This is important to me, because I have found a great deal of benefit from monastic writings on spiritual formation, but it is very hard to translate those into a framework for lay people, without suggesting that it is best for everyone to head to a monastery. I think the future of Christianity as a movement is in our learning to live in ‘active contemplation’ or ‘contemplative activity’. All believers, no matter what their station in life, should be able to learn to grow in spiritual awareness and their union with Christ. This is a democratization of the sweetest fruits of the spiritual life. For a good example of something that heads towards this, I would look at The Way of a Pilgrim, the tale of an anonymous Russian pilgrim who integrates the depths of contemplation into his simple life of work and wandering.

To illustrate, it is common in some circles that I move in for people to reject the validity of Christian mysticism. Not to object to certain practices or speculations, but to reject the idea of mysticism as a valid experience and idea altogether. My question is how, having rejected mysticism, one is to explain and account for the countless profound ‘mystical’ experiences had by Christians and non-Christians over the centuries.  How does your theological system explain the area that was covered by mystical theology and experience? If you have nothing to say, then that is not very helpful. The New Age movement is the kind of result that you get when you say that certain kinds of spiritual experience are ‘non-Christian’ and reject them altogether.

What I’m asking for, I think, is that we try to realise that integrity calls for us to face up to the implications of the limitations in our thinking. Or perhaps I’m just proposing humility as a necessary virtue for growing in knowledge.

- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, pg. 54.

‘Either the Triune Christian God or the dying in insanity…Pay attention: I do not exaggerate. That is precisely the way things are. I lack the words to express myself even more drastically. Between eternal life inside the Trinity and the eternal second death, there is no clearance, not even a hair’s breadth. Either/or. Rationality in its constitutive logical norms is either completely absurd, insane down to its microscopic structure, composed of unprovable and therefore wholly random elements; or its ground is the supralogical.’

Having set before us the problem of doubt, Florensky discusses the way in which the Trinitarian doctrine is the prime battleground for resolving doubt and ‘epoche’.

“Trinity unisubstantial and indivisible, unity trihypostatic and consubstantial” – that is the only scheme that promises to resolve epoche, if the doubt of skepticism is at all resolvable. Only this scheme would not be melted down by Pyrrhonism if the latter were to encounter it realized in experience. If Truth can exist at all, this is the path to it, the only path. But do we actually take this path?’

Why would the doctrine of the Trinity be the path to resolving epistemological problems? Very few people can actually understand the Trinity in an intellectual sense, it seems to be a mass of contradiction and mystery. And for Florensky that is precisely the issue. The significance of the Nicene insistence on ‘homoousios’, the one God in three persons, is that it is an inconceivable unity, beyond rationalisation. It denies the power of the ‘given’ or the ‘undeniable’ logical laws that we saw in the previous letter, which can only lead to slavery or epoche. ‘The single word homoousios expressed not only a christological dogma but also a spiritual evaluation of the rational laws of thought. Here rationality was given a death blow.’

The great figure here in Christian history is Athanasius, who stood up for homoousios against the Arians and the concept of homoiousios. Homoiousios (of ‘like’ substance) is a fatal rationalisation of the Trinitarian mystery. It gives up the fight against skepticism.

‘Let us return to the problem of skepticism. In order that the law of identity be given not only as a blind principle of rationality, in order to liberate onself from the empiricism of rationality, which is no better than the empiricism of sensuousness, it was necessary to go beyond rationality, to enter into the domain where rationality with all its norms is rooted. This means that it was necessary to achieve in experience a synthesis of the nonrelative and relation, of the primary and the derived, of rest and motion, of unit and infinity, etc. Rationality does not accept these combinations. Where every A is A and only A, the sought for synthesis is absolutely impossible. If it is possible at all, it is possible only beyond rationality.’

Arianism is a rational form of Christianity. It is easy to understand how the Son can be like the Father, yet separate. There is no mystery there. But it destroys the hope of salvation, as the church determined at Nicaea. Florensky sees this choice, between Arian rationalism and Orthodoxy, as a difference between whether one is willing to suffer the ‘ascesis of faith’, the necessary struggle to go beyond mere rationality in order to approach the Truth. ‘Accomplishing the ascesis of faith, the Orthodox sought what is needful, higher, whereas the Arians, inwardly protecting themselves, asked in a calculating way: “Will the Truth not demand a sacrifice from us”? And, seeing the Garden of Gethsemane, the Arians retreated. Both made a free choice. But the Arians used their freedom to enslave themselves, while the Orthodox used it to free themselves from the bondage of fleshly limitation.’

