Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue (Science and Orthodox Christianity) (Science and Orthodox Christianity, 2) 9782503592671, 2503592678

Table of contents :
Front Matter
Christopher C. Knight. Tradition Seeking Understanding
Doru Costache. One Description, Multiple Interpretations
Sergey S. Horujy. Cosmic Liturgy, Orthodox Theology, and Integral Ecological Expertise
Alexei V. Nesteruk. The Dialogue between Theology and Science in View of an Irreducible Ambiguity in Hermeneutics of the Subject
Tatiana Litvin. Knowledge of God and Phenomenological Foundations of Religious Experience
Elizabeth Theokritoff. Orthodox Theology, Ecology and Science
Bruce Foltz. ‘The Lord Is in this Place, Yet I Did Not See It’
Gayle E. Woloschak. Reflections on Gene Editing Technology
Adrian Lemeni. References of Father Dumitru Staniloae’s Thought in the Dialogue between Theology and Science
Kirill Kopeikin. Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy
Gheorghe Stratan. Orthodoxy and Future Science

Citation preview

Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science

Science and Orthodox Christianity 2

Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue

Edited by Christopher C. Knight Alexei V. Nesteruk

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© 2021, 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/2021/0095/27 ISBN 978–2-503–59267-1 eISBN 978–2-503–59268-8 DOI 10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.121868 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

Contents

Notes on Contributors

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Preface Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk

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Part I General Aspects of the Dialogue between Orthodox Theology and Natural Sciences Tradition Seeking Understanding Christopher C. Knight

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One Description, Multiple Interpretations Doru Costache

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Cosmic Liturgy, Orthodox Theology, and Integral Ecological Expertise Sergey S. Horujy

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Part II Philosophical Aspects of the Dialogue between Orthodox Theology and Science The Dialogue between Theology and Science in View of an Irreducible Ambiguity in Hermeneutics of the Subject Alexei V. Nesteruk

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Knowledge of God and Phenomenological Foundations of Religious Experience Tatiana Litvin

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co n te n ts

Part III Orthodox Theology of Nature, Ecological Insights and Bioethics Orthodox Theology, Ecology and Science Elizabeth Theokritoff

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‘The Lord Is in this Place, Yet I Did Not See It’ Bruce Foltz

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Reflections on Gene Editing Technology Gayle E. Woloschak

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Part IV Historical Aspects of the Relationship between Orthodox Theology and Science References of Father Dumitru Staniloae’s Thought in the Dialogue between Theology and Science Adrian Lemeni

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Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy Kirill Kopeikin

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Orthodoxy and Future Science Gheorghe Stratan

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Notes on Contributors

Doru Costache is both a priest and a faculty member and Senior Lecturer in Patristic Studies in Sydney College of Divinity’s Graduate Research School, Australia. He is an Honorary Associate of Department of Studies in Religion, The University of Sydney. Also, he is a Fellow of The Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology (ISCAST), Australia. He is the co-author of Dreams, Virtue and Divine Knowledge in Early Christian Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Bruce (Seraphim) Foltz is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Eckerd College in St Petersburg in Florida. He has authored or edited six books, along with many articles, book chapters and encyclopedia articles. Foltz draws on the history of philosophy (especially Ancient Greek, Byzantine, and Russian Philosophy) and contemporary European methodologies (especially hermeneutics and phenomenology) to address issues in ontology, environmental philosophy, and philosophical theology. Sergey Horujy is a chief research scientist at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of the Sciences, Moscow. He is also a Professor at the Institute of Humanities of the Yaroslav Mudry Novgorod State University, Russia, and the head of the Institute of Synergic Anthropology, Moscow. He is a specialist in philosophy, theology and theory of literature and the author of about twenty books (with translations into English, Chinese and Serbian.) Christopher C. Knight is a priest and holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics as well as a degree in theology. For the ten years before his retirement he was the Executive Secretary of the International Society for Science and Religion, and is now a Senior Research Associate of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, England. He is the author of over sixty papers and book chapters, as well as two books in the Fortress Press’s Theology and the Sciences series: Wrestling With the Divine and The God of Nature (which is also available in a Romanian translation.) His third book — Science and the Orthodox Christian: A Guide for the Perplexed — is to be published soon by the St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Kirill Kopeikin holds a PhD in physics and mathematics, as well as in theology. He is an assistant professor at the St Petersburg Orthodox Theological Academy, the Director of the Center of Multidisciplinary Scientific Theological Research of St Petersburg State University, an Archpriest of the St Peter and St Paul Church in St Petersburg State University, Moscow Patriarchate, and the author of two books and numerous scientific and educational articles on the relationship between Orthodox theology and the natural sciences.

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Adrian Lemeni is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Orthodox Theology, Bucharest University, Director of the Center of the Dialogue and Research in Theology, Philosophy and Science, Bucharest University, as well as Director of the Doctoral School, Faculty of the Orthodox Theology, Bucharest University. A specialist in philosophy and science, science and Orthodox theology, and author of several books in Romanian concerning the dialogue between theology and science. Tatiana Litvin holds a PhD in philosophy, and is an independent researcher from, St Petersburg, Russia. She is a leading specialist in modern phenomenological philosophy and its application to theology and philosophy of religion, and is the author of a book and numerous papers on the philosophy of time and modern philosophy. Alexei V. Nesteruk holds a PhD in physics and mathematics and a DSc in philosophy. A visiting lecturer at the University of Portsmouth (UK), as well as a leading research scientist at the Interdisciplinary Center on Education in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the St Petersburg State Marine Technical University (Russia). He is the author of six books in English and Russian (with two translations into Romanian), as well as numerous articles on cosmology, philosophy of cosmology, and science and Orthodox theology. Gheorghe Stratan holds a PhD in Physics. He worked with the Horia Hulubei National Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering in Bucharest from 1968, and was president of its Scientific Council (2000–2002). He was Chair, History and Methodology of Science, at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania (2003–2008). He is a Dr Hon. Causa and a research professor at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna (Russian Federation), and a member of its Scientific Council. He is an author of four books and fourteen translations in Romanian. Elizabeth Theokritoff is a Senior Research Associate and part-time lecturer at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, UK. She is co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and author of Ecosystem and Human Dominion (in Greek) (Athens: Maistros, 2003) and of Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009), as well as many articles principally on aspects of theology and ecology. Gayle Woloschak is Professor of Radiation Oncology and Associate Dean of The Graduate School at Northwestern University, where she maintains a research lab studying molecular biology. She is also an adjunct professor of Religion and Science at the Lutheran School of Theology and Sessional Professor of Bioethics at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. She has over 250 published articles and several books in various areas of radiation biology, radiation oncology, nanotechnology, and religion and science.

Christopher C. Knight and A lexei V. N esteru k

Preface

In the Christian West, a vigorous investigation of the relationship between theology and the sciences has been in progress for more than half a century, partly as a result of Ian Barbour’s seminal book of 1966, Issues in Science and Religion.1 The response to that book was considerable, and in the last three decades of the twentieth century a number of institutions and organizations devoted to science-theology studies were set up: the Zygon Center, the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, the Science and Religion Forum, the Ian Ramsey Centre, the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology, and the International Society for Science and Religion, to name but a few. Most of these organizations had little or no Orthodox input, however, and in the Orthodox world it is only in more recent years that projects comparable to those set up in the West have come into being. Before this time there were, of course, individual Orthodox authors who explored issues comparable to those examined in the West, and important groundwork for their work had long existed, especially through ways in which the Russian philosophical tradition had developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was only in the twenty-first century, however, that a sustained, collaborative, and international effort came into existence, first through various projects in Romania and then, in the second decade of the century, through the Athens-based Science and Orthodoxy around the World (SOW) project. This Orthodox attempt to explore the relationship between theology and science is, however, different to that which has been typical in the Western Christian world. One aspect of this difference is the way in which Orthodox approaches often fail to fit neatly into the categorization that was one of the most influential aspects of Barbour’s pioneering work, in which four ways of understanding the relationship between science and theology were set out: conflict, independence, dialogue and integration. Certainly, the conflict thesis — that scientific understanding and theological commitment are incompatible — can be found in the Orthodox world (for example, through the work of scholars like Philip Sherrard and of modern ascetics like Fr. Seraphim Rose, which has become influential in certain circles.) One can also find manifestations of a kind of independence thesis, which sees science and theology as doing such different things that there is effectively no legitimate interaction. However, among the Orthodox this usually has quite different roots to any Western Christian version of the thesis, being based on the conviction that the Orthodox theological

1 Ian G. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (London, SCM, 1966).

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perspective encourages Orthodox Christians to explore the realities of the created world through pushing the frontiers of scientific knowledge (Stanley Harakas, Christos Yannaras). In this context, it would be natural to suggest that scientists are also theologians of a certain kind: they study with their own specific methods (possible because of the Divine Image in humanity) the world which was created by God, not only for the purposes of adaptation to it and understanding it, but also as making a precious offering before creation and the Creator. Such an integrative approach to theology and science receives its justification in a particular philosophical stance taken by some Orthodox Christians, which is rooted in the phenomenological tradition of philosophical thinking. This stance is represented in this volume by the contributions of Alexei Nesteruk and Tatiana Litvin, and its essential feature is an attempt to elucidate the intuition that both science and theology originate in one and the same human person, so that no existential separation and contradiction between them is possible. In a comparable way, when we look at Barbour’s categories of dialogue and integration — which assume a legitimate interaction between science and theology — we find that Orthodox approaches, even when comparable to Western ones, tend not only to have distinctive characteristics but also to straddle the boundary between the two categories that he delineated. The differences between Orthodox responses to science and those to be found in the West seem to arise from a number of factors, not least Orthodoxy’s Christologicallyfocused doctrine of creation and what Adrian Lemeni, in his chapter, calls ‘an ecclesial understanding of the relationship between theology and science.’ However, as the chapters that follow bear witness, there is a variety of ways in which these factors are at present understood and utilised, and it would be simplistic to suggest that there already exists some well-defined understanding of how Orthodox theology should respond to the sciences of our time. Nevertheless, these chapters — some specifically invited by the editors, and others based on presentations at the 2018 conference of the SOW project — not only give a sense of this variety, but also witness to the underlying unity of purpose and of understanding that is to be found among scholars who adhere to the Orthodox Christian faith. The volume has four sections into which the papers naturally fall: 1. General Aspects of the Dialogue between Orthodox Theology and Natural Sciences; 2. Philosophical Aspects of the Dialogue Between Orthodox Theology and Science; 3. Orthodox Theology of Nature, Ecological Insights and Bioethics; 4. Historical Aspects of the Relationship between Orthodox Theology and Science The first part of the volume — ‘General Aspects of the Dialogue between Orthodox Theology and Natural Sciences’ — opens with the chapter by Christopher Knight: ‘Tradition Seeking Understanding: Orthodoxy, Nature, and Modern Science.’ In this chapter, Knight argues that we need a more subtle and penetrating notion of what Tradition means than is sometimes to be found in Orthodox discussion, and

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that George Florovsky’s notion of the need to develop ‘the mind of the Fathers’ is helpful in this respect, particularly in relation to the theological response to modern science. A sense of the historical context of the patristic writings is, he argues, important here. He notes in particular that the kind of quasi-instinctive separation of the ‘supernatural’ and the ‘natural’ that is often implicit in discussions about science and theology may not actually represent patristic perspectives at all, and he uses Western discussions about divine action to illustrate the problems that arise from this. He proposes a ‘naturalistic’ view of divine action that is more in accordance with patristic perspectives, based on teleological aspects of the thinking of St Maximus the Confessor. This kind of approach, he suggests, can be explored in terms of the kind of teleology implicit in certain aspects of modern scientific understanding, and provides a basis for a fully Trinitarian understanding of how God acts in the world, both in everyday events and in miraculous ones. In the second chapter, by Doru Costache — ‘One Description, Multiple Interpretations: Suggesting a Way Out of the Current Impasse’ — the author begins by pointing out that at present Orthodox Christianity has different views in regard to the value of contemporary science and forms of engagement with it. He undertakes the study of six authors who provide a moderate view of interaction between theology and science. The term moderate means here that, accepting that there are unchangeable aspects of Christian faith, its worldview and theological message should nevertheless be reformulated according to the cultural delimiters pertaining to a particular historical era and social-geographic location. This stance refutes traditionalist trends which ignore the historical lessons of the Orthodox tradition and take ancient and medieval formulations of the Christian worldview as immutable and not adaptable to the contemporary situation. Such a position denies the validity of contemporary science, making impossible any meaningful communications between Orthodoxy and modern society, whose very functioning is possible only because of the technological achievements of the sciences. The six authors discussed in the chapter took a different approach. They shared a view that theology and science have different competences, the first interpreting what the second describes. This position allowed them to restate the content of the faith in various ways, according to the needs of their contemporaries, as well as to find a way of moving beyond the current lack of communication between Orthodox thinkers and the scientific community. In the next chapter — ‘Cosmic liturgy, Orthodox Theology and Integral Ecological Expertise’ — Sergey S. Horujy undertakes a certain kind of neo-patristic synthesis of theology and science, appealing — is often done in nowadays — to the writings of St Maximus the Confessor. Horujy explores the idea of ‘cosmic liturgy,’ which originates in the work of St Maximus the Confessor, for whom the destination of all created being is deification, conceived as union with God and achieved through the Eucharist, understood cosmically. The author reconsiders and reinterprets this idea in the perspective of the modern situation of humanity and the world. He argues that the cosmic liturgy must be interpreted as an ordered set of practices, involving the gradual ascent of humanity and the world to union with God. These practices include primary ascetic practices, including liturgical participation in the

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Church’s sacraments, through which humans commune with God through the divine energies. It is this communion which allows the transmission of Divine Grace to the world. Orthodox theology becomes here a pivotal tool in transmitting this Grace, in the sense that theology can perform a selection and conditioning of scientific and technological practices which could resemble a cosmic liturgy. Scientific and technological practices, incorporated into the scope of ‘cosmic liturgy’, thus actualize the cosmic dimensions of deification. The author claims that, interpreted in this way, the cosmic liturgy can be considered as a type of integral ecology, so that Orthodox theology as such becomes a new kind of integral ecological expertise. Since in many ways the dialogue between science and theology (in particular Orthodox theology) is performed spontaneously, without following any particular methodology and overall strategy for the future, it becomes more and more evident that the very problem of the dialogue must be subjected to a certain logical and philosophical analysis which could clarify its sense and the conditions of its very possibility. In other words, the very premise that this ‘dialogue’ is indeed a dialogical relationship must be subjected to a critical analysis from within an independent frame of thought. This is done in the second section of the book, which deals with the ‘Philosophical Aspects of the Dialogue Between Orthodox Theology and Science.’ In this section there are two contributions: Alexei Nesteruk’s chapter “The Dialogue between Theology and Science in View of an Irreducible Ambiguity in Hermeneutics of the Subject” and Tatiana Litvin’s “Knowledge of God and Phenomenological Foundations of Religious Experience: Modern Interpretations.” Both authors adopt a strategy of tackling the issue of the dialogue from an empirical intuition that both theology and science originate in one and the same human subject, and thus all possible outcomes in the relationship between them originate in the split in people’s cognitive faculties and their attitude to the world and humanity itself. The major claim of these philosophical enquiries is that the dialogue between theology and science represents an open-ended hermeneutics of the human condition, which aims to explicate the latter, but not to change it. Thus, in this perspective, the so called dialogue between theology and science does not aim to reconcile science and theology but simply to provide an open-ended advance in our understanding of the ambiguous position of humanity in the universe, being a part of that universe and, at the same time, being its centre of disclosure and manifestation. Nesteruk’s chapter thus represents a continuation and development of his stance on the way in which the dialogue between theology and science should be seen through the eyes of phenomenological philosophy and its extension towards theology, as outlined in his talks at the SOW Conferences in Athens in 2017 and 2018 and published in the previous SOW volume. He treats the paradoxical position of humanity in the world (being an object in the world and subject for the world) to be the underlying cause in the split between science and theology. Nesteruk bases his major arguments on the philosophical position that since no reconciliation between two opposites in the paradoxical hermeneutics of the subject is possible, the whole issue of the facticity of human subjectivity, as the sense-bestowing centre of being, acquires theological dimensions, requiring new developments in both theology and philosophy. The intended overcoming of the unknowability of the human ego by itself, encoded in

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the paradox and tacitly attempted through the ‘reconciliation’ of science and theology (guided by a purpose to ground humanity in some metaphysical substance), is not ontologically achievable, but demonstrates the working of formal purposefulness. Nesteruk comes to the conclusion that the dialogue between theology and science should be considered as a teleological activity without a purpose, representing a never-ending hermeneutics of the human condition. The second chapter in this section, by Tatiana Litvin, is ‘Knowledge of God and Phenomenological Foundations of Religious Experience: Modern Interpretations.’ This chapter examines the methodology of studying religious experience — and in particular the experience of knowledge of God — by using methods of modern philosophy. The author claims that such research is timely because of the need to understand the relationship between a theological approach to creation and the modern scientific vision of it, particularly through elucidation of its philosophical underpinning in relation to questions about human cognitive capacities. On this basis, moving on in the interaction between theology and science requires that we deal with both philosophical anthropology and existential philosophy. The second point made by this chapter relates to the philosophical issue of the existence of God, as it is treated in modern Orthodox theology. (This treatment is based on traditional patristic thinking, as well as on hermeneutics and on the philosophical appropriation of religious experience in medieval thought). However, the author notes that the reconstruction of philosophical approaches to the issue of God does not always lead to strict theological conclusions, and can be interpreted purely academically and humanistically. As a historical example, Litvin points to the Middle Ages as an inheritor of the Late Antiquity, where the question of the knowledge of God was included in the theory of knowledge — in the Platonic theory of contemplation, for example, or in the genre of Aristotelian commentary. In modern philosophical theology, the concept of a subject or person becomes the result of the synthesis of philosophical methods and scientific knowledge, so that knowledge of God is also regarded as an experience of thinking and a phenomenon of consciousness, whose nature is studied through special forms of philosophical reflection. Special attention is given by Litvin to the phenomenological direction in modern philosophical theology and the study of religious experience, in which — after the so called “theological turn” in French phenomenological school of philosophy — not only a description but also a theological understanding of the internal experience of thinking becomes significant. As a case study, the author considers the ideas of J.-L. Marion and J. P. Manoussakis, who are seen as examples of post-metaphysical philosophy of religious experience, in which both science and faith become united in a special dialectic of knowledge of God. What is ultimately implied in this chapter is the same conclusion as is made in Nesteruk’s chapter, namely that the seeming separation between theology and science results from the split in intentionalities of one and the same human subject, so that no existential contradiction between theology and science is possible. The next section of the volume — ‘Orthodox Theology of Nature, Ecological Insights, and Bioethics’ — begins with a chapter by Elizabeth Theokritoff: “Orthodox Theology, Ecology and Science: a Journey of Rediscovery.” In this chapter, the author points to the fact that ecological theology is one of the few areas where the

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Orthodox contribution is widely known and respected by theologians of other Christian denominations, as well as by environmental activists and thinkers. Among environmentalists, this is due largely to the pronouncements of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who takes every opportunity to talk to a variety of secular or inter-faith audiences about the spiritual and ethical aspects of environmental issues. Theologians are more likely to be familiar with the work of John Zizioulas, who is a contemporary Orthodox theologian very well-known in academic circles, as well as being the most systematic exponent of a theological approach to ecology. This topic has in fact attracted the interest of a number of Orthodox theologians, who approach it from a wide range of viewpoints, including that of liturgy, patristic thought, the ascetic tradition, the lives of the saints, and philosophy. Such contributions are often thoughtful and thought-provoking, but as yet they are not well known either within or beyond the Orthodox sphere. Since in Orthodox literature it is not always easy to draw a line between ‘ecological’ thinking and the theology of creation that informs and underpins it, the chapter focuses — in order to keep the topic within manageable proportions — on theological responses to the new challenge of the current environmental crisis. These responses involve rediscovery of the meaning and implications of various facets of church tradition as wells as the development of modern insights into a theological understanding of creation The second chapter in this section is by Bruce Foltz: ‘“The Lord Is in this Place, Yet I Did Not See It: From the Concept of Nature to the Experience of Creation.’ In this chapter. the author explores the theological meaning of nature, challenging the marginal status often assigned to that meaning because of a predominantly naturalistic or materialist understanding of nature. Foltz insists that the ancient experience of nature as creation — which exhibits a beauty, goodness, and holiness that we can experience in a unmediated way — is nowadays largely ignored in environmental discussions because it is assigned to the realm of mere subjectivity, with no commonly accepted meaning and value. The author appeals to the experience of nature as ordered creation and a realm of meaning, as it stands at the foundation not only of religious and poetic visions, but at the basis of the thinking of a few modern environmentalists. such as Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold. He argues that scientific naturalism should be limited to its methodological employment, and should refrain from taking the step to metaphysical naturalism, which serves to invalidate those richer modes of experiencing nature that are necessary to contextualise and lend practical guidance to scientific and technological applications. One can express this last thought differently by saying that the scientific approach to nature provide us with a kind of fringed phenomenality, which does not provide access to nature as it was created by God, understood in terms of the appearance of humanity in it. The hidden teleology of nature, as related to the phenomena of humanity and the Incarnation of Christ, is not disclosed by the sciences but can be grasped only in a theological context, in which nature is seen as being created with the the occurrence of the Incarnation as its motive. This third section of the volume concludes with a chapter by Gayle E. Woloschak: ‘Reflections on Gene Editing Technology.’ In this chapter, she discusses ethical aspects of gene editing technology, as it has been practised in the past and as it is likely to be developed in the future. Much of the work done in secular bioethics examines the

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questions of what the justification is for doing a particular study, and in particular whether or not there is harm to the human (or animal) that will be involved. Existing theological studies of bioethical issues, by contrast, focus almost exclusively on the end product. The author promotes the view that theology must also consider the methodology of bioethical research, since this could influence our judgement of whether a particular practice is ethical or not. The paper outlines approaches that have been used in the past and present for gene editing technology, paying particular attention, not only to the overall goal of the process in genetic research, but also to the method and approach used in each example. The concluding section of the volume deals with historical aspects of the relationship between Orthodox theology and science in two Orthodox countries: Romania and Russia. It opens with a chapter by Adrian Lemeni: ‘Aspects of Father Dumitru Stăniloae’s Thought and their Relevance to the Dialogue between Theology and Science.’ In this chapter, the author appeals to the theological creativity of a famous Romanian Orthodox theologian Father Dumitru Stăniloae, who contributed a great deal to contemporary Orthodox theology through the way in which he deepened our understanding of Patristic and ecclesial Tradition, making a major contribution to the attempt to develop a “neo-patristic synthesis” for our times. A significant aspect of Fr. Stăniloae’s theology, which Lemeni outlines, is that there is a reciprocity between the natural and the supernatural, and between cosmos and history, and this reciprocity can elucidate the nature of the dialogue between theology and science. Fr. Stăniloae’s iconic ontology stresses that nothing is purely natural (scientific), and that anything natural is structured on the supernatural (theological). Lemeni argues that it is through his iconic ontology that Fr. Stăniloae emphasised the reciprocity between faith and reason, developing a fruitful dialogue between theology, philosophy and science. The second chapter in this section on history is by Fr. Kirill Kopeikin: ‘Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy: between the Middle Ages and Postmodernity.’ He analyses the complicated interaction between faith and knowledge, and between theology and science, in the Russian Orthodox context from the medieval Byzantine period up to modern times. The author claims that the question of the relationship between a scientific study and theological experience was never seriously considered in Russia, in either the pre-revolutionary or the Soviet period. After the revolution, in particular, when the Church faced the question of its own survival, there were no place for high theologising or resolution of challenging intellectual issues. Today’s situation in relations between faith and knowledge, theology and science, may, according to the author, be metaphorically compared to the construction of a nuclear bomb: science and theology are like two subcritical masses that need to unite in order to initiate the chain reaction of a dialogue. Real dialogue, he suggests, is still to come and is likely to be very dramatic. In the concluding chapter on this section, Gheorghe Stratan considers ‘Orthodoxy and Future Science’ by attempting to position the dialogue between science and theology in relation to modern scientific culture. According to the author, the main task is to understand the challenges which humanity confronts at present and will confront in the future. He suggests the use of research in the history of science, in the hope that some situations in the dialogue between science and theology in the past

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can offer useful analogies with the present situation. In particular, he asks whether some of the tensions between science and religion in the past could happen again. He insists that it is important to understand the specific relations between science and Orthodoxy, and to see to what extent they are different from the relations between science and religion in general. The relations between Orthodoxy and science over the last twenty years in Romania are able, he believes, to throw light on this question. The chapters of this book cannot, of course, indicate the full range of questions that are being asked about scientific understanding in the Orthodox world today, let alone the full range of possible answers that are being explored. In particular, it would require a separate volume to explore the whole range of ethical issues that now arise from the technical application of modern scientific understandings, and we make no attempt here to give a sense of how these issues should be approached other than by including Gayle Woloschak’s contribution on gene editing, which we regard as exemplary in its attentiveness to both scientific understanding and theological considerations. This collection as a whole indicates, nevertheless, the context in which Orthodox exploration of scientific understanding is being undertaken at the present time. That exploration promises, we believe, to be one of the most exciting and fruitful areas of Orthodox thinking in the twenty-first century. Christopher C. Knight Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, UK Alexei V. Nesteruk University of Portsmouth, UK, and Russian Christian Academy of the Human Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia



* This publication has been implemented within the framework of the project “Science & Orthodoxy around the World”, 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(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Project SOW and the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.

Part I

General Aspects of the Dialogue between Orthodox Theology and Natural Sciences

Christopher C. Knight

Tradition Seeking Understanding Orthodoxy, Nature and Modern Science

Tradition and the Mind of the Fathers The theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church is characterised by a strong emphasis on the Tradition embodied in the scriptures, in the Church’s liturgical and conciliar texts, and in the writings of the Church Fathers. However, following Tradition involves far more than familiarity with these sources and professing loyalty to them. It involves a deeper level of understanding since, as Fr George Florovsky used to say in relation to the patristic writings, to ‘follow the Fathers does not mean simply to quote their sentences. It means to acquire their mind’.1 Thus, just as Anselm famously spoke about theology in terms of faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum), so we, in a slightly different way, may perhaps speak of the process of acquiring the mind of the Fathers as one of Tradition seeking understanding. An example of the necessity of this seeking relates to the Christological two natures formula of the Council of Chalcedon. Discussions between Orthodox scholars and those of non-Chalcedonian Oriental Christian communities have, in recent decades, made it increasingly clear that we can only understand this formula if we understand precisely how those who defended it were using the term nature in a particular, dynamic way.2 At least one form of the non-Chalcedonian understanding of nature was one in which — as Peter Bouteneff puts it —‘asserting two natures in Christ leads inexorably to positing two hypostases’ and therefore takes us onto ‘untenable ground’.3 Thus, if the term nature is understood as many of the opponents of the Chalcedonian formula understood it,4 then that formula is



1 George Florovsky, ‘The Ethos of the Orthodox Church’ Ecumenical Review 12 (1960), p. 188. 2 For an accessible brief account of this, see Eugene Webb, In Search of the Triune God: The Christian Paths of East and West (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2014), pp. 95–6. 3 Peter Bouteneff, ‘Christ and Salvation’, in The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology ed. by Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 101. 4 See the comments of John S. Romanides in ‘St Cyril’s One Physis or Hypostasis of God the Logos Incarnate and Chalcedon’, in Paul R. Fries and Tiran Nersoran, Christ in East and West (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), pp. 15–34. Christopher C. Knight • Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, UK Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue, ed. by Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk, SOC, 2 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 19–32. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.122605

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not a legitimate expression of the Orthodox Tradition. Having the patristic mind, in this context, requires far more than simply assenting to the formula that the Chalcedonian Fathers produced.

Noetic Perception This particular historical issue may perhaps suggest that the process involved in Tradition seeking understanding is primarily one of ensuring philosophical exactitude. However, we must remember that, while acuity at this level is sometimes of the greatest importance to a full understanding of the writings of the Fathers, what is meant by the patristic mind is something more than the philosophical reflection that is based on the functioning of the rational, discursive faculty (dianoia). We recognise that many of the saints have been unsophisticated at this level, but that nevertheless they have achieved a high degree of intuitive theological insight. Some of these saints wrote nothing and had little knowledge of the complexities of the debates of the patristic era. Nevertheless, they still had the ‘mind’ of those who gave that era its name. This underlines the way in which what is essential to having the mind of the Fathers is — as many of those Fathers have stressed — the intuitive perception that arises from the liberation of the nous from the diminution of its functions in fallen humanity. This term nous is often translated as ‘intellect’, but it refers to something very different to what is now often understood by that English term. The nous was seen, in ancient and medieval philosophy, not as the seat of discursive reasoning, but as the direct intuitive faculty that is necessary for understanding what is true or real. In a religious context, the nous was often seen 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 patristic theology, however, it was 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.5 For the Orthodox Christian understanding, therefore, what is central to the Fathers’ mind is not their words, as such, but their noetic awareness: what we might call their spiritual instinct. Their words represent their attempt to express this instinct in verbal terms for the benefit of others. They themselves often stressed the limitations of this verbal expression. Their teachings on apophaticism emphasised that the words that we can legitimately use about God can never circumscribe the reality to which they point. They insisted that this reality must be appropriated experientially rather than through discursive reflection on verbal formulae. These formulae were not



5 For some reflections on the concept of the nous in relation to modern science, see Christopher C. Knight, ‘The Human Mind in This World and the Next: Scientific and Early Theological Perspectives’, Theology and Science, 16 (2018), pp. 151–65.

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seen by them as unimportant, but were nevertheless viewed primarily in terms of their ability to provide a kind of ladder towards an increasingly contemplative and non-conceptual knowledge of God.6 It is in terms of this focus on something deeper than verbal expression that we should, in my view, understand Florovsky’s sense of our need, in the present day, to develop a neo-patristic synthesis. This perspective will move us beyond the views of those who see this synthesis as requiring little more than explanation of the Fathers’ views in terms that are readily comprehensible to present day believers. It will take us instead towards the views of those who recognise the need not only to increase comprehensibility in this way, but also to make a clear distinction between what is central to the patristic mind — the patristic spiritual instinct — and the various ways in which the Fathers expressed that instinct in terms of non-theological beliefs that were common in their own day but may now seem unhelpful.

The Patristic Writings in Historical Context Making this distinction is one of the ways in which we can — as Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia once put it —‘separate Patristic wheat from Patristic chaff ’.7 A simple example of this ‘chaff ’ is the way in which the Fathers often expressed their beliefs in terms of scientific understandings that were common in their time but are now seen as inaccurate or even ludicrous. (St John Chrysostom, for example, explicitly insisted that, even if the antipodes exist, they could not possibly have human inhabitants, while St Basil believed that some animals, such as eels, have no parents but arise spontaneously from the earth.) For those who recognise the need to separate the wheat from the chaff, such scientific inaccuracy does not affect the religious meaning of what was expressed by the Fathers, since we can find an understanding of that religious meaning that is not dependent on the precise way in which it was originally expressed. The need to understand the Fathers’ meaning at a deeper level does not arise only from scientific understanding (though we shall examine another scientifically-based example presently). It arises also from a number of other perspectives, not least that of those historians who stress that the Fathers were, in their writings, often responding to particular questions that had arisen within the Christian community of their own time. There is sometimes an unfortunate tendency to downplay or even ignore this fact. As Fr John Behr has perceptively noted, Orthodox Christians have often started with what they think they already know and then looked back to the Fathers ‘simply to find confirmation’. This, he argues, carries a great risk of misconstruing what the





6 See e.g. the comments in Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957), p. 40. This kind of approach is, as Lossky (p. 33) has noted, especially evident in the work of St Gregory of Nyssa, for whom 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 ’. 7 Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), p. 212.

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Fathers were saying since, as he rightly notes, ‘if the questions being debated are not understood, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to understand the answers.’8 The intrinsic limitations of the Fathers’ verbal expression of their understanding may also be recognised through an examination of the way in which they often employed, not only individual philosophical terms like nature, but also wider philosophical frameworks — especially that of neo-Platonism — that were familiar to their audiences. These frameworks were, admittedly, modified in patristic usage so as to reflect the realities of the Christian revelation. Nevertheless, the use of a non-Christian philosophical framework inevitably constrained the way in which the Fathers’ spiritual instinct about that revelation could be expressed verbally. Moreover, these philosophical frameworks sometimes lead to difficulties in interpretation for us now, in that we tend to see them not simply as tools used by the Fathers to express their noetic religious perception but as intrinsic to that perception. As Elizabeth Theokritoff has remarked of the Cappadocian Fathers, ‘the modern reader, to whom … [their neo-Platonic] language is alien … [may] mistake their Platonic starting point for their conclusion.’ This, she goes on, would be to misread their intention in using this language, which is to stress that it is ‘for the sake of the whole creation that man the microcosm receives the divine inbreathing, so that nothing in creation should be deprived of a share in communion with God.’9 In addition to recognizing all these issues, we need to be aware of another, summed up in the comment of a modern philosopher that in any epoch and culture there exist ‘fundamental assumptions’ which ‘adherents of all the various systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose … [since] no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them’.10 When this is taken into account, it becomes clear that our understanding of the Fathers as inspired in their writings should not be tied to an understanding of that inspiration which implicitly takes them out of the historical context of the ‘fundamental assumptions’ of their time. Once again, it must be stressed that it was the Fathers’ spiritual instinct that Orthodox see as inspired. Their verbal expression of this instinct may have been the best that was available in their own time, and in this sense Orthodox can certainly continue to see their words as inspired. Nevertheless, while these words should be taken with the utmost seriousness since

8 John Behr, ‘Faithfulness and Creativity’ in Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West — Festschrift for Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia ed. by John Behr, Andrew Louth, and Dimitri Conomos (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), p. 74. 9 Elizabeth Theokritoff, ‘Creator and Creation’, in The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology, ed. by Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 65. 10 A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Mentor Books, 1948), pp. 49–50. This has been quoted by Jaroslav Pelikan in his understanding of the Orthodox use of natural theology: see Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993). Aspects of Pelikan’s analysis are discussed in Christopher C. Knight, ‘Natural Theology in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition’, in The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, ed. by Russell Re Manning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 213–26.

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they have been historically definitive for the expression of the Orthodox faith,11 this does not mean that there is no need for further explanation or even translation into the philosophical frameworks of our own day. There are issues in relation to which the Fathers’ inner meaning can be made clear to us now only through the process of Tradition seeking understanding that I have outlined.

Biological Evolution A simple example of this need for clarification relates to an aspect of the term nature that is different to that involved in the controversy associated with the Council of Chalcedon. This is the fact that, for late antique and medieval thinking, natures — however defined — were generally assumed to be unchangeable. This was one of the reasons that although (as we shall see) some of the Fathers did not entirely rule out the perspectives now offered to us by evolutionary biology, they were inevitably constrained in their ability to envisage what modern evolutionary theory envisages: one species of plant or animal giving rise to another. A comparable constraint existed among French biologists of the nineteenth century, some of whom were slow to accept evolutionary insights because they tended to define the term species in terms of an unchanging nature. Unlike these French biologists, however, the Fathers had no scientific evidence for evolutionary processes, so they had no reason — as the French biologists did — to consider whether their philosophical assumptions might be inadequate. Had such scientific evidence existed in their own time, it is arguable that the Fathers would have been able to overcome these philosophical constraints. St Maximos the Confessor, for example, seems — as Fr Andrew Louth has noted — to have shared with his contemporaries the philosophical assumption that natures are fixed. Nevertheless, Louth goes on, the thought of Maximos was dynamic enough to be implicitly open ‘to the idea of evolution … as a way of expressing God’s providence’, so that that his cosmic vision can ‘be re-thought in terms of modern science’.12 If this re-thinking is to be done adequately, however, it will require a far deeper reading of the Fathers than is sometimes evident in modern commentary in the Orthodox community. For example, it is clear that many of the Fathers — with no reason in terms of the science of their time to do otherwise — gave a literal interpretation to the seven-day process of creation recounted in the opening chapter of Genesis. Some modern commentators, observing this tendency, have manifested a kind of patristic fundamentalism by insisting that this literal interpretation is

11 As Peter Bouteneff (p. 102) rightly notes, it is ‘the language of the ecumenical councils, and thus constitutes an enduring and definitive reference point. Furthermore, it is constantly sung in our liturgy, which gives it an ongoing currency in the life of the Church’. 12 Andrew Louth, ‘The Cosmic Vision of Saint Maximos the Confessor’, 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), p. 189.

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therefore definitive for Orthodox understanding.13 However, while it is true that some patristic authors did not question the historical and scientific accuracy of this chapter, others — like St Gregory of Nyssa — most certainly did. (These tended, in fact, to see the process of creation as instantaneous rather than as happening through a series of distinct divine acts.) Another common and often related misreading of the patristic literature is the assertion that any kind of evolutionary theory is completely alien to the patristic understanding. An evolutionary scenario was, admittedly, unavailable to the Fathers on scientific grounds, which is perhaps why few of them considered it. We should not forget, however, that some of them did hint at the possibility of a gradual unfolding of the potential of what God had created ‘in the beginning’. St Augustine of Hippo, in particular, quite explicitly suggested a scenario that is distinctly reminiscent of evolutionary theory. God, he said, may have created potentialities in the creation which — like dormant ‘seeds’— only gradually came to fruition.14 Similarly, St Basil the Great seems to see the earth as having been endowed from the beginning with all the powers necessary to realize the whole array of lifeforms intended by God to come into being in due course. Examining this and other aspects of Basil’s Hexameron, Howard van Till has concluded that ‘Basil expresses his conviction that although the Creator’s word is spoken in an instant, the Creation’s obedient response is extended in time.’ Indeed, Van Till goes on, at times Basil speaks ‘in language that seems almost to anticipate modern scientific concepts.’15 Here it is important to note that, in relation to biological evolution, some patristic scholars have looked more deeply at the Fathers’ writings and have declared that they are in no way incompatible with evolutionary perspectives. Panayiotis Nellas, for example — though he does not tackle the details of scientific theory — has made the point that a central aspect of patristic belief is that ‘the essence of man is not found in the matter from which he was created but in the archetype [the incarnate Logos] on the basis of which he was formed and towards which he tends’. It is precisely for this reason, he goes on, that for Orthodox understanding ‘the theory of evolution does not create a problem … because the archetype is that which organises, seals and gives shape to matter, and which simultaneously attracts it towards itself ’.16

Naturalism and Supernaturalism The potential impact of modern science on the Orthodox interpretation of patristic writings is by no means limited to issues of this kind, in which scientific insights are sometimes thought to challenge Tradition rather than providing a deeper insight 13 See e.g. Seraphim Rose, Genesis, Creation, and Early Man (Platina: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2000). 14 Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis. 15 Howard van Till, “Basil, Augustine, and the Doctrine of Creation’s Functional Integrity”, Science and Christian Belief 8 (1996) pp. 21-38. 16 Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person, trans. by Norman Russell (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), p. 33.

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into its content. The issue of evolution is, in fact, only one aspect of a broader issue evoked by modern science: that of how the naturalistic perspectives at the heart of the scientific enterprise interact with theological ones. Here it is important to note that in speaking of naturalism we need to define it carefully. It is a term that — like the associated term nature — is used with a range of meanings, not all of which are mutually compatible. Sometimes it is used as if it represents an understanding which precludes the reality of God. Sometimes, among believers in God, it is understood in terms of a kind of separation between God and the world that so strongly stresses the autonomy of the cosmos’s normal functioning that God’s action within that world is seen as requiring either supernatural intervention — in which God sets aside the laws of nature — or else what is sometimes called a causal joint between God and the world, through which those laws are used by God as tools. For other believers, however, this notion of separation is rejected, and what is sometimes called a panentheistic notion is adopted, in which the world is seen as being in some sense ‘in God’. This latter view is that which is held in the Orthodox world,17 and we shall look at aspects of this Orthodox panentheism presently. However, it is the ‘separation’ model — often interpreted in terms of liberal Protestant assumptions — that has to a great extent set the terms of the debate about divine action within the so-called science-theology dialogue of the last half century. This notion of separation, coupled with a suspicion of the concept of supernatural intervention, has meant that the causal joint view has been the predominant one within that dialogue until very recently. As a result, the primary theological task has often been seen as that of identifying the causal joint in a scientifically literate way. This causal joint approach has, however, been strongly criticised in an important study by Nicholas Saunders.18 Seeing that approach as the only one available but judging it to be ultimately unsuccessful, Saunders concludes that ‘the prospects for supporting anything like the “traditional understanding” of God’s activity in the world are extremely bleak’, so that it is ‘no real exaggeration to say that contemporary theology is in a crisis’.19 My disagreement with Saunders in this assessment lies not in his plausible critique of the causal joint scheme — which is broadly accurate — but in his conception of the ‘traditional understanding’ of God’s action. His view is too narrow because — like that of many of those he criticises — it is focused on supposedly biblical perspectives rather than on the Christian tradition as a whole. Here I agree with Wesley Wildman’s judgment that much of the discussion of the ‘causal joint’ account of special divine action is based on what he calls a ‘personalistic theism’ that represents ‘a distinctively Protestant deviation from the mainstream Christian view’.20 Because of this, I have

17 See Louth, The Cosmic Vision and also Kallistos Ware, ‘God Immanent yet Transcendent: The Divine Energies according to St Gregory Palamas’, in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheist, ed. by Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke, Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 157-68. 18 Nicholas Saunders, Divine Action and Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 19 Saunders, Divine Action, p. 215. 20 Wesley Wildman, ‘Robert John Russell’s Theology of God’s Action’, in God’s Action in the World: Essays in Honour of Robert John Russell, ed. by Ted Peters and Nathan Hallanger (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), p. 166.

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argued that part of our strategy in trying to re-think divine action must be to re-assess traditional Christian understandings, and this is indeed part of the approach of my book, The God of Nature.21 However, an equally important part of my argument in that book is my exploration of the way in which the naturalism at the heart of the scientific enterprise can be interpreted in an Orthodox way, and it is with this that I shall begin here.

Orthodox Naturalism? There have been some Western scholars — Arthur Peacocke in particular — who have described themselves as ‘theistic naturalists’ because, although they adopt a causal joint explanation of special divine action, they put a great deal of stress on naturalistic perspectives. This approach I have dubbed ‘weak theistic naturalism’22 in order to distinguish it from the ‘strong theistic naturalism’ that I have defended as a philosophical interpretation of Orthodox perspectives. In this strong version, two ideas of God — that He is outside of the world and that He is a temporal being who makes temporal responses to situations in the world — are rejected in favour of alternative views to be found, at least implicitly, in Orthodox thinking. The first of these rejected notions — that God is to be understood as a temporal being — explicitly rejects the traditional notion that God exists beyond time. (Like Orthodoxy, the scholasticism of the medieval West also had a strong sense of God existing outside of time, so the causal joint model’s notion of a temporal God is an essentially Protestant one.) The second rejected notion — which is that God’s relationship to the world is to be understood in terms of separation — is one that has influenced most Western theological systems, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike. For Orthodoxy, by contrast, there is both a panentheistic understanding and also — as Vladimir Lossky has noted —‘no concept of “pure nature” to which grace is added as a supernatural gift. For it, there is no natural or “normal” state, since grace is implied by the act of creation itself ’.23 This is linked to the way in which the notion of the supernatural is not used in Orthodoxy in the same way as it is in the West, since this Western usage depends on a notion of the separation of grace and nature that is alien to Orthodox thinking. (Indeed, the use of the distinction between the natural and the supernatural is far less common in Orthodox writing than is the distinction between the created and the uncreated).24

21 Christopher C. Knight, The God of Nature: Incarnation and Contemporary Science (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007). Many of the perspectives set out in this book are repeated in my book: Christopher C. Knight, Science and the Orthodox Christian: A Guide for the Perplexed (Yonkers N.Y., St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2020). 22 Knight, The God of Nature, p. 27. 23 Lossky, The Mystical Theology, p. 101. 24 The distinction between the created and the uncreated is interesting in that the former category includes entities (like angels) that traditional Western systems regard as supernatural. For Orthodoxy, atoms and angels belong to the same category, not to different ones, in part because of what Elizabeth Theokritoff (p. 65) has called the Orthodox stress on ‘solidarity in createdness’.

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My own version of strong theistic naturalism incorporates these Orthodox perspectives, and particularly stresses the panentheistic dimension of Orthodox understanding, which is manifested most clearly, perhaps, in the use of the notion of divine energies in the work of St Gregory Palamas.25 My own panentheistic focus has, however, been primarily on the understanding to be found in the work of St Maximos the Confessor, who — in a way that reflects the range of meanings of the Greek term logos — speaks, not only about the divine Logos incarnate in Christ ( John 1:1–14) but also about the logos of each created thing, which he sees, panentheistically, as being in some sense a manifestation of the divine Logos. The reason for my focus on Maximos is that his notion of the logos of each created thing is not only panentheistic but also has a teleological dimension. As Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia has put it, for Maximos’s understanding ‘Christ the creator Logos has implanted in every created thing a characteristic logos, a “thought” or “word”, which is God’s intention for that thing, its inner essence which makes it distinctively itself and at the same time draws it towards the divine realm.’26 Or, as Vladimir Lossky has put it, the world, ‘created in order that it might be deified, is dynamic, tending always towards its final end’27 — this final end being ‘predestined’ in the logoi. One of the things that is particularly interesting here — and which I have explored in The God of Nature28 — is that this teleological understanding may be interpreted not only in terms of the final, eschatological goal of the cosmos, but also in terms of naturalistically understandable ‘intermediate’ goals of the kind that in recent years have crept back into interpretations of scientific thinking. (Here, Simon Conway Morris’s analysis of ‘evolutionary convergence’ and some understandings of the ‘fine tuning’ of the universe, perceptible to astrophysicists, are of particular importance.)29 It is in terms of these intermediate ‘goals’, I have argued, that modern scientific insights provide an opportunity for pursuing the process of Tradition seeking understanding, in that they seem to provide new insights into what I have called the teleological-christological30 understanding at the heart of St Maximos’s cosmic vision.

Miracles There is also, I have pointed out, another aspect of the Orthodox Tradition that may be interpreted in terms of a kind of naturalism. This is the way in which some Orthodox writers seem to echo the Augustinian notion that miracles are the result, not of supernatural divine intervention, but of the operation of ‘higher laws of

25 Ware, God Immanent yet Transcendent. 26 Ware, God Immanent Yet Transcendent, p. 160. 27 Lossky, The Mystical Theology, p. 101. 28 Knight, The God of Nature, pp. 111–23. 29 Knight, The God of Nature, pp. 111–23. 30 Knight, The God of Nature, pp. 111–23.

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nature’ built into the world by God from its very beginning.31 This is related in Orthodox thinking to the belief that the world has suffered a transformation in ‘the Fall’ — not necessarily interpreted as a historical event32 — and will undergo another transformation when its eschatological fulfilment is accomplished. In this sense, as Panayiotis Nellas has pointed out, the world, as we experience it now, is seen in Orthodox theology as being far from what God originally intended and ultimately wills, so that in a sense it should be seen as ‘unnatural’ or — perhaps better — as subnatural. The traditional Eastern interpretation of the ‘garments of skin’ given by God to humans after their disobedience (Genesis 3. 21) is that they represent our present, sub-natural, psychosomatic make-up, and that this make-up is reflected in the entire sub-natural world in which we find ourselves. (An aspect of this sub-natural character of the world is that there exists within it what Western Christian analysis would call ‘natural evil’.) Miracles, for this Eastern tradition, are often at least implicitly seen as a restoration of the world’s ‘natural’ state — i.e. as an anticipation of its eschatological transformation.33 The central argument in my book, The God of Nature,34 is that my philosophical arguments about strong theistic naturalism and these essentially theological insights may be brought together in a new synthesis, in which the classic Western distinctions between special and general divine action and between the natural and the supernatural are made redundant. This argument is, as the reader might expect, not a simple one of the kind that can be presented here in detail, and those interested must, therefore, be referred to that book. However, awareness of an important development since its publication may be helpful to those who read it now. This development is that within both the Roman Catholic and Protestant worlds, new approaches to divine action have emerged that manifest important links to my own. In the Roman Catholic tradition, there has been a revision by Michael Dodds of much of scholasticism’s metaphysics in relation to divine action.35 In the Protestant world, a comparable way of thinking has emerged in a new strand of thinking, in which the focus is on the Holy Spirit.

31 St Augustine, Of the Advantages of Believing 34, City of God 21:6–8; see the comments in Wolfhart Pannenberg ‘The Concept of Miracle’, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 37 (2002), pp. 759–62. 32 In the Origenist tradition — which has had a significant effect on Orthodox thinking despite aspects of it being considered heretical — there is a strong sense that the Fall represents a descent into our present space-time world, not an event within it. In this sense the Fall is seen, not as a historical event but as something meta-historical. This has been stressed by a number of Orthodox authors, not least in Sergius Bulgakov, Bride of the Lamb. (Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2002) 164 ff. 33 Knight, The God of Nature, 86–95; cf. 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), 305–15. 34 Knight, God of Nature, 2007. 35 Michael Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012).

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The ‘theological turn’ in the Divine Action Debate In an influential paper on these links36 (later expanded in an important book),37 Sarah Lane Ritchie has spoken about what she labels as a ‘theological turn’ in the debate about divine action. She has explored, in particular, the way in which I and the other proponents of this theological turn challenge the causal joint model’s assumption of a particular kind of naturalism, in which there is an assumption of an essentially autonomous universe that God must influence from the ‘outside’. The challengers instead posit, in their various ways, a universe that is to be understood only in terms of God’s presence within it. We argue, she observes, ‘that standard causal joint proposals […] are dependent upon question-begging metaphysical commitments, which in turn inadequately frame the entire divine action conversation. These presuppositions involve basic ontological questions about the God — nature relationship, and especially the question of what, exactly, it means to be properly “natural”’.38 Ritchie makes some fascinating points about the work of two scholars in the Protestant charismatic / Pentecostal tradition: Amos Yong39 and James K. A. Smith40 (the latter’s work manifesting parallels with the Western movement known as Radical Orthodoxy.)41 Ritchie observes that — like my Orthodox, panentheistic framework and like Dodds’ Thomistic approach — what she calls the ‘pneumatological naturalism’ of these two scholars reverses the methodology and metaphysics of the causal joint approach. Smith, she notes, labels his own version of this perspective as enchanted naturalism, and this is similar, she observes, to the understandings to be found in Dodds’ approach and in my own work. (It is a coincidence — but surely a significant one — that Smith’s term enchanted naturalism is echoed by my own use of the term enhanced naturalism.) This kind of pneumatological framework for divine action is able, in Ritchie’s judgment, to perform the same metaphysical function as panentheism does in my 36 Sarah Lane Ritchie, ‘Dancing Around the Causal Joint: Challenging the Theological Turn in Divine Action Theories’, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 37 (2017), pp. 362–79. 37 Sarah Lane Richie, Divine Action and the Human Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 38 Ritchie, ‘Dancing Around the Causal Joint’, p. 362. 39 Amos Yong, The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the PentecostalCharismatic Imagination (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2011). 40 James K. A. Smith, ‘The Spirit, Religions, and the World as Sacrament: A Response to Amos Yong’s Pneumatological Assist’, Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 15 (2007), 251–61; James K. A. Smith, ‘Is the Universe Open for Surprise? Pentecostal Ontology and the Spirit of Naturalism’, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 43 (2008), 879–96; James K. A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). 41 Smith himself is by no means an uncritical supporter of the Radical Orthodoxy, and has written a useful introduction to it: James K. A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004). Radical Orthodoxy is, it should be noted, distinct from Eastern Orthodoxy but exhibits certain parallels with it — see Encounter Between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy ed. by Christoph Schneider and Adrian Pabst (London: Routledge, 2016).

