by sayingandunsaying

Update: Praying to Saints

I plan to have ongoing ‘update’ posts where I note that I have changed my mind on something and detail why. Ideally they’ll continue to come up as my beliefs change, but there are several recent and not-so-recent historical changes that I’d like to detail as a sort of warmup and because they’ll serve as relevant content. Some of these will be wholly on the theistic side, while others will be mainly rationalist. Now, to begin.

Of interest: Primarily to Christians, probably less so to others
Discarded position: It is inappropriate to pray to the dead for any reason.
Updated position: It is appropriate to pray to the dead for many reasons.
Update occurred: ~October 2017

What I believed and why:

1. The dead cannot hear us

For various reasons, I was under the impression that when people die, we stay dead (and unconscious) until the general resurrection, probably with occasional exceptions e.g. Elijah, Enoch, and maybe the thief being crucified on Jesus’ right. This being the case, it wouldn’t make any sense to pray to them in the first place — no one’s listening (except possibly demons — see #3).

2. Even if they could, there would be no point in them praying for us

Why would we ever pray to a dead person to talk to God for us when we can just talk to God directly? This felt like an unhealthy attitude toward prayer and faith in general, as though God is too important (or busy) to interface with us directly. Also,

When they say to you, “Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter,” should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living? (Isaiah 8:19)

3. The Bible doesn’t mention praying to the dead except by prohibiting necromancy

This generally plugs into my previous understandings about sola scriptura (topic of a future update post). Not only does the Bible not tell us to pray to saints, but when the subject of contacting the dead does come up it is categorically prohibited and dimly regarded.

There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the LORD; and because of these detestable things the LORD your God will drive them out before you. (Deuteronomy 18:10-12)

Also, there are repeated exhortations to not trust spirits that one might encounter, because demons (even Satan) are prone to pretending to be other entities and so ensnare unwary humans.

4. Praying to saints is (probably) just fig-leafed paganism

You don’t even have to squint to notice that the ancient world went from praying to theoi with particular domains and portfolios of interest (travel, agriculture, commerce, healing, etc.), organized under Zeus, to praying to ‘saints’ with particular domains and portfolios of interest (travel, agriculture, commerce, healing, etc.). This did, and actually still does, strike me as just a little bit too much of a coincidence.

Why I changed my mind:

1. The (righteous) dead may be able to observe us, and the Church says they can

Orthodox theology seems to think that, in Heaven, the righteous deceased are conscious and in the immediate presence of God. And there’s even scriptural support in Hebrews, which refers to the ‘cloud of witnesses surrounding us’. So far as I can tell, this has always been interpreted by Christians as referring to the saints who have gone before us rather than, I dunno, angels or principalities or whatever.

Protestants like to suggest that the ‘cloud of witnesses’ is a metaphorical thing, mainly because they’re allergic to anything that feels Roman Catholic, I think, but that was not the understanding of the early church. Our earliest Christian sources that mention the topic seem wholly, uncontroversially on board with the idea that the saints are conscious, able to observe us, can hear our prayers to them, and are happy to pray for us in turn.

The concept of theosis maintains that we are to participate in God’s essence and power; why then is it implausible to suggest that God has granted the righteous dead such abilities?

2. It is good for Christians to pray for each other, death notwithstanding

Praying to saints instead of directly to God definitely is a bad idea, but the dichotomy is false. One can always pray to both!

I’ve never heard an argument against this that wasn’t fully generalizable to ‘it’s bad to ask anyone else to pray for you at all’. Yet the Bible does encourage us to pray for each other. At first glance, this wouldn’t seem to make much practical sense. If we pray to God about something, what can possibly be gained by someone else doing so as well? This would seem to imply any number of troubling prospects, like God favoring some peoples’ prayers more than others, or needing reminders instead of taking notice the first time. But we are taught that God wishes to work our salvation at least partly through our community with each other — that we are blessed with the opportunity to participate in each other’s salvation by praying for each other.

So, given #1 above, it seems an unalloyed good idea to ask other Christians, living or dead, to pray for us.

3. Given 1 and 2, the Bible does endorse praying to the righteous dead

And at any rate it’s definitely not necromancy — there’s no intent to gain information from a dead person (or the thing masquerading as them).

