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| DC Field | Value | Language |
|---|---|---|
| dc.contributor.author | Λώλης, Σοφοκλής Δ. | el |
| dc.contributor.author | Lolis, Sophocles D. | en |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-09-23T10:32:44Z | - |
| dc.date.available | 2026-09-23T10:32:44Z | - |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://olympias.lib.uoi.gr/jspui/handle/123456789/40408 | - |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://dx.doi.org/10.26268/heal.uoi.20046 | - |
| dc.rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States | * |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ | * |
| dc.subject | Πίστη | el |
| dc.subject | Χριστιανισμός | el |
| dc.subject | Εκκλησία | el |
| dc.subject | Φιλοσοφία | el |
| dc.title | Αι θρησκευιτκαί ιδέαι του Νεόφυτου Δούκα = The religious ideas of Neophytos Ducas | el |
| heal.type | book | - |
| heal.type.en | Book | en |
| heal.type.el | Βιβλίο/Μονογραφία | el |
| heal.generalDescription | Περιλαμβάνει βιβλιογραφικές παραπομπές και ευρετήριο ονομάτων | el |
| heal.generalDescription | Κείμενο στα ελληνικά με περίληψη στα αγγλικά | el |
| heal.generalDescription | "Διατριβή επί Διδακτορία, υποβληθείσα εις την Θεολογικήν Σχολήν του Εθνικού και Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών"--verso | el |
| heal.classification | Δούκας, Νεόφυτος, 1760-1845 | el |
| heal.classification | Εκκλησία της Ελλάδος | el |
| heal.classification | Θεολογία, Δογματική | el |
| heal.dateAvailable | 2026-09-23T10:33:45Z | - |
| heal.language | el | - |
| heal.access | free | - |
| heal.recordProvider | Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων. Βιβλιοθήκη και Κέντρο Πληροφόρησης | el |
| heal.publicationDate | 1949 | - |
| heal.bibliographicCitation | Σ. Δ. Λώλης, 1949. Αι θρησκευτικαί ιδέαι του Νεόφυτου Δούκα, New York, Cosmos Greek-American Printing Co., σ. 223 | el |
| heal.abstract | Neophytos Ducas, one of the most important and prominent modem Greek philosophers, theologians and clergymen, belongs to that group of Greek scholars who prepared the new birth of modem Greece and who labored to rebuild a nation, which having kept alive the spirit of ancient Greek civilization survived the ordeal of four hundred years of Turkish slavery. With the fall of Constantinople (1453), the capital city of the Greek Byzantine Empire, to the Ottoman Turks numerous Greek scholars took refuge in the free western and northern lands of Europe, especially in Italy. They brought with them the heritage of classical Greece which by that time had already made ite influ¬ence felt on the peoples of Europe who were coming out of the me¬dieval darkness. “From the middle of the fifteenth century on,” Alfred Weber remarks, “Western Europe experienced a series of sur¬prises. Led by the Greek scholars who settled in Italy, she entered directly into the promised land, which the Arabians of Spain had in part revealed to her: I mean, antiquity with its literature, phi¬losophy, and art.”1 Simultaneously with the Greek scholars a great number of Greeks also took refuge in the following countries: Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Roumania and Russia. There they established a multitude of rich, wealthy and progressive Greek colonies. These colonies became in some way centers of light and sources of civiliza¬tion; they scattered the medieval darkness of Western Europe and furnished the foundations of a new era for mankind. In the course of centuries the Hellenism abroad prepared the revolution of the Greeks against the Turks and was constantly working for the liberation of its glorious native country, Greece. First of all, their attempt was to open Greek schools not only in the foreign countries but also in Greece itself. And they succeeded in doing so. At the close of the eighteenth century there were nu¬merous Greek schools for the enslaved nation, some of which, such as the schools of Yannina, Metsovon, Athens, Smyrna and of the very capital city of the Ottomans, Constantinople, were well known. A little after the middle of the eighteenth century Neophytos Ducas, the “pride of the Greek Orthodox Church,” as its historian, the late Archbishop of Athens Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, called him,2 was born from a poor family in Ano Soudena, now called Ano Pedina, Zagorion, Epirus. In order to save their children from the hands of the Turks, the Greeks devoted them to different Monasteries; that is why Ducas since his boyhood of twelve became a Monk. And at the age of eighteen he was ordained priest. As a priest Neophytos Ducas attended the schools of Yannina and Metsovon and completed his studies at the well known Greek Aphthenteki School for higher education in Bucharest, Roumania, under the prominent scholar, also from Yannina, Lambros Photiadis. The beginning of Ducas’ career as a scholar was Vienna, Austria, where, after the completion of his studies, he spent twelv·- hard years as a priest in the Greek Orthodox Church of Vienna’s Greek community and as a private tutor, writing and teaching day and night. In Vienna, Ducas edited a large part of the ancient Greek writers, with translation and annotations, and most of hi? writings of some seventy big volumes which imposed Ducas as a scholar in Europe. Ducas wrote easily the modern as well as the ancient Greek language. The late Professor Demetrios Bernardakis of the Uni¬versity of Athens says: “When Ducas wanted to write, he took the paper and wrote.” And he addss “Ducas wrote and read ancient Greek without any help ... all Hellenism was in his head." 3 He knew the ancient Greek writers by heart. Thus Ducas by his work became well known and was recognized as an