Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization

Conclusion

Conclusion By 2009, “the year of Darwin and Galileo,” 1,631 years had passed since Basil of Caesarea, a founding father of Orthodoxy, composed his Homilies on the Hexaemeron , in which he spelled out the relations between the sciences and Eastern Christianity. Since Basil’s day, the sciences—once the speculative occupation of a tiny minority of scholars and philosophers—have become (along with technology ) a defining characteristic of civilization and the major concern of the richest countries. Has too much changed even to make meaningful generalizations about the history of science and Eastern Orthodoxy? I think not. Present-day Orthodoxy claims to be the heir of the Greek fathers. It bases itself on their exegetical texts, which are still studied in schools and faculties of theology—not just as historical documents but also for inspiration and doctrine. This commitment, however, does not necessarily reduce the value of secular knowledge. Since antiquity, many Orthodox scholars have appreciated the sciences for providing rational explanations of the world and for offering insights into questions of faith. How can rationality and revelation be reconciled? To what extent can reason explain the mysteries of the universe? What scientific importance should be given to the texts of the fathers? For some contemporary Orthodox scholars, the Big Bang cosmogony demonstrates the accuracy of the fathers’ texts, because of its similarity to the fathers’ conception of the birth ex nihilo of space, time, and matter. Since Origen, the third-century theologian, Eastern Christianity has taken an interest in science. The idea that prevailed—though not without opposition —was that the main concern of believers should be the purification of their souls in order to glorify the marvel of Creation. This Creation, however, should be compatible with the image of the world described by the philosophers. Two factors facilitated the adoption of this position: the Greek language and institutional continuity. Eastern Christianity spoke and wrote in Greek, the language 194 Science and Eastern Orthodoxy of the philosophers and mathematicians, and was an integral part of the Eastern Roman Empire, which inherited the schools of antiquity. Thus, although interest in science declined sharply in the first Christian centuries, science education was never ignored, as happened to Western Christianity in the early Middle Ages. Even if in some periods schools declined or closed, overall the secular Byzantine power structure maintained an educational system that included science. Although secular leaders kept science teaching alive, the church often played a supporting role. The great ecclesiastical debates during the Byzantine period constitute landmarks for the relations between Orthodoxy and science. Five centuries after Basil and Gregory of Nyssa reconciled Christianity with the science of the ancient Greeks and saved the prestige of secular learning, the debate over icons again posed the question of the necessity of such learning. The closing of the university during this period proved ephemeral, and Orthodox scholars increasingly saw themselves as the inheritors of ancient Greek science. These developments led to the revival of secular learning during the ninth century, the period of “Byzantine humanism.” The Hesychasts of the fourteenth century, seeking the holy light of revelation through prayer and bodily exercise, once more devalued secular learning, dismissing it as ephemeral and of little help in understanding the Creation. But once again science survived, even thrived. During and just after the debate over Hesychasm, science flourished more than ever in Byzantium. In the long run, Hesychast ideas exerted a much greater influence on Slavic Orthodoxy that on Greek Orthodoxy. After the fall of Byzantium to the Ottomans in 1453, the most important landmark in the history of Eastern Christianity, the Christian patriarch of Constantinople , came under the control of a Muslim power, while the Russian Orthodox Church started down its own independent path. The Greek church’s involvement in science increased, however, because the millet system instituted by the Ottoman Empire gave the patriarch control over the education of Christians. During the five centuries of Ottoman domination, the problem of secular knowledge arose whenever a change was in view, especially during the period of “Orthodox humanism” at the beginning seventeenth century and during the Greek Enlightenment in the mid-eighteenth century. In both instances, the Orthodox Church was divided between conservatives and the partisans of reform. In the first case, the reformers supported scientific teaching in the curriculum of the schools, following the ideas of humanism, which promoted secular learning. In the second, the progressives promoted the introduction of the new European science associated with the “Scientific Revolution” in...