The Spirituality of the Rational Mind and the Spirituality of Logic

To continue from where we left off in Part I: Considering what the word “spiritual” meant in the early Church, the mind was without reservation incorporated into the concept and practice of spirituality because the mind is the bearer of the Image of God.

Since this is the case, we need to have an understanding of what the human mind is.  This can best be done by comparing us to animals.  Animals can move, and they can feel, but while this so, they do not appear to reflect on things whether that be on the world as a whole, or on their communities, or about themselves.  They live to survive, not to reflect.  This is why many animals migrate throughout the year, and even though we do not quite understand all the mechanisms involved, we see (by our ability to reflect) that there is a reason behind their migrations.  But there is no internal struggle to not migrate; no one member argues with the community about remaining when the time has come for migration.  Neither does a splinter group arise formed by those who don’t agree.  Rather, the entire herd migrates, and the one who does not migrate ends up dead due to environmental conditions that occur during the change of the seasons, and if that member does not die, then at least it is significantly weakened.  The actions of animals are reactions to environmental stimuli, but their behaviors are on a totally different level than all other systems.  They can be conditioned.

But when we come to humans, we are like the animals because we can move and we can feel like they do, yet there is something altogether different between us and all other beings.  We can reflect on everything: objects as parts and systems as wholes, individuals as parts and communities as wholes, the entire universe as a whole.  We can reflect on our actions versus our thoughts, the actions of others, consequences that arise out of actions, and ourselves and what we feel and why.  Further, this ability to reflect leads to understanding.  We are not only animals, but we are in addition something else.  We have a mind; we have rationality.  As mentioned in Part I, the early Church defined the human being as “a rational animal.”

These abilities to reflect and to understand occur nowhere else other than in human beings.  To make this clear, let me define what is meant by reflection and understanding.

Understanding can be defined as “perceiving the meaning, significance, explanation, or cause of (something).”

Some wonder and think that animals have all these capabilities, but with a little consideration of the nature of humans compared with animals we find that this is not the case.

For example, meaning often expresses itself in language and symbols.  Symbols are things that carry a meaning other than what they are.  For example, the head is the topmost part of our body that contains our brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.  But we use the word head to refer to our ability to think and understand such as in the phrases, “Use your head!”  Yet, we are not literally using our heads, but only our minds.  This is a symbolic usage of the word “head.”  Further, language is also purely symbolic because the sounds produced refer to things other than the sounds.  No other creature has the ability to be symbolic.  If they did, it would have been observed.  Every single animal observed has never produced symbols.  Symbols are a result of reflection, understanding, and application of that understanding.  This is all done within a matrix of communication with an other.  If there is no other, then there is no foundation for symbols.  We can do just fine with instincts; certainly all species except for humans have only relied on instincts, and look at how long animals have lived on the planet.

Next, significance as different from meaning expresses itself in looking into the future (even a very far off future) and imagining what that future will be like (such as an ideal) and adjusting our plans and behavior to make real that ideal imagined future.  For example, if we want to be large and bulky, then we will adjust how we eat, what we eat, how often we eat, how often we go to the gym, what type of exercises to do, and what period of time we need to do it (e.g. 6 months, 1 year).  Other than building nests for laying eggs and raising their young (which is a very short look into the future), no animal exhibits such foresight.  Further, their foresight does not come as a result of reflection because it is repeated regularly regardless of where the animal is located.  It appears to be something built into them, something instinctual.

Significance, on the other hand, is characterized by variation.  We see no such variation in the animal kingdom in terms of planning for the future.  It is all the same.  The same nests are observed among all birds of the same species.  There is no development or change in quality and structure over the generations.  Reflection leads to change in quality and structure over even a very short time, if not in anything else, at least in appearance and decoration.

There are few things that are more misunderstood in the modern world than the word “spiritual.”

Try this: ask someone you know what the word “spiritual” means and they will probably answer that it is some type of emotional, subjective, or religious feeling.

