The Theory of the Big Bang and the Faith of the Holy Fathers (Part 1: Cosmology and Theology)
Part 1 of the 1996 Book by Bishop Basil (Rodzianko)
[See here for the rest of this book in “Part 2: Cappadocian Theology—Key to the Apologetics of the 21st Century” also in English with notes. Also, see here for more information about publishers considering this text and about its legal status.]
Bishop Sergius Sokolov (1951 to 2000) wrote a “Note to Readers” at the front of Bishop Basil Rodzianko’s 1996 book sharing that “this book will . . .serve as a worthy testimony to the Orthodox faith . . .during the . . .2000th anniversary of Christ’s Nativity.” It is certainly a bold (even audacious) book and is explicitly intended as a Christian “apologetics for the 21st Century.” Bishop Basil has been described as “a holy, loving and regal bishop who broadcast his Orthodox radio program in Russian on the BBC to infiltrate the Soviet airspace throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s.” This book was the culmination of a lifetime spent defending the Christian faith in secular and atheist environments in the East and the West. Bishop Basil’s thesis is that Stephen Hawking’s philosophy of science is complimentary to Cappadocian theology and that both can work together to help fill in the gaps and misconceptions found within the Catholic theology of figures such as Teilhard de Chardin. Bishop Basil writes: “Philosophically: what Hawking describes as imaginary (or vertical) time is, for Basil the Great, εν κεφαλαιω.” In his enthusiasm for Stephen Hawking, Bishop Basil is almost childlike as he calls Hawking “the great physicist and sufferer of our days.”
The book lays out a bracing, yet still thoroughly orthodox, case for how our world, as we experience it within fallen time, is the result of a human fall that has shattered and distorted our experience of God’s perfect creation where we and our fallen world originate beyond the start of our temporal universe with the Big Bang. Here are a few sample passages:
Each of our prayers and dialogues with the saints is given, by the great physicist and sufferer of our age [Stephen Hawking], a mathematical and graphical formula. This formula reimagines the seemingly “simple” biblical account of creation and reveals the deeper meaning of the words “it was very good” and other phrases about Paradise before sin (“be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”… “and it was so”… Yes, so! Paradise was filled with us) beyond the limits of our time and space. But with sin came a trans-temporal banishment [or a “beyond-time expulsion”], a “Big Bang” that cast us onto this earth in an “imperfect” universe—through a long evolutionary process spanning centuries, culminating in the coming of salvation and restoration in the future Kingdom of God. This entire vast journey, in truth, is but an instant!
. . .The force [or “power”] that Stephen Hawking tentatively [or “presumably”] calls “God” directed the tattered [or “shattered”] universe in an intelligent direction—toward humanity, banished [or “expelled”] from Paradise by Him as a result of sin, for the purpose of humanity’s salvation. The millions of years of subsequent time, the light-years of expanding space, and their interaction with the speed of matter’s development, solar systems, and stars—all aligned through Einstein's equation of energy and matter—all of this is but a moment from the perspective of Paradise’s eternity and “nothing” from the perspective of God’s Eternity. Yet for the world and humanity, this is the reality of their transformed existence.
. . .This world is “of this age,” while the Kingdom of God is “before all ages” and “at the end of time,” meaning outside of time and beyond time and space. Time, severed from eternity and, as [Nikolai] Berdyaev puts it, “torn apart by sin within itself,” has, in relation to matter and energy, become the foundation of “temporal existence in this world”—with the purpose of giving both humanity and the world itself the opportunity, through repentance and perfection, to return to the “lost Paradise.”
. . .We do not wish to argue with the West. On the contrary, we seek to clarify and assist—might not our ancient Eastern tradition help the Western Christian Church with its current difficult internal problems? And might it not also aid Dr. Hawking in his Unified Theory of Everything?
As Bishop Basil is writing in Russian for a people who have just been released from decades of brutal persecution, he addresses the reader as “we” and “our” and assumes a substantial set of differences between Eastern and Western thought and theology. This is understandable but still unfortunate for several reasons—especially given that the book is almost entirely engaged with contemporary Western scientific thought and with the leadership provided by the Catholic church in the dialog with such scientific theories and developments. However, if the overriding oppositional framework can be overlooked, there is much in the book that is relevant across all Christian traditions and that would open up a host of specific and productive points of conversation between them. I’m sure that Bishop Basil would have appreciated this fact and agreed with it, but this book (and his entire heart near the end of his life) was given over to his mission to his own people who had suffered so much during the span of his lifetime.