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own approach. In all of these approaches, she observes, to be natural is to be directly involved with God. One aspect of this parallelism relates to the basic understanding of nature. Just as for Orthodoxy there is no ‘pure’ nature to which grace is added as a supernatural gift, so also the Protestant pneumatologists ‘deny the implicit deism that would legitimise the notion of an autonomous natural world apart from the Spirit of God.’42 Another similarity lies in the understanding of miracles. As we have seen, miraculous events are, for my own approach, an aspect of the ‘natural’ functioning of the world, in that they may be spoken of in terms of the operation of ‘higher’ laws of nature. In a comparable way, the pneumatological approach is, as Ritchie observes, one in which, if ‘some events seem more supernatural than others, this is due to varying levels of creaturely response and openness to the Spirit’.43 Such events are, she goes on (quoting Smith), ‘sped-up modes of the Spirit’s more regular presences’.44 This clearly parallels my own view — based on the cosmic vision of St Maximos — of the way that such events may be seen as the outcome of the presence of the divine Logos in the logoi that are manifested in both ordinary and ‘higher’ laws of nature. (In Yong’s approach to this issue there is also, it should be noted, an eschatological focus comparable to my own, though Ritchie does not comment on this.) An important aspect of this Pentecostal / charismatic emphasis on the third person of the Trinity is that it may be seen as being complemented by the Logos — logoi understanding of Orthodoxy, in which the focus is on the second person. (This complementarity becomes especially evident when we remember that pneumatological insights are already present in the Orthodox approach, since Orthodoxy has a strong sense of the importance of the Cappadocian Fathers’ belief that all divine action is essentially Trinitarian action, with the Son and the Spirit constituting what St Irenaeus called the ‘two hands’ of the Father.) This complementarity can arguably enable Western theology, through Orthodox influence, to develop an understanding of divine action that is truly Trinitarian, and not just based on the rather vague philosophical theism of the causal joint approach or the more rigorous philosophical theism of the Thomistic one.

More and Deeper In this example we can see, on the one hand, how Orthodox understanding can provide for Western theologians what are, for them, new insights into how the cosmos — and divine action within it — can be understood in Christological terms. On the other hand, we can see the potential for pneumatological insights from the West to reinforce and clarify the pneumatology already present within the Orthodox Tradition. If this clarification occurs, then it would be an example of Western Christian thinking playing the role that is spoken of by Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, when

42 Ritchie, ‘Dancing Around the Causal Joint’, p. 374. 43 Ritchie, “Dancing around the Causal Joint’, p. 375. 44 Smith, ‘Is the Universe Open for Surprise’, p. 892.

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he says that ‘if we Orthodox are to fulfil our role properly, we must understand our own Tradition better than we have in the past, and it is the west … that can help us do this. We Orthodox must thank our younger brothers, for through contact with Christians of the west we are being enabled to acquire a new vision of Orthodoxy’.45 Thus, in the ‘theological turn’ of which Ritchie speaks, and especially in its potential for Trinitarian development, we arguably have an example of something that can be seen as paradigmatic for Orthodoxy’s understanding of its relationship to Western theological reflection. This is that interaction between Orthodox and Western thinking can be mutually enhancing while at the same time being asymmetrical, in the sense that Orthodoxy need not give up its claim to having a fuller and more balanced theological understanding than others. In the same book as that in which he comments about understanding our Tradition better through contact with Western Christians, Metropolitan Kallistos sums up what much of this essay has attempted to delineate: the idea that following Tradition requires more than simply parroting the formulae of the past. ‘Loyalty to Tradition’ he says, ‘properly understood, is not something mechanical, a passive and automatic process of transmitting the accepted wisdom of an era in the distant past … [Tradition] is constantly assuming new forms, which supplement the old without superceding them’.46 The fear that some Orthodox may feel in the face of proposed supplements of this kind has been commented on in an interesting way by another Metropolitan bishop of our church. This is Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh, who as a young man trained as a medical doctor and later used the experience of science obtained in that training to explain his perceptions about such fears. When a scientific model is first developed, says Metropolitan Anthony, a good scientist’s reaction ‘will be to go round and round his model in all directions, examining and trying to find where the flaw is, what the problems are that are generated by the model he has built, by the theory he has proposed, by the hypothesis he has now offered for the consideration of others’. At the root of the scientist’s activity, he continues, ‘is the certainty that what he is doubting is the model he has invented — that is, by the way he has projected his intellectual structures on the world around him and on the facts, the way in which his intelligence has grouped things. But what he is absolutely certain of is that the reality that is beyond his model is in no danger if his model collapses. The reality is stable; it is there, the model is an inadequate expression of it, but the reality doesn’t alter because the model shakes.’47 Because this distinction is fully understood in scientific work, says Metropolitan Anthony, the scientist’s doubt ‘is hopeful, it is joyful, it is destructive of what he has done himself because he believes in the reality that is beyond and not in the model he has constructed.’ This, he goes on, is something ‘we must learn as believers for our

45 Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church 3rd edn (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993), p. 326. 46 Ware, The Orthodox Church, p. 198. 47 Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, God and Man, New edn, (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2003), pp. 51–2.

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spiritual life both in the highest forms of theology and in the small simple concrete experience of being a Christian.’48 For Metropolitan Anthony, the spiritual and theological application of this insight seems to be that God is the Reality, and that what we say about God is — as Orthodox apophaticism emphasises — the model. As we come to develop the patristic mind, and therefore increasingly know the Reality experientially, then we will increasingly find that we need have no fear about exploring the way in which concepts about that Reality may be open to new forms of expression. ‘Whenever we are confronted with a crossroads’ says Metropolitan Anthony, ‘whenever we are in doubt, whenever our mind sees two alternatives, instead of saying “Oh God make me blind, Oh God help me not to see, Oh God give me loyalty to what I now know to be untrue,” we should say “God is casting a ray of light on something I have outgrown — the smallness of my original vision. I have come to the point where I can see more and deeper, thanks be to God”’.49

48 Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, God and Man, pp. 51–2. 49 Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, God and Man, pp. 51–2.

Doru Costache

One Description, Multiple Interpretations Suggesting a Way Out of the Current Impasse*

Well, science and religion are not competitors, they’re two different languages trying to tell the same story. There’s room in this world for both. Dan Brown, Origin

Different Descriptions of Reality Contemporary science, albeit incomplete and characterised by a state of permanent reinvention and change, nevertheless offers the only rigorous description of reality, part and whole. This holds true irrespective of how the various schools within the vast scientific network explain and nuance this description. And so, until a new science replaces it, this description of reality should remain the reference point in educated conversation. After all, and taking my cue from the conviction of Dumitru Stăniloae, the world, understood as the totality of things within what we call reality, constitutes the content of much communication among people.1 Whether they talk about weather, landscaping, crops, mining, travel, environment, biology, chemistry, geography, astronomy, physics, or cosmology for that matter, implicitly or explicitly people share their views about the world. But, for the world to be a common reference point in conversation, the interlocutors must adhere to the same description of reality. When to one person the earth is long and to another it is wide, to paraphrase a nineteenth-century Romanian poet, communication is obstructed. Conversation becomes impossible when people describe reality in different and opposite ways;



* This paper was written during my adjunct senior lectureship with the School of Philosophy and Theology, the University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney (2017-2019), being based on research undertaken both there and at St Cyril’s Coptic Orthodox Theological College (Sydney College of Divinity). 1 Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă [Orthodox dogmatic theology], vol. 1, 3rd edn (București: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 2003), pp. 359–60; 366–74. Doru Costache • St Cyril’s Coptic Orthodox Theological College • Sydney College of Divinity, Sydney, Australia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue, ed. by Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk, SOC, 2 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 33–49. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.122606

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when they live in parallel universes as it were. Imagine a colloquy between the inhabitants of a unidimensional realm and the dwellers of a multidimensional reality: incommensurable experiences render communication impossible. The same goes for the conversation between adherents to the standard representation of reality pertaining to scientific cosmology and certain Orthodox Christian milieus committed to outmoded descriptions of the world. The fact of the matter is that, as Christopher Knight pointed out,2 according to some authors (such as the conservative Seraphim Rose3 and, I would add, a plethora of internet apologists more recently) contemporary Orthodox Christians must uphold the scientific knowledge of antiquity and ignore the science of our time. They adopt this position because the revered theologians of past eras contextualised their worldview within ancient science. Nevertheless, the ancient computation of the world’s age to roughly eight thousand years is not an acceptable description of reality and by no means an article of faith. Nor are geocentric cosmography and the flat earth geography. Nor is the notion of a celestial ceiling whose lightbulbs are the stars. Nor, again, is the view that the stars are angels swimming in the waters above the firmament. Nor is, furthermore, the ancient notion of inert matter which requires extraneous interventions from an Aristotelian unmoved mover or a theatrical deus ex machina. Nor is, finally, the Julian calendar. Yet such anachronisms still linger, idolatrously, in certain Orthodox Christian quarters, against the backdrop of an opposition to the current representation of reality and to all things scientific.4 This situation impacts Orthodox Christianity itself and its rapport with contemporary scientific culture, causing a communication breakdown with various ramifications. To these issues I briefly turn in what follows. First, opposition to all things scientific causes dissension within Orthodox Christianity. In contrast with the anachronism of certain milieus, such as those influenced by Seraphim Rose’s views, mainstream Orthodox Christians neither follow the outdated Julian calendar nor believe in a recently made cosmic ceiling which revolves around a flat earth mechanistically pushed by a prime mover situated somewhere, over the rainbow. Drawing on traditional approaches, as we shall see in what follows, mainstream Orthodox Christians respect the different competences of science and theology, while they endeavour to bridge them for the purposes of articulating a Christian cosmology which, in turn, serves as a platform for mission today, as it did in the past. But the coexistence of these opposite attitudes towards science denotes that Orthodox Christianity is internally divided. If truth be told, Orthodox Christianity harbours two mutually incomprehensible languages, corresponding to divergent representations of reality. On one side, the mainstream translates the traditional worldview into the spoken language of

2 Christopher C. Knight, ‘Natural Theology and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition’ in The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, ed. by Russell Re Manning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 213–26 (pp. 213, 224). 3 Seraphim Rose, Genesis, Creation and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision (Platina, CA: Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2000). 4 Knight, ‘Natural Theology’, pp. 223–24.

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contemporary scientific culture. On the other side, anachronistically committed to obsolete knowledge under the pretence of tradition, gibberish is spoken. The former interprets the current representation of reality in a Christian sense. The latter favours a mythical worldview to contemporary cosmology. This is a typical case of inhabiting parallel universes, one multidimensional and one unidimensional respectively; no meaningful communication can be established between their residents. The two approaches fit to a tee the bill of Jaroslav Pelikan’s categories of tradition and traditionalism, which he famously described as ‘the living faith of the dead’ and ‘the dead faith of the living’.5 The mainstream view, which draws lessons from the past in order to adhere to in the same spirit today, corresponds to Pelikan’s tradition, whereas the anachronistic position, which considers the past permanent and unchangeable, corresponds to traditionalism.

Description and Interpretation History shows that, rhetoric notwithstanding, no Church father of late antiquity and the middle ages ever replaced the Hellenistic science of their age by the mythical lore of the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Hebrews underpinning the scriptural worldview. On the contrary, as it will soon become evident, the fathers redrafted the message of Genesis in the scientific parameters of their times. In this light, the position of mainstream Orthodox Christians, namely, their effort to render into contemporary idiom the wisdom of their faith, is an authentic expression of the tradition. In turn, anachronism is a pseudomorphosis of that tradition. As a recent synodical document states, ‘the identification of the Church with conservatism, incompatible with the advancement of civilisation, is arbitrary and improper’.6 Until the conservatives retrieve, as the tradition teaches, contemporary scientific culture, Orthodox Christianity will remain a fractured family, unable to gain external credibility. This point leads me to the second impact of the situation described above. Anachronism and conservatism discredit the Orthodox Christian representation of reality as mythical and inconsequential for contemporary society and culture. As a result, the constructive exchange of ideas, which occurred in past centuries between Orthodox Christianity and a range of cultures, is very limited, if it happens at all. If truth be told, while contemporary scientists turn to various religions, spiritualities, and philosophies in search for alternate terms and imagery to their own specialised jargon,7 no one considers the Orthodox Christian worldview a resource in this regard. Of course, it is not the scientists who are to blame because, instead of

5 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition: The 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 65. 6 Encyclical of Holy and Great Council (2016) [accessed 10 August 2018]. 7 David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge, 1980); Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, 1975).

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intelligibly transmitting the wisdom of the tradition, its values and input to the understanding of the world we live in, Orthodox Christianity allows conservative voices to represent it. But this situation has caused an almost total communication breakdown, incapacitating Orthodox Christian mission. Given the difficulties they generate, conservatism and anachronism should be abandoned and the wisdom of the tradition restored. There is no other way of reconciling Orthodox Christianity within itself. And there is no other way of bridging Orthodox Christianity and the scientific culture of today for the purposes of mission. Another matter must still be addressed. Is there anything legitimate about the resistance of the conservative milieus within Orthodox Christianity to contemporary science, including cosmology? I believe that there is. Let me explain. On many occasions, scientists present themselves as unconcerned with or even opposed to religion. Perhaps well-meant, their position denotes however an unscientific bias. This bias becomes more obvious when representatives of the scientific community openly deride Christianity and its values. Together with causing irritation among believers, these representatives prove that science is ideologically fraught, lending substance to agnostic, atheistic, naturalistic, and materialistic agendas which depend on personal convictions.8 Ideological positions of this kind are what fuels anti-scientific sentiments, not the description of nature itself. Anachronism and conservatism do not thrive in times when harmonious exchanges of ideas take place. And although Orthodox Christian conservatism betrays a misunderstanding of the tradition, as we have seen above, its proliferation is engendered by ideological attacks, such as those mentioned in the foregoing. This situation is not unprecedented. Christians faced persecutions throughout history9 and their reactions to oppression have not always amounted to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Unfortunately, contemporary conservatives do precisely that — they reject science together with the ideologies which hijack it. What matters is that conservatism and anachronism represent extreme reactions to another form of extremism, namely, the ideologically conditioned science promoted by many members of the scientific community and the zealot critics of religion. As long as the scientists allow their research to be ideologically hijacked, and do not denounce the unscientific nature of ideologies such as agnosticism, atheism, naturalism, and materialism, there will be reason for the anachronistic circles within Orthodox Christianity and elsewhere to resist science. In what follows I attempt to sketch a way out of this situation. A distinction between description and interpretation must be observed. In tune with this distinction, I propose that the scientific description of reality, taken wholesale, allows for multiple interpretations and that the agnostic, atheistic, naturalistic,



8 Bernard Lightman, ‘Unbelief ’ in Science and Religion around the World, ed. by John Hedley Brooke and Ronald L. Numbers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 252–77. 9 Knight, ‘Natural Theology’, p. 223; Richard Norris Jr, ‘The apologists’ in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. by Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 36–44.

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and materialistic ideologies which hijack contemporary science represent biased interpretations of science, not science itself. Since it pursues discovery, science should maintain ideological neutrality. Furthermore, nothing should preclude the results of scientific enquiry from being interpreted from multiple viewpoints, theological and atheistic alike. The theological and the atheistic interpretations of science are equally unscientific, being relevant to particular layers of a given society. Theological interpretations of science, relevant to believers, are as legitimate as the atheistic interpretations of the nonbelievers. Should science maintain ideological neutrality, allowing instead for a variety of interpretations, including theological, the current description of reality could become readily acceptable to most Orthodox Christians. In what follows I seek the wisdom of several exponents of the patristic tradition in matters of engaging scientific knowledge. Then, through a succinct overview of the neopatristic approach to science, I draw lessons for today. I show that the solution I propose has traditional grounds, being therefore acceptable for all Orthodox Christians, and that the above distinction makes possible a genuine conversation between theologians and scientists. Below I consider examples of the way several early Christian authors within the Greek strand of the tradition handled science. These cases by no means exhaust the range of relevant attitudes. For instance, the Assyrian Tatian (d. 180) and the Carthaginian Tertullian (d. 220) were circumspect about modes of knowing not anchored in scriptural wisdom, such as ancient philosophy and science.10 But within the tradition of interest, the Alexandrian master, Clement (d. c. 215), built a sophisticated system of thinking which integrated scientific expertise, philosophical reflection, and theological insight.11 In the same vein, history records Byzantine theologians, such as John Damascene (d. 749), Theodore Metochites (d. 1332), and Gregory Palamas (d. 1359), who worked out hierarchical epistemologies which accommodated scientific, theological, and spiritual perspectives.12 10 Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), p. 39; David Lindberg ‘Early Christian Attitudes toward Nature’ in Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction, ed. by Gary Ferngren (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 47–56 (pp. 49–50). 11 Doru Costache, ‘Christian Gnosis: From Clement the Alexandrian to John Damascene’ in The Gnostic World, ed. by Garry W. Trompf, Gunner B. Mikkelsen, and Jay Johnston (London and New York: Routledge Worlds, 2019), 259–70 (pp. 259–61); 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), 55–87 (pp. 56–64); Doru Costache, ‘Meaningful Cosmos: Logos and Nature in Clement the Alexandrian’s Exhortation to the Gentiles’, Phronema 28: 2 (2013), 107–30. 12 Borje Bydén, ‘To Every Argument there is a Counter-Argument’: Theodore Metochites’ Defence of Scepticism, Semeiosis 61’ in Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources, ed. by Katerina Ierodiakonou (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 183–217 (pp. 184; 186–87; 207); Costache, ‘Christian Gnosis’, pp. 267–69; Doru Costache, ‘Byzantine and Modern Orthodox Gnosis: From the Eleventh to the Twenty-First Century’ in The Gnostic World, ed. by Garry W. Trompf, Gunner B. Mikkelsen, and Jay Johnston (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 426–35 (pp. 428–30); Doru Costache, ‘The Transdisciplinary Carats of Patristic Byzantine Tradition’ in Transdisciplinary Education,

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In this part of my study I refer to three patristic theologians, namely, Basil ‘the Great’ of Caesarea (d. 379), Gregory of Nyssa (d. c. 390), and Maximus the Confessor (d. 662), whose contributions are highly regarded within the ecclesial milieus as well as by contemporary scholarship. I hope that these examples will cast light upon the traditional way of addressing scientific matters in Orthodox Christianity.

Basil ‘the Great’ of Caesarea Basil of Caesarea maintained a liberal attitude towards the scientific culture of his time. His openness was undoubtedly conditioned by his solid training as a polymath in the Christian and the Classical curricular disciplines.13 That said, his appreciation for the sciences, documented by two related works, Address to Youth (hereafter, Address) and Homilies on the Hexaemeron (hereafter, Hexaemeron), was reinforced by discernment and critical thinking. In the prologue of Address14 he outlined a selective approach to the Classical literature, a method which also guided his endeavours to achieve an integrated representation of reality, theological and scientific, in the Hexaemeron. Within the latter, discernment transpires through Basil’s conviction that to articulate the Christian worldview requires an awareness of the competences of both perspectives. He did not explicitly outline this opinion in the Hexaemeron, but his position therein corresponds to the methodological sections of the Address.15 There, in the Address, he detailed the way one was supposed to approach the Classical sources with profit for the Christian life. This entailed ignoring the morally questionable parts of Classical culture and appreciating the parts that praised virtue. In short, the Address amounts to a pedagogical exemplification of how Christians should exercise critical thinking. Extrapolating this lesson for the Christian representation of reality, the Hexaemeron illustrates these very principles in a compelling manner by pointing out what to take from and what to ignore about the established view of reality. In the Hexaemeron, on which I focus from now on, Basil made copious use of the sciences to describe and to analyse natural phenomena. He adhered to the scientific notion of creation’s contingency and natural mortality, together with believing that

Philosophy, & Education, ed. by Basarab Nicolescu and Atila Ertas (Lubbock, TX: The Academy of Transdisciplinary Learning & Advanced Studies, 2014), 149–65 (pp. 157–61); Efthymios Nicolaidis et al., ‘Science and Orthodox Christianity: An Overview’, Isis, 107:3 (2011), 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), pp. 85–89; 98–104; Basil Tatakis, Christian Philosophy in the Patristic and Byzantine Tradition (New York: Orthodox Research Institute, 2007), pp. 232, 269. 13 Stephen Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea: A Synthesis of Greek Thought and Biblical Truth (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), p. 188; John Lee, ‘Why Didn’t St Basil Write in New Testament Greek?’ in Cappadocian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal, ed. by Doru Costache and Philip Kariatlis (Sydney: St Andrew’s Orthodox Press, 2013), 63–77 (pp. 71–74); Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy, pp. 8–9. 14 Address 1.1–8; 1.20–29. 15 Address 2.26–47; 3.1–18; 4.1–54.

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the sun was the physical source of its own heat.16 He was aware, furthermore, that the cosmology of Genesis was incomplete and that the gaps in the narrative had to be filled by the available scientific data. In his words, When he [namely, Moses] said, ‘In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,’ he passed over in silence many things, such as water, air, and fire, out of which [the created beings] happen to be produced. All these [elements] which complete the cosmos clearly existed, without any doubt, but the story left them out so that our mind can exercise its skills by inferring the rest from little pointers.17 Here, the inquisitive mind is supposed to complete the scriptural worldview by referring to the fundamental elements known to ancient physics. It is not Genesis which supplies a description of the infrastructure of the universe; it is science, regardless of how wrong ancient science looks to a modern reader. In relation to this, Basil filled the gaps in the Genesis account by referring to details about the astronomical sky, natural phenomena, plant life, and animal behaviour.18 These descriptions were based on personal observations as well as the available sciences. Without pedantically indicating the sources, he usually mentioned what the physiologoi, the researchers of nature or physicists, relayed.19 The evidence of scientific information within the Basilian discourse contradicts the hypothesis of a patristic worldview that developed, as certain scholars have asserted in the past, at odds with the theories of the ancients.20 More recent scholars have vindicated Basil and the tradition he represented.21 Indeed, Basil credited the scientific knowledge of his time with offering a legitimate description of reality. He never objected to the geocentric model or other tenets of ancient cosmography, including the concentric spheres of the Ptolemaic system,22 which, after all, have nothing in common with Scripture and the Christian creed. At the same time Basil rejected — on theological and scriptural grounds23 — the ideologically fraught interpretation of natural phenomena from atheistic, pantheistic, and materialistic viewpoints. A good example is his opposition to the hypothesis that the universe was self-generated and self-sufficient, thus uncreated

16 Hexaemeron 1.3; 3.7. See also Alexei Nesteruk, The Sense of the Universe: Philosophical Explication of Theological Commitment in Modern Cosmology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), p. 415. 17 Hexaemeron 2.3. 18 Hexaemeron 3.4–5; 4.2, 6; 5.2–3; 7.1–2. 19 Hexaemeron 1.10, 11. 20 Pierre Duhem, Le système du monde: Histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic, vol. 2 (Paris: Hermann, 1965), pp. 395–96, 398–99; Gregory Telepneff and Bishop Chrysostomos,‘The Transformation of Hellenistic Thought on the Cosmos and Man in the Greek Fathers’, The Patristic and Byzantine Review 9:2–3 (1990), 123–34 (p. 123). 21 Costache, ‘Meaningful Cosmos’, pp. 98–106; Harrison, Territories of Science and Religion, p. 220; Hildebrand, Trinitarian Theology, pp. 51, 121; Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 20, 36, 91. 22 Hexaemeron 1.3–4; 3.3. 23 Hexaemeron 1.11; 3.3; Lindberg, ‘Early Christian Attitudes’, p. 51; Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture, pp. 12–13.

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and deprived of divine providence. Against this view he stated, ‘The creation of the sky and the earth must be conveyed not as having happened spontaneously, as some have imagined, but as having their cause from God’.24 Of course, his relevant strategies included more than blunt dismissal. On reviewing a range of physical and cosmological theories, he declined to discuss their intrinsic validity, which would have required the expertise of a scientist, and reserved for himself the theologian’s task of pointing out that they shared a common flaw, namely, an atheistic bias.25 It is noteworthy however that Basil was not tempted to replace natural phenomena by a divine agency that operated in supernaturalistic manner. Instead, he discerned the synergetic or interactive structure of nature, which entailed a continuous cooperation of divine and cosmic energies.26 I cannot delve into this topic here. What matters is that, while he took as a starting point the way the ancient physiologoi described reality, he offered an interpretation of the facts that was different from the latter’s atheistic interpretation. His was a theological, scripturally rooted, iteration. Accordingly, he considered the created beings and the phenomena within the natural world pointers to a creator and provident God.27 In so doing he proved that the established description of reality could accommodate not only atheistic viewpoints, but also theological interpretations. Basil’s complex approach includes therefore both denials and affirmations of science. This puzzling situation cannot be taken as a contradiction which escaped him. His approach draws upon an important methodological assumption, namely, a delineation between the competences of science and theology. The passages referred to in the foregoing suggest that he discerned the analytical and descriptive contribution of the sciences, and theology’s hermeneutical or interpretive input. This discernment cohered with his broader distinction between scientific discourse and ideology. Accordingly, the competence of theology overlapped with that of the ancient ideologies. It is on this level that the conflict unfolded — between theology and ideology, not between theology and science. While he criticised the ancient theories that interpreted the scientific worldview atheistically, he offered the alternative of a theological take on the available data. The natural world he described coincided with that of Classical science, not that of another science, but he interpreted the world according to theological criteria.28 And whereas he was mindful of the incompleteness and contradictions of certain physical theories,29 the line he drew between interpretation and description enabled him to accommodate both views — theological and scientific — within one, complex, and coherent representation of reality. One might wonder what prompted Basil to implement this method. It is possible that his motivation was pastoral. He must have realised that Hellenistic Christians 24 Hexaemeron 1.1. 25 Hexaemeron 1.2; Hildebrand, Trinitarian Theology, p. 116; Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy, pp. 11–12. 26 Hexaemeron 5.2; 8.1; Costache, ‘Christian Worldview’, pp. 119–24. 27 Hexaemeron 1.11. 28 Costache, ‘Christian Gnosis’, p. 262. 29 Lindberg, ‘Early Christian Attitudes’, pp. 50–51.

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experienced difficulties with grasping the doctrine of creation from Genesis, formulated in the mythical idiom of ancient Near and Middle East. While he remained profoundly respectful of the scriptural message, he nevertheless engaged the sciences of his time in order to translate the doctrine of creation into the cultural categories of his readers. Thus, he showed that the doctrine of creation was independent from any culture and that Christians could therefore use any scientific framework to convey their faith in understandable terms to a given audience. This presupposed another distinction, between what was perennial and what transitory in theology’s own worldview. He decided that what should change was the mythical shape of the story, not the essence of the doctrine of creation. Albeit implicitly, in proposing this message Basil applied the principles espoused in his Address.30 This approach totally differs from the understanding of modern Orthodox traditionalists, who believe that the task of theology is to replace current science. But Basil offered yet another lesson, more relevant to my concerns. In the process of translating the doctrine of creation from the Near and Middle Eastern universe of Genesis into Hellenistic categories, he proved that the available scientific description of reality was not the sole province of atheistic, pantheistic, and materialistic interpretations. Science was equally interpretable from the vantage point of the Christian doctrine of creation. Extrapolating this wisdom for our circumstances, Basil’s solution entails that contemporary science, as a rigorous description of reality, should not be considered the sole province of agnostic, atheistic, naturalistic, and materialistic interpretations. It can likewise be interpreted for the benefit of faith-oriented communities, therefore theologically. On this note, I turn to my next witness, Basil’s younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa.

Gregory of Nyssa Gregory of Nyssa differed from Basil in his way of articulating theological matters,31 without overall abandoning the methodological path walked on by his older sibling. Concerning the topic of interest, he continued Basil’s effort to translate the message of creation from the Semitic cast of Genesis into the vernacular of Hellenistic science, but he did so in his own manner, by allocating much more space for scientific explanation than his brother ever did. This massive scientific input must have been a reaction to the revival of pagan culture that culminated with the rise of Emperor Julian ‘the Apostate’ (d. 363), particularly the criticisms levelled at Christianity during those years. According to their antagonists, Christian authors were unable to 30 Hildebrand, Trinitarian Theology, pp. 2–5; Lee, ‘Why Didn’t St Basil’, pp. 63–64, 75–76; Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture, pp. 9–10, 29, 176, 182. 31 Paul Blowers, ‘Beauty, Tragedy and New Creation: Theology and Contemplation in Cappadocian Cosmology’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 18:1 (2016), 7–29 (pp. 8–9); Andrew Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present (Westmont: Inter Varsity Press, 2004), p. 289; Nicolaidis, Science and Orthodox Christianity, pp. 548–49; Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture, pp. 7–8.

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produce great literature, incapable of scientific research, and inapt for sophisticated thinking. Gregory resolved to refute these pagan allegations indirectly, by showing how well-read and astute a home-schooled Christian bishop can be. His relevant approach is most obvious in An Apology for the Hexaemeron (hereafter, Apology), published shortly after Basil’s death, possibly in mid-379. In this ‘technical treatise’ on the creation32 Gregory gave what sometimes scholars consider a commentary on the first four days of the creation narrative in Genesis 1. In reality, he used the scriptural account as a pretext to relay his profound awareness of the natural movement of the universe, chaos theory, physical phenomena such as the propagation of light and the cycles of water, the structure of matter, and the fundamental elements.33 He went to great lengths to explain the processes of nature, causing wonderment to the reader who would expect to find in the Apology an analogous approach to Basil’s, whose Hexaemeron assesses all scientific information against the backdrop of a solid scriptural theology. But for undisclosed reasons Gregory preferred to use Scripture as merely a frame for what otherwise was a veritable encyclopaedia of natural philosophy.34 Apart from this peculiarity, his method fits better the profile of apologetic literature than the exegetical genre.35 On this note, I must turn to his approach to the matters under consideration. Gregory made sense of certain obscure parts in Genesis by interchangeably using scriptural material and knowledge borrowed from Hellenistic science. At some point he questioned the cosmological accuracy of Genesis on the grounds that it ignores the physical order of creation outlined by logic and presented by the available sciences. More specifically, he pointed to a lacuna within the narrative, which, he believed, was supposed to discuss air immediately after treating light and fire.36 Caught in his savant argument, he forgot that Genesis does not mention fire and the Greek doctrine of the four elements. What matters is that, following Basil, he was of the view that Genesis does not disclose the entire sequence of creation; instead it makes suggestions which an inquisitive mind has to clarify by deferring to scientific expertise. One way of bringing scriptural cosmology to clarity was by taking the light in Genesis as fire or rather a ‘fiery and luminous potential of the creation’.37 This is but one example of many. Here is a related example: Within the same scriptural narrative, the primordial element of light, or fire, signified the unity of the creation as well as its multiplicity — particularly when it referred to the astronomical bodies that

32 Paul Blowers, Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 109. 33 Doru Costache, ‘Approaching An Apology for the Hexaemeron: Its Aims, Method and Discourse’ in Cappadocian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal, ed. by Doru Costache and Philip Kariatlis (Sydney: St Andrew’s Orthodox Press, 2013), 349–71 (pp. 355–56); 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. 34 Costache, ‘Making Sense’, pp. 7–14. 35 Costache, ‘Approaching An Apology’, pp. 362–70. 36 Apology 24. 37 Apology 65. See also Blowers, Drama of the Divine Economy, p. 120.

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populated the seven celestial spheres.38 The point about the seven spheres denotes Gregory’s integration of the concentric regions of the Ptolemaic system, which, as with the element of fire, were foreign to Genesis. This amounts to a recasting of Genesis in the cultural format expected by the Apology’s first readers,39 namely, Hellenistic physiologia or natural philosophy. In so doing, Gregory proved that Genesis and the available sciences were not at odds. But, again like Basil, Gregory did not stop at making use of science in order to clarify the missing links within the scriptural narrative. He employed Genesis as a hermeneutical tool for interpreting the cosmos described by science theologically. In his words, ‘the prophet wrote the Book of Genesis as an introduction to divine knowledge’.40 He did not refer to Scripture in order to replace the scientific description of reality. Instead, he employed it as an authenticating framework in view of the theological appropriation of the available cosmological data. Gregory’s references to God’s ‘will, wisdom, and power’ which conditioned the ordered and purposeful universe illustrate this strategy abundantly.41 This was his way of iterating his older sibling’s position that the scientific description of reality — ideologically tweaked in support of atheistic and agnostic agendas — could very well be interpreted in terms of a theologically meaningful universe. While he pursued this goal in his own manner, Gregory adhered to Basil’s distinction between description and interpretation, deployed in order to assert the legitimacy of a theological take on the scientific description of reality. But this meant that Gregory, following Basil, believed in the validity of scientific enquiry.42 They were not the only Greek Christian authors to do so.

Maximus the Confessor An admirer of Gregory, Maximus — widely considered the most significant Byzantine theologian — was not only a great spiritual master, a skilled exegete, and a doctrinal polemicist; he also was the builder of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary syntheses which, by all intents and purposes, anticipated modern transdisciplinary thinking.43 One of his contributions was what I call his theory of everything: a multilayered worldview presented as five levels of reality, every level containing two different elements which tend towards unification.44 This complex theory, amounting to a comprehensive map of reality, incorporated data from a range of sources and

38 Apology 65. 39 Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy, pp. 9–11. 40 Apology 8. 41 Apology 7; 9; 25; 64; 65; 69. 42 Knight, ‘Natural Theology’, p. 216. 43 Costache, ‘Transdisciplinary Carats’, pp. 157–59. 44 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), 378–96 (pp. 379–81).

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disciplines. It borrowed from Scripture the distinction between male and female (Genesis 1) as well as between paradise and land (Genesis 2–3). The distinction between earth and sky represented Aristotle’s scientific cosmography. Plato’s metaphysics lent it the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible aspects of reality. From Christian theology, finally, it borrowed the distinction between the created and the uncreated. According to Maximus, the human being was supposed to bridge these distinctions or polarities horizontally and vertically — a perspective which he deployed with reference to other objects as well.45 The vertical unification bridged, in order, humankind, the earthly ecosphere, the physical universe, the whole of the creation, and the whole of reality.46 The parts and the whole were both represented. In so doing, the theory of Maximus harmonised within one worldview two scriptural narratives, Aristotelian science, Platonic ontology, and Christian theology. In so doing, furthermore, it suggested a way of preventing culture wars through associating each field with the precise level of reality for which it was competent. Basil’s point about disciplinary competences, earlier mentioned, was once again confirmed. But let us have a closer look at the theory. Humankind was supposed to act as a catalyst of general unification.47 Given that its failure to maintain a holy life made this achievement impossible, it was Christ who fulfilled the project of unification on our behalf and in our behalf.48 Christ’s activity was then replicated in the achievements of the Church and its saints.49 Of interest is the second stage of the unification project, presented in terms of bridging the inhabited earth, or civilisation, and paradise, or the spiritual experience.50 The scriptural pretext of this stage is the narrative in Genesis 2–3, according to which, after moving from an earthly condition signified by the phrase ‘dust of the earth’ to the paradisal status, humankind lost paradise and returned to the condition of sinful and mortal dust, as settler of an inhospitable land. Maximus identified in this account circumstances of his own time, however. Namely, he took paradise as an image of the spiritual life primarily illustrated by the monastic experience, and the inhabited earth of the fall — where humankind had to progress scientifically and to develop technologies in order to survive — as an image of civilisation. In his age, as today, the story unfolded in terms of civilisation ignoring the spiritual life and of the monastic opposition to civilisation, its science, and its technology. Following Basil, who discerned the respective competences of theology and science, Maximus noticed the differences between civilisation and spirituality. But he believed that they could do better than just to coexist. They could be united without losing their distinctiveness, as paradise and the inhabited land did before the fall. After all, corresponding to the Byzantine christological

45 Costache, ‘Transdisciplinary Carats’, pp. 154–57. 46 Nesteruk, Sense of the Universe, pp. 14, 55, 125. 47 Costache, ‘Mapping Reality’, pp. 381–85; Nesteruk, Sense of the Universe, p. 145. 48 Costache, ‘Mapping Reality’, pp. 385–90; Nesteruk, Sense of the Universe, p. 77. 49 Costache, ‘Mapping Reality’, pp. 391–94. 50 The Book of Difficulties [hereafter, Difficulties] 41.4.

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model,51 this principle of union in distinction worked for the previous unification, between male and female as one humanity.52 It was further applied as well to the remaining unifications — between earth and sky, visible and invisible, and created and uncreated.53 According to Maximus, After that [namely, after accomplishing human unification in the first stage,] by uniting paradise and the inhabited land through a proper lifestyle, worthy of the saints, [the human being] created one earth, whose parts, according to its distinction [between paradise and land], were no longer divided because of it [namely, humankind], but rather gathered together.54 While the fall caused a break in the earthly ecosphere, humankind’s return to the spiritual life — to virtue, the main unifying factor in Maximus’s theory55 — healed the wounds and bridged the gaps. This unifying factor is ‘a proper lifestyle, worthy of the saints’, signifying that the spiritual experience, paradisal par excellence, does not widen the existing chasms. On the contrary, it gathers everything together. Maximus’s saints did not revel only in angelic company, being very much interested in bridging the shards of human experience. They made room for marriage and celibacy as well as for spirituality, science, and technology.56 Maximus’s saints were profoundly spiritual, committed to ascetically reshaping their lives, but they were equally interested in the world, understood as both ecosystem and society. The latter entailed technological invention and scientific inquiry, of which Maximus, an assiduous reader of Aristotle, was no stranger.57 In short, the second stage of his unification theory postulated that, as paradise and the inhabited land, spirituality, science, and technology can interact creatively, particularly when people embrace a holy way of life which enables them to wisely use everything at their disposal.58 Irrespective of what one might make of this Byzantine theory of everything, what matters is that Maximus rehearsed here the same inclusive approach of his predecessors. While he built on the position of Basil and Gregory that scientific description and theological interpretation are compatible, he further refined it by showing in what way data from a range of disciplines can be organised — hierarchically — according to their respective competences for the various levels of reality. Either way, these three witnesses of the tradition offered invaluable lessons for how to proceed, in relation to science and theology, both reasonably and profitably. All three, simply put, worked with a distinction between the scientific description of reality and its theological interpretation, bridging the two perspectives harmoniously. Their lessons were not lost on the theologians of recent times.

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Costache, ‘Mapping Reality’, p. 384; Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, pp. 22–23, 49–51. Difficulties 41.3. Difficulties 41.4. Difficulties 41.4. Costache, ‘Mapping Reality’, p. 383. Costache, ‘Transdisciplinary Carats’, pp. 156, 158–59. Costache, ‘Christian Gnosis’, pp. 266–67. Difficulty 41.4.

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Continuity within the Tradition In what follows I briefly review the contributions of three mainstream Orthodox Christian scholars who have reiterated the above traditional approach in the parameters of our age. These modern theologians, Vladimir Lossky (d. 1958), Panayiotis Nellas (d. 1986), and Dumitru Stăniloae (d. 1993), represent the same strand of the tradition, known in contemporary literature as the neopatristic school.59 Lossky was perhaps the first neopatristic theologian who, emulating the traditional approach outlined in the foregoing, attempted a modern contextualisation of the early Christian worldview. According to him, seeking to articulate an intelligible representation of reality, the early Greek fathers relied on ancient scientific theories to complement their theological takes on Genesis, but without proclaiming ancient knowledge as an eternal science. They both contextualised the Christian worldview against the available sciences and secured its independence from any scientific paradigms. In so doing, they proved that the Christian representation of reality, theological in nature, remained unaffected by the ancient sciences. In so doing, again, they implicitly showed that contemporary sciences cannot affect the Orthodox representation of reality either, and that these sciences should replace the ancient knowledge in contemporary theological discourses.60 In this vein, Lossky, together with summarising the Christian doctrine of creation as postulating an ecclesial destiny of the universe,61 pointed out that this destiny crowned the dynamism of the evolutionary cosmos, particularly its increasing complexity.62 His acknowledgment of contemporary cosmology was crucial for the retrieval of the spirit of the tradition in modern Orthodox theology. Nevertheless, although his insight into the methodology of the early Christian theologians was correct, Lossky did not undertake a full translation of the traditional representation of reality into the scientific idiom of our days. It was Dumitru Stăniloae who pushed the project further. Rewriting patristic theology in the parameters of current Orthodox experience, he stated upfront that he endeavoured to make sense of the teachings of the Church in the spirit of the holy fathers, namely, the way they would have understood it today.63 One such teaching was the doctrine of creation. I have discussed his reiteration of the patristic worldview

59 Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, pp. 77-93, 100-05, 127-42, 191-93; Andrew Louth,‘The patristic revival and its protagonists’ in The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology, edited by Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 188–202; Aidan Nichols, Light From the East: Authors and Themes in Orthodox Theology (London: Sheed & Ward, 1999), pp. 21–40, 170–80. 60 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), pp. 104–06. 61 Lossky, The Mystical Theology, pp. 111–13; Aristotle Papanikolaou, ‘Created for Communion: Vladimir Lossky on Creation and the Divine Ideas’ in Legacy of Achievement: Metropolitan Methodios of Boston. Festal Volume on the 25th Anniversary of His Consecration to the Episcopate (1982–2007), ed. by George D. Dragas (Columbia, MO: Newrome Press LLC, 2010), 650–69. 62 Lossky, The Mystical Theology, p. 241. 63 Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. 1, p. 6.

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in conversation with topics of contemporary cosmology in a number of studies;64 I shall not return to those matters here. Paraphrasing Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, one can confidently assert that Stăniloae truly ‘spoke the modern language … [while] delivering the ancient message’. My final witness is Nellas. Corresponding to Stăniloae’s contemporary articulation of traditional cosmology, Nellas produced an Orthodox Christian anthropology situated at the crossroads of patristic tradition and evolutionary biology.65 For him, biological evolution and spiritual advancement represented the two sides of a single coin,66 one referring to the mechanics of nature while the other to the divine origin and purpose of human existence.67 Nellas was convinced of the necessity to integrate data from various sciences in order to reach a better understanding of the human mystery as depicted by traditional anthropology — a conviction based on his belief that one of the divinely appointed tasks of the human being was to progress in scientific knowledge.68 The saints of old, after all, had never been afraid of science.69 Far from exhausting the list of Orthodox Christian theologians engaged in the effort to redraft the traditional worldview within the parameters of contemporary science,70 the examples referred to here prove the methodological continuity between the best of the early Christian tradition and the best of contemporary Orthodox theology. All these theologians, indeed, held the view that grounding theology in reality depends on its assimilation of the available sciences, and that science is open to interpretation in more than one way — including within theological frameworks.

Conclusion Drawing to a close, it is worth noting once again the continuity between the early Christian tradition, illustrated by the contributions of Basil, Gregory, and Maximus, and contemporary Orthodox Christian theology, represented by scholars such as Lossky, Nellas, and Stăniloae. The consensus between these theologians is not

64 Doru Costache, ‘The Orthodox Doctrine of Creation in the Age of Science’, Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 2/1 (2019), 43–64; Doru Costache, ‘A Theology of the World: Dumitru Stăniloae, the Traditional Worldview, and Contemporary Cosmology’ in Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle Woloschak (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2019), 205–22; Doru Costache, ‘At the Crossroads of Contemporary Cosmology and the Patristic Worldview: Movement, Rationality and Purpose in Father Dumitru Staniloae’, Studii Teologice, 3rd series, 9:2 (2013), 141–63. 65 Doru Costache, ‘Olismos, dynamismos kai synthesi: i anthropologiki skepsi tou Panayioti Nella’ [Holism, dynamism and synthesis: the anthropological thought of Panayiotis Nellas] Synaxi 140 (2016), 30–40. 66 Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person, trans. by Norman Russell (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), p. 121. 67 Nellas, Deification in Christ, pp. 27, 33, 41–42. 68 Nellas, Deification in Christ, p. 28. 69 Nellas, Deification in Christ, p. 98. 70 Knight, ‘Natural Theology’, pp. 224–25.

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perfect, and a reader of our age should not expect absolute consistency between their contributions. That said, the difference has mainly to do with the temporal gap between them. Basil, Gregory, and Maximus elaborated their views within the confines of the science of late antiquity, whereas Lossky, Nellas, and Stăniloae considered contemporary science. They all addressed reality according to their respective cultural contexts. What secures their continuity within the tradition is their adherence to the same theological worldview and — what is particularly relevant here — the same methodology. Specifically, as churchmen, they distinguished between what is useful and what useless in science, and also between what is perennial and what is transitory in theology’s own representation of the universe. Accordingly, they abandoned outmoded descriptions of reality, while preserving the spirit of theological interpretation. Moreover, they adopted new descriptions of reality, which they interpreted from the same theological vantage point. Theirs is a lesson of great discernment and wisdom. That the exercise of discernment remains central to the theological engagement of contemporary scientific culture was recently confirmed by a synodical document of the Orthodox Church.71 What still goes unnoticed is that, in the case of articulating the Orthodox Christian worldview, discernment operates with a silent assumption: that reality can be perceived from diverse viewpoints. This was the great realisation of the early Christian and medieval scholars.72 This, precisely, is the way out of the current impasses. It is not in theology’s purview to produce scientific descriptions of reality. Theology relies on the expertise of the sciences in order to make sense of the nature of things. In turn, theology’s competence consists in interpreting the available description of reality from the viewpoint of the traditional doctrine of creation — which remains unaffected by any sciences, whether ancient or modern. In short, at any given time there is one description of reality, scientifically obtained, which can be variously interpreted, according to the criteria and the aspirations of the interpreting communities. Since Orthodox Christian theology interprets for the Church what science describes for all, there is virtually no clash between the scientific and the theological views of reality. As the motto to this essay reminds us, there is room for both in our world. Within the Orthodox Christian tradition are found, therefore, clear pointers to a discerning and inclusive approach to the matters at hand. Exemplified in the early twentieth century by the adoption of the new calendar and throughout that century by contributions of scholars such as Lossky, Nellas, and Stăniloae, this approach affirms both the validity of scientific research and the legitimacy of the theological interpretation of reality. This approach, as we have seen, draws upon the early Christian and the medieval traditions. It follows that conservatism and anachronism are not inherent to the Orthodox Christian worldview. Orthodox Christianity is not conditioned by the scientific knowledge of late antiquity or the middle ages in order to promote its view of reality.

71 Encyclical 11. 72 Nicolaidis et al., ‘Science and Orthodox Christianity’, p. 566.

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Should a time come when the scientific community will disavow its current misalliance with atheistic, agnostic, naturalistic, and materialistic ideologies — instead allowing for more interpretations of its description of the universe — I am confident that traditional elements such as those discussed here will appease the worries of the Orthodox regarding contemporary science. Such a development will show that there is room for all within the same reality, for all to talk about the same world. In that world, the Orthodox will be able to present the wisdom of their tradition in meaningful ways, for the greater, common good.

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Sergey S. Horujy

Cosmic Liturgy, Orthodox Theology, and Integral Ecological Expertise

The Paradigm of Cosmic Liturgy and its Updated Version In the subject field of our project — ‘Science and Orthodoxy around the World’ (SOW) — the main trajectory relates to the critical reappraisal of scientific knowledge at its present stage. Such a reappraisal must touch upon both general principles of modern science and particular domains in which scientific knowledge is problematic in its conceptual foundations or its results and consequences. The talks presented at the SOW meetings provide many examples of the reappraising analysis dealing with science as a whole, as well as its concrete fields such as cognitive science, astrophysics, theory of evolution, psychoanalysis, bioethics, etc. In this analysis science is, as a rule, considered together with technology, since they are inseparable and the latter is the product of the former. And, last but not least, the reappraisal is carried out with regard to the Orthodox vision and the global task of our project that is the assessment of the relationship between science and Orthodoxy. The present text is the direct continuation of my talk at the First SOW Conference.1 In this talk I tried to show that the most adequate context and conceptual framework for bringing together Orthodox theology and modern science can be provided by the patristic idea of ‘cosmic liturgy’. I argued that this formula, introduced by Hans Urs von Balthasar as a general name for the panorama of the created world in its relation to God in the work of St Maximus the Confessor, can be conceived as the name for a sui generis global model of created being embracing the entire history of the Universe. The talk presented the detailed exposition and discussion of the corresponding (re) interpretation or updating of this idea. In the present text, I resume briefly this (re) interpretation of cosmic liturgy (Sect. 1) in order to transpose it into a different



1 Sergey Horujy, ‘Patristic Idea of Cosmic Liturgy as the Basis of the Relationship between Orthodox Theology and Science’. In Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguity, Potential. Ed. by Gayle Woloschak and Vasilios Makrides (Turnhout, Brepols, 2019), pp. 83-95. Sergey S. Horujy • Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue, ed. by Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk, SOC, 2 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 51–70. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.122607

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discourse, representing it as an Orthodox model of integral ecology (Sect. 3). This model, which turns Orthodox theology into an institute of integral ecological expertise, is compared to the Catholic version of integral ecology (Sect. 2) and is illustrated by the historic parallel with the mission of High Scholastics in Gothic culture (Sect. 4). According to the idea of cosmic liturgy, man and world have to perform the gradual ascending advancement to deification (theosis), which is the union with God and the ontological transcending in philosophical terms: the change of the world’s ontological status as created, fallen being. This theosis is conceived initially as relating to man, in the first place, but then also to the whole cosmos, the sum of all created being. It is the destination of all creation; and according to Maximus, the advancement of the cosmos to this destination has the closest connection with the liturgy and the Eucharist. This connection is two-sided: in the course of the liturgy the fundamental divisions of the created world are gradually overcome (so that the liturgy has a cosmic dimension and is the ‘cosmic liturgy’ in this sense) and the existence of the cosmos is structured into stages corresponding to the phases of the liturgy (so that this existence is a kind of cosmic, extra-ecclesial extension of the ecclesial liturgy, and it is liturgical in this sense). Thus deification as the final goal, as the telos of cosmic liturgy, is an ontological event and a spatio-temporal process of a complex nature; it has liturgical (sacramental), anthropological and cosmic contents connected in a strict order. By virtue of the liturgy and the Eucharist, man obtains God’s deifying grace, and since he is the microcosm, he serves then as a mediator through whom the cosmos also becomes involved in deification. This order, based on man’s mediating role, was reconstructed in detail in a path-breaking book by Lars Thunberg.2 Due to it, the connection of the liturgy and the cosmos takes the form of a conceptual scheme so that cosmic liturgy can be considered as a certain paradigm. The initial form of the paradigm, as found in Maximus’s texts, left many open questions; in particular, its key element, the overcoming of the fundamental divisions within creation, was presented in a most fragmentary and laconic way. This was unavoidable, however. Maximus’s thought relied strongly on the experience of Christocentric communion with God, gained and preserved in the patristic and ascetic tradition of the preceding centuries. But the articulation of the Tradition was far from being finished then, and its next stages brought forth an important development of, and complement to, the way in which this quintessential Christian experience had been expressed. First of all, Athonite hesychasm reached new depths in its spiritual art, making communion with God in the ascetic experience more profound. The ascetic dimension of theosis, the necessity of which had already been stated by Maximus, was fully apprehended due to the Hesychast Renaissance of the fourteenth century. The resolution of the disputes about the nature of hesychast experience confirmed that hesychast practice is a way to the union with God, and its higher stages — considered by the hesychasts as the contemplation of the Light of Tabor — represent the actual approach to theosis, so that the latter is the telos of



2 Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator. The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, 2nd edn (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1995).

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the Hesychast Ladder. In addition, the notions of deification and of cosmic liturgy were interpreted on the basis of the Palamitic theology of divine energies: it was recognised that in deification, and in the hypostatic union of man with God provided by the liturgy and the Eucharist, the union of divine and human energies is to be achieved in ascetic practice. Such interpretation followed clearly from the principal texts of the Hesychast disputes, the ‘Triads’ by Palamas and the Synodal Tome of 1351. The inclusion of ascetical practice in the economy of the deification process means the extension and enrichment of those aspects of the latter which are concerned with man’s own actions. Such extension is a steady trend in the course of history; lots of new human practices emerge, some of which — like practices of dehumanisation — can be relevant to theosis, and in this sense the role of anthropological factors tends to grow. Nowadays a new stage in this growth is taking place: as I demonstrate in the above-mentioned talk, not only ascetic practice, but also some classes of man’s practices in the world can be relevant to theosis, not as negative barriers, like practices of dehumanisation, but as factors contributing to the ascent to union with God. According to Maximus, the deification of the cosmos is basically the overcoming of the fundamental divisions of created being. Today the five divisions on his list can be interpreted in a generalised sense; what matters is the key idea of the need to overcome divisions which are viewed as obstacles barring the way to union with God. This idea of Maximus’s has deep roots in the universal intuition of world harmony, linking it to many traditions and schools of thought, the closest of which is the neoplatonic teaching of the epistrophe. Moreover, the situation of man in the cosmos may be seen to have changed radically. Now, man’s scientific and technological practices have become capable of affecting basic predicates of the physical world, and it means that man’s freedom reaches new horizons, where man can actually affect what takes place in the cosmic dimension of the deification. It is worth discussing this important topic in a bit more detail than was done in my talk. Today, there is no need to prove that man’s practices can affect the world’s basic predicates on the Earthly scales, but deification means the actual ontological transcending that is the change of the fundamental predicates of present being as such, and hence its cosmic aspect involves the physical Universe — or Multiverse, to be more precise — as a whole. Thus, the question arises of whether man’s practices are capable of affecting basic predicates of the physical world on the really cosmic (galactic, meta-galactic etc.) scale. The cosmic expansion of mankind’s activity is one of the principal trends of global development, and the present state of this trend can be characterised as follows: a) It is accepted that mind and consciousness possess sufficient potential for real influence on cosmic processes. ‘In astrophysics… abundant arguments are adduced in favor of the thesis that consciousness is not an epiphenomenon but a cosmologically fundamental phenomenon capable of playing the key role in the further evolution of the Meta-galaxy… and that the laws of nature do not restrict the scale and diapason of the rational regulation of flows of mass and energy… Thus, potential perspectives of the rational influence on cosmic processes have no limits’.3

3 Akop Nazaretyan, ‘Vyzovy i perspectivy tsivilizatsii: stanet li evolutsiia na Zemle cosmicheski znachimoi?’ [Global civilisation’s challenges and perspectives: Is the evolution on Earth cosmologically relevant?] in Voprosy filosofii [The Problems of Philosophy] 6 (2018), 99-110 (p. 103).

