WHY ISN'T IT CONTRADICTORY TO EXCLUDE OUR
MOST DISTINCTIVE FACULTY (REASON) FROM
WHAT ONE CLAIMS TO BE ONE'S HIGHEST
COMMITMENT--RELIGION?
Where should apologetics begin?

©  2004 by Orchid Land Publications

[20040528, 20040717]

    One is not upholding a rationalist view of religion in answering "Yes" to the first question posed in the title of this piece:  One is not contending that reason is greater than love.  One is not proposing that it would be a possible or worthwhile for a finite human mind to try to dissect infinite Mysteries beyond human capacities to analyse.  One is simply saying that excluding from what one claims to be one's highest pursuit that which is the highest human faculty--and an essential part of the Icon (Image) of God that distinguishes us from animals--is self-evidently contradictory.  If the Creator was the Reason (LOGOS) and Wisdom (SOPHIA) of God, as St. John and St. Paul taught, then the Fathers were right to view creation as logikós ("intelligible").
     Some forms of Christianity are descended from a will-first philosophy in which will is held to be higher than reason.  (Nominalism began at Oxford but descends in a straight line from the Muslim Aristotle--a term that in its day referred to the Muslim and Arabic-speaking Jewish philosophers of Córdova and their ancient Greek and Arabic predecessors.)  Yet, will without reason does not rise to the level of intention--the only thing that makes an act meritorious or blameworthy.  The same forms of Christianity that elevated volition about reason descend from a Reformer who substituted a will-based fiducia ("trust, confidence, loyalty") for fides ("belief").  Yet, the West speaks of believers where the Eastern Orthodox are worshipers.

SEER145

     Reason is never bad in itself--with freewill, it is part of the Icon (Image) of God according to St. John of Damaskós.  But reason and freewill can be energized for evil ends (e.g. those of an evil dictator) as well as for good ends like the reasoned defence (apología; cf. lógos "reason") that St. Peter urged on readers of 1 Pet. 3:15.  There is no defensible reply to the first question posed in the title of this piece other than:  "It is a contradiction."  The capacity to reason and choose freely that constitute the Icon of God are reflections of divinity in us.  An even higher and often more relevant human faculty is noûs--the transcendent apperception of divine realities that the Fathers thought to be located in the heart.  If the Assimilation to God that energizes these dynámeis into behavior pleasing to God had not been lost at the Fall, the uncreated Energies of Assimilation to God (they constitute the Life of the all-holy Trinity) would not need to be restored today through Baptism and Communion . . . and eventually the Vision of uncreated Light (energy's purest form) and Divinization (2 Pet. 14; NOT Deification by essence ).

   No one can be expected to reason beyond one's capacities--which most aspects of infinite mysteries are!  But only a philistine Christian would advocate doing less--in despite of St. Peter's injunction.  To disguise reason as the apostolically condemned "vain philosophy" is an egregiously bogus cop-out that insults the Creator, Who St. John and St. Paul tell us was the Reason and Wisdom of God That created the "intelligible" universe which we inhabit.  Such talk shows that bemeaning reason represents either a neglect of the study of the history of human thinking; or that whoever bemeans reason is unable to examine and perhaps escape the unexamined premises of one's paradigm.  (See examples of such premises further on.)  For, since without reason all religions' claims would be as indisputable as a definition or axiom, equalizing all beliefs leads undeviatingly to the shoddy individualistic relativism that prevails today:  "You think the way you wish and I'll do the same."  Truth suffers as the One Who was the Way, the Truth, and the Life is thus disfigured.   The writer is not advocating depriving anyone of freedom to believe in or advocate any non-violent set of religious teachings or interpretations; what one is maintaining is that truth suffers if one claims that truth varies from EGO to EGO.  This altering of objective truth to a subjective sentimentalism denudes truth of any worthwhile import.  Yet, many sincere people subscribe to such an ego-relative view of truth and biblical interpretation; moreover, they claim that it is so obvious to them that they do not have to justify their position to others.  Religion without reason and belief of course becomes a matter of confidence, loyalty, and good works--a sort of spiritualized Red Cross (the old Western term was Pelagianism; see more below on the rôle of good works in soteriology).

     That the relativizing point of view has infected many who avow themselves to be Orthodox is something that is very regrettable.  That ethnic concerns sometimes supersede doctrinal concerns eats at the heart of Orthodoxy ("right belief").  We should pray to the all-pure Theotókos and Mother of YHWH (Luke 1:43, John 8:58) to protect our Church today, just as she has done in the past.  Past heresies pale, however, when compared with relativism.  The ancient heretics of note lodged arguments against those who rejected their teachings and even composed ditties or jingles to be sung to keep the people "in tune" with a given point of view.  (How modern!)  But relativism is more radical than Arianism, Nestorianism, and the like.   
     It has got to be admitted, though, that some arguments cannot be solved in a every framework.  Grace and works remain a soteriological contradiction in Western Christian frameworks.  Phlp. 2:12-13 in Greek is a passage that tells us that Spirit-energized works voluntarily embraced by a worshiper of Christ are not contradictory--the all-holy Spirit is the original Cause; the worshiper is the immediate and necessary conditional cause.  They rather fit into the Orthodox scheme of Salvation without contradictions.

