a natural process, natural selection, without any need to resort to a Creator or other external agent.’6 And in a sharper tone: Darwin’s theory encountered opposition in religious circles, not so much because he proposed the evolutionary origin of living things (which had been proposed many times before, even by Christian theologians), but because his mechanism, natural selection, excluded God as accounting for the obvious design of organisms.7 For many scientists, such a theory became a basis for an atheistic worldview. As an example, the so-called ‘Letter of academicians against clericalism’, issued in 2007 in Russia, categorically declared that ‘all achievements of a modern world science are based on a materialistic vision of the world’,8 whereas any kind of religious explanation does not make any sense. For adherents of such a position, all human behaviour and activity, meanings and values of life can be explained solely by such scientific methods. What do all these statements mean? Does Darwinism exclude any appeal to a theological explanation? What level of an explanation is implied here? If it means that methodologically scientific explanations should never involve any ideas about God, theologians would agree with the interpretation of the statement Ayala made in this context. But the view that solely science provides with an absolute and valid



2 Cited in Christian C. Young and Mark A. Largent, Evolution and Creationism: A Documentary and Reference Guide (London: Greenwood Press, 2007), p. xii. 3 Young and Largent, Evolution and Creationism, p. xii. 4 Charles Darwin, ‘Letter to a Mr J. Fordyee’, in: The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters, ed. by Francis Darwin (New York: Dover, 1958), p. 59. 5 Cited in John H. Brooke, ‘The Relations between Darwin’s Science and his Religion’, in Darwinism and Divinity: Essays on Evolution and Religious Belief, ed. by John Durant (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), pp. 40–75 (p. 56). 6 Francisco J. Ayala, ‘Darwin’s Revolution’, in Creative Evolution?, ed. by John H. Campbell and J. William Schopf (Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 1994), pp. 1–17 (p. 4). 7 Ayala, ‘Darwin’s Revolution’, p. 5. 8 ‘Open Letter to the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir V. Putin from the Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences’, 23 July 2007, [All websites cited were accessed in November 2017].

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explanation is, logically speaking, not a scientific conclusion by itself, but simply a position of belief reflecting scientific naturalism. Subscribing to the thesis that only natural science can explain life, many biologists and philosophers of biology today share a view that the Darwinian theory does not retain a place for God. This is the main reason that many Christians reject any evolutionary explanation of the living world as a fully atheistic enterprise. The traditional Christian theology considered humans as the apex of God’s creation and as distinct from the rest of the created world because they were created according to God’s image. On the contrary, the Darwinian theory is rather critical of such absolutist statements concerning the place of humans in nature. For example, evolutionary psychology affirms that human habits, values, convictions and norms can be fully analysed and understood from a Darwinian perspective. Nevertheless, even the zealous adherent of Darwinism and a militant opponent of religion Richard Dawkins cannot agree with this. He thus wrote: ‘We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth […] We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.’9

Evolutionary Theory and Orthodox Theology in Russia From the 1990s until today, there have been many intense discussions about the relationship between Orthodox theology and evolutionary theory in post-communist Russia. These discussions gave rise to many different approaches in attempting to deal with and perhaps solve this problem. This chapter intends to critically discuss each of these positions by underlining their strong and weak sides respectively. Before discussing the possibility of overcoming these difficulties within the Orthodox Christian theological context, some preliminary topics need to be addressed. Can science indeed offer something valuable to Orthodox theology? At least two answers are possible to this question: 1) A positive one: Science continuously discovers more about the nature of the universe and humans, thus it can enrich our theological vision of the world, of human beings and their relationship with God. Moreover, we may argue that science demands from us to some degree a reconsideration of our theological views and concepts. The degree of this influence depends directly on the challenges of concrete scientific findings. 2) A negative one: Science cannot give anything to our theological vision of the world and human beings and their relationship with God, because science can only deal with the material world, not with the spiritual one. Science possesses incomplete knowledge, which constantly changes. Exactly this renders science incompatible with theological conceptions.



9 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 200–01.

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Let us discuss the consequences of these two perspectives. In the first case, if we accept that science can enrich our knowledge about God and the world, we also accept that some contemporary theological doctrines or biblical interpretations may be reconsidered. Consequently, the question arises about the existence of core beliefs, which are regarded as constant and unchangeable. Such core beliefs about God and God’s relationship with the world and humans in any discussions about scientific discoveries are left untouched. As Del Ratzsch noted: ‘There are only limited possibilities of science contradicting that core.’10 If such a conflict arises, it will usually have to deal with particular core beliefs. This type of conflict would demand a reconsideration of some theological views and doctrines or interpretations. This will further lead us to a difficult problem: What do we include in these core beliefs? As we can see from the period of the seventeenth century, according to Cardinal Bellarmine, core beliefs include not only the Christian Creed, but also a specific approach on how to interpret the Holy Scripture, which is reserved strictly to the Church, not to some individual. In addition, they concern the person who has the power to offer new interpretations and to deal with scientific questions. If one thus renounces heliocentrism, this is – according to Bellarmine – similar to denying the existence of the twelve sons of Patriarch Jacob.11 This is because, as it became evident later on, it was completely mistaken to connect heliocentrism with faith and moral questions. Unfortunately, in the Orthodox theological milieu there are many adherents of the second position, who sharply deny any connections between scientific progress and the theological vision of the world and human beings. The theological idea of creation consists of bringing into being everything that exists all at once. As Augustine believed, the creation happened together with time, but it is not in time. Hence, time is a part of the order of creation.12 This idea about time and space brought to existence together is reflected in modern physics. The notion of a creation can be brought into agreement with scientific theories, yet they should not be admixed. For example, today’s creationism has absolutely another meaning than in the nineteenth century. It implies a specific doctrine, which is developed and widely disseminated especially in the USA (e.g., by the Institute of Creation Research) and which claims a very short age for the Universe on a broader scale and for the earth in particular. However, the belief in a geological youth of the earth can invoke only surprise. The most dominant approach among the Orthodox parishes in Russia is the ‘Creationism of the Young Earth’. It is not ‘scientifically-based’ as in the West, but it is specifically a ‘Patristic Creationism’, grounded in literal interpretations of the Bible by some Church Fathers. It became the most popular approach to speak 10 Del Ratzsch, ‘The Alleged Demise of Religion: Greatly Exaggerated Reports from the Science/ Religion “Wars”’, in Science and Religion in Dialogue, ed. by Melville Y. Stewart, vol. I (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 69–84 (p. 84). 11 Annibale Fantoli, Galileo: For Copernicanism and for the Church (Studi Galileiani, 3) (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), p. 139. 12 Simo Knuuttila, ‘Time and Creation in Augustine’, in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. by Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 103–15.

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about a theology of creation and evolution in contemporary Russia. Unfortunately, the indisputable results of modern science are viewed from this perspective as uncertain and hypothetical conceptions, based not on empirical data, but on the atheistic beliefs of ill-intentioned enemies of religion. In fact, ‘scientific creationism’ is an example of a synthesis, which is extremely hostile to true scientific knowledge. This philosophical-theological doctrine has arisen in Protestant contexts during the twentieth century due to the works of several propagandist creationists such as Henry Morris.13 Creationism very often calls itself a genuine science, and creationist scientists name themselves Christian scientists, engaged in the development of the special, Christian-based scientific knowledge. Since the 1990s, many books have been published in Russia, which are devoted to a critique of the theory of evolution under the influence of such US Protestant creationists. Later on, there were many works of Orthodox Christian authors based on these books; for example, by the priests Timothy (Alfyorov),14 Daniel Sysoyev,15 Konstantin Bufeev,16 and others. They basically argued that the Orthodox faithful cannot accept the thesis about an evolutionary origin of life. The evolutionary concept has already been declared a ‘heresy’ in the works of the well-known American Orthodox hieromonk Seraphim (Rose).17 In such a situation, the Orthodox scientist actually has no choice: If he/she accepts in any form the theory of evolution, then he/she is a heretic; if he/ she rejects it, then it is necessary to articulate an Orthodox science of biology, based on correct biblical principles. Some years ago, Sergei Vert’yanov published a textbook for Orthodox high schools named General Biology. In this textbook, he stated that evolutionary views became popular due to the ‘rejection of faith by society’.18 The goal of this textbook for the Russian Orthodox youth was to study true ‘Orthodox biology’, based on the biblical interpretations of the Church Fathers. However, there is an even more radical approach in addressing the problem of the evolution of the universe. This approach does not only deny the very existence of an evolutionary process, but also assumes that science is basically incapable of telling us anything authentic about the past of the universe, the earth and humankind. This is because the laws of life in the world after the Fall of Adam and Eve have radically changed, so that the world began ‘to look old’. For example, Reverend Paisios (previously Oleg) Petrenko rejected the real presence of evolution in the universe19 and brought back the ‘omphalos hypothesis’ in his book Divine Metrics of the Universe: ‘Because 13 See Henry M. Morris, Сотворение и современный христианин [Creation and the Modern Christian] (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ‘Protestant’, 1993). 14 Timothy (Alfyorov), Две космогонии [Two Cosmogonies] (Moscow: Pilgrim, 1998). 15 Daniel Sysoev, Летопись начала. Библейская история и современная наука [The Chronicle of Origin: Biblical History and Modern Science](Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Sretenskogo Monastyria, 1999). 16 Konstantin Bufeev, Православное вероучение и теория эволюции [Orthodox Teaching and Evolution Theory] (St Petersburg: Obshchestvo sv. Vasiliia Velikogo, 2003). 17 Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose), Православный взгляд на эволюцию (письмо А. Каломиросу) [An Orthodox View on Evolution (Letter to A. Kalomiros)] (St Petersburg: Svetoslov, 1997). 18 Sergei V. Vert’yanov, Общая биология [General Biology] (Sergiev Posad: TSL, 2011), p. 192. 19 Oleg Petrenko, ‘Вселенная: творение или эволюция?’ [‘The Universe: Creation or Evolution?’], .

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animals and human beings were already created old, so the entire Universe with its galaxies, stars, planets, and all the rest was born in its final stage and had a visible old age.’20 From this point of view, we live in a world with an age of approximately six thousand to ten thousand years. Consequently, it is claimed that evolutionary biology has been constantly deceived by studying the fallen world ‘as if it has evolved naturally’. Reverend Paisios argued that we have to trust the Bible and the Church Fathers rather than scientific theories, as there is an obvious conflict between their respective positions pointing to a potential incompatibility. Even a model of theistic evolution is considered by him dangerous, since it essentially demands to transform and as a result to destroy not only particular theological doctrines, but also the core of Christian beliefs. Creationists believe that the evolutionary perspective on biological processes is only a theory or a hypothesis. They argue that any scientific consideration of the past is based on conclusions drawn from contemporary observations. This concerns preeminently historical geology and modern cosmology. However, conclusions of this kind have a high degree of probability, and it is better to speak about them as practically correct. The biological chemistry of the twentieth century has proved the fundamental resemblances on a molecular level between all living organisms from microorganisms up to human beings. DNA contains the hereditary information about all organisms. A code transferring this information from the basic sequence in the DNA through the RNA to amino-acid sequences in proteins is the same for all organisms. The molecular biology has presented other reliable confirmation of evolutionary processes due to the possibility of comparing amino-acid sequences in proteins with identical chemical functions (e.g., Cytochrome C) in various organisms. Attributes of our evolutionary past are thus inscribed in our genome. As Denis Alexander noted: ‘We are all walking genetic fossil museums, with some 45% of our DNA comprising transposable elements, including many copies of endogenous retroviruses, which have been integrated into our genomes as permanent passengers, providing irrefutable evidence for our common descent from the apes. Our genomes are littered with pseudogenes, genes used by our ancestors, but now fallen into disuse; for example our chromosome 7 encodes 1,150 genes, but also 941 pseudogenes, sitting there like molecular fossils of our evolutionary past.’21 Supporters of such a concept about the mutual relations between science and religion would like to remind us of the words of Augustine: Even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipse of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons […] and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now it is a disgraceful 20 Oleg Petrenko, Божественная метрика вселенной. Слово о пространстве и времени [Divine Metrics of the Universe: A Word about Space and Time] (Moscow: Palomnik, 2007), p. 345. 21 Denis Alexander, ‘Darwinian Evolution – The Really Hard Questions’,

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and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.22 The evolutionary paradigm has already transcended biology and has been accepted as a methodological basis by both natural and social sciences. It cannot so simply be written off. It is hard to explain this wider circulation and influence of the evolutionary paradigm in other fields of science exclusively by some alleged intrigues of atheist scientists intending to sabotage religion. We also have to remember the attempts to absolutely exclude the evolutionary doctrine from school programmes as unreasonable. This is what several Protestants in America23, the Minister of Education and Sport of Serbia in 2004 Ljiljana Cholić24, the student Maria Schreiber in 2006 in Russia,25 and several others have tried to do. Such attempts invoke negative reactions in the scientific world and do not promote a productive dialogue between religion and science at all. At the same time, it is necessary to note that such debates and conflicts are quite understandable because biology is a positive science that can be to the greatest degree penetrated by atheistic concepts. In many cases, philosophical NeoDarwinism is closely joined with scientific evolutionism. However, such disputes and debates cannot be an evidence for or against evolution; they are only an evidence of the unavailability of a given society to enable a serious and constructive dialogue between diverging theories and their promoters. Today, it is unreasonable from the geological point of view to teach the theory about a young history of the earth in public schools, exactly as it is to still teach the outdated flogiston theory as the alternative one in order to explain the processes of oxidation. For the sake of a qualitatively good scientific education, it is important to remember that any aversion against a creationism postulating a young Earth should not lead to a rejection of the traditional belief in creation. It is thus unfortunate that most of the parish libraries in Russia abound today in creationist books. The creationist approach is regularly taught in many Sunday schools, Orthodox high schools, theological faculties and seminaries. Consequently, a modest flow of adherents of a theistic evolution almost died out in Russia. In the second half of twentieth century, there were many Russian Orthodox theologians supporting theistic evolution; for example, Metropolitan John Wendland, Reverend Alexander Men’, Reverend Gleb Kaleda, and others. But today the situation is quite different. Solely a minority of Russian Orthodox theologians may assert publicly such a view. 22 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1, 19, 39 (trans. by John Hammond Taylor, St Augustine: Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. I, Series: Ancient Christian Writers, New York: Paulist Press, 1982, V. 41). 23 See, for example, the Scope’s Trial: John A. Moore, From Genesis to Genetics: The Case of Evolution and Creationism (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 147–66. 24 Liliana Cholich, Вызов современной эпохи - в каком образовании мы нуждаемся/Православное осмысление творения мира [The Challenge of the Modern Age – What Education do we Need? An Orthodox Understanding of the Creation of the World] (Moscow 2005), pp. 62–69. 25 Georgy S. Levit, Uwe Hoßfeld and Lennart Olsson, ‘Creationists Attack Secular Education in Russia’, Nature, 444 (16 November 2006), p. 265.

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Some years ago this approach had been accepted by Archdeacon Andrei Kuraev in his paper ‘Can an Orthodox Christian be an Evolutionist?’. He argued that the evolutionary explanation of life should be perceived as God’s chosen method of the creation of life from inorganic things towards more complex structures of life. He also wrote: ‘The Bible does not tell us how long it took for life to appear on earth. It insists that all living beings have their origin in the hands of the Creator […] What are the ways for God’s plan to realize His intentions – these questions are placed besides the Divine Revelation. Science has been especially engaged in such questions.’26 Kuraev agrees with many other Orthodox thinkers in understanding that we cannot automatically transfer our knowledge about the scientific laws of this world to the state of being before the Fall.27 But such a perspective does not play an important role in his interpretation as in the approaches of his opponents. As a consequence, this transformation is not supposed to have been so radical and to have changed most physical and biological laws. At the same time, this approach starts from the assumption that Adam and Eve were miraculously placed in some special place on earth without being subjected to pain and death. For Kuraev, death is here rather a theological notion, which means the departing of the soul from the body, a change that natural processes in the living world cannot describe.28 Another Orthodox thinker and biologist Alexei V. Goman’kov also agrees with this position.29 The creation of the first humans was not only a natural, but was at the same time a supernatural process. This is why Kuraev wrote: ‘The Bible does not tell us about the various chronological intervals in the process of creation and thus gives us some freedom to think about a time interval between the creation of the human body by God and its later ensoulment.’30 This approach presents some parallels with the position of the Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner who wrote: ‘The empirical appearances of outward shape and form and of biological mode of life may show such very gradual transitions between animal and man, that in this respect it may perhaps not be possible at all to succeed in indicating concretely and unmistakably, where the dividing line runs between animal and man.’31 From Kuraev’s point of view, the human being was created in the world of evolution, but had to grow in Eden: ‘The human being had to protect the world of his anthropogenesis.’32 The purpose of creating humans was to transform all earth to Eden, but Adam sinned and destroyed this plan of God. 26 Andrei Kuraev, Может ли православный быть эволюционистом? Той повеле, и создашася. Современные учёные о сотворении мира [Can an Orthodox Christian be an Evolutionist? For He spoke, and it came to be. Modern Scientists about the Creation of the World] (Moscow: Fond ‘Khristianskaia Zhizn’’, 1999), p. 52. 27 Kuraev, Может ли православный быть эволюционистом?, p. 61. 28 Kuraev, Может ли православный быть эволюционистом?, p. 71. 29 Alexei V. Goman’kov, Библия и природа. Эволюция, креационизм и христианское вероучение [The Bible and the Nature: Evolution, Creationism and Christian Teaching] (Moscow: Geos, 2014), p. 95. 30 Kuraev, Может ли православный быть эволюционистом?, p. 61. 31 Karl Rahner, Hominization: The Evolutionary Origin of Man as a Theological Problem (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), p. 106. 32 Kuraev, Может ли православный быть эволюционистом?, p. 76.

