Posted on 05/25/2004 7:14:01 PM PDT by Destro
When truth becomes buried in dogma
The head - not the heart - now rules society, religion
By Yvonne Seng
Special to The Daily Star
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
CAIRO: Archbishop Damianos is from a line of holy men who contemplate the soul of the planet. For what seems like eternity, the Greek Orthodox monks of Saint Catherine's monastery in the Sinai have gazed at the ancient stars to find the face of God. Now satellites crisscross their perfect night sky.
Today's monks continue in the study of dusty texts and in meditation of the otherworldly landscape, where Moses received the 10 Commandments, our moral guidebook.
But sitting opposite the Holy Father of the Desert, one can't help but think how unreal it all seems, how divorced these men are from the realities of the outside world. Behind high walls on a Sunday morning, they sit eating ice-cream cake trucked in refrigerated vans from the outside, while only feet away the Universal Herd swarms around their refuge. Holy pilgrims, hardened tourists, and the just-plain curious come from around the planet to climb Mount Moses, check out the icons, have a religious experience.
Behind the stone walls of the fortress, these men are isolated from the wars, poverty, violence, even daily stresses. They have retreated from the mess. In so doing perhaps they have traded one bloody hardship post for another.
Because of their majestic isolation, however, bounded by stark nature, the monks also have a unique perspective of the planet. Life on the margin allows them to pull back and to think in longer, broader terms.
Asked for his views of our recent advances in science and technology, Archbishop Damianos' answers, rooted in history, are directed by a spiritual compass.
"Our knowledge here is so small, so small," he says. "I think that we exist as a small atom, with small knowledge.
"Throughout history," he says, "dogma has been mistaken for knowledge."
Throughout history there have been fights between Eastern and Western Christianity - between Occidental and Oriental, between Catholicism and Protestantism. Over dogma.
"Even today, we are born into the Catholic Church or the Protestant Church," Damianos points out, "or the Anglican Church, or the Orthodox Church. So there will be always religious points of difference between Christians. It is really a very sensitive issue, but we still have a good chance. Through love in Christ."
He elaborates: "You believe ... like the Orthodox, that you have a theoretical basis and you accept it. But it is has to be more than theory. Teaching is alright, but it must also be practical. Practice. On its own, teaching is nothing," he says.
Outside the window rises the dramatic Jebel Mousa. Before meeting with Damianos, I climbed the mountain in the predawn darkness with hundreds of strangers from across the globe. From Korea to Kansas, our individual and social psyches have been shaped by the Thou-Shalt-Nots of this place.
"And the 10 Commandments," I ask, adding: "In practice, the laws of Moses, are the ancient teachings still relevant?"
"The commandments were excellent guides," he says, "but not enough."
Social divisions, and social problems such as drug abuse, poverty and AIDS can be traced to the entanglement of dogma is our modern life, he explains.
"Social problems are also theological problems," he says.
So, is the destruction of
the environment a theologic-
al problem?
"It is a symptom of the chaos in which we now live," he says. "We naturally suffer from our own actions. For example, atomic energy is common now. Nuclear warheads can be made from it. All right, this is dangerous. Even the testing of these weapons leaves nuclear particles in the atmosphere. We must stop it."
The archbishop believes we now have the ability to destroy the earth more than at any other time in history, that the Second Coming will be a result of our mistakes involving technology - not of technology alone, but of technology without spirituality.
"God gives us liberty," he says, "but because we claim to be God, then we make ourselves into holy men."
If scientists are not men with spirituality, he warns, then the present advances in science are dangerous. Whatever benefits humanity, we should keep. If a particular technology has the potential for catastrophe in human life, however, then we must stop it.
In voicing these concerns, the archbishop joins Pope John Paul II, who in his agenda for new millennium called for a moratorium on certain scientific research. High on the Pope's list was cloning. Although the two leaders may be poles apart on matters of Christology, they are united on this issue.
