Aristotle and saint Basil the Great: ancient and Christian ontological thinking of the heterosexuality
Paper presented at the International discussion seminar
Christianity
and Philosophy in the epoch of the postmodern,
Sofia
University “St. Kliment Ohridsky”
3-5
September 2013
published in Християнство и философия. Christianity and Philosophy. vol. I
Edited by Zvetina Racheva, С., "Парадигма", 2014, с. 237-261
Dimka Gicheva-Gocheva
Summary: In this paper I will try to present in brief and with theses my
understanding of several important problems. Some of them are theoretical ones
– philosophical and theological, while others are practical and demanding
immediate response. The main issue will be: to demonstrate that the challenges
of the present day and the contemporary life may be reflected better upon, if
we rely on some important thinkers of
the past – both pagan and Christian[i].
One
of the great challenges of the present day is the thinking about gender and the
difference between the two genders – if there is such a difference at all –
because sometimes we encounter such claims in the critical and theoretical
branches of the humanities: in reality according to them, ontologically there
is no such difference, there is only biological sex, but the gender is a social construct. In the realm of actual politics
this theorizing leads to legislative initiatives in a number of developed
countries in the Northern hemisphere, which legalize the marriages of people
from the same sex, and moreover allow the adoption of children by such couples.
What could be replied to this challenge?
The sine qua non from the Holy Scripture of the Old
Testament
In
the big narrative of the creation, created in six days, the holy prophet Moses
tells in the book of Genesis, in chapters 6, 7, 8 about the
exterminating kataklismos, sent by
the Lord to the earth, because of the corruption and the wickedness into which
the humans have fallen. The righteous Noah is foretold to
build an ark from a gopher wood and give in it shelter to all the members of
his family, in order that only his sons and their wives are saved from
extinction. Also, Noah is ordered to preserve in the ark couples from animals
and birds: from the clean ones seven couples, and from the rest – two by two,
male and female, in order to be kept alive, and after the end of the deluge the life of all living creatures
to be resumed.
Let’s continue with an excerpt from
one well-known Psalm, read in the services of the Orthodox Church every
evening, the so-called ‘vechernya”. Let me also remind you, that according to
the ancient and the Christian intuitions as well, the new day begins from the
evening of the previous one. I allow myself to do this, because the topic of
the paper is the heterosexuality as such, and not only the one in the human
race. When talking about gender and sex we have to start from the question:
whether we conceive of man as a part of nature, of creation of the Creator
and life according to the Lord’s design, or we are thinking of nature and
life as materially-biological realities, or even as social constructions of
differences, which do not exist in the living?
Mentioning only the most necessary in the Old Testament, we have to
stress on the Psalm 103 (or Psalm 104 in some editions of the Bible),
designated as the Psalm of the creation of the world, in which the Lord’s
perfection is praised and it starts by the famous:
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
O Lord my God, thou art
very great;
thou art clothed with honour and majesty.
thou art clothed with honour and majesty.
The inspired singer glorifies the wisdom of
the Lord and the well-being of everything living, including the habitations of
the living creatures with the following hymn:
10 He sends
the springs into the valleys;
they flow among the hills.
11 They give drink to every beast of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
12 By them the birds of the heavens have their home;
They sing among the branches.
13 He waters the hills from His upper chambers;
The earth is satisfied with the fruit of Your works.
14 He causes the grass to grow for the cattle,
And vegetation for the service of man,
That he may bring forth food from the earth,
15 And wine that makes glad the heart of man,
Oil to make his face shine,
And bread which strengthens man’s heart.
they flow among the hills.
11 They give drink to every beast of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
12 By them the birds of the heavens have their home;
They sing among the branches.
13 He waters the hills from His upper chambers;
The earth is satisfied with the fruit of Your works.
14 He causes the grass to grow for the cattle,
And vegetation for the service of man,
That he may bring forth food from the earth,
15 And wine that makes glad the heart of man,
Oil to make his face shine,
And bread which strengthens man’s heart.
16 The trees of the Lord are full of sap,
The cedars of Lebanon, which He planted;
17 Where the birds make their nests;
The stork has her home in the fir trees.
18 The high hills are for the wild goats;
The cliffs are a refuge for the rock badgers.
19 He appointed the moon for seasons;
the sun knows its going down.
20 You make darkness, and it is night,
In which all the beasts of the forest creep about.
21 The young lions roar after their prey,
And seek their food from God.
22 When the sun rises, they gather together,
and lie down in their dens.
23 Man goes out to his work
And to his labour until the evening.
The cedars of Lebanon, which He planted;
17 Where the birds make their nests;
The stork has her home in the fir trees.
18 The high hills are for the wild goats;
The cliffs are a refuge for the rock badgers.
19 He appointed the moon for seasons;
the sun knows its going down.
20 You make darkness, and it is night,
In which all the beasts of the forest creep about.
21 The young lions roar after their prey,
And seek their food from God.
22 When the sun rises, they gather together,
and lie down in their dens.
23 Man goes out to his work
And to his labour until the evening.
24 O Lord, how manifold are Your works!
In wisdom You have made them all.
The earth is full of Your possessions.
25 This great and wide sea,
In wisdom You have made them all.
The earth is full of Your possessions.
25 This great and wide sea,
In which are innumerable teeming things,
Living things both small and great.
26 There the ships sail about;
There is that Leviathan,
Living things both small and great.
26 There the ships sail about;
There is that Leviathan,
Which You have made to play there.
27 These all wait for You,
That You mayest give them their food in due season.
28 What thou give them they gather in;
You open Your hand, they are filled with good.
29 You hide Your face, they are troubled:
You take away their breath, they die
and return to their dust.
30 You send forth Your spirit, they are created;
And You renew the face of the earth[ii].
27 These all wait for You,
That You mayest give them their food in due season.
28 What thou give them they gather in;
You open Your hand, they are filled with good.
29 You hide Your face, they are troubled:
You take away their breath, they die
and return to their dust.
30 You send forth Your spirit, they are created;
And You renew the face of the earth[ii].
The
psalms of Saint King David do not need additional commentaries and
clarifications. It is not by chance that they are part of the church services –
because they are not only inspired by the Spirit, but also they are
understandable and touch the heart of every human with the depth of their
poetry.
