BALANCING DOGMA vs. PIETY:
BELIEFS vs. EXPERIENCES

© 1999, 2000 by Orchid Land Publications

[updated 10-9-00]

      One can find in Orthodoxy (at least online) those of either extreme--those who stress pious acts and visionary experiences to the exclusion of any idea of the intellectual beauty of holy Orthodoxy; and those who over-intellectualize the faith and drop the piety in favor of a dessicate and etiolate list of truths.  Some religions don't have this problem.  You won't find many beliefs in Fundamentalist Protestantism (hardly even the Trinity); those you find are mainly about practices--the age of getting baptized, and the like.  

     Other religions are much more "cerebral" (like Christian Science), without necessarily being very "rational."  Interestingly (and perplexingly) enough, Liberal Christians--equally with the Fundies on the antitraditionalist left extreme of Christianity--have migrated from a cerebral stance to a relativism favoring good feelings over beliefs.   (Any reader wishing to get an idea of what an abandonment of the "cerebral" leads to is welcome to check out E. L. Mascall's book, Whatever happened to the human mind?)   But the holistic character of holy Orthodoxy opens up the possibility and danger that beliefs may disdain experience or piety or, equally, that the inspiring lives of the Saints will wipe out reasoning over why  we believe what we believe and how our beliefs cohere.  It is not a hypothetical danger; one can find it easily enough.  (This is, by the way, not the same problem as how holy Orthodoxy should be presented to the heterodox world around us; CLICK HERE).  

     So Where should we look for guidance?  A worthwhile source of information is found in the  hieromonk Seraphim (Rose)'s famous book (one of the best-sellers ever in Russia)--Orthodoxy and the religion of the future, referring to developments taking place on the American religious scene--mostly in "Eastern" religions other than Eastern Orthodoxy.   (Those who are unfamiliar with Fr. Seraphim [may his memory be everlasting!] should be informed that he led a life of extreme austerity.)   He says:

Can  this lack of that balance (a balance that Fr. Seraphim of Sarov so admirably exhibited in his own life) be the background for those Internet warnings by earnest and devout Orthodox people who condemn cerebral approaches?  Or are they just warning against over-intellectualizing the Faith, as one should charitably assume?  Clearly, prying into the inner architectonics of what are infinite Mysteries crosses the line into rationalism--including Aquinas's inquiries over whether God's knowledge is discursive, is of things inexistent, of singulars, is variable, is of things theoretical or practical; whether He wills from necessity or freely, whether His will is immutable, etc.  (One can object to these pryings without losing one's great admiration from Thomas's accomplishment--its systematic grandeur, its fair presentation of good arguments against as well as for each conclusion, its leaving no stone unturned, etc.).  Since Christ is the Reason and Wisdom of God in the New Testament, using reason in its right place is very Orthodox. An Orthodox person becomes too cerebral or rationalist when s/he attempts to use a finite human intellect to grasp an infinite reality in any manner other than the apophatic--which is grasping what God could not be or do without ceasing to remain uncreated Divinity.  (One may secondarily consider the extent to which one may rely on the ways in which the Greek language, which the divine Majesty ordained to be the vehicle for formulating and propagating the Gospel--e.g. the concept of energy in Greek being a prominent example.)   Analysing infinite Mysteries beyond what is obvious in revelation (a good example is John 15:26 for understanding the procession of the Holy Spirit) breeds the errors of the Filioque, transubstantiation, purgatory, and so on.  
     It may be inferred by some readers that talking about paradigms is to engage in an un-Orthodox overuse of reason--"rationalism."  The truth is that paradigms are irrational in being immune to the true-false distinction and in usually being pre-conscious; paradigms are prerational in being necessary to thinking; and paradigms are rational (preterrational?) in accounting for individual thoughts.  There is nothing un-Orthodox about paradigm analysis in its right use--e.g. to understand and deal with the forms of Christianity invented in the second millennium.
     The conflict that the West sees between faith and good works is absent in Greek of 2 Philp. 2:12-13 and other passages.

