Father Josiah Trenham, archpriest at St. Andrew Orthodox Church in Riverside, California had an interesting conversation with a parishioner of his, Dr Zachary Porcu (website), a theologian and author of the book, "Journey to Reality" (bookfinder). Two things stand out to me as a blogger, writing on issues concerning philosophy and Orthodoxy. First, Dr Porcu explains the liberal democrat, secular approach to religion. They misrepresent secularism as a 'neutral' stance on religious issues. Just yesterday we commented in a post that included the debate between professors Mearsheimer and Dugin, that this is exactly how liberal democrats explain, not just religion, but their entire ideology: as a universal, neutral stance on everything from (geo)politics to the silliest is news items (link).
Dec. 14, 2024 Patristic Nectar: Why Young People Are Losing Faith.
Basis on this fallacy they have declared their own moral supremacy on the world stage. As Dr Porcu explains, the secularist world view informs the entirety of the culture, which is downstream from the basic world view. But the inquisitive mind of Dr Zachary does not stop there.
This does not emerge with a full hundred percent certitude from the interview, but Dr Porcu may be alluding briefly to what we assume to be an uniquely Greek aspect of Orthodoxy, namely the integration of the seen and the unseen as the basis of the world view on reality.
It is a very complicated concept to explain. We tried a few times in these pages, must recently on Nov. 28 in a posting titled "How the West Lost Touch with Reality" (link). In contrast to the dualistic Platonic approach...
..."In Aristotle's world the unseen, immaterial dimension and the seen material world of atoms and molecules are one and the same, an inseparable, integrated whole."
We illustrated the concept of integration with a fairly typical example how Greeks experience life in a different way than Westerners do. Dr Porcu may be alluding to the same when he is stating that "the physical and the spiritual are inseparable" (6:55 mark). He goes on.
"We really think that the physical world is primary, science tells us real verifiable truth about the world and spiritual things are kind of unprovable, can't be demonstrated and many people believe that at a very deep level. All of us believe that at some level, because even those who believe in miracles, still think of miracles as along an enlightenment definition which is, the laws of physics were temporarily suspended.
"That is not the Orthodox, ancient view of miracles. When I start explaining what is a sacramental, ancient way if viewing the world, it sounds like superstition. If I say, physical signs, colors, numbers, all of these things have intrinsic, spiritual meaning, people go okey, like astrology, so you believe in superstition."
Father Josiah, whom I know is not aware of the dualistic (Platonic) versus the integrated (Aristotelian) view on reality, does not pursue the matter further; and at this point the conversation might still go the way of Platonic dualism.
We probably have to go and read the book Dr Porcu wrote, in order to find out what his particular view on this is. We will probably do that any way. But we thought it might be interesting to point that out.
After all, it is not a cosmic step from the integrated world during Eastern Orthodox liturgy, to an entire reality functioning in this way.
We will continue pursuing this subject as it is the key to that illusive commodity entire weblogs and podcasts are now built upon: the re-enchantment of our lives.
Comments
Post a Comment