The Universe in the Image of Imago Dei

The Dialogue between Theology and Science as a Hermeneutics of the Human Condition

Alexei V. Nesteruk

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781666711233
  9781666711240
• eBook ISBN:
  9781666711257
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Cosmology, anthropology, and Christology are deeply interrelated. This implies that one cannot talk about the structure of the world without human presence in it, as well as it is impossible to produce any reasonable understanding of humanity without positioning it in the universe. In the same fashion, in order to comprehend where the human capacity of predicating the universe comes from, one needs to appeal to humanity's Divine Image, that is, to its archetype in the incarnate Christ. Whereas Christians traditionally believe that the human phenomenon is unique as created in the Divine Image, such scientific disciplines as evolutionary biology, palaeoanthropology, the sciences of artificial intelligence, psychology, and others, challenge the vision of humanity as a unique formation thus challenging the doctrine of Imago Dei. All these disciplines place humans in a mediocre position in the world accompanied by the feeling of anxiety, insecurity, and non-attunement to the universe. Theology needs to respond to these challenges by incorporating into its scope the data from the sciences in order to neutralize such anxieties. The resulting dialogue of theology with science provides a hermeneutics of the human condition with no objective to change the latter. Then the sense of the universe is disclosed from within the Divine Image reflecting the predicaments of the human created condition.

Part 1

Humanity as a Central Theme of the Dialogue between Theology and Science

1

The dialogue between theology and science

Its Sense and Philosophical Foundations

“Christianity is not a philosophical school for speculating about abstract concepts, but is essentially a communion with the living God. . . . The question between theology and philosophy has never arisen in the East. . . . This is why there is no philosophy more or less Christian. . . . Christian theology is able to accommodate itself very easily to any a scientific theory of the universe.”

—Vladimir Lossky

“Theology’s relationship to philosophy—that is, to philosophy’s interpretation of the world—constitutes that basis for Christianity’s dialogue with the natural sciences.”

—Wolfhart Pannenberg

Why the relation between the terms in the dialogue of theology with science cannot be symmetric?

There are two points of view with respect to relations between theology and philosophy, and hence between theology and science that are reflected in the above quotations. Both belong to Christian theologians of the twentieth century. One is Orthodox, another one is Lutheran. The first one assumes that theology “can accommodate” any scientific synthesis of the universe with no recourse to philosophy. The second one claims that it is philosophy that is the mediator between theology and science. Yet, with all respect to the view of Vladimir Lossky, the question remains on how to carry out what he calls “accommodation” of scientific truth to theology? What is the method? If Lossky implies that theology can do this itself without appeal to any wider system of thought, then he also implies that theology is a meta-discourse which oversees all spheres of human knowledge and existence. If one accepts such a stance on theology there arises a task of elucidating philosophy and the sciences theologically. Can one speak of theology of philosophy, or theology of science? Eidetically, this way of thought is possible if one disregards that theologians exist in specific and concrete physical conditions that need to be taken into account. Since these conditions lie in the foundation of the very possibility of theology, their intrinsic presence in every theological formula point towards the fact that the very possibility of theology has a basis disclosed by the sciences and scientific philosophy. This implies that the method of mediation between theology, philosophy and the sciences cannot be theological per se. It needs some input from the sciences, but their mediation is carried out by philosophy playing a role of a method of such a mediation. This is the reason why it seems timely to attempt to clarify the method of mediation between Orthodox theology and the sciences by developing some philosophical insights.

Indeed, modern discussions on mediation between Christian theology and science imply a form of a “dialogue” between them, positioning both theology and science as symmetric terms in such a mediation. This is typical practically for all recent versions of the dialogue between science and Christian theology, when science and theology are compared and related from a sort of external to both of them epistemological point of view. This approach dominates nearly all discussions tackled from within different Christian denominations.22 Regardless whether this “dialogue” evolves into attempts of reconciliation of theology and science, or, on the contrary, insists on separation of theology and science, it is tacitly assumed that there is a common and universal ground of such a mediation. The assumption that theology and science can be brought to a “common denominator” that allows one to make a comparison and establish relation between them is not clearly justified. In this sense the dialogue is carried out in the conditions of ignoring the long-standing philosophical discussion on faith and reason.

