“For I desire mercy and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6.6)

With this post, I am bringing to an end my thoughts on the psychology of polemics. You can find the other posts in this series here, here, here, here, here , here, here, and (finally!) here. As I mentioned, in these reflections I am writing as much, if not more, to myself than to anyone else. What little self-knowledge I have rather clear tells me that reconciliation and forgiveness are not necessarily what I desire. Power, authority, prestige, yes certainly. But humility and a life of being merciful and compassionate—being myself not simply an agent of reconciliation but a man of forgiveness—well this I don't desire nearly as I should.

In my last post, I suggested that hidden within our polemics is a desire for reconciliation. That desire is obscured, however, because we often live not by desire (as Levinas uses the term) but by need and need is grounded in our physical nature. David Joplin in his essay "Levinas on Desire, Dialogue and the Other" writes that because "needs are satiable, they mark out a kind of 'restricted economy,' or system seeking a homeostatic balance." While we always seek to satisfy our needs, our desires have a different focus, for desire "is an aspiration that the Desirable--the absolutely Other—animates." Need tends to be self-referential, desire, transcendent. Likewise, polemics tend to be restrictive, reconciliation expansive.

Bishop Hilarion of the Moscow Patriarchate in an insightful paper, "The Patristic Heritage and Modernity," asks "But why should faith be 'patristic'?" And having asked he proceeds to answer his own question. "Might this imply that Orthodoxy must be necessarily styled as in the 'patriarchal days of old'? Or is it that, as Christians, we should always be turned towards the past instead of living in the present or working for the future? Should perhaps some "golden age" in which the great Fathers of the church lived, the 4th century for instance, be our ideal, a bearing to guide us? Or, finally, could this imply that the formation of our theological and ecclesial tradition has been completed during the "patristic era", and that, subsequently, nothing new may take place in Orthodox theology and Orthodox church life in general?"

He continues by saying that "If this were so – there are many who think exactly this - it would mean that our principal task is to watch over what remains of the Byzantine and Russian heritage, and vigilantly guard Orthodoxy against the infectious trends of modern times. Some act in precisely this way: fearfully rejecting the challenges of modernity, they dedicate all their time to preserving what they perceive as the traditional teaching of the Orthodox Church, explaining that in the present times of 'universal apostasy' no creative understanding of Tradition is needed, since everything already has been understood and demonstrated by the fathers centuries earlier. Such supporters of "protective Orthodoxy" like, as a rule, to refer to the 'teachings of the holy fathers'. Yet in reality they do not know patristic doctrine: they make use of isolated patristic notions to justify their own theories and ideas without studying patristic theology in all its pluriformity and totality."

While his Grace argues for the need to preserve the inheritance of the fathers, he also argues for the need to "invest the talent of the patristic heritage." If we seek to invest the treasures of the fathers, "we find ourselves confronted by a tremendous task indeed, comprising not only the study of the works of the Fathers, but also their interpretation in the light of contemporary experience; it similarly requires an interpretation of our contemporary experience in the light of the teaching of the Fathers. This not only means studying the Fathers; the task before us is also to think patristically and to live patristically. For we will not be able to understand the fathers, if we have not shared their experience and endeavours, at least to a certain degree."

As a theological matter, at best polemics tend to be concerned with preservation, reconciliation (or so I would assert) with investment—in drawing new, as yet undisclosed, riches from our tradition. But as his Grace suggests, this is not an easy task and given the risk requires not only faith in God but also a fair amount of courage.

Where might we find that courage?

Earlier I argued that the intellect serves the heart as its guardian—the intellect is essential in helping keep from the heart images that would corrupt us from within. While guarding the heart is essential, it is insufficient, the heart must be purified by prayer and fasting so that, purified by grace and our own efforts, we can see God. Under no circumstances, however, can we allow the intellect to lead the heart.

Guarded by the intellect, and purified by pray and fasting, mercy emerges in the heart. Though I am far from it, my thinking on the psychology of polemics has reminded me that I need to have a merciful heart. As St Isaac the Syrian says.

What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person's heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation. For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God.

What so concerns me about polemics is the ease with which even the very best of intentions are used to justify an indifference, and even hostility, to mercy.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

An Anthropology of Reconciliation

In an earlier post ("Toward & Away; Against & With") I argued that, psychological, the reason I might find intolerable even insignificant theological differences with others is that I have come to identify my faith tradition ( be that as an Orthodox Christian or as a Roman Catholic) with my own preferred style of coping conflict. On this Horney is helpful because she points out to us that all of this my is ultimately ground in my own self-image. Given this, it is not unreasonable that often theological polemics become personal. Given the affirmation of self I find in my religious tradition I am likely to take any disagreement or divergence from my tradition as a personal attack and respond aggressively. While the movements toward, against and away are valuable they are insufficient. What is need is that we learn not simply to move toward, away and against, but also move with each other. It is this, I would suggest, is really the goal of any ecumenical dialog. The "movement with" is the movement of reconciliation and communion. It is also the movement that the one that is most often neglected. In what follows I seek to offer a possible explanation for this.

