My Struggle With Eastern Christianity

[Innocent]

Apotheoun,

From what you've written, it seems to me that most of the popular Catholic Apologetics as currently practiced in the Latin Catholic Church, would be considered a wrong approach by the Orthodox. Is my impression correct?

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Innocent' post='1861638' date='May 8 2009, 01:49 AM']Apotheoun,

From what you've written, it seems to me that most of the popular Catholic Apologetics as currently practiced in the Latin Catholic Church, would be considered a wrong approach by the Orthodox. Is my impression correct?[/quote]


I think so. To be honest, even from my Western perspective I am occasionally irked by pop-apologetics. They serve a very necessary purpose (God used them to grab my attention, initially) but people have a tendency to think they are trained theologians just from being well-versed in pop-apologetics. I get sick of seeing Catholics who presume to know more than their priest or bishop (especially when it comes to liturgical norms), all in the name of pop-apologetics. I am ashamed to say that I used to be that way. The problem with pop-apologetics is that they treat the faith like a corpse that may be examined; something changeless, unable to move, perfect for inspection. In reality, the Church is a living, dynamic organism, moving through time; it does not sit still and wait for the pop-apologist to approve of its flexibility.

[Apotheoun]

What I can know about God naturally, i.e., that He exists, is not faith, and so it is not salvific. That is not to say that it is evil, but it simply cannot save me, and if I said that such knowledge could save me I would be a Pelagian.

Faith is a gift of grace, which transcends both body and mind, and that is why St. Gregory -- in the homily I quoted earlier -- spoke about the Bride giving up all that she had discovered with the operation of her mind, and only then did she find Beloved by faith.

The created intellect is a wondrous gift, but the created mind of man cannot transcend the gap (diastema) between the uncreated and the created, and that is why God condescended to reveal Himself in Christ, because it is not possible for man on his own to come into a real communion with Him in any other way.

Edited May 8, 2009 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Innocent' post='1861638' date='May 8 2009, 12:49 AM']Apotheoun,

From what you've written, it seems to me that most of the popular Catholic Apologetics as currently practiced in the Latin Catholic Church, would be considered a wrong approach by the Orthodox. Is my impression correct?[/quote]
Most of my Orthodox friends would say it is overly rationalistic in its approach.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='abercius24' post='1861619' date='May 8 2009, 12:02 AM']Just to remind everyone, Fideists believe that a person cannot even begin to know God apart from God granting that person the gift of Faith. Theists believe that a person can begin to know God at the most rudimentary level simply by way of an honest use of reason.[/quote]
I can know by the gift of created reason [i][b]that[/b][/i] God exists, but I cannot know [i][b]who[/b][/i] or [i][b]what[/b][/i] He is by natural reason alone. To know [i][b]who[/b][/i] He is requires revelation (i.e., God revealing Himself to man through Christ), while to know [i][b]what[/b][/i] He is in essence is not possible, not now or in the eschaton.

Knowing [b][i]who[/i][/b] God is, i.e., that He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is salvific; and this type of knowledge is -- by its very nature -- personal (experiential), and so it cannot be reduced to intellectual concepts.

Edited May 8, 2009 by Apotheoun

[Innocent]

[quote name='Apotheoun' post='1861761' date='May 8 2009, 10:17 PM']Most of my Orthodox friends would say it is overly rationalistic in its approach.[/quote]

Would you say that books like C.S. Lewis' [i]Mere Christianity[/i] a typical example of what the Orthodox would consider overly rationalistic?

Edited May 9, 2009 by Innocent

[RezaMikhaeil]

In the East Orthodox we're encouraged not to assume. Revelation people often read and claim to know what the prophesies say, in the East we're encouraged to read them but not assume to know prophesy but rather let it unfold itself. The Apostles themselves didn't even understand what the prophesies necessarily meant, even the old prophesies that Jesus fulfilled, but as time unfolded the prophesies, they didn't have to guess, it became known by itself.

I'm not sure if this helps to answer your questions, but its a stab at it.

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='RezaLemmyng' post='1864863' date='May 12 2009, 01:43 AM']In the East Orthodox we're encouraged not to assume. Revelation people often read and claim to know what the prophesies say, in the East we're encouraged to read them but not assume to know prophesy but rather let it unfold itself. The Apostles themselves didn't even understand what the prophesies necessarily meant, even the old prophesies that Jesus fulfilled, but as time unfolded the prophesies, they didn't have to guess, it became known by itself.

I'm not sure if this helps to answer your questions, but its a stab at it.[/quote]

I would say that is exactly what happened in the case of the various Western doctrines.

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' post='1860157' date='May 6 2009, 10:11 PM']The author of 3 John felt that continuing to write his personal note would be a waste, clearly indicating that he had no clue that he was writing under divine inspiration.

