Conservatism or Orthodoxy?

For as long as I’ve known him, I have considered Rod Dreher both a friend and a mentor. He played an indispensable role in my conversion to Orthodoxy. I would have asked him to be my sponsor, if we didn’t live 4,000 miles apart (give or take). Rarely do I find myself disagreeing with him. But when I do, I usually find it’s something worth writing about.

Today, I’d like to offer some thoughts in response to Dreher’s recent Substack post, “Defending Divorced David Brooks”. It seems that some conservatives have decided that Brooks has no right to speak about the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, having left his wife for a much younger woman.

Dreher dissents:

I disagree with David about some big things—race and LGBT, for example, on which he takes a more liberal line—but he’s unquestionably right about the loss of the “shared moral order.” How can any conservative disagree? But they went after him ad hominem. It’s cheap and ugly. Hannah Arendt was sleeping with her professor, Martin Heidegger, while he was married. Does that discredit everything she says about moral order? Some pretty prominent Christian intellectuals behaved, or do behave, with a shocking lack of charity, Christian or otherwise, towards people they consider unworthy of them. Brilliant men, all! Are we therefore to discount everything they say about morality and faith? That’s an absurd standard, and makes me think that this weekend contretemps is about people who just don’t like David Brooks, and are throwing what they can at him to tear him down.

Now, let me be clear: I have the least right of anyone alive to say, “That person is too sinful to be a writer.” I’m the worst of sinners. So, I’m definitely not going to pile on Brooks there. God forbid.

I’m more interested in the question, What makes someone qualified to write or speak about morality? Is it enough simply to have the “correct” view? And besides, how can I (the reader) be sure that Brooks (or any other thinker!) is correct? Is it something we can discuss in a purely abstract, intellectual way?

That’s not a rhetorical question. Many great thinkers have held this position, from Aristotle and Seneca to Kant and Bentham. All of them spoke about morality in abstract terms. None of them justified their positions by reference to their own character or example. Rather, they appealed to the intellect. They were not gurus but philosophers.

Yet there’s something to be said for a kind of “guruism”—from choosing a teacher, not because he talks the talk, but because he walks the walk. Take, for example, the Lord Jesus Christ.

At least a dozen times throughout the Gospels, Jesus says to His disciples, “Follow me.” Once He says, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Another time, He says, “Take up your cross and follow me.” But every time, the meaning is the same. We must order our existence according to His example. We must live as He lives. Matthew emphasizes this point when he says that Christ “taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Matt. 7:29).

When we read the words of the Apostles, we find that Christianity is, quite literally, a living tradition. It’s passed on from one generation to the next, not by words, but by a lived example. St. Peter says, “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps” (1 Pet. 2:21). Likewise, St. Paul: “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1).

This has to do with the Christian understanding of how wisdom is transmitted. After the Resurrection, Christ appears to two of His Disciples on the road to Emmaus. At the end of their meeting, “He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45) Here, “understanding” is a translation of the Greek nous. Nous is sometimes translated as heart. In other words, understanding doesn’t come from our rational faculties (Greek: dianoia). It’s deeper than that.

Later, in Acts 8, St. Philip finds a eunuch studying the Book Isaiah. “Do you understand what you’re reading?” the Apostle asked. “How can I,” the eunuch replied, “unless someone explains it to me?” Notice what happened next. Philip sits down beside him, explained the teachings of the Prophet, and then baptizes the eunuch in a nearby spring.

The Lord opened Philip’s nous to understand the Scriptures. The Apostle was, therefore, able to teach the eunuch “as one having authority.” And by baptizing the eunuch, he prepared his nous to receive the Spirit of Truth as well.

Now, fast-forward 2,000 years. How do we experience this kind of noetic healing? Well, the Church is clear on this point: through fasting, prayer, good works, manual labor, and—above all—participating in the sacramental life of the Church, especially Holy Baptism.

This is why, throughout Church History, our great moral teachers have not usually been trained theologians. Rather, they have been great ascetics: Anthony the Great, Moses the Black, Mary of Egypt, Melania the Younger, Seraphim of Sarov, Matrona of Moscow, Paisios of Mount Athos, Thaddeus of Vitovnika, etc.

True, some of these great teachers were educated. But most were not. They grew wise, not by reading many books, but by steeping themselves in a single book: the Hoy Gospel. Their authority rests, not on their academic credentials, but on their years of ascetic struggle and noetic prayer.

This is why most of these figures didn’t even begin to teach until they were very old. It’s why most icons and photographs show these saints as old men and women. For the most part, they remain hidden for the first sixty or seventy years of their lives, devoting themselves completely to fasting, prayer, and obedience. Only when they’ve grown old and gray, worn out in their struggle, would they begin to teach others.

This, of course, is the example left to us by Our Lord! Christ only preached for the last three years of His life. The rest He spent praying, fasting, and working with His hands.

This whole conversion gets to the heart of why I stopped calling myself a conservative. Like David Brooks, I see the “moral order” declining all around me. And, like Brooks, I think it would be a good idea to reverse that decline. But I come back to the same two questions I posed at the beginning of this article: (1) what makes someone qualified to write or speak about morality? And (2) how can I determine if their teaching is correct or not?

As a young man, I wanted nothing more than to be a conservative journalist. I read books, essays, magazines, and columns by all the greats: H.L. Mencken, William F. Buckley, George Will, and—yes—David Brooks.

Now, as an Orthodox Christian, I can't justify looking for wisdom in the pages of National Review or the Washington Post when I’ve got the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Philokalia, and the Evergetinos right here on my shelf.

The question is, where does wisdom come from? It doesn’t come from reading books, journals, magazines, or newspapers. It comes from fasting, prayer, and the Holy Sacraments. It comes from a life spent following Christ. It comes from direct, sustained encounter with the Living God.

To sum it up: Life is short. I’d rather spend it reading St. Paisios the Athonite than David Brooks. That has nothing to do with Mr. Brooks and everything to do with St. Paisios.

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