Further, if one goes to Wikipedia as a source of enlightenment, in the article on “Spirituality” it says, “In modern times the emphasis is on subjective experience and ‘the deepest values and meanings by which people live,’ incorporating personal growth or transformation, usually in a context separate from organized religious institutions” (Wikipedia). This is not how the Early Church understood the meaning of “spiritual.”

In contrast, to the early Church, the word “spiritual” meant “immaterial reality.” Interestingly enough, if one looks up the definition of “spiritual” on Google’s dictionary, the first definition that comes up is “relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.” This definition is closer to the understanding of the Early Church.

Image from Pixabay

Spiritual Realities

So we must now ask a question: What are the things that affect our spirits that are not material or physical?

To begin to answer that question, we need to go back to the past for a lesson. For hundreds of years before Christianity, philosophers had long recognized that there were realities with which humans dealt that were immaterial and that could not be derived from only observation of the material world. This means these realities could not be perceived only by the senses of sight, hearing, feeling, smell, or taste. For example, the Pythagoreans recognized that the rules and objects of mathematics especially the concepts of the One and Geometry were immaterial realities.

To give you an idea of how this is so, try this thought experiment. Everything that you see that you call one, whether it is one person, or a place like one city, or a thing like one house, are all made up of many different parts. The fact that we can sense a unity in them is something that cannot be suggested by the parts, but it is something that only the mind can access. This is due to the fact that all these things are a result of purpose, which is by nature immaterial because the purpose (and therefore the design) of something exists immaterially before the physical thing takes shape. Further, it is that purpose that holds the thing together after the material parts have come together to make it, such as a house. This is why we repair and maintain the house because the purpose holds the parts together.

Following these thinkers, the philosopher Plato (who studied with the Pythagoreans) systematized this understanding in his Theory of the Forms. The Forms (also called Ideas) are realities that are nonphysical, eternal, and unchanging. They are not simply ideas in our minds, but they exist independently of our minds. Our minds can perceive them. An example from mathematics includes the idea of the triangle. This idea is nonphysical and unchanging, and thus eternal. Nothing one does in nature nor any amount of observation can change what it means to be a triangle. But the material world can replicate the Form, the Idea, and if it does so, it is because it participates in it. Further we can recognize whether something is a better representation of a triangle than another. This is due to the fact that our minds can recognize the Form, the Idea, because our minds are of the same nature as the Forms. Put another way, this is because our minds stand above nature, and the patterns they perceive such as the Idea of the One are not affected by the material world. We cannot get the Idea of a perfect triangle from observing things, but we can determine whether something is a better representation of a triangle than another. This is objective. This is also immaterial.

Following these discoveries, the philosophers categorized what comprised the immaterial realities and these realities were: The Laws of Logic, the rules and objects of Mathematics, Aesthetics (that is Values), and Morals. All these categories are unaffected by the material world, but the material world participates in them. They underlie the material world, and the material world is built on them. These realities are objective, meaning they are not left to opinion, but they are universally true.

There is a quip in the Greek Orthodox Church that goes, “We don’t read Bibles; we only kiss them.”

We might as well add another one, “We don’t read the Fathers; we only praise them.”

Such is the mentality of many Orthodox Christians with the Church Fathers. For them, the Fathers are this abstract standard to which we must appeal to show that we are really Orthodox, but if we are not familiar with many things that they modeled for us, then we are Orthodox by name and not by practice. This is because the Fathers communicate for us the mind and heart of the early Church.

Christ Taking Leave of the Apostles

by Duccio di Buoninsegna

between 1308-1311

There are four types of attitudes to approaching the Church Fathers.

First, there are some that speak highly of the Fathers like the peasant statement mentioned above, but never read them. This can be either the traditionally Orthodox or converts of the sort who are commonly called hyperdox. Most are familiar with the hyperdox as being overly zealous converts from Protestant churches. Yet the hyperdox have not converted to the Orthodox Christian ethos because they do with the Fathers what they did with the Bible in their former churches; they proof-text from them which means they take passages from them to claim support for their own views. The difference is that they have a much larger group of texts to select from. Yet proof-texting is not discovering the mind and heart of the Fathers, but simply engaging in confirmation bias of your own pre-existing attitudes. Both the traditional and hyperdox in this group are especially guilty of patrolatry, which is the over-praise and even what one might call worship of the Church Fathers. The way to fix this wrong attitude is by reading the Church Fathers in their own contexts and drawing out their central ideas. This will lead us to discover the mind and heart of the early Church.

