WHY PEOPLE TALK PAST ONE ANOTHER:  
IT'S NOT ALWAYS TRUE THAT AN ORANGE
IS AN ORANGE IS AN ORANGE;
SOMETIMES IT'S AN APPLE

TO ORTHODOX READERS

© 2000 by Orchid Land Publications

xi

[10001002]

Dear-in-Christ [NAME]:
 
     In trying to understand the Orthodox hyperduly in Orthodoxy and the absence of that veneration in your former Calvinistic Faith, you have written the following, beginning with the five TULIP teachings distinctive of Calvinism: 

> Total depravity>
> Unconditional predestination>
> Limited atonement
> Irresistable grace>
> Perseverance of the elect

     > In this picture, Mary was an ordinary human being, no worse than
> the rest of us but certainly not significantly better either (T: "total depravity"), >who was simply selected by God (U: "unconditional predestination", I: >"irresistable grace") for a special role for a period of her life.  Where's the heroism >in that?  How does that really make Mary, herself, special?  "None" and "It >doesn't", are the obvious answers.

      One could add the P of the Calvinist TULIP:  If Grace is not only irresistible but also (P) one can never go back and lose Grace (i.e. virtual righteousness), once one has been favored with it, . . . then there is not much virtue in doing or being anything, is there?
>
     >This chapter [of Mary the untrodden Portal of God] may have been meant as a >[commentary in opposition to] Papal policies, but it has turned out to give me yet >another set of useful perspectives on my non-Papal non-Orthodox background.

     The feeling grows in the present writer (partly based on the idea that we learn by comparing and contrasting) that those who have crossed a paradigm boundary (e.g. from Papal or Reformation Christianity to Orthodoxy or any of the other possible crossings, including to or from the minimalist theology of "Evangelicals") have certain insights that those who have been absorbed in a single thought world from the cradle till now (or the grave) may not be aware of . . . just as on the other hand converts lack much of the phronema of those cradle Orthodox who have been rightly brought up. 

     Some sites have "conversion experiences"--but they presumably emphasize the circumstaces or the HOW of the leap that has taken place.  I like the way you focus more on the other kind of HOW--the basic crossing of the gulf between thought worlds invented over a millennium apart.  I think an interest or focus on this would be not only useful for missionary outreach but possibly (I leave it for them to say) even for cradle Orthodox (at least many not very well educated here in the alien American ambiance) to understand their place on the American scene:  Compare and contrast in order to understand more deeply. 

     Now I'm not in favor of--just the contrary--describing Orthodoxy the way encyclopedia articles do (even those by esteemed Orthodox writers)--telling what we are NOT--how we are a non-papalist catholicism or how we are not like Protestants in respect to this or that detail.  Details, details, lists of likes and dislikes, never the WHYs.  The author of the book you mention has provided many of the WHYs for our veneration or hyperduly of the Theotokos; that is a change from many presentations--one that has taught me a lot.  

     This additional kind of approach (in a footnote) would, I fallibly think, be useful.  If it were an encyclopedia article, it would set out with a set of assumptions (with perhaps contrasts vis-à-vis Western assumptions and history) and show how the major details build up consistently with them.  Your example of the Theotokos in two thought worlds is IMHO a very good and pointed example of this.  This approach should, I suggest, be done on more topics--Grace, Unity with Christ, everything.  In that way, non-Orthodox and ill-informed cradle Orthodox could be introduced to the Orthodox phronema, I think, by showing how to step out of one thought world into another--not just reading an itemized list of beliefs and practices that one should exchange another itemized list for. 

     Finally:  Some lists start with agreements, as though that would pave the way to understanding what it is all about--even though the core words nearly always mean vastly different things to different readers in different thought worlds.  That just builds up false expectations doomed to crash in the end.  Ironically (as I've said before), our itemized differences are often clearer than our alleged convergences.  Your approach to WHY the Theotokos is not "Mother of YHWH"--the Being One"--or indeed anyone WHO IS SPECIAL in Calvinist theology seems extremely insightful to me.  The author of the book referred to is, as already said by you and me, brilliant in telling us WHY the Orthodox so highly venerate the Theotokos.  

Yours in Christ, 

xii

Dear-in-Christ . . . :

     I very much liked your piece that NAME forwarded.  I would like to comment on this, since I am in the middle of reading a piece, "In honor of St. Gregory Palamas."   You describe an approach quite contrary to that Saint's found in Latin-influenced Orthodox writers in these terms: 

1. These were purely cerebral and, I would dare claim, scholastic views. But St. Symeon showed in his works that the basis and purpose of Orthodox church life is man's deification (theosis), which is achieved by the energy of the Holy Spirit and the vision of the Uncreated Light.

Our mutual friend, NAME, like all good Orthodox, emphasizes the effects of piety on theologizing and the defects of doing theology (in the wider sense of that term) in a purely cerebral or rationalist manner.  I evidently misunderstood him at one point when the context had to do with paradigms, writing him back to the effect that paradigms are not cerebral but often unconscious--indeed irrational or prerational--though having deep imprints on what one thinks; e.g. the concept of Grace and many other key notions.  

     The Latin scholastics erred on the side of being too cerebral; that remains a danger.  But the problem among self-styled Evangelicals is just the opposite--concentrating on experience with a "personal" Jesus (no longer Christ, no longer God--just "Lord and Savior" like a Roman demigod) and reducing doctrine to four points or rules, the Trinity being either absent or watered down-- is erring on the antirational side.  (It is primarily will-based--theletist.)   Even in one statement put out by the Billy Graham organization's, the Persons of the Trinity are "co-eternal" but not explicitly co-essential or co-equal.

      Looking holistically at the problems of being too cerebral and not cerebral enough, it seems to me that there is a danger from BOTH sides in the current American context--leaving out of consideration relativism and the ecumenism and all of the other deflections from true Orthodoxy.  In Western Christianity prior to the latter part of the second millennium, there was a danger of being too cerebral (omitting experience, efséveia "piety," prãxis "practice," etc.) standing on the other side from an equal problem of being too non-cerebral (not using lógos "reason" and sophía "wisdom"--as though one didn't hold that Christ is the LOGOS and SOPHIA of GOD.  The latter deflection takes two forms--self-styled Evangelicalism (minimalizing doctrine to a few points) and Liberalism (relativism).  In their emphasis on a "personal" Jesus, Christ ceases to fill the bill, and the Trinity effectively goes down the tubes:  Christ is Lord and Savior like a Roman demigod rather than God.  How we could save us if we do not demand belief in Him as God is often not explained (in my experience).

                                              xiii

Dear . . . :

     Is there a right-sounding English translation of noëtic and neptic?  I wish there were usages as clear as feasible that raised no untoward questions about style.  Though it won't happen by itself, we can no doubt get used to noëtic and neptic in English the way we've done with Theotokos, Logos, and phronema--and maybe that's the best route, provided that, as a cross-over strategy, we parenthesize the sense in whatever clumsy English may be required.  

      Noëtic (soul) is opposed to psychic (soul) as what is particularly human and what is merely animate--the one a deathless "oversoul," th'other a mortal soul.  But the term need to have intellectual overtones or undertones--though "intellectual Principle" by the translator of Plotinos doesn't convert to an adjective.  Intuitive is misleading, and lofty-souled fails to convey the right sense.  Suppose we say "noëtic (transrational)" or "transrational (noëtic)" till something better comes along.
     As for neptic, would "well-balanced" or  "calmly watchful" work?  (Holistic
falls short, self-possessed is too self-centered, and temperate and sober are misleading).  Would circumspect or measured (moderated sounds too Platonic) fill the bill?  Perhaps doable would be "unperturbable" or "undistracted" or even "focused."  All in all, I tend to favor well-balanced, though I realize its inadequacy.
     It would be great if we could find a good rendering that we could agree on, at least till noëtic and neptic get nativized in English.  What has already happened with phronema could happen with noëtic and neptic.  But it needs to be managed where terms carry the baggage of different paradigms.  
     Protestants elevate words above "sacraments" and sometimes err in the direction of word-magic.  Karl Barth and many others slide back and forth between the (allegëd) Word (LOGOS) and the other Word (Bible, sermons) in a way that I find off-putting.   But that doesn't mean that words are unimportant, although i know well enough how little worth they CAN hav:  They can be deceptive, misleading, ennobling, inspiring--you name it.  I do think that words deserve greater attention than they at times receive, given that their power to enlighten or destroy.  Think of the baggage we bring in when we call Theophany Epiphany; the Great Fast, (the Great) Lent; Mysteries, sacraments or sacramentals, not to speak of dozens of terms discussed on this site, including Western mistranslations of  ktísis "creation" and omoíosis "assimilation" as though they were ktísma "creature" and omoíoma "likeness."
     One is not unaware of the likelihood that some will see this concern for proper terminology as overblown.  My reply would be:  Those who have crossed from one paradigm to another have often been misled by word-usage in a way that cradle Orthodox very likely have little sense of.  If we are to convey the right feeling to Orthodox born in English-speaking American culture and to potential converts--a major obligation also--we need terminology that sends the right signals, I would suggest, rather than misleading baggage.  Just as sacrament sends the wrong signal and ecumenical also does that in some circles, I think we should use a chaste terminology and rehabilitate some degraded terms to their former nobility--if we can.  I don't think it's a lost cause; we should at least try.
     At all events, I think a lofty passage can sometimes be marred by unclarified noëtic, neptic, and other terms that cause readers to stumble.  We can linguistically engineer such terms so that they will become as normal as Theotokos, Logos, phronema, etc. if we try, but not if we devote no effort to that end.  We can notify the leading dictionaries in the English-speaking countries of the Orthodox senses of these and other terms like energy that are often ignored.

                                                                       Yours in Christ God,