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b) As for present-day scientific and technological practices, they are now undergoing transition from the planetary stage of evolution to the cosmic one. Typical for this transitory period is the big international program SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), in which I participated. Here the traditional astronomical study of the cosmos is complemented by attempts to establish contacts with supposed extraterrestrial civilisations. Much closer to actual participation in cosmic processes are the latest collider experiments. These take place directly in the area of the four fundamental interactions (strong, electromagnetic, weak and gravitational) which represent the deepest structural level of the Multiverse. Mutatis mutandis, in the context of deification, the set of them can be compared to Maximus’ set of fundamental divisions of the created world. Indeed, processes at this level can include the generation and radical transformations of the fundamental predicates of spatio-temporal being, such as space, time and mass. Maybe it is already time to ask what kinds of transformations on this deepest level correspond to cosmic deification; but surely, the answers to questions like this one cannot yet be given.

A New Dimension To a certain extent, the thesis about man’s active role in cosmic evolution is close to the idea of the Anthropocene, which is gaining popularity nowadays. It implies that the deification of the cosmos — which was conceived as having just a symbolic or sacramental nature — acquires a new dimension which is related to scientific and technological practices. A priori, these practices can take part in the deification of the world in two ways, either helping or preventing the overcoming of the fundamental divisions. It means that new problems emerge, and the mission of man as mediator obtains new aspects and new tasks. These new tasks concern new practices which are related to the cosmic dimension of the deification. We shall call them practices of the cosmic liturgy. They must be identified in the ensemble of all human practices, and their role in the cosmic liturgy must be determined. What is more, it is desirable also to have ways and means to manage such practices, stimulating practices with the positive role, and blocking those with the negative role. Evidently these are very specific tasks. Practices of the cosmic liturgy are practices of a new and unprecedented kind; they belong to the interface of the economy of deification and the economy of man’s scientific and technological activity. They are involved in the ascension of the world to union with God, which is realised by deifying God’s energies with the necessary mediation of man as the only essent capable of acquiring these energies. Hence it follows that practices of cosmic deification must be directly connected with practices of the deification of man, that is, with hesychast practice, the direct partaking of which has been recognised by the Orthodox Tradition as crucial to the deification of man at least since the Hesychast disputes and the Council of 1351. The hesychast tradition has diverse connections with secular society, and the special importance in our context is the phenomenon of the ‘return’, studied by Metropolitan

cosmic liturgy, orthodox theology, and integral ecological expertise

Kallistos Ware and also by myself.4 This means essentially that well-grounded hesychasts return to the secular world to transmit the hesychast experience and way of life and, as a result, lay people often adopt and assimilate elements of hesychast practice and try to keep their life oriented to hesychast principles. These patterns of the Orthodox way of life, created and supported by the Philokalic renaissance and by Russian and later pan-Orthodox eldership, draw some spheres of man’s inner world and activity into the orbit of the hesychast influence. In the first place, such spheres relate to spiritual life, moral principles and social behavior, but in principle they can also include professional activity and scientific and technological practices. This is because deifying grace extends to all the created world, even though we are far from knowing all its ways and means. If we succeed in achieving such inclusion, then a kind of a bridge emerges between the realms of hesychast practice and of secular — and in particular, scientific and technological — practices: a bridge leading from the domain of the deification of man to that of the deification of the cosmos. Due to this bridge we can see practices of the cosmic liturgy more clearly. As mentioned above, man’s mediating role demands that he should single out the practices that correspond to the goals of cosmic deification, and then support, develop and stimulate them. It means that in addition to practices of the cosmic liturgy as such, which must transform the physical world, there must be a special practice of the identification of such practices. Their main feature is the orientation toward union with God, but this feature is implicit because they are not anthropological or explicitly religious. Thus, the practice which could discover and ascertain their fitness for deification should itself be based on the experience of communion with God, and this requires partaking in hesychast practice. In addition, this practice must be capable of articulating this experience and identifying its presence in other practices. And we notice that the practice which meets these conditions is nothing but theology in its Orthodox interpretation: according to Archimandrite Sophrony, ‘theology … is the first-hand account of the being into which man was introduced by the action of the Holy Spirit’.5 Undoubtedly, this hesychast teacher considered his own theologizing as meeting this definition. Thus theology, according to Sophrony, unites the experience of the higher stage of hesychast practice and the ‘account’ of this experience: that is, its articulation and transmission to other people. Taking into account that the experience in question belongs in the domain of approaches to the deification of man, where cardinal changes of the human being begin, we must ask: How is this union possible? Here, we are confronted with the classical problem of the (in)expressibility of mystical experience. We cannot dwell on this topic now, but can point out only that hesychasm elaborates the set of the specific kinds of know-how which make it





4 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. 5 Ieromonakh Sophroniy, Starets Siluan [The elder Silouan] (Moscow: Voskresenie, 1991) p. 153.

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possible to preserve the principal fruits and after-effects of the extra-temporal events of communion with ‘the being into which the man was introduced by the action of the Holy Spirit’. It is on this part of its spiritual art that the above-mentioned phenomenon of the ‘return’ is based, as well as on many other important elements of ho bios hesychastos. From the epistemological viewpoint, all these phenomena have a deeply paradoxical nature.

The Mission of Theology It is also well-known from the practice of Russian elders (as well as from the earlier history of the ascetic tradition) that such experience of ‘the being, into which the man was introduced’ makes it possible to see and appraise the inner world and actions of the neighbour in the light of the love of Christ or eo ipso of deifying grace. It means that the Orthodox-hesychast theology that we discuss possesses some appraising ability, and one can suppose that this ability extends in principle to man’s activity as a whole, i.e., to all kinds of human practices, including scientific and technological ones. And in this case theology turns out to be the key element of the bridge between the deification of man and the deification of the cosmos. It is also worth stressing the unity of the Orthodox Tradition: the concept of theology held by our contemporary Sophrony is essentially the same as the interpretation of theology in the works of the Cappadocians and of Maximus. ‘It is the patristic tradition… that determines Fr Sophrony’s insistence on existential personal involvement in the field of theology’.6 From the Desert Fathers and the Cappadocians to Sophrony, the whole Orthodox Tradition asserts the experiential and ascetic nature of theology, as it is presented in patristic triads integrating theology into the ascending way of ascetic practice: Catharsis — Theoria — Theologia (St Gregory the Theologian) and Praxis — Theoria — Theologia (St Maximus the Confessor). ‘The concept of theologia in Byzantium… was inseparable from theoria… theology… was a vision experienced by the saints… The true theologian was the one who saw and experienced the content of his theology; and this experience was considered to belong not to the intellect alone… but to the “eyes of the Spirit”, which place the whole man — intellect, emotions, and even senses — in contact with divine existence’.7 As Fr John Meyendorff stresses here, theology is integrated into the economy of the deification of man, conceived as the holistic transfiguration of the human being. Thus, the paradigm of cosmic liturgy, in the updated formulation outlined above, acquires a new structural element: the necessary involvement of theology, in the Orthodox sense of the discourse that keeps the quintessential Christian experience of the communion with Christ (who is the Truth) and hence is endowed with the



6 Nicholas V. Sakharov, I Love therefore I Am. The Theological Legacy of Archimandrite Sophrony (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), p. 58. 7 Author’s italics. John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology. Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (Oxford: A.W.Mowbray & Co., 1975), pp. 8–9.

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appraising ability. The mission of theology is to be the practice of the appraisal of practices: in order to partake in the deification of the cosmos it must find some criteria which single out practices of the cosmic liturgy and rules or procedures for checking these criteria for concrete classes of practices. Overcoming basic divisions of the created world, practices of the cosmic liturgy are supposed to lead to a harmonious order of things, correcting and stopping trends of destruction and disintegration. In the Christocentric perspective, such order of things corresponds to a state of the created world in which it is possible to receive divine energies, that is, to perceive and imbibe the love of Christ. Clearly, such capability can only be possessed by those entities endowed by Life and Reason. Life and Reason can a priori have carriers completely different from ours, and ones which are not related to electromagnetic but to some other fundamental interactions. However, in all cases these entities should necessarily represent complex systems with the high degree of differentiation belonging to the category of many-level hierarchical systems. Thus, trends of destruction and disintegration should be understood as processes which lower the degree of complexity and differentiation, destroying highly-organised structures and many-level hierarchical systems. As for the practices of the cosmic liturgy, they should help processes leading to the formation of highly-organised structures and many-level hierarchical systems, and support the existence of such structures and systems. On the Earthly scale, such tasks include the establishment of the perfect accord between man and his environment which is the goal of ecology. But the goals of the cosmic liturgy are wider and go further, to the actual transfiguration of the world by the deifying grace that integrates all of it into the orbit of the love of Christ. Due to the involvement of theology, one can say that the cosmic liturgy represents the union of ecology and ascesis, and its economy embraces all created being, including both the physical world and man’s inner world. However, ecology must be understood here in the extended and generalised sense: as a discourse that considers all the world as an ecosystem and applies to it ecological notions and principles. Such all-embracing economy — which unites spiritual and scientific-technological tasks and practices, and which tries to bring reality to harmony and accord — was recently given the name of ‘integral ecology’.8 Everything seems to indicate that integral ecology is the most adequate response to the challenge of the catastrophic anthropological and ecological trends of the modern world. The idea of integral ecology is actively discussed, and various versions of it are propounded in both religious and secular thought. In Orthodox thought, we can find very similar ideas in the work of many authors. Metropolitan John Zizioulas writes as follows: ‘Theology is … called to offer the right Christian answer to the [ecological] problem… Nature is the “other” that man is called to bring into communion with himself, affirming it as “very good” through personal



8 See, e.g., Sergey Horujy, Integral Ecology as the Base for a New Humanism in Multicultural Coexistence, Harmonious Symbiosis, Sharing Future. Ed. by Tu Weiming (Deng Feng: Academic Conference of the Songshan Forum, 2018), pp. 21-32.

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creativity’.9 He speaks also about the involvement of cultural and artistic practices into the economy of deification: ‘In a para-eucharistic way, all forms of true culture and art… are ways of treating nature as otherness in communion, and these are real antidotes to the present ecological illness’.10 The notion of ‘para-eucharistic forms’ emerging here can be relevant and useful when we discuss the updated paradigm of cosmic liturgy: evidently, practices that we call practices of the cosmic liturgy can also be characterised as para-eucharistic forms, in Zizioulas’s sense.

Roman Catholic Projects of Integral Ecology and Cybertheology Up to now, the most articulated project of integral ecology is presented in the Encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015) of Pope Francis the 1st.11 The general reference point for this project is the spirituality of Francis of Assisi, who spoke about fraternity with all creation and ‘our sister, Mother Earth’: ‘Saint Francis is the example par excellence of … an integral ecology’.12 The constitutive principle of integral ecology is the close union of ecological, sociocultural, anthropological, and spiritual goals. ‘In integral ecology goals of the integrity of ecosystems are joined with those of the integrity of human life… Inner peace is closely related to care for ecology and for the common good’.13 In other words, integral ecology represents the union of many particular ecologies: environmental, human, cultural, social, economic, ‘ecology of daily life’, etc. Its spiritual dimension includes ascetical attitudes of temperance, sobriety and humility, as well as the Church sacraments, the treatment of which is rather close to the paradigm of cosmic liturgy: ‘The Eucharist is the living centre of the universe… The Eucharist is itself an act of cosmic love … The Eucharist joins heaven and earth, it embraces and penetrates all creation… the Eucharist is also a source of light and motivation for our concerns for the environment’.14 The central task of integral ecology is the ‘liberation from the dominant technocratic paradigm’, and the important part of this task is the criticism of this paradigm which includes the exposition of negative trends and properties of modern scientific knowledge. In this part, the program of integral ecology has much in common with Heidegger’s critique of modern science and technology. As a rule, scientific and technological practices are anti-ecological since they ‘cultivate the confrontational relationship with nature and things’, making them objects of dissecting analysis or

9 John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness. Further Studies in Personhood and the Church ed. by Paul McPartlan (London: T&T Clark, 2006), p. 11. 10 Zizoulias, Communion and Otherness, p. 11. 11 Franciscus. Laudato Si’. The Encyclical Letter. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015, : https://w2.vatican.va/ content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html (the last access date 12.05.2019). 12 Franciscus, paragraph 10. 13 Franciscus, paragraphs 224, 225. 14 Franciscus, paragraph 236.

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drawing them into the chain of production. ‘Scientific and experimental method … in itself is already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation,’15 of domination and manipulation. Another negative trend is scientism, ‘the tendency to make the method and aims of science and technology a universal paradigm shaping both individual and social existence.’16 It leads to the conviction that science and technology represent ‘the principal key to the meaning of existence’, and this is a dangerous illusion. All these negative factors belong to the roots of the ecological crisis, and hence, for its overcoming, the direction, goals, meaning and social implications of scientific and technological progress have to be reconsidered. However, ‘we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation’.17 Due to this, integral ecology also demands what the Encyclical calls ‘ecological conversion’: change of mindset and lifestyle, a ‘break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness’, the adoption of a ‘culture of care’, and the gradual advancement to the ‘civilisation of love’. Such advancement is possible because the world is God’s loving gift, and ‘God’s love is the fundamental moving force in all created things’.18 The Encyclical points out also that man’s relation to the environment and all creation is not exhausted by the usual ecological tasks of preservation and protection, but includes an additional mission concerning the created world as a whole: ‘Human beings … are called to lead all creatures back to their creator’.19 The text quotes a homily of the Pope Benedict XVI, stating that ‘Creation is projected towards divinisation… towards unification with the Creator himself ’20 and declares that ‘Sunday… is the pledge of the final transfiguration of all created reality’.21 Clearly, all these cosmic motifs have much in common with the ideas of cosmic liturgy and cosmic deification, but for the most part they are just declared in the final part of the text and are not fully articulated. Evidently, the most important role in the ‘dominant technocratic paradigm’ belongs today to virtual and digital practices. The virtual world is also a part of the created world, and hence it also must be drawn into the cosmic liturgy and the orbit of integral ecology. The Encyclical does not discuss virtual/digital practices, but the Catholic Church pays great attention to them, and Antonio Spadaro, S.J., a Catholic theologian and close collaborator of the Pope Francis, has developed a systematic theological approach to the virtual and digital world called cybertheology. We are not going to discuss it here, but we must touch upon its aspects which are connected with integral ecology. First of all, the character of this connection must be clarified. The virtual world is a technological artifact; it is not part of the natural environment and hence not an 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Franciscus, paragraph 106. Franciscus, paragraph 107. Franciscus, paragraph 48. Franciscus, paragraph 77. Franciscus, paragraph 83. Franciscus, paragraph 236. Franciscus, paragraph 237.

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object, to which the ecoprinciples of protection and preservation should be applied. But at the same time, it is well-known today that human beings who relate to this world, cultivating virtual/digital practices, do need protection because these practices involve specific risks and dangers. The conclusion is that an ecology of the virtual world is surely needed, but it belongs not so much to the usual environmental ecology as to the ecology of man: it is the ecology of humans who inhabit the virtual world. From this point of view, we find that cybertheology is insufficiently careful about the ecological — that is anthropological, in this case — dangers of the virtual world, and too trusting of the merits of virtual (and especially the Web’s) practices. ‘The Internet increasingly helps to shape people’s identities’22 says Antonio Spadaro, ignoring lots of evidence which shows that the Internet can very easily disfigure and ruin people’s identities. Equally one-sided is his judgment that ‘The digital media … are extensions that enrich our capacity to live our relationships’23 as there is abundant evidence that these media can impoverish our relationships. He insists also that not only secular thought, but even theology, must change its mode of thinking in order to adopt the ‘Web’s logic’: ‘We must begin to think about the Web theologically, but also about theology in the Web’s logic’.24 In terms of ecological expertise, this is too liberal and superficial, and can hardly secure the proper protection and preservation of humans in the virtual world. The point is that this apologetic treatment of virtual practices strongly underestimates the irreplaceable role of personal face-to-face communion in man’s constitution and spiritual life. Thus, it is the task of Orthodox theology to present its own conception of the virtual world which would restore this role.

Orthodox Theology as Integral Ecological Expertise In its principal aspects, the Catholic approach is in accordance with the Orthodox paradigm of the cosmic liturgy. The Catholic version of integral ecology includes (the usual environmental) ecology and asceticism among its principal components. In the Encyclical, and in Spadaro’s works, it presents resolute criticism of scientism and reductionism, as well as a radical critical reassessment of modern models of scientific knowledge and technological development. It also outlines certain strategies for the overcoming of the present crisis, which are based on love and ascetic attitudes and take into account that the crisis is not only ecological: ‘The present ecological crisis is one small sign of the ethical, cultural and spiritual crisis of modernity’.25 However, there are a number of basic elements of the Orthodox paradigm which are not present in the papal project. Yes, the paradigm of cosmic liturgy in the updated version described here can be considered as an integral ecology, but of a different

22 Antonio Spadaro, Cybertheology: Thinking Christianity in the Era of the Internet. (NewYork: Fordham University Press, 2014) p. 17. 23 Spadaro, Cybertheology, p. 3. 24 Spadaro Cybertheology, p. 18. 25 Spadaro, Cybertheology, p. 119.

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kind. In order to see the difference, it is worth schematically presenting the main points of this paradigm, which are as follows: 1) The Church, the liturgy and the Eucharist, 2) hesychast practice and tradition, 3) theology as the ‘first-hand account’ of communion with God, 4) an ensemble of scientific and technological practices selected and conditioned by theology so as to be oriented to the deification of the cosmos. As shown above, all these points are closely tied together. According to Maximus, the liturgy is cosmic, and the deification of the whole created world is already taking place in the ecclesial dimension and in the sacramental and symbolic sense. At the same time, however, the Orthodox conception of deification includes another horizon of the latter, which is supposed to take place in actual space-time, in history. This is a steadfast motif in Maximus’s work which is presented very explicitly, e.g., in the Question XXII of the ‘Answers to Questions by Thalassius’s : ‘One must already wait for other centuries which are coming to accomplish the deification of men… Let us define certain centuries as relating to the mystery of the Divine incarnation and the others as relating to the grace of the deification of men… the former have already reached their end while the latter have not come yet… We achieved in the possibility due to the faith (katintisi dynamei tis pisteos) the end of times which will come in reality (kat’eidos energeia) in the deification of the worthy by grace’.26 Here the distinction between the deification which takes place ‘in possibility’ through faith (that is, in the ecclesial dimension) and the deification ‘in reality’, which is to come in actual history, is expressed with full clarity. Today we are about one and half thousand years after Maximus. Human history is noticeably accelerating and shows many eschatological features27 The nature and the diapason of human practices are changing radically so that it changes also the situation of man in the cosmos. All this gives us good reasons to try to thematise the subject of actual deification on a new level. The configuration of the basic elements of actual deification was briefly described above. The Church and the Sacraments are the precondition of hesychast practice, the higher stages of which enter the anthropological horizon of actual deification. Theology as an experiential discourse belonging to these stages has, as explained above, the appraising ability which makes it capable of serving as a bridge between the anthropological horizon of deification and the next (and last), cosmic one, which is to be constituted on the basis of scientific and technological practices. As we shall show, in terms of (generalised) ecology this bridge is nothing but an institute of integral ecological expertise. The main difference with the Catholic version of integral ecology is that, in the latter, both cosmic and ontological dimensions are missing. In that project, scientific

26 Maximus Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalsssium. Quaestionis XXII. PG 90 (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1865) 317–24, p. 317. 27 See e.g. Sergey S. Horujy, Sovremennost’ i eschatologiya: Rene Girard i paradigma spaseniya v poslednii mig [Modernity and Eschatology: René Girard and the Paradigm of the Salvation at the Last Moment] in Voprosy filosofii [The Problems of Philosophy], 6 (2018), 111–20.

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and technological practices are an end in themselves, and the only problem is to make them compatible with the common good and not provoke a crisis of any kind, be it ecological, cultural or ethical. But in the framework of the cosmic liturgy, these practices must be integrated into the process of cosmic deification — the ascension of created being to union with God. In this all-embracing cosmic and ontological mission, theology must play the key role of the mediating link between the sphere of ascetics — as the school and the pool of authentic deifying experience — and that of techno-scientific practices. But these close ties with theology and ascetical practice of spiritual ascension are also absent in the papal project. Moreover, the presence of cosmic and ontological dimensions in the Orthodox version of integral ecology implies that this version is more substantially different from conventional environmental ecology than the Catholic version. Indeed, the goals of conventional ecology are the preservation and the protection of the human environment, with the aim of bringing it to a certain well-balanced and harmonious state; and the goals of Catholic integral ecology are basically the same, only with an extension of them to the spheres of all the particular ecologies listed above. But the final goal, telos, of Orthodox integral ecology is theosis, the transfiguration of all the created world. This does not contradict the usual ecological goals, but it exceeds them very much; and it must be stressed that it is not a forced or violent transformation, but the accomplishment of certain deep inner strivings of creation itself, because ‘the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God’ (Rom. 8.19) and because ‘the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God’ (Rom 8.21). Thus, theosis is in a sense the transcending or the involution — the raising to some power (to use the notion of Kierkegaard) — of ecology. Finally, the Catholic project does not touch upon one of principal aspects of any ecology, integral as well as environmental: the aspect of expertise. The use and development of expertise are key parts of ecology as such, since the main destination of ecology is not speculative, but practical: it must perform the monitoring of its phenomenal sphere (the human environment in the case of conventional ecology, and global reality in the case of integral ecology) and the appraisal of anthropological and social practices which affect the ecological situation in this sphere. These practical tasks are connected with many kinds of social, economic and techno-scientific problems, and involve many areas of the social system. Thus, ecological expertise develops into a big and many-dimensional framework. Its principal problems are of two kinds: a) it must elaborate principles and determine the procedure of the expertise for each concrete object of the expertise, b) it must ensure the further adherence to its recommendations and conclusions. Problems of the first kind demand the creation of a well-developed discourse capable of describing the ecological situation in detail. Such discourse must include the set of basic ecological notions and principles, as well as the set of basic properties and parameters characterizing the ecological situation. Problems of the second kind refer to social and administrative aspects of ecological problematics. They demand collaboration between the community of ecoexperts, the community of proprietors

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and exploiters of ecological objects, and executive bodies; the efficiency of this collaboration will depend upon the presence of adequate ecological legislation and some generally accepted ecological ethics. As for the goals of the expertise, they include the appraisal and monitoring of the ecological situation and risks, the control of adherence to the rules of ecological protection, etc., but chiefly they are focused on the discovery and prevention of the negative effects and consequences of man’s activity in the environment. It is evident, then, that integral ecology must also include an institute of expertise; and it is easy to see that such an institute is really present in the version of integral ecology represented by our ‘updated paradigm of cosmic liturgy’. The cosmic dimension of deification represents the transfiguration of all spheres of the created world, which can be interpreted in the ecological discourse as a kind of ‘involution of ecology’. As stated above, the works of transfiguration or ‘practices of the cosmic liturgy’ include the appraisal of techno-scientific practices, and this is obviously an expert function which represents an auxiliary, but crucially important part of the economy of cosmic deification. It was shown that this function belongs to Orthodox theology, conceived as the source of the quintessential Christocentric experience: it is due to the possession of this experience that it can be the ‘practice of the appraisal of practices’ which elucidates their relation to the cosmic liturgy. In ecological terms, it means that theology performs the mission of integral ecological expertise. Today such a mission is only a project. Orthodox theology has now started actively to study its relationship with the sciences (the SOW project is one of many examples in this field), but so far these studies are of the usual academic kind and don’t belong to theologia in the patristic and hesychast sense. Equally, techno-scientific practices on mega-scales are still in transition from the planetary to the cosmic (in the sense of the vast cosmos) stage, while practices in the micro-world are only starting to attain capability to affect the deepest structural levels of the multiverse. This means, with respect to cosmic deification, that we are now in a threshold situation: the necessary principal practices have been not developed yet, but we can already point out their main types and properties. In particular, we can outline the suggested new kind of ecological expertise in terms of its general structure. Evidently, it must include basic elements of ecological expertise as such. First of all, there must be a community of experts, and in this case their expert qualifications must include, in the first place, the partaking of the quintessential Christocentric experience. Then one must determine the object of expertise, that is, describe the set of practices of the cosmic liturgy, and formulate a system of general principles of this expertise similar to the standard system of the nine principles of the environmental expertise. Below, we concretise this object and this system to the (not great) extent to which it is possible at the present stage of the project. The next step is to single out principal classes of practices which are subject to the necessary appraisal and, for each of these classes, the system of principal characteristics that are to be appraised must be determined. As for the criteria of the appraisal, usually they are chosen with the help of the principles of ecological ethics and ecological law; and obviously, some analogues or generalisations of these disciplines for the practices of the cosmic liturgy must be created.

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This is the universal framework of ecological expertise and it must be complemented with important specific features. First of all, the expertise of practices of the cosmic liturgy has different goals. The usual ecological expertise is focused on negative tasks: its goals of preservation and protection demand, in the first place, preventing the destruction of existing ecosystems and the pollution of the environment. However, in our case the object of the expertise is not the environment, but the ensemble of techno-scientific practices touching upon the fundamental divisions of the created world. These practices should not contradict the goals of preservation and protection, but their main destination is different: they must take part in the cosmic liturgy which performs the cardinal transformation of the world. This transformation brings it to the state of the ubiquitous presence of deifying grace, which manifests itself in processes leading to the formation of highly-organised systems capable of involvement in the economy of the love of Christ. It was mentioned above what the main tasks of the expertise of such an object are: the expertise must perform the selection and the conditioning of the practices which belong to the object of the expertise, so that the resulting (i.e. selected and conditioned) practices are practices of the cosmic liturgy, taking part in the deification of the cosmos. But at present such expertise is not set up yet, and we can only point out principal properties of these practices, such as the increasing degree of the complexity and of the differentiation of the systems involved. This increasing complexity and differentiation, and the formation of highly-organised systems at bigger and bigger scales, transform the world to a state of coherent unity which overcomes the fundamental divisions of created being. Thus, the mission of Orthodox theology as integral ecological expertise is concretised as the selection and the conditioning of practices touching upon the fundamental divisions of created being. This mission is not completely different from the tasks of the usual environmental expertise, which often include corrective recommendations concerning human activity in the environment. It is especially close to the ecological expertise performed at the global level, which deals with the planetary ecological situation: expert appraisals of this global situation find that the selection and the conditioning of environmental practices, and the changing of man’s attitudes to the environment, are necessary for the improvement of the global ecological situation and for advancement to ecological harmony. However, the concrete principles and procedures of the appraisal of practices must be radically different because of the ascetical component which realises the necessary connection with the quintessential Christocentric experience. (We note again here that in the conceptual scheme of the cosmic liturgy, theology serves as a sui generis bridge between ascetical and techno-scientific practices.) Practices of the cosmic liturgy must be in contact with the love of Christ, they must be moved by God’s grace — that is by divine energies. Which expertise can lead to such practices? When techno-scientific practices are integrated into the cosmic liturgy, they must acquire new connections and new dimensions. Practices of the cosmic liturgy realise the deification of the cosmos, and this cosmic deification is not a purely physical process; it includes, via the bridge of Orthodox hesychast theology, liturgical and ascetical dimensions, in which man’s communion with Christ is actualised. The key question about cosmic deification is the role of these dimensions and the ways and

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mechanisms by means of which this role is implemented. Our conclusion — that Orthodox theology, carrying the quintessential Christocentric experience, must perform the reappraisal of techno-scientific practices — is the answer to this question. However, this is only a partial answer, which gives rise to many further questions. If the reappraisal includes the selection and the conditioning of practices, then what are the concrete criteria of this selection? And what is the conditioning, how does it change the practices in question? Moreover, does the reappraisal represent a certain preliminary stage or starting phase of cosmic deification, after which techno-scientific practices of the cosmic liturgy have no connection with the liturgical and ascetic dimensions, or is it a kind of permanent monitoring of these practices, so that they always keep their connection with theology? These questions have no simple answers, and not only because practices of the cosmic liturgy have not yet been selected and cultivated. They touch upon the domain of mystico-ascetical experience, and we must base our inquiry on the evidence from bearers of this experience (or participate in it ourselves). Thus, we have here a set of problems for the further study of practices of the cosmic liturgy. However, at least one piece of the relevant evidence is already available and well-known, and we can use it for making our description of these practices more substantial. This piece of evidence is St Maximus’s conception of the five fundamental divisions of created being. It was mentioned briefly above, and now we shall see that it allows us to significantly complement the framework of integral ecological expertise. According to Maximus, cosmic deification amounts chiefly to the successive removal of the fundamental divisions. Taking into account our working hypothesis about the modern interpretation of these divisions in terms of fundamental interactions and deep structural levels of the multiverse, we see in Maximus’s thesis some indication of what practices of cosmic liturgy should do. This gives us a thread for elaborating much needed criteria for the expertise of techno-scientific practices. In the first place, these criteria must be based on the relation of practices in consideration to the fundamental divisions in their suggested interpretation. For a start, the expertise could perform the appraisal for two opposite groups of practices, in which this relation is most clearly expressed: one can single out ‘definitely positive’ practices, those which help to overcome the fundamental divisions and establish harmony and accord in created being, and ‘definitely negative’ ones, which deepen and aggravate these divisions. The first group will include practices of the cosmic liturgy with the minimal conditioning which was described in my talk at the First SOW conference: for example, practices cultivating pure knowledge, like those of fundamental science, ‘take part in the cosmic liturgy preserving its autonomy and not needing any special transformations or intrusions from outside’,28 but at the same time, as love precedes knowledge, there is a certain heuristic primacy of the love of Christ (brought forth by the Orthodox hesychast theology) which implies that these practices of empiric knowledge must be integrated into the large meta-empiric (that is going beyond empiric being) context determined by the quintessential Christocentric experience. 28 Horujy, Patristic Idea, p. 94.

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The second group will include practices which express negative trends and patterns of modern scientific knowledge, and increase the risks and dangers inherent in technological development. These need radical conditioning or outright rejection. In singling them out and outlining strategies for correcting them, and by neutralizing their effects, Orthodox experiential theology performs the mission in a way which is similar to conventional ecological expertise. Together with the discussion in the preceding talk, this text shows again that the patristic paradigm of cosmic liturgy in its modern interpretation provides the basis for the relationship between theology and science in our age of technological revolutions and of transition from the planetary stage of evolution to the cosmic one. Integral ecology and integral ecological expertise in the Orthodox version appear as an adequate context and framework for the critical reassessment of modern scientific knowledge and technological development. It can be added that the interpretation of Orthodox theology as integral ecological expertise fits present-day epistemological trends: the profound discursive transformations of humanistic knowledge taking place now29 and the spread of the methodology of expertise throughout the field of the humanities.30

A Historical Parallel: High Scholastic as the Integral Ecological Expertise There is a historical example in which the correspondence between theology and techno-scientific practices was realised, and this realisation has something in common with our updated paradigm of cosmic liturgy. This is the well-known correspondence between High Scholastic and High Gothic, discovered first by Erwin Panofsky. In the twelfth century, a new style of building and architecture was created which had striking parallels with the new school of thought created during the same age. In the High Gothic, the architecture of Gothic cathedrals follows a rigorous system of principles which has a profound resemblance to the principles of scholastic theology. This correspondence is a highly meaningful phenomenon, the study of which already has its history. Panofsky demonstrated it very convincingly, describing both its sides, the theological and the architectural, with equal care, trying to comprehend the nature of the relationship between these sides. This relationship was accepted as an important feature of medieval culture and was discussed by many specialists in medieval art, history and theology, in particular, by M.-D.Chenu (1895–1990), a great authority on Scholasticism. Christos Yannaras, in his book ‘Person and Eros’, interpreted it in the context of his anti-Westernist ideology, attempting to represent it as a ‘theological prerequisite of technocracy’, a phenomenon which signified the 29 See e.g. Horujy Sergey S. Horujy, Diskursivnye transformatsii v postroenii novoi epistemy dlia gumanitarnogo znaniia. [Discursive transformations in the construction of a new episteme for humanistic knowledge.] In Metodologiia nauki i diskurs-analiz [Methodology of Science and the Discourse-Analysis.] Ed. by Alexander Ogurtsov (Moscow: Institute of Philosophy, 2014) pp. 68-85. 30 See e.g. Mikhail V. Pronin, Boris G. Yudin, Yulia V. Sineokaya, Filosofiya kak ekspertiza. [Philosophy as the expertise] in Filosofskii Zhurnal [The Philosophy Journal], 10:2 (2017) 79–96.

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emergence of the technocratic paradigm. He sees in it evidence of the mechanical and not the organic nature of High Gothic, the ‘sensual expression of the desire of Scholastics to subordinate truth to human reason’, and the manifestation of the ‘attempt of the dominance of man over Nature and history’.31 This ideologised interpretation differs, however, from Panofsky’s original interpretation, which is more objective. Panofsky reconstructs the parallel between theology and architecture in minute detail. At first he finds it in the historical development of both subjects: ‘There exists between Gothic architecture and Scholasticism a palpable and hardly accidental concurrence in the purely factual domain of time and place.’32 Then, analyzing correlations between concrete historical episodes, phenomena and features of Scholastics and Gothic, he comes to the general conclusion that ‘in contrast to a mere “parallelism”, the connection … is a genuine cause-and-effect relation’.33 But in the prism of the paradigm of integral ecological expertise, the presence of the cause-and-consequence relation means that Scholasticism played the role of expertise with respect to architecture! One can say that it performed the selection and the conditioning of architectural and building practices: their projects and norms, tools and techniques were somehow (and Panofsky explains how exactly) determined by, or coordinated with, theological discourse, its structures, postulates and discursive techniques. Now, Gothic architecture and Gothic cathedrals were not just one of many particular technological spheres but the sum or the microcosm of all medieval technology as such. ‘Like the High Scholastic Summa, the High Gothic cathedral aimed, first of all, at “totality”… to one perfect and final solution… The High Gothic cathedral sought to embody the whole of Christian knowledge’.34 Thus Panofsky’s correspondence actually means that scholastic theology was a kind of institute of expertise with respect to medieval technology as a whole. With this conclusion, we are getting close to an updated paradigm of cosmic liturgy: High Scholasticism can be considered as a medieval prototype of integral ecological expertise, and the object of its expertise is the sum of medieval technologies — in the case of this paradigm it is the sum of modern technologies. There are other points of resemblance as well. Although scholastic theology is very far from the Orthodox theology of deification, some of the motifs of the latter were present in High Scholasticism, and found their reflection in the phenomenon of the Gothic cathedral. Orthodox tradition recognised that the approach to the deifying transfiguration of man is the contemplation of the Light of Tabor, and in the case of High Gothic, it was recognised that ‘The Gothic cathedrals were hymns to the divine light’.35 The presence of cosmic aspects in this phenomenon was repeatedly stated, and the formula ‘cosmic liturgy’ was sometimes applied to it. Indeed, the Gothic cathedral was considered to be the symbolic image

31 Christos Yannaras, Person and Eros. Brookline (MA): Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1982. 32 Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (New York: New American Library, 1976). p. 2. 33 Panofsky, Gothic Architecture, p. 2. 34 Panofsky, Gothic Architecture, p. 44. 35 Kenneth Clark, Civilisation (New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 96.

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of the cosmos, and was also the place of the liturgy, whence it followed that ‘The Gothic cathedral represents the cosmos conceived as the cathedral and liturgy… Thus, the key image of Christian cosmology was the cosmic cathedral and cosmic liturgy’ 36Of course, the formula ‘cosmic liturgy’ is used here with a meaning which is very different to ours, metaphorically or semi-metaphorically, and it is worth stressing that I am discussing this medieval episode only with the aim of showing that it provides a bona fide example of the practice of integral ecological expertise. In no way do I consider it as an argument in favour of the presented conception of the cosmic liturgy. In this example the integral ecosystem, like medieval thinking in general, corresponds to the planetary, but not to the cosmic stage of evolution. Nevertheless, the comparison to modern views of integral ecology produces the fruitful dialogue of the conceptual models. As stated above, besides demonstrating the existence of the ‘cause-and-consequence relation’ between Scholasticism and Gothic architecture, Panofsky analyzed also the mechanisms of the implementation of this relation. Accordingly, the standard views of medieval culture, theology exerted a direct dictate over all areas of culture and public life, and so we could expect that such a dictate was exerted with respect to Gothic architecture as well. But Panofsky finds that there was no dictate; in reality, the relation was much more delicate. ‘The cause-and-effect relation comes about by diffusion rather than by direct impact. It comes about by the spreading of what may be called, for want of a better term, a mental habit — reducing this overworked cliché to its precise scholastic sense as a “principle that regulates the act”, principium importans ordinem ad actum … It is not very probable that the builders of Gothic structures read… Thomas Aquinas in the original. But they were exposed to the Scholastic point of view in innumerable other ways… They had gone to school; they listened sermons; they could attend the public disputationes de quodlibet which … had developed into a social event not unlike our operas, concerts or public lectures’.37 The concept of ‘mental habit’ introduced here by Panofsky turned out to be valuable for cultural and sociological studies, and Pierre Bourdieu later formed his basic concept of ‘habitus’ on the basis of it. Thus, according to Panofsky, the connection between Scholastics and the Gothic is implemented via the following mechanism: scholastic theology generates and shapes a certain mental habit of cultural and public consciousness, and then, in its turn, the mental habit shapes the character of architectural (and, obviously, many other) practices. The medieval example (as interpreted by Panofsky) helps us to understand possible mechanisms of the updated paradigm of cosmic liturgy. We suppose that Orthodox theology must be the agency of the integral ecological expertise which performs the appraisal (the selection and the conditioning) of techno-scientific practices. But what are the ways or models for realizing this mission? Looking at the medieval example, we see two different models for the mission of theology as an expertise of technology. The first is the model of direct dictate and coercion: it is

36 Anatolii Akhutin, Eksperiment i priroda [The experiment and Nature] (St Petersburg: Nauka, 2012), p. 434. 37 Panofsky, Gothic Architecture, pp. 21, 23.

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debatable to what extent this was actually present, but at least it was steadily imputed to medieval theology. The second is what could be called Panofsky’s model: theology generates a mental habit or habitus, in Bourdieu’s terms, and this habit determines or influences the character of technologies. Evidently, irrespective of Gothics and architecture, mental habit (and habitus) is a universal category, indeed, it is one of the principal categories in the interface of the Anthropological and the Social; and hence it is heuristically productive. In particular, it is easy to see that the ‘ecological conversion’ suggested by Pope Francis’s Encyclical is nothing but the establishing of a certain mental habit, the principal features of which can be extracted from the Encyclical. It means that the Catholic version of integral ecology follows the Panofsky model, reproducing some old structural pattern of Catholic culture. But what about (the project of) the Orthodox version that we have outlined? Undoubtedly, the concept of the mental habit is useful here too. One can agree that, together with this concept, both principal conceptual insights of the Panofsky model — that theology shapes mental habits and that mental habits influence techno-scientific practices — are universal in their application. Hence it follows that the key part of the Orthodox version of integral ecology, the reappraisal of techno-scientific practices, can be implemented by means of shaping, with the help of Orthodox hesychast theology, certain mental habits adequate to the tasks of the cosmic liturgy. This conclusion is a constructive complement to the version in question. If the reappraisal of techno-scientific practices can be performed via the shaping of certain mental habits, then the subsequent problem is to find out which habits are in accordance with the tasks of the cosmic liturgy. This is an interesting problem, and neither of the Catholic examples, medieval or modern, can give us any hints about its solution. Although cosmic deification is only a future prospect so far, it is clear that mental habits corresponding to it are sharply different from those corresponding to the Catholic models. Scholastic mental habits corresponding to the medieval integral ecology, were described by Panofsky in detail, and they include, in the first place, the ‘striving for the minute systematisation of divisions and subdivisions’, a hypertrophied formalism and schematism. But deification as such, and the cosmic deification as well, mean that the union with Christ and the entire ascent to this union are based on the quintessential Christocentric experience. Thus, it belongs to the economy of love and personal communion, which rejects not only compulsion and coercion (the policy ascribed often to medieval theology), but also any impersonal formalism. The scholastic absolute primacy of logical systems and formal schemes that structure the subject into minute divisions and subdivisions is completely out of place here. To sum up, the relationship between theology and technology is very different in the two traditions because scholastic discourse, representing ‘the obsession with systematic division and subdivision, methodical demonstration, terminology, parallelismus membrorum’38 is of a different nature to experiential Orthodox theology. In the case of scholastics, theology shapes mental habits, which translate into architecture a peculiar hyper-systematised organisation that imitates the ‘hierarchy 38 Panofsky, Gothic Architecture, p. 36 (author’s italics).

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of logical levels in a scholastic treatise’. But Orthodox theology shapes mental habits which lead, not to the imposition of some formal rules and norms, but to the rearrangement and coordination in the multiverse of human practices directed to bringing this multiverse of practices to a coherent unity. If the multiverse includes specific practices, corresponding to the cosmic stage of evolution and dealing with fundamental structures of the multiverse, this mission of Orthodox theology becomes the integral ecological expertise. Such mission is oriented to the dialogue and collaboration of the religious and the secular, and one can say that it corresponds not to the medieval but the postsecular cultural paradigm. One can add in conclusion that ideas about the cosmic activity of mankind have been first discussed and promoted widely by the so called Russian cosmism, a philosophical and cultural movement in Russia in the first decades of the last century,39 the prophet and founder of which was a maverick philosopher, Nikolai Fedorov (1828–1903), who taught about the physical resurrection of the dead and the resettling of the humanity on celestial bodies. It was a very varied movement: its products belonged to philosophy, theology, avant-garde literature and arts, and its participants adhered to the most diverse religious and political views, from militant atheism to strict Orthodoxy, and from bolshevism to monarchism. In the 1920s it was influential and popular, and its ideas left a noticeable trace in Russian culture. Thus, turning now to problems of the cosmic mission of mankind, we are obliged to mention this first page of the (pre)history of the subject, which we discuss. But as for the treatment of these problems, our approach has practically nothing to do with Russian cosmism: its works have no conceptual culture and epistemological discipline, but represent mostly a free-style narrative with a big dose of fantasy. And let us also mention, as a final comment, that the current situation of the world lends the ancient theme of the cosmic liturgy additional topicality. This situation is characterised by strong destructive processes which are developing fast on both the anthropological and social level of reality; these include the disintegration of human identities and the decay of basic social institutions, such as politics, law, the regulation of wars, etc. These processes form global eschatological trends which, quickly progressing, make the perspective of the violent end of man and history more and more realistic. There is nothing unthinkable in such a scenario; on the contrary, there seems a real danger of the self-annihilation of civilisations (as well as other Big Systems) because of internal conflicts, tensions, and hostility, which is the usual mechanism, indeed, the mainstream, of civilisational development. In order to avoid this scenario some ingenious strategies are needed, the discovery and the realisation of which are rare opportunities. The cosmic liturgy might be just such an opportunity offered to mankind by Christianity.

39 See Michael Hagemeister, ‘Russian Cosmism in the 1920s and Today’, in The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997) pp. 185-202; and Russkii Kosmizm. Antologiia filosofskoi mysli [The Russian cosmism. Anthology of philosophical thought.] ed. Svetlana G. Semenova and Anastasiya G. Gacheva. Moscow: PedagogikaPress, 1993).

Part II

Philosophical Aspects of the Dialogue between Orthodox Theology and Science

Alexei V. Nesteruk

The Dialogue between Theology and Science in View of an Irreducible Ambiguity in Hermeneutics of the Subject*

Introduction: Man’s Unknowability at the Inception of the Dialogue This paper represents a direct continuation and development of my stance on the sense of the dialogue between theology and science as it is seen through the eyes of phenomenological philosophy appropriated theologically.1 Summarising our previous discussion of formulating the difference in the modi of the given in the natural sciences and theology, we have established that it amounts to the difference in the underlying ontology in the sciences (physical substance and biological formations) versus ontology of events (in theology), that is modi of phenomenality of that which is given within the structures of subjectivity. We have pointed out that in spite of the explicitly ontic features of theological propositions (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 ontically through the structural path of its constitution by the subject. Thus the strict demarcation between theology and science on the basis of the opposition between ontic and ontological can hardy be achieved, contributing to the two-fold argument that a naïve positing of experience of the Divine outside the material conditions of the possibility of its expression, represents de facto faith without reason (whose existential and soteriological meaning remains obscure), whereas, at the same time,

* I wish to express my gratitude to Elizabeth Theokritoff for helpful suggestions related to the theological resources used in this paper. 1 Alexei Nesteruk, ‘Philosophical Foundations of the Dialogue between Science and Theology’: Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 11: N 2 (2018) pp. 276-98; in ed. Vassilios N Makrides and Gayle E Woloschak, Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 97-121. Alexei V. Nesteruk • University of Portsmouth, UK, and Interdisciplinary Center on Education in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the St Petersburg State Marine Technical University, St. Petersburg, Russia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue, ed. by Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk, SOC, 2 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 73–93. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.122608

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any physical reductionism in the constitution of humanity also fails without an appeal to theology of humanity’s creation. The mediation between theology and science does not represent any metaphysical necessity but represents events of life, that is those dimensions of the human will and reason that cannot be deduced on the grounds of causality pertaining to the world. The facticity of the dialogue points to the fact that it represents the event-like phenomenon related to life’s self-affectivity, so that its interpretation demands a philosophy that deals with the phenomenon of man as ‘event’ of Life, the phenomenon that has a ‘meta-ontological’ status, ordaining and justifying the very possibility of the philosophical as well as scientific knowledge of the world.2 However this ‘event of life’, or, simply saying, the human phenomenon, being given to humanity, does not receive any further elucidation by man himself. The self-imposed question ‘What is man?’ remains unanswered. Seen from this standpoint, all human activities, including those of science, as well as religious experience, originate in one and the same man in the conditions that this very man does not understand its own essence. Then both theology and science, as well as the dialogue between them, are functioning in the conditions of man’s self-incomprehensibility. The sciences and religions are efficacious on the level of phenomena since they describe the facticity of life and explicate the sense of humanity through a never-ending hermeneutics of the world. In a way, human activities give a witness to that which is unknowable in man contributing to a view of humanity as an ‘infinite task’ for itself. To quote Karl Jaspers, ‘We cannot exhaust man’s being in knowledge of him, we can experience it only in the primal source of our thought and action. Man is fundamentally more than he can know about himself.’3 The sciences, philosophy and theology, all, pose questions to man about man himself that cannot lead to any definitive answer, thus provoking further questions.4 Correspondingly the dialogue between theology and science, as a particular modus of the human enquiry in the nature of things, contributes to further explication of the riddle of man, with no aim of creating any metaphysical concept of man. The seeming dualism in comprehension of reality, either on the grounds of the sciences or through theological insights, explicates the dualism in the human condition between being and having: ‘We are, but we do not possess ourselves’,5 that is: we are, but it is not us who created us. One can say that man has its own ‘I’ as a co-participant of the infinite all-embracing being; however, it is because of the infinite character of such a communion with being that man cannot comprehend the sense of this communion’s contingent givenness. As the sciences explicate the modus of ‘we are’, that is the outward way of our existence as things (objects), they do not answer the question as to ‘why we are?’, that is, why humanity is given to itself in such a way that



2 Nesteruk, ‘Philosophical Foundations of the Dialogue between Science and Theology’ 3 Karl Jaspers, Ways to Wisdom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), p. 63. See also p. 66. 4 Cf. Jurgen Moltmann, Man. Christian Anthropology in the Conflicts of the Present (London: SPCK, 1974), p. 2. 5 Helmut Plessner, Conditio humana (Berlin: publisher, 1961), p. 7.

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the detection of the ‘we are’ is possible at all. The drama of not being able to create himself is transferred by man to the cosmological scale when man is not being able to understand his place in the universe.6 Being groundless in the universe, humanity does not have its own home, not only in the sense of space, but also in the sense of the laws which it cannot control.7 Theology clarifies this issue of man not being able to possess himself by transforming it to the issue of participation in, and communion with, that which escapes the limits of metaphysical definitions. The sciences play a twofold role in comprehending and formulating the sense of man’s unknowability and groundlessness in the universe. It is science that makes it possible to bring on board the outward aspects of man’s unknowability through his insignificance in the physical universe. Without a scientific refinement of the predicaments of the human condition man would not be able to understand the scale of his epistemological significance for comprehending the universe and developing an articulated capacity of longing for the ultimate ground of his existence either in the world or beyond it. The ontological groundlessness of humanity is exactly that intrinsic part of the human condition which provokes humanity to search for grace or ‘blessing’ for its existence from that which is beyond the world and man himself. The predisposition to transcend the sphere of the unconcealed relies on participation and communion with that which is beyond the visible and sensible. This transcending, even if it is not initiated by the sciences, is reactivated in man and made existentially dramatic through cooperation with the sciences. One cannot assert that the sciences are paving the way to a theological apprehension of the world, but at least one finds them refining the delimiters of the human condition, turning to a theological search for the sense of existence. It is in this sense that the unknowability of man by himself, endorsed by scientific knowledge, becomes a factor of engaging with theology through abandoning any straightforward attempts to overcome this unknowability on the grounds of metaphysical concepts. The implicit hope and longing for overcoming the unknowability of man by himself, present in the modern sciences and some branches of philosophy, forms a hidden purpose implanted in the core of the human condition. This purpose is to acquire ‘home’ in being, to ground man in that which he always





6 Not dwelling long on the sense of this claim, but referring to a common knowledge of our insignificance in vast space portrayed by modern cosmology, we nevertheless quote S. Frank, invoking a rather nostalgic description of the cosmic homelessness as a loss of the ‘motherland’: ‘Contrary to deceptive appearances which man had trusted for thousands of years, his native abode, the earth, proved to be not the centre of the universe, but a mere speck, a part of a planetary system which itself was only an insignificant appendage of one of the innumerable stars lost in boundless space’ (Semyon Frank, Reality and Man (New York: Taplinger, 1965), pp. 190–91). 7 In Erich Fromm’s words ‘He [man] is set apart while being a part; he is homeless, yet chained to the home he shares with all creatures. Cast into the world at an accidental place and time, he is forced out of it, again accidentally. Being aware of himself, he realises his powerlessness and the limitations of his existence. He visualises his own end: death. Never is he free from the dichotomy of his existence: he cannot rid himself of his mind, even if he should want to; he cannot rid himself of his body as long as he is alive…’ (Erich Fromm, Man for Himself. An Enquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 40.

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transcends. This purpose is not ontologically achievable,8 so that the whole process of knowledge is driven by this purpose only formally, that is as a teleological activity without a material purpose.9 Tis implies that the ‘reconciliation’ between science and theology could never be achieved, so that the dialogue between theology and science can be considered as a teleological activity without a material purpose. Theologically, this activity could be understood as a mediation between moral divisions between his sense of creaturehood in the midst of the physical world and, at the same time, his being in communion with that which is beyond this world.

