A Notion To Ponder

This was originally written in May of 2024.

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Only a year ago I was penning my thoughts on an issue I was seeing with modern churches. I had said that the church failed to see what was tradition and what was biblical. At the time I was perhaps thinking about the way communion is done in different churches. I have changed my view on communion and the Lord’s supper in the last year. This has been a gradual exploration into Orthodox Christianity.

You cannot separate tradition from interpretation and while every reading of scripture is an interpretation the question then becomes what is the right tradition to interpret this? Should we let the scientific process guide us? What about rationality? Unfortunately, we can’t use the scientific method because the claims soon interplay with the non-material and so the method is rendered useless. A conservative take might perhaps be where one might then say, let us stick with the scientific method and instead dispense with some of the extravagant truth claims; we’ll keep the moral values but not ratify the claims to the only truth. After all there are a plethora of religions which seem to be getting at a ‘good way’ of life.  Indeed some have walked this way. For me, this was hardly satisfying.

Rationality has its limits. The scientific method is built upon rationality and is an immensely useful tool but a modern bias has crept into our understanding of rationality; that it is inherently materialistic. This is enough to then conclude that rationality in the sense that it assumes only a material reality is not enough. There is more.