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11St Archbishop Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki
Against the Positivist Ideology of Separating Science and Religion
Reverend Father Evgeny I. Legach1
Rev Fr Evgeny I. Legach,
Dr habil (Medicine), PhD (Medicine), Professor,
Chief Scientific Researcher of the Department of Cryoendocrinology,
Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine
Его преподобiе отецъ iерей Евгенш Ивановичъ Легачъ,
докторъ медицинскихъ наук, профессоръ,
главный научный сотрудникъ отдЪла крюэндокринолопи, Институтъ проблемъ крюбюлопи и крюмедицины
Нацюнальной академм наукъ Украины, (Украина)
For citation (Chicago style) / Для цитировашя (стиль «Чикаго»):
Legach, Evgeny I., Reverend. 2018. "St Archbishop Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki against the positivist ideology of separating science and religion." The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions 1, 020110012.
Versions in different languages available online: English, Chinese (traditional).
HEADLINE. Could an Orthodox Christian Saint unify science and religion ideologically separated by the positivist programme in the Russian and Soviet society of the twentieth century?
1 Please send the correspondence to e-mail: [email protected].
Permanent URL links to the article:
http://thebeacon.ru/pdf/Vol.%201.%20Issue%202.%20020110012%20ENG.pdf
Received in the original form: 2 August 2018 Review cycles: 2
1st review cycle ready: 22 September 2018 Review outcome: 3 of 3 positive Decision: To publish with minor revisions 2nd review cycle ready: 8 October 2018 Accepted: 14 October 2018 Published online: 14 October 2018
ABSTRACT
Evgeny Legach, Rev. 5t Archbishop Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki against the positivist ideology of separating science and religion. We consider the life feat and professional activities of 5t Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki, Archbishop, the Saint of the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches, and show that they were aimed at restoring the integrity of knowledge, the ideal of knowledge that was lost under the influence of the positivist ideology widely spread in the Russian and Soviet science and society of the twentieth century.
Key words: Saint Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki, surgery, purulent surgery, medicine, healing, science, positivism, Enlightenment, persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church, cognitive unity of knowledge, the ideal of knowledge
РЕЗЮМЕ
Легачъ Евгент Пвановпчъ, iерей. Святитель Лука Вой-но-Ясенецк!й противъ позитивистской идеологи разделения науки и релипи. Мы разсматриваемъ жизненный подвигъ и деятельность святаго Украинской и Русской Православныхъ церквей, святителя Луки Войно-Ясенецкого, и показываемъ, что они были подчинены его программе возстановлеыя целостности знаНя - возвращеНя того идеала знаНя, который былъ утерянъ подъ действiемъ идеолопи позитивизма, распространившейся въ росайской и советской науке и обществе ХХ века.
Ключевые слова: святитель Лука Войно-Ясенецкй хи-рурпя, гнойная хирурпя, медицина, целительство, наука, по-зитивизмъ, ПросвещеНе, гонеНя на русскую православную церковь, когнитивное единство знаыя, идеалъ знаНя
IDEOLOGY OF MUTUAL CONTRADICTION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGIOUS FAITH
IN MATERIALIST IDEOLOGY, which first most clearly manifested itself in the atheist programme of the Enlightenment, and later flourished in the positivism of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries, they usually argue that religion and science are doomed to irreconcilable hostility, and due to this ideological confrontation Church leaders and scientists are coerced to constant opposition to each other. Despite the contestable "obviousness" of this maxim, it is unlikely that we may find a statement more distant to the truth. The Church and science are enemies exclusively in the ideological narratives of Enlightenment, Hegelianism, Marxism, positivism, and, to a certain extent, postmodern thought. Those pillars of thought who are regarded as the founding fathers of rationalist approach in our cognition, Galileo, Newton, Euler, Lagrange, Maupertuis, wrote more about God than about nature, and some, like Copernicus, were even men of cloth. If Einstein were an atheist, it is improbable that he would have written the book The World as I See it, with religious matters occupying nearly four fifths of the book.