PREMISES THAT HAVE BEEN, CONSCIOUSLY OR NOT, EMBRACED

     If the preceding surmise is as correct as it appears to be, the apologetic enterprise
 urged in 1 Pet. 3:15 should logically begin with the assumptions that constitute a person's framework.  Possible premises in addition to the (ir)relevance of reason include:

--Miracles are (not) possible and do (not) occur.

--The use of reason in religion is vain philosophy and to be avoided.
--Material things are (not) relevant to a spiritual Christianity.  (John 6:53-54 cannot
   mean what itsays.  One's    position affects one view of the [ir]relevance of the rôle 
   of Incarnation and Resurrection in Salvation; the same is true of the Mysteries, 
   which may be either ontological vehicles of Grace or juridical 
   sacraments/ordinances, depending on one's outlook.)
--Time (tradition and development) do (not) exist for revelation.  
   (Dogmas once laid down, do [not] get energized over time with new 
   understandings [doctrines] built on [and consistent with] the 
   Orthodox doctrines that have gone before.)
--The Bible is self-evidently true independently of the premises of 
   one's paradigm.  (One has got to hedge a lot to maintain that today's 
   Bible "existed" long before the Orthodox Church canonized it in the 
   latter fourth century, seeing that  the Epistle to the Hebrews and 
   Apocalypse got included centuries later than other books.)

--Will is superior to and should overrule reason; saving faith is simply 
   trust, not rational belief.    
--Praying has got to be extemporaneous or at least composed by the
  one praying; reading prayers from a book is worthless.
--Sincere conviction makes something real or true (cf. Luther's famous 
   idea (in his Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church) that he 
   could have the mass any time and in any place that he might 
   will [voluero was his word!].)
--Prolonging incurable suffering is morally better/worse than ending life.

     Readers will be amazed that the following premise is voiced by some:

--Making converts is not acceptable.  (Mat. 28:19 cannot mean what it seems to say!).

THE ROLE OF THE EMOTIONS IN RELIGION

     Just about every thing is found--even in Christianity and quasi-Christianity.  Leaving aside the quasi-intellectualized "emotion" of Christian Science and the stillness of the Quakers, we find the extremes of Pentecostalism and the elevated emotions of the Orthodox, with much in-between, often induced by music of the relevant sort.  There are emotionally-deprived forms of Christianity found in many of the mainline Protestant denominations.
   Emotion should, in the opinion of the present writer, not be kept out of religion; they dry up and lose their energy and devolve into goodwill societies that do or do not offer the fellowship people crave. Elevated emotions that represent energizations of the love of God and one's fellow human beings and energizations of hope in a better world are necessary to keep a religion going.   The evidence of what happens when a religion ceases to include emotions is there for all to see..  If reason is what willed behavior is built on and guided by, reason-guided love is (1 Cor. 13) the greatest element in religion.  Both love and hope are essential emotions that easily go astray when reason is banished:  We can love the wrong things--evil; or we can pin our hopes on chimeras--such as an imminent Second Coming of Christ . . . even though Scripture tells us that no one knows when that will be . . . and even though there have probably been few times in Christian history when someone has not propagated the hope of an imminent Second Coming--thousands of false hopes, as time has shown.

   An emotional faith--not belief but the confidence and loyalty that Luther promoted when he re-formed fides ("faith") as fiducia--wiill or emotion, viz. loyalty, confidence, trust, not "formed by reason breeds fideism and relativism.  Fideism is the idea that if I believe something strongly enough, how can it not be true?  Relativism is the idea that whatever each fiducia-centered person holds to be true is true.  Never mind that one person is very confident (faithful to) X and another holds that not-X is the object of trust and confidence.  Nazism and Communism were, for many loyal to those ideologies, examples of fiducia; yet who thinks that they were "true"--let alone because a strong confidence in them.  Unlike some, I am not saying that Luther would have embraced Nazism; what many have concluded however, is that the idea confidence, trust, and loyality suffice as guides for behavior and belief can lead to perversions like those ideologies.  In fact, an ideology is based on (examined or unexamined) slogans that are elevated to truths, even though they can be simply myths.  If one's premises are bad, what one gets out of them will be bad.  

      The emotions of love and hope must be moulded and chastened by reason:  One must not love evil and wrong-doing or primarily oneself; one must not place one's hope on a guess that history has shown over and over to be unreasonable.  Reason forms belief and guides the higher things--the emotions of love and hope.  These are emotions are essential for a living religion.  But since they can energize good or bad or merely silly objectives and behavior, they can be as dangerous as they can be exalting.  They require great discernment.  

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