Another question of cosmological significance
In my second master's thesis, AI as an Arena for Magical Thinking Among Skeptics, I have a section, Intellect, Principles, and Cosmology, in which I wrote:
Why do I speak of the 'artificial intelligence cosmology'? Surely one can have a long debate about artificial intelligence without adding cosmology to the discussion. This is true, but it is true because cosmology has become invisible, part of the assumed backdrop of discussion. In America, one cultural assumption is that 'culture' and 'customs' are for faroff and exotic people, not for 'us'—'we' are just being human. It doesn't occur to most Americans to think of eating Turkey on Thanksgiving Day or removing one's hat inside a building as customs, because 'custom' is a concept that only applies to exotic people. I suggest that Maximus Confessor has an interesting cosmology, not because he's exotic, but because he's human.
Artificial intelligence proponents and (most) critics do not differ on cosmology, but because that is because it is an important assumption which is not questioned even by most people who deny the possibility of artificial intelligence. Searle may disagree with Fodor about what is implied by a materialist cosmology, but not whether one should accept materialism. I suggest that some artificial intelligence critics miss the most interesting critiques of artificial intelligence because they share that project's cosmology. If AI is based on a cosmological error, then no amount of fine-tuning within the system will rectify the error. We need to consider cosmology if we are to have any hope of correcting an error that basic. (Bad metaphysics does not create good physics.) I will describe Maximus Confessor's cosmology in this section, not because he has cosmology and AI doesn't, but because his cosmology seems to suggest a correction to the artificial intelligence cosmology.
At the base of Maximus's cosmology is God. God holds the Principles in his heart, and they share something of his reality. Concrete beings (including us) are created through the Principles, and we share something of their reality and of God. The Principles are a more concrete realisation of God, and we are a more concrete realisation of the Principles. Thought (nohsis) means beholding God and the Principles (logoi) through the eye of the intellect. Thinking of a tree means connecting with something that is more tree-like than the tree itself.
It may be easier to see what the important Principles in Maximus Confessor's cosmology if we see how they are being dismantled today. Without saying that Church Fathers simply grafted in Platonism, I believe it safe to say that Plato resembled some of Church doctrine, and at any rate Plato's one finger pointing up to God offers a closer approximation to Christianity than Aristotle's fingers pointing down. I would suggest further that looking at Plato can suggest how Christianity differs from Aristotelianism's materialistic tendencies, tendencies that are still unfolding today. Edelman describes the assumptions accompanying Darwin's evolution as the 'death blow' to the essentialism, the doctrine that there are fixed kinds of things, as taught by Plato and other idealists.[46] Edelman seems not to appreciate why so many biologists assent to punctuated equilibrium.[47] However, if we assume that there is solid evidence establishing that all life gradually evolved from a common ancestor, then this remark is both apropos and perceptive.
The cosmology shared by the artificial intelligence movement and its mainstream critics within the academy is a standard scientific cosmology in which, in particular, the royal race of mankind is in fact an unintended by-product of mindless forces that did not in any sense have the human race in desire or mind. The debate between John Searle and "strong AI" proponents is not about whether this whole cosmology holds. It is not about whether a part of this cosmology holds. It is rather that given the complete truth of the cosmology, there is a difference about whether it implies that computers can replicate intelligence such as the royal race of men possess.
Regarding that cosmology, I would quote The Commentary:
Martin stepped into his house and decided to have no more distractions. He wanted to begin reading commentary, now. He opened the book on the table and sat erect in his chair:
Genesis
1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
1:2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.
1:3 And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.The reader is now thinking about evolution. He is wondering whether Genesis 1 is right, and evolution is simply wrong, or whether evolution is right, and Genesis 1 is a myth that may be inspiring enough but does not actually tell how the world was created.
All of this is because of a culture phenomenally influenced by scientism and science. The theory of evolution is an attempt to map out, in terms appropriate to scientific dialogue, just what organisms occurred, when, and what mechanism led there to be new kinds of organisms that did not exist before. Therefore, nearly all Evangelicals assumed, Genesis 1 must be the Christian substitute for evolution. Its purpose must also be to map out what occurred when, to provide the same sort of mechanism. In short, if Genesis 1 is true, then it must be trying to answer the same question as evolution, only answering it differently.