"To control life," the archbishop says, "to have, for example, men like copies. Like cloning. Okay, we know we can do this, but we also know this is not okay. Then we should give glory to God for what we have discovered, then stop it."
He emphasizes that what we think we create or invent, we only discover. That is, it already existed in God's knowledge.
"We believe that what we discover is a miracle," he says. "That it has come out of our own hat. We make ourselves into gods. We make ourselves divine through our own efforts, not through the spirit."
When asked for his opinion of spiritual life in our technological age, he raises his hands in frustration.
"Egoism," he says bluntly. "We act from our heads, not our hearts. ... Our hearts are the chairs for our spirit," he says. "Our heads are the chairs for the ego."
He is referring to the value of spiritual experience.
Like his colleague the grand sheikh of Islam, Sheikh Tantawi of Al-Azhar, the archbishop also advocates cooperation and the need for understanding. He points to a circle he has drawn on my notepad and to the need for us all to move towards the center from wherever we are on or within that circle.
He explains that each person, according to his or her own religion or religious belief, should move as close to the center as possible. The center is the world of the spirit.
As you move toward the center, he instructs, you experience the spiritual life. Book learning and theory are not enough. Commandments and laws are helpful, sure. But the paradox of the spiritual life, is that range precedes depth.
"We are all creations," he says, "and we are all a point of creation. The Orthodox follows but in a different way."
Christianity, now a minority within the Middle East, is decreasing proportionately in the world. And, although the Greek Orthodox Church is one of the largest of the Eastern line, Orthodoxy is a minority within even the Christian world. I ask the archbishop how the Greek Orthodox Church defines its identity under these pressures to survive and what beliefs keep them going.
"We believe our mission for all the world is not to increase the number of Orthodox in the world," he says, "but to provide a good example for all people. By praying more, by being more mystical, more spiritual. That is the meaning of Orthodox."
One wonders if the past doesn't hold some guiding wisdom for the future. According to the desert father, however, the past is no example for the future.
"If we are looking to the past to find truth ... we are not going to find it," he says.
Looking over our shoulders for a more simple and uncomplicated world, free from the stresses and problems that currently plague us, is not the answer. That perfect past is another of our inventions. Like Lot's wife, we can't go back.
"We need to return to spirituality," Archbishop Damianos says. And we should not confuse spirituality with dogma.
Truth, like faith, has been changed over the centuries by the minds of men.
Truth has become buried in dogma. The head - not the heart - now rules society and religion. The chair now sits on the sitter.
Yvonne Seng, author of Men in Black Dresses: Quest for the Future Among Wisdom Makers of the Middle East, is a cultural historian specializing in the Middle East and Turkey.
Many on the Religion Forum do just that. The conservative Roman Catholics wishing the return of the Tridentine Mass and Latin, and so on. I don't necessarily disagree. After all Orthodoxy is just that -- unchanged, rich and spiritual.
But, just as the grass looks greener on the neighbor's side, so does the past often look more perfect and appealing to some. That this is not so, and that, as Archibishop Demetrios says, we are not going to find truth in the past, I will cite none other than the Vatican I.
Convened in 1870 to address several issues and ended prematurely with Italian invasion of the Vatican, the Council bears witness to a phenomenon known as the "evil of modernism."
Surely, no one alive today would consider the "good old" days to be as bad as the current ones. Surely, no one had the scandalous disrespect and lack of holiness we see today back in 1870. After all, some would rather return to the times when the Church was free of these upheavals.
The facts, however, show that human nature is the only thing that didn't change and that the problems we see today are not that much different from the problems perceived by the Roman Catholics in 1870.
The 3rd session of the Vatican I took place on April 24, 1870. The Council condemns "naturalism" (Paragraph 7):
they are found to distort the genuine sense of the dogmas which Holy Mother Church holds and teaches, and to endanger the integrity and genuineness of the faith"
As Archbishop Demetrios correctly observes, dogmas are not the answers, but in spirituality.
