Hey, thanks for the engagement here over the weekend, by the way; I enjoyed that and think that I understand what you're doing better now. In particular, I thought over what you said about being a "Tradition bearer" after having drunk deeply from the well of Orthodoxy. From my standpoint, that would seem to imply that you're trying to take Orthodoxy in a creative new direction, like Bulgakov with his Sophiology. But I can understand why you're framing it the way you are, in terms of your Oorts cloud vector.
Also, I was thinking about how one would go about distinguishing good groovy from bad groovy. I once ran into a pair of Presbyterian seminarians who made claims to the effect that Jesus was a bastard—and I'm pretty sure they thought they were being groovy. There's a similar problem with the contemporary rhetoric of "acceptance" and the woke plague. A great many people confuse the zeitgeist with the Holy Ghost, which seems to give Orthodox warnings about "obedience" a certain credence, even as that shouldn't be allowed to impede genuine inspiration.
I'm thinking that Curmudgeophan might be a prophet.
I don't know—I guess all this handwringing is just pretty foreign to me, because I never expected much from the institutional Church. What I do see is the practical matter of how while the entire society is collapsing into a death spiral, my parish is filled with happy families, and no one seems particulary confused about who the boys and girls are. So there's that: it seems like a place where there's some possibility of life.
And there's the culture and the tradition, a certain anchoring within material species history, which I find that I need in order to not become too free-floating or abstracted or lost in my own head.
At the religious level, the only thing I care with respect to the institutonal Church is the Eucharist. (I don't go to confession, because I'd rather take that up straight with the Holy Ghost: I know when I'm forgiven, and it's not when a priest says so.) Other than that, I treat the Catholic Church as a very valuable vault from which I can take what I want and find useful for the creative purposes of God. I pray the Rosary every morning, for example.
Basicaly, I'd long wanted to be a heretical Catholic—but at some point, I realized that in order to achieve that, I'd have to go turn Catholic. That part is important, because it's only relative to traditional Catholic discourse that my "heresies" could even make sense, since my metaphysics and anthropology are very old-school Christian. Within a contemporary secular context, I think that a lot of your concerns and mine would sound like incomprehensible gibberish.
Your thoughts have persuaded me, actually, that I might be better off just staying Catholic. I hate Rome, though—and in the Roman Mass, the priests don't even give parishioners the wine, which I find to be poetically criminal, not to mention just plain rude. So I am glad to have my Eastern Catholic parish at this time, camped out comfortably close to the edge of both the big cities.
Also, I'm in agreement with DBH that the Schism never happened—as in, clearly it de facto happened, but it did not de jure happen, because no one had the legal authority to implement it. I'm sure a lot of Orthodox folk would just love to hear that, am I right? . . .
"What I do see is the practical matter of how while the entire society is collapsing into a death spiral, my parish is filled with happy families, and no one seems particularly confused about who the boys and girls are. So there's that: it seems like a place where there's some possibility of life" -- that's legit, that's right. And if you love your priest, too, man--wonderful. Yeah, maybe I want to just go do my time in the wilderness, then come back as rebel Orthodox, I don't know. I gotta strange brain that has to find a place somewhere, and something useful to do...mad dreams for American Orthodoxy a million years from now might at least keep me occupied...
I think that what you want, and I want as well, is something not of this world. It's not even a Church per se; it is the Kingdom. Not in the past or the future, but in a vertical dimension of time upward—kairos, not chronos. It probably couldn't happen without a mass-level transmutation of human nature. Hell, we would've probably been repulsed by the politicking even among the original apostles.
I figure that a parish church is a place like any other, with people like any other, except that most of them at least try to be sane and good, and have some concept of what that might mean. So like any other place, but a little better, and also there's the Eucharist: sure, I'll take it. The poetic project of helping the Kingdom descend is something else altogether, and we don't need a worldly institution for that.
Man, I enjoyed that, Sethu -- thank you. I appreciate that you push back, and that you listen when I push back on your pushing back. It's sharpening. As for Bulgakov: I bow before his intellect and intensity of feeling. And I smile ruefully at the analogy or implication. I don't know what I'm trying to do; just trying to be very alive. I think I once dreamed of helping the real people like Kingsnorth and Shaw help Orthodoxy go "in a creative new direction," but I finally accepted what's been said to me from all sides, for years: Orthodoxy doesn't need anything. There is no new direction it needs to go in. It doesn't want to go in any new directions. It has found the right direction to go in, and is going in that direction, and we can either go along, or not. For myself, I wish to go in the direction of Earth. I wish to reconnect with the plants and animals. And I wish to know Yeshua, face to face. I'll do whatever it takes to go in those directions.
The main outstanding issue to me would be along these lines: to what extent would your project turn you into one of the typical, New Agey, spiritual-not-religious "Others" who are more or less the dominant demographic today? (Tara Isabella Burton's book *Strange Rites* is great on this topic.) Maybe you don't see that as a problem, and perhaps it isn't intrinsically, but I think it sort of becomes a problem in the midst of our broader cultural landscape.
Likewise, everyone at some level wants to "be very alive". But many people are of course tragically wrong about what that involves: some today, for example, believe that mutilating themselves to make their bodies match their deluded subjective self-concepts will make them more alive. It's sort of like if everyone had a clear intuition of what it meant to be very alive, then religious traditions would have never been needed in the first place, just as law would be unnecessary if all men were angels. So in my view, some of the commands about obedience exist because the common heart can be a very deceitful thing.
Personally, I don't think you have this problem: your direct intuition of the Holy Ghost looks real enough to me. But then we get into the problem of self-referentiality. If you and I are right on the sole authority of our own intuitions, then there is no longer any epistemological basis or guardrail to tell others that they're wrong about theirs. The external frame of reference vanishes, and with it the possibility of meaningful communication, at least with non-initiates. And I think that's a problem of its own, aside from being wrong or right on the merits.
Basically, I see the species Tradition as a sort of canopy, or "atmosphere", that offers a sort of protection. If we stick our heads up above the atmosphere, then we may expose ourselves to potentially fatal radiation. My preference, then, is to be content with being considered a heretic by some but to still speak in the name of the Tradition and not against it. I see that as a matter of discursive and existential strategy, and I can understand if you must pursue a different course. It doesn't change the substantive content any.
Sethu, if you ever see me on youtube explaining to people how they can raise their level of spiritual vibration, I give you my blessing to come smack me, then drag me to a church of your selection, where I will convert to the religion of your choice, with all the usual sighing and weeping. Also, I thought of another way to describe my project -- if you take Schmemann's deep critiques of his own Orthodoxy, and if you take Sherrard's deep critiques of his own Orthodoxy -- which are much the same critiques -- and you remove some of their constraints (Sherrard was unleashing his most devastating stuff at the end of his life; he literally died while finishing "Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition"; and Schmemann, even though in his Journals he said clericalism was the death of Christianity, and that people love the Fathers too much, and that Byzantium was poison, and that the secular world is "the only real world there is" and that priests should honestly just go get a real job, instead of drawing paychecks from people who want somebody to take care of religion for them -- he was himself a priest, and many people relied on him to be just that, and so he was) -- if you take away those kinds of constraints, which I don't have, but you add the triple urgency of the post-2020 polycrisis, and then you asked yourself: Given, in America, that our rupture with tradition has actually been catastrophic, no matter how much we'd like to imagine that things are pretty still intact somewhere, and given, on the other hand, that we've only just begun to understand, much less appreciate and accept, the absolute annihilation of the living ecosystems -- spiritual and biological and spiritual-as-biological and biological-as-spiritual -- perpetrated by light-skinned people on this continent, fleeing one spiritual hellhole by creating another -- if you were to try to weave all that together, because it's truth, and it's the job of men to envision the horizon of truth, and how to enact truth here and now, no matter how chaotic everything gets, and then you asked yourself "OK, what's next?" then you'd have some of the initiatory feelings associated with starting to think about walking aboard the viking ship that is this project.
Hey man, as long as you call them gunas (you know, like from the Bhagavad Gita?—tamas and rajas and sattvas), you have my blessing to go on about spiritual vibrations to your heart's content.
Briefly been reading the interactions in comments. The bishops were swayed and wrongly-some
started with a bit of live stream and then abandoned it. There are a couple of monasteries which did not follow the weirdness in 2020 and a few priests and parishes.
Some of us have tried to contact the bishops with no response.
I take the long view, that the body of Christ as Orthodox has endured through innumerable challenges that included bishops and priests and kings apparently leading her off the cliff. But not so. Finally the truth shone forth.
Sorry I do want to continue but this takes prayer and time.
Thanks for this, FaultLine. I also take the long view. The very, very, very long view. In all seriousness, I think we could be at it for another million years or so -- "at it," meaning: Trying to live the Messianic life, and failing beautifully and horribly, by equal turns. No one is more patient than God. He appears to be in exactly zero rush about anything. The kingdom of God is like the seeds you toss away and forget about, and "we sleeps and rise night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; we knows not how" (Mk. 4:27). I harp on the "anti-virtual" things that I harp about, hoping that it's a little contribution I can make towards the very long run. We'll hang in there!