The adepts of Enlightenment and positivist ideological programmes cannot imagine that religious faith may not contradict reason. Galileo, when he wrote about the distinction between science and the truths of Scripture, spoke of a different type of faith. He did not assert that a rational person should inevitably abandon the truths of his religious faith, the faith in the Almighty God. However, with the help of the Enlighteners such as D'Alembert, Voltaire and Laplace, the history of human thought began to be considered in an ideologically tinctured way. In the nineteenth century, the ideological narratives began to generate a reality in which scientists and theologians commenced to regard each other as adversaries. Many accusations were made against each other by both the Christian Church and science, and many harsh words were said. On the part of the triumphant scientific Mind, many Laplaces, Huxleys, and Hawkings were accusing and continue to accuse the Christians of being spineless and pathetic ditherers. As a countermeasure, the Faith put forward its own Champions embodied as allies and followers of St Philaret of Moscow, who wrote many lines against natural philosophy, which, as he was thinking, would eventually turn into nihilism and degradation, St Ignatius Bryanchaninov, who equated scientists with the Evangelical "scribes," and St Ignacio Loyola, who said that a small fraction of divine insight is more valuable to a man than all the scientific books of the world combined. The validity of the ideology of "enmity" was "officially fixed" in 1874 by John Draper, the first President of the American chemical society.
Can we now, at the border of the second and third decades of the new Millennium, re-consider the ideal of unified knowledge that seems to have prevailed in the Renaissance, and which, in the opinion of many, has been lost forever? Shall we be able to hear each other again, shall we try to speak a common, mutually understandable language devoid of ideological cliches and barriers?
St Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki, Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea, is a man who in the
twentieth century did his best to reconcile rationality and faith. Few people have done as much as he has done to restore knowledge to its original integrity. What kind of man was he? "If you describe my life, don't try to separate the surgeon and the Bishop. The image, divided in two, will inevitably be false," so said St Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki, an amazing doctor, scientist and Confessor of the twentieth century (Luke 1995, 7). His scientific and spiritual works have an invaluable meaning and beneficial influence on the development of modern medicine. "We need a living knowledge and a faith capable of seeing, and only their synthesis and indissoluble connection will open the possibility of creative life, as only wise people inspired by faith, may create life," St Luke wrote in his writings (Luke 2019, 22). And as it is impossible to divide his medical and priestly service, so it is unrealisable to divide science and faith in his works, whether they are scientific or theological.2
ST LUKE WOJNO-JASIENIECKI: AT THE BEGINNING OF STUDYING HIS
SCIENTIFIC AND THEOLOGICAL INHERITANCE
THE LIFE OF SAINT AND CONFESSOR LUKE WOJNO-JASIENIECKI is astounding in its being multifaceted. A brilliant surgeon appears before us as a zealous Archpastor and a courageous Confessor of the faith in the Christ. St Luke is known both as an outstanding scientist, whose scientific heritage is still relevant, and as the author of inspired sermons and apologetic treatises. Many monuments are erected to him in contemporary Russia (Fig. 1 and 2).
The today's appeal to the theological and scientific works of St Luke is an extremely relevant research task, in Russia, Ukraine (whose Orthodox Churches recognise Archbishop Luke as the saint), and abroad these two countries. The man who united the Christian ascetic life, scientific occupations and medical practice, hitherto remains virtually unknown in Europe, Asia, America and Australia, outside the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches. I hope that my article will help to shed some light to St Luke's singular personality to different cultures, though to a certain extent.
The story of confessional life and theological works of St Luke are important for the mission of the Church in the modern world. Today's society needs an example of the life path of a person, a devotee of faith and science, who combined high spiritual gifts and profound education, the talent of a doctor and a preacher. St Luke, through his life and in his work, passed on to subsequent generations a huge religious, moral and scientific experience, which can be successfully applied in formulating and studying the moral problems of modern society, since his outstanding sermons and theological treatises awaken faith, convince doubters of the truth of the existence of God.
The study of the medical and theological heritage of St Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki is relevant for the following reasons.
First, St Luke was a world-class surgeon. The Essays of Purulent Surgery, an outstanding
2 I appreciate Irina Kalmyk, Head of Scientific Library Sector of Kharkov National Medical University.
monograph written by St Luke (Wojno-Jasieniecki 2000), was and remains to be the basic medical textbook in surgical treatment of purulent diseases. The book has been reprinted six times (most recently in 2016). For writing it, in 1946 the author received the Stalin Prize of the first degree (the highest public award during the Stalin's time). The value of this work for medicine is that St Luke developed a topographical and anatomical concept of surgical treatment of purulent diseases. The Essays immediately became a reference book for many generations of surgeons. Even in our time St Luke's research has a great further potential for scientific work of specialists of the highest class. And today this work is treated by neurosurgeons, ophthalmologists, urologists and specialists of other narrow medical specialties, as an encyclopaedia of surgical treatment of purulent diseases of almost all localities.