The truth is, the Church founded by Christ was and is Catholic -- but it's not only Vatican Catholic. The Orthodox Churches are fully Catholic.
all the schisms from her have occurred due to the manifest sin of the schismatics
That is a sweeping generalization. What was the "sin" of the Greek Christians? I think the sin and the schism is to be found in Rome and I don't say that to inflame passions. The schism and the sin was to go against the established religion by inserting clauses that made sense in Latin but not in Greek and that were not allowed. Even the popes (until the 11th century) forbade Latin bishops to use the Filioque. The schism was clearly on the Latin side.
The Filioque is a theological concept. It has to do with the monarchy of the Father. The insertion of the Filioque, first by some theologians, and then by the Council of Toledo (a local council that had no authority to change the official Creed), was a violation of the Church canon prohibiting any changes.
However, the Latin terminology may be confusing but the theology maintains the monarchy of the Father and therefore the concept of trinity is not disturbed by the insertion of the Filioque. However, that is not immediately clear. Whereas the official Creed from the middle of the 5th century to the middle of the 11th century had no ambiguity because Filioque was there officially.
It is much less of a sin for the Latins to dispense with the Filioque then for the Orthodox to accept it. But, the Filioque is not the cause of the schism. At the end of the 8th Ecumenical Council, which was signed by the Eastern and the Western fathers, including the pope, the Filioque was not sanctioned. So, the insertion of it in the 11th century by a pope was in direct violation of the Church Creed to which other popes agreed. Clearly, the schism is to be found in the Rome. The Orthodox Church emains true to the Ecumenical Councils that defined the faith as it was when the church was still united.
The real schism is not over theology but over papacy. That this is so is clear from the (comm)union between the Greek-Catholic churches and Rome. These so-called "Greek-Catholic" churches (i.e. Unrkaininan) are Orthodox in their Creed (without Filioque) and in every manner of worship and theology -- the only difference is that they recognize the pope as the de facto ruler of the Church with the juridical authority over other bishops.
The real schism of the schurch occurred in 1870, at the Vatican I, when the Latin Church (with some dissention) elevated the pope above other bishops not in eminence (he always had that), but in juridical power over them.
So, it was dogma after all that drove the last nail in the coffin of the original Church, with papacy. The schism, again, is to be found in Rome.
I always suggest that the Vatican, if it is sure of its innovations and inventions, to take the first step and return to the Church of the first Seven Ecumenical Councils, place all dogmas on the table for the Synod to discuss and defend them. Let the Synod decide, let the pope give his opinion. Ultimately, the Synod defines what is faith.
The pope was never the ruler of the Church before it split. He was the spiritual influence and a spiritual force to be reckoned with, but he could not force or order bishops to act in a certain way. The Church was known to vote for something over the pope's veto.
There were five seats in the church back then, Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, and your church began when it split from the other 4. The other four of us are still together. Come home when you are ready.
I am reading the first Lossky book, now after reading others written later. It is fascinating.
"Orthodox Theology".
I always thought it is ironic that dogmatic, propositional theology is so diametrically opposed to the parable/paradox form of teaching that Jesus supposedly used.
Jesus came preaching the coming immanent Kingdom of God and the church came instead...
He founded the Church. The Church teaches what Jesus taught. Where is the irony in that?
Catholic is a Greek origin word - as Greek a word as orthodox is.
The church does its best but doesn't really seem to want to really carry the cross.
That's where I see sad irony....
I beg to differ on this one point. So many are alive today due to advances in modern medicine that in 1870, very probably wouldn't have lived past childhood. What the actual percentage is I cannot say, but I think it may be substantial.
I see it as kind of a catch-22. On a global scale, we have the means to alleviate much misery which has often been done, but we also have weapons and the means for mass genocide.
There is probably a toxic spinoff from modern technology that we do not fully comprehend at this time in terms of psychological and physiological impairment due to stress and other factors, some brought about by altering the natural rhythms of life. One example I've often pondered is how much electricity which has allowed people live and work into and through the night may have a downside. Another might be people who are forced to work endlessly repetitive jobs after the industrial revolution.