Human living informed and inspired by the generosity of Sun, Rain, Soil. That just about sums up the longing embodied in my work. Thank you for this beautiful writing. You've also granted me a better understanding of idols. I'm wondering now about the emergence of such stone idols in relation to the city/temple complexes and power structures of Sumerian civilization. I'm sure we will dive into such topics, but for now thank you. You were right to be thinking about me as you wrote about the Feast and table fellowship, and "reckless generosity"--one of my favorite phrases, alongside radical hospitality. Bless you, Graham.
Thanks, Adam! Your Gratitude Feasts in which you offer food as "a gift for anyone who is hungry for any reason" are, concretely, the way of the future happening now.
(and yes -- stone idols + city/temple complex and power...I think we might get there next essay; or...in some essay, anyway...tho it may be one of the things that hits the cutting room floor, as many things do; but at some point, the complex of massive temples, centralized power, king-priest synergy, and bowing to images as a way of bowing to the power complex--all that has to come into this line of thought, because Yeshua's kingdom of God as small, hidden communal feasts is specifically an alternative to that, and a threat, and a challenge--a 'judgment,' an apocalypse....)
“Harmonious” is a brilliant alternative to the moralistic “righteous”—life is a song with which we should get into tune. Relatedly, I think of Jesus as the Orpheus who won. And I have always loved the way that Leonard Cohen refers to God: as the Lord of Song.
I think I got that from Balentine's "The Torah's Vision of Worship" (I say that, because I'm re-reading it for the next essay, and was struck by the following): "Just as the cosmos is ordered into a harmony of divisions and boundaries, so, in Israel, to be 'righteous' means to do justice to the harmony inherent in the cosmic order."
Thank you Graham! It is always comforting to open my computer and see something new from you!
Part of the Sherard quote:
"The Christian’s own religiousness has become his chief preoccupation. And in this context the concept of the Christian’s responsibility for the fate of the world has inescapably lost all meaning."
It is difficult for me to express how important this quote is. I find it so very sobering.
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Beyond all discussions of what Christianity is, what true worship is, what salvation is, of where history has lead the Church down rabbit holes, and, I suppose, discussions of Hellenism and Plato...beyond all this is the still small voice of the Creator.
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The humanity we share with the Messiah...that is it. Yet we* (see below) have to debate, discuss, try to convince the other, instead of just being - just learning how to listen to the still small voice. To be Christian there are no words. There are no words. There is only giving. We cannot truly give of ourselves unless we experience a union of love with the Messiah, the Creator, the ruach ha-kodesh (the wind that carries the Peace that passes all understanding) . Even without this union we can begin to give of ourselves, though this union is (I feel) our natural state - a union with the one in which we are truly human (many of you thinkers and writers may be scoffing at my meager attempt to express the inexpressible. Thanks your for your patience).
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This desire for the wordless reason, this desire for our natural state that Jesus the Messiah is... presenting himself in silence, without our desire to explain or describe it, but just to receive... in silence.
Thank you Graham for allowing me to once again contemplate these things, and share a bit.
*(I'm not talking about this discussion here in the comments or in these essays)
Brad, in this very beautiful, surprising "inner substack of the heart"--this very comment of yours--in the silent eye of the raging substack vortex, you give us everything. "Beyond all discussions of what Christianity is, what true worship is, what salvation is, of where history has lead the Church down rabbit holes, and, I suppose, discussions of Hellenism and Plato...beyond all this is the still small voice of the Creator." Amen.
Haha, yeah, I have a bad habit of liking substack posts as soon as I read *anything* that makes me nod vigorously in agreement. I was reading another substack when the notification for this came up and, well, It's often hard for me to keep my attention on what I'm doing at the moment, ESPECIALLY on my phone.
Yeah, I'm not Platonism's number one fan, especially when it comes to its impact on Christianity. It seems that a lot of heresies and problems in our history has had Platonism at their roots.
That said, I'm not quite as down on it as you are simply because I see the problem as being what Fr. Schmemman termed "undigested" Platonism. I do think there are some useful nutrients there, if mixed with some useless and counterproductive substances. I really do think that it needs to be digested, broken down, the nutrients extracted, and the waste excreted. Which is what the Church has done at its best, and too much of Christendom has failed to do. Of course, Platonism is not special in this regard. I believe that's what Christians ought to do with everything we encounter, especially in culture.
Given that the Church came into its own in a culture whose intellectual currents were steeped in Platonic and Aristotelian thought, it's not a surprise that these ways of thinking were impactful. But no culture, like no person, this side of the eschaton, is ever fully perfected.
Christianity is the most difficult path there is, I think, precisely because we live in the "now and not-yet" tension where the world can never be fully and simply embraced nor ought it be fully and simply rejected. The Church is where former enemies are called to embrace each other, where ways of life and seeing the world that when taken whole are mutually exclusive are to brought into contact, sifted, and synthesized into something new. It's where we must recognize that the material world is God's temple and meant to be so into eternity, while recognizing that it's not yet perfected into what He meant it to be. Here there are equal and opposite dangers in rejecting or denigrating the material or losing sight of what the material will one day be in God, following this material, subject to entropy, into its end but failing to come to the fullness of its Transfiguration, at least in terms of our internal relationships to it.
Sorry. I don't wanna sound like a broken record, or kick up more debates. I absolutely see you, Graham, and where you're coming from, and I can promise I'm a lot more sympathetic to it than what I may come across as being. It's just that I don't think I'll be ever be able to follow you ALL the way down your road where Jerusalem seems to have nothing to do with Athens, even if it seems to have something to do with everywhere else (which I'm with you on that part) and where so much of Christian history and certain core dogmas seem to be rejected not as something that is abused or taken in a wrong way or badly understood or applied by Christians, but as something wrong in and of themselves.
Anyway, I do hope you take care and I certainly look forward to more of your essays!
Actually, Zach, here's a question for you (and anyone else who'd like to chime in, of course): What are a couple of things from the Platonic tradition that are *absolutely indispensable* for us who are, or trying to be, Christians? (This is a sincere, earnest question that I really have for you, for the world). Like if somehow every last trace of Platonic thought evaporated tomorrow, and all we had was pre-Hellinistic Hebrew thought -- which of course was a great river into which so many ancient spiritual cultures rushed, and were "baptized," too -- Persian, Sumerian, Egyptian, etc -- what staggering losses and deprivations would we be suffering right now, for lack of [ ________ fill in the blank ________ ]?
Plato oscillates between the domains of what I call specter vs. presence, and he is thus a very double-edged influence. He could be taken to say that there is a spectral abstraction hovering over our heads that is more real than life, *or* that there is a realm of spiritual presence that dwells behind the realm of mere matter and power. I think that the best thing that Socrates ever said was: "It's better to suffer an injustice than to commit one." I think that is true spirit, and a real prefiguration of the Gospel.
Is Plato "indispensable"?—nah, not really, although I'm generally opposed to tossing babies out with bathwater. There's good in him; we just need discernment. As with any book, a lot depends on how we read it. And anyway, the real influence on the Church was Plotinus, not Plato per se. Vedanta could have also filled the same role at the time, if it had been geographically closer—much of it is brilliant and also truly schizophrenic. I just don't think there's a need for such sweeping judgments. We could afford to be slightly more subtle and generous and attentive to nuance.
You're much better at nuance, and subtly and generosity, than I am; and I am much better at throwing out babies with bathwater ;) Good point about Vedanta...and, really, it seems like Indian philosophy in general was a major impetus for the emergence of Greek philosophical thought. And also, too, we could probably have neither Plato (=really Plotinus) nor any Indian thought, and Persian dualism alone would have infected us with the same problem. "Reality is elsewhere, change is not real" is probably just a basic feature/flaw of human cognition that emerges roughly in step with agriculture or something--you'd know. With your nuance and your subtly. I think I want to have a somewhat severe attitude toward the beloved Plato because it seems like we're in a crisis of consciousness right now that is as bad as it's ever been.
Psychologically, I'd think that it just has to do with the fear of death. Change as we know it in our realm moves only in one direction, and we know where that train line ends, so it can perhaps be comforting to imagine eternity as a place where there is no change and thus no death. The Resurrection should change that for believers, though.
Fear of death, exactly. On a more historical note, to talk a little bit about my favorite human of all time, Plato, I can't remember if I was saying this to you or someone else, but my sense is that the real driving force of Plato's otherworldliness is not a hatred of the world, but in a desire to figure out what the hell happened when his Greek world imploded on itself in the Peloponnesian War, and how the hell we're going to reenvision a new cosmos, a new order, that isn't as susceptible to catastrophic self-implosion like that. This, I can appreciate. And the early Fathers living through an imploding Roman world -- I can see them latching onto Plato for something real, something impervious to the chaotic flux, the carnage, the pride, the vanity, the absolute brutality and callousness. But what you get in Plato is vision of stability, eternity, etc, at the price of detachment from what's really real -- since change is, in fact, real. The more ancient Hebrew vision of the cosmos in which God and man are co-gardeners is better than Plato. And you are right, the resurrection *should* help with the fear of death, but Vine Deloria analyzes at length in God Is Red how Christians, of all people, have in some ways been the *most* afraid of death. And I think part of that comes out of this idea -- non-existent in scripture, but one of the main points of Platonism -- that "you" are not your body; that when your body dies, "you" escape.
I think of reality as shaped like a rotating cone, where we're at the base and the spiritual aions are higher up. So, we're spinning fast down here, and the higher aions are also spinning but much more slowly, such that from our standpoint they could seem stationary. In theory, the apex of the cone would be completely still, but that might be more of just a mathematical asymptote than a place that actually exists.