Let
me just add, that the beauty and the wisdom of the creation of the Lord are
reflected upon, praised and worshiped like that in the Judaism, in the
Christendom, in the Islam. Life is the supreme gift of the Creator and even its
most elementary forms cannot be created in the proper meaning of the
word by anyone else and in anyway – this is not a topic of dispute for the
people who confess one of these religions. With the living organisms, which are
already created – from the most microscopic ones to the highest mammals, people
may operate with noble aims in the sciences, in
embryology and medicine, but also they may indulge themselves in
dangerous games: reproduction, combination, recombination, remodeling and bioengineering, cloning and
coping. From ontological point of view both in the allowable and justifiable,
but also in the bold applications of the modern technologies there is only
usage, handling and playing, sometimes going too far, with what has already
been created by Him.
The strongest ancient ontological grasping of the
heterosexuality: Aristotle
There
is a powerful beginning of the ontological thinking of the
difference-and-differentiation-in-the-identity in ancient Greece and it is
founded in the pre-Socratics, in the Pythagoreans. From Philolaus on they
conceive of ten primordial couples or pairs, but they do not label them
opposites. They are called “principles by correlation’, or sustoice…a, co-elements,
principles-in-unity, because the one is impossible without the other. The male
and the female ¥rrhn kaˆ qÁlu are among them, on the fifth
position among the principles in couples[iii].
There
is endless room for debating: who is the ancient thinker, who contributed more
for the founding of the first philosophy – Plato or Aristotle? Especially
regarding the ontological conceptions of the heterosexuality Aristotle offers
several concepts. They are rich in sense and strong in application, whereas
Plato only touches the problem at the end of his encyclopedic dialogue on
nature and the cosmos – the Timaeus (90 e ff and further till the
end). The poetic ontology of love between man and woman in the Symposium and the organic description
of the difference between them as natural beings at the end of the Timaeus is directed at the explanation
of the great task in the being for all the living creatures in the eternally
living cosmos: this happens for the propagation of the genus.
*
When
working on the first Bulgarian translation of the Metaphysics with
Nikolai Gochev, who translated eight of the books, we had to solve the following
problem in book Iota: there are several words in it with the same root,
which are as if synonyms. We had to decide: are these redundant precisions or
they are absolutely necessary distinctions? Repeatedly through the centuries
Aristotle has been accused by people, who feel aversion towards his thought,
that sometimes he enjoys the playing with speculative distinctions for the sake
of their own. Precisely these, by the way, make book Iota so boring for
some readers. The decision, which we have chosen for the translation of the
terms in the Metaphysics later on
has been applied again in the first Bulgarian translation of the De caelo, done by me and the editor
Vladimir Marinov.
We have been convinced that these seeming
synonyms are conceptual differentiations – and moreover important ones for his
first philosophy, for his second philosophy and for his cosmology. The
translation of these terms in the Metaphysics,
for the books I-III and X-XIV, and in the De
caelo as well is: as “противоположно” (in English
approximately “the opposite”) is translated ™nant…on, аnd ™nant…wsij (in English approximately “opposing”) is rendered as “противополагане”. The Bulgarian “противоположеност”
stands for
™nantiÒthj (in English opposedness), аnd “противолежащо”
is the rendering of ¢ntike…menon
.
What does this
mean for ¹ qeologik» or the first
philosophy?
The core part of the Aristotelian lectures on ¹ qeologik», which
we nowadays read as the fourteen books of the Metaphysics, is in the so-called “treatise in three books on oÙs…a, the books ZHΘ”. The concepts genus, edoj -species, substance, differentia specifica are thought
over in these books. Centuries later Porphyry
comments on them in his Isagoge, and Boethius translates and comments
on them in Latin. So they became part of the medieval universities’ curricula
and fundamentals of logic. After these three books on oÙs…a
-
substance (or the substantial being), the precise clarifications are
even deepened in book Iota, but many readers skip it as a boring inquiry
into meticulous superfluities.
In
book Iota the analysis begins with the problem of what is
one-unique-unified and logically the other problem emerges from here: what are
the separately existing real entities, which are to be included into groups of
species (forms, e‡dh),
similar to theirs, and from here in larger and more voluminous genera, which
comprise the similar species. We can ask a paradigmatic question like that: why
the opposite of the white colour is the black colour, and why the opposite of
the basso voice is the tenor? Why the soprano is not the opposite of the red
colour or why the cold air is not the opposite of the rough surfice, or to the
unbearable pressure on the bottom of the ocean? Book Iota is important
because it gives answers to questions similar to these ones. In this paper, of
course, I will confine myself only with what pertains to its topic:
1. The whole of
chapter 4, but particularly 1055 a 3-10 :
"Since
things which differ can
differ from one another in a greater or less degree,
there is a certain maximum difference, and this I call contrariety. That it
is the maximum difference
is shown
by induction. For
whereas things which differ in genus have no means
of passing into each other,
and are more
widely
distant,
and are not comparable, in the case of things that differ in species, the contraries
are the extremes from which generation takes place; and the
greatest
distance is that which is between the extremes, and therefore also between the contraries. [iv]
2. And again book Iota,
chapters 7 and 8, from 1057 b 35 till 1058 a 29 for the precisions of the
concepts genus and eidos-species, differentia specifica, ™nant…on, ™nant…wsij, ™nantiÒthj :
"That
which is “other in species” than something else is “other” in respect of something; and that something must apply to both. E.g., if an animal is
other
in species than something else, they must both be animals.
Hence, things which are other in species must be in the same genus. The sort of thing I mean by “genus” is that in virtue of which two things are both called the
same one thing; and which is not accidentally differentiated,
whether regarded as matter or otherwise. .. Therefore this difference must be “otherness of genus”. ( I say “otherness of genus” because
by “difference of genus” I mean an “otherness” which makes the genus itself
other); this, then, will be a
form of contrariety. This is
obvious by induction. For all differentiation is by opposites, and we have shown that contraries are in the same genus, because contrariety was shown to be complete difference. But difference in species is always difference from something in respect of something; therefore this is the same thing, i.e. the genus, for both.
(Hence too all contraries which differ in species, but not in genus are in the same line of predication, and are other than each other in the highest
degree; for their difference is
complete, and they cannot come into existence simultaneously.)[v] Hence, the difference is a form of contrariety.
"To be “other in species”, then, means this: to be in the same genus and involve contrariety, while being indivisible.
"To be “other in species”, then, means this: to be in the same genus and involve contrariety, while being indivisible.
3. Especially in
respect of the heterosexuality and the explanation of the sex difference
between male and female creatures not only in man , but also in all the animals
and the whole nature in general, conceptually very important is almost all of
the chapter 9, 1058 a 30 – 1058 b 24.
