2. Patristic Theology and Natural Science: Elements of History

Introduction – The Problem in Its Historical Setting – The Apologists

and Greek Religious Philosophy – Science and Philosophy as Cooperating

in Truth – Faith as a Condition for Knowledge – The Interpretation of Nature – The Laws of Nature – The Transfiguration of Nature – From Uniformity in Nature to the Logos of God: St. Athanasius – St. Maximus the Confessor

on the logoi of Creation – Detachment from Nature and the Love of Nature – The Latin Church and the Natural Sciences – St. Augustine of Hippo and the Natural Sciences – Science as the Handmaiden of Theology in St. Augustine

Seminal Reasons and Natural Law in St. Augustine – The Differences

between the Greek and Latin Treatment of Nature and Science

Two general opinions have prevailed as to the role of the church – and Christian thought in general – regarding secular knowledge at the beginning of the Christian era. One of them, still popular now, is that the church proclaimed the authority of Scripture over all aspects of human experience, rejecting freedom of investigation and any judgment on the nature of things that was in conflict with the letter of Scripture. This view, carried to its extreme, led some authors in the nineteenth cen­tury to claim that the church had been a stumbling block for the intellectual devel­opment of Europe for more than a thousand years.²⁴ This is a widespread view among laypeople today and probably still enjoys the sympathy of some academics. The opposite opinion has the opposite ideological purpose – that is, it seeks to promote a historical value of Christianity as the only social force able to release pagan science from its view of a divinized nature. This opinion made possible the development of natural science, which led in the end to that state of knowledge and technology we enjoy today.²⁵ The rise of Christianity, according to the latter writers, was a necessary condition for modern science to come into existence.

It has been argued that both approaches give a simplified view of the complicated, dynamic interaction between science and theology in the past and that therefore a more detailed analysis of their relationship must be undertaken.²⁶ The historical dimensions of the problem of interaction of science and theology are, of course, extremely wide and embrace several subproblems. Since Christianity did not enter a vacuum, it encountered different aspects of the surrounding culture. Science, as an existing social and cultural reality, was already an important part of the Hellenistic tradition. Thus Christianity had to confront both the existing religious traditions and the contemporary secular culture, which included philosophy and its special modes, such as mathematics, physics, music, and so forth, which we now call the sciences.

On the one hand, then, Christian thought had to explain the function of Christianity with respect to the different aspects of contemporary culture; on the other hand, aspects of contemporary culture, such as the liberal arts, philosophy, and the natural sciences, had be understood and explained with respect to Christianity as a faith.²⁷

This chapter outlines the views of some of the church fathers on science and its relevance to theology. The first sections address the Greek Fathers, and the second half discusses the special contribution that St. Augustine the Hippo, a Latin Father, made to the formation of the church’s attitude toward science, a contribution that gave a unique flavor to the development of science in Western Christendom.

Between 180 and 450, the Roman Empire entered a period of general decline.²⁸ As a result, Greek science declined as well. Despite the fact that the Fathers of the church and some lay individuals were involved in assessing nature and the methods for its investigation, few people were engaged in active research and the renewal of scientific component of classical culture associated with Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. This resulted in a shift of the culture of knowledge from creativity to commentary as well as a shift from the use of original writings to the use of handbooks and compendia. In discussing the science of the Patristic period, the question inevitably arises: was there then, in fact, anything to which we would give the name science?

Certainly many of the ingredients of what we now regard as science were present, including a developed language for describing nature, methods for exploring it, factual and theoretical claims emerging from such explorations, and criteria for judging the truth or validity of the claims thus made. It is clear, moreover, that the resulting knowledge (in astronomy, meteorology, optics, and medicine, for example) was for all practical purposes identical to what is now taken to be genuine science.

The Fathers of the church, however, did not admire the sciences, not because they thought that scientific inquiry threatened theology nor because they were ignorant of the Sciences, but because they appreciated the special nature of science and its lim­ited ability to talk about the nature of things. An example of this attitude is provided by a passage from St. Gregory of Nazianzus (called “The Theologian”) in which he explains his own view of the sciences: “For, granted that you understand orbits and periods, and… all the other things which make you so proud of your wonderful knowledge; you have not arrived at comprehension of the realities themselves, but only at an observation of some movement, which, when confirmed by longer practice, and drawing the observations of many individuals into one generalization, and thence deducing a law, has acquired the name of Science”.²⁹

The Patristic approach to nature differed from the modern approach in signifi­cant ways. For the Fathers, knowledge of nature was an integral part of the larger philosophical enterprise, and religion was a legitimate participant in the investiga­tion and formulation of truths about the natural world far more frequently than it is today.³⁰

The motivation for pursuing science in the ancient world and the institutions through which that pursuit took place differed significantly from those in place today. The government support that drives big science now would have been inconceivable during the Patristic period. Indeed, the pursuit of knowledge of nature as such was not generally encouraged in ancient society, with the exception, perhaps, of medicine and astronomy. This resulted in a general shift of interest from the world of nature toward metaphysics, law, and so forth. This decline of the study of nature was a social and economic reality not influenced by Christianity. Nevertheless, Christianity considered the study of nature an important ingredient of knowledge, one that could serve the faith.

The Fathers’ position on the education of Christians was not uniform. The simplistic view that they condemned all pagan philosophy and science without qualification would definitely be false, though they did object to them for certain obvious reasons.³¹ Their opinions vary from the view that a Christian can be faithful and have hope of salvation without any learning to a recognition that simple piety does not enable one to confront the enemies of the Christian faith with reasoned argument. It is also worth mentioning that in the time of the Fathers no alternative to the Hellenistic style of education existed.

Although the Fathers considered pagan literature to be inferior to the Scriptures, they believed that it could nevertheless still serve the purposes of Christian educa­tion. Gregory the Theologian reflected this approach to Christian education:

I take it as admitted by men of sense, that the first of our advantages is education; and not only this our more noble form of it, which disregards rhetorical ornaments and glory, and holds to salvation, and beauty in the objects of our contemplation: but even that external culture which many Christians ill-judgingly abhor, as treacherous and dangerous, and keeping us afar from God. For as we ought not to neglect the heavens, and earth, and air, and all such things, because some have wrongly seized upon them, and honour God’s works instead of God: but to reap what advantage we can from them for our life and enjoyment, while we avoid their dangers.³²

Given the similarities and the differences already noted here between ancient and modern science, are we justified in calling what the Fathers were concerned with “science”? This question is still a matter of dispute among historians. Sometimes one sees attempts to qualify the ancient scientific enterprise and scholarship of nature as science in the same sense that we use the word science today. But any attempt to relate science understood in this way to the faith of the Fathers would be fundamentally anachronistic. This implies in turn that if we want to explore the relationship between Patristic theology and natural sciences, we should rely on the understanding of science that follows naturally from the Fathers’ writings themselves. It is critical here to remember that many aspects of ancient scientific study were deeply grounded in philosophy, which, as in our modern understanding, formed a methodological framework for the study of nature. Thus the Fathers of the church had to spend considerable effort relating Christian teaching to philosophy, for philosophy (that is, Hellenistic philosophy) claimed that it had access to truth. This presents a more serious issue, one important for the purposes of this research: the problem of faith and reason, or faith and knowledge.³³

The problem of faith and knowledge was touched upon in one way or another by most of the Patristic writers. One outstanding contribution to this problem, however, changed all future church reactions to Hellenistic philosophy, to its methods of reasoning, and, as a result, to the natural sciences and nature itself. This influential force was the work of the great teacher Clement of Alexandria (d. ca. 211 – 215). Before considering his approach, however, it will help to consider what was said by other Christian thinkers before him.

It is probably impossible to point to a definite moment in history when the “dialogue” between Greek religious philosophy and the Christian teaching began. In a sense, it is already present in St. Paul. In any case, Christian thinkers were not the first to enter such a dialogue, for the use of Greek ideas and categories for the interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures had begun well before Christianity appeared. The Bible used by the early church was in fact a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint. Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 b.c. – a.d. 50) prepared the way for the future encounter of the Christian Church with Greek philosophical thought through his exegesis of the Greek Scriptures.