Again, a lot depends on whether we're talking about specter or presence. I'd say there is a type of changelessness, or at least a slower and different type of change, in the spiritual realm that is the *infrastructure* of our flesh. This isn't the same as a purely cerebral abstraction of qualities or forms or whatever; it's not like saying the color greeen is more real than a green thing, with which I totally disagree. So there's a fundamental difference between whether we're talking about the invisible world of presence, the edge of which is our visible realm; or whether we mean a strictly unreal world of specter, which only exists within our own troubled heads.
I think it's instructive here to remember *why* Nietzsche hated both Plato and Christianity. He thought they only generated specters, which sapped vitality and life away from our real world. But he hated not only specter, but also presence; he had no interest in the actually real domain of spirit, either. So I think that's something we need to navigate with care. Insofar as Plato's talking about presence and not specter, he is a friend, especially in the midst of a world where most people do not believe in the reality of spirit.
I'm not going to ask that you accept the points I just laid out. I'm not sure if this is a disagreement that can be resolved. I just hope where I'm coming from is better understood. And I hop I have a better understanding of where you're coming from.
tl;dr: I don't think Plato's influence is indispensable or unproblematic. I just don't think it *must* be totally banned from the table.
Ah. I think we're getting closer to the heart of the matter.
I don't think platonic thought is "absolutely indispensable." I would never argue such and have not been arguing such. If I came across that way, then I'll take the hit for my poor communication.
No, I've no problem with the notion that Platonism in all its forms *can* be dispensed with. Christianity can get by just fine without it. My objection is that you seem to me to be arguing that it *must* be dispensed with. It seems to me that you've been saying that any and all understandings or expressions in Church history that can be traced back to Plato's influence, or those of his later followers, is always and everywhere inherently wrong and illegitimate in its totality for the Christian.
My main problem with this is that I'm not convinced such a radical dichotomy is necessary. And since I don't see it as necessary, I don't think it worth the potential pitfalls of such an approach; the most dangerous of which I see as the dissolution of historical continuity within the Body of Christ, anticatholicism, and the suppression of tools *some* people may find the most helpful.
First, given the influence of platonic, especially neoplatonic, thought on so much thinking of so many Christians down the ages, East and West, and especially on those that were instrumental in clarifying certain key Christian understandings, I think your approach risks thoughtlessly casting the majority of Christianity post-second century as simply illegitimate. This, in turn, would raise very serious questions about the Providence and action of the Holy Spirit to the point that, if such a thesis were accepted, Christianity would not really be founded on Truth. Basically, it's difficult for me to see how one could simultaneously and consistently hold that Christianity is both true - given that the Holy Spirit preserving the body of the faithful as a real and historical entity is such a basic tenet - and that most of that body for most of its history has been so thoroughly wrong that they must simply be rejected.
Secondly, I have become convinced that to be fully Christian, one must be, or at least strive to be, Catholic in the sense of being "according to the whole." Now, I don't mean trying to hold together everything that every Christian group has taught. I do mean that one's default approach ought to be to see how all these disparate views and ways of all the different peoples can be understood, applied, and modified without utter destruction such that they can hold together. Or, at the very least, desiring to see such a synthesis occur. A Christian ought to desire so strongly to bring all into the fold that one can that our bias should be toward looking at everything to see what we can take without losing our essence. It's more about a mindset of "what can I take." Again, I don't mean forcing together what can't be. I just mean a generous spirit that actively seeks for compatibility. Obviously, historically speaking, this hasn't been practiced nearly enough by any group claiming the Christian mantle. The more mainstream understandings I'm defending have a huge history of actively suppressing other ways of teaching the same things, especially in those places outside of the historical boundaries of the Roman Empire, and sometimes even within it. This is obviously an manifestation of an anticatholic attitude. But I do see the equal and opposite reaction, of rejecting the mainstream expression or understanding in favor of the more marginal or indigenous to also be lacking a necessary Catholic attitude.
Finally, there have been many aspects of the Faith that much have the church has found platonic language or concepts helpful in articulating. There are and will be plenty of others who feel the same that I believe room should be made for. For one thing, even in the Old Testament, we get a picture of God that is at once radically transcendent AND radically immanent, and of a good and loving God bringing His world, despite any brokenness, up into His way of life. The Scriptures have also painted a "now-and-not-yet" picture of God's Kingdom in the world, leading to exhortations to be in the world but not of it, to be subject to human authority and to obey God rather than men, and to be in this world as aliens. The negative side of this picture, of God's utter Otherness, of the brokenness and "not yet"-ness of the world, of being aliens on a sojourn, many Church Fathers have found in platonic many useful understandings to articulate this state of affairs. Apophaticism and certain strains of asceticism that downplay the senses are obvious examples. Obviously, taken alone and wholly, this would be a distorted and sub-Christian picture. But so would a total rejection of this aspect of reality. Now, I'm not saying you reject this more negative aspect of Christian understanding. I know you don't. Nor am I saying that you're wrong to point out that such platonically-inspired articulations of this negative understanding can and have often led to bad outcomes and frankly anti-Christian views. I'm saying I think you're wrong in seeming to say that such an angle is always and everywhere wrong, can't ever be helpful, and can only harm.
That's really it. It's not that I think every Church Father has gotten everything right. It's not that I don't think there's room for criticism of more mainstream Christian understandings of God's immanence, of their relationship with the natural world, or with their embrace or applications of platonic understandings. It's just that I'm not convinced that such criticisms warrant such an utter rejection of the mainstream.
"A Christian ought to desire so strongly to bring all into the fold that one can that our bias should be toward looking at everything to see what we can take without losing our essence."
I'm on it!—we are called to be omnivorous. On my reading agenda right now is *Christ the Eternal Tao*, and I also fully intend to personally go baptize (in my writings) the branch of Hinduism known as Kashmiri Shaivism. I believe that the Logos who is Jesus Christ speaks through Holy Wisdom in all places and cultures and times, and that it is very good to gather together all the fruits we can. Thus is New Jerusalem built.
I get the sense that Graham is angry about something, and that he's trying to work it out. I think that while his overall criticism is valid, he's being way more negative and alienating than he needs to be in going about it.
Omnivorous gather-ye-fruits-while-ye-may is it; and I'm glad you're on it. And I'm trying to be, too, in my own way. I don't mean to be negative and alienating. Are you saying this in reference to my stuff here in the comment section, or the essay itself? I do work hard to push through any bitterness as I write and get to a point of clarity and serenity before publishing...though it's never perfect in that regard. And, yes, I do think I am angry about something, though I don't know what. Wounded and somewhat bitter. But what I work hard to do in my writing is to envision a bright and reachable future. I do think some idols are gonna have to get smashed if we want to get serious about self-examination and course-correction.
I'm just referring to the very sweeping nature of some of your claims, such as Orthodox worship being a type of VR fantasy, the embrace of Platonic philosophy being a 100% mistake, and so on. (So in this case, much more in response to the comments than the essay, although I'm aware that this is part of the gist of your overall project.) The radicalism of the claims seems sort of unnecessary, and it could perhaps be alienating to Christians who might otherwise be sympathetic to what you're saying. On the one hand, I could see the case that you're trying to compensate hard against a trend that's heavily long been in the other direction; but on the other, it could also come across like you've got an ax to grind against the Church. I'm not personally alienated by it, although I do sometimes wonder why the claims must be so extreme.
With the intensity of your polemic and your dislike of Plato, you're actually making me think a little of . . . Nietzsche. Haha. You know, the guy who philosophized with a hammer. Just be careful to not start raving about Hyperboreans.
Mm. Maybe a few points of clarification, then: I think I'd say Orthodox worship lends itself to VR -- as shown by the almost universal transition to livestreaming, as if that were the only option -- in 2020. I think I am interested in unpacking *why* that was seen almost universally as the only option, especially by bishops. I think it has to do with the long, slow shift in the last 1700 years from a face to face circular arrangement in which the Eucharistic assembly has come together to commune with one another, and with God through one another, to a rectangular arrangement in which generally speaking, what you are looking at is icons, not each other. I don't see 2020 as a weird blip, but as a manifestation of what's been there. As for Platonic philosophy being a 100% mistake, that's not what I've said in my essays; instead, I've pointed out specific ways in which Platonism has helped create the crisis we're in. And in the comment section, I asked "What, from Plato, is actually indispensable?" Because I'd really like to know. No one has listed a specific thing that we really need, and that we only got from Plato or the tradition coming out of him. But I'm still curious about that question. As for the "Church" capital C, part of my problem is I'm trying to understand what that is. The Orthodox Church says the Orthodox Church is the Church, capital C, and it's really not any more complicated than that. Go listen to Fr. Peter Heers; he's not playing around, he'll tell you exactly what the Fathers say, and what they say is that if you're not Orthodox, you're not even a real Christian. Having been Orthodox, yes, I'm angry about this ideological trend by which I am encouraged to deny so much of what is undeniable about other people. As for you -- what's the "Church"? You're Catholic, right? I don't have an ax to grind against the church (ekklesia), as I -- with difficulty -- understand what it "actually" is (acknowledging again that I, as is the case with everyone else on this planet, do not actually have a total vision of the world). I have an ax to grind with people who are distorting the true nature of the church with their extreme ideological stances.
