Thought and action

In a recent Expressive Photography newsletter, Alister Benn makes the following comment:

If you don’t think about something at all, it has no value to you.
If all you do is think about something and then do nothing about it, you are of no value to it.

Alister was talking about photography, but I feel this has much wider application. For example, you cannot honestly say you value the natural world if you never give it a second thought. Conversely, if all you do is talk about caring for nature while continuing to live a typical modern Western lifestyle, you are certainly of no value to it.

Radical Orthodoxy may be a health hazard

Here is my second extract from Elizabeth Smith’s ‘Radical Orthodoxy for Dummies’:

The Fine Print:  Radical Orthodoxy May Be a Health Hazard

Now, a word of caution to the would-be Radically Orthodox. If one or more of the following apply to you, you may not be cut out for a career in this branch of theological endeavour. 

1. Your interest in sex as a subject for theological reflection still carries a concern for the practical and social and spiritual liberation of women. Radical Orthodoxy seems to be better at problematising the gender of Christ than it is at deproblematising the economic and political downside of the gender of actual women. However, if you are a woman theologian who is happy to continue speaking of “God himself,” you will probably be fine.  
2. You think think that theology is fun to do, but it still matters to you that it’s fun for anyone else to read. Radical Orthodoxy seems to have jettisoned clarity of English syntax in favour of bandwagon vocabulary. However, if a sentence like the following appeals to you, you will most likely do well in Radical Orthodoxy: “Perhaps unsurprisingly, this search for the universal and the ‘superhuman’ reveals itself as a hopeless and ultimately nihilistic account of form and essence, since it maintains that forms can appear apart from what they inform, and universality upholds only its self-depiction and has no necessary or obvious regard for the particulars it could instantiate.”  (Phillip Blond, “Perception:  From modern painting to the vision in Christ,” in Millbank, Pickstock, and Ward, eds, Radical Orthodoxy:  A New Theology , p. 229.)
3. You quite enjoy reading and interpreting the bible. Radical Orthodoxy hasn’t quite worked its way back past Augustine to scripture as a source of inspiration, let alone as a major primary contributor to theology. However, there is probably another rediscovery of patristic biblical hermeneutics waiting to happen, and possibly yet another a re-appreciation of the bible as artful verbiage (“literature”) worthy of some attention in its own right, so if you want to help inspire the Radically Orthodox to reappropriate the word “biblical” the way they’re reappropriating “platonic,” by all means go for it.
4. You are a sacramental theologian or liturgical theologian. Radical Orthodoxy is acting rather as if it had invented, with a little help from its postmodern and platonic friends, the entire concept of an “outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible reality,” while you and your mates have been exploring this very field of endeavour for decades already.  You may feel a trifle resentful that Radical Orthodoxy does not give due credit to the liturgical life of the church for persevering with an environment that is rich in metaphor, visual image, sensory input and embodied prayer, while all around were foundering in the sterility of metaphysics and rationality.  However, if with Prince Charles you suspect that the last 50 years of liturgical renewal have been a bad mistake and a waste of time, or if you think liturgists are really terrorists who can’t be trusted with real theology, you may well find a way to enjoy Radical Orthodoxy.
5. You can’t muster up much theological nostalgia. Perhaps you think that the best and most fruitful theology is yet to come and your energy is best directed into constructive rather than deconstructive projects. Perhaps you get exhausted just thinking about the embedded patriarchal assumptions in 99.5 per cent of theology to date, and despite your genuine admiration for Aquinas you would rather put your hand to the plough and not look back. 

If you still want to become Radically Orthodox, dodging, embracing or transforming the issues described above, you may find you can do it even without footnotes to Hans Urs von Balthasar.

How to become radically orthodox

About twenty years ago, I came across ‘Radical Orthodoxy for Dummies’ by Elizabeth Smith poking fun at the theological movement known as Radical Orthodoxy. Sadly, it has long since vanished from the Internet. So I have decided to post a couple of extracts here for your amusement.

This first piece is called ‘How To Become Radically Orthodox: A Beginner’s Guide’:

First, it will help if you start out Radically Privileged, have learnt at least one classical language before you hit university, and are not beset by family members asking why you haven’t gone in for something like Accountancy or Marketing that will guarantee you a well-paying job. A good general grounding in classical and enlightenment philosophy is also necessary, so that you do not embarrassingly mix your epistemology and your ontology, your realists, idealists, nihilists and so on. Then you need to go deeply into the work of a theologian or philosopher who may well be totally out of fashion. At this point you may become discouraged because no one else seems to be interested in your chosen writer, but please persevere. 

By now you will also have friends who are studying subjects other than classical philosophy and what used to be called “patristics.” Eventually you will notice that they are having great fun playing with Structuralism and Post-structuralism and Psychoanalytic Theory and Queer Theory, not to mention the whole gamut of Feminisms and Post-Colonialisms, and all sorts of other exciting tools of fin-de-millennium scholarship, and you will wonder if it might not be fun to play with some of the same things in your own field. 

