ghost and machine

... our mechanistic paradigms trap much of our thinking about mind and body within an absurd dilemma: we must believe either in a ghost mysteriously animating a machine or in a machine miraculously generating a ghost. Premodern thought allowed for a far less restricted range of conceptual possibilities.

In Western philosophical tradition, for instance, neither Platonists, nor Aristotelians, nor Stoics, nor any of the Christian metaphysicians of late antiquity or the Middle Ages could have conceived of matter as something independent of "spirit" or of spirit as something simply superadded to matter in living beings. Certainly none of them thought of either the body or the cosmos as a machine merely organized by a rational force from beyond itself. Rather, they saw matter as being always already informed by indwelling rational causes, and thus open to - and in fact directed toward - mind. Nor did Platonists or Aristotelians or Christians conceive of spirit as being immaterial in a purely privative sense, in the way that a vacuum is not aerial or a vapor is not a solid. If anything, they understood spirit as being more substantial, more actual, more "supereminently" real than matter, and as in fact being the pervasive reality in which matter had to participate in order to be anything at all. The quandary produced by early modern dualism - the notorious "interaction problem" of how an immaterial reality could have an effect upon a purely material thing - was no quandary at all, because no school conceived of the interaction between a souls and body as a purely extrinsic physical alliance between to disparate kinds of substance. The material order is only, it was assumed, an ontologically diminished or constricted effect of the fuller actuality of the spiritual order. And this is why it is nearly impossible to find an ancient or mediaeval school of thought whose concept of the relation of soul and body was anything like a relation between two wholly independent kinds of substance: the ghost and the machine...

In Platonic tradition, the soul was not conceived of merely as a pure intellect presiding over the automaton of the body. The soul was seen as the body's life, spiritual and organic at once, comprising the appetites and passions no less than rational intellkect, while the body was seen as a material reflection of a rational and ideal order. Matter was not simply the inert and opaque matter of mechanistic thought but rather a mirror of eternal splendors and verities, truly (if defectively) predisposed to the light of spirit. For the Aristotelian tradition, the human soul was the "form of the body," the very essence and nature of a human being's whole rational and animal organism, the formal and vital power animating, pervading, and shaping every person, drawing all the energies of life into a living unity. For Stoic tradition as well, the indwelling mind or "logos" of each person was also the rational and living integrity of the body, and was a particular instance of the universal logos that animates, shapes, and guides the whole cosmos. For pagans, Hellenistic Jews, and Christians alike, the soul was the source and immanent entelechy of corporeal life, encompassing every dimension of human existence: animal functions and abstract intellect, sensation and reason, emotion and ratiocination, flesh and spirit, natural aptitude and supernatural longing. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, spoke of the soul not only as intellect but also a gathering and formative natural power, progressively developing all of a person's faculties, physical and mental, over the entire course of a life....

- David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss

The last day of Constantinople - Runciman's account

"On this Monday, with the knowledge that the crisis was upon them, the soldiers and citizens forgot their quarrels. While the men at the walls worked to repair the shattered defences a great procession was formed.

In contrast to the silence in the Turkish camp, in the city the bells of the churches rang and their wooden gongs sounded as icons and relics were brought out upon the shoulders of the faithful and carried round through the streets and along the length of the walls, pausing only to bless with their holy presence the spots where the damage was greatest and the danger most pressing; and the throng that followed behind them, Greeks and Italians, Orthodox and Catholic, sang hymns and repeated the Kyrie Eleison.

“The Emperor himself came to join in the procession; and when it was ended he summoned his notables and commanders, Greek and Italian, and spoke to them. (…)

“Constantine told his hearers that the great assault was about to begin. To his Greek subjects he said that a man should always be ready to die either for his faith or for his country or for his family or for his sovereign. Now his people must be prepared to die for all four causes.

“He spoke of the glories and high traditions of the great Imperial city. He spoke of the perfidy of the infidel Sultan who had provoked the war in order to destroy the True Faith and to put his false prophet in the seat of Christ. He urged them to remember that they were the descendents of the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome and to be worthy of their ancestors.

“For his part, he said, he was ready to die for his faith, his city and his people. (…)

“All that were present rose to assure the Emperor that they were ready to sacrifice their lives and homes for him. He then walked slowly round the chamber, asking each one of them to forgive him if ever he had caused offence. They followed his example, embracing one another, as men do who expect to die.

“The day was nearly over. Already crowds were moving towards the great Church of the Holy Wisdom. (…) Barely a citizen, except for the soldiers on the walls, stayed away from this desperate service of intercession. (…) The golden mosaics, studded with images of Christ and His Saints and the Emperors and Empresses of Byzantium, glimmered in the light of a thousand lamps and candles; and beneath then for the last time he priests in their splendid vestments moved in the solemn rhythm of the Liturgy. (…)

“Later in the evening the Emperor himself rode on his Arab mare to the great cathedral and made his peace with God. Then he returned through the dark streets to his Palace at Blachernae and summoned his household. Of them, as he had done of his ministers, he asked forgiveness for any unkindness that he might have shown them, and bade them good-bye.

“It was close on midnight when he mounted his horse again and rode, accompanied by the faithful Phrantzes, down the length of the land-walls, to see that everything was in order and that the gates through the inner wall were closed.

“On their way back to Blachernae the Emperor dismounted near the Caligarian Gate and took Phrantzes with him up a tower (…) from where they could peer out into the darkness both ways (…).

“Below them they could hear noises as the enemy brought up their guns over the filled-in foss. This activity had been going-on since sunset, so the watchmen told them. In the distance they could see flickering lights as the Turkish ships moved across the Golden Horn.

Phrantzes waited with his master for an hour or so. Then Constantine dismissed him; and they never met again. “

From The Last Days of Constantinople by Steven Runciman, 1965 - pp 129-132

The great liturgical artists unite gift, skill and spirituality. This is because making liturgical art is a priestly and prophetical act. Creation can praise God of its own accord, but it gives thanks through us, its mouthpiece. We are ourselves a union of matter and spirit, and so we are the meeting place of the material and spiritual worlds. In the words of the seventh century St Leontius of Cyprus: The creation does not venerate God directly by itself, but it is through me that the heavens declare the glory of God, through me the moon worships God, through me the stars glorify Him, through me the waters and showers of rain, the dew and all creation venerate God and give Him glory.

Each work of sacred art is an instrument within a larger liturgical orchestra, and so its design needs to harmonize with the whole. Egotism and the desire to make a statement has no room. Panel icons hang within a church and are venerated as part of liturgical ritual; murals are painted on the surfaces created by the architect; chanters sing music composed by composers and words written by hymnographers; clergy and laity have processions in a sacred choreography wearing woven and embroidered vestments. Each sacred artwork is part of the whole.

- Aidan Hart

To me there is something at once marvellously mystical, and a bit sinister and disturbing about the Orthodox liturgy.

- Patrick Leigh Fermor, 'Mount Athos' in The Broken Road