4. Many pagan institutions are redeemed in Christianity

The practice of praying for the intercession of the righteous dead is entirely justified by that which has been described above, and it’s almost enough for the conversation to end there — but not quite.

I mean, look. There’s no getting around the obvious-on-the-face-of-it reality that some of the association of specific saints with specific domains is carryover from pagan modes of thinking. So is that necessarily a problem? After all, one can look at any number of pagan philosophies and traditions that found their ultimate, and wholesome, expression in Christianity.

And given that it’s fitting and right to ask the righteous dead to pray for us, why wouldn’t we naturally turn to those who were passionate or experienced with specific problems in their earthly lives? It’s normal to ask certain friends to pray about certain things.

This does still make me a bit uncomfortable because I think it’s naturally prone to abuse, as when Roman Catholics do zany things like bury statues of Saint Joseph upside-down to help sell houses. But as far as I can tell the Orthodox Church is good about keeping an eye on these things and nipping problems in the bud.

by sayingandunsaying

Gods and Simulators

This is the first post explicitly in the ‘Core Mission’ category: Bridging Orthodoxy and Rationality. It’s intended mainly as a building block for later content, but also as a polite notice for anyone who hasn’t made the connection on their own yet.

In online conversations it’s common for me to come across people who are surprised at the idea that, in this day and age, anyone with internet access and half a brain can countenance the idea of a God. Often times these people are amiable and ask honest and valid questions to better understand the position of the informed theist, even if I still get the impression that they’re tickled to have the chance to do so in $current_year. Other times they are not so open-minded, and phrases such as ‘bronze age’, ‘cavemen’, and ‘sky wizard’ come out.

How quaint, the line of thinking seems to go, that I take seriously the prospect of a Creator, deeply concerned about humanity, existing outside of time and space, and capable of changing reality at will; an overarching purpose for the universe; an afterlife. Don’t I know that the universe came into being due to fluctuations in the quantum foam, or failing that, am I not at least familiar with the Big Bang? Have I not heard that humanity is an insignificant organism inhabiting a layer of scum on a ball of rock orbiting a mediocre star in an unfashionable section of an unremarkable galaxy? Isn’t it obvious that the concept of an afterlife is just wishful thinking? A crutch for bewildered early hominids unable to cope with the harsh truth of their own mortality?

Isn’t it time to put away childish things?

An interesting trait that I can’t help but notice about many of these people is that they will react as above, then turn around and discuss the Simulation Hypothesis with complete earnestness. And why not? It makes perfect sense.

Incidentally, if it’s true,

  1. Our universe was intentionally created by a conscious entity or entities
  2. These are quite possibly transhumanly intelligent and beyond our comprehension
  3. They exist outside of space-time and are effectively omniscient
  4. At the very least, our universe exists for some purpose
  5. It’s entirely reasonable to suppose that the observation of intelligent life may be a primary goal of the simulators
  6. Indeed, it’s entirely plausible that we are, to some degree, made in their image
  7. The apparent vastness of the universe is no indication that Earth and her inhabitants is not the focus of creation and the attention of the creators (due to the possibility that everything else we see is simulated at extremely low-res or else projected for our benefit)
  8. Such creators almost certainly have read/write permissions and can edit as they see fit
  9. They’re also almost certainly capable of transferring copies of people (and other organisms) into other simulations run on the same or other substrates

The only two that I want to comment on for now are #7 and #9.

In the theist view, the size of the universe in #7 isn’t an issue because God isn’t short on resources. Why not make a vast and majestic cosmos? I doubt He’s using two digits for the year, either.

Also, regarding #9, I’m fascinated by the idea that, depending upon the moral requirements of the simulators, they may actually be obligated to provide some sort of afterlife. At least, I can imagine this being a thorny issue should our race ever become capable of spawning sub-realities full of sapients.

Now, there is of course a difference between gnostic theism and hypothetical simulationism, and the validity of the latter isn’t ammunition for the former. Except when fending off the folks who can’t resist lumping Gods in with fairies and unicorns.

