Apophaticism in Orthodox Theology and the Apophaticization of Quantum Physics

This article explores how Orthodox Theology (OT) and QM could benefit from each other in contributing to a fruitful interplay between theological and scientific cultures. One can refer to such interplay as a process of cultural translation which refers to the act of describing for members of one cultural community how members of another interpret the world and their experience within it. The specific focus is on the apophatic attitude to language and reality. While apophaticism has been a key characteristic of OT, it is a relatively new thing for QM. The article will specifically focus on discussing QBism – a most recent interpretation of QM – and use the discussion to illustrate how OT and QM could enrich each other by engaging in a fruitful dialogical interaction. It will also discuss a similar ongoing translation between quantum physics and the human sciences which is currently taking place with the emergence of a quantum social science.

Introduction

The title of this text refers to the role apophaticism plays in two very different contexts—Orthodox theology and quantum mechanics. Why apophaticism, why in these two specific contexts? Discussing apophaticism seems to be naturally related to theology and religion. Does it need to be? Not necessarily, since the topic has been discussed extensively, for example, in literature. In his recent book ‘On the Universality of What Is Not—the Apophatic Turn in Critical Thinking’ William Franke examines the application of apophatic thinking across a variety of disciplines, including media and politics, as well as explores the role of theology in fostering a more universal apophatic consciousness. According to Franke:

Integrating an ‘apophatic’ (literally ‘negative,’ but, in effect, eminently affirmative) detachment and awareness into our determinately, rigidly positive programs can make them open to others in ways that are critical to their success in generating consensus and the will to work together. The discretion of not saying (or knowing) is key to eliciting even just provisional acceptance from others rather than provoking resistance and retrenchment into oppositional camps and stances.^[1]

Even though such view on apophaticism impresses with its inspiring inclusivism, it manifests the clear signs of a tendency towards relativism. As we shall see, the other natural temptation of apophaticism is agnosticism (this is one of the lessons we can learn from the history of Orthodox theology).

Despite the temptations, the excitement with apophaticism has become a common trend in the twenty-first century theological works. Van Kuiken speaks about the existence of an apophatic turn in modern Trinitarian theology.^[2] Martin Liard suggests that there is an ongoing apophatic rage which made many theologians identify themselves as apophatic.^[3] According to Laird, much of the retrieval of the Christian apophatic tradition has been inspired by a sustained dialogue with postmodern deconstruction philosophers such as Jacques Derrida.

The growing interest in apophaticism should not come as a surprise because the apophatic attitude to reality has a fundamental anthropological dimension. It is ultimately grounded in the incomprehensibility of human beings which, according to Jean-Luc Marion, is ‘founded and required by the incomprehensibility of the One whose image and likeness man bears.’ In this sense it is bound up with theology. At the same time, continues Marion, ‘it does not belong entirely, or even foremost, to theology, because man must comprehend this very incomprehensibility, by opposing it to, and preserving it in front of, every other comprehension that he gains over every other thing … In this sense, … man’s incomprehensibility comes under the domain of philosophy’ and ‘can be seen to define the proper domain of … philosophy of religion.’^[4]

According to Saul Bellow, the indispensability of the human concern for apophaticism could be also seen in broader human existential terms:

The essence of our real condition, the complexity, the confusion, the pain of it, is shown to us in glimpses, in what Proust and Tolstoy thought of as ‘true impressions.’ This essence reveals and then conceals itself. When it goes away it leaves us again in doubt. But our connection remains with the depths from which the glimpses come. The sense of our real powers, powers we seem to derive from the universe itself, also comes and goes. We are reluctant to talk about this because there is nothing we can prove, because our language is inadequate, and because few people are willing to risk the embarrassment. They would have to say, ‘There is a spirit,’ and that is taboo. So almost everyone keeps quieter about it, although almost everyone is aware of it.^[5]

The growing interdisciplinary interest in apophaticism still does not explain our interest in discussing apophaticism across two so different domains—Orthodox theology and quantum physics. The choice of a methodological approach that could enable such exploration is not trivial at all. We need therefore to start by discussing the methodological grounding of such interdisciplinary exploration.

Talking about methodology — the ACTA approach

The Analogical Comparative Theological Approach (ACTA) is a constructive approach to the exploration of the encounter between theology and physics which incorporates two different methods grounded in analogical isomorphism and comparative theology.^[6]

Analogical isomorphism^[7] seeks to generate insights by uncovering parallels between two supposedly similar issues, concepts, or relations in two different domains of human experience by, first, examining how these issues, concepts, or relations emerge and operate within their own natural contextual environment and, second, using the examination as an exploratory lens focusing on uncovering the differences and similarities in the applications of the concepts and the unfolding of the relations.^[8] I have found the application of the analogical isomorphism method highly valuable in exploring the parallels of the distinction between essence and energy in Orthodox theology and physics.^[9] Comparative theology, on the other hand, is an emerging discipline within theology that explores the creative tension between the comparative and the theological aspects of interreligious endeavors.^[10] It represents a special type of theological practice committed to deep interreligious learning while staying rooted in a specific religious tradition.^[11] In contrast to the theology of religions, comparative theology is a theology of learning that engages in an in-depth study of the particularities of other religious traditions. It is ‘not primarily about which religion is the true one, but about learning across religious borders in a way that discloses the truth of my faith, in the light of their faith’.^[12]

The generative principles of comparative theology^[13]

First, comparative theology is characterised by its micro-logical approach and attention to the particular. It acknowledges that the adoption of specific language games affects the meaning and expression of religious convictions as well as the quality of the encounter between different religious traditions.^[14]

Second, comparative theology is concerned with contemporary problems and addresses highly relevant questions. It focuses on theological problems and concerns related to lay questions about sense, ultimate purpose, salvation, and truth, in addition to issues raised by academics and specialists.

Third, comparative theologians deal with specific religious beliefs but, at the same time, attempt to incorporate their deeper understanding of the position of the other into their own theology. Ideally, comparative theologians should have studied more than one theology and should be able to switch back and forth between the two different confessional perspectives.^[15]

Fourth, comparative theology needs the instance of a third position—an issue, a problem, or an open question that enters the two religious traditions as a challenge from the outside while, at the same time, offering an opportunity for the two traditions to engage dialogically in addressing the issue by using the potential of their internal resources. A third position must be concrete, highly relevant, and able to serve as a continuous reference to the dialogue by playing the role of a controlling instance driving the logic of the comparison.

Fifth, comparative theology focuses on praxis followed by reflection—the praxis of different religious traditions and a reflection upon further developments within the interreligious dialogue.

Sixth, the adoption of dialogical open-mindedness should make comparative theologians aware of the vulnerability of their judgements within the context of their own tradition. Such vulnerability could emerge from the existence of competing theological interpretations exactly within one specific tradition. Comparative theology considers such competing interpretations as opportunities that could enable a constructive reflection on existing open questions or controversies.

The ACTA approach to the exploration of the encounter between theology and physics integrates the methodological intuitions of analogical isomorphism and comparative theology. In fact, the comparative theology method could be considered as an instrumental enhancement of analogical isomorphism. If properly applied, ACTA can be used as a way of exploring the relations between theology and any scientific discipline, not just physics.

It is however important to clarify two points with respect to the objective of the present text.

First, I am not trying to make or claim contributions to the two domains that I am going to explore comparatively. I am just trying to identify insights developed by other scholars for the sake of using them as part of the comparative approach. My focus is on adopting the comparative approach in a way that could help me reflect on the specifics of the encounter between Orthodox theology and physics.

Second, the ACTA approach should be considered as a ‘soft’ research method. It is a participatory research approach which aims at engaging both the author and the audience in the task of comparison for the sake of developing insights that are impossible to develop otherwise. In this sense, one of the most valuable outcomes of this text would be to inspire an interest in the readers to go deeper into the task of comparison and develop their own perspectives.