The Christian Apologists, however, entered the dialogue with Greek philosophy in a rather instinctive, unsystematic fashion by appropriating certain intellectual resources of Hellenistic culture. Historians locate this starting point in the second half of the second century. In fact, the Apologists’ approach to Greek philosophy might be described as somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, they accepted Greek ideas; on the other, they admitted a certain hostility to them. The writings of Justin Martyr illustrate this point very well. Justin allowed that Greek philosophy contained undeniable truths and valuable insights, but at the same time he claimed that traditional phi­losophy was full of errors and distortions when compared with Scripture. Following Philo, Justin argued that the Greeks had actually borrowed some of their ideas from the Scriptures, which had been revealed to Moses before the Greeks had had a chance to develop their philosophy. He claimed, for example, that Plato’s doctrine of creation, as formulated in the Timaeus, was borrowed from the account in Gen. 1: l – 3.³⁴

Justin’s primary purpose, however, was to place Greek thought in its proper place in the story of Christ’s revelation of God by identifying salvation history with world history. He sought to clarify some aspects of Christian teaching by fitting them into a Platonistic worldview while at the same time readjusting the latter according to the needs of the Christian faith. The fact that Justin was not a philosophical thinker of any great depth made his theology, which was essentially apologetic in its aims, both tentative and unsystematic.³⁵

St. Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 130 – 200) followed on from Justin but entered into dialogue with Greek thought from a somewhat different perspective, since he was struggling not so much against pagan misinterpretations of Christianity as against Gnosticism, a sectarian movement within the church. Although it was pastoral and occasional, his major work also represented a reaction against Hellenistic tradition, for in it Gnosticism was paralleled with philosophy. This was why Irenaeus’s hostility to philosophy became explicit and he was happy to label philosophers as ignorant of God.³⁶ Christians, however, are dealing with a truth that is certain and uncorrupted by human error, that is, with the revealed truth of the Scripture.

In his struggle with Gnosticism, Irenaeus developed an approach to the relationship between God and the world that differed from Justin’s approach. Irenaeus asserted that God, as the transcendent creator, does not exclude himself from his cre­ation. God differs from every creature in his ingenerate simplicity, and this is exactly what makes God able to be present in relation to every creature.³⁷

According to Irenaeus, the created world has no material cause. Its ontology, its very being, is rooted in the will of God, which is mirrored in the world. Creation is fundamentally good, and all its levels are open to divine redemption. This is confirmed through the incarnate Logos. Everything thus participates in incorruption. According to Irenaeus’s teaching, this world is “generate” – that is, totally dependent on God – and is therefore also open to his continuous creative activity. The world itself is a never-ending flux of events, whose nature is whatever God makes of them. As a result, the concept of natural law is quite problematic in Irenaeus.

Clement of Alexandria is considered the founder of Christian theology in modern setting as knowledge about God. Knowledge in its classical Greek sense means the transmission of facts and of statements about these facts using logical reasoning and shared language. This form of knowledge was treated as philoso­phy in the third century. The fundamental innovation in Clement’s teaching was the transfer of the language and methods of philosophy to the realm of faith. It is through these methods that simple faith becomes a demonstrated faith and acquires intersubjective forms of expression, thereby becoming a form of gnosis, a theology.³⁸

Clement understood very clearly that if he wished to achieve this goal of demonstrability, it would be unwise to disregard those achievements of Greek thought that formed the intellectual scaffolding of a still-pagan society. Historically, he was the first Christian writer who insisted on a positive evaluation of ancient culture and philosophy as an important heritage of use to Christians.³⁹

Clement’s argument for the usefulness of philosophy and sciences is based upon his understanding of truth as something that embraces all, that includes all particu­lar kinds of truth. Truth is one, and it is God’s truth. That is why, according to Clement in The Stromata, or Miscellanies, philosophy is characterized by investigation into truth and the nature of things.⁴⁰

When he discusses philosophy, Clement thinks of it as a kind of integrated truth that is hidden in every particular form of philosophical activity, but he does not identify philosophical truth with divine truth (Strom. 1.6). Rather, it is a partial truth. Truth is not attainable from within philosophy, though philosophy can con­tribute to the comprehension of truth, “not as being the cause of comprehension, but a cause along with other things, and co-operator; perhaps also a joint cause” (Strom. 1.6). In a similar way, Clement argues that there is only partial truth in the sciences: “In geometry there is the truth of geometry; in music, that of music; and in right phi­losophy, there will be Hellenic truth” (Strom. 1.6). Clement claims that the Greeks, through the gift of reasoning granted to them by God, approached this truth but did not manage to collect together the divided truth and to find its source in the Logos of God: “Barbarian and Hellenic philosophy have torn off a fragment of eternal truth from the theology of the ever-living Word” (Strom. 1.13). Thus the function of phi­losophy is to be understood as that of a cooperating cause leading to knowledge of the truth. A person who uses philosophy to attain truth by bringing together its divided parts and making them one “will without peril, be assured, contemplate the perfect Word, the truth” (Strom. 1.13). Clement then argues that philosophy is useful for Christians as a kind of training in order to attain truth, but that “philosophy is a concurrent and co-operating cause of true apprehension,... a preparatory training for the enlightened man; not assigning as the cause that which is but the joint-cause” (Strom. 1.20).⁴¹

In this respect, philosophy – considered as a means to an end and supported by faith – can lead to receiving the words concerning God. Philosophical knowledge in itself is incomplete, for “it cannot by itself produce the right effect” (Strom. 1.20). Clement contrasts such knowledge with the Christian teaching, “which, according to the Saviour, is complete in itself and without defect, being ‘the power and wisdom of God’” (Strom. 1.20).

Moreover, Clement declares that knowledge is possible only because of faith and that faith is a condition for knowledge of any kind. Conversely, knowledge helps make affirmations of faith demonstrable and thus, according to Clement, more scientific. The faith that is true knowledge of revelation becomes a more scientific faith when supported by philosophy, and in this way it becomes gnosis (Strom.1.2). Clement emphasizes that to enable faith to overcome the lack of necessity and rigor of mere opinion, one must appeal to the methods used in the sciences. Since philosophy is “scientific” by definition, in that it represents rational knowledge, it differs from other forms of knowledge – for example, ordinary opinion. Clement uses the Aristotelian method (see Strom. 8) to establish (in the words of Aristotle) a scientific demonstration, which is the means of knowledge and the goal pursued by the intelligence as opposed to opinion (Strom. 8.1). This is a demonstration in a truly Aristotelian sense and is similar to syllogism, in which from established premises a new proposition is deduced that has the same certainty as the premises despite the fact that the new proposition was not certain before the syllogism was carried out. The difference, according to Clement, is that “to draw conclusions from what is admitted is to syllogize; while to draw a conclusion from what is true is to demon­strate” (Strom. 8.3).

This approach to demonstration is then used by Clement to justify his further claim that one needs faith in order to employ first principles of any kind. Indeed, in cases where some truth is already established, demonstration will mean that “we try to find an argument which, by starting from things already believed, is able to create faith in things as yet not believed” (Strom. 8.3). This kind of demonstration cannot be applied, however, to the ultimate principles that constitute the basic premises of any demonstration: “Should one say that knowledge is founded on demonstration by a process of reasoning, let him hear that the first principles are incapable of demon­stration” (Strom. 2.4). Since knowledge is based on demonstration emerging from the first principles that cannot themselves be demonstrated, knowledge itself cannot be demonstrated. This in turn implies that the very possibility of any knowledge at all requires the acceptance of first principles, which means faith in them. In this way, knowledge depends on something that is not knowledge; this is faith. The difference between knowledge and faith thus becomes very clear: “For knowledge is a state of mind that results from demonstration; but faith is a grace which from what is indemonstrable conducts to what is universal and simple, something that is neither with matter, nor matter, nor under matter” (Strom. 2.4).