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The main reason that many Orthodox theologians reject theistic evolution is the necessity to state that scientific knowledge in general and evolutionary biology in particular demand from us a redefinition and, in some cases, a rejection of the traditional and accepted understanding of the Bible and of the Church Fathers. These critics insist that the potential consonance between the theory of evolution and Christian theology comes at a very high price. More specifically, it leads us to the following: 1. A rejection of the traditional Christian understanding of death and suffering in the world as a consequence of the Original Sin; 2. An impossibility to solve the problem of theodicy. This is because, if we assert that God created the living world through an evolutionary process, God also becomes the main cause of the living beings’ suffering. 3. A questioning of the historicity of Adam and, as a consequence, of the sinfulness of humankind. If Adam had an evolutionary origin, then when did he live and what relationships did he have with other hominids? How can we solve the problem of some inbreeding between Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons and other hominids? As Alexander Hramov wrote: ‘The problem is that the idea of creation by evolution […] undermines the fundamental antithesis between Adam and Christ, which lies at the center of Christian theology.’33 However, all of these problems can be solved through a ‘theistic evolutionary approach’, at least with some redefinition of traditional theological concepts, without undermining the roots of the Christian teaching about salvation. For example, in his book The Bible and the Nature the aforementioned Goman’kov has outlined an attempt to reconcile the biblical text with modern scientific data and thus provided a more consonant version of a theistic evolution than any creationist approach. Further, in his work about the problem of animal suffering, Ronald Osborn asserted that many difficult problems concerning a theistic evolution could be solved by reflecting on the idea of kenosis: The Creator God revealed in the kenosis of Christ is neither the remote Designer or Grand Engineer (deus otiosus) of Enlightenment deism, nor […] ‘Cosmic Tyrant’ of classical theism who utterly dominated animals not simply once but twice, first in act of forming them without allowing them to participate in their own making, and second in act of cursing them without granting them any understanding of their own suffering.34 The concept of kenosis supposes that God has been deeply involved and also has suffered in the process of creation, while pointing to the eschatological transfiguration of the world.

33 Alexander Hramov, ‘Теистическая эволюция и дарвинизм: от войны к миру’ [‘Theistic Evolution and Darwinism: From War to Peace’], Государство, религия, церковь в России и за рубежом [State, Religion, Church in Russia and Abroad], 4 (33) (2015), 84–109 (p. 102). 34 Ronald E. Osborn, Death before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014), p. 162.

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This theology of kenosis was also developed by many Western scientists and theologians, such as John F. Haught, John Polkinghorne and Jürgen Moltmann. For example, Haught remarks that the theological questioning of Darwin should not try to demonstrate that evolution is logically compatible with the concept of Divine Providence. More importantly, theology should be concerned with the problem of contingency in evolutionary processes. The presence of contingency in the entire universe means, first of all, that the latter is in a certain sense independent in its own existence; in other words, it is not just a toy in the hands of the God: ‘[…] the universe is grounded in divine self-giving love, as Christian faith, for example, maintains, at least some degree of indeterminacy in the world is just what one should expect.’35 If God thus loves the created universe, then this universe should possess at least some degree of spontaneity and autonomy. Evolutionary biology would completely agree with such a theological view on the universe. The autonomy of the world is evident in the sheer variety of unpredictable cases of spontaneity – including what we consider as contingency in the Darwinian frame of evolution. Without this uncertainty, the world becomes an appendage of God rather than something distinct from the Creator. Moreover, the appearance of human freedom would never be possible in a universe created by means of some magic manipulation, which does not allow an independent development of the cosmos. As Jürgen Moltmann wrote: ‘God acts in the history of nature and human beings through his patient and silent presence, by way of which he gives those he has created space to unfold, time to develop, and power for their own movement. We look in vain for God in the history of nature or in human history if what we are looking for are special divine interventions.’36 Such a theological rethinking of evolution and the biblical text do not demand the rejection of any doctrine from the core beliefs of Orthodox Christianity. At the same time, it provides us with a deeper scientific and theological understanding of the universe. Despite all this, many Orthodox theologians still argue that this attempt to overcome the problems between Christian theology and evolution is still quite radical. The main reason for this, according to Hramov, is that theistic evolution definitely demands the rejection of traditional beliefs. At the same time, Hramov claims that the model of theistic evolution was born in Western theological contexts and thus radically opposes Orthodox theological thinking.37 However, exactly the view of a theistic evolution has been deeply rooted within the Russian philosophical heritage. As mentioned above, Orthodox theologians support the idea of a huge difference between our world and the world before the Fall. It was the Russian religious thinker Evgenii N. Trubetskoy (1863–1920), who applied this idea to the science-religion dialogue from an Orthodox Christian point of view. He wrote:

35 John F. Haught, ‘Darwin and Contemporary Theology’, World Views: Environment, Culture, Religion, 11/1 (2007), 44–57 (p. 52). 36 Jürgen Moltmann, ‘God’s Kenosis in the Creation and Consummation of the World’, in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, ed. by John Polkinghorne (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), pp. 137–51 (p. 149). 37 Hramov, ‘Теистическая эволюция и дарвинизм’, p. 106.

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Collisions between science and Christianity are illusions […] because the Revelation and science […] tell us about different aspects of the world. All phases of the Revelation about the universe before the Fall have a relation to its specific condition, in which the entire constitution of the cosmos was completely different. There were other laws of nature, quite different from those, which we can discover by our scientific research. Any attempts to find in the Bible a cosmographical teaching about our planet or the solar system are as arbitrary as any cosmographical rejections of the Bible by scientists.’38 This view is based on the interpretation of Genesis 3. 21: ‘The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them’. As Reverend Oleg Mumrikov wrote: Without rejecting the literal meaning of this text, the Church Fathers and teachers indicate the deep symbolic and ontological sense of this passage. Dressed in garment skins after violating God’s commandment, the human being accepts the ‘nature of beasts’, his body becomes mortal and corruptible as the body of other living beings […]39 From this point of view, the moment of dressing in ‘garment skins’ is a key to understanding how we can reconcile a theological vision of humanity with relevant scientific theories. As palaeontologist and Orthodox thinker Hramov argued,40 we can compare these two theological approaches to evolution as follows: i) Theistic evolution approach: 1. Humans were initially created in the way we observe them today; 2. Humans, as we see them today, are a product of evolution; 3. Consequently, God created humans and all other organisms through evolution. ii) Theology of the ‘garment skins’ approach: 1. Originally humans were created as angel-like beings whereas their contemporary state is a result of the Original Sin; 2. Humans, as we see them today, are a product of evolution; 3. Therefore, evolution is a consequence of the Fall and has actually begun after it. In this respect, evolution does not bear any relationship to the creation of humans by God. Variants of the second approach in various forms are also shared by other Orthodox thinkers, such as Bishop Basil (Rodzianko), Reverend Sergiy Sokolov (Russian Orthodox Church Abroad), Philipp Sherrard, Panayiotis Nellas and Christopher Knight41. But there is a common argument in all of them, namely that the Original

38 Evgenii N. Trubetskoy, Смысл жизни [The Meaning of Life] (St Petersburg: Тipografiia t-va I. D. Sytina, 1918), p. 153. 39 Oleg A. Mumrikov, Концепции современного естествознания: христианско-апологетический аспект [Conceptions of Modern Science: Christian-Apologetical Aspects] (Moscow: Sergiev Posad, 22014), p. 468. 40 I cited the position of Alexander Hramov from a lecture at the St Tikhon University in Moscow. His book about this topic will published soon. 41 See, for example, Christopher C. Knight, ‘The Fallen Cosmos: An Aspect of Eastern Christian Thought and its Relevance to the Dialogue between Science and Theology’, Theology and Science, 6 (2008), 305–17.

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Sin did have an immediate effect upon the world and changed it radically. Thus, only after the Fall does the human being appear as a leader in the evolutionary chain. This approach has some advantages in comparison to creationism and theistic evolution. On the one hand, it gives us the possibility to accept the scientific explanation of the biological world, and on the other hand, it can go along well with the Orthodox Christian Tradition. But there are still various difficulties concerning this approach, which will be addressed in the following remarks. My main argument is that any model of interpretation and reconstruction of the relationship between evolution and Christian theology must be accepted only as a working hypothesis with a degree of probability, not as a doctrine of faith. First, an understanding of ‘garment skins’ as some kind of transformation of humans can be accepted in any of the proposed models. But this position becomes problematic if we accept that Adam was radically changed after the Fall. If Adam before the Fall belonged to quite a different world with other natural laws (e.g., another biology), then what exactly distinguishes the pre- and the post-lapsarian condition of Adam? Is there anything in our bodies that connects us with Adam before the Fall? What is it? If it is only the immortal soul, then Adam before the Fall must have been like some kind of a spirit, who fell upon the earth due to sin or guilt. This concept is similar to the position formulated by the famous Alexandrian theologian Origen42 in the early Church. Second, another difficulty, as Goman’kov noted, has to do with the concept of ‘alterism’ (Goman’kov’s term – alter mundi), which asks for a duplication of worlds. As a consequence, some Russian adherents of this hypothesis insist on the parallel existence of two different worlds at some period of time.43 Third, if evolution began only after the Fall, then where is the point in the evolutionary process in which we can locate Adam with his fallen condition? How could Adam bear the DNA elements of all previous organisms? What can we say about the process of hominization in evolutionary biology? Such questions can be answered by the model of theistic evolution, yet hardly by the model of ‘garment skins’. What kind of hominids can we assign as descendants of Adam? Only the Europeans with their parts of the genome of Neanderthals? Or the Africans without it? Here we have problems with both the above approaches. Fourth, another question arises in connection with the origins of the universe. What does a scientific explanation of the universe mean? Can science tell us something about the origin of the universe or not? If the answer to these questions is negative (e.g., due to the Big Bang, which is not an element of the creation, but an evidence of Fall and sin), how can we still talk about the harmony of creation? How can we find some consonance between science and theology if we accept a sharp division between these two worlds and conditions? Fifth, as in the case of a theistic evolution, this approach also poses the problem of theodicy. Why did God in the first place allow the Fall of Adam, which subsequently

42 Stefan Nordgaard, ‘Body, Sin, and Society in Origen of Alexandria’, Studia Theologica – Nordic Journal of Theology, 66 (2012), 20–40. 43 Goman’kov, Библия и природа, p. 18.

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caused various processes such as the Big Bang and evolution? The entire range of ‘evolutionary losses’ is then quite enormous, so that we cannot explain them only by reference to the Fall of Adam. Could God decrease the consequences of the Fall of Adam in relation to the other cosmos? The next questions also address the advocates of a theistic evolution: ‘Why did God choose the evolutionary method of creation?’, or ‘Why did God make such a huge universe?’, or ‘Why did God create dinosaurs?’. In general, the approach of the theology of ‘garment skins’ had tried to save the ‘traditional’ or ‘accepted’ understanding of biblical texts with a very high price, given that it also cannot solve real theological problems. As Goman’kov wrote: ‘[…] the historicity of the concept of altruism is very dynamic (and it is difficult to analyse it) […], but it cannot save this concept from serious objections.’44 Today the Christian scientist is thus confronted with an uneasy problem. On the one hand, being engaged in scientific activity, the scientist should be guided in the explanation of the world by exclusively natural causes and physical laws because any reference to a non-physical reality automatically transcends the bounds of science. On the other hand, the same scientist constantly feels the necessity to discover ‘the actions of God in the world’, which are supposed to be in harmony with the universe as a whole and lead to a glorification of the Creator.

Conclusion Despite the variety of approaches generated in twentieth-century theology concerning the question of evolution, it is important to keep the following in mind: Natural sciences, including various Darwinian paradigms, can be interpreted atheistically, theistically and agnostically, but they do not necessarily demand any of these interpretations. Darwinism can do both, i.e. completely agree with and completely contradict Christian belief. Both Darwinism and Christian theology have their own distinct structure, characteristics and objectives. On the one hand, Darwinism is a scientific theory, which is temporary by its status and open to variation, correction, development and even final rejection in the course of scientific development. It is thus possible to endorse the scientific knowledge of our time, which has, however, an element of relativity in itself. By looking namely at the history of science one can easily realize the many radical changes that took place in scientific theorizing and progress. On the other hand, Christian theology should not be necessarily changed on the basis of any scientific development, but it can provide us with a deeper comprehension of the evolutionary process, something that science alone cannot offer. The Christian theological interpretation may thus complement and develop the scientific account even further. Moreover, the theological perspective yields meaning to the present and a sense of direction to the future in a world that is still regarded as being in process and as the matrix of new developing forms of human life.

44 Goman’kov, Библия и природа, p. 179.

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The Orthodox Tradition and a Personal View on the Universe ‘from Within’ A Russian Orthodox Perspective

Introduction Modern science arose in Western Europe in the context of the Catholic and Protestant traditions, and only much later came into contact with the Orthodox tradition. Perhaps this is one reason why modern science was often perceived as something alien and even hostile to Orthodoxy.1 Yet, the basic problem that arises in the relationship between science and religion is the following: From ancient times philosophy and science have presented the world observed around us as a world made up of bodies. These bodies obey certain natural laws, which we – at least in principle – may comprehend. Furthermore, as it turns out, these laws are rather deterministic. That is, if we know the state of some system at a particular point in time, we can with certainty determine its state at any following point and also calculate this state in the past. The world is causally enclosed, and its description requires only the parameters that physics uses (distance, mass, charge, energy, etc.). The fullness of this language’s description means that proposing the existence of any ‘extra’ (in the sense of this language) non-material ‘beings’, such as the soul, angels and even God, is superfluous and must then be rejected. In this sense, religion is regarded simply as a prejudice prompted by its ignorant adherents; those who do not know physics. Thus, when a true Enlightenment finally illuminates all the world’s darkened corners with the light of science, religion will inevitably wither away as some relic of the past. This



1 Until now, the majority of bishops, priests and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church perceive science as something hostile. It is noteworthy that after his election to the Patriarchal throne in 2009, Patriarch Kirill established an Inter-Council Presence of the Russian Orthodox Church. The main goal of the Inter-Council Presence is to prepare church-wide documents for approval at the Bishop’s Council of the Russian Orthodox Church. One of the commissions of the Inter-Council Presence is the Theology Commission. In 2009, the Theology Commission was tasked with formulating a document on the Church's relationship to science. Although almost ten years have passed since then, this task has not been solved yet. The whole problem is obviously that there is no unity among the members of the Theology Commission on this issue. Kirill Kopeikin  St. Petersburg Theological Academy, St. Petersburg State University, Russia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 237–246. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116868

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view prevailed in the context of the overall secularization theory into the twentieth century. Many consider this position to be the proper one down to our days. Certainly, under this position a host of questions arise for which there is no definite answer, but these problems ‘are usually swept under the carpet’ in the hope that they will be resolved in the future. One of these problems concerns the ‘place’ of these laws of nature. Every professional working physicist is convinced that the laws of physics actually exist.2 But as soon as one asks the question ‘where do they reside?’, one runs into a dead end in the scientific picture of the world.

