Gabriel’s excellent blog “Going Along” has two recent posts concerning “Problems with Contemporary Orthodox Expieriantialism” that I think Orthodox Christians should reflect upon. Here are two quotations from Gabriel’s posts.
“What almost always passes for ‘Orthodox theology’ among English-speaking Orthodox these days is actually just a branch of the larger Orthodox picture. Indeed, it tends sometimes to be rather sectarian.
The Orthodox Church is an ancient castle, as it were, of which only two or three rooms have been much in use since about 1920. These two or three rooms were furnished by the Russian émigrés in Paris between the two World Wars. This furniture is heavily neo-Palamite and anti-Scholastic. It relies heavily on the Cappadocians, Maximus, and Gregory Palamas (who are good folks, or course). Anything that does not fit comfortably into that model is dismissed as ‘Western’ and even non-Orthodox.
Consequently, one will look in vain in that theology for any significant contribution from the Alexandrians, chiefly Cyril, and that major Antiochian, Chrysostom. When these are quoted, it is usually some incidental point on which they can afford to be quoted.”- Fr. Patrick Reardon
“It is, I believe, an imperative that Orthodoxy reflects upon the place of experientialism in its self-understanding and explication. I do not believe that there is any precedent in the writings of the Church Fathers or, for that matter, Holy Writ which calls for the sort of radical experientialism that we see today. That is, for the rampant inversion of Tertullian’s wrong-ascribed epithet, “I believe because it is absurd.” No, today the belief itself is absurd and the accounts, justifications, apologetics, etc. which spring forth from that absurdity are, even in their most soberminded and seemingly logical presentation, little more than invitations to perpetuate it. The checks and balances still abide to some extent, but their voices often drowned by the sorts of questionable accusations I mentioned above. When the experientialism fades, so does the belief and when concrete issues are put forth and no amount of experience can solve them, the choice is to leave them be, invoke “economia” in the truly hard instances, or do a quick Church Fathers “proof texting” to demonstrate that they weren’t “definitional” on the matter (not surprising since some of these matters—strictly construed—could in no way have been anticipated by them in the forms they have taken today) and move on to some more experience, some more incense, and some more vague (and perhaps inappropriate) exhortations to “draw closer” to Christ…whatever that means.”- Gabriel