Psychoanalysis and patristic anthropologies agree at least on this: The lines of conflict runs not so much between people and traditions as it does within each human persons. Our conflicts, as Horney argues so convincingly, are in the final analysis "inner conflicts." Before "we" are in conflict with each other, "I" am in conflict with myself. "We" are not in communion with each other, because "I" am not in communion with myself. Whatever else they may have gotten wrong, what the late Pope John Paul II called the "philosophies of suspicion" got at least this much right, conflict arise out of the human quest for power and authority over others—and we will use economics, politics and even the Gospel as a means to acquire that power.

Practically speaking what does this mean? Well, it means this, while I think I've been writing to others—or more probably some imagined polemicist be he Catholic or Orthodox—I'm really writing to myself. Or maybe, I should say, while writing to "you" I had better also apply my observations and admonitions to "me." Because the problem isn't in "you" it is not "out there" or in Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church. The problem isn't even in me. I am the problem because the only thing I know for certain is that I am a sinner.

None of this is to suggest that argumentation, withdrawal, or the seeking of common ground is to be rejected. Far from it. But it is to suggest that, while not unrelated to these, reconciliation represents its own, unique movement and means of social encounter. Further because we are created in the image of the Triune God Who is Himself a community of persons, implicit within the three movements of from, toward and against, is a desire to move and be with—that is a desire for communion.

St Augustine makes an analogous point in a brief discussion on the psychology of suicide. He writes that "Every willful desire for death is directed toward peace, not toward nonexistence. Although a man erroneously believes that he will not exist after death, nevertheless by nature, he desires to be at peace; that is, he desires to be in a higher degree." In like fashion, polemics embody not simply a person's desire to form his/her life apart from others. Polemics reflect is not simply a desire "not to be" with others or "to cease to be" with others. Rather, this desire to be alone is also a search for a deeper and more profound way of being-with-others. This aspiration to be in a different way is a movement toward communion.

Ironically, when the heart's aspiration toward reconciliation is only given form as movements "toward," "away from" and "against," it remains wedded to the dissonance of the starting point. Only when it is given form "with" others does the movement toward communion become liberated from the conflict of the heart's starting point.

In his book Existence and Existents, Emmanuel Levinas offers a phenomenological analysis of fatigue that can help us understand this paradox. Of singular importance is the description of fatigue as a letting go that is also a holding on. For Levinas, "Fatigue is not just the case of this letting go, it is the slackening itself. It is so inasmuch as it does not occur simply in a hand that is letting slip the weight it finds tiring to lift, but in one that is holding on to what it is letting slip, even when it has let it drop it remains taut with effort. For there is fatigue only in effort and labor."

The is in our polemics a certain sense of fatigue as Levinas describes it. This fatigue "a peculiar form of forsakeness . . . of being forsaken by the world with which one is no longer in step." The person is no longer in step with the world because s/he is no longer in step with him/herself.

I would suggest that each of the three movements of the human heart (toward, from and against) can be understood as a mode of fatigue, of a "letting go" that is also a means of "holding on." Freedom from the dissonance of the starting point, of the inner conflict or passion that fuels our polemical engagement of each other, demands that we change our way of relating to God, humanity and the cosmos, that we move beyond fatigue and to a "movement with" (i.e., conformity) God, humanity and the cosmos. In his philosophical anthropology, Levinas offers us some insight into how it is that we can move beyond this initial dissonance to a life of consonance (of what van Kaam might call our "movement with" others). This insight is found in a recurring theme in Levinas's work: the distinction between "need" and "desire." And it is this distinction that I will take up in my next post.

To be continued…

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Thoughts on Some Recent Comments

The recent posting of an article by Deacon Keith Fournier, ("Is There a Breakthrough in Orthodox and Catholic Relations?") seems to have generated what is, for this blog anyway, quite a stir. If you are so inclined you can read the comments here. Deacon Fournier's article is in response to a suggestion by His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew that it might be possible for Eastern Catholics to enter a "dual unity" in which they remain in communion with both Rome and Constantinople ("Orthodox leader suggests "dual unity" for Eastern Catholics"). The comments generated by that post can be read here.

As one commentator, John Hogg, has pointed out we have precocious few details as to what His All Holiness does and doesn't mean by this suggestion. All we do have is one rather brief news report. In that report Patriarch Bartholomew comments that "the people at the grass roots have to come together again" even while theologians on both sides still explore the theological differences between the two Churches. While I cannot claim to know what is in the Patriarch's heart, it would seem (in answer to Ilyas Wan Wei Hsien question) that there has been some back away from comments made in a speech at Georgetown University where His All Holiness described the differences between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches as ontological in nature. To the best of my knowledge neither in that speech nor subsequently has anyone offered any clarification of what exactly these differences in being might entail.

All of this is to come around to my being in fundamental agreement with the observation made by Michael Skarpa. His words are worth quoting here at length:

One of the first steps toward the restoration of unity among us should be a removal of these misunderstandings. That seems straightforward, but it isn't all that simple because many Catholics do not know the Catholic doctrine, and I suppose the same applies to the Orthodox. I suggest that no individual, whether Orthodox or Catholic, can claim that his grasp of the faith of the Church to which he claims to belong, is ipso facto an authentic expression of that faith. (We would make only one and rare exception: the Pope ex cathedra.) We can only make an effort to come closer to an authentic grasp of the faith of the Church, and continuously keep our minds open to a better and deeper understanding of that faith, fully conscious that in that understanding we are not infallible; in other words, we have to be ready humbly to admit a mistake if we realize it, and never rule it out if we do not realize it.