The Perspective ‘from Within’ and ‘from Outside’ in Theology and Science One basic problem is that in a world of bodies, there is no place for the psychical, to the extent that the psychical is itself not a bodily substance. Certainly, in distinction to the external world of things, which simply are there and exist independently of us ‘for themselves’, we know ourselves to be living, ceaseless streams, including streams of consciousness, feelings and emotions. In order to understand ‘things’ in the external world, we must at least ‘reach out’ to them, yet concerning the psychic realm we are contiguous. It is about a single being that we know unmediated. The problem of understanding the psychic is not understanding the ‘laws’ which govern it, but describing those experiences, which are our experiences. It is psychic subjectivity itself, which produces the principal theoretical and practical difficulties for its description and modelling. This gives rise to a paradoxical situation: The knowledge of the external ‘physical’ reality is received from an ‘internal’ psychic reality, which is missing from our image of the world. However, the study of the psychical is now moving into a prominent position. On a yearly basis, the number of laboratories specializing in the study of the brain grows, however the answer to the question of what consciousness is and how it is linked with the functioning of the brain is just as unsettled as it was before. Currently, the better funded, related projects are the American one called The BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies)3 and the European one, Human Brain Project.4 Yet, the question already raised by John Roger Searle, a living classic of the philosophy of consciousness and one of America’s most



2 Nobel laureate Vitaly Ginzburg (1916–2009) said that since there are laws of nature, there is no God. Ginzburg was the editor-in-chief of the most authoritative Russian journal Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk [Successes of Physical Sciences], and, perhaps, the most outstanding scientist who opposed the Church in recent years after the fall of the communist regime. See Vitaly Ginzburg, About Science, Myself, and Others, Part III (Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2005), pp. 389–523. 3 [All websites cited were accessed in February 2018]. 4 .

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influential modern philosophers, remains unanswered: If the brain is ‘atoms and a void’, then ‘how […] can atoms in the void represent anything?’.5 In my opinion, the problem of consciousness, despite its primacy, cannot be resolved outside of theological discourse, which is engaged with the personal view on the hard problem of consciousness. One of the greatest Russian theologians of the twentieth century, Reverend Pavel Florensky (1882–1937), a philosopher, mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, polymath and neomartyr, noted that the specificity of the Orthodox view of the world lies in the fact that this view is ‘from within’.6 In his essays ‘Reverse Perspective’7 and ‘Iconostasis’8, he compares the Orthodox ‘Eastern’ view of the world to the ‘reverse’ – or ‘inverse’ – perspective of the icon, contrasting it with the ‘Western’ view of the world as a picture ‘from outside’ in the direct perspective. This vision is due to the specificities of Orthodox theology. It is indeed theology which presents itself as a part of the humanities, as humanities in the real sense of the word. A questioning of human nature unreduced to biological or social existence, granting each person an absolute value, leads to the possibility of entering into a personal dialogue with the Creator.9 An unexpected aid in resolving the problems of consciousness comes from modern physics. In their ever-deepening study of the structure of the world’s bodies, scientists have observed with surprise that the fundamental particles, which make up these bodies, are in no way ‘bodies’ in the ordinary sense of the term. Experiments with elementary particles (in particular, the quantum delayed choice and quantum eraser experiments) illustrate that – in complete agreement with the predictions of quantum mechanics – even the very basic ability to ‘observe’ the behaviour of a system by measuring one or another of its parameters radically changes its behaviour, as if these particles ‘became aware’ that they were being observed. The observation of fundamental particles (very small ‘bodies’) recalls the behaviour of cognitive systems more than anything else. This has advanced to such an extent that today there are increasing attempts to employ quantum mechanics for the description of various socio-humanitarian processes.10 Classical physics enforced a conception of the transcendental consciousness of the ‘objective’ external world of ‘things’ located in ‘time and space’. The founder of one of

5 John Rogers Searle, Minds, Brains and Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 16. 6 Clemena Antonova, Space, Time, and Presence in the Icon: Seeing the World with the Eyes of God (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). 7 Pavel Florensky, ‘Reverse Perspective’, in Pavel Florensky, Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art, ed. by Nicoletta Misler (London: Reaktion Books 2006), pp. 197–272. 8 Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, trans. by Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1996). 9 Christos Yannaras, Person and Eros (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2008); Christos Yannaras, The Meaning of Reality: Essays on Existence and Communion, Eros and History (Los Angeles: Sebastian Press, 2011). 10 For example, Alexander Wendt, Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Emmanuel Haven and Andrei Yu. Khrennikov, Quantum Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

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the twentieth century’s most influential philosophical movements, Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), considered this an illusion so tightly ‘enmeshed’ with humankind that he called it ‘the natural condition of consciousness’. In fact, classical physics postulates the existence of absolute times and spaces, which are ‘receptacles’ of bodies. This space-time was postulated to be so absolute that Newton called it the ‘sense organ of God’ – sensorium Dei.11 Absolute space-time is actually ‘the inside’ of God, to which He has immediate access just as we have immediate access to our psychic realm. Indeed, the world described by the language of physics models its external reality in its internal, psychic ‘space’. Yet, a whole set of particularities of classical physics allows one to identify the internal model of reality with external, objective reality. Among these particularities are, firstly, the scale units employed in classical mechanics: distance, mass and force. They have become so commonplace as to gradually be considered self-evident and objectively existing ‘in and of themselves’. The observations of quantum mechanics have indicated that reality is not ‘objective’ in the traditional understanding of the term, but depends on our active awareness of it.12 This leads us to one conclusion: what constitutes the psychic nature of our external reality is not ‘objective’, but is psychical, or perhaps better, quasi-psychical, as is internal reality.13 We note here that this argument is aided by the fact that if classical physics, as has already been said, implicitly proposed ‘substantiality’ as is used in the theory of scale, then quantum mechanics in the constitution of external ‘objective’ reality uses an extremely strange mathematical construct, the wave function or state vector, which for nearly a hundred years has stubbornly resisted all attempts at a materialistic (‘substantial’) interpretation. Incidentally, Husserl developed his ‘phenomenological 11 Isaac Newton, Optice: Sive De Reflexionibus, Refractionibus, Inflexionibus & Coloribus Lucis. Libri Tres. (London 1706). 12 To my mind, the most significant attempt to uncover the correspondence between the psychic and physical world was the research undertaken in the middle of the twentieth century by one of the founders of quantum mechanics, the Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli (1900–58) and the founder of analytic psychology Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). The problematic raised by Jung and Pauli has lately been attracting the attention of numerous researchers. See, for example: Kalervo Vihtori Laurikainen, The Message of the Atoms: Essays on Wolfgang Pauli and the Unspeakable (Heidelberg: Springer 1997); Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932–1958, ed. by C. A. Meier and translated by David Roscoe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Suzanne Gieser, The Innermost Kernel: Depth Psychology and Quantum Physics (Heidelberg: Springer, 2004); David Lindorff, Pauli and Jung: The Meeting of Two Great Minds (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2004); Arthur I. Miller, Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung (New York: Norton, 2009); Harald Atmanspacher and Hans Primas, Recasting Reality: Wolfgang Pauli’s Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science (Heidelberg: Springer, 2009); Charles Paul Enz, No Time to be Brief: A Scientific Biography of Wolfgang Pauli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Arthur I. Miller, 137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession (New York: Norton, 2010); Kirill Kopeikin, ‘По следам Юнга и Паули в поисках соприкосновения физического и психического миров’ [‘In the Footsteps of Jung and Pauli in Search of a Contact Between the Physical and Mental Worlds’], in Известные и неизвестные открытия ХХ века [Known and Unknown Discoveries of the Twentieth Century] (St. Petersburg: Publishing House of the St. Petersburg State University, 2016, pp. 85–97. 13 Donald D. Hoffman, ‘Conscious Realism and the Mind-Body Problem’, Mind & Matter, 6 (2008), 87–121; Donald D. Hoffman and Chetan Prakash, ‘Objects of Consciousness’, Frontiers in Psychology, 17 June 2014, .

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reduction’ procedure that attempted to bridge ‘the natural condition of consciousness’ at the same time that quantum mechanics was being developed.14 The very nature of physical theories itself argues in favour of the ‘psychical’ aspect of all existence.15 Certainly physics, and quantum mechanics as well, describe (that is, model in psychic reality) the world with the assistance of mathematics. An unbiased view of the problem witnesses the fact that the mathematical universe as created by mathematicians in the reality of their own psyche is itself, in a certain sense, ‘psychical’. The mathematical (‘psychical’) model of the universe corresponds so deeply to the external world that one must question both the structure and the ontological nature of this correspondence. Modern science is implicitly based on the presumption that humans are created in the image and likeness of the Creator of the world, who is able to comprehend His creation.16 We come to an awareness of the world by shaping in our psyche a mathematical model of the external universe. It is thus logical to presume that the nature of the universe is just as psychical as is mathematics. It is remarkable that this is the view about the universe that we find in the Bible, namely in the context where modern science was initially formed, describing the world in the language of mathematics.17 Historically, it was in the context of the European intellectual tradition, rooted in the biblical worldview, that the concept about two divine Books was articulated: the Book of the World, and the Book of Revelation, between which there can be no contradiction, as they are the work of one and the same Author. If the world is a text, then the same methods of investigation can be applied to it, which are also applied to other semiotic systems. And it is precisely that humans were created ‘in the image and likeness of God’ and that the world was set into the heart of humans, which gives us hope to be able to read through the Book of the Creator and to grasp its divine intent. What can we say today about the Book of Revelation, based on the results of the investigation of the Book of Nature that Francis Bacon (1561–1626), one of the founding fathers of modern science, called ‘the key to the Bible’?18 Opening the Bible 14 Edmund Husserl published his work Logical Investigations (Logische Untersuchungen) in two volumes in 1900 and 1901, when Max Planck introduced the concept of a quantum. He also published Ideas for Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie) or Ideas I in 1913, when Niels Bohr created his first ‘naïve’ theory of the atom. 15 Kirill Kopeikin, ‘The Quantum Icon of Nature’, Studies in Science and Theology, 4 (1996), 104–11. 16 Alexey Burov and Lev Burov, ‘Genesis of a Pythagorean Universe’, in: Trick or Truth? The Mysterious Connection Between Physics and Mathematics (The Frontiers Collection), ed. by Anthony Aguirre, Brendan Foster and Zeeya Merali (Decatur, GA: Springer, 2016), pp. 157–70. 17 The thesis that this ‘Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics’, once pushed forward by Galileo Galilei (1564–1643), has been demonstrated: Mathematics has truly become the universal language in which nature is written. Moreover, Galileo effaced that when we learn the world with the help of mathematics, our knowledge of reliability is equal to the divine. Actually, it is because of this that Galileo had a conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. Science gives man the ability not only the grasp the fundamental beginnings of existence and the laws of the universe, but also to reconfigure this world. This implies, in a particular sense, that he usurps the function of the Creator, or at least that of the demiurge. 18 Francis Bacon, Instauratio Magna Scientiarium, De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarium, Liber I.

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to the Book of Genesis presents us with God’s creation of the world out of nothing though His very Word. In the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan Creed, God is called the Creator, Ποιητής, literally, the Poet of the Universe. If the world is a text, then where does it exist? If we at once logically consider all that is now known to us thanks to the study of the ‘elements’, the poiesis, of the Book of Nature, and also recall the theological context that lay at the conception of modern science, then we must arrive at an unambiguous (and at once rather bold) conclusion: ‘The World is the ψυχή of the Creator’, ‘for in Him (ἐν αὐτῷ) we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17. 28). The aforementioned John Searle reckons that today philosophy has been trapped by a false dichotomy: At once, the world is made up of objective particles (a view which Searle considers to be correct, but which in our view disagrees with quantum mechanics) and of consciousness possessing experience ‘in the first person’ (and this it does in certainty).19 At first glance, these theses contradict one another, but Searle argues that both are true (he calls this ‘biological naturalism’).20 To my mind, the dilemma is easily resolved, though, although it may shock the ‘natural condition’ of consciousness. If the nature of external reality is as psychic as the nature of internal reality, then this means reality has a ‘subjective’, ‘internal’ dimension of existence. This resembles our subjective reality, which cannot be reached by objective methods. The presumption of a quasi-psychic character to existence and an ‘internal’ dimension to all existing things inevitably requires making cardinal alterations to the principles behind the standard worldview, not only those at the foundation of classical physics but also at the foundation of all classical philosophy. From our perspective, this by no means requires abandoning ‘objective’ science. Rather, it entails an essential ‘broadening’ of science, its fulfilment through the inclusion of ‘subjectivity’. For this, natural science’s objective view on the universe ‘from the side’ must be fulfilled (without losing its objectivity) with the mutually fulfilling view ‘from within’. In the middle of the twentieth century, the Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner (1902–1995) – while accounting for the limits and prospects of the development of science – noted two extremely important disciplines, which establish a complementary view of the world: physics and psychology. Physics describes the external objective world, and psychology describes the subjective reality of the internal world. In the full picture of the universe, both these perspectives must be in concord. Wigner expressed the hope that in future ‘we may yet be able to unite physics and psychology into a deeper common discipline without overtaxing our mind’s capacity for abstraction’.21 In my opinion, this synthetic ‘duality’, this ‘stereoscopic’ outlook on the world can be obtained by means of a ‘fulfilment’ of formal (structured) physical theories

19 John R. Searle, Thinking about the Real World, ed. by Dirk Franken, Attila Karakus, and Jan G. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Ontos Verlag, 2010). 20 Jerry A. Fodor, ‘Searle on What Only Brains Can Do’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3 (1980), 217–19. 21 Eugene P. Wigner, ‘The Limits of Science’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 94 (1950), 422–27.

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with existentially experienced, semantically endowed contents.22 As modern science emerged as a means of researching the ‘syntax’ of the Creator’s Second Book, the Book of Nature, in a mutual exchange with the Bible, then we must mount an exact search for its semantic (semantic and pragmatic) interpretation, namely within the biblical context. Certainly, the interpretation of the syntax of the Book of Nature as a second Scripture of the Creator, a supplement to the Bible, is a hermeneutical task and consequently, one traditionally ascribed to theology. Addressing the biblical context, that in which modern science had initially emerged, allows the existentially received and semantically dynamic content to fill in mathematical structure and to develop a synthetic ‘two-dimensional’, meaning-bearing language, which enables an objective description of the ‘external’ physical world along with the subjective ‘internal’, psychical world. Indeed, from the perspective of the three so-called Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – the Bible represents its Revelation of the Creator, expressing to the world existence ‘from within’. Over centuries of practice, the spiritual function of the Bible’s symbolic language is suited to the archetypal (‘internal’) structure of the psyche like no other. Given that modern science first emerged in the biblical theological context, its hermeneutical semantic interpretation should also be made in the biblical context. If the Bible is the revelation of the Creator, then this means God reveals to us His own view about the universe. We should try to look at His point of view in order to understand Him. But is this possible? Amazingly, it is mathematics, used as the language of science, that gives us hope for such an opportunity. One can see a similarity between the creation of the mathematical universe and the creation of the world as described in the Bible. Just as God creates the world ex nihilo, a mathematician first creates an empty set and then out of it an entire mathematical universe. The process of the creation of mathematics we know from the ‘inside’. Its careful investigation permits the formal structure of mathematics to be fulfilled with existential content. The surprisingly exact correspondence of the ‘internal’ mathematical model of the world with external reality allows one to suggest that this personal existential content can also be extended to the entire universe. This fulfilment of the structure of the mathematical model of the world with a living, existential content allows it to be included organically into a theological outlook on the world. I would even venture to argue that today’s situation resembles the construction of a nuclear bomb. Science and theology are like two subcritical masses that need to unite in order to initiate a chain reaction. There was a time when science and theology (foremost in the theology of the West, both Catholic and ​Protestant) were closely interdependent and their reactions gave birth to modernity, as in a ‘nuclear reactor’. The resulting ‘explosion’ was so strong that it cast theology and science in completely different directions. Hence, today they undergo virtually no

22 Kirill Kopeikin, Что есть реальность? Размышляя над произведениями Эрвина Шрёдингера [What is Reality? Reflecting on the Works of Erwin Schrödinger] (St. Petersburg: Publishing House of the St. Petersburg State University, 2014).

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interaction. But since Orthodox theology was found at the time in isolation, it kept to itself a reserve of unspent energy. The particularities of Orthodox theology are that it proposes a particular discourse, a view ‘from within’, a perspective ‘in the first person’. Scientific discourse is an objective view from ‘the outside’, a view ‘in the third person’. The combination of these two views cannot but provide the ‘critical mass’ and release a new ‘nuclear reaction’, where a new and holistic approach to the world can be born – an approach that combines the objective and subjective views, perspectives from ‘outside’ and ‘inside’, in ‘the first’ and ‘the third persons’.

