Exemplarity is an idea that can be found in Platonism, the Church Fathers, Franciscan saints such as Bonaventure and in Orthodox theology. It is an idea that is based in philosophical realism and a metaphysical understanding of the transcendental - the Good, the True and the Beautiful. Since corrosive ideas such as nominalism, which denies the reality of universals, we have lost touch with the necessity of participation in exemplarity. The fullest manifestation of exemplarity is not abstract ideas, but the Person of Jesus Christ, the God Man.
With exemplarity we can see various threads of thought and culture coming together in a virtuous synthesis. Stoic ideas of self restraint, Aristotlian ideas of the telos of virtue and Neo-Platonic ideas of participating in the transcendental realm all come together in the figure of the exemplar. Only in the Church is the concept given its fullest and ultimate iteration. In Neoplatonism participation is in abstract and airy transcendentals. In Aristotle the telos is eudaimonia, rather than full self sacrifice. In the Stoics, the personal is lost in a pantheist theology. Only in the Church is exemplarity incarnated in the God Man, in whose life we are to participate and Whom we are to imitate.
The concept of exemplarity requires a vertical and upwards-orientated understanding of reality. Plato here is helpful in pinpointing reality as being in the realm of Forms, not in this material world of becoming. The pagan philosopher though went too far in disembodying us from reality. In the Church's teaching the second Person of the Trinity comes down into our world, incarnate. Humbling Himself for us, through His kenosis. The Truth is embodied. The spiritual manifests in the physical. The Word made flesh. Without this we fall into Gnosticism.
If there are heights to which we aspire, if man as much as a lyre or an animal has an orientating purpose as in Aristotle, then it must be more than eudaimonia. It must be deeper, it must then be love. We then do not simply seek the happy life, the good life, but love in Christ. This self-sacrificial love can account more for suffering than simply the virtue for the sake of the good life of eudaimonia.
If life and virtue are about restraint and freedom from the passions, as with Seneca and the Stoics, then a pantheist cosmos is not enough. Such attainment of freedom must involve the personal, not a dissolution into the cosmos. In the Church we participate in the Person of Christ, not becoming part of the universe. The personal is the height of exemplarity.
The practical aspect of a chain of exemplarity is participation. The purpose of our life is not hedonism or power, it is participation in the highest, which is about sacrifice and humility. Exemplarity requires an orientation towards the highest. The pagan philosophers could not find an ultimate exemplar. This ultimate exemplar is Christ, because God as man is the perfect man.
With Christ as the ultimate exemplar, there are lower exemplars who to a greater or lesser extent manifest Christ and can be looked up to as examples and models to follow. The Medieval notion of knighthood helps with the culture of exemplarity. The code of chivalry was the warrior's form of participating in Christ. We thus look up to the knight as an honourable model to follow, but as Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur reminds us, even knighthood as a worldly thing is imperfect and subject to temptation and hubris.
The saints are the greatest exemplars and that is why the churches are full of their icons. They help us not only through their prayers, but because as flawed men and women they achieved the spiritual heights through Christ. They can then inspire us in our participation as we follow the models of exemplarity. The Mother of God, in particular, is to be understood as the ultimate fully-human exemplar of sanctity.
The knights, of course, had a particular veneration for the Mother of God, which was expressed in loyalty and love for their own lady. The monks are the other zenith of human participation. The Orthodox monks on the Holy Mountain of Athos dwell on an isthmus dedicated to Mary the Theotokos. The Mother of God is the first Christian and the only human born in our sinful state to be personally without sin.
The figures of exemplarity are then in a chain of participation ultimately leading to Christ the God-Man. Monks in particular exemplify this participation in the life of Christ. As ascetics they sacrifice their life in this world for love of Christ.
Participation in the higher Good is challenging for us in the West. With Ockham's denial of universals, with Protestantism's destruction of the saints' shrines and its hatred of the Mother of God, with empiricism turning our attention to the material and the particular and with utilitarianism's promotion of hedonism, these beliefs, linked genealogically, have separated us from the transcendental. Popular culture celebrates revolutionary culture and individualistic self realisation. We have become unhealthily obsessed with sexual identity. Western Churches have reinterpreted Christ as an advocate for the secular values of liberalism. We in the West are cut off from higher meaning.
This is why the statistics show a surge of interest in traditional religion from the young, so-called Gen Z. Western ideals have been shown to be barren and empty, quite literally in the way our secular values have led to a demographic crisis. Clearly aspiring to participate in the life of Christ through the Church is not ultimately about utilitarian social benefits, such as restoration of the trust society, solving the birth crisis or regaining our collective Christian identity - these are side benefits. The true benefit is through Christ we have access to participate again in the Good, the True and the Beautiful and restore our telos, through self restraint and asceticism, in the eventual hope of eternal life with the Father through the Spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment