Class on Journey to Reality Chapter 01: Trees Walking

Today we started our Fall Wednesday evening education series, during which we are working our way through Zachery Porcu's "Journey to Reality" from Ancient Faith Publishing.  Today, after framing our discussion with the "trees walking" account of the healing of the blind man from the Gospel according to St. Mark (8:22-38 - see below), we cover the main topics in chapter one.  Enjoy the show!

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Trees Walking: the Problem of Discerning the Gospel
Fr. Anthony Perkins; 03 September 2025

Text: Zachery Porcu, PhD. 2025. “Chapter 1 – What is Christianity” in Journey to Reality; Sacramental Life in a Secular Age.  Ancient Faith Publishing.

St. Mark 8:22-38 (KJV)

²² And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him.

²³ And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.

St. Ambrose; Through the font of the Lord and the preaching of the Lord’s passion, your eyes were then opened. You who seemed before to have been blind in heart began to see the light of the sacraments.

²⁴ And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.

Why would he see men as trees???

²⁵ After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.

Note the progression.

²⁶ And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.

²⁷ And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am?

²⁸ And they answered, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets.

How could they not know?

²⁹ And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ.

But even using the right word, how much did he understand?

³⁰ And he charged them that they should tell no man of him.

³¹ And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

³² And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him.

And how much of this plain speaking were they able to hear?

³³ But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.

This is the warning: a poor understanding of the truth can lead us to condemnation.  (segue to text)

So how can we know the Gospel in a way that saves?

Intellectual knowledge.  Study the Bible!  [oops]

More intellectual knowledge.  Study the Fathers. [oops]

The Bible is not the source of the Gospel or of the Church or of Christianity.  All the written texts of Holy Tradition – to include the Bible - are not the source of Orthodoxy.

How can I make this claim?

It is not the way that the members of the early Church were saved and grew in holiness.  It was not a text that evangelized the Roman Empire.  It was a way of being; a way of thinking; a way of relating.  It was first called “The Way.”

The metaphor of the family (p 13)

Our way of relating to information is new.  Before, information was contextualized within relationships.  We still have some of this, but even people’s experience of Orthodoxy is increasingly a-contextual and un-Orthodox.

The metaphor of sex (p. 15)

Two types of Christianity

         Text-based (re-enactment).  Ideas.  Dissolute community.

         Sacramental participation.  A community with a life-energy (an angel!)

Problems with using the Bible.  Genres: myth, song, prophecy, history, rules, authors, styles.  Needs interpretation!

Need to avoid:  ignoring – forsaking both the culture AND the text (progressive/individualist).  Make the text and the culture what we want it to be.

A paradigm shift to Sacramental Reality.