The Prospective for a Mutually Beneficial Cooperation Between Theology and Science Exactly this point may be used as a starting point for suggesting two possible areas of research, which are relevant to modern science. As is known, the EU’s Horizon 2020 program for research and innovation23 launched a search for technological projects that would offer the greatest future potential called the Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship.24 As a result, two principal research orientations were identified and two mega-projects were initiated:25 1) The Graphene Flagship,26 which is rather a technical project; and 2) The Human Brain Project.27 As is well known, this has had several serious problems and had to be re-designed.28 In my view, the difficulties that have arisen are in themselves quite revealing. I am convinced that describing physical reality demands a fundamentally new approach – a view ‘from the inside’ that is typical to theological discourses and that makes the involvement of theology unavoidable. The key to solving this problem is that the Bible may be seen not only, and not primarily, as a relation about external events, but instead as a narrative about the internal life and the structure of the human soul. As a result of many centuries of spiritual searching, the Bible’s symbolic language is best suited for describing the dynamics of the human interior world. biblical stories taken for cosmological theories or mythological histories are essentially projections of the psyche’s deep archetypal structures. The key to finding universal psychic structures is mathematics, which has truly incredible and seemingly mutually exclusive properties. Mathematics is at once ideal in the sense that there are no mathematical objects in nature, as they only exist in the human mind. Yet, mathematics is also universal in 23 . 24 . 25 . 26 . 27 . 28 .

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the sense that it is equally representable for all peoples irrespective of their ethnic or confessional affiliation. We do know of no other ideal universal constructs. In all likelihood, the nature of these (psychic) forces, which create mathematical reality, is one and the same for all people. This is the only way to explain that the very ‘subjective’ mathematics can be still demonstrated as universal and general. Finally, mathematics demonstrates, in the expression of Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, an ‘unreasonable effectiveness’ in the natural sciences.29 This has always amazed physicists (such as Albert Einstein, Paul Dirac, Eugene Wigner, Freeman Dyson), and mathematicians who have made significant contributions to physics (such as Felix Klein, David Hilbert, Hermann Minkowski, André Weil). There is a sense of archetypal parallelism between the creation of the world and the human fashioning of a mathematical universe, established in the image and likeness of the cosmic Creator. If we turn to an existential reading of the Bible’s six days of creation in the ‘mathematical’ context of the creation of mathematics by the word of the mathematician-creator ex nihilo, we then may extend the mathematical structure with an existentially experienced (‘psychically’) significant content and establish a new concept of the ‘immaterial’, symbolic, ‘two-dimensional’ language that permits the description of the physical for the objective ‘exterior’ world, as well as the subjective ‘interior’, psychic world. I would term such a project Mind T(h)e(chn)ology. Now the EU is launching another third project, namely the Quantum Technology Flagship.30 In an attempt not to fall behind America and China, it intends to start in 2018 an initiative in quantum technologies with a billion euros of financing.31 This could place Europe on the limit of a ‘second quantum revolution’ and lead to a radical transformation of the sciences, industry and society. Two years earlier, the Quantum Europe 2016 conference in Amsterdam32 adopted the Quantum Manifesto.33 This formulates a general strategy intended to set Europe at the avant-garde of the second quantum revolution. Bearing all the above in mind, I am convinced that the involvement of theology is unavoidable for the achievement of such goals. The fact is that quantum mechanics arose and developed not as a description of reality, but as a description of the results of observations. This recalls Ptolemy’s old geocentric system, perfectly explaining the observable movement of the planets from an earthly perspective, but not the physical reality. Achieving a breakthrough in quantum information technologies, establishing an effective means of quantum cryptography, and quantum computers knowing only quantum formalism is about the same as launching an artificial satellite from earth using the Ptolemaic system. I am certain that a ‘Copernican revolution’ in the world of sub-atomic particles will become possible by resorting to the biblical tradition that presents its view of the ‘interior’ of being. The surprisingly deep correspondence of 29 Eugene Wigner, ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’, Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, 13 (1960), 1–14. 30 . 31 . 32 . 33 .

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the mathematical (‘psychic’, ‘internal’) model of the universe to the outside world compels us to pose the question not only about the structural, but also about the ontological nature of this correspondence. Remembering the philosophical and theological context, in which modern European scientific investigation arose, it is logical to assume that the correspondence between the internal ‘psychic’ mathematical model and the external physical world is not limited to their structural likeness, but can be extended into the realm of ontology. This allows one to resolve the problem of the interpretation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics and move from a description of the results of observations to a description of reality itself. This approach allows us to include the psychic reality in the scientific picture of the world, as well, and to bring the second quantum revolution to bear, for indeed it is the psyche which is the true ‘habitat’ for (quantum) information. I would call such a project Quantum T(h)e(chn)ology. By way of concluding, it seems to me that both of these research projects I have proposed are quite able to fit into the contemporary scientific mainstream and can become a ‘point of growth’ for a renewed, fruitful interaction between theology and science. And this is undoubtedly even better (and much more crucial and significant) than a nuclear bomb! It seems that today we are very close to the moment when science and theology, which have hitherto been hostile to each other, will be able to enter into fruitful interaction. The key to this is mathematics. An interpretation of mathematics in the biblical context of creation from nothing will enable to produce a new conceptual ‘two-dimensional’ language that will permit the description of the physical for the objective ‘exterior’ world, as well as of the subjective ‘interior’, psychic world and the ‘inner’ world of quantum micro-objects.

Aleksandar Petrović and Aleksandra P. Stevanović

Theology in the Mirror The Dictionary of Technology as Revival of Orthodox Culture in Serbia/Yugoslavia and Re-ideation of Technology

Introduction The hand-drawn and handwritten Dictionary of Technology resembles a mediaeval manuscript. A closer look into its pages, however, makes it clear that it dates from a relatively recent past, and our second assumption is that we have in front of us a beautiful artefact of modern art or an example of postmodernism that references mediaeval Christian heritage. At that moment, hopefully, one is enticed to explore further and read the document leading to a further discovery: Anonymous authors of the Dictionary have invented their own symbolic language to develop a central thesis that technology aspires to become Technology and supplant theology. It is this theme that guided the authors of the Dictionary to choose the formalism of Orthodox Christian manuscripts as their mode of presentation and led them to work only by hand. In 1981, in former Yugoslavia when the Dictionary was first released, a communist political party was in power, cherishing modernism as its ‘tradition’ and relying on technology to usher in the bright new future. The Dictionary was labelled a subversive counter-culture artefact and its circulation was stemmed and suppressed. It took more than 30 years for the Dictionary to resurface in the contemporary Serbian public sphere. Many of the Dictionary’s minor ‘prophecies’, such as the dissolution of Yugoslavia, have been fulfilled in the meantime; the major ‘prophecy’, relating to the rise of technology, is daily becoming more persuasive. Technology is epistemologically close not only to science, but to theology as well. Likewise, technology has developed its entelechy by adopting a scientific method and by a genuine adaptation of theology. The entire artistic and philosophical formation of the Dictionary represents a consistent, not only theoretical, but also practical re-ideation of technology with the unexpected resurgence of Orthodoxy as a path to this understanding. This chapter postulates that the way in which the Dictionary utilized Orthodox Christian symbolism, independently from the Serbian Orthodox Aleksandar Petrović  University of Belgrade, Serbia Aleksandra P. Stevanović  University of Kragujevac, Serbia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 247–260. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116869

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Church establishment, provided a distant mirror in which we can observe technology for what it is without succumbing to its growing power.1

The History of the Dictionary of Technology The Dictionary of Technology was first published in Belgrade in May 1981 as a special edition of Vidici (Horizons), a University of Belgrade journal for social, cultural and political affairs.2 Almost four decades after its appearance, it might also be referred to as the Dictionary of Theology, or more precisely, the Dictionary of the Theology of Technology. It included 162 entries hand-written in calligraphy across twenty-eight large format (35 x 50 cm) sheets of paper and illuminated in the Orthodox mediaeval manner. Its publication occurred a year after the death of Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), president of Yugoslavia since the end of the Second World War (1945–80). That year was difficult for the incumbent political nomenclature3, because after many decades of social comfort it faced an uncertain future, given that the prevailing Marxist interpretation of history and the historical necessities were increasingly and critically reassessed in the country. The first response to the Dictionary came from the most important Serbian philosophical journal Theoria (Theory), which devoted a significant part of its editorial portion to the Dictionary.4 An avalanche of public responses followed,5 for the Serbian political elite at that time felt itself ideologically and technologically challenged by the Dictionary. At the beginning of 1982, a pamphlet entitled Analysis of the Ideological Orientation of the Dictionary of Technology was issued,6 pushing the Dictionary to the epicentre of political conflicts of the time and striving to prevent its circulation and public understanding. As an important political and ideological document, the Analysis was secretly prepared for half a year under the auspices of political forums. This publication involved a dozen of aspiring politicians and intellectuals of the time, many of whom subsequently achieved prominent careers.



1 The authors appreciate sincerely the thoughtful advice and the enlightening comments by Professor Tatjana Paunesku from Northwestern University in Chicago, which greatly enhanced this paper. 2 Some discussion about the history of the Dictionary is available in the following articles: Miloš Knežević, ‘Разјасница техно-ујдурми: Милословљење о Речнику технологије’ [‘Clarifying the Techno-Conspiracy: The Cognitive Mindedness of the Dictionary of Technology’], Filozofija i Društvo [Philosophy and Society], 26/1 (2015), 115–38; Aleksandar Petrović, ‘О Речнику технологије и тесању привида’ [‘About the Dictionary of Technology and the Reduction of Illusions’], Тхеориа [Theory], 58 (2015), 147–66. 3 It is customary to use this term to refer to the political leaders in countries with a single political party. 4 Particularly significant is the contribution by professor Slobodan Zunjić, who in the text ‘Објава и ауторитет’ [‘Revelation and Authority’] clearly recognizes the theological impulse found in the Dictionary. 5 More about the Dictionary of Technology may be found at [All websites cited were accessed in February 2018]. 6 The Analysis is discussed in Knežević (see footnote 2), and its text may be found at .

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This attack by the ruling regime led to condemnation of the Dictionary and its (unknown) authors by the mainstream media, which cried for indictments. Ultimately, the Dictionary shared the fate of numerous other works of history, science and culture that challenged the societies that begot them. Just as the Roman Senate used damnatio memoriae (condemnation of memory) as the most severe punishment for transgressions, so was the Dictionary erased from the memory of Yugoslavia and Serbia by the mighty hand of political power.7 Today, more than three decades later, after a long silence and despite the enforced oblivion, the Dictionary has begun to attract academic attention. No longer censored and no more distorted by politically clouded misinterpretations, the Dictionary of Technology provides insight into the historical-cultural policy of the 1980s, the minds of its independently thinking authors, and the overall Zeitgeist (‘spirit of time’) in Yugoslavia a decade before it ultimately crumbled. Three doctoral dissertations exploring aspects of the Dictionary have been defended in the recent years: one at the EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) in Paris in 2009,8 and two at the University of Belgrade in 2014 and 2016. In addition, a round table discussion entitled The Dictionary of Technology as Anti-Utopia was held at the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade on 23 December 2016,9 as well as a scientific conference The Dictionary of Technology – 33 Years Later, organized by the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade on 12 and 13 November 2014.10 During the First International SOW Conference in 2017 in Athens, the director of the Institute of Balkan Studies of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Alexandre Kostov, analysed the historical significance of the Dictionary.11 In January 2018, an extensive academic exhibition about the Dictionary of Technology was opened under the title The Hermetics of the Dictionary of Technology and the Yugoslav Utopia.12

7 The silence about the Dictionary was so complete, and its categorization so difficult, that it was not included into the list of politically incriminated cases in Yugoslavia, discussed in ‘Idejna borba u kulturi i umjetnosti’ [‘Clashes of Ideas in Culture and Art’], Naše teme, 7–8 (Zagreb 1984), 1093–1251. 8 Subsequently published. See Zoran Petrovic Pirocanac, La Serbie et l’ascension de Slobodan Milosevic (1982–1992). Anatomie d’une auto-dégradation (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011). 9 As a result of the academic discussion during this event, a volume with various contributions was issued in December 2017 titled Хептадекагон – Речник технологије као анти-утопија (pro et contra) [Heptadecagon – The Dictionary of Technology as Anti-Utopia (Pro et Contra)], edited by Dimitrije Vujadinović, and published by the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade. It includes more than ten diverse scientific papers exploring the historical significance and cultural relevance of the Dictionary of Technology. 10 Повратак из земље змајева – Речник технологије 33 године после [Return from the Land of Dragons – The Dictionary of Technology 33 Years Later], ed. by Dušan Bosković and Aleksandar Petrović (Belgrade: Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, 2015). 11 See . 12 The exhibition was held from 16 to 26 January 2018 at the Art Gallery ‘Prozor’ in Belgrade. It included a plethora of archival records, the first screening of the television documentary dedicated to the Dictionary, the presentation of the latest publication about the manuscript Heptadecagon – The Dictionary of Technology as Anti-Utopia (Pro et Contra), and more than five different panels and calligraphy workshops. It was opened by Professor Tatjana Paunesku from Northwestern University, Chicago.

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It explored the social and conceptual background of the Dictionary and its historical consequences. All of these events were dedicated to the examination of the cultural context and different aspects of the content of the Dictionary of Technology. They have shown that the events around the Dictionary and the script itself would be better reassessed by deeper analyses from a present-day vantage point and by exploring the ways in which the Dictionary anticipated our world today. Finally, many find in the Dictionary a choice example of Serbian old new age, a total art theory merge of premodernity and postmodernity13 and hope for a future investigation of this document, oriented both at its aesthetics and philosophy.

The Contemporary Political Context of the Dictionary of Technology The publication of the Dictionary of Technology in 1981 in Serbia, one of the six Republics of Yugoslavia at the time, was a big cultural and political surprise. It appeared in ‘soft’ socialism in Yugoslavia during which Christian religion was at the same time allowed and repressed for more than four decades. The Church and the Orthodox worship were tolerated, but the core idea of the political world was to suppress the Serbian heritage and the Church as its prevalent still living symbol. The cornerstone of the Yugoslav historical programme was the modernization of every aspect of personal and social life, where religious needs were seen as superfluous. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the Dictionary was persecuted due to its Orthodox Christian content and appearance. The problem was that the Dictionary rejected the concept of modernity as tired and obsolete by recognizing technology as the main driver of modernity. The Dictionary did not insomuch controvert the ideological beliefs of Yugoslav and Serbian society, as it considered technology the hidden, ground zero of utopian ideological expectations. It was in line with postmodernism and rejected the modernism of the Yugoslav officialdom. Moreover, the Dictionary did not differentiate between Yugoslav and Serbian communists, their intellectual counterparts in the USSR, or their ideological opponents and technology believers from the USA.14 The most successful figures of 1980 viewed technology as the 13 Хермeтика Речника технологије и застарела модерност утопије Југославије [The Hermetics of the Dictionary of Technology and the Obsolete Modernity of the Utopia of Yugoslavia], ed. by The Authors’ Collective Heptadecagon (Belgrade: Art Gallery ‘Window’, 2018). 14 The belief in technology, accompanied by a disregard for science, was, for example, at the core of Michurinist ‘biology’ (from Ivan V. Michurin, 1855–1935) and Lysenkoism (from Trofim D. Lysenko, 1898–1976), used by the Soviet government to engineer a perfect social utopia. The utter futility of such efforts was recognized by several Russian novelists, leading to wonderful parodies, such as Mikhail Bulgakov’s Fatal Eggs. Not surprisingly, Bulgakov was one of the great minds cited by the Dictionary. Interestingly, the technology craze in the USSR was condemned even by some communists – see, for instance, the novella The Sea of Youth by Andrei Platonov: . A similar technological optimism in the USA during the same period is notable in the works of psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner, who stated: ‘What is needed is

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grand promise of the world of the future. Instead of utopian prospects fuelled by technology, and despite its deceptively ‘pro-technology’ title, the Dictionary of Technology offered its readers Christian Orthodoxy as creative premodernity and the possible path to a better future, salvific or not. It made a claim that premodern sensibilities and postmodern concerns about the free reign of technology are closer to each other than to modernity. The Dictionary contrasted Orthodox Christianity with technology to debunk the myth of technological paradise. Formally, it used the mediaeval pre-technological manufacturing to assert the seriousness of this message. The accusations against the Dictionary by the pro-modernity fundamentalists, who wrote the Analysis, were directed against predictions of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the end of its ideology. The bitterness of these accusations was all the greater, as there was a deeply rooted idea in everyone’s mind that Yugoslavia was the peak of political technology, a perfect country that overcame historical dead-ends of both East and West. When Tito died, they considered themselves dedicated defenders of this legacy and Yugoslavia as its most precious gem. Blinded by its historic mission, the Serbian nomenclature was disinterested in the significance of Orthodox expressions in the Dictionary, as these appeared foreign and unrelated to contemporary events as to the recognized Orthodox dogmas. The theme of the Dictionary was technology; Orthodox motifs embedded in the document appeared more as an art form rather than an ideological stance. In the atheistic optimism of the early 1980s, the nomenclature believed in conquering history, and technology was considered as the only indisputable means to improve life. The goal of the Dictionary was to alert the reader about the falseness of such hopes and to raise awareness about the possible long-term perils of this trend: ‘недвосмислена програмска намера овог списа била је да подигне ниво јавне осетљивости спрам циља историјског хода технологије.’ (‘The unambiguous programme of this manuscript was to raise the level of public sensibility about the ultimate goal of the historical progression of technology.’)15. This message was never (openly) noted by the nomenclature; nevertheless, it rushed to suppress the Dictionary quickly and effectively and committed it to obscurity. The Dictionary of Technology is one of the first documents that predicted the abundance of technology in the postmodern world where all aspects and features of life are technologized. That prediction and the recognition that technology emerges from the cradle of modernity make the Dictionary worthy of the attention of philosophers and historians. Its bold use of Orthodox Christian motifs, its concise, dictionary-like form with the new symbology and the sheer beauty of the document make it an artistic, literary and Christian representation of all that postmodern theory and art can be. All in all, the Dictionary occupies a unique place in the spectrum of ideas and artefacts produced in the second half of the twentieth century.

a technology of human behavior.’ (B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, New York: Knopf, 1971, p. 24). Similarly, again, a dystopian technology satirical novel by Thomas M. Disch titled Camp concentration mentions the performance in Skinner’s boxes as an étalon of excellence and as a justification for technology-driven atrocities. 15 Bosković and Petrović, Повратак из земље змајева, pp. 16–17.

