J
JayDyer
Guest
www.nicenetruth.com
[Many more patristic quotes could have been given but it was getting too lengthy. -Jay]
By: Jay Dyer
First, I want to thank my friend James Kelly of OrthodoxPatristics.com for his interest in dialoguing with me. He is far more well-read in Fr. Romanides and the Orthodox writers than I am: Perry Robinson and Daniel Jones as well. I have spent the last few years trying to immerse myself in the East and its Doctors in the attempt to obtain a more Catholic understanding of the mind of the one Church, which all admit is truly East and West in unison. And, as many of you know, I refrained from being received as Orthodox primarily for some of the reasons we will be discussing. I am delighted, however, to have become friends with James, and, I’m even surprised and honored he would be interested in devoting any time to discussions with me. We have had some very engaging late-night discussions and this discussion will get a bit ‘feisty.’ Also, I’m not responding to the ‘haters’ at James’ site who have posted pointless attacks of my “heretical prattle,” with absolutely no substance. As many times as I have changed my positions and retracted certain views, I hope it’s obvious my concern is for what is true, and not merely academic disputes and intellectual ostentation.
That being said, as much as I respect the intellects of Dr. Joseph Farrell, Perry Robinson, Daniel Jones and James, I remain unconvinced of their assessment of what truly constitutes the Catholic tradition. I am in the process of reading as much as I can by these men and those they recommend (I also work 2 jobs right now). In this response, I intend to respond to James primarily, since he was zealously desirous of a dialogue/debate, while I will mention a few of Daniel Jones’ points. Let me again stress that I am in the process of learning and can only offer these objections based on the present understanding I have obtained by God’s grace, with the utmost respect to all these men, since they are, in sincerity, more learned than I. And that isn’t false humility.
But our points of departure are not about who is smartest. James has argued a few times now on his blog that his strand of Orthodox thinking is undoubtedly the true one primarily because he has discovered the correct religious epistemology. Perhaps he is right: let’s see if his position is convincing. His view, following Fr. Romanides and others, is that the fallen human ‘nous’ must be purified by deification, recalling its original, natural knowledge of God, which is all part and parcel of the work of glorification. Glorification is experienced in this life, and it is the holy orthodox fathers who have experienced this glorification, along with all true orthodox Christians down to the present, which glorification translates to a direct union with God by which we are given a true religious epistemology ‘from within,’ if you will, by the deifying energies of Trinity. Such is the crux of his presuppositions.
The usefulness of this approach for James in our discussion is that it becomes his bogus ‘trump-card,’ that only the Fathers that he perceives as having experienced this purifying-deifying of the ‘nous’ are to be counted the true, holy orthodox fathers. Thus, anything that one presents from a Church Father or from the Sacred Scriptures must be stretched to fit with James’ presuppositions, and be placed neatly within a kind of Kantian template (not that he is a Kantian, but that he is operating in similar fashion to Kantianism, where the mind orders reality and sticks the ‘facts’ in their proper place in the ‘ice-tray’ of categories). So, for example, if I quote St. John of Damascus speaking of the eternality of God’s just penal decision to damn the wicked, James responds that, “St. John of Damascus was an orthodox father [whom he has allowed to make the cut], and irrespective of what he may have written in certain sections,” James is assured, “he had to mean” whatever fits with Fr. Romanides and Gregory of Palamas views, or rather, with James’ own present interpretation.
But this is a fallacious and useless approach. I might simply turn the tables on him, in the same flawed approach that many Catholic apologists take, and make the same ‘trump card’ claims: “James is alien to the commonwealth of the Catholic Communion. Only those with a truly Augustinian-Thomistic understanding can grasp the mysteries of the Catholic Faith. You, James, follow the tired old approach of the radical Eastern polemicists and you have been excluded from the communion of the true saints. Therefore, until you are in agreement with all of my positions, you will never understand the Christian Faith.” I mean, of what use would it be for me to say, “unless you have my position, anything you say is meaningless and my truly Catholic ‘nous’ ‘trump-card’ cancels out any and all your quotations of Scripture and the Fathers.” This is the very kind of ‘argument’ a weak patristic and biblical theology would resort to.
What would this achieve? Do we all have presuppositions? Of course. But apologetics has to assume some common ground, or else the venture would be useless. In other words, James must posit a radical difference in our epistemic approaches because his position demands it, rather than it actually being the case that we are radically different in our approaches. How can I demonstrate this? James has on several occasions told me that he does not know whether he personally has experienced the purification of ‘nous,’ but that he believes it to be true, and that the fathers he has chosen to follow (in contrast to other orthodox fathers, by the way, as I will show below), certainly experienced the purification of ‘nous’ necessary to know the truth of God.
