With the participation of the Director of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies

On February 24-25, 2017, the first international conference on the topic “Modern Science and the Orthodox Tradition. An Uneasy Relationship?” organized by the Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, was successfully held in Athens. The conference is part of the wider research project  “Science and Orthodoxy around the World–SOW,” hosted by the Institute of Historical Research and directed by Dr. Eythimios Nicolaidis, Research Director of the Institute. The project was made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.

The First International Conference of SOW focused on the nature of the relationship between modern Science and Orthodox Christianity with its centuries-old tradition. Orthodoxy today shares a variety of —sometimes ambiguous—attitudes towards modern science shaped by the texts of the Church Fathers, medieval and modern theologians and scholars, as well as contemporary social realities. On the other hand, modern science, which sprung from the seventeenth-century quest by Western-European philosophers for rationality, is faced with crucial and uneasy questions about the meaning of life and the position of humankind within the natural world. The main goal of the Conference was to define the patterns of the science-religion relationship in the Orthodox world, especially in the light of the most recent trends in both science and theology.

Among the participants were, Metropolitan of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki Nikolaos (Chatzinikolaou), Bishop of Christopolis Makarios (Griniezakis), Dr. Efthymios Nicolaidis (National Hellenic Reasearch Foundation, Athens, Greece), Dr. Aristotle Papanikolaou (New York, USA), Dr. Sergey Horujy (Moscow, Russia), Dr. Vasilios Makrides (Erfurt, Germany), Dr. Nina Dimitrova (Sofia, Bulgaria), Rev. Dr. Doru Costache (Australia), Dr. Athanasios Papathanasiou (Athens, Greece), Rev. Dr. Christopher Knight (UK), Dr. Ronald Numbers (Viscosin, USA), Rev. Dr. Ioan Chirila (Cluj-Napoca, Romania), Dr. Dimitrios Kyriazis (Athens, Greece), Dr. Gayle Woloschak (Chicago, USA), Rev. Dr. Vassilios Thermos (Athens, Greece), Dr. Stoyan Tanev (Denmark), Dr. Alexei Bodrov (Moscow, Russia), et al.

The Director of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies Dr. Pantelis Kalaitzidis spoke on the topic “The Ambiguous Relationship between Orthodoxy and Science, as part of the pending discussion between Orthodoxy and Modernity”. According to his presentation, the dominant Orthodox discourse regarding the relationship of Orthodoxy to science claims that the former was never opposed to the latter, and that Orthodoxy was always open to the scientific research and progress. However, a careful reading of the encounter between Orthodoxy and science in the time of the Enlightenment, as well as the attitude adopted by many Orthodox to a wide range of crucial issues such as the use of the historico-critical method in biblical and theological sciences, the bioethical questions, the evolution theory, or questions of gender and sexuality, call for a reappraisal and a more critical and balanced evaluation of the relationship between Orthodoxy and science, and to an honest discussion of the problems this relationship involves. The paper sought to engage in this study under the hermeneutical angle of the still pending dialogue between Orthodoxy and Modernity. 

To read the abstracts and more information about the conference and the entire project please visit the official website at: http://project-sow.org/