Apophaticism in Orthodox Theology

Theology has been traditionally perceived to operate in two discursive modes: positive and negative.^[16] The former refers to positive (kataphatic) theology, the latter to negative or apophatic theology. Kataphatic theology operates with affirmative assertions: God is Good, Being, Wise, etc., while negative theology works with negations: God is incomprehensible, infinite, beyond knowledge, etc. Over the centuries, the Western Christian Church has been using the term negative theology while the Eastern counterpart has been mostly referring to apophatic theology. However, this is not just a linguistic difference. There is a difference between the negative theology of the Western Church and the apophatic theology of the Eastern Church. The term ‘apophatic theology’ in the East has acquired a meaning which does not refer to the ways of defining God either positively or negatively. To speak apophatically of God means to transcend all attributes of God, whether positive or negative; it means to accept the challenge of using narratives to share personal or community experiences of God with others, knowing that there are no words that are good enough to do that. In this sense, Eastern Christian apophaticism does not restrict itself to the discursive task of theology alone.^[17]

According to Christos Yannaras, the term ‘apophaticism’ in the Eastern Church refers to ‘our refusal to exhaust knowledge of the truth in its formulation. The formulation is necessary and required, because it defines the truth, it separates and distinguishes it from every distortion and falsification of it. … At the same time though, this formulation neither replaces nor exhausts the knowledge of the truth, which remains experiential and practical, a way of life and not a theoretical construction.’^[18] Yannaras emphasises the need for theology to go beyond the distinction between positive and negative linguistic connotations and adopt an attitude to language similar to the one adopted by some of the modern sciences. According to him, one of the characteristics of post-modernity is the emergence of a new language in dealing with ontology and reality, a language emerging from two scientific disciplines—quantum mechanics and post-Freudian psychology.^[19] According to him, the post-modern duty of the Church includes the appropriation of the new language aiming at linking the salvific message of the Gospel to linguistic categories that could be more efficient in the interpretation of ‘the reality of existence, the appearance and disclosure of being,’^[20] and more specifically, in the articulation of the experiential mode of the relationship between God, the world, and man.

How did the Eastern Church Fathers deal with issues related to theological language? According to Fr John Romanides, they stress that all the expressions and concepts that a human person can have, are products of human thought.^[21] Concepts and expressions did not come down from heaven and God did not personally create concepts and expressions in the human mind. There is no divine language.^[22] God does not communicate with man by using some special language that he gives to those with whom He communicates. Fr Georges Florovsky expressed a similar point in a beautiful way:

The scriptures transmit and preserve for us the Divine Voice in the tongue of man. The scriptures transmit and preserve for us the Divine Word such as it had been heard, such as it sounded in the receptive soul of man. The mystery of Divine inspiration is not only that God spoke to man, but also that man was listening to God and heard him. God descends to man, shows his Face to man; speaks to him. And man sees God, is lost in the vision of God, and describes what he has seen and heard, bearing witness to what has been revealed to him. … It is already in the Old Testament that the Divine Word becomes human, is incarnated in the human tongue. And there is another point of great importance. If we want the Divine Word to ring clear, the human tongue must not lose its natural qualities. It must not leave off being human. What is human is not suppressed or swept away by Divine inspiration; it is only transfigured. The supernatural does not go counter to what is natural. … The Word of God may be exactly and strictly expressed in the language of man, who is created in the image and likeness of God; in the image of God’s Word, as was taught by some of the Fathers of the Church. The Word of God does not grow dim because it sounds and is pronounced in the tongue of man. On the contrary, the human word becomes transfigured, transubstantiated, because God deigned to speak in the human tongue. The Divine Spirit breathes in the organism of human speech, in the substance of human words. And therefore the tongue of man acquires force and firmness. It becomes possible for the word of man to speak of God. Theology becomes possible.^[23]

At the same time, human language is the result of human needs and the human condition. This is the reason why, according to Fr John Romanides, we are free to borrow any name or concept and to attribute it to God as long as we do so in an apophatic way. God does not have any likeness in the created world.^[24] There are no concepts in the created world that can be attributed to God as a way of describing him. So, according to Romanides, we can attribute a name to God, but only if, on the other hand, we also take it away from him. We can say that God is Light, but we can also say that God is darkness, and we do not add this additional qualification because God is not Light, but because God transcends light. So, for the Church Fathers, names are given and then they taken away or replaced by using opposites.^[25] When they speak about God and attribute opposites to him, they go beyond or transform Aristotle’s law of contradiction (two opposite propositions cannot both be true in the same sense and at the same time). They do not follow the rules of classical logic when they deal with theological matters or talk about God. This is because the rules of logic are valid only for God’s creation— the created world. What is logically valid in the created realm is not valid in the context of the uncreated reality of God; it needs to be theologically refined and corrected.

Dionysius the Areopagite has a very special place in the apophatic tradition of the Eastern Church. The corpus of the Areopagite is critically important because it stands at the crossroads between Christianity and Hellenism, as well as between the Western and the Eastern Church.^[26] Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century and Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth century commented on it and defended it. The Areopagitic corpus almost achieved canonical status in the Eastern Church. The Western Church based its negative theology on Dionysius. Scotus Eriugena translated him into Latin and Thomas Aquinas commented on his book On the Divine Names. It is no mere historical accident that the Western Church accepted Dionysius and developed its negative theology based on his works. According to John Meyendorff, the Areopagitic corpus is ‘the most read Greek writing of the Latin philosophers of the Middle Ages.’^[27]

In the fourteenth century Barlaam the Calabrian attempted to base the unification of the Western and Eastern Churches on St Dionysius. Barlaam misunderstood Dionysius and turned apophaticism into nominalistic agnosticism.^[28] St Gregory Palamas confronted Barlaam on several issues, two of which were his understanding of the nature of Divine knowledge and the ways of using logical propositions about God.^[29] The confrontation created a theological controversy that resulted in some of the most insightful reflections on apophaticism in Eastern Christian theology.

Barlaam rejected the possibility of using apodictic proofs in theology and believed instead in the suitability of the dialectical method ‘because it begins with, and has as its premises in, the universal laws and the data of created reality, which are subsequently applied to God. In this way, Barlaam sought the eternal and uncreated within the temporal and the created.’^[30] He ignored the patristic distinction between created and uncreated, as well as the possibility for a direct revelatory presence and activity of God in the world. For him ‘no vision or direct experience of God is possible without created intermediaries. Any gift of God, even the light of Tabor, inasmuch as it was perceived by the physical senses, constitutes a ‘created spirit’ or a ‘created symbolic representation.’ Based on such created representations, the soul rises through philosophy toward the immaterial archetypes which constitute perfection and the fullness of theognosia.’^[31] Thus, Barlaam denied the empirical basis of theognosia.

According to Palamas, God is to be spoken of apophatically not because of the unknowability of his essence but because of the subtlety of the ways of knowing him through the Divine energies. Thus, if the difference between Divine essence and Divine energies is disregarded, theology becomes agnostic. St. Gregory accused Barlaam for claiming that ‘there is nothing above knowledge’^[32] and that it was only ‘spoken knowledge’ that could be called light.^[33] According to St. Gregory there are two philosophies, a philosophy in words and another one in deeds, and there are ‘many and various differences’ between them.^[34] He sees Barlaam’s philosophy as being strictly discursive, bounded by language, and ultimately incapable of true knowledge of the Divine realm. The problem of such philosophy is its restriction of the mind to discursive reasoning alone, which makes the cognitive aspects of contemplation merely impossible. Whenever Barlaam speaks of contemplation, he reduces it to knowledge of created beings. Hence, the monks on Mount Athos did not think that it fits to call him a contemplative.^[35] Barlaam’s focus on discursive knowledge alone ‘evidences a denial that one can go beyond words to the reality they indicate. That is, we can speak about God but, since he is transcendent, cannot encounter God himself.’^[36] And ‘it is not the same to say something about God as it is to possess and see God. For apophatic theology is a word, whereas contemplation surpasses words.’^[37] ‘The intellect, theologizing apophatically, thinks those things that are different from God, and thus acts by discursive reasoning. But in the other case there is union. … Contemplation is not simply abstraction and negation, but union and deification.’^[38]

For Gregory Palamas the light seen by the Hesychasts is a pledge of union with God and a true encounter with him. For Barlaam the contemplation of light is restricted to the realm of concepts and to discursive thought where the words refer to natural phenomena.^[39] ‘The philosopher teaches that the knowledge we have from creatures is the most perfect vision of God’^[40] but the knowledge of natural phenomena cannot be the measure of human progress towards the likeness of God. ‘Such knowledge is trapped by a superficial consideration of phenomena—paralleling the superficiality of words—since ‘every being that knows is established and remains in that which it knows.’’^[41] We are therefore suspended in our language and need to deal with the consequences of this challenge.^[42]

According to Palamas, Theognosia

… is an event, a direct charismatic experience given to those who are pure of heart and mind, who are illuminated in body and soul by the uncreated light of divine grace. The prophets, the apostles and the saints of the Church ascended and ascend to this height of vision and communion with God. Together with this charismatic theology, which is basically a theophany of God, rationalistic theology has its place. The latter begins from and elaborates upon the insights of the former.^[43]