Darwinian evolution is not a true answer to the question, "Why is there life as we know it?" Evolution is on philosophical grounds not a true answer to that question, because it is not an answer to that question at all. Even if it is true, evolution is only an answer to the question, "How is there life as we know it?" If someone asks, "Why is there this life that we see?" and someone answers, "Evolution," it is like someone saying, "Why is the kitchen light on?" and someone else answering, "Because the switch is in the on position, thereby closing the electrical circuit and allowing current to flow through the bulb, which grows hot and produces light."
Where the reader only sees one question, an ancient reader saw at least two other questions that are invisible to the present reader. As well as the question of "How?" that evolution addresses, there is the question of "Why?" and "What function does it serve?" These two questions are very important, and are not even considered when people are only trying to work out the antagonism between creationism and evolutionism.
Martin took a deep breath. Was the text advocating a six-day creationism? That was hard to tell. He felt uncomfortable, in a much deeper way than if Bible-thumpers were preaching to him that evolutionists would burn in Hell.
What is the cosmological issue? I quote Within the Steel Orb:
Art said, "But our scientists are making progress. Your advanced world has artificial intelligence, right?"
Oinos said, "Why on earth would we be able to do that? Why would that even be a goal?"
"You have computers, right?"
"Yes, indeed; the table that I used to call up a scientific calculator works on the same principle as your world's computers. I could almost say that inventing a new kind of computer is a rite of passage among serious inventors, or at least that's the closest term your world would have."
"And your computer science is pretty advanced, right? Much more advanced than ours?"
"We know things that the trajectory of computer science in your world will never reach because it is not pointed in the right direction." Oinos tapped the wall and arcs of pale blue light spun out.
"Then you should be well beyond the point of making artificial intelligence."
"Why on a million, million worlds should we ever be able to do that? Or even think that is something we could accomplish?"
"Well, if I can be obvious, the brain is a computer, and the mind is its software."
"Is it?"
"What else could the mind be?"
"What else could the mind be? What about an altar at which to worship? A workshop? A bridge between Heaven and earth, a meeting place where eternity meets time? A treasury in which to gather riches? A spark of divine fire? A line in a strong grid? A river, ever flowing, ever full? A tree reaching to Heaven while its roots grasp the earth? A mountain made immovable for the greatest storm? A home in which to live and a ship by which to sail? A constellation of stars? A temple that sanctifies the earth? A force to draw things in? A captain directing a starship or a voyager who can travel without? A diamond forged over aeons from of old? A perpetual motion machine that is simply impossible but functions anyway? A faithful manuscript by which an ancient book passes on? A showcase of holy icons? A mirror, clear or clouded? A wind which can never be pinned down? A haunting moment? A home with which to welcome others, and a mouth with which to kiss? A strand of a web? An acrobat balancing for his whole life long on a slender crystalline prism between two chasms? A protecting veil and a concealing mist? An eye to glimpse the uncreated Light as the world moves on its way? A rift yawning into the depths of the earth? A kairometer, both primeval and young? A—"
"All right, all right! I get the idea, and that's some pretty lovely poetry. (What's a kairometer?) These are all very beautiful metaphors for the mind, but I am interested in what the mind is literally."
"Then it might interest you to hear that your world's computer is also a metaphor for the mind. A good and poetic metaphor, perhaps, but a metaphor, and one that is better to balance with other complementary metaphors. It is the habit of some in your world to understand the human mind through the metaphor of the latest technology for you to be infatuated with. Today, the mind is a computer, or something like that. Before you had the computer, 'You're just wired that way' because the brain or the mind or whatever is a wired-up telephone exchange, the telephone exchange being your previous object of technological infatuation, before the computer. Admittedly, 'the mind is a computer' is an attractive metaphor. But there is some fundamental confusion in taking that metaphor literally and assuming that, since the mind is a computer, all you have to do is make some more progress with technology and research and you can give a computer an intelligent mind."
The setting is science fiction and the litany of metaphors is meant to be literally true as a litany of metaphors in which "The brain is a computer" fits as one metaphor among others and not the one metaphor that is in fact literal truth.
What other kinds of cosmological questions are there?