So, we are faced with a prospect of trying to grasp the faith of "another party" while not sure of our own; learn from others who themselves are not sure or their own; convey our grasp of our faith to others and make sure that they grasp it in the same way; and they have to make sure that their grasp of our faith is identical to our grasp of it. Not simple as it first appears.

Like the Church of Rome, the Orthodox Church believes "in One holy catholic and apostolic church." And again both Churches would argue that "Oneness is an essential, not accidental mark. It is so compelling, that it requires from us to 'inquire not just about the defensibility of union, but even more urgently about the defensibility of remaining separate, for it is not unity that requires justification but the absence of it' (Ratzinger 1982). And so, he concludes

Our Lord prayed that we all be one, while the present state of affairs is, evidently, contrary to His will. It is a scandal to the non-Christian and non-believing world, obstacle to spreading His Gospel, and what we believe to be another essential mark of the Church, her universality, catholicity, is less evident than it would be if all those who should belong to her by Baptism were fully integrated into her visible structure.

While Catholic and Orthodox Christians disagree about the locus of the Church's unity ("we" think we are the One True Church, "they" think they are), we would, I assume, agree that divisions among Christians is contrary to both the command of Christ and harmful to the Church's evangelical mission. That Catholics think the Orthodox left, and the Orthodox think the Catholics left, is certainly important. But we do not have to agree on that point to nevertheless agree that our lack of unity is unacceptable.

Going back to something I mentioned above, we simply do not have sufficient information about the content, and context, of His All Holiness suggestion of the possibility of a dual unity for Eastern Catholics. News reports provide neither a fuller explanation of what His All Holiness has in mind nor are we told what conversations, if any, he has had with Orthodox and Catholic leaders. When I add to this what is often the sorry state of catechetical knowledge among Catholic and Orthodox Christians I wonder what we are REALLY talking about.

Reports like these reveal—contrary to what we might wish to believe—that there is no unanimity among the respective faithful of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches on ecumenicism. We disagree not only across traditional lines, but even among ourselves about the question of how the reconciliation of the Churches is to come about. For what I suspect are catechetical and spiritual reasons we suffer from not only rather serious inter-ecclesial divisions and disagreements, but intra-ecclesial ones as well.

What I have noticed (and this is true for both Catholic and Orthodox apologists) is that many people assume that when reconciliation between the Churches happens it will look essentially like what we see when an individual is reconciled to one Church or the other. In other words, we assume—wrongly I would suggest—that the Roman Catholic Church reuniting with the Orthodox Church will happen pretty much the way it does when an individual Roman Catholic joins the Orthodox Church. Roman Catholics, I hasten to add, quite often hold to an equally individualistic model—as if the reconciliation of well over 25% of the world's population will be just like what happens at St Sophia Orthodox Church or St Francis of Assisi Catholic Church one Holy Saturday.

Folks, whatever it might look like, it probably won't look like that if for no other reason than economy of scale.

Finally, whether I am Orthodox or Catholic, need to be careful of setting myself up as the arbiter in these matters. I may agree, I may disagree, but I am not my Church's standard of orthodoxy.

The last several days I have been exploring the psychology of polemics and apologetics. One of the points that I am making, and I will develop this more in the coming week, is that theological conversations and disputations are as potentially marred by my passions as any other part of my life. To help me be mindful of my own sinfulness in these conversations, I ask myself what would a third party make of my conversation? If I can't be morally certain that a third party would find me a credible witness to the Gospel it might be better if I remain silent.

Again, as always, thank you to everyone for your questions and comments.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Toward & Away; Against & With

In my last post, I suggested that the Catholic and Orthodox traditions have there are different basic styles of relating to the world. In brief, the Catholic Church's tradition tends to be one that favors a "movement toward" the world. The tradition of the Orthodox Church, on the other hand, is one that values more a "movement away" from the world. In the West, grace perfects nature; in the East, grace is what makes possible the transcendence of nature. Obviously these are overly broad categories and just as obviously one can find easily "Eastern" tendencies in the "West" and "Western" tendencies in the "East." And counter examples exist in both traditions that make a hash of my typology. But be that as it may, the general tendencies are true enough. Though they are different ways of relating to the world, there are not necessarily opposed to each other. Indeed, they can even complement each other.

In my own view, one of the greatest values of psychoanalytic thought in general, and Horney's thought in particular, is that it embodies a certain anthropological genius. Psychoanalysis excels in helping us understand how even the noblest of human sentiments and goals can be shot through with self-deception and a desire for self-aggrandizement. For example, and we saw this in yesterday's post, the Catholic "movement toward" the world of person, events and things can easily become mere compliance even as the Orthodox tendency to "move away" can come to embody what Horney calls detachment, or (to use less theologically loaded language) indifference. At least by analogy, faith communities can be as pathologically neurotic as individuals.

That said, I think that it is a helpful way to think about East/West Christian relations. Both of these movements, "toward" the world and "away" from the world, I would suggest, can certainly be taken up for the life of the world. Just as a fundamental openness can embody my concern for the good of the world outside the Church, so to can my movement to separate myself from it also be in the service of the life of the world.

The tendency of some in both traditions to make rigid and exclusive what should be complementary, but opposite, movements of East and West I think is where much of the conflict arises when we sit down together to discuss the relationship between our respective traditions. Under the best of circumstances, but especially in the absence of any personal relationship, intimacy, and trust, such conversations are anxiety provoking. This is why, as a quick aside, we often discover that face to face conversations between Catholics and Orthodox seem to work so much better than they do on the internet. Absent a personal, human encounter characterized by mutual respect and trust, we tend to fall back on our preferred approach to the world. As the anxiety increases, we become more rigid in our approach.

So, for example, the more the Catholic partner move toward the position of his or her Orthodox counterpart, absent a warm human connection between them, the more likely it is that the Orthodox participant will withdraw evoking from the Catholic partner an even more passionate pursuit of common ground.

And things, by the way, work the other way around as well. The more the Orthodox "moves away," the more the Catholic partner is likely to "move toward" evoking an even more passionate "movement away" by the Orthodox.

If this is beginning to sound like a married couple stuck in a bad relationship, it should because it is.

Eventually the toxic mixture of anxiety and frustration leads not simply to a disagreement, but a bitter argument in which truth is often sacrificed for victory. Just as we can see the characteristically Eastern "movement away" among Western Christians, and can see the typically Western "movement toward" among Eastern Christians, so too both traditions have resources that lend themselves to a ratification of the third of Horney's coping mechanism: "movement against."

As with the other two movements, the movement against can, and often is, a healthy coping mechanism. There are times when we need to try and understand the one with whom we are in conflict (movement toward). At other times, the best response to conflict is to not let it bother us, to ignore it if you will (movement away). But just as clearly, there are times when must we risk a confrontation with the one with whom we are in conflict.

And, just like the other two styles, a movement against can become neurotic. For Horney a neurosis is a compulsion, what St Maximos would call a "passion." Neurosis carries me away robbing me of my freedom to respond.

We would also do well to remember that these three styles of coping are not absolute. They are dynamics and are present in different measure, at different times, in the heart of each and every person. Though a particular faith tradition might "fit" with my own style of coping, and regardless of what I tell myself to the contrary, this fit is never absolute. I suspect that so often the bitter conflicts that ignite between Catholic and Orthodox Christians reflect (as I have said before) our own passions. But now we are in a position to understand that we often seek out for ourselves the "blessing" of our respective tradition for those passions.

To the degree that I confused my faith tradition with my own preferred style of coping, to that degree I will find intolerable even theologically insignificant divergence from the tradition to which I am neurotically attached. And again as Horney reminds us, my neurosis is ultimately ground in my own self-image. This being so any divergence from my tradition is likely to be taken up by me as a personal attach—and as such evoke from me an aggressive response.

Add to this what I see as the official and explicit sanction of my tradition for my preferred coping mechanism, and an otherwise healthy person is likely to lose all sense of balance and perspective.

What we need, then, might be a new method of engaging the often conflicted world of persons, events and things that constitute our lives?

While the movements toward, against and away are valuable they are insufficient. What might be a fourth, more spiritually and theologically sound means of coping?

What is needed is that we learn not simply to move toward, away and against, but also move with each other. It is this, I would suggest, that is really the goal of any ecumenical dialog. Ironically, it is the "movement with," the movement of reconciliation and communion, that is the one that is most often neglected.

To be continued…

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

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Neurosis Isn’t Necessarily Bad

Applying psychological, much less psychoanalytic, constructs to a social group or a tradition is dicey at best. Even when applied to individuals, psychological and psychoanalytic constructs tend to be used reductionistically, that is, they minimize (or even ignore) human freedom. When applied to a social group insights meant to help us understand something of the individual in his or her life situation homogenize a community—it causes us to lose sight of the person for the group.

That said, however, there is still something to be said for identifying personality general styles or traits that are favored within a particular social group. Even as "I" have a preference for certain patterns of thought and action, so to do "we" or even "they" seem to reward and discourage particular ways of engaging the world of persons, events and things. Before I go on, it is very important to emphasize that in the context of this post, "world" is used more in an existential and empirical sense and not as a theological construct. "World," here means a social reality and not, as it does in John's Gospel, the creation as fallen and in rebellion against the Creator.

Earlier I hinted at the idea that Catholic and Orthodox Christians tend to favor different very broadly defined styles of engaging the world. Jesus toward the end of John's Gospel tells His disciples that we must be in the world, but not of it. Especially since the Second Vatican Council, I the Catholic Church, this has tended to take the form of a fundamental openness toward the world of persons, events and things outside her visible boundaries. For the Orthodox Church, the movement has been somewhat different—even opposite. Orthodoxy favors not a movement toward the social world outside her visible boundaries, but more a movement away from it.

Looking around the world of psychology, I think Karen Horney's work of neurosis is helpful here. So before I can look at Catholic and Orthodox polemics, I need to explain a little bit of psychoanalytic theory.