It is faith, therefore, that allows one to formulate the first principles in a proper way and to perceive things that are not seen in the course of demonstrable knowl­edge. Demonstration, then, follows after faith, but not the other way around. The Greeks, according to Clement, participated in the truth that comes from the Logos, but they did not see any of the spiritual meaning of this truth because they did not have faith (in the Logos of God) and thus could not have access to the only true demonstration, which is supplied on the basis of the Scriptures. This is why a demonstration based on opinion cannot qualify as divine – only as human, that is, as mere rhetoric – whereas a demonstration based on reasoned knowledge produces faith in those who wish to learn of God by examining the Scriptures. Clement calls this faith that is supported by philosophical methods a considered faith (that is, a gnosis), and, according to Clement, it forms the subject matter of theology. Clement has clearly formulated a methodological principle that allows one to treat sciences and philosophy as two different ways of knowing that cooperate in truth. Whatever science and philosophy can offer to theology can easily be incorporated by the latter to deepen and extend faith within the boundaries of the church’s definitions.⁴² This attitude to science and philosophy could remove all modern concerns about the rela­tionship between science and theology.⁴³

For Clement, knowledge – that is, scientific knowledge – is not possible without faith in some first principles; true knowledge is spiritual knowledge, for the ulti­mate meaning of objects and ideas is sustained by the Logos of God, and the modes of communion with the Logos are opened through Christian faith. The result of historical developments in the stream of so-called modernism and postmodernism has been the removal of any spiritual insights from scientific discourse and its rationality. Faith as the expression of belief in unity of orders in the universe, provided by the Logos, has been nearly eliminated from the diverse, extremely specialized scientific fields we see today. Can Clement’s understanding of philosophy and the sciences provide the key to a new – and yet premodern – methodology for mediating between science and theology?

Within this frame of thought about philosophy and science as activities that cooperate with the truth of Christian theology, this section outlines the place that nature, its investigation, and its interpretation occupied in the thought of the Greek Fathers. The concern here, however, is not to use the various bits of knowledge accessible to the Fathers in order to describe their biblical exegesis or Christian teaching. Rather, the discussion focuses on the Fathers’ attitude toward nature seen as part of creation, distinct from God, as well as their attitude toward research in the natural sciences.⁴⁴

The Greek Fathers did appreciate and value the natural world. Of course, they looked at nature through the prism of the knowledge available to them. They did not propose any research programs or participate in any actual research, for they were bishops, not scientists. Nevertheless, they interpreted nature and its knowledge through their faith and through their vision of the world in its relationship to God. They were looking for indications of the presence of the divine in nature, but they never allowed their thought to degenerate into pantheism. They firmly maintained the fundamental Christian claim that the transcendent God of the Scriptures created the world ex nihilo but that God is present in the world through the divine logoi (purpose and end) of all created things.⁴⁵ It is because of this that the Fathers clearly understood that any scientific knowledge, that is, any knowledge that relates to cre­ated nature, will never be complete and that one never arrives “at a knowledge of the realities themselves.”⁴⁶

Thus the Fathers considered it their primary task to interpret scientific knowledge theologically in terms of purpose and end, thereby completing and perfecting scien­tific discourse. In other words, they wished to make scientific knowledge understandable in Christian terms.⁴⁷

The Fathers found that they could easily accommodate themselves to any partial view of nature with no fear of losing their orthodoxy and the integrity of life in Christ. It is true, however, that the hierarchical vision of nature through the intelligible patterns of creation and their logoi had a selective effect: Plato’s view of the world would prevail for a thousand years among Christian thinkers, until Aristotelian phi­losophy, via Islam, found its way back into Europe in the twelfth century.⁴⁸ The Fathers’ treatment of science made their position rather Platonistic in that any par­ticular knowledge was thought of as serving the ideal of an ultimate knowledge. This position – a vision of science in the perspective of “heavenly” things – was the object of criticism and accusations for many centuries.⁴⁹

The wholeness and integrity of the Fathers’ vision of science, metaphysics, and theology are particularly articulated in their treatment of the laws of nature as laws of God as well as in their understanding that the relationship between the sciences and theology can only be established on christological grounds.

The Fathers considered the laws of nature to be the physical aspect of the natural law, and they innovatively introduced this idea into the heart of the faith of the Jews, who believed that every phenomenon, such as the growth of trees and animals, took place because of God, not because of an impersonal “force”. The Fathers, for their part, claimed that the laws of nature responsible for such growth were established by God at the origin of the world. They emphasized that each moment of growth is not caused by a separate act of the divine will, but that the will of God lies behind the movement of nature. That is why, according to the Fathers, any change in nature can be justified on the grounds of the laws that were established by God at the point of creation: God’s command at the moment of creation becomes a law of nature.⁵⁰

Two points are important here. First, when seen from a modern perspective, the view that the laws were established at the point of creation does not imply that God “set the clock in motion” and then let it run on its own. This would be a form of deism. Having creating the world, God still participates in it through his logoi and grace, guiding nature as a whole to its final end. Second, the laws of nature (for exam­ple, mechanical or thermodynamic laws) are not a matter of necessity. They could be different, as could the structural units based on them. This is why, since the Fathers’ time, it has been said that the world and the laws of nature are contingent: they are dependent on God.⁵¹

All laws of nature “are included in the one law which proceeds from the counsel of God.”⁵² This does not mean that no contingencies exist in the world’s happenings apart from the original act of creation. Some contingent events happen as manifestations of our free will; others take place because of the accidental actions of the external bodies. However, nothing in the writings of the Fathers indicates that they perceived separate interventions of the divine will in nature apart from the initial establishment of nature’s laws at the point of creation.⁵³

Inorganic matter and living creatures other than humans are treated by the Fathers as irrational beings; it is only humans who can resist necessity because of their rational faculty, which enables them to know things and to make decisions based upon this knowledge. Gregory the Theologian acknowledges this rationality by saying that human knowledge of things is “ordained by God.”⁵⁴ This, he argues, is the difference between humans and the rest of nature. The rationality of humans, made in the image of God, corresponds to the rationality in nature, which is established by the Word, or Logos, of God. In contradistinction to Greek philosophers, the Fathers of the church rejected the idea of a spontaneous coming together of the elements. In their view, God is the cause of existence and the source of its maintenance by his providential power.⁵⁵

The laws of nature, the Fathers say, are providential, for they indicate the purpose of existing things and the way these things receive their most favorable outcomes.⁵⁶ In other words, all knowledge of natural phenomena is incomplete if it is not seen from the perspective of the final causes mysteriously present in the natural world’s deep structure. It is this structure – that is, the hierarchy within nature – that enables humans to view nature teleologically and to conclude from partial knowledge to the whole and from the lower natural order to the higher. This view of nature is one expression of the Platonistic tendency in the Greek Fathers.

Despite their appreciation of nature, the Fathers could also see nature’s evil. But, for them, the cruelty and suffering in nature were never dissociated from human sin. This is why, when the Fathers argued for the restoration of human nature through eliminating the divisions in human nature and bringing it back into union with God, they never forgot about nature as a whole. They always felt responsible for the imperfections in nature, for the irrational creatures that had become involved in the chain of original sin. Nature – all its elements, trees, and animals – is to be transfigured through man’s mediation between the divisions in the created realm, as well as between the created and the uncreated, between this world and God.⁵⁷

The Fathers found justification for this view of nature’s ultimate “future” in the Scriptures. One of their sources can be found in Rom. 8 :19 – 21, where St. Paul says that “the creation will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” St. Irenaeus of Lyons makes a similar assertion, this time based on a text frorn Isaiah 11: “The wolf also shall feed with the lamb, and the leopard shall take his rest with the kid;… and they shall do no harm, nor have power to hurt anything in my holy mountain.”⁵⁸

The restoration of animals and matter to union with God will come about through the salvation of man, for it is only humans who can change the order of things in nature through their own perfection, leading ultimately to union with God, to deification. The restoration of sensible nature means not its destruction but rather its transfiguration, which changes only the outward appearance of things. Origen describes this in his De principis: “If the ‘form of this world passes away’, it is not by any means of annihilation or destruction of the material substance that is indicated, but the occurrence of a certain change of quality and an alteration of the outward form.”⁵⁹

This idea referred not only to the restoration of a person’s body but also to changes in the natural environment, that is, to restoration of the earthly paradise. According to St. Maximus the Confessor, the distinction between Paradise and the rest of the created earth is connected with ontological differences in the creation. These differences led to the fall of humans, that is, their preference for sensible realities rather than for God.⁶⁰ In a truly ingenious way, Maximus links the restora­tion of Paradise with the contemplation of purposes and ends in the perceptible realm of creation.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria, in his fundamental christological writings, argues for the uniformity of the created world – the principle that makes it possible to apply the same method of knowledge to objects on different scales of space, time, complexity, and order – for the world was created by the Word (Logos) of God and everything exhibits God’s presence, the principle of which is Christ, who is both God and human. Athanasius argues that it is through God’s Logos that God gave an order to the universe so that it is comprehensible by man; it is in this comprehensibility that humans can know God from within creation: “God knew the limitation of mankind, you see, and though the grace of being made in His image, was sufficient to give them knowledge of the Word, and through Him of the Father, as a safeguard against their neglect of this grace He also provided the works of creation as a means by which the Maker might be known.”⁶¹

