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THE REAL IMPORTANCE OF SOMETHING TO YOU CAN BE GAUGED BY COMPARING THE
PROPORTION OF YOUR ENTIRE THINKING DEVOTED TO IT, AND NOT BY YOUR BEHAVIOR
ALONE. A SIMPLISTIC APPROACH . . . THE REDUCTION OF BELIEF TO A SLOGAN OR
MANTRA . . . IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR THOSE WHO ARE CAPABLE OF BETTER . . . IF, AT
LEAST, IF RELIGION REALLY IS AS IMPORTANT TO YOU AS YOU WOULD HAVE OTHERS BELIEVE!
WE ARE TO JUDGE AND ASSESS IDEAS BUT NOT PRONOUNCE MORAL JUDGMENTS OF OTHER
PEOPLE'S INNER INTEGRITY [Mat. 7:1, Luke 6:37].
YOU
CAN BELIEVE WITHOUT WORSHIPING WHAT YOU BELIEVE, BUT YOU CANNOT REALLY WORSHIP
WITHOUT BELIEVING IN WHO OR WHAT YOU WORSHIP. BELIEVERS CONSTITUTE A
PHILOSOPHY AND DOERS OF GOOD CONSTITUTE AN ETHIC OR A SERVICE ORGANIZATION, BUT IT TAKES WOR-SHIPERS TO MAKE A RELIGION.
WORSHIP
IS OFFERED TO GOD. SERMONS OFFERED TO EGO, MUSIC OFFERED TO
"ENTERTAIN" EGO, PRAYERS FOR EGO'S NEEDS, AND FELLOWSHIP WITH OR
SERVICE TO OTHER EGOS FALL SHORT OF WORSHIP: THEY ARE, WHERE LEGITIMATE,
DIACONY, RATHER THAN PRIESTHOOD. THE DESACRALIZATION OF RELIGION IN MANY
QUARTERS IN AMERICA HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE DESACRALIZATION OF OUR
CULTURE--EVIDENT ON THE MEDIA. CONVERSELY, DESACRALIZED RELIGIONS ARE
DESACRALIZING EUROPEAN AND NORTH AMERICAN CULTURE. iF BELIEF IS NOT THE
ESSENCE OF RELIGION ANY MORE THAN THE FOUNDATION OF A SKYSCRAPER IS ITS RAISON D'ÊTRE, THAT DOES NOT MAKE THE FOUNDATION ANY LESS NECESSARY FOR SKY-
SCRAPER OR BELIEF ANY LESS NECESSARY FOR A RELIGION. NON-CREDAL RELIGIONS
ARE A SHAM FOR THE REASON THAT A BELIEF IS NO MORE THAN AN EMPTY SLOGAN IF ITS
TERMS ARE NOT SET FORM IN DOCTRINES.
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If we begin with the assumption that religion is important
for a person, doesn't it follows that that person should devote greater mental
abilities to it than to what is less important? Of course, what one's
mental abilities are--and hence what one's obligations in the cognitive arena
are--vary from the more intelligent to the less intelligent.
2. Is what respect is
it important for what is important to be simple?
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An example that
will show a valid simplicity in contrast with the sort of
complexity that drives Western Christians to advocate simplicity tout
court is found in the contrast between Eastern and Western views
of the Fall and Salvation. In the East,
the FALL
is the LOSS
of the Assimilation to God; SALVATION
is its RECOVERY--as Diadochos, St. Maximos the Confessor, and others clearly
teach. |
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Gen. 1:26
says that the first humans were made "according to the Icon
[Image] of God" and "according to the
Assimilation." The first, human essence, was (we read in
the Fathers) endowed with the capacities of reasoning (lógos) and
freechoice (proaíresis). The energization of these capacities
to act to please God lay with the Assimilation to God (Greek 'omoiosis
is an energization formation in the morphology of the Greek
language). The uncreated Energies are what Grace is in Orthodox
thinking; with Them or It, there is not Salvation. |
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The Eastern account of the Fall comes down tothe loss of the
Assimilation to God (the uncreated Energies of Grace that enable
reason and the will to act to please God; cf. Gen. 1:26)
and
--of
Salvation as (1) God's joining human and divine natures;
(2) the perfect sacrificial Worship on the Cross that expiates obstacles
to individuals' participation in the divine Nature; and
(3) the Resurrection's making an individual worshiper's incorporation
into Christ, sharing His uncreated Life (Grace) realizable;
&
--(1)
the recovery of the lost Assimilation to God in
Baptism;
2) its preservation through accepting the Energizations of the Holy Spirit (Philp.