authority. European writers referred to him with Ducas dixit. At the time of the death of Lambros Photiadis (1815), Ducas was invited to succeed him at the Apthenteki School of Bucharest, Roumania. Ducas’ presence at the School caused a rapid increase in students. Within two years the students increased from a few score to the number of four hundred. But. unfortunately, he was soon forced to leave the school and became again a private tutor. Since his birth, Ducas suffered from poverty and misfortune; but soon, through his work, he expelled his indigence and became so rich that his riches became proverbial among the common peo¬ple. All his wealth, on the other hand, was spent for Greece and for the edition of the ancient Greek writers which he distributed freely to all Greeks in Greece and abroad. Soon after, the Greek revolution of 1821 broke out during which Ducas enthusiastically and actively took part. After the liberation he immediately arrived in Greece and remained on the island of Aegina near Piraeus. A little before his death (1845), at the age of eighty-five, he came to Athens as advisor to the Secretary of Education. Ducas was buried with great honors. The Greek Parliament proclaimed him a Great Benefactor of the Greek nation and fol¬lowed his funeral service, as did the King of Greece himself, Otto I, and almost all the people of Athens. During his life Ducas was bestowed with high honors. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople officially awarded him the office of Archimandrite. Russia honored him by the Golden Cross, and King Otto I of Greece by the Silver Cross of the Saviour. He was also appointed with the first professors to teach in the School of Philosophy of the then young University of Athens. Ducas’ biographer George Gazis Delbenakiotis states that Ducas “by his own works has been glorified in a manner becoming to a common benefactor, not only to Greece proper, but to all Greeks and other races of the same religion under the Turks, because he devoted all his life doing and teaching the works of the evangelical virtue; and never ceased doing good to Greece, always teaching and writing, advising, helping, giving charity and donating all his for¬tune.”4 Ducas himself wrote, “I am very much interested to die having no property at all, and for that I am in a big hurry to dis¬pense with it.” 5 * * * During World War II, rather during the German occupation of Athens, Greece, under the spectre of starvation and cold and under the terror of German inroads at home — who, by the way, twice interrupted me while writing the book about Ducas — I acquainted myself much more with Ducas’ ideas, read all his writings and all about his life. The result of that study is my book: The Religions Ideas of Neophytos Ducas. It is difficult to be entirely exposed to all his theological views and ideas as they are in my book. The purpose of this brief ac¬count is to give, in a comprehensive way, some of the main points of Ducas’ ideas, the ones that are more interesting as well as more representative and characteristic of his mind. Neophytos Ducas was a real, sincere and true Christian. He be¬lieved unhesitatingly and without the least doubt in Christ as God and in Christianity as the only true religion. He also possessed a broad and philosophical mind. Let us say first something about his theory of knowledge. He teaches that there are three sources of knowledge: first, the concep¬tion of the world through our senses; second, a real intellectual one, whose task is to compose a system of the conceptions which come to us through our senses and thus form general thoughts; and third, the supernatural, found beyond our senses and beyond reason, the revelation, which alone furnishes to us the truth about the Supreme Being. Therefore, the truth about God we can get only through revelation, and Christian religion is the only true religion because it has been revealed by the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Reflecting upon his thoughts we see that Ducas really accepted two sources of knowledge, reason and revelation, as Lecomte du Nouy, a famous contemporary biologist, has also accepted,® and that reason is opposed to revelation, which one gets only through faith. Yet, as for his first two ideas on the sources of knowledge, one is reminded of Kant’s theory in the Critique of Pure Reason.7 I am sure Ducas was influenced by Kant’s philosophy. We do not have any indication that he knew the German language, but I personally believe that he did, because of his love of learning and of his residence in Vienna for twelve years. Moreover, it is very difficult to accept that Ducas was not familiar with the philosophy of such a contemporary as Kant. If he had not been acquainted with Kant’s philosophy through the German language, of course he could have known it through the French which he knew as well as Latin or ancient Greek. At any rate, Ducas had an unshaken belief in Christianity as the only revealed true religion which is divided, according to him, into three parts: dogma, ethics, and worship. The first part, dogma, contains the true teaching and belief in God as a Trinity, in the Church and its sacraments, and in every-thing that belongs to dogma, as they have been revealed in the Holy Bible and were interpreted by the seven Holy Ecumenical Synods and by the Holy Fathers. The second part, ethics, contains the virtues, which “because they proceed from the natural law, are common to all men and na-tions, and give their benefits from the results and not from the religion.” In other words, virtues are virtues because they have value of their good results and not because of the authority of any religion. The third part, worship, Ducas divides into two types. He dis-tinguishes between inner (έσωτερική) and outer (έξωτερική) worship: “The first is faith, hope, fear, love, praise, acknowledg-ment of the divine attributes; this is the real and true worship ... the second includes our prayers, sighs and tears in the time of penance, the kneelings, the gaiety of our face mixed with fear and joy during the Holy Communion, the common prayers in the churches and everything that was given to us from the old times, as, for example, fasting.” The first type, the inner, is the sine qua non and needs the second, but unessentially, while “the second without the first could be nothing else but clear hypocrisy, prattle and disgust before our Lord.”’ As for the relations between religion and philosophy, Ducas calls them “sisters” and assigns two purposes to the latter. Philo-sophy, he says, investigates the natural world and aims to find its problems and laws in order to formulate general ideas and theories; secondly, philosophy, by examining personal and social life of men and establishing moral laws and rules for that life, guides humanity to the summum bonum. Philosophy, always making use of reason for its aims and re-lying on the “solid physical laws,” is limited only to “the problems of nature.” Religion, on the contrary, utilizing not reason for ques-tions of faith but relying only on the revelation, is limited to the supernatural problems. Therefore, in that case, philosophy and xeligion have no relation to one another. But according to the second aim of philosophy, religion and philosophy are the same thing, since .. everything that is related with the moral law, the character and the manners of men is at the same time philosophy and religion, both, being one, can in one word be called philosophy.” In other words, philosophical ethics and Christian ethics are one and not different ethics. Although Christian and philosophical ethics are the same, yet there is a difference between them. Philosophy, on the one hand, promises prosperity to men only on this world; religion, on the other, besides prosperity on this world, promises beatitude beyond this world. To the statement that “philosophy is hostile to religion, because many philosophers became atheist,” Ducas positively replies that there is no conflict between philosophy and religion. Those who maintain it are not true philosophers but are arrogant or supersti-tious or illiterate ones. The haughty philosophers, trusting them-selves and thinking that they know everything, are mistaken imag-ining they can search those things which are beyond reason, beyond the bounds of philosophy, because «αμα της φιλοσοφίας ύπερέ- βησαν δρους, καί της άληθείας έξέπεσαν»,8 and “it is foolish¬ness to search philosophically for supernatural and the beyond reason questions.”9 On the other hand, the superstitious and il¬literate philosophers knowing nothing about philosophy are against both philosophy and religion. Regarding the Supreme Being himself, Ducas teaches that God is unchangeable and, although omnipotent, He is by nature unable to do evil. Everything that we say for God — that is love, hate, anger, mercy, etc. — does not really belong to God. It seems the same is true of God as of fire. When we are near the fire we feel the heat of the fire, but we feel the opposite when we are far away. This does not mean fire warms those who are near it as a favor and does the opposite to those who are far away. “Thus God,” Ducas concludes, “loves and hates neither one; love and hate be long to the human soul; but God, being simply unit, is believed and worshipped as unchangeable.” As for the evil, Ducas admits natural and ethical evil. But he, by all means, denies God as the creator of the evil. Evil, he main¬tains, is but privation of good. He also finds difficult to accept Demons as the creators of the evil. Because, in that case, we are going to have two supreme opposite powers, one for the good and the other for the evil, which is unacceptable to Ducas. Very interesting also are Ducas’ ideas about freedom, prayer and fasting. He finds three kinds of freedom, natural, civil and .moral, and points out that the most important is the moral freedom which contains the civil freedom and aims to rule over the bad habits and vices. When we are praying we can not, Ducas states, expect God’s immediate intervention, but a kind of illumination to find out by ourselves the solution to our problem for which we are praying. Fasting, according to Ducas, is neither faith nor virtue; but because it is an old tradition, we can keep it, and only we may shorten it. Neophytos Ducas, a real Christian and a faithful follower of the Eastern Orthodox Church, was also a deep admirer of the an¬cient Greek civilization. “Long live Aristeides for the right; long live Nestor for his melifluous speeches; long live Socrates for his prudence,” Ducas enthusiastically exclaims! He especially followed and admired Socrates’ life and philosophy. “No one knows philo¬sophy better than Socrates,” he states. Ducas’ long life was an attempt to harmonize Christianity and Greek philosophy. For him there were two big events in history, the golden age of Pericles and Christianity. As a moral person Ducas was really a great per¬sonality. Ducas’ is the proverb: “say what yoo think, but think what you say.” | el |
| heal.numberOfPages | σ. 223 | - |
| heal.publisher | Cosmos Greek-American Printing Co. | el |
| heal.fullTextAvailability | true | - |
| Appears in Collections: | Μονογραφίες | |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Αι θρησκευτικαί ιδέαι του Νεόφυτου Δούκα. Σοφοκλής Δ. Λώλης.pdf | 5.99 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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