The discussion of the legitimacy of using apodictic syllogisms in theology turned into a discussion of the nature—created or uncreated—of the theophanies in the Old and the New Testaments, as well as of the physical or sensible nature of the divine light seen by the Apostles during the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Thabor.^[44] Fr John Romanides explicitly pointed out the Latin (or rather Augustinian) theological point of departure of the Calabrian monk.^[45] For Barlaam, if the light shining at Mount Tabor was visible to the Apostles, it had to be created, definable and physically perceptible, i.e. it could not have been uncreated. For Palamas this light was uncreated, eternal and undefinable, transcending both the intellect and the natural laws of physical sensation. For him this is the Divine glory which is not an objectively given reality that can be perceived by anyone present, because its vision requires the transformative effect of the Divine energies. A close reading of the first homily of St Gregory Palamas on the Transfiguration of Christ will help in clarifying this point:

The light of the Lord’s transfiguration does not come into being or cease to be, nor is it circumscribed or perceptible to the senses, even though for a short time on the narrow mountain top it was seen by human eyes. Rather, at that moment the initiated disciples of the Lord ‘passed’, as we have been taught, ‘from flesh to spirit’ by the transformation of their senses, which the Spirit wrought in them, and so they saw that ineffable light, when and as much as the Holy Spirit’s power granted them to do so. Those who are not aware of this light and who now blaspheme against it think that the chosen apostles saw the Light of the Lord’s Transfiguration with their created faculty of sight, and in this way they endeavour to bring down to the level of a created object not just that light — God’s power and kingdom — but even the power of the Holy Spirit, by which divine things are revealed to the worthy.^[46]

In this passage, St Gregory referred to St Maximus the Confessor in order to emphasise that it was actually Christ’s disciples who were transfigured by the Spirit and made able to ‘pass from flesh to spirit’ so that they could see his divine glory.^[47] A necessary condition for the theophanic experience is that the visionary is in the right state of soul under the influence of grace.^[48] The divine light is not accessible to the human capacities in the way they naturally operate. It is physically invisible and inaccessible to them. Every human being can prepare by good works, purification of the heart and prayer, but the vision of the Divine light is ultimately given by the transformation of the natural human capacities through the enabling power of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Eternal Spirit of the Father and the of the Son, who proceeds from the Father and rests on the Son. In this sense, the spiritual empowerment which is enabled by the Holy Spirit is both Christological and Trinitarian.

The discussion of the relationship between apophatic theology and the experience of God is equally relevant today. In a recent discussion of the theological contributions of Christos Yannaras, Federico Aguirre points out that

[i]n the context of Orthodoxy, apophaticism does not define —not even by negation— a field of knowledge —‘divine’ reality— but it highlights a principally methodological issue, which defines a ‘way’ of accessing knowledge in general: the absolute priority of experience regarding its formulation. As Lossky points out, apophaticism is ‘an existential attitude which involves the whole man: there is no theology apart from experience’.^[49]

In a more recent study focusing on the theology and life of St Symeon the New Theologian, Fr Nikolaos Loudovikos provides an insightful reflection of the participatory nature of Eastern Christian apophaticism which can be used as a final point for this section:

The grace of Baptism was scorned, since study of the texts alone was considered ‘precise and certain information concerning the Holy Τrinity.’ Worship of the text stifled its spirit, and contemplation became speculative representation, or, according to Symeon ‘foolishness.’ Foolishness, then, is a preference for representation: when scholars hear about the triune radiance of the one divinity, they immediately conjure up in their minds a ‘simile’ of three suns and ‘foolishly consider to perceive divinity —and thus the holy, consubstantial and undivided Trinity— as being the same as the simile.’ But representation excludes ‘union in knowledge’ as a false and deceptive concept, whereas, in fact, it is ‘knowledge through will,’ that is, free, existential communion. … This union, then, happens through the will, without being representative; the communion obviates the need for representation, establishing apophaticism as experience of the Being: ‘But if, indeed, they were united to Him, they would never dare speak about Him, seeing that everything in Him is inexpressible and incomprehensible; and not only the mysteries about Himself but also the great part of His works are unknown to all.’^[50]

It is union, therefore, as communion in existence, which gives rise to apophaticism. It is not the apophatic as a comment on representation, but as an opportunity for participation. … This nonrepresentational, apophatic knowledge, being the result of participation, redefines the content of faith. Because otherwise faith risks ending up as a radical unfamiliarity with Being.^[51]

Apophaticism in quantum mechanics

The current situation of quantum mechanics as part of physics could be described with a testimony by David Mermin — a physicist who has made genuine contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum information science, and physics in general.

More than ninety years after the invention of quantum mechanics, we find ourselves in a strange situation. Quantum mechanics works. Indeed, no theory of physics has ever had such spectacular success. From ignorance about the structure of matter, quantum mechanics has brought us, in less than a century, to an understanding so broad, powerful, and precise that virtually all contemporary technology relies on it. And the theory has enabled us to make sense of phenomena far beyond anything technology has yet been able to exploit. Yet despite this unprecedented success there is notorious disagreement about … . The sentence fades away because it is not so easy to say what the disagreement actually is about.

What we lack is any consensus about what one is actually talking about as one uses quantum mechanics. There is an unprecedented gap between the abstract terms in which the theory is couched and the phenomena the theory enables us so well to account for. We do not understand the meaning of this strange conceptual apparatus that each of us uses so effectively to deal with our world. … What the hell are we talking about when we use quantum mechanics? For practical purposes ordinary everyday quantum mechanics is just fine, and what I have to say is of little or no interest. It is my hope to interest those who, like me, are impractical enough always to have been bothered, at least a bit, by not knowing what they are talking about.^[52]

Many physicists and non-physicists consider quantum mechanics strange and weird. Here are some of the most common reasons for calling quantum mechanics weird:^[53]

quantum objects can be both waves and particles

quantum objects can be in more than one state at once

it is impossible to know exactly and simultaneously two different properties of a quantum object (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle)

quantum objects can affect one another instantly over huge distances (‘spooky action at a distance’ or quantum entanglement)

it is impossible to measure anything without disturbing it, so the human observer cannot be excluded from the theory.

But, as Phillip Ball rightly points out, ‘quantum mechanics says none of these things. In fact, quantum mechanics doesn’t say anything about ‘how things are’. It tells us what to expect when we conduct particular experiments. All of the claims above are nothing but interpretations laid on top of the theory.’^[54]

The radicalness of quantum mechanics could be described as follows.

In most physics equations, the variables refer to objective properties of the system they are describing: the mass or velocity of bodies in Newton’s laws of motion, for instance. But according to quantum mechanics, the wave function is not like this. It’s not obvious whether it says anything about the quantum entity itself—such as where it is at any moment in time. Rather, it tells us what we might see if we choose to look. It points in the wrong direction: not down toward the system being studied, but up toward the observer’s experience of it. ‘What makes quantum theory puzzling is … the fact that we cannot interpret the measurements as revealing some pre-existing properties of the system.’ What’s more, the mathematical machinery provides only probabilities that can be written down only if you stipulate how you’re looking. If you do different measurements, you might calculate different probabilities, even though you seem to be examining the same system in both cases.^[55]

According to Ball, it is possible that we might never be able to say what quantum theory really means. More specifically, we might find our words and concepts, our usual patterns of cognition, to be unsuited to articulating a meaningful interpretation. David Mermin expressed a similar opinion in a description of the way many quantum physicists feel about Niels Bohr,^[56] the one who acquired the reputation of a highest authority with an almost quasi-mystical understanding that leaves even today’s physicists wondering over his words.

‘I have been getting sporadic flashes of feeling that I may actually be starting to understand what Bohr was talking about. Sometimes the sensation persists for many minutes. It’s a little like a religious experience and what really worries me is that if I am on the right track, then one of these days, perhaps quite soon, the whole business will suddenly become obvious to me, and from then on I will know that Bohr was right but be unable to explain why to anybody else.’

What are the key differences between quantum mechanics and classical physics? Here is how Phillip Ball summarises Leonard Susskind’s explanation of what is fundamentally different between quantum and classical mechanics:

Quantum physics has ‘different abstractions’ — how objects are represented mathematically, and how those representations are logically related.

Quantum physics has a different relationship between the state of a system and the result of a measurement on that system.^[57]

The first of these statements seems to be intuitively understandable. The second however refers to the fundamental reason for quantum theory’s counter-intuitive nature. How does the relationship between the state of a system and a measurement of the system come into play? Objects in classical physics have preexisting properties and a measurement tells us about the state of an object which is characterised by its measured properties.

