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I'm new to the Orthodoxy stuff (there are at least three of us on here???), so forgive me if I misunderstand, but isn't what you're saying true because the entire idea of "symbolic" was very different for the ancient Hebrews that wrote, redacted, and passed down Scripture and built the Church. Different than our contemporary understanding I mean. The notion of symbolic over and against literal is a very anachronistic way of reading the symbols that are being described and referenced in Scripture and the writings of the saints and church fathers. Similar to the false dichotomy of spiritual vs physical.
Dichotomizing like that gives too much away to the scientific materialist viewpoint which insists that there is the real (its domain) and then there is the other stuff, which is at best entertaining literature and poetry, and at worst woo woo and delusion.
As Orthodox Christians, we see that our entire world is aflame with the Divine Energies. We pray to the God who is "everywhere present, filling all things." We recognize that creation is just one great Burning Bush.
As such, moments of profound symbolic importance are, to us, moments where the physical is fulfilled in the spiritual, where the goodness of this world is, for a bit, perfectly aligned with the Good of the world to come, a point in physical and psychic space where Heaven touches earth.
That would be awesome. Something to pray for!
Me, you, @Gaashk, @ortherox (sp?) and I think @TheDag (?) are Orthodox. Probably more if I had to guess.
Is this true? I've heard over and over that the allegorical/symbolic reading of the Scriptures is something the Church Fathers did. We even have the words allegorical and symbolic in many Orthodox chants. Perhaps symbolic over and against literal I agree with - the literal and the symbolic were seen as one. Symbol literally means "where heaven and earth meet."
And hey I'm working on converting the techies on twitter. Come help out!!
There's the Five (some say Four) Senses of Scripture, and passages can be debated as "meant literally or to be interpreted symbolically?" but there are limits.
You can probably get away with "Jonah was not literally in the belly of a fish" but no dice on "Jesus was not literally born of a virgin".
I agree with that, though I'd argue Jonah was definitely in the belly of a fish.
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Yes, this is exactly what I was getting at. Symbol as a unity between heaven and earth, a point in which the physical and the spiritual are reconciled. A completely different notion compared to when people say "just a symbol" in our modern parlance.
This probably didn't come across clearly in my ramblings of last night -- apologies, we have a newborn and a toddler at home so sleep is in short supply.
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