"The question might be raised as to why woman does not differ from man in species, seeing that female is
contrary to male, and their
difference is a contrariety; and why a female and a male animal
are not other in species, although the difference belongs to “animal” per se, and not as whiteness or blackness does; “male” and “female” belong to it qua animal. This problem is practically the same as “ why does one kind of contrariety (e.g. “footed” and
“winged”) make things other in species, while another (whiteness and blackness) does not?” The
answer may be that in the one case the attributes are peculiar to the genus,
and in the other they are less so’; and since one element is formula and the
other matter, contrarieties in the formula produce difference in species, but contrarieties in the
concrete whole do not.
Hence the whiteness or blackness of a man does not
produce this, nor is there any specific difference between a white man and
a black man; not even if one term is assigned to each. For we are now regarding “man” as
matter, and matter does not produce difference; and for this reason,
too, individual men are not species of “man”, although the flesh and bones of which this man and that man consist are different. The concrete whole is “other”, but not “other in species”, because there is no
contrariety in the formula, and that is the ultimate indivisible species. But Callias is definition and matter. Then so too is “white
man”, because
it is the individual,
Callias, who is white.
Hence “man”, then, is only white accidentally. Again, a bronze circle
and a wooden one do not differ in species; and a bronze triangle and a wooden
circle differ in species not because of their matter, but because there is
contrariety in their formulae.
But does not matter, when it is “other” in a particular way, make things “other in species”? ... Surely it is because
there is contrariety in the definition, for so there also is in “white man” and
“black horse”; and it is a contrariety in species, but not because one is white
and the other black; for even if they had both been white, they would still be
“other in species”.
“Male” and “female” are attributes peculiar to the
animal, but not in virtue of its substance; they are material or physical.
Hence the same semen may, as the result of some modification, become either
female or male.
The Greek for the last two
sentences: tÕ d ¥rren kaˆ qÁlu toà zóou
o„ke‹a mn p£qh, ¢ll' oÙ kat¦ t¾n oÙs…an ¢ll' ™n tÍ ÛlV
kaˆ tù sèmati, diÕ tÕ aÙtÕ spšrma qÁlu À ¥rren g…gnetai paqÒn ti
p£qoj.
Here I will make quite
minimalistic commentary. The issue is tremendous, because as Plato clarifies in
the Phaedo (103 a and ff.) to all real entities, which really exist as
substancies (or substantial beings) nothing is opposed. To the man a real
contrary being would be the anti-man or the not-man, to the woman a real
contrary being would be the anti-woman or not woman. The examples here are
mine, and we remember that in the Phaedo this is made in order to
prove the immortality of soul, because the anti-soul or the not-soul does not
exist. To being there is not not-being as its opposite and this is the deepest
root of the monism, which dominates the whole philosophical tradition after
Plato and Aristotle in the millennia after that. It is not by chance, that for
both of them not-being is not an ontological, but epistemological category.
Then how to explain the difference
between male and female? What Aristotle offers in chapter 9 of book Iota is a virtuous passing through
Scylla and Charybdis, i.e. the extinction of the differentiation between them,
on the one hand, and the exaggerated removal of the one from the other, which
would send them in different e‡dh. It is well known from the deepest antiquity, that the different e‡dh in the animals’ world even
if they can copulate at all, do not beget fertile off-springs but monstrous
creatures. From empirical point of view Aristotle touches this question (among
many others) in the On the generation of animals, but it is much more
important that he finds a solution of it in his first philosophy. He succeeds
in this by polishing the exquisiteness of the difference between ™nantwsij, which is translated by us
as “противополагане”
(approximately “opposing” in
English) and “противоположеност” - ™nantiÒthj (approximately “opposedness” in English) . There is dynamics,
movement and modality in the first one, this is a concept through which the
mutual attraction and approaching of two remote from one another opposite
things is conceived, whereas in the second one there is static and rest, there
is the result and the product of a process or becoming, which is already
fulfilled.
During the presentation
of this paper in Hall I on the 5th of September I tried to show an
example for this using the piano in the hall. The two most remote keys, for the
lowest and highest sound, when they are at rest and nobody is playing through
them, are in a state of “opposedness”, but if we pass our fingers from the two
ends of the keyboard with a successive very quick pressing of all the keys and
meet somewhere in the middle, this simultaneous movement will show an example
for the dynamic ontological concept ™nant…wsij. The
difference between the male and the female is conceived through it and its
optics, mingling with the concept of the peculiar p£qoj. It is not by chance that this precision is used in his
logic rarely, only twice in the Topics (112 b 28 and 113 a 2, 9), whereas the usages of these distinctions in two
other spheres of his thinking are many and important , and they will contribute
to the abstractedness of the first philosophy.
Sketches
on the distinctions between
™nant…on, ™nant…wsij, ™nantiÒthj
in
Aristotle’s cosmology and his philosophy of nature
The
analysis of the movements in the cosmos begins with these precisions in the De caelo, book Alpha, ch. 4, 270b 30 –
271 a 35. There are two main genera of the movement of the fundamental elements
– circular movement and rectilinear movement, both of them being primordial.
The circular movement, or more precisely said, the spherical movement of the
outmost sphere of the cosmos in itself around the axis of the cosmos and the
Earth, which coincide, is used by Plato in the Timaeus and by Aristotle in the De caelo in order to explain the uniqueness, the spatial
limitedness and the eternity of the cosmos. Aristotle thinks that two different
movements, happening in a circle, are contrary ones, only if they occur on a
line – whatever chord, connecting two points in the circle, or as it is in the
example in ch. 4 – the diameter. That’s why in the good editions of the text
there are diagrams to what is told in this place, in order to ease its
understanding. By the circular movement, when a body with a limited volume is
moving on the edge of a circle, its direction doesn’t matter for Aristotle.
Regardless of the fact that there are clockwise movements or counter-clockwise
movements, he does not consider them to be contrary in the absolute
meaning of the word. They have opposite directions physically, but they are not
contrary in the ontological aspect of his concept[vi].
One can see here excellently, that the
“opposedness” is used by Aristotle for a static and topological description,
whereas “opposing” is a term for a dynamic-vector ontological and kinetic
usage, for the designation of movements having intrinsic direction. The unison
with the Metaphysics is complete. There is real symphony.