Zach, there's a lot to think about here! Just a few points now: One, I don't see myself as advocating an "utter rejection of the mainstream," though I do think some serious, severe soul-searching is needed. We are all in this together (even if doctrinaire Catholics and Orthodox have a hard time believing that we are, in fact, still moving through history together, attempting together to remain faithful...). I don't deny that the collective body of Christ is a real, physical body of humans moving through history together, like a stream, in unbroken continuity with the source. But like a stream, we are certainly down near the delta as we approach the ocean of the apocalypse, and there is the sludge we have carried, and there we are, in our appearance as many thousand different streams. And I certainly believe in God's unbroken fidelity to us, as a collective body, with or without our fidelity. But both aspects of that fidelity, God's and ours, may involve -- actually *certainly* involves serious purgation, cleansing. Think about the OT ekklesia, Israel: The whole story of the OT is precisely about Israel slurping up the idolatry of the world like a sponge, and having to barf it out, again and again, through the mercy of God. *That is what it is to be the people of God.* That is why we are moving through history, picking up wound after wound after wound on the way. People who want to imagine that there is some institution which has preserved everything true inviolate, and which is more or less not seriously touched by the ravages of time, are wanting to live in a fantasy world. An ideological, and often times totalitarian, one. Plato was a world-denying paedophile, whose thoughts were super-genius, but mostly poison, as we can see all around us, his world-denying spirit concretizing itself in the world all around us. Not in spite of, but because of, Christianity: We are living in the Christian world, the world that Christianity desecrated.
Oh, and to clarify one final thing: my statement about disagreeing that it was Christianity qua Christianity spreading destructive views was meant to apply not just to specifically Platonic views nor just to the destruction Christendom brought on itself. But also to your statement that Christianity desecrated the world. I don't disagree that the earth has been desecrated nor that the historical vehicle was Christian civilization. I just don't see that as having been specifically of Christianity but truly because of a failure of Christianity to be fully itself. If you will, because our civilization became collectively those who said, "Lord, Lord" but didn't do His will.
I agree with that, definitely -- Christianity in its fullness cannot be world-denying or nature-desecrating; in fact, of all religious visions, it should be the most world-affirming and nature-cherishing. And so it is painful -- agonizingly painful -- to reflect on how things have actually gone down...
It is painful. Extremely painful. I think we both see the problem and the solution as radical in nature. That is, we have been cut off from and need to return to our roots. I think we just disagree about some, but only some, of the particulars about that enterprise.
There is not doubt that *all* Christian groups in one way or another, to one degree or another, have been shaped for the worse by making too great a peace with those revolutions collectively known as modernity. And even before this, we too often failed to be fully ourselves, and have too often followed other gods. And there were even some things that were either good, or at least harmless, at one time but nonetheless had negative potentials that lay dormant underground until erosion and atmospheric changes caused them to blossom.
Okay. Yeah, I see you! And I don't think we're actually as nearly far apart as it would seem, at least as far as principle is concerned. It seems to me to be more in the application of that principle and the specific interpretations of the Christian world through that principled lens where I see our disagreements to lie. Specifically, in some of what we see as the "sludge" that has been brought downstream (e.g. icons as virtual reality and creation ex nihilo to name a couple).
Believe it or not, I actually don't disagree with your description of Plato nor of the reality of the harms that can be traced back to his influence. Neither do I disagree with the statement that Christendom brought these into the wider world nor that the New Testament ekklesia is/will be in a similar state to the Old Testament ekklesia and in need of a similar purgation. I really do see the pattern of "the faithful" remnant playing out in Christianity as it did in ancient Israel and as it did/is in humanity as a whole.
I just don't see that the Platonic influence has brought only harm. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and I don't think it was illegitimate for the Church to use him, in principle. In practice I can't and won't deny that, at least when it comes to the application of dogma, the sifting process with him was not what it needed to be. Nor do I see Christianity qua Christianity as the problem (as per your last statement) in bringing the destructive, "world"-denying to the wider world, but Christianity failing to be fully itself. Christendom, both East and West, but especially the West (as much as it pains me to say it) truly did plant the seeds of its own destruction. I just see it having done so by turning its back on itself.
Regarding denial of the mainstream, I simply wish to offer the following clarification: I wasn't trying to say that you were simply denying the mainstream in any sort of deliberate or self-concious way. What I'm *trying* to get at is that I see an anticatholic rejection of the mainstream as a very real and dangerous *potential consequence*, intended or nor, of *how* you've been going about this; of the angles you've been traversing and of the intensity or degree of the critiques you've levied. That is - and I it's okay if we'll just have to agree to disagree about this - I think you've picked some wrong targets in the specifics of your criticisms and I don't think they've been proportional.
Honestly, Graham, I think this was a good talk! I feel like we understand each other a lot better! At least, I now feel I have a very good idea of where you're coming from and why. I agree with the vast majority of it and, even where I don't agree, I get it!
Zach, thanks for taking the time and care to flesh out your thoughts even more here! And you may be right that I've picked some wrong targets, and that my criticism hasn't been proportional. I don't have some total vision of the world, but I do have the human feeling and experience of someone living in the world, and it's this that I give voice to. I don't at all feel the need to develop the typical arguments that you're "supposed" to develop; there's already plenty of that around. I have my own voice, and I'm trying to put words to things that a few of us -- though not all, and maybe not even many -- feel (I know I am not unique; I'm weird, but definitely not unique)
(note that I am not broadly anti-Greek, only anti-Plato. I think Heraclitus was spot on, with his insight that change is real, that reality IS change -- but Parmenides (change is an illusion; that which is real does not change) is who won Plato's heart, and it's Plato who won the first of the Western culture wars...))
I hear you, Zach. There is a time and place for compromise, synthesis, nuance, balance, patience, etc...of course. That is the mature, reasonable approach. "There is always a reason why things are the way they are, just try to understand what you can and accept with humility what you can't, go with the flow, etc." -- I don't know how many times I've heard this from people (NOT you) in positions of authority, who really just have a stake in maintaining the status quo, and who don't really understand or appreciate how dire the situation is right now -- how serious the need is to reconnect with nature, and get real. So, I just want to push in an extreme direction. and it's kind of silly that the direction i'm pushing in is the extreme one. I'm tired of the constant justification of almost every attitude that the church has adopted (in Orthodoxy, this is everywhere). i think it is actually possible to go seriously off the rails, and that the thing to do is admit what's going on, and go in another direction.
“Christianity is the most difficult path there is” well, Jesus said “you will find rest for your souls , for my yoke is easy and my burden light” IMO even more devastating for the church than platonism has been nearly two thousand year infection of the yeast of the Pharisee and Sadducee who always resist the Holy Spirit and lay heavy burdens on people “for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” Christianity is meant to be gift based raw straight up Spirit felt and known tangibly in the body and soul and in the temple built of living stones in the here and now.. “You shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace” “the kingdom of God is rightwiseness, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.” Rightwiseness is an older form of the word righteousness used in early English translations.
Amen, brother. "Come close to my side, you whose hearts are on the ground, you who are pushed down and worn out, and I will refresh you. Follow my teachings and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest from your troubled thoughts. Walk side by side with me and I will share in your heavy load and make it light." (Mt. 11:28-30, First Nations Version)
--is what I wish I'd used for the epigraph. I hate the word synchronicity because it has too many sharp angles in it, for what the phenomenon is (ripples is better), but damn, that song was good timing. Glad you dug it all. Let's break bread together soon. "Why you not here with me?"
"Gregory was the author of the private mass, such a great abomination that there has never been anything like it in the New Testament church." --Luther
This was excellent! I especially loved your emphasis on the Hebrew revelation being the inversion of the religion of their neighbors!
Both N.T. Wright (who introduced this, at the time, unreconstructed evangelical to the fullness of the bodily resurrection) and Fr. De Young have hit on that point especially well. Indeed, Fr. De Young (who spends half his podcast, it seems, calling out the undue influence of Plato on us) mentioned that whereas in the pagan temples the priests fed the idols, in the Jewish temple, the idea of the bread was that God was feeding his priests.
Thanks, Zach. Also, you get the prize for liking the essay 10 minutes after it came out, so you must have liked it in advance, which I like ;) Yeah, NT Wright was really important for me, too. And glad to hear there are other Orthodox priests, besides Schmemann, who call out Platonism. I'd be interested to know if there are Orthodox priests out there not only calling out Platonism, but actively subverting it, excising it, spitting out the poison, healing the wound. If that were like a movement happening now--and, more so--if there were any motion at all towards restoring the Eucharist as a real meal, not just a symbolic one, I'd be very, very interested to know that. I looked for signs of that for about a decade before giving up.
Hey, thanks for the engagement here over the weekend, by the way; I enjoyed that and think that I understand what you're doing better now. In particular, I thought over what you said about being a "Tradition bearer" after having drunk deeply from the well of Orthodoxy. From my standpoint, that would seem to imply that you're trying to take Orthodoxy in a creative new direction, like Bulgakov with his Sophiology. But I can understand why you're framing it the way you are, in terms of your Oorts cloud vector.