There is a standard block of dummy text used in print design and by designers on the web. It is called "lorem ipsum," and it has been traced as a lightly mangled version of "De Finis Bonorum et Malorem," section 1.10.32, which happens to be an original text of (tr. 1914 H Rackam):
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
St. Paul quotes a proverb in the same vein as, "Let us eat and drink, for to morrow we die." This is mentioned in relation to the greatest chapter in the Pauline letters about the resurrection which is pre-emiment among Christian hopes. Hedonism, as in the carpe diem that leads to suicide in Dead Poets Society, is not a joyful philosophy at all. It is a philosophy that says we might as well eat, drink, and be merry, because there is no greater good to be had than pleasure in this rapidly vanishing life.
To this I say, "There are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in this philosophy."
A question on par with cosmology, worldview, and the Way in which we walk
If one accepts a worldview under which hedonism is a straightforward available option, including the moralistic therapeutic deism that Rob Dreher says is "mostly about improving one's self-esteem and subjective happiness and getting along well with others" in The Benedict Option, then condemning porn is an uprooted plant that is placed in dry sand and has no way to draw real water. It will likely be short-lived. At least for the person who is tempted to use porn, the "thou shalt not" is an uprooted plant at a loss for sustenance to draw on. Now feminism may be able to scathingly condemn porn and say in a feminist dictionary, "Pornography is the theory. Rape is the practice." However, the initial pleasure that porn seems like it will offer is strong, and a rootless "Thou shalt not" has a very uphill battle to wage.
But the "Thou shalt not" does not need to be rootless. It is not rootless under Orthodox cosmology, worldview, or Way. And I say this even if I use the term "worldview" advisedly because the semiotic frame of "worldview" is something one has to pioneeringly construct and not something that has already been established, needs our curation and not pioneering from scratch, and has to do with an Athonite elder saying, "It's not 'Take what the previous version has kept unchanged, and pass it on unchanged to the next generation;' it's 'Take what the previous generation worked on, work on it, and pass it on to the next generation to work on.'" The worldview aspect of Orthodox Tradition is not the sort of thing one should construct; it is something to conserve, adapt, and keep custody of, even or especially if "to conserve is to change."
The cosmic picture we live in is of a world more wondrous than George MacDonald's fairy-land and fairy tales. It is of an entire cosmos that does not exist apart from a Creator (Aristotelianism said matter had always existed and was merely given form by God), nor for instance as in Babylonian mythology did a warrior-god tear the dragon Tiamat and make one part the earth and the other part the sky, nor one of mindless forces playing out as in the gospel according to modern science, but an entire world created with beauty and purpose, an entire world and everything in it the creation of a loving and infinitely wise God, embedded in the story beyond all other stories, a God who is the best of all possible Gods and exercises towards us the best of all possible Providences. It is a world in which this present life is of unspeakably great importance, during which we make an eternal choice between being everlasting splendors shining the uncreated Light, and horrors beyond being a nightmare. It is as I wrote before being Orthodox, in one not-so-great novella,
I would like to tell you a story. I prayed, and hesitated now — Lord, I pray, bind me from saying anything that would harm these little ones, bind the power of the Evil One, and keep me in your heart. But I'll tell the story, with a warning that I don't agree with all of it. When I told it to one young man, he asked me, 'So, do you really believe that God created man just to prove a point?' I stepped back and said, 'No. I don't believe that. That's not why I told the story at all; it's just that I don't know how to tell the story without it looking that way.' So I ask you to excuse my weakness, and I pray that you will see what in this story I mean to tell: God's power and wisdom as manifest in his redemption.
"In the very beginning, before God created the heavens and the earth, he created angels, stars of light to shine in the light of glory. He created one star higher and holier than any of the others, and named him Lucifer, the Light-Bearer.
"Lucifer saw his own wisdom, majesty and glory, and told God, 'I want you to give me my rightful place, as head of you as well as head of the angels. I am wiser than you.'
"God could have zapped Lucifer then and there, and that would have established his power. But not his wisdom. So God decided on something very different.
"'Very well, then,' God said, 'Prove it. I'll unfold my plan, and you'll unfold yours.'
"The great Dragon shouted in rebellion, and swept the sky with his tail, and flung down a third of the stars, and a third of the stars chose to become dragons, vipers, worms.
"Then God created Heaven and earth; he set the stars, in their courses, and created glory after glory after glory: no two blades of grass alike, thousands upon thousands of species of beetles, and as the crowning glory man, created godlike in his image, pure, holy, spotless.
"Then the Dragon appeared in the form of a serpent, and beguiled the woman, and the woman pulled the man down with her. The whole creation became accursed, and began to rot, with poison seeping in a wound.