Fig. 1. St Luke's monument erected on the territory of Tambov City Clinical Hospital. © www.it-hotel.ru
Secondly, as a practicing physician, St Luke paid great attention to issues of medical ethics. These problems are particularly relevant today, as the modern medical technologies often come into conflict with traditional moral principles and values. Unfortunately, in medical practice, there are frequent examples of inhumane attitude to a patient, with the result being the loss of understanding the value of human life. For this reason, the problem of determining the norms of the relationship between a doctor and a patient, is extremely important for the formation of the moral foundations of a medical worker.
Third, research on bioethics issues encourages discussion among clergymen, doctors, and lawyers. In the context of world globalisation, the translation of a certain way of life leads to an inversion of values. We need correctly treat the modern problems of genetic engineering, the possibilities of using stem cells, reproductive technologies, and clinical transplantation. For this reason, it seems appropriate to study the spiritual and scientific
heritage of St Luke.
Besides The Essays, there are many St Luke's theological, medical and autobiographical works, e.g. Spirit, Soul and Body (Luke 1995), Science and Religion (Luke 2019), I Fell in Love with Sufferings (Luke 2017), selected sermons and spiritual dialogues (Luke 2016).
The current research on St Luke's creative heritage is presented mainly in works of a biographical nature. The most famous authors of books and scientific articles about St Luke are S. T. Varshavsky and I. D. Zmoyro (1989a; 1989b), V. A. Glushchenkov (2002), I. A. Kassirsky (1989; 1995a; 1995b; 1999), V. А. Kotelnikov (1987), G. P. Kotelnikov (2008), V. A. Lisichkin (2009; 2013), V. Malyagin (2013), Archdeacon V. Marushchak (2013), M. A. Popovsky (2002). The works of St Professor Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki are still not systematised. Modern authors confine themselves mainly to brief assessments of his role in purulent surgery. Reading St Luke's works requires research in the following modern medical areas: the theory of clinical diagnosis, medical psychology and deontology, surgery (including general, abdominal, thoracic, urology, orthopaedics and other sections), military field surgery and anaesthesiology, health organisation and social hygiene. The discovery of new archival data about St Luke as a doctor (the archival data on his work as a local provincial doctor), along with the development of new technologies of regenerative medicine, increases interest in the personality of St Luke and his theological and scientific works.
ST LUKE'S LIFE FEAT AND CHURCH ACTIVITIES
VALENTIN FELIXOVICH WOJNO-JASIENIECKI (THE FUTURE ST LUKE) was born in Kerch (Russian Empire) on 27 April 1877 in the family of a pharmacist. The family of Wojno-Jasieniecki is of Polish origin (his father Felix was a Polish). It was a noble and ancient family, and its roots may be traced back to the sixteenth century. Its representatives served at the court of the Polish and Lithuanian kings. Felix Stanislavovich, the father of the future Saint, was educated and had his own pharmacy. However, after the two years of ownership, he sold his business, as the pharmacy did not generate any considerable income. St Luke's father joined the civil service. St Luke's mother Maria Dmitrievna (nee Kudrina) was an Orthodox devotee who prayed diligently at home and did good deeds for the suffering and poor for the glory of God. St Luke's father was a Roman Catholic, devout and religious.