The
consequences from this conceptual frame for his cosmology are well known: fire
and air move in a straight line from the center of the cosmos to its periphery,
and water and earth – in the opposite direction, to the center. The aither, the
fifth element deserves its name, because accordingly to the witty-serious
etymology proposed for it, it is eternally running, eternally speeding on the
outmost celestial sphere and the eternity of its movement guarantees the
eternal existence of the cosmos.
In
the Physics we see again the same precise conceptual clarity (187 a 20
and 190 b 27). Especially telling is the reasoning in 217 a 23: cold and hot
are “opposings”, they are not given and petrified in a static state once and
forever, but changing and changeable characteristics, because the hot may cool
down and the cold may get warmer. In 226 a 26 it is added that ™nant…wsij is relevant
concerning the quality, the quantity and the place, but it is not applicable
for the substance, the relation, acting and being acted upon. In 229 a 23-24
another example is given: the transition from health to illness and vice versa,
movement from and to.
In
230 b 11the tone of cosmology is tuned, by the mentioning of the movements of
the four cosmic elements, and in 261 b 36 from the ™nant…wsij of all the movements in general according to
their directions (forward, backward, up, down) the most important theological
and cosmological conclusion is drawn: it is necessary to have an eternally
moving, which is unmoved, the alpha and the omega of being, first cause and
final end[vii].
Let
us also pay attention to something else. In order to be clear and brief, I will
try to explain it by a metaphor, used by Plato in the Statesman (281 d-283 c). This is the metaphor of the fabric,
which is woven by “the supreme art of weaving” on a weaver’s from the threads
of the yarn-beam and the warp-beam[viii].
In the same manner, in the De caelo and chapter 9 of book Iota
of the Metaphysics Aristotle uses
as if being threads in the yarn-beam the parallel lines of the concepts contraries and contrarieties, oppositions,
opposites, opposings and “opposed-ity”,
or “opposed-ness”. In the warp-beam he uses the concept of the
immanent, the proper change p£qoj. The conceptual fabric is woven like that and thus the difference in
the sex of the males and the females in the living species is grasped in the Metaphysics. Similarly, the concept
for the home (or the immanent, the proper) place and the home (or the immanent,
proper) movements in the De caelo depict the scenery of the eternal and beautiful cosmos. The literary meaning of
this adjective o„ke‹oj is “homy, pertaining to the home, cozy, neat”, from which is inferred,
that the sexual differentiation is not a forcible one in being. On the
contrary, thanks to it the living creatures are complete and perfect, and
likewise the four elements do not move forcibly and contrary to their nature
for a long time, but they are always striving by nature to reach to and occupy
their own and immanent place (literally said in Greek ‘the home place’). This nuance is not felt in any translation,
because the layer of Porphyry, namely the word idion has covered it for centuries. Later on it has become proprium
in latin, which conveys much more abstract
ideas. The expressions in the Metaphysics, book Iota and the De
caelo, book Alpha, with their literal punctuality suggest the basic
intuition of Aristotle: in the cosmos everything is beautiful, cozy and neat as
in a nice house; the elements are by themselves and in their homes, when they
dwell in their places and move with their own movements in the proper
directions; and the living beings are in themselves in their entirety,
completion and perfection, when they are sexually determined – males or
females.
And it
is not by chance that the root of this word later on engenders the word
‘ecology’ – the science for the universal home, for the Earth and the natural
environment, which we have to preserve and protect as of our own home.
The male and the female in the world of the living
creatures
One third of the Aristotelian philosophical
heritage, of his lectures, which we nowadays read as treatises, consists of his
biological texts: Parts of the animals, Movement of animals, Generation of
animals, Historia animalium[ix].
It is not strange that he never hesitated to coin a new word or an awkward
expression in order better to express his thinking, in the cases, in which he
felt unsatisfied by what was available in the Greek language of his time. There
are hundreds of words, artificially coined by him, which have been
incomprehensible and unacceptable even for his most faithful followers in the
moment of their appearance, but gradually, for some of them after centuries,
they have been discovered as precious conceptual treasures. Nevertheless, the
word “biology” is not found among his linguistic novelties, precisely because
Aristotle has not conceived of his inquiries and lectures on the living world
as a part of some experimental scientific work. He sought in the living beings
a transparent and understandable confirmation and irrefutable, vivid
demonstration of the principles of the ¹ qeologik», of the fundamental truths of his first
philosophy. He has convincingly presented them in a classification of the
animals, which has emerged at the cross point of several criteria: the external
image – shape – edoj of the animals, their habitations and especially the way of their
reproduction, the propagation of the existence of all the e‡dh of animals, birds, reptiles and the like. It
looks like this:
Firstly, the big genus of the animals
possessing blood, which comprises almost all
species nowadays designated as vertebrae:
1.
Man, the only biped living
creature.
2.
The quadruped hair or fur
animals, which roughly corresponds to the present-day label “earthly mammals”.
3.
The genus of the whales and
the dolphins, correctly determined by him to be sea mammals.
The
common between all of them is that they are vivipara.
4.
The genus of the birds,
possessing two legs and two wings through which they fly in the air.
5.
The quadruped and footless
animals – like lizards, tortoises and snakes, today designated as reptiles
and/or amphibians.
6.
Fish – the living creatures,
which may live only in water.
The common between all of them is that
they are ovipara, laying perfect eggs.
Secondly, the
other great genus comprises the bloodless animals.
1.
The malakia, the present day Cephalopodes – the octopuses,
sepias and calamari.
2.
The malakostraka, the present day Crustacea, described by
Aristotle as being soft outside and hard inside – lobsters, crabs, river crabs,
etc.
The
common between the two groups of the softies is that they are also Ovipara, but
they lay imperfect eggs.
3.
The insected animals, in
Greek entoma. Precisely because he
has been led by the etymology and the linguistic designation, Aristotle
includes in this group not only the insects, but also the worms.
The
common between all of them is that they procreate through larvae.
4.
The ostrakoderma, the softies which have shell instead of skin: the
snails and the seashells.
According
to him they procreate through budding or emitting special generative liquid.
5.
The zoophyta, the animals-plants which are immovable like plants but
breathe and nourish themselves like animals.
According to him they are self-generated.
Some
of these compartments and designations nowadays seem strange, even ridiculous,
but they have been made precisely like that, because one of the unshakeable
fundaments of Aristotle’s worldview is the conviction of their eternity. All
the genera and the e‡dh of the animals are eternal,
they have never changed and they will never change in the eternal world, which
likewise has never been created and will never perish.