It seems that in every era, there was an upside which had an accompanying downside.
We probably didn't have ice cream in 1870 :-). Or hamburgers, hot dogs, potato chips, and pepsi/coca cola :-).
At least by 1870 the Italians had tomatoes.
Despite "progress," human society hasn't changed. Twot housand years ago, you had good neighbors and bad neighbors, children misbehaved, couples had disagreements, in-laws interfered, political correctness existed, people discussed politics, had sex, had holidays, etc. The only thing that changes are the means and the pace. Human nature hasn't changed.
We didn't have ice cream in 1870 but we didn't have all the chemicals in our food either. People had more resistance to colds and less asthma, but women died at childbirth in greater numbers, and tuberculosis was a big problem, etc. They didn't have AIDS but they had syphillis which was usually undiagnosed and for which there was no treatment.
So, the nostalgic Roman Catholics who long for the "good old days" of pre-Vatican II need only go back to 1870 and realize that the Church in 1870 thought the children of the Church then, as now, disobeyed and misbehaved just the same.
That hardly follows from the words you wrote which are:
Jesus came preaching the coming immanent Kingdom of God and the church came instead.
The word "Church" means all believers; ecclesia is gathering of the faithful. It's not an organizations, it's an organism made up of believers. When you say the Church doesn't want to carry the cross, then you are saying that the believers, across the board, neither believe nor live according to the faith.
The Church is not made up of saints but of sinners. Becoming saints is a long process we can only hope to achieve, but it is not easy -- because it requires defeating human nature. Are you a saint?
The purpose of the Church is to lead humanity back to God by following the Way Jesus Christ showed us.
As far as I know, the Church teaches what Jesus taught. Whether we follow Him is up to each believer. You can't sweep the entire Church under the rug with such generalizations.
...we still have dogma issues left to work out, and they are important to us
The only real stumbling block between the Eastern and Western Catholicism is the pope. That wedge was established in 1870 by a majority vote. The role of the pope as the infallible ruler of the Church and above other bishops is not the historical role the pope had in the undivided Church.
It is therefore clear where the schism originates and what needs to be done to return to a united Church. Again, I say let's scrap all dogmas and start at the end of the 7th Ecumenical Council, place all the dogmas and innovations on the table and let the Synod decide.
Tseng may have misquoted the Desert Father with that past and truth, but if I can sense what he is driving at it is probably that the truth is eternal.
He may have been telling Tseng in a roundabout way that history does not provide the truth by definition, lest some read history as the source of truth.
Maybe I just don't understand Orthodoxy
The Orthodox Church does not evangelize. It is a duty of an Orthodox Christian to tell non-Orthodox about the truth, but not to force. God gave us free will and we must not force people to believe. He showed us the Way but He doesn't make us take it. The number of believers is not indicative of how many real believers there are. For example, two thirds of all Roman Catholics in America don't believe in the Real Presence. But they give donations. The Roman Church has succumbed to many changes in order to attract and keep people coming to church. People should come to church to glorify and worship God. They should not have to be bribed to come in.
Orthodox Church's priority is not on advertising, although I once witnessed to my horror a stoppage in the Holy Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox church in St. Augustine, Florida, for a fund-raiser pep talk. That same "church" had a neatly uniformed quire and an electric organ (!). Protestantism has infected many Greek and other Orthodox churches in America and I can see why the pope says that Americans have replaced spiritualism with materialism.
When someone refers to the Greek Orthodox Church they mean the Greek Rite - It can be very confusing in terminology. Originaly the term Greek Catholic stood for the Orthodox. We have the Roman Catholic Church of the Latin Rite and the Greek Catholic Church - the Greek Rite.
The Orthodox Church does evangelize (to preach the gospel) what it does not do is proselytize (to induce someone to convert to one's faith). (Webster's dictionary used)
Thanks for clarifying both concepts Destro.
ping
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