In Contra gentes, Athanasius makes use of such astronomical examples as the regular motions of the sun and the moon, the stars, and the sunrise to infer that there is a consistent order in the universe in which opposite motions and differentiated objects “are not ordered by themselves, but have a Maker distinct from themselves who orders them.”⁶²

He insists that the order among things is not self-produced but is maintained by God by means of uniting, balancing, administrating, ordaining, and reconciling cre­ated things (Contra 36.1 – 3, 37.1). He claims that if things in the universe were to exercise the power of ordering themselves, we would see “not order, but disorder, not arrangement, but anarchy, not a system, but everything out of system, not proportion but disproportion” (Contra 37.3). In another passage, Athanasius uses the exis­tence of life on earth to conclude, in a similar fashion, that there exists a principle of “arrangement and combination” in the world that is ultimately granted by God (Contra 37.4).

The genius of Athanasius affirmed that order in the universe (by which he did not mean the order or design arising from an already created matter) is underpinned and sustained by the Word of God as the transcendent creator.⁶³ Athanasius means by the order of the universe not an epistemological construction (as Kant would affirm later on), but an ontological rational order whose existence has its ground in something other than the things that are ordered, that is, in the very being of the reason or Word of God (Contra 40.1).

This fundamental argument in favor of the rationality of the universe proceeds not from the principles of existence of the created things, which provide only for the existence of particular things in their multiplicity, but from the Word (Logos) of God, who unites all principles of existence (that is, the logoi of things) in himself in a harmony and order that penetrate into creation and are contemplated as the order and rationality of the universe. Athanasius writes:

But by Word (Logos) I mean not that which is involved and inherent in all things created, which some are wont to call the seminal principle (logos spermatikos), which is without soul and has no power of reason or thought, but the living and powerful Word of the good God, the God of the universe, the very Word which is God, Who while being different from things that are made and from all creation, is the One own Word of the good Father, who by His own providence ordered and illumines this universe. (Contra 40.4)

Athanasius anticipated the possibility of skepticism as to the existence of the Word of God, the same skepticism that caused so many problems for Kant at the end of the eighteenth century. Kant argued that no demonstration of the existence of a creator of the world from the order and design of the universe was possible. Athanasius, however, insisted that such a demonstration was possible “from what is seen, because all things subsist by the Word and Wisdom of God, nor would any cre­ated thing have had a fixed existence had it not been made by reason, and that reason the Word of God, as we have said” (Contra. 40.6).

It is through this inference of the existence of the Word of God from the created order that one can know that God is, for it is the Word of God who orders the uni­verse and reveals the Father. At this point, Athanasius draws a clear connection between order in the created world and the concept of the incarnation of the Word of God. It was not enough for God just to create an ordered world to teach humankind about the Father: “Creation was there all the time, but it did not prevent men from wallowing in error.”⁶⁴

It was the role of the Word of God, the Logos and only Son of the Father, who by God’s ordering of the universe reveals the Father, “to renew the same teaching” through his incarnation, thereby using another means to teach those who would not learn from the works of creation about God.⁶⁵ One particular aspect of the incarnation of the Word of God serves to justify a principle of uniformity and order in nature and thus make science developed on earth applicable to all aspects of the cos­mos. Christ, while being incarnate God in the flesh at a given point of the history of salvation and in a particular point of the physical universe, did not cease to be the Word (Logos) of God:

The Word was not hedged in by His body, nor did His presence in the body prevent His being present elsewhere as well... The marvelous truth is, that being the Word, so far from being Himself contained by anything, He actually contained all things Himself. Existing in human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still the Source of life for all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the whole; and He is revealed both through the works of His body and through His activity in the world.⁶⁶

This affirmation of the unique position of Christ in the world, where the incarnate Son, Christ, though being in body locally at a given point in the vastness of cos­mic space, is still co-inherent at every point in space because he is in everything as the Word of God, provides an implicit principle of order in the universe that ensures that every place in the universe, as a place of the “presence” of the Word, is co-inherent with the place where God is bodily incarnate, on earth.⁶⁷

In the view of the Christian scientists of the time, this implied that there was a uniformity in the laws of nature (which were known from their experience on earth) throughout the whole of the cosmos. This intrinsic rationality in the world, accord­ing to Athanasius, is maintained by the creative Logos of God, which is not an imma­nent principle of the world but rather the transcendent artificer of order and harmony in created existence, an existence thus contingent on the transcendent rationality of God. As a result, for Athanasius, both realms in creation – the empirical (visible or perceptible) and the intelligible (invisible) – as well as the common principle of their creation, order, and harmony, are encoded in the Word (Logos) of God (Contra 3.44).⁶⁸

Two implications of this theological development for physics were realized by the Christian thinker John Philoponus of Alexandria (d. ca. 570). He recognized that any true order in the universe must be universally valid and inferred from the colors of the stars that the same laws govern the stars and bodies on earth.⁶⁹

Philoponus also tried to understand the created order from the distinction between the uncreated and the created light in the theology of creation. According to him, we explain the visible order in terms of the invisible, that is, in terms of either physical or moral laws. The laws involving the intelligible order of the created world, which has a derivative existence, point back to the ultimate foundation of all order in God.⁷⁰ This example is an important argument for the possibility of demonstrating the presence of the logoi of created things scientifically by analizing the interplay between empirical and intelligible reality.

The problem that arises is how to demonstrate the presence of the Logos from within the created realm. The clue to this demonstration can be found in Maximus the Confessor’s theology of the logoi. According to Maximus, it is the divine Logos (Word of God) that holds together the logoi of created things (that is, their immutable and eternal principles).⁷¹

Maximus considered the contemplation of the logoi of created things to be a mode of communion with the Logos leading ultimately to mystical union with God. The fundamental aspect of this communion is that, because it is exercised through the purified intellect (nous), the contemplation of the logoi is not the same as either empirical perception or mental comprehension. It is a mode of spiritual vision of reality in which the ontological roots of things and beings have their grounds beyond the world. This Christian contemplation of creation as if it were “from above” or “from within” – and not through external sensible or internal mental impressions – is significantly different from what is now normally accepted as taking place in sci­entific experience.

Indeed, science usually thinks of itself as starting from experiments and measurements, from things that constitute our sense of ordinary reality, though sometimes mediated by experimental apparatus. There is, however, another aspect of all scien­tific investigation that involves the shaping of contingent empirical findings into a theory. This requires access to symbolic language (for example, mathematics), which makes it possible for us to talk about the entities behind the outcomes of our measurements. This takes place regularly when, for example, physics talks of elementary particles, fields, global geometry, the totality of the universe, and so forth. All these “objects” are known to us only through their effects and are representable in our minds only with symbolic images. In other words, their physical existence is affirmed in terms of their symbolic images. We understand at present that this way of looking at reality corresponds to what we call human rationality. The source of this rational­ity is hidden in the mystery of the human hypostasis, the human person.⁷²

The human person, made in the image of God, “is not identifiable with the body, or the soul, or the spirit. It arises from another order of reality.”⁷³ In other words, “the transcending character of human hypostasis... cannot be manifested within the relationship between body and soul – for they form one nature – but only in relation to something which is not of human nature, i.e. superhuman.”⁷⁴

It is only because of the existence of this divine dimension in human beings that it is possible to infer from nature to God. Only because of this dimension can we hope to unveil the divine intentions behind created things through the principles and ideas that are introduced into science by means of human rationality.⁷⁵

According to Maximus, the divine Logos is present in all things, holding their logoi together. Thus the world is filled with the divine reality, and humans, in accordance with their logos, can have knowledge of the logoi of things. Maximus expresses this thought in a characteristic, quite modern way when he speaks of the presence of the divine in the structure of the created world: “Indeed, the scientific research of what is really true will have its forces weakened and its procedure embarrassed, if the mind cannot comprehend how God is in the logos of every special thing and likewise in all the logoi according to which all things exist.”⁷⁶