Also, I was thinking about how one would go about distinguishing good groovy from bad groovy. I once ran into a pair of Presbyterian seminarians who made claims to the effect that Jesus was a bastard—and I'm pretty sure they thought they were being groovy. There's a similar problem with the contemporary rhetoric of "acceptance" and the woke plague. A great many people confuse the zeitgeist with the Holy Ghost, which seems to give Orthodox warnings about "obedience" a certain credence, even as that shouldn't be allowed to impede genuine inspiration.
man, i think i'm taking my turn at this: https://steverobinson.substack.com/p/staying-orthodox?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=qtro1&triedRedirect=true
I'm thinking that Curmudgeophan might be a prophet.
I don't know—I guess all this handwringing is just pretty foreign to me, because I never expected much from the institutional Church. What I do see is the practical matter of how while the entire society is collapsing into a death spiral, my parish is filled with happy families, and no one seems particulary confused about who the boys and girls are. So there's that: it seems like a place where there's some possibility of life.
And there's the culture and the tradition, a certain anchoring within material species history, which I find that I need in order to not become too free-floating or abstracted or lost in my own head.
At the religious level, the only thing I care with respect to the institutonal Church is the Eucharist. (I don't go to confession, because I'd rather take that up straight with the Holy Ghost: I know when I'm forgiven, and it's not when a priest says so.) Other than that, I treat the Catholic Church as a very valuable vault from which I can take what I want and find useful for the creative purposes of God. I pray the Rosary every morning, for example.
Basicaly, I'd long wanted to be a heretical Catholic—but at some point, I realized that in order to achieve that, I'd have to go turn Catholic. That part is important, because it's only relative to traditional Catholic discourse that my "heresies" could even make sense, since my metaphysics and anthropology are very old-school Christian. Within a contemporary secular context, I think that a lot of your concerns and mine would sound like incomprehensible gibberish.
Your thoughts have persuaded me, actually, that I might be better off just staying Catholic. I hate Rome, though—and in the Roman Mass, the priests don't even give parishioners the wine, which I find to be poetically criminal, not to mention just plain rude. So I am glad to have my Eastern Catholic parish at this time, camped out comfortably close to the edge of both the big cities.
Also, I'm in agreement with DBH that the Schism never happened—as in, clearly it de facto happened, but it did not de jure happen, because no one had the legal authority to implement it. I'm sure a lot of Orthodox folk would just love to hear that, am I right? . . .
"What I do see is the practical matter of how while the entire society is collapsing into a death spiral, my parish is filled with happy families, and no one seems particularly confused about who the boys and girls are. So there's that: it seems like a place where there's some possibility of life" -- that's legit, that's right. And if you love your priest, too, man--wonderful. Yeah, maybe I want to just go do my time in the wilderness, then come back as rebel Orthodox, I don't know. I gotta strange brain that has to find a place somewhere, and something useful to do...mad dreams for American Orthodoxy a million years from now might at least keep me occupied...
I think that what you want, and I want as well, is something not of this world. It's not even a Church per se; it is the Kingdom. Not in the past or the future, but in a vertical dimension of time upward—kairos, not chronos. It probably couldn't happen without a mass-level transmutation of human nature. Hell, we would've probably been repulsed by the politicking even among the original apostles.
I figure that a parish church is a place like any other, with people like any other, except that most of them at least try to be sane and good, and have some concept of what that might mean. So like any other place, but a little better, and also there's the Eucharist: sure, I'll take it. The poetic project of helping the Kingdom descend is something else altogether, and we don't need a worldly institution for that.
Sethu, you crazy madman: You're so right.
Takes one to know one, as they say. . . .
Man, I enjoyed that, Sethu -- thank you. I appreciate that you push back, and that you listen when I push back on your pushing back. It's sharpening. As for Bulgakov: I bow before his intellect and intensity of feeling. And I smile ruefully at the analogy or implication. I don't know what I'm trying to do; just trying to be very alive. I think I once dreamed of helping the real people like Kingsnorth and Shaw help Orthodoxy go "in a creative new direction," but I finally accepted what's been said to me from all sides, for years: Orthodoxy doesn't need anything. There is no new direction it needs to go in. It doesn't want to go in any new directions. It has found the right direction to go in, and is going in that direction, and we can either go along, or not. For myself, I wish to go in the direction of Earth. I wish to reconnect with the plants and animals. And I wish to know Yeshua, face to face. I'll do whatever it takes to go in those directions.
The main outstanding issue to me would be along these lines: to what extent would your project turn you into one of the typical, New Agey, spiritual-not-religious "Others" who are more or less the dominant demographic today? (Tara Isabella Burton's book *Strange Rites* is great on this topic.) Maybe you don't see that as a problem, and perhaps it isn't intrinsically, but I think it sort of becomes a problem in the midst of our broader cultural landscape.
Likewise, everyone at some level wants to "be very alive". But many people are of course tragically wrong about what that involves: some today, for example, believe that mutilating themselves to make their bodies match their deluded subjective self-concepts will make them more alive. It's sort of like if everyone had a clear intuition of what it meant to be very alive, then religious traditions would have never been needed in the first place, just as law would be unnecessary if all men were angels. So in my view, some of the commands about obedience exist because the common heart can be a very deceitful thing.
Personally, I don't think you have this problem: your direct intuition of the Holy Ghost looks real enough to me. But then we get into the problem of self-referentiality. If you and I are right on the sole authority of our own intuitions, then there is no longer any epistemological basis or guardrail to tell others that they're wrong about theirs. The external frame of reference vanishes, and with it the possibility of meaningful communication, at least with non-initiates. And I think that's a problem of its own, aside from being wrong or right on the merits.
Basically, I see the species Tradition as a sort of canopy, or "atmosphere", that offers a sort of protection. If we stick our heads up above the atmosphere, then we may expose ourselves to potentially fatal radiation. My preference, then, is to be content with being considered a heretic by some but to still speak in the name of the Tradition and not against it. I see that as a matter of discursive and existential strategy, and I can understand if you must pursue a different course. It doesn't change the substantive content any.
Sethu, if you ever see me on youtube explaining to people how they can raise their level of spiritual vibration, I give you my blessing to come smack me, then drag me to a church of your selection, where I will convert to the religion of your choice, with all the usual sighing and weeping. Also, I thought of another way to describe my project -- if you take Schmemann's deep critiques of his own Orthodoxy, and if you take Sherrard's deep critiques of his own Orthodoxy -- which are much the same critiques -- and you remove some of their constraints (Sherrard was unleashing his most devastating stuff at the end of his life; he literally died while finishing "Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition"; and Schmemann, even though in his Journals he said clericalism was the death of Christianity, and that people love the Fathers too much, and that Byzantium was poison, and that the secular world is "the only real world there is" and that priests should honestly just go get a real job, instead of drawing paychecks from people who want somebody to take care of religion for them -- he was himself a priest, and many people relied on him to be just that, and so he was) -- if you take away those kinds of constraints, which I don't have, but you add the triple urgency of the post-2020 polycrisis, and then you asked yourself: Given, in America, that our rupture with tradition has actually been catastrophic, no matter how much we'd like to imagine that things are pretty still intact somewhere, and given, on the other hand, that we've only just begun to understand, much less appreciate and accept, the absolute annihilation of the living ecosystems -- spiritual and biological and spiritual-as-biological and biological-as-spiritual -- perpetrated by light-skinned people on this continent, fleeing one spiritual hellhole by creating another -- if you were to try to weave all that together, because it's truth, and it's the job of men to envision the horizon of truth, and how to enact truth here and now, no matter how chaotic everything gets, and then you asked yourself "OK, what's next?" then you'd have some of the initiatory feelings associated with starting to think about walking aboard the viking ship that is this project.
Hey man, as long as you call them gunas (you know, like from the Bhagavad Gita?—tamas and rajas and sattvas), you have my blessing to go on about spiritual vibrations to your heart's content.
Briefly been reading the interactions in comments. The bishops were swayed and wrongly-some
started with a bit of live stream and then abandoned it. There are a couple of monasteries which did not follow the weirdness in 2020 and a few priests and parishes.
Some of us have tried to contact the bishops with no response.
I take the long view, that the body of Christ as Orthodox has endured through innumerable challenges that included bishops and priests and kings apparently leading her off the cliff. But not so. Finally the truth shone forth.
Sorry I do want to continue but this takes prayer and time.
Thanks for this, FaultLine. I also take the long view. The very, very, very long view. In all seriousness, I think we could be at it for another million years or so -- "at it," meaning: Trying to live the Messianic life, and failing beautifully and horribly, by equal turns. No one is more patient than God. He appears to be in exactly zero rush about anything. The kingdom of God is like the seeds you toss away and forget about, and "we sleeps and rise night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; we knows not how" (Mk. 4:27). I harp on the "anti-virtual" things that I harp about, hoping that it's a little contribution I can make towards the very long run. We'll hang in there!
True. I am thanking God for His patience.
Please continue to harp on the anti virtual. What an exceeding oddity to live stream the Liturgy in order to “save” our hides.
You are not alone in anger over this.
This really helps to hear -- thank you.
This was really good.
Thanks, CS!
Graham,
Human living informed and inspired by the generosity of Sun, Rain, Soil. That just about sums up the longing embodied in my work. Thank you for this beautiful writing. You've also granted me a better understanding of idols. I'm wondering now about the emergence of such stone idols in relation to the city/temple complexes and power structures of Sumerian civilization. I'm sure we will dive into such topics, but for now thank you. You were right to be thinking about me as you wrote about the Feast and table fellowship, and "reckless generosity"--one of my favorite phrases, alongside radical hospitality. Bless you, Graham.
