“that with the split between the true Church of Christ, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the heterodox Church of Rome (RCC) in 1054 with the Great Schism, there was ushered in a new theology, new spirituality, and new ideas into the Roman West — brewed from the Roman plant of rationalism, logicism, legalism and a proto-humanism; compared with the philosophical and mystical East.”
Hmm.
I was reading Nikolai Berdyaev and he says similar things.
The hostility to the Renaissance is clinically interesting.
Should we have also kept the Medieval model of the cosmos, with Earth as the fixed center (despite the universe having no fixed center) and celestial bodies spinning in perfect circles, encased by crystalline spheres? Or was just useful in preserving faith in the Middle Ages? Regardless, it was an arbitrary system in the sense that the ordering of the heavens was inferred based on very tenuous and crude logic, the kind that also dominated much of theological discourse.
It was upheld not because it was correct or reflected the actual order of God’s creation, but because it outlined a strict system of hierarchy, and an eternally dividing line between the celestial heavens and the Earth.
It turned out to be a bad model. The finite could fathom the infinite ie The celestial heavens were something man could understand and investigate. And once the archaic model was overthrown, thanks to thinkers like Cusa and Kepler (both devout Christians), suddenly mankind experienced a very dense period of discoveries. This too involved a rather mystical process of spiritual transformation.
Science here wasn’t the kind of Aristotelian or logical dogmatic system that reigned during the Middle Ages. It was a lot more humble in what it presumed to know; but firmly rooted in the belief that man is made in the likeness of his Creator—imago viva dei—and therefore has a godlike spark—capax dei—which makes him capable of investigating and understanding God’s creation ever less imperfectly. God did not create an arbitrary universe, but a universe based on reason. And God in turn gave man powers of reason.
As Cusa observed: real science requires a leap of faith, namely, that man can know God, and thus has the capacity to investigate creation. Science doesn’t dispel mystery, it only makes the mystery clearer.
The Orthodox take seems somewhat confused on this front, reducing science to empiricism, positivism and crude materialism.
I think you are remiss in mentioning post Roman Christianity as such. Because Christianity was corrupted from the time of the Counsels of Nicea and when Augustine created just war theory. Christians went from pacifist followers of Jesus to warmongers for empire under rubrics such as "responsibility to protect" and "bringing democracy to the world." Read this in Charles Avila's book The Corruption of Christianity an chapters in my award winning book the Earth Belongs to Everyone, free pdf at theIU.org in Resources / Books section.
“that with the split between the true Church of Christ, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the heterodox Church of Rome (RCC) in 1054 with the Great Schism, there was ushered in a new theology, new spirituality, and new ideas into the Roman West — brewed from the Roman plant of rationalism, logicism, legalism and a proto-humanism; compared with the philosophical and mystical East.”
Hmm.
I was reading Nikolai Berdyaev and he says similar things.
The hostility to the Renaissance is clinically interesting.
Should we have also kept the Medieval model of the cosmos, with Earth as the fixed center (despite the universe having no fixed center) and celestial bodies spinning in perfect circles, encased by crystalline spheres? Or was just useful in preserving faith in the Middle Ages? Regardless, it was an arbitrary system in the sense that the ordering of the heavens was inferred based on very tenuous and crude logic, the kind that also dominated much of theological discourse.
It was upheld not because it was correct or reflected the actual order of God’s creation, but because it outlined a strict system of hierarchy, and an eternally dividing line between the celestial heavens and the Earth.
It turned out to be a bad model. The finite could fathom the infinite ie The celestial heavens were something man could understand and investigate. And once the archaic model was overthrown, thanks to thinkers like Cusa and Kepler (both devout Christians), suddenly mankind experienced a very dense period of discoveries. This too involved a rather mystical process of spiritual transformation.
Science here wasn’t the kind of Aristotelian or logical dogmatic system that reigned during the Middle Ages. It was a lot more humble in what it presumed to know; but firmly rooted in the belief that man is made in the likeness of his Creator—imago viva dei—and therefore has a godlike spark—capax dei—which makes him capable of investigating and understanding God’s creation ever less imperfectly. God did not create an arbitrary universe, but a universe based on reason. And God in turn gave man powers of reason.
As Cusa observed: real science requires a leap of faith, namely, that man can know God, and thus has the capacity to investigate creation. Science doesn’t dispel mystery, it only makes the mystery clearer.
The Orthodox take seems somewhat confused on this front, reducing science to empiricism, positivism and crude materialism.
In the flurry of this, we have now, the unseen world is waiting to have its say!
I think you are remiss in mentioning post Roman Christianity as such. Because Christianity was corrupted from the time of the Counsels of Nicea and when Augustine created just war theory. Christians went from pacifist followers of Jesus to warmongers for empire under rubrics such as "responsibility to protect" and "bringing democracy to the world." Read this in Charles Avila's book The Corruption of Christianity an chapters in my award winning book the Earth Belongs to Everyone, free pdf at theIU.org in Resources / Books section.