Anyhow, it’s my hope that this conceptual bridge proves useful for some people.

by sayingandunsaying

The Compression Problem

Priority interrupt: Syntactic language use detected. Resume? Y/N/R/Q

Imagine that you’re running a simulation of an island chain. It’s pretty well-realized; ocean and wind currents are well-modeled, but so too are the plate tectonics that are perpetually giving rise to new islands. The ecology of the islands is vibrant and complex, ranging from thriving coral reefs and shoals of fish to endless profusions of terrestrial plants and animals. And best of all, a pseudo-sapient race of vaguely-humanoid natives that you like to think of as ‘Archipeligans’.

One day you decide to slow down the sim speed and zoom in on these critters. Much to your delight, they seem to have developed some kind of language and are engaged in what looks like a council! You’re able to run time forward and backward, of course, and with the help of some trusty scripts you’re soon able to work out that their language is quite rudimentary — only ninety-six words so far — and that they’re debating the merits of building small watercraft and moving to the next island over, which they can see is full of plentiful fruit trees.

Your eyes dart to another window — this one an overlay of tectonic activity — and you wince. The Archipeligans aren’t real, of course, but you’re fond of the little guys. You pause the sim and set to work.

It takes all afternoon, but before long you’re ready to set your plan in motion. You unpause the sim, fire up your new script, and watch with pleasure as a glowing, golden orb appears in the midst of the Archipeligan council. Conversation ceases and all heads turn toward your avatar.

But what to say? The Archipeligans’ language has no generic word for ‘danger’ at all, let alone ‘vulcanism’. You’re going to have to get the message across in words they can understand.

“No go there,” throbs the orb. “Killjaws there.”

The Archipeligans recoil in gratifying terror. The ‘killjaws’, as they’d have it, are their most fearsome natural predator. This should be sufficient to curb their ill-fated expansion plans. The fact that there aren’t actually any killjaws on that island is inconvenient, but it’s not really a lie. It’s just the closest to the truth you can get in their almost painfully-limited language.

Satisfied that you’ve done your good turn for the day, you deactivate the glow-orb, switch off the lights, and head for bed.

* * *

In the days of the Fathers, the Light walked among them and spoke words of warning. ‘Killjaws there’, it said. Some believed and gave up their plans. But others, envious of the plentiful fruit on that island, built their watercraft anyway and loitered just off-shore. They were sensible, these Testers, and took their time, slowly circumnavigating and observing the new island without ever making landfall.

And — the Light’s words notwithstanding — there were no killjaws there! Only a glorious abundance of streaming freshwater and glistening fruit, bursting in its ripeness.

Some of the Archipeligans didn’t care. The Light had said there were killjaws there, and so they were sure there must be, observation be damned. The Testers laughed and scorned them, and called them Believers. But the Believers were soon forgotten as the majority of the Archipeligans set off for their new land of plenty.

For a time all seemed well. A few generations passed. The descendants of the Testers thrived and grew in number, while the obstinate Believers scraped for sustenance in misery. But they could look across the waters and see the Testers’ children growing tall and strong and proud, and their own sons and daughters crossed the water in the night in dismaying numbers. No one seemed to be falling prey to killjaws, after all.

And then, one day, a terrible earth-shake struck the new island. Settlements were laid waste and the death toll was staggering. But when it was done it was done, and for the Testers life went on as it ever had. They weren’t troubled by thoughts of the Light; it had warned about killjaws, after all, not earth-shakes. They took the apparent instability of the new island into account and rebuilt. Before long they were thriving again, and their progeny covered all of the new island except its highest peaks.

Back on the original island, the Believers were in schism. They all venerated the Light, of course; those that didn’t were long-gone. But many of them now believed that they knew what the Light had really been telling them. No, there were no killjaws, but there were terrible earth-shakes — a concept unknown in the days of the Fathers. And the Testers had developed new building designs to withstand such things! So now, these Interpreters insisted, everyone could move to the new island and live in full-bellied bliss, even as they respected the now-explicable warnings of the Light.

‘Not so’, bleated the remaining Believers. ‘There are killjaws there.’

The Interpreters shook their heads sadly — the question of killjaws had, after all, been long-settled — and sadly did the Believers watch as almost all of their sons and daughters sailed off for the new island.

Yet even as they arrived, the highest peaks began to smoke…

by sayingandunsaying

About This Blog

There seems to be constant demand for more rationality blogs from that community; and while I have yet to hear of any demand for rationality-meets-orthodoxy blogs from either community, I imagine that it must exist. At any rate, I’ve felt more and more compelled to write on both topics lately, and figured I might as well do it here.

