His Grace Bishop Joseph, Antiochian Bishop of Los Angeles and the West (our archpastor and my boss), was given an honorary doctoral degree from St. Tikhon’s Seminary. His Grace’s commencement speech gives an excellent overview of the Orthodox Christian understanding of the relationship between secular learning and what we in English normally call spirituality (which in Orthodoxy is just called experience or noetic knowing, or knowing above reason). He provides a nice summary of the development of academic Protestant theology; unfortunately, he does not mention the development of popular Protestant thought. But then you can’t say everything in a nine-page lecture. I recommend this lecture to anyone who is interested in or involved in academic learning and would like a little insight into how Orthodox Christians have seen the relationship between secular learning (both as content and process) and faith.
P.S. If you don’t like big words and philosophy and theology, skip it. Just take my word for it: it’s pretty good.
1 comment:
Loved it! My favourite part...—St
Gregory of Nyssa said, “(Greek philosophy was as if) always in labour but
never giving birth.”[4]
Thank you for sharing this speech, Fr. Michael.
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