Post Edited (Theoria) : 7/22/2007 11:22:39 AM (GMT-5)

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=HPIB,HPIB:2005-19,HPIB:en&q=%22%22David+Bradshaw+University+of+Kentucky%22%22

 

http://ethicscenter.nd.edu/events/fallconfs/documents/BradshawDavid.pdf

Eastern Orthodox Views of Modernity

Panel Proposal for "Modernity: Yearning for the Infinite"

Eastern Orthodoxy has never been at home in modernity. Orthodox liturgical and ascetic practices are deeply traditional and cannot be changed to accommodate modern tastes, as has been done in other Christian communions. From a theological standpoint, most Orthodox tend to look upon modernity as a product of trends internal to western Christianity. They trace its roots to medieval scholasticism, with its bifurcation between reason and revelation and its insistent exploration of the limits of what "natural reason" can accomplish. They also see certain characteristic features of medieval western Christianity, such as the doctrine of predestination, the centralization of authority in the Papacy, and the militant spirit of the Crusades and Inquisition, as tending to make the Christian God seem alien and oppressive. The radical break with the past which gave birth to modernity was, on this view, a natural (although deeply misguided) reaction to the late medieval distortion of Christianity. This Orthodox critique of modernity was pioneered by Alexander Khomiakov in the nineteenth century and has been developed in various ways by modern Orthodox theologians such as Alexander Schmemann, Dumitru Staniloae, Olivier Clément, Philip Sherrard, and Christos Yannaras.

We believe that the Orthodox critique is largely correct. However, we also believe that if it remains merely a critique then its practical value will be severely limited. For better or worse, modernity (or post-modernity) is here to stay. The Orthodox have to live in the modern world just as does everyone else, and they face the same centrifugal pressures of individualism, rationalism, and secularism as do other Christian communions. Rather than lament events that occurred long ago, it is more profitable to seek out the aspects of modernity that offer hope for the widespread recovery of Christian faith. That is where the conference theme of "Modernity: Yearning for the Infinite" offers great promise. In our panel discussion we would like to pursue two closely related tasks. One is to explain some basic points in the Orthodox critique of modernity; the other is to ask what Orthodoxy can contribute to the contemporary Christian response to modernity, as well as how the Orthodox can benefit in this regard from collaboration with other Christian communions.

Both of us are converts to Orthodoxy. We would welcome the nomination of a third panel member, not necessarily Orthodox, who could contribute to a fruitful dialogue on these matters.

David Bradshaw, Associate Professor of Philosophy,  University of Kentucky   dbradsh@uky.edu  

John Jones, Professor of Philosophy, Marquette University   john.jones@marquette.edu

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 7/23/2007 8:58:35 AM (GMT-5)

(Dionysius) "Viewing time and eternity as divine processions is a striking innovation, but it also raises many questions. Most obviously, what becomes of the traditional view that time is a feature of the physical cosmos? How can this be, if it is also a divine procession, and thus one way of apprehending God himself?"

 

(John of Scythopolis) "...notes repeatedly that God is eternal by Himself being Eternity, whereas creatures are eternal by partaking of eternity.²⁵ Yet he does not neglect that God can also be identified with Time."

 

 

(article's author--Bradshaw)   

There are here two distinct ways in which God can be referred to as Time. One is in reference to time in the proper sense, "the procession of the goodness of God in creating sensibles." Time in this sense is God just as any of the divine processions is God, although He also remains beyond it as its source. (Indeed, it was "once at rest in He Who Always Is," prior to its shining forth in the creation of the sensible world.) Second there is time as "the movement of temporal intervals," that which is measured by time in the first sense. God can also be called Time in this sense, just as He can be called by the name of any of His creatures, since they pre-exist in Him as their cause. By way of analogy, we might distinguish two ways in which God can be referred to as the Good: goodness as a divine procession, and "the good" as referring collectively to those creatures that partake of the Good in the first sense. John is careful to qualify this second way of referring to God as Time by the adjectives "supereternally and timelessly," so as to make it clear that in using the name of creatures for God there is no diminishment of divine transcendence.

 

. . .

 

In closing I would like to leave aside philosophical controversies for a moment in order to observe that what the Greek Fathers are proposing is not only a different theory of time, but a different way of experiencing time, one which sees it as an icon of eternity.   . . .   St. Basil speaks explicitly of time as an icon.

(Basil) "We make our prayers standing on the first day of the week, but all do not know the reason for this. For it is not only because we are risen with Christ and that we should seek the things which are above, that on the day of the Resurrection we recall the grace that has been given us by standing to pray; but also, I think, because this day is in some way the image (εἰκών) of the future age."

To pray without kneeling on Sunday is not only a commemoration of the Resurrection, but a foretaste of the age to come, as befits Sunday, which is itself an icon of that age. In such an act one deliberately lives within the iconic meaning of time, accepting time as the expression, within our current sensible existence, of the immeasurable fulness of eternal life. It is this iconic form of life that the eastern Church Fathers open up for us today.