One of the very few places in Plato, in
which he speaks about the sexual love between the male and the female, was
mentioned earlier in this text. As is usual for him, it is done as a retelling
in the retelling in the retelling. From several transmissions the reader
understands about the conversation between Socrates and Diotima in the Symposium (206 c and ff.) in which the
priestess from Mantinea, before reaching to the highest, explains the physical
intimacy of love, the conception and the birth as the striving of the mortal
creatures, and mostly of the mortal humans, to reach the divine and the
undying.
The reader of the biological works of
Aristotle sees that he goes even further: not only the humans, but all the
living creatures, including the plants, according to him, are striving to reach
the eternal and the divine by creating their offspring, which is not identical
with the parents or the organisms, which have begot them, but are from the same
edoj. So
the e‡dh of the living creatures
remain eternal in the eternal cosmos. Aristotle explains how this occurs in all
species of animals, group by group, in the On
the generation of animals, and leaves to Theophrastus the work on the
explanation of the plants – their e‡dh, habitations and means of propagation. The radically ontological
thinking of heterosexuality in Aristotle is spread over the self-generation of
the most microscopic creatures in the mud, the water, the sand and the cliffs.
In all the places where some living creature appears, no matter how miniscule
it is, no matter how difficult it is to determine what exactly it is as edoj, this happens again thanks to the male and the
female. The female in these cases is the matter, the nourishing milieu, in
which the tiny living creatures are self-generated, and the male is the edoj or the form, which is in the so-called immanent
or connatural pneuma, containing the
vital heat (literally said in Greek: “the
psychic heat”). “Animals and
plants are formed in the earth and in the water because in earth water is
present, and in water pneuma is present, and in pneuma soul-heat is present, so
that in a way all things are full of Soul;[x]”
The apology of life in the Hexaemeron of St Basil the Great
The influence and the usage of important
concepts and ideas of the classical Greek philosophy, science, culture and
literature in the writings of the holy Fathers of Cappadocia is an enormous
topic. They have been exceptionally educated, real erudite persons with an
encyclopedic scope of knowledge. They have been given different artistic
talents but also no lesser practical gifts: diplomatic tact and justifiable
strategy. Without undue noise or showing off they have succeeded to adopt and
implant in the foundations of the Christian dogmatics everything acceptable and
necessary for it from the Greek achievements of the spirit. In the time of the
hectic preparation for the Second Universal Council and in the decades when the
Cappadocians have fought for the faith against their former friend and
classmate – the emperor Julian the Apostate, every one of them in his own way
and with a predilection to a certain ancient thinker, had created fundamental
works in which the best of the Greeks were fused together with the core of
Christianity. St Gregory of Nyssa for example has an obvious preference for
Plato, seen in his dialogue On the soul and the resurrection, the plot
of which is a parallel to the composition of the Phaedo[xi].
St Basil the Great accomplishes exceptional heights in the implementation of
Aristotelianism into the Christian doctrine. It is still a task to evaluate the
significance of the synthesis seen in his works: to begin with the writing of
poetry in the rhythm of the hexameter and with archaic lexical stock, which has
been his favorite leisure activity, because he loved the epic of Homer. We may
add further the most serious distinctions for the difference between m…a oÙs…a, tre‹j Øpost£seij, the Persons of the Holy Trinity, and also such
considerations, as for instance, the question why the water of the Pontus is
not as salty as the Hellespontus. In all these we see Aristotle’s influence.
Especially in the “Hexaemeron” the
strongest conceptual borrowing from the first philosophy (¹ qeologik») is seen in the
first sermons, which start by clarifying of the senses and meanings of the
concept ¢rc» principle precisely in the manner and
in the order, used by Aristotle in chapter 1 of book Delta of the Metaphysics.
But since the topic of my paper here is a different one, I will focus on it
with a very long quotation from the Seventh Sermon[xii].
So is this great and wide sea, wherein are
things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. Yet a wise and
marvellous order reigns among these animals. Fish do not always deserve our
reproaches; often they offer us useful examples. How is it that each sort of
fish, content with the region that has been assigned to it, never travels over
its own limits to pass into foreign seas? No surveyor has ever distributed to
them their habitations, nor enclosed them in walls, nor assigned limits to
them; each kind has been naturally assigned its own home. One gulf nourishes
one kind of fish, another other sorts; those which swarm here are absent
elsewhere. No mountain raises its sharp peaks between them; no rivers bar the
passage to them; it is a law of nature, which according to the needs of each
kind, has allotted to them their dwelling places with equality and justice.
4. It is not thus with us. Why? Because we incessantly move the ancient landmarks which our fathers have set. We encroach, we add house to house, field to field, to enrich ourselves at the expense of our neighbour. The great fish know the sojourning place that nature has assigned to them; they occupy the sea far from the haunts of men, where no islands lie, and where are no continents rising to confront them, because it has never been crossed and neither curiosity nor need has persuaded sailors to tempt it. The monsters that dwell in this sea are in size like high mountains, so witnesses who have seen tell us, and never cross their boundaries to ravage islands and seaboard towns. Thus each kind is as if it were stationed in towns, in villages, in an ancient country, and has for its dwelling place the regions of the sea which have been assigned to it.
Instances have, however, been known of migratory fish, who, as if common deliberation transported them into strange regions, all start on their march at a given sign. When the time marked for breeding arrives, they, as if awakened by a common law of nature, migrate from gulf to gulf, directing their course toward the North Sea. And at the epoch of their return you may see all these fish streaming like a torrent across the Propontis towards the Euxine Sea. Who puts them in marching array? Where is the prince's order? Has an edict affixed in the public place indicated to them their day of departure? Who serves them as a guide? See how the divine order embraces all and extends to the smallest object. A fish does not resist God's law, and we men cannot endure His precepts of salvation! Do not despise fish because they are dumb and quite unreasoning; rather fear lest, in your resistance to the disposition of the Creator, you have even less reason than they. Listen to the fish, who by their actions all but speak and say: it is for the perpetuation of our race that we undertake this long voyage.
They have not the gift of reason, but they have the law of nature firmly seated within them, to show them what they have to do. Let us go, they say, to the North Sea. Its water is sweeter than that of the rest of the sea; for the sun does not remain long there, and its rays do not draw up all the drinkable portions. Even sea creatures love fresh watery... one often sees them enter into rivers and swim far up them from the sea. This is the reason which makes them prefer the Euxine Sea to other gulfs, as the most fit for breeding whole tribe returns home. Let us hear these dumb creatures tell us the reason.