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The Form and the Features of the Dictionary of Technology Despite its relatively small size (twenty-eight large pages, corresponding to about fifty-six regular pages of text), the Dictionary resists an easy examination and classification.16 Its one hundred and sixty-two entries encompass philosophy, theology, science, literature, history and visual arts – all permeating each other. The existential experience and the humanistic heritage of the Age of Technology are critically examined, and projections about the future development of technological civilization are provided. Technology is seen as a language in its own right. It is this language that the Dictionary tried to define. Each term in the Dictionary is explained at five levels – etymology, meaning, interpretation, synonym, and a corresponding example from literature and the history of science and culture. Synonyms punctuate each word and enforce an iterative and circular reading of the entries. This is different from a standard progressum ad infinitum (‘endless progress’) reading approach, as it forces the reader to ponder the message and look for clues that unlock the meaning of other entries. Thus, each entry and the Dictionary as a whole resist linear cognitive schemes.17 The Dictionary is also a meta-discursive text, because it contains symbols, metaphors, allegories and newly invented words in addition to the regular text. Associations between the terms and their definitions are generally different from what would be expected. Thus, for example, the terms Analysis, History, Evolution, Positivism, and Certainty belong to the collection of terms that define scientific method and its limitations. Terms such as Technology, Mathematics, Mind, Machine, and Progress are defined in relation to the ideological and social background of technological developments. The entries Balkans, Leviathan, Virtue, and Mirror are used to give a geopolitical and ethical dimension to the problem of technological expansion. Finally, the entries Descartes, Darwin, Encyclopaedia, and Relativity are defined in the Dictionary under the realm of the history of science. These definitions are enriched by quotes from and reflections on the work of approximately one hundred and fifty distinguished international authors in the fields of philosophy of technology, history of science, philosophy and religion, literature, and anthropology. The Dictionary of Technology has a plethora of other unusual features, infrequent even in postmodern texts. The first is that it consists of concise codes that cannot be understood unless one apprehends the key concepts of the entire document and the circular relationships within and between the entries. The second is that the Dictionary challenges the Cartesian subjectivity as ego-centeredness and opposes to it a concept of Self. This is accomplished by concealing the names of the authors, as well as the name of the calligraphist–illuminator of the script. The identities of the 16 A bibliography of Serbian encyclopedias and lexicons by Dejan Vukićević (Библиографија Српских Енциклопедија и Лексикона, Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike, 2014) that encompassed the period between 1818 and 2013 did not include the Dictionary of Technology. 17 One also recognizes the power of ‘circular reading’ in liturgical practice. For example, as Gordon A. Lathrop (Holy Things. A Liturgical Theology, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1998, p. 33) argues: ‘Meaning occurs through structure, by one thing set next to another.’ In a similar fashion, the Dictionary also borrows concepts and structural solutions from church practice.

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Dictionary’s authors and that of the calligraphist were discussed only recently. In 1981, their identities were ingrained in the document itself rather than remaining dependent on their signatures, thus upsetting the usual copyright conventions. This idea has roots in a mediaeval Christian practice when the makers of manuscripts did not sign their work considering the work itself more important than the author’s ego. This practice was lost during the era of modernity, which advocated ego-originality and authorship. The need for the reader’s engagement (namely, the effort to understand the ‘code’ of the document), and the fact that the authors’ anonymity implied that their message is of primary importance, create an intimacy between them, resembling the one that bonded literate mediaeval Christians. In this way, postmodern culture meets premodernity, and the Dictionary reveals Orthodoxy as premodern and postmodern at the same time. The third surprise of the Dictionary is the way in which it rehabilitates the human hand. One of the first deeds of developing technologies is the replacement of hand by mechanical devices in the name of ‘precision’, ‘efficiency’, or both. This trend has gradually limited the power of the human being to be a creator and connect with his or her own self through the process of creation. In contrast, the Dictionary is handwritten.18 Different scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, Greek) harmonize in it freely, and so do its form and content, reminding us of the canon of mediaeval manuscript production. Thus, the Dictionary opposes modernity by the very mode of its manufacture, following the old-fashioned monastic technique of making scripts and books19 and rejecting mechanical typography. Therefore, the Dictionary is theoretically and practically aligned with a rejection and revision of technology. It restores the creative power of the premodern hand that was obviated by modern technological devices. Contrary to production technology that is narrowed to mechanical on and off gestures, hand writing and drawing imply coherence, collectedness, and the presence of mind: not

18 Bacon claimed that ‘the unassisted hand and the understanding left to itself possess but little power’ (see Lewis Mumford, Mit o mašini 2 (Pentagon moći) [The Myth of the Machine II (Pentagon of Power)], trans. by Nikica Petrak, Zagreb: Grafički zavod Hrvatske, 1986, p. 112). But in the tradition of diverse religions holy scripts are only written by hand because – contrary to the mechanical multiplication of books and writings discontinuing the thread of devotion and commitment – the impress of a hand revives each time the harmony of soul and body. Mechanically multiplied books, even though the text remains the same, are no longer sacred. The sacred texts require the readers’ present vigilance that calligraphy bestirs, whereаs printed books are rather customized to fast reading. 19 ‘Наслеђе антике уметности пренето је првенствено преко уметности књиге, која је сматрана помоћним делом литургије колико и оруђем сазнања. Она је саучествовала у служби божјој. Зато је требало да буде украшена као што су олтар, свете посуде или зидови светилишта. У том уметничком предмету васпостављала се веза, тешња но било где другде, између писане културе и слике.’ (‘The heritage of the antiquity of arts was primarily transmitted through the art of the book, which was considered the complementary part of the liturgy, as well as a tool of knowledge. It took part in the service of God. That is why it had to be decorated as altar, sacred vessels, or the walls of a sanctuary. In that art work, a connection was established, stronger than anywhere else, between the written and the image.’) (Georges Duby, Vreme katedrala: umetnost i društvo 980–1420 [The Age of the Cathedrals: Arts and Society 980–1420], trans. by Zoran Stojanović, Belgrade: Nolit, 1989, p. 33). Following a similar idea, the visual identity of the Dictionary is in continuous harmony with its inner essence, so that the strongest possible bond between form and content would be sustained.

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mimesis (‘imitation’), but poesis (‘creation, formation’). Mahatma Gandhi demonstrated this very convincingly noticing that personal and general liberation largely rest on the use of hand and handcrafts, which resist the uniformity of mechanical precision and raise the level of self-consciousness.20 The unique significance of the Dictionary lies in the fact that it is the only theoretical treatise in modern European culture, which is entirely handwritten and illuminated according to premodern mediaeval standards, as it recognizes and rejects technology as the main impetus of a self-sufficient modernity. The Dictionary is a two-coloured and calligraphed escape into the oasis of Serbian cultural legacy. Floral and pictorial decoration (the so-called illumination) and the use of Constitution Font21 align the Dictionary with the ancient books of the Orthodox Christian tradition. Certainly, the manufacture of the Dictionary did not signify the resurgence of that tradition, but a conceptual re-creation of an illuminated manuscript in a new, postmodern context. In other words, the choice to manufacture the Dictionary by calligraphy did not come from the desire to become adept in heritage practices, but from the need to assert selfhood, to explore the concept of Self, and to pursue the higher ethical aims of one’s own work in the contemporary world.

The Ideological Content of the Dictionary of Technology The Dictionary of Technology represents a peculiar and eccentric, yet effective revival of the suppressed potential of Orthodoxy, which in this key concept provides a fresh look at the relationship between the mechanics of production and the human spirit. ‘Речник је неочекивано дело чија логика не следи из духа времена у коме је настало већ својом симболиком упућује ка обрту кључних мисаоних и друштвених образаца’ (‘The Dictionary is a surprising piece of work, whose logics do not ensue from the spirit of the time it originated, but rather from its symbolism, which leads to a turnover of key thoughts and social patterns’)22. By the time the Dictionary had appeared, there was a substantial popular opposition to the ruling opinions within Yugoslavian socialism. This opposition was also largely ignored by those in power,

20 The principal idea of correlation, according to Gandhi, ‘is to impart the whole education of the body and the mind and the soul through the handicraft that is taught to the children. You have to draw out all that is in the child through teaching all the processes of the handicraft, and all your lessons in history, geography, arithmetic will be related to the craft’. Mahatma K. Gandhi, Basic Education (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1956), p. 10. 21 It is the Font by which the mediaeval Tsar Dušan’s Code was written. The king of Serbia (1331–45) and First Serbian Czar (1346–55), who promoted the Serbian Orthodox Church from an Archbishopric to a Patriarchate, Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, commonly known as Dušan the Mighty, enacted in 1349 the constitution of the Serbian Empire in a Code, one of the most important documents of mediaeval Serbia. The visual identity of the Dictionary of Technology largely resembles this script. 22 Aleksandra P. Stevanović, ‘Анти-утопијски Речник технологије у свету после истине’ [The AntiUtopian Dictionary of Technology in the World of Post-Truth], in Хептадекагон – Речник технологије као анти-утопија (pro et contra) [Heptadecagon – The Dictionary of Technology as Anti-Utopia (pro et contra)], Belgrade: Institute for European Studies, 2017], pp. 135–48 (p. 135).

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because the ideology of communism was narcissistically totalitarian and did not allow any dissent, regardless of the colour of the political spectrum. The real faith of communism, if it is possible to speak of something like this, was not Marxism, but in fact technology. In the 1980s, no critical opinion on technology from the perspective of Orthodoxy was imaginable, and it cannot be argued that this has changed much even thirty years later. In this way, the publication of the Dictionary and the challenge it posed to ‘faith in technology’ came as a complete surprise. The Dictionary of Technology is authentic as a secular dialogue between theology and technology and reveals their unexpected proximity. In an essay entitled ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, Martin Heidegger realized that ‘the essence of technology is by no means anything technological’.23 But he did not perceive that the marrow of technology is theology. However, the Dictionary states that technology is nothing but theology in the mirror: ‘The dream of a happy and harmonious techno-secular future is based on false hopes in infinite energy, infinite human potential, infinite human progress, and complete human good will.’24 Therefore, the genuine theological problem of today lies in the shift of technology from modernity, where it had solved practical problems, into a postmodern world, where quasi-practical technological developments begin to predominate. Today, technology seeks its place and reason for existence in our lives by trying to overtake the attributes of theology and solve transcendental riddles. ‘[…] We give too much importance to a technical instrument: The machine has become the primary source of magic and has given us the false feeling that we possess divine powers. The age that denied its symbols turned the machine itself into a universal symbol: God to be worshipped.’25 The seduction of technological innovations, the promises of technological prophets (who rarely think about ethical consequences), and the obsession with an eschatology of eternal life (on Earth) and salvation of the human being through a rescue from the natural environment – they all occupy the thoughts of humans today. They exult in a technological utopia, not much different than that of the communists pursuing utopian social structures. Even the word ‘revolution’ is again all around us, this time in the context of technology. Human fantasies are perennial and many believe that, given the power of technology, they would succeed in a Gilgamesh-like venture to find the plant of eternal life. Technology in a postmodern key is nothing but a faith in transformed and reduced projections of hopes that had originally been formulated by theology. Where theology talked about the kingdom of heaven and the necessity of waiting for it, technology suggests waiting for future, ‘perfectioned’ mechanical devices for absurd tasks. With the ideal of replacing God, Technology (with a capital T) strives to adapt theological concepts to itself in order to make its cult more palatable for minds used to millennial

23 Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. by William Lovitt (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 287–317 (p. 288). 24 Alan G. Padgett, ‘God Versus Technology? Science, Secularity, and the Theology of Technology’, Zygon, 40 (2005), 577–84 (p. 582). 25 Lewis Mumford, Art and Technics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), p. 138.

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theology. In cloud information technology, we hear, the information of the entire world is somewhere in the ‘cloud’. While the lay public does not know where this cloud is or how to actuate it, it does believe in its existence and the ability to appeal to it in the hour of need. Postmodern information technologists are dedicated to a facilitation of exchange between people and the virtual world of information in the ‘cloud’. This implicit overtaking of the role of priests, who connect the below and the above and proclaim (most often trivial) truths, conveys a metamorphosed theology. It is precisely this seeking of an alliance with theology that differentiates technology from science, which normally exhibits no such tendencies. Science is defined by its method, unchanged since the times of Galileo, Bacon, and Descartes, who made seminal contributions to it. In contrast to technology, the scientific method is not perpetually perfectioned and does not allow deviation, regardless of the changed historical circumstances. Although they might be considered complementary, scientific method and technological process exist in parallel, and their crossing is sporadic and unpredictable. For much of human history, technology had nothing to do with science. Most of our most significant inventions are pure tools, with no scientific method behind them. Wheels and wells, cranks and mills and gears and ships’ masts, clocks and rudders and crop rotation – all have been crucial to human and economic development, and none historically had any connection with what we think of today as science. Some of the most important things we use every day were invented long before the adoption of the scientific method […] Soap prevented more deaths than penicillin. That is technology, not science.26 Even at the time of the complete predominance of the scientific method, namely in the nineteenth century, the most significant innovations rarely came through science. Nikola Tesla’s invention of the rotating magnetic field and alternating current, the greatest technological breakthrough at the end of nineteenth century, came out not from an implementation of scientific method, but from Tesla’s enlightened technological interpretation of Roger Boscovich’s Curve of Force and Goethe’s Faust. Tesla’s breakthrough was not a new contrivance, but ‘only’ a re-ideation or an analogous translation of natural processes into technological ones.27

26 John Lanchester, ‘How Civilization Started’, The New Yorker, 18 September 2017, p. 22 27 ‘One afternoon, which is ever present in my recollection, I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the City Park and reciting poetry. At that age, I knew entire books by heart, word for word. One of these was Goethe's Faust. The sun was just setting and reminded me of the glorious passage, “Sie rückt und weicht, der Tag ist überlebt, Dort eilt sie hin und fordert neues Leben. O, dass kein Flügel mich vom Boden hebt, Ihr nach und immer nach zu streben! Ein schöner Traum, indessen sie entweicht, Ach, zu des Geistes Flügeln wird so leicht Kein körperlicher Flügel sich gesellen!” (“The glow retreats, done is the day of toil; it yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring; Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil.”) As I uttered these inspiring words, the idea came like a flash of lightening and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand, the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and my companion understood them

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Technology relies, thus, on pre-existing science, but in its aspirations, it is completely autonomous. It continuously changes and improves things. Contrary to science that is oriented to itself and its method, technology is expected to be focused on the practical contributions to human lives according to modernity. Yet, that is no longer the case. The final aim of postmodern technology is to cross all boundaries and achieve transcendence. According to the French philosophers of the eighteenth century, technology did not hesitate to try to ‘overthrow God from the throne and be divine itself ’.28 Here, and not in the scientific method itself, is where the Dictionary of Technology discerns the main problem. The Dictionary deems that technology has severed itself from science during the era of modernity and, in the postmodern era, became indifferent towards any content and quality that could not be mirrored and transformed into quantity and pure form: ‘Самим тим што је пуна могућности, технологија је само празна форма, то јест, као најформалнија логика није кадра да одреди садржај живота.’ (‘By the very fact that it is full of possibilities, technology is but an empty form; that is, as the most formal logic, it is not able to determine the content of life.’)29 Such a crucial question of the final cause of technology may be truly solved solely on the grounds of theology, which the Dictionary of Technology has recognized. It is necessary, however, to distinguish the theology of the Dictionary from contemporary postmodern theology. A socially active church often subordinates and adapts itself to a given place, time, ruling ideology or order and secular considerations. The fundamental difference between postmodern theology and the theology of the Dictionary of Technology is that the latter did not have to change or adapt itself. There was neither a historical shift nor an ‘adaptation’ of Christianity exacted by the authors of the Dictionary. In this sense, all theologies today are ‘postmodern’, since they have a feeling, more or less hidden, of guiltiness towards modernity and a need to adapt themselves to a postmodern apotheosis of technology. In order to do so, postmodern theology has dispensed with those qualities that are of no interest to technology. This is why the postmodern theology is so much burdened by denial and disbelief in truth, the foundations of knowledge, and principles. This change inevitably makes the theology dependent on society and vulnerable to all future social trends. Postmodern theology is hence marked by ‘a predilection for the plural, the multiple, valorization of everything that had been suppressed by earlier systematicity, everything that had been left out or relegated to the margins’.30

perfectly. The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone, so much so that I told him: “See my motor here; watch me reverse it.”’ (Nikola Tesla, My Inventions and Other Writings, New York: Penguin Books, 2011, p. 37). 28 Karl Heim, ‘Christian Faith and the Growing Power of Secularism’, in Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, ed. by Walter Leibrecht (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), pp. 181–95 (p. 188). 29 José Ortega y Gasset, ‘Човек технолог’ [Man the Technician], in Технологија [Technology], 5–6 (1980), 25–35 (p. 33). 30 Robert Stam, Film Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 299.