"'Well, then,' the Dragon said, 'Who is wiser now?' And God wept.
"Then God pointed to one person and said, 'You see that man?'
"'Yes,' the Devil said.
"'Hey, there!' God said to the man. 'You in the desert. Build a huge boat.'
"And the man did. When the wind and rain came, the man and his household were saved.
"Then the Devil walked on the earth, and said, 'I see not one who is righteous,' and God said, 'Have you considered my servant Job?' And Job, bewildered, saw his children and his property taken away, and then his health — and cried in agony, cursing the day of his birth, but refusing to curse God like the Serpent said he would. In the midst of his misery, Job said, 'I know that my redeemer liveth, and in my flesh I shall see God. Though he slay me, yet shall I praise him.'
"The story unfolded, and God sent a prophet to give his people Law. When they strayed, he sent prophets, never tiring of loving them. Finally, in the fullness of time, he sent his Son, to become a man.
"This man was a stranger in a strange land, and passed through the world like a flame. The Serpent spoke beguiling words into the ear of one of his disciples, and he was betrayed, and nailed to a piece of wood, and left to die. And darkness reigned.
"'Surely you will acknowledge,' said the Serpent, 'that I am wiser?'
"God raised his Son from the dead, in a new and incorruptible life, surging with power. And the Devil trembled with fear.
"His Spirit filled those who were his Son's disciples, and they burst forth with new life. The Serpent tried everything to stop them — even making some of the people God had called to persecute them. God was not discouraged; he called one of the persecutors to join in the new life." The preacher took off his glasses, and said, "I'd like to read to you now from one of the letters written by that persecutor:
"'Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.'
"The Church — I mean you and me, not just people who wear a white collar — stands as a family for Christ, his brother and sister and mother, as children for God the Father, as God's magnum opus, as a servant to the world, as a witness to the world, as a mother and family to those who believe, and lastly as a warrior against Satan. This is the secret God has concealed in his bosom, and his many-sided wisdom is displaying so that all of the angels and even all of the demons, Satan himself, can look and see the wisdom of God's plan.
"Christ came once; he will come again, and then every knee shall bow. Then the redeemed shall stand holy, spotless, pure, and perfect, gods and goddesses, sons and daughters of God, to enter into his eternal paradise. Then the Dragon will look and see beyond any question or doubt that God's plan is wiser. Then, and only then, will Satan and all his minions be cast into the lake of eternal fire.
The Orthodox word and narrative is one that places us in a tremendously important world. For one detail, "Examples of the kiss as a means of making and breaking enchantments have been found in the fairy tales of virtually every culture in the Western world." Christians share a holy kiss that is the only act the Bible calls holy, and the Sacrament of Sacraments is itself illuminated as kiss: as Orthodox pray before communion, "Neither will I give Thee a kiss as did Judas." The entire universe has order: the entire universe has meaning: the entire universe is called to dance the great dance.
And in that world, one of the richest ecclesiological passages in the Bible reads:
...submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
Wives, unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the Head of the Church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church: for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh." This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.
The passage is chokingly politically incorrect even if it places a much heavier burden on husbands than on wives, but Christ and the Church find a signally important icon in the sacrament of marriage between one man and one woman, or if I may underscore the point, the marriage between one lord and one wife. And if this seems demeaning, I would invite you to watch Disney's classic cartoon of Beauty and the Beast. Every little girl wants to marry a Prince; and the natural desire of woman is to marry a lord, however much we try to legislate it away.
Furthermore, the truth of headship extends far beyond political incorrectness about one lord and one wife. It extends to:
Today I'm going to talk about head and body (headship). And I say "headship" with hesitation, because in today's world asserting "headship" means, "defending traditional gender roles against feminism." And that maybe important, but I want to talk about something larger, something that will be missed if "headship" means nothing more than "one position in the feminist controversy."
One speaker didn't like people entering Church and saying, "It's so good to enter the Lord's presence." He said, "Where were you all week? How did you escape the Lord's presence?" And whatever Church is, it is absolutely not entering the one place where God is present. At least, it's not stepping out of some imaginary place where God simply can't be found.
But if we are always in the Lord's presence, that doesn't mean that Church isn't special. It is special, and it is the head of living in God's presence for all of our lives. Our time in Church is an example of headship. Worshipping God in Church is the head of a life of worship, and it is the head of a body.
