[Magdalen] Greetings and question about the Photian Heresy

[Sally Davies]

Hi Brad

Lovely to hear your "voice" again and that you are happy.

Waldorf education is popular in South Africa albeit with small groups of
people - we had two Waldorf schools in the Cape Town area that I knew of.
The one was quite familiar to me as we used to go there on Saturdays for an
organic market. They tried to keep the fees affordable but as a result the
building was kind of collapsing...

The school went to the max in terms of encouraging children's
imaginations...sometimes I wondered if this were entirely a good thing as
they could present as very spaced out at times - but in any case,
preferable to the traumatised children who too often emerged from the
public schooling system.

As for the Dark Ages, I'm with you in believing that they definitely did
not exist. As far as I can tell, the era of the 9th Century, far from being
a time when things fell apart, marked the Golden Age of the Muslim
civilisation, and a degree of recovery for the Byzantines. There's also
some controversy about the so-called "Carolingian Renaissance" but that
seemed to mark a period between the early and late Middle Ages in which
there was more writing and cultural development.

It seems that the notion of a Dark Age is a prejudiced characterisation
from people who idealised the bloodthirsty Roman Empire (such as Petrarch),
or Protestants who wanted to characterise these years as years of gathering
Catholic corruption and spiritual decay.

Steiner seems, somehow, to have picked up on this idea and made his own
narrative out of it - but there's nothing Dark there except our own
ignorance of that time, in which many very good things began, such as
charities and public hospitals.

The guy who taught my boys Art was very influenced by Steiner's ideas, he
was a fine teacher of both children and adults. I can recall having some
interesting conversations with him about the influence of colour and other
sensory factors on learning process.

Montessori schools are also very popular here - they encourage exploration
and experimentation rather than freely ranging imagination but have a
philosophy of the child as a natural learner that is not dissimilar to
Waldorf.

I am currently studying neuropsychology and have been reading some
interesting things about "dynamic core" theory - the underpinning of
consciousness, which seems to shed some light on problems such as
hyperactivity and various forms of sensitive temperament in children. The
key brain structure is the thalamus.

In Renaissance and early Modern times people were forever cutting up brains
in the hope of finding "the seat of the soul". As it happens, there is a
sort of bony seat in there, the Pituitary Gland rests in it.

Sally D

On Sunday, September 20, 2015, brad daly <bwdaly at gmail.com> wrote:

> Greetings old friends of the Magdalen list,
>
> I hope this message finds you all well.
>
> I popped in today because I was hoping one of the scholarly denizens of the
> pub might be able to help elucidate the Photian Schism for me a little bit.
>
> First, some background: I'm now in my sixth year of teaching at the Alabama
> Waldorf School. Without going into a lot of background on Waldorf
> education, I'll just say it's an alternative educational philosophy that
> conceives of and runs a school differently than mainstream education. It
> was founded by the Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner and based upon his
> syncretic religion/philosophy of anthroposophy, though anthroposophy never
> explicitly appears in the curriculum. (That is, we don't teach
> Anthroposophy to the children the ways in which a Roman Catholic school,
> for example, would teach Christianity.) If you want to read more, the
> Wikipedia entry on Waldorf education is quite thorough and balanced.
>
> I'm generally pretty skeptical of anthroposophy, but I do love the school
> and the way it is run. I wish I'd been a Waldorf student when I was a kid.
>
> In an effort to be a good sport and a genuine desire for of anthroposophy,
> I've started attending a community anthroposophy class that the school is
> offering for parents/teachers/etc who don't have formal Waldorf training.
>
> Something that has come up is that Rudolf Steiner, founder of anthroposophy
> and Waldorf education, sees something about the Eighth Ecumenical Council
> (Constantinople, 869 CE) as a cataclysmic turning point in human history,
> specifically the 11th Canon of the council. Here's the text of the 11th
> Canon from the Fordham University website:
>
> *CANON 11*
>
> *Summary: The Old and New Testaments teach that man has but one rational
> and intellectual soul.*
>
> *Text. While the Old and New Testaments teach that man has one rational and
> intellectual soul, and this is the teaching also of all the fathers and
> doctors of the Church, some persons, nevertheless, blasphemously maintain
> that he has two souls. This holy and general council, therefore,
> anathematizes the authors and adherents of that false teaching. Anyone
> presuming to act contrary to the decision of this great council, shall be
> anathematized and cut off from the faith and society of Christians.*
> From what I can gather, Steiner believed that humans had both a "spirit"
> and a "soul," and that the council's anathematization of this idea "severed
> a tether to heaven," in the words of one of my colleagues, leading to the
> so-called "Dark Ages," from which humanity only began to emerge in the
> Renaissance.
>
> Now, I was educated in the tradition that rejects the idea of the Dark
> Ages, but I think the idea was very current in the historiography of
> Steiner's era. I've not yet even brought up the idea that there were no
> Dark Ages to the class because I wanted to do some more research on the
> Photian Schism and the theological implications behind it.
>
> I will say, from my readings, that the schism sounds more political than
> theological, and that the doctrine of a soul-spirit dichotomy seems like a
> very minor issue within the field of church history. The most recent book
> on the schism itself appears to be Dvornak's from 1948.
>
> The impression anthroposophists seem to have is that the dual soul doctrine
> was popular and somehow metaphysically true prior to the schism, and that
> the councils decision was a major turning point for humanity. I'm thinking
> that only anthroposophists seem to understand the story this way, perhaps
> because the only version of the story they've ever heard in Steiner's.
>
> So, old friends, does anyone here have any wisdom you'd like to share on
> the Photian Schism, the dual-soul doctrine, or Waldorf Education, either
> from personal experience or from reading and studying?
>
> --Brad
>
> --
> brad daly
> http://www.bradbrad.com
> http://www.flickr.com/bradbrad
>