Maximus contends that people know things from nature in their differentiated mode – that is, they see creation as divided into parts – and that this perception always confuses them. The natural contemplation of things means the knowledge of the principles of existence of those things in their differentiation. The fundamental step, which is made at this stage of mediation, is to contemplate all sensible creation in its oneness through finding that all the logoi of sensible things can be united in one divine Logos, which constitutes the principle of creation. To achieve this contemplation, people must be detached from sensible creation so as to see things spiritually. Maximus compares this kind of contemplation of natural things with the angelic knowledge of sensible things, for angels know the logoi of sensible things directly, “from above.” Because the incarnation, according to Maximus, takes place both in the words of the Scripture and in the logoi of things that are held together in the uni­versal Logos, spiritual ascent through the contemplation of the logoi of creation leads finally to the Logos-Christ. The knowledge of things of the world thus acquires all the features of participation in the Divine: “On the account of the presence of the Logos in all things, holding their logoi together, the world is pregnant with divine reality, and knowledge of it – through the rational quality of humans, their own logos – is itself a kind of communion with God, a participation in divine things through the aims and purposes that are recognized in creation.”⁷⁷

The incarnation thus gives expression to the cosmic importance of Christ, for through the differentiation of things and their logoi, in which Christ the Logos is present, one can contemplate their unity in the one Logos of God and through them ascend with the incarnate Christ to the Father. This movement into the spiritual con­templation of the unity of things, their purposes and ends, can be qualified as com­munion with God through nature, something that is possible only because of the incarnation and through the gift of divine grace to humans. The natural contempla­tion of the different logoi in the one Logos thus manifests the exodus of humans from this world to God, as the truth of the whole of creation is revealed by and in the Logos of God. Maximus treats all of this mystagogically, that is, as a liturgical process on a cosmic scale: the “cosmic liturgy.”⁷⁸

It is characteristic of Maximus and of the Greek Fathers in general that they could transcend spiritually the material world, the world of nature, in order to contemplate its logoi and through this contemplation praise the creator of the natural world. Afterward, they could come back to nature and see it in a new light, from the per­spective of its ends and purposes, from the perspective of Christ the Logos. For the Fathers, nature was empty before Christ. Its true meaning was opened only through the mystery of the incarnation of the Logos of God. But the Fathers, though worshiping the uncreated through nature, were always aware of the danger of pantheism, for the passage between the material and the spiritual (as the easiest mental image of the uncreated) was made with such ease that the fundamental distinction between them could be confused. The Fathers never worshiped nature, only its creator. This is why when we speak of the “cosmic liturgy” of Maximus as a form of mediation between heaven and earth, we must remember that overcoming the divisions in the creation on the moral and existential level does not imply the elimination of the differences in creation on the ontological level. Praying to the Creator does not remove the distinction between God and the creation. This safeguards the position of the Fathers from pantheism. God and nature are not identical, but one may seek access to nature in order to find God.

Though fascinated by the natural world and appreciating its great beauty, the Fathers clearly understood that if the mind were to be distracted by the puzzles of nature and to consider them as ends in themselves, then the knowledge of nature would itself become an obstacle in trying to know God. Thus a tension was created between the appreciation of nature and the danger of being trapped by its investigation. On the one hand, the natural world is accepted and affirmed, while, on the other, it is renounced as having no meaning without its spiritual ground. The necessity to rise above nature in order to find God was always experienced as the difficulty of being detached from a natural world that at the same time was highly appreciated.

In the contemplation of the logoi of creation, the Greek Fathers found an ingenious way of resolving this tension, freeing themselves from the demands of nature, on the one hand, while enjoying nature, on the other. They never experienced any fear of nature, which was the creation of a God “who loves mankind.” Their detachment from the material world provided a paradoxical freedom to treat this world in a way that never subverted their spiritual vision of reality, that is, their faith. The secret of the Greek Fathers’ freedom to enjoy nature was their detachment from it. Their spir­itual vision of nature freed them to love and appreciate nature without condemning its created origin and without fearing its demands, for the natural world, like all of creation, is good because everything done by God through his Word (Logos) is good.

This section discusses the role of Latin Christianity in establishing the position of the church with respect to science. The Latin case is extremely important because its approach to science predetermined, in a way, the whole subsequent development of philosophy and science in the West, which ultimately led to the scientific achievements we face now. Some authors claim that St. Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430), the most influential and prolific Latin writer of the fifth сentury, should be considered the Father who most influenced the seventeenth-century Cartesian revolution in philosophical thinking and who anticipated certain aspects of modernism.⁷⁹6

Augustine contributed his own ideas on the role of philosophy, science, and edu­cation in the life of a Christian. His primary thesis, which became the predominant view of science in the cultural context of Western Europe until the end of the Middle Ages, was that science was important and indispensable for exegesis and the defense of the Christian faith.⁸⁰ At the same time, Augustine developed the so-called handmaiden formula, according to which the natural sciences inherited from the classical tradition have no intrinsic value. Instead, they acquire value extrinsically, since they are useful tools, serving as “handmaidens” to Christian theology and the church.

For our purposes, it is crucial to grasp that through his writings Augustine transmitted to later generations this vision of science, which he inherited from Classical Greek thought and which was later transformed into a systematic scientific enter­prise carried out by the new European universities and academia. Although Augustine does not represent the whole story of the Latin Patristic encounter between science and religion, he did lay the foundations of the Christian attitude to science that later made it possible for Roger Bacon (ca. 1220 – 1292) to continue the Augustinian approach to natural sciences as the handmaiden of theology, albeit in an elaborate, systematic way that corresponded to his own era, historically removed from Augustine’s by almost eight centuries. Bacon’s activity led ultimately to “legitimization” of science as a Christian activity and to the creation of the European uni­versities and an extended system of education. The transition from Augustine to Roger Bacon, though not a straightforward, continuous process, meant that the sci­ence of the Classical tradition was transmitted to Medieval Europe. It is in this aspect of the history of science that the church played a fundamental role.⁸¹

From a historical point of view, it is interesting to note that the Western world, as it evolved intellectually toward the acceptance of science as a part of the educational norm in a Christian society, incorporated only those aspects of the relationship between science and theology that were developed by the Latin Fathers. The panorama of views from the Greek-speaking Christian world was nearly forgotten. One explanation for this can be found in the difference of language itself. The Western church fathers of the Patristic period and the Christian authors of the early Middle Ages were forced to rely on the derivative, Latinized version of the Classical Greek tradition. Moreover, the Latin Fathers generally knew this tradition only in the “thin” form, that is, from secondary sources and compendia. Philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were not read in Greek at all in the Western world and thus were nearly forgotten, until the twelfth century, when a more complete version of the sci­entific portions of the Classical tradition was introduced in Western Europe through translations from Arabic versions into Latin, along with extensive Islamic commentaries. Not long afterward, many of the same texts were translated into Latin from the original Greek, to which Western Europeans had finally gained access.⁸²

However, this return to the Classical Greek sources, such as the philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle, did not bring about a revival of interests in Greek Fathers and their attitude to the natural sciences. The numerous writings of the Byzantine theologians were, if not ignored, at least disregarded as significant for the establishment of a “new” approach to science and education in Western Europe. After a gap of nearly eight centuries, Roger Bacon and his followers – and later, St. Thomas Aquinas – appealed only to the authority of Augustine on such issues as faith and reason, science and its role in exegesis, and so forth, and paid little if any attention to the Greek Patristic and Byzantine thinkers who contributed, as we have seen, nontrivial ideas on the importance of natural sciences and the significance of nature for Christian theology. This represents a problem for historical research that has yet to be addressed.

The aim here is to understand the specificity of the Latin Christian attitude toward natural sciences and its differences from the Greek Patristic views on nature, which were considered earlier in this chapter. This difference, which was only minor in the Patristic period, led ultimately to the large-scale differences about the rela­tionship between science and theology that exist at present between Eastern Orthodox theology and Western Christianity in its various forms.