The Paradox of Subjectivity and the Dialogue between Theology and Science The unknowability of man by himself can easily be explicated through the so called paradox of subjectivity10 whose concise formulation is: ‘We can describe the relations between subject and world as purely intentional relations as opposed to (objective) spatial, temporal, and causal relations. We can appeal to the distinction between belonging to the world of objects and being a condition of the possibility of the world of objects (as meaning). Perhaps the broadest terms for these relations would be the transcendental relations and the part-whole relation’,11 or ‘It is necessary to combine the recognition of our contingency, our finitude, and our containment in the world with an ambition of transcendence, however limited may be our success in achieving it.’12 The paradox, as co-existence of two attitudes to hermeneutics of the subject appears to be a structural element of human subjectivity in general. Self-givenness and



8 ‘If he [man] ever finally got “behind himself ”, and could establish what was the matter with him, nothing would any longer be the matter with him, but everything would be fixed and tied down, and he would be finished. The solution of the puzzle what man is would then be at the same time the final release from being human’ (Moltmann, Man, p. 2). 9 The terminology of formal purposiveness originates in Kant’s ‘Critique of Judgement’ and can briefly be defined, using his words : ‘[] An object, or state of mind, or even an action is called purposive, although its possibility does not necessarily presuppose the representation of a purpose, merely because its possibility can be explained and conceived by us only so far as we assume for its ground a causality according to purposes, i.e. in accordance with a will which has regulated it according to the representation of a certain rule’ (Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, § 10 (ET: trans. J. H. Bernard (London: Hafner Press, 1951), p. 55) (Emphasis added). 10 The formulations of the paradox are abundant. See e.g., Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Conclusion (ET: Kant’s Critique of Practical reason and Other Works on The Theory of Ethics, trans. T. K.full name Abbot (London: Longmans, 1959), 260; Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 179; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Battle over Existentialism’, in Sense et Non-Sense (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1982) 71–72; Max Scheler, Die Stellung Des Menschen im Kosmos, in The Collected Works (Moscow: Gnosis, 1994), p. 160. The review of different formulations of the paradox can be found in Alexei Nesteruk, The Sense of the Universe (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), pp. 136–61. See also David Carr, The Paradox of Subjectivity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 11 Carr, The Paradox of Subjectivity, p. 116. 12 Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 9.

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self-affectivity of ‘the subject’ implies the question of the facticity of consciousness, which is missing from any articulations of the world. As M. Merleau-Ponty once put it, ‘…consciousness attributes this power of universal constitution to itself only if it ignores the event which provides its infrastructure and which is its birth. A consciousness for which the world “can be taken for granted”, which finds it “already constituted” and present even in consciousness itself, does not absolutely choose either its being or its manner of being.’13 Because of the inexplicability of the facticity of consciousness in metaphysical terms, it can be considered as ‘event’,14 the event of the existence of man. The temptation to find that missing foundation of its own realisation in existence leads consciousness to transcendence in a theological direction, which exceeds the scope of philosophy, but, at the same time, extends philosophy towards appropriation of those realities which escape the phenomenality of objects.15 Then the paradox of subjectivity cannot have metaphysical explanation and falls under rubrics of event, that is something as given with no recourse to its possible metaphysical justification. In this case, the reconciliation of the terms in the paradox is equivalent to the elucidation of its very appearance in the subject, that is, appearance of a personal subject, which is treated as event in the sense that no metaphysical explanation for existence of this subject is possible. Theology inevitably enters the discourse for, as we argued before, events are a ‘natural’ domain of theology.16 The problem of the origin of the paradox is reduced to the existence of the pre-predicative world, the life world, which in its sheer givenness is not reducible to anything in the natural world. Its interpretation proceeds from the theology of creation of life associated with the Life understood as Divine Being. In the words of M. Henry ‘I am not only for myself, i.e. this individual appearing in the world,

13 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1962), p. 453 (emphasis added). As a matter of analogy one can quote B. Carr who comments on a similar situation in physics whose picture does not contain that same consciousness which generates the content of physical theories: ‘That physics has little to say about the place of man in the universe is perhaps not surprising when one considers the fact that most physicists probably regard man, and more generally consciousness, as being entirely irrelevant to the functioning of the universe’ (Bernard Carr, ‘On the Origin, Evolution and Purpose of the Physical Universe’, in Modern Cosmology and Philosophy, ed. J full name Leslie (New York: Prometheus, 1998), p. 152). 14 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). 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 made in J.- L. Marion, Certitudes négatives (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2010), pp. 243–308. 15 In general, the term ‘phenomenality’ describes the quality or state of a phenomenon. For example, phenomenality of mundane things corresponds to their being perceptible by the senses or through immediate experience. This constitutes the notion of the phenomenal world, as the world of visible, empirical phenomena. One can talk about the phenomenality of objects as entities being constituted according to the rubrics of ‘I think’, so that such a phenomenality can be described in four rubrics: quantity, quality, relation and modality. The phenomenality of objects is different from the event-like manifestations, whose phenomenality cannot be reduced to the stated four rubrics and where there is the excess of intuition over the discursive faculty. 16 Nesteruk, Philosophical Foundations.

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a thing among things, a man among men… In order to relate everything to oneself, one must first of all be this Self to whom everything is related, one must be able to say I am me. But the point is that this I am me is not at all originary… A Self such as that of man, a living transcendental Self — such a Self is only ever to be found in the “Word of life” of the first letter of John, whom Paul describes as a “First Born among many Brothers” (Romans 8: 28–30).’17 In other words, the transition from the philosophical paradox to its theological sense can only be made by reducing the facticity of the paradox to the impossibility of its metaphysical description, that is to ‘event’, manifesting God’s creation of that which is metaphysically impossible (and hence unexplainable). Theologians of the past expressed the paradox in terms explicitly containing a reference to that which is beyond the world, that is to the fact that the paradox explicates the condition of creaturehood. In his Epistles to Romans, the apostle Paul recapitulates man’s paradoxical created condition by contrasting his serving God’s Law with his mind, and serving the law of sin with his unspiritual nature (Rom 7. 25). Maximus the Confessor advocated that God’s image in man made man capable of mediating between the moral divisions in himself and in creation in general, for example between the sensible (visible universe) and intelligible (invisible — for example an image of the world’s wholeness in consciousness): ‘As a compound of soul and body he [man] is limited essentially by intelligible and sensible realities, while at the same time he himself defines [articulates] these realities through his capacity to apprehend intellectually and perceive with his senses.’18 The Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev explicitly referred to God in his description of the human ambivalent condition: ‘Man comprises in himself all possible oppositions, all of which are reduced to one great opposition between the unconditional and conditional, or between the absolute and eternal being, and a transient phenomenon, an illusion. Man is deity and nothing at the same time’.19 Another Russian philosopher and theologian Victor Nesmelov expressed the paradox in different words: ‘all particular contradictions of thought and life arise from man’s aspiration to fulfil the ideal image of the unconditional in the necessary boundaries of the external conditions’;20 and ‘In knowledge of ourselves we know truly, that although our own person exists only in the necessary conditions of the physical world, by its nature it manifests not the world, but the true essence of the very Infinite and Unconditional.’21 Now it is reasonable to pose the question of whether the impossibility of metaphysical explication of the paradox of subjectivity (that is unknowability of man)

17 Michel Henry, ‘Phenomenology of Life’, Angelaki 8:2 (2003), 100–10 (p. 104). 18 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 10:26, PG 91, 1153B [English translation: ‘Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice’, 5:71, in The Philokalia: St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth. The Philokalia: The Complete Text, 4 vols., ed. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber, 1979–95). vol. 2, p. 277]. 19 Vladimir Soloviev, Readings on Godmanhood (Moscow: Pravda, 1989) (In Russian: В. С. Соловьев, Чтения о Богочеловечестве, М.: Правда, 1989, p. 113). 20 Victor Nesmelov, The Science of Man (Kazan: Central Printing House, 1905) (In Russian: В. И. Несмелов, Наука о человеке. Казань: Центральная типография, 1905, p. 246). 21 Nesmelov, The Science of Man, p. 269.

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characterises something fundamental in the human condition, which as such represents an element of its constitution in reflection. The philosophical impasse here may be elucidated through an appeal to theological anthropology relating the present human condition to the event of the Fall. In other words, the question can be posed like this: does the paradox of subjectivity in its outward formulation manifest the essence of that which represents a consequence of the event of transgression from union with God, granted to the first man at the moment of his creation (implying that the first man wan knowable to himself)? If this were indeed true, then the consequence for our topic would be manifest and conclusive: the dichotomy between a scientific and theological vision of the world would originate in the Fall, and the very telos of reconciliation between them can be treated as the healing and redemption of sin which ultimately would resolve the paradox and thus unify theology and science. In addition to such a conclusion, one could argue that the split between science and theology encapsulates that characteristic feature of the post-lapserian condition of man and the world which a contemporary Greek Orthodox thinker, Christos Yannaras, emphatically describes in terms of ‘evil’. According to Yannaras, the paradox of subjectivity is a particular form of explication of ‘evil’: ‘All the laws of nature, the fundamental constancies of the natural world, its “arbitrary” arithmetic values, constitute a single holistic phenomenon that tends organically from the outset toward the creation of conditions for its self-knowledge, that is to say, for intelligent life…And yet the way nature operates within the conditions prevailing on earth also manifests in a parallel fashion an autonomy (a mechanistic “indifference”) with regard to the intelligent existence of the human subject, its creative uniqueness and otherness… In this autonomy of nature we human beings see a challenging “absurdity” (a violation of our own rational conception of meaning in the world), an absurdity that we can only characterise as evil.’22 Yannaras’s reading of the paradox through his understanding of man — as a creature longing for immortality but facing a defeat by the laws of nature23 — contributes to the longstanding discussion of the paradox by philosophers, qualifying it as an expression of the basic anxiety of humanity in the world, its despair and non-attunement to the world, depriving man of understanding the sense of existence.24 Can the paradox of subjectivity (implied in Yannaras’ quote) be treated in this way as a definition of ‘evil’, related to the human incomprehension of his own condition, that is to the condition after the Fall? Or does the notion of ‘evil’, invoked by Yannaras, have a sense independent from the Fall and inherent in the condition of creaturehood as such? I am inclined to defend the second option because of one striking theological observation, namely that the unknowability of man by himself (entailing the paradox and the sense of the autonomy of nature in him) is part of his Divine image. The fact that human nature 22 Christos Yannaras, The Enigma of Evil (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2012), p. 16. 23 Christos Yannaras, ‘The Church in Post-Communist Europe’, The Meaning of Reality. Essays on Existence and Communion, Eros and History (Los Angeles: Sebastian Press & Indiktos, 2011), pp. 123–43. 24 Anxiety as a modus of human existence was indirectly introduced in the context of the paradox by J.-P. Sartre and M. Heidegger.

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is unknowable follows from its being an image and likeness of God, that is of that One Who is unknowable. A classical excerpt from patristic texts is that 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.’25 This entails that any attempted resolution of the paradox of subjectivity, as a search for the answer to the question ‘What is man?’, qualifies such an attempt (in which man defines himself in terms of something which is less than God) as a distortion of the Divine image.26 One can suggest that for the first man the question of ‘What is man?’ did not exist in the same form as it is posed by us because of his union with God, and his following of God, keeping him free form anxiety of existence as creaturehood. In this case, the event of the Fall can be characterised as the loss of the primordial ‘privilege of unknowing’ and the lapse in the state of anxiety and homelessness in the world. Then the paradox (as an encapsulated ‘response’ to the question ‘What is man?’) explicates, in a positive fashion, the essence of the ambivalence of the human condition: it exists subject to the physical conditions of the world, but yet in the Divine image, that is in communion (not union!) with God. Then the question is: what is meant by evil in Yannaras’ reformulation of the paradox? Since the assertion of the unknowability of man is based, de facto, on a premise that he cannot create himself whilst, as a creature, he holds the Divine image, the Fall can mean only a change of attitude to this inherent creaturely condition. In this case, that evil to which Yannaras refers is related not to the ontology of the created world, but to evil in man as the loss of the privilege of being in union with all creation and God, resulting in his separation from the world and his seeing it just as a medium of necessity and slavery, an obstacle in man’s ambition for transcendence. In this sense, the drama of the paradox, as well as the tension between science and theology, represent such an attitude to the sense of existence in which the basic condition of creaturehood (as a premise for being in communion with God-Creator) is forgotten. This makes it possible to treat Yannaras’s interpretation of the paradox in terms of evil in a moral, but not ontological sense, explicated in similarity with those moral divisions in creation which were at the center of Maximus the Confessor’s theology of deification as mediation between these divisions and, ultimately, mediation between the created and uncreated, between the world and God. Seen in this perspective, we argue, the paradox explicates the basic predicament of the human condition as being

25 Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio [ET: On the Making of Man in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. P. Schaff and H Wace (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdman Publishing Company, 1996), vol. 5, 387–427 (p. 397)]. See on the unknowability of man an article by J.-L. Marion, ‘Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Priviledge of Unknowing’, The Journal of Religion 85, No. 1 (2005), pp. 1–24, as well as a chapter by J.-L. Marion, Certitudes négatives (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2010), pp. 21–86. 26 J.-L. Marion in his Certitudes negatives, p. 41, quotes a passage from St Augustine’s De Trinitate 10.5.7, in which, as Marion claims, a phenomenology of sin is represented through describing the human soul as turning away from God, ‘slithering and sliding down into less and less, which is imagined to be more and more’. What is implied by this, is that any attempt of man to define himself on the basis of the human only is tantamount of denying life as the gift of that other than man, that is God, through resemblance with whom man resembles himself, and thus is only capable of defining himself.

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a creature in communion with God. But, as we will discuss below, it is this predicament that paves the way for man’s deification: to be deified, one must be created. If the conditions of ‘evil’, in Yannaras’s sense, correspond to the moral tensions related to the apprehension of the world and to man’s inability to comprehend its facticity through the corporeal cognitive faculties, one can argue that the sciences help humanity to adapt to the conditions of ‘evil’ in man himself, insofar as it is their primary task to articulate, although indirectly, particular aspects of this ‘evil’. One needs to see ‘evil’ in order to develop an impetus for transcending its conditions. In fact, even to articulate the ambivalence in the human condition as ‘evil’, one needs grace, as that which constitutes the move which positions ‘evil’ in man beyond his natural condition. In view of this, one reasonably comes back to the question of the sense of the dialogue between theology and science. Science articulates the conditions of ‘evil’ in man, although silently, not giving any moral judgment on whether nature (as being recapitulated in man) is good or bad for humanity. The moral judgment comes from theology, which contrasts the ends of nature with the ends of humanity, and which Yannaras describes as the ‘autonomy of nature [that] we human beings see a challenging “absurdity” (a violation of our own rational conception of meaning in the world).’27 In his desire to subordinate the ends of nature to the ends of himself, man exercises his archetypical ‘likeness’ to God by knowing and judging things according to his free will.28 However, man’s actual incapacity to transform nature (and first of all his own nature) in the manner of his creator, is determined by the fact of creaturehood. Correspondingly, that notion of ‘evil’ which is invoked in Yannaras’s quote, can be treated as a certain misuse of the Divine image in man, who attempts to tame the ends of nature (in order to define himself) not through his privilege of creaturely communion with God, but through his illusion of the unlimited power of controlling the material world through reason. This ambition of man is his moral problem is related to his oblivion of the fact that his privilege of being in the Divine image is the result of otherness with respect to God, that is creaturehood in communion. The overcoming of this ‘evil’ in man, that is mediation between moral tensions between parts and aspects of creation in man himself, cannot be done metaphysically. No philosophical concept is possible which would resolve the riddle of man without reference to the theology of creation. The sense of creaturehood arrives only through grace in communion, which de facto means existential transcendence. The possible overcoming of the difference between human ends and the ends of nature can only be seen in terms of soteriological purposiveness, avoiding any ontological reference either to the natural state of man, or to any particular modus of the natural in the world, which

27 Christos Yannaras, The Enigma of Evil (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2012), p. 16. 28 The analogy comes from St Maximus the Confessor’s discussion on whether God knows created things according to their nature. His answer is negative: God knows things according to his will: ‘… he neither knows sensible things sensibly nor intellectual things intellectually. For it is out of question that the one who is beyond existent things should know things in the manner proper to beings. But we say that God knows existent things as the products of his own acts of will…’ (Ambigua, 7, PG 91, 1085B) [ET: Paul Blowers, Robert Wilken, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ. Selected Writings from St Maximus the Confessor (Crestwood NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), pp. 61–62].

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would allegedly manifest the achievement of such a purpose. The theology of Maximus the Confessor on man’s mediation between moral tensions (divisions) in creation always warned its readers that no ontological bridge between creation and its creator will be possible through mediation and deification. In other words, the ends of nature will never be subordinated to the ends of humanity on the ontological level. On the moral level, the ends of man and the ends of nature can be reconciled through such a transfiguration of the spiritual insight in man that will ease the drama of nature’s autonomy and make humanity free, not from the conditions of nature, but from anxiety of creaturehood. One can summarise that the unknowabililty of man by himself, expressed through the paradox of subjectivity, encapsulates the essence of the moral division in man between his limited created position in the physical world and his intellectual and spiritual capacity to transcend the world and to long for the unconditional and eternal. The dialogue between theology and science then represents a future explication of man’s drama of creaturehood, providing us with an open-ended hermeneutics of man’s created existence in communion with God.

The Unknowability of Man as Oblivion of Origins The paradox of subjectivity, or the mystery of the ambivalent position of man in the universe, can be considered in the context of the issue of beginnings. One implies the beginning of that consciousness in man which is responsible for man’s reflection upon his confrontation with the universe in the conditions of the paradox. The reflecting consciousness always slides back to the mystery of its beginning because the hidden nature of this beginning is a very simple and primordial manifestion of man’s unknowability by himself.29 Man, although not being able to explicate his own beginning, always faces this beginning as a problem that is implicitly present in his consciousness: as that which cannot be ‘looked’ at; as that which is inescapable from the very fabric of the human condition, and that which can hardly be distinguished from experience of life. This situation is explicated in a phenomenological treatment of birth, understood as coming into existence of hypostatic human beings, that is persons. The problem is that I can experience my birth30 only through its delayed consequences: I did not see my birth and I must rely on the account of my parents or other witnesses in order to attempt to grasp my birth as that occurrence which affects me through all my life, but I will never be able to reconstitute this event as a phenomenon. The phenomenon of birth gives itself without showing itself because it comes to pass as an event, that is something without foundation, ground, as origin but which is non-originary.31 The exceptional status of this event follows from the fact that birth gives itself together

29 Cf. the already quoted passage from Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 453. 30 For the purposes of simplicity we use first person language in this section. 31 See on the phenomenology of birth J.-L. Marion, ‘The Event, the Phenomenon and the Revealed’, in Transcendence in Philosophy and Religion, ed. by James F. Faulconer, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 87–105, as well as his In Excess. Studies of Saturated Phenomena

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with that it gives me to myself. This is a mechanism by which my birth phenomenalises itself, for without this giving me to myself I would not be able to realise that it is me who is affected by birth. The phenomenon of birth thus exemplifies the condition for any phenomenon: the possibility of phenomenalisation of all things lies in the extent by which it gives itself: the phenomenon of birth is the first phenomenon which initiates the possibility of receiving all other phenomena. The phenomenon of birth as a phenomenon par excellence, not being reducible to any preceding causes and being incommunicable and indemonstrable, forms that excess in human perception of life which always allows for unpredictable future, for an indefinite series of commentaries and insights on the sense of this birth which extends forward in time while being interpreted retrospectively. Not being a phenomenon given to myself, I always experience an intention to look at birth as a phenomenon which initiated me, my identity, my spiritual growth, ultimately my hypostatic uniqueness. Birth as an existential premise is always silently encoded in all my actions, which attempt to reconstitute it in order to come to terms with the fact that I was born without my consent and can do nothing about it. In a way, my birth can be seen as the never-ending continuation of my experience of life, but it is still inaccessible as a phenomenon to my direct gaze. My appropriation of birth is always delayed because any retrospective reflection contains as its basic element a delay: delay between the occurrence of my birth and innumerable intuitions of its meaning. In this sense ‘me’ as an original being, does not have an originary origin, that is a metaphysical ground to which I can refer in order to deduce the occurrence of my birth from a chain of the worldly events. In fact the very idea of the possibility of grounding my birth in the chain of such events signifies a fundamental reduction or deprivation of the phenomenality of birth of its excessive primordiality. It is exactly because my birth is in the foundation of all derivative intentions to construct a chain of historical or cosmological transformations, which as antecedents would conclude in my birth, that all articulations are overwhelmed initially and irreducibly by the intuition of this incomprehensible and indemonstrable event of birth. How then can my birth as a phenomenon, while not showing itself, affect me radically in the sense that it produces my unique existence? How can the origin of myself, which is present in all following events of my life, show itself in such a way that, effectively, it is indemonstrable? The answer to these questions comes from the realisation that this showing has an ‘eschatological’ character because the past of my birth is being shown to me only through its anticipation as directed to the future. My birth has sense only as an ‘event’ which phenomenalises itself by endowing me with a future. Being an indemonstrable phenomenon, birth reveals itself as an ‘event’ that was never present to me in orders of ‘presence in presence’ and always already imbued with the qualities of having passed, but never being irrelevant for the present and thus outdated. But even in this ‘eschatological phenomenalisation’, my birth does not allow any demonstrability in the sense of communication: my birth for me is an event which

(NY: Fordham University Press, 2002), pp. 41–44. See also Claude Romano, L’événement et le monde, (Paris: Presses Universitaire de France, 1998), pp. 95–112, and Michel Henry, De la Phénoménologie. Tome I. Phénoménologie de la vie (Paris: Presses Universitaire de France, 2003), pp. 123–42.

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cannot be grasped as a fact and correspondingly described in rubrics of thought and demonstrated, being irreproducible and surpassing any expectation and prediction. The event of birth (if one regards it as coming-into-being of persons) as an event is not accountable on the level of sufficient conditions of its happening: its outcome is unpredictable and unforeseeable: given the normal physical conditions birth (conception) might not happen at all. However, the necessary conditions for this event to happen lie in the sphere of what preceded it, the physical plan. In this sense, in spite of its sporadic and unique character, an event of birth as physical incarnation contains in itself that something which made the happening of this event possible. And when one says that birth gives itself in an unmediated and indemonstrable way, that it is to say that it does contain in itself (that is birth) and does manifest the hidden conditions for it to take place. These conditions come with birth and follow birth in the same unmediated and indemonstrable way. This means that in no way can I treat myself as an absolute beginning. I can oversee the limits of my origin and look objectively at it, that is, I can formulate for myself the necessary conditions which made it possible. My personal story can easily be extended to that ‘before’ which lies in the foundation of my incarnation, not only on the level of my parents as a biological species, but that ‘before and out there’ which make it possible for life to exist at all. One means here physical conditions and ultimately the universe. Thus my act of birth entails not only an unbreakable communion with my parents but an unbreakable communion with the universe in which I was born, and which is an implicit premise of the very possibility of my articulations, with regard to both my birth and the universe as a whole. I did not choose the universe in which to be born; the universe then is mine in an absolute sense. I cannot disregard the universe in my life because its presence is implanted in my birth: I am in communion with the universe from the very moment of the inception of my body and consciousness. The phenomenological concealment of the sense of birth as coming of man into existence makes this unique and personal existence incomprehensible, thus contributing to the radical unknowability of man by himself. Since the paradox of subjectivity in its philosophically articulated form is possible only for persons, the unknowability of man’s personhood cascades toward the incomprehensibility of contingent facticity of the paradox itself. Since the event of birth endows man with a future, so that birth’s explication goes on continuously as a process directed to the future, the hermeneutics of the paradox as an inherent feature of the human condition goes on endlessly. This explication includes the dialogue between theology and science which, as an activity directed to the future, contributes to the elucidation of the sense of birth as being created.

From the Paradox of Subjectivity to the Incarnational Archetype: The Sense of the Dialogue as it is Seen Theologically The approach to the question ‘What is man?’ through the notion of communion receives its Biblical justification through the answer which God gives to Moses ‘I will be with you’ (Exodus 3:12). Paraphrasing, it is the way that He can say ‘I am who I am’

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(Exodus, 3.14) that tells to Moses that he will be with him. The whole essence of the question ‘Who am I?’ as a concrete incarnation of the question ‘What is man?’ entails, through the encounter with God, an answer which is not a direct response to that which is asked, but an indication that the implied sense of the response can only be given via an invitation of man into God’s midst through the way of life. Communion is thus following the same imperative of God ‘I will be with you’ on the side of man: ‘I will be with You by following You’. By accepting God’s communion, man does not receive any answer on what he can or cannot know, what he ought or ought not to do, what he may or may not hope for: thus he does not receive an answer to the question of ‘What is man?’ as it was formulated by Kant. For God indicates to man that this question cannot be addressed and responded to in abstraction simply because, without communion with God, it does not have sense and cannot be clarified. ‘Man is man only in communion with God’ means that God offers man the way, which is man’s history as the endowing him by the future. There is no being of man as such, devoid of the inaugural event of communion with God enabling man to have future, that is life. In other words, the ‘knowledge’ of man by himself as such turns out to be the unfolding of his history towards that for which this history was created: man receives the sense of his telos formulated not in terms of those potentialities which are implied in Kant’s three questions, but through the definition of communion. It is only by following this God-given purpose (through communion that man can indefinitely unfold and constitute the sense of its own existence, knowing in advance that the ultimate union with God, phrased theologically as deification, will yet leave untouched an inerasable difference (diaphora) between a creature and the Creator. It is a dedication to this telos that releases man from the incessant idolatry of his images of himself, thus effectively removing all dramtic overtones from the unanswerable nature of the question ‘What is man?’, through which God releases man from any search for rootedness in the rubrics of the world by constantly pointing out to him that, while being in the world, man is not of the world.32 Man’s anxiety about his contingence and homelessness in being, entailing the question of ‘What is man?’, is intended to be replaced by offering home in God’s midst, that is through being introduced to communion with God, who will be with him in all his ways.33 Then the refusal of following God, which meta-historically associated with the Fall, meant that man imagined that he can attain to himself by choosing to resemble something less than God. This is rather a paradoxical situation: to be man in communion with God is to remain in the conditions in which man’s Divine Image

32 Cf., e.g., Nicholas Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom (London: Centenary, 1944), pp. 94–95. 33 A similar thought was expressed by V. Nesmelov: ‘Man aspires not only to the explanation of his situation in the world, but also to knowledge of that way through which he could indeed overcome this situation… To reach knowledge of the eternal mystery of being means the same as to, de facto, remove this mystery in being, that is to produce the true way for accomplishment by man of his destiny in the world and to give him true possibility for the accomplishment of this destiny. It is about this way and this possibility that Christian teaching tells man. It communicates to man that knowledge without which man cannot manage, but which he, unfortunately, cannot create’ (Nesmelov, The Science of Man, p. 418).

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is detected, but not defined. If man attempts to define himself in some metaphysical terms pertaining to the world, that is if he denigrates his existence from transcendent communion to some immanent attribution, he effectively commits sin because he co-relates his humanity to something which is less than God. By not following God, and introducing into its own definition of himself something less than God, man predisposes himself to despair and homelessness in being, because there is nothing in being which gives man a dwelling place and the comfort of reciprocity.34 However, as the Bible teaches us, the invitation to communion with God, in order to ease the feeling of despair and anxiety, does not find a straightforward response in man: it represents an existential difficulty, because communion transcends the limits of the empirical, which is accessible to the senses and logical thinking. Certainly, there always was a temptation to treat the idea of communion as an abstract ethical ideal leading to a sort of religious humanism. In reality, this invitation to communion never implied any abstract teaching on how to answer the basic questions articulated by Kant. It implied the need to see God in creation and hence to be in communion with him. This ‘did not prevent men from wallowing in error’,35 so that the invitation to communion, not recognised by men, was reactivated through the descent of God towards man when God assumed reality of the human flesh. This became God’s self-response to his longstanding invitation to men to be in communion. On the one hand God’s descent to the poverty and miserableness of the human condition, entering friendship with the wicked and sinful, brought nothing new to man in terms of his own explanation of himself. The vulnerable condition of the human affairs in the world, with all the horror and atrocities of humans with respect to themselves, was not explained and healed away. Christ himself, by being crucified and passing through the brutal attitude of humans to humans, did not teach them from the Cross an answer to the question: what is man? He did not attempt to teach of man along the lines of the Greek ideal of beauty and kindness. He rather confirmed to them, through his witness to the Father, that they ‘do not know what they do’ (Lk 23:34). By rephrasing a response to the Kantian question, Christ demonstrated to man

34 As a corollary to what we have discussed on the paradox of subjectivity, it turns out to be that any possible overcoming of the paradox of subjectivity would correspond to the diminution of the human (as being in communion but in the conditions of unknowability) in man, that is an imminent spiritual lapse into the state of deprivation of communion. However here is an intrinsic counter argument made by the same consciousness which attempts to resolve the ambiguity in the paradox. This argument is simple: the facticity of consciousness precedes any particular modus of reflection upon the ambiguity of man in the universe. This means that the resolution of the paradox (as finding a metaphysical ground for it) is impossible on the grounds of its contingent facticity that enters any human life as an event which saturates intuition and blocks its discursive apprehension. Hence the language of resolving (or overcoming) the paradox becomes irrelevant. The intended ‘overcoming’ can be posited as a formal purpose, without implying that the actual achievement of this purpose has any metaphysical sense, as if man would find the ultimate source of this paradox (its own explication) in the world. As a result, one can conclude that the knowing of the world in the conditions of the paradox, when this paradox itself becomes a purpose of explanation, represents a purposeful activity where the purpose is only formal (See our comment on the idea of formal purposiveness in ref. 8). 35 Athanasius, On the Incarnation 14 [ET: (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), p. 42.

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that, without receiving Christ as the Son God, and as the Son of Man, ‘man does not know what to do, and what to hope for, he cannot avoid despair and the uncertainty of not being able to approach the mystery of the his existence.’ Through his parables, Christ inaugurated the Kingdom of God, which was available to all, not only to those ideal men of the Greek philosophy. For anxiety and despair, groundlessness and non-attunement to the world, expressed through the paradox (and through an implicit longing for immortality), can be healed in man only through his abandonment of the idea of finding his own foundation in that ‘substance’ of the world which, in spite of being created by God, yet is in a state of indifference to man and his affairs, a state which was described above as a primary ‘evil’.36 Being a creature, man cannot receive any hope of elucidating his condition from a creature which is not hypostatic. However, man can confess unconditional love by imitating God, who created the world with no hope of reciprocal love from the world. But to exercise such a love man ought to follow his archetype through God’s promise of being in communion with man. In this sense the Kantian questions received practical (not abstract philosophical) answers explicating the sense of the offered communion: ‘As an image of God, man cannot know himself. He can know things of the world only in the delimiters of his own unknowability. Correspondingly, to avoid anxiety of this unknowability, man ought to follow Christ (= to be in history) in order to see the world through “his eyes”, where the chasm between the uncreated and created was removed through the Incarnation of the Son “begotten before all ages”. Only in this case may man hope for the union with God in his Kingdom, but without explication of the miracle of its own creation’. Communion thus becomes such a change in the tropos (the way) of existence, when the world loses its sense of being a hostile terrain and the source of ‘evil’ (where man is crushed under the weight of astronomical facts37). This change invokes (in Pascal’s manner) man’s understanding that it is the universe that is capable of killing him, and that the universe itself does not understand this.38 Christ, being fully human, experienced the same predicaments as all created men, but unlike other men, he knew that coping with these predicaments proceeded from his being the Son of God. The Son of God enhypostasised himself in the conditions of the physical world and, as a being who was fully human, he knew what it meant to be a creature and he transferred to humanity knowledge of this. The key point to the manifestation of Christ’s creaturehood was his Crucifixion, which showed the wholescale tragedy of being subjected to the law of death. The way to be ‘man in communion with God’ is to follow Christ through his life in the created human condition and comprehending the whole universe through his Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension and ever being on the right hand of the Father. Thus the human predicament expressed in the paradox of subjectivity receives its

36 Yannaras, The Enigma of Evil, p. 16. 37 Cf. Gabriel Marcel, Du Refus a l’Invocation (Paris, Galllimard, 1940), p. 32. 38 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 199 (cf. 113), trans. Louis Lafuma (Paris: Editions Du Seul, 1962), p. 103 (cf. 67)) [This ET: Pascal, Pensées. Selections, trans. and ed. by Martin Jarret-Kerr (London: SCM, 1959), p. 78 (cf. 39)].

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elucidation from the Christ-event, being the only possible theological reference in the hermeneutics of the ambivalent created condition of humanity. In spite of Christ’s moral teaching through centuries of recent history, the Incarnation of God is not an accidental event which happened in order to heal human faults (for example, human inability to see the creator through creation,39 thus not following God). As that part of creation which has been envisioned by God from the beginning, the human predicament of the ambivalent existence in the universe was implanted in the very logic of creation by confirming once again that the main delimiter in answering the question ‘What is man?’ proceeds from his creaturehood. Man cannot answer the question ‘What is man?’ because he cannot create himself. By understanding this he is predisposed to communion and acquisition of Grace that confirms that man is not only a natural being, but a Divine image. And it is through science, which is a particular modus of the Divine image in man, that man understands the dimensions of his created condition, not from the side of the negative connotations of the paradox of subjectivity, but, in fact, in relation to to the whole logic of creation. It is science that makes possible the understanding that it is the descent of God into the universe that predetermines the contingent facticity of the universe which accommodates man. For the Word-Logos of God to assume human flesh, there must be this flesh. Since modern physics and biology are clear with respect to the necessary conditions of existence of such a flesh, requiring at least ten billion years of cosmological evolution, it seems evident that for the Incarnation to take place the necessary physical conditions must have been fulfilled. For Christ and his Mother (Virgin Mary) to have bodies, the universe must have had from the beginning the propensity to produce them. Correspondingly the ontological aspect of the Incarnation40 is always present in the reversed history of the universe as it is described in modern cosmology.41 According to Thomas Torrance, the whole surrounding world, being created freely in the act of Love between the Persons of the Holy Trinity, exhibits contingent necessity related to its physical structure, its space and temporal span, encoding the motive of the Incarnation (and hence man) in the fabric of creation.42 These observations change a stance on the position of man in the cosmos, releasing him from the mediocrity and insignificance of his physical existence. The question ‘What is man?’ receives its elucidation through adoption of a new vision, in which the very existence of man is seen as ‘implanted’ in the fabric of creation, whose logic presupposes bringing creation to communion with God through man. If the motive of the Incarnation is linked to the logic of creation, man as a particular segment of creation becomes inextricably intertwined with the rest of creation. Since the actual historical Incarnation happens in the midst 39 See, for example, Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 3: 11, p. 12. 40 The ontological view of the Incarnation can be seen through a modern theological development called ‘deep Incarnation’ Niels Gregersen, ‘The Cross of Christ in and Evolutionary World’, Dialog: A Journal of Theology, 40: 3 (2001) pp. 192–207. 41 These conditions are summarised in various versions of the Anthropic Principle (AP), which detects consubstantiality of the physical stuff of the universe and human corporeal beings. 42 Thomas Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998).

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of the human subset of the universe (recapitulating the universe on the level of consubstantiality and epistemological acquisition), its proper sense can be directly related to the constitution and meaning of the cosmos, in which humanity itself is no longer positione on the periphery of the created universe, but in its centre, as the immanent intentionality of creation.43 However, one must not treat the Incarnation and the very existence of intelligent humanity as metaphysically predetermined in the creation. One can only assert that the logic of creation contained the necessary conditions for the existence of intelligence and hence for the Incarnation. The sufficient conditions for both human intelligence and the Incarnation can only be detected through the actual happening of the Incarnation, thus providing us with their transcendent references (paradeigmata). The sufficient conditions for the Incarnation are not part of the underlying ontology of the world, and here the revelational aspect of the Incarnation enters the discussion, framed in terms of the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. This is to say that the Incarnation is not part of the natural conditions in the world. Even if the world was created by God in order to attain the union with God, it is humanity which is granted the means of such an attainment through a special call. The possibility of such an attainment effectively contributes to the definition of man: only in communion with God does man become ‘himself.’44 In this sense man, in spite of being consubstantial to the visible creation45 and having solidarity with it, is a special creation whose essence requires grace, and the mechanism of acquiring this grace proceeds through the Incarnation. Thus one can see that the proper theological input in the dialogue of theology with the sciences originates precisely in man’s archetypical predisposition (endowed by the incarnate Christ) to relate the visible universe to its transcendent foundation, given to humanity through the grace of the ‘giver of life.’ If one generalises this, the dialogue between theology and science, as co-existence of different attitudes to the created world, has its archetype in the Incarnate Christ, for whom the predicament of the dialogue did not exist because this dialogue was Christ’s own creation in the same sense as the world and its scientific exploration were created by him. The difference in attitude to the world (present in theology and science) was introduced by Christ in order to teach man about the meaning of creaturehood in the conditions of communion with God. Being in human flesh, Christ as the Logos-creator, had to hold the image of the physically disjoint universe in one single consciousness as an

43 Maximus the Confessor, for example, refers to man, created in the image of God, as a key to understanding creation in his process of divinisation when he may elevate it to the supreme level of its full soteriological comprehension. See e.g. Lars Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. 1985), p. 76 referring to Maximus’ Questions to Thalassius 35. 44 As was expressed by J. Zizioulas, one cannot identify man through a syllogistic formula ‘man = man’ which, if one follows a philosophical logic, contains a pointer beyond itself towards the definition of man as ‘man = man-in-communion-with-God’ ( John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness (London: T&T Clark, 2006), p. 248). 45 According to modern cosmology, the human body, consisting of atoms, effectively interacts only with 4% of all matter of the universe, remaining de facto non-consubstantial to the rest 96% of the allegedly existing Dark Energy and Dark Matter.

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intelligible (noetic) entity. Thus the unity of the created world, being split in itself as the sensible and intelligible, becomes the pivotal indication of the sense of the created. This split in representation of man by himself (as the composite unity of the empirical and intelligible), as indicated in the paradox of subjectivity, cascades towards the split between science and theology, pointing towards the simple fact that neither empirical nor theoretical knowledge of the universe can receive any justification of their contingent facticity if the ultimate source if this facticity is not sought in the logic of creation. Thus the dialogue between theology and science can be treated as an outward manifestation of the radical createdness of humanity wrestling with its own incapacity to control its own ends, as well the ends of the world. It is not difficult to guess that such a dialogue is an open-ended enterprise, having no metaphysical accomplishment and hence having sense only as contributing to the infinite hermeneutics of the created human condition. One can be tempted to link the unknowability of man by himself, and the paradox of subjectivity, not to the issue of creaturehood, but to the conditions of the Fall as if the ambivalence in the human condition formulated in the paradox proceeds from the loss of memory of ‘all in all’ (Eph. 4.6) in the post-lapserian state. Correspondingly, the resolution of the paradox could be associated with the re-acquisition of the state of the first man, Adam. However, this cannot be true, because the first man was also created, and his knowledge of ‘all in all’, implanted in his Divine likeness, did not guarantee him being able to reproduce himself in the manner in which he was created by God. The crucial moment in explicating man’s unknowability is Christ who, by being God and fully human, elucidates to man the sense of man’s created condition, the sense which, as such, was obscured by the Fall. The traditional link between the Fall and the Incarnation is that the latter is treated as a redeeming act of God towards saving the transgressing humanity. However, Orthodox theology points towards a connection between creation and the Incarnation, as being, de facto, a necessary and sufficient condition for the created to be brought to union with God. In other words, the motive of the Incarnation is linked to the aim of creation.46 According to Maximus the Confessor, the creation of the world contained the goal for which all things were created: ‘For it is for Christ, that is, for the Christic mystery, that all time and all that is in time has received in Christ its beginning and its end.’47 It is in this sense that the motives of creation and the Incarnation are inextricably intertwined and this, theologically (and in addition to cosmological findings), points to the fact that the phenomenon of man is intrinsically linked to the motive of creation. Man

46 According to G. Florovsky, ‘It seems that the “hypothesis” of an Incarnation apart from the Fall is at least permissible in the system of Orthodox theology and fits as well enough in the mainstream of Patristic teaching. An adequate answer to the “motive” of the Incarnation can be given only in the context of the general doctrine of Creation.’ Georges Florovsky, ‘Cur Deus Homo? The motive of the Incarnation’, in Creation and Redemption: The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, vol. III, (Belmont: Nordland Publishing Company, 1976), p. 170 (Emphasis added) (The discussion of ‘Cur Deus Homo?’ has never been a part of the canonical corpus of Orthodox literature and constituted, in words of G. Florovsky, a theologumenon (theological opinion)). 47 Maximus the Confessor, Questions to Thalassius, p. 60.

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was created in the universe, and because of its createdness he experiences his Divine image through the unknowability and ambivalence of existence. From this, one can conclude that the dichotomy between theology and science is an inevitable characteristic of man’s creaturehood, so that the sought reconciliation of theology and science is impossible in the human condition to the same extent as the overcoming of the ontological (not moral) division between creation and God in the process of deification. By linking the motive of the Incarnation to the intrinsic logic of the creation of the world by God, Orthodox theology extends the scope of the Incarnation beyond the opposition Fall-Redemption, towards a wider span of the plan of salvation, as related to the deification of man and bringing the whole creation to union with God. The lesser arch of the Fall-Redemption becomes a tool in restoring the greater arch: Creation-Deification.48 A famous phrase from Athanasius — that God ‘assumed humanity that we might be made God’49 — implies that humanity, being created, has a potential to be in union with God (not based in the natural laws related to creation). One can say, even more strongly, that a creaturely modus of existence becomes unavoidable for the very possibility of deification. Correspondingly, if God’s plan ‘consists in deification of the created world’ (some parts of which imply salvation), the plausibility of the plan of deification is rooted in the fact that man is ontologically united with the created nature. Man is the ‘microcosm who resumes, condenses, recapitulates in himself the degrees of the created being and because of this he can know the universe from within.’50 In this sense Orthodox theology links the Incarnation to humanity as that subset of the created universe which is capable of conducting a mediating role in overcoming moral tensions between different parts of creation, and between creation and God.51 The mediation between moral divisions in creation explicates the sense of being created and the delimiters of deification: the union with God through these mediations does not remove the basic ontological

48 Andrew Louth, ‘The place of Theosis in Orthodox theology’, in Partakes of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions, Michael Christensen and Jeffrey Wittung (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press), pp. 34–35. In this sense the conditioning of the Incarnation by the human concerns would be a mistake: ‘Christ is not a mere event or happening in history. The incarnation of the divine Logos was not a simple consequence of the victory of the devil over man…The union of the divine and the human natures took place because it fulfilled the eternal will of God’ (Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ. Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), p. 37 (emphasis added)), so that it ‘…showed us that this was why we were created, and that this was God’s good purpose concerning us from before ages, a purpose which was realised through the introduction of another, newer mode’ (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, PG 91: 1097C [ET: On Difficulties in the Church Fathers. The Ambigua. Vol. 1., ed. and trans. by Nicholas Constas, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014, pp. 131–33]), that is the entrance of ‘the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God [into] our world’ (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 8 [ET: Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press 1996, p. 33]). 49 Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54 [ET: p. 93]. 50 Olivier Clément, ‘Le sense de la terre’, in’ Le Christ terre des vivants. Essais théologiques. spiritualite orientale, no. 17, (Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Abbaye de Bellfontaine, 1976) p. 90. 51 See, for example, Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), pp. 387–427.

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difference (diaphora) between the world and God, thus not removing the riddle of man but retaining the basic definition of man as being a creature in communion with God. The reader may be puzzled by such a paradoxical situation: indeed if one talks about deification as union with God, and about deification as possible through the Incarnation, why can man not achieve through this deification that state that was pertaining to Christ the Incarnate? The answer is: Christ hypostatically remained the Logos of God and was controlling his enhypostasisation in Jesus by being able to explicate its own human, that is created, nature. However this is not given to man, so that the Incarnation remains an archetype of the human (Divine image/physical flesh = uncreated/created) predicament. At the same time the Incarnation brings a kind of a natural division into our understanding of communion. According to Maximus the Confessor, the Incarnation brought the division in the temporal span of evolution of the universe onto two fundamentally different aeons: ‘…God wisely divided “the ages” between those intended for God to become human, and those intended for humanity to become divine.’52 This excludes a possibility of treating the movement from creation to deification through the Incarnation as a ‘natural process’ inherent in the fabric of creation. On the one hand, created things participate in God through the fact of their existence, that is through ‘being in communion.’ However, when Maximus enquires into the human capacity for deification, he stresses that it does not belong to man’s natural capacity.53 By separating the aeons before and after the Incarnation, Maximus makes a difference between the participation in God which is bestowed to man by creation and that participation which is bestowed by deification. Put differently, one can say that the aeon after the Incarnation corresponds to the movement of man to God, whose very possibility was effected by the Incarnation, and whose actual exercise demands not only communion through existence, but communion through grace. Grace is not implanted in the natural conditions of existence, but is bestowed by God on the grounds of man’s personal degree of perfection.54 It is this grace that makes it possible for man to realise his ambivalence in the universe, originating in creaturehood. It is this grace that makes possible enquiry into in the contingent facticity of the sciences, thus initiating their dialogue with theology. It is this grace that makes theology possible as that constituent of knowledge that explicates the sense of the created humanity.

52 Maximus the Confessor, Ad Talassium 22 [ET: Blowers, Wilken, On the cosmic mystery of Christ, p. 115] This point sheds light on the inclusion of the lesser arch of Fall-Redemption into the greater one of Creation-Deification as the different degrees of participation in God. 53 ‘…what takes place would no longer be marvellous if divinisation occurred simply in accordance with the receptive capacity of nature’ (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 20 [ET: Nicholas Constas, On the Difficulties in the Church Fathers, The Ambigua, vol. 1 (London & Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2104), p. 411]). 54 Thunberg with reference to Maximus asserts: ‘There is in man no natural power that can deify him, but there exists on the other hand a reciprocal relationship between God and man that permits him to become deified to the degree in which the effects of the Incarnation are conferred on him’ (Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos, p. 55).

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Conclusion: The Dialogue between Theology and Science as an Open-ended Hermeneutics of the Human Condition The duality in hermeneutics of the subject which is transpiring through the dialogue between theology and science receives its elucidation from the basic feature of man related to his creaturehood: man exists through communion with God by the fact of his createdness, but he does not ‘possess’ himself entirely in the world even in tendency, because the conditions of communion through grace are not part of the world. Indeed, by detecting his ambivalent position in the world (the paradox of subjectivity), man discovers himself in the conditions of an intellectual impasse, that is incapacity of understanding the contingent facticity of such a paradox as the delimiter of his embodied consciousness. Through attempts to find the metaphysical grounds for himself, man produces instead an infinite hermeneutics of his own predicament, thus sensing that the very means of interrogation of himself by himself cannot be existentially clarified. Here, an inerasable Divine image in man invokes the latter to seek for God’s help and thus to follow God, that God who once descended in the world to teach man about his creaturehood in order that man might be be deified. How does all this relate to the problem addressed by this paper: that of the nature of the dialogue between theology and science? The sciences implicitly articulate the outward sense of existence in communion (that is being created) through their very contingent facticity, that is through the fact that they exist. The underlying foundation of the sciences is man, whose sense, nevertheless, cannot be completely explicated either by the sciences or by philosophy. The sciences function in the conditions of man’s unknowability by himself. Theology encounters the sciences (and philosophy) in order to release man from an intellectual impasse of unknowability and to invite him to learn, from his archetype in Christ, that in spite of his creaturehood he remains in communion and has a potential to achieve union with God for the sake of understanding that the unknowability and paradox remain the basic theological delimiters in man’s self-awareness of his creaturehood. This brings us to the final conclusion that the dialogue between theology and science represents an open-ended hermeneutics of the created human condition. The discourse of the paradox of subjectivity and that of oblivion of origins (phenomenology of birth) provide the delimiters for any of such hermeneutics. Since the riddle of the unknowability of man by himself cannot be resolved in terms of metaphysical concepts, cascading down towards the irresolvable nature of the paradox, the dialogue between science and theology cannot hope to have any material goal as its accomplishment. The moral tension between man’s created condition and his Divine image, as well as a capacity of receiving the grace of deification, means that the dialogue will remain active and alive always and forever, just confirming a simple existential truth that both — science and theology — originate in one and the same man, created in communion with God, but living in a moral tension between the sense of his created limitedness and graceful longing for the unconditional and immortal.

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Knowledge of God and Phenomenological Foundations of Religious Experience Modern Interpretations

The question of the knowledge of God in modern Orthodox theology is usually raised on the basis of the traditional meaning of Church Fathers, on the basis of hermeneutic and philosophical experience of medieval thought. However, the reconstruction of tradition does not always lead to theological conclusions and can be built into the academic dialogue. Even in the Middle Ages, the question of the knowledge of God included the theory of knowledge, the platonic tradition of contemplation or the genre of philsophical Aristotelian commentary. In modern philosophical theology, however, the idea of the subject, the human being as a creature, becomes the result of the sum of philosophical methods and scientific knowledge. The knowledge of God is considered like the experience of thinking and the phenomenon of consciousness which nature is understood, through philosophical forms of reflexion. In this paper, special attention will be paid to the phenomenological direction which, after the ‘theological turn’ of the French school becomes significant for the continental tradition, not only as description, but in terms of theological understanding of the internal experience of thinking. In particular, the ideas of E. Husserl, which further discourse is based on will be considered, as well as the hypotheses of J.-L. Marion and J.-P. Manoussakis—the view of postmetaphysical philosophy on religious experience, in which both science as a form of thought and faith as a form of being become unified in the special dialectics of God knowledge.

Experience as a Category of Faith and of the Knowledge The question of knowledge of God in the context of natural theology leads to contemporary discussions present in the dialogue of scientific knowledge and religious experience (including that of Revelation). What then is the sense of such a dialogue between science and religion from the philosophical point of view, in particular in the perspective of phenomenology?

Tatiana Litvin • Independent Researcher St Petersburg, Russia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue, ed. by Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk, SOC, 2 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 95–102. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.122609

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In the history of varieties of the mutual influence of scientific knowledge and religious interpretation of experience, it is anthropology that provides a sufficiently large scope of interaction of theology with modern philosophical and scientific questions. Natural theology can be understood solely as part of metaphysics, that is, it includes all the fundamental Thomist provisions that are necessary for preserving tradition and coordination between the everyday life of faith and the most general conditions of experience as such. However, from the standpoint of the current state of knowledge, such a traditional function does not exclude the possibility of using Thomistic thought for scientific knowledge, and therefore for understanding of social progress, as it happened in the seventeenth century, when the most fundamental principles of rationalism and mathematical thinking were formed thanks to the tenets of Christianity. In this regard, in parallel with the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition of natural theology, the tradition deriving from Augustine became influential and, thanks to Anselm, Bonaventure, and Duns Scott, represented a fundamentally different proof of the existence of God and knowledge of him. The difference between these two traditions is that the latter included the question of free will, which was a topic considered in the first book of Augustine’s De libero arbitrio, and which received a rather detailed reflection in later philosophical theology. Not only the idea of salvation but, in general, the proof of the world order and its hierarchy1 proceeds from experience of direct contemplation given to humanity as an element of its free action. One can state that it is at least starting from Augustine that the question of freedom is implied in a philosophical understanding of experience. It is experience as the basis of understanding that remains the starting point for the proof of any existence, so that an epistemological approach to proof of the existence of God turns out to be a reason for analysing both the empirical and transcendental levels of consciousness and self-awareness in the twentieth century. Before the twentieth century, the concept of experience was developed in two key traditions — British empiricism and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. From a phenomenological point of view, experience is given in reflection and implies its treatment as passivity (or a gift). Experience demanded reflection, not just descriptions or articulations, but of explanation of the transcendental dimension of human reason and its boundaries. This approach to experience undoubtedly unifies several questions in one issue: how is religious experience possible? Why does the question of the existence of God remain an integral part of the problem of defining the boundaries of human knowledge? In addition, this approach accentuates the role of phenomenology in establishing some commonality in modern approaches to the dialogue between natural theology and science. Experience in this approach includes any conceptualisation that can be based either in schemes grounded in the rational causality or unmediated existential or aesthetic experience. In modernity it is possible to allocate the sum of representations about the person and to symbolize the given dialogue in terms of a ‘philosophy of the person’, or scientific representation of the person. Then philosophical anthropology has been shaped due



1 Louis Mackey, Faith, Order, Understanding. Natural Theology in the Augustinian Tradition (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2011), pp. 16-18.

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to the theory of evolution, including its critique and the synthesis of the general ideas of Max Scheler and phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis — that is those approaches to understanding of humanity, which, summarizing results of the biological sciences, nevertheless, create their own holistic ideas. Thinking about knowledge of God on the borders with definitions of humanity, is one of the ways to actualize the experience of Revelation. Theology as a reflection upon Christian experience and doctrine, as well as the tradition of knowledge of the highest truths, is not always considered as something important for the scientific outlook of the early twenty-first century; however it is precisely because of its paradoxical status that it is relevant in some topics of intellectual culture and political debate. Can knowledge of God in the light of modern philosophical methods be defined through the knowledge of nature? Or does knowledge of God remain no more than religious experience, which includes specifically phenomena of individual mystical experience, those phenomena which may not be transmitted intersubjectively? From a phenomenological point of view it is possible to do both, but in order to describe in more detail the state of modern ‘natural theology’ we need to develop a certain criticism in order to clarify its methodological basis.