Since his childhood, the boy had a calm but resolute disposition. He also had promising artistic tendencies that became obvious in his early years. From his adolescence, Valentin was a good painter. His passion for drawing led him to Kiev Art School, from which he graduated a few years later. He has been often going to Kiev-Pechersk Lavra to make sketches, as he chose a religious direction in painting at once. He even participated in one of the pilgrimages held in Kiev. He received his secondary education in Chisinau and Kiev classical schools. After graduating from high school with honours, he received a memorable gift from the Director, the New Testament. As Valentin pointed out, he had already read it by that time. The book was given "as a parting word to life," and so he found it necessary
to read it again. As he was reading, he was literally shaken by realising the meaning of the text. Here is what he confesses: 'But nothing could be compared in great power of impression with the passage of the Gospel, in which Jesus, pointing to the disciples in the field of ripe wheat, said, "The Harvest is large, but the workers are few.'"3 This led him to serious re-considering his life, choosing his path in it and sticking to a profession. Many years later, taking the Cross of the Saviour, he would write: "When the Lord called me as a worker in his field, I was sure that this gospel text was the first call of God to serve Him" (Luke 2017, 78). It is noteworthy that the young Valentin has been hesitating to choose a definite life path for a long time.
Fig. 2. St Luke's monument in Krasnoyarsk. © mytashkent.uz
At first he inclined towards a career of an artist (he even studied in Munich at an art school for a year), then of a lawyer (in 1897-1898 he studied at the Law Department of Kiev
3 Lk 10:2.
University). But the final choice was made in favour of medicine, because, from the point of view of a young man full of ideas of populism, it was medical care that was particularly needed in Russian provinces. A zeal to become a "peasant doctor" led him to the Medical Department of Kiev University. During his studies from 1898 to 1903, Valentin Wojno-Jasieniecki showed himself a brilliant medical student. He did become a provincial doctor afterwards.
Immediately after the final exams, Valentin began to work in the Kiev ophthalmologic clinic. Out-patient admissions and operations seemed insufficient to the young surgeon, he felt a necessity in a new type of practice, and he began to receive patients right at home. He turned his house into an ophthalmological infirmary.
The mature medical life of the to-be Saint began on 30 March 1904 in the medical department of the Red Cross organisation, which seconded him to the Far East. The Russian-Japanese war broke out at that time. Young doctors with the similar views, volunteered to work in the most difficult places of the war zone. Sergey P. Botkin also did this immediately after his graduation, when he went to the Russian-Turkish war. Nikolay N. Burdenko followed the path, taking part in the Russian-Japanese war. Young Valentin followed their examples. His unit was quartered in Chita, and it was here that the young doctor was assigned the head of the surgical Department. He performed successful operations on bones, joints, and skulls, instantly mastered neurosurgery, and performed numerous bandages daily. Here, for the first time, he encountered severe purulent-septic complications that required a doctor to have a perfect command of topographical anatomy. This invaluable experience tempered the character and formed the professional views of the future genius of Russian surgery.
The next stage of Dr Wojno-Jasieniecki's life is his work in Russian provincial hospitals. In Russian small provincial cities Ardatov, Fatezh, Lubazh, Pereslavl-Zalessky and many other provincial cities, he was able to apply his knowledge and help suffering patients everywhere. He encountered a huge number of patients every day, and he was engaged not only in surgery, but also in obstetrics, gynaecology, therapy, paediatrics. The talented doctor actively studied ophthalmology, was interested in osteomyelitis and received valuable results thanks to his own radical method of treatment. He also created a method of operating hernial phlegmons. The range of his surgical manipulations is unusually wide for a provincial hospital: operations on the brain, heart, stomach, intestines, gall
Fig. 3. St Luke, then the Bishop of Tashkent and Turkestan. © Department of Culture and Archives of Tambov Region
bladder and bile ducts, kidneys, spine, joints, breast. For splenectomy in technically difficult cases, the to-be Saint suggested pre-ligating the splenic artery, intercepting it with ligatures along the pancreas. For the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia, the doctor used alcohol injections into the affected trunk and only if unsuccessful cases he made excision of the Gasser node. Since 1913, he began to manage the hospital for the personas wounded in military actions, conducting the most complex surgical interventions (Kaladze 2016, 11).
Complications of inhalation anaesthesia and the appearance of drugs for local anaesthesia, led Dr Wojno-Jasieniecki to think about a necessity in local anaesthesia. Since 1907 to 1916, he has been gathering material for his future doctoral dissertation. In 1909, Valentin became the chief doctor of the city hospital in Pereslavl-Zalessky. It is important that at that time he was working in a hospital for just thirty beds without electricity, running water, X-ray apparatus, but he managed to perform more than 1,000 inpatient and outpatient operations a year. Now such a task is performed by means of six to seven surgeons.