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In that sense, postmodernism opens the door to ‘messianism’,31 the arrival of the new and newer, of something unseen and different. Religion is an integral part of postmodernity (more than it was of modernity), but only as long as it is adaptable and ready to adopt everything it is presented with. This type of religion is opening the door to pluralism reminiscent of ancient Roman temples, where the statues of all gods that Romans had encountered in their conquered lands were arrayed. Such an openness is deconstruction (one of the principles of postmodernism) rather than theology, because the religion of postmodernism reflects its environment. Going this way, postmodern religion may soon adore the faces of artificial intelligence and transgenic and technological post-human ‘superior’ forms.

The Innermost Content of the Dictionary of Technology and the Concept of Selfhood The theology of the Dictionary is not burdened by concerns of a postmodern theology, for it is not dogmatic and does not deal with adaptations. The Dictionary is arrayed in the Orthodox mediaeval form; however, it does not discuss theological, but technological matters. That prevents it from being accepted as a ‘real’ theology. On the other hand, the Dictionary used both the concepts and the formalism of Orthodoxy as a ‘tool’ and brought it unchanged closer to the centre of contemporary culture. The Dictionary also represents an implicit critique of the ideology of modernist self-sufficiency. The Dictionary of Technology is at the same time a premodern and postmodern artefact. It has a postmodern layout, but it uses the premodern Christian Orthodox legacy in accomplishing its task. It is distinct in its form (illuminations, graphics, handwriting, non-utilitarian format32, Cyrillic and Greek script) and its content (in complex, concise, prophetic, and sometimes Heraclitan elliptic terms). These terms follow the mediaeval Orthodox and Neoplatonic thought and allow

31 The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. by Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 20. 32 The format of the manuscript is non-practical, since it is slightly larger than the one of a then major newspaper format. ‘Не мање важан јесте и формат списа, који је за нијансу већи од тада највећег новинског формата, као и папир који се користи за прављење џакова, на коме је цео број одштампан. Дакле, читава уметничка и техничка реализација Речника сугерише (дуго) вечност тог производа и намеру аутора да спис и физички траје у времену. Несумњива је, дакле, у самој изради и физичком изгледу Речника референца на средњовековне рукописе, попут бестијаријума, Физиолога и слично, али и на друге духовне списе као што су јеванђеља (пр. Мирослављево, Вуканово).’ [‘Not less important is the format of the script, which is slightly larger than the one of the biggest newspaper formats, as well as the paper which is used for making sacks, on which the entire issue is published. Hence, the entire artistic and technical realization of the Dictionary suggests longevity and the authors’ intention that its script also physically lasts in time. It is therefore unquestionable in the very creation and physical appearance of the Dictionary that there is reference to mediaeval manuscripts such as the Bestiary, the Physiology and the like, but also to other religious scripts such as the Gospels (for instance, Miroslav’s, Vukan’s).’]. Bosković and Petrović, Повратак из земље змајева, p. 132.

T HEOLO GY IN T H E M IRROR :T H E DI CT I ON ARY OF T ECHN OLOGY

one to rethink the hermeneutics of technology in passages from the Gospels and the Old Testament. The entire content of the Dictionary is thus directed towards a genuine understanding of technology. However, the central concept through which technology is perceived in the Dictionary is not essentially dogmatic. The Dictionary defines Selfhood as something that amalgamates premodern and postmodern contents and overcomes the hiatus between freedom and necessity. Selfhood suggests that the Dictionary is autonomous with regard to historical and political circumstances. Furthermore, it illuminates all other terms and the synonyms in the text, in which the intersection of the meaning of technology can be perceived. Selfhood is the entity that suggests freedom and fosters connections in a world of heterogeneity, disparateness, fragmentation, individualization, a welter of plurality, virtuality, and final alienation. It demands the justification of values and the quality in the context of technological processes and quantities. ‘Без личности, технологија се делатно остварује као универзални посредник, анализа личности и живота, сваке чврстине за постојање, као лагано клизање у ништа, као стварање наспрамног света, огледала које је исто (истинито), али није живо.’ (‘Without Selfhood technology is operatively actualized as an universal mediator, the analysis of Selfhood and life, every firmness for existence, as a slow sliding into nothing, as the creation of the mimetical world, of the mirror that is the same [truthful], but is not alive.’)33 That is why the Dictionary believes that Selfhood is and must be the guardian against technology; an agent that prevents technological developments that are not motivated by human values and whose level of uncertainty grows with each technological gadget shaping the consciousness of human beings more than they may realize it. Selfhood is the quintessence of the Dictionary; it is different and opposed to the self-centeredness of ego cogito (‘I think; therefore, I am’) as the idol of modernity. God is the essence in three hypostases, and thereby the secret of Christianity is Selfhood (hypostasis), not the individual ego. Jesus Christ appears as a perfect divine-human being, that is, Selfhood that in its responsibility unites what is separated. He is the hypostatic oneness of the divine and the human. By this concept, and through the treatment of the terms Apocalypse, Faith, Will, Virtue, Acting, and Soul, the Dictionary of Technology contemplates technology to be the actual form of perennial eschatologies. These terms reflect the experience of Orthodox Christianity and are well posited in the frame of the comprehension of the contemporary forms of (postmodern, technology-caused) crisis. Finally, the conceptual use of Orthodoxy for the creation of the Dictionary is very significant. This was the first time Orthodoxy (in the Yugoslavia of the 1980s) appeared in the public sphere as a desired and active agent rather than as an instance of a conquered non-modernity in the time of modernism.

33 Речник технологије, бр. 1–2 (Београд: Видици, 1981) [Dictionary of Technology], nb. 1–2 (Belgrade: Vidici, 1981), p. 24.

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Conclusions The fate of the Dictionary of Technology and its political persecution clearly outline that for contemporary society technology is not just a practical know-how, but a perennial algorithm that determines basic social relations. The question of technology is a taboo rarely reconsidered. Instead of looking at the essence of the problem, those who would solve the problem of technology often search for ‘new technologies’ that could resolve the troubles made by ancien régime (‘old, obsolete regime’) technologies. The Dictionary uses a different approach and defines technology itself as a problem: ‘критика подавања светом привиду, побуна против преварне технологије која је својим “револуцијама” почела једну по једну да потискује друштвене и личне слободе и преузима сву власт да би опсенама оковала и окончала живот.’ (‘The critique of the submission to the holy illusion, the rebellion against the deceptive technology, which has by its “revolutions” started to suppress one by one social and personal freedoms and take over all the dominance so as to shackle and terminate life by its phantasms.’)34 The relationship between religion and technology that has taken the dominance over science is always political, that is why the reaction to the Dictionary was basically political. The Dictionary of Technology had to be forgotten, so that technology, as a theological compromise between human limitations and their aspirations towards salvation on earth, would continue to grow unopposed. The appearance of the Dictionary of Technology was one of the loud critical statements about technology and its posthuman outcomes. In today’s world, losses are great – living species, cultures and languages are disappearing fast. The Dictionary of Technology gave an early warning and a prophetic alarm about these realities more than thirty-five years ago. It is possible that the Dictionary may be used as the clavis aurea (golden key) for the door of Orthodoxy; namely, hoping to reawaken a healthy resistance to the ideology of modernism leading to postmodernism fuelled by a Whiggish ideology about an endless progress and the expansion of technology. It is impossible not to remember Walter Benjamin’s words that ‘there is no document of civilization which is not at the same moment a document of barbarism’.35 The same holds true for the Dictionary. It represented the resistance of the analogue culture of the hand to the era of digitalization and technologization; a revival of Orthodoxy, not only in theory, but also in practice; it exemplified religion (Lat. religo – to connect) by a cyclic egregore of synonyms. The thought and the intuition of the Dictionary endure even after more than three decades of enforced obscurity. In that sense, the Dictionary is not only a unique postmodern theoretical manuscript, handcrafted, coded, fragmented and absent-authored, but also a genuine theology of technology that endeavours to summarize the secular experience of technology as a paradigm of modernity.

34 Petrović, ‘О Речнику технологије и тесању привида’, p. 154. 35 Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York: Shocken, 1969), pp. 253–64 (p. 256).

Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu

Orthodox Christian Physicians and Scholars in the Ottoman Court

Introduction The Orthodox Christians were the second biggest population of the multireligious and multi- ethnic Ottoman Empire. Since its emergence as a small principality at the north-west of Anatolia at the turn of the fourteenth century and its gradual expansion into the south-east of Europe and the other parts of Anatolia, the Levant and North Africa, it incorporated Greek Orthodox, Arab Orthodox, Gregorian Armenians, Syrians, Chaldeans, Jacobites, Nestorians and Egyptian Copts, and they all became part of the Ottoman world. The intercultural and scholarly interactions among the integral parts of this vast mosaic of Ottoman population, among Muslims and non-Muslims, are areas of research and study that have been almost undiscovered with exception of a few references to religious polemics at certain conjunctions. Therefore, the scholarly exchanges and interactions among different religious and ethnic groups constitute a new area of research and investigation that needs to be explored. Our knowledge today about scientific activities and scholars of the six-century-long Ottoman history is much better that it was three decades ago thanks to the publication of the 18 volumes of the History of Ottoman Scientific Literature [Osmanlı Bilim Literatürü Tarihi] edited by E. İhsanoğlu.1 These volumes have showed us the 1 The volumes of the History of Ottoman Scientific Literature (in Turkish with Arabic and English explanations), published by IRCICA between 1997 and 2011, were as follows: History of Ottoman Astronomy Literature - OALT (1997, 2 vols) History of Ottoman Mathematics Literature - OMLT (1999, 2 vols) History of Ottoman Geography Literature - OCLT (2000, 2 vols) History of Ottoman Music Literature - OMULT (2003, 1 vol.) History of Ottoman Military Literature - OASLT (2004, 2 vols) History of Ottoman Natural and Applied Sciences Literature - OTTBLT (2006, 2 vols) History of Ottoman Medical Sciences Literature - OTIBLT (2009, 4 vols) History of Ottoman Literature Supplements I: History of Ottoman Astrology Literature & History of Ottoman Astronomy Literature OASTLT-ZEYL I (2011, 1 vol.)

Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu  Turkish Society for History of Science, Istanbul, Turkey Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 261–271. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116870

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existence of scholars from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, including Greek Orthodox, and their contributions to the Ottoman science. Yet, the examples we will highlight in this paper clearly indicate the need for more concerted efforts to unearth more scientific literature in languages other than Turkish and Arabic ones and to conduct more studies that are detailed. In light of what we have at hand, we can surmise the following indications of scientific exchange among Greek Orthodox scholars and their Muslim counterparts and official patrons during the Ottoman era: The first phase – i.e. the classic period when both Muslim and Greek Orthodox Ottoman scholars share the same classic traditions of Islamic science and classic ancient Greek legacy; the second phase – when early contacts start with the rising modern science; and the third phase – with the prevalence of modern science and the integration of Greek citizens in Ottoman life after the proclamation of Tanzimat (1839). The features of these contacts and exchanges demonstrate respective particularities according to the epochs. These three phases are certainly intertwined, and each phase could consist of different epochs.

The First Phase This part will present some examples related to cases that can set the general parameters for future studies, which need to be more detailed and more comprehensive through a wide network of cooperation. The first example that we are aware of is the case of the Byzantine physician Taronites, who was in the service of the second Ottoman monarch Orhan Ghazi (r. 1323/4–62). Orhan’s wife Nilüfer Hatun (c. 1283–c. 1383) was a daughter of a Byzantine ruler (tekfur) of Bilecik and was known for her wisdom. We are aware of the existence of Taronites in the court of Orhan because of his involvement with Gregorios Palamas (b. 1296–d. 1360), the Metropolitan of Thessaloniki, who became captive in the hands of Ottomans in 1354. Palamas wrote a letter to his people in Thessaloniki telling them about his captivity adventure and his discussion with Ottoman ulema on religious matters. It was the Greek physician of Orhan, Bey Taronites, who recorded the letter and reported the polemic discussion.2 This first discussion between an Orthodox Greek and a Muslim Ottoman scholar and other similar polemic literature had attracted the attention of the Ottomanists

History of Ottoman Literature Supplements II: (Mathematic, Geography, Music, Military, Applied Sciences, Medicine) and Ottoman Mavzu’at al-Ulum Literature OASTLT-ZEYL II (2011, 1 vol.) Cumulative Index (2011, 1 vol.). Recently an overview and analysis of these eighteen volumes appeared in two volumes: Osmanlı Bilim Mirası [The Ottoman Scientific Heritage], published by Yapı Kredi Yayınları, İstanbul, 2017. 2 The text of this report was first published by Maximilian Treu in 1889 in the Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστορικῆς καὶ Ἐθνολογικῆς Ἑταιρείας Ἑλλάδος [Bulletin of the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece]. For a new English translation and about the subject, see Daniel J. Sahas, ‘Captivity and Dialogue: Gregory Palamas (1296–1360) and the Muslims’, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 25 (1980), 409–36.

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considerably. However, as it is clear from the previous example and more clearly from the other example from the seventeenth century, which will be discussed below, there is a need to revisit the literature of Islamic-Christian polemics for the benefit of other historical issues.3 It is plausible to suggest that Ottomans, who were in need of well-trained professionals in the early stage of founding their state and building and developing their own institutions, had recourse to Greek physicians and scholars. Meanwhile, in medicine, Ottomans were mainly making use of physicians who were educated and trained in well-advanced parts of Selcukide Anatolia and Memlukide Egypt. Those trained in the al-Mansuri Bimaristan in Cairo had a special reputation among Ottoman physicians. Therefore, the existence of Taronites in the court of Orhan Bey could not be an exceptional case because of his wife of Greek origin. As the Ottomans started to have a sort of contact with Byzantine scholars, there were already ongoing contacts between Byzantine and Muslim scholars, and there was interest of Byzantine scholars in scientific texts used by their Muslim counterparts. As early as the eighth century, there was interest of Greek scholars in the newly developed astronomy in the Muslim world. Efthymios Nicolaidis in his detailed survey explains the nature of the contacts between Greek Orthodox and Muslim scholars and refers to the translation and adaptation of many Arabic texts to Greek. He considers different examples and categorizes the history of this relationship in two epochs, namely the eighth to the twelfth and thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. He concludes his study by stating, ‘it is not seen that there has been importation of new sources of Islamic astronomy in Byzantium in the second half of fourteenth century until the fall of Constantinople’.4 In the context of these efforts, we should highlight the activities of the members of the two schools founded in Trebizond and Constantinople in the fourteenth century where significant transmission of the latest scientific results from the Islamic world to Europe was realized through translations from Arabic to Greek.5 In this milieu, we observe other scientific activities in different directions, which carried importance for the history of science and the exchange of scientific knowledge between four spheres namely, ancient Greek, Islam, Byzantine and Europe. In this context, the contributions of Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1335–1415) and his disciple Jacobus Angelos (c. 1360–c. 1410) need to be highlighted. These two Byzantine scholars came to Rome from Constantinople for a rather political reason; to solicit the Emperor’s support against the Ottomans, who reached the Dardanelles and were







3 Halil İnalcık, Osmanlı Tarihinde İslamiyet ve Devlet [Islam and State in Ottoman History] (İstanbul: İş Bankası Publication, 2016), pp. 155–64. See also Spyros Vryonis Jr, ‘Religious Polemic’, in Spyros Vryonis Jr, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 421–36. 4 Efthymios Nicolaidis, ‘La Trasmissione dell’Astronomia Araba nel Mondo Bizantino’, Storia della Scienza, 2002, [accessed June 2018]. 5 Fuad Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Vol. vi. Astronomie (Leiden: Brill, 1978), pp. 56–57.