For Horney a neurosis is fundamentally a coping mechanism, it is a way of dealing with conflict. As a way of negotiating conflict—both conflicts with environment as well as our inner conflicts—a neurosis isn't necessarily pathological. Only when the neurosis becomes rigid, that is, only when we pursue some needs at the expense of other, equally legitimate needs, do we enter into the world of the pathological.

In her work Our Inner Conflicts, Horney identifies three forms of neurosis and the underlying needs that they help us meet. There is a summary on Wikipedia (which I think tends to lump healthy and pathological response to conflict together, so I've edited it for my purposes here):

Moving Toward People

1. The need for affection and approval; pleasing others and being liked by them.
   
2. The need for a partner; one whom they can love and who will solve all problems.
   

Moving Against People

1. The need for social recognition; prestige and limelight.
   
2. The need for personal admiration; for both inner and outer qualities—to be valued.
   
3. The need for personal achievement.
   

Moving Away from People

1. The need for self sufficiency and independence.
   
2. The need for perfection.
   

Looking through the summary, it is clear that our movements toward, against or away from, others are all attempts to met very specific psychological and social needs. We all of us need both to love and be loved (moving toward), even as there is a legitimate desire for self-sufficiency and independent (moving away).

Horney will later summarize these three movements as compliance, aggression and detachment respectively. And again, these only become pathological when they are not appropriately balanced by the other two movements or responses to outer and inner conflict.

In my next post, I want to look what seems to me to be the different basic styles of Catholic and Orthodox traditions in relating to the world understood psychologically. In brief, I would suggest that in the main the Catholic Church's tradition tends to be one that favors a 'movement toward" the world. The tradition of the Orthodox Church, on the other hand, is one that values more a "movement away" from the world. In the West, grace perfects nature; in the East, grace is what makes possible the transcendence of nature. Obviously these are overly broad categories. One can find easily counter examples in both traditions. That said, I think that it is a helpful way to think about East/West Christian relations.

To be continued…

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

“Sanctify Those Who Love the Beauty of Your House”-Part II

Continuing yesterday's thoughts on the saving character of Beauty…

In the catechumen classes at the parish I serve we have been discussing the structure of the Divine Liturgy. This past Sunday we looked at the Prayer of the First Antiphon:

Lord, our God, save Your people and bless Your inheritance;

protect the whole body of Your Church;

sanctify those who love the beauty of Your house;

glorify them in return by Your divine power;

and do not forsake us who hope in You.

As a group our attention was captured by the third petition: "sanctify those who love the beauty of Your house." In the Old Testament especially, God is holy not so much because He possess moral perfection but because He is free. In God to be holy is to be free of all that would limit Him and constrain His will; as with God so to with us, we are called to be free of everything that would compel us to act against our nature and our vocation.

Growth in freedom, growth in holiness, requires from me that I love the beauty of God's house.

As we talk about this we began, naturally enough, with the beauty of the church building itself and then of the services. Slowly, however, we began to see that God's house is really rather more than simply the church building, the services and the Tradition of the Church. All of creation is the house of God. How, we asked ourselves, can we say that we really love the beauty of the church building on Sunday morning if we our indifferent to the beauty of creation?

And, again as we thought about things, how can I say I love the beauty of creation if we are indifferent to the beauty of our neighbor who is created in the image and likeness of God. And if I say that I love the beauty of my neighbor how can I then dismiss my own beauty?

Stepping back from our reflections, I mentioned to the catechumens (and other listeners) that what we experience in the church can't be separated from the rest of life. If you will we can think of the experience of beauty in the Church's worship as a preparation for the experience of the beauty of creation. In fact, I suggested, to try and limit beauty to either the Church or creation is a bit like the young man who told me he didn't know much about his girlfriend—they were only seeing each other for sex.

To fail to see Beauty, to ignore Beauty, or worse to be indifferent to it, is to be unchaste. God tells the prophet Hosea (1.2):

"Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry

And children of harlotry,

For the land has committed great harlotry

By departing from the LORD."

To see Beauty only here and not there is to limit God, to deny His holiness and so to deny Him as He Is. Once that is done, then everything else in my life falls into chaos and ugliness.

But, to return to Solzhenitsyn, there is a whimsy, unpredictable, unexpected quality to Beauty that makes it such a fit symbol of Divine Grace. Beauty can "soar up," to quote Solzhenitsyn once more, "to that very place" where I turned my back on Truth and Goodness and, once there, "perform the work of all three."

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

 

 

“Sanctify Those Who Love the Beauty of Your House”-Part I

When people first enter the Orthodox Church they often comment about the beauty of the experience. This happens whether they attend a baptism or wedding, Vespers or Divine Liturgy, or even if they walk into a church. For Orthodox Christians beauty is a key element of the spiritual life. So important is beauty to the Church's spirituality that the 19^th century Russian author Fydor Dostoyevsky goes so far as to say, "Beauty will save the world."

Another great Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his Nobel prize lecture says of beauty that it

bears within itself its own confirmation: concepts which are manufactured out of whole cloth or overstrained will not stand up to being tested in images, will somehow fall apart and turn out to be sickly and pallid and convincing to no one. Works steeped in truth and presenting it to us vividly alive will take hold of us, will attract us to themselves with great power- and no one, ever, even in a later age, will presume to negate them. And so perhaps that old trinity of Truth and Good and Beauty is not just the formal outworn formula it used to seem to us during our heady, materialistic youth. If the crests of these three trees join together, as the investigators and explorers used to affirm, and if the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way perform the work of all three.

