Rationalism brings with it self-conceit;
self-conceit brings estrangement; and estrangement grows with worldly
power. Thus, at the time when more than ever the West needed the
spiritual assistance and guidance of the East, the chasm appeared
terrifying to the eyes of all.
In the meantime, in its effort to Christianize
the peoples of Europe who were still barbarian, the Latin Church, instead of
trying to raise them to the difficult heights of Christian faith and life,
tried to present Christianity as something easy and pleasurable, hoping
that way to bring the barbarians more quickly to Christ. Thus
instead of
raising the barbarian it lowered the Church. It made its teaching more
comprehensible, more categorized, more systematic, more academic. This
way the spread of rationalism began and the adulteration of Christian
Faith. From a mystery and life in the Holy Spirit, Christianity became an
ethical-philosophical system, which later found its best expression in the
Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas.
Those who later rejected Catholicism received
their culture from it. They grew up in it, and it had taught them how to
think and philosophize. Protestants, humanists, atheists -the whole
series of European philosophers- all graduated from the school of
Catholicism. That is why they all speak the same language, the language
of rationalism, and this is why, in spite of all their variances, they
understand each other so famously. …
Here is what’
St. Gregory of Nyssa says about
man: «For as it seems to me, the make-up of man is awesome and inexplicable,
portraying many hidden mysteries of God in itself.»
Orthodoxy uses the words «soul», «flesh»,
«matter», «spirit», without always meaning the same things with the same
words. She uses words which are taken from human vocabulary because she must
express herself. But she never consents to enclosing within the narrow
limitations of a human concept a whole mystery, which even the angels cannot
grasp. Neither does she consent to the dividing of man into air-tight
compartments of body and soul, or, like some modern heretics, into body,
soul, and spirit. Nor does she account little value to flesh; rather,
she often speaks of it as of the whole human nature: «And the Word became
flesh». …