The Question of Method in the Contemporary Theology What is the sense of religious science in the modern academic community, where the very notion of science is itself under constant revision? In the philosophy of science, the problem of delimiting the criteria of scientific rationality has been studied for several decades, at least since the beginning of post-positivism, and even earlier, and remains one of the central issues in the debate early in the twenty-first century. The famous principle of falsifiability by Karl Popper2 expresses the expectations that the scientific community had of scientific theory, and thus the possibility of a reasoned criticism was spelled out for any research at the level of a hypothesis. In the latest period of science there is an equal value of subject and object, as well as the socio-cultural context and the formation of scientific knowledge, but the principle of falsifiability remains a criterion not only for natural sciences, but also for the humanities if they lay claim to being scientific. Can such an idea of science be applied to theology? And if so, what result for religious reflection and for religion in general does this possibility have? Or does theology as a dogma not permit criticism, and is it then in this case inherently unscientific? Modern theology has inherited the same fragmentation as philosophy, and reasons should be sought for this fragmentation by appealing to the experience of twentieth century philosophy as a practical guide for analysing theology in modern post-secular society. The scientific criteria of the natural sciences are often built upon empirical verification. However, does the term ‘empirical’ mean only experimentation in a laboratory? The scientific status of theology may undoubtedly be established as the

2 Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1963), p. 36.

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scientific status of philosophy, but only if we include the history of theology in the definition of theology and recognise historical experience as a part of empirical verification. This conclusion entails switching to the revision of the philosophical methodology of the twentieth century. The second half of the twentieth century was a time of eclectic hermeneutics, an era which continues until today. During this period, different ways of analysis and work with the text were tested for the interpretation of the Bible: for example, experiments with French structuralism, reader-response theory, feminism, hermeneutics of liberation, and postcolonial hermeneutics belong to the latest biblical hermeneutics, as well as other post-modern approaches. It should be emphasised that both in history and especially in the present state of the humanities, the boundary between the biblical and philosophical hermeneutics is very thin. A Christian exegesis, like theological science as a whole, is formed by the fusion of two traditions, the Hellenistic and Judaic. Biblical hermeneutics goes back to the Old Testament period, in schools whose origins were in the time of Babylonian captivity, and to the allegorical method of the Alexandrian school. The latter is undoubtedly the most important for philosophical thought in the history and methodology of hermeneutics, in which the Judeo-Alexandrian allegorical interpretation reached its completion. The allegorical method was not only a technique and interpretation of the anthropomorphisms and commandments which were obscure to the Gentiles, but it was a constitutive element for later theological schools and thus demonstrated that one must discuss its unique worldview and philosophical synthesis. The allegorical method was prevalent in the Catholic theology in the Middle Ages up to the restrictions imposed on it by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas turned to the theology of Augustine, in which the epistemology of Neoplatonism became the method of knowing God and understanding the Word. From a Christian perspective, the sense of the dogma of the Incarnation of the Word of God ( John 1.1) was, among the others, established on the basis of faith by Augustine, illuminating the very mystery of language and revelation. In the philosophical reflection of this dogma it is necessary to distinguish between the ancient idea of the Logos in its cosmic potentiality and embodiment of language in a concrete historical-semantic content. Since the basic principle of interpretation of Scripture is the principle of divine inspiration, the moral and didactic sense should only be supplemented by the historical. Language should be used only to serve theological purposes. Until the Reformation, biblical hermeneutics blended the ambiguity of philology and the mystery of Revelation, which limited human understanding. Before the Reformation, Western Christian theology expressed itself in Latin, and afterwards it established two religious languages: the Roman Catholic and the Evangelical Protestant. Immediately, this philological difference led to different approaches to biblical hermeneutics, which served as the ground for philosophical methodologies. In the hermeneutics of the twentieth century, both philosophy and theology, in particular in the form of biblical studies, were more closely intertwined. The Protestant philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher, and subsequently Hans-Georg Gadamer,3

3 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Warheit und Methode (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990), pp. 478–94.

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established the potential of hermeneutics as a basic method in philosophy and in the humanities in general. Gerhard Ebeling suggested the idea of hermeneutical theology placing hermeneutics to be an intermediary tool between historical-critical and dogmatic theology, reconciling the traditional exegesis with post-reformational reflection. Language as a means of expression for human spirituality has a special function for theology. Ebeling assumes the main features of a theological language, such as absolution, responsibility, and foundation for explanation and understanding. A theory of a theological language is necessary as a separate religious reflection that can solve the problem of the modern understanding of ‘Babylonian’ culture.4 One also finds the continuation of a philosophical hermeneutics in the works of a protestant philosopher, Rudolph Bultmann, and ideas of Wilhelm Dilthey,5 according to whom hermeneutics not only provides ways of understanding texts, but is the basis of historical science as such, which in turn becomes the method of understanding history. Gadamer and Bultmann were influenced by the phenomenology of Heidegger, so that the problem of understanding becomes not so much an epistemological problem as an existential challenge, creating a special kind of sense of ‘event’. This happens partly because of the fact that this phenomenological dimension, which transformed hermeneutics into a philosophical anthropology, was suggested by Paul Ricoeur as the idea of hermeneutics of the subject in the second half of the twentieth century that took into account all the traditions. But the hermeneutics of the subject does not extend to theology; instead it embraces psychoanalysis and social theories.6 The absence of the unity in the overall discourse was caused not only by different confessional goals, but also by the postmodern crisis of philosophy that affected the position of the humanities in the continental tradition. Despite the historical differences in the formation of continental and analytic approaches, in the postmodern period they converge. However, there is an exception to this rule, namely the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion, in which he returns to the ideas of Descartes and Husserl and performs the ‘theological turn.’7

Phenomenology in Knowledge of God In the unpublished manuscript A V 21, which dates from the years 1924–1927, Edmund Husserl provides a consistent description of a phenomenological understanding of theology, as well as of those functions which it performs in a system of philosophical knowledge. The ancient distinction between philosophy as a science of nature and theology as knowledge of the supernatural is still present in the concept of scientific thinking. It is necessary to distinguish phenomenologically, in the first place, “theology

4 Gerhard Ebeling, Einführung in die theologische Sprache (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971), p. 43. 5 Rudolf Bultmann, ‘The Problem of Hermeneutics‘, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 47 (1950), pp. 47–69. 6 Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed. by Don Ihde, trans. by Willis Domingo et al. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969). 7 Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

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in the now conventional sense, as the science of religion, for our Christian religious sources of knowledge and, secondly, theology as a science about God and the divine (von göttlichen Dingen), also, the science of the natural light.”8 When it comes to the “natural light of reason” (and science is understood in terms of rationality in the modern European sense), the rationality of judgments becomes the primary criterion for the validation of scientific knowledge. Rationalism amounts to the belief that there are a-priori principles of knowledge, or knowledge finds its justification in experience. Husserl points out that rationalism often involves empiricism; apriorism and verification complement each other in a search for justification. This method (rationalism) reveals its inconsistency when it comes to the super-rational or nonrational (arationale) justification that pertains to a religious understanding. There is a need to clarify the theological grounds, as well as the basic facts, when there are non-rational (ausserrational) reasons. Religious faith is based on the tradition of fundamental religious principles. Tradition is the active resource of beliefs but it does not claim its absoluteness; for Husserl, the religious tradition is not related to the credibility of the knowledge derived from a ‘simple’ vision (Sehen) or recognition (Einsehen). Faith is a judgment but not a judgment of the doxological or axiological order. Husserl argues about what is the structure of judgments in scientific knowledge, pointing to the difficulties which are found phenomenologically — the difference between the proposition and its ground, between cause and motive, between judgment and premise. This issue, known more from the Logical Investigations, is considered in the manuscript with respect to religious judgement, or, as the author writes, “the faith of reason” (Verstandesglaube). Judgments reflect all areas of human knowledge: social and cultural values and norms are also judgments. The same can be said about religious values. However, phenomenologically, it is important to clarify the foundation of faith as an act of consciousness present in the foundation of any judgment, in the mode of the evident self-giveness, “pure vision.” In faith understood as the self-givenness of judgments, I take belief in its “true self ”, “I have decided on faith, because I see the believed as such (Geglaubte selbst)”. Pure vision corresponds to faith as the foundation of judgment. Thus, distinguishing between the proposition (as one of the opinions on those or other values) and the judgment (as it is based on faith in its self-giveness), we are talking about the origin of value itself. Husserl sees some kind of a ‘need’ for a judgment in the soul (Gemüt), for “causes” or a “will”, which enable us to appreciate judgments (wertlegen). In this sense, the motivating force (motivierende Kraft), is different from a causality that would create a kind of obligation (Sollen) in judgments, as set out precisely in sensuality. Klaus Held, commenting on the post-Husserl phenomenology, emphasised that from the position of a neutral phenomenological observer it is important not to expose God as such, but to understand God and to understand the meaning, which



8 Tatiana Litvin, ‘Temporality and philosophical theology in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl’, International Journal of Decision Ethics, 9.1 (2013), pp. 59-76 (p. 68).

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in his unity creates a certain subject meaning.9 Therefore, the process of constitution of any logical category and the process of constitution of any phenomenon for phenomenology turns out to be more primary [primäre] than the field of application of constitution to the object. The object turns out to be a kind of a consequence of reflection, a consequence of this process, which is essentially intentional and can be studied by itself. The philosophical response of E. Husserl would be that we are not talking about a sort of mysticism in the origins of philosophical thinking. Mysticism may be present as an element so that one can say that phenomenology is a form of Neoplatonism. On the contrary, it is a more accurate clarification of all the nuances in the cognition of God and all the nuances in the objectification of any idea, its formation. Jean-Luc Marion and John Panteleimon Manoussakis, reproducing the Augustinian tradition, set as their task the phenomenological description of each structure involved in the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God is, first of all, the process that includes self-knowledge: the formation of the human ‘Ego’ is impossible without an idea of God (implying that the formation of an adequate image of the human ‘Ego’ is impossible only by means of the biological sciences or scientific discourse). Correspondingly, within the framework of the phenomenological description of the cognition of God, there appears the idea of the cognizing subject, that is the subject becomes cognizant, the ‘Ego’ itself appears. J.-L. Marion builds the unity of the aesthetics of icons with the phenomenology of perception, and the theology of the gift of grace with the metaphysics of free will.10 Each part of the system is connected to another, and Husserl is similar to Malevich, Descartes to Levinas. Since the task of my article is not to include an exhaustive analysis of the philosophy of Marion, I limit my criticism to one essential point — the systematics of Marion does not solve the problem of the postmodern crisis, but rather emphasizes it. The transcendental subject becomes an aesthetic subject and the questioning of God takes the form of artistic experience.

Conclusion Which of the above methods is more influential in the twenty-first century? It is an approach that includes phenomenology, namely that of Ricoeur and Marion. The benefits of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the subject are that the latter relied on an anthropological analysis. In other words, Ricoeur does not take the ‘living’ person out of consideration; he provides a balanced approach to psychoanalysis and pays a special attention to language and its many layers. Accordingly, Ricoeur’s study of patristics, such as the anthropology of Augustine, remains a relevant example of the application of methods of the twentieth century to the analysis of classical texts.

9 Klaus Held, Phänomenologische Begründung eines nachmethaphysischen Gottesverstndnisses (Freiburg: Herder, 2009), p. 11. 10 Marion, God Without Being.

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However, a disadvantage of the theory of Ricoeur is that the hermeneutical question of the ‘conflict of interpretations’ switches into a plan of social criticism, and Ricoeur resolves this ‘conflict’ by appealing to Marxism.11 This move is interesting in terms of social philosophy, but within the philosophy of religion it transforms hermeneutics into a tool of political rhetoric, leading to an ever increasing secularisation, in my opinion. As for Marion, his transcendental project undoubtedly has a much larger impact than that of Ricoeur, including French phenomenology and philosophical anthropology. This approach is recognized in philosophy and theology as the most systematic. But the Cartesian nature of this project, in particular, leads to systematic disadvantages in the use of Marion’s philosophy. As was noted above, Marion’s philosophy does not reconcile systematic eclecticism and emphasises the inner contradiction even more. It is important to add that the optics of Marion’s work can lead to dogmatism, which returns the disadvantages of medieval metaphysics in the twentieth century. A Greek Orthodox theologian, J.-P. Manoussakis, also develops a modern philosophical anthropology and the philosophy of time.12 But the question of the theology of creation for the newest philosophical theology remains open. In the dialogue of science and religion, phenomenology can be a mediator and a guarantor of their “convergence”. The phenomenological difference between the act of reflection and the subject of reflection is the basis for each type of knowledge, including knowledge of God. Religion and science are similar to the two wills (Maximus the Confessor) in human nature, which dialectically construct each act of experience. E. Husserl, as a mathematician, revises the foundations of mathematics and raises the question of the ultimate sense of axiom, how the meaning of axiomatics as such is constitutive, returning mathematics to its Pythagorean forms in some way. That is why mystical knowledge suddenly acquires the accuracy that may never actually be implied in it. Summing up, as an intermediate variant of knowledge between scholastics and mathematics, phenomenology is still a way to create a more accurate system of distinction for science knowledge, and remains a way to describe the inner spiritual experience.

11 Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations. 12 John Panteleimon Manoussakis, Self and Time: Post-Subjectivity: Philosophical, Theological and Historical Considerations on Subjectivity after the Enlightenment (Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars 2014).

Part III

Orthodox Theology of Nature, Ecological Insights and Bioethics

Elizab e th T heokritoff

Orthodox Theology, Ecology and Science A Journey of Rediscovery

Introduction Ecological theology is one of the few areas where the Orthodox contribution is quite widely known and respected by theologians who do not specialise in Eastern Christianity, as well as environmental activists and thinkers. Among environmentalists, this is due largely to the pronouncements of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who takes every opportunity to talk about the spiritual and ethical aspects of environmental issues to a variety of secular or inter-faith audiences. Theologians are most likely to be familiar with the work of John Zizioulas, who is the contemporary Orthodox theologian best known in academic circles as well as being the most systematic exponent of a theological approach to ecology. This subject has actually attracted the interest of a number of Orthodox theologians who approach it from a wide range of viewpoints, including that of liturgy, patristic thought, the ascetic tradition, the lives of the saints and philosophy.1 Such contributions are often thoughtful and thought-provoking, but as yet not as well known either within or beyond the Orthodox sphere. In Orthodox literature, it is not always easy to draw a line between ‘ecological’ thinking and the theology of creation that informs and underpins it. In order to keep the topic within manageable proportions, however, I have focussed on the theological responses to the new challenge of an environmental crisis. This is a challenge that, in the view of one Greek theologian, was going to ‘demand serious theological adaptation and large-scale upheaval within the church body’.2 And yet as one explores these writings from the past forty years, to a striking extent the response involves not so much upheaval as rediscovery — of the meaning and implications of various facets of church tradition, but also of earlier modern insights into a theological understanding of creation. This process of rediscovery is very much still continuing, as I shall illustrate in the second part of this chapter.



1 See notably Towards an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature and Creation, ed. by John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). 2 Savas Agouridis, ‘Ecology, theology and the world’, in Chryssavgis and Foltz, p. 75. Elizabeth Theokritoff • Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, UK Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue, ed. by Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk, SOC, 2 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 105–120. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.122610

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Theology, Ecology — and Science? The Orthodox response to the environmental crisis might seem an obvious place to seek an intersection of science and theology, but in fact this is developing only gradually. Apart from occasional scholarly papers,3 Orthodox writers and homilists addressing ecological themes rarely get far beyond juxtaposing environmental and theological approaches. According to the pattern established early on in writings and exhortations responding to the ecological crisis, science appears primarily in the role of messenger, conveying news about the state of the earth, probable causes and possible remedies. One of the prime responses to the bad environmental news is a call to metanoia, a ‘change of heart’; not simply an ethical response, but a realignment of our relationship with God and hence with the rest of his creation. Orthodox thinking thus has a strong affinity with those environmentalists who believe that the environmental crisis requires us to change the way modern man sees himself and his place in the world. It is for this reason, rather than any bias against technology, that there is almost no discussion of technological means of mitigation. The idea that environmental damage signals a damaged relationship to God could easily be dismissed as a pre-scientific understanding of causality in the natural world. In fact, however, it reflects a profound vision of reality that is much less easy to dismiss: a conviction that the laws of nature and the laws governing human conduct, the workings of natural systems and of human society, come from one and the same divine source and therefore mirror each other.4 Potentially, this opens the way to looking theologically not only at the evidence of anthropogenic environmental damage, but also at the whole web of interactions revealed by ecological science. Hitherto, most theologians have availed themselves little of this potential. But as we shall see later, the theological terms in which the Orthodox vision of creation is typically expressed actually lends itself to such connections. This vision draws on church Fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa and especially Maximus the Confessor, who reflect on the ways in which God is present and active in material creation and the unique role of the human as an instrument through whom God works in creation. The preferred framework for speaking about Creator and creation, including the role of man, is sacramental and especially eucharistic, since the Eucharist is the transformation of matter into Christ. As an example of the practical effects of the ‘eucharistic ethos’, Orthodox frequently invoke the many stories of Saints, ancient and modern, who provide remarkable examples of compassion for all creatures and harmonious coexistence with their natural environment.5 The paradigms of the eucharistic offering, for which the natural world is shaped into bread and wine, and the making of icons lead to a strong affirmation of human

3 E.g. Gayle E. Woloschak, ‘Perspectives on Orthodoxy, Evolution and Ecology’, in Chryssavgis and Foltz, pp. 263-75. 4 See further Elizabeth Theokritoff, ‘How to read the creation’, in A Journey along the Christian Way. Festschrift for the Right Rev. Kallistos Ware, ed. by Elena Ene D-Vasilecu (Beau Bassin, Mauritius: Scholars’ Press, 2018), pp. 12-25. 5 See e.g. So that God’s Creation might Live (Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, 1992).

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use and transformation of ‘nature’, as well as qualifying the spirit in which this is to be undertaken.6 A ‘eucharistic’ use of the world is a thank-offering to God, a recognition of our dependency on His gifts. Using and ‘consuming’ the world for our own satisfaction, without reference to its Creator, is quite literally the original sin. In the environmental context, it is a matter of great importance that our use of the world is held to the high standard of being consistent with the Eucharist. This leaves no room for the idea that use and consumption of the world can be bracketed as a necessary evil, to be offset by conservation elsewhere. The affirmation of using the world typically goes hand in hand with an affirmation in principle of scientific research as a way of revealing God’s glory.7 Nevertheless, what has been much slower in coming is a recognition that the very way we speak theologically about creation and man’s role in it can profitably be enriched by a scientific understanding of the world. A sustained effort to bring into dialogue theological and scientific approaches to environmental issues has again come from Constantinople, notably in the Religion, Science and Environment symposia initiated in 1993. The 1999 Halki Environmental Institute was intended to build on this initiative in a more focussed way by providing an introduction to environmental science and local environmental issues to church representatives from the countries abutting the Black Sea.8 It is regrettable that this programme was not able to continue beyond the first year, because it revealed both the value of engaging with environmental science in a theological setting, and the difficulty of breaking the habits of a lifetime and talking about theology in a different key. Environmental discourse relates by definition to empirical data about the natural world; yet more often than not we find theologians and homilists firmly wedded to talking about man and the natural world in a long-established theological language that owes precious little to casual observation, let alone scientific research.

Theology and Ecology: Developing an Approach Creation and God’s relationship to His world has been a lively topic in modern Orthodox thinking since the nineteenth century, when this was an important theme in Russian religious philosophy. The signature doctrine of the ‘sophiological’ thinkers such as Vl. Soloviev, P. Florensky and S. Bulgakov, their promotion of the wisdom of God as the ‘point of contact’ between Creator and created, has not found much favour among modern Orthodox writers, who generally prefer the language of the Word and ‘words’. But the sensitivity to divine presence in the world found in Bulgakov and especially Florensky is echoed in important twentieth-century writers such as P. Evdokimov and especially O. Clément, who was thinking theologically about the earth and our place

6 See e.g. Archimandrite Kallistos Ware, ‘The Value of the Material Creation’, Sobornost, 6:3 (1971), pp. 154-65. 7 Ware, ‘The Value of Material Creation’, pp. 154-65. 8 John Chryssavgis, ‘Introduction’ in Cosmic Grace, Humble Prayer: The Ecological Vision of the Green Patriarch Bartholomew I, ed. by John Chryssavgis (Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 9-14.

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among its creatures some years before environmental issues came to prominence. The Orthodox encounter with specifically environmental issues came initially through the World Council of Churches, and this had a long-lasting influence on the way the discussion was framed. Christian, mainly Protestant, ‘ecological’ thinking of the 1970s and 1980s had a strongly apologetic character. Not only was it grappling with human responsibility for an alarming failure to care of the earth, but it was also responding to a pointedly anti-Christian strain in nascent environmentalism which blamed the crisis on a generic ‘Judaeo-Christian tradition’ for its ‘anthropocentrism’ and teaching of man’s dominion over the earth. This aetiology seems to have attained the status of an urban myth in secular environmental circles, but Protestant ‘eco-theology’, too, has often internalised the idea that Christianity is to blame for the ecological crisis.9 Orthodox theologians have generally recognised the lamentable ignorance of Christian tradition that is reflected in this sort of blanket condemnation,10 but the resultant framing of the issues left a fateful legacy. Ironically, the concerns over ‘anthropocentrism’ and ‘dominion’ have led to a preoccupation with the place of man vis-a-vis ‘nature’— the current popularity of the image of ‘man as priest of creation’ being only the latest instance. Only gradually is it being recognised that the question crucial to human treatment of the earth may not be whether we see our position as dominion, stewardship, priesthood, kingship or something else, but our degree of awareness of the context of that position: as part of a creation that in its totality comes from God, serves God and acknowledges His sovereignty. As I shall suggest in the second part of the chapter, it is in the recovery of this perception of creation as a totality that the scientific picture of the world can give theologians perhaps unexpected help. The shift in thinking from ‘man and nature’ back to the more traditional ‘Creator and creation’ may be gradual, but the key point was made clearly and trenchantly from the beginning by the most prominent Orthodox voice on the environment in the 1970s and ’80s, Metropolitan Paulos (Varghese) mar Gregorios.11 A bishop of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church and sometime President of the WCC, Mar Gregorios was an adventurous and idiosyncratic thinker who was happy mixing political philosophy with theology, but many of his insights remain unparalleled. He is quite clear that the concept of ‘nature’ as non-human material creation is not native to the Christian tradition, so that the modern juxtaposition of ‘man and nature’ should be replaced with the traditional Christian language of ‘creation’ in contradistinction to God. Man’s unique role is thus a role within, not vis-a-vis creation. Mar Gregorios is one of the first to use the image of ‘priest’ for man’s role in creation, and he favours it precisely because ‘the priest has to be an integral part of the people he represents’.12

9 See e.g. Ernst M. Conradie, ‘Introduction’ in Creation and Salvation Vol. 2: A Companion on Recent Theological Movements, ed. by Ernst M. Conradie (Zurich/Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2012). 10 See e.g. Issa J. Khalil, ‘The Ecological Crisis: An Eastern Christian Perspective’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 22:4 (1978), pp. 193-211; J. J. Heckscher, ‘A “tradition” that never existed: Orthodox Christianity and the Failure of Environmental History’, in Chryssavgis and Foltz, pp. 136–51. 11 See Metropolitan Paulos mar Gregorios, The Human Presence (Madras: The Christian Literature Society, 1980). 12 Metropolitan Paulos mar Gregorios, The Human Presence, p. 85.

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This means that the rest of creation is the ‘community’ that offers, not only the matter that is offered:13 Mar Gregorios is far more sensitive to the communal implications of the eucharistic metaphor than most of those who repeat the ‘priest of creation’ formula today. For him, human affairs including ‘science-technology, political economy and value choices’ are part of creation’s self-offering to the Creator. Indeed, in the spirit of the eucharistic prayer ‘Thine own of Thine own we offer…’, ‘all human activity, indeed all the dynamism and vitality in the created order’ is to be understood as God’s own creativity. Mar Gregorios is quite explicit: ‘Art and science, philosophy and faith are all from the operation of the [Holy] Spirit’.14 Despite many dramatic changes in the forty years since Mar Gregorios was writing, he has some thoughts on science in society that may still merit consideration today. Noting the sensation caused by Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics, mar Gregorios, as a representative of the indigenous Church of India, was well placed to point out that Christianity too is an Eastern religion with potential for integrating science into a broader vision of human understanding and overcoming ‘pernicious dichotomies’. Importantly for ecological thinking, such dichotomies include the duality between vertical and horizontal — the assumption of ‘one realm (nature) where man is master and another (grace-supernatural) as coming from God’.15 Nor is this merely a matter of balance, but there is a clear order of precedence. Notwithstanding the fact that mar Gregorios, like others of his time, shows what may seem today a rather naive optimism about technological ‘mastery’ of the world, he is adamant that any such ‘mastery of nature must be held within the mystery of worship’16 (my italics). Another somewhat neglected classic statement of the ‘cosmic theology’ that grounds the Orthodox approach to environmental questions comes from a trio of sermons given in 1989 by the late Patriarch of Antioch Ignatius IV.17 In addition to patristic sources, he shows the influence of Russian religious philosophy and of his contemporaries, Paul Evdokimov and Olivier Clément. Ignatius sets the course for Orthodox ecological writing in looking not simply to the protection of creation, but its transfiguration. He ends by speaking very practically of the responsibility of Christians but the practical action comes out of the vision of a world destined to ‘become eucharist’, a world whose very existence is ‘ontological

13 On ‘priest of creation’ language and its implications, see further Elizabeth Theokritoff, ‘Priest of creation or cosmic liturgy?’ in Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth: Studies in Honour of Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, ed. by Andreas Andreopoulos and Graham Speake (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016), pp. 189-211. 14 Metropolitan Paulos mar Gregorios, Science for Sane Societies (New York: Paragon House, 1987), p. 97, pp. 230-31. 15 Metropolitan Paulos mar Gregorios, The Human Presence, pp. 104-06. 16 Metropolitan Paulos mar Gregorios, The Human Presence, p. 89. 17 Ignatius IV, Patriarch of Antioch, ‘Three Sermons: A theology of creation; A spirituality of the creation; The responsibility of Christians’, http://www.orth-transfiguration.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Lecture_HB-Ignatius1989-Lecture-Nr-1.pdf> [accessed 26/11/19][accessed 26/11/19] [accessed 26/11/19].

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praise’. It is given to man to apprehend the world at various levels — contemplative, artistic, scientific. The contemplative way of knowing enables us to perceive the glory of God in things, to recognise the world as ‘an ocean of symbols’— the image comes from his compatriot St Ephrem. It is perfectly clear that the ‘symbolic structure of the world’ refers to a deeper level of knowing the very same world that is accessible to science. It does not mean, as modern readers sometimes imagine, that the material world is ‘only’ symbolic and has no reality and integrity of its own.18 For Patriarch Ignatius, the contemplative experience allows us to make common cause with the scientist who is awed by the mysterious intelligibility of the universe. It can illumine the work of research: Ignatius apparently has in mind the words of Paul Evdokimov, that ‘a scientist bent over the disintegration of atoms may reflect on the eucharistic integration of nature into the risen body of Christ. The Jesus prayer will naturally come to purify his vision, so that he may perceive the “flame of things” in the very matter of the world’.19 The Patriarch makes a strong case for a synergy of different levels of knowing, which can guide us to ‘a principle of explanation that does not dissolve the mystery of things’. This contrasts with the disjunction between ‘modern rationality’, which deals in ‘quantifiable abstractions of things’, and a spiritual knowledge of the world that perceives the great divine ‘Reason’ (Logos, Word) suffusing all things — a split that he sees as lying at the root of environmental destruction. Quoting the words of Ilya Prigogine about scientific knowledge as ‘poetic listening to nature’, the Patriarch declares that ‘reason as instrument has disenchanted the world … reason as contemplation has now to teach us to admire and respect it’. We should say something more here about the work of Olivier Clément,20 to whom Patriarch Ignatius is especially indebted in these sermons. Clément began writing about theological cosmology at a time when technology was already a live issue, but environmental damage scarcely registered. It was also a time when few Orthodox theologians were paying any attention to questions of the human role in the cosmos.21 His language is poetic rather than scientific, but the commonality of matter among all physical creatures is central to his very concrete vision of how the sanctification of all creation works. For Clément, the working of the Eucharist in the world is the primary example of a synergy of creatures, human and otherwise: it depends both on man using the world and on the very structure of the world. In a lyrical passage which he reuses in several variants over the years, he describes how the natural cycles and the rhythms of human agriculture dependent on them all work together: ‘The saps rise from the earth, the water circulates and makes fruitful,

18 See the helpful discussion in Byron David Stuhlman, ‘The theme of creation in the liturgical theology of Alexander Schmemann’, in Creation and Liturgy, ed. by Ralph N. McMichael, Jr (Portland, OR: Pastoral Press, 1993), pp. 113-27. 19 Paul Evdokimov, ‘Nature’, Scottish Journal of Theology 18 (March 1965), pp. 1-22 (p. 22). 20 See e.g. Olivier Clément, ‘L’homme dans le monde’, Verbum Caro XII:45 (1958), 4-22; ‘Le sens de la terre (Notes de cosmologie orthodoxe)’, Contacts 59-60 (1967) 252-323 (pp. 3-4); On Human Being: A Spiritual Anthropology (London: New City, 2000). 21 As Mar Gregorios (Human Presence, p. 80) laments even in the late 1970s.

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heaven is married to the earth in the sun and rain, humanity toils in seedtime and harvest…’ so that they produce the food of incorruption (or in an earlier version, so that bread and wine become fully themselves). Either way, this matter becomes the glorified body of the Lord; ‘and the effect is also the cause, as the fire spreads to the rocks and stars whose substance is present in the holy gifts…’22 Thus ‘the Eucharist guards and sanctifies the world, gradually pervading with eternity the heart of things and making ready the transformation of the world into eucharist’. We could say that this understanding simply follows the logic of the ‘logoi of things’ of which St Maximus speaks. The divinely-implanted ‘words’ at the core of every creature’s being are operative both in the qualities accessible to science and in the creature’s role in God’s plan ‘to deify the universe’. Like Clément, Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia (Kallistos Ware) was writing about the spiritual value of the material world several years before the environment became a fashionable topic. He conveys a strong sense of the world as ‘a sacrament of divine presence, a means of communication with God’, as he says in a talk significantly entitled ‘Through the creation to the Creator’.23 The same sensibility, and a profound love for the land, come across in the writing of John Chryssavgis. Although Chryssavgis often makes connections with particular environmental problems, both of them draw on poetry, literature and sometimes nature writing more than science for their depictions of the natural world. But the sense of the sacredness of the natural world is also experiential — an experience often connected with monastic life. Metropolitan Kallistos acknowledges his debt to St Amphilochios of Patmos, who not only exhorted his spiritual children to plant trees but would himself go round watering the saplings through the summer drought.24 He also recalls his walks on the Holy Mountain with Gerald Palmer, his collaborator on the translation of the Philokalia, whom he credits with opening his eyes to the holiness of the physical place, such that ‘the monks, the monasteries and the icons are enfolded… within an all-embracing context of sacred space… The very rocks and earth of the Mountain, with all its flowers, shrubs and trees, possess an intrinsic sacredness…’25 John Chryssavgis appeals also to the experience of the desert dweller, who comes to know nature, and its dependence on God, first and foremost in his or her own body. Without the security blanket of modern civilisation, the desert dweller becomes acutely aware of being on the same footing as other creatures, ‘co-operating and identifying with the earth, in the firm conviction that both humanity and the earth belong to heaven’.26

22 I draw on three different versions of this passage: Clément, ‘L’homme’, p. 13, Clément, ‘Le Sens’, p. 290 and Clément, On Human Being p. 116. 23 Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia, ‘Through the Creation to the Creator’ in Towards an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature and Creation, ed. by John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 86-105 (p. 90). 24 Ware, ‘Through the Creation of the Creator’, pp. 86-7. 25 ‘Gerald Palmer, the Philokalia and the Holy Mountain’ Friends of Mount Athos Annual Report 1994, 26-7. 26 John Chryssavgis, ‘Sacredness of creation in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers’, Studia Patristica XXV (1991), 46-51 (p. 349); see also John Chryssavgis, Beyond the Shattered Image (Minneapolis: Light and Life Publishing, 1999).

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This strand of Orthodox ecological thinking is profoundly indebted also to another devoted pilgrim to the Holy Mountain, Philip Sherrard; to his ‘ontological tenderness’ towards all created things and his emphasis on the need to ‘experience nature as part of [one’s] own body’.27 Sherrard was a practical environmentalist well in advance of his time, lovingly restoring and transforming a landscape scarred by mining, albeit in a spectacular setting overlooking the Aegean, and championing the footpaths of Mount Athos already in the 1970s.28 Most Orthodox writers do not however follow him in his perception of an unbridgeable gulf between the approach and even the findings of modern science, and a knowledge of creation that glorifies its Creator. At the opposite pole from Sherrard is the best known and most systematic ecological theologian of contemporary Orthodoxy, and chief exponent of ‘man the priest of creation’: John Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon. From the 1989 lectures in which he first addresses the subject of ecology, Zizioulas is clear about the need to set out Orthodox theological cosmology ‘in a way that will not involve logical contradictions or stumble over fundamental scientific facts’;29 theologians cannot simply repeat traditional formulae of Christian cosmology and anthropology with no reference to what we know about the world today. One way he does this is by a strict definition of what belongs to creatures according to their own created nature, as distinct from God’s calling or purpose for them. Thus, by nature, man is an animal. This also allows him to recognise that mortality and corruptibility did not enter the natural world at some point in human history: they are indeed the natural state of material things, reflecting the nothingness out of which all things are created. Here he relies principally on St Athanasius, who teaches that the original role of man, now recapitulated in Christ, was to reverse that natural trajectory so as to bring creation to its intended deification beyond nature. This resolves the question often raised especially in Protestant eco-theology, of why the non-human creation needs to be ‘saved’. It also explains why ‘nature needs man’ for its ultimate survival, no less than man needs nature for present physical survival. Zizioulas’ whole ecological vision is framed in eucharistic terms. In lifting creation up to God, whether in the Eucharist per se or in thankful (i.e. eucharistic) use of the world, man brings it into communion with its Creator.30 Formulations such as this can cause confusion, including sometimes the question of the status of material creation before man appeared on the scene.31 The historical question can

27 Quoted in Kallistos Ware, Metropolitan of Diokleia, Philip Sherrard: A Prophet for Our Time [The first Annual Sherrard Lecture] (Friends of Mouth Athos, 2008). 28 Philip Sherrard, ‘Paths of Athos’, Eastern Churches Review, 9(1-2) (1977), 100-07. 29 Metropolitan John of Pergamon, ‘Preserving God’s creation’ (Part 2), Sourozh 40 (May 1990), 31-40, (p. 39). 30 Metr. John of Pergamon, ‘Man the Priest of Creation’, in Living Orthodoxy in the Modern World ed. by Andrew Walker and Costa Carras (London: SPCK, 1996), pp. 178-88. 31 See e.g. Christina M. Gschwandtner, ‘Creativity as Call to Care for Creation? John Zizioulas and Jean-Louis Chretien’ in Being-in-Creation: Human Responsibility in an Endangered World, edited by Brian Treanor, Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), pp. 100–12.

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be answered by recognising the dynamic quality of Orthodox cosmology: we are talking about a process whose fulfilment is eschatological. Creation is for salva­tion; the world is moving towards an end point of union with God. Even so, a number of other Orthodox writers have an uneasy feeling from Zizioulas’ work that ‘creation appears devoid of divine presence’. Because of his insistence that the divide between God and the world is bridged only through the person, ‘there is not a clear sense of how creation as God’s creation is already relating and participating in God’s life’.32 There is an irony here, because connection and relationship as ideas are central to Zizioulas’ thinking. That is one reason why an evolutionary understanding of the world plays such an important part in Zizioulas’ liturgical vision of creation. Man’s connecting role absolutely requires that he is ‘also an animal’, a creature that cannot be thought of apart from the ‘endless [evolutionary] chain of “others”, personal and “natural”’, from which our own being has emerged.33 Such is the creature that receives the divine calling to be a person according to the divine image. Personhood for Zizioulas means the capacity for relationship, which is not a natural attribute but a calling from God. This capacity in turn enables man to see creation as a ‘catholicity of interrelated entities’.34 Zizioulas draws on science to find parallels to this in the physical workings of the world, whether it is the ‘breakdown in communion’ involved in the programmed death of a cell35 or the physicists’ picture of the world as ‘relational and dynamic’;36 and importantly, he argues that this is not merely an analogy but an ontological connection, grounded in creation through the Logos. This might seem at odds with his surprising earlier contention that God does not act in ‘nature’ but only in human history,37 and perhaps indicates a shift in his thinking.

The Task Ahead As environmental threats become more widely recognised, the focus is increasingly on practical responses that will be effective in the short term and require minimal adjustment in people’s vision of the world. But this does not render irrelevant the deeper questions about the root causes of large-scale environmental destruction. 32 Aristotle Papanikolaou, ‘Creation as communion in contemporary Orthodox theology’, in Towards an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature and Creation, edited by John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 106-20 (p. 119). 33 John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness. Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (London: T. and T. Clark, 2006), p. 92. 34 Metropolitan John of Pergamon, ‘Preserving God’s creation’ (Part 3), Sourozh, 41 (August 1990), (2839) p. 37. 35 Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, p. 52. 36 John Zizioulas, ‘Relational Ontology: Insights from Patristic Thought’, in The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relativity in Physics and Theology, ed. by John Polkinghorne (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2010), 46-56 (p. 152). 37 Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon, ‘Symbolism and Realism in Orthodox Worship’, Sourozh 79 (February 2000), 3-17.

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Nor does it contradict the insistence of Orthodox theologians that there is little point in trying to remedy the damage with the same tools that produced it, notably the utilitarian approach to nature.38 As we have seen, the preferred alternative to such utilitarianism is a ‘eucharistic’ approach which still focuses on human use of the world, but sees all things as gifts of God and means of relationship with Him. Another approach, which I believe has potential to be developed much further, is to take as it were a step back and consider creation as an integral whole united in God’s service. In Paulos mar Gregorios’ language, this is the over-arching ‘mystery’ within which human ‘mastery’ of other creatures finds its proper (subsidiary) place. It is a perspective familiar especially from the Psalms and liturgical texts such the prayers for the Blessing of Waters or early Anaphora prayers. It is less often recognised, however, that it is also a perspective in which environmental and other sciences can prove invaluable, enabling us to ‘put into new wineskins the wine [of Christian theology] which is ever new’, as Nikos Matsoukas writes, appealing already in 1981 for ‘a new hexaemeron’ in which theological language will exhibit a suppleness to match the dynamic and evolving language of science.39 Environmentalists and Orthodox ecological writers would largely agree that the environmental crisis is the nemesis of the modern distinction between reason-endowed man as agent and ‘nature’ as the material for his use. But there is less agreement on where a more integrated vision is to be sought. Writing in one of the earliest collections of Orthodox environmental thinking, Stanley Harakas declares that ‘Orthodox Christianity approaches the totality of reality in an integrated, coherent and comprehensive manner’, and goes on to characterise this ‘holistic perspective’ as ‘quite out of step with much Western Christian theological tradition, and contemporary mind-set of much scientific thought’40 (my italics). In this assessment he probably speaks for many Orthodox clergy and theologians of that time at least (1989); but Orthodox writers increasingly recognise the limitations of identifying the picture of the world revealed by the sciences with reductionism or scientism. It is also hard to ignore the change in popular perception, which increasingly sees the scientific picture of reality as ‘integrated, coherent and comprehensive’, an awe-inspiring vision of the universe whose story is our own story. Of course, theologians will be quick to point out that ‘integration’ on these terms comes at the unacceptable price of reducing man to a purely physical creature. But I want to suggest some of the ways in which Orthodox theology can complement such a picture of reality, rather than feeling the need to reject it.

38 Cf. Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon, ‘Ecological Asceticism: A Cultural Revolution’, Sourozh 67 (February 1997), 22-25 (reprinted from Our Planet 7/6 (1996), pp. 7 ff.); Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, Cosmic Grace, Humble Prayer: The Ecological Vision of the Green Patriarch Bartholomew I, ed. by John Chryssavgis (Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 124-25). 39 NikosMatsoukas, Epistemi philosophia kai theologia sten Exaemero tou M. Vasileiou, 2nd edn (Thessaloniki: Pournaras, 1990) pp. 206, 199-218,. 40 Stanley Harakas, ‘The integrity of creation: Ethical issues’, in Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation: Insights from Orthodoxy, ed. by Gennadios Limouris (Geneva: WCC, 1990), 70-82 (p. 70).

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Finding our Place in the Cosmos First of all, we need to banish the lurking fear that the immensity, antiquity and sophistication of the universe threaten the theological significance of the human being and its unique role in God’s purposes for His creation. That is undoubtedly the conclusion drawn by some popular scientific writing that indulges in an ‘almost gleeful abasement of humans, … inform(ing) us that we are insignificant worms in the cosmic drama’.41 But rather than reacting defensively, it is important to recognise that this is a tendentious interpretation of science. It is not the immensity of cosmic processes in themselves, but the metaphysical interpretation of them as a force displacing God that allows humans to appear as mere ‘efflorescence’ on ‘the dunghill of purposeless interconnected corruption’.42 Insofar as sentiments of this sort are deliberately trying to take aim at Christian anthropology, they show a poor understanding of how Christian tradition sees creation and man’s place within it. For the church Fathers and their contemporaries, ‘dominion over the earth’ was a divine gift to allow human survival in a world that seemed vast, largely wild and for the most part outside human control. There was little risk that the dignity accorded to man in Christian theology would eclipse a salutary sense of creaturely frailty. Now technology has shrunk that ‘world’— the earth — so that we can think of it, at least from the safety of our home or office, as a tame, familiar neighbourhood. But at the same time, pure science allows us to recover a sense of immense forces answerable to their Creator, not to us. Recognising ourselves as very recent arrivals in a cosmos of enormous antiquity and inconceivable vastness does not contradict belief in our unique vocation; it reminds us that we exercise that vocation amidst creatures that are our fellow servants. Faced with the grand picture of an immense, ancient and evolving universe presented by the natural sciences, Christian anthropology has two options for affirming the dignity of man. One is defensive — to focus on the qualities and destiny of the human person and try to keep ‘nature’ in its place. This seems to be predicated on the feeling that there must be a sort of tug-of-war for glory and prestige between man and the rest of creation: the gain of one side can only be the other’s loss. Unfortunately, some Orthodox writing tends to reinforce this idea — not by explicit statements, but by an almost pointed lack of interest in the totality of creation of which we are part. The picture of the human person is exquisitely drawn, delicately shaded, three-dimensional: to be human is to be ‘endlessly varied, innovative, unexpected, self-transcending’.43 But this splendid creature is often set against the flat backdrop of a world characterised in quite stereotypic ways, apparently of interest only as a foil to the human. Such an 41 Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 105. 42 P. W. Atkins, ‘The limitless power of science’ in Nature’s Imagination: The Frontiers of Scientific Vision, ed. by John Cornwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995), 122-32 (p. 128). 43 Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, ‘Orthodox Theology in the New Millennium: What is the most important question?’ (Paper delivered at the 2003 Summer School of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge).

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exaggerated contrast may be combined with a vision of the potential of all creation for transfiguration and transparency: thus we see in Fr Dumitru Staniloae a sharp contrast between the potential for non-human creation to ‘become contingent through the human person’ and the natural condition in which it ‘simply unfolds monotonously within the exclusive and rigid framework of its own laws’.44 Given what we know about the history of the universe and the evolution of life within it, one could see the rationale for describing the process as capricious, wasteful or cruel: but ‘monotony’ and ‘rigidity’ are not notions that readily spring to mind. This is the sort of language that makes people wonder whether science and theology are talking about the same world. The alternative strategy is to embrace the universe revealed by contemporary science as a stunning new revelation of what St Maximus calls ‘all the majesty of the divine wisdom’ invisibly present in creatures.45 All we creatures reflect that same Wisdom from a common source. If we believe ourselves to be created in the divine image, how can we fear being upstaged by the handiwork of our own Archetype? This does not oblige us to gloss over the fact that natural forces and processes are often terrifying and supremely indifferent to our welfare: pre-modern Christians had noticed the same thing about many of the natural forces called on by the Psalmist to praise the Lord.46 But even as the universe reminds us of our physical fragility, it points to the power and glory of the Creator in whose image we are. The cosmic vision of St Maximus the Confessor is increasingly recognised, among Orthodox theologians and beyond,47 as a supreme resource for such an understanding of the world. In place of modern man’s feeling of alienation from the cosmos, it provides, as Andrew Louth points out, a ‘sense of coherence of the whole’; and a vision of that whole that can readily be ‘re-thought in terms of modern science’.48 Key to this vision is Maximus’ doctrine of the ‘words’ (logoi) of things, in which the Creator Word is actively present in all things and they participate ‘proportionately’ in Him. The ultimate goal of this activity is that God should be all in all; but the physical, chemical and biological processes that shape our world and ourselves can equally be seen as the working out of the divine logoi, which are the blueprint as well as the ultimate purpose of every created thing. Indeed, most of what strikes people with amazement about the universe can well be seen as logos — word, rationality — at

44 Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology Vol. 2, (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press 2000), p. 46. 45 Maximus the Confessor, To Thalassius, PG 90: 481C. 46 Cf. Chrysostom Comm. on Psalm 148, PG 55: 487–88. 47 See e.g. Willis Jenkins, Ecologies of grace: Environmental ethics and Christian theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 48 Andrew Louth, ‘The Cosmic Vision of Saint Maximus the Confessor’, in In whom we live and move and have our being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, edited by Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2004) 184-96 (p. 195). Cf. also Konstantinos Zakhos, E Khamene oikeioteta: E oikologike krise ypo to phos tes skepses tou Agiou Maximou tou Omologetou [Lost Familiarity: The Ecological Crisis in the light of the Thought of St Maximus the Confessor] (Larisa: Ella, 1998); Elizabeth Theokritoff, ‘The vision of St Maximus the Confessor: That creation may all be one’, in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology, ed. by John Hart (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), pp. 220-36.

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work: whether it be the accessibility of the universe to mathematics, the fine-tuning of its constants, the adaptability of organisms or the evidence of (non-human) animal intelligence. It is intriguing to see, for instance, how similar is the ‘reading’ of creation that biologist Ursula Goodenough derives from her scientific work, as she rejects separations such as physical versus spiritual and ‘see[s] the whole enterprise, from bacteria to starfish to maples to humans, as operating on the same principles, as profoundly homologous’.49 Even the coincidence in language is striking, a reminder that biological homology is but another aspect of logos in creation. Within this sort of framework, to see ourselves as the product of ‘natural’ processes is no less to see ourselves as the object of God’s purpose. Nor are new discoveries of the intricacies and resourcefulness of the natural world a threat to our position: in celebrating the wisdom, rationality and creativity implanted in the universe, we celebrate our own Archetype. Further, the idea of logos (rationality) as a human characteristic takes on a different complexion in light of a logos-filled cosmos. Rather than separating us from other creatures, it unites us to them, enabling us to perceive and articulate their own distinctive logos or ‘word’ — their own unique echo of the Word though whom they and we were made. If there is a limitation from the theological point of view in the scientific picture of the universe, it is not that it claims too much for the non-human world, but that it claims too little. Certainly there is a tendency in popular scientific writing to give ‘wonderful life’ or some such abstraction the sort of starring role that Orthodox theologians like to reserve for man. And once we start to look at the history of life, it too appears ‘endlessly varied, innovative, unexpected’, to recall Metropolitan Kallistos’ characterisation of the human person. But self-transcending, in a radical sense, it is not. Transfiguration into Christ is one leap that nature really does not make. That is precisely where the hybrid creature comes in, the animal made according to God’s image to enable nature to transcend itself and its mortality.

A Natural Link As we have seen, Orthodox ecological writings never confine themselves to discussing the practical, ‘stewardship’ role of the human being in creation. Rather, they focus on man’s ultimate vocation to bring all things to unity in God. In the terminology of St Maximus, man functions as a ‘natural link’ or ‘workshop of unity’. The modern imagery of ‘priest of creation’, popularised especially by Zizioulas, raises the question of how other creatures become ‘our’ priestly offering. Often the answer is expressed in terms of creativity and shaping of the world,50 or ‘humanising’ it (a usage that probably

49 Nancy Frankenberry, The Faith of Scientists in their own Words (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008) p. 498. 50 E.g. Metr. John of Pergamon, ‘Proprietors or Priests of Creation?’ (Keynote address, Baltic Symposium, June 2003); see [accessed 26 Jun 2018].

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goes back to Bulgakov, who associates it with e.g. domestication of animals). Yet all this can be problematic — 51 the recent track record of human ‘shaping’ of nature has been chequered to say the least, and besides, only an infinitesimal proportion of the universe is accessible to human shaping even if that were considered desirable. There is a much simpler answer which depends not on our activity, but on biology and biochemistry: we are the world humanised. It should be underlined that this does not reduce the sanctification of the world to an involuntary organic process. As ‘human animal’, we share and exchange the stuff of the cosmos with all other creatures, willy-nilly. But as a creature in the divine image, we can choose — or refuse — to ‘commend ourselves … and our whole lives to Christ our God’. This offering of our whole life is our offering of the universe, because there is simply no way of drawing a hard and fast line between ourselves as physical creatures and all the rest of material creation. As Olivier Clément puts it, ‘What is our body but the form that our "living soul" impresses on the universal "dust" which constantly penetrates and passes through us?’52 Our bodily being connects us quite literally with the ‘extremes’ of the universe, the distant reaches of space and time in which the atoms of our bodies were formed; and in the creature who is ‘a living soul’, those atoms are brought into conscious relationship with the Creator of the universe. The ancient idea of man as microcosm turns out to be no less relevant today; indeed, we keep discovering new ways in which it is apposite. Not only are we connected with the mineral world as ‘stardust’ and with the living world through genetic commonalities and evolutionary history, but our bodies function quite literally as a world in miniature whose population is our microbiome. Not all these commonalities will immediately be welcomed in polite theological society. But ambivalence about our status as microcosm is nothing new. Gregory of Nyssa points out that we share this distinction with the mouse and the mosquito, who are equally formed from the four elements: the glory of the human creature lies rather in bearing the image of God.53 But it is precisely the fact of these two poles of human existence that make man a ‘natural link’. What we may call the ‘Godward pole’ in no way negates our material and animal nature, but rather transforms its meaning. Instead of diminishing man as just a sophisticated animal, a handful of chemicals or a mechanism for genes to perpetuate themselves, the shared nature magnifies all other creatures as bearers of a substance that can be suffused with divine power. This is illustrated in a very tangible way in the Church’s experience of saints and the places and objects associated with them. Nature may be seen transformed around holy people — not by the way they cultivate or use it, but through their physical presence as a locus of prayer and transfiguration. This is a natural extension of way their holiness extends to the matter of their own bodies. ‘The saints during their 51 E.g. Christina M. Gschwandtner, ‘Creativity as Call to Care for Creation? John Zizioulas and JeanLouis Chretien’, in Being-in-Creation: Human Responsibility in an Endangered World, ed. by Brian Treanor, Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), pp. 100-12. 52 Olivier Clément, ‘L’homme dans le monde’, Verbum Caro XII:45 (1958), 4-22 (pp. 11-12). 53 On the Making of Man XVI.1, PG 44: 177D-180B.

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earthly lives were filled with the Holy Spirit’, says John of Damascus; ‘and when they fulfil their course, the grace of the Holy Spirit does not depart from their souls or their bodies in the tombs’.54 And since matter is the common stuff of the cosmos, we should expect to find just the sort of porosity that is apparent between the holy person and his or her surroundings: the transformation spreads to the saint’s body and beyond, to his clothes, the place where he has lived and the earth where his relics ‘remain as a sacred compost’, in the striking words of the Athonite elder Vasileios of Iviron.55 Our modern understanding of how the physical world is structured turns out to be remarkably congruent with traditional Christian beliefs and practices that many today, I suspect, might be tempted to dismiss as embarrassingly medieval.

