St Justin Popovich | Spiritual knowledge, linked with humility, brings to perfection the soul...
This knowledge invents the arts and sciences and all that adorns the body in this visible world. But in all this, such knowledge is contrary to faith. It is known as “mere knowledge, for it is deprived of all thought of the divine and, by its fleshly character, brings to the mind an irrational weakness, because in it the mind is overcome by the body and its entire concern is for the things of this world.”
It is puffed up and filled with pride, for it refers every good work to itself and not to God. That which the Apostle said, “knowledge puffeth up” (I Cor. 8:1), was obviously said of this knowledge, which is not linked with faith and hope in God, and not of true knowledge.
True, spiritual knowledge, linked with humility, brings to perfection the soul of those who have acquired it, as is seen in Moses, David, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, and all those who, within the limits of human nature, were counted worthy of this perfect knowledge. “With them, knowledge is always immersed in pondering things strange to this world, in divine revelations and lofty contemplation of spiritual things and ineffable mysteries. In their eyes, their own souls are but dust and ashes.”
Knowledge that comes of the flesh is criticized by Christians, who see it as opposed not only to faith but to every act of virtue.
It is not difficult to see that in this first and lowest degree of knowledge of which St. Isaac speaks is included virtually the whole of European philosophy, from naive realism to idealism—and all science from the atomism of Democrates to Einstein’s relativity.
St Justin Popovich