So we have no problem saying that the tennis ball was travelling at 100 mph and then we measured it. … We would never think of saying that it was travelling at 100 mph because we measured it. That wouldn’t make any sense. In quantum theory, we do have to make statements like that. And then we can’t help asking what it means. That’s when the arguments start. … The fact that Susskind’s second principle — the relationships between states and measurements — can be put into words, without any need for equations or fancy jargon, should reassure us. It’s not easy to understand what the words mean, but they reflect the fact that the most fundamental message of quantum theory isn’t a purely mathematical one.

The principle of complementarity and the breakdown of classical logic

It was around 1920 when light ‘acquired’ in physics an explicitly dual, i.e. wave-particle, character that was unexplainable by the existing laws of classical physics. Almost at the same time the universal nature of this duality at the quantum level became apparent as well. Both light and particles, under different complementary circumstances, can manifest their presence in a wave-like or particle-like manner, hence the concept of wave-particle duality. The need to conceptualise this duality required a new logical framework. A new logical framework was suggested by Niels Bohr in an effort to explain the wave-particle dualism in quantum physics.^[58] The mutual exclusivity of the wave and particle behaviors of single quantum entities was the basis for him to define the principle of complementarity—a single quantum entity can either behave as a particle or as wave, but never simultaneously as both. The wave and particle behaviors of a single quantum entity cannot manifest themselves at the same time, but you need both to describe what a quantum entity is.

One of the basic laws of Aristotelian logic is the law of the excluded middle, which claims that x is either y or not y, or that an attribute belongs or does not belong to an object and there is no middle ground on which two essentially opposite attributes could belong to the same object. Traditional normative logic, which is premised on this law, is based on our dealings with macro-level phenomena and does not hold in the quantum domain where the dual quantum nature of physical reality requires a new logic and new epistemology.^[59] The need for a new logical framework was based on the fact that, in addition to the need to represent two different sets of properties that preclude one another in any given experimental situation, both these sets were necessary to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the quantum object.

In what way exactly does the principle of complementarity contradict classical logic? The contradiction does not consist in the fact that two profoundly different models of behavior (wave vs particle) that preclude one another in any given situation are both necessary to achieve a complete understanding of a quantum object. The principle of complementarity ensures that we can never apply both models to the same entity at the same time (i.e., to the same experimental configuration or measurement). It is only when we tried to apply both models simultaneously to one and the same entity that contradiction would appear. For Bohr, however,

[t]he aim of the idea of complementarity was to allow of keeping the usual logical forms while procuring the extension necessary for including the new situation relative to the problems of observation in atomic physics.^[60]

Interestingly, Bohr refers to a new situation. What was this new situation? Before the emergence of quantum physics, all physical objects were known to behave in experiments consistently in one of two ways—as a particle or as a wave. As a result, some of the physical objects existing in nature were considered to possess the properties of a particle and others to possess the properties of a wave. There was no way for a classical object to deviate from its wave or particle properties in different experimental setups. After the emergence of quantum physics, scientific experiments clearly showed that an individual physical object can manifest properties of either particles or waves depending on the specific experimental configuration they are put into. In other words, it ‘became possible’ for physical objects to drastically alter their manifested properties depending on the specific personal engagement of the observer which included the design of a specific experimental configuration. In other words, one could not speak anymore of objectively existing properties of quantum objects independently of an observer’s experimental intervention. The quantum object exists objectively, but its properties emerge within the context of the experimental setup and observer’s intention behind it. This is what Leonard Susskind means when he points out that quantum physics has a different relationship (in comparison to classical physics) between the state of a system and the result of a measurement on that system. This is what makes quantum physics experiments to a great extent personal and ‘subjective’. The world ‘makes itself known to each of us through our own private internal perceptions.’^[61]

Albert Einstein vs Niels Bohr

A famous debate between Bohr and Einstein began at the fifth Solvay Congress in 1927 and continued until Einstein’s death in 1955. The essential point of the disagreement in the debate was the answer to the question whether quantum theory was a complete theory. Einstein’s position can be expressed by one of his most famous quotes today: ‘Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘Old one.’ I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice’.^[62]

According to Einstein, if our current understanding about the nature of quantum objects is probabilistic, this only shows that we are missing something and there should be some ‘hidden variables’ that escape our knowledge but will be certainly discovered as our theories keep improving over time. In other words, our ignorance about the variation of these hidden variables makes quantum reality appear as probabilistic, unpredictable, and unknowable in classical terms. Therefore, future knowledge of these hidden variables would supposedly make the description of quantum systems completely deterministic. In other words, although quantum indeterminacy may be a property of a quantum system in practice, it does not need to be so in principle. In this sense, the physical attributes of quantum systems can be viewed as objective or real even in the absence of measurement, and we could assume, as Einstein did, that there is a one-to-one correspondence between every element of a physical theory and the physical reality it is representing.

Bohr agreed that the existing theories may and will improve over time but believed that this improvement will still need the principles of uncertainty and complementarity because they are inherent characteristics of the nature of quantum objects. He looked at quantum objects in terms of their energetic manifestations in the effects of their interaction with measuring instruments rather than in terms of the properties they manifest in isolation and independently of an observer. In Bohr’s ultimate view all available quantum phenomena are defined strictly in terms of the manifestations of particular aspects of their inner nature in recorded effects, such as the click of a photo-detector, rather than in terms of properties that are pre-assigned to the quantum objects independently of their involvement in an experiment.

The assignment of such properties to particles in advance, when they are on their own and outside of a specific experimental configuration, is unacceptable in view of the impossibility of any sharp separation between the individual behavior of atomic objects and their interaction with the measuring instruments that serve to define the conditions under which the observable phenomena appear. In this sense, quantum discreteness, discontinuity, individuality, and indivisibility are transferred to the level of the phenomena and their effects are manifested in a context of an experimental configuration which is preliminarily designed by the researchers. This transfer requires a terminological adjustment. All terms now apply to certain physically complex and apparently non-localised entities, each involving the whole experimental arrangement, rather than to single physical entities that are narrowly localised in space. In Bohr’s view, there is no God-like perspective from which we can know physical reality in itself, i.e. when they are on their own and could be considered outside of the context of a physical experiment. Thus, we are forced to recognise that our knowledge of physical reality is in principle local and, therefore, incomplete.

Niels Bohr’s way of expression, especially in the early stage of the development of quantum mechanics, did not help much in providing enough clarity to his positions. Even his own followers shared an uneasiness with respect to his way of using words and sometimes expressed wide disagreements with respect to what he really meant to say. For example, in a letter Paul Ehrenfest wrote to him dated July 17, 1921: ‘Now, dear Bohr, every person I know wails only over the fact that you write your things so briefly and compactly that one always has the greatest trouble fetching all of the ideas out of the fruit cake’.^[63] The point here is that Bohr appeared to struggle with finding the proper language to express his view of the emerging quantum theory.

One could, however, look at Bohr’s struggle in another way. ‘He usually refrained from absolute statements about what he called ‘deep truths’, and although he joked about it, he actually believed that as far as they were concerned ‘truth’ and ‘clarity’ were complementary to each other.’^[64] Heisenberg noted several times that Bohr did not have a problem with language but was in the process of creating a new one. In this process, he ‘tried to keep the words and the pictures without keeping the meaning of the words and of the pictures, having been from his youth interested in the limitation of our way of expression, the limitation of words, the problem of talking about things when one knows that the words do not really get hold of the things’.^[65] Heisenberg’s view suggests that quantum physics needs to deal with the challenges of apophatisation in a way that is similar to the one discussed in the context of Orthodox theology.

Here is another interesting quotation from David Mermin:

In my youth I had little sympathy for Niels Bohr’s philosophical pronouncements. In a review of Bohr’s philosophical writings I said that ‘one wants to shake the author vigorously and demand that he explain himself further or at least try harder to paraphrase some of his earlier formulations.’ But in my declining years, I’ve come to realize that buried in those ponderous documents are some real gems: ‘In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience,’ and ‘Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods for ordering and surveying human experience.’