The development in theology from Mark to John is self-evident.

....

God could have revealed the full grandeur of his plan to Adam immediately after the Fall; he didn't. Christ could have revealed the full grandeur of his revelation on the first day of his preaching ministry; he didn't. Like the creation of the universe, all of God's history with Man has been indicative of a God who likes to "take time" with his Creation. It fits the nature of such a God - a God who is Truth itself - to create a Church like he created trees, to lumber slowly but ever taller through time, bearing scars and indignities from passersby, to sway in the winds that may come, but to ultimately shelter all who would find refuge under her branches. God did not send Jesus full grown, but as the smallest of seeds, slowly, but surely, growing and developing in the fullness of time. Likewise it would seem to make sense that the Mystical Body of this same Jesus would be growing and moving through time. And it would make sense that the God who is Truth would want his children to explore and understand more and more of His Truth by means of their God-given reason.[/quote]

Apo,

I appreciate your posts, but I do not feel you adequately addressed the portions of my post, above. And as regards both the theological developments of the Fathers and the experience of marital intimacy with regards to a progressive understanding of marriage and one's spouse, I think further exploration is warranted. I will try to find the time to more adequately present my stances, which stem from my own reading of the Fathers. I am open-minded, but the fundamental problems I mentioned in the OP are fairly large stumbling blocks.

Thanks again.

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Apotheoun' post='1860280' date='May 6 2009, 10:30 PM']Whether you like it or not, your noetic conceptions formed from the experience of you wife in married life are distanciated from that actually experience, and so they cannot really convey what that experience is, but that is not all, for there is even a further distanciation that occurs when you try to reduce your noetic conceptions to language, because language cannot relate clearly even the concepts that one forms in relation to reality. All of this was pointed out by the Cappadocian Fathers in their disputes with the heretic Eunomius, for he believed that he could noetically conceive God in his mind and grow in his knowledge of Him, who is beyond intellectual conception.

As St. Gregory explained in relation to David's statement in the Psalms that all men are liars (Ps. 116:11), the great King of Israel was not saying that all men are depraved; rather, he was pointing out the limited nature of human language. Language is a [i]diastemic[/i] reality and as such it is the creation of man, and not the creation of the Creator of man, who does not have language, but only a Word. This idea is also found in St. Hilary, as I said in an earlier post.[/quote]

I do not feel that this post addressed the key point of what you were responding to:

[quote]...admonishment toward the use of reason in figuring out God; a task which, like understanding my wife, is infinitely beyond all human power, albeit not beyond our responsibilities and certainly not beyond the wants of our spouse, earthly or divine.[/quote]

Just because things of God will ultimately remain mysteries does not mean that we cannot plunge our minds (along with our spirits) deeper and deeper into the truths that may be grasped.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' post='1865119' date='May 12 2009, 09:23 AM']Just because things of God will ultimately remain mysteries does not mean that we cannot plunge our minds (along with our spirits) deeper and deeper into the truths that may be grasped.[/quote]
If I were willing to reduce the mysteries of the faith to discursive axioms open to logical development I would agree with you, but I am not willing to do that. I reject the Scholastic reduction of God to a "supreme being," for He is in fact beyond being.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Apotheoun' post='1865280' date='May 12 2009, 01:57 PM']If I were willing to reduce the mysteries of the faith to discursive axioms open to logical development I would agree with you, but I am not willing to do that. I reject the Scholastic reduction of God to a "supreme being," for He is in fact beyond being.[/quote]


That strikes me as very sane, more so than the reductionist approach you mention.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' post='1865098' date='May 12 2009, 08:02 AM']Apo,

I appreciate your posts, but I do not feel you adequately addressed the portions of my post, above. And as regards both the theological developments of the Fathers and the experience of marital intimacy with regards to a progressive understanding of marriage and one's spouse, I think further exploration is warranted. I will try to find the time to more adequately present my stances, which stem from my own reading of the Fathers. I am open-minded, but the fundamental problems I mentioned in the OP are fairly large stumbling blocks.

Thanks again.[/quote]
Although there is a sense in which the Old Testament manifests a "progressive pedagogy" the New Testament does not, for Christ is the definitive revelation of God to man, and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That said, I simply reject the modern notion that people living today can know more (experientially or discursively) about God than the Apostles.

I think that you are confusing changes in the linguistic formulas in the decrees issued by the God-inspired Fathers in council with [i]development of doctrine[/i]. The Church Fathers never believed they knew more about the mysteries of the faith because they issued a decree in defense of the Church's Tradition. They simply used different words in order to restate one and the same mystery of faith.

Check out my posts at the Byzantine forum on this topic: [url="http://www.geocities.com/apotheoun/development_of_doctrine"][b][u]Select Posts on Doctrinal Development[/u][/b][/url]

Edited May 12, 2009 by Apotheoun