As noted above, Bishop Basil references Berdyaev at one point positively. He engages a wide variety of Orthodox thinkers including positive reverences to Florensky and Bulgakov. In Part 2 of the book, Bishop Basil says of Bulgakov that “I was close to him, of course, keeping the distance of age and position, as well as some theological differences” and that “I studied and learned much from his brilliant books.” Even before finding these direct references, I had been finding more and more indicators that Bishop Basil was a close reader of Bulgakov (while being much more theologically moderate and uncontroversial than Bulgakov). For example, Bishop Basil several times shares ideas from Fichte (without referencing Fichte) that were central to Bulgakov’s thought. Also, the concept of a meta-historical human fall in Bulgakov is almost identical to that advanced by Bishop Basil in this book. Finally, Bishop Basil’s concept of “Providence” maps very closely to “Sophia” in several respects (while never equating Wisdom with any figure other than Christ the Word of God).
While expressing a typically suspicious stance toward Origen, Bishop Basil quotes and praises Plotinus twice at length as well as extolling the entire Alexandrian theological school. Also, according to Bishop Basil, Saint Gregory of Nyssa “contrary to general opinion, corrects his brother Saint Basil’s excessive Origenism, if Saint Basil really separates souls from bodies in Paradise—and not the other way around.” Bishop Basil even defends Saint Gregory of Nyssa’s opinions about universal salvation as entirely orthodox given that “it belonged to apophatic theology, not to cataphatic theology” in Basil’s reading.
Anyway, there is so much within this wild and devotional little book, that I’m sure to be referencing it again many times in years to come. For now, however, I am simply sharing the full text of Part 1 (pages 1 to 88) for subscribers here (followed by the full text of Part 2). Below is the full text with my notes for the first half of The Theory of the Big Bang and the Faith of the Holy Fathers by Bishop Basil (Rodzianko). Not knowing any Russian myself, I have rendered it into English using four different machine translation tools powered by large language models to compare and to interrogate the results for as clear and literal a translation as possible. Where there was any uncertainty that I could uncover, I’ve included multiple options and commentary. While I also own the printed book (and note page numbers from the book in my text below), the source of the Russian text has been placed online in full for many years on this officially-sanctioned website:
Book Part 2: Cappadocian Theology—the Key to the Apologetics of Our Time: Apologetics of the 21st Century [archived here]
I have tried without success thus far to contact Marilyn Swezey who translated the excerpt from the introduction to his book available here and who served as Bishop Basil’s executive assistant from 1981 to 1999. Swezey holds a M.A. in Russian Area Studies from Harvard University, 1964 and B.A. in Russian language and International Relations from Manhattanville University, 1962. I’ve also been unsuccessful in getting a reply from Father Alban Waggener who was referred to me as a personal friend of Bishop Basil. If anyone has more information about this book or the best ways to make it available to a wider readership in English, I would be glad to share my work below with them in full.
Table of Contents
To the Readers [by Bishop Sergius (Sokolov) of Novosibirsk and Berdsk; from the printed book and not included in the online Russian text linked above]
Author’s Acknowledgments [from the printed book and not included in the online Russian text linked above]
Introduction
Part 1. Cosmology and Theology [pages 1 to 88]
Heaven and Heavens [or “Sky and Heavens”] [page 10]
History of Astrology [page 13]
The Uniqueness of a Person [page 16]
The Uniqueness of the Infant [page 19]
On the Divergence from Astrology [page 21]
Cosmology and Christianity [page 23]
What World Do We Live In? [Or “What Kind of World Do We Live In?”] [page 26]
“Big Bang”—The Big Bang [page 31]
The Anthropic Principle [page 35]
Creation of the World [page 42]
How God’s World, Created by Him, Differs from This World Distorted by Satan [page 45]
Biblical Paradise [page 48]
Tree of Life [page 53]
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil [page 56]
Shards [or “Fragments”] [page 59]
The Fate of the Shards [or “The Destiny of the Fragments”] [page 62]
Where Does the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil Come From? [page 64]
The Role of Humanity in the Salvation of the World [page 66]
Hawking and the Catholic Church [page 71]
Dr. Hawking and St. Basil the Great [page 74]
“Imaginary” Time [page 79]
The Omega Point [page 81]
Alpha [page 84]
Can Science Speak of the “Alpha” of Another World? [or “Can Science Talk About the ‘Alpha’ of an Alternate World?”] [page 86]
Notes (from Part 1)
Part 2. Cappadocian theology is the key to apologetics for our time: Apologetics for the twenty-first century [pages 89 to 235]
Is St. Gregory of Nyssa an Origenist? [page 91]
Revelation and Theology [page 95]
Theology of the Cappadocians [page 97]
Scholarly Literature on the Cappadocians [page 104]
Revelation in the Arabian Desert [page 107]
The Primordial Creation of the Holy Trinity’s Image [page 121]
Attempt by Russian Theologians of the 19th and 20th Centuries to Revive Cappadocian Theology [page 132]
Spirituality and Mysticism of Cappadocian Theology [page 162]
Answer to the Question [page 173]
Cappadocian Personalism [page 182]
Personality in God [page 185]
Latin Theology on Original Sin [page 189]
Two Theologies: East and West [page 195]
Cappadocian Theology in Liturgical Poetry [page 210]
Notes (from Part 2)
Epilogue [page 233]
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