The blog’s name is a reference to John Henry Newman by way of an episode of Thomas Hopko’s (of blessed memory) Speaking the Truth in Love, in which he goes on an extended digression regarding the nature of speaking about God:

…In the Latin, Aristotelian line, God was being, but not becoming; God was unchanging but not changing; God was simple and not multiple; God was static and not moving, not dynamic, and so on. Whereas the Bible, or how the Eastern Fathers, like Gregory and Basil and the other Gregory and Maximos and Simian and others said — especially Dionysius — they said, ‘No; God is completely different! God’s not like anything that exists. God is beyond being. He’s beyond becoming, beyond un-being. That in God, the one and the many — God isn’t one as opposed to many; God is beyond one and many. But He reveals Himself to us as being itself, as goodness itself, love itself, truth itself… but He also reveals Himself in a multiplicity, countless number of the divine actions and energies because He is the living God, and these operations or actions or energies of God, His speaking, His acting, His being angry, His revealing Himself, His hiding Himself — these are all real. God is a living God. He’s beyond anything in the created order. We can’t simply identify Him with ‘being’. In fact, Gregory of Palamas will say, ‘If God is being, I am not. If I am being, God is not. If God is, I am not. If I am, God is not.’ What he meant by that is, you can’t use the term ‘being’ for God and for creation in the same way.

Now if you say that ‘God is’, then you have to qualify that God is beyond anything. For example, if a Christian was, let’s say, walking down the street, and wearing a cross, and some person came up to him and said ‘Hey, are you a Christian, you’re a believer, you have that cross on?’ Say ‘Yeah’. And then if the person said, ‘Do you believe God exists?’ And of course the first Christian answer would be ‘Yes, of course. We believe God exists.’ But if we were really doing our duty, according to the Bible and according to the Holy Fathers — certainly according to St. Gregory of Palamas — we would say to that person, ‘You have a minute? Let’s chat.’ And then we’d say to that person, ‘You know, I just said to you “God exists.” And by that I mean, yes, there is God. Yes. It is not true that there is no God. There is God. But, if you think that God exists like I exist, or you exist, or that building or that tree exists, or even like the planet Earth exists, or like the hundred billion galaxies with the hundred billion stars in the expanding universe exist, then we would have to say God does not exist. God brings into existence creatures who can say that they exist. But God is beyond existence. He’s even beyond non-existence.’

In his summary of the patristic writings that he wrote in the Ninth Century, St. John of Damascus said, ‘God is not only beyond being, He’s beyond non-being.’ That we have to negate even the negations that we make about God. Because if we say that God does not exist like the creation exists, that concept would even be somehow contingent upon an idea of creation. But God, as Prophet Isaiah said [a] long time before Jesus, ‘God doesn’t have any comparisons.’ There’s nothing in Heaven and on Earth to compare with Him. As it was already revealed to the men and women of the old covenant, God is holy. Kadosha, holy. And ‘holy’ means not like anything else. It means completely different; completely other. Like there’s nothing you can say about God but just to contemplate His activities in silence. St. Gregory of Nyssa says, quoting Psalm 116, ‘If we dare to speak about God, then every man is a liar.’ ‘Cause whatever we say, we have to correct somehow. Even the great Englishman and great theological writer, John Henry Newman, who was a Church of England person who became a Roman Catholic, mainly because of the Church Fathers, he said that theology for a Christian is ‘saying and unsaying to a positive effect’. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware quoted that once. I loved it. He says that that’s the same thing that the Eastern Church Fathers say. Theology is saying and unsaying for a positive effect. For a good reason. Because you affirm something — in technical language, that’s called cataphatic — and then you negate it. That’s called apophatic. And so when you say anything about what God is or what God is like, you can say it! You can say ‘God exists, God is good, God is love’, but immediately you have to correct it and say, ‘not like being and not like goodness and not like love that we can capture with our mind. God is way beyond that.’

Nevertheless, He acts. He speaks. He shows Himself. As Gregory of Nyssa said way back in the Fourth Century, ‘His actions and operations,’ he said, ‘they descend even unto us.’

I, uh, transcribed that myself, so any issues are likely my issues.

You can also find me making an ass of myself on reddit as /u/sayingandunsaying.