     In judging such matters, it would be wrong not to allow for different temperaments and different accomplishments--those who find inspiration in the beauty of the ways in which the teachings of Orthodoxy cohere, those who find more cogent inspiration in the beauty of Saints' lives (even if the same admirers cannot freeze alone in a Russian forest for 1000 days or make 1000 prostrations every evening or be blessed with a dozen visions of the Theotokos by middle age), etc.   We need to remember what St. Paul says in 1 Cor. 12 about the diversity of members of Christ's Body--why they are necessary, why they are valuable, how they complement one another in an ontological holism.  Certainly, the dogmatician should be inspired by St. Mary of Egypt, and not only on the Lordsday devoted to commemorating her in the Great Fast.  Certainly, the pious meditator on love should (to the degree one's mental abilities enable one to perceive systematic thinking) be rapt by the beauty of the ineffable teachings on the Trinity, the consequences of the Incarnation, the human perfection of the all-holy Theotokos, greater than the Cherubim and Seraphim, the true Glory of the uncreated Light of God.  The practitioner indeed has an advantage over the thinker.  For any human can do good, can love, can honor, can worship--whereas only a certain mentality can do the kinds of systematic thinking that makes our beliefs intelligible at least to the extent of understanding their basis, their lógos, and their interrelations; there are far fewer of these than of the many.  But quantity should not outweigh or efface quality of either kind--thinking well, doing good.  Being inspired by doctrine, being inspired by heroic virtue:  Either kind of Orthodox Christian may be called to martyrdom, as so many indeed were during recent the Communist era obtaining in so many Orthodox nations.

     We have got to distinguish quality and quantity.  In a balanced Orthodoxy, Worship, piety, and experience certainly deserve the lion's share in terms of quantity--even in the work of "professional" theologians.  But it's a trade-off with regard to quality--for how can theology be good and right without good and right piety and the dýnamis déeseos dýnamis písteos ("sense of prayer, sense of belief"); how can piety be good and right if not guided by the influence of right belief--as Fr. Seraphim insists?   Even those who "major" in piety and praxis--the monastics--cannot exist without inspiration from the holy font of true dogma (cf. 2 Thes. 2:10 on love of the truth).  We ought to see that belief directs and safeguards practice, while practice energizes, gives life and reality, to belief.

     If those who violate the holism of holy Orthodox are in error, as the preceding comments suggest, that does not derogate from the necessity of specialization in what one is best at.  While the heart, hand, the eye, the mind, the ear, the vocal cords (and golden throat) have been combined by some of the Saints, most members of Christ will have to be satisfied with being good at being a heart or hand or eye or mind or ear.  The point is, unless the present writer misunderstands St. Paul's 1 Cor. 12, to respect each for what kind of member of the Body one is, even while each member strives to embrace as much of the others' talents as one's own capacities (dynámeis) enable one to do.  We fall short of Orthodoxy when we fall into a Protestant extreme of "just accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior" and even "as God" (rather more than the prevailing description of a demigod) and work hard at doing good while speaking chillingly toward those who seek to get at the lógos or reason of our beliefs--without going too far in the intellectual direction.  We fall into a scholastic imbalance (which, let it be said despite the remarks above, Thomas Aquinas avoided in his own life) and scorn the lives of humble believers who pray daily, frequent the services of the Church, who live charitable lives.  There have been martyrs from both camps of Christians--martyrs that those of other "specializations" should admire rather than disparage.
      If you look at some "Christian" exchanges on the Internet, you can find viler prejudice and greater verbal abuse than on most secular equivalents.  If you just restrict yourself to Orthodox exchanges, you can find prejudices against cerebral interests and, one can hardly doubt, equivalent put-downs from the other side.  This should not be.  Anyone who has seen a vision of the Theotokos or the Savior, even if not of the uncreated Light, can hardly migrate from that energy to that of expressing doubt (not to say disdain) about the worth of the other kind of Christians.  One can respect the honesty even of heretics without agreeing with their views--which have more represented often false emphases than outright rejections of Christian wisdom--a fact that does not diminish their evil.  It is not surprising, given the supreme importance of religious truth and practice for those concerned, that ecclesiastic differences are so often bitter.  But we should hate error, not those who err.  This is of course easier to say than to put into practice.  That should not diminish one's aiming at the goal.

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