Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church

Gayle Woloschak, Daniel Buxhoeveden, Daniel Buxhoeveden, Gayle Woloschak

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317059042
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion & Wissenschaft

Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church explores core theological and philosophical notions and contentious topics such as evolution from the vantage point of science, Orthodox theology, and the writings of popular recent Orthodox critics as well as supporters. Examining what science is and why Eastern Orthodox Christians should be concerned about the topic, including a look at well known 20th century figures that are considered holy elders or saints in the Orthodox Church and their relationship and thoughts about science, contributors analyse the historical contingencies that contribute to the relationship of the Orthodox Church and science both in the past and present. Part II includes critiques of science and considers its limitations and strengths in light of Orthodox understandings of the experience of God and the so called miraculous, together with analysis of two Orthodox figures of the 20th century that were highly critical of science, it's foundations and metaphysical assumptions. Part III looks at selected topics in science and how they relate to Orthodox theology, including evolution, brain evolution and consciousness, beginning of life science, nanotechnology, stem cell research and others. Drawing together leading Orthodox scientists, theologians, and historians confronting some of the critical issues and uses of modern science, this book will be useful for students, academics and clergy who want to develop a greater understanding of how to relate Orthodoxy to science.

Part IScience and Orthodox Christianity: Compatibility and Balance

Chapter 1 Living with Science: Orthodox Elders and Saints of the Twentieth Century

Daniel Buxhoeveden

DOI: 10.4324/9781315607764-1

This chapter focuses on the Holy elders and saints of the Eastern Christian Church because they bear witness to the Spirit and actions of God in the world. It is through them that the reality of God acting in and through humanity is made visible. The Orthodox emphasis on the experience of God can be a complementary approach to theology and the study of nature, a quality of Orthodoxy that affects its relationship with science, as expressed by Professor Vladimir Katasonov in an essay:

In the beginning, we noted that for the Orthodox Church, the relation of science and religion never displayed the same kind of antagonism often seen in the West. Traditionally, Orthodox theology, in general, depends less on science than do Western denominations. It is, in a sense, more otherworldly; yet, paradoxically, this often allows it to be less hostile to developments in this world, including science. (Katasonov 2007: 1)

It may be safe to argue that the majority of grace-filled elders and saints in Orthodox history were not trained in formal theology but became bearers of the Light and models for emulation which made them experts in regards to the experience of God. On the other hand, we do not typically go to them to ask questions about histology, geology or physiology unless they have training in any of these areas. The training and knowledge which they do have concerns acquiring the Holy Spirit and the virtues of humility and love. Generally, the emphasis is not about what we would deem to be scientific issues. However, some elders like Porphyrios (below) not only took a very active interest in science, technology and nature, but even berated Christians for their disinterest. The importance of the saints in the Orthodox Church is foundational, as emphasized in this quote by Metropolitan Vlachos:

The spirituality of the Orthodox Church, however, does not lead to abstract religious life; nor is it the fruits of man’s inner strength. Spirituality is not an abstract religious life because the Church is the Body of Christ. It is not simply a religion which believes in a God, theoretically.

… Moreover, spirituality is not a manifestation of the energies of the soul as reason is, or the feelings are etc. This is important to state because many people tend to label a person spiritual who cultivates his reasoning abilities: a scientist, an artist, an actor, a poet etc. This interpretation is not accepted by the Orthodox Church. Certainly we are not against scientists, poets etc. but we cannot call them spiritual people in the strict orthodox sense of the word.

The Saints are bearers and manifestations of Orthodox spirituality. They live in God and consecutively they speak about Him. In this sense, Orthodox spirituality is not abstracted but is embodied in the personhood of the Saints. (Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Ierotheos 2002: 3)

The aim of this chapter is to see how elders who were not trained as professional theologians interacted with science and how it affected them in daily life. The intent is not to look for systematic arguments, but to discern attitudes more than specifics. The focus is on the twentieth century since those living in that century will have been exposed to the kind of modern science that we are familiar with today.

The individuals mentioned below represent a variety of backgrounds and, while not exhaustive by any means, the list includes some of the most widely recognized figures of the last century. It is remarkable that the twentieth century, for all its materialism and anti-Christian and anti-theistic sentiment, produced a number of wonderful grace-bearing people.

