A Warning on the Reckless and Indiscriminate Pursuit of Learning

Editor's Note: On May 7th, the Orthodox Ethos shared a picture quote on social media of the first four sentences of the second paragraph, below. In the discussion that it generated, some dismissed or mocked St. Athanasius as being anti-intellectual or the Orthodox as being against learning. Although St. Athanasius clarifies his meaning in the quote itself that we provided, this escaped some critics. We therefore offer the few surrounding paragraphs from the start of Chapter 6 of On the True Philosophy (available now for pre-order) to give our audience the full treatment of the saint’s wise counsel and pastoral guidance.

If a man does not wish to bridle his appetites, he can never find satisfaction in his desires. Consider that vain rich man, who, in order to become even richer, continually tears down all his old barns and strives to build new ones to store all his produce there. And it seems that his intention is, if his land yields more in the coming year, to demolish those as well and build even larger ones, and to continue doing this endlessly. Leave that fool alone. Consider that young Macedonian,[173] who cannot confine his desire within his ancestral kingdom, but, driven by the sting of greed, crosses into the East, destroys the mighty kingdoms of Asia, and then, from Asia he crosses into Africa. And if death had not set limits to the excess of his desire, nothing would have stopped him from becoming master even of the ocean.

Even more intense and tyrannical is the desire for learning. This compels a man, if it were possible, to ascend even to the planets to see what they are like and to ascertain whether or not they, too, are inhabited, as the miserable thoughts of mortal men speculate.[174] And although the human mind is reproved for desiring the impossible, yet it has already dared to design the ascent (the reference is to the invention of the airship). Therefore, we must place limits and a bridle on this desire, as well as on others, so that it might not lead to excessive and disorderly attempts.[175] The excess of such desire has given us the reason to make a considerable critique of secular education and those who recklessly and indiscriminately pursue it, wherever it may be found.

Now we repeat that this rational education is not for heaven: it is for the earth, for cities, for kingdoms; it is one of the functional goods, like money, beauty, bodily strength, dignities, and such, with this difference, that it is the first and most honorable of the functional goods, because all the others are called and considered material and physical, whereas learning is rational, a product of the rational soul, and an exceptional fruit. Yet even this, being a functional thing, serves both contrary purposes, as we are assured by experience. For of those who possess secular wisdom, many have greatly benefited the Church, and again, others have used it to cause great harm and turmoil to the Church of Christ. Therefore, secular wisdom is by its nature neither good nor bad; but by the use of those who have it, it becomes either good or bad.

The good results it produces in the cities of the world were adequately explained in the first chapter of this handbook, but the good that it causes for the Church is also sufficiently explained in the book recently published in Leipzig, titled Christian Apology.[176] Therefore, the abuse of secular wisdom gives it its bad name. This abuse, however, is not simple and single-faceted, but of many kinds.[177]

ENDNOTES:

[173] He means Alexander the Great. —Greek ed.

[174] Cf. Wis. Sol. 9:14: “For the thoughts of mortal men are miserable, and our devices are but uncertain.” —Greek ed.

[175] “Disorderly” (ἄτακτα): i.e. transgressing the divinely ordained order of things. —English ed.

[176] Christian Apology (Ἀπολογία Χριστιανική), originally printed in Constantinople at the Patriarchal Press with the blessing of His All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Saint Gregory V in 1798, reprinted in Leipzig in 1805, and then again reprinted in Athens in 2016 with a Modern Greek rendition. —Greek ed. [Published in English under the title A Defense of the Christian Faith in 2026 by Uncut Mountain Press. —English ed.]

[177] This paragraph, as well as the following ones, clearly shows how unsubstantiated is the accusation brought against Saint Athanasius, that he opposed knowledge and learning. His polemic is against the ideological obsession of the “Enlighteners” and their followers throughout the ages, who try to attack the Faith through knowledge, often taking refuge in the perversion of reality, in sarcasm and falsehood. —Greek ed.