Did the saints concern themselves with the relation between theology and science?

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Published: Monday, 29 September 2014 09:07

Written by pr. Razvan Ionescu

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The answer is yes, more so than we would be tempted to believe at first glance. They did not do so, however, as an extra-ecclesiastical hobby. Rather, they approached this relation from an interior preoccupation with their own salvation, as well as of that of their neighbour’s. In the Church we know saints who through the simplicity of their lives and through their pureness of heart, acquired union with God, without any kind of interest for science. At the same time, we also know saints who were passionate about the marriage of secular knowledge with spiritual knowledge, for the latter becomes a true spinal cord for the former. For example, Saints Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa constituted, for their time, true models of scholarship embraced as service before God. Saint Catherine shamed the sages of her time with her sense of discernment. Another illuminating and special figure in history is Saint Luke of Crimea – bishop, surgeon, and university professor in medicine, who lived in the last century.