(As a side note: I am not a theologian, nor do I claim to be one. This is simply a commentary on what I have discovered on a personal level without prejudice to either side of the discussion.)
In the previous article, I began my journey of learning about those things of which I was never taught. Not knowing history, nor discovering documents written in a non-judgmental way is difficult to discover at best. So I began my quest.
And in my astonishment, I discovered something I had never heard from the Catholic side. A history that didn’t denigrate the “other side”! Written by those from the East, like Kallistos Ware and Father John Strickland. No bashing the West on the head, but displaying what both sides brought to the table of the Christian Faith.
The Truth lies somewhere in the middle between prejudices, so unpacking all the biases takes discernment and time. And now I had the means to discover where that Truth lay.
The confusion of the journey…
The journey from Roam Catholicism to Eastern Orthodoxy was a confusing one at best. At worse, it hurt my brain trying to understand the Eastern mindset! How is it that someone could believe what wasn’t defined, explained, written about, and rationalized?
That is the problem with the West. We want concrete answers. For everything.
We came to our current societal beliefs because we reasoned our way to them. But because we were tired of the legalism and obligatory nature upon which all of our lives were built, we naturally began to rebel. Authority no longer was listened to. Only those we deemed “experts” were heard, skewing our perceptions of politics, religion, relationship.
Our temperaments, personalities, how we interrelate to each other, how we raise children, and even what we eat all has to be somehow grounded in the unshakeable belief that our minds can scientifically discover everything we need to know. Even our disordered passions somehow had an out by a reasoned argument to embrace what we should discard.
It isn’t enough to simply believe.
Reasoning through a different lens…
What I didn’t know was that reason is limited. I was raised in the Aristotelian (rational thought based on Aristotle and Plato) and Thomistic (based on Thoms Aquinas) mindset. “If it can’t be explained, then you don’t really know what it is” mentality.
But the true purpose and function of our rational mind is to understand the physical world around us. It was never meant to define what our spiritual beliefs are, nor how to explain them.
What I also didn’t know was that man is simple but complicated. He is a spiritual being inside a physical one. Each connected to the other, but having different organs, or parts, for understanding each aspect of his humanness and his relationship to the world around him.
The human reason is there to determine the effectiveness and truthfulness of the tangible world.
The original term of “Science” at the time of the Greeks was to determine the workings of nature around them and how it all interrelated by observatio. Once understood, then being able to apply the mind to what was discovered. (LINK https://www.worldhistory.org/Greek_Science/)
In our current era, that which is called “science” is the means to discover not how the world works, but how to comprehend it by empirical means. It is constrained by reason, but without the philosophical understanding of past civilizations.
“…most modern studies of the world around us are empirical, and there is clearly much more to understand than what is being studied by scientists. The understanding of complex systems remains a major challenge for the future, and no scientist today can claim that we have at hand the appropriate methods with which to achieve this. Thus, we cannot discuss the future of science without taking into account the philosophical problems generated by the study of complexity. Modern, or Western, science may not be best suited to fulfil this task, as its view of the world is too constrained by its characteristic empirical and analytical approach that, in the past, made it so successful.” (LINK https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1315909/)
But on the spiritual side, the human being has another intellectual organ, referred to as the “Nous1” in the East, or, in the west, “eye of the Soul”. It views the world through a completely different lens.
Seeing the world differently…
The western world view must have an “expert” citation at its core. Since the Enlightenment era, nothing can pass the muster without another human being having scrutinized it until it is completely shredded, devalued of it’s original or mystical (essential) intent.
So, too, was the Western churches. Devoid of the original essence of The Way (as the early Christians were called), it has become an institute of rational thought and prooftexting2. Everything that is to be believed must be documented and then cited as fact.
In the East, the way the truth is determined isn’t by quoting others, but by seeing, historically and traditionally, a consistency in understanding and living. If an individual varies from what was always believed, their position on a particular subject would undergo a great deal of scrutiny.
While this isn’t explained in a truly Orthodox way, the general idea is actually very freeing.
Instead of determining what is and isn’t a part of the Faith based on hours of research and texts, the Orthodox inherently understand Truth from human invention by something deep within them. They are raised with an Orthodox Phronema, or interior understanding based on something beyond reason. It is a sort of instinct or consensus of the entire body of the faithful.