The Trinity stands before us as a challenge, an offer of the Truth that can be directly known and which justifies itself, but only when we are able to be purified by faith, to make the leap into this unknown which promises to be the Truth. Faith cannot be the object of the kind of certainty that sinful humanity desires, a self-evident certainty without risk. ‘There are many kinds of atheism, but the worst is the so-called rational faith. It is the worst, for, besides the rejection of the object of faith (“things not seen [Heb 11:1]), it is hypocritical, accepts God but rejects His very essence, His “invisibility”, i.e., His suprarationality. I ask myself, What is “rational faith”? I answer: “Rational faith’ is foulness and abomination before God. You will not believe until you reject your own self, your own law. But “rational faith” does not desire to reject selfhood. It even asserts that it knows the Truth. But if it has not rejected itself, “rational faith” can only have itself. The truth is known through itself, in no other way. In order to know the Truth, it is necessary to have it, and for this it is necessary to stop being only oneself and participate in the Truth itself.’

So, is it worthwhile to make the leap of faith, to abandon epoche and strike out for something which promises to be there but may be an illusion? What else is there, though? We are stuck between either agonising doubt or an arduous journey of faith. This is the inner force of ‘Pascal’s Wager’. Will we abandon a certain meaninglessness for an uncertain infinity of meaning? What do we have to lose by such a risk?

‘What is better: to die eternally, in sight perhaps of the promised land, to freeze in the icy cold of absolute nothing and to burn in the eternal fire of pyrrhonian epoche; or to exhaust one’s last strength, perhaps for a chimera, a mirage that moves further away as the traveler makes an effort to come closer? I remain, I remain here. But excruciating sorrow and sudden hope do not permit me to die peacefully. Then I leap up and run headlong. But the cold of a despair just as sudden cuts my legs out from under me; and infinite fear possesses my soul. I run back headlong. To go and not to go, to seek and not to seek, to hope and to despair, to be afraid of expending one’s last strength and, because of this fear, to expend much more of this strength running back and forth. Where is the way out? Where is the refuge? To whom, to what can one rush for help? “Lord, Lord, if Thou existeth, help my insane soul. Come Thyself, Thou Thyself, lead me to Thyself! Whether I want it or not, save me. As Thou canst and as Thou knowst, allow me to see Thee. Forcibly and through suffering, draw me to Thyself.” This cry of ultimate despair is the beginning of a new stage of philosophizing, the beginning of a living faith. I do not know if the Truth exists or not. But I feel with my whole being that I cannot be without it. And I know that if the Truth exists, it is everything for me: reason, goodness, strength, life and happiness. Perhaps it does not exist, but I love it. I love it more than anything that exists.’

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

The two main positions taken in the church on gender relations are Complementarianism and Egalitarianism. These are considered to be opposing opinions, despite the fact that they are not contradictory or even contrary statements when taken generally: to whit -

Complementarianism – Men and women are different

Egalitarianism – Men and women are equal

In actual fact the opposition comes from the more nuanced positions:

Complementarianism – Men and women are different, which means that there are certain roles and positions that women can’t occupy (insert here a tentatively held theory as to why this is the case).

Egalitarianism – Men and women are equal, and limiting their roles on the basis of gender instead of gifting is to make them unequal, particularly as it turns out that complementarians want the leadership positions in the church and home to be reserved for men.

Both positions face problems when confronting reality. For complementarians, the problem is that large numbers of men and women live and work outside the prescribed roles that complementarians think are appropriate, and do so on the basis of indisputable gifts and calling. The complementarian ‘role’ descriptions tend to turn on stereotypes about masculine and feminine behaviour that are simply not true in many cases, and are actively harmful when pursued rigorously.

For egalitarians, the problem is not the individual and the exception, but the statistical mass of humanity, who in general seem determined and fitted to live quite contentedly according to stereotypes.

