Biotechnology, Bioethics and Biotheology: An Interview with Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

About his book titled Biotechnology, Bioethics, Biotheology, which was recently published, the Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou, Mr. Hierotheos, speaks to “Orthodox Truth” (2/2/26). In the book, in addition to the bioethical and biotheological issue, a brief update is given on the developments in the field of biotechnology and the problems that arise.

In the interview that follows, the Metropolitan of Nafpaktos refers, among other things, to the prospects for dialogue between the Church and Science, to the research work of scientists as well as to the searches of young people regarding Bioethics. He particularly emphasizes that “Orthodox Theology must go beyond humanistic Bioethics, which connects Humanism with the Enlightenment and globalization, and offer an Orthodox Biotheology.”

God-Human Development or Evolution (St. Justin Popovich)

 God-Human Development (Evolution)

By St. Justin Popovich

Letter to a Student (Nov. 19, 1968)

My most precious child in the Lord. You wish me to tell you what questions the “Theological Circle” concerns itself with. Here they are: can the scientific understanding of the evolution of the world be reconciled with the Orthodox feeling and consciousness founded on Divine Revelation? How did the Holy Fathers speak about this? Is there any need at all for such a reconciliation?

Briefly. New Testament anthropology is inseparable from Old Testament anthropology. The good news of the Old Testament is this: man is the image of God. The good news of the New Testament is this: the God-man is the image of man. The heavenly, divine, immortal, eternal, and unchangeable human element in man is the image of God: the God-likeness. This God-likeness of the human being has been disfigured by voluntary human sin, by his union with the devil through sin and its consequence — death. God therefore became man “in order to renew once again His own image, which had been corrupted by passions.” God therefore became man, and remained in the human world as the God-man, as the Church, in order to give man — the image of God — all the necessary means: the Holy Mysteries and the holy virtues, by which the disfigured yet God-like human being, within the God-Human Body of the Church, might grow into a perfect man, into the measure of the full stature of Christ (the fullness of Christ). This is God-human development (evolution) of man; this is God-human anthropology.

Science and Religion - Chapter 3 b (St. Luke of Simferopol)

Chapter 3 (a)

Chapter 3 (b) 

 

If we consider religion in its essence — that is, as an inner experience, as adoration of God and communion with Him — we must agree that science not only does not contradict religion, but, moreover, science leads to religion. If we do not limit ourselves to the painstaking collection of facts, like the learned specialist Wagner in Goethe's work, but, like Faust, give free rein to the entire human thirst for knowledge, which strives to comprehend the mysteries of existence and to possess these mysteries, then we will inevitably arrive at religion. And it is precisely science that proves its necessity. It poses the very same questions that religion answers. By the law of causality, science leads us to the First Cause of the world, and religion answers who is this creative First Cause not only of the world but also of man. It tells us that we descend from God (and not from apes). Science reveals the eternal Logos of being, which conditions this harmony. Science leads us to the need for some rational meaning in life, some higher purpose for life. Religion answers – it is GOD.

Science and Religion - Chapter 3 a (St. Luke of Simferopol)

Chapter 2

Chapter Three: Sources of Prejudice

Where does the widespread opinion among students, and educated people in general, that science contradicts religion come from?

Its cause lies in superficial knowledge in both science and religion, which confirms the idea: "Knowledge leads to God, half-knowledge leads away from Him." Half-knowledge is the scourge of our time: it is precisely this that creates the prejudice just mentioned. First, we know little about philosophy, especially the branch of philosophy that specifically addresses this issue — that is, epistemology, or the theory of knowledge.

By credulously accepting as scientific the evidence presented in support of the proposition that God does not exist, we forget the propositions already clarified by Kant that theoretical reason is equally powerless to prove or disprove the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and free will. These objects and these questions are therefore called transcendental (beyond the bounds of science).

Science and Religion - Chapter 2 (St. Luke of Simferopol)

Chapter 1

Chapter Two: What is Religion?

 

Broadly speaking, religion is the relationship to the Absolute, to That Which we call God. Since this relationship exists for everyone, even for an atheist, it is common to say that everyone has their own religion. However, when taken in this manner, in a broad sense, religion can be both correct and incorrect, true and false, moral and immoral – depending on what we understand as the absolute, highest, and ultimate value of the world and how we relate to it – what we believe in and how we believe, what we accept and what we reject. Positively and fundamentally speaking, religion is the communion with God (reunion). It is precisely about this religion that we must speak.