Elder Sophrony: The Experience of God as Knowledge

Elder Sophrony is an interface between the Orthodox world and the Western one, the desert-dweller and the world of the Parisian artist, academic theology and monastic theology. Sophrony Sakarov was one of the first students of the Orthodox theological Institute in Paris, whose teachers included Bishop Veniamin, Sergei Bulgakov, Symeon Frank and George Florovsky (Sakharov 2002). Sophrony came into close personal contact with and was influenced by Bulgakov and Berdeyeav (N. Sakharov 2002). From his own testimony however, the greatest gift was being able to learn at the foot of a modern saint, Saint Silouan the Athonite, from whom he learned the theology of the desert. Sophrony quickly understood that the academy was not where he was going to find his quest for the personal God, what he referred often to as the revelation of the ‘I AM.” Silouan, directly experienced the Uncreated Light and was therefore able to speak about it firsthand, which is what Sophrony was seeking in a teacher and something which he was to experience himself later in his life.

Though born in Russia, he spent the majority of his life in Western Europe and was able to establish a monastic community in Essex, England, which is still there today. Sophrony is a link between the modern world and the Orthodox experience of God. His works are especially beautiful and insightful and he describes the “desert” life in a way that few others have been able to achieve.

Nicholas Sakharov, a cousin of Sophrony, undertook one of the first and more complete looks at the theology of Elder Sophrony, and he describes the theology of Sophrony as something shaped by his experiences of God and his life in the world.

The synthetic character of his theology is controlled by an exigency to create a bridge between differing worlds: the modern western world, the Russian intellectual elite in Paris, with its intense intellectual search, and Athonite monasticism, with its ancient patristic tradition and concern for the existential (practical–ascetic) relevance of theology. (Sakharov 2002: 37)

There are at several themes that Elder Sophrony Sakharov reiterates throughout his writings. One is the insistence that true knowledge of God is revealed though the heart and not the head. Nicholas Sakharov notes that some Russians (Kirievsky, Bulgakov, Florensky) stressed a philosophy of “the knowing heart” in contrast to the “self-aware thinking mind in Hegel.” True knowledge is not attained by creating an objective detachment, but through a subjective participation or communion (N. Sakharov 2002). Elder Sophrony makes it plain that knowledge of God is existential; it is lived and not arrived at from the outside and at the same time it is a different kind of knowing than is possible in science. Sophrony stresses that it occurs in a manner outside all other avenues, as exemplified in the quote below:

The experience of the great ascetics … passed before them but in conditions radically dissimilar to those in which scientific activity operates. The human spirit is led by the Spirit of Christ to knowledge of God, existential knowledge, so that the very word “knowledge” denotes, not abstract intellectual assimilation, not rational understanding, but entry into divine being, communion in being. (Sophrony 1991: 217)

Having studied psychology, he is also insistent that this is not a psychological state. The experience of God is something differentiated from the intellect, the sciences and psychology. It is something wholly other. It is transcendent and because it is revealed we cannot attain it by human reasoning or by science (Sophrony 1988).

The Orthodox Christian does not rely on philosophy or science for knowledge of God. Each of these can tell us things about God by sense, knowledge and reason, but knowledge of God is attained by direct personal relationship. The question is how does one approach the empirical scientist? On what basis does an outsider agree that there is something valid here? If there is no way to verify existential knowledge of God then there can be objective criteria in which to claim it is authentic. Nikolas Sakharov, cousin of the Elder, alludes directly to this issue:

Empirical/scientific knowledge can be enclosed in the form of thoughts, objective ideas, and concepts, but these are insufficient for the perception of divine reality. Here we come to the crucial question: How and in what form then can non-conceptual and subjective knowledge of God be communicated to the human being? (N. Sakharov 2002: 48)

The answer to this question is to be found in the introduction of a new concept; theology as a state of being. Sakharov explains that the term “state” must not be confused with its common use which is very psychological or related to feelings, and Fr Sophrony provides a definition of what he means by the word state: “State is the fact of being, which prompts our thought, operating after its own fashion, to understand truth. Such understanding is not achieved by demonstrative reasoning but through an intuitive penetration or an establishment of fact as knowledge of Divine being, descending on us from God” (N. Sakharov 2002: 49).

Sakharov argues that Fr Sophrony was a “theological realist in regards to the ability to communicate the perception of divine reality in the form of personal states” (N. Sakharov 2002: 49). This is the way in which we communicate divine reality in conjunction with the tradition of the Church and it is what the apostles did. It is a descriptive recollection of facts of being passed down from the apostles to the theologians that followed.

Sakharov (2002: 41) summarizes the theological principles of Fr Sophrony as follows:

Theology is not based on principles of formal logic but on divine revelation. The basis of the knowledge of God is a personal and existential act of communion with the divine reality. The words “personal and existential act” provide us with a key to the roots of Fr. Sophrony’s concept of knowledge.