For Solzhenitsyn Beauty, has he says, "a special quality." Beauty "is absolutely indisputable" and is able to tame even the heart that is "strongly opposed" to it. While a "political speech, an assertive journalistic polemic, a program for organizing society, a philosophical system," might be well constructed and well argued, these are "built upon a mistake, a lie" that often remains "hidden." The "distortion" at their core is not necessarily "immediately . . . visible," and indeed the polemic, the social organizational theory or elements of a philosophical system often are "well constructed and . . . smooth, . . . everything will seem to fit. As a result, we will have "faith in them—yet [in so doing, we have] no faith" at all.

"It is vain to affirm," Solzhenitsyn "that which the heart does not confirm." This is not meant to be a defense of relativism, but rather an affirmation that beauty, consonance, harmony, communion (these are, if not synonyms, so closely related that one cannot be understood apart from the others) is the fundamental character of creation because creation reflects the character of God.

Unlike polemics, Beauty invites me to come along, to step out of myself; Beauty woes the heart, it inspires me to be more than we are. Like polemics, Beauty can challenge me; it can even break my heart. But again, and unlike polemics, when the beauty of the Beautiful breaks my heart it does so with a certain joyful melancholy which, if I allow the pain to do so, can move me to repent of all that is Ugly, Wicked and False in me.

More tomorrow…

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Polemics, Zeal and St Isaac the Syrian

Isaac the Syrian is probably the most eloquent patristic witness for the position I have been sketching out (you can read that post here). The saint writes that "Someone who has actually tasted truth is not contentious for truth. Someone who is considered by people to be zealous for truth has not yet learnt what truth is really like; once he has truly learnt it, he will cease from zealousness on its behalf." [Kephalaia IV.77; The Wisdom
of Saint Isaac the Syrian, translated by Sebastian Brock, (Fairacres, Oxford: SLG Press Convent of the Incarnation, 1997), p15.]

Commenting on this passage, David Goa, writes that like relativism, the zealousness that informs our polemical attitude "fail to discern aright what stands under the desire we have for that which is true." Both relativism and zeal, deform our desire for the truth "into an appetite." Once the pursuit of truth becomes an appetite, a passion in patristic terminology,

Whatever we come to look at and care about is then forced into conformity with the idea, image, or ritual that we have erected as absolute. We begin to hang all our hopes and dreams on the truth of our chosen framework, our precious absolutes (including the relativists' precious absolute that there is nothing of ultimate value). Our longing is captured by an absolute of our own making. It follows, almost without saying, that once we hang all our hopes and dreams on something that we claim as absolute, it is a short step to hanging all our fears on it as well. In this moment the holy longing of the human heart and mind that lies behind the search for absolutes becomes polluted. Zealousness for the truth frames how we see and understand and reshapes our response to the fragility of the life of the world.

Goa continues by observing that the symptom our passionate pursuit of the truth is a need for enemies. My passion (pathos) for the truth can only be sustained insofar as I stand in opposition to someone or something. But this approach is one "that reduces complexity and purpose to frame [my assumed] conclusions." But for the Christian "this is a false start for it begins neither at the heart of human nature or in the presence of God's love" but in fear. Again, Goa:  "For St. Isaac, zeal for truth is itself a symptom of a spiritual disease. Or, perhaps, it is a condition that tends to develop at a certain stage in the spiritual life and is itself simply a marker of that stage. It is the spiritual equivalent of adolescence where the young try out all sorts of ideas and actions with the conviction that no one else has ever had these thoughts or feelings and they are exploring them for the first time. How can it be that no one else has ever seen just how important and ultimate these thoughts and feelings are?"

There is a sense in which our zealous pursuit of truth "is part of the process of maturation." So when as a spiritual father I see the "zealousness for truth" spoken of by St. Isaac, I understand that it is "a stage in the spiritual development of the person. But just as with adolescence, if the condition persists, spiritual growth is arrested. One is stuck in the adolescent stage of the spiritual life."

Christ however calls us to wholeness of being. Part and parcel of this wholeness means that by God's grace and our own efforts "we are freed from the habit of taking refuge in abstract notions of truth. If we taste of truth at every Eucharist we know better. If we taste of truth every time we, like the disciples, find ourselves in Emmaus breaking bread with someone we didn't know we knew, we know better. We know better every time our hearts are moved with compassion."

But as I mentioned earlier, polemics, a zealous approach to the truth has a strangle hold on us because we do not wish to grow, to change. Our conversations are polemical because more often than not, our thinking about ourselves is static and rigid. Catholic/Orthodox polemics—at least as we see them in contemporary practice—are only accidentally theological. In the main (and I will address this more in another post) our polemics reflect our own lack of wholeness, of balance, of our own lack of virtue. We are, as I said earlier, neurotic

At the risk of misapplying the theory, I will in the next essay explore the different neurotic styles that seem favored by Eastern and Western Christians. To anticipate, Eastern Christians tend to see themselves as standing "against" others, even as Western Christians tend to move "toward."