A second attitude belongs to those who see the Fathers as outdated and as such worthless. Most Protestant Christians fall into this category. Such an attitude develops only due to a lack of imagination. They lack imagination because they have never seriously engaged with the writings of the Church Fathers.

A third attitude belongs to those that don’t care. This group thinks that the Fathers are a preference. One time, a person who read my blog commented saying, “I noticed that unless you have the willpower to try to understand [them], [they] will make no sense. Seeking the church fathers is something you must do on your own.” Another wrote to me, “Your issue seems to be that he [a certain person] does not quote Church Fathers or content from the Early Church enough to your liking. It is not clear how this is harmful or why your barometer of what is Orthodox enough is the one we should all follow.” Regrettably, both of these comments came from self-professed Orthodox Christians. What they did not understand, to no fault of their own but more to their shepherds, is that the Church Fathers are not a preference, but they are the heritage of the Orthodox Church. We would not know Orthodox Christianity if it were not for the Fathers explaining it and handing it to us.

Lastly, there are those that hold the Fathers as extremely valuable and for this reason read them.

When we read the Fathers as a matter of habit, then we will begin to discern the mind and heart of the early Church. That mind is very different than the Christianity most people are familiar with today. The mind of the early Church is fresh, is infused with meaning, offers powerful explanations of what we can know about God, ourselves, and the world, and its spirituality is much deeper and transformative than what we know now.

The Mind of the Fathers

What are the characteristics of the mind of the early Church?

1. Christ-centeredness

The most defining characteristic of the mind of the early Church is its Christ-centeredness. This Christ-centeredness most clearly appears in the interpretation of the Bible. To the early Church, the Scriptures appear to be like a treasure chest and Christ is the key who unlocks it to reveal all the treasures the chest contains.

Also, to them the Scriptures are like a Well and Christ is the water drawn out from it. The Fathers model how to draw water out of this well, and if we follow their teaching, we too will learn how to effectively draw Him out from this Well.

We are aware that many Prophecies are clearly centered on Christ. For example, the Four Servant Songs in Isaiah (Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and 52-53).

Yet in the early Church, the whole of the Bible was read centered on Christ. For example, the Psalms were read in Christ-centered fashion. An example is Psalm 7:6-7

“Rise up, O Lord, in your anger
—be exalted in the borders of my enemies.
—and awake, O my God, with the ordinance you commanded.
And a congregation of people will surround you,
—and above this return on high.” (Psalm 7:7-8 LXX)

St. Basil the Great, in his Homily on Psalm 7, which can be found in the collection of his sermons titled Exegetic Homilies published in the Fathers of the Church series by Catholic University of America, interprets this verse as prophesying the Resurrection. Indeed, in Greek both the words “exalted” and “awake” use terms associated with the Resurrection in the New Testament. It then becomes clear that “the congregation of people” is the Church that Christ will establish after His Resurrection. The beauty and implications of St. Basil’s Christ-centered interpretation are too rich to discuss in detail here, and I highly recommend that you read these homilies on the Psalms in your devotions.

Moreover, this Christ-centeredness went beyond the Scriptures to view the world in the light of Christ. An example of this is the early Christian book Physiologus which interprets many different animals, trees, and stones as symbols for Christ. These symbols then were used in Christian art to raise the mind of the beholder to see Christ in everything.

The Christ-centeredness of the early Church is best exemplified in the prayer known as Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, which near the end reads,

“Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ at my right, Christ at my left,
Christ when lying down, Christ in sitting,
Christ in rising up.

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me” (Saint Patrick’s Breastplate VIII-IX).

This prayer is worthy of meditation and repetition because it will transform how we view ourselves, others, and our way in the world in the light of Christ.

