Timmay
Puritan Board Freshman
Was having a discussion with an Eastern Orthodox priest who blames the Reformation for the rise and prevalence of materialism. He says the Reformation "desacralized the material world." He said this is why:
"By eliminating, or diminishing the tangible relations between the physical and spiritual. In its older context the word "symbol" meant an object that made the representation present. Icons, or statues, were not simply "this" referring to a distant "that." They were the presence of "that" here and now. So iconoclasm removed the tangible sense of the communion of the saints and the unity of the Church militant and the Church triumphant. Prayer for the departed affirmed our ongoing connection to those who have gone before us. Eliminating it, and teaching that it was wrong, removed that lived awareness of the continuity of our existence in God; Eucharist was the means of participating in the Divine Life of God and a foretaste of the Kingdom. By making it merely a representation or eliminating it entirely, and replacing it with a sermon, the lived participation in the eternal Kingdom, while in the mortal body and world, was taken away. All of this leaves a sense of separation between this world and that, and between the body and the spirit. Which makes room for later, more explicit articulations of materialism."
I answered that Calvin nor Luther never saw the Sacraments as merely memorial or that there was a complete break with the physical and spiritual world. I also tried to show how materialistic thought was present amongst the Greeks and even during the Renaissance. He also seems to fail to understand how the Word of God is also a direct "link" thinking one needs icons to continue to have this link.
Any thoughts?
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"By eliminating, or diminishing the tangible relations between the physical and spiritual. In its older context the word "symbol" meant an object that made the representation present. Icons, or statues, were not simply "this" referring to a distant "that." They were the presence of "that" here and now. So iconoclasm removed the tangible sense of the communion of the saints and the unity of the Church militant and the Church triumphant. Prayer for the departed affirmed our ongoing connection to those who have gone before us. Eliminating it, and teaching that it was wrong, removed that lived awareness of the continuity of our existence in God; Eucharist was the means of participating in the Divine Life of God and a foretaste of the Kingdom. By making it merely a representation or eliminating it entirely, and replacing it with a sermon, the lived participation in the eternal Kingdom, while in the mortal body and world, was taken away. All of this leaves a sense of separation between this world and that, and between the body and the spirit. Which makes room for later, more explicit articulations of materialism."
I answered that Calvin nor Luther never saw the Sacraments as merely memorial or that there was a complete break with the physical and spiritual world. I also tried to show how materialistic thought was present amongst the Greeks and even during the Renaissance. He also seems to fail to understand how the Word of God is also a direct "link" thinking one needs icons to continue to have this link.
Any thoughts?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk