"Both perception and faith are manifestations of the law of the Spirit...The Holy Spirit as the cognitive light, can verify the existence of the world infallibly...In the words of St. Irenaeus, "Through the Spirit we see and speak" (Against Heresies, IV, 20:2) In contrast to Kantian idealism, Christian Greek epistemology affirms that in the act of perceiving the world about us, we make an immediate contact with the thing-in-itself, the noumenon...In contrast to the Thomistic view of the creaturely nature of grace and the metaphysical light, the Orthodox Church holds that the very divine person of the Spirit Himself, as the indwelling and imm[a]nent Presence of God, is that light. Rev. Eusebius A. Stephanou, _Charisma and Gnosis in Orthodox Thought_, Fort Wayne, Indiana: The Logos Ministry for Orthodox Renewal, 1975, pp.26-27). It is faith-functioning/ intentionality (as I like to call it) in this radical, charismatic sense, which operates in Orthodox prayer and worship, in a process of "indwelling" vastly more complex than but very much akin to the practice of Husserl's *radical wonder* or *free variation in fantasy*, although "essences" are only intuited "apophatically", not "adequately". And, to be sure, things do not exist "in themselves", but "in relationship", and a metaphysics of underlying "substance" is not necessary.

July, 1997

mmm

Index