WHAT IF THE FATHERS HAD 
WRITTEN IN SOUND BITES?
Athanasios & Areios

© 2003 by Orchid Land Publications

[200304026 (bis)] 

Athanasios:  "Areie, I fund that little ditty you got the people a-singing anything but beneficial.  I heard this:  "There was when He was not." 

Areios:  "Well, Thanasy, that's all you can expect 'em to understand--a sound bite.  It's an opening for something more, but I don't wanna put 'em to sleep the way you been doin'.

Thanasy:  "I can't deny, Ryie, that your song is pithy and that the dîmos--you know, the folks--lap it up.  I could, but  won't, respond with the strategy of countering your song with "There was never when He wasn't."  I'll go so far as to grant that sloganizing may be compatible with reason.  But when I hear "Jesus died for EGO," I cannot see that it's much above a superstition if one doesn't specify whether it's your Jesus or my Jesus--or how what He did can be transferred to me in a way that accrues to my benefit.   

Ryie:  I grant that without such specifications, it's superstitious.  But what can you expect?  You expect too much, you lose 'em; most people are incapable of thinkin' about these things.  If we get 'em in, the rest can come later for the few who are able to reason.

Th.:  C'mon, man!  Reason and freewill constitute humanity's highest faculty--the eikón of God.  Doesn't it belie a claim that religion is supremely important if one refuses to devote one's highest facultires to it . . . if all one can come up with is a sound bite?  If pagans lack the 'omoiosis or "Assimilation," and thus cannot reason or will in ways to please God, is one simply to conclude that all that we are called on to do is to point others toward some goal we think right?  Do we want believers and worshipers who simply follow what doesn't rise above an unreasoned and undefined superstition?

Ryie:  I'll buy the argument that we should teach the teachable ones.  But I differ from you in thinking that few are teachable; you are just putting most of 'em to sleep with those weary volumes . . . which, by the way, do contain slogans--like homoöúsios, "He became human that we might be made divine."  If that's not a slogan, what is it.  It's jus' like those who ramble on and one with slogans like "When we say the same things, we are not sayin' the same things."  You and I know that when someone says "Jesus," we are not saying the same thing; and we know that the pollí think that even when we say different things, we are saying the same things.  That's just the way the cosmos is; all we can do is get 'em on board any way we can.  We need their souls; we need their drachmas.

Th.:  But Ryie, "He was made human that we might be made divine" is simply a  mnemonic summary that I explain in detail (in my book on the Enhumanization of the Reason) the import of the statement.  If it's a slogan, it's not a simple one that lacks a reasoned elaboration--up to the point where the Mystery forces us to stop.  You hafta think when you say, "He was made human that we might be made divine."  You can't even say it if you are a Gnostic who thinks that created matter and time can play no role in religion--no Mysteries (sacraments); no revelatory tradition--no evolution in creation.  We need technical terms like homoöúsios in order to be exact and avoid sloppy thinking.  If it can be turned into a sound bite, that's a misuse of it:  It's a heaven lot more than that.  You seem to forget that the Apostle Peter admonished us (in our Greek Bible, at 3:15 in his first Epistle) to be ever ready to give when asked.  

Arie:  You could at least set it to a singable tune, man!  As for the rest, I say "reason, shmeason."

Th.:  You keep jumping from one extreme to th'other.  I could reduce what I teach to slogans and set them to peppy tunes and have the people sing them in the public squares and even in our temples.  But I'd rather do it the way those who have gone before have done and follow their examples.  Not that I doubt that your way "works" in promoting supporters for your side and bringin' in the drachmnas.  Heaven knows that our side has received more blood than drachmas at the hands of the heretics.  But is all that one strives for just winning at any cost?

Ryie:  I'm on your side if you think a term like the one you've sited saves a lot of verbiage.  In fact, that's all I'm doing . . . except that I doubt one can explain its real meaning to the many.  I gotta be satisfied if they just mouth it and defend it.  If you think you can go beyond that, be my guest!

Th.:  Well, St. Paul and St. John went beyond it, and many now read them and rejoice.  Their disciples--e.g. St. Ignatios of Antioch--and even very early writers like St. Eirenaíos tried to follow Christ's exhortation to "teach all peoples" and St. Peter's admonition to "be every ready with a reasoned reply to everyone asking you the reason (lógos) for the hope in you."

Ryie:  You wanna bet that my slogans will win in the long run, and your dronasms will not?  I have 'em singin' dogma in the plazas; y'all are lackin' all o' that.

Th.:  I'm not a betting man, but I predict that in millenniums to come, some will opt for reasoned teachings, soporific as you may judge them; but there will probably be more sloganizers, as you expect.  Time will tell.  But you were right to speak of 'em as singin' dogmas.  A dogma is like a definition--it can't be refuted, since it is simply accepted by the will.  Unless it is filled in with meaning by doctrines that develop over time to interpret it, it is empty of rational content--fit only for juveniles, if even them.

Ryie:  Well, run with your rationalism.

Th.:  There you go again.  If one is against irrationality, one is a rationalist, you seem to be implyin'.  Aarrgghh!!  Is there no middle ground?  Isn't a moderate position thinkable in your either-or thought world?  Look at the those Punics in North Africa over there in the West.  Tertullian said he believed something because it was absurd; and I've already been hearin' from Milan about a nineteen-year-old Punic orator named Austin there who speaks of some day dissecting the Trinity.  One day, maybe in the next millennium, one of his followers will be writin' about faith seekin' understandin'--and you know how that would be able to turn out.  Who knows but what some Augustinian will be as will-oriented as those tribes Austin grew up with in Numidia--or wherever it is he comes from--and will assume that God doesn't forgive without first punishin' . . .  or that another will preach that the divine Will attributes virtual righteousness to sinners?  Always one extreme or th'other.  Virtual unity with God's imparticipable Essence will be the end o' that line.

Ryie:  Maybe I went a bit far in calling your view rationalistic, given that it won't, in my view, cut the intellectual mustard anyhow.  Hey man, should you make it to Paradise (which I wouldn't count on if I were you), I'll discuss it with you there and then.

Th.:  Whichever of us gets there won't be able to find th'other there.  That's a prediction that it would be hard to find fault with.

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