In 1916, Dr Wojno-Jasieniecki brilliantly defended his doctoral thesis on regional anaesthesia. He was conferred the degree of doctor of medicine and received the award of the University of Warsaw for the best essay creating novel methods in medicine. In his dissertation, he discovered new approaches and methods of drug blockade of the sciatic and median nerves, which before was considered impossible. In 1917, Dr Wojno-Jasieniecki was appointed the chief physician of the first city hospital of Tashkent, and in 1919 he was elected Professor and Head of the Department of operative surgery and topographic anatomy of the Turkestan University. In 1922, he became Chairman of the Union of Doctors of Turkestan.
Following the words of Innocent, Russian Orthodox Bishop of Tashkent and Turkestan, "Doctor, you should be a priest," a new stage in Valentin's life began. Valentin comprehended these words as the God's highest call. At a time when the Russian Orthodox Church was already subjected to unprecedented persecution, many priests took off their dignity. But Valentin took the orders as a priest, despite the obvious danger of such an act. After three years of service as a priest, Fr Valentine took monastic vows with the name of the Holy Apostle, Evangelist and Doctor Luke. On 31 May 31 1923 Fr Hieromonk Luke, with the blessing of Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, was secretly ordained a Bishop (Fig. 3 and 4). It is noteworthy that Patriarch Tikhon, having approved the election of a new Bishop, gave Fr Luke a blessing not to leave his scientific and surgical activities. Fr Luke
Fig. 4. Archbishop Luke in the 1950s. © Spiridon of Trimifunt Temple in Zelenovka
continued to make a lot of surgical treatment. He made four reports at the First Congress of Doctors of Turkestan in 1922. Since 1923, a stage of exile and deprivation begins for Fr Luke. But this exile could not interrupt his creative work on The Essays of Purulent Surgery and his professional activities. It was during this difficult period of life in 1924 that he performed a state-of-the-art operation to transplant a goat kidney to a patient with end-stage uraemia. Wherever Fr Luke was exiled, to Yeniseisk, Turukhansk, Khaya, Plakhino, everywhere he performed his duty as a doctor and a priest (Kaladze 2016, 12-13).
Since 1926 to 1929, Fr Luke developed the technique of direct blood transfusion, working on a monograph on purulent surgery. In 1934, the main scientific work of his life was published. The material presented in the monograph is quite complex, but it is presented in a clear, straightforward and at the same time highly professional way. The theoretical foundations presented in the book,
are especially valuable. They are illustrated by the analysis of specific medical histories, drawings, treatment schemes (Sizykh 2007, 11). This is where the artistic talent of the scientist appeared. Since 1936 he headed the surgical corps of the Institute of Emergency Medical Care, where he developed methods of treatment of face phlegmon.
SIMULTANEOUSLY AN IDEOLOGICAL OUTCAST AND HERO?
IDEOLOGICAL PERSECUTING ST LUKE BY THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT was strangely mixed with the reverence the very same public persons felt to him as the doctor (Fig. 5). At the beginning of World War II Bishop Luke sent a telegram to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Mikhail I. Kalinin:
I, Bishop Luke, Professor Wojno-Jasieniecki, being in exile in Bolshaya Murta, Krasnoyarsk region, a specialist in purulent surgery, can assist the military in the front or in the rear, where I would like to be entrusted. I ask you to interrupt my exile and send
Fig. 5. Professor Fr Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki at a surgery.
© Orthodox magazine FOMA; Simferopol and Crimean Diocese of Ukrainian Orthodox Church
it to the hospital, I am ready to return to exile at the end of the war (Marushchak 2013, 102).
Of course, the 64-year-old surgeon was not sent to the battle front, but the transfer to Krasnoyarsk followed immediately. In 1941 Fr Luke was appointed as a consultant to all hospitals in the Krasnoyarsk territory for 10 thousand beds, where he performed complex surgical operations with the development of unique accesses to large joints. He also developed methods of treatment of firearms osteomyelitis then. Since 1944, Fr Luke has been working in Tambov hospitals, being the chief consultant of 150 hospitals. In 1945 he was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree for scientific works and the development of new surgical methods for the treatment of purulent diseases and wounds. As well, he was awarded the medal "For valiant work during the Great Patriotic War."