Thanks, Adam! Your Gratitude Feasts in which you offer food as "a gift for anyone who is hungry for any reason" are, concretely, the way of the future happening now.
(and yes -- stone idols + city/temple complex and power...I think we might get there next essay; or...in some essay, anyway...tho it may be one of the things that hits the cutting room floor, as many things do; but at some point, the complex of massive temples, centralized power, king-priest synergy, and bowing to images as a way of bowing to the power complex--all that has to come into this line of thought, because Yeshua's kingdom of God as small, hidden communal feasts is specifically an alternative to that, and a threat, and a challenge--a 'judgment,' an apocalypse....)
“Harmonious” is a brilliant alternative to the moralistic “righteous”—life is a song with which we should get into tune. Relatedly, I think of Jesus as the Orpheus who won. And I have always loved the way that Leonard Cohen refers to God: as the Lord of Song.
I think I got that from Balentine's "The Torah's Vision of Worship" (I say that, because I'm re-reading it for the next essay, and was struck by the following): "Just as the cosmos is ordered into a harmony of divisions and boundaries, so, in Israel, to be 'righteous' means to do justice to the harmony inherent in the cosmic order."
Thank you Graham! It is always comforting to open my computer and see something new from you!
Part of the Sherard quote:
"The Christian’s own religiousness has become his chief preoccupation. And in this context the concept of the Christian’s responsibility for the fate of the world has inescapably lost all meaning."
It is difficult for me to express how important this quote is. I find it so very sobering.
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Beyond all discussions of what Christianity is, what true worship is, what salvation is, of where history has lead the Church down rabbit holes, and, I suppose, discussions of Hellenism and Plato...beyond all this is the still small voice of the Creator.
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The humanity we share with the Messiah...that is it. Yet we* (see below) have to debate, discuss, try to convince the other, instead of just being - just learning how to listen to the still small voice. To be Christian there are no words. There are no words. There is only giving. We cannot truly give of ourselves unless we experience a union of love with the Messiah, the Creator, the ruach ha-kodesh (the wind that carries the Peace that passes all understanding) . Even without this union we can begin to give of ourselves, though this union is (I feel) our natural state - a union with the one in which we are truly human (many of you thinkers and writers may be scoffing at my meager attempt to express the inexpressible. Thanks your for your patience).
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This desire for the wordless reason, this desire for our natural state that Jesus the Messiah is... presenting himself in silence, without our desire to explain or describe it, but just to receive... in silence.
Thank you Graham for allowing me to once again contemplate these things, and share a bit.
*(I'm not talking about this discussion here in the comments or in these essays)
Brad, in this very beautiful, surprising "inner substack of the heart"--this very comment of yours--in the silent eye of the raging substack vortex, you give us everything. "Beyond all discussions of what Christianity is, what true worship is, what salvation is, of where history has lead the Church down rabbit holes, and, I suppose, discussions of Hellenism and Plato...beyond all this is the still small voice of the Creator." Amen.
Graham, thanks yet again for planting the seed of envisioning grounded engagement. Ron Finley is my saint this morning.
🙏🏼
Haha, yeah, I have a bad habit of liking substack posts as soon as I read *anything* that makes me nod vigorously in agreement. I was reading another substack when the notification for this came up and, well, It's often hard for me to keep my attention on what I'm doing at the moment, ESPECIALLY on my phone.
Yeah, I'm not Platonism's number one fan, especially when it comes to its impact on Christianity. It seems that a lot of heresies and problems in our history has had Platonism at their roots.
That said, I'm not quite as down on it as you are simply because I see the problem as being what Fr. Schmemman termed "undigested" Platonism. I do think there are some useful nutrients there, if mixed with some useless and counterproductive substances. I really do think that it needs to be digested, broken down, the nutrients extracted, and the waste excreted. Which is what the Church has done at its best, and too much of Christendom has failed to do. Of course, Platonism is not special in this regard. I believe that's what Christians ought to do with everything we encounter, especially in culture.
Given that the Church came into its own in a culture whose intellectual currents were steeped in Platonic and Aristotelian thought, it's not a surprise that these ways of thinking were impactful. But no culture, like no person, this side of the eschaton, is ever fully perfected.
Christianity is the most difficult path there is, I think, precisely because we live in the "now and not-yet" tension where the world can never be fully and simply embraced nor ought it be fully and simply rejected. The Church is where former enemies are called to embrace each other, where ways of life and seeing the world that when taken whole are mutually exclusive are to brought into contact, sifted, and synthesized into something new. It's where we must recognize that the material world is God's temple and meant to be so into eternity, while recognizing that it's not yet perfected into what He meant it to be. Here there are equal and opposite dangers in rejecting or denigrating the material or losing sight of what the material will one day be in God, following this material, subject to entropy, into its end but failing to come to the fullness of its Transfiguration, at least in terms of our internal relationships to it.
Sorry. I don't wanna sound like a broken record, or kick up more debates. I absolutely see you, Graham, and where you're coming from, and I can promise I'm a lot more sympathetic to it than what I may come across as being. It's just that I don't think I'll be ever be able to follow you ALL the way down your road where Jerusalem seems to have nothing to do with Athens, even if it seems to have something to do with everywhere else (which I'm with you on that part) and where so much of Christian history and certain core dogmas seem to be rejected not as something that is abused or taken in a wrong way or badly understood or applied by Christians, but as something wrong in and of themselves.
Anyway, I do hope you take care and I certainly look forward to more of your essays!
Actually, Zach, here's a question for you (and anyone else who'd like to chime in, of course): What are a couple of things from the Platonic tradition that are *absolutely indispensable* for us who are, or trying to be, Christians? (This is a sincere, earnest question that I really have for you, for the world). Like if somehow every last trace of Platonic thought evaporated tomorrow, and all we had was pre-Hellinistic Hebrew thought -- which of course was a great river into which so many ancient spiritual cultures rushed, and were "baptized," too -- Persian, Sumerian, Egyptian, etc -- what staggering losses and deprivations would we be suffering right now, for lack of [ ________ fill in the blank ________ ]?
Plato oscillates between the domains of what I call specter vs. presence, and he is thus a very double-edged influence. He could be taken to say that there is a spectral abstraction hovering over our heads that is more real than life, *or* that there is a realm of spiritual presence that dwells behind the realm of mere matter and power. I think that the best thing that Socrates ever said was: "It's better to suffer an injustice than to commit one." I think that is true spirit, and a real prefiguration of the Gospel.
Is Plato "indispensable"?—nah, not really, although I'm generally opposed to tossing babies out with bathwater. There's good in him; we just need discernment. As with any book, a lot depends on how we read it. And anyway, the real influence on the Church was Plotinus, not Plato per se. Vedanta could have also filled the same role at the time, if it had been geographically closer—much of it is brilliant and also truly schizophrenic. I just don't think there's a need for such sweeping judgments. We could afford to be slightly more subtle and generous and attentive to nuance.
You're much better at nuance, and subtly and generosity, than I am; and I am much better at throwing out babies with bathwater ;) Good point about Vedanta...and, really, it seems like Indian philosophy in general was a major impetus for the emergence of Greek philosophical thought. And also, too, we could probably have neither Plato (=really Plotinus) nor any Indian thought, and Persian dualism alone would have infected us with the same problem. "Reality is elsewhere, change is not real" is probably just a basic feature/flaw of human cognition that emerges roughly in step with agriculture or something--you'd know. With your nuance and your subtly. I think I want to have a somewhat severe attitude toward the beloved Plato because it seems like we're in a crisis of consciousness right now that is as bad as it's ever been.
Psychologically, I'd think that it just has to do with the fear of death. Change as we know it in our realm moves only in one direction, and we know where that train line ends, so it can perhaps be comforting to imagine eternity as a place where there is no change and thus no death. The Resurrection should change that for believers, though.
Fear of death, exactly. On a more historical note, to talk a little bit about my favorite human of all time, Plato, I can't remember if I was saying this to you or someone else, but my sense is that the real driving force of Plato's otherworldliness is not a hatred of the world, but in a desire to figure out what the hell happened when his Greek world imploded on itself in the Peloponnesian War, and how the hell we're going to reenvision a new cosmos, a new order, that isn't as susceptible to catastrophic self-implosion like that. This, I can appreciate. And the early Fathers living through an imploding Roman world -- I can see them latching onto Plato for something real, something impervious to the chaotic flux, the carnage, the pride, the vanity, the absolute brutality and callousness. But what you get in Plato is vision of stability, eternity, etc, at the price of detachment from what's really real -- since change is, in fact, real. The more ancient Hebrew vision of the cosmos in which God and man are co-gardeners is better than Plato. And you are right, the resurrection *should* help with the fear of death, but Vine Deloria analyzes at length in God Is Red how Christians, of all people, have in some ways been the *most* afraid of death. And I think part of that comes out of this idea -- non-existent in scripture, but one of the main points of Platonism -- that "you" are not your body; that when your body dies, "you" escape.
I think of reality as shaped like a rotating cone, where we're at the base and the spiritual aions are higher up. So, we're spinning fast down here, and the higher aions are also spinning but much more slowly, such that from our standpoint they could seem stationary. In theory, the apex of the cone would be completely still, but that might be more of just a mathematical asymptote than a place that actually exists.