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threatening the Byzantine Empire. They also aimed to persuade the Emperor to permit Greek professors to teach in Rome.6 Copies of their translation of Ptolemy’s Geography into Latin in 1406 were rapidly disseminated in Europe, and it was first printed in Bologna in 1477.7 Sultan Mehmed II came into contact with the members of this milieu after the conquest of Istanbul in 1453 and particularly with those in Trebizond in 1461. He himself was a learned young monarch acquainted with Greek, Latin and Slavic languages, in addition to his knowledge of Turkish, Arabic and Persian, a poet, and a patron of arts, science and scholarship.8 He took interest in philosophy, religious matters (both Islam and Christianity), and scientific issues. He gathered in his court Muslim as well as European and Byzantine scholars.9 Among the Byzantine scholars who voluntarily joined his retinue in Trebizond were Georgios Amirutzes (1400–75), the Pontic Greek, Renaissance scholar, philosopher and civil servant, and his son Mehmed, who adopted Islam, learned Arabic and joined his father in the service of the Sultan. It is reported that they translated the Bible into Arabic upon the instruction of the Sultan, but no copies survived of this translation. However, among the diversified activities of the Byzantine father and son, the translation of Ptolemy’s Geography book, which was commissioned by the Sultan, is worth special attention. First, they completed a large copy of Ptolemy’s map in Arabic and Greek, which is lost. The translation was accomplished with the son transcribing the Arabic text and the father registering the names of localities and completing their work in 1463.10 Two original copies, which were completed at this time, survived and they are kept in the Ayasofya Library (Mss. 2610 and 2596). The 2610 copy, which contains maps, was published in facsimile by Prince Youssouf Kamal in 192911 and reproduced by Fuad Sezgin in 1987.12 Since the first Arabic translation of Ptolemy’s book on Geography made in the Abbasside period was lost, this translation has a special importance in the history of geographical literature. However, as Fuad Sezgin observes, the two

6 J. Fischer, ‘Claudii Ptolemaei Geographiae’, p. 183, quoted by Fuad Sezgin, Klaudios Ptolemaios Geography: Bṭalmiyūs al-ǧuġrāfiyā: Arabic Translation (1465 A.D.) (Frankfurt am Main: Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, 1987), p. 15. 7 L. Bagrow and R. A. Skelton, Meister der Kartographie, Berlin 1963, p. 11, quoted by Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, p. 15. 8 Halil İnalcık, ‘Mehmed II’, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. xxviii, Ankara 2003, pp. 395– 407; Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, ‘Some Remarks on Ottoman Science and its Relation with European Science and Technology up to the End of the Eighteenth Century’, in Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire: Western Influence, Local Institutions, and the Transfer of Knowledge (London: Ashgate Variorum, 2003), Study I, pp. 45–73. 9 A. Deissmann, Forschungen und Funde im Serai. Mit einem Verzeichnis der nichtislamischen Handschriften im Topkapu Serai zu Istanbul, Berlin/Leipzig 1933, quoted by Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, p. 15. 10 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (ed.), Osmanlı Coğrafya Literatürü Tarihi = History of Geographical Literature during the Ottoman Period (İstanbul: IRCICA, 2000), vol. i, pp. 12–13 and Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, pp. 15–16. 11 Youssouf Kamal, Monumenta Cartographica Africae et Aegypti (Le Caire, 1926–1951), v. 2. 12 Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, pp. 15–16.

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translators were not acquainted with the Arabic geographical literature, thus they faced difficulties in finding the proper Arabic terminology and updating its information. Soon after the conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul), Sultan Mehmed II appointed Gennadios II Scholarios (c. 1400 – c. 1473) as the Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul) since the Patriarchate had been without leader since Patriarch Gregorios III had fled in 1450. The Sultan, who was eager to learn more about Christianity, asked him to write a book on Christian faith (İtikatname). Another Byzantine scholar Georgios Trapezuntios (1395–1472) wrote a book, which he submitted to the Sultan maintaining that there is a need to have reconciliation between the two religions. Michael Kritovoulos (c. 1410 – c. 1470), a contemporary Greek historian, explains that the rights the Ottoman Sultan gave to the Greek Patriarch were not less than those under the Byzantine Empire.13 All the Orthodox populations were probably institutionalized as Rum Milleti. Thus, the Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian and Romanian as well as Arab Orthodox Christians formed this Millet. The Fener (Phanar) Patriarchate became their religious centre.14

The Second Phase In one of the religiously most troubled times of Ottoman intellectual life in the second half of the seventeenth century, the Kadızadeli school of thought, a kind of Salefi puritanical movement, was prevailing in the Ottoman capital. At this juncture, a rare example of scientific and religious debate reveals challenging outcomes for the standard historiographical discourse. The debate took place in July 1662 between two well-established scholars, a member of the high-ranking Ottoman ulema circle and a celebrated Greek Orthodox scholar. The debate was initiated by the Grand Vizier Köprülü Ahmed Fazıl Pasha and lasted for two days in the Port between Vani Mehmed Efendi, who was the private teacher of the Sultan and a leading figure of the puritanical Kadızadeli movement, and Panagiotis/Panagiotakis Nikousios (1613–73), a man of erudition well respected in the port and an associate of the Grand Vizier. On the first day, they discussed astronomy whereas the second day was devoted to theology. Unlike previous debates between Byzantium Greek and Ottoman scholars, which were mainly related to religious polemic issues, this debate was also related to astronomy and geography and luckily was recorded and has reached us. There are at

13 Mehmet Âkif Aydın, ‘The Ottoman Legal System’, in History of the Ottoman State, Society & Civilization, ed. by Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, vol. i (İstanbul: IRCICA, 2001), pp. 429–86 (p. 476). See also Benjamin Braude, ‘Foundation Myths of the Millet System’, in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, ed. by Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, vol. i (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982), pp. 65–86 (p. 78). 14 Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, ‘Religion’, in History of the Ottoman State, Society & Civilization, ed. by Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, vol. ii (İstanbul: IRCICA, 2002), pp. 175–236 (pp. 187–88). See also Halil İnalcık, ‘The Status of the Greek Orthodox Church under the Ottomans’, Turcica, 20–22 (1991), 407–36.

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least four different surviving manuscript versions of this debate recorded by either Nikousios himself or a person of his entourage. There have been also early-published texts of this debate (the first in 1715 by De La Croix). It is due to the efforts of Eugenia Kermeli-Ünal that we are aware of the importance of this text, its content’s relevance to the history of Ottoman science, and its significance in illustrating an important example of interaction between scholars of different ethnic and religious backgrounds in the Ottoman Empire. Nikousios was well educated and studied in Padua (Padova) for some time. Besides his mother tongue, Greek, and Ottoman Turkish, he knew Latin, Italian, French, German, Arabic and Persian. He was a protégée of the Grand Vizier Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, proficient astronomer and astrologer and an expert in Kabbala, and his astrological predictions earned him a reputation in the court. He also became a dragoman at the port.15 The debate was initiated by the curiosity of Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, who saw a two foot diameter celestial globe and a four foot diameter terrestrial one in the library of the senior ulema. Both globes had Latin characters and circles that the astrologers attribute to heaven and the usual icons of the stars. These set of globes made by Gerhard Mercator could be the ones presented to Sultan Murad III in 1579. These globes are among the instruments shown in the famous miniature that depicts Takıyeddin’s observatory. The text that narrates the story of the debate tells us that the Grand Vizier asked Vani Efendi the reason why the celestial circles, that is the meridian and the equator and the other circle, are on the earth globe. Vani – a wise man according to the text – answered well, however, the Grand Vizier, whom the available text calls ‘the commissioner’, was not satisfied and wanted more solid answers. The host Ebussaid is quoted as having told ‘the commissioner’ that Panagiotis, the translator of the imperial state, would have given information on the issue, if he were here. He would have explained the many [Latin] letters on these globes and given your Excellency a lot of information’. The commissioner replied, ‘You speak truly. Lend us these globes to take them to the palace’. Ebussaid bowed and said, ‘We are at your disposal’. Many from the present archons praised Panagiotis saying to the imperial commissioner that his Excellency should with word and promises turn him [to convert] to the religion of the Turks. If he is not convinced, then he should be persuaded by force. Then Vani said, ‘I can persuade him within an hour, with words and proofs, to leave the faith of Christians and accept ours’. The commissioner laughed and said ‘wise Vani, do not think it to be a simple task, many tried in the past to make him Turk [Muslim]. I have tried and my father too, but we accomplished nothing. Vani said, ‘I have some issues and questions. When I ask him, he would be forced to accept my opinion and I will convert him easily’.

15 Eugenia Kermeli-Ünal, ‘Yüzyılda Bir Kültürel Rastlaşma: Vani Efendi ile Panagiotakis Nikousios’un Söyleşisi [A Cultural Rapprochement in the Seventeenth Century: The Debate between Vani Efendi and Panagiotakis Nikousios]’, in Prof. Dr Özer Ergenç Armağanı [Festschrift Prof. Dr Özer Ergenç], ed. by Ümit Ekin (İstanbul: Bilge Kültür Sanat Yayınları, 2013), pp. 446–57. See also her unpublished article titled ‘An Example of Polemic/Apologetic Literature in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire’.

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The next day Nikousios was invited and the debate lasted until dusk, in the palace of the Grand Vizier this time. Nikousios answered the questions of the Grand Vizier with regard to the two globes in the presence of many important dignitaries. The breadth of Nikousios’s knowledge impressed his audience. At the end of the day, Hüseyin Ağa, the cousin of the Grand Vizier as mentioned in the text, made great promises of wealth and high positions if Nikousios converted. As expected on such occasions, the Grand Vizier at the end of the day rewarded Nikousios for his knowledge with a great amount of golden coins. However, since Vani Mehmed did not appear on this day, they agreed to continue the discourse the next day. The morning of the third day the Grand Vizier invited the kadi of Rumelia, the kadi of Anatolia and Vani Mehmed Efendi who arrived with all his pupils. What is astonishing in the verbal duello between Nikousios and Vani Mehmed Efendi on the function of meridian and equator in determining the latitude and longitude of cities, astronomical measurements and the new astronomy of Tycho is the breadth of the famous ulema’s knowledge on these subjects. Furthermore, the text depicts in the most vivid way the moments of tension between the two. Despite the continuous exhortations of Vani Efendi that such knowledge is wasted while Nikousios remains Christian, the latter – undoubtedly out of self-preservation – avoided replying. Nikousios knew very well that any hint of blasphemy could prove to be detrimental, in which case even the Grand Vizier might not be in a position to extend his protection. As Vani Efendi was questioning the competence of Panagiotis, he asked him how he could find the latitude and longitude of cities, and asked for the Zij of Uluğ Bey to be brought in. However, since Panagiotis had with him a copy, the two scholars immediately engaged in detailed discussion, and Panagiotis showed the application of finding the latitude and longitude of certain cities on the terrestrial globe. Vani, upon the request of the Grand Vizier, started to narrate in detail the life of the Timurid ruler and astronomer Uluğ Bey [King Ulu Begou in the text] and praise his wisdom and virtue, and mentioned his assistant Ali Kuşcu. Vani Efendi, after his detailed exposé, asked Panagiotis whether the Christians have new observations like Uluğ Bey’s. Panagiotis answered in detail referring to astronomical observations made in the past one hundred and twenty years in ten places in Europe and saying they were more accurate than the ancient ones and they have changed Ptolemy’s hypothesis in many ways. The available text of the debate quotes an interesting dialogue between the two scholars in comparing classic and modern astronomy, as well as their relation to new geography. At the end of a long day’s debate on astronomy and geography, Vani Efendi turned to Panagiotis and said: ‘Since you know so many things, why do not you become a Muslim?’ Panagiotis replied: ‘I was born a Christian and I want to remain a Christian.’ As the debate continued the next day on theological matters, it ended with dinner given by Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, who protected and appreciated Panagiotis profoundly.16

16 The quotations from the text of the debate were only possible due to the generous help of Prof. Eugenia Kermeli-Ünal, who kindly made the English translation of the text available to me: Διάλεξις τοῦ σοφωτάτου καὶ Μεγάλου Ἑρμηνέως Παναγιώτου χριστιανοῦ καὶ ἐκ τῶν σεκρετῶν τῆς

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The rest of the debate focused on theological issues in defending the religious positions of the two sides. The long text of the debate hitherto relives many unknown facts about the cultural milieu in the upper Ottoman strata, which looks quite different from what has been accepted as established judgment on the rigidity of the Kadızadeli radical movement and its leaders. It also shows the breadth of knowledge of Ottoman scholars on classical astronomy. This example of the dissemination of knowledge among Ottoman elites belonging to different religions is a revealing one – it substantiates the existence of a scientific exchange between Muslim and non-Muslim scholars in the Ottoman Empire and demonstrates an outstanding example of state patronage on the highest level. Meanwhile, it also shows that Panagiotis already knew Islamic scientific literature, particularly the Zij of Uluğ Bey, that of the Timured ruler, and the work of his assistant Ali Kuşçu, who ended his life in the service of Sultan Mehmed II, and that it was part of the shared Ottoman scientific culture. On the other hand, Vani Efendi was not aware of upcoming modern literature and the findings of European scholars in astronomy and geography. However, we should emphasize in this context that the sixties of the seventeenth century witnessed the rise of the interest in European literature of astronomy and geography among the Ottoman administrators and scholars. The first translation of a book on astronomy from a European language was made by another protégée of Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, Köse İbrahim from Szigetvar.17 The polymath Katib Çelebi (d. 1657) has translated and authored his famous works on geography making use of modern European sources alongside his well-established classical Islamic literature.18 In addition, Abu Bakr bin Behram al-Dimashqi, another protégée of Grand Vizier Köprülü, translated Jamszoo Blaeu’s (d. 1636) Magnum Opus, shortly known as Atlas Mayor (first printed in 1634), with the instruction of Sultan Mehmed IV in 1668.19

ὀθωμανῶν βασιλείας πρωτοσυμβούλου ἀρίστου, πρώτου χριστιανοῦ ἑρμηνέως χρηματίσαντος ἐν τῇ τῶν ὀθωμανῶν βασιλείᾳ, μετά τινος Βανῆ μουσουλμάνου, διδασκάλου τῶν Τούρκων, μεταφρασθεῖσα ἀπὸ τῆς τῶν Τούρκων διαλέκτου [Debate of the wise Grand Dragoman, the Christian Panagiotis, the excellent first privy councilor/Geheimrat of the Ottoman Kingdom, the first Christian interpreter of the Ottoman Kingdom, with a certain Muslim Vani, a teacher of the Turks, translated from the language of the Turks]. 17 The translation of Noel Durret’s Nouvelle Théorie des Planètes (Paris 1635) by Tezkereci Köse İbrahim of Szigetvar. See Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, ‘The Introduction of Western Science to the Ottoman World: A Case Study of Modern Astronomy (1660–1860)’, in Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire: Western Influence, Local Institutions, and the Transfer of Knowledge (London: Ashgate Variorum, 2003), Study II, pp. 1–44. It was also published in Religious Values and the Rise of Science in Europe, ed. by John Brooke and Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (İstanbul: IRCICA, 2005), pp. 185–228. 18 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (ed.), Osmanlı Coğrafya Literatürü Tarihi = History of Geographical Literature during the Ottoman Period, vol. i (İstanbul: IRCICA, 2000), pp. 85–98; İhsanoğlu, ‘The Introduction of Western Science to the Ottoman World’. 19 İhsanoğlu, Osmanlı Coğrafya Literatürü Tarihi, pp. 108–14; İhsanoğlu, ‘The Introduction of Western Science to the Ottoman World’.

