The message of His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Chuch, to the participants at the pan-Orthodox Congress „The Dialogue between Science and Religion in the Orthodox World”, Bucharest, September 25 – 27, 2008:

Your Excellency, Mr. Prime Minister,
Mr. President of the Romanian Academy,
Respected invitees,
Honored attendees,

Firstly, we wish to welcome all invitees and participants at the pan-Orthodox Congress „The Dialogue between Science and Religion in the Orthodox World” and to express our joy for the fact that Romania is hosting this event. The Congress „The Dialogue between Science and Religion in the Orthodox World” is organized by the Association for Dialog between Theology and Science in Romania, together with the Romanian Patriarchate and the Romanian Academy, and represents a part of a larger project titled „Science and Orthodoxy. Research and Education” which is unfolding in Romania between 2007 and 2009.
In Romania, the dialog between Religion and Science is regarded with special interest. Over the last eight years, the Romanian Orthodox Church participated in many successful projects and events on this theme. Many of these were organized by the Association for Dialog between Theology and Science in Romania, within the projects developed with the support of the John Templeton Foundation. We also remember with joy that in 2006, in Iaşi, unfolded one of the largest events of this kind, The Conference of the European Society for Studies in Science and Theology, reuniting more than 100 participants from Europe, the United States and Canada. To these events we can also add some projects initiated and coordinated by the Romanian Orthodox Church, such as the Journal for Interdisciplinary Research on Religion and Science, an international e-journal, edited in cooperation with several Romanian Universities, which presents various research and perspectives on this dialog.

The Congress debuting today is, however, an event with a distinct significance, as it is the first pan-Orthodox meeting which addresses the dialog between Science and Religion. It is thus appropriate to send out our congratulations to the initiators and organizers of the Congress, the members of the Association for Dialog between Theology and Science in Romania.

Practicing science, man’s reason becomes sharper, able to pierce through the physical veil of things, capturing their ever-more subtle reasons. “God does not bestow upon man forthright the meanings and names of those created by Him, but rather awaits for the man’s effort to decipher them, for which he was granted with the inner capacity and need,” said Father Dumitru Stăniloae.

The rationality of Creation, captured in part also by the sciences, unveils itself in the texts of the Holy Scripture, but, even more, in the revelation made to men by Christ – the incarnated Logos. Father Dumitru Stăniloae links the Incarnation of the Word in Christ, for people, with the incorporation of His reasons (the logoi) in all things of the created world, seen now as signs or plasticized ideas of the Creator Logos.

The human mind takes the shape of the realities it comes to know, according to the way it gains this knowledge. A passion-filled act of knowledge, which is egotistical and possessive, further enslaves the one who performs it, which leads him to seek for and see, in the world, only that which feeds his egotistical passions. That is why the entire patristic thought links knowledge with the shunning of passions, with prayer and with the cultivation of virtues through the communion of man with God the Creator, Who is at the same time present within creation and transcending it.

Through spiritual life, with the support of the divine grace, man does not see anymore the created world as a final reality, but rather God – its Creator. The mind does not hold man anymore in possession of the limited things, but helps him go beyond himself and them, in communion with the limitless and eternal God.

For the spiritualized man, the intelligible reasons of physical creatures become spiritual food for the mind. The entire world and the things in it become ways of uniting with God. The world is thus a gift and a sacrament of divine love. Through this, we can see how the Fathers show the holistic and integrating embrace of Orthodoxy, which, in any experience of authentic knowledge in the field of sciences, can be a step towards getting closer to God, and the efforts to scientifically research the world receive spiritual value. The Orthodox cosmic Christology is a Trinitarian one and is based upon the communion of the Creator with creation, between uncreated divine grace and the freedom of human person, in such a way that the rationality of creation fulfills itself in personal communion.

Together with these considerations, there are numerous theological motivations which prove that the Eastern patristic thought has important openings towards contemporary science. Thus, the dialog between the Orthodox theology and the sciences of the Universe and of life can lead towards a better knowledge of the beauties of Creation and of God’s work within it, for the salvation of humans and as eternal communion of life and love with the eternal God.

We congratulate all those present at the works of this Congress, praying to God to bless the joint efforts of the men of science and of the theologians, and to grant them the joy of knowing truth as a divine reason of existence.





† D A N I E L
Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church