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On dogma and 'spiritual economics'
Feb. 13th, 2013 10:35 amMy last posting on my visit to Mount Athos led to a long ping-pong correspondence between two regular correspondents, with me trying to play reconciliator.
This is my reply to one of them. If any of my more serious theologically-minded friends would like to critique it (English, Russian and French all accepted), I'd be pleased.
"You might want to be a bit careful with the use of ‘dogma’. I suspect that ‘dogma’ per se impinges fairly little on the spiritual life. What I think we are dealing with more are the ‘rules of the spiritual economy’ – what encourages a spiritual life, what weakens or at worst kills it. I think there are considerable differences in our 'economic theory' in this area, with much of the dividing line running between Protestantism on the one hand and RCatholicsm + Orthodoxy on the other.
O.K., if you can’t say the Nicene creed and mean it you are not going to get very far in your spiritual life: you’re pretty much dead in the water before you start. (But note in passing that the Nicene creed is quite limited: it is not fully Trinitarian, contains no clear concept of original sin, and does not define what the Church is). But that is not the real area of contention.
Nor, would I argue, are the post 1054 doctrines promulgated by the RC Church on its own really essential to the spiritual life: I do not believe Orthodox are seriously disadvantaged by not having specific doctrines of the Immaculate Conception, Purgatory or the Church’s ability to express itself infallibly on doctrine and morals. Though I will accept that a watered-down concept of Church, including the intercessory role of the Mother of God and the saints, and a smaller number of sacraments, among Protestants, reduces the spiritual feeding area.
The real battleground, what exercises true theologians (those with the necessary spirituality to support real theological thinking) lies, I would argue, elsewhere:
- First and foremost, what types of behaviour (especially, but not only, sexual) are spiritually advantageous, neutral or deleterious.
- Understanding how prayer and ascetic endeavour works: what makes it effective and ineffective (does fasting just make you lose weight and make you more alert at prayer, or does it have deeper effects?)– also the relationship between individual prayer and ascesis and the well-being of humanity of the whole (the prayer of the saints saving the world, or at least preventing its collapse).
- The relationship between Church and society: a burning issue in many Orthodox countries
- What are the best forms of spiritual food, both communal and individual. The present communal forms remain predicated both on illiteracy – the Church as the place where you hear the Scriptures because you can’t read a Bible or read religious literature at home – and knowledge of the liturgical language, a very moot point in most Orthodox churches (other than Romanian and OCA).
Much of this area, I would argue, is hardly treated in dogmatic theology textbooks or seminary lessons – it takes the form of a semi-formalized tradition, passed on much more in the form of obiter dicta in the letters, biographies and sermons of deeply spiritual people than in dogmatic statements. Read the letters of Fr John Chrestiankin or the biography of Fr Paisios to see what I mean.
This is my reply to one of them. If any of my more serious theologically-minded friends would like to critique it (English, Russian and French all accepted), I'd be pleased.
"You might want to be a bit careful with the use of ‘dogma’. I suspect that ‘dogma’ per se impinges fairly little on the spiritual life. What I think we are dealing with more are the ‘rules of the spiritual economy’ – what encourages a spiritual life, what weakens or at worst kills it. I think there are considerable differences in our 'economic theory' in this area, with much of the dividing line running between Protestantism on the one hand and RCatholicsm + Orthodoxy on the other.
O.K., if you can’t say the Nicene creed and mean it you are not going to get very far in your spiritual life: you’re pretty much dead in the water before you start. (But note in passing that the Nicene creed is quite limited: it is not fully Trinitarian, contains no clear concept of original sin, and does not define what the Church is). But that is not the real area of contention.
Nor, would I argue, are the post 1054 doctrines promulgated by the RC Church on its own really essential to the spiritual life: I do not believe Orthodox are seriously disadvantaged by not having specific doctrines of the Immaculate Conception, Purgatory or the Church’s ability to express itself infallibly on doctrine and morals. Though I will accept that a watered-down concept of Church, including the intercessory role of the Mother of God and the saints, and a smaller number of sacraments, among Protestants, reduces the spiritual feeding area.
The real battleground, what exercises true theologians (those with the necessary spirituality to support real theological thinking) lies, I would argue, elsewhere:
- First and foremost, what types of behaviour (especially, but not only, sexual) are spiritually advantageous, neutral or deleterious.
- Understanding how prayer and ascetic endeavour works: what makes it effective and ineffective (does fasting just make you lose weight and make you more alert at prayer, or does it have deeper effects?)– also the relationship between individual prayer and ascesis and the well-being of humanity of the whole (the prayer of the saints saving the world, or at least preventing its collapse).
- The relationship between Church and society: a burning issue in many Orthodox countries
- What are the best forms of spiritual food, both communal and individual. The present communal forms remain predicated both on illiteracy – the Church as the place where you hear the Scriptures because you can’t read a Bible or read religious literature at home – and knowledge of the liturgical language, a very moot point in most Orthodox churches (other than Romanian and OCA).
Much of this area, I would argue, is hardly treated in dogmatic theology textbooks or seminary lessons – it takes the form of a semi-formalized tradition, passed on much more in the form of obiter dicta in the letters, biographies and sermons of deeply spiritual people than in dogmatic statements. Read the letters of Fr John Chrestiankin or the biography of Fr Paisios to see what I mean.
