A common energy trap we can easily fall into is that of comparison. We can imagine that this commonly takes shape by way of comparing our lives to others. We observe how others are more muscular than we are, how some make more money, and how some drive better cars.
This understanding of comparison as an energy sap is typically left sitting in our minds as a platitude. I think this understanding should be expanded to realizing its usefulness in the spiritual life.
I plan to demonstrate this by looking at a real-world, historical debate that continues until today. I think comparison has been uniquely powerful in this field, and I think comparison is totally avoidable with respect to these two things; and I intend to demonstrate the latter.
The time-sink I am referring to is the four-hundred year old debate between Empiricism and Rationalism. Each side has been embroiled in both proving their superiority and disproving the other side’s claims of legitimacy.
Rationalists will take our rational faculty and assign it supremacy over our empirical senses. Empiricists will take our empirical senses and say it is the only source of knowledge.
I can identify that both sides make strong claims. I can even have my sympathies and assign villainhood to one camp over the other. But this doesn’t change the fact that the debate is ongoing and wasting time; and it doesn’t change the fact that I personally don’t adhere to any of these two labels.
To suspend abstract speak and provide some concreteness, I have personally seen — especially in my teenage years — an obsession with this debate in my peers. Not only this, but in our Anglo-American culture Empiricism is largely considered the privileged view. I can think of examples in my life when statements only backed by empirical, reduceable data are given the stamp of approval by someone I am speaking with. I think this experience is univocal, as many cultural icons of rationality seldom adhere to Rationalism. Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, The New Atheists, and many science-minded folk will usually dislike any conversation having to do with philosophy. They much prefer hard empirical findings and facts, and the strongest proponents of Empiricism will say that sentences are meaningless if they do not reference something empirical.
This debate quite literally is a defining aspect of our culture. It affects us in day-to-day interactions. The stance one takes on this debate will form the framework that they use to decide what a valid thought is. Our decision as Orthodox Christians on this matter is very important, then. Our decision signals to the world what the correct belief is.
So here’s my proposal. I believe there is a third option in this debate. That third option is that this debate can be evaded completely. I’ll explain how I get there.
The question that both the Empiricist and Rationalist are trying to solve is, “what’s better?” Do we use our Empirical data as foundation, or are we to rely on our Rational faculty? I think this question is improper as a foundational one; and a different one should be asked.
I’m going to take the liberty to draw the picture as I see fit. The way I see it is that we are images of God. According to St. Maximus the Confessor, God joined both sensibility and rationality in us; and this work was a great display of His Majesty. Throughout the writings of St. Maximus the Confessor, sensibility and rationality are talked about. But they’re never talked about as if they’re at odds. They are a part of the whole human condition and that requires an account.
To complicate the picture further, St. Maximus uses paradox to display something fascinating about our sensibility and rationality. He says that the way souls access the external world — our sensibility — has an interior component. Our sensibility has an effect on our nous, our heart. Furthering this, our primarily internal faculty — our rationality — has an exterior component: speech. So perhaps the picture as it is drawn for the past five centuries is too simplistic and fails to grasp the greater picture of our human powers. Our internal and external faculties have an interpenetration. Our internal naturally finds its end in the external, and our external naturally finds its end internally.
It follows, then, that our sensibility and rationality have a relationship and work with each other. This is firstly proved by our very makeup: having sensibility and rationality is an inescapable aspect of the human condition; and secondly, there is an interpenetration between both worlds. This relationship provides much meaning, and hyperfixation on one or the other is bound to cause an attrition of meaning.
We wouldn’t know there is a material world external to us without our intelligibility discerning meaning from our sensibility. But without sensibility, we wouldn’t be able to interact with and therefore make sense of anything external to us. Our dual power immediately begins to work the second you are faced with anything in the world. Our abstract and concrete work in tandem the second anything external pushes upon us. When we take a term like “gravitate” are we not forced to think about it in both ways? We think of very concrete planets moving, but we also grasp the underlying rational principle of gravitation and can use it as a metaphor in day to day life: “He gravitates towards me.” This is a powerful ability we have, and we owe it to Christ.
I want to make it clear that throughout St. Maximus’ writings, he does not pit the two against each other. Rationality has a higher order than sensibility to St. Maximus, as rationality properly ordered ennobles sensibility by discerning natural principles and spiritual meanings.
To the mind of St. Maximus, which reflects the Christian mind, the very notion of pitting the two against each other did not and could not emerge; and this is the thought worth driving home. It simply does not make sense to speak of the two as separate from one another, because God mingled the two worlds; the world of the intelligible and the world of the sensible are linked, and this shows the great majesty of Christ’s creation.
Orthodox Practicability
Because we have been blessed with intelligibility we can reason and find meaning in things. We have a fuller access to creation than the animals. We can look at a tool for more than itself. We can look at inscriptions on paper and see the meaning that is being pointed to beyond the actual text. Do you see that without sense data we would not be able to access this external world? And that without intelligibility we would not be able to make sense of this external world? And futhermore, the true crown of this reflection: does not the sensibility of Peter’s physical body allow for him to grip Christ’s hand when he fell into the water? Christ’s Body saved Peter, and the poetry of the Gospel is that our lowly flesh has been ennobled by Him because He took flesh. And through His Flesh, His Body and Blood saves us. We are the envy of the angels because of our lowly state.
With this picture painted, I don’t see the foundation existing for us to question rationality or empirical ability. The question being asked for the last four hundred years is the wrong one. It is better that we know ourselves as existing in both the sensible and intelligible realm and to ask ourselves, “how should we order this?” We are made with this condition on purpose. We can’t skirt around it. So why do we debate about it and fight over it? We can reason and we can eat, but what is amazing is that we are tasked with a choice: what do we reason about and what do we eat? We can circle our mind around vanity, or we can be thinking of God. We can be eaters of junk food, or eaters of His True Food. We should take the opportunity to bind ourselves closer to Him Who reasoned to take on flesh.
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