The immediate problem that Augustine still faced three hundred years after Clement of Alexandria was how to react to the non-Christian philosophy and liberal arts that were still widely studied in the culture surrounding the expanding Christian Church. Like Clement, Augustine argues that philosophy, which was so important for the art of reasoning and for defending faith, must be not condemned, but Christianized. Philosophy should be seen from the perspective of faith, for there is no understand­ing without faith. When faith is achieved, however, it becomes necessary to understand what one believes.⁸³

Augustine saw faith as a necessary condition for reason to lead to understanding. However, he was cautious – and even negative – in his attitude toward pagan learning in general. Even when treated only as a matter of curiosity, pagan learning is still potentially dangerous, he explains in his Confessions: “For in addition to the fleshly appetite which strives for the gratification of all senses and pleasures… there is also a certain vain and curious longing in the soul, rooted in the same bodily senses, cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning.”⁸⁴

Augustine declared that his personal study of the liberal arts and sciences was of no use for him, since it did not help him to find and praise God. It was because of this that pagan learning, when it did not serve the purpose of knowledge of God, was not to be appreciated: “And what did it profit me that I, the base slave of vile affections, read unaided, and understood, all the books that I could get of the so-called liberal arts?... So, then, it served not to my use but rather to my destruction.”⁸⁵

Like his Greek predecessors, Augustine argues that pagan learning, if it does not serve the purposes of faith – that is, if it is not understood through the eyes of faith – leads nowhere, because, taken as it is in itself, it does not provide its purposes and ultimate meaning. The aid to this learning means the acquisition of faith in God, who is the provider of all abilities to learn, as well as the content of learning.

It does not follow, however, from the fragments just quoted that Augustine denied any rational activity, and in particular philosophy, of the Classical culture. We have seen that the major thesis of Augustine is that understanding, rational explanation, and philosophical activity all have meaning only if they are grounded in a life of faith. Augustine makes a clear distinction between knowl­edge that originates from the senses, that is, from sensible experience, and that of the intellect. The latter was not so much affected by the bodily affections and was worthy of being included in the armory of a Christian as a means of defending the faith and arguing with one’s enemies. He writes in On Christian Doctrine: “There remain those branches of knowledge which pertain not to the bodily senses, but to the intellect, among which the science of reasoning… [which] is of very great service in searching into and unravelling all sorts of questions that come up in Scripture.”⁸⁶

Elsewhere, Augustine warns that one should be cautious when reasoning about religious matters. The problem does not lie in applying reason to such issues as the Trinity, for example, but in avoiding false reasoning. One should not abandon rea­soning altogether if some particular form of it is false.⁸⁷ In order to avoid false rea­soning, reason must be grounded in faith.⁸⁸

All this points to the fact that Augustine was relatively favorable to rational forms of knowledge and philosophy. Like Clement of Alexandria, he argues that there are many positive aspects in Classical philosophical thought and precepts of morality, which are well adapted to Christian truth. Also like Clement, he believes that those fruits of wisdom that the Greeks placed in the service of philosophy were not invented by them “but dug out of the mines of God’s providence which are every­where scattered abroad.”⁸⁹

Augustine’s main appeal to Christians is to convert these achievements of Greek thought to their proper Christian use: “If those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said aught that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it.”⁹⁰

One particular thought of Augustine’s must be mentioned here. He applies a typological analogy to the relation between the Christian faith and pagan philosophy by comparing the people of Israel, who took vessels and ornaments of gold at the time of the exodus from the Egyptians (who could not know how, in the future, all these things could be turned to the service of Christ), with the Greeks, who invented philosophy and the liberal arts (not knowing that they, too, could be turned to the service of Christ): “For what was done at the time of the Exodus was no doubt a type prefiguring what happens now.”⁹¹

Augustine not only sees the problem of the relationship between Christian faith and non-Christian philosophy in its historical dimension but also assigns it some theological features. For him, the full meaning of this relationship can be understood only after the incarnation of Christ. Thus, according to Augustine, the true meaning of philosophy can be achieved only through the Christian understanding of its role as a gift of reason given to humans by God in order to praise God and his creation. This makes Augustine’s position close, in general terms, to that of the Greek Fathers, who, as discussed above, interpreted science in the perspective of Christ.

It is clear that Augustine appreciated rational thinking and philosophy in those aspects that were required by religious thought, that is, when reason was applied to problems and objects that had religious relevance. It is interesting to understand Augustine’s treatment of philosophy when it was applied to natural objects with no obvious reli­gious significance. How did he treat empirical research in the material world in which we live? The brief answer is that Augustine did not value these investigations highly. For example, while writing on the shape of the heavens in his Literal Meaning of Genesis, he warns numerous writers against discussions on this topic in terms of the natural sci­ences because “the sacred writers with their deeper wisdom have omitted them… for they knew the truth, but the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, did not wish to teach men these facts that would be no avail for their salvation.”⁹²

Thus, according to Augustine, the writers did this for a purpose: “Such subjects are of no profit for those who seek beatitude, and, what is worse, they take up very precious time that ought to be given to what is spiritually beneficial.”⁹³

Does this mean that Augustine encouraged Christians to proclaim an intentional ignorance with respect to natural phenomena and the attempts to explain them? When speaking about such borderline questions as the cosmological issues involved in the Genesis narrative, Augustine follows the way of caution: saying too much about the meaning and nature of material things is worse than saying nothing. Christians’ ignorance of the natural sciences must not be considered alarming if they know but one thing: the world of nature is created by God. In other words, Augustine tacitly admits that the empirical investigation of nature is possible, since things that are observed are created exactly in such forms as they are perceived by a researcher. From his point of view, any further theoretical investigation into the ultimate causes of things has no value. He confirms this in On Christian Doctrine: “I think, however, there is nothing useful in the other branches of learning that are found among the heathen, except information about objects, either past or present, that relate to the bodily senses, in which are included the experiments and conclusions of the useful mechanical arts, except also the sciences of reasoning and of number.”⁹⁴

Augustine, then, stresses the usefulness of the knowledge of natural facts if they are compiled in a systematic form to provide the minimum of information that Christians should know in order to understand things that are mentioned in the Scriptures.⁹⁵ This quite modest assessment of the utility of the natural sciences for Christians is associated, among other factors, with Augustine’s concern about the use of scientific arguments in the interpretation of Scripture by those Christians who did not sufficiently understand scientific matters. Knowledge was better than ignorance in any case, but undeveloped knowledge could be worse than ignorance, because, by being used in ecclesial arguments, it could damage the reputation of a Christian in the eyes of a nonbeliever. Augustine writes:

Usually even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world... and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is disgraceful and dangerous for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance... If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books?⁹⁶

This brings us back to the thesis already stated: Augustine affirmed that, for a Christian, it is enough to believe that all natural things are created by God.⁹⁷

Nature viewed from this perspective must not be loved, for there is nothing to admire in the creation.⁹⁸ It is the Creator who must be praised and worshiped. Nature, which, as a part of creation, is finite in its essence, must be used only for spir­itual and eternal purposes: “This world must be used, not enjoyed, that so the invis­ible things of God may be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, that is, that by means of what is material and temporary we may lay hold upon that which is spiritual and eternal.”⁹⁹

Natural philosophy thus receives its justification – and, in a sense, sanctification – through its special function with respect to theology: it is its handmaiden. Augustine develops this thesis through his exegetical work in which he uses the nat­ural sciences to interpret Scripture. In his Literal Meaning of Genesis, Augustine tries to make a consistent interpretation of Scripture using the cosmology and physics of the Classical tradition.¹⁰⁰ As noted earlier, the status of science as the handmaiden of theology played an extremely important role in the Western church’s support of sci­entific research and education in Europe after the twelfth Century.¹⁰¹ One might also argue that this attitude toward science was, in the end, responsible for the develop­ment of scientific thought in the direction of Cartesian dualism, and ultimately to the separation of science and theology.