4. It is not thus with us. Why? Because we incessantly move the ancient landmarks which our fathers have set. We encroach, we add house to house, field to field, to enrich ourselves at the expense of our neighbour. The great fish know the sojourning place that nature has assigned to them; they occupy the sea far from the haunts of men, where no islands lie, and where are no continents rising to confront them, because it has never been crossed and neither curiosity nor need has persuaded sailors to tempt it. The monsters that dwell in this sea are in size like high mountains, so witnesses who have seen tell us, and never cross their boundaries to ravage islands and seaboard towns. Thus each kind is as if it were stationed in towns, in villages, in an ancient country, and has for its dwelling place the regions of the sea which have been assigned to it.
Instances have, however, been known of migratory fish, who, as if common deliberation transported them into strange regions, all start on their march at a given sign. When the time marked for breeding arrives, they, as if awakened by a common law of nature, migrate from gulf to gulf, directing their course toward the North Sea. And at the epoch of their return you may see all these fish streaming like a torrent across the Propontis towards the Euxine Sea. Who puts them in marching array? Where is the prince's order? Has an edict affixed in the public place indicated to them their day of departure? Who serves them as a guide? See how the divine order embraces all and extends to the smallest object. A fish does not resist God's law, and we men cannot endure His precepts of salvation! Do not despise fish because they are dumb and quite unreasoning; rather fear lest, in your resistance to the disposition of the Creator, you have even less reason than they. Listen to the fish, who by their actions all but speak and say: it is for the perpetuation of our race that we undertake this long voyage.
They have not the gift of reason, but they have the law of nature firmly seated within them, to show them what they have to do. Let us go, they say, to the North Sea. Its water is sweeter than that of the rest of the sea; for the sun does not remain long there, and its rays do not draw up all the drinkable portions. Even sea creatures love fresh watery... one often sees them enter into rivers and swim far up them from the sea. This is the reason which makes them prefer the Euxine Sea to other gulfs, as the most fit for breeding whole tribe returns home. Let us hear these dumb creatures tell us the reason.
The short commentary to this text and to its
larger context, the sermons from the fifth to the ninth in the Hexaemeron has to start with mentioning of the extraordinary belletristic talent of St
Basil. He was not just an erudite knower in cosmology, philosophy of nature and
the knowledge about the animals’ and plants’ reigns. All the richness of the
classical Greek science of nature – from Plato’s Timaeus, from
Theophrastus’ Historia plantarum, but mostly from the Aristotelian
lectures on the cosmology and the philosophy of the living, is included in a
condensed form in his sermons on the creation, done in six days. Naturally,
some of the ideas from the De caelo are absolutely excluded: the
eternity of the world and its not-createdness, and similarly no one could
expect that the idea of the eternity and the uncreatedness of the animals’
species will be borrowed from the biological treatises. Of course, the same
applies to the ontological conception that there is a material chaos, which is
available to the Demiurge and used by him for the making of the cosmos,
accordingly to the paradigm of the eternal in the Timaeus.
All the rest, however, is woven into the Hexaemeron.
Moreover, it is more artistically expressed, with a greater variety of examples
and impressive metaphors, than the exposition of the same theories in the
writings of the thinker, from whose philosophy of nature and the living they
have been borrowed. Aristotle’s knowledge of the living creatures reveals his
undoubted interest and insatiable curiosity for them, but his observations and
classifications are presented with an intended cautiousness and a dryness of
the phrasing, typical for a scientist-investigator. At the same time St Basil
the Great does not hide his admiration for the beauty and the wisdom of the
Creator, implemented by Him and exhibited in this realm of the creation.
Furthermore, they are examples of homilies, of Christian rhetoric, built on the
exegetics of the Hexaemeron. Especially the sermons from the fifth to
the ninth, the focus of which falls on the living part of the created world,
are full of original instructive and homiletic accents for the examples of
imitation, shown by some birds, animals and sea-dwellers to the people. Human
beings should be more intelligent, foreseeing and caring than the creatures,
deprived from logos, but – alas - it is not always so.
Enumerated in brief, the following common features in the philosophies
of the living of Aristotle and Saint Basil the Great are dominating in the
second half of the sermons of the Hexaemeron:
1.
The labels and the
classification terms, which describe and divide the different groups, genera
and species of animals – according to their outer appearance, but also
according to the way of their propagation.
2.
The idea of the absolute
purposefulness and the foresight in the composition of all living creatures and
all their parts, regarding their environmental habitation. The Christian
philosophy of the living, as the Aristotelian one, is an apology of the
foresight and the perfect reason of nature. Of course, Aristotle expresses this
with generalizations like: “As if what was to happen in the future has been
foreseen by nature!”[xiii]
and “God and nature do nothing in vain”[xiv].
In the Hexaemeron of St. Basil the Great there are analogous
observations, enriched by even more interesting examples, which convince and
preach to the reader: the Creator of everything is good and caring, He has
taken care even for the tiniest living creatures and in His wisdom, foresight
and forecast, with His mercy He has provided to all of them everything needed
by them in their habitations – on the earth, in the water, in the air or by the
lakes, in the desserts or in the mountains. This is done for the sake of
their preservation, for the protection of their life in tempests and
disasters.
3.
In every living being there
is beauty. Moreover, this is not the individual, aesthetic impression of
beauty, which is difficultly expressible and easily contested. On the contrary,
this beauty is ontologically given and immediately sense-perceptible, defined
by the geometrical structures and the commensurable order, as for example is
the beauty of the perfect hexagons of wax, in which the laborious bees collect
their honey.
4.
The teleology which
dominates in the biological treatises of Aristotle is multifaceted, and it is
entirely philosophically developed and theologically exalted in the Hexaemeron:
every living being is not simply created just as perfect in regard with the
habitation, in which it will dwell and propagate its species, but also it is
designed like that, in order to assist and not to harm the other living
creatures around itself in the place they live together. Additionally, all
living beings are gifted with a peculiar striving, organically intrinsic in
them: to obey the highest law of God and nature for the procreation of the
generation, for the sake of which many of them take care and exhibit
admirable foresight. Fish, for example, migrate across seas in order to get
into places, where the water is colder and because of that not so salty. The
swallows come up with a way to put together nests, in which to lay their little
eggs. They do this only by way of their little beaks and wetted wings
pulverized with dust.
5.