The uncritical implication of a “common denominator” assumption can lead either to serious conflicts between theology and science, or attempts of their heroic reconciliation without a clear indication of their differences. Here is an example of such a difference on a theological side when Christ declares “I am the Way; I am the Truth; and I am the Life” (John 14:6), introducing for his contemporaries a purely phenomenal definition of life that reappears constantly in the Scriptures. Here Christ runs against a contemporary definition of life originating in biology and medicine, reduced to the properties of compositions of molecules and their physical interaction. It seems at first glance, that Christ’s teaching represents a strange “ignorance” that could not be reconciled with representations of life in the present age dominated by scientific ideas about the underlying substances and their implications in biological and medical technologies. Christ speaks of Life where no biological degradation happens, where cities and states do not disappear, where, contrary to the logic of decay and corruption in the material world, those who followed Christ and wanted to save their lives will lose it, but whoever loses their life for him will save it (Luke 9:24). Christ speaks about Life which is the source of its own phenomenality, which is difficult to be aware of, but which, ultimately makes possible all other phenomena of the living experience of men, including that of science. The words of Christ, being theological per se, and the words of science use different languages implying different existential connotations. Theology and science both originate in one and the same humanity, but speak differently of that essence of existence which humanity experiences in its life. The words of Christ are turned to man from the perspective of that through Whom all was made. The words of science are human words about that which has been made by the Word-Logos, including man himself in its fleshly form. Christianity concentrates on the relation of life with the living, making man a focus point of the meeting between God and its creation, whereas science is concentrated on the explication of living in rubrics of the already created. Can then any straightforward comparison of the words of theology and the words of the sciences be established? What is the nature of the difference in the articulation of the sense of existence in theology and science if, according to the above-mentioned theological definition the very fact of the dialogue between theology and science is the modus, a property of life from Life as that irreducible to anything and self-revealing beginning of everything23, named, because of Christ’s declaration, by God. The difference is that Life asserted by Christ is not that something that can be presented at a distance from human life, as something outside itself. Saying formally, life of men cannot be asserted in the phenomenality of objects (how this is done in biology and medicine), for their life itself is the tacit condition for things to be presented as objects. Molecules and other biological formations constituting bodies of the living beings are presented by the sciences as outer objects that make life possible in its embodied form; all of them become possible as articulated images of concrete physical entities and biological life-forms because their articulation is already going on from within life of Life that as such escapes a representation in the phenomenality of objects. The difference in phenomenality which becomes obviously seen when one compares Christ’s definition of life and those ones in the sciences has a philosophical nature and can only be detected from within a philosophical sensibility, the lack of which can lead either to a conflict between theology and science or to attempts of their naïve reconciliation. This observation informs us of the fact that if the mediation between theology and science does not contain any rigorous introspection upon the sense and epistemological nature of theological and scientific propositions, this mediation is doomed for an endless reshuffling of the terms of the “dialogue” with no clearly anticipated result. Saying emphatically, the “dialogue” has to become philosophical in order to formulate the difference between theology and science on existential grounds. Such a demarcation does not necessarily entail the impossibility of the “dialogue.” On the contrary, the “dialogue” receives its concreteness and purpose if it is distinctly seen what is that which has to be mediated.

The lack of a philosophical clarity in the sense of the “dialogue” leads to no visible progress in the discussions on science and religion for the last decades: scientists continue their research as if the “dialogue” between science and theology did not exist at all, whereas theologians sometimes defend their convictions in a narrowly historical and linguistic fashion, being forced into such a “dialogue” by an atheistic stance of their opponents. For theologians such a defensive position is unsatisfactory, for they rightly claim that the sense and justification of science, its contingent facticity, originates in the special position of humanity in creation, concisely described in terms of the Image of God (Imago Dei), that is, human life, within which humanity scientifically explores the world, and that which originates in Life proclaimed by Christ. In such a case the mediation between science and theology can be treated as a theological appropriation of science implying not so much a “dialogue” between equally weighted opposites, but an asymmetric coexistence of theology and science treated both as phenomena pertaining to the human condition. One can say that such an asymmetry among the terms of the “dialogue” resembles not an attempt of reconciliation of science and theology, but a more articulate and precise demarcation between two types of experience of living. In other words, the “dialogue” transforms into a detailed description of the difficulties of conducting of such a “dialogue.” This conclusion attests to the fact that the lack of philosophical clarity in the sense of the “dialogue” compromises the whole objective of the dialogue, making it obscure and doubting the status of the dialogue as an academically credible enterprise.

Philosophy must act as a...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1: Humanity as a Central Theme of the Dialogue between Theology and Science
• Part 2: The Universe in the Image of Imago Dei or Humanity as Hypostasis of the Universe
• Conclusion: The Transfiguration of the Universe through the Deified Knowledge or the Universe in the Image of Imago Dei
• Appendix 1: Glossary of philosophical terms
• Appendix 2: Glossary of basic terms and ideas from physical cosmology
• Bibliography