The Crucial Distinction Between the Rationalism of Western Christianity and the Mysticism of the Eastern Orthodox Church

The split between the East and the West in 1054 AD, known as the Great Schism, was not merely the result of a few different theological points.  To be sure, there were serious differences of theology such as the addition of words to the Creed that altered or distorted a proper understanding of the relationship of the Godhead to the Trinity – a distortion that works its way out in how salvation is perceived and lived.  Then there was the divide over the primacy of the pope as well as other theological differences. 

But underlying the theological differences was a major divide between Western rationalism and Eastern mysticism.   This divide led to different ways of understanding God and salvation that has profound significance even today. 

Civilization in the West developed differently than in the East.  Rome fell prey to several major influences and movements that did not have any significant impact on the East. 

In the West society’s ways of thinking and understanding were shaped and formed by the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, Scholasticism and the development of Rationalism and Science as the foundation for all thinking, even theological.  These movements began in the world but quickly infiltrated the Papacy and what we know today as the Roman Catholic or Latin Church.  It’s a long history but some of the most noted theological voices of rationalism in the West were Aquinas, Anselm and Augustine. (Augustine in his later years.  In his earlier writings he was Orthodox but ended up being unduly influenced by Western rationalism.)  The Protestant Reformation was a product of these influences and continued to build upon the foundation of rationalism failing to understand that the issues they protested against were the products of the same rationalism that fueled and guided the Reformation.

Rationalism in Western Christianity looks to human intellect, reason and rational enlightenment as the best ways to approach and understand God.  There is an attempt to make the Christian Faith conform to human ideas of what is rational, scientific and enlightened.  Christianity should be explainable and discerned by knowledge and reason.  Thus, knowing God is more of an intellectual thing achieved by acquiring knowledge of God through study, books, lectures and information.  From this perspective the theology is derived from the theologians in the theological schools.  The theologian is someone with book knowledge, an intellectual scholar who can know and reveal God by study and research. 

In the East, the Church approached God much more from a mystical or spiritual point of view.   For those who have remained true to the Orthodox Tradition this is still true today.

This approach is derived from the understanding that sin and the resulting passions that afflict us also darken our minds and keep us from the true knowledge of God.  It is believed that a person who is still subject to the passions – pride, greed, vanity, lust, sloth, self-righteousness, selfishness, envy, jealousy, etc. – cannot attain to the discernment of the knowledge of God within himself.  Only those who by grace and by prayer, fasting, self-denial and obedience have been purified of their sinful passions, illumined by the Holy Spirit and attained to a full and complete communion with God (theosis) can truly know and reveal the knowledge of God.  Their hearts and minds are enlightened/illumined with the knowledge of God by direct experience of God in a way that is not known by the carnal person who is still subject to sinful passions.   God is known by experience in a purified heart more than in a head full of knowledge. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God".

The knowledge of God comes not from the intellect, books and lectures but from the saints who have experienced communion with the uncreated Light of God.  They have entered into the Glory of God as did Moses on Mt. Sinai, Elias on Mt Horab and the disciples on Mt. Tabor.  In that Glory, the knowledge of God is revealed to the heart of man, not as intellectual knowledge but as the experience of God in the Holy Spirit.  These are the true theologians of the Church.  It is on this basis that the Orthodox Church claims to possess the fullness of the Faith and to be the True Church of Christ.  It is not because we have theologians who are smarter than your theologians but because the truth we hold is born witness to by those who in purity have been in the presence of God and have beheld the vision of the uncreated Light/Glory of God.  God is revealed to the Church mystically/spiritually, not rationally according to the wisdom of this world.  The wisdom of this world knows not the things of God.  We look to the saints, fathers, confessors and martyrs for the revelation of the knowledge of God – those who in purity have beheld the face of God in the Holy Spirit.  We do not derive our interpretations and understanding of the Christian faith from rational book knowledge still subject to the sinful passions.  We believe and honor the saints of this age for the same reason we believe and honor the saints of old - Abraham, Moses, Elijah, all the prophets and the apostles - because they learned the knowledge of God through the experience of beholding the vision of God in a way the rest of us do not due to our sinful and darkened mind and passions.

Conflict between these two approaches to God came to a head in the fourteenth century in the debate between a Roman theologian named Barlaam and St. Gregory Palamas, a monk from Mt. Athos and Archbishop of Thessalonica. 

Barlaam, following the rationalism of the West, said that man can come to the knowledge of God through his reason and intellect and is a Christian by virtue of living an ethical life and fulfilling the obligations of the Christian life.

St. Gregory posited that knowing God and living for God is a matter of union and communion with God in the Holy Spirit that involves purification of the passions, illumination of the heart by the Holy Spirit, and participation in the uncreated Light of God Himself.     

The ultimate result is two different approaches to salvation.  For the Western rational mindset, salvation became much more centered in the knowledge of certain facts, following certain steps or principals, adhering to certain ethics and fulfilling certain obligations.  The theology of salvation developed much more along legal, Roman law, and juridical models emphasizing the objective/external nature of salvation. Salvation is much more cerebral and perceived somewhat as a one time event obtained by a prayer.

The mystical approach of the East developed a therapeutic model of healing seeing salvation as a life long journey and the Church as a hospital.  This healing includes the purification of the heart from sinful passions, the illumination of the mind by the Holy Spirit, and beholding the Glory of God through theosis.  The illumination of the mind grows out of the purification of the passions and theosis grows out of both.  The theology of salvation centers on the mystical union with God in the Holy Spirit and a transformation or deification of human nature.  The path to salvation is a path of denying self, crucifying the sinful passions, devotion to prayer, obedience and fasting.  All of this presupposes life in the Church/Body of Christ where we absorb the life and spirit of the saints, submit our lives to a spiritual father for confession and guidance, and partake of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Our salvation is a matter of inner spiritual union with Christ and His Body the Church through the Holy Spirit.

From time to time, Protestantism and even elements of Rome, have gone through periods of awakenings growing weary of the rational and intellectual approach to salvation – the institutional church as it is called.  This has resulted in the “Great Awakenings”, revival movements and charismatic movements of the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  But even these movements, having no awareness or connection to the mystical faith of the Eastern Orthodox Church, have always succumbed to extreme and wild emotional fanaticism, embracing numerous heresies, and leaving in their path a wake of disillusioned and burned out people either seeking the next movement and guru or becoming agnostic if not atheistic.