A more balanced approach
to the interpretation of the Einstein vs Bohr debate

According to a recent interpretation of the debate between Einstein and Bohr suggested by N. P. Landsman,^[66] the discussions between Einstein and Bohr on the incompleteness of quantum mechanics ‘were incredibly fruitful and informative for later developments in the foundations of quantum mechanics’ and Bohr’s refutations of Einstein’s arguments were extremely thoughtful and elegant’.^[67] According to Abraham Pais, a scientist who knew both Einstein and Bohr very well, Bohr is ‘not only a major figure in physics but also one of the most important twentieth-century philosophers. As such he must be considered the successor to Kant’.^[68]

Bohr’s focus on the importance of classical physics concepts in describing quantum mechanical phenomena is particularly interesting. According to Bohr the key point is that, in contrast with the situation in classical physics, in quantum mechanics it is no longer possible to sharply distinguish between the autonomous behaviour of a physical object and its inevitable interaction with other bodies serving as measuring instruments.^[69]

We are faced here with an epistemological problem quite new in natural philosophy, where all description of experiences so far has been based on the assumption, already inherent in the ordinary conventions of language, that it is possible to distinguish sharply between the behaviour of objects and the means of observation. This assumption is not only fully justified by everyday experience, but even constitutes the whole basis of classical physics … [In light of this situation] we are, therefore, forced to examine more closely the question of what kind of knowledge can be obtained concerning objects. In this respect, we must … realize that the aim of every physical experiment—to gain knowledge under reproducible and communicable conditions—leaves us no choice but to use everyday concepts, perhaps refined by the terminology of classical physics, not only in accounts of the construction and manipulation of measuring instruments but also in the description of actual experimental results.^[70]

… The argument is simply that by the word ‘experiment’ we refer to a situation where we can tell others what we have done and what we have learned and that, therefore, the account of the experimental arrangement and of the results of the observations must be expressed in unambiguous language with suitable application of the terminology of classical physics.^[71]

Bohr’s focus on the necessity of classical concepts could be characterised as an articulation of the need for a quantum ‘economy’ of knowledge where we have to give up any attempts to talk about the inner nature of quantum objects and focus on what we can learn about them through the objective description of the experimental situation by the linguistic means of classical physics — the only way accessible to us to share our personally acquired experience and knowledge.

A theological analogy that helps in reconciling
Einstein’s and Bohr’s positions

Landsman’s article appears to be particularly relevant to our discussion. The author is a well-known theoretical physicist^[72] who, most interestingly, employed a theological argument to enlighten the disagreement between Einstein and Bohr:

More importantly, the agreement between Einstein and Bohr on the solution to the problem of objectification in quantum theory paves the way for an identification of their exact disagreement on the issue of the (in)completeness of the theory. Namely, the technical parts of their debate on the (in)completeness of quantum mechanics just served as a pale reflection of a much deeper philosophical disagreement between Bohr and Einstein about the knowability of Nature. For Bohr’s doctrine of classical concepts implies that no direct access to the quantum world is possible, leaving its essence unknowable. This implication was keenly felt by Einstein, who in response was led to characterize his opponent as a ‘Talmudic philosopher’.^[73]

Landsman showed how astute the characterization of Bohr as a Talmudic philosopher was through a theological analogy comparing Bohr and Einstein with Maimonides and Spinoza, respectively, on the unknowability of God. Bohr insisted that the formalism of quantum theory provided a complete description of physics and accepted as a given the incompleteness of the knowledge the theory provides. This for Einstein was equivalent to a mere acceptance of ignorance. He was most probably following Spinoza (Einstein’s intellectual engagement with Spinoza’s thought is well known), who spoke about the ‘complacency of ignorance’ in reference to the scholastic philosophers who defended the unknowability of God.^[74]

In a letter to Schrödinger from 19 June 1935, Einstein portrays Bohr as follows: ‘The Talmudic philosopher doesn’t give a hoot for ‘reality’, which he regards as a hobgoblin of the naïve’.^[75] According to Landsman, the ‘Talmudic philosopher’ label reveals the true and insurmountable disagreement that is manifested in the opposition between Einstein’s claim that ‘God doesn’t play dice with the world’,^[76] and Bohr’s reply to him that he ‘should stop telling God what to do’.^[77]

As Landman indicates, some of the commentators on the Bohr-Einstein debate ‘tend to put Einstein in the Talmudic tradition, leaving Bohr at the side of Eastern mysticism (a case supported by Bohr’s choice of the yin-yang symbol as the emblem of his coat of arms following his Knighthood in 1947)’. Others will emphasize that Bohr was not religious and did not believe in the existence of a ‘God’s-Eye View’ on quantum reality.^[78]

The theological analogy suggested by Landsman ‘is between the knowability of Nature in physics, as limited by Bohr’s doctrine of classical concepts, and the knowability of God in theology, highly restricted as the Old Testament claims it to be. Indeed, Bohr’s idea that the quantum world can be studied exclusively through its influence on the ambient classical world has a striking parallel in the ‘Talmudic’ notion that God can only be known through his actions’.

To illustrate this analogy, Landsman quotes from Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed:

THAT first and greatest of all thinkers, our teacher Moses, of blessed memory, made two requests and both his requests were granted. His first request was when he asked God to let him know His essence and nature; the second, which was the first in point of time, was when he asked Him to let him know His attributes. God’s reply to the two requests was to promise that he would let him know all His attributes, telling him at the same time that they were His actions. Thereby He told him that His essence could not be apprehended in itself, but also pointed out to him a starting point from which he could set out to apprehend as much of Him as man can apprehend.

This quotation correlates with Bohr’s view, in which the philosophy of quantum theory is ‘bound up with the impossibility of man’s knowing himself, and his not being able to know the external world completely because he himself was a part of the external world’.^[79]

One of the nicely surprising features of Landsman’s theological analogy is its correspondence with some of the key insights of Orthodox theology with respect to the distinction between the unknowable Divine essence and the knowability of the God’s energies or activities. Examining the relationship between the Talmudic and the Eastern Christian understanding of the distinction between divine essence and energies is beyond the scope of the present study. We can only mention that a link between the two traditions could be found in Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 B.C.E. – 40 C.E.), a Hellenized Jew who spanned two cultures, the Greek and the Hebrew. For him the divine essence is strictly unknowable, and God is known through his powers, which he identifies with the divine glory.^[80] ‘Philo’s metaphysics, rooted in the antinomy between divine transcendence and immanence, begins with the distinction between God’s incommunicable divine essence and his participable divine operation, or energy’.^[81]

Landsman’s analogy indicates the potential of the essence-energy distinction as an exploratory lens in the interpretation of the debate between Einstein and Bohr. This is a unique example of a theological insight that could offer a deeper understanding of the apophatic, the interpretation of quantum physics, as well as a great example of an insight that could be enhanced through the adoption of the ACTA approach.

The QBist interpretation
of quantum mechanics — a basis for a deeper encounter with theology

According to David Mermin, a recent interpretation of quantum mechanics, called QBism, is ‘by far the most interesting game in town.’^[82] It was suggested by Carl Caves, Chris Fuchs, and Rüdiger Schack, and builds on many of the insights of the founders of quantum theory. According to Caves, Fuchs and Schack, the confusion at the foundations of quantum mechanics arises out of a confusion about the nature and meaning of probability. The dominant view among physicists is the frequentist view of probability: probabilities describe objective properties of ensembles of identically prepared systems. Caves, Fuchs, and Schack take a personalist Bayesian view: An agent assigns a probability p to a single event as a measure of her or his belief that the event will actually take place.^[83] They maintain that, if probability is understood in this way, the notorious quantum paradoxes either disappear or assume less problematic forms.

The personalist Bayesian view of probability has profound implications for the meaning of quantum mechanics, which Fuchs and Schack call quantum Bayesianism, hence its name — QBism. Since quantum states are used to determine probabilities, if probabilities are indeed assigned by an agent to express this same agent’s degree of belief, then the quantum state of a physical system is not objectively inherent in that system but assigned by an agent or observer to encapsulate her or his beliefs about it in a future experiment or observation. Quantum state assignments, like probabilities, are relative to a specific agent. We could say therefore that QBism offers a fundamentally personalist perspective on quantum mechanics.