Concluding Thoughts: Cosmic Eucharist Revisited Of the images used to speak of creation in Orthodox ecological theology, one of the most promising is that of ‘cosmic liturgy’ or ‘cosmic eucharist’. While these phrases themselves are modern coinages, they capture well a vision not only found in church Fathers such as Maximus and Dionysius but also deeply embedded in liturgical tradition. These liturgical and ecclesial images also provide a framework for speaking of the activity of all creatures as their service to God, without denying that the human ministry is distinctive. When John Chryssavgis uses ‘cosmic liturgy’ to refer to the ‘interdependence of all persons and things’,56 he is staying very close to Maximus’ imagery of the world as church, in which all created things are drawn together, converging on God.57 This is a refreshing contrast to the disappointingly clerical way in which liturgical imagery has often been used.58 After formal protestations that a priest is part of the community he represents, the ‘community’ tends to be tacitly dropped and ‘cosmic eucharist’ appears to be strictly the business of the human ‘priesthood’: the remainder of creation is simply ‘the matter of an all-embracing cosmic Eucharist’ (my emphasis).59 It should be made clear: to be the matter of the Eucharist, transformed into the Body of Christ, is a high dignity indeed. The question is rather whether this purely passive role properly depicts the relationship between the work of humans 54 On the Divine Images 1.19; John of Damascus, On the Divine Images: Three Apologies against those who attack the Divine Images, trans. by David Anderson (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), p. 27. 55 Archimandrite Vasileios of Iviron, Kallos kai Hesychia stin Agioreitiki Politeia [Beauty and Hesychia in Athonite life] (Iera Moni Iviron, 1999), p. 83. 56 John Chryssavgis, ‘The Face of God in the world: Insights from the Orthodox Christian Tradition’, in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology ed. by John Hart (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 273-85 (p. 275). 57 Mystagogy 2, PG 91: 669. 58 See further discussion in Elizabeth Theokritoff. ‘Priest of creation or cosmic liturgy?’ in Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth: Studies in Honour of Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, ed. by Andreas Andreopoulos and Graham Speake (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016) pp. 189-211. 59 Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (Crestwood: SVS Press) p. 15.

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and that of other creatures. Is it not more accurate to see other creatures as being also the ‘congregation’ of the cosmic eucharist, contributing to the gifts which can then be offered up? Fr Alexander Schmemann, just quoted, offers a fascinating intuition of this more complex relationship but to my knowledge never takes it further. In an early article where he seems almost to be thinking aloud about the meaning of the ‘sacramentality’ of the world, he recognises that ‘our world breeds life…’ and bread is nourished up from inert minerals, and concludes: ‘if we are to consider the whole world as something sacramental, it must be because of this transformation which is happening all the time’.60 This surely has far-reaching implications for our use of eucharistic imagery, not least the human ‘working’ of the world that is often emphasised. Certainly, in the Eucharist we offer not ‘raw’ nature, but natural products deliberately shaped into human food. In the context of a cosmic Eucharist, however, our human transformation of the world might more naturally be seen as something that links us with the natural transformations going on all around us, rather than setting us apart from the rest of creation. This is the sort of picture presented to us already for instance in Psalm 103 (LXX), where ships share the seas with creeping things innumerable and Leviathan, where lions hunt by night and humans work the land by day. It starts to make more sense to see ‘shaping’ as something that we do according to our nature as human creatures, our ordained part in the process — as microorganisms make vegetable matter into humus, wheat germinates and produces more grain, water sculpts rocks, volcanic activity shapes the land and so forth. Once one starts to look at what is required to produce, for instance, the eucharistic gifts, it is hard to escape the conclusion that ‘the wheat and the grapes are the offering of the community that is the cosmos, the offering of the dust clouds in space, the stars, the earth and other planets, of bacteria and funguses, of plants and animals’.61 Human activity is the tip of a vast iceberg of chemical and biological ‘working’ in nature, made possible only by the contributions of the sun, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the solid earth, plants and decomposers. The world as Church, as eucharistic community, bears a striking resemblance to the world revealed by ecological science. It is one in which one hesitates to say to any member, no matter how apparently insignificant or unappealing, ‘I have no need of you’; a world in which the fates of all of us are linked together, and no-one can be saved alone. All this clearly has profound implications for the way we make environmental choices. But the recognition of such a congruence also has far-reaching implications for our theological thinking about creation. In enables us to ‘read’ the environmental sciences not just as a source of practical information, but also as a fount of new insights about the way God works in and through the natural world.

60 Alexander Schmemann, ‘The World as Sacrament’, reprinted in his Church, World, Mission. (Crestwood: SVS Press, 1979) pp. 217-22. 61 George Theokritoff, ‘The Cosmology of the Eucharist’, in Towards an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature and Creation, ed. by John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), pp. 131-35.

Bruce Foltz

‘The Lord Is in this Place, Yet I Did Not See It’ From the Concept of Nature to the Experience of Creation

Introduction: Why Science Is Not Enough The concept of nature is one of the foundational ideas of Western thought, and it presents us with a long and complex history involving many thinkers and many schools of thought.1 Nonetheless, modernity has arrived at an easy consensus as to its meaning, one that is reflected in ordinary language, which has a ready answer to the question ‘what is nature?’ According to our modern worldview, nature is nothing more than matter in motion. And what, in turn, is matter? Metaphysically speaking, matter is a substance (Latin, substantia, Greek ousia). And as understood in Western philosophy since Aristotle, a substance is that which can subsist on its own, without need of anything outside itself. Nature, the material world, constitutes its own self-subsistent, self-standing realm, obeying its own laws. It is, as the modern worldview has insisted from the beginning, autonomous, i.e. it obeys only its own edicts — a self-contained system of interacting, interlocking laws. We know these laws, in turn, through mathematics, which allows us to calculate regularities in the material world and to predict causal outcomes. Thus, sound environmental practice must orient itself by means of these material laws, laws that it must learn from the natural sciences, which base their inductive generalisations on mathematical calculations. It must proceed not from the understandings of nature articulated in the arts and humanities, but from the natural sciences alone, for without the tools of mathematics and inductive logic, nature is silent matter, speechless as a stone, silent as a gravestone, and everything else (beauty, integrity, goodness, and so on) is extraneous and subjective and therefore irrelevant. For after all, the quality of stoniness has always been regarded as quintessentially

1 There have been many studies of the history of the concept of nature in Western culture as a whole and in various periods. These include Bruce V. Foltz, Inhabiting the Earth: Heideger, Environmental Ethics, and the Metaphysics of Nature (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995) ; Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); Pierre Hadot, The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008); Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield, The Architecture of Matter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982; and Max Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). Bruce Foltz • Eckerd College, St Persburg, Florida Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue, ed. by Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk, SOC, 2 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 121–139. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.122611

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material — matter (and thus, nature) at its simplest and purest, apprehended before accretions such as life enter the picture. Stone is concreted matter, materiality per se. It is more than any other material on earth — except perhaps for dust, which itself is nothing more than pulverised stone — prime matter in Aristotelian terms, although for Aristotle prime matter was purely hypothetical, for he still remained close enough to life-experience to realise that prime matter, matter devoid of any form, matter with nothing to say, could never really exist in the first place. Pure matter, prime matter, was for Aristotle a fiction. But if we look at our concrete experience, is matter after all really speechless like a stone? Has nature nothing to say? And must even the stone itself remain utterly silent? Even the stony sphinx has a face. Moreover, are there not beautiful stones? And even if stone is ground down into sand, do the dunes not form themselves into beautiful and enticing shapes? But here we may also recall something surprising, and perhaps even shocking. Entering Jerusalem upon a colt, Jesus tells the Pharisees that if the multitudes rejoicing at his arrival were somehow to be stilled — if they were to become silent like stones — a reversal would take place: the very stones themselves would cry out. How are we to understand this? In what sense can stones call out like the arresting cry of a raven, as the Greek verb implies? And there is more here that is puzzling. Rather than responding to the joy of the surrounding crowds in like kind, with elation or perhaps some expression of triumph, Jesus instead begins to weep. And even more surprising, he is mourning not people but stones. He explains that he is weeping over the stones of Jerusalem, over which he has been looking on his steep descent down the Mount of Olives. He is weeping over a sad sight that he foresees, a view of ruined habitation, in which not one of the stones of the Holy City — not even the stones of the temple itself, the very House of God — will be left standing upright. And we may recall here, too, a much earlier tale of a certain strange and marvelous stone that was once used as a curious kind of pillow by an anxious fugitive. And after waking from a wonderful dream, the traveler upended this stone, which had lain horizontal before, raised it upright as a column or pillar, and even anointed it and designated it as a House of God. A wondrous stone, indeed, that can at the same time be a house, a prototype of the Great Temple over whose fall Jesus wept. Jacob’s dream was a vision of ascent and descent, the marvelous vision of a ladder connecting heaven and earth, upon which angels travel up from earth to heaven and come down to from heaven to earth (Genesis 28. 10–19). So in turning the stone upright, Jacob emulates the ladder he had seen in his dream, even makes the stone into a ladder, or perhaps better, shows that it already is a ladder. This takes place within a section of Genesis that is rife with reversals and up-endings, with surprising narratives in which things turn out to be opposite to what they seem. It is filled with tales such as Isaac thinking he is blessing Esau, but really blessing Jacob. Of Jacob thinking he is lying with Rachel, but really lying with Leah. Of an ordinary place, that turns out to be extraordinary. Of a tasty stew that seems more valuable than an inheritance and a bunch of mandrake that seems more important than an heir. And above all, the themes of under-estimation and under-appreciation prevail. As Jacob says, when he awakens from his dream: ‘The Lord is here, yet I did not see it’ (Genesis 28. 10–17). God has opened his eyes, allowing him to see what

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he had not seen before. Now, after the dream, which we are to believe is a heavenly vision sent from God — now he does see it, sees that God is here right among the stones, in some mysterious way present within the stones, present here on earth, in the so-called material world, giving it a voice. And perhaps he even somehow sees, even if dimly, what the Church Fathers who read this passage all agree upon: the stone in this narrative is itself Christ, Himself the ‘precious cornerstone’ (Isa 28: 16). But if Christ is Himself the Logos, the Primal Saying that makes all other sayings possible, and if the Logos is present not just in the stone that Jacob anoints, but throughout the created order, then stones (and with them all creation) can indeed speak, perhaps have much to say and even to sing. Witness the ecstatic Song of the Three Holy Children that is chanted on Holy Saturday, in which every element of creation is, in turn, enjoined to cry out in song: O all ye sun and moon and ye stars of Heaven, bless ye the Lord … O ye showers and dew and all ye winds, bless ye the Lord … O ye fire and warmth, ye heat and cold, bless ye the Lord … And so on through every manner of being within the created order: storms and springs, seas and rivers, frosts and snows, mountains and hills, birds of the air, wild animals and sea-monsters, cherubim and angels, priests and servants of the Lord and ‘holy and humble men of heart’: all are enjoined to sing hymns and exalt the Lord.2 Just as did the multitudes on the Mountain of Olives, and just like the stones that would have served as their proxies had they themselves been forced into some stony silence. If all of this seems odd and perhaps even unintelligible to us today, it is because we no longer have a ladder. Interestingly, the twentieth century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his aspirations to be a mystic, urged us to kick away the ladder subsequent to our ascent to the mystical. Rather than being a sacrament, the ladder is to him a disposable commodity. And four centuries earlier, Descartes had been unable to find a ladder anyway, a bridge between matter and mind, between what he called extended substance (res extensa) and conscious substance (res cogitans). (In a fetchingly ingenuous hope, Descartes thought it might nevertheless be the pineal gland that somehow joined together the visible and the invisible — linking extended substance or matter, and conscious substance or mind.) Meanwhile, in the Protestant world, Luther and Calvin undertook something similar, rejecting natural theology of any kind, and insisting upon the utter transcendence of God. And before that, their predecessor William of Ockham rejected not just the realist claim that eternal forms are immanent in the world, but the weaker Thomistic claim to an analogy between the natural and what Thomas called the supernatural. In the world of Ockham’s nominalism, which is in fact our own modern world, there is no bridge. There is no ladder between earth and heaven. We are forlorn, left to ourselves, left to ‘grow up,’ as the later ‘death of God’ theologians would have it, to manage on our own. Or as Nietzsche put it, showing far more spiritual depth than the closeted unbelievers of



2 ‘The Vesperal Divine Liturgy of St Basil the Great,’ in The Services of Great and Holy Week and Pascha, ed. by V. Rev Fr Joseph Rahall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Antakya Press, 2006) pp. 608 f.

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more recent times, it is all quite terrifying: the earth has become unchained from its sun, and we are hurtling through the icy realms of trackless space with no star to guide us, no light to illumine our way. Not surprisingly, we the last men, hardly men at all, opt for the abstract, conceptual, mathematical nature of modern natural science by default, unaware that there could even be such a metaphysical ladder, such a spiritual stairway, such an existential lifeline, in the first place. Now there is much more that could have been said about the figure of the stone in Holy Scripture. It was upon stone that God first inscribed the Law for Moses, for it symbolises immutability. Likewise, we think of that Great Tombstone, the stone that sealed the tomb of Jesus, the stone seemingly final and immovable — yet which soon becomes the stone askance, whose very displacement proclaims joy and hope and the overcoming of death itself. Here, the tombstone has now become a lintel stone, an entryway rather than an impasse, now a beginning and no longer an ending. Beyond this, throughout the Book of Revelations, precious stones shimmer and shine — silver and gold, crystal and jasper and pearl — while Jesus promises to the one who overcomes, a wonderfully eloquent white stone, on which is inscribed a new name, known only to the one who receives it Rev 3.17. As we mindfully read the scriptures, stones become increasingly articulate, become eloquent, become more than what they are, become along with all creation … symbols that connect heaven and earth. Not connecting them in the mind, but ontologically connecting them. But of course, modern epistemology assures us that all this is just subjective. The real world is a world of facts, and facts are ultimately material. Whereas all the rest derives from the realm of values and subjectivity and really never leaves that realm, the realm of the individual mind that entertains it. As the positivistic mindset insists, the world is (and only is) all that is the case. The world, the aggregate of facts, or material realities, is what it is and is only what it is. It cannot exceed itself, overflow itself, lead beyond itself, support a ladder. This is the world of modernity and it is the concept of nature as it is comprehended by modernity and by us moderns. And we view the natural environment through the lens of that concept. So it is with our modern world. But this is not the world of scripture. Nor is it the world of the Church Fathers. Moreover, it is by no means the realm inhabited by the holy hermits and mystics, by the Geronda and Staretz of our own day, in whose discourses we discover a world more like that of Tolkien and the Narnia Chronicles than it is like the far more fictitious world of the positivist. Let us, for example, attend to the words of Elder Joseph the Hesychast, as he rests his eyes upon the rocky slopes of Mt Athos: Listen to the rough crags, those mystical and silent theologians, which expound deep thoughts and guide the heart and nous towards the Creator. After spring it is beautiful here [on the Holy Mountain] — from Holy Pascha until the Panagia’s day in August. The beautiful rocks theologise like voiceless theologians, as does all of nature — each creature with its own voice or its silence.3



3 Elder Joseph the Hesychast, Monastic Wisdom: The Letters of Elder Joseph the Hesychast (Florence, AZ: St Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery, 1998), p. 270.

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In this world, as in the world of the Psalms, the rocks do indeed speak, speak as voiceless theologians — they ‘expound deep thoughts’ and ‘guide the heart and consciousness [nous] itself ’ toward the Creator. So I want to suggest here that we have a choice between two worlds, two epistemologies, two ways of seeing things. Both, I believe, are perennial, ever viable, even though one is associated (given some notable exceptions) with modernity while the other is associated (apart from some important exceptions) with antiquity. And the rather ambitious goal of this essay is to reach, and perhaps even ascend, from one perspective to the other: from the concept of nature to the experience of creation. It will seek to point toward the path from not knowing that God is present in this (that is, every earthly) place, in the temple of our earthbound habitation, to seeing that He is instead most powerfully present after all. One way, the modern way, is conceptual and abstract and quantitative, while that other, the ancient way, is multifaceted and experiential and qualitative, even though it is modernity that prides itself on what it believes is its own empiricism. This second way is deeply experiential, ultimately traversable only one person at a time, and transmissible only in poetry and liturgy. One way approaches the natural environment by means of an abstraction called nature — lifeless and speechless, apart from the mathematical rubrics we impose upon it — while the other encounters the environment within a living experience of creation, of what the ancients called ktisis — not that which has been produced (poiēsis), but that which has been instituted in the manner of something that is said, for Genesis is clear that God creates the world through speaking or saying (epo), through a Logos, i.e. through his own Son. And of course, this is why St Maximos the Confessor can explain to us that all creation is interwoven with logoi, each of them reflecting the Eternal Logos through which they are created and sustained. Nature does not speak, unless as Bacon and Kant had put it, we force it talk, interrogate it, even torture it. Creation, on the other hand, is everywhere eloquent, as is shown throughout the Psalms of David (the first and greatest environmental poetry we possess). Which path should we embrace if we want to understand the natural environment, and want to preserve and protect it — if we wish to see it as it is and to deal with it accordingly? I’m afraid that our collective approach so far has too often been positivistic, looking primarily to science and the modern metaphysical concept of nature to teach us about the environment, and only subsequently (as a kind of afterthought) going on to assign richer meanings to the concept and the results. Typically, this proceeds somewhat arbitrarily, attaching facts to values like young children putting stickers on items they find around the house, giving them an extraneous meaning they lack on their own and can in fact possess only within the mind of the beholder. But this is by no means to suggest that we should ignore the natural sciences. The sciences give us effective tools for getting things done, things like preserving estuaries, for example, or alleviating heart conditions, procedures from which the author has personally benefitted. But if we go beyond the domain of usefulness, if we employ modern science for something that it was never intended to be, if we recruit it as the basis for a metaphysic and a worldview, we will undermine any broader aspirations before they are even underway. It is one thing to be committed to methodological materialism, the belief that science can only deal with those kinds

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of realities (material realities) that its methodologies are competent to investigate. This is sensible and unproblematic. All sciences must limit themselves to the field to which their methodologies correspond. But to embrace metaphysical materialism, (what philosophers usually call metaphysical naturalism), and to also insist over and beyond the scientific findings themselves that only those domains are real, is both scientifically and philosophically irresponsible, for such a claim turns a methodology, a particular approach to knowledge, into a general ontology. It is the epistemological counterpart to saying that only those things that I have come to know and care about in my life are real, and it is therefore myopic and ultimately egocentric. Scientists can and must be methodological materialists, but to drift into metaphysical materialism is to encroach on territory that the scientist does not and, as a scientist, cannot understand. The world is more than science can comprehend. And the order of creation is more, much more, than environmental science can understand, or even apprehend. Nevertheless, within the repository of the Church’s noetic experience of creation, lost elements of this surplus reality have been preserved and guarded, waiting for us to retrieve them. The next section, then, will argue that we need to draw from the experience of creation at least as much as from the concept of nature, considered in its modern, metaphysical sense. Finally, a last section of this essay will sketch several features of what a worldview would look like that is faithful to both the Orthodox Christian tradition as well as our own native experience of the natural environment.

Why We Need to Retrieve the Living Experience of Creation that Modernity Has Dismissed or Marginalised The turn from concepts and calculations of nature to something different, something more primary, more immediate — this turn first began in the nineteenth century with Romanticism in Europe and Transcendentalism in America. It was in 1802 that William Blake wrote to his friend Thomas Butts: ‘May God us keep From Single Vision and Newton’s Sleep.’ For Blake, the Newtonian conception of a self-contained, mechanical world-system resulted in an impoverished experience of creation, one that led away from religious and visionary and poetic experience and even rendered them impossible — led away from the earth’s ‘pleasant pastures’ and ‘mountains green’ upon which the Holy ‘Lamb of God’ had once trod, and instead give us the godforsaken, ‘dark satanic mills’ of industrialised England. Modernity’s experience of the world, Blake felt, has become impoverished, narrowed, flattened into the long sleep of single vision, of a fixed idea, leaving the created order to be devastated by applications of the same scientific reductionism that induced the slumber itself. We sit in a cave like the figure of Newton in Blake’s famous watercolor, whose steely gaze is fixed trancelike only upon the narrow span between the points of a divided caliper — the instrument itself, as measure of the world-order, displacing the Divine Creator with the figure of Newton, the new master of the ‘world-system.’ Blake’s Newton here is totally engrossed in the realm of pure geometry and oblivious even to the colorful lichen growing upon the stone of the cave walls that surrounds and

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shelters him, let alone the ‘mountains green’ that lie outside the cave itself. As Kathleen Raine puts it, ‘The universe of Newtonian science Blake condemned as a universe of abstractions and formulae, not of experience.’4 It could easily consume the rest of this essay just to survey the importance of European thought and art during this time for inaugurating the retrieval of a more primal experience of created nature, from Burke’s exposition of the sublime in nature to Wordsworth’s ‘Odes’ that elucidate how at the basis of our experience of nature’s beauty lies a sense of the eternal, of the transcendent, most fully revealed to us in childhood. And many have argued that the roots of modern ecological sensibilities lie here, in the Romantic Movement. For example, even today it is not widely known that wild landscapes were not only neglected prior to Romanticism, but regarded as downright repulsive and ugly. Indeed, until the eighteenth century, coaches travelling through the Alps would pull their curtains, to shield passengers from the repellent sight of bare rock strewn about in chaotic disorder. The emergence of an understanding of, and appreciation for, the sublime was the turning point here, i.e. approaching the sublime as a wild kind of beauty that is not proportionate and harmonious as classical beauty was required to be, but exceeding all boundaries and tending toward the infinite — vast mountain ranges, crashing waves on rocky cliffs, and raging thunderstorms. Even more important than its philosophical explication in Burke and Kant, however, was its aesthetic presentation in painting (for example, in the landscape paintings of Friedrich), music (consider Beethoven’s later symphonies), and literature (Chateaubriand’s vivid portrayal of wild American landscapes thrilled European audiences). But the bond between the immediate experience of natural creation and the way in which we live is explored much more powerfully in the writings of American naturalists, from Thoreau and John Burroughs to John Muir at the end of the nineteenth century, and it is here with these largely literary figures that we find the beginnings of current environmental sensibilities as we know them. Thoreau pushed beyond the sublime, which after all is best experienced at a safe and comfortable distance — the blizzard outside my warm cottage, the crashing waves upon which I look down from some grassy headland — to articulate the phenomenon of wildness, of a kind of numinous, mysterious depth at the heart of creation that can only be grasped from within, by immersion, by immediate encounter. And of course, it was Thoreau who is remembered for asserting that ‘in Wildness is the Preservation of the World.’ Speaking like an Old Testament Prophet, Thoreau exhorted his fellow townsmen in Concord to get out of town and spend some time up to their waists in a swamp. He was delighted whenever he saw some hint of wildness spark and flicker in domesticated animals, and he feared that we ourselves were becoming over-civilised, over-rationalised, shallow and timid, domesticated and tame. John Burroughs, in turn, wrote less lyrical, more pensive works, noting the deep wisdom that he found everywhere in creation — a wisdom that he believed we were in danger of losing. But most important was John Muir, truly the founder of modern environmentalism, whose books and articles on the American West almost single-handedly laid the

4 Kathleen Raine, William Blake (London: Thames & Hudson, 1970) p. 113.

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foundation for the preservation of wild creation in America. He too felt that modern civilisation was toxic, and he recalled digging a deep well as a child in Scotland and almost being fatally overcome by carbonic acid fumes. His father, who had lowered him down in a wooden bucket shouted down frantically from the sunlit opening: ‘Get in! Get in the bucket and hold on! Hold on!’ And so they pulled him out just in time. And in this story, we find a perfect allegory for the mission of Muir’s wilderness essays, shouting out to us who are suffocating from the fumes of civilisation to get into the oaken staves of his writings — or perhaps better, to leap out from the vehicle of rescue (Muir’s texts) and experience the places he so vividly describes — so they, and the places themselves, can both be saved. Through longtime friendships of both Burroughs and Muir with President Theodore Roosevelt, more than anyone else the founder of America’s great National Parks system, along with their influence upon other policy makers, the critical role of directly, deeply, even innocently experiencing nature became deeply embedded into federal land use policy in a way that continues to this day — an impressively practical outcome for what might at first glance seem utterly impractical and, in the pejorative sense, merely romantic gestures. This connection between how we experience creation and how we treat it is expressed clearly and powerfully in the work of Aldo Leopold, along with Muir indisputably one of the two most influential figures in environmental thought. He was also a most practical man, who spent his life working in the details and practicalities of forestry and land management. In his short work, ‘The Land Ethic,’ Leopold argues that we ought to grant ethical status to the land itself, recognise the need for a ‘land ethic.’ Accordingly, he maintained that in relation to the land, it is right to favor ‘what tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community,’ a statement that has been widely misunderstood by regarding it as a rationalistic formula or algorithm, comparable to Kant’s categorical imperative or Mill’s principle of utility.5 In fact, Leopold bases this practical imperative not upon the rational application of a formula, but upon the living experience of creation — not just empirical ‘nature,’ but the ‘land’ understood as that value-laden realm that can be apprehended in its beauty and integral harmony, and with which we can sustain a kind of community. ‘It is inconceivable to me,’ he argues, ‘that an ethical relation to the land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its values.’ But how can we maintain love, admiration, and respect for an abstraction, for the concept of matter in motion? Rather, argues Leopold, ‘we can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.’ Hence, he concludes, ‘the most serious obstacle impeding the evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our educational and economic system is headed away from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of land’ that would allow us to experience ourselves as ‘a member of a community of interdependent parts.’6 The prescriptions here, I will



5 Aldo Leopold, ‘The Land Ethic’, in A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, ed. by Curt Meine (New York: Penguin Random House, Library of America edition, 2013), pp. 171-89, (p. 188). 6 Leopold, ‘The Land Ethic’, pp. 188, 180, 172.

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add, bear a striking correspondence to the experience of creation as it is presented throughout the Psalms, which offer us (always as fellow residents of creation) what may well be the most powerful body of ‘nature poetry’ known to humanity (always intended to elevate us to that royal priesthood of creation to which we alone have been called). But what, more precisely, is this ‘intense consciousness’ of creation, that it can generate a living sense of community with the natural world — and alongside it, the ‘love, admiration, and respect’ that would ensure that we see the ‘integrity, stability, and beauty’ of creation that surrounds us? We find a powerful answer in the early writings of Leopold’s older Russian contemporary, Fr Sergei Bulgakov, who sees a certain kind of experience of the world to be the rudder from which all these things take their direction. Bulgakov came from a long lineage of Russian Orthodox priests and even began seminary studies himself. But he initially rejected Christianity and instead launched a career as a celebrated economist with a strongly Marxist orientation, writing a highly-regarded book called Capitalism and Agriculture. Following a mystical experience of nature, however, he returned to the Church, ultimately to be ordained, becoming one of the more visible representatives of the ‘religious renaissance’ among the Russian intelligentsia that took place in the early years of the twentieth century, a movement that was brutally suppressed after the 1917 Revolutions and until recently, mostly forgotten. Let us listen to Bulgakov’s own description of this experience that in his twenty-fourth year awakened him from his materialist slumbers and reoriented his very soul: Evening was falling. We were traveling across the southern steppe, covered with the fragrance of honey-colored grass and hay, gilded with the crimson of a sublime sunset. In the distance the fast-approaching Caucasus Mountains appeared blue. I was seeing them for the first time. And fixing my avid gaze on the mountains that opened before me, drinking in the light and air, I harkened to the revelation of nature. My soul had grown accustomed long ago to see with a dull silent pain only a dead wasteland in nature beneath the veil of beauty, as under a deceptive mask; without being aware of it, my soul was not reconciled with a nature without God. And suddenly in that hour my soul became agitated, started to rejoice and begin to shiver: but what if … if it is not wasteland, not a lie, not a mask, not death but him, the blessed and loving Father, his raiment, his love … ? My heart pounded under the sounds of the chugging train and we hurried towards that burnt gold and those blue-gray mountains. And again I struggled to capture the fleeting idea, to hold onto the glistening joy… And if … if the holy feelings of childhood, when I lived with him, walked before his face […] what if all this is truth, and all of that [i.e. Marxist materialism] is fatal and empty, blindness and lie?’ ‘Before me,’ he concludes as he reflects upon this powerful experience of distant mountains, ‘before me the first day of creation blazed.’7



7 Sergius Bulgakov, Unfading Light: Contemplations and Speculations, trans. Thomas Allen Smith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), pp. 8–9.

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Bulgakov rejected the materialist concept of nature, embracing instead this experience of creation as offering a visage of God. Nevertheless, he continued to embrace a core element of the experience of materialism, and even went on to say it was an essential component of our modern experience of the world — that the intuition underlying the idea of materialism embraced an indispensible insight. That is, as he explained in his Philosophy of Economy — which was meant to correct and complete the earlier book on economics — he affirmed that human beings are, in fact, a part of nature, not beings on the outside looking in. We are in nature, and it is important to recognise (along with Marx) that ‘life is, above all, an economic process.’ But what does this mean concretely, not as an abstraction, but within our lived experience? It means, he continues, that ‘our time understands, feels, experiences the world as a household.’8 Thus, we experience ourselves as proprietors of the world-household or oikos, an insight reminding us that both economy and ecology have the same root meaning of household. But as proprietors of the oikos (or ecos) of the natural world, we are not just the head of the household, but those who understand it, who devote themselves to it, who care for it — true inhabitants of this our home who can alone (i.e. not as transients and guests, but as inhabitants and proprietors) grasp the meaning of it and indeed appreciate and celebrate and enhance it. And this is to say that not only are we in nature, nature is in us, for it is only within our experience of the world-household that beauty and goodness and holiness of the natural world can emerge and endure, features that are just as essential to it as its materiality. We are in nature, Bulgakov argues, and nature is in us. Seemingly contradictory, these statements are both true and both necessary, for they refer to a single process, one that Bulgakov goes on to call ‘economic activity.’ But by economics, he means much more than industrial production and commercial exchange. For as Bulgakov understands it, economics is the very fulcrum of our interaction with the world itself — the life-activity by means of which we collectively reveal the surrounding world in its truth and it goodness, its beauty and holiness, elevating and transforming its mere usefulness — and thereby revealing ourselves as world-revealers. In its highest modes, economic includes the arts and sciences, poetry and philosophy and liturgy — all that reveals and realises the divine wisdom in creation. Humanity, then, can be understood as itself the very world-soul that Plato struggled to articulate in the Timaeus: a royal priesthood of nature and world, perhaps even a demiurge (working with already given materials) but by no means a creator from nothing; rather, our position is to serve as a mediator between creation as God intended it and its ‘frozen and therefore lifeless distorted reflection’ that we too often find surrounding us — the ‘link between a higher world where life is triumphant and a sleeping, lethargic nature that appears [as it did to Marx and the positivists] to be quite dead.’9 We cannot create ex nihilo, for the real meanings we can find in nature are not fictions or fabrications; they are there, incipient, waiting

8 Sergei Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy: The World as Household, trans. Catherine Evtuhov (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000), p. 40. 9 Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy, p. 133.

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for us (and us alone, as Rilke observed in his First Duino Elegy) to discover and articulate them. (In his encounter with the Caucasus on the horizon, Bulgakov says he ‘hearkened’ to ‘the revelation of nature.’) But of course, we can fail to listen, not bother to hearken, and instead impose our own willful designs upon nature, serving it not as priests but as vandals and plunderers and disfigurers, oblivious to the divine wisdom that inheres in creation. Indeed, we find ‘in the primordial purity and perfection of the universe, in the charm of a child and the enchantment of a fluttering flower, in the beauty of a starry sky or of a flaming sunrise’ epiphanies of divine revelation — God’s first revelation, given before the revelation that is conveyed in scripture.10 But there is something else, too, something embedded in nature that is other than this Edenic order and this divine wisdom. There is disorder and death and corruption, which have entered into the world through our own dereliction from the task of serving as a cosmic priesthood who would unite heaven and earth, consecrating a ladder between them. Thus, the ultimate task of economics as our most basic life-activity Bulgakov does not hesitate to call a “resurrection of nature,” to be carried out through finding divinity everywhere in the world, raising up these divine traces and building upon them. For we have not forgotten paradise altogether. We still have it, for we each possess a kind of anamnesis or recollection of paradise — dimly entertaining dreams largely forgotten since childhood, as had been the case with Bulgakov himself. But if we neglect these divine traces, bringing not resurrection and life to creation, but more disorder and death and corruption. And if humanity tries to usurp the place of the creator and thereby seeks to shape ‘a shadowy, satanic world alongside the given, created one,’ if it tries to create from nothing, according to its own designs — then it generates ‘a “parasitical world” given over to the “nonbeing and death” that result from a diabolical economy.’11 For Bulgakov, then, such an authentic experience of creation can save us from the ‘kingdom of shadows’ instituted by a diabolical economy, leading instead toward an Edenic economy. Yet as Leopold observed a half century ago, we are headed away from, rather than toward, this kind of experience, with each generation buried more deeply in smart phones and video games than the created order that surrounds and supports them. We have heard, then, from a number of voices (Blake and Thoreau, Muir and Leopold and Bulgakov) about the practical importance of a certain kind of experience of nature, one that in the next and final section we will call noetic experience. But it is not only nature itself that stands in need of salvation, but ourselves as well. And thus there is a second approach to the need for a noetic experience of nature, one proceeding not from its practical outcomes, but from our own spiritual need — our own need of inner integrity, goodness, and beauty. Not surprisingly, we find this powerfully argued by each of the figures just discussed, especially by Muir, whose father was both a farmer and an itinerant preacher devoted to the salvation of souls. Muir saw himself as engaged in the same mission as his father, but rather than what

10 Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy, p. 151. 11 Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy, p. 146.

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he takes as God’s secondary revelation (presented in scripture) he felt it was more efficacious to draw upon an earlier revelation, God’s revealing Himself in creation. (This is not always evident in current editions of his work, for mendacious editors commonly went into his texts and substituted the word ‘Nature’ for the word ‘God,’ obscuring Muir’s main point that in wilderness we encounter not exemplifications of the scientific concept of nature, but epiphanies of the eternal glory of the Creator.) But I believe that no one in the twentieth century has articulated the importance of our experience of creation for spiritual growth than the Russian philosopher, Fr Pavel Florensky. In an early essay, he argued that Orthodox Christianity had by the twentieth become largely unintelligible to ordinary believers due largely to its being embedded in dogma that lacked a dogmatics.12 That is, it was being merely asserted in bare propositional assertions that were not elucidated and interpreted in terms of our living experience. And this became the center of his philosophical work, to show vividly, and in terms of our own experience, first in a theodicy (a presentation of God to man) and then in an anthropodicy (a presentation of a path from man to God) a link, a bridge, and indeed a ladder between heaven and earth. And since his childhood, it had always been clear to him that this ladder had to rest upon the vivid and poetic, and ultimately mystical and noetic experience of nature. And it is toward a topography of this mode of experience that the final part of my talk will proceed, beginning first with Florensky’s nineteenth century predecessor Fyodor Dostoevsky, and concluding with the work of Florensky himself.

The Experience of Holy Creation: The Noetics of Nature William James, whose Varieties of Religious Experience contains what is still the definitive study of mysticism, uses the term ‘noetic’ for the kind of experience Bulgakov describes, his experience of the blue mountains in the distance in which ‘the first day of creation blazed,’ revealing to him within that experience the Fatherly love of the Creator. Protocols of these mystical experiences, James shows, are often written in poetic language, which alone conveys the quality of the experience. On Plato’s famous ‘Divided Line’ Analogy in his Republic, noetic knowledge is the highest mode of understanding, surpassing the rationalistic, discursive understanding typified by mathematics and scientific explanation. And the part of the soul that can engage in this contemplative noetic experience is the nous, somewhat misleadingly translated as mind or intellect, a term that occurs throughout the New Testament, most notably in Romans 12, where St Paul exhorts the Church in Rome to ‘not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your nous.’ And it is of some importance to us that this noetic mode of experience or understanding is usually discussed by Plato, and subsequent Neoplatonists, in a poetic context, suggested first of all by the fact that all his extant works are dramas, but beyond this by his regular

12 Pavel Florensky, ‘Dogma and Dogmatics’ in Pavel Florensky, Early Religious Writings, 1903–1909, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017).

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use of myth, allegory, analogy, and metaphor whenever this level of experience is presented. In the Philokalia, the usual word for this mode of experience is theōria (contemplation, or spiritual seeing), and the patristic counterpart to Leopold’s ‘intense consciousness’ of creation is theōria physikē, the contemplation of nature. Parallel to this, in Romanticism the correlative word is ‘imagination,’ here too suggesting that a poetic medium may serve best for understanding its mystical, meta-rational character. The German Idealists called it ‘intellectual intuition,’ and they too stressed its aesthetic character. And the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, in striking synchronicity with his Russian contemporary Bulgakov, spoke of ‘poetic dwelling’ as the highest truth for inhabitants of creation understood as earth-household. It is fitting, then, that before proceeding to Florensky (whose own major work was heavily poetic) we begin with Dostoevsky, who was not only a keen observer of human nature, but possessed a powerful and poetic literary imagination. Supporting this patristic epistemology concerning our knowledge of creation are two metaphysical insights that illumine it, deriving not from speculative metaphysics, but from the exercise of these very noetic modes of access to creation that generate a living ontology. All of them are distinctive to the Orthodox East, although I would not want to assert their absence in one form or anther in the Latin West. There is, for example, the great distinction between the divine essence (God as He is in Himself) and the divine energies, (the divine activity or operation that is manifest everywhere throughout creation. This distinction allows for the possibility of seeing God everywhere, without suggesting that the divine essence is locally inscribed anywhere. Second is the insight into the divine logoi, the words of creation, all articulating the uniqueness of each created thing, every ‘word’ directed towards its end, and each constituting its point of contact with the Eternal Logos, into which each is elevated in a Divine Syntax. They are not Platonic forms, or Stoic logoi spermatikoi, nor are they Augustinian exemplars, for they are in each case individual, not universal. Rather they show that the humblest members of creation, every blade of grass or grain of sand, is rooted in a divine voicing of it, for as St Maximos maintains, its logos has been harboured by God from eternity. Meanwhile, they give us a lexicon of that primordial revelation that preceded written scripture. As it is put by St Isaac the Syrian, ‘The first book given by God to rational beings was the nature of created things.’13 It is important in passing to take note of these patristic insights before approaching Dostoevsky’s view of creation. For just as Dostoevsky was first misunderstood in the West through a Freudian lens as a student of abnormal psychology, and then through an existentialist reading was seen as a proponent of the irrational, the absurd, the antinomial — now his view of the natural world is getting misread as pantheist and neo-pagan. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather, he is arguably our most profound Christian writer surely since Milton, and perhaps even since Dante.14

13 Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Ninevah, ed. by A. J. [Arent Jan] Wensinck (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie Van Wetenshappen, 1923) p. 41. 14 Bruce V. Foltz, The Noetics of Nature: Environmental Philosophy and the Holy Beauty of the Visible (Bronx NY: Fordham Univ. Press, 2014) p. 190.

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Through the discourses of Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky shows us what a patristic experience of nature would look like, gained no doubt in part from his sojourn at Optina Pustyn (i.e. Optina “in the wilderness”) Monastery and his long meetings with Elder Ambrose. And through his narrative, Dostoevsky instructs us on how to get there, but indeed also on how not to get there. For example, this novel presents views of creation espoused by three characters: Dimitry Karamazov, his brother Ivan, and the Staretz Zosima, the mentor and spiritual father of the third brother, Alyosha — two blind alleys and one true path. Dimitry, a former military officer, is a man of action driven by the passions. He expresses a deep love of creation, but always filtered through the medium of his intoxication with its beauty. This merely aesthetic path to creation, however, as Dimitry himself notes, has a fatal flaw: the ideal of the Madonna and the ideal of Sodom — i.e. of beauty in its heavenly purity and beauty in its most base and debauched forms — can be confused, one can believe he is pursuing the former and end of pursuing the latter. (In the Phaedrus, Plato signifies this with the two-winged horses soaring aloft, one ascending to heaven and the other struggling to return to earth.) Dimitry himself all too easily slips from panegyrics of nature drawn from Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’ to debauched indulgences in wine (he prefers cognac), women, and song. Ivan, an urbanised intellectual and cunning nihilist, espouses his love for the beauty of creation as well. Indeed, he confides that were it not for the sticky little green leaves of springtime, his cynicism would have already driven him to take his own life. But his intellectual pride prevents him from embracing life, from affirming not just the charm of nature but the goodness of creation. For he has decided beforehand that the suffering of the innocent is unredeemable, even by the suffering endured by the Creator Himself, having entered into creation. Thus, he rejects life, and ultimately refuses the very order of creation as such, because it is not the way he thinks it should be. Creation may be lovely, but it can be harsh and therefore it must be pointless, he insists, no matter what higher kind of harmony and goodness may ultimately be revealed. And it is of interest here that Dostoevsky, as shown in his correspondence, believed that this was the second step of modern atheism: no longer to deny the existence of God per se, for this negation is of course not ultimately demonstrable, but rather to undermine the meaningfulness of God’s creation. As he put it, ‘they no longer bother with [refuting the existence of God]. Instead, they vehemently deny God’s creation, God’s world and its significance.’15 And indeed, the narrative goes on to demonstrate that Ivan’s concern with the suffering of the innocent is no more than intellectual posturing, for when real children suffer in the novel, it is the former monk Alyosha who rushes to their assistance. Ivan could not care less. As with Dimitry, the passions here obscure the way to a noetic experience, an ‘intense consciousness’ of creation. Even more with Ivan does unrestrained thinking — the logismoi or discursive thoughts that clutter the consciousness and claim our allegiance — hide from our awareness the glory of God in creation. In The Brothers

15 Letter of May 19, 1879 in Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoevsky, ed. Joseph Frank and David Goldstein, trans. Andrew MacAndrew (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989).

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Karamozov, as throughout Dostoevsky’s five great master-novels, the only true way is the path of the purified heart, the heart humbled and chastened, but ironically, the heart that has thereby powerfully invigorated by repentance and asceticism — a path begun by the third brother Alyosha, but already completed by his teacher Zosima. The central sections of ‘Karamazov’ that present Zosima’s teachings — the forty-odd pages of Book Six, called ‘The Russian Monk’— offer some of the finest reflections on the natural world and its meaning in all literature. Here, Elder Zosima talks about ‘the beauty of this world of God’s, and about its great mystery. For each blade of grass, each little bug, ant, golden bee, knows its way amazingly: being without reason, they witness to the divine mystery, they ceaselessly enact it.’16 ‘Everything is perfect, everything except man is sinless, and Christ is with them even before us,’ he recalls having instructed a young man. ‘But can it be that they, too, have Christ?’ the lad asked. ‘How can it be otherwise,’ [Zosima] said to him, ‘for the Word is for all, all creation and all creatures, every little leaf is striving towards the Word, all, all creation sings glory to God, weeps to Christ, unbeknownst to itself, doing so through the mystery of its sinless life.’17 And in one of his homilies, he recalls his younger brother on his deathbed, whose repentance leads him to ask forgiveness of the birds for failing to see their divine beauty. ‘My young brother asked forgiveness of the birds: it seems senseless, yet it is right, for all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world. Let it be madness to ask forgiveness of the birds, still it would be easier for the birds, and for a child, and for any animal near you, if you yourself were more gracious than you are now, if only by a drop, still it would be easier. All is like an ocean, I say to you. Tormented by universal love, you, too, would then start praying to the birds as if in a sort of ecstasy, and entreat them to forgive you your sin. Cherish this ecstasy, however senseless it may seem to people.’ He goes on to conclude: ‘On earth we are indeed wandering, and did we not have the precious image of Christ before us, we would perish and be altogether lost, like the race of men before the flood. Much on earth is concealed from us, but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why philosophers say it is impossible to conceive the essence of things. God took seeds from other worlds [i.e. the logoi of creation] and sowed them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, but it lives and grows only through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this sense is weakened or destroyed in you, that which has grown up in you dies. Then you become [like Ivan Karamazov] indifferent to life, and even come to hate it. So I think.’18 Finally, he exhorts his listeners in his dying moments: ‘Kiss the earth and love it, tirelessly, insatiably, love all men, love all things, seek this rapture and ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy, and love those

16 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Random House, 1990), pp. 294–95. 17 Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p. 295. 18 Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p. 320.

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tears. Do not be ashamed of this ecstasy, treasure it, for it is a gift from God… ’19 Surely Elder Zosima, after a lifetime of practicing humility and taming the passions, can now say with the awakened (and humbled) Jacob: ‘The Lord is in this place!’ We have taken here Aldo Leopold’s notion of an ‘intense consciousness’ of creation (or as he says, ‘the land’) as normative for our relation to the natural world, both for the good of the earth itself as well as for our own spiritual well-being. But how do we arrive at that point? For Dostoevsky, it is through the askēsis of repentance and the humility that follows from it. His characters, while in the midst of their proud schemes and ambitions, see nature as dark and repellent and suffocating, or else as utterly indifferent, matter in motion that will as easily crush you as support you. As they learn humility, they learn to love, and that love is an educator, opening up to them what St Anthony the Great called the book of nature. Florensky, too, sees askēsis or ascetic struggle, but he puts a more thematic emphasis on overcoming the passions as the path to having an ordered soul, a soul that can then thereby grasp the inner order, divine wisdom, and heavenly beauty of creation. With this in mind, it becomes less surprising than it might be, when we discover that in his masterpiece work, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, Florensky introduces his chapter on ‘Creation’ with a discussion of chastity. For chastity here is not just the quietude of sexual passion, but of the passions as a whole and is used (quite accurately) to translate that ancient Greek and patristic word sophrosynē. It is only within this stillness that we can find God in creation, and thus encounter it as creation at all. Florensky quotes approvingly an aphorism by Niketas Stethatos in the Philokalia: ‘The nature of things changes according to the inner disposition of the soul.’20 It is, he maintains, the ascetic who knows creation most truly, not the scientist. ‘Blessing the universe, the ascetic everywhere and always sees in things God’s signs and God’s letters. For him, all creation is a ladder on which the angels of God descend to the earthly vale.’21 But the holy hermit, the ascetic monk, the visionary poet, or indeed ordinary people for whom creation reveals itself as a ladder to heaven — how seriously can we moderns take the claim that the truth of creation is better revealed to these figures than to the great scientific minds of our modern era. After all, as Heidegger put it probingly: ‘Science is the theory of the real.’22 We moderns assume that what is real is what science takes as real. Science is our de facto worldview. But as we have noted at length, science legislates through its methodology, and with perfect conformity to its own tasks, such that it cannot recognise anything that is not material. So if only possible objects of science are real, then what is not material cannot be real. Florensky shows us that this is not just an epistemological quibble. For although one difficulty in seeing God in nature is perennial — the obscuration of divine epiphanies either by pride (Dostoevsky) or by uncontrolled passions and inner disorder (Florensky) 19 Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, p. 322. 20 Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters, tr. Boris Jakim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 200. 21 Florensky, The Pillar, p. 200. 22 Martin Heidegger, ‘Science and Reflection’,’in Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper, 1977), p. 157.

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— if Florensky is correct, modernity now poses a second difficulty, one that is more dangerous precisely due to its invisibility. We will survey just one example of this danger, i.e. what Florensky believes is the hegemony of naturalism in our modern worldview, and consider this only in a very cursory and schematic matter, not just for the sake of brevity, but also because his critique of modernity entails complex issues in mathematics, physics, epistemology, and metaphysics. The rise of modernity defines itself above all through an insistence on the autonomy of nature. Nature in this modern understanding is not creation, entailing a relation to a Creator outside it, nor does it manifest anything else transcendent to itself. So in relation to what, asks Florensky, is the autonomy of nature asserted in modernity? Clearly autonomy from anything outside or beyond nature, and this can only mean autonomy from God Himself. Thus, modernity prescribes that the world must be understood to be closed off from God, even fortified against Him. It must be self-subsistent and self-sufficient, a self-enclosed system of cause and effect, a spatio-temporal continuum functioning on its own and intelligible without reference to anything outside it. Nor is this merely a side-effect of other factors. The very essence of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought, Florensky argues, is precisely this revolt against God through which He is expelled from the world. Moreover, considered metaphysically, such a world that is utterly outside God, standing opposed to God and resistant to divine agency, is precisely the world of Manichaeism, of Bogomilism, even if modernity holds that this autonomy is something good, rather than something evil.23 No longer is creation experienced as symbolic — as syn-bolos, as a ‘casting together’ of the invisible and visible, the energies of the Creator and creation itself, into a unity. The ontological bond between them is severed. Proceeding from his own distinguished research in the mathematics of discontinuity — originally inspired by the work of his celebrated mentor in mathematics, Nikolai Bugaev — Florensky formulates one of his most important insights. The primary means by which God is expelled from the world, he maintains, is through the modern insistence upon continuity: continuity in space and time, continuity between cause and effect, and indeed ontological continuity within orders of being and between orders of being. This metaphysics of continuity (and it indeed is a metaphysical postulate, not a verifiable scientific claim) insists that there can be no discontinuity, no leap or qualitative break, between species, such as between man and beast, or ultimately between any one form of life and any other.24 Indeed, the whole concept of form is radically subverted here in favor of a morphological continuum that is infinitely divisible into non-discrete points, like the ever-shifting shapes of sea fog or passing clouds. Everything merges into everything else. But most importantly, the modern demand for continuity — and thus for a seamless, perceptible, predictable world that is self-subsisting and self-sustaining,

23 Pavel Florensky, At the Crossroads of Science & Mysticism, trans. Boris Jakim (Kettering: Semantron Press, 2014) p. 82. 24 Bruce V. Foltz, ‘The Fluttering of Autumn Leaves: Logic, Mathematics, and Metaphysics in Florensky’s The Pillar and Ground of the Truth,’ Studia Humana, Volume 2:3 (2013) pp. 3–18.

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sealed-off from the divine energies that might infuse it — ensures that God cannot be experienced as entering into this closed world-system, and just as much guarantees that this world of everyday experience cannot be transcended. Florensky states this in relation to the philosophy of Kant and its insistence on continuity (for example, of space and time) as structuring all human experience, a doctrine that Florensky regards as the capstone of modernity’s fortification of the world against God: Kant’s philosophy, like all of Renaissance philosophy, is based on the principle of continuity: in space and time there cannot be any breaks. From the point of view of this philosophy Christ’s Ascension is impossible, as is the appearance of angels. Because if one acknowledges that angels can appear, one would have to acknowledge that the world is not fortified, that no scientific construction is absolute, and that any scientific law could be overcome at any moment, which could mean that no knowledge and no culture are absolute… Our reasoning — in the spirit of Kant — will be approximately as follows: all right, Jesus Christ ascended to heaven, but at precisely what moment did He ascend? The task of the scientific world-understanding is to keep Christ from leaving the world, to keep Him within the bounds of sensory experience. The same goes for the Annunciation: before appearing, the angel had to enter through the door; before that, he had to be in the garden; before that he had to be in the street, etc. Our task is to keep capturing him by the law of the conservation of energy and indestructibility of matter, to keep tracking him using the differential equation of motion of each of his particles… The system of Kantian categories is the symbol of Renaissance faith without which the revolt against God cannot succeed.25 Thus, if we assume that the naturalistic view of the world reveals the deepest truth about reality, rather than being a methodological convention, we must conclude that grace cannot enter the world, miracles cannot really take place; neither God nor angel can enter the world, nor could Christ ascend from it. These things thus become to us fabulous and inconceivable, even while we mechanically recite the creeds and sing the hymns. The world is then, to use a term from the sociologist Max Weber, ‘disenchanted,’ no longer creation for us at all. Does this mean, then, that we must listen only to the poet and the mystic, while ignoring the scientist? By no means. Florensky himself was a distinguished scientist in his own right, as well as an engineer and inventor whose brilliance in these areas made him invaluable to the nation and enabled him to wear a cassock and pectoral cross to his lectures well into the era of Stalin’s purges. But precisely because he knew science so well, he knew that we should not be dazzled by it — he knew that there was far more than science could comprehend. And he knew this because from his earliest childhood encounters with creation on the Black Sea and in the High Caucasus, he always sensed, felt, indeed knew that God was present in these places. Thus, his life’s task as a philosopher centered upon arriving at the metaphysical truth of a world in which God can be manifest, in which a ladder can stand between heaven 25 Florensky, Crossroads, p. 122.