What’s the best solution? It depends on your personal preference, generally. If you are conservative and like order, then you choose the complementarian option and bite the bullet about implicitly endorsing patriarchy and abuses of power. If you are ‘progressive’ or liberal in orientation, you take the egalitarian option and cop the legitimate flak about the destruction of society because of broken families and confused teenagers who don’t know what it means to be a man or a woman.  But do we really need to live in such an impasse?

‘But what about theology?’, I hear you say. That is a very helpful question. I want to suggest that we can develop some theological insights that can help us move to the next stage. What is the basic theology of each position? I would say that complementarianism is essentially a Christologically focussed position. Complementarians often reference the place of Christ as the head of the church, about our male high priest and all that implies, and the masculinity of the Son. Egalitarianism, on the other hand, is essentially a Pneumatologically focussed position. Egalitarians are concerned with the gifts of the Spirit, given to all for equal service in the kingdom of God, and the freedom this brings. Luckily for us, as Trinitarian Christians we are forced to make sure that we never separate the work of the Son and the Spirit, and this begins to open up an answer.

The problem is the meaning of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’. I want to suggest that masculinity, in its broadest sense, is the principle of active form, order, and purpose. Femininity is the principle of passive matter, fullness and completion. When these two principles combine, we have the dynamic of genuine creation – form and matter, beginning and finishing. Creation, therefore, is by definition a ‘masculine-feminine’ process. And this can be elaborated in Trinitarian terms. Irenaeus spoke very insightfully of the Son and the Holy Spirit as the ‘two hands of God’. As Bulgakov points out, the Father is always the ‘unmanifested’ Person of the Trinity – he is only seen (and seen perfectly) in the Son and the Spirit (they are consubstantial with him), and his will and thought are seen in their works.  This leads me to a controversial proposition, but one that actually appears inevitable to me given the theological impasse we are in. I propose that the work of the Son in creation and redemption is a ‘masculine’ work, and the work of the Spirit is a ‘feminine’ work. Together, they bring a finished and complete creation into being, the definitive ‘masculine-feminine’ work. I know that suggesting that the Spirit has a feminine role is difficult for some to swallow, but this has actually been suggested by a few theologians over the years, and it makes a great deal of sense of the idea that humans, ‘male and female’, are made in the image of God. This is not anthropomorphism; the Son is not a man (from eternity, not the incarnation) and the Spirit is not a woman. It is in fact the only way to keep from anthropomorphism when speaking of the Trinitarian relations. The central weakness of complementarian theology is that it tends to see the Father-Son dyad in the Trinity in very human terms, as analogous to a human father and his male offspring. But the Son is not of ‘like’ substance to the Father (homoiousios), as a human son is of his father, he is of the same essence as the Father (homoousios). The Spirit is also homoousios with the Father and the Son. There is no male and female differentiation in the Trinity, only a difference of origin – begetting and procession, which indicates a dynamic life that is the basis of the masculine-feminine process of creation expressed by the economic Trinity.

This helps us to understand the concept of humanity, male and female, as being in the image of God (Gen 1:27). We share this common nature, expressed outwardly as a masculine-feminine complementary work – to ‘be fruitful, fill the earth and subdue it’.

But isn’t this just what complementarians have been saying all along, that men have a masculine role and women have a feminine? Not at all. What I am saying is that all of created reality works according to this masculine-feminine dynamic, and that the male-female reproductive pairing is just one expression of it. Within each individual person, this masculine-feminine dynamic is working as well. There is no creative humanity without it. All healthy adults are to some extent ‘androgynous’, in that they express both masculine and feminine traits. Hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity are most commonly found in adolescents who are attempting to discover how to express their identity. I think that the physical gender differences are the expression of masculine-femininity at the level of biological humanity, and serve the purpose of the creative life of humanity as a whole. Individually they are not determinative of the kind of creative expression we give to our lives, though we would expect that on average women would express more ‘feminine’ qualities in their personalities, due to a resonance from their physically feminine nature. This explains and solves the two ‘reality problems’ that I outlined for both complementarianism and egalitarianism above. We expect people to on the whole behave according to their gender tendencies, but no-one should be forced to adopt artificial ‘roles’ according to some preconceived schema of masculinity and femininity. Such a schema is actually one of the results of the Fall, that we become trapped by our physical nature instead of using it to express our spiritual calling. We think that men need to always adopt a ‘masculine’ role in every situation, and women must be always kept to the ‘feminine’, by force if necessary.