• Our entire aesthetics and (even) “romantic vision” are haunted through and through by the Holy Trinity, particularly by the “energy” that proceeds everywhere from that Essence, which is above all names.
• The moment is charged with the light and force of the Trinity, and the love that spirals out from essence and through the blinding energy of the Divine.

• You wouldn’t understand. You’ve grown up in a Universe completely surrounded by and penetrated with the Uncreated Light, the Energy of the Essence, the Incarnate Christological Grace of the Triune God. You can only imagine "not-God" (in a rather mentally ill idiom, I might add, the very fanciest of schizophrenias). You cannot ever, even in hell, experience real atheism.

• Even in hades, in paradise, even in the intermediate state of the soul. The soul of the departed man or woman is opened ever wider to the Uncreated Light of Tabor, the Energy that proceeds incessantly, infinitely, ubiquitously, from the Essence, the Holy and Consubstantial Tri-Hypostatic Sun.

• Personhood is a particularly Christian idea (i.e., not Rogerian), as it is a product of life that rises and converges with the Personal Divinity, and co-inheres with Triune grace. This rising takes time, of course -- "time" that is very much an "energy" (not essence) of God. Thus it behooves a life to cohere with God's Son, God's time and God's earth, to pray in place, and to stay with the crest of grace.

  That business of cohering is the Christian quest to discern God's will, to pray "Thy will be done," and to live it. One discerns and one obeys by prayer and fasting, by knowing the theology of Holy Tradition, by immersing oneself in the mysteries and graces of the Church, and by embracing the ascetical renunciation of passion, and embarking on the self-pouring pilgrimage of the Cross.

  A man grows in time -- planted in image, sprung up toward likeness. A name, thus, is quite a personal story, perfected along time's way. It is grown in the sun, the wind and the rain, rooted in the earth and called by the sky. Time and Creation, and the Incarnation (for that matter) are thus inseparable. That is why time cannot be mathematicized as a mere dimension, and why it is no good suggesting that Christ might not have needed to come had things turned out differently in the Garden.

  That's the way of getting a name, of becoming a person. That is why Saints are the only free people on earth. Their wave function of "uncertainty" (or freedom) does not collapse into necessity on either side of the horns of dilemma. In solidarity with the Body of Christ, in coinherence with the Triune grace, one becomes free, abundant, distinct and named on the crest of Time, in God's moment and in God's earth. Names are for free-men. Slaves of passion and insanity are demon, and are nameless.

  Lazarus, in the Parable, kept his name and enhanced it. The Rich Man lost his, and was remembered only in terms of how he wished to be known in the duration of moral choice in the world: he is labeled, not named, in Hades, and even that only in terms of regret. Think of the brittle irony that bites like rust into an old corrugated shed roof on an ugly November day of gray: the desperate, whiny shade is monikered as the "Rich Man," who cannot presently pick up a mite, much less hoist the gold that was used aforetime to substantiate his fame.

  Hades is the event horizon of irony, and the singularity toward which all passion gravitates inexorably. It is the rejection of grace, the disavowal of personhood, the betrayal of Jesus, the forsaking of time and the rupture of ego, the necrosis of soul. It is emptiness and the inspiration of demons. It is Nirvana, and the destroyer of psychic worlds.

  A demon does not "believe" any of this ... which is not to say that he does not know this, because he most assuredly does. He knows, for instance, that God exists, and he can quote Scripture pretty well (which goes to show that there is a big difference between what you know and what you believe -- between information and data on one hand, and theology and wisdom on the other).

  A demon knows this stuff, but he does not believe -- which is another way of saying, obviously, that he has no faith. Demons only know about time and earth, they don't know the place or the day. In the same way, they know an awful lot about God, but they sure as hell don't know Him, at all.

  They might be able to predict the future somewhat, and whisper insider-trading information to their symbiants, like they did to that poor Philippian girl in the Book of Acts. But I think that's more a matter of demons being the superior sociologists that they really are, and having done post-doctoral work on the individual and social industrial psychology of passion. It would not surprise me if they were able to predict market trends, or if they knew when the next 9/11 was planned, and where the next school shooting might take place. They have enough data to make uncanny extrapolations. They are, after all, the ones who established statistics as epistemology: if regular joe's can count cards at 21, demons can certainly do actuarial math.

  Their predictions are probabilities, not certainties, not written in stone. Only God can do that -- i.e., write in stone things like commandments, names and destiny. Demons can predict decadence, but not history, and certainly not eschatology. They can afflict saints with distractions and social calumnies, even persecutions and martyrdoms. They can discourage attentive prayer with to do lists and peep shows (1. in a psychic podcast that is remarkably similar in method to TV reality-show scripts) (2. but since the Cross, they cannot prevent prayer).

My friend writes well.