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and earth. He articulated this variously as a distinction between the empirical and the empyrean, then as a philosophy of Divine Wisdom or Sophia, and ultimately as a philosophy of the symbol — understood not as a merely literary phenomenon, but as an ontology, and a way of understanding the world as an saturation of the visible with the invisible, a meeting of earth and heaven, an incarnation of the Eternal Logos in the many logoi of creation, an inconceivably lavish infusion of creation with the divine energies that we can experience if we purify our souls and bring order to them. Using the patristic language of ‘energy,’ Florensky defines a ‘symbol’ as ‘any reality that contains in its energy the energy of another reality higher in value and hierarchy,’ and explains that the pre-modern world, before the rise of the natural sciences, was entirely symbolic. Let us linger with that thought, thinking back to a worldview within which there was no secular experience, when everything in creation manifested the divine energies. And why should this matter to us? Florensky continues, ‘if the lower reality is destroyed, the light of the higher one fades, not in itself but insofar as the window is closed.’26 John Muir was broken-hearted that he was unable to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley, a virtual twin to the Yosemite Valley. But it might be countered, the resulting reservoir allowed water for the growing population of San Francisco and water to irrigate the great plantations of corporate agriculture nearby. It was a very sensible thing to do. True enough, Florensky encourages us to answer, but in the process, a window to God was closed. Closed forever. We need to draw upon the best results of science if we are to live sustainably upon the earth while respecting its integrity. But science itself will not motivate us. Nor will it help us to order our priorities, even if we are already dedicated to environmentalist goals, which often entail compromise and trade-offs. Nor will it, by itself, help us to become the kind of human beings who will appreciate what we preserve. The modern concept of nature and the natural sciences themselves cannot serve goodness, beauty, or even truth itself, without looking farther, toward what underlies the experience of creation. And if we do not look toward the mystical, noetic experience of nature to orient us, we will continue to be guided solely by a utilitarian ethic that seeks only to maximise pleasure. We have been witnessing the outcome of the latter for quite some time.

26 Florensky, Crossroads, p. 137.

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Gayle  E. Woloschak

Reflections on Gene Editing Technology

Introduction The goal of this paper is to discuss ethical aspects of gene editing technology as practiced in the past and as predicted for the future and also to reflect upon possible approaches that might be considered for resolution of conflict Much of the work done in secular bioethics examines the questions of what the justification is for doing a particular study, whether or not there is harm to the human (or animal) that will be involved, the method and approach which will be used and their appropriateness, as well as other questions. Often, theological studies of bioethical issues ignore the approach and focus almost exclusively on the end product; this is done at least in part because of the difficulty in understanding and/or explaining some of the science behind the approach. Nevertheless, theology must reflect upon the methodology since this often influences whether a particular practice is ethical or not. This paper will examine approaches that have been used in the past and present for gene editing technology, but consideration will be given not only to the overall goal of the process but also to the method and approach used in each example.

What is Gene Editing Technology? The genetic material that regulates inheritance for human beings and all other living organisms is a collection of complex molecules known as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). There are many arguments in the literature about how much of a person’s psychological and physical make-up is defined by genetics (inheritance) and how much is determined by environment (nurture). This means that there are certain diseases and specific traits that have a relatively simple genetic cause while others have a combination of causes including genetics and environment and still others have only an environmental component. For example, thalassemias are always caused by mutations in one of the globin genes that code for the proteins that transport oxygen in the bloodstream. On the other hand, plague is almost exclusively related to infection with the bacterium Yersinia pestis; in the absence of this infectious microorganism the person does not get the disease. Gayle E. Woloschak • Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, U.S.A. Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue, ed. by Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk, SOC, 2 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 141–152. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.122612

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Gene editing technology is the modification (or editing) of a person’s (or any other living thing’s) DNA to alter one of the products that this DNA is responsible for making. In biology a concrete segment of DNA that is responsible for production of a single product is called a gene and the act of production is called gene expression. Gene editing therefore forever changes the production from a specific gene. Editing involves either the insertion, deletion or replacement of a segment of DNA at a specific site in the genome of an organism or a cell.1 In most cases, the goal of gene editing is to eliminate an unwanted variant of a gene from the population of living organisms. For example, a gene associated with a debilitating disease could be removed from humans. A thalassemia could be eliminated from the human population if the mutant genes responsible for it were edited to make them ‘healthy’— the same as the genetic sequence in unaffected people. However, for diseases such as plague where infection is responsible for the disorder, gene editing would not alter the disease as all. This means that gene editing can be useful for some but not all diseases that affect humans. Benefits from gene editing would be much more difficult to obtain in those cases when the disease is genetic but caused by multiple genes, or a gene that causes the disease has multiple functions in itself or in synergy with other genes and so on.

Early History of Gene Editing (from DNA Discovery to CRISPR-Cas9 Technologies) Scientists have had the tools to manipulate, to insert or delete DNA sequences for close to forty years. The process of the replacement of one DNA segment with another was more complicated and became possible only recently. All of these advances began with the discovery of a class of bacterial proteins called restriction enzymes. In biology, an enzyme is a protein that carries a catalytic function and its name is most often associated with the job it does for the organism it is found in. Restriction enzymes were discovered as proteins that restrict the infection of bacterial cells with viruses that target them (this may seem surprising, but viruses afflict every kingdom of life — from bacteria to plants to animals). Restriction enzymes are proteins that bacteria use as a type of defence against viruses that infected them in the following way — they cut the viral DNA into pieces so that the virus becomes inactivated. In order to protect their own DNA from collateral damage, bacteria synthesise restriction enzymes that cut DNA only at very specific short DNA sequence stretches. Because DNA is made of four components — nucleotides adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine, a sequence stretch that is six nucleotides long has four to the power of six possible variations. In most cases, restriction enzymes recognise only one of those many possible places; no DNA cutting will occur at (46–1) / 46 remaining possible places of a DNA sequence parceled into strings of six nucleotides. This makes a restriction



1 Kevin Esvelt and Harris H. Wang, ‘Genome-scale engineering for systems and synthetic biology’ Molecular Systems Biology, 9:1 (2013), pp. 641-58.

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enzyme extremely specific. Up until the discovery of these proteins, DNA could be cut only mechanically, which produced random segments, so the possibility of editing specific genes was impossible. Once the restriction enzymes were discovered, the era of genetic engineering began — DNA could be cut at very specific sites and researchers doing molecular biology could learn about the organisation of DNA and very soon they began to edit it. One needs to appreciate the crudeness of these first tools and approaches; if we were to compare this with woodworking — restriction enzymes are as delicate as axes and it takes the development of much finer new tools to enable one to produce a house more elegant than a log cabin. Despite their specificity, restriction enzymes still cut the DNA of large (non-bacterial) genomes too often and therefore manipulation of a single gene within a large genome was extremely difficult. Even when such a manipulation was possible, insertion of new sequences (designed to correct a genetic error) occurred randomly, which could lead to ‘off-target’ effects (i.e., many genes could be affected instead of only the one of interest). In addition — places of DNA cleavage were restricted to those sequences that were recognised by a handful of restriction enzymes which meant that not all sites in the DNA could be edited. Nevertheless, many feats of genetic engineering were accomplished using restriction enzymes, particularly with DNA from bacteria and humans (and a few other mammals and birds). Molecules of DNA that combined gene sequences of two species are called ‘recombinant DNA’ because the technology that created them involved (re-)combining DNA from different sources together in a single DNA fragment.

Early Ethical Concerns about Gene Editing The new ‘recombinant DNA technology’ became a scientific term in the 1970s; it produced a type of gene editing called ‘gene splicing’— a piece of DNA coming from an external source could be introduced into a genome of a recipient cell but it could not be targeted to a specific location. This approach was used predominantly for basic science research to improve our understanding of gene activities and the interaction between different processes in cells. There were few members of the general public who were aware of the technology or concerns that might arise from it. There was little if any mention of this technology among the different religious denominations predominantly because the media was not reporting anything about it. Most of the concerns that were expressed related to safety issues (see the discussion on the scientists’ moratorium below) rather than ethical issues. For example, the discussion did not relate to whether it was acceptable to genetically engineer a cow or a mouse, only whether such engineered organisms could become dangerous; the scientific community believed that the engineering as a process could be justified to a committee charged with maintaining animal welfare. Genetic engineering in humans was first done with the goal to develop ‘gene replacement therapy’. The hope was that in those cases where an extra copy of a normal gene can be added to the genome to overcome genetic disease, genetic engineering could be done with people. Observing the fact that viral DNAs often integrate into

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host cells genomes (this happens with many human viruses), recombinant DNA technology experts tried to deliver corrective genes by inserting them into viral DNA (made harmless also by genetic engineering) and then infecting the individual with a virus. The first gene therapy was attempted in 1990 at the National Institutes of Health for a disease called Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID). Children with this genetic anomaly are so immunocompromised that they have to live within sterile barriers where they can never be touched by another human being including their parents. The severity of their disease and the fact that it could be cured by delivery of a single gene made this first instance of gene delivery to humans much desired by everyone involved in their care. From 2016–2017 at least 2,300 clinical trials have been performed using gene therapy that targeted only somatic cells; germ-line cells, also known as eggs and sperm were always excluded from these manipulations in order to prevent introduction of genetically engineered DNA into the next generations of humans.2 Over the years, many questioned gene replacement therapies.Reflections about whether humans are playing God or whether humans are tampering with what is fundamentally human arose around gene therapy issues. The Orthodox Church has generally viewed healing as coming from God and therefore of benefit to humanity.3 In the absence of ethical limitations to the approaches used, any and all therapies against disease would be considered acceptable by the Orthodox Christian church. In general, most genetic engineering therapies that have not involved the use of germ cells have not been limited by the Church. Most methods of gene editing that could be used prior to 2000 relied on relatively crude ‘tools’ such as restriction enzymes etc. The use of any one of the possible genetic engineering tools produced collateral genetic alterations — events where off-target DNA was altered inadvertently; a variety of defects can come from introduction of normal genes into the wrong places. Thus, genes other than those that were being targeted were always at least partially endangered when gene replacement of a targeted gene was done, and the engineering was exclusively done in non-reproductive cells. The risks associated with gene replacement in the germ-line cells consisted of the risks of introducing completely new and unwanted genetic variants into the genetic pool of the entire species. This concern prevented germ line cell alteration attempts in humans, and even animals that could get loose in the wild. Germ line cell genetic alterations were used only in experimental animal systems where researchers had complete control over further propagation of the engineered animals. Errors in somatic cells could be handled by eliminating those cells. The same errors in the germ-line would mean that the defect would be passed on for many generations.

2 See Gene Therapy Wikipedia [accessed 13 Sept 2018]. 3 Gayle E. Woloschak and Leonard Hummel, ‘Pastoral Issues and Reflections on the Inevitability of Cancer’, in Caregivers and Confessors and Healers, ed. by Stephen Muse, JamesBurg, and Halina Woroncow (Wichita: Eighth Day Institute Press, 2015) ; Gayle E. Woloschak, ‘What is on the Horizon? What is science likely to be doing in the upcoming years?’, in Theological Foundations in an Age of Biological Intervention, ed. by D. C. Ratke (Chicago: ELCA Press, 2014).

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Scientists Called for a Moratorium in 1974 In 1974, scientists were wary of gene-splicing technology predominantly because of possible safety issues. For example — some scientists proposed engineering of obligatory oil consuming bacteria that could be released into the wild to remove oil spills and then die due to lack of food when the spill is over; others responded with concerns that a release of millions of such organisms could lead to the development of entirely new species of bacteria that would attack other organic matter etc.4 This and other similar discussions led to a world-wide but voluntary moratorium on all research with restriction enzymes and gene editing for a period of time (1974–6), and the moratorium was called by the scientists themselves to give them an opportunity to meet, assess the risks of the technology, and discuss possible problems that might ensue from its broad-ranging uses. A meeting was held at the Asilomar conference center in California with the express purpose of discussing risks and benefits of the genetic engineering technology.5 One of the questions that were asked was ‘If a cancer-related gene is placed into a bacterium, could the bacterium cause cancer?’. It was clear that the scientists felt unsure about the ease of ‘lateral gene transfer’ from one organism to another at that time. Much effort was made to predict possible future problems in the discussion about what restrictions should be placed on the use of recombinant DNA technology. This conference was initially seen as being a landmark meeting because it involved voluntary restriction of technology by the scientists themselves. Others expressed doubts, saying that it was possible this meeting was called to preempt otherwise more restrictive limitations on gene splicing technology that might have been imposed by government sources.6 The decisions of this conference were as follows: 1. There would be a moratorium on certain experiments. (While it was understood that DNA splicing technology could continue, the need for some restrictions was noted). Two types of experiments were voluntarily deferred: (a) those that involve the creation of new bacterial DNA that could carry antibiotic resistance genes or toxin genes into new bacterial strains and (b) experiments that linked DNA from cancer-causing viruses to other DNAs. 2. Experiments that involve the linking of animal DNA to DNA of other organisms should be ‘carefully weighed’.



4 See Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty, Wikipedia, [accessed 13 Sept 2018]. 5 Rasmussen, N. ‘DNA Technology: ‘Moratorium’ on Use and Asilomar Conference’, Wiley Online Library, published on-line 27 Jan 2017, which is based on a previous version on the Wiley Onlibrary Library article ‘DNA Technology: Asilomar Conference and “Moratorium” on Use’, 2006 by Susan Wright, [accessed Sept 11 2018]; Paul Berg, David Baltimore, Sydney Brenner, Richard O. Roblin III, and Maxine F. Singer. ‘Summary Statement of the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules’, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 72: 6 (year) pp. 1981-1984, ( June 1975. 6 ‘Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA entry, ) [accessed Sept. 10 2018]; Ira H. Carmen, Cloning and the Constitution: An Inquiry into Governmental Policymaking and Genetic Experimentation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).

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3. The director of the NIH was requested to establish an advisory committee to evaluate the hazards of recombinant DNA, develop methods to minimise risk and develop guidelines for work with recombinant DNA. 4. An international meeting would be held early in the following year to weigh the hazards.7 The Asilomar Conference led to the Recombinant DNA guidelines that regulate much of the gene modification work we see today. The 1975 Asilomar Conference was initially viewed as a model for self-regulation in science with scientists recognising the concerns and establishing necessary regulations for the process. Nevertheless, many of the scientists involved in the regulations moved forward with genetic engineering in private companies and other commercial interests, calling into question the approach from Asilomar. It is also important to note that at this time the first patent for a genetically engineered microorganism was issued.8 It is likely that this event is the root cause of the subsequent gene editing frenzy and the impossibility of regulating it, which led to the social injustice of the genetically engineered crops we face today. Interestingly, much of the Asilomar discussion occurred in a vacuum with little involvement of the broader public. This would not be likely in today’s environment with a wide scientific press covering both new discoveries and complex intricate questions. Indeed, public expression has become important in the evaluation of ethical approaches to treatments and techniques. In general, the Church as a whole is able to ‘weigh in’ on these technologies through public engagement, something that was not discussed by anyone at the Asilomar conference.

Importance of Gene-Splicing Technology Scientists who followed the Asilomar regulations on the use of gene-splicing technology developed many exciting and useful tools for further advances in gene editing. New discoveries were made, and even some new therapies became available. For scientific and laboratory experiments, the use of gene-splicing and recombinant DNA technologies has become an essential component of gene interrogations; the entire field of molecular biology has grown because of the access to the tools of genetic engineering. For example, gene knock-out technology allowed scientists to eliminate a particular gene from an animal (most often mouse) and examine cause-effect





7 Donald S. Frederickson, ‘Asilomar and Recombinant DNA: The End of the Beginning’ in Biomedical Politics, edited by Kfull name E. Hanna (Washington DC: National Academies Press, 1991). A free pdf of the book is available at: [accessed 9 September 2018]. 8 See Diamond v Chakrabarty Wikipedia, (accessed 14 September 2018).

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relationships for the gene.9 Because most mammals have the same genes or at least genetic pathways, it became possible to cross-correlate gene-loss associated diseases of engineered mice with their human equivalents and then test if the homologous human genes were responsible for human diseases. Gene over-expression approaches permitted many copies of the same gene to be introduced into animals or cells in culture; similarly to gene knock outs this allowed us to understand how the absence of the tight regulation of a gene affects its function and changes homeostasis in cells and whole organisms. Gene knock-ins therefore also provided an important contribution to biomedical inquiry.10 Another major use of recombinant DNA technology has been the generation of slightly altered genes that produce proteins minimally different from the original. Serial modulation of such proteins allowed discoveries for what parts of a protein should be ‘attacked’ by a drug in order to alter disease outcomes. Equally important was the advancement of approaches dependent on gene editing and the transfer of a gene into a new species which allows the massive production of pure human proteins for use as therapeutic tools. This has been extremely important, for example, for proteins that are present in limited quantities or are difficult to obtain. The development of animals (cows, for example) that produce human insulin in their milk using recombinant DNA technology has allowed for the rapid production of insulin suitable for use in diabetes patients. Prior to this development the same patients could use non-human insulin but the reactions to pig insulin have limited its therapeutic use. Production of large quantities of proteins used as therapy has also been made possible through recombinant technology. For example, some cancer treatments depend on immune modulators called interleukins that are present in only very small amounts normally; through recombinant DNA technology large amounts of these molecules can be synthesised and used therapeutically. There are many other similar examples of genetically engineered proteins.11 Recombinant DNA gene-splicing technologies have been used as tools for understanding and treating disease. Why have they not been used for editing of the human genome to prevent disease? This is mostly because the technologies have not had the precision to cut in only very selected places in the genome nor have they been able to correctly cut and insert new DNA fragments into the genome.



9 Bradford Hall, Advait Limaye and Ashok B. Kulkarni ‘Overview: Generation of Gene Knockout Mice’ Current Protocols in Cell Biology 44 (2009) Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ, doi:10.1002/0471143030.cb1912s44. 10 Gregory Prelich, ‘Gene Overexpression: Uses, Mechanisms, and Interpretation’, Genetics 190: 4 (2012), 841-54. 11 Yuriy Khodarovich, Igor L., Goldman, Elena R., Sadchikova, P.Georgii Georgiev, Structural Genomics Consortium et al, ‘Protein production and purification’, Nature Methods 5 (2008) 135-46; Yuriy Khodarovich, Igor L. Goldman, Elena R Sadchikova, and P. Georgii Georgiev, ‘Expression of eukaryotic recombinant proteins and deriving them from the milk of transgenic animals’, Applied Biochemistry and Microbiology 49 (2013), 711-22.

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Gene-Editing in the Age of CRISPR-Cas9 As far back as 1987 scientists in Japan discovered in bacterial genomes the repeat sequences that were to become known as CRISPR. CRISPR is short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.12 Much like the restriction enzymes described above, CRISPR sequences are part of the bacterial defence mechanism for fighting invading viruses. As different CRISPR systems were studied in different micro-organisms, one from a Streptococcus species was found to rely on the protein Cas9, an enzyme that is known to cut DNA. Unlike restriction enzymes however, the entire complex of CRISPR nucleic acid sequence and protein Cas9 recognise target DNA sequence; what is even more important is that the target sequence is 18–20 nucleotides long. Thus, a targeted CRISPR-Cas9 complex finds its target only once in 418 to 420 18–20-mer sequences in the genome. That is (in the case of a 20-mer) 268,435,56 times more specific than a restriction enzyme. In essence, when the CRISPR-Cas9 is used for targeted DNA cutting we can expect that cutting to occur most likely only once in a human genome. The CRISPR-Cas9 complex allows for a refined guidance system that regulates DNA cleavage and limits it to a portion of the DNA that might need repairing or altering. In addition, with a system as precise as CRISPR-Cas9 one can introduce two defined cuts into the target DNA and, when an additional ‘template’ DNA sequence is added, a replacement of targeted DNA with the template DNA may occur and a cleanly edited gene is obtained. While frequency of the latter event is low and the weaning of the correctly edited DNA is slow, this process is more precise than any other genetic engineering tool that has been previously used to alter DNA.13 It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine the exact mechanisms by which the CRISPR-Cas9 complex functions, although many reviews have been written that describe it well.14 What is important to note here is that this form of gene editing provided a means that was much improved over previous methods of genetic engineering: it is now possible to target very specific sequences of the DNA that are uniquely found in one location in the human genome, to cut this DNA out with precision, and to replace it very specifically with a new piece of DNA. All of the limitations that prevented other approaches of gene editing from being useful 12 Y Ishino, H Shinagawa, K Makino, M Amemura, A Nakata (1987), ‘Nucleotide sequence of the iap gene, responsible for alkaline phosphatase isozyme conversion in Escherichia coli, and identification of the gene product’, J Bacteriol 169: 12 (1987), 5429–33. (This journal does not offer full names of the authors; this is common in scientific papers). 13 Feng Zhang, Yan Wen, Xiong Guo, ‘CRISPR/Cas9 for genome editing: progress, implications and challenges’, Human Molecular Genetics, 17: R1 (2014), R40–R46. 14 Luciano A. Marraffini, rik J Sontheimer, ‘CRISPR interference: RNA-directed adaptive immunity in bacteria and archaea’, Nature Reviews Genetics, 11:3 (2010), 181–90; Melody Redman, Andrew King, Caroline Watson, David King, ‘What is CRISPR/Cas9?’, Archives of Disease in Childhood. Education and Practice Edition 101: 4 (2016), 213–15; Frank Hille, Hagen Richter, Shi Pey Wong, Majda Bratovič, Sarah Ressel, Emmanuelle Charpentier, (March 2018). ‘The Biology of CRISPR-Cas: Backward and Forward’, Cell, 172: 6 (2018), pp. 1239–1259.

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therapeutically were eliminated with CRISPR-Cas9. This discovery has opened the door to possible gene editing not only in somatic cells (cells that make up the bulk of the body, which have already been used for editing by existing approaches) but also germ-line cells (eggs and sperm that will go on to become offspring) where gene editing has been largely avoided due to lack of precision and the possibility of the development of errors. In the US and western Europe, many scientists called for a world-wide moratorium on the use of CRISPR-Cas9 technology to permit time for consideration and reflection, much as had been done with the 1974 moratorium described above. Taking into consideration the potential of CRISPR-Cas9 for genetic modifications, it was anticipated that a temporary moratorium on the use of this technology would be issued. This did not occur. On the one hand, it would have been difficult to allow such broad participation today as that which took place in the 1970s. On the other hand, the scientific climate is significantly different and the drive to develop a technology for the market is too competitive. Instead of a moratorium, a series of conferences were held by the National Academy of Sciences in 2016 with the goal of reviewing the question of CRISPR-Cas9 and its role in gene editing. Scientists from around the world were represented.15 A committee to consider CRISPR-Cas9 technology was formed with a mix of scientists, ethicists, science policy workers, and others; this was very different from the original Asilomar conference which invited mostly scientists. The broad-ranging application of the technology was clearly felt, and it is obvious from the media coverage that the understanding and immediate availability of the technology have grown in new directions since the 1970s. The committee to consider CRISPR-Cas9 concluded that most avenues for the use of CRISPR technology fit into one of the following categories: 1. Basic and preclinical research: this was deemed useful and necessary for further progress 2. Clinical use in somatic cells: this was considered promising 3. Clinical use in germline (reproductive) cells: this was expected to have great potential but at the same time was considered the most risky because of the still remaining potential off-target effects, the implications for future generations, the fact that it could lead to permanent genetic ‘enhancements’ and other issues. This committee supported the idea that more discussion on the topic is necessary for the entire discipline and also with the broader academic community and the public. The group noted that basic and preclinical research using CRISPR-Cas9 is already underway and should continue unhindered. They also recommended that studies with somatic cells that are now in planning stages are considered unlikely to be ready for use until much more basic science work has been completed. Clinical work at the germline requires even deeper consideration at all levels prior to any

15 Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics, and Governance. Book available at no charge from National Academy Press, 2017, . Accessed 25 November 2019.

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further steps in this area (recent findings about significant off-target modifications in CRISPR/Cas9 modified mice support this assertion16). The National Academy of Sciences report reflected the multiple perspectives that need to be considered, particularly as they related to the use of CRISPR-Cas9 at the level of germ-line modification: 1. Advantages: Preventing transmission of inherited disorders; treating diseases that affect multiple tissues 2. Limitations: (i) the genetic correction of parental defects may be less than completely efficient because of mosaicism (the fact that not every cell will have identical gene expression) and the numerous ways by which heritable defects can originate (e.g. nearly terminal and terminal germ cells — eggs and sperm, may themselves acquire mutations); (ii) the long term genetic effect on the entire human gene pool may be detrimental (e.g. genes that are ‘bad’ in two copies are often useful in a single copy in certain environmental conditions — providing resilience to parasites and diseases) 3. Ethical concerns: Balancing individual-level and societal-level benefits (cures vs. unintended risks); natural vs. edited genome; human dignity vs. fear of eugenics; economic and social justice; slippery slope that once you agree to one issue you agree to everything else that follows The committee noted that while there are concerns about the use of the CRSPR technology, as well as limitations on it, the fact that it has great power to prevent and treat debilitating diseases should not go unrecognised.

Perspectives Gene editing has been available and used for decades now, and most of the regulation has been done by the government working through local Animal Care and Use Committees, Institutional Review Boards, and Recombinant DNA Committees. The work done to-date has been on somatic cells which perhaps pose a danger to the individuals who are being treated but not to those around them. For the first time, new technologies are available which will permit the use of gene editing technology in germ-line cells (eggs and sperm). When this editing takes place, edited DNA will be present in every single cell of the edited person. Therefore, his or her germ cells will also carry edited DNA and pass it on to their offspring and so on. Questions to be considered are: 1. Should germ-line editing be permitted when we are changing the human gene pool permanently? 2. If we know a gene editing cure for some very difficult and life-threatening disease that can be corrected by germ-line gene manipulation, should we ignore it?

16 KSchaefer, Wen-Hsuan Wu, Diana F. Colgan, Stephen H. Tsang, Alexander G. Bassuk Vinit B. Mahajan, ‘Unexpected mutations after CRISPR-Cas9 editing in vivo’, Nat Methods 14:6 (2017), pp. 547-48.

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3. How can the technology be handled globally when most world nations are capable of carrying out the process, many of whom have different ethical considerations than one would find for example in the US or western Europe? 4. If we do permit germ-line gene manipulation we will have to commit to follow-up for effects that would be trans-generational, not just over a number of years as we are used to doing now. How could this be handled? These and other questions should be discussed not only in scientific circles but also in broad Church and religion communities to inform governmental positions.

Orthodox Perspectives Expressed on Gene Editing There are few Orthodox written opinions that have been expressed about gene editing in general, and none since the development of CRISPR technology. In fact, when a group of Orthodox bishops was asked about opinions on CRISPR and gene editing, not one had heard of CRISPR except in one case as a media story. There is a general lack of awareness about the issue of gene editing in the age of CRISPR in the Orthodox Church. The one Church that has expressed some prescriptions about genetic technologies has been the Russian Orthodox Church in its ‘Basis of Social Concept’ document.17 Section XII of the document includes a large number of comments about various genetic technologies including genetic diagnosis of disease, fetal testing, and other similar topics. The document is full of scientific errors; e.g., a statement is made in the document: ‘It is important to remember, however, that genetic disorders often stem from the disregard of moral principles and the vicious way of life, which result in the suffering of the posterity. The sinful erosion of the human nature is overcome by spiritual effort; but if vice dominates in life from generation to generation with growing power, the words of Holy Scripture come true: “Horrible is the end of the unrighteous generation” (Wisdom of Solomon 3.19)’. It is really uncertain what possible genetic disease could be caused by sinful behavior and disregard of moral behaviors, but this certainly does not by any means represent the majority of genetic disorders. Throughout this section of the document there are similar such errors and mostly prescriptive formulations rather than the use of theology to support the comments. Despite the level of detail in this document, there is no real mention of gene editing, and certainly CRISPR became available in widespread use after this document was completed. There is clearly a need for Orthodox reflection on this complex issue with the inclusion of a broad range of scholars in the discussion such as theologians, pastors, scientists, clinicians, and others.

17 Available online in Russian and English, [last accessed 14 November 2018].

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Conclusions Not surprisingly, much of the gene editing is done by private companies and corporations world around, with little input from the remainder of society which is relegated to the role of consumer. The only avenues for involvement in discussions on issues which determine the future of humanity still open to the members of the public are political forums and organised religion. Despite its dependence on contributions from private donors, the Church may still be able to support procedures that demand ethical consideration of gene editing technologies.

Part IV

Historical Aspects of the Relationship between Orthodox Theology and Science

Adri a n Lemeni

References of Father Dumitru Staniloae’s Thought in the Dialogue between Theology and Science

Introduction Father Dumitru Stăniloae could be understood as a significant theologian in developing an ecclesial understanding of the relationship between theology and science. He translated and made profound comments on the Holy Father’s texts (particularly Saint Gregory the Theologian, Saint Maximus the Confessor, and Saint Gregory Palamas). Father Stăniloae assumed the same spirit and perspective, developing an encompassing dimension of Patristic and ecclesial Tradition. Father Stăniloae’s work remains in the spirit of the Patristic Tradition, but this fidelity doesn’t mean only a repetition of the patristic texts. Father’s Stăniloae theology implies a living effort to respond to contemporary challenges. Father Stăniloae, valorising the synthesis between Latinity and the Orthodox Tradition in Romanian spirituality, expresses the vocation to create links between Eastern and Western Traditions. In this balanced perspective, he structures a dialogue between theological knowledge, philosophical reflection and scientific research. The knowledge structured between the unity between reason and faith, and between mystery and lucidity, discovers the deep identity of the complex rationality of the world and of human reason, structured and fulfilled by the Person of Jesus Christ. Departing from this specific of Romanian spirituality, Father Dumitru Stăniloae passes over the extreme positions of rationalism (focusing only on an autonomous logic) and pietism (faith separated by the reason of the Truth).

Father Dumitru Stăniloae: A Witness for Ecclesial Theology that is Open towards Dialogue with Contemporary Science Father Stăniloae remains an overwhelming figure in contemporary theology through the way in which he assumed and deepened the encompassing dimension of Patristic and ecclesial Tradition. He developed a theology that bore witness to, and was anchored in, the life of the Church, and that responded to the concrete and deep Adrian Lemeni • Faculty of Orthodox Theology, Bucharest University Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue, ed. by Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk, SOC, 2 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 155–163. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.122613

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needs of society, at the same time surpassing any unilateral position and isolationist attitude given by rationalism or pietism. The theology of Father Stăniloae is the kind that generates and strengthens the consciousness of dialogue. Dialogue does not mean the evasion of identity or monotony, canceling diversity, but the expression of identity in a perspective which is open and capable of assuming otherness. Father Stăniloae embodies through his personality, an ingenious synthesis and a balanced theology, the capacity to establish points of contact between different traditions of Orthodox Theology and the encompassing power of universal Orthodoxy. His theology is not gratuitous, where information is displayed in an artificial way. It is not a pretext for a proud affirmation, but the expression of striving and sacrificing through which he attempted the recuperation and valorisation of theology’s ecclesial dimension. In this perspective, theology is open to the real problems of the world. Father Dumitru Stăniloae (1903–1993), a theologian of the divine glory and light of the gracious love of the Holy Trinity manifested towards the world, engages in continuity with the spirit of the great Holy Fathers of the Church through his detailed theology. Father Stăniloae did not understand the actualisation of patristic references within contemporary theology just as a mere repetition of the texts of the Holy Fathers, or as a compilation of them. Father Stăniloae creatively generated and deepened a theology of great amplitude faithfully grounded in the spirit of the Orthodox Tradition, a dynamic theology through which he tries to give concrete answers to the specific needs of the world in which he lived. In this perspective, Father Stăniloae, through a creative faithfulness, assumes the same spirit as, and a similar manner to, that of the Holy Fathers. The great Romanian theologian expresses the wide vocation of Orthodoxy; he highlights the universality of the Gospel manifested in the calling of all the nations made by the Church of Christ. Thus, he continues the line of apostolic mission of confessing the Gospel to all the nations to the ends of the world, showing that the ecclesial experience is not a mere confession, but the fullness of life, lived in the Truth of faith. Also, this universality is not understood as an abstract reality, thought exclusively in conceptual terms and applicable through institutional mechanisms. It is a specific reality in a concrete context. Having these requirements in mind, Father Stăniloae, by translating the great Fathers of the Church such as Saint Gregory the Theologian, Saint Maximus the Confessor, and Saint Gregory Palamas, continues and deepens their theology and at the same time, and in the same spirit, he develops a specific theology for the problems of the world he lived in. The Romanian theologian surpasses the scholastic understanding of theology, fragmented in different fields of study in the academic setting. Without circumventing academic requirements, Father Stăniloae surpasses, through spirit and content, the scholastic manner in which a rigid, formalised theology is elaborated in the academic environment, a theology deprived of existential impact and unrelated to life. Father Stăniloae’s confession is not an option for isolationism or a complacency in the invoked Tradition, but a bold assertion of the Truth of the Gospel, using the intelligence of faith and having the capacity for a dialogue with different exponents of science, philosophy, profane culture or other religious traditions. Thus, he follows

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the steps of the Holy Fathers of the Church, he himself being a father and a theologian for the contemporary world. Given that the paradigm of contemporary science offers significant epistemological mutations through high level research in various scientific fields, and that the limit of the scientific approach is assumed and recognised, there is the chance of a fair openness of the scientific knowledge towards the theological one. One of the ecclesial responsibilities of contemporary theology is to provide answers to these honest approaches from different renowned scientists, thus developing the framework for the dialogue between theology and science, but by keeping and valuing their own specific competences.1 Father Dumitru Stăniloae was interested and open towards the new results in science, especially physics. He sensed that these contemporary scientific researches surpass the ideological position in the relation between theology and science. In the condition in which the paradigm of contemporary science offers significant epistemo­logical mutations through the heights of research in different scientific domains, and with the limits of the scientific approach being recognised and assumed, there is a chance for honest openness of scientific knowledge towards that of theology. One of the ecclesial responsibilities of contemporary theology is to respond to the honest openness of many reputable leaders of the scientific community, in such a way as to update the framework for developing a dialogue between theology and science. The relationship between science and religion was distorted by different ideological tendencies. Orthodox theology does not have to defend any kind of ideology, but must confess the full Truth that saves the world. Father Stăniloae, through his comprehensive theology, can offer significant landmarks regarding the dialogue between theology and science. In the present chapter, I will dwell upon two suggestive aspects from Father Dumitru Stăniloae’s theology which can be correlated with some results from current scientific research, thus outlining the possibility of a dialogue between science and theology. On one hand, ontologically, it is about the internal relation between natural and supernatural, about the dynamic reciprocity between the rationality of the world and human reason. On the other hand, epistemologically, it is about the deep relation between reason and faith.

The Reciprocity between the Natural and the Supernatural, between Cosmos and History A significant contribution of Father Stăniloae’s theology is the comprehensive perspective rooted in the patristic Tradition, according to which he highlights,



1 I added more references of the contributions of Father’s Dumitru Stăniloae thought to the dialogue between theology and science in Adrian Lemeni, ’The Rationality of the World and Human Reason as expressed in the Theology of Father Dumitru Stăniloae: Points of Connection in the Dialogue between Theology and Science’, International Journal of Orthodox Theology, 3–4 (2012), pp. 89–101.

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from an ontological point of view, the reciprocity between the natural and the supernatural, between cosmos and history. Father Stăniloae’s reflection reveals an iconic ontology through which it is highlighted that nothing is purely natural, and that anything natural is structured on the supernatural. Thus, we can observe the deep connection between cosmos and history, and the organic relation between the natural component of Revelation and the supernatural one. In scholastic theology there is a separation between the natural and the supernatural, leading to an opposition between the two. In this sense, any miracle is seen as a violation of the laws of nature. God is seen as being absent and not as an encompassing presence in the world and in history. Scholastic metaphysics, by separating the natural from the supernatural, has developed a type of apologetics which no longer highlights the reciprocity between the Creator Logos and creation. Famous rational arguments on God’s existence are basee precisely on such a separation between the Logos and creation. Father Stăniloae starts his Dogmatics with a benchmark affirmation through which, from the beginning, he surpasses the scholastic approach: ‘The Orthodox Church makes no separation between natural and supernatural Revelation. Natural Revelation is known and understood fully in the light of supernatural Revelation, or we might say that natural Revelation is given and maintained by God continuously through his own divine act which is above nature… Supernatural Revelation unfolds and brings forth its fruit within the framework of natural Revelation, like a kind of casting of the work of God into bolder relief, a guiding of the physical and historical world toward that goal from which it was created in accordance with a plan laid down from all ages. Supernatural Revelation merely restores direction to and provides a more determined support for that inner movement maintained within the world by God through natural Revelation. At the beginning, moreover, in that state of the world which was fully normal, natural Revelation was not separated from a Revelation that was supernatural.’2 Theologically speaking, the reciprocity between the natural and the supernatural, as well as the fulfillment of the Revelation in the Person of Jesus Christ, the GodMan, have a particular relevance. It is of great significance that the iconic ontology is rediscovered and valued according to the Patristic tradition expressed convincingly by Father Stăniloae, especially in the current situation, in which the existing mentality is dominated by a way of thinking which has very much separated the natural from the supernatural, leading to the fact that the supernatural can no longer be thought of as significant for human experience. It is also significant that Father Stăniloae insists both on the dynamics of Revelation and its fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ. The dynamics of Revelation does not assume that one can think anything beyond the crucified and risen Christ. The acts of Jesus Christ (Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension) are inseparable from his person, and they are constitutive acts of Christianity; every believer is



2 Father Dumitru Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, volume 1 (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998), p. 1.

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called to personally assume what the Savior lived in His assumed humanity, which was spiritualised by His acts. Today, when different unconventional languages are sought in order to express the Christian faith, through a logic of un-incarnated thought, typical of the gnostic vision, it is topical to confess the direct link between the Saviour’s acts and his Person, as well as fulfilling Christ’s Revelation in his Person. In this sense, Father Stăniloae states: ‘Revelation is not a mere communication of teachings, but man’s new, continuous state, through his closeness to God. Christ’s Revelation is a new state of humanity, assumed by the Son of God, and the Revelation of the life to come is a similar state to that of Christ-Man in all that will believe. Thereby, it is shown that the Christian Revelation is given through a person, through the divine-human person of Christ, and that it is the effect of the acts of incarnating, crucifying, resurrecting and ascending as man of the Son of God, of sending His Spirit in the world. In Christianity, Revelation can be understood only this way. An adaptation of Christianity to the world by rejecting these acts of Christ, essential acts of Christian Revelation, is equivalent to an abandonment of Christianity. A theological language which, in the desire to adapt Christianity, would not express the content of these acts of Revelation, would not be a Christian theological language anymore.’3 The internal relationship between natural Revelation and supernatural Revelation shows that the whole creation (cosmos and man) is brought into existence, sustained and fulfilled through the one and only God. Trying to explain the reality of the world and of the human person excluding God, is a great deception. ‘This separation of God from nature, a nature through which God speaks and works, or rather through which he speaks by working and works by speaking, has easily led to various kinds of conceptions that have sought to explain the world exclusively on the basis of an immanent reality. But natural revelation is inseparable from supernatural revelation and the faithful feel themselves in immediate connection with God… God speaks and works continuously through created and directed realities, by creating circumstances that are always new, circumstances through which he calls each man to fulfill his duties towards God and his neighbors and through which he answers man’s appeal at every moment. These realities and circumstances are so many thoughts of God made manifest hence so many words given concrete shape. Through all things, it is God who is leading us, as in some ongoing dialogue, towards our perfection and opening us to us the perspective of total fulfillment for the meaning of our existence in communion with the infinite God.’4 For Saint Maximus, contemplating God in creation is a prior step to His immediate contemplation. But knowing God through nature has a transient value because the world’s divine rationality remains for eternity. The rationality of creation, far from becoming useless after God became revealed, will help us deepen even more the fecundity of divine Reason. Saint Maximus writes: ‘The one who was raised



3 Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, ‘Revelația prin acte, cuvinte și imagini’ [Revelation by acts, words and images-my translation AL] in O teologie a icoanei, ed. by Ștefan Ionescu-Berechet (București: Editura Fundației Anastasia, 2005), pp. 18-19. 4 Father Dumitru Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, volume 1, p. 21.

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from the false opinion about things has sacrificed the visible forms, and eating the unseen rationalities, has acquired natural contemplation, in the spirit.’5 The world is a pedagogue to Christ. The relationship between man and cosmos and between the rationality of the world and human rationality are significant coordinates of the Orthodox Tradition, and they are very well expressed in Fr Dumitru Stăniloae’s theology. Deepening this dynamic reciprocity between human reason and the rationality of the world could help shape the dialogue between theology and science. The rationality of the world and human reason cannot be expressions of an absurd reality. Both the sense of the rationality of the world and the sense of human reason are fulfilled in the mystery of the Supreme Person, Christ the Logos, who structures and fulfills all creation. ‘The rationality of the universe can not be absurd. But it derives its full meaning when it is seen as having its source in a rational person, which uses it for an eternal dialogue of love with others. Thus, the rationality of the world, for its fulfillment, implies the existence of a superior subject. The world as object is only the milieu of a dialogue of loving thoughts and actions between the supreme rational Person and the rational human beings, as between they themselves. The universe bears the mark given by its origin in the creative rational Person, and its purpose of being the milieu of an interpersonal dialogue between that Person and human persons, with the purpose of them becoming eternal in the happiness of communion between them. The whole universe bears the mark of a personal rationality destined in order that the human persons will become eternal. Our being considers that it will fulfill its purpose only in the eternal participation in the infinite of the Supreme Persons’.6

The Relationship between Reason and Faith Scholastic theology, based on the ontological separation between the natural and the supernatural, has also transferred this separation from an epistemological point of view, leading to a false perception of antagonism between faith and reason. Using the method of the double truth (the supernatural is known through faith and the natural through reason), both the natures of faith and reason were distorted. Faith was reduced to a certain psychological aspect and reason was assimilated by the discursive capacity to produce demonstrations. Reason has become instrumental, being uprooted from its religious grounds. Thus, reason has become autonomous in relation to faith, being reduced to a mere abstract speculation. Father Stăniloae exceeds this approach, and, in the line of the Fathers, states that there is a deep reciprocity between faith and reason. Harnessing the internal



5 Saint Maximus the Confessor, Răspunsuri către Talasie, in Filocalia, volume 3 [Answers to Thalasius, Philocalia, no.3-my translation AL], ed. by Father Dumitru Stăniloae (București: EIBMBOR, 2009), p. 159. 6 Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, ‘Revelația prin acte, cuvinte și imagini’ [Revelation by acts, words and images-my translation AL], pp. 18-19.

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connection between the natural and the supernatural highlighted by the iconic ontology from knowledge, he increased the convergence between faith and reason. Thus, Father Stăniloae opens the horizon of an ecclesial perspective that no longer remains dependent on scholastic schemes through which arguments of an autonomous rationality were meant to make reasonable the realities of the faith. By relating human reason with the rationality of the cosmos, and by showing their common basis through the Supreme Reason which is the divine Logos, Father Stăniloae harnesses the potential of reason. Reason does not remain a mere faculty of the mind capable of generating discursive thought, but is fundamentally open to faith. Following the line of the Fathers (especially the thought of St Maximus the Confessor), the Romanian theologian points out that in the natural contemplation of the rationality of the world, reason is not canceled, but transfigured. Thus, knowledge, as a spiritual view of the divine rationalities, is not antirational but suprarational. Human reason, engaged in the virtuous way of fulfilling God’s commandments, through a consistent exercise, crucifies the selfishness of its own views, thus opening to the truth of faith. In the act of knowledge, all spiritual powers of man are activated. In this perspective, the Orthodox tradition values the effort of reason on the path of contemplation, without identifying natural contemplation with scientific knowledge, as divine reasons can not be conquered by discursive thought. ‘God is beyond discursive reasoning, but He does not lack reason; He is the supreme Reason, the rationale from which all the rationalities of creation start and also the rationality from our soul, although it is more than this, more than we can ever contain through rational concepts. If God is the ultimate reason why wouldn’t it be present in human contemplation and reason, a reason of what was gathered in this development? Human reasoning is a temporal manner of God’s contemplation, while human contemplation is an anticipation of the non-temporal life, above all explanation’.7 Valuing the relationship between reason and faith, Father Stăniloae emphasises the reciprocity between cataphatism and apophatism in knowledge. The Romanian theologian shows that apophatism can not be reduced to the negative dimension which expresses the impossibility of knowing God through concepts, proving that God is above all discursive thought. Apophatism is specifically understood as knowledge resulting from the experience of grace, a view of the uncreated light. In this regard, Father Stăniloae, in the spirit of the Holy Fathers and particularly following the Fathers of the Philokalia, shows that the true knowledge gained through faith is a view above all understanding. Faith is not limited to a particular type of trust or confidence from the psychological sphere, but discovers its ontological basis of confirmation of the unseen, through the contemplation of the light of the One which is unseen. This distinction is crucial and is particularly relevant to current research, especially in the relationship between theology, philosophy and contemporary science. To articulate an honest dialogue between theological thought, philosophical reflection



7 Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Ascetica şi mistica Bisericii Ortodoxe, [The Ascetical and Mystical Experience in Orthodox Church-my translation AL] (Bucureşti: Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 2002), p. 249.

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and scientific research, it is necessary to specify distinct competencies. Faith cannot be solely the result of a naturalist effort. Father Stăniloae sets significant milestones in this regard, developing an awareness for dialogue and comprehensive understanding, and, at the same time, emphasizing the specific features of knowledge. Father Stăniloae, focusing specifically upon the theology of Saint Gregory Palamas in the context of his dispute with Barlaam of Calabria, clearly emphasises the distinction between knowledge acquired through culture and profane science, and knowledge which has resulted from spiritual experience, directly shared in the life of the Church. Following Saint Gregory Palamas’s conception, Father Stăniloae does not neglect the value of science, philosophy and culture, but points out that the long-standing focus on the issues scrutinised by mind can obstruct a real contemplation of divine rationality. Also, knowledge, as a view through faith and through a spiritual life, is above discursive meditation. These distinctions are particularly relevant in the current context for theological research. Father Stăniloae states clearly: ‘Focusing all of our life on sciences obstructs the possibility of true wisdom entering the soul. For the soul to be entered by wisdom, man has to have the fear of God from which a grieving, continuous prayer and the keeping of God’s commandments arise. So, by letting God enter our souls, fear turns into love, and the pain of the prayer turns into joy. And so, enlightenment blooms in us like a flower from which the knowledge of the mysteries of God penetrates like an odor. The one who is enslaved by the love of a wisdom in vain, and the one who is fretful because of the theories and the devious sciences can not even hope to acquire the smallest speck of what this wisdom means, for his soul is rapt and immersed in all sets of thoughts. And only after he did pray continuously, clearing his soul of other concerns, will the Holy Spirit let His trace within the soul. Nothing really matters, not even the knowing of the dogmas without a proper Christian life. All that matters is the spiritual wisdom — the one that is born from faith and that is combined with love — this one is redeeming’.8 The rationality of things cannot be exhausted by means of discursive knowledge. Analytical reasoning covers only a small part of the inexhaustible spectrum of the



8 Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Viața și învățătura Sfântului Grigorie Palama [The life and the doctrine of Saint Gregory Palamas-my translation AL] (București: Scripta, 1993) p. 32. Father Stăniloae shows that faith can not be transmitted through impressive culture or science, but is favoured by the specific meeting with a man who expresses the certainty and the power of life of the faith. ‘The most wonderful thing that can ever happen is the power with which the certainty of the faith is communicated from the man that has it to the man that sees him. Who finds himself around the man that confesses his faith tensely or calmly, but firmly, can hardly resist to become himself faithful. The certainty within the other raises the certainty within ourselves. Does this come from the trust we have in another man? No, because more often, the one who believes is a person of “lower rank” in our consideration and in that of society. Compared to other people that are gifted or to people who we are more connected with, those ones are not relevant to our lives. But, in an indestructible manner we are overwhelmed by the reliability of the fact that the person concerned does not take the certainty of his faith from his own powers. We somehow know that the power of God’s work is beyond that of any man.’ Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Iisus Hristos sau restaurarea omului, [Jesus Christ or restoration of human person-my translation AL], (Craiova: Omniscop, 1993), pp. 16-17.

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world’s rationality. This feature derives from the connection between the rationality of the world, human reason, and the Divine Logos. The divine rationalities of the world are spiritually contemplated by a view of the mind cleansed of passions and enlightened by grace. In this type of knowledge, intuition emphasises an unmediated knowledge that is beyond the specific process of analytical research. Even the top fields of science admit their internal limits of analytical knowledge. Hence, the mystery of the world is assumed and it can not be consumed by an analytical way of reasoning. The cross of analytical reason is the spiritual view enlightened by faith. The spiritual effort on the path of the faith does not nullify the potential of analytical reasoning, but it transfigures it by intuiting deeper meanings, incomprehensible for rationality practiced exclusively analytically. The spiritual contemplation of the rationality of the world develops a unitary knowledge of the world, which highlights the common sense both of the rationality of nature and of human reason. All of these are fulfilled in the most profound sense by Christ the Logos.

Conclusion The novelty of Father Dumitru Stăniloae’s position is given by a powerful and living synthesis of the Patristic and Ecclesial Tradition, valorised in the contemporary world. This perspective is materialised by a reciprocity between witness and dialogue, an extraordinary capacity to see the divine rationality in cosmos and history, and by developing a spiritual and ecclesial understanding in the dialogue between different theological, philosophical and scientific traditions. Father Dumitru Stăniloae develops an Apologetic perspective, witnessing to the Truth, but in the Spirit of the Truth. In this way he keeps together the christological and pneumatological dimensions. The witness to the Truth doesn’t mean an isolationist position and at the same time the dialogue is not understood as an accommodation of the Truth to the ideological tendencies. According to this perspective the dialogue between theology, philosophy and science could be a fruitful tool in order to discover the profound identity of reason, opened to the vision given by faith and ecclesial experience.

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Kirill Kopei k in

Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy Between the Middle Ages and Postmodernity

The Early History of Orthodoxy in Russia This article addresses the contemporary situation of Orthodoxy in Russia, one which cannot be understood without an account of the particular history of the Russian Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy came to Rus’ in the ninth and tenth centuries. As far as we can judge today, this was largely for political reasons. In the midst of the ninth century the ‘Ros’ (Ῥωσ) people began to increase their attacks on the lands of the Eastern Roman Empire, the ‘Βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων’, which only after its fall came to be called Byzantium. Patriarch Photius (Φώτιος, c. 820–96) sent missionaries to Kievian Rus.1 These missionaries were, in particular, St Cyril and St Methodius, who developed the Slavonic alphabet. It was common practice for Byzantines to engage in relations with belligerent, pagan tribes.2 At the end of the tenth century, Prince, or Knyaz’ Vladimir (c. 960–1015) decided to adopt Christianity as a state religion.3 Thus the young Russian state entered into Byzantium’s political and cultural orbit which was, perhaps, at that time the most powerful and culturally developed state of that oikoumene (οἰκουμένη). At first the Kievian Archdiocese was under the legal authority of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The first metropolitans and bishops in Rus were Byzantines (‘Romans’). They had received their education in Byzantium. In Russia a number of monasteries founded elementary schools which were to provide at least a minimal professional preparation for Russian clerics. But there was no independent theological school. As the famous Russian Orthodox writer Nikolai Leskov (1831–1895) said, ‘Rus were baptised, but not enlightened’. The ancient Russian state had disintegrated into independent principalities by the middle of the twelfth century. The Mongol invasion of the Rus’ began in the thirteenth

1 Nikon (Lysenko), Hierodeacon, ‘“Fotiev” baptism of the Slavic-Russians and its significance in the prehistory of the Baptism of Russia’, Theological works, (29) 1989, pp. 27–40 (in rus). 2 Jonathan Harris, The Lost World of Byzantium (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), p. 280. 3 Ilya Semenenko-Basin, ‘Vladimir Kievsky’, in Catholic Encyclopedia. Moscow: Publisher Franciscantsev, 2002. Vol. 1, p. 1035 (in rus.). Kirill Kopeikin • St. Petersburg Theological Academy, St. Petersburg State University, Russia Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue, ed. by Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk, SOC, 2 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 165–172. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.122614

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century. In 1240, Kiev was sacked by the Mongol army. The eastern Slavic principalities were included in the Mongol state, the Golden Horde. The Kievian metropolitans, selected in Constantinople, had to receive a permit (yarlyk) from the Horde. Of course, during these devastating, bloody wars, when the very question of survival was foremost, there was scarcely any time for speculative theology, nor for the discussion of complex intellectual matters. For the Russian Church, Byzantium remained as before: an inaccessible ideal which should serve as a guide and whose traditions should be preserved. In 1453 Constantinople was seized by the Turkish-Ottoman forces led by Mehmet II. The Russian Orthodox Church was deprived of its Byzantine spiritual and educational center and thus the need emerged for it to establish its own system of theological education. Its principal task was to preserve the Byzantine intellectual heritage. The issue was not about the development of speculative theology. Furthermore, contextually, the need for theological education appeared in the midst of Muscovy’s gradual political advancement which, in the Church’s conceptualisation, was taken to be the last stronghold of Orthodoxy, the Third Rome.4 By the end of the fifteenth century, Rus’ became the largest independent (sovereign) Orthodox state. Thus it began to consider itself as the Third Rome, that by Divine Providence had been given the task of preserving the Orthodox tradition after the fall of the Second Rome, namely Constantinople.