So complementarianism is right to say that men and women are different. They are physically masculine and feminine, and they are made to be a pair of mates, to become ‘one flesh’ and to have children. That is the fundamental reason why marriage and a family is for those of opposite gender, because of the productive possibilities of this union. Of course in a fallen world this can become just another means of slavery. But complementarianism is wrong to say that because of this physical difference there must needs be a rigid demarcation in the spiritual lives of men and women, in the tasks they perform. Though we might expect to see what we do, that men and women tend to gravitate on average to particular roles. But every person always has their own masculine-feminine work to complete, which is between them and the Word who dwells in them and the Spirit who empowers them – they receive a white stone with a new name on it, known only to the one who receives it (Rev 2:17).

Egalitarianism is right too;  men and women are equal, as the Spirit and Son are equal. But any suggestion that there is no difference between them is false, male and female gender does express a fundamental truth about God’s creation that we cannot ignore. And people need to learn to embrace the fullness of masculine and feminine identity that God has gifted them with, and not be discouraged from expressing those traits merely because of bad practices in the past.

The relationship of masculine and feminine is a mysterious thing, but a beautiful one, in which we reflect the image of the living God. Consider the wonderful examples of the great Father and the Mother of the Church, of Abraham who boldly went out on an adventure of faith, and Mary who humbly received the word of her Lord.

‘The problem of the certitude of truth is reducible to the problem of finding a criterion’.

The main issue in this letter is how we can be sure that we have discovered the truth, what means we have to find something that cannot be doubted. This is harder than it may seem (or at least those who claim to have it make it sound). Florensky goes over the two main ways of finding certitude that philosophy provides, essentially the modernist and postmodern solutions.

The first is the method of a self-evident intuition, the ‘given’ that we are presented with – either sensory experience, intellectual irrefutability, and mystical intuition. The problem with these is their very ‘givenness’, their unjustified nature, the lump of factitude that sits there demanding to be recognised. He discusses the purest form of this, the most basic law of logic, the law of identity.

‘A = A. That is the final answer. But this tautological formula, this life-less, thought-less, and therefore meaningless equality A = A, is, in fact, only a generalization of the self-identity that is inherent in every given. But by no means is this formula an answer to our question “Why?”[...] A=A. That says everything. It says: “Knowledge is limited by conditional judgments.” or simply: “Be silent, I tell you!”.’

The problem is that the law of identity, and all epistemological givens, are not expressions of the fullness of truth – they ignore time, the development of reality and the perspectives of multiple subjects, and only hold sway when they are not questioned. The law of identity is ‘only a hypostatized abstraction of a moment and a point, which, in themselves, do not exist. Yes, the law of identity is an unlimited monarch. But its subjects do not object to its autocracy only because they are bloodless phantoms, without reality, because they are not persons but rational shades of persons, i.e. things that do not exist. This is sheol. This is the kingdom of death.’

Turning from this first alternative, we arrive at the method of discursive reasoning, of justifications that seek to explain everything. But then each judgment must be further justified by another reason, and so on in an infinite regress that either arrives at a ‘given’ (with all its problems) or cuts off and does not live up to the promise of certitude. Who made the universe? God. Who made God? ……….? This is not an answer.

So with both attempts we fail. We are stuck, as Florensky says, between ‘an impenetrable wall and an uncrossable sea’. Is there a way over and across?

This leads to the problem of skepticism. This happens when someone tries to accept both of the problems at once, to reject every ‘truth’ but to still want to know the Truth, which recedes as each justification fails. This attitude is very important for Florensky in this book, and he calls it ‘epoche’, the ‘delaying of judgment, the state of refraining from all statement’.  Epoche is not a stable state, it is a constant movement between the following positions:

1. I do not affirm anything

2. I also do not affirm the fact that I do not affirm anything.

One rejects both the given and the justification. This is not ‘logically’ possible. The cheap retort of Christians to the postmodern philosophers is that for them ‘there seems to be no truth except the truth that there is no truth’. This misses the point.  Epoche is not logical inconsistency, it is a state of the soul, a spiritual torment whereby we both want the Truth but must reject everything that is not the Truth, so never being able to rest. ‘Givenness’ satisfies most people in everyday life, and ‘justification’ gives scholars something to do, but Truth is not in either, and so they do not satisfy the skeptic. Florensky describes this state of being as a tormenting fire, which may, if it continues, fall into the darkness of nihilism and despair, when one gives up completely and the mind collapses. ‘Here, behind a thin barrier, spiritual death begins’.