That consensus has its confirmation in the lives of those who have lived in a way that continues the practices and understanding of those gone before. How these men and women live and think from the earliest days until today reflects that unchangeable spiritual attunement.
It isn’t based on quotations of Patristic Fathers or previous saints, but on a lifestyle and change of disposition.
“…acquiring an Orthodox mind does not mean collecting a head full of “patristic quotes.” Rather it refers to the transformation of the whole man, resulting in one’s gradual participation in the ‘noetic vision3.’” (http://orthodoxinfo.com/phronema/)
(Noetic vision3, loosely understood, is the ability for the intellect, provided it is pure, to contemplate Divine Truth.)
Peace, mercy, love…
Those elements of the western approach to God is so foreign to the East. Just as foreign as not proof texting is to the West.
The idea that man is sinful because of the sins of the father and mother of the human race is unthinkable. The guilt of our inability to reach perfection – totally inept creatures that we are – apart from any unmerited Grace from God if He decides to will it on us – isn’t within their conceptual understanding of the merciful God they worship. They have offended God and therefore have incurred His wrath and punishment.
But God is Love. God is Mercy. God understands our human frailties. So much so that He opted to become His creation to heal the rift caused by Adam and Eve. Not to serve, as the West thinks, to “bridge the gap” by “paying the price” of man’s degenerate condition and sinfulness. Instead, He came to heal the damage caused by man’s nature when Adam and Eve chose to turn away from Him.
He overcame the death due to our human Parents’ sin of turning from God to themselves. We inherited that human frailty. God became one of us to experience and overcome all the ailments that we are participating in as an effect of the Fall.
God is a God of healing woundedness, not a judge demanding sacrifice in atonement for our sins. Nor did He send His son to do so in our place.
We are given the gift of eternity because God loves His creation so much. He sent His Son in the form of man, fully human, fully divine, to share in man’s suffering that in His participation, He gave us back The Way to Him – the Path on which to walk, hand-in-hand with Him.
God showed us the fullness of His pity on us and our blindness by giving us back the keys to Heaven.
But where to go from here?
Find out as the journey continues in Part Three…
FOOTNOTES:
- “Commonly translated as ‘mind’ or ‘intellect’, the Greek word nous is a key term in the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. What gives nous its special significance there is not primarily its dictionary meaning – other nouns in Greek can also signify the mind – but the value attributed to its activity and to the metaphysical status of things that are ‘noetic’ (intelligible and incorporeal) as distinct from being perceptible and corporeal. In Plato’s later dialogues, and more systematically in Aristotle and Plotinus, nous is not only the highest activity of the human soul but also the divine and transcendent principle of cosmic order.” (Long, A.A.. Nous, 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-A075-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/nous/v-1.) ↩︎
- “A proof text is a passage of scripture presented as proof for a theological doctrine, belief, or principle.[1] Prooftexting (sometimes “proof-texting” or “proof texting”) is the practice of using quotations from a document, either for the purpose of exegesis, or to establish a proposition in eisegesis (introducing one’s own presuppositions, agendas, or biases). Such quotes may not accurately reflect the original intent of the author,[2] and a document quoted in such a manner, when read as a whole, may not support the proposition for which it was cited.[3][4][5][6] The term has currency primarily in theological and exegetical circles.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prooftext#cite_note-1) ↩︎
- Bishop Timothy (Kallistos) Ware defines it as “that which belongs to or is characteristic of the intellect”, or, in conjunction with his definition of Intellect, as “the highest faculty in man, through which — provided it is purified — he knows God or the inner essences or principles of created things by means of direct apprehension or spiritual perception. Unlike the ‘dianoia’ or ‘reason’, from which it must be carefully distinguished, the intellect does not function by formulating abstract concepts and then arguing on this basis to a conclusion reached through deductive reasoning, but it understands divine truth by means of immediate experience, intuition or ‘simple cognition’ (the term used by Saint Isaac the Syrian). The intellect dwells in the ‘depths of the soul’; it constitutes the innermost aspect of the heart (Saint Diadochos). The intellect is the organ of contemplation, the ‘eye of the heart’ (Makarian homilies).” (LINK https://www.byzcath.org/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/78861/Re:%20What%20does%20’noetic’%20mean) ↩︎