Posts
Dear Parish Faithful,
CHRIST IS RISEN!
INDEED HE IS RISEN!
"'Unless I see I will not believe.' Clearly, however, observable experience, empirical data, is just one form of knowledge, the most elementary, and therefore the lowest, form. Empirical analysis is useful and necessary, but to reduce all human knowledge to this level is like trying to comprehend the beauty of a painting by a chemical analysis of its paint. What we call faith is at a second and higher level of human knowledge, without which, it can be claimed, man would be unable to live even a single day. Every person believes in something or someone,e so the only question is whose faith, whose vision, whose knowledge of the world corresponds more accurately and more completely to the richness and complexity of life."
- Fr. Alexander Schmemann
___________
This is just a small excerpt from a longer article by Fr. Alexander Schmemann entitled "Doubting Thomas," but a good indication of how Fr. Alexander will question the reduction to all knowledge to "scientific verification" and simultaneously elevate faith as so much more of a comprehensive and satisfying way of "knowing." The apostle Thomas made that transition when he encountered the risen Lord, clearly expressed by his confession of faith in Christ: "My Lord and my God!"