There is something special about our time in Church. But the way we live our lives, our "body" of time spent, manifests that glory in a different way. Christ didn't say that people will know we are his disciples by our "official" worship, however much God's blessing may rest on it. Christ said instead that all people will know we are his disciples by this, that we love one another. That isn't primarily in Church. That's in our day to day lives. If our time in Church crystallizes a life of worship, our love for one another is to manifest it. And that is the place of the body.
The relationship between head and body is the relationship between corporate worship and our lives as a whole. The body manifests the glory of the head. In my head I can decide to walk to a friend's house. But the head needs the body and the body needs the head, and I can only go to a friend's house if my head's decision to visit a friend's house is lived out in my body. "The head cannot say to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'"
The Father is the head of the Son. "No man can see God and live." God the Father is utterly beyond us; he transcends anything we could know; he is pure glory. If we were to have direct contact with him, we would be destroyed. And yet the Son is equal to the Father; the Son is just as far beyond this Creation, but there is a difference. The Son is the bridge between God and man, and God and his Creation. God the Father created the world through the Son, and the Son is just as glorious as the Father, but the Son can touch us without destroying us. The Father displays himself through the Son. The Father's love came to earth through the Son. The Father's wish that we may be made divine is possible precisely because the Son became man. And finally we can know the Father through the Son. If you have seen the Son, you have seen the Father.
We read in the New Testament that Christ is the head of man, that Christ is the head of all authority, that Christ is the head of the Church, and that Christ is the head of the whole Creation. If we think, with people today, that to have any authority over us, any head, is degrading, then we have to resent a lot more than a husband's headship to his wife. But that's not the only option. When Christ is the head of the cosmos, there is more than authority going on, even if we have a negative view of authority. Our Orthodox understanding that the Son of God became a man that men might become the sons of God, that the divine became human that the human might become divine, expresses what the headship of Christ means. Christ is the head, and that means that the Church is drawn up in his divinity. If we are the body of Christ the head, that doesn't mean we're just under his authority. It means that we are a part of him and share in his divinity. The teaching that we share in his divinity is very tightly connected to the teaching of "recapitulation", or "re-heading," where Christ being the head of the Church, and our sharing in Christ's divinity, are two sides of the same coin. Christ is the head, and we, the body, make Christ manifest to the world. Some people may not know Christ except what they see in us. We cannot have Christ as our head without being a manifestation of his glory, and if Christ is the head of the Creation and Christ is the head of the Church, that means that when we worship, inside this building and in our daily lives, we are leading the whole visible Creation in turning to God in glory, and living the life of Heaven here on earth.
Christ is the head of the whole Creation, not just the Church. Christ isn't just concerned with his people, but the whole created world. By him and through him all things were created. Icons, which reflect the full implications Christ's headship over his Creation, exist precisely because Christ is the head of the whole Creation. We use a censer, a building, icons, water, flowers, and other aspects of our matter-embracing religion as representatives of the whole material Creation over which Christ is head. Christ doesn't tell us to be spiritual as spirits who are unfortunately trapped in matter; far from it, we are the crowning jewel of the material Creation, and Christ's headship glorifies the whole Creation and makes it foundational to how we are saved. The universe is a symbol that manifests the glory of its head, Christ.
One example of headship that is immediate to me, although I don't know how immediate it is to the rest of you, is artistic creation. I create, write, and program, and in a very real sense I am at my fullest when I create. When I create, at first there is a hazy idea that I don't understand very well. Then I listen to it, and begin struggling with it, trying to understand my creation, and even if I am wrestling with it, I am wrestling less to dominate it than to get myself out of its way so I can help bring it into being. If in one sense I wrestle with it, in another sense I am wrestling with myself to let my creation be what it should be. If I were to simply dominate my creation, I would crush it, breaking its spirit. My best creations are those which I serve, where I use my headship to give my creations freedom and cooperate with them so that they are greater than if I did not give my creations room to breathe. My best work comes, not when I decide, "I am going to create," but when I cooperate with a creation, love it, serve it, and help it to become real, the creation becomes a share of my spirit.
A great many writers could say that, and I don't think this is something that is only found in writing, but how something far more general plays out. All of us are called to exercise headship over our work. In a family, the father is the head of the household and the mother is the heart of the household. The mother's headship over work in the home provides ten thousand touches that make a house a home. A mother's headship over the home is as much human headship over one's work as my headship over my creations and writing. What I do when I create is love my creation, serve it, develop it, work with God and with my creation to help it be real. If I'm not mistaken, when a woman makes a house into a real home, she loves it, serves it, develops it, and works with God and what she has to make it real. When a woman makes a house into a warm and inviting home, that's headship.
What is the relationship between women and the home? In societies where people have best been able to honor what the Bible says about men's and women's roles, there is a strong association between women and the home. The home, in those societies, was the main focus of business, charity work, and education, besides the much narrower role played by a home today. To say that women were mainly in the home is to say that they held an important place in one of society's important institutions, an institution that was the chief home of business, education, hospitality, and what would today be insurance, and held many responsibilities that are denied to housewives today. The isolation felt by many housewives today was much less an issue because women worked together with other women; like men, they worked in adult company. I believe there should be an association between women and the home, and I believe the home should be respected and influential. And, for that matter, I believe that both men and women are sold short with the options they have today. But instead of going too deep into that sort of question, important as it may be, I would like to look at what headship means.
The sanctuary is the head of the nave. Part of what that means is that there is something richer than either if there were just an sanctuary or just a nave. But we'll miss something fundamental if we only say that the sanctuary is more glorious to the nave. They are connected and part of the same body. They are part of the same organism, and the sanctuary manifests the glory of the sanctuary. There is also a head-body relation between the saint and the icon. Or between the reality a symbol represents, and a symbol. Or between Heaven and earth. Bringing Heaven down to earth is a right ordering of this world. Heaven isn't just something that happens after death after we serve God by suffering in this world. "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has any heart imagined what God has prepared for those who love him," but God wants to work Heaven in our lives, beginning here and now. If we are bringing Heaven down to earth, we are realizing God's design that Heaven be the head of earth, in the fullness of what headship means.
What about husbands and wives? There's something that we'll miss today if we just expect wives to submit to their husbands, even if we recognized that that's tied to an even more difficult assignment for husbands, loving their wives on the model of Christ giving up his own life for the Church. And we need to be countercultural, but there's something we'll miss if we just react to the currents in society that make this unattractive. Quite a few heresies got their start in reactions against older heresies; it is spiritually dangerous to simply react against errors, and if feminism might have problems, simply reacting to feminism is likely to have problems. Wives should submit to their husbands, and husbands should love their wives with a costly love, but there's more.
It bothers me when conservatives say, "I want to turn the clock back... all the way back... to 1954!" If we're just reacting against some feminists when they say women should be strong and independent, and have no further reference point, we're likely to defend a femininity that says that women are weak and passive. What's wrong with that? For starters, it's not Biblical.
If you want to know God's version of femininity, read the conclusion of Proverbs. The opening of this conclusion is often translated, "Who can find a good wife?" That's too weak. It is better translated as, "Who can find a wife of valor," with "valor" being a word that could be used of a mighty soldier. She is strong—physically strong. The text explicitly mentions her powerful arms. She is active in commerce and charity. There are important differences between this and the feminist picture, but if we are defending an un-Biblical ideal for womanhood, some delicate thing that can't do anything and is always in a swoon, then our reaction against feminism isn't going to put us in a much better spot.
And men should be men, but that doesn't mean that men should be rugged individuals who say, "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul!" That is as wrong as saying that Biblical femininity is weak and passive. Perhaps men should be rugged, but to be a man is to be under authority. Trying to be the captain of your soul is spiritually toxic, and perhaps blasphemous. There is one person who can say, "I am the captain of my soul," and it isn't Christ. Not even Christ can say that, but only God the Father. Christ's glory was to be the Son of God, so that the Father was the captain of his soul, and he did the Father's work. Even Christ was under the headship of the Father, and if you read what John says about the Father and the Son, the fact that Christ was under headship, under authority, is part of his dignity and his own authority. To be a man is, if things are going well, to be a contributing member of a community, and in submission to its authority. Individualism is a severe distortion of masculinity; it may not be feminine, but it is hardly characteristic of healthy masculinity. There are a lot of false and destructive pictures of what a man should be, as well as what a woman should be.
