Let me come into the Bunge debate. I'll be honest: I have not read Bunge, and I have no immediate intention to (see below) Two priest friends of mine here say he’s OK as a general introduction. My wife, an expert on the subject, says he is best avoided on iconology. I’ll take their word for it.
Why the fuss? Why is his change of church headlined on the Mospat site? Dare I suggest that it is because the Orthodox Church is desperately, desperately short of faces in Western Europe. The sort of people you can build a story around, whom you can make an interesting half-hour documentary about, who feel ‘spiritual’, who speak well, and who to westerners like me are 'one of us', acceptable in our own culture. There is a huge, gaping void here in Western Europe, in particular since the death of Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh, who to my generation in England in the 1970s and 1980s was ‘Mr Orthodox' in person. I note that Bunge was accompanied at his first Orthodox Eucharist by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, almost the only other 'face' which exists.
Why not read Bunge? Because I am hesitant of authors who write about other authors, in particular lots of other authors. It is too easy to walk in other men’s shoes, wear other men’s clothes. Orthodoxy is spread direct one-to-one, not via intermediaries. Simeon the New Theologian was set seriously on the road by Simon the Pious, as a person, not by what Simon told him about St Basil, St Maximus the Confessor or whoever. The only interest in Bunge for me is Bunge himself – either in person or a good (auto)-biography.
One more Bunge-related comment: elsewhere in Friendland there was a whole conversation two days back about 'serious' and 'exalted' Roman Catholic mystics (it started when someone quoted Bunge). 'Exalted' has become a dirty word here, particularly in its French version ‘exalté’, referring to someone who is not religiously (better: religiously-sexually) stable. Where does it come from? Popular accounts of Teresa of Avila? The ‘Devils of Loudun’ film? In reading Teresa of Avila I have the feeling of a very ‘feet on the ground’ woman, very cautious indeed about what was happening to her. Yes, I have met along the way one of two pious men and women whom I would place in the 'exalté' category, but I would certainly not class them as real mystics.
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anglomedved
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Date: 2010-09-02 08:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 08:18 am (UTC)Сколько же можно за ним повторять?
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Date: 2010-09-02 08:46 am (UTC)And with apologies to my wife and other lady friends, I would add the one of the pleasures of Mount Athos compared with other monasteries is the total absence of pious women...
no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 08:59 pm (UTC)Let me just quote from something I wrote last year, when talking of the split between academic and 'mystical' theology that opens up from about 1350 in the West. It may or may not be relevant
"The fact remains that this split between mystical and academic theology is probably the key ‘problem’ with Catholicism, seen from the Orthodox standpoint. Trying to understand the divorce is not easy: there are clearly major factors in play, including a major change in social context, not least the fact that, from about Hildegard of Bingen onward, through Margaret of Porete, Catherine of Genoa, Saint Teresa of Avila, the Béguine movement and through into Marie Alacoque, the female side appears to be doing a lot of the running. At the risk of an oversimplification, the 'mystical' side becomes feminine and the academic, scholastic, becomes male. All this is intertwined from St Bernard of Clairvaux onwards, with a sponsal theology, which 'feels’ wrong from an Orthodox (and Protestant) viewpoint. Has anyone on the Orthodox side seriously examined and critiqued this Brautmystik? (...)
At the same time, if we as Orthodox are going to play a part in this in the West, we have, among other things, to work out the position and contribution of pious, intelligent females.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-06 06:40 pm (UTC)I can’t give an authoritative answer. Perhaps the question is put better this way: which of these mystics would be recommended or permitted reading for Catholic monastics or lay people who were serious with their spiritual lives?
Teresa of Avila (whose writings themselves are quite sober), perhaps Catherine or Siena (whom I have not read). There could well be a tradition inside female Carmels which I am unaware of….
I do not know who really reads St Bernard nowadays…. (apart from the guestmaster at the (dying) Cistercian monastery who has an 18th century copy in Latin in his guestmaster’s room….)
More than that I don’t know. Sorry.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 08:15 am (UTC)Неужели, однако, непонятно, что знаковую фигуру, "икону" европейского православия из Бунге не вылепить? Это ведь не шоу-бизнес.
А про легенду об "экзальтированном западном мистицизме" - это, по-моему, заслуживает отдельной записи.