But that for another day.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Tradition and the Passions

In an earlier post, I argued that a tradition exists, enhypostatically, that is only by way of the person. What might this mean for East/West conversations?

Let me suggest that if the tradition only exists by way of the person, then tradition is not simply, or even primarily, an objective content. Rather tradition is a virtue and virtues wax and wane. In other words, a tradition is only more or less revealed by how I live my life. Complicating this further, is that I do not live or embody only one tradition. Rather each human life is lived as the intersection of multiple traditions.

So yes, I am an Orthodox Christian, but my experience of that tradition has been co-formed (as van Kaam would argue) by the variety of other traditions in which I live. For example, I am an Orthodox Christian, but I am also an American. Currently my wife and I live in Ohio (yet another tradition), though we have lived in Pennsylvania, California and Texas. My wife grew up in Oregon, I grew up in Connecticut—so there are two more traditions that form our lives.

Complicating this further, my understanding of what it means to be an Orthodox Christian is strongly influenced by my becoming Orthodox as an adult, by being a psychologist, my service as a mission priest and a college chaplain. All of these are central to me and so to how I come to embody the Tradition of the Orthodox Church. And this is all before we look at my own unique genetic and psychological characteristics.

And if this is true for me, it is also true for my Catholic partner in a theological conversation.

Add to this outside observers, each of whom live at the confluence of multiple traditions and with their own unique backgrounds, who may "eavesdrop" on our conversation and how complex the conversation between us becomes!

Does this mean that we should not engage in theological conversations across traditions? No. It does mean however that we need to attentive to how these other traditions influence us personally, our perception of both our own theological tradition and that our partner in conversation, and really the whole of our encounter with each other.

Given the complexity of the situation it might at first seem that a theological conversation is pointless. It isn't. BUT, and this is an important point, each of these traditions carries with it what van Kaam called life directives or "oughts." We may agree or disagree with these directives, but they influence us in either case. To the degree that we are unaware of these directives they rob us of our freedom to respond in charity.

All of this is to say that even if the content of our conversation with each other is lofty, we are still under the sway of the passions. We are motivated by a desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain—and unless we are well formed in the spiritual life, and psychologically sound, what we are mostly likely to give voice to is not the tradition of the Orthodox Church or the tradition of the Catholic Church, but our own passions. And this, I would suggest, is true regardless of the objective validity of any given statement that we might make.

The example I use with my own spiritual children is this, it may in fact be objectively the case that I am stupid and my mother dresses me funny, but it is unlikely that telling me this truth is sufficient to change my life. Still less is telling me this likely to encourage me to trust you and give you a place of authority in my life. And let us make no mistake here, in any conversation I have, I only listen to the views of those who I see as authoritative—I might or might not trust they authority, but I still must see them as an authority for me.

As I said earlier, far too often and for too many of us, our attachment to our religious tradition is an escape, a refusal, of the dynamic and gratuitous quality of our own lives that van Kaam does such a effective job of delineating for us. Often we embody this refusal in our polemic attitude and conversation with others.

Whatever the reason, sharp disagreements are inevitable when we are looking together at what divides us. Polemics, however, seem to me to begin with that sharp disagreement. In so doing, they are intellectually unchaste embodying as they do an underlying lack of respect for the limitations of both self and others. In our polemical attitude we are freed from any consideration of our own passions in the pursuit of the Truth. The fact that we often say things which are true does not remove from us the burden of intellectual dishonesty.

What Grace Doesn’t Do: Some Thoughts on Orthodox/Catholic Conversations

Now that my more academic research is finished (for the moment, I'll be starting a new project on the passions and levels of consciousness in S. Freud (psychoanalysis), A. Beck (cognitive psychology), and A. van Kaam (existential-phenomenological psychology) in the next few weeks), I have time to put in writing a talk I gave at the Society of St John Chrysostom. The talk discussed, rather poorly in my view, why conversations between Orthodox and Catholic Christians so often degenerated into polemics and ad hominem. As part of finishing up that work, I thought I would offer a few thoughts here and invite your comments.

What Grace Doesn't Do

One of my professors in graduate school, Fr Adrian van Kaam (to download a pdf that summarizes van Kaam's life and work, click here) pointed out on more than one occasion that though it was a great blessing for which we should be grateful an experience of God does not exempt us from the laws of human development or "an evident need for psychotherapy." In other words, not matter how profound my experience of God, it is ought not to be confused with either maturity or healthy psychological functioning.

And why would it?

For van Kaam, a cheerful and committed Thomist, the answer is that grace perfects, but does not replace, nature. While I don't disagree with my professor's explanation (which I have merely summarized in slogan form), I would add to it. To assume, as many seem to, that an experience of grace exempts me from the normal process of human growth and development is Christologically unsound. It to deny that in Christ the whole of human life is sanctified.

We read in the Scriptures, that "Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." (Lk 2.52) Taking Jesus Christ as our example, we can argue that the normal ebb and flow of human development is not necessarily opposed to sanctity and wisdom. Indeed, and again looking to Jesus as our example, it would seem that each stage of human developmental is capable of participating in the divine nature, even as in each developmental stage of His life, Jesus was Himself the Theanthropos . To borrow from Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution of Divine Revelation from the Second Vatican Council:

For this reason Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth. Moreover He confirmed with divine testimony what revelation proclaimed, that God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal.

