The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

In the variety of views on the relationship between Christianity and natural sciences, several fundamentally different approaches can be outlined, and the popularity of these approaches also varies within the framework of Orthodoxy and Western theology. While in the Russian Orthodox Church creationism is opposed mainly by Christian evolutionism and alterism, then in the West the debate is conducted mainly between creationism and fabulism. The divergence of these two directions of apologetics can be attributed to the 70s of the 20th century and relate to differences in views on the origin of science. The article analyzes the work of the English philosopher R. Gruner “Science, Nature  and Christianity”, which is devoted to a critique of „revisionism“ — a concept that asserts that modern science emerged from Christian theology. Gruner formulates two aporias (difficult questions) that revisionism faces: why did science emerge only fifteen hundred years after the incarnation of Christ, and why is it so often used for the purposes of atheistic propaganda? In addition, he criticizes revisionism for ignoring the negative features of natural science: the underestimation of the world evil generated by the Fall, and the utilitarian approach to nature, within which it is seen only as a means to achieve the well-being of mankind. The article shows that Russian-language revisionism connects answers to Gruner’s “aporias” with an idea of the development of Christian theology, which is fundamentally unacceptable for Gruner, and in relation to the Fall and the utilitarian nature of science, it proceeds from a different interpretation of biblical texts (Gen 1:28, 3:17,18). So, with regard to Russian-language revisionism, Gruner’s criticism seems untenable: having arisen in a different time and for other reasons than the Western revisionism, it finds itself outside the scope of this criticism.