Deconstruction and Proof Texts

From a comment posted to another blog:

Indeed: How could we Orthodox base our authority on the scriptures, when we wrote the scriptures? Rather, the reverse is true. The scriptures derive such authority as they have from us. Indeed, were it not so, the Ecumenical Councils would have no meaning, for in them we articulated the canons of the scriptures. But in reality, the scriptures are the icon of Christ, and so we’re not concerned so much with ‘authority’ in some quasi-Roman-Catholic sense, but with the Incarnation, with the Scriptures as revelation of the Incarnate One. For us, the Scriptures are in this sense an interactive call to theosis, to deification, to union with God. This is their purpose and their significance to us, as indeed are all things in Holy Orthodoxy, but a means to that one end. For us the question is not “what is true?” as much as “how may I be deified?”, because Orthodoxy is not a belief system – it’s an asceticism.

How could we Orthodox base our authority on the scriptures, when we wrote the scriptures? Rather, the reverse is true.

On your last point, concerning those who do not follow Orthodox epistemology nonetheless trying to cobble together proof texts from our writings to refute that very epistemology, it is indeed parasitical. Pure invention would be better suited to their underlying assumptions – why don’t they write their own books? The question is a historical one, as much as an ecclesiological and epistemological one. Fundamentally, they consider themselves the heirs of the apostles and so of holy writ, and attribute therefore to their own tribe and mentality those holy men who had no such notions as they hold, and then position them to try to reconcile them or admit confusion.

We are debating with people who first begin with the notion that the Church is something general and non-specific, and then proceed to claim historical continuity with it’s fathers and texts. Their history, and indeed historiographical method is bunko. If that falls through their fingers, nothing they say now about doctrine or theory matters at all. Theirs is, at it’s heart, the error of the literary deconstructionist. It’s as if one of us wrote an epic poem, and they think they know better than the author what it means. We write books, and they take those texts and presume to tell us what we mean. And we say,

Orthodoxy is not a belief system – it’s an asceticism.

No, we also have the original author’s letters, and his disciple’s letters, and the continuity of discussion (e.g. the liturgy) in which they lived and breathed, the very tradition into which they were writing and the language of metaphors and references and history they were speaking – the grammar of their faith, and we have their prayers, and their lives, and their disciples prayers and lives, and their mentors’ prayers and lives and letters and books, and we have the decisions of the councils in which they participated, and the succession in which they participated, and even the languages in which they wrote and spoke and prayed, and indeed the very physical churches in which they served and prayed and did works, and their childrens’ childrens’ children unto ages that they sired in the faith, and the testimonies of holy men to the meaning and significance of their teachings in their lives, and miracles, appearances, visions, visitations, healings, and answered prayers following the veneration of these men, which follow upon and proceed because of this understanding of their thinking, and our homes are filled with their icons, and their names upon our calendars and our lips – indeed our children are given their names and keep their name days as the days of their new birth, and indeed Bishops are tonsured in their names, and Churches consecrated in their names, and monastic brotherhoods proceed in their names and go ahead before us into glorification and return to us with answered prayers and signs and wonders bidding us follow still, so that we see the line of our people stretching back to Him who made us and ahead to those who live in his uncreated Energies, deified and divinized.

But here they offer, “yes, but we know what the writings really mean”, which is nothing else than what the gnostics of old offered up against the Orthodox: that they were wiser than the apostles, and possessed the higher intuition, the illumined insight, the greater connection to the spiritual thread of God, and had no need of the Incarnate Christ in whom all these fathers subsist, since the secrets of their minds are superior. This is the character of those who offer us the ulterior wisdom of their own minds, and bid us look away from the path of light to their own ‘enlightenment’.

But we are the elder brother. They cannot speak of Christ or Christianity or fathers or Church or scripture except by us.

But we are the elder brother. They cannot speak of Christ or Christianity or fathers or Church or scripture except by us. Ours is the language and history of heaven come to earth, and so it’s nonsense for us to reverse this order – or rather it’s Babel, the attempt of earth to attain heaven, as if to own it and possess it and situate it within our own religious framework and assumptions and culture. God forbid. And God save us by the prayers of the fathers who led and lead us still, who are not dead, and not silent, and not impotent, but continue to save us, and speak to us, and teach us, as we listen to their voices and receive grace through them, drowning out the distortions of their false followers who presume to tear them away from this unbroken tradition – what you call our epistemology, which is really much more – and so to sever us as well.

How can we listen to the heterodox prattle about writings and teachings when, regardless of all else, they are not of us, not of those whose writings they handle so roughly? As the one who led me said, “If they say they follow the Apostles and the Saints, then let them join their Church.”

Key excerpts from the [Original Comment Source]:

You believe that the Pope, the Apostles and the Bible are somehow “infallible.” I believe that the prophets, Apostles, and saints of all ages, up until this exact minute, have experienced revelation, which is glorification.

I follow the Orthodox Church, whose authority is based not upon Scripture or Liturgy per se, but upon real revelation, which is direct, noetic experience of the divine.

Without glorification, Christianity becomes a “religion.” A set of rules and maxims which are dictated to man by mere men.

The [scriptures are] written by those who are inspired by their experiences of glorification to write words that lead (in the context of the Church and individual spiritual fatherhood) others to the selfsame experience of God.

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