The QBist way of understanding probabilities in terms of the content, limitations and anticipation of personal information acquired in our personal interactions with the world around us helps in highlighting the value of quantum mechanics for science in general and for the human sciences in particular. ‘It can help us see quantum mechanics, not as an anomaly in the space of physical theories, but rather as their deepest archetype.’^[84] This is because quantum theories are not to be understood as an indirect representation of some reality beyond the phenomenal level of experimental information, but as a direct expression of the fundamental bounds of the availability of such information — something that could be considered as a common to both quantum mechanics and human sciences:

One case is especially striking: it is a recent generalization of quantum theory that applies to several domains of the human sciences such as decision theory, semantics, and the psychology of perception. This application of quantum theory to the human sciences shows that no matter who or what responds (human beings or things), the probabilistic structure that is to be used to anticipate the responses is the same. A set of human beings making choices that depend on the options which are presented to them, and on the order of the decisions to be taken, behave exactly like a set of electrons on which one evaluates several incompatible observables. … There is nothing shocking about the fact that it should be so. For this implies strictly nothing about some alleged similarity between electrons and humans at the level of their profound being. There is only a formal isomorphism between the possibilities of epistemological access to electrons and to humans: an isomorphism^[85] of their phenomenal reactions to being solicited, and of their informational dispositions. Such universal applicability of quantum theories … strongly suggest that these theories are precisely that, and only that: a general procedure for anticipating probabilistically the replies to context-dependent experimental solicitations. They do not even offer a hint in the quest of a faithful representation of some independent reality out there, behind phenomena.^[86]

Christopher Fuchs — the most articulated proponent of QBism, suggested an ontology of participatory realism that was inspired by John Wheeler’s post-Bohrian idea that quantum mechanics involves ‘observer-participancy’. According to Wheeler, ‘The strange necessity of the quantum as we see it everywhere in the scheme of physics comes from the requirement that—via observer-participancy—the universe should have a way to come into being.’ Fuchs agrees that each act of observer-participancy is an act of creation which brings out the reality of the world of which we can actually speak about.^[87]

The current status of the development of quantum mechanics suggests that there is no such thing as a reality independent of us and our agency. We should therefore give up any attempts for representation and devote our efforts to making sense of the participatory reality of the quantum realm simply because we can not speak of what there is as if we were describing it from outside.

Participatory realism is truly useful, because it sketches the only conception of reality that is immediately compatible with quantum mechanics, and by doing so satisfies our want for mental pictures without indulging in wrong representations. Indeed, this mental picture is the only one that fully acknowledges the core reason of Bohr’s prohibition of global ontological representations in quantum mechanics. It is a mental picture of the reason of the inadequacy of pictures. We could also say that participatory realism succeeds because it does not ascribe ‘reality’ any positive predicate, but only a negative predicate: the impossibility of neatly splitting it into a spectator-like knower and a play-like known. This introduces us to what may be called ‘negative metaphysics’, similar to the famous (or infamous) ‘negative theology’. In the same way as ‘negative theology’ may be taken by some as a good reason to abstain from theology, ‘negative metaphysics’ may be taken by some (the instrumentalists) as a good reason to abstain from metaphysics.^[88]

In his most recent publication Fuchs makes an explicit reference to the apophatic method:

In fact the first phase of QBism might be likened to a grand exercise in apophatic method: We won’t yet tell you what reality is, but what it is not. In particular, on the supposition that probabilities … are not part of reality, after careful analysis, we’ll tell you lots of other things that cannot be part of it either. In this way, first the quantum state fell as a potential element of reality, then more surprisingly the operators used to describe quantum measurements, and then perhaps even shockingly Hamiltonians and unitary operators. So it went with nearly every individual term of the theory.^[89]

It appears therefore that quantum mechanics has reached a moment when it needs to adopt explicitly an apophatic attitude to reality (i.e., an apophatic realism). This is a realization that offers an opportunity to explore further the contextual similitudes (a term suggested by Fr John Breck as a better alternative to ‘analogy’)^[90] between Orthodox theology and quantum mechanics.

Conclusion

In concluding we can surmise that one of the most interesting similitudes between theology and quantum physics appears to be related to the ways apophaticism plays a role in them. This issue touches on some of the deepest epistemological aspects of these two domains. A closer look at the controversial issues shows a common need to go beyond the challenges of representation, assertion and negation to the epistemological conditions of knowledge emerging through personal union and participation. This trend is more sharply expressed in Orthodox theology where theologians have emphasized that such union and participation in the Divine life removes the need for any representation, be it positive or negative, of the Divine and establishes apophaticism as way of communion in existence. The apophatic does not emerge as a comment on representation, but as an opportunity for participation. It allows talk about an apophatic realism which focuses on the subtleties and the quality of participation instead of the need for negation in speaking about the Divine realities.

According to Richard Healey, ‘quantum theory makes a radical break with previous physics not because of the weirdness of the physical behavior it represents, but … (because) quantum theory is simply not in the business of representing what happens in the physical world’^[91] We have seen Heisenberg’s comment on Bohr’s challenges of using language in addressing the new epistemological situation in quantum physics where he tried to keep the words and the pictures of classical physics ‘without keeping the meaning of the words and of the pictures, having been from his youth interested in the limitation of our way of expression, the limitation of words, the problem of talking about things when one knows that the words do not really get hold of the things’.^[92] Bohr’s focus on the need of using classical concepts is a manifestation of the need for an ‘economy approach’ to quantum knowledge that could be compared to a similar approach in theology — the focus of our theological epistemology on what was made accessible to us through the person and the activities of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and through the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the history of salvation, instead of focusing on reflections about the Holy Trinity which remains inaccessible to us in its essence. This original apophatic insight of quantum physicists was fundamentally enhanced by the current QBist interpretation which brings its participatory realistic perspective very close to the characteristics of the apophatic realism that was described above.

A last point about the concept of probability. It is obviously a technical term that has been naturally associated with quantum physics. Does it have a place in theology? I believe that the QBist personalist Bayesian view on probability offers an opportunity for theology to explore the potential value of the adoption of such perspective in a theological context. For example, the personalist Bayesian view on probability could relate to the context of prayer. I know this may sound strange to many Christians but let’s take a moment and think about it. Our prayers emerge from the depths of our personal existential situations. But there is no determinism in our prayers. In the Gospel of Matthew 7:7 our Lord and God Jesus Christ said: ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.’ But nobody says that what we will receive will be what we have actually asked for. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways (Isaiah 55:8). He is the One having the best answers for us even though we may have not seen them in advance as such. In this sense, our prayers are an expression of our personal beliefs about our best future, i.e. beliefs based on our personal experience and existential context. God respects our freedom and can satisfy all our requests, but He does also have a plan for us that may not result in what we have actually asked for in a particular moment of time. This is a point that would definitely benefit from a more comprehensive theological elaboration in future studies.

We can continue to deep dive into the exploration of the similitudes emerging from the application of the ACTA approach. The present article should be considered as an invitation to such deeper exploration. The ACTA approach counts on the participatory engagement of the reader in making the connections and personally exploring any other emerging similitudes between Orthodox theology and quantum physics.

 

^[1]  William Franke, On the Universality of What Is Not—The Apophatic Turn in Critical Thinking (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), 4. This reference appears as an example of interpreting apophaticism in rather relativistic terms. Other potential dangers are to interpret it agnostically or within predominantly discursive modes of inquiry.

 

^[2]  E. Jerome Van Kuiken, ‘Ye Worship Ye Know Not What’? The Apophatic Turn and the Trinity, International Journal of Systematic Theology 19, no. 4 (October 2017): 401-420, doi:10.1111/ijst.12227.

 

^[3]  Martin Laird (2001). ‘Whereof We Speak’: Gregory of Nyssa, Jean‐Luc Marion and the Current Apophatic Rage, Heythrop Journal 42, no.1: 112.

 

^[4]  Jean-Luc Marion, Inaugural lecture as the John Nuveen Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology at the University of Chicago School of Divinity. Jean-Luc Marion, Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Privilege of Unknowing. The Journal of Religion 85, no. 1 (January 2005): 1-24, p. 23-24.

 

^[5]  Saul Bellow, It All Adds Up (New York: Penguin, 1995), p. 96-97. Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 1915 – 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts.

 

^[6]  The articulation of ACTA was inspired by both my theological research and teaching experience. The foundations of this approach were set in my Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics. From Controversy to Encounter (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017) and then complemented by the development of a comparative theological perspective in a science and theology context: Stoyan Tanev, ‘Exploring Analogy of Debates to Approach the Encounter between Orthodox Theology and Quantum Physics,’ Analogia-The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies, 12 & 13 (2021): 97-135; Stoyan Tanev, ‘The Encounter of Theology with Physics: An Eastern Christian Perspective’, in T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and the Modern Sciences, ed. John Slattery (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 209-222; S. Tanev, ‘Using the Concept of Energy to Encounter Orthodox Theology with Physics: An Analogical Comparative Theological Approach (ACTA)’, in Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Tensions, Ambiguities, Potential. Science and Orthodox Christianity Series, Vol. 1, eds. Gayle Woloschak & Vasilios Makrides, (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2019), 127-146; S. Tanev, ‘Adopting an Analogical Comparative Theological Approach to the Encounter of Orthodox Theology with Physics’, Theoforum, 49 (2018): 153-173.