2. The Focus on God and Humanity

Another characteristic of the mind of the early Church is the centrality of the Incarnation of the Son of God. This leads to the focus and emphasis on God and Humanity because God Himself has become Human.

The first and foremost implication of all this is the holiness of the body and living in the present since this is what God did by becoming human in our Lord Jesus Christ. Most ancient religions were escapist, which means they longed to leave this world. Modern Christianity seems to be this way too, but in ancient Christianity this was not the case. Certainly, the early Christians looked to the end of the age, but not as an escape, but rather as a preparation for how we should live our lives in the present. To use an analogy that the Church Fathers themselves often used, it is like how a good student looks to the end of his or her education as culminating in a lifelong career, and when this is taken in mind, it affects how they work in school for the entirety of their time as students. It will produce highly motivated, hard-working, and well-behaved students. The same was true for the early Church in their hope for the age to come; while they looked to the end of the age, it meant that it had an effect on the present way of living. The age to come was a natural outgrowth of what we prepared for here. The present age was like a school to prepare us for the life of the age to come.

One year during my church’s annual festival, I was in the team giving the church tour/presentation and afterward, as usual, one visitor, a Protestant in his early 20s, came up and asked me a question.  He began by saying, “Who’s that?” angrily holding the booklet that visitors received when they entered the festival like the book was something loathsome.  He was referring to the icon that was on the cover. It was an icon of the patron saint after whom our church was named.

So I answered him that it was the saint after whom this church building was named.  Then he asked me if this saint was in the Bible.  I said no.  He paused seemingly to think (but from multiple experiences of the same sort, I knew his answer was rehearsed already), and already I saw sweat falling on his temples, then he said, “I thought this was a Christian church.”  I replied, “Yes, it is.”  He said, “So why do you have a picture of this…” and he had difficulty pronouncing the name of the saint.  I replied again that this saint was the person after whom our church building was named, and that this saint had happened to die as a martyr for Christ.

The conversation then went into dogma and sacraments and faith and salvation.  I’m sure many of you know the type of conversation I am describing.  Maybe you’ve had a similar conversation yourselves.

Yet, what I want to focus on is that there is such a misunderstanding of the saints in the West in both Protestant and Apostolic churches that this topic usually devolves into emotionalism when touched upon.

There is a right way to view the saints, yet that view is often lacking.  But If we go back into our Christian past and seek to understand what saints are and their meaning in the light of Christ, then the result is that all of us will grow to be like Christ.

Greek Icon of the Second Coming, c. 1700

Christ is surrounded by the saints

The Character of Christ

Before we can begin to understand the meaning of the saints, we have to go back to our Lord Jesus Christ. We must first understand what character is, and then what His character is like.

To make things simple, character is the combination of features that make the individual nature of a person or thing.  These features include:

1. Values (or what one holds important)
2. Priorities (or the ordering of one’s values from most important to least important and which allows us to act)
3. Confidence (or what one has full trust in);
4. Actions (or what one does).

Since Christ became human, He has a human character built on this combination of features.

The Gospels make the values, priorities, confidence, and actions of our Lord Jesus clear to us.  Our Lord’s mission was to save humanity; that was His main priority.  He did this by giving us a model of how to live our lives and selflessly dying for us and rising from the dead; these were some of His actions which broke the hold and power of sin over us.  He had confidence in His Father and in the Scriptures that He inspired.  He was the fulfillment of God’s promises and plan of salvation for humanity.  The result was that He created a community of believers who no longer were held by the power of sin and lived in the way God intended for humans to live reflecting His love out of their own freedom by imitating Christ.  This does not mean that they did not occasionally sin as all of us do, but that they were no longer defined by it because of the work of Christ.  This is a simple sketch, but it briefly shows Christ’s character.

If we contemplate on our Lord Jesus Christ’s character and come near to Him, then He becomes a model for us.  But should we model our lives on His?  Isn’t it enough to simply believe that He did this for us and that we be true to ourselves?

Actually, no.

Imitation and Faith

To begin with, believing in Christ does not mean only believing that He died on the Cross for us.  That is historical fact.  Rather, believing in Christ means believing that His way of life and teachings, which are His example is the one that you should take up into your own life.  This can only be done through imitation, but that imitation must be done out of love.