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During the second phase of the contributions of Orthodox Greek scholars to Ottoman science, the name of Alexander Mavrokordatos (1641–1709) stands out as an impressive Ottoman diplomat, scholar and distinguished founder and representative of the Phanariot Greeks. His diplomatic career in the service of the Ottoman Empire has been well known and was appreciated by Sultan Mehmed IV; meanwhile, he was in the retinue of Fazıl Ahmed Pasha and his successors. What matters here in the context of this paper is his scientific career. Mavrokordatos studied medicine at the University of Padua where he wrote a book published in Latin on blood circulation titled Pneumatium Instrumantuus Circulandi Sauguiniz, Siva de Mota et Usli Pulmonuim (Bologna, 1664). This is the first reference to Harvey’s blood circulation by any Ottoman scholar that we know of.20 There are other names to be mentioned in this second phase among Greek Orthodox scholars in addition to this illustrious name. However, in the context of this paper I would like to draw attention to a Greek convert from the Resmo (Rethymno) province on the island of Crete, Nuh B. Abdulmannan (d. 1707), who studied medicine in Padua and did attend one of the Istanbul medreses. Then he joined the Ottoman Court and became chief physician of the Sultan (Hekimbaşı); his son Ali Pasha later became grand vizier. Nuh Efendi translated a Greek medical text into Turkish21 and was influential in organizing the medical profession in the Ottoman Empire and in putting standards to prevent the ‘pretentious Europeans’ from claiming that solely they were practising modern medicine (Tıbb-ı Cedid)

The Third Phase In the third phase of the centuries-long history of interaction and exchange of scientific knowledge between Ottoman Muslim and Greek scholars, there are many important figures deserving thorough studies. In this phase, and particularly with the advent of the Tanzimat reforms in 1839, the privileges enjoined by non-Muslims according to Islamic sharia law and Ottoman practices were transformed to equal citizenship in the modern sense, where non-Muslims acquired the same status and rights of the Muslim population. In this epoch, several Greek Orthodox scholars, statesmen, diplomats and scientists came to the fore. Two names of the Caratheodory (Kara Todori) family, which was settled in Bosnaköy near Edirne, deserve special interest. One of the sons of this family, Istefanaki Efendi (1789–1867), who studied medicine and distinguished himself as a physician, joined at a certain period the Ottoman court in 1827. He served two Sultans namely 20 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (ed.), Osmanlı Tıbbi Bilimler Literatürü Tarihi = History of the Literature of Medical Sciences during the Ottoman Period (İstanbul: IRCICA, 2008), vol. i, no. 217, pp. 337–38; Gul A. Russel, ‘Physicians at the Ottoman Court’, Medical History, 34 (1990), 243–67. 21 The Turkish title of this translation is ‘Terceme-i Akradin-i Metiko’, which was composed by a Greek scholar called Melchios and was completed by his son Ömer after the father’s death. For copies of the book and his biography, see İhsanoğlu, Osmanlı Tıbbi Bilimler Literatürü Tarihi, vol. i, no. 215, pp. 333–36.

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Mahmud II and Abdulmecid, who greatly appreciated his work.22 He taught at the Imperial Medical School in Istanbul in its first years where the instruction language was French. It is reported that he has authored Turkish and French books on botany and natural history.23 Dr Istefanaki’s son, Alexander Caratheodory/Karatodori Pasha (1833–1908), was a prominent diplomat who served in the Ottoman foreign office, holding many important positions as diplomat and bureaucrat, and was also appointed Minister of Public Works and Foreign Affairs. As for scientific interest, Caratheodory Pasha had interest in mathematics and particularly in the history of mathematics.24 He published two Arabic texts on mathematics with their French translations. The first text belonged to the İlkhanid astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201–74), a treatise on secants in the science of geometry titled Kaşf al_Kına’ ‘an al-Şakl al-Katta’.25 One of al-Tusi’s students originally copied the original Arabic text, which was among the collection of Edhem Pasha (1819–93) a Grand Vizier of Greek origin, ‘Abdulkafi b. ‘Abdulmacid b. ‘Ubaydullah al-Tabrizi in Shirwan of Azerbaijan in 677/1278. Caratheodory Pasha published the Arabic text and translated it into French under the title of Şakl al-Katta’/ Tarbi’ al-Da’ra – Traité du quadrilataire attributé à Nassiruddīn el-Toussy, d’après un Manuscrit Tirè de la Bibliothèque de S. E. Edhem Pacha. The second publication is a text of Abbasid scholar Sabit b. Qurrat al-Harrani (836–901) on the same subject of secants titled Makala fi’l-Şakl al-Katta’ va’l-Nisbat al-Mu’allafa and the French translation of this text was titled Extrait du Livre de Thabit-Ben-Korrah de la Figure du Quadrilatère et des Rapports Composés.26 Alexander Caratheodory Pasha’s interest in the history of mathematics and his two publications of Arabic texts and their French translations need a closer look and deserve to be put in a wider context of developing modern scholarship in the field of history of science and the publication of classical texts.

22 Mehmet Işık, ‘Aleksandır Karatodori Paşa’, [accessed June 2018]. 23 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (ed.), Osmanlı Tabii ve Tatbiki Bilimler Literatürü Tarihi = History of the Literature of Natural and Applied Sciences during the Ottoman Period (İstanbul: IRCICA, 2006), vol. i, no. 179, pp. 179–80. 24 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (ed.), Osmanlı Matematik Literatürü Tarihi = History of Mathematical Literature during the Ottoman Period (İstanbul: IRCICA, 1999), vol. ii, no. 342, pp. 412–13. 25 Boris A. Rosenfeld and Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Mathematicians, Astronomers, and Other Scholars of Islamic Civilization and Their Works (7th – 9th c.) (İstanbul: IRCICA, 2003), no. 606, p. 214. 26 Rosenfeld and İhsanoğlu, Mathematicians, no. 103, p. 50.

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Conclusions These few examples of scientific interaction among Orthodox and Muslim scholars in the Ottoman epoch reveal the existence of a wide range of interaction, transmission, translation and, perhaps of other different modes of give and take, that took place among Ottoman scholars of diverse ethnic and religious affiliations. The debate mentioned above that took place between two celebrity Ottoman scholars, namely the Selefi Vanî Mehmet Efendi and the Greek Orthodox Panagiotis Nikousios, is a conspicuous indication of the existence of cultural and scientific interactions among Muslim and Greek Orthodox scholars. This happened despite the impact of the puritan Selefi (i.e., Muslim Orthodoxy) Kadızadeli movement on several segments of society and some circles in the imperial courts thanks to the wise and cosmopolitan patronage of the Grand Vizier and others. One remarkable feature of this epoch is that both Muslim and Greek scholars were using scientific tests of the well-established scientific tradition of the Muslim world at a time when both were interested in the benefits of modern scientific developments. The synopsis highlighted here is just an introductory commentary drawing attention to the need to unearth and expose the existence of a new area of research in the discipline of history of science that necessitates and invites multidisciplinary cooperation and networking.

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John Hedley Brooke

Orthodox Christian Physicians and Scholars in the Ottoman Court A Commentary

I count it a special privilege to comment on Professor Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu’s paper, not only because of his unrivalled expertise on Ottoman science, but also because his paper marks a new and potentially exciting departure in the study of trans-cultural exchange. Despite a lack of specialist Ottoman/Turkish science in Greece, we do now have a more detailed picture of the state of the sciences within Orthodox and Islamic constituencies during the long period of Ottoman domination. Particularly stimulating in İhsanoğlu’s paper is his call for new research into the cultural exchanges that took place between representatives of Muslim culture and of Christian Orthodoxy. At an early stage in his paper, he indicates how promising such an enquiry might be: In the early years of Ottoman rule, it is plausible to suggest that, given a need for well-trained professionals, it would have been natural to turn to Greek Orthodox physicians and scholars. I see in his project a reflection of the abiding passion he has displayed for seeking unity and rapprochement between different cultures. In 2005, he published a book with the title Cultural Contacts in Building a Universal Civilisation: Islamic Contributions. In his editorial introduction, he spoke of a moral and academic duty to create a public consciousness of the common heritage of humankind. To expose the substrata of a shared legacy can bring an element of rapprochement into a world fraught with controversy and conflict. He has relished the insight of Fernand Braudel that the history of civilisations is a history of their exchanges over the centuries.1 Hence his question now: What kinds of exchange were possible between the cultures of Islam and Orthodoxy within the Ottoman Empire that were auspicious for the sciences? It is perhaps tempting to say that the omens were not particularly good. From Professor Nicolaidis’s articles and his book on Science and Eastern Orthodoxy,



1 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (ed.), Cultural Contacts in Building a Universal Civilisation: Islamic Contributions (İstanbul: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture/IRCICA, 2005), pp. 1–9. John Hedley Brooke  Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford, UK Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 273–277. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.116871

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it would be possible to imagine a mainly negative picture of the scope for fruitful inter-relations. I am thinking of the long period during which, for Orthodox scholars, innovation had carried pejorative connotations. Even after the sixteenth century, the Christian Orthodox World, according to Nicolaidis, ‘has not actively participated in the making of the new science developed in Europe’. There was a new era for Orthodoxy after the Ottoman conquest, but from that point on, in his judgement, ideas only moved from West to East. After the fall of Constantinople, science teaching in the Orthodox world fell into sharp decline as the vast majority of scholars fled to the West, mainly to Italy and to Venice in particular. As Nicolaidis succinctly puts it, ‘no more schools, no more libraries, almost no scholars’.2 There was to be an important axis along which a Greek scholarly élite, who had the opportunity to study at Padua, might find themselves in the Sultan’s court or teaching at the patriarchal school in the Ottoman capital; but patriarchs were, if anything, under pressure to preserve a conservative identity over which the Sultan could exert control. One of the striking examples from Nicolaidis’s book concerns the educational reformer and Protestant sympathiser Cyril Lucaris who, following his appointment as Patriarch of Constantinople in 1620, was restored and removed by the Sultan four times. Nicolaidis explains that ‘in a rare display of cooperation, Catholics and conservative Orthodox believers united to convince Sultan Murad IV to remove him in 1623’.3 Although I claim no expertise in this domain, the strength of İhsanoğlu’s paper clearly lies in the glimpses it gives of different contexts in which interaction between the two civilisations could be constructive for the participants and instructive for us. We see different sets of circumstances in which productive exchange was possible. Fundamental was where a need was felt for the translation of major texts from one language to another. This had happened in the fourteenth century when, in Trebizond and Constantinople, the latest scientific results from the Islamic world had been transmitted to Europe through translations from Arabic to Greek. It happened after the conquest of 1453 when Sultan Mehmed II gathered in his retinue a variety of scholars, Muslim European and Byzantine, in pursuit of his interest in scientific issues, philosophy, and religious matters. This was the context in which he apparently sought translations of the Bible and Ptolemy’s Geography from the Greek scholar in his service Georgios Amirutzes. Translation was sometimes facilitated when a scholar had converted from one religion to another, as happened with the son of Amirutzes, who joined his father in the service of the Sultan. One of my questions is whether the experience of conversion from one faith to another might sometimes leave a mark on the way scholars thought of the relations between religion and knowledge of nature. I have been prompted to raise this question by the example of an eighteenth-century scholar, İbrahim Müteferrika (1674–1745), whom İhsanoğlu has discussed in his

2 Efthymios Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization, trans. by Susan Emanuel (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), p. 124. 3 Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy, p. 132.

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book Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire.4 Müteferrika’s religious trajectory took him from his parental Christianity in Transylvania, to Unitarianism experienced in a Calvinist College, and finally to Islam. With an interest in astronomy and moving between the two cultures, it is plausible to suggest that, as a former Christian scholar, one contribution he could make was to alert his Muslim audience to just how dangerous the Copernican system had proved to be further West. Does Müteferrika’s religious trajectory also help to explain his sophisticated philosophical position that, once one had acknowledged the universe to be the work of an exalted creator, the choice of which model to adopt for its arrangement, shape and order should not depend on religion? Returning to İhsanoğlu’s paper, cultural exchange could also occur in the unusual context of organized debate on scientific and religious issues. This occurred in the fascinating debate of July 1662 when Vani Mehmed Efendi, private teacher of the Sultan, discussed astronomy and theology with the celebrated Greek Orthodox scholar Panagiotis/Panagiotakis Nikousios. This is the debate that captures one’s imagination, not only because of its intrinsic interest, but also because it is presented by İhsanoğlu as a challenge to a conventional historiography. I shall return to it in a moment. In the second of İhsanoğlu’s three phases, when a greater awareness of European science was achieved, we see another set of circumstances in which cultural exchange could occur – in the opportunity presented to Orthodox Greek scholars for a diplomatic career in the service of the Ottoman Empire, as in the instructive case of Alexander Mavrokordatos. He had studied medicine in Padua and published what we are told is the first known reference in Ottoman scholarship to William Harvey’s account of blood circulation. The choice of which European texts to translate raises an issue that İhsanoğlu has discussed in his research on the history of astronomy. In Ottoman translations of astronomical texts, there was a preoccupation with the tables that were of practical moment in calendar making, while the fundamental theoretical texts of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe and Kepler were left untranslated.5 This, I suggest, illustrates a critical point – that when we say of anyone, a sultan, a priest, a community of scholars, that they ‘took an interest in science’, we should recognise that ‘taking an interest in science’ could mean many different things. This might include a casual reading interest, a commitment to translation, to serious popularisation, to formal teaching, to curricular reform, all the way to original empirical observation and experimental investigation. Looking to İhsanoğlu’s phase three, it is clear that, by the second half of the nineteenth century, the opportunities for cultural exchange exceeded what had been possible before. During the 1860s, a new journal, the Journal of Science, appeared with

4 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). 5 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, ‘The Introduction of Western Science to the Ottoman World: A Case Study of Modern Astronomy (1660–1860)’, in Religious Values and the Rise of Science in Europe, ed. by John Hedley Brooke and Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (İstanbul: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture/IRCICA, 2005), pp. 185–228 (p. 226).

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the express purpose of introducing modern science to the masses in the Muslim world. Missionary activity from the West also created new contexts for interaction. But this was also the time when Western cultures were experiencing an unprecedented sense of conflict between scientific and religious authority. In this respect, I have a specific question concerning the response in the Muslim and Orthodox worlds to John William Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1875), which painted such a dark picture of the reaction of the Catholic Church to scientific innovation. I am thinking particularly of the response of Ahmet Midhat, who was worried that young Muslims might think that Draper’s strictures against Rome might also apply to their own religion. In his four-volume work published in the 1890s, Midhat offered reassurance that this was emphatically not the case. In fact, Draper had been relatively kind to Islam, even suggesting that an early evolutionary theory had been formulated by a Muslim scholar many centuries before Darwin. And he had also been kind, too kind, to Orthodox Christianity, saying that it had ‘never since the restoration of science arrayed itself in opposition to the advancement of knowledge’, always meeting it with welcome. My question is whether Midhat ever pointed to those favourable assessments of Islam and Orthodoxy in Draper’s Introduction, or whether he simply set out to demonstrate, with historical examples, the propitious character of Islam for the cultivation of scientific knowledge. Finally, I return to that fascinating debate in 1662, between Vani Efendi and Panagiotis Nikousios. İhsanoğlu argues that, as an encounter between a Muslim and an Orthodox scholar, their debate was distinctive because it was not simply a polemic about religious differences, but involved in both cases a display of astronomical knowledge. Because Nikousios had studied in Padua, he was able to impress his audience with a degree of scientific knowledge that Vani Efendi had not anticipated. What I find so absorbing is the respect in which this was a debate that, incidentally at least, did involve religious differences. Unless I have misunderstood, it looks as if a stratagem was in place, which presupposed that a religion could be judged, at least in part, by the quality of the science it produced. This sounds strange today, but there are many examples of this cultural chauvinism in tribal histories of science. I was reminded of this phenomenon by Vani Efendi’s perception of an anomaly – that an Orthodox Christian should be so knowledgeable. When he asked Nikousios whether Europeans had new astronomical observations like those of Ulug Bey, was this an innocent question? Or was he expecting, or even hoping for, a negative answer? It was during the 1660s that the Ottomans had their first contact with the new astronomy through the translation of the astronomical tables of Noel Durret, whose Nouvelle Théorie des Planètes depicted Ptolemaic, Tychonic and Copernican systems. Vani had been confident that he would be able to convert his adversary, who strenuously maintained his Orthodox Christian identity and apparently had a reputation for resistance. There had been murmurs that, if necessary, he should be converted by force. İhsanoğlu notes that, in the interests of self-preservation, there were things Nikousios could not say; but what danger was he in when resisting the pressures to convert? And why did Vani believe that Nikousios’s knowledge was ‘wasted’ so long as he remained a Christian? Did he believe there was something

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incongruous about a seriously knowledgeable Christian?6 As İhsanoğlu presents the debate, it casts a different light on the reputation of the puritanical movement in which Vani Efendi was a leading figure. For our purposes, it defeats any expectation that there would not be examples of knowledge dissemination among Ottoman élites of different religions. It is conceded that this debate was a rare event. Was it so rare as to be unique? It is surely a great virtue of the paper that we are all encouraged to look for more of its kind. It is not an easy task. Professor İhsanoğlu has stressed that the challenge can only be met by a team of scholars who, between them, have the necessary language skills.



6 In subsequent private correspondence, Professor İhsanoğlu has stressed the appreciation shown by the Ottoman ulema of Nikousios’s scientific knowledge, of his expertise in this different field. He adds, nevertheless, that the appreciation was mixed with a feeling of superiority towards nonMuslims, grounded in the belief that Islam has primacy as the last revealed religion, and at a time when Ottomans still felt stronger than other nations. He believes there was no compulsion on Nikousios, who enjoyed the respect and protection of the Grand Vizier, to convert.

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