Orthodoxy and Science

Science, Creation and the Seeking of Truth in Orthodox Christian Theology :

Science, Creation and the Seeking of Truth in Orthodox Christian Theology Archpriest Gregory Hallam Manchester Metropolitan University Thursday 24 th February 2011

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“… a needless clash of two Titans of similar breed; fundamentalism in religion and triumphalism in science.” The Phoney War

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“In Catholic Europe in the Middle Ages the scholastic movement sought to develop the idea that reason alone could establish certain basic fundamentals of Christianity.” The Scholastics St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) a Catholic scholastic theologian

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“The deist god was only in the most minimal sense a Creator in the sense that at creation he had “lit the blue touch paper,” and retired to a ‘safe distance’ allowing creation to develop in accordance with the laws with which he had imbued it .” Deism Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809) – a prominent deist

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“Soon the intellectual establishment embraced Positivism, the Great Idea that the sciences themselves were a sufficient and exclusively reliable description of the totality of human experience.” . Positivism – The Great Idea Auguste Compte, (1798 – 1857) the father of Positivism

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“God created the Cosmos out of His own love, freely, so as to nurture something “not-Himself” into a dynamic and evolving relationship of communion with Himself .” Creation Ultra Deep Field Galactic View

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“Although man was a special case in that only he, both male and female of course, was made in the image and likeness of God, there is no reason to suppose that humans, animated by the breath of God, were exempt from these natural processes of life development … the supposed conflict between faith in a Creator and evolutionary processes is both unnecessary and harmful to the pursuit of truth .” Coded for Life Creation without Creationism

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“Any attempt to construe the reality of God from principles of design in the Cosmos, intelligent or otherwise, although superficially plausible, falls into the error of thinking that religion exists to explain this order in Creation. This is the fatal God-of-the-gaps defence of God-the-Explainer, forever retreating behind the advancing frontline of science, always a feeble competitor, never a strong associate. From a true monotheistic perspective, God does not explain Creation, Creation explains God.” No God of the Gaps God is not the Great Explainer

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“The Jews did not know God because they philosophised about Him but rather because they had entered into a relationship with the One who had made a friend with Abraham and the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. This transcendent Being they came to know as above and beyond infinity, space, time, created reality itself, was so sacred that even his Name could not be spoken.” The Uncreated One “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14)

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“There is a marked progression and refinement in understanding for example between Genesis, which only considers creation from the starting point of pre-formed matter (1:2) and 2 Maccabees 7:28 which follows the received faith to its logical conclusion, namely that the Cosmos was made out of nothing ( ex nihilo ) or rather, more properly, out of that which had no being.” Being from Non-Being The Big Bang 13,800,000,000 years ago

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“‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ Science is not equipped to answer “why” questions such as this, whereas the unfathomable existential issues are “food and drink” to the philosopher and the theologian. It arises from the hubris of an all-inclusive positivism for atheist scientists to claim scientifically that no such theological answers can exist in principle. That is to step beyond the boundary of empirical science itself into belief, in this case the belief we call ‘unbelief’”. Being from Non-Being Bubbling Quantum Foam or Colliding Branes? Whatever these are, they are not ‘nothing’.

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“The Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church teach that God manifests himself in creation without being absorbed by it or fused with it, which of course would be pantheism. By way of contrast, the Orthodox teaching that incorporates the reality of the Divine Presence is called panentheism and this received its classic formulation in the distinction made between the essence and energies of God in the works of St Gregory Palamas. The energies of God are sometimes referred to as his immanence in creation.” Theophanies God is beyond creation yet nowhere absent from it.

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“When the Word became flesh in the Incarnation of Christ and later when the Holy Spirit was given to the Church at Pentecost, the Apostles learned through their own personal experience that this Word and the Spirit have their own distinct hypostatic identities. That which had been hinted at in the Old Covenant was fully revealed in the New Covenant and Church Tradition was later to make sense of this in monotheistic terms by the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.” The Trinity The Trinity (or Hospitality of Abraham) by Andre Rublev (ca 1410 - 1420)

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“We must say rather that the lineaments and processes of the natural order are in and of themselves signatures of the divine. These signatures cannot be shaped by a calligraphy of intelligent design without invoking the capricious intervention of a episodically active god in an otherwise chaotic and frequently fragile and dangerous evolutionary process. Such extrinsic and invasive actions of a god from beyond the Cosmos, the classic form of supernaturalism, neuter both science and theology. The divine signatures are rather to be found in the beauty, elegance and fittingness of the natural operations themselves which are both emergent in their complexity and convergent in their function.” No Big Foot God Against Supernaturalism

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“The Father is in relation to the Son or Word and the Spirit as the timeless Source of the Trinity. …. I shall proceed in my argument from the Logos in Wisdom (from the Father alone but in the Spirit) to the Spirit in Wisdom (from the Father alone but in the Son). The Father … timelessly imparts Wisdom both to the Son and the Spirit in their coordinated actions as One God in Creation .” Holy Wisdom

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“St John the Theologian in the prologue to his gospel taught that it was the Logos or the Word of God that was active in both the creation of the Cosmos and in the Incarnation. St. John deftly achieved two goals in the use of this Logos Christology. Firstly he showed the universality of the Incarnation by using a term which was familiar to Jews and pre-Christian Greeks, the Logos. The Jewish diaspora in Alexandria (Philo) had already united the Hebraic concept of the Word of God (dabar) with the Hellenistic Logos, the divine seed inherent in all things. Secondly, by using a single term, the Logos, St John ensured that Christ would be received, as is His due, as the Lord of all creation.” The Logos

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“St Maximus explored further this idea of the logoi in all things created as manifestations of the creative Word, the Logos imparting both the inner essence and the ultimate fulfilment to one and all. In this account the Incarnation was characterised not as an abrupt intrusion or invasion of the Logos into the created order from which it was originally absent but rather the personal and particular development and refinement of an existing and universal creative presence of the Word, now united to human flesh and nature in the person of Christ.” The Logoi in Creation St. Maximos the Confessor (580 – 662)

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“The Holy Spirit also continues to work in Creation so that in the Wisdom of God the Cosmos is transfigured and, in the case of humans who are in the divine image and likeness, deified.” The Life Giving Spirit Holy Pentecost

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“If we look for a physical expression in the Cosmos of the logoi, well documented by science, we might cite the principle of emergent complexity. By means of a few simple rules of engagement, simple systems and building blocks of matter and energy seem to follow a line of higher and more complex organisational function and integration of which life and consciousness are perhaps the most extraordinary and beautiful examples. At a very simple level one can see this in Conway’s cellular automata, his “Game of Life” whereby occupied and unoccupied cells develop, split and move across a grid of squares in lifelike sequences of simple motion and reproduction.” The Game of Life A Simulation of the Logoi in Action