The only answer to epoche is hope. The fact that we seek Truth means that it might reside somewhere, so we can turn aside from skepticism and turn to probabilism, the acceptance of our limitations and the beginning of arduous ascent towards the knowledge of the Truth. We will know that we have arrived at this when we find something that is both a given, an intuition, and which can be explained and justifies, that puts an end to the endless regress of ‘Why?’. Not in a limited way, but because it is a true infinite, that encompasses all answers. Hence the title of this post, and Florensky’s conclusion that ‘TRUTH IS INTUITION-DISCURSION’.

The letter ends with a beginning of the solution. We must find something that can be fully itself (A = A), a ‘given’, while still being fully all other things (A=B/A=-A), a ‘justification’, and which returns completely to itself in an infinite fullness (A,B,C = A). This ‘absolute Subject’ can both be known by experience and provides the perfect answer and justification of itself. It resolves epoche and begins to give faith and knowledge. This, as we begin to see, is the mystery of TRIUNITY, the subject of our next letter.

Florensky begins with his anguished and urgent desire for true knowledge. This is a very common question – how can we really know what is true? He begins here with the crux of the problem, which is that Truth can’t lodge itself in or be found by someone who is unprepared for it. Seeking truth is a moral and spiritual exercise, as well as one of the cognitive intellect. Florensky interprets here Matt 11:25-30 in a ‘epistemological’ sense. Truth is hidden from the wise and revealed to little children. Finding Truth means finding Christ. In this book the ‘pillar and ground of the truth’ is interpreted to mean many things, but here it starts with his central proposition, to be unfolded further in other letters – ‘But the fullness of all is in Jesus Christ, and therefore knowledge can be acquired only through Him and from Him.’

He writes: ‘But far be from me the desire to convince anyone. I give of my meagerness. And if but one soul were to feel that I speak to it not with my lips and not into the ears, I would wish for no more’.

Here’s at least one soul who hears you, Pavel.

‘The Hebrew who wrote: These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, and further: This is the book of the generations of Adam, was expressing not only his personal and national consciousness. Through him first shone forth in the world the truth of the unity of the whole universe and of all humanity. And all further advances of consciousness consist solely in the development and embodiment of this truth, for they have no reason and cannot possibly go beyond this all-embracing form. What else can the most perfect astronomy and geology do but restore completely the genesis of the heaven and the earth; in just the same way the highest task of historical knowledge can only be to restore “the book of the generations of Adam”, i.e. the successive genetic bond in the life of humanity. And finally, our creative activity can possess no higher end than to embody in perceptible images this unity of heaven, earth, and humanity created and proclaimed from the beginning.’

I’m going to start up with a chapter by chapter summary and review of ‘The Pillar and Ground of the Truth’ by Pavel Florensky. Florensky was what they call a ‘polymath’, a man of immense genius and ability across a variety of areas. He was a mathematician, philosopher, theologian, engineer, and artist. Look at his Wikipedia entry for his life story.  Unlike some others, he was allowed to stay in Russia after the Revolution. But he was eventually executed in 1937 by the Soviet regime after a spell in the gulag.

The Pillar and Ground of the Truth is his seminal theological work, and vastly influential. It is essentially a series of treatises on a Christian epistemology, designed to show how orthodox theology provides the best solution to the problems of knowledge. It is most famous for his exposition of the concept of ‘Sophia’, which was and still is a very controversial piece of theological speculation. But more of that in good time.  The PGT is made up of twelve ‘letters’ (and several explanatory appendices), which are written as though addressed to a close friend of Florensky’s. There is a lot of ‘art’ in the production of this book, including illustrations, digressions and a huge amount of footnotes. it is meant to be experienced as a holistic work, as an artistic product rather than just a tool for conveying information.

I’ll deal with each letter, giving a summary and some of my thoughts on the issues.

Shalom