2:13 in Greek); and
(3) its culmination in Union with the uncreated Energies of the Trinity
through the Vision of uncreated Light (Energy at its purest).
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Contrast the complex legalistic (juridical) mélange
of Western
satisfaction;
atonement;
redemption (ransoming);
justification;
legal adoption as Christ's virtual member;
sanctification; and
virtual Unity with God's imparticipable Essence. |
A) The question is a crucial one. One aspect is whether one views one's
beliefs as a list embraced as a matter of will and divorced from reason,
regardless of any conflicts between one item in the list and another . . . or
whether consistency among the items in the list--in other words whether they
constitute a system that hangs together--is essential. (Again, this
consideration varies with the intelligence and hence
cognitive obligations incumbent on each individual.)
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Just
as society's values can be divined by the way it pays for work (e.g. a
basketball player vs. a laborer for the Red Cross), so the worth we
place on our religion can be gauged by the amount of thought and
(depending on our talents) action we devote to it. The simplist
degrades religion by excluding it from the highest faculty of a human
being.
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B) Given
what has just been said, we need to distinguish the simplicity of our
assumptions from simplicity in what follows from those premises.
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What is true depends on the axioms that we base what is real and what is
true on. What is good is can be what promotes a nature; or it can
depend on will or a decision taken apart from other
considerations. Given appropriate axioms (premises that are not
truth-vulnerable), any sort of details following from them can be
defended. It is with axioms that we should begin, not only for
this reason but also because they are where justifiable simplicity
should reside. |
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For example, Eastern Christians assume that for worshipers of Christ to
benefit from and share in His Expiatory Sacrifice of Worship (His
Crucifixion) and His soterial Glorification (His Resurrection), the
worshiper needs to be ontologically one with Him, sharing the uncreated
Energies of His Life and being energized by the all-holy Spirit (Philp.
2:13) to live accordingly. It's a very grave choice between Grace
(uncreated Life) or being on one's own individual will
The basic choice is vastly
different for a Western Christian, whose thought world
does not distinguish uncreated Energies (as taught in the New Testament)
from God's imparticipable Essence; and where obedience to laws looms
larger than ontological unity with God, so that a conflict between Grace
and works becomes central. The Western frameworks elevate
divine Justice above Love, teaching that God has to exact punishment
before He forgives. Reason is less important, since it can
be overruled by will--say, in teaching that newborns are guilty of
Adam's sinning or by viewing death and even Christ's Crucifixion as
satisfying divine demands for punishment--or can lead to an under-
standing of the way in which a believer benefits from Christ's
Crucifixion (His Resurrection is a bit too "material" to be be
as central as it was in the Message of early Christianity) is through
virtual (intentional-conceptual or volitional-covenantal) unity with
God's ontologically imparticipable Essence. |
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In the foregoing, we see how simple axioms--the energy view of reality
mentioned 26 times by the Apostle Paul; or a view that volition and
power overrule the need for cognitive justification--that are not
truth-vulnerable entail complex consequences. The questionable
nature of the consequences to an inquiring mind may lead to questions
about the premises. While premises are expected to be simple and
few, simplicity with regard to the details that follow from such
premises--say, in calling for less ratiocination than for other things
obviously important in one's life--can be as easily unquestioningly
superstitious and empty sloganizing as otherwise. Hence,
simplicity in details is un-good for those capable of better. |
While axioms are simple, to treat them or the manifold details entailed by them
as simple slogans or mantras (SEE
HERE) based on
desideration and not on cognition, i.e. rational justification, is effectively
to reduce them to superstitions--at least for person of normal mental abilities.
say as calculated from the way they deal with things that are obviously
important like earning enough to eat and live comfortably. Believing in a
simple Jesus (with no regard to His Divine and human natures) can bemean
Him--say, if one refuses to view Who and What He was or to accept that
Salvation resides solely His Martyrdom and not mainly in His earthly
Glorification (Resurrection). If these "details" follow from
one's assumptions about the superiority of will over cognition or of materiality
and law over what is, they are excusable only in proportion to the ignoring of
mental capacties one exercises in the conduct of other things important to the
persons in question. Justifying a notion of how one shares in what
another does that one would reject in non-religious matters one views as
important can degrade religion unless one can show why something that important
should be simplistic. If human justice rejects punishing the children for
the sins of their parents (cf. also Deut. 24:16), how can we view God as other
than a tyrant if he does what we would shun among humans? How can any view
of simplism justify that? If "simplicity" should signal that
religion is more important as a wish or idea than as something one devotes one's
whole being--including one's highest human faculties--noûs, mind,
feelings, and will--to, does that not turn religion into something ignoble?
SEE
HERE & HERE FOR MORE
