{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Class on Journey to Reality - Chapters Seven and Eight on Participation and the Bible","description":"Today Fr. Anthony covers Chapters Seven and Eight from Dr. Zachery Porcu's Journey to Reality,  "The Life of the Church" and "The Bible and the Church."  Enjoy the show! +++ Journey to Reality Chapters Seven and Eight You are What You Do (Including Eat) 10\/29\/2025 As creatures, we were made malleable.  It was built into our design so that we could grow towards perfection eternally.  While this is a characteristic of the entire cosmos \u2013 and every member of it \u2013 it has a special purpose for us.  We are the shepherds, farmers, and priests of the cosmos.  The system is designed so that as we become better, we are able to shepherd or grow the cosmos from one made good \u2013 that is to say made both beautiful and beneficial into one that is even better; that is to say even better and more beneficial. This malleability is built into us.  Alas, we have left our true home, so that malleability leads to malformation. Let\u2019s talk about the malleability.  The way Dr. Porcu puts it is that we become what we do.  Much of my own work reflects on the way our rituals form us.  These rituals are embedded within a culture, and living within that culture shapes us into members and bearers of it. A few weeks ago, we talked about how we live in a materialist, secular, and consumerist culture.  Living in it means that we automatically participate in its rituals.  These develop within us a certain way of thinking, acting, and relating to other people, God, and our environment.  How could it not? The unfortunate thing for us is that our primary culture is imperfect and reifies its imperfections into our way of being.  I propose that the answer is not really to actively oppose it \u2013 as in some kind of culture war \u2013 because doing so before we break out of its conditioning is just going to ingrain its patterns more deeply into our hearts.  Rather, we must find a new way of living. This new way of living should come with its own rituals that will gradually get enough traction to lessen the hold that the majority culture has on us and replace it with its own.  To the extent that we must participate in the old rituals, we should reframe our participation in a way that resonates with our new life rather than our old one.  We have to give them new meaning, so that, eventually, even these old ways of doing things can work with our new rituals to deepen the hold that our new way of life has on us and on our minds and how we relate to God, other people, and the environment. Some rituals, such as pornography, fornication (i.e., sex outside marriage), and driving slowly in the left-hand lane on the expressway, cannot be redeemed and so they have to be avoided. It will take discernment to figure out how to best engage in this process, so this way of life should involve developing a community that is all focused on the same sort of new life. Now let\u2019s go through chapter seven, \u201cThe Life of the Church.\u201d Quotes for discussion: \u201c[Y]ou don\u2019t have to do anything, but if you want to become something, you have to participate in it.\u201d (77) \u201cSacramentally, the purpose of attending church services is to participate in a higher spiritual reality.\u201d (70) \u201c[N]othing is \u2018just\u2019 physical.  Objects and actions have intrinsic, spiritual meaning.  Everything is participatory\u2026 [I]f the physical and the spiritual can\u2019t be  separated, then imitation is always participatory.  \u2026 You can\u2019t participate in something physically without also participating in its spiritual meaning.\u201d (72) \u201c[As Orthodox Christians, our] goal is to imitate, and therefore participate in, a spiritual reality through the physical ritual.  And the spiritual reality that sacramental Christians are trying to imitate through their liturgy is nothing less than heaven itself\u2026. This is why sacramental Christians call their liturgy the \u201cDivine Liturgy.\u201d  To participate in it is also to participate in the exact same cosmic liturgy that the angels perform around the throne of God\u2026. [W]hen you step into a sacramental church space that\u2019s correctly imitating the heavenly liturgy, you are stepping into a small bit of heaven itself \u2013 you are participating with the angelic powers in a higher spiritual reality.\u201d (73) \u201cSacramental Christianity is not just about doing a particular set of actions; it\u2019s a whole way of life.  One way to describe this life is as participation in what the Church calls \u201cliturgical time.\u201d (75) \u201c[T]o be sacramental is not merely a matter of attendance, nor is it merely about thinking a certain way or performing certain ritual actions; it is a lifestyle\u2026 [G]oing to church and participating in the sacraments is about living out the idea that the physical and the spiritual are bound up together, and that you encounter them together through participation \u2013 not just in church, but in everything you do and are.\u201d (77) \u201cYou can\u2019t become healthy by sitting at home and reading a lot of articles about health.  You don\u2019t become a member of a family by skipping family gatherings in order to sit at home looking at pictures of past family events.  If you want to be a part of something, you have to live it.\u201d (77) \u201c[Y]ou don\u2019t have to do anything, but if you want to become something, you have to participate in it. And in sacramental Christianity, the thing you\u2019re participating in is the higher spiritual reality of the arche\u2019 Himself.\u201d (77)  Chapter eight, The Bible and the Church  \u201c[T]he Bible is not the source of Christianity.\u201d (77) \u201cThe Bible is not a scientific of historical document in the particular sense that modern people mean this.  It\u2019s important here to distinguish between truth and fact.  Facts are those things that are objectively verifiable\u2026. But even though facts are verifiable\u2026, they have no deeper meaning.  Truth, on the other hand, includes facts but goes beyond them to encompass the deeper meaning of reality itself.\u201d (77) \u201cAs modern people we tend to care only about facts [read whole section] \u2026 even over meaning.\u201d (77) \u201cThere are plenty of mistakes and errors in the Bible that have been thoroughly documented\u2026 The Bible is about truth, and truth is higher than fact. (78) \u201cFrom the very beginning, ancient Christians recognized three levels of biblical interpretation: the literal, the moral, and the spiritual (what they called the typological). (78). \u201cBut how do you know which passages in the Bible have a literal meaning and which don\u2019t, or which have both?  How do you know what the correct typological meaning is?\u201d (81) \u201cTo really read the Bible with the mind of the Church requires that you have a certain kind of formation \u2013 not just intellectual but spiritual.\u201d (84) \u201cAnd just as you can\u2019t really understand the Bible\u2019s true depths without participation in the life of the Church, so too the whole life of the Church [resonates with] imagery from the Bible.\u201d \u201cThe Bible\u2026 is not merely read or memorized, but lived and experienced.  Or, to put it another way, being reconnected with the arche\u2019 is not something you do only in your mind.  It\u2019s a new kind of life, and it must therefore be lived.  Questions for Discussion What are some of the new rituals that a commitment to living the Orthodox Way gives us, and how do they help transform our thinking and way of relating to others? In addition to pornography and fornication, what are some of the rituals that you believe work against our new way of life? What are some of the things that we have always done that can be given new meaning and help us become better Christians? Are you concerned that the book claims that there are errors in the Bible? ","author_name":"OrthoAnalytika","author_url":"http:\/\/orthoanalytika.libsyn.com","html":"