 

^[7]  Stoyan Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics. From Controversy to Encounter (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017).

 

^[8]  Bernard Lonergan, ‘Isomorphism of Thomist and Scientific Thought’, in Collected works of Bernard Lonergan — Collection, Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran, eds. (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 133-141,133. See also Yann Schmitt, L’Être de Dieu. Ontologie du théisme (Paris: Ithaque, 2016).

 

^[9]  First in Stoyan Tanev, ‘Essence and Energy— an Exploration in Orthodox Theology and Physics’, Logos – Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 50, 1-2 (2009) 89-153, and in some more detail in Tanev, Energy in Orthodox Theology and Physics.

 

^[10]  Francis Clooney, Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders (Chichester, England: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010); Klaus Von Stosch, ‘Comparative Theology as Challenge for the Theology of the 21st Century’, Religious Inquiries, 1 (2012): 5-26; Paul Hedges, Comparative Theology. A critical Methodological Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

 

^[11]  Clooney, Comparative Theology, 15.

 

^[12]  Ibid., 15-16.

 

^[13]  Von Stosch, ‘Comparative Theology as Challenge’, 5-26. The summary of the comparative theological principles presented here follows von Stosch’s logic.

 

^[14]  Von Stosch, ‘Comparative Theology as Challenge’, 12.

 

^[15]  Ibid., 13.

 

^[16]  Here I am following closely the logic of the text by Marios P. Begzos, ‘Apophaticism in the Theology of the Eastern Church: The Modern Critical Function of a Traditional Theory,’ The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 41, no. 4 (1996): 327-357.

 

^[17]  Marios Begzos, ‘Apophaticism in the Theology of the Eastern Church: The Modern Critical Function of a Traditional Theory,’ The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 41, no. 4 (1996): 327-357.

 

^[18]  Yannaras, Postmodern Metaphysics, 84.

 

^[19]  Янарас, Христос. ‘Постмодерната актуалност на понятието личност.’ Кризата като Предизвикателство. София: Лик, 2002.

 

^[20]  Yannaras, Elements of Faith, Ch. 6, 43.

 

^[21]  Here I am following closely the logic of the text of Fr John Romanides’ Patristic Theology, p. 59-60.

 

^[22]  Compare this statement with a statement that Aage Petersen attributed to Niels Bohr: ‘When asked … [about] an underlying quantum world, Bohr would answer, ‘There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.’‘ See: Aage Petersen, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 19 (1963): 8-14, 12.

 

^[23]  Fr Georges Florovsky, The Work of the Holy Spirit in Revelation. The Christian East Journal XIII, no. 2 (1932): 49-64. 1932: https://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/holy_spirit_revelation_florovsky.htm.

 

^[24]  John Romanides, Patristic Theology, 59-60.

 

^[25]  It is interesting to compare this statement with a statement by Niels Bohr who is considered to be the father of quantum mechanics. According to Bohr there is an old saying of the two kinds of truth: ‘To the one kind belongs statements so simple and clear that the opposite assertion obviously could not be defended. The other kind, the so-called ‘deep truths’, are statements in which the opposite also contains deep truth.’ Niels Bohr, ‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics,’ in P. A. Schilpp ed., Albert Einstein: Philosopher–Scientist (place, publication: publisher, 1949), 240.

 

^[26]  Begzos, ‘Apophaticism in the Theology of the Eastern Church’, 337.

 

^[27]  J. Meyendorff, St Grégoire Palamas et la mystique orthodoxe (Paris :Seuil, 1959), 42f.

 

^[28]  Marios P. Begzos, ‘Apophaticism in the Theology of the Eastern Church: The Modern Critical Function of a Traditional Theory,’ The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 41, no. 4, (1996): 327-357.

 

^[29]  John Romanides. ‘Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics’, Part I, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 6 (1960-61): 193-202; Stavros Yangazoglou, ‘Philosophy and Theology: The Demonstrative Method in the Theology of Saint Gregory Palamas’, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 41.1 (1996): 1-18; Иван Христов, ‘Битие и съществуване в дискусията за метода между св. Григорий Палама и Варлаам,’ in Хуманизъм, култура, религия (София: Лик, 1996), 37- 48; Robert Sinkewicz, ‘The Doctrine of Knowledge of God in the Early Writings of Barlaam the Calabrian,’ Medieval Studies 44 (1982): 181 – 242; Георги Каприев, Византийска философия, второ издание (София: Изток-Запад, 2011) (earlier edition in German: Georgi Kapriev, Philosophie in Byzanz (Wuerzburg: Koenigshausen und Neumann, 2005) 344); Иван Христов, Византийското богословие през XIV век. Дискурсът за божествените енергии (София: Изток-Запад, 2016); Norman Russell, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019); David Bradshaw, ‘Natural Theology in St. Gregory Palamas’, in David Bradshaw and Richard Swinburne, eds., Natural Theology in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition (St Paul, Minesota: IOTA publications, 2021), 51-64. The latest contribution to this topic can be found in Tikhon Pino, Essence and Energies: Being and Naming God in St Gregory Palamas (London: Routledge Research in Byzantine Studies, 2023).

 

^[30]  Stavros Yangazoglou, ‘Philosophy and Theology: The Demonstrative Method in the Theology of Saint Gregory Palamas’, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 41 no. 1(1996): 1- 18; 16 – 17.

 

^[31]  Ibid, 17.

 

^[32]  Gregory Palamas, The Triads, II.3.11.

 

^[33]  Ibid., II.3.71.

 

^[34]  Ibid., II.1.21.

 

^[35]  Pentecost, Quest of the Divine Presence, 61.

 

^[36]  Ibid., 62.

 

^[37]  Gregory Palamas, The Triads, I.3.17.

 

^[38]  Ibid., II.3.15.

 

^[39]  Pentecost, Quest of the Divine Presence, 63.

 

^[40]  Gregory Palamas, The Triads, II.3.67.

 

^[41]  Pentecost, Quest of the Divine Presence, 69, referring to The Triads, II.3.76.

 

^[42]  Compare again to a statement by Niels Bohr: ‘What is it that we human beings ultimately depend on? We depend on our words. We are suspended in language. Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others.’ Quoted by Aage Petersen in ‘The Philosophy of Niels Bohr,’ in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists XIX: 7 (1963): 8-14, 10.

 

^[43]  Stavros Yangazoglou, ‘Philosophy and Theology: The Demonstrative Method in the Theology of Saint Gregory Palamas’, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 41.1 (1996): 1-18, 17.

 

^[44]  Stoyan Tanev, ‘Created and Uncreated Light in Augustine and Gregory Palamas: The Problem of Legitimacy in Attempts for Theological Reconciliation,’ Analogia – The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies 4(3), Special issue on St Gregory Palamas, Part 2 (2018): 81-114. On the transformative effect of the Old and New Testament theophanies see Bogdan Bucur, Scripture Re-envisioned: Christophanic Exegesis and the Making of a Christian Bible (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2019).

 

^[45]  John Romanides, ‘Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics’, Part I, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 6 (1960/1961):193 – 202, 194.

 

^[46]  St Gregory Palamas, ‘Homily Thirty-Four on the Holy Transfiguration of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ’, in The Homilies, trans. Christopher Veniamin (Dalton, PA: Mount Tabor Publishing, 2009), 266 – 74, 269.

 

^[47]  Andrew Louth, Maximus the confessor (London: Routledge, 1996), 106, Difficulty 10, 1125D— 1128A: ‘They beheld Him transfigured, unapproachable because of the light of his face, were amazed at the brightness of his clothes and in the honor shown Him by Moses and Elijah who were with Him on either side, they recognized his great awesomeness. And they passed over from flesh to spirit, before they had put aside this fleshly life, by the change in their powers of sense that the Spirit worked in them, lifting the veils of the passions from the intellectual activity that was in them’.

 

^[48]  Cory Hayes, Deus In Se Et Deus Pro Nobis: The Transfiguration in the Theology of Gregory Palamas and its Importance for Catholic Theology (PhD diss.: Duquesne University, 2015), 94.

 

^[49]  Federico Aguirre, ‘Theological Apophaticism and Philosophical Nihilism, Towards a Theory of Knowledge’, Teología y Vida 60 no. 2 (2019): 229-242, p. 231, referring to V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press: Crestwood, NY, 1976), 39.

 

^[50]  Ibid., referring to Symeon the New Theologian, Hymns 3.261.

 

^[51]  Ibid., 92.

 

^[52]  N David Mermin, ‘Making better sense of quantum mechanics’, Reports on Progress in Physics, 82 (2019): 012002 (16pp): https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6633/aae2c6, 1-2.