Again, a lot depends on whether we're talking about specter or presence. I'd say there is a type of changelessness, or at least a slower and different type of change, in the spiritual realm that is the *infrastructure* of our flesh. This isn't the same as a purely cerebral abstraction of qualities or forms or whatever; it's not like saying the color greeen is more real than a green thing, with which I totally disagree. So there's a fundamental difference between whether we're talking about the invisible world of presence, the edge of which is our visible realm; or whether we mean a strictly unreal world of specter, which only exists within our own troubled heads.
I think it's instructive here to remember *why* Nietzsche hated both Plato and Christianity. He thought they only generated specters, which sapped vitality and life away from our real world. But he hated not only specter, but also presence; he had no interest in the actually real domain of spirit, either. So I think that's something we need to navigate with care. Insofar as Plato's talking about presence and not specter, he is a friend, especially in the midst of a world where most people do not believe in the reality of spirit.
I'm not going to ask that you accept the points I just laid out. I'm not sure if this is a disagreement that can be resolved. I just hope where I'm coming from is better understood. And I hop I have a better understanding of where you're coming from.
tl;dr: I don't think Plato's influence is indispensable or unproblematic. I just don't think it *must* be totally banned from the table.
Ah. I think we're getting closer to the heart of the matter.
I don't think platonic thought is "absolutely indispensable." I would never argue such and have not been arguing such. If I came across that way, then I'll take the hit for my poor communication.
No, I've no problem with the notion that Platonism in all its forms *can* be dispensed with. Christianity can get by just fine without it. My objection is that you seem to me to be arguing that it *must* be dispensed with. It seems to me that you've been saying that any and all understandings or expressions in Church history that can be traced back to Plato's influence, or those of his later followers, is always and everywhere inherently wrong and illegitimate in its totality for the Christian.
My main problem with this is that I'm not convinced such a radical dichotomy is necessary. And since I don't see it as necessary, I don't think it worth the potential pitfalls of such an approach; the most dangerous of which I see as the dissolution of historical continuity within the Body of Christ, anticatholicism, and the suppression of tools *some* people may find the most helpful.
First, given the influence of platonic, especially neoplatonic, thought on so much thinking of so many Christians down the ages, East and West, and especially on those that were instrumental in clarifying certain key Christian understandings, I think your approach risks thoughtlessly casting the majority of Christianity post-second century as simply illegitimate. This, in turn, would raise very serious questions about the Providence and action of the Holy Spirit to the point that, if such a thesis were accepted, Christianity would not really be founded on Truth. Basically, it's difficult for me to see how one could simultaneously and consistently hold that Christianity is both true - given that the Holy Spirit preserving the body of the faithful as a real and historical entity is such a basic tenet - and that most of that body for most of its history has been so thoroughly wrong that they must simply be rejected.
Secondly, I have become convinced that to be fully Christian, one must be, or at least strive to be, Catholic in the sense of being "according to the whole." Now, I don't mean trying to hold together everything that every Christian group has taught. I do mean that one's default approach ought to be to see how all these disparate views and ways of all the different peoples can be understood, applied, and modified without utter destruction such that they can hold together. Or, at the very least, desiring to see such a synthesis occur. A Christian ought to desire so strongly to bring all into the fold that one can that our bias should be toward looking at everything to see what we can take without losing our essence. It's more about a mindset of "what can I take." Again, I don't mean forcing together what can't be. I just mean a generous spirit that actively seeks for compatibility. Obviously, historically speaking, this hasn't been practiced nearly enough by any group claiming the Christian mantle. The more mainstream understandings I'm defending have a huge history of actively suppressing other ways of teaching the same things, especially in those places outside of the historical boundaries of the Roman Empire, and sometimes even within it. This is obviously an manifestation of an anticatholic attitude. But I do see the equal and opposite reaction, of rejecting the mainstream expression or understanding in favor of the more marginal or indigenous to also be lacking a necessary Catholic attitude.
Finally, there have been many aspects of the Faith that much have the church has found platonic language or concepts helpful in articulating. There are and will be plenty of others who feel the same that I believe room should be made for. For one thing, even in the Old Testament, we get a picture of God that is at once radically transcendent AND radically immanent, and of a good and loving God bringing His world, despite any brokenness, up into His way of life. The Scriptures have also painted a "now-and-not-yet" picture of God's Kingdom in the world, leading to exhortations to be in the world but not of it, to be subject to human authority and to obey God rather than men, and to be in this world as aliens. The negative side of this picture, of God's utter Otherness, of the brokenness and "not yet"-ness of the world, of being aliens on a sojourn, many Church Fathers have found in platonic many useful understandings to articulate this state of affairs. Apophaticism and certain strains of asceticism that downplay the senses are obvious examples. Obviously, taken alone and wholly, this would be a distorted and sub-Christian picture. But so would a total rejection of this aspect of reality. Now, I'm not saying you reject this more negative aspect of Christian understanding. I know you don't. Nor am I saying that you're wrong to point out that such platonically-inspired articulations of this negative understanding can and have often led to bad outcomes and frankly anti-Christian views. I'm saying I think you're wrong in seeming to say that such an angle is always and everywhere wrong, can't ever be helpful, and can only harm.
That's really it. It's not that I think every Church Father has gotten everything right. It's not that I don't think there's room for criticism of more mainstream Christian understandings of God's immanence, of their relationship with the natural world, or with their embrace or applications of platonic understandings. It's just that I'm not convinced that such criticisms warrant such an utter rejection of the mainstream.
"A Christian ought to desire so strongly to bring all into the fold that one can that our bias should be toward looking at everything to see what we can take without losing our essence."
I'm on it!—we are called to be omnivorous. On my reading agenda right now is *Christ the Eternal Tao*, and I also fully intend to personally go baptize (in my writings) the branch of Hinduism known as Kashmiri Shaivism. I believe that the Logos who is Jesus Christ speaks through Holy Wisdom in all places and cultures and times, and that it is very good to gather together all the fruits we can. Thus is New Jerusalem built.
I get the sense that Graham is angry about something, and that he's trying to work it out. I think that while his overall criticism is valid, he's being way more negative and alienating than he needs to be in going about it.
Omnivorous gather-ye-fruits-while-ye-may is it; and I'm glad you're on it. And I'm trying to be, too, in my own way. I don't mean to be negative and alienating. Are you saying this in reference to my stuff here in the comment section, or the essay itself? I do work hard to push through any bitterness as I write and get to a point of clarity and serenity before publishing...though it's never perfect in that regard. And, yes, I do think I am angry about something, though I don't know what. Wounded and somewhat bitter. But what I work hard to do in my writing is to envision a bright and reachable future. I do think some idols are gonna have to get smashed if we want to get serious about self-examination and course-correction.
I'm just referring to the very sweeping nature of some of your claims, such as Orthodox worship being a type of VR fantasy, the embrace of Platonic philosophy being a 100% mistake, and so on. (So in this case, much more in response to the comments than the essay, although I'm aware that this is part of the gist of your overall project.) The radicalism of the claims seems sort of unnecessary, and it could perhaps be alienating to Christians who might otherwise be sympathetic to what you're saying. On the one hand, I could see the case that you're trying to compensate hard against a trend that's heavily long been in the other direction; but on the other, it could also come across like you've got an ax to grind against the Church. I'm not personally alienated by it, although I do sometimes wonder why the claims must be so extreme.
With the intensity of your polemic and your dislike of Plato, you're actually making me think a little of . . . Nietzsche. Haha. You know, the guy who philosophized with a hammer. Just be careful to not start raving about Hyperboreans.
Mm. Maybe a few points of clarification, then: I think I'd say Orthodox worship lends itself to VR -- as shown by the almost universal transition to livestreaming, as if that were the only option -- in 2020. I think I am interested in unpacking *why* that was seen almost universally as the only option, especially by bishops. I think it has to do with the long, slow shift in the last 1700 years from a face to face circular arrangement in which the Eucharistic assembly has come together to commune with one another, and with God through one another, to a rectangular arrangement in which generally speaking, what you are looking at is icons, not each other. I don't see 2020 as a weird blip, but as a manifestation of what's been there. As for Platonic philosophy being a 100% mistake, that's not what I've said in my essays; instead, I've pointed out specific ways in which Platonism has helped create the crisis we're in. And in the comment section, I asked "What, from Plato, is actually indispensable?" Because I'd really like to know. No one has listed a specific thing that we really need, and that we only got from Plato or the tradition coming out of him. But I'm still curious about that question. As for the "Church" capital C, part of my problem is I'm trying to understand what that is. The Orthodox Church says the Orthodox Church is the Church, capital C, and it's really not any more complicated than that. Go listen to Fr. Peter Heers; he's not playing around, he'll tell you exactly what the Fathers say, and what they say is that if you're not Orthodox, you're not even a real Christian. Having been Orthodox, yes, I'm angry about this ideological trend by which I am encouraged to deny so much of what is undeniable about other people. As for you -- what's the "Church"? You're Catholic, right? I don't have an ax to grind against the church (ekklesia), as I -- with difficulty -- understand what it "actually" is (acknowledging again that I, as is the case with everyone else on this planet, do not actually have a total vision of the world). I have an ax to grind with people who are distorting the true nature of the church with their extreme ideological stances.