Another shared feature of
the teleology of the living in both Aristotle and St Basil is the peculiar
reluctance to fix on man, the lack of anthropocentrism, and more properly said,
the denial of consumerism and hedonism of man. Of course, for them both, man is
the supreme of all living creatures. Moreover that for all believers man is
created “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27),
but not everything in the living nature, in the world, created by God, is for
the sake of man and for his immediate use. On the contrary, there are
birds, animals, plants, reptiles, which are dangerous and harmful for the
people, but in their life and in the propagation of their species, there is
also wisdom and foresight: they are assigned to live and to procreate, either
because of themselves or, as it often turns out to be, they are useful and
necessary for the nourishment or the preservation of other living beings, or
because of the elimination of some of their enemies and rivals in their
habitation. Nothing in the created – nor the growing, nor the engendered – is
in vain.
This
part of the paper will be ended with another quotation, this time from Sermon
Five.
4. What shall I say? What shall I leave unsaid? In the rich treasures of creation it is difficult to select what is most precious; the loss of what is omitted is too severe. "Let the earth bring forth grass;" and instantly, with useful plants, appear noxious plants; with corn, hemlock; with the other nutritious plants, hellebore, monkshood, mandrake and the juice of the poppy. What then? Shall we show no gratitude for so many beneficial gifts, and reproach the Creator for those which may be harmful to our life? And shall we not reflect that all has not been created in view of the wants of our bellies? The nourishing plants, which are destined for our use, are close at hand, and known by all the world. But in creation nothing exists without a reason. The blood of the bull is a poison: ought this animal then, whose strength is so serviceable to man, not to have been created, or, if created, to have been bloodless? But you have sense enough in yourself to keep you free froth deadly things. What! Sheep and goats know how to turn away from what threatens their life, discerning danger by instinct alone: and you, who have reason and the art of medicine to supply what you need, and the experience of your forebears to tell you to avoid all that is dangerous, you tell me that you find it difficult to keep yourself from poisons! But not a single thing has been created without reason, not a single thing is useless. One serves as food to some animal; medicine has found in another a relief for one of our maladies.
Conclusion: what about the challenges of the contemporary
epoch
So far two thinkers have been treated in
the paper, but there will be no violation of the facts and the extant texts, if
a generalization is made: these thinkers are representative for the worldviews
of their epochs and for the reflections upon the place of man in nature and the
cosmos. The one of them is representative of ancient, the other – of the
Christian philosophy. In the ancient philosophy there is only one vulgar
materialist-hedonist, who had boldly declared himself as an atheist. He had
treated his friends, family and children brutally, and this is not Epicurus, as
it is supposed wrongly, but Aristippus[xv].
In the middle ages and the Renaissance there are no atheists to be encountered.
The attitude of man towards nature as a
realm of the evolution, in which the not-living gradually moves to the living,
and thence with a progressive development, natural selection and struggle among
the species, the stage of the highest mammals, primates and man is achieved – this
attitude begins with the New time and the Origin of species. The
modernity and the post-modernity added to this world-perception of the living
nature the ever more increasing confidence, that man as the wreath of evolution
may acquire more and more mechanisms, techniques and technologies, in order to
reign over life. Really, there is genetic engineering, conceptions in vitro, voluntarily change of sex,
successive cloning of animals, surrogate pregnancy, and never ceasing
experiments for the cloning of people… Nevertheless, for the time being the
sciences and the technologies have not succeeded to create in the proper sense of the word a single drop of blood.
In the social sphere there are events,
which are not so new, unheard and unseen before, but rather they are a sinister
repetition of processes from remote, but well documented epochs. For example,
the noisy demonstrations of homosexual marriages and/or the showing-off of
bisexuality is described excellently in the biographies of some Roman emperors.
Nero had been the first one with such shocking behavior: he had married the
slave Pythagoras, he had persecuted the Christians, but also he had
demonstrated his contempt for the old
pagan gods by raping publicly a priestess of Vesta. With its contemptuous
attitude to the sacred and the divine our post-modern epoch resembles the Roman
imperial centuries.
There are scaring tendencies nowadays, both
in the usage of some of the biotechnologies, and also in the imposing through
legislative initiatives of the same-sex marriages and the right for the
adoption of children by such couples. Many philosophers and theologians give an
answer to these developments. When we look at the shelves of the library and
see there the writings of thinkers as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and
Simone de Beauvoir on the phenomenology of the sexual difference, we appreciate
the depth of their philosophizing, but unfortunately we cannot take ready-made
instructions for the crisis of man and the human in the beginning of the XXI
century[xvi].
Some contemporary Christian theologians and
writers defend excellently the millennia old truths of the faith of the
sacredness of life, of the marriage as sacrament and the beauty of nature in
the world created by Lord. For me most instructive and precious are the
writings of Étien Gilson, Christos Yannaras, Uergen Moltman and John Breck [xvii].
Especially in the book of Father John Breck an excellent analysis is
offered of the processes, evolving nowadays and a clear-cut evaluation is
proposed concerning the limit: to celebrate the development of the sciences,
the biotechnologies and the medicine, but where is the final stage, beyond
which no one should go. Also, when we speak about the human rights, we must not
forget that they are part of the rights of all the mankind and the rights of
nature. This is an imperative for the conceptual frame of the rights. A man in
one’s individuality is unique and unrepeatable as a person, but as an
individual from his species everyone has obligations to the mankind and nature. This is something with which might
agree any tough and freethinking atheist, materialist and/or evolutionist. The
rights of the mankind and nature in the hierarchy of the values should be
ranked above the rights of the individual,
moreover that for the time being nobody has demonstrated as an immanent human
right the sinful wish for sexual delight and usage of another person as an
object in the contacts within the same sex.
As human beings we have several duties to the
mankind and the environment:
-
To not exhaust all natural
resources in the life of our generation;
-
To not poison the Earth with
damaging industrial undertakings;
-
To not extinguish the planet
in a new world war, which inevitably will do harm to all territories and will
eliminate almost all the human race;
-
We are obliged to preserve
the variety of nature in all its forms, species and levels – from the tiniest
microscopic creatures in the mosses of the rocks till the most perfect and high
species of homo sapiens.
All positions on these topics in
the book of Father John Breck are exposed convincingly and attractively. This
is the point of view of an Orthodox Christian philosopher and theologian and it
is expectable. But I will stress also on another aspect of its preciousness:
the book insists on the holiness of the sacrament of marriage between a man and
a woman, and on the value of the intimacy and the sexual love in the family. I
am mentioning this, because very often the popularizations of Christianity
distort and overstrain it to a degree, which transforms it into a Gnostic sect.