In 1942, at the height of the World War II, as a consultant to the Krasnoyarsk group of military hospitals, Bishop Luke was appointed Archbishop of Krasnoyarsk. In 1943 Archbishop Luke became one of the six members of the Holy Synod. In 1944 he was appointed Archbishop of Tambov and Michurinsk, and in 1945 he was awarded the diamond cross on the hood from the Patriarch of All Russia as a sign of the highest Russian Orthodox Church's award. Finally, in 1946 Luke was appointed as Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea (Dionysius 2015, 84).
AN ICON IN THE SURGERY:
TOWARDS THE LONG-LOST WHOLENESS OF THE SPLIT KNOWLEDGE
Bishop Luke, Professor Wojno-Jasieniecki, did his best to return the lost wholeness to the knowledge. That he placed an icon of Virgin Mary in his surgery, was very signifying. By the prayers he was saying before his operations, he not merely showed his piety. He gave an example of healing the wounded knowledge. "Our cognition should be integral, he was consistently repeating, not scientific apart from theological, but they should be combined together" (Wojno-Jasieniecki 2000, 12). Once he was told to remove the icon by the Soviet authorities. He refused to continue his doctoral practice as a surgeon, until the requirement was cancelled. It is highly meaningful that he is always depicted with the beads and his famous monograph on surgical treatment in his hands (Fig. 6).
Bishop Luke enjoyed the full respect of both the congregation and his patients (Fig. 7). Wherever he was sent, the people met him, as a ruling Bishop, with a bell ringing. The sick people met him with the hope of recovery. He was legally forbidden to bless the faithful, to preach, but he was steadfast. Subsequently, the Saint-surgeon continued his medical practice at home. There was a notice posted on the door of his office saying that the landlord of this apartment, a Professor of medicine, had a free appointment every day except on holidays and pre-holidays. Many patients flocked to the Professor-Bishop, and he did not refuse to help anyone. St Luke always associated physical recovery with turning to
God, and he always taught the sick people to ask God for health (Ikonnikov-Galitzky 2013, 210).
Bishop Luke was always severe with militant atheists, whose illnesses he attributed to the punishment of God for their sins of resistance. He identified factors that are directly related to the patient's recovery. It is interesting that he related trust in the doctor with the faith in the God. Trust in the doctor is of paramount importance. The doctor's understanding of such trust as an element of therapy, is directly related to the disclosure of the concept of faith in the teaching of the Church. The doctor must earn the patient's trust and sow faith in God in the patient's mind.
In his life, St Luke showed the high ideal of medical service, when a doctor is driven by faith in Christ. He was also driven by the faith that a man is a creation of God. The main aspiration of a believing doctor in his work is to take care of his neighbour. In each line of The Essays on Purulent Surgery the Christian approach of a doctor to a patient, the love to a human as the image and likeness of God, are clearly expressed (Sysoykina et al. 2017, 152). Bishop Luke believed that there should be no "case" for a surgeon, but only a living suffering person, suffering due to his sins and large distance from God. In St Luke's medical practice, the examples of this attitude towards a patient, are clearly visible.
With each patient Bishop Luke entered into personal relations, remembered each person, knew his or her name, kept in mind the details of the operation and the postoperative period. Each death brought him deep emotions and suffering. The case histories compiled by the Bishop, say a lot about the personalities of his patients and his own. They are written laconically and simply, with an excellent description of the clinic and diagnosis, tactics of surgical treatment. And they show a keen interest in every sick person as in the lost sheep from the Evangelical parable.
A well-educated Russian intellectual, seriously interested in law, fine arts, a brilliant medical scientist, a successful practitioner, a man who has undergone many severe life ordeals, St Archbishop Luke came to a necessity for a deep study of theology and Christian Church doctrines.
Fig. 6. St Luke's monument in Tambov.
© Department of Culture and Archives of Tambov Region
Fig. 7. St Archbishop Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki and his congregation in Krasnoyarsk (Popovsky 2002). © Orthodox magazine FOMA; Simferopol and Crimean Diocese of Ukrainian Orthodox Church
He could combine the life of surgeon, scientist and clergyman. But more importantly, with his outstanding life and views, this remarkable man shows us an example of opposition to the destructive ideology of the separation of science and religious faith.
Funding. This work was funded by Ukrainian Orthodox Church, without specific grant number.