If simply reacting against feminism is a way to miss what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman, it is also a way to miss something more, to miss a broader glory. This something more is foundational to the structure of reality; it is a resonance not only with God's Creation, but within the nature of God and how the Father's glory is shown through the Son. This something more is in continuity with God's headship to Christ, Christ's headship to the Church, Christ's headship to the cosmos, Heaven's headship to earth, the sanctuary's headship to the nave, the spiritual world's headship to the physical world, the soul's headship to the body, contemplation's headship to action, and other manifestations of a headship relation. On the Sunday of Orthodoxy, we proclaim:
...Thus we declare, thus we assert, thus we preach Christ our true God, and honor as Saints in words, in writings, in thoughts, in sacrifices, in churches, in Holy Icons; on the one hand worshipping and reverencing Christ as God and Lord, and on the other hand honoring as true servants of the same Lord of all and accordingly offering them veneration... This is the Faith of the Apostles, this is the Faith of the Fathers, this is the Faith of the Orthodox, this is the Faith which has established the Universe.
What does this have to do with heads and bodies? The word "icon" itself means a body, and its role is to manifest the glory of the saints, as the saints are to manifest the glory of God.
We don't have a choice about whether we will live in a universe with headship, but we do have a choice whether to work with the grain or against it, work with it to our profit or fight it to our detriment. Let's make headship part of how we rejoice in God and his Creation.
And where is porn in all this?
Pornography is like trying to seek warmth, not by putting a sweater, but by lighting part of your house on fire.
It does deliver impressive warmth quickly, but this is bitterly fleeting: if Proverbs says that the adulterous woman is in the beginning as sweet as honey and in the end as bitter as gall and as sharp as a double edged sword, then the adulterous woman punishes with whips while porn punishes with scorpions.
Porn is like a dog licking a saw: it likes the taste but the taste is the taste of its own woundedness. Porn is anonymous sex. Masturbating after porn, the masturbatory act, the act that the porn viewing leads into, is an ultimate exploitation of the model(s) and their poor, miserable, uncomfortable, defiling performance.
And if you are not already impotent, porn has everything to make you impotent. The need for a stronger fix is a marker along the way to even more impotence.
Stepping back
If "It is all meaningless, it is all meaningless, everything is meaningless," and there are isolated, meaningless pleasures and pains atomized in a meaningless life, then if you're looking for pleasure delivery systems, sex may represent the greatest pleasure that can be used without empty addiction, and for that matter should be used that way, and it is understandable at least to seek what seems like harmless pleasure in porn. The reality of porn addiction may be different. It is, with other evils, a pursuit of something that does not exist and cannot create lasting satisfaction. Not that porn is the only evil by any stretch of the imagination. But it is one way of reaching the misery for which the final destination is a Hell that has many, many entrances but not one exit.
But you are invited to the unsexy (and I am sorry to use the term) advice your parents gave or should have given you, that if the house feels a little cold to you, and you aren't wearing a sweater, put on a sweater. The expedient of lighting part of your house on fire is not a way to stay pleasantly warm; it is an inexpedient that will leave you homeless, and out in the cold.
The words, "Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless" open the book of the Bible that poses the terrifying question the rest of the Bible answers. And the Bible, along with the other treasures of the Orthodox Tradition, tell of a world where everything is created with meaning, in which we all of us make an eternal choice between Heaven and Hell, in which the Son of God became a man so that men might become the Sons of God, and in which marriage between one lord and one wife offers the best and most lasting sexual pleasure there is to be had, and which pleasure is transcended as husband and wife grow more and more in love as the years pass and turn into decades. Not, necessarily, that marriage is the only path that can go with salvation: monasticism excels marriage and for that matter married sex. However, marriage is an incredible, wondrous thing, and the sexual aspect of a couple welcoming children (the best sex is when you're trying to make a baby) is part of a wonderful and beautiful picture.
Conclusion
G.K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith that he set about the business of designing Utopia, and when he had planned a tower, he found it a thousand years old and shining in the sun. He even, he says, thinks he could have invented marriage: he says this somewhat humbly as inventing or even reinventing marriage is an act of creative genius of the first order. Real old-fashioned marriage is an incredible thing. It may be eclipsed in monasticism, and even the place of sexuality in marriage may be eclipsed by the place of sexuality in monasticism. But it is an epic thing, the stuff of which fairy tales and dreams are made of.
Porn is an ever hollow consolation prize next to true marriage. Go for the gold here, not a photoshopped gold-plated turd!
Read more of Porn is a Question of Cosmological Importance on Amazon!