Continued here.
[Many more patristic quotes could have been given but it was getting too lengthy. -Jay]
By: Jay Dyer
First, I want to thank my friend James Kelly of OrthodoxPatristics.com for his interest in dialoguing with me. He is far more well-read in Fr. Romanides and the Orthodox writers than I am: Perry Robinson and Daniel Jones as well. I have spent the last few years trying to immerse myself in the East and its Doctors in the attempt to obtain a more Catholic understanding of the mind of the one Church, which all admit is truly East and West in unison. And, as many of you know, I refrained from being received as Orthodox primarily for some of the reasons we will be discussing. I am delighted, however, to have become friends with James, and, I’m even surprised and honored he would be interested in devoting any time to discussions with me. We have had some very engaging late-night discussions and this discussion will get a bit ‘feisty.’ Also, I’m not responding to the ‘haters’ at James’ site who have posted pointless attacks of my “heretical prattle,” with absolutely no substance. As many times as I have changed my positions and retracted certain views, I hope it’s obvious my concern is for what is true, and not merely academic disputes and intellectual ostentation.
That being said, as much as I respect the intellects of Dr. Joseph Farrell, Perry Robinson, Daniel Jones and James, I remain unconvinced of their assessment of what truly constitutes the Catholic tradition. I am in the process of reading as much as I can by these men and those they recommend (I also work 2 jobs right now). In this response, I intend to respond to James primarily, since he was zealously desirous of a dialogue/debate, while I will mention a few of Daniel Jones’ points. Let me again stress that I am in the process of learning and can only offer these objections based on the present understanding I have obtained by God’s grace, with the utmost respect to all these men, since they are, in sincerity, more learned than I. And that isn’t false humility.
But our points of departure are not about who is smartest. James has argued a few times now on his blog that his strand of Orthodox thinking is undoubtedly the true one primarily because he has discovered the correct religious epistemology. Perhaps he is right: let’s see if his position is convincing. His view, following Fr. Romanides and others, is that the fallen human ‘nous’ must be purified by deification, recalling its original, natural knowledge of God, which is all part and parcel of the work of glorification. Glorification is experienced in this life, and it is the holy orthodox fathers who have experienced this glorification, along with all true orthodox Christians down to the present, which glorification translates to a direct union with God by which we are given a true religious epistemology ‘from within,’ if you will, by the deifying energies of Trinity. Such is the crux of his presuppositions.
The usefulness of this approach for James in our discussion is that it becomes his bogus ‘trump-card,’ that only the Fathers that he perceives as having experienced this purifying-deifying of the ‘nous’ are to be counted the true, holy orthodox fathers. Thus, anything that one presents from a Church Father or from the Sacred Scriptures must be stretched to fit with James’ presuppositions, and be placed neatly within a kind of Kantian template (not that he is a Kantian, but that he is operating in similar fashion to Kantianism, where the mind orders reality and sticks the ‘facts’ in their proper place in the ‘ice-tray’ of categories). So, for example, if I quote St. John of Damascus speaking of the eternality of God’s just penal decision to damn the wicked, James responds that, “St. John of Damascus was an orthodox father [whom he has allowed to make the cut], and irrespective of what he may have written in certain sections,” James is assured, “he had to mean” whatever fits with Fr. Romanides and Gregory of Palamas views, or rather, with James’ own present interpretation.
But this is a fallacious and useless approach. I might simply turn the tables on him, in the same flawed approach that many Catholic apologists take, and make the same ‘trump card’ claims: “James is alien to the commonwealth of the Catholic Communion. Only those with a truly Augustinian-Thomistic understanding can grasp the mysteries of the Catholic Faith. You, James, follow the tired old approach of the radical Eastern polemicists and you have been excluded from the communion of the true saints. Therefore, until you are in agreement with all of my positions, you will never understand the Christian Faith.” I mean, of what use would it be for me to say, “unless you have my position, anything you say is meaningless and my truly Catholic ‘nous’ ‘trump-card’ cancels out any and all your quotations of Scripture and the Fathers.” This is the very kind of ‘argument’ a weak patristic and biblical theology would resort to.
What would this achieve? Do we all have presuppositions? Of course. But apologetics has to assume some common ground, or else the venture would be useless. In other words, James must posit a radical difference in our epistemic approaches because his position demands it, rather than it actually being the case that we are radically different in our approaches. How can I demonstrate this? James has on several occasions told me that he does not know whether he personally has experienced the purification of ‘nous,’ but that he believes it to be true, and that the fathers he has chosen to follow (in contrast to other orthodox fathers, by the way, as I will show below), certainly experienced the purification of ‘nous’ necessary to know the truth of God.
Continued here.