Conflicts of interest. None declared.
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EXTENDED SUMMARY
Legach, Evgeny I, Rev. St Archbishop Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki Against the Positivist Ideology of Separating Science and Religion.
Positivist ideology partially based upon the Enlightenment programme, ideologically separated science and religion, rationality and faith. But we may observe that this separation has purely artificial and ideological nature. Many scientists of the past, from Galilei via Newton to Einstein, were religious people, though their belief was not always orthodox, as prescribed by the Church. However, they would not have approved the discrimination between cognitive and epistemic fields of science and religion. The validity of the ideology of "enmity between reason and faith" was "officially fixed" in 1874 by John Draper, the first President of the American Chemical Society.
In the twentieth century, several attempts were made both on the Church side and in scientific world, to restore the long-lost wholeness and integrity of human knowledge, remove the ideological split described above. But almost all the persons involved seemed to belong only to one camp, either scientific or religious. Some figures, as e.g. Teilhard de Chardin, were likely to be members of the two sides simultaneously. This notwithstanding, Teilhard de Chardin and some others obviously failed in their attempt to reconcile scientific knowledge and religious devotion. They took the positivist side and eventually broke up with the Christian Church. There are just a few thinkers - their amount is negligibly small - who really succeeded in combining their scientific and clerical occupations successfully. Their example is valuable for the programme of removing ideological separation from science and the Christian doctrine. One of the most prominent figures is St Archbishop Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki. He was an outstanding surgeon, talented medical scientist, whose scientific heritage is extensive and still relevant in our time, and a clergyman. His life, hagiography and activities are studied in the paper, in order to comprehend his programme of returning integrity to the human knowledge.
The today's appeal to the theological and scientific works of St Luke is an extremely relevant research task, in Russia, Ukraine (whose Orthodox Churches recognise Archbishop Luke as a Saint), and abroad these two countries. The man who united the Christian ascetic life, scientific occupations and medical practice, hitherto remained virtually unknown in Europe, Asia, America and Australia, outside the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches.
St Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki achieved his target to help those who are in need, simultaneously as a doctor and priest. He was cruelly persecuted by Stalin regime for his religious belief and spent more than eleven years of his life in exile in Siberia and Polar Russia. But in 1946 he was also awarded the Stalin Prize, the highest public award of the Soviet Union of the time. This ambiguity of treating St Luke by the public authorities, is still beyond our understanding. It was simultaneous condemnation and recognition, abuse and veneration. Hardly could we find a person that was treated in such a way by the totalitarian governments of the Bolsheviks.
Bishop Luke, Professor Wojno-Jasieniecki, did his best to return the lost wholeness to
the knowledge. That he placed an icon of Virgin Mary in his surgery, was very signifying. By the prayers to God he was saying before his operations, he not just demonstrated his piety and religious devotion. He gave an example of healing the wounded knowledge that was once separated to science and faith by the founders of positivism of the nineteenth century. "Our cognition should be integral, he was consistently repeating, not scientific apart from theological, but they should be combined together." St Luke's scientific and spiritual works have an invaluable meaning and beneficial influence on the development of modern science and theology. They continue to remain a source of the greatest inspiration for modern surgeons, biologists as well as Church preachers.
Author / ABTopt
Reverend Fr Eugene Ivanovich Legach, Professor, is an Ukrainian Orthodox priest, clinical surgeon, medicine theoretician, biologist and theologian. He is the Dean of Temple of St Transfiguration in Kharkov. In 1998 Fr Eugene defended his PhD thesis in Medicine (Cryobiology and Cryomedicine) on the topic "The influence of cryopreservation on adrenocortical tissue." In 2009 he passed the habilitation in Medical Sciences (specialties "Transplantology and artificial organs; Cryomedicine") on the topic "Combined transplantation of cryopreserved organotypic cultures of endocrine glands (experimental study)".
Rev Fr Eugene I. Legach,
Dr habil (Medicine), PhD (Medicine), Professor,
Chief Scientific Researcher of
the Department of Cryoendocrinology,
Institute of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine
of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
Pereyaslavskaya 23,
Kharkov 61016, Ukraine
© Rev Fr Eugene I. Legach
Licensee The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions
Licensing the materials published is made according to Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence
