Orthodoxy and Science

The Orthodox Church is uneasy about contemporary science. What causes its uneasiness is not exclusively its slow reception of modern culture. An important cause is the fact that contemporary research sidelines ethical and spiritual criteria. The practical application of scientific discoveries in the area of biotechnologies provides abundant evidence for this. That said, progress is being made in regard to the Orthodox appraisal of modern culture and contemporary science and toward self-assessment against current cultural trends. This progress cannot make an impact, however, without an authenticating framework. Fortunately, three documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church provide an implicit framework for addressing matters such as the Orthodox attitude toward science, especially biology and its related branches, in light of theological anthropology and traditional ethical and spiritual criteria. A shared particularity of these documents is that they consider modern culture and scientific research in a missional perspective.     

The Technological Factor: Redemption, Nature, and the Image of God

This paper begins from the premise that being in the image of God refers humanity neither to nature nor to its technology but to God. Two positions are thereby rejected: (1) that nature should be treated as a source of salvation (Heidegger), and (2) that redemptive significance may be ascribed to technology (Cole-Turner, Hefner). Instead, theological judgments concerning technologyrequire the reconstruction of theological anthropology. To this end, the image of God ( imago dei ) is reconceived in terms of sociality , temporality , and spatiality to show how humanity may be understood as imaging God in a technological society.     

Genealogy of Morality and Law

In order to clarify the relationship between morality and law, it is necessary to define both concepts precisely. Cultural realities refer to concepts which are more specifically defined if we focus towards the genealogy of those realities, that is to say, their motivation, function and aim. Should we start from legal anthropology, comparative law and history of law, law arises as a social technique which coactively imposes ways of solving conflicts, protecting fundamental values for a society's co-existence. Values subject to being protected are proposed by morality, the latter making subordination of law to morality inevitable. This explains that a great number of modern constitutions include a reference to fundamental moral values, that is to say, they have explicitly positivised moral contents. Legal reasoning, at all levels and expressions, needs to appeal to the aforementioned values. Constitutional reasoning, international law, legislative activity and judicial practice are studied to verify the latter. This subordination of law to morality sets out a serious problem: moralities are cultural realities which are only valid for a specific society. In order for law not to fall in a not very rational legal relativism, law should not be subordinated to morality, but to ethics, the latter understood as cross-cultural morality. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a step forward in this sense.     

ON MAKING A CULTURAL TURN IN RELIGIOUS ETHICS

This essay critically explores resources and reasons for the study of culture in religious ethics, paying special attention to rhetorics and genres that provide an ethics of ordinary life. I begin by exploring a work in cultural anthropology that poses important questions for comparative and cultural inquiry in an age alert to “otherness,” asymmetries of power, the end of value‐neutrality in the humanities, and the formation of identity. I deepen my argument by making a foundational case for the importance of culture as a topic of normative analysis through a discussion of the emotions as cultural artifacts. To illustrate how cultural analysis can inform religious ethics, I turn to works by Wayne Meeks, Margaret Trawick, and Charles Taylor. I conclude by sketching some implications of a “cultural turn” for future work in religious ethics.     

Ecclesiological Research and Natural and Human Sciences: Some Observations of an Unconventional Phenomenon

This article is motivated by the absence of published material dealing with the rapprochement between ecclesiology and the sciences. It presupposes that there is a need to broaden the scope of ecclesiological research in order to integrate into it theories and methods from the social and natural sciences. Ecclesiological research in this wider sense has as its object, church, as a broad concept. The article suggests a threefold aspect for ecclesiology, conceiving it as the ecclesiology of the researcher, and the ecclesiology of both the object and of the result of the research. Furthermore, its purpose is to identify transparent ecclesiological theories which are able to engage with and integrate scientific theories and methods. An inventory of examples of modes of collaboration used between ecclesiology and different sciences is then offered as an illustration of the context in which ecclesiology may integrate or relate to science in different ways. Finally, the article concludes that there is a need for further clarificatory research into the possibilities which exist for ecclesiology to be made more fully the science of being Christian in community or church.     

Introduction: Politics of faith in Asia: Local and global perspectives of Christianity in Asia

This collection of papers is the result of research presented at the 2010 meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Atlanta, Georgia, sponsored by the Comparative Studies of Religion section. The set of papers resulting from the panel, Politics of Faith in Asia: Local and Global Perspectives of Christianity in Asia, presents findings from a diverse array of cultural areas and historical contexts across the Asian continent. All of these are connected by a focus on the intersection of Christianity and the political organisation in Asian societies. Although each paper focuses primarily on the continued encounter of Protestant, Evangelical Christianity and local religions, the definition and scope of the political milieu differ considerably. Moving from local communities in a small Indian town, through the growing global connections of religious groups in the Philippines, to the global and national politics of South Korea, the set addresses a multitude of political levels, be they governmental or the processes of everyday interactions.     

Recurrent motifs as resonant attractor states in the narrative field: a testable model of archetype

At the most basic level, archetypes represented Jung's attempt to explain the phenomenon of recurrent myths and folktale motifs (Jung 1956, 1959, para. 99). But the archetype remains controversial as an explanation of recurrent motifs, as the existence of recurrent motifs does not prove that archetypes exist. Thus, the challenge for contemporary archetype theory is not merely to demonstrate that recurrent motifs exist, since that is not disputed, but to demonstrate that archetypes exist and cause recurrent motifs. The present paper proposes a new model which is unlike others in that it postulates how the archetype creates resonant motifs. This model necessarily clarifies and adapts some of Jung's seminal ideas on archetype in order to provide a working framework grounded in contemporary practice and methodologies. For the first time, a model of archetype is proposed that can be validated on empirical, rather than theoretical grounds. This is achieved by linking the archetype to the hard data of recurrent motifs rather than academic trends in other fields.     

Editorial

Mauss's contribution to his uncle's classical study, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, has not been widely acknowledged. It is, however, difficult to assess in the light of inadequate knowledge. This essay is an introduction to the study of the relation of nephew and uncle with regard to this problem. The difference between them as people and their achievements is first briefly considered. Then attention is turned to the way they approached the sociological study of religion. Only two aspects of religion have been selected. The first considers the problems in defining religion. Durkheim holds to the notion of the sacred and Mauss to mana as being central to a definition. The second area is ritual, where there is considerable agreement, although Mauss shows little interest in effervescence. In the final analysis, the two tend to show a complementarity in their work.