 

^[53]  Philip Ball (2018). Beyond Weird. Why everything you thought you knew about quantum physics is different. University of Chicago Press, p. 11. I am grateful to Phillip Ball for the insightful articulation of the peculiarities of quantum mechanics provided in his book. I have greatly benefited from his narratives.

 

^[54]  Ibid.

 

^[55]  Philip Ball, ‘Mysterious Quantum Rule Reconstructed From Scratch’, The Quanta Magazine, February 13, 2019: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-born-rule-has-been-derived-from-simple-physical-principles-20190213/

 

^[56]  The continuous references to Niels Bohr in discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics are not by accident. It is worth mentioning a 1929 comment by Paul Ehrenfest to a young physicist which convincingly attests to the status of Niels Bohr in the physics community: ‘Now you are going to get to know Niels Bohr and that is the most important thing to happen in the life of a young physicist’ (Casimir, H. B. G. 1968. Recollection from the Years 1929 -1931. In Niels Bohr: His Life and Work as Seen by His Friends and Colleagues, edited by Stefan Rozental (Amsterdam: North-Holland, and New York: Wiley, 1967), 109 – 13; 109.

 

^[57]  Leonard Susskind & Art Friedman. Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 2.

 

^[58]  Niels Bohr, ‘The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory’, Nature 121 (1928): 580-90. See also Steen Brock, ‘Old Wine Enriched in New Bottles: Kantian Flavors in Bohr’s Viewpoint of Complementarity’, in Constituting Objectivity, Transcendental Perspectives on Modern Physics, eds. Michel Bitbol, Pierre Kerszberg, Jean Petitot (Berlin: Springer Science + Business Media B.V., 2009) 301- 316, 314.

 

^[59]  George Birkhoff and John von Neumann, ‘The Logics of Quantum Mechanics’, Annals of Mathematics 37 (1936): 823 – 43.

 

^[60]  Ibid., 115-16.

 

^[61]  N. David Mermin, ‘Physics: QBism puts the scientist back into science’. Nature 507 (2014): 421-23: https://www.nature.com/news/physics-qbism-puts-the-scientist-back-into-science-1.14912.

 

^[62]  Letter to Max Born (December 4, 1926), in Max Born and Albert Einstein, The Born-Einstein Letters, trans. Irene Born (New York: Walker and Company, 1971). Einstein used slightly different versions of this quote at other times. For example, in a 1943 conversation with William Hermanns recorded in William Hermanns, Einstein and the Poet— In search of the Cosmic Man (Wellesley, MA: Branden Books, 1st edition, 2011), 58, where Einstein was quoted to have said: ‘As I have said so many times, God doesn’t play dice with the world’.

 

^[63]  Catherine Chevalley, ‘Niels Bohr’s Words and the Atlantis of Kantianism’, in Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy, eds. Jan Faye and Henry Folse, 33 – 55 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1994), 33.

 

^[64]  David Favrholdt, Niels Bohr’s views concerning language. Semiotica, 94-1/2 (1993), 5-34, 5.

 

^[65]  Ibid. Heisenberg’s comment deserves a deeper and more extensive study since it opens the opportunity for the discussion of a constructive analogy between the ways language was shaped in the early period of the discovery of quantum mechanics and during the time of the Ecumenical Councils of the Christian Church. ‘The problem of talking about things when one knows that the words do not really get hold of the things’ could be identified as equally present in both contexts.

 

^[66]  N. P. Landsman, ‘When champions meet: Rethinking the Bohr— Einstein debate’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 37 (2006): 212 – 42.

 

^[67]  Ibid., 216.

 

^[68]  Abraham Pais, The genius of science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 23.

 

^[69]  Kristian Camilleri, ‘Why do we find Bohr obscure? Reading Bohr as a philosopher of experiment’, in Jan Faye and Henry Folse, eds., Niels Bohr and the Philosophy of Physics—Twenty First Century Perspectives (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 19-46; 29.

 

^[70]  Niels Bohr, ‘Natural Philosophy and Human Cultures’, in Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge: The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, Vol. II, Essays 1932-1957 (Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press, 1987), 23-31; 25.

 

^[71]  Niels Bohr, ‘Discussions with Einstein on epistemological problems in atomic physics’, in P. A. Schilpp, ed., Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist: The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. 7 (Evanston, IL: Open Court, 1949), 201-241; 209.

 

^[72] https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=nl&user=PTyjucMAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

 

^[73]  Landsman, ‘When champions meet’, 218. Landsman refers to A. Einstein, Letter to Erwin Schrödinger (June 19, 1935), in A. Fine, The Shaky Game: Einstein Realism and the Quantum Theory (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1986), 35.

 

^[74]  Alan Donagan, ‘Spinoza’s theology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed. Don Garrett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 343 – 82; 347.

 

^[75]  Don Howard, ‘Einstein on locality and separability’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 16 (1985): 171 – 201; 178 (Howard’s translation).

 

^[76]  See note 82.

 

^[77]  Landman refers to R. Kroehling, Albert Einstein: How I see the world (PBS Home Video, 1991). In the video, Abraham Pais says about Einstein that ‘he had a certain type of arrogance. He had a certain belief that—not that he said it in those words but that is the way I read him personally—that he had a sort of special pipeline to God, you know. He would always say that God doesn’t play dice to which Niels Bohr would reply “but how do you know what God’s doing?”’

 

^[78]  David Farvholdt, ‘Niels Bohr and realism’, in Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy, eds. Jan Faye and Henry Folse (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 77 – 96; 88.

 

^[79]  See the statement of Sir Nevil Mott, who visited Bohr’s Institute in 1928 and wrote in a letter to his mother of October 6, 1928: ‘…and so Bohr began to talk about the Philosophy of the Quantum Theory and how it was all bound up with the impossibility of man’s knowing himself, and his not being able to know the external world completely because he himself was a part of the external world’. Reference provided by David Farvholdt, ‘Niels Bohr and realism’, 90.

 

^[80]  David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West—Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 59 – 64; John Dillon, The Middle Platonists, Second Edition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 155 – 70. See also Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 B.C.E.— 40 C.E.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://www.iep.utm.edu/philo/: ‘Philo produced a synthesis of both traditions developing concepts for future Hellenistic interpretation of messianic Hebrew thought, especially by Clement of Alexandria, Christian Apologists like Athenagoras, Theophilus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and by Origen. He may have influenced Paul, his contemporary, and perhaps the authors of the Gospel of John (C. H. Dodd) and the Epistle to the Hebrews (R. Williamson and H. W. Attridge). In the process, he laid the foundations for the development of Christianity in the West and in the East, as we know it today’.

 

^[81]  Tikhon Alexander Pino, ‘An essence— energy distinction in Philo as the basis for the language of deification’, The Journal of Theological Studies NS 68, no.2 (2017): 551 – 71.

 

^[82]  N David Mermin, ‘Fixing the shifty split’, in Why Quark Rhymes with Pork: and Other Scientific Diversions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 219-226; 222.

 

^[83]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bayes#Bayesianism

 

^[84]  Michel Bitbol, ‘Why should we use quantum theory? The case of human sciences’, in Quantum Interactions 2018, eds. B. Coecke and A. Lambert-Mogiliansky, LNCS 11690 (2019), 3 – 21, 3. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35895-2_1

 

^[85]  Interestingly, Michel Bitbol uses the term isomorphism, which reminds of the analogical isomorphism approach discussed earlier in the present text.

 

^[86]  Michel Bitbol, ‘A Phenomenological Ontology for Physics,’ in Phenomenological approaches to physic, eds. Harald Wiltsche & Philipp Berghofer (Heidelberg: Springer, 2020), hal-03039509; 3-4.

 

^[87]  According to Bitbol (see footnote above), this could be considered as an anti-metaphysical move inspired by Wittgenstein’s famous statement that ‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence’.

 

^[88]  Bitbol, ‘A Phenomenological Ontology for Physics,’ 12.

 

^[89]  Christopher Fuchs, ‘QBism, Where Next?’, arXiv:2303.01446 [quant-ph], March 10, 2023: 1-53, p. 2: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2303.01446.

 

^[90]  Fr John Breck, Beyond These Horizons, Quantum Theory and Christian Faith (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press; Wadmalaw Island, SC: Kaloros Press, 2019), 70.

 

^[91]  Richard Healey, The Quantum Revolution in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 3.

 

^[92]  Chevalley, ‘Niels Bohr’s Words and the Atlantis of Kantianism’, 33.