An Orthodox Theory of Knowledge: The Epistemological and Apologetic Methods of the Church Fathers, by Rev. Deacon Dr. Ananias Sorem
“If anyone should suggest that scientific knowledge is provable by the help of reason, he must realize that the first principles are not to be proved…By faith alone is it possible to arrive at the principle of the universe.” – Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis
I ended my last post on the uses of pragmatism to confirm reason outside of itself, and presented both a scientific example and an approach regarding proofs of God’s existence. To be fair we should attempt a similar process to consider the possibility that the traditional concept of God might be untrue. The agnostic (or atheist) might counter that the traditional concept of God is proven erroneous using correspondence (the presence of unnecessary evil in the universe and the illogic of omnipotence and its inconsistency with free will)), coherence (the physicist’s argument for the spontaneous appearance of the primordial singularity or the power of science to explain events previously thought to be supernatural), and pragmatically (the inconsistency of attempts of most persons to achieve mystical union and the failure of prayers to solve worldly problems). In the end, reason and pragmatism are shown to leave the proof of God unsettled.
Fr. Sorem’s attack on foundationalism and coherentism is immensely old – the default position of the ancient skeptics. But he who lives by the sword may die by it – intellectually honest skepticism imposes doubt on faith and revelation as well. In fact it seems far more dubious to consider revelation (particularly the patchwork of the New and Old Testaments) as absolute truth over reason and science with their largely internal consistencies, accurate predictions (for example eclipses) and immense utility (such as the automobile, cell phone, or computer). I seek not to undermine faith here, only to challenge whether skeptic doubt is the correct format to champion faith.
Nonetheless, for me, the most powerful portion of Sorem’s essay is his proof of God’s existence I extracted in Part II of this critique. This is possibly one of the most powerful arguments I have ever seen for the belief in deity. If reason and truth itself are instantiated in the divine, what in the West is called the logos, then Fr. Sorem’s formulation of what is essentially a metaphysical argument for God’s existence seems to be entirely different from the traditional ontological, teleological, and cosmological arguments. Its weakness is I suppose is the validity of the first premise – “Truth and knowledge cannot be justified in the absence of God (i.e by unverifiable human reason alone).” Still, it is for me worthy of extended contemplation which must follow this critique.
My last comment is that even if we bracket the above comments, this paper seems to argue that reason cannot confirm faith, not that Christianity is true. Nothing within it disproves the truth of other faiths, each of which is held as tightly by others as Christianity is for the Orthodox practitioner. Perhaps that was never his focus of course.
All in all, I appreciate the reader’s recommendation to review Fr. Sorem’s article, and I enjoyed becoming more familiar with Orthodox theology through the links provided. I would also like to thank Fr. Sorem for making his essay available to all of us for study.
Next week we return to contentment and psychology.
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“God is proven, not as the conclusion of rational or empirical theistic arguments, but as the very ground of argument itself.” – Russell Manion, The Contingency of Knowledge and Revelatory Theism.
“When God was conversing with Moses, He did not say ‘I am the essence’, but ‘I am the One Who is.’ Thus it is not the One Who is who derives from the essence, but essence which derives from Him, for it is He who contains all being in Himself.” – St. Gregory Palamas, Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts.
At his juncture he inserts tenets of the Orthodox religion that complement the logical arguments above. Since unaided human reason is incapable of determining its own legitimacy and the divine functions as the originating force of knowledge and truth, a bridge is needed between man and God. A quote from St. Justin Popovich fills this gap:
This week a reader asked me to critique this 19 page essay1 with the following prompt: “… at a fundamental level all religions of the world are a form of monism…and only Orthodoxy has the essence – energy distinction model which allows epistemic flourishing and avoids the circular reasoning of monism. Please take a look at this paper which I think is a good representation of the way I see things as of now and let me know if you have any critique for the way the author presents his transcendental argument.”2
In any case, the author of this essay offers as his biography the following: “Fr. Deacon Ananias Sorem, PhD is CEO, Founder, and President of Patristic Faith. Father is an Orthodox apologist and Professor of Philosophy at Fullerton College and Carroll College. He has a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Thomas Aquinas College, together with an MA (Honors) and PhD in Philosophy (Epistemology; Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Mind) from University College Dublin. His current academic work focuses on philosophical theology, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. Father is the author of several articles and peer-reviewed papers, including: ‘Searle, Materialism, and the Mind-Body Problem,’ ‘Gnostic Scientism and Technocratic Totalitarianism,’ ‘An Orthodox Approach to the Dangers of Modernity and Technology,’ and ‘An Orthodox Theory of Knowledge: The Epistemological and Apologetic Methods of the Church Fathers.’ He is also known for his YouTube channel, the Norwegian Nous.”4
Let’s look now at two perspectives on contentment within positive psychology. First William Pavot and Ed Diener present subjective well-being as incorporating four independent variables – high positive affect, low negative affect, life satisfaction, and domain satisfaction. This last item, domain satisfaction, refers to the discreet realms of life such as marriage, work, health, and so forth. Contentment in this model then is global in scope and integrates the subjective weight of each characteristic and domain for a specific individual. Pavot and Diener point out this global assessment can be (1) bottom-up referring to the aggregation of experiences, the more labile derivation, or (2) top-down referring to personality or individual disposition that views life experiences in a positive light, and thus is the more stable consruct.
