Christopher C. Knight

This paper explores the way in which two aspects of patristic thinking seem to have parallels with understandings to be found within the philosophy of science of the present time, especially as it has developed through reflection on the physicist’s understanding of the world. The first of these aspects relates to the concept of apophaticism, which in recent decades has been made more prominent in theological discussion through the influence of Vladimir Lossky’s focus on the ‘mystical’ nature of Orthodox theology. Here, insights into physics within the philosophy of science – exemplified by the work of Mary Hesse and Rom Harré – are presented as particularly relevant to exploring this concept. The second of these aspects of patristic thinking relates to the philosophical concept of idealism, often associated with the understanding of the eighteenth-century Anglican bishop, George Berkeley, but in fact to be found in a comparable form in the patristic era. The relevance of the ancient Greek philosophical concept of the nous – often used by patristic authors – is emphasized in relation to both topics.

The Eastern Orthodox tradition is based on the consensus developed within the Christian community of the patristic period, but it is not something that can be adhered to simply through familiarity with the patristic writings and professing loyalty to their content. For one thing, the writings of the Fathers sometimes reflected the mistaken secular ‘knowledge’ of the period in which they lived,{1} which means that there is sometimes a need for the process that Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia has called separating ‘Patristic wheat … from Patristic chaff.’{2}

1.Basil the Great, for example, illustrated a (legitimate) theological understanding through the mistaken science of his time, in which it was believed that not all animals are produced by existence spontaneously from the earth (Basil the Great, Hexameron IX.2). parents; he cites grasshoppers, small insects, mice, frogs and eels as creatures that come into existence spontaneously from the earth (Basil the Great, Hexameron IX.2).

2.Timothy Ware [later Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia], The Orthodox Church (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957), 212.