Zach, there's a lot to think about here! Just a few points now: One, I don't see myself as advocating an "utter rejection of the mainstream," though I do think some serious, severe soul-searching is needed. We are all in this together (even if doctrinaire Catholics and Orthodox have a hard time believing that we are, in fact, still moving through history together, attempting together to remain faithful...). I don't deny that the collective body of Christ is a real, physical body of humans moving through history together, like a stream, in unbroken continuity with the source. But like a stream, we are certainly down near the delta as we approach the ocean of the apocalypse, and there is the sludge we have carried, and there we are, in our appearance as many thousand different streams. And I certainly believe in God's unbroken fidelity to us, as a collective body, with or without our fidelity. But both aspects of that fidelity, God's and ours, may involve -- actually *certainly* involves serious purgation, cleansing. Think about the OT ekklesia, Israel: The whole story of the OT is precisely about Israel slurping up the idolatry of the world like a sponge, and having to barf it out, again and again, through the mercy of God. *That is what it is to be the people of God.* That is why we are moving through history, picking up wound after wound after wound on the way. People who want to imagine that there is some institution which has preserved everything true inviolate, and which is more or less not seriously touched by the ravages of time, are wanting to live in a fantasy world. An ideological, and often times totalitarian, one. Plato was a world-denying paedophile, whose thoughts were super-genius, but mostly poison, as we can see all around us, his world-denying spirit concretizing itself in the world all around us. Not in spite of, but because of, Christianity: We are living in the Christian world, the world that Christianity desecrated.
Oh, and to clarify one final thing: my statement about disagreeing that it was Christianity qua Christianity spreading destructive views was meant to apply not just to specifically Platonic views nor just to the destruction Christendom brought on itself. But also to your statement that Christianity desecrated the world. I don't disagree that the earth has been desecrated nor that the historical vehicle was Christian civilization. I just don't see that as having been specifically of Christianity but truly because of a failure of Christianity to be fully itself. If you will, because our civilization became collectively those who said, "Lord, Lord" but didn't do His will.
I agree with that, definitely -- Christianity in its fullness cannot be world-denying or nature-desecrating; in fact, of all religious visions, it should be the most world-affirming and nature-cherishing. And so it is painful -- agonizingly painful -- to reflect on how things have actually gone down...
It is painful. Extremely painful. I think we both see the problem and the solution as radical in nature. That is, we have been cut off from and need to return to our roots. I think we just disagree about some, but only some, of the particulars about that enterprise.
There is not doubt that *all* Christian groups in one way or another, to one degree or another, have been shaped for the worse by making too great a peace with those revolutions collectively known as modernity. And even before this, we too often failed to be fully ourselves, and have too often followed other gods. And there were even some things that were either good, or at least harmless, at one time but nonetheless had negative potentials that lay dormant underground until erosion and atmospheric changes caused them to blossom.
Okay. Yeah, I see you! And I don't think we're actually as nearly far apart as it would seem, at least as far as principle is concerned. It seems to me to be more in the application of that principle and the specific interpretations of the Christian world through that principled lens where I see our disagreements to lie. Specifically, in some of what we see as the "sludge" that has been brought downstream (e.g. icons as virtual reality and creation ex nihilo to name a couple).
Believe it or not, I actually don't disagree with your description of Plato nor of the reality of the harms that can be traced back to his influence. Neither do I disagree with the statement that Christendom brought these into the wider world nor that the New Testament ekklesia is/will be in a similar state to the Old Testament ekklesia and in need of a similar purgation. I really do see the pattern of "the faithful" remnant playing out in Christianity as it did in ancient Israel and as it did/is in humanity as a whole.
I just don't see that the Platonic influence has brought only harm. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and I don't think it was illegitimate for the Church to use him, in principle. In practice I can't and won't deny that, at least when it comes to the application of dogma, the sifting process with him was not what it needed to be. Nor do I see Christianity qua Christianity as the problem (as per your last statement) in bringing the destructive, "world"-denying to the wider world, but Christianity failing to be fully itself. Christendom, both East and West, but especially the West (as much as it pains me to say it) truly did plant the seeds of its own destruction. I just see it having done so by turning its back on itself.
Regarding denial of the mainstream, I simply wish to offer the following clarification: I wasn't trying to say that you were simply denying the mainstream in any sort of deliberate or self-concious way. What I'm *trying* to get at is that I see an anticatholic rejection of the mainstream as a very real and dangerous *potential consequence*, intended or nor, of *how* you've been going about this; of the angles you've been traversing and of the intensity or degree of the critiques you've levied. That is - and I it's okay if we'll just have to agree to disagree about this - I think you've picked some wrong targets in the specifics of your criticisms and I don't think they've been proportional.
Honestly, Graham, I think this was a good talk! I feel like we understand each other a lot better! At least, I now feel I have a very good idea of where you're coming from and why. I agree with the vast majority of it and, even where I don't agree, I get it!
Zach, thanks for taking the time and care to flesh out your thoughts even more here! And you may be right that I've picked some wrong targets, and that my criticism hasn't been proportional. I don't have some total vision of the world, but I do have the human feeling and experience of someone living in the world, and it's this that I give voice to. I don't at all feel the need to develop the typical arguments that you're "supposed" to develop; there's already plenty of that around. I have my own voice, and I'm trying to put words to things that a few of us -- though not all, and maybe not even many -- feel (I know I am not unique; I'm weird, but definitely not unique)
(note that I am not broadly anti-Greek, only anti-Plato. I think Heraclitus was spot on, with his insight that change is real, that reality IS change -- but Parmenides (change is an illusion; that which is real does not change) is who won Plato's heart, and it's Plato who won the first of the Western culture wars...))
I hear you, Zach. There is a time and place for compromise, synthesis, nuance, balance, patience, etc...of course. That is the mature, reasonable approach. "There is always a reason why things are the way they are, just try to understand what you can and accept with humility what you can't, go with the flow, etc." -- I don't know how many times I've heard this from people (NOT you) in positions of authority, who really just have a stake in maintaining the status quo, and who don't really understand or appreciate how dire the situation is right now -- how serious the need is to reconnect with nature, and get real. So, I just want to push in an extreme direction. and it's kind of silly that the direction i'm pushing in is the extreme one. I'm tired of the constant justification of almost every attitude that the church has adopted (in Orthodoxy, this is everywhere). i think it is actually possible to go seriously off the rails, and that the thing to do is admit what's going on, and go in another direction.
“Christianity is the most difficult path there is” well, Jesus said “you will find rest for your souls , for my yoke is easy and my burden light” IMO even more devastating for the church than platonism has been nearly two thousand year infection of the yeast of the Pharisee and Sadducee who always resist the Holy Spirit and lay heavy burdens on people “for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” Christianity is meant to be gift based raw straight up Spirit felt and known tangibly in the body and soul and in the temple built of living stones in the here and now.. “You shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace” “the kingdom of God is rightwiseness, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.” Rightwiseness is an older form of the word righteousness used in early English translations.
Amen, brother. "Come close to my side, you whose hearts are on the ground, you who are pushed down and worn out, and I will refresh you. Follow my teachings and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest from your troubled thoughts. Walk side by side with me and I will share in your heavy load and make it light." (Mt. 11:28-30, First Nations Version)
My favorite in this series!
As I read it a song came on the radio.
Lyrics
Can you break bread with me?
Break bread with me
Break break, can you break bread with me?
Break bread with me
Woah, Kenny!
Why you not here with me?
Can you break bread with me?
Why you switch phone numbers like clothes?
Why you can't answer me? (Yeah)
'Cause I got more coming
Why you not here with me?
Can you break bread with me?
Why you switch phone numbers like clothes?
Why you can't answer me? (Yeah)
'Cause I got more coming
"Can you break bread with me?
Break bread with me
Break break, can you break bread with me?
Break bread with me
Woah, Kenny!
Why you not here with me?
Can you break bread with me?"
--is what I wish I'd used for the epigraph. I hate the word synchronicity because it has too many sharp angles in it, for what the phenomenon is (ripples is better), but damn, that song was good timing. Glad you dug it all. Let's break bread together soon. "Why you not here with me?"
"Gregory was the author of the private mass, such a great abomination that there has never been anything like it in the New Testament church." --Luther
This was excellent! I especially loved your emphasis on the Hebrew revelation being the inversion of the religion of their neighbors!
Both N.T. Wright (who introduced this, at the time, unreconstructed evangelical to the fullness of the bodily resurrection) and Fr. De Young have hit on that point especially well. Indeed, Fr. De Young (who spends half his podcast, it seems, calling out the undue influence of Plato on us) mentioned that whereas in the pagan temples the priests fed the idols, in the Jewish temple, the idea of the bread was that God was feeding his priests.
Enjoyed this whole piece!
Thanks, Zach. Also, you get the prize for liking the essay 10 minutes after it came out, so you must have liked it in advance, which I like ;) Yeah, NT Wright was really important for me, too. And glad to hear there are other Orthodox priests, besides Schmemann, who call out Platonism. I'd be interested to know if there are Orthodox priests out there not only calling out Platonism, but actively subverting it, excising it, spitting out the poison, healing the wound. If that were like a movement happening now--and, more so--if there were any motion at all towards restoring the Eucharist as a real meal, not just a symbolic one, I'd be very, very interested to know that. I looked for signs of that for about a decade before giving up.