For Christians, Eastern or Western, Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, is the whole of His life that is revelatory. His voluntary and life-giving death and glorious resurrection from the dead on the third day, together with Ascension into heaven and bestowal of the Holy Spirit, is the confirmation of what is true for the whole of His life. If this is true for Jesus Christ then it is (at least potentially) true for those of us who received His Name in Baptism.

This idea is probably not one that most of us would contest. Though I suspect that, in some cases at least, the agreement reflects more sentiment than rigorous anthropological reflection (but, as another of my professor's once asked, "Who am I to do things for the right reason? I know what's right and should simply do it. My thinking will, hopefully, catch up with by doing."). What is more controversial is the suggestion that an encounter with God does not bring with it mental health.

I need to be careful here. When I say "mental health" I do not mean this in a narrow, culturally bound, sense of the term. One of the most encouraging developments in the profession and science of psychology is the growing realization just how bound the notion of mental health is to the experience of one relatively small segment of contemporary American culture.

So when I say mental health I mean it in the broad sense, of the integrity of the person's cognitive, emotional and social functions. In classical philosophical and theological anthropology, this life of integral living is the life of virtue. By necessity virtue means for me that there is a certain degree of tension in any psychologically healthy life. Why? Well because, just to take one example, my social situation might be such that a virtuous response demands of me social isolation. Or virtue might even require of me that I live in a state of relative conflict with those around me.

Mental health then, reflects a convergence of internal and external factors. And like human development, it is dynamic. Within the limits of his/her life situation, the psychological healthy human being is flexible and adaptable in his or her thinking and behaving. Indeed though it is often (wrongly) conflated with political liberalism, a central characteristic of mental health is the ability to change, to become if you will, evermore who I am.

Mental illness, to return to the second of the two human realities that an experience of grace does not exempt us from, is the precisely the lack of this ability to change in a positive direction. Psychotherapy is concerned with those times in human life when we are unable to exercise our cognitive, emotional and social functions in the service of becoming more fully who we are. In a broad sense, psychotherapy serves the life of virtue.

Think for example of the alcoholic.

The problem with alcoholism is not that the alcoholic enjoys wine. The problem, the real sorrow of alcoholism, is that the person only enjoys wine—until of course his or her indifference to the other joys of life and his or her fixation on wine becomes so pervasive that even wine is no longer enjoyed and its consumption becomes a compulsion and what yesterday reflected human freedom, today is the sign and source of freedom's lack.

Returning now to the centrality of virtue to any anthropologically sound view of mental health what can we say? Virtue, as Aristotle and the Christian tradition, understands the term is about finding the mean between extremes. It is moderation that is the key to wholeness—and moderation is learned.

An experience of grace then does not allow us to leap frog over the typical stage of human growth and development. Just as we grow from child to adult, we also grow (ideally anyway) in virtue, in wholeness of being. To be human, to borrow from existentialism, is to live a life of dynamic openness to the future. But as Emmanuel Levinas and Gabriel Marcel remind us, the future, as future, is always unknown and unknowable. Or, to us van Kaam's phrase, to live a constant human life means that we remain open in awe, trust, and gratitude to the Mystery of Being (God) and becoming (human life as a life of dynamic openness).

So, what has this to do with the difficulties we often see in Catholic/Orthodox conversations?

Though it needs to be developed more fully, I would suggest this: We often talk as if the Catholic/Orthodox dialog is a conversation is between two different, even competing, traditions. In fact these conversations are always conversations between human beings who in their conversations with each other, make selective appeals to their own understanding of the past, both their own and the other's. Traditions, to state the painfully obvious, do not have conversations—only human beings can speak, can enter into a conversations. Tradition, as Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) has pointed out in Being in Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church, only exist enhypostatically, that is, by way of the person.

Too often conversations between Eastern and Western Christians are not understood as human encounters. In fact, I would suggest that the reason that our conversations are so often polemical, is because we imagine that there is nothing of ourselves in our talks with each other. Let me go even further, we are so often polemical because we are striving not to encounter one another. We do not wish to know the other, because not only do we do not wish to be know by the other, we do not know, or even wish to know, ourselves personally. Any human encounter is necessarily one that demands from me both self-knowledge and change. To refuse one or the other of these is to refuse the encounter, the gift of the other person and so to refuse to receive my own life as a gift from God.

For too many of us, our attachment to our religious tradition is an escape, a refusal, of the dynamic and gratuitous quality of our own lives. We do not wish to grow, to change. Our conversations are polemical because more often than not, our thinking about ourselves is static and rigid. Catholic/Orthodox polemics—at least as we see them in contemporary practice—are only accidentally theological. In the main (and I will address this more in another post) our polemics reflect our own lack of wholeness, of balance, of our own lack of virtue. Or, to borrow from psychology, our encounters so often go wrong because of we are neurotic. And, to push things a bit further, Eastern and Western Christians tend to favor different neurotic styles.

As always, your questions, comments, and criticisms are not only welcome, they are desired.

More later.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory