Re: on Eastern Orthodoxy and science

Ted,

I also find Orthodoxy fascinating. An acquintance of mine from our
Mennonite Brethren church recently decided to leave the church and
become a catechumen of the Greek Orthodox church, mostly for
liturgical reasons I think.

Maybe this is not precisely on topic for what you had in mind, but I'd
be interested to know your thoughts and those of others on the list:
is Orthodoxy fundamentally more appreciative of evolution? I note
that Dobzhansky, probably the most well-regarded Christian biologist
of his time, was Russian Orthodox. I also wonder whether it is the
doctrine of deification (theosis) that proves more compelling for the
Orthodox, though of course the Logos is a supportive position as well.
 And a further, more "out there" question: do such doctrines drive the
Mormon support of, or at least indifference to, evolution?

Chris

On 4/4/06, Ted Davis <tdavis@messiah.edu> wrote:
> When we start talking about the Orthodox tradition, my ears perk up. Let me briefly mention two things to see whether or not there is enough interest to take this conversation in a different direction. I've been learning quite a bit about that tradition these past two years, and a lot of it I like.
>
> (1) This past year I completed a fairly lengthy article giving a spiritual biography of Michael Idvorsky Pupin, the leading Serbian-American scientist of his generation (his career flourished from ca. 1895 to ca. 1930) and also the most influential Serbian-American of his generation (not an exaggeration, he had a significant role in Wilson's policy about the creation of Yugoslavia after WW1). He also wrote extensively on religion and science in the 1920s, including 3 books that were very widely read, one of which won the Pulitzer Prize for autobiography and was in abridged form read by millions of school children. He brought genuine Orthodox insights into his theology of nature. Here's an abstract of my article, which has not yet been published:
>
> Columbia University physicist Michael Idvorsky Pupin (1858-1935), president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the year of the Scopes trial (1925), is usually remembered today for his discoveries of secondary x-rays and the mathematical theory of loaded transmission lines. In his own day, however, his life story was very widely publicized in the United States as an example of a successful immigrant from Eastern Europe; and his many writings on science and religion were very widely read. As a devout Serbian Orthodox believer, Pupin's theology of nature emphasized a central idea of the Eastern Orthodox religious tradition: the presence of beauty and order in the universe as manifestations of the creative divine Word (the Λόγος of John's gospel) that had brought all things into being. This paper offers a brief intellectual and spiritual biography of Michael Pupin.
>
> (2) One of my Orthodox colleagues (yes, Messiah does hire Christians who are not Protestants; our faith statement is the Apostles' Creed) pointed me to this webpage, in order to explain to me "the Holy Fire" miracle that is said to occur annually on the true Easter (ie, the one calculated from the old Greek calendar). I had never heard of this before, despite the spectacular nature of the claim, and I am interested to know whether anyone knows about this. Here's the link:
> http://www.holyfire.org/eng/
>
> Ted
>
>
>
Received on Wed Apr 5 10:13:21 2006