All this time, you will have been faithfully attending church services. You should take care to participate in the type of liturgy that is aesthetically rich, in a visually stunning building with marvellous music, ministers in fabulous vestments, services that go on unhurriedly in imitation of the Liturgy of Heaven, and the kind of sermon that has sometimes been unkindly characterised as “three points and a poem” (the poem usually being many times richer and deeper than the three points, due to its having been written by someone other than the preacher). Steep yourself in the liturgical world of metaphor, symbol, and palpable transcendence, for here has been preserved (or, if we are to be honest, reinvented in 19th century Anglicanism) the flavour of piety and imagination that we are about to inject, along with a cocktail of postmodern methodological stimulants, into the veins of the historical theological figure you have so diligently and hitherto thanklessly been studying. 

Now you need to find a group of like-minded scholars with whom you can share hints on how to get Lacan and Derrida into footnotes where a generation ago Schleiermacher and Barth cast much longer shadows. You need to grit your teeth and read North American contemporary criticism and not just British and European sources. Then, at last, you need to find a hot topic in current social or ecclesial life, and find a way for your antique hero to appear to make a contribution to the debate. Only a cynic would suggest that in fact the debate is making a contribution to the faded aura surrounding your antique hero. As for suitable debates, sex, politics, and art are always good value for a controversy guaranteed to get the juices of academic interest flowing.

Christ is risen!

 Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Христос воскресе! Hristos a înviat! 

He is risen, indeed! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! Воистину воскресе! Adevărat a înviat!

Enjoy ye all the feast of faith; receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness. (St John Chrysostom)

Palm Sunday grief

Yesterday the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem issued a statement entitled ‘Palm Sunday Grief’ about the current situation in Gaza. Here is part of the text:

In the early light of this holy day, the al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza, a place consecrated to healing and long rooted in the Christian vocation of mercy, was struck by an Israeli air assault that rendered its emergency and other critical departments inoperative. Patients in fragile condition, including children, were forced into the open streets. Among them, a twelve-year-old who perished during the chaotic evacuation. This death, like so many others, is a silent cry, a reminder of the innocent who suffer where care should prevail.

This hospital, already strained by months of siege, stood as one of the last beacons of medical hope in Gaza, where dozens of healthcare institutions have been systematically destroyed. The stripping away of such sanctuaries of life and dignity is a tragedy that transcends all boundaries of politics and enters the realm of the sacred.

Yet even amidst devastation, the light of faith remains unextinguished. In Gaza’s Zaytun Quarter, within the heart of the Old City, the historic Church of Saint Porphyrius held Palm Sunday prayers—quiet, steadfast, and full of grace—affirming that the witness of Christ’s peace endures, even when sorrow surrounds the sanctuary.

My Lenten reading

I intended to reread John Climacus’s Ladder of Divine Ascent but failed hopelessly. Even switching to Papavassiliou’s modern rendering of it (Thirty Steps to Heaven) was no help. I think I find the mindset and context of sixth-century monk living in the Sinai desert too alien. It is not something that can be easily mapped onto the life of a layperson living in an affluent Western society in the twenty-first century.

So, perhaps inevitably, I reverted to rereading Tito Colliander’s Way of the Ascetics. In 26 short chapters he offers a practical introduction to Orthodox spirituality largely in the form of extracts from the writings of the Church Fathers. I like it because it is so practical and, having been written by a layman for twentieth-century laypeople, it is directly applicable to our context. It is much easier to read than Climacus but just as challenging if read properly.

As for my other reading during Lent, I have been carefully working my way through Andrew Jackson’s Maximus the Confessor and Evolutionary Biology. I know some Orthodox theologians are a bit sniffy about non-Orthodox studies of Maximus, but this is a must read for anyone interested in relating modern science and Christian theology. At the moment, I am preparing a review of it, which will appear in a future issue of the journal Science & Christian Belief. But it also looks highly relevant for a paper I hope to write for this year’s ORIC conference.

I have also been reading Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of St John. My main reason has been so that I can take part in the regular ORIC seminar. It has reaffirmed my sense that I do not like Origen as a theologian. I dislike his belief that the material universe exists only as a punishment for essentially spiritual beings. And his hierarchical view of Christians – most are carnal (i.e. they know Christ and him crucified!) and a small elite are spiritual (i.e. they have gone beyond the letter of Scripture to its spiritual sense) – makes me deeply uneasy.

Blogger’s block?

It has been more than three weeks since I last posted here. In that time, several ideas have drifted in and out my head before I could get round to writing them down. My excuse is that a toxic combination of health issues and current affairs has left me unable to concentrate on writing anything coherent.