Sakharov seeks to demonstrate, however, that the existential appeal found in Sophrony has its roots in Church tradition, the theologians of the church and Scripture. Sophrony’s claim is not just his alone, it is what Sakharov defines as an “organic synthesis of scripture, patristic tradition – which incorporate the common experience of the saints – and personal experience” (Sakharov 2002: 66). Thus it is both intensely personal and objective at the same time. It is personal because there is the experience of the person receiving the revelation, and because the reality of God is made known through another person. The objective knowledge of this relationship is that it is caused by something real outside the person and that it can and has been experienced many times. It should also be noted that science is, of course, never totally objective either, for it is a human endeavor clouded and interpreted by human judgment, values and attitudes. Whereas this aspect of science can be pushed too far resulting in the notion of science as a social construct, the other extreme of naïve realism is also untenable.

In Sophrony, knowledge of God is objective truth that is made known subjectively, “[n]onetheless, he does claim the objectivity of the divine reality on a subjective basis” (N. Sakharov 2002: 64). The fact that the experience of God is repeated often through history provides it with a sort of reproducibility, different in kind than that of science, but nonetheless one that stands on its own.

The divine nature of this personal vision is startlingly authentic, though words may fail to convey it. Yet the knowledge it offers has an objective sui generis character which we repeatedly observe down the centuries in the lives of many individuals largely identical in their experience and self-determining. “Where two or three are gathered together” (Matt. 18:20) – there we have objectivity. (Sophrony 1977: 44–45)

Another use of this objective reality taken from subjective experience is that “the personal revelation makes the general revelation of the New Testament spiritually familiar” (Sophrony 1977: 44).

Sophrony does not consider all religious experiences to be the same, and his firsthand experience of the practice of yoga, wherein he attained certain mystical states, enables him to make direct comparisons with that of the Uncreated light. He is emphatic that there is no comparison because yoga does not derive from the Uncreated light but from the reflection of the divine given to us as creatures, and is in effect a form of self-divinization. Elder Paisios who understood the differences between the light of illusion and that of the Uncreated, also made this distinction.

In summary, for Sophrony science is part of the knowledge of the world, attained by the use of our intellectual prowess. True, life-giving knowledge of God (in contrast to the study of God) is made known in a whole other manner, which is direct experience in conformity with the aesthetical principles of a purification of the heart. The challenge is how to approach a secularized world with the kind of experience of God described in Orthodox theology. It is a challenge that requires disengaging science as an empirical method of inquiry from its current tie to the metaphysics of materialism that greatly narrows its scope of inquiry and negates its ability to be objective in regard to phenomena it deems impossible. In this regard, projects and centers such as those found at some dozen universities, including the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) project at Princeton University, may free up science from its current rigidity that shapes the modern perception of what constitutes reality.

Fr Arseny

Many members of the Orthodox Church know the life of Fr Arseny through several books describing his life and his spiritual children. What is striking about the community that surrounded Fr Arseny was the large number of highly educated people and scientists that constituted this group. Among his spiritual children that are mentioned, there are scientists and academics and at least five medical doctors. There is a highly published geologist and at least one psychiatrist (see below). One account refers to a research biologist. In no instance are any negative connotations attached to the scientific endeavors of the members of the group. One member of the group raises the concern of rationalism rather than science:

Our community was unique in a way. From 1920 to 1930 it consisted mostly of cultured people, people with higher education, or young people who were studying at the university or were members of Christian groups. This of course was felt by all the members since it created an atmosphere of intellectuality in our relations, in ways we understood and interpreted the church services and Fr Arseny’s teachings.

Sometimes this was a positive influence, but it also happened that being too intellectual got in the way of knowing God, of believing in him, loving others; it got in the way of a spiritual understanding of the world or of the human soul.

…Some people lived their faith not with their soul and heart, but by rationally weighting it against the bulk of knowledge that they had acquired. (Bouteneff 2002: 203)

The issue of being too rationalistic and intellectual about Christianity is not a problem of the academy alone, for anyone is capable of this, and it is worth noting that many polemics against religion were and continue to be promoted by those in the humanities.

Reading the exchanges between the individuals in the group, one would almost forget that this occurred in a society that was intentionally using science as a means of propagating Marxist atheism. Among other things, the Soviet system is an example of the political abuse of scientific knowledge, where fields like evolution and quantum physics were subjected to distortions imposed by Marxist ideology,...