A second perspective of contentment within positive psychology is offered by Jane Henry, who explores contentment as the quieting of the mind.5 She adapts thinking from the Eastern traditions in encouraging spiritual practices that result in low arousal states as a path to happiness, not the higher arousal states sought by Westerners. Spiritual psychologists advocate living ethically, stress interpersonal relationships, and seek inner equanimity. They encourage us to go within, root out failings and develop the capacity to attend to others kindly. Acceptance, detachment from desires, mindfulness, non-personal identification, desisting from criticizing oneself and others, and flow or contented absorption in the present are highlighted.
“Contentment is not a final resting point, but a positive self-appraisal; an acknowledgement that we are on the proper course, a savoring of the past seasoned with hope for the future, a satisfaction with the self we are creating.” – Raymond Angelo Belliotti, The Seduction of Happiness.
Objective measurements of happiness and contentment remain tenuous, but MRI studies have demonstrated that positive affect is processed in the left prefrontal cortex and amygdala and negative affect is processed in the right prefrontal cortex. Likewise studies suggest that mindfulness meditation produces changes in brain activation consistent with reduced negative affect and increased positive affect.2
Cognitive therapy deploys techniques intended to deal with anxiety, depression, and adjustment disorders, not contentment per se. The goal is behavioral modification through systematic change in the way a person thinks and feels. Techniques include disconfirmation (evidence against negative thoughts) and reconceptualization or developing an alternative belief system to explain one’s circumstances.
Of course, psychologists intend these therapies to be guided by a trained therapist, but the practical philosopher may extract and adopt self-guided equivalents for the alleviation of his or her own uneasiness. One advantage of the do-it-yourself approach is that one can combine features from different approaches in establishing a course to contentment. Nonetheless, at the end of the day, insight, self-knowledge, and a sound understanding of reality underlie the psychological avenue to inner serenity.
“Do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.”– Max Erhmann, Disiderata
feelings.”1 Richard Kasschau offers a slightly different nuance: “cognitive therapy is an approach in which thoughts are used to control emotions and behavior.”2 In either case the basic premise is that behavior and feelings are largely controlled by our thought processes.
Michael Balint, in his essay, The Final Goal of Psycho-Analytic Treatment, describes a process beginning with Freud’s “making conscious the unconscious,…or the overcoming of resistances.”10 and V. Kovac’s step of “the unwinding of the repetition factor.”11 But he feels these are insufficient ground to break the cycle of anxiety resulting from prior unsatisfied needs. He has observed that in the final phase of treatment, individuals begin to
Finally Otto Rank in his essay, The Basis of a Will Therapy, offers an alternative perspective on breaking the cycle of anxiety. For him it is caused by the historical experience of repressing one’s will (in essence Freud’s id), and thus is relieved by learning to will freely without feelings of guilt. This entails confronting the ‘will problem’ in order to strengthen it in a positive direction, in effect, replacement with a “will-to-health.’ While Rank clearly is committed to the guidance of a therapist, I think we can repurpose his theory for self-directed contentment using his concluding words – our goal for defeating anxieties should not be “the overcoming of resistance, but the transformation of the negative will expression (counter-will) underlying them into positive and eventually creative expression.”13
We need only be concerned when anxiety takes the form of “an unpleasant interference with thinking processes and concentration, as a diffuse, vague and frequently objectless feeling of apprehension or as a discomforting feeling of uncertainty and helplessness.”8 It is as if Fromm-Reichmann is in effect defining anxiety as the opposite of contentment. Her solution to this mode of discontent is of course psychotherapy, but here I think we must begin to diverge from the psychoanalysts and rework the components they impute to a successful program into a self-guided option.
The third step is to break the cycle of anxiety which manifests two ways: (1) the propensity to feel helpless in the face of anxiety further exacerbates it, and (2) dwelling on the specific sources of anxiety reinforces it. The cycle is broken by recognizing and eliminating these patterns and adopting healthy alternatives. For example, Alfred Adler, in his essay Individual Psychology, Its Assumptions and Its Results, suggests the following for overcoming this cycle (referring to one arising from the unfounded feelings of one’s superiority over others):