The Third Rome Despite an obvious need to establish its own system of theological education, the first Orthodox theological schools were organised only at the end of the sixteenth century in the western Slavic territories in the style of Jesuit Roman Catholic colleges. The first such school appeared in Lvov; in 1601 the Kiev-Mohyla College in Kiev was founded. In spite of having a western, Roman Catholic setting, the theological disciplines had been taught at the schools in the spirit of Eastern Orthodoxy, that is the mediaeval Byzantine tradition. The ‘Academia Slavo-Graeco-Latina’ appeared in Moscow only in 1687.5 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Emperor Peter the Great began the process of modernisation and ‘Europeanisation’ of the Russian Empire.6 In 1703 he set the foundations of a new capital of Russia, St Petersburg. The relics of the Holy Prince Alexander Nevsky were brought to the new city, a saint who made war with the Teutonic Knights the ‘Teutonic Order, or Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem’. In the name of the ‘struggle against the heathen’

4 Oleg Ulyanov, ‘About the time of the conception of “Moscow — the Third Rome” (“Donatio Constantini Magni” and “The Tale of the White Cowl”) in Russia’, in Terminology of Historical Science. Historiography, (Moscow, 2010), pp. 196–214 (in rus.). 5 Michael Gromov, ‘Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy’, History of Philosophy. West-Russia-East. Prince first one. The philosophy of antiquity and the Middle Ages, (Moscow: Greek-Latin Cabinet, 1995), pp. 474–76 (in rus.). 6 Sergey Solovyov, Public readings about Peter the Great, (Moscow, 1872) (in rus.).

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they seized the lands of the western Slavs. Knyaz’ Alexander was to become the holy warrior and patron of the Western Capital, at once a ‘window to Europe’ and a military outpost on Russia’s western borders. The new Alexander Nevsky Monastery was built to accommodate the holy relics of its divine intercessor. Another fragment of his relics was set in the foundations of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the military centre of Russia’s new capital. Interestingly enough, at that time, the Russian Empire’s ideological ‘heart’ manifested an internal contradiction as an external cultural and technological orientation towards the West, on the one hand, and an internal, spiritual resistance to the West, on the other. In 1721 the ‘Spiritual Regulations’ were set in place; these were in fact a set of laws determining a new legal position of the Orthodox Church within the Russian Empire. The author was one of Emperor Peter the Great’s closest associates, Archbishop Theofan (Prokopovich) (1681–1736). He had received his education from the universities of Leipzig, Halle and Jena, the Pontifical Greek College of St Athanasius in Rome, and the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, where he was later its rector. Theophan was invited by the Emperor to Petersburg for the implementation of clerical reforms. Theophan regarded the Emperor as pontifex, which is to say the bishop over all bishops and the chief of the clergy. The ‘Spiritual Regulations’ served to give a legal basis to the process of secularisation taking place in the country as a whole. The Patriarchiate was abolished and in its place was established the Most Holy Governing Synod. The Synod was de facto a government ministry and the Church was turned into a government agency. The clergy were thus government bureaucrats, their aim being to strengthen the Empire’s spiritual (ideological) unity. The principle that the Emperor would be not only the head of state but also the local prelate of the Church became the official ideology of the Russian Orthodox Church and is ascribed to the so-called Synodal Period, between 1700 and 1917. Yet in its internal structure Church life continued as before, set according to a mediaeval, Byzantine ideal.7 According to the Spiritual Regulations, each bishop was obliged to maintain a church school in his diocese. Thus a system of spiritual education first appeared in Russia only at the beginning of the eighteenth century, yet it was one founded upon the initiative of a secular state authority. A ‘Slavonic School’ was opened in 1721 under the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St Petersburg. In 1725 it was renamed the ‘Slavo-Graeco-Latin Seminary’, in 1788 it was turned into the ‘Chief Seminary’, and, in 1797, the ‘Spiritual (or “Theological”) Academy’.8 In 1724, Emperor Peter the Great issued a decree on the creation of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in St Petersburg. This occurred largely under the influence of the ideas of the leading German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716). Leibniz’s interest in Russia starts at the end of the 1690s. The news of the Petrine reforms and the ‘great Embassy’ to Europe Peter the Great’s diplomatic



7 Nikolay Kedrov, Spiritual regulations in connection with the transformative activities of Peter the Great. (Moscow, 1886) (in rus.). 8 Hilarion Chistovich, History of the St Petersburg Theological Academy, (St Petersburg: Printing House of Jacob Trey, 1857). 458, IV р (in rus.).

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mission (1697–1698), led Leibniz to imagine that his grandiose plans could be realised in Russia. Leibniz took Russia to be a tabula rasa, a society ideally suited for building up from nothing and avoiding the errors of Europe. He wrote: ‘Russians could benefit from others’ mistakes and, with a proper system of scientific inquiry, serve as an example to illuminate the rest of Europe’. Leibniz viewed Tsar Peter as an instrument of Divine Providence serving toward the unification of European peoples and founding a universal culture that would combine the greatest achievements of East and West. Leibniz believed science would enable man to arrive at a single language, the mastery of which would lead to its unification and the unity of the churches. He hoped such a unification would take place under the aegis of the Russian Emperor, Peter the Great.9 Unfortunately, Leibniz’s aspirations were not to be fulfilled. The Russian Academy was a far cry from the philosopher’s high ideals. If he had dreamt of the creation of a system of holistic knowledge, harmoniously uniting the natural sciences and the humanities, then Peter was interested in practical applications of natural science useful for the state. The eminent Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky (1941–1911) wrote: ‘Having come to Western Europe [Peter] first ran after the workshop of its civilisation and had no interest in going any farther. In other matters he was a diffuse and disinterested spectator when shown the other sides of western European life.’

The Separation of Science and Theology It is worth noting that a university was included in Peter the Great’s plan for the Academy of Sciences. First among its faculties was to be that of Theology. But it was struck out personally by the Tsar and theology has ever since been excluded from academic, scientific and educational space and only studied in clerical educational institutions. For Peter, the Church was associated with Russia’s archaic past, from which he sought to distance its future. Thus, from his perspective, practical sciences, useful to the construction of a new state, and theology, oriented towards the preservation of tradition, must be separated into different ‘departments’. And the Church likewise considered preservation of the traditions of the Middle Ages to be the principal task of theology and not the discovery of something new. Thus theology in Russia never took on the character of a subject suitable for scientific investigation. The important Church historian and professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Alexei Lebedev (1845–1908) wrote: ‘I have always been of the opinion that theological science in our Russia has been nothing more than decorous. Among Catholics and Protestants there is such a thing as theological science, so to imitate them and avoid embarrassment, from them we have taken this or that. But we have no true sense for it, content with the fact that we, too, have science. Above all we demand that our theology make no fuss, that it not “stick out”, that it not “raise any hackles”, that it



9 Victor Henri, ‘The role of Leibniz in the creation of scientific schools in Russia’, Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk. 169 (1999), pp. 1329–1331 (in rus.).

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keep to the rules: that it better keep quiet. I know of no case in the history of our nation when someone granted value and praise to some or another success achieved in theological science.’ His student, Nikolai Glubokobsky (1865–1937), professor of the St Petersburg Theological Academy, wrote later: ‘All these judgements of our late teacher are likewise shared by me.’10 In such fashion Russian Orthodoxy, for all practical purposes, passed over the Modern period. Russian Orthodoxy was focused not on development, not on dialogue with a changing world, but rather on the transmission of medieval Byzantine tradition. Moreover, ‘Byzantium’ was understood not as a particular reality with a complex thousand-year history, but as an ideal (and in many respects mythological) image engendered first in ancient Russia and then finally formed in the church theology of the nineteenth century. In tandem and in isolation, science was developing according to the Western European model in the Imperial Academy of Sciences and in the universities. The question of the relationship of scientific and theological discourse in Russia was not considered in any serious sense. If such a question arose, it was usually limited to the level of superficial polemics in journalism and the public sphere. In a letter to the Russian Christian philosopher Pyotr Chaadayev (1794–1856), the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) remarked on the place the Church and clergy occupied in the Russian Empire: ‘As concerns the clergy, it is outside of society, it still wears the beard. Nowhere to be seen, not in our parlours, not in literature, not in the confines of polite society. It does not wish to be part of the public. It has behooved our sovereigns to keep it just as it was. Like eunuchs, it has a taste for power. And so they fear it’ (19 October 1836).11

The Revolutions of 1917 and the Situation Today The bourgeois revolution came in February 1917. In March 1917, Emperor Nicholas II, who according to the laws of the Russian Empire was ‘Supreme Protector and Custodian of Dogma’ and ‘Guardian of Orthodoxy’, issued his abdication of the throne without even mentioning the church. In August 1917, a local synod of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow restored the Patriarchate, putting an end to the Synodal Period. Patriarch Tikhon (Bellavin) (1865–1925) was elected.12 The Bolshevik Revolution took place in October 1917. In January 1918, the Soviet government issued a decree separating the Church from the state and the school system from the Church. The ‘Red Terror’

10 Nikolay Glubokovsky, ‘In memory of the late professor Alexei Petrovich Lebedev (Under the first impression of bereavement)’, in Lebedev A. P. To my scientific and literary autobiography and materials for characterizing unprincipled criticism: a collection of the memory of A. P. Lebedev, (St Petersburg: Publishing house of Oleg Abyshko, 2005), pp. 61–62 (in rus). 11 Alexander Pushkin, Complete works in 10 volumes. Vol. 10 (Moscow — Leningrad: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1951), p. 886 (in rus.). 12 ‘A letter on the occasion of accession to the patriarchal throne (dated December 18, 1917)’, Church Gazette, 1 (1918) (in rus.).

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began.13 The Church was again faced with the question of its very survival, again with no place for high theologizing or the resolution of difficult intellectual issues. Patriarch Tikhon passed away in 1925 and in 1927 Metropolitan Sergei (Stragorodsky) (1867–1944), as head of the Russian Church, issued a declaration ‘On the Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Existing Civil State’.14 In this ‘Declaration’ it was stated that ‘the joys and successes of the (godless) state power are our joys and successes, and its failings our failings’. Metropolitan Sergei’s collaborationist ‘Declaration’ was the cost of the Russian Orthodox Church’s legalisation in the Soviet Union. But this did not stop the Soviet regime’s punitive machinations: by 1941 approximately 350,000 Orthodox believers were persecuted for their faith and among them no fewer than 140,000 priests, the majority of whom were either shot or perished in camps or prisons.15 Most importantly, the Soviet atheist government wrested the right to control the personnel policy of the Church from Met. Sergius and the synod. As a result there was a ‘negative selection’ of clerics. The most educated and faithful were decimated, and the Church’s spiritual life was degraded to the fulfilment of treby — performance of the liturgy, prayers, weddings and other rites. By the beginning of the Second World War all but four bishops were imprisoned. In 1943, on the eve of The Tehran Conference of the ‘Big Three’ Allied leaders (the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom), Joseph Stalin summoned Mets. Sergey, Alexei (Simansky) and Nikolai (Yarushevich). The Allied forces would not initiate further invasion on The Western Front so long as Soviet Russia continued religious repression. Stalin discussed the possibility of a decorative restoration of the patriarchy with the three remaining hierarchs and within four days a council of bishops was held to unanimously select Met. Sergey as Patriarch. But, most importantly, the godless Soviet state created the Council on the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church to set up a rigid ‘vertical of power’ so as to define the internal structure, personnel policy and strategy of the Russian Church. If the restoration of the Patriarchate in 1917–1918 had been a symbol of the liberation of the church from the rigid ‘embrace’ of the power of the Tsar and the supervision of the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod, its second restoration in 1943 was another reversal, a new date for its enslavement. In the midst of the 1940s, the Church of Russia’s contemporary administrative system was developed in the throes of Stalinist tyranny. Thus, in 1943, a form of Church-State relations emerged in which the legal existence of the former depended on its inerrant obedience to all the recommendations of a godless power. Furthermore, all these recommendations were to be issued in its own

13 Vasily Vinogradov, Protopresbyter, About some of the most important moments of the last period of life and work of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon (1923–1925), (Munich, 1959), p. 15 (in rus.). 14 ‘Message from the deputy patriarchal locum tenens, Metropolitan of Nizhny Novgorod Sergius (Stragorodsky) and the Patriarchal Holy Synod temporarily attached to him (“Declaration” of Metropolitan Sergius)’, in Vladislav Tsypin, prot. History of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1917–1990: A textbook for Orthodox theological seminaries, (Moscow: Publishing house “Chronicle”, 1994) [websit cited were accessed in March 2021]. 15 Boris Pushkarev, Two Russia of the twentieth century. Overview of the history of 1917-199,. (Moscow: Sowing, 2008), p. 309 in rus.).

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name, with no reference to the power enjoining them. Thus a kind of Stockholm Syndrome developed within the Church’s consciousness. The Church hierarchy entered into a conscious compromise with a godless state that no longer had as its aim the former’s utter destruction, but its use in a debilitated condition to serve toward the ends of the latter’s anti-Christian aims. Under these conditions, under this departure from reality in which ‘scientific atheism’ was promulgated, the immersion into mediaeval theology transmuted into its own form of ‘internal emigration’. After Stalin’s death in 1953, a new wave of church repression began between 1958 and 1964. These persecutions were launched on the initiative of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev. In 1961, the XXnd Congress of the Communist Party adopted a new platform. The program envisaged that in the USSR the construction of communism would be completed by 1980. And communism would be constructed with the help of the ‘tools’ of science, natural science foremost. Religion was called a ‘capitalist remnant’, and the struggle against it declared one of the most important tasks of the Communist Party. It was presumed that 20 years hence the youth of that day will be living under a communism where there was no place for religion. Therefore much attention was paid to cultivating an atheist upbringing.16 Khruschev’s persecutions were not as bloodthirsty as Stalin’s. In the years of ‘militant atheism’, before the beginning of the Second World War, persecution was directed to the physical extermination of the most active believers. After Stalin’s death, the main emphasis was on the promotion of ‘scientific atheism’ and on the ‘re-education’ of believers, as well as setting them in an unattractive light in the eyes of the rest of society. The struggle against religion was carried out not only by the law enforcement system, but also by Party authorities, the management of enterprises, trade unions, the Communist Youth and civic organisations.17 This totality of persecution was to create for believers an atmosphere of social and cultural isolation in which they would feel second-class citizens. They would be outcasts, unworthy to enter into the prospects of the bright future that was to be enjoyed by others. Obviously a meaningful dialogue between theology and science under such conditions was absolutely impossible. The fall of the communist regime in 1991 marked the ‘Second Baptism of Rus’. New people began to come to the Church, most of them young and innocent of the ideological pressures of the Soviet state and atheist propaganda. But a significant part of the laity, and the vast majority of clergy, including teachers at institutions of theological education, were formed in the Soviet period. For them, the revival of the church is a return that means a ‘return to the Fathers’, which is in fact a return to the Middle Ages. Hence it entails an abandonment of modernity (a negation of the Darwinian theory of evolution, literal understanding of the Biblical narrative

16 Alexander Elsukov, ‘The young generation during the “Khrushchev anti-religious campaign”’, Church and time, 57 (2011), pp. 225–40 (in rus.). 17 Yuri Geraskin, ‘From the history of the Khrushchev attack on the Russian Orthodox Church’, New Historical Bulletin, 19 (2009), pp. 71–79 (in rus.).

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of the creation of the world in six days, and so forth). Such ideas are also appealing for many neophytes. Yet, at the same time this situation provides the opportunity for a new space of dialogue to emerge between modernity and traditional theology. I would say 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 different directions. Today they undergo virtually no interaction. But since Orthodox theology was positioned 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’. I have already spoken on this last year in Athens in my paper ‘The Orthodox tradition and the personal view of the Universe ‘from within’: A Russian Orthodox Perspective’.18

18 Kirill Kopeikin, Rev., ‘The Orthodox Tradition and a Personal View on the Universe ‘from Within’: A Russian Orthodox Perspective’, Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential, ed. by Vasilios N. Makrides and Gayle E. Woloschak, SOC, 1 (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 237–46.

Gheorghe Stratan

Orthodoxy and Future Science*

Introduction It is clear for all of us, theologians and/or scientists, that we live in a period of radical changes in all fields of human activity, mainly generated, sustained and led by science. This tendency will be maintained in the future and only a major catastrophe at the planetary level, natural or provoked by man, will stop it. Let’s hope that this will not happen1 and that ahead of us there are innumerous millennia of scientific development. If so, one of our possible and necessary tasks is to understand — according to the perspective of the relations between science and religion — the main challenges which we confront at present and which we will confront in the future. For this, we may use the research instrument of the history of science, as some situations of the past offer useful analogies with our present stage. Learning from the past, to understand the present and to foresee the future is our principle which we hope to apply also in this essay. Could some contradictions between science and religion of the past happen again today, or in the near (or not so near) future? According to this perspective, it is important to understand the actual relations between science and Orthodoxy and to see to what extent they are different from the relations between science and religion in general. To take a step in this direction, we appeal to a book published under the John Templeton Foundation program Science and Religion2 by nineteen Romanian authors, from which we had to select only the authors dealing specifically with the relations between Orthodoxy and science, without entering in theological or doctrinal disputes, for which the present author doesn’t have competence.



* The author is indebted to Professor William Shea for the observation concerning the early Copernican opinions of Galileo (Note 30) and to Father Christopher Knight and Dr Alexei Nesteruk for accepting the last moment modification in the text. 1 If we have ahead two or three decades, even the danger of devastating collision between an asteroid, or another celestial body, and our Earth could be avoided by an international cooperation applying the newest technology generated by Science. 2 Magda Stavinschi (Editor), Romanian Perspectives on Science and Theology, Curtea Veche Publishing, Bucharest, 2006 (in Romanian). Gheorghe Stratan • Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russian Federation Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Theological, Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Aspects of the Dialogue, ed. by Christopher C. Knight and Alexei V. Nesteruk, SOC, 2 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 173–186. © FHG10.1484/M.SOC-EB.5.122615

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Science — Today, and in the (Near) Future We cannot predict the future development of science; it finds always new ways of solving old problems by inventing methods which make the former obstacles obsolete. Science opens new fields of research. Science has of course its limits, but systematically pushes them and invents new problems. These features of science explain its capacity to surprise, based on the inexhaustible resources of the human mind and also on the extreme variety in the world. A special position in our contemporary society is occupied by so-called Big Science, which involves a huge amount of money and personnel, and plans its projects for decennia. Here, the character of the research allows a glimpse into future science. So, soon we will know more about the Higgs boson (journalistically called the God particle, a name which became very popular, but which is, of course, inadequate), about the properties of the ultra-dense and ultra-hot matter extant immediately after the moment of the Big Bang, with consequences for understanding correctly the evolution of the universe. The discovery of the accelerated expansion of the universe made in the last few decades led to the extension of astronomical research in order to understand the nature, properties and distribution of so-called dark matter. More recently, gravitational waves, predicted a century ago by Albert Einstein, were first detected and measured, in an epoch-making experiment. The search for the exoplanets revealed a multitude of planetary systems (well over 2000 until now, and increasing rapidly), some of them having the conditions required for the emergence of life.3 The estimated number of planetary systems in our galaxy is huge; it is not much inferior to the total number of stars in the Milky Way, numbering several hundred billion. In the context of the relations between science and religion, this research is very relevant for all participants to the SR dialogue. It seems that theology took many steps ahead of science in this field: we already have astrotheology and astrochristology and not yet scientific proofs of exobiology. Theology prepares itself for the major discovery of extraterrestrial (social, even religious) life, while science builds devices to detect the most elementary forms of it (microbes, viruses). We will not touch this subject here; the reader will find a comprehensive article of Ted Peters.4 But it is not only the hard sciences which are progressing. If the past century was the century of physics, a period which will continue for a while, it is now the turn of biology to make us marvel and to show its colossal impact on our life and society. Prolonging human life, correcting the individual genetic code to improve its quality, fighting against chronic diseases, creating new species of animals and plants or improving them to be used as food for the ever increasing number of inhabitants of Earth, etc., are already, or will be, sheer facts in a relatively short interval of time. If the great scientists of the past, like Kepler, Galileo and Newton could consider themselves



3 William J. Borucki, Kepler: A Brief Discussion of the Mission and Exoplanet Results, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 16, No. 1, March 2017. Now, (March 2020), the number of known planetary systems became more than 2600. 4 Ted Peters, Astrobiology and Astrochristology, Zygon, 51, no. 2 ( June, 2016 ) 480-96.

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elected by God to discover and explain ‘to the mortals’ aspects of God’s creation, what about the contemporary scientists, who prepare intervention in His favorite creation? Galileo wrote in a letter addressed to Belisario Vinta, the Secretary of the Grand Duke of Florence on January 30, 1610: ‘I infinitely thank God that He pleased to make me only the first observer of admirable things kept secret all the centuries’.5 No such statements came from contemporary scientists. This general trend of science and associated technology is generally known, but some of its aspects are less accessible and many of its social, economic and ethical effects are not predictable. There are advanced theories which sustain the existence of many (parallel) universes, an idea which can be as shocking today, as Giordano Bruno’s statement about the plurality of worlds was at the end of the sixteenth century. Should we take seriously such radical theories? To answer to this question, we appeal to two theoreticians, the first one a Nobel laureate for Physics, the second one a laureate of the Templeton Prize, namely Steven Weinberg6 and Freeman Dyson,7 respectively. Writing about theories, Dyson quotes and sustains Weinberg’s statement ‘… our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough’. If Weinberg wrote about the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang), Dyson’s article deals with the problem of its end. So, from these two works, we have the scientific variants of both Genesis and Apocalypse. It is interesting to note that Dyson’s study, communicated first in 1978, is based on an unusual approach, relevant to the subject of our considerations here. In the period of writing his article (and for a long time after that), both issues — the ever expanding universe (if its total mass is less than a certain critical mass) or a slowed-down expansion followed by a contraction ending with the Big Crunch — were equally acceptable then by scientists, as the total mass of the universe was not exactly known. Freeman Dyson’s choice for an ever-expanding universe was based then on a non-scientific reason: the refusal to be fried if the universe will contract8 far in the future. For Dyson, the idea of God destroying His own creation was simply unacceptable. In contrast with this terrifying perspective, Dyson’s article shows that life and civilization could survive indefinitely even if the universe is in permanent expansion. Now, several decades after this article was written, we know that this is the case,9 but then, Dyson’s choice10 contravened Jacques Monod’s warning against mixing knowledge and values.11 5 Galileo Galilei, Opere, Edizione Nazionale, Antonio Favaro, Ed., Firenze, Barbera, 1896-1908, vol. X, p. 280. 6 Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes, Basic, New York, 1977. 7 Freeman Dyson, Time without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe, Reviews of Modern Physics, 5, No. 3 (1979) pp. 1-25. 8 In the hypothesis of a contracting universe, the temperature will rise until returning to the initial stage of origin, making complex structures and processes impossible. All be “fried”. 9 More than that, the expansion is accelerated due to the dark matter! Recent experimental results in this field are under a hot debate, but the expansion is doubtless. 10 Maybe, this choice won him the Templeton Prize. Because of his pessimistic epilogue to The First Three Minutes, where he wrote about a senseless Universe, Weinberg had to content himself only with the Nobel Prize for Physics for the prediction of heavy bosons. 11 Jacques Monod, Le Hasard et la Necessité, Édition du Seuil, Paris 1970.

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Or, in our present conference the interplay of knowledge and values is supposed to have a benefic role for both its components: science, as a main source of knowledge, and religion, as a main source of values. The best place for their interaction (besides, of course, Athens) is ethics. Science builds also its own values and has its own ethics: studying, for example, how an ecological niche functions, it becomes clear how it could be preserved for the future generations. Religion offers other reasons with the same conclusion in this field: do not destroy God’s creation.12 For the sake of truth, we have to admit that the two kinds of ethics don’t always agree. As an example, when the universally respected Pope John Paul II took a position against contraceptives, the number of AIDS contaminations in Catholic Africa increased dramatically, a situation avoidable by studying scientifically the impact of an attitude issued from strictly religious considerations. Before that, the Vatican went against Professor Daniele Petrucci’s advanced research on human artificial reproduction (in vitro fertilization). Under both Vatican and public pressure, (the second provoked mainly by the first) the Italian scientist (and profound Catholic believer) stopped his research. Not long afterwards, his method, with some improvements, became common, first across the ocean, then almost everywhere, making many infertile couples happy. So, it seems that in this case, science was nearer than religion to fulfilling the scriptural requirement to live and multiply. By providing these examples, the author doesn’t maintain that science is always right and religion (or religious authorities) wrong; after all, in spite of having two different targets: nature and God, both of them have the same actor: humankind. The issues presented above are relatively recent, but there are some contemporary followings of old aspects concerning the relations between science and religion, dating from centuries ago, like the Galileo case, which, as we shall see, remained in actuality. Indeed, a quite natural question is that of whether such a case could arise again in the future. As is well-known, at the Pope’s request, a Pontifical Commission, guided by the very well-known theologian and scholar Paul Poupard, studied for more than a decade the problem and communicated its conclusions in 1992. Shortly, following Cardinal Poupard ‘it was not a revision of the process, but an effort to understand what happened’. The judges of Galileo were not capable of dissociating the faith from a scientific (secular) theory and wrongly opposed Copernicus’ model which was professed by Galileo. As Poupard remarked ‘Galileo had to suffer a lot’ for that.13 Opinions on this subject are divided: we can find scholars who consider that the Catholic Church did all that was needed to clarify the case, and others, who said that many things remained unclarified and need further developments. Significant in this respect is the difficulty of choosing between critical (presumably, anticlerical) and apologetical (presumably, favorable to the clergy) opinions. The 12 It seems that God preserved for Himself the prerogative to destroy at least a part of His own Creation, like in the case of dinosaurs. In other situations, a totally destructing effect of a supernova explosion has as a consequence the diffusion of matter in the neighboring interstellar space, one of preconditions for the development of complex chemical combinations in the Galaxy. 13 Paul Poupard, Report on Galileo Case, 31 October 1992, in Papal Addresses, (Vatican City, 2003), pp. 344-48.

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situation becomes more complicated, if the critical opinions come from Vatican circles. So, Father George Coyne, the former director of the Vatican Observatory, had important critical statements on the Poupard Commission activity and conclusions, and even — somehow attenuated — reservations about the discourse of Pope John Paul II about Galileo.14 Coyne’s considerations embrace all the aspects of the Poupard Commission activity, from the professions of its members (no important branches of specialists were represented, like the historians of science, to mention only one), to the long periods of inactivity (no meetings) and the redaction of the report itself (which was not agreed upon by all its members). Reading Coyne’s article,15 the impression is that a great opportunity was lost: a step backwards was made by the report in comparison with the generous intention announced by Pope John Paul II in his discourse16 in 1979. Coyne is not alone in these considerations; others, including the well-known historian of science Michael Segre17 also reach similar conclusions. Doubt about finally solving the Galileo case starts from the very beginning of his article, which has an interrogative title and calls for the continuation of the work initiated, but not finished by the Poupard Commission. We can see that, of course, nobody doubts now the position of the Earth in the solar system, nor its motion. The main debate revolves around the relations between the Catholic Church and Galileo, then and now.18 Quite different is the situation in another field of science and religion relations, concerning Darwin’s more recent — almost 160 years old — theory of evolution. For the early reception of this theory, and for subsequent developments, we guide the reader to the book by John Hedley Brooke19 which presents a detailed description of the events generated by the publication of Origin of Species from 1859 until recently. Compared with the Galileo case, the religious reaction to Darwinism was quite mild, in spite of the importance of the religious dogma implicated — the act of Creation itself. Of course, there were some more recent developments, which couldn’t be presented in Brooke’s book. Step by step, the Catholic Church seemed to accept the theory of evolution, although not for ever, and not totally, as it was clear from the article printed by Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the Archbishop of Vienna in the New York Times of July 7, 2005. In this article, Cardinal Schoenborn considers the

14 George Coyne, The most recent attempt to dispel the Galileo’s Myth (University of Notre Dame Press, Chicago, Ill), 2005. 15 Before being published as a book, (see the Note 14) Coyne’s considerations circulated a lot of time on the Internet, with the express requirement to not be quoted. 16 John Paul II, Discourse at Pontifical Academy of Sciences on commemoration of Albert Einstein birth, November 10, 1979. 17 Michael Segre, Light on the Galileo Case? ISIS, 88, (1997, September), pp. 484-504. 18 Catholic theologians were shocked by Galileo’s requirement to reinterpret the Bible statements which seemed to contradict the scientific achievements. They were equally upset by his request to not interfere in (natural) Philosophy, if not specialists. After all, the Book of Nature, wrote Galileo, was written in Mathematical language… 19 John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion. Some Historical Perspectives, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991).

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neo-Darwinian evolution theory20 ‘not compatible with Catholic doctrine’; instead, Intelligent Design is, in his opinion, a suitable option. A prompt reaction came from George Coyne, then Director of the Vatican Observatory.21 He quotes Pope John Paul II who declared in a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences22 that: ‘New knowledge has led us to the conclusion that the theory of evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis’. Coyne found five errors in Schoenborns statements, and corrected them as follows: 1. The scientific theory of evolution, as all scientific theories, is completely neutral with respect to religious thinking. 2. The message of Pope John Paul II, dismissed by the cardinal as ‘rather vague and unimportant’ is a fundamental church teaching, which significantly advances the evolution debate. 3. Neo-Darwinian evolution is not, in the words of the cardinal, ‘an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection’. 4. The apparent directionality seen by science in the evolutionary process does not require a designer. 5. Intelligent Design is not science despite the cardinal’s statement that ‘neo-Darwinism and the multi-verse hypothesis in cosmology [were] invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science.’ Further on, Coyne presents the arguments for these five items. We will let readers read for themselves his very concise and convincing article (only five very accessible pages). It seems that we could consider Father Coyne a contemporary victim of high ranked prelates of the Catholic Church, adversaries of the Darwinian theory of evolution. Soon after this dispute with Cardinal Schoenborn,23 Pope Benedict XVI sacked Coyne from the Vatican Observatory.24 Of course, today the Catholic Church doesn’t have the means (nor the desire) to punish a ‘dissident’ more severely, as it did centuries ago with Bruno or Galileo. All these cases are generally known, and their mention serves here only as a preamble for the question of whether or not we can find similar problems in the

20 The “‘classical”’ Darwinian theory (1859) is a phenomenological (macroscopic) one, describing the evolution of species, while the neo-Darwinian theory furnishes the explanation of the variability of species at the microscopic (DNA) level, where the random processes dominate. The last theory includes also the newest developments of Mathematics, Quantum Physics and Biochemistry. This trend to explain the macroscopic behavior by microscopic phenomena is common for several fields of Science, from Thermodynamics of 19th century, to the Atomic and Nuclear Physics of nowadays. As a result, we have a new understanding of the world and a real progress in technology. 21 George V. Coyne, Science Does Not Need God, or Does It? A Catholic Scientist Looks at Evolution. Talk delivered at Palm Beach Atlantic University, Florida, Jan. 31, 2006. See (http://chem.tufts.edu./ answersinscience/coyne-evolution.htm). 22 John Paul II Address to the Plenary Session (of Pontifical Academy of Sciences) on the Subject ‘The Origins and Early Evolution of Life, 22 October1996 in Papal Addresses, Pontifical Academiae Scientiarum Scripta Varia, 100, Vatican, 2003, p. 372. 23 Cardinal Schoenborn was a student of pope Ratzinger. 24 Simon Caldwell, Pope sacks astronomer over the evolution debate Daily Mail, August 23, 2006.

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field of science and religion in the Orthodox world of the past, or present. From the beginning, it must be noted that some Western authors minimize or neglect the Orthodox thinkers, and the invoked reason is that the main developments in science (from Copernicus, to Einstein, and so on) took place in Western, and not in Eastern Europe. Consequently, the main theological reactions to the advances of science came from Catholic (mostly) and Protestant denominations, and not from the Orthodox one. There are several reasons to amend that opinion, which, in Stanley Jaki’s books takes the form of a sui generis reductionism..25 One of his theses is the limitation of the origin of science to western Christianity, when it is known that in the Byzantine Empire both science and religion flourished. The first calculations of solar eclipses26 and the first proposal to reform the Julian calendar came from Constantinople a considerable period of time (decades, or even centuries) before similar events took place in Western Europe.27 Without neglecting the importance of the religious factor, to explain why science, as we know it, appeared in the West, we have to search also in the social, historical and even in the political events of that period.28 If speaking of Byzantium, its scientific, as well as its religious flourishing diminished step by step with the advancement of Ottomans. Science totally ceased there after the fall of Constantinople.

Is There a Specific Orthodox Approach to the Problem of Science and Religion? This is a legitimate question, and one of possible answers could be found in the article of Teresa Obolevitch,29 who uses the Galileo case, as reflected on by Russian Orthodox thinkers, to assess the relations between religion and science seen in their largest context. The author reaches some conclusions important for our considerations here: 1. The teaching of Copernicus and Galileo gained early recognition from students and educated people (e.g. fifty-two Ukrainians attended Galileo’s courses in Padua.)30 Important academics and opinion leaders adopted Galileo’s attitude on

25 Stanley Jaki, The Origin of Science and Science of its Origin, Gateway Publishing, 1979. 26 Even concourses were organized, to determine who will deliver the most precise prediction. 27 Theodore Metochites (1270-1332), Introduction to Astronomy, Emmanuel A. Paschas and Christos Simelides (Eds.) World Scientific, Singapore, 2017. 28 Only one example: when Galileo named the Jovian satellites Medicean, after the Medici family of Florence Grand Duke, other regnant families asked their astronomers to find something similar, to give to the new stars their names. 29 Teresa Obolevich, Galileo in the Russian Orthodox Context: History, Philosophy, Theology, and Science, Zygon, vol. 50. No.4 (December 2015) 788. 30 This number is quite impressive, but, in appreciating the argument, we have to take into account that, in spite of his early Copernican opinions, Galileo delivered Aristotelian lectures; his first Copernican writings are dated long after he went in Florence in 1610. His letter to Duchess Christina of Lorraine in the favor of Copernican system was written in 1615 and circulated only in manuscript until being printed first by Elsevir after Galileo’s trial. Concerning the lectures on the new 1604 star, the problem is how many students had access to them.

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relations between science and theology, while the Orthodox Church essentially didn’t interfere in matters pertaining to science. 2. Teresa Obolevitch quotes the Russian Slavophile I. Kirievsky who wrote during the mid-nineteenth century about the Orthodox Church; ‘the relationship between reason and faith is completely different from their relationship in the Latin and Protestant confessions. The difference is this: In the [Orthodox] Church, Divine Revelation and human thought are not confused. The boundaries between the Divine and the human are transgressed neither by science nor by Church teaching… The boundaries stand firm …’ Of course, Obolevich distances herself from the second statement as being too idealised and discusses the real situation, starting nevertheless from the fact that Russian Orthodox Church doesn’t consider the results of science as a danger for faith, and no confrontation like that in in the West could arise in this field. The confrontation didn’t take place even after the Darwinian evolutionist theory and the discussion of the subject ‘was quite moderate’31 writes Obolevevich, quoting Nesteruk.32 As we know, the Orthodox Church doesn’t have a supranational pyramidal hierarchy (like the Catholic Church); there are instead national autonomous churches, which can adopt different attitudes in their relations with Science in general, or with some of its local developments. In this context, as we shall see, individual opinions are quite varied. Taking into account this fact, it becomes interesting to understand the relations between science and orthodoxy in other regions than Russia (or, in the past, the Russian Empire). Limiting ourselves to Romanian Orthodoxy, we will use as a general framework an article by Mircea Flonta33 in which the respected Romanian philosopher enumerates the principles of the dialogue between Science and Religion. By religion, Flonta understands more than ‘a compass to find our way in life’ or the ‘human relation with the central order of the world’ — conceptions frequently present in the community of contemporary scientists. Here, Flonta is closer to 6he German scientist, Max Planck,34 who divides the phases of belief into before and after the crucial moment of truth, a kind of ‘credo quia absurdum’ (I believe even it is absurd) of Tertullian, real belief starting only after passing Tertullian’s test.35 Following Flonta, the discussion between science and religion becomes interesting only if we consider real belief (as, e.g. defined by Planck) as the partner of the dialogue with science. This dialogue, writes Flonta, must take into account the fact that between scientific and religious knowledge there are profound differences, which could play a negative role in the correct understanding of each other. 31 See Note 29, p. 804. 32 Alexei Nesteruk, Logos i kosmos. Bogoslovie, nauka i pravislavnoe predanie. [Logos and Cosmos. Theology, Science and Orthodox Tradition].Moscow: BB1, 2006. 33 Mircea Flonta, The Scientific Knowledge and Religion between Conflict and Cohabitation without Tension, see Note 2, pp. 489-508. 34 Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949, 151-87. 35 Max Planck didn’t disclose if he passed the test.

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There is also another reason why the dialogue between science and religion needs a special approach: if religion strives to maintain the tradition (in the framework of the Scripture and the writings of Fathers of the Church), science challenges its own achievements and proposes evolving images of the world. So, they could be in opposition — the dynamic factor in this process being science, while religion reacts to the changes produced by the scientific developments in the picture of natural world and will accept them only reluctantly (as in in the Galileo case). Of course, this is a somewhat simplified image, but it is sustained by many aspects of the historical perspective. Orthodoxy, as it was presented by Obolevitch, seems to avoid this potential conflict. Not always however, as we will see further on.

Some Opinions of Romanian Orthodox Theologians on Science and Religion Our analysis will deal mainly with the study entitled Science Ideologization and its Impact on the Relation between Science and Religion by Father Gheorghe Istodor.36 The title seems biased, but the author deals also with religious and political-religious ideologization. After Istodor, and historically speaking, there are two kind of science: science with God, and ‘Science’ without God (put between quotation marks to suggest its inadequacy). This last type of science is the result of materialist philosophical influences, which started with the Enlightenment, although its roots were already to be found in the Renaissance. Its results, mentions Father Istodor, are the naturalisation of science and the real depletion of ethical values, bit by bit, until atheism becomes dominant. Science (i.e. ‘Science’ in Father Istodor’s terms) tends to the hegemony of both the human spirit and human social affairs, taking from this point of view the place held in the past by religion. Such a development is of considerable concern to our theologian author. Where is the position of scientists in this description? The author of the present work doesn’t know any recent study devoted to this subject in the Orthodox realm, but many authors of other denominations (e.g. Coyne37) mention the fact that being a believer or not doesn’t play any role in doing science. Indeed, the professional scientist may pray to God for the success of her/his approach if s/he is a believer, but after that, starting the work, s/he will use the current professional paradigm and the experimental instruments like a non-believer does. They could discuss the significance of their research and eventually disagree on what their findings show, but as professionals, they will use a common language, the language of science. Are the scientists guilty of all the aspects criticized in Istodor’s article (the ‘ideologization’ of science, turning its back to God — secularization, etc.)? Can science be responsible for its use for purposes other than obtaining knowledge for all humankind? What is

36 Gheorghe Istodor, Science Ideologization and its Impact on the Relation between Science and Religion, Note 2, 87-113. 37 Note 21.

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Arak’s knife from the Louvre Museum, an art object more than five millennia old? Is it an instrument for cutting bread, or a weapon for cutting someone’s throat to eat his bread? Of course, as Father Istodor writes, science is far from being perfect, but — and this is not mentioned by him — it is perfectible. On the other hand, science is neutral toward religious disputes, even in what concerns the Darwinian theory of evolution, with, or without the prefix ‘neo’. One of the targets of Father Gheorghe Istodor (and this author is not alone in such a choice) is the contemporary theory of evolution, which adds to Darwin’s understanding the newest conquests of genetics, and other scientific achievements. Agreeing with the idea of evolution in general, Father Istodor rejects some (essential!) details. For him, as a theologian and believer, it is difficult to accept the randomness of biological variations which come from the probabilistic processes at the molecular level, described by quantum mechanics. The reason for that rejection is not scientific, but of course comes from theology, as this randomness seems to contradict God’s power to influence evolution in the direction that He wants. So, Man, the main creature of God in the theological picture, would cease to be the result of His intention, but the result of the ‘game of love and chance’, and this is judged unacceptable. On the other hand, no scientific knowledge could support Father Istodor’s theological viewpoint: no intervention by God’s finger is visible, or even possible at the quantum level. This contradiction could be explained by what is called the law of great numbers. All the mutations that could take place happen during the replication of DNA, with different probabilities given by the quantum mechanical laws, some of them leading to viable cells, and organisms, some not. If the variations are random, the selection is not, and only so we have the man and other living creatures as a result of evolution. Man is far from being its most perfect result: there are many organisms more adapted to the environment and having a history much older than man’s. The history of science shows us that Father Istodor’s position isn’t something new: in the decades following the publication of On the Origin of Species, evolution was accepted more easily, but not natural selection.38 We know that Father Gheorghe Istodor is not alone in rejecting the randomness in nature; a century ago, even Albert Einstein, one of fathers of quantum mechanics, went against the probabilistic interpretation of the new science,39 which nevertheless soon became the standard one and contributed essentially to the progress of physics in the last century. We know that the Newtonian deterministic picture, successful in describing the motion of planets, fails at the microscopic level and cannot explain the phenomena. It was Einstein’s tragedy, and, unfortunately, not his only one. Using the attitude towards the theory of Darwin and its modern developments as an indicator, we can see that Father Istodor’s ideas are close to Cardinal Schoenborn’s ones, except for Intelligent Design, which was rejected by the Romanian author.40 In

38 Note 17, p. 238. 39 Einstein had a theological argument: ‘God doesn’t play dice.’ 40 Cardinal Schoenborn made a half step back after his New York Times interview, partially renouncing to his radical statements; the author of present chapter doesn’t know about similar reconsideration of Father Istodor’s position.

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Father Istodor’s article, the author perceives three shortcomings of the Darwinian image of the living universe: ‘the works of nature are accidental and irrational’, ‘the universe is fundamentally cruel towards weak’ beings and it is ‘blind and indifferent towards humanity’. If we understand ‘accidental’ as random, then yes, nature’s works are accidental; they are deterministic only in the process of selection.41 We cannot consider nature as rational or “‘irrational”’, since these characteristics can be used only for humans. Cruelty is not applicable to nature; Father Istodor complains about the weak beings which disappear in selection and forgets the mass extinctions of species during dramatic episodes of natural history. Cruelty? No, failed adaptation to radical changes of the environment42 or to catastrophic events. Coming back to Father Istodor’s difficulties with neo-Darwinism, we must underline that evolution didn’t always lead to ‘perfect’ beings, but to the best adapted ones for temporary reigning conditions. Speaking about humans, man’s body has many ‘imperfections’, true weak points, similar to faulty engineering. Man’s physical shortcomings manifest themselves mainly in old age. This is a proof that natural processes selected the human genotype for a short life, enough only to live and reproduce, and die. When social development and medicine allowed a longer life, the shortcomings of man’s body became evident.43 So, in spite of the progress manifested in the last centuries, we are far from the lifespan of the patriarchs in the Bible. It is very interesting to understand why some (in our case, Romanian) theologians reject different scientific achievements or contemporary developments of science. While we discuss here this issue, (neo-) Darwinian evolutionists are progressing in the experimental evolution field. Experiments are done with short-lived beings (viruses, microbes, some insects) in their natural, or ‘arranged’ conditions, and the aim is to predict and use their evolution44 Previous research on random — most probable — variation performed with influenza viruses allowed science to develop the efficient seasonal flu vaccine, a great medical success of recent decades.45 But, when the complexity of organisms chosen for the experiments increases, the prediction becomes much more difficult, or even impossible. The main points of Father Istodor’s article, like the criticism of the Renaissance and Enlightenment ideas, as well as of nineteenth-century science or (neo)-Darwinism

41 Some variations are neutral towards the selection; they could be important later on in the process of speciation, or remain so ‘forever’. One example of ‘neutral’ variation is the blue color of human eyes, which appeared relatively not so early in the development of our species. Recent studies show that a new relation exists between the genotype and the environment; some variations being provoked by the man made chemical or radioactive substances dispersed in nature. 42 In Ecology, we live now in the fifth (or sixth) mass extinction period and the first one generated with the participation of man; the rest of them took place in the remote geological periods. 43 Olshansky, S. Jay, Cames, Bruce A, Butler, Robert N, If humans were build to last, Scientific American Special Edition, tom 13, No. 2.(2003). 44 David Reznick and Joseph Travis, Is evolution predictable? Science, 16 February 2018, vol. 259, pp. 738-39. 45 We can suppose that even the people rejecting the random component of evolution vaccinate themselves against the flu … The vaccines contain more than a stem of the future virus, due to the fact that the most probable virus of the next flu epidemics is not exactly known.

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could be found, with some nuances, in the articles published in Stavinschi’s book46 or in other sources by Romanian theologians, who are often quoted by Father Istodor in his contribution. This allows — with some approximations — a consideration of a larger circle of authors in the field of science and theology, and, without generalising, an idea about the attitude of Romanian Orthodox theologians towards the evolution of contemporary science and the history of it. So, Istodor’s criticism of the past stages of science, leading to ‘naturalism’ and atheism, are sustained also by Adrian Lemeni.47 Pushing his analysis further, Lemeni states that ‘The mathematization of the truth expresses the break between traditional scientific thought and the modern version. Through the algebrization of Geometry, Galileo and Descartes imposed on truth a mathematical nature.’ Here, we have to mention first that there are marked differences in this sense between the two seventeenth century thinkers. Galileo was an admirer of geometry, and considered it as being the true language of God.48 (He was not alone: Johannes Kepler, the discoverer of laws of planetary motions, used geometrical — and musical — models to describe the universe. Both his models were of Pythagorean origin.). The actual theory of gravitation, due to Einstein, which offers the possibility of describing the properties of the universe, could be properly called dynamical geometry (or geometro-dynamics). On the other hand, from Galileo and Kepler to Newton and Einstein, the development of science was possible only by the introduction of algebra, which made transparent the relations extant between different magnitudes characterizing the surrounding world, including its geometrical structure (global and local curvature, distances in space-time, etc.). In fact, algebra enriches geometry and offers practical possibilities of obtaining concrete results in exploring the universe, including the calculation of complex trajectories for the spatial vehicles exploring the solar system. Criticizing this trend means contesting the main conquests of contemporary science, a fact which puts the respective theologians in a very uneasy situation. Moreover, the author of this paper presumes that the aforementioned theologians don’t even suspect the implications of their statements. Definitely, algebra isn’t a vehicle of departing of our thinking from geometry, nor of science from God. The attack against algebra represents a false target of their criticism starting from an evident misunderstanding of the real situation in this field. It is interesting that Father Istodor,49 following Nesteruk,50 considers that the unity between theology and science could be obtained if and when scientific activity will turn towards God, becoming a true Eucharistic cosmic activity (a ‘cosmic liturgy’,

46 See Note 2. 47 Adrian Lemeni, The scientific knowledge and the religious knowledge, in Note 2, pp. 155-79. For the critique of Enlightenment, see Chap. II, p. 159. 48 During Galileo’s time, European Algebra was in its labour pains; some of his younger friends and followers were implied in research in this field. Galileo knew their works and encouraged them, but himself didn’t work in Algebra. 49 See Gheorghe Istodor in Note 36. 50 Alexei Nesteruk, Light from the East. Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Minneapolis, Fortress Press. p. 2.

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in Nesteruk’s words). This idea has its early origin in the Mediaeval image of the two Books: the Sacred Book (the Bible) and the Book of Nature, both coming from God. Both theologians and philosophers of nature (early scientists) were approaching God by following their specific methods of prayer and/or research. More than that, in seventeenth-century England, a kind of sacred alliance between theologians and philosophers of nature led to the founding of modern science.51 Could (and/or need) we now revive this period, or even an earlier one, in which science and religion are described as situated nearer to each other than they are today? We don’t know the definitive answer, but have no illusions that this is in principle possible. Presenting in an ideal light a Golden Age of science and religion, in contrast with more recent periods, like the nineteenth century or the present time, is a trend which gives rise to problems. We know that general historical research has rejected the existence of a happy period in the history of mankind, which remains in the realm of legend: there is no archaeological evidence for it, nor is there any other proof of its existence. So, by analogy, a new merging of science and religion seems illusory; we cannot reverse time, nor know exactly where to go in the past.52 The critique of the ideologization of Science and of the departure of science from religion, more or less present in the book edited by Stavinschi,53 is followed by the more appealing and constructive proposals of their dialogue, advanced by many contributors to this book. One of them, Iustinian Sovrea,54 goes further, proposing a common project of science and religion, considered by its author ‘a frontal approach of this problem’. In his intention, a common SR project is even more important than a simple correction of the situation extant in Romania before 1989, which is necessary, of course, but not sufficient. Sovrea’s project starts with the premises of such a demarche, comprising the following necessary items: 1. Analysis of the actual relations between religion and science, only partially done by the authors published in the analyzed book.55 2. Analysis of possible interactions between science and religion. Iustinian Sovrea encourages both participants in (future) dialogue to identify the problems of each of them, which necessitates a practitioner of one field to appeal to the other field, if the respective problem cannot in principle be solved in the framework of its own domain. One example is the question of the origin of the universe; until now, astrophysics made spectacular progress in understanding the process of

51 Dana Jalobeanu, Sacred Alliance: Natural Philosophy, Theology and the founding of modern Science, in Note 2, pp. 117-54. 52 This doesn’t mean that we negate the existence of cooperation between scientists and theologians in the past: it is enough to mention the Jesuits (leaded by Father Christophor Clavius) who confirmed Galileo’s observations with the telescope and the fact that many natural philosophers of the past were monks. In the same time, this doesn’t exclude some adversities, like that of Galileo and Christopher Scheiner, having not only scientific and theological reasons, but also Galileo’s polemical (and far from friendly) attacks against the Ingolstadt Jesuit astronomer. 53 See Note 2. 54 Iustinian Sovrea, Religion and Science. A Draft for a Common Project, in Note 2, pp. 205-34. 55 See Note 2.

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its evolution close to the ‘zero’ moment, but it became clear that science, as we understand it now, cannot answer the query about the meaning of all that (see above Weinberg’s statement about the senseless universe). 3. Avoidance of a unilateral, polarized and/or ideologized image of the world. The language of communication between science and religion can be philosophy, as having the experience of negotiating between the world and the cultural modernity. A new cosmology is necessary, to include the individual person as an active part of the world writes Sovrea.56 The existence of a hermeneutical component in each of them,57 is a contributing factor for SR dialogue. Maybe it will seem paradoxical, but Sovrea’s proposal has a practical precedent (the mixing of knowledge with values) in Dyson’s article presented in the beginning of our contribution. And, of course, taking into account the young age of Sovrea, Dyson was not aware of his article.

Instead of Conclusions The lectures in the book edited by Stavinschi58 reveal a multitude of attitudes towards the relations between science and religion, which is difficult to characterize in a few pages. The ten theologians59 who contributed to Stavinschi’s book have — in various degrees — articulated objections to some of the developments of old or contemporary science, and in particular have pointed to the materialist conception of science and its separation from God. There are no other negative attitudes from the authors towards religion.60 Not all the articles deal specifically with Orthodoxy; they approach religion in general. All the contributions are open to the SR dialogue. Orthodoxy is only a part of Christianity — and not the largest one. And Christianity is only one, among the many religions of the world. What about them? How do they see the relation between (their) religion and (universal) science? We certainly can learn from the comparison with other opinions.

56 Note 47, p. 219. 57 Ibid, p. 222. 58 Note 2. 59 We consider here theologians the authors who graduated from a Faculty of Theology, even if they actually have other employment. 60 It must be mentioned that even in the Communist period, no scientist wrote antireligious articles or books. All such printed materials were translated in the fifties or early sixties from Russian. Later on, this literature was produced in a special publishing house by quasi-anonymous authors.