From the simple observation that nature, especially in all its leaving forms, is still in a state of unfolding variety and development, Augustine faced a serious problem: how to reconcile this natural fact with the scriptural affirmation of the completion of God’s creative activity “in the beginning.” Augustine distinguishes two kinds of creatures: those that were fixed in their form in the work of God during six days (for example, angels, the days themselves, earth, water, air, fire, stars, and the human soul) and those that were created in their “seeds” and still had to develop. The latter were only preformed at the “time” of creation; for Augustine, these include all living things, be they plants, animals, or even humans. At the time of creation, they all existed invisibly and potentially as things whose reality was caused by their future. Augustine uses the term rationales seminales (usually translated as “seminal reasons”), a Latinized form of the Stoic expression spermatikoi logoi.¹⁰² These hidden seeds in the world created by God are compared sometimes with the causes, which contain every­thing that is to be unfolded in the future.¹⁰³ Augustine writes: “For the Creator of these invisible seeds is the Creator of all things Himself: since whatever comes forth to our sight by being born, receives the first beginnings of its course from hidden seeds, and takes the successive increments of its proper size and its distinctive forms from these, as it were, original rules.”¹⁰⁴

The nature of these seminal reasons, or seeds, according to Augustine, is twofold. On the one hand, he argues, these seeds already exist in the elements of nature. Although invisible, they are present in a hidden form in the created world. On the other hand, he understands them as the principles of activity in nature, ideas in a Platonic sense, which underlie physical existence and form its pattern. Augustine compares them with the numbers that bring into the elements the efficacious forces that were planted in the works of God before he completed his work of creation. From this point of view, the original creation was complete in itself, even though these forces showed their effects later, for they all were hidden in the elements them­selves. In this case, God no longer creates, though he is still at work, for he keeps all things in being by his power and causes the seeds to reach the full development he established for them “in the beginning.”¹⁰⁵

This Augustinian view of the seminal reasons – as created and fixed preexistent principles of all unfolding processes and things – has a serious impact for natural sciences, for it denies strongly any possibility of creative evolution in nature and transformation of the species.¹⁰⁶ In fact, Augustine’s doctrine does not explain the appearance of anything new through the unfolding of as yet undeveloped aspects of living nature; on the contrary, everything is created at the beginning of all time and nothing fundamentally new can come into existence after this, for the existence of everything was planned before and the surface of appearances contains only things developed from the “old” seeds. That is why it is true to say that God created all things “simultaneously”.¹⁰⁷

In contradistinction to transformation of species, the seminal reasons account for the stability of species; they represent the principles of stability rather than of change. Augustine’s doctrine goes along the lines of his other arguments that rule out any real efficacy in human activity or in that of other beings. Whatever people do that leads to the further unfolding of natural phenomena – for example, when they cultivate plants – they still do not invent or create anything new but rather appeal to the hidden inner forces in nature, to the initial seeds, which from the beginning contain all power and potency to develop in the visible creation according to God’s plan.

Thus, in the Augustinian universe, any scientific discovery of evolving processes does not provide evidence for the creativeness of nature itself. What we treat as novelty is just the appearance of something old and preexistent in the seminal reasons. The whole scientific enterprise thus leads us to an endless witnessing of the unfold­ing of the initial seeds that points back to the creatio ex nihilo itself. An infinite advance in scientific development thus means no more than a never-ending unfold­ing of the plan of creation, which, being “simultaneous” in the sense that it is God’s action, is potentially infinite and eternal in its historical incarnation.

This theory of the seminal reasons in Augustine can be used to justify his attitude to science as the handmaiden of theology. Indeed, in his view, science cannot lead us to any independent knowledge of truth in creation, apart from producing indications of the presence of the initial seeds, which are brought into existence by God. That is why, on the one hand, the natural sciences and empirical research, taken in themselves, are of no real use for a Christian. They cannot provide any evidence for the presence of the Divine for an uneducated person, though scientific investigation can be useful if understood theologically and in light of its function as illustrating the presence of the seminal reasons in creation. It can serve theology by finding traces of God in the created world.

One can make an analogy with mechanics by comparing the seminal reasons with the initial conditions that are implanted in nature to launch its growth according to various dynamic laws. The seminal reasons themselves do not possess temporality except in a hidden, latent form. It is important to realize, however, that Augustine’s seminal reasons not only play the role of the initial conditions for things that evolve but also predetermine their dynamics, that is, the particular features of their growth and development, their temporal flux. This allows one to argue that Augustine’s concept of the seminal principles leads to the notion of natural law.¹⁰⁸

If we take Augustine’s notion of the seminal reasons seriously, we should make a clear distinction between what we can know about God’s plan in the “continuous” creation through observing the unfolding of these reasons, and God’s intention at the original act of creation as a whole. The latter is contingent and free from the necessity that we are apparently able to uncover in the world. Augustine anticipated this distinction: “For it is one thing to make and administer the creature from the innermost and highest turning-point of causation, which He alone does who is God the Creator; but quite another thing to apply some operation from without in pro­portion to the strength and faculties assigned to each by Him, so that what is created may come forth into being at this time or at that, and in this or that way.”¹⁰⁹

One can thus treat the causation that originates from the nature of things, assigned to them by God, as natural law. This differs from causation of the creatio ex nihilo type. There is no reduction of the former to the latter and, theologically speaking, causation at the “point” of contingent creation cannot be affirmed in terms of a description of the natural world. Nor can one say that natural law can be explained. It can be detected, but its ultimate origin and causal nexus constitute a theological ideal rather than a subject for scientific inquiry.

In concluding this section, it should be stressed again that the idea of seminal reasons was invoked by Augustine not to solve a scientific problem but rather to address difficulties in his exegesis of Genesis. He did not intend to make his theory of seminal reasons subject to empirical confirmation. Augustine never supposed that the seminal reasons, or seeds, were the object of experience. As mentioned before, he thought of them rather as Platonic ideas that can only be grasped by the mind. Still, it is interesting to realize that Augustine’s speculations on seminal rea­sons were indirectly supported by empirical observations of the everlasting unfold­ing of the natural world. This justifies the intuition that Augustine used a one-way inference from empirical facts to speculative propositions on the underlying nature of these facts. The strength of this argument can be seen in the fact that Augustine attempted to use the idea of numbers – that is, mathematical ideas in their extreme form – in application to such entities that cannot be observed and empirically verified. This makes his attempt similar to modern theoretical physics, which speaks sometimes about unseen particles or fields in terms of their symbolic images, using the language of mathematics. The reality of the seminal reasons thus can be asserted as on a par with the reality of mathematical ideas. Augustine used the adjective eter­nal with respect to the seminal reasons, though they can also be described as “immutable” ideas. They are different, however, from the logoi of Greek Patristic thought, which are uncreated and originate in the divine Logos of God. At the same time, it is through the intelligible domain of the created realm that their presence in the world can be shown.

This chapter has focused in particular on a most intriguing outcome of the historical developments of scientific enterprise in the Christian world: the difference in attitude toward nature and science that can be observed in Greek Patristic thought and the Latin tradition. This difference would appear to be ultimately responsible for the striking divergence in the understanding of the problem of science and religion in the Eastern church on the one hand, and in modern Western Christianity, on the other. At this point, I will try to highlight these differences, though with no pretension to being complete.¹¹⁰

Both the Greek and the Latin Fathers had to address the issue of natural philosophy and science in their theological reflections. In doing this, they inevitably transmitted the science of the classical Greco-Roman tradition down through the centuries. This transmission should be regarded as one of the major contributions made by the Christian Church and its theology to the future development of the scientific enterprise.

This transmission of Greek philosophy and science was naturally accompanied by a change of function as they took their place in the system of Christian thought. The Fathers’ strong preference for Platonic philosophy continued to influence the development of science until the twelfth century, when the writings of Aristotle became fully available in Western Europe and were accommodated by Christian thinkers.

Christian theology itself, which was heavily imbued with Greek metaphysics and cosmology, took the shape of the unique synthesis of faith and philosophy that we now call now the Patristic synthesis. The Fathers’ “conversion” of Greek philosophy, and their use of it in theology, was not the choice of a “handmaiden” for the theolog­ical enterprise. It involved an authentic creative synthesis of human thought with the Christian’s mystical experience of God.

The classical image of nature was de-divinized by Christian thinkers, who approached it in a new way. Nature was freed from the Hellenistic gods who inhabited its elements and was secularized in the sense that, instead of worshiping nature, the Fathers worshiped its creator. They treated nature as good and beautiful, since it was the good creation of a good God. The meaning of nature, its purposes and its ends, was formulated in Christian doctrine from the perspective of Christ. Thus the unfolding of natural processes and knowledge of them acquired definite Christian features, for nature was treated in a sacramental fashion, that is, in the light of the incarnation of God.

