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Darkness of
the psyche The Hermit's Message
Way of Theosis Psychological method Prayer of the heart
praxis studies
Introductory studies
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To understand the way the early fathers thought about this question, and
how they tilled the soil that brought forth such 'fruit unto repentance,'
such a crop of individuals of a spiritual power almost unimaginable in this
time without saints, it is helpful to know that, even before their time, the
Greece of Pericles, Plato, and Socrates possessed an established educational
tradition. This was a programme of character formation, and it seems to have
been the idea of developing this further that inspired large parts of
Plato's Republic. Werner Jaeger, a
leading Harvard Theologian of the 1960's, wrote about Greek philosophers of
the slightly later time when Christianity began, that:
"They
led their pupils to that spirituality which was the common link of all
higher religion in late antiquity. They began to remember that it had been
Plato who made the world of the soul visible for the first time to the inner
eye of man, and they realized how radically that discovery had changed human
life ... On their way upward, Plato became the guide who turned their eyes
from material and sensual reality to the immaterial world in which the
nobler-minded of the human race were to make their home.
"In
this situation, Clement of Alexandria, the head of the Christian school of
the Catechetes, and Origen, became the founders of Christian philosophy."[ii]
To prepare people by making them more sensitive to subtleties that include
[iii]
spiritual feelings and intuitions, general aesthetic education is often
recommended, especially under modern conditions, when aesthetics are
generally ignored in education.
Greek paedia -- specifically that of Athens at the time of Plato and Pericles -- included aesthetic elements as well as physical culture and intellectual concerns. The Stoic philosophy, which was a major force in Greece and Italy at the time that Clement taught in Alexandria, could be regarded as a specific form or an adult extension to paedia, and it is notable that it taught self-control. So, at the time of Christ, Greek education included elements that contributed to the formation of emotional sensibility and self-control. Plato, for instance, advocated teaching certain specific poetic and musical forms. Byzantine Christian society many centuries later taught a series of rules for music that defined precisely the way in which some combinations of sounds had a beneficial effect on the hearer while others were harmful. Those rules can still be studied. |
different christianity
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