Vlad: The spiritual poverty of Evangelicalism is in stark contrast to the spiritual wealth of any Eastern Orthodox Church.
imardmd1: If that's what you think, I doubt if you know what "spiritual" means, to tell you the truth.
Vlad: If that’s what you think, I doubt you know what the word “spiritual” means.
Well, Vlad, this "Nyah, nyah" ploy of answering may be cute, but it is not spiritual. It is soulish. And I do really know what it means to be spiritual. It is a thing of the mind, Vlad, not a gorgeous container in which to deliver a dress-up play-acting religion to a credulous, carnal audience. Here's the way Paul puts it:
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Re the Spiritual Mind:
1 Cor 2:14-16 AV
But the naturalsoulish man receiveth not the deep, v. 10 things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him:
neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him?
But we have the mind of Christ.
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Re the Mind of Christ:
Php 2:5-8 AV
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant,
and was made in the likeness of men:
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross.
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The true Protestant Puritans put away the fancy robes, headdresses, gargoyled architecture, and in a plain meeting home or assembly hall sought the beauty of Christ, who laid aside His prerogatives and glory, to come and die a bloody mess on the engine of Romish torture. It is not clear to me that any of the statues and art and choir robes and rituals mean much to Him, if the heart has not been submitted for His cleansing power and spiritual maintenance, and is a personal friend (Jn. 15:
So please, don't harp on whether the New Testament Christian of Paul's time or my time were/are interested in any ginned-up system of quasi-holy liturgical oblations and ablutions, gymnastics or vocal trills. That kind of thing was foreign to Justin Martyr and ought to be to today's disciple, regenerated-in-the-spirit by the Holy Spirit, prepared as a utensil for the Lord's use:
Paul's counsel to Timothy re how to be spiritual:
2Ti 2:20-21 AV
But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver,
but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour.
If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified,
and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work.
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Are you ready, Vlad, for that kind of spirituality? It's not the surface things that count, FRiend. Spirituality is not visible or tangible. The Holy Spirit is like the wind, going wherever He wishes.
And I know He's in me.
. . . and is a personal friend (Jn. 15: 14-15, 1 Cor. 1:9).
“Are you ready, Vlad, for that kind of spirituality? It’s not the surface things that count, FRiend. Spirituality is not visible or tangible. The Holy Spirit is like the wind, going wherever He wishes.”
And there we see problem again with your understanding of spiritual reality Here, I’ll put it in bigger letters so maybe you’ll see it: NO ONE HERE IS TALKING ABOUT THE “SURFACE THINGS”. NO ONE HERE IS TALKING ABOUT THAT WHICH IS ONLY ‘VISIBLE OR TANGIBLE’. Well, maybe you are, but I’m not. This is exactly what I mean by the idea that you apparently don’t know what spiritual means. You, apparently, are reflexively, like Pavlov’s dog, barking out the Protestant bias against anything spiritual that doesn’t agree with your almost Cathar-like disdain for the physical.
Let me remind you of something: JESUS IS PHYSICAL. He is “visible”. He is “tangible”. Are you denying He is spiritual? Is He just a “surface thing” to you? I bet you’ll say, “Of course Jesus is spiritual” - even though you essentially just denied something could be spiritual and “visible” or “tangible”. According to your logic the crucifixion is not a spiritual event because it was “visible” or “tangible”.
The Eucharist is spiritual. Blessings are spiritual. The Eastern Orthodox way of praying is spiritual. And all of those things are also “visible” or “tangible”.
“And I know He’s in me.”
But according to your logic there can be no actual “visible” or “tangible” effect. You negate the very power of God to operate in the “visible” or “tangible” world.
By the way, the real reasons “true Protestant Puritans put away the fancy robes, headdresses, gargoyled architecture” was long ago explained by no less a Protestant authority than the Ralph Adams Cram once wrote:
“From the outbreak of the Protestant revolution, the old kinship between beauty and religion was deprecated and often forgotten. Not only was there, amongst the reformers and their adherents, a definite hatred of beauty and a determination to destroy it when found; there was also a conscientious elimination of everything of the sort from the formularies, services, and structures that applied to their new religion. This unprecedented break between religion and beauty had a good deal to do with that waning interest in religion itself. Protestantism, with its derivative materialistic rationalism, divested religion of its essential elements of mystery and wonder, and worship of its equally essential elements of beauty. Under this powerful combination of destructive influences, it is not to be wondered at that, of the once faithful, many have fallen away. Man is, by instinct, not only a lover of beauty, he is also by nature a ‘ritualist,’ that is to say, he does, when left alone, desire form and ceremony, if significant. If this instinctive craving for ceremonial is denied to man in religion, where it preeminently belongs, he takes it on for himself in secular fields; elaborates ritual in secret societies, in the fashion of his dress, in the details of social custom. He also, in desperation, invents new religions and curious sects working up for them strange rituals . . . extravagant and vulgar devices that are now the sardonic delight of the ungodly. ... If once more beauty can be restored to the offices of religion, many who are now self-excommunicated from their Church will thankfully find their way back to the House they have abandoned. The whole Catholic Faith is shot through and through with this vital and essential quality of beauty. It is this beauty implicit in the Christian revelation and its operative system that was explicit in the material and visible Churches and their art. We must contend against the strongest imaginable combination of prejudices and superstitions. These are of two sorts. There is first, the heritage of ignorance and fear from the dark ages of the sixteenth century. I am speaking of non-Catholic Christianity. Ignorance of authentic history, instigated by protagonists of propaganda; fear of beauty, because all that we now have in Christian art was engendered and formulated by and through Catholicism; fear that the acceptance of beauty means that awful thing—’surrender to superstition.’ It is fear that lies at the root of the matter, as it does in so many other fields of mental activity.” (Radio Replies, vol. 2: 1052)