What distinguishes the view of science in the Patristic era from that of the present day is that when the Fathers talked about science theologically, they dealt with the scientific laws and symmetries, which reflected an essentially Platonic understanding of the world, rather than with the particular empirical outcomes of these laws, which manifested the deviation from the Platonic symmetry in the concrete empirical situ­ation. The complex outcomes of physical laws apparent in nature (that is, the empir­ical situations when the symmetric pattern of the Platonic laws were broken) became the subject of thorough scientific analysis only later, when Aristotelian philosophy and physics began to dominate Western European thinking. It was much easier for the Fathers to think in terms of Platonic regularities in nature than to investigate the particular empirical situations that are, in fact, the outcomes of these laws. Today, it is understood that neither the laws alone nor the outcomes of the laws can provide an adequate description of nature. This is why the Platonic approach to science was insufficient for its advance and why the Fathers – and the civilization they represent – did not contribute to empirical research, which generally deals with the out­comes of the underlying laws. Nevertheless, this was not the main reason for their lack of contribution to science. They were bishops, not scientists, and were primarily concerned with the theological issues that arose as they sought to defend their faith. Thus they felt called to make use of science but not to develop it.

Nevertheless, it is important to understand why nearly similar views on the nature of scientific activity among Greek and Latin Fathers influenced their successors in completely different ways, leading to an outburst of scientific activity in the Western Christian world while having no significant impact on the development of science in Eastern Orthodox Europe. Two conclusions may be drawn. The first relates to the historical significance of the handmaiden formula that was strongly articulated by Augustine but never seriously developed among the Greek Fathers.

In the thirteenth century in the West, Roger Bacon followed Augustine’s strategy in employing sciences for learning and for services to theology and the church.¹¹¹ To avoid undesirable theological conclusions, Bacon sought to cleanse the sciences of all error and to make them a faithful handmaiden of theology. Bacon’s major work, the Opus maius, is an apology for the new learning. In it, he builds his arguments on the basis of Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine, using the Augustinian notion that phi­losophy, when properly understood and practiced, can contribute to the unfolding of scriptural truth. Bacon managed to claim – and to demonstrate – that nearly every­thing can fit into the handmaiden formula. He went to great lengths to see that his claim for the handmaiden status of philosophy and the various sciences was justified and systematic, covering nearly all sciences, including linguistics, mathematics, astronomy, and geography, in order to convince the reader that all can qualify as the handmaidens of theology, thereby justifying their religious utility. Bacon strongly advocated that any knowledge obtained through experiment must be confirmed in order to qualify for handmaiden status. For this reason, he called for the pursuit of “experimental science” as the methodology of such confirmation. It is important to remember that in his advocacy for the utility of natural sciences for theology, Bacon was, in fact, concerned mostly with the proper positioning of natural sciences vis-à-vis theology, rather than with any possible threat that the sciences could pose to the­ology. He was a philosopher, not a theologian like Augustine, and thus sought to salvage the natural sciences rather than to interpret them theologically.

The work of Roger Bacon and the success of St. Thomas Aquinas in incorporating Bacons teaching into Christian doctrine resulted in a strengthening of the hand­maiden formula that overcame opposition to the new learning, leading to the establishment of new universities in Europe and a new intellectual climate within Christian culture. Although the handmaiden formula was important for promoting experimental science in general, it never seriously influenced the course of develop­ment or content of any particular science. Through the approach to science as the handmaiden of theology, initiated by St. Augustine and transmitted in the Western church, science entered Western Christian culture and acquired a position of prominence that it has not yet lost.

The second conclusion is theological. St. Augustine’s theological position differed from that of the Greek Fathers on at least two dogmatic points. These were later transformed by St. Thomas Aquinas in a way that laid the foundation for the scien­tific revolution of the seventeenth century. It was Augustine who introduced the view that physical, material nature was separated from the divine not only ontologically but also in terms of God’s grace. On the one hand, Augustine argued, the material universe should be understood in the light of Christ. On the other, however, the same universe cannot participate in the life of the Divine. As a result, knowledge of finite things in the universe has no theological relevance, since through this knowledge one cannot participate in the Divine. It was this stance that made it possible for Augustine to put forward his handmaiden formula for science. Scientific knowledge can be used for various passages of Scripture, for example, but even when treated in terms of its purpose and end – Christ – it still cannot provide any insight into the presence of the Divine in the world.

The concept of nature in Augustine has a very specific status. Nature, or the natural state, corresponds to the world created by God before the fall, when all things were brought into being according to their seminal reasons, which Augustine treated as ideas in the mind of God.¹¹² Creatures in this prefallen state receive grace from God, a grace that does not belong to their natural state, because they receive it extrinsically. Created beings have no ability to participate in their seminal reasons (ideas), since these ideas are not intrinsic to the things that are created in their image. Even in this prefallen state, all creatures, including humans, are separated from God and are deprived of any par­ticipation in God’s energies. In the actual, fallen world, the gulf between God and the created, according to Augustine, is unbridgeable. The natural world, including humans, has no chance to participate in the grace of God, even extrinsically.¹¹³

Here we clearly see that the Orthodox doctrine of the Logos of God, who is the source of the logoi of all things visible and invisible and the center of the divine uncreated energies and grace in the whole world, was drastically narrowed in the sense that apprehension of the logoi and access to grace were strictly conditioned by the boundaries of the established church. This meant that the natural world after the fall, in Augustinian thinking, was separated from the unceasing activity of the Holy Spirit and from participation in the Divine. Thus nature in itself lost its sacramental quality. It is this development of Augustinian thought that led ultimately to the recognition that nature is governed by its own natural law, which has nothing to do with grace. Philip Sherrard has described this perspective as the “desanctification of nature.”¹¹⁴

Despite the fact that Augustine himself never treated his view on nature as its desanctification, he definitely developed an argument on nature and its knowledge from a theological position that did not incorporate the whole of the idea of the Logos and participation in the logoi as developed in the Greek Fathers. This prevented him from seeing nature as a sacrament, in the light of Christ and his incarnation, and not as something somehow abandoned by God at creation. For the Greek Fathers, nature was a manifestation of God, a revelation of God’s loving activity through the divine logoi in a world that is good. It was through God’s works in nature, where the Holy Spirit is always active, that the Fathers were able to enter into communion with God. Knowledge of nature was, for the Greek Fathers, a part of the fullness of their liturgical experience, an experience that gave meaning to science and made it capable of leading people to a knowledge of the logoi of created beings. If the Greek Fathers saw scientific activity as a mode of the liturgical experience, under­stood through participation in the creative energies (and divine logoi) of God, then Augustine saw science as no more than a handmaiden of theology devoid of deeper spiritual meaning.

The liturgical vision of science has advantages as well as disadvantages if the prob­lem is considered within the framework of the dialogue between science and religion. The liturgical understanding of science, which in philosophical terms implies its vision through the eyes of Christian Platonism, does not provide any scientific, investigative methodology, since the treatment of nature has a highly speculative character and makes use of hierarchical structures and mathematical laws. Science, however, when understood in this way through the prism of its place in the whole of humankind’s experience, does acquire a sacred quality and receives its justification in terms of higher spiritual realities. The scientific enterprise as a whole thus becomes indispensable for our better understanding of the meaning of this world as seen in its relationship to God.

The Platonistic approach to science, however, as mentioned earlier, does not deal with the outcomes of physical laws and with broken symmetries. The development of an experimental science requires that we see nature in its variety, not only as highly symmetrical and organized but also as complex and full of disorder. The revival of Aristotle’s philosophy and his ideas on the nature of scientific inference in Western Europe during and after the twelfth century led to the establishment of an empirical science that had no immediate implications for theology. Science was no more than a handmaiden of theology. This in turn led eventually to the divorce of science and theology and the mutual incomprehension that we sometimes see today.

It is difficult to say exactly why Greek Patristic and Byzantine theology had no sig­nificant impact on the development of new learning in Europe after the twelfth cen­tury. This lack of influence is commonly attributed to its inherent Platonism, which was always suspected in both Greek and Latin circles of being essentially pagan. Perhaps a certain antipathy to the Greek East, with its Platonizing tendencies, after the Great Schism of 1054 also made it easier to accept in the long run the new wave of Aristotelian philosophy introduced to Western Europe by Arab scholars in Spain.¹¹⁵ Whatever the cause, in Western Europe an Aristotelian philosophy was absorbed by Christian thought, replacing the largely Platonistic theology of the Christian East and leading to the differing attitudes to science that we see today.