Saint Iakovos Tsalikes and the Unbelieving Physicist

 

By Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol

There was a woman from Canada, and another nun with her, from Cyprus, actually, and they went to see Fr. Iakovos.

The young woman who was from Canada was a physicist, but she didn’t believe and was probably an atheist. When they got there, Fr. Iakovos told them he was leaving to go to a village. He added: "But I hope that Saint David, who’s here in our monastery, will show you that there really are saints and the grace of the Holy Spirit. God exists and He overcomes the laws of nature."

How Are We To Understand the Sun Standing Still for Joshua?

By John Sanidopoulos

In the Book of Joshua 10:12-14 we read:

Then Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel:

“Sun, stand still over Gibeon;
And Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.”

So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the people had revenge upon their enemies.

Is this not written in the Book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. And there has been no day like that, before it or after it, that the Lord heeded the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel.

The Unbelieving Physicist and a Miracle Above and Beyond the Laws of Nature

St. Iakovos Tsalikes holding the censer and cane of St. David of Evia

By Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol

A few days before we went to the monastery in Evia, some people came from a village and asked Fr. Iakovos Tsalikes to take some relics of Saint David and to perform a Supplicatory Canon for them. As he was leaving, there was a woman from Canada named Maria, and there was a nun with her, from Cyprus actually, and they went to see Fr. Iakovos.

The young woman who was from Canada was a physicist, but she didn’t believe and was probably an atheist. When they got there, Fr. Iakovos told them he was leaving to go to a village. He added: ‘But I hope that Saint David, who’s here in our monastery, will show you that there really are saints and the grace of the Holy Spirit. God exists and He overcomes the laws of nature.'

Doctor of Physics at Stanford University Becomes Orthodox Monk in Crete

Hieromonk Athenagoras, 34, is a Doctor of Physics from Stanford University in California. Born in Heraklion, Crete, he studied at his hometown and came to the United States for postgraduate studies, where he worked as a researcher. In 2016 he returned home and finally resigned at the Monastery of Saint George in Epanosifi, and a year later, on November 3, 2017, he was tonsured a monk and ordained a deacon.

Can We Know God Through Mathematics?

The esteemed theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, one of the creators and developers of the revolutionary String Theory which is highly respected throughout the world, claims to have developed a theory that might point to the existence of God. Through this theory he claims that it is through mathematics we can know the mind of God, who he says is a mathematician. He says: "The mind of God we believe is cosmic music, the music of strings resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace. That is the mind of God." You can hear him explain more here. The Orthodox perspective is quite different, however, coming down to how both Science and Theology should be viewed and used. Below Fr. John Romanides and Fr. George Metallinos explain, together with a wonderful quote by Albert Einstein that can be integrated into the Orthodox perspective.

By Protopresbyter Fr. John Romanides

At this point, we come to a crucial difference between the apophatic theology of the Church Fathers and that of the Western Scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages. Even today if we open up a dogmatic textbook written by Roman Catholic theologians, we will come across their claim that there are two ways to theologize – one way involves attributing names to God and the other negative way involves removing these names from God. But what is absurd is that for them these names are not taken away from God in order to avoid attributing them to Him, but in order to purify the names of their imperfections.

If the Earth Stopped Spinning

The Magic and Value of Photons

By Metropolitan Nicholas of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki

We live in a superbly beautiful world, whose underlying secret of life is borne by microscopic entities called 'Genes'. They are inconspicuous; they are not visible. And yet, they determine life and its characteristics. They are what determines each person, each identity, with precision and with details.

We are swimming inside an ocean of infinite particles, which relate to assorted and strange names: Quarks, Gluons, Bosons, Leptons, Baryons, Neutrinos, Photons and a host of others - which are also not visible. However these tiny particles are what supports the grandeur of this world. They are the ones that shield its mystery.

Cosmological Contingency and Logical Necessity: G. Florovsky and T. Torrance

This lecture was delivered in April 2011 at the Orthodox Theology and the Sciences Conference held in Sofia, Bulgaria.

By Matthew Baker
Fordham University, New York, USA

After long neglect, Fr Georges Florovsky is now finally again being talked about. Over the past two years, conferences have been held in five countries, a society has been established at Princeton, and articles are appearing in various journals – all dealing with Florovsky's thought and influence.

Some of this talk is highly critical. Some argue that Florovsky's neo-patristic hermeneutic must be, not extended, but transcended, left behind, if Orthodoxy is to rise to the needed engagement with modern culture. Given the crucial place of the sciences in the birth of the “modern,” it is interesting, to say the least, how little engagement with scientific thought one finds among these critics.

In contrast to these critics, the work of Alexei Nesteruk has recently shown us how contemporary physics and Orthodox theology in a distinctly Florovskian vein may be brought into deep and fruitful interaction. But there is another figure upon whose crucial contributions Nesteruk explicitly builds, who has also not yet received the interest deserved from the Orthodox. Of all 20th century theologians, T.F. Torrance's offering to theology-science dialogue is the most estimable, and informed by a profound engagement with the Greek Fathers. In a certain sense, the two approaches of Torrance and Florovsky are joined in Nesteruk's attempted neo-patristic synthesis of theology and physics.

This exchange is not one Nesteruk inaugurated. After meeting, probably at the first WCC assembly in Amsterdam, 1948, Florovsky and Torrance corresponded occasionally into the 70's. Torrance's published works also contain positive remarks on aspects of Florovsky's thought.

In the context of theology-science dialogue, however, it is on the theme of the contingency of creation that Torrance most frequently repairs to Florovsky for insight. In what follows, then, we will consider Florovsky and Torrance's contributions to our understanding of created contingency in theology and science, and then conclude by asking what, if anything, the respective approaches of these two theologians have to offer to one another as well as to the wider enterprise of Church theology.

The Mysteries of the Universe

By His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos

of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

The discovery of the Higgs boson gave an opportunity for newspapers and magazines to interview scientists and to popularize our knowledge of the world and the universe.

Such an interview was given by the eminent physicist and astronomer Dionysios Simopoulos, director of the Eugenides Planetarium in Athens, who has received many honorary distinctions. We will mention below certain points from this interview about our mysterious universe.