For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ . . . (2 Corinthians 10:4-5 NKJV)
As I worshipped at the Divine Liturgy yesterday, roughly about the time of the anaphora I began to think about how this same Liturgy had been prayed every Sunday for ten years at this parish. That led to thinking about how this same Liturgy had been and was being and would be prayed around the world in the twenty-four hour period that marked Sunday, in various countries and among various ethic groups and in scores of languages. That led to thinking about how this same Liturgy had been prayed in this way for about the same length of time it took the Protestant Reformation to occur. I thought then how this holy worship had worn grooves in the minds of millions and millions of worshippers for hundreds and hundreds of years. I began to understand what is meant by "common prayer" and by "an Orthodox mindset."
I have begun to recognize the furniture of the Divine Liturgy and its arrangement. While it's not quite the same acclimation as being able to walk though my home in the dark without a bruised shin or a stubbed toe, at least I can grope my way about manageably enough. But groping about and being able to get to exactly the right point in the right room is not quite the same. I wondered how long it would take me to develop this "Orthodox mindset."
This was brought home to me by the kind words of a friend last evening. I heard him to say how interesting it was to hear folks like myself speak about Orthodoxy . . . as a Protestant. It seems to me this morning that such attempts must smack of speaking French with a lovely Arkansas twang. "Well, pardonnay mwaw, yawl!"
One could, I suppose speak of Western and Eastern mindsets. But as my parish priest strives ever to exemplify, when it comes to Orthodoxy, there is no east and west. It may be best to simply refer to Orthodoxy as a patristic mindset. The Church Fathers were focused on absolute fidelity to the Tradition, but a fidelity that sought to maintain the life-giving nature of the Tradition, not a fidelity that could be relegated to mere reproduction and jots and tittles. It is this patristic mindset, then, that animates the Orthodox churches today. As is evidenced by my own parish priest. Each Sunday we commemorate the saints of the Church, East and West. Father frequently chants the Psalms in Latin prior to Vespers on Saturday nights. No mere parochialism here.
For myself, I suppose my metanoia of mind is going to take longer than I'd suspected, and indeed longer than I want. And for one who lives so much in the mind as myself, such a lengthy transfiguration is irritating, if necessary.
Grounded in the Western mindset, having gone from the modernism that I drank in with my mother's milk to the postmodernism (more correctly, hypermodernism) with which modern academia is rife, I can so clearly see the strengths, and know so intimately the failures, of the Western mind. The Western mind, founded in the Latin, is ever-precise and categorical. Thus the Western mind is either oriented toward rationality alone, or to its opposite extreme, nonrational mysticism. Either syllogism or relativism. Westerners have a devil of a time holding the Areopagitic tension between kataphatic and apophatic theology. We either "imprison" God in dogmatic boxes, or we eschew reason and claim "It's all the same, anyway."
I, of course, though attempting a Pseudo-Dionysian balance, usually by temperment and training swing hard over to rationalism. Typical postmodernist, I suppose, I rail against reason on reason's terms. Thankfully, I can still appreciate the contradiction, if I do not enjoy the irony. Others with whom I connect swing hard toward mysticism, but once again, are caught in their rationalistic chains of absolutizing relativism.
It seems to me that what I need (and I am bold enough to say the same of my interlocutors on the "other side") is a warfare of the mind by which Christ takes hold of my thoughts and subdues them into obedience. After all, if Jesus Christ is the Truth, if in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, then it is his mind I need. Which is to say, I need the mind of the Church. And that means that I must prepare the battlefield with the prayers of the Church and the Scriptures, digging deep grooves and trenches into which enemy thoughts will fall and be vanquished.
Posted by Clifton at May 19, 2003 09:39 PM | TrackBack