Abstract
The Christian and particularly the Orthodox understanding of belief sometimes might be seen as a matter of the soul and not a matter of the body. Based on such an understanding the binomial “creditions – neuronal processes” would not have any significance for an Orthodox anthropology . But such an understanding can be marked as reductionist regarding the broader conceptions that we can find in the positions of the Fathers. In this contribution, some aspects of the comprehensive anthropological understanding of humans and their relation to God will be presented as it is conceived in the famous synthesis of patristic thought, De Fide Orthodoxa, written by St. John Damascene (~ 650–before 755).
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Notes
- 1.
De Fide Orthodoxa is divided in four books, each of them containing several chapters. All quotations are from the online edition of the revised version.
- 2.
Mathew 5,16: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your which is in heaven.”
- 3.
The New Advent edition we use translates the Ancient Greek φαντασία with “presentation”, ignoring other meanings like “apparition, impression, imagination, perception, representation”. We think that in the context of its etymology - φαντάζω = “I make visible, I show at the eye or the mind” - a better translation might be “perception”, but from Avicenna onward “representation” has been normally preferred, so that we shall use it too.
- 4.
We know that St. John of Damascus was not a medical doctor, that he took these anatomical data from Nemesius of Emessa. (Ables 2013)
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Oancea, D. (2017). Soul and Body According to “De Fide Orthodoxa” of St. John Damascene. In: Angel, HF., Oviedo, L., Paloutzian, R., Runehov, A., Seitz, R. (eds) Processes of Believing: The Acquisition, Maintenance, and Change in Creditions. New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion , vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50924-2_22
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