"Believe and don't investigate." Faith, logic and research in Orthodox theologytranslated
His Eminence Metropolitan Hong Kong Mr. Nektarios writes
The phrase "Believe and seek not" is often used as a slogan against the Christian faith. It is presented as if it expresses the essence of church teaching, as if the Church allegedly asks man to give up thinking, judgment, science and the search for truth. Thus the impression is created that Christianity rests on ignorance, fears reason, and cultivates uncritical acceptance.
Such a perception, however, does not convey the content of the Orthodox faith. The Church does not call man to stop thinking, nor to despise scientific knowledge. He considers the mind a gift of God and the logical element of human nature. What he rejects is not research, but the arrogant self-sufficiency of the human intellect, especially in the face of the mystery of God.
The question, therefore, is not whether man has a right to research, but what he researches, in what way and what limits he recognizes in his knowledge. It is one thing to study creation—the natural world, history, language, medicine, astronomy, or any scientific subject—and another to demand that…
