After publishing my blog series of reflections on Christopher Knight’s book, Science and the Christian Faith: A Guide for the Perplexed, I decided to publish this blog series which I originally composed two years ago. This continues looking at Orthodoxy’s relationship to science specifically focusing on Neoplatonic essentialism which the Church Fathers basically accepted as true since all great thinkers in their day assumed it to be true and the challenge to that idea presented by the modern scientific idea of evolution which rejects essentialism.
Our Church has a central tenet that God became incarnate, so we have to take seriously what the incarnation means. The Word became flesh (John 1:14) – we now, because of science, have a much deeper understanding of what the material world, including the flesh into which God became incarnate, is. Science is helping us understand the depths of the material world in a way that the Patristic writers could not imagine. Science can give us insights into the hypostatic union that the Fathers could not conceive. Jesus didn’t just take on some vague concept, “the flesh”. He took on blood vessels, cells, organs, DNA, atoms, molecules, protein, tissue, etc. Or, is it the case that when Orthodoxy talks about the Word became flesh, ‘flesh’ always is only a spiritual concept and has nothing to do with the material creation? The incarnation is not only a spiritual event, but a material one as well. The Patristic writers made clear that the material creation is important in salvation (especially, for example the 7th Ecumenical Council and the entire debate on icons). Though St Gregory of Nyssa thought the world was not material at all because all things exist as an idea in God (Knight, Science and the Christian Faith: A Guide for the Perplexed, Kindle Location 1780-1791).
As St John of Damascus writes in the midst of the icon debate God becomes matter for our salvation:
I do not venerate matter, I venerate the fashioner of matter, who became matter for my sake and accepted to dwell in matter and through matter worked my salvation, and I will not cease from reverencing matter, through which my salvation was worked. … Do not abuse matter; for it is not dishonorable, this is the view of the Manichees. The only thing that is dishonorable is something that does not have its origin from God.” (Treatise 1.16)
I reverence therefore matter and I hold in respect and venerate through which my salvation has come about, I reverence it not as God, but as filled with divine energy and grace.’
God works out our salvation in and through matter! It is only those who reject the incarnation who devalue the material world. Matter was brought into existence by God to share the divine life with the material world. Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Archdiocese says in his 2020 Sunday of Orthodoxy message: “… those struggling against the veneration of the icons were confining God in the heavens instead of recognizing the sanctification of creation ushered in by the incarnation of Christ.” The sanctification of creation! Science enables us to examine and study exactly what it is that God sanctifies. Think for a moment about the rainbow which God says is a sign of the covenant between God and us (Genesis 9:13-16). Both God and we can see the same rainbow. It has a spiritual value but it is a physical thing. We can understand its spiritual, covenantal value. We also can study it scientifically and learn how God works in creation. The material world is essential to God’s own revelation.
The flesh wasn’t subsumed into divinity – it didn’t disappear in the incarnation. The flesh is created by God and is essential for our salvation. We are not trying to escape the flesh or become disembodied souls. Rather we believe God became human so we humans might become God. God became flesh in order to raise our material bodies to heaven. Science is shedding new light on what it is to be human, to have a physical body. None of the major religions are as materialist as is Christianity – which celebrates the incarnation – God united to material creation in a hypostatic union. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God (1 John 4:2).
It is true, however, that as the centuries passed, Orthodox writers became less and less interested in our empirical world and more interested in the spiritual life and the kingdom of heaven. Elder Aimilianos for example commenting on St Maximos the Confessor and marriage says:
“In general, the Fathers were concerned about the Kingdom of heaven, and in a certain manner theologized based on their personal, spiritual revelations and eschatological experiences. That is, they saw the world as a figure, a prelude, a passageway to the kingdom of God. This is why they always endeavored to raise the human person from earth to heaven.
The Fathers did not focus their theology on matters pertaining to this world. This is why they did not produce a theology of marriage. They certainly taught marriage, and taught things about marriage, but always with an emphasis on raising the human mind from marriage itself to what marriage represents and symbolizes. St Paul does the same thing when he says that ‘marriage is a great mystery concerning Christ and the Church’ (Eph 5:32).” (Elder Aimilianos, THE MYSTICAL MARRIAGE: Spiritual Life According to St Maximos the Confessor, p 120)
While the Fathers did not focus their theology on things pertaining to this world, this doesn’t mean the things of this world are of no value. Christ became incarnate in this world, he took on flesh. If escaping this world and the flesh was the real divine plan, why the incarnation at all? The Fathers were interested in the spiritual life, which does not mean that the physical, empirical world does not matter to God. And, it is interesting that Elder Aimilianos can state unequivocally that the Fathers did not produce a theology of marriage. For many in Orthodoxy today are certain that the Church has an exact theology of marriage which applies strictly to one man and one woman. The Church needs to open the discussion on marriage and on science to clarify its understanding and these discussions may also help the Church in dealing with contemporary issues such as homosexuality.
Fraternized 