Imitation and Love

Humans are highly imitative creatures.  In fact, we might be the most imitative of all creatures.  Almost all we do since we are born is the result of imitation.  We pick up language solely by imitation and assimilation from our parents.  We learn the most basic body language such as eye contact, smiling, and compassion by imitation of our parents, mostly our mothers.  This happens unconsciously.

We imitate continually. But most of all, we imitate what we love.  The ones we first love are our parents.  Thus, most of us are like our parents in significant ways.  For example, if our parents love learning and model that for us at a young age, then we love it too.  If our parents have certain hobbies such as working on cars or gardening, then we love those too.  If our parents are easily angered, then we are too.  If our parents cry a lot, then we tend to cry a lot too.

If you think about these things, and what your parents were like, and what you are like, then you will realize this is the case.

Yet, some of you will be suspicious about all this, and think of counterexamples to what I am saying. Your siblings will come to mind, and according to the line of thinking I mentioned above, then they should be just like you too.  But they’re not.  Why not? This is because we have different friends than our siblings do.  If we are friends with certain people, then we come to love them too (indeed the word “friend” in English and many European languages comes from a root word meaning “to love”), and as such we imitate them consciously or unconsciously.

To illustrate the power that friends can have on us in terms of our behavior, I remember when I was in high school, I had several friends who read the Bible, and this was one of the reasons (but certainly not the only reason) that I read the Bible in high school. I still remember a conversation that I had with one of my good friends in the fall of my senior year about reading the Bible regularly and how he told me to not feel like I was unworthy to read it. I remember that I finished the New Testament for the first time shortly after that.

In the same way, when we have friends who cuss, party, drink heavily, do drugs, and fornicate, then we will end up like them too.  If you go through these things yourself, think about when and where you first started these vices, and you’ll find that your friends (or family) were there.

We imitate what we love, and this happens unconsciously for the most part, and it leads to a transformation of who we are.

“Do not refrain from speaking at the proper moment,
—and do not hide your wisdom.
For wisdom becomes known through speech,
—and education through the words of the tongue.
Never speak against the truth,
—but be ashamed of your ignorance.
Do not be ashamed to confess your sins,
—and do not try to stop the current of a river” (Sirach 4:23-26).

Why do you say you are lacking in these things,
—and why do you endure such great thirst?
I opened my mouth and said,
—Acquire wisdom for yourselves without money.
Put your neck under her yoke,
—and let your souls receive instruction;
—it is to be found close by.
See with your own eyes that I have labored but little
—and found for myself much serenity” (Sirach 51:24-27).

The Perception of Knowledge

Over the years I have had countless conversations about the relationship between faith and knowledge. These conversations have often ended up pitting faith against knowledge, and how we should focus on faith rather than knowledge.

To illustrate the point, last year I was giving a presentation at an apologetics conference held at my church on Christianity’s interaction with science throughout history. I had begun the presentation by saying that I would accept questions throughout and not only at the end. At about 5 minutes in, a lady in the very back of the church raised her hand and began saying how we needed to be simple in faith and that we didn’t need any of this (meaning the three apologetics presentations we had had that day). Then she continued by saying if we knew everything about God, then He wouldn’t be God.

So, I responded that while we, of course, could not know everything about God, there were definitely some things we could know about God, and that was why we were holding this conference, to talk about those things. I gave her an example in Biblical interpretation, and how this is a development of knowledge, and learning more about God.

Needless to say, I have always felt something off in this type of thinking which pits faith against knowledge. I often consider how one can grow in their faith without knowledge. All faith that grows does so due to some measure of understanding or experience of that faith. So how can faith be opposed to knowledge?

Image from Pixabay

In addition to pitting faith against knowledge, there are other things our communities get wrong when it comes to teaching and education in the Church. We often confuse humility with simplicity. The reality is one can be humble and highly intelligent. I have met many scholars who were of the utmost humility. This is because humility is a disposition of character, not one of knowledge.