*
At the end let mention the debates, which
occurred in France this year (2013), provoked by the legalization of the
marriages within the same sex. These debates were reflected in some of our
media as well. It was curious, but not at all unexpected, that among the rivals
of the legalization of these marriages there were famous artists and
intellectuals with confessed predilections for their sex. Everyone, who is
familiar with the great study of Michel Foucault Histoire de la sexualité and especially with the second and the third volume L’usage des plaisirs and Le souci de soi, will guess why[xviii].
The last thing in the world, which a philosopher from the post-structural
paradigm would desire, and especially if he has a romantic attitude to the male
friendship, could be the imprisonment of love into the power-matrix of
marriage.
Needless to explain further is also the
consideration, that the fixation on this topic provokes many hypocritical
sinners from all religions and Christian denominations to charge the
homosexuals with all the sins of mankind, as if they are the scapegoat.
The position nowadays of an university person with a Christian faith in
one’s heart against the waves of the severe attacks, directed to the demolition
of the sacred and the divine, might be: to remind that we are part of the
living nature and the wreath of the creation of the Creator, Who has created
the world ex nihilo with His foresight, wisdom and beauty; to repeat
that the sacredness of life in the highest human race is propagated through
love and the sacrament of marriage between one man and one woman; to insist on
the consideration, that especially in countries like ours, which is still the poorest
in the European Union, the primordial importance among the human rights should
have the right to education and to a minimum of social care, i.e. the
overcoming of poverty, because of which tens of thousands of Bulgarian children
remain outside the schools in ignorance; not to judge in general and in groups
entire human communities, because the supreme court will be His one, and it
will be personal and individual; not to demonize the people who are inclined to
homosexual flirts, and instead of this to appeal to them to remain in the
Platonic friendship; last, but not least, not to allow the legalization of the
marriages within the same sex, because this defies the creation according to
the plan of Lord and the order in the being.
“So God created man in
His own image;
in
the image of God he created him; male and female He created them”
Genesis 1: 27
[i] The paper has been stylistically and linguistically
edited by Assoc. Prof. Svetla Slaveva-Griifin from the Florida State
University, to whom the author expresses her gratitude.
[ii] The Holy Bible. Containing the Old and New Testaments. The New King
James Version. ABS, New York, 1990, p. 576-577.
[iii]
Aristotle. Metaphysics,
А/І, ch.
5, 986 а 22-986 b
9. See Aristotle. Metaphysics,
Loeb Classical Library, vol. XVII, XVIII, 1989 (1933), ed. by G. P. Goold.
Translated by Hugh Tredennick.
[iv]
In the paper I am
quoting the translation of Hugh Tredennick from the Loeb edition, mentioned in
the previous endnote. See also the similar rendering of these passages in the
translation of W. D. Ross, published on the Internet Classics Archive of the
MIT, accessible on the 7th of October 2013.
See also
Aristotle. Metaphysics, Loeb Classical Library, vol. XVII, XVIII, 1989
(1933), ed. by G. P. Goold. Translated by Hugh Tredennick.
[vi] De caelo, book Alpha, ch. 4, 270b 30 – 271 a 35. For the Greek original see
Aristotelis, De caelo, recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit
D. J. Allan, Oxonii, 1961, (1936). SCBO.
[vii] Aristotelis, Physica, recognovit brevique
adnotatione critica instruxit W. D. Ross, Oxonii, 1960, 5 (1950). SCBO.
[viii]
In the Statesman (or
the Politicus in earlier translations) this metaphor is used
for the political art, whereas in the Sophist it describes the weaving
of the fabric of the language from the verbs and the nouns.
[ix]
Loeb Classical Library: Aristotle. Generation of Animals. Vol.XIII, ed.
by T.E. Page, translation, commentaries and appendixes by A. L. Peck. 1963
(1942); Aristotle. Parts of Animals.
Vol. XII, ed. by G.P.Goold, translation, commentaries and appendixes by A. L.
Peck. Movement of Animals. Progression of Animals, translated by E.S.
Forster, 1983 (1973). Aristotelis de animalibus Historia. Textum
recognovit Leonardus Dittmeyer. MCMVII, Lipsiae, Bibliotheca Teubneriana.
[x] The translation of A. L. Peck is quoted from the Loeb
edition mentioned above.
[xi]
Григорий Нисийски. За душата и възкресението. Двуезично издание с паралелен
гръцки текст. С., “ЛИК”, 2001, превод от гръцки Иван Христов.
Bilingual
edition with Greek text and translation by Ivan Christov.
[xii]
The English quotations in the paper from the Hexaemeron are taken from the Internet-resource Fish eaters, available on the 13th
of October 2013 http://www.fisheaters.com/hexaemeron.html .In the Bulgarian version of the paper the references
are
Свети Василий Велики. Шестоднев и
други беседи. Превел от старогръцки Росен Тенев. С.,
1999, “Народна култура”. С. 84-86. The original Greek text is used from a digitalized
pdf . St. Basilii Caesareae Opera, Editio Parisina altera, emendata et
aucta. Tomus primus, 1839.
[xv]
See Diogenes
Laertius, Vitae philosophorum, book II, ch. 6. In the Bulgarian version
of the paper is quoted the edition Диоген Лаерций.
Животът на философите. С., Планета 3, 2002, превод Тодор Томов, книга
Втора, гл. 6.
[xvi] A relatively new reflection on this in the book of Sara
Heinämaa, Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Hussеrl,
Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir. 2003, Rowman&Littlefield Publishers.
[xvii]
Étien Gilson. D’Aristote à Darwin et retour. Essai sur quelques constants de
la biophilosophie. Paris, 1971. Христос Янарас, Кризата като
предизвикателство. С., 2002, “ЛИК”, превод Достена Лаверн, ред. Яна Букова;
Христос Яннарас. Вера Церкви. Введение в
православное богословие. Центр по изучению религий. М., 1992. Перевод В. Г.
Вдовиной; Юрген Молтман. Правата на човека, правата на човечеството и правата
на природата. В: Изтокът и Западът за личността и обществото. Богословски
перспективи. Изд. Праксис, Велико Търново, 2001, съст. и превод Ина
Мерджанова и Мариян Стоядинов.
Джон Брек. Свещеният дар на живота. С., 2002, ИК “Омофор”, Фондация “Покров
Богородичен”. Превод Валентин Кожухаров. (John Breck, The Sacred Gift of
Life. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998)
[xviii]
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