ORLAPUBS P. R24: OTHERDOX APOLOGETICS, &c

Profit often accrues from a sober look at what others claim to be their beliefs; do not shy away from finding out what others are all about! It can strengthen one's Orthodox position. If you are closely associated with an otherdox Christian, it would not be a waste of your time to find out what the group that that person belongs to believes. It is incumbent on those marrying persons of a different faith to investigate each other's beliefs. These pages are listed for various reasons, but with confidence that a true, practising Orthodox believer would not find others' beliefs preferable to one's own. You can test this confidence by looking at the following. For the Orthodox view of the situation of sincere Christians who are not adherents of the Orthodox Christian religion, the following book should clarify the matter: Patrick Barnes, The non-Orthodox: the Orthodox teaching on Christians outside of the Church (Regina Press, 1999). It may be worth your trouble to get PARADIGM INCOMPATIBILTIES THAT MAKE OUR EASTERN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY NON-THINKABLE FOR THE NON-ORTHODOX: THE BOOK THAT I WISH HAD BEEN AVAILABLE WHEN I FIRST HEARD ABOUT HOLY ORTHODOXY. Look for the announcement on the ORLAPUBS main page during 2002.

[Note that a paradigm is a small set of axioms or assumptions that a
person accepts as given--premises that influence what one
can properly think and what cannot properly think]

Readers should realize that otherdox apologetic websites--so often as to be normal--reveal that the apologete in question has his or her head up his paradigm . . . which is to say that s/he is unable to make a temporary paradigm-shift that would enable him/her to actually understand what we mean when we say make a given assertion or other statement.

To see how this mental quirk functions, cf. the following example. The Orchid Land Publications address is Orchid Land Drive. But most correspondents live where orchards are more familiar than orchids. This creates a mind-set and presupposition that imposes its consequences on how they read our address. The mail comes addressed to Orchard Lane Dr. (one doesn't know how "Dr." is understood). The village post office smiles knowingly and sends the mail on to us.

If a Western writer is unacquainted with the correlation of dýnamis and enéryeia in Aristotle, in New Testament Greek (esp. in St. Paul's Epistles; but once even in the more Hebraďc St. James), and in Eastern thinking from the Apostolic Age until now . . ., how can s/he have the faintest inkling about what is involved in an ontological Fall & Salvation or the rôle of the Resurrection in soteriology? [We know that Thomas got a potentia : actus/operatio idea from Islamic philosophers; but he took actus to mean a state of actuality or realization--not what causes that state; he failed to distinguish essence from energy (and nature in the energetic sense of 2 Pet. 1:20). The difference between energy-causative and result deverbative nouns in Greek is lost in a Western paradigm, so the Greek word for "assimilation" is mis-rendered as "likeness," and the word for "[a new] creating" is mis-rendered as "creature."] What we mean when we say "Grace" is word-salad in the Western mind. A Western apologete might possibly grasp what we mean when we deny that the soul is immmortal by nature (but only by Grace, i.e. uncreated Energy); or that the East has not (for two millenniums) believed that a newborn can inherit sin or guilt of any other person or be punished for that; or that God won't forgive till he has first exacted a condign "satisfaction" (punishment). But most of what we say will pass by an otherdox apologete, just as her/his arguments depend on assumptions (paradigm axioms) foreign to our understanding. (Without those axioms, the doctrine doesn't follow.) When we say the same things, we are not saying the same things. Dogmas like the Trinity and Fall and Salvation and Grace may be the same and changeless, but their senses come from the doctrines (teachings) that energize and actualize them. Western apologetes miss the boat in speaking to us because what we say is so alien o their paradigms that it comes across as gobbledygook. And conversely.

Why do we need an immaculate conception when we don't believe that any infant is born guilty of Eve's and Adam's sinning? Why do we need a deathless Theotókos (who is all-pure, as we believe) when death is not held to be a punishment for sin? Why do we need a purgatory if we reject the idea that God won't forgive till he has punished? Let's hope that otherdox apologetes will get their heads out of their paradigms for a moment or so and stop mis-addressing their comments our way?

The following sites don't, I believe, understand Orthodoxy's energy ontology or the energy (along with dark matter/energy) interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis.

John Donne (died 1631), of a Roman Catholic family, converted to the Church of England and evidently adhered to its traditionalist wing. It was, after all, the time of King Charles I, who married the Catholic wife of King Louis XIII of France, having earlier courted the Infanta of Spain. (The anti-Puritan William Laud hadn't yet become the Archbishop of Canterbury--he became Bishop of London only a few years before Donne died--but his catholicizing influence was welcome in the royal circles that Donne frequented. ) In his youth, Donne (who probably studied at Cambridge) was reputed to be a rake. He wrote beautiful love poetry. In his middle years, he lived in extreme poverty with his wife and children. He became a priest and then succeeded to the deanship of St. Paul's cathedral in London. He was an outstanding preacher. But his sublime religious poetry, written in his unhappy middle period, rises to the level of Dante's; it contains nothing, so far as this observer has seen, that an Orthodox reader cannot appreciate, even though the religious language is not what is typical of Orthodox writing. His sermons have a rhetorical quality that has seldom been achieved by preachers in the English language. Given the preaching that takes place in many Orthodox temples, preachers might take lessons from Donne. The most moving of his Divine Poems and Holy Sonnets have, I think, never been equaled in English. It was an era of beautiful language. Ours could be another, but who is trying? . . . hardly the Orthodox.

University of Virginia Information on many religious movements
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PERIPHERAL INFORMATION ON SCIENCE AND RELIGION Š 2000-2003 by Orchid Land Publications [updated 20020331]

PERIPHERAL INFORMATION
ON SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Š 2000-2003 by Orchid Land Publications

[updated 20020331]