Support Your Local Sherriff

As some of you know, I am unemployed. For some time I’ve been working odd jobs to help support my family while I attempt to find something more stable.  This  means that I don’t buy books anymore. That was fine while I had a number of books to read. Now I’ve run out of books to read. Most of what I read ends up on the blog in one way or another. The way I figure it, I provide the information here for free. I am happy to do so as it is my intent to help people think through the kinds of issues and ideas we discuss here. A good number of you helped me financially out when I lost my academic position. That was a great help that served to get us through the summer without loosing our home. Now that we are reasonably stable in being more poor than we were, waxing Pauline I don’t think it is unreasonable to not muzzle the ox while he is threshing grain. So I don’t think it is too much to ask for some contribution to the efforts I make here.

So below I’ve placed a list of books. I am not asking people who are in a similar financial situation. Worry about your own family first. Seriously. I’d hate to find out that someone sent me something when they were in about the same spot. If you are already giving to a worthy cause, thats great. But should I have some reasonably well off readers who aren’t, I’d ask them to make a contribution by buying a book. It is better than cash since you know exactly what your efforts are going towards and you’ll see it deployed here.

Feast of St. Gregory Palamas

November 14

Apolytikion in the Plagal of the Fourth Tone

You are a guide of Orthodoxy, a teacher of piety and modesty, a luminary of the world, the God inspired pride of monastics. O wise Gregory, you have enlightened everyone by your teachings. You are the harp of the Spirit. Intercede to Christ our God for the salvation of our souls.

I Do the Works of Him Who Sent Me

I had an interesting catechism class today. We were discussing an overview of the 7 Councils and the nature of the Christological heresies they dealt with. One of the class members said, “So, when I was taught that I was saved by grace alone and that NOTHING I do that is good is of “me” but solely of God, and MY works were all evil…is that like Eutychianism? (Which teaches that Christ’s human nature was absorbed by His divine nature.)” I thought about the Scripture where Jesus says, “I came to do the works of Him Who sent Me”. If we affirm the Christology of the Councils, it seems there is a big question that poses to an evangelical: If Jesus was fully God and fully man, which “Jesus” did the works? If His full humanity participated in doing “the works of Him (God)” freely and with a full human will as affirmed by the 6th Council, doesn’t that impact the doctrine of “grace alone”? Does the doctrine indeed smack of Eutychianism?

The Historiographical ‘tradition’ of the Second Europe

If we were faced with the unlikely proposition of having to destroy completely either the works of Augustine or the works of all the other Fathers and Writers, I have little doubt that all the others would have to be sacrificed. Augustine must remain. Of all the Fathers it is Augustine who is the most erudite, who has the most remarkable theological insights, and who is effectively most prolific (William Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1979), Vol. 3, p. 1).

“[Augustine is] a philosophical and theological genius of the first order, dominating, like a pyramid, antiquity and the succeeding ages. Compared with the great philosophers of past centuries and modern times, he is the equal of them all; among theologians he is undeniably the first, and such has been his influence that none of the Fathers, Scholastics, or Reformers has surpassed it.” (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, p.997, New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1867)

Sci-fi, Orthodoxy and the Future

Here is an interesting clip from the upcoming pre-quel to Battlestar Galactica. (Yes, I watch Sci-fi. I watch Lost  as well.) There are a few things here that are interesting. The slide to Sodom via technology, which people like C.S. Lewis clearly saw. (That Hideous Strength  is well nigh modern prophecy.) If you don’t this kind of stuff is coming and rather soon, you need to wake up. Another is the consciousness of reaching rock bottom in sin and finding that it is really nothing good at all. Notice also the focus on the experience of God and the subsequent connection with the creation of life.

WARNING: This clip is not for virgin eyes.

http://video.scifi.com/player/?id=907641

Another Great Maximus

Here’s an informative note on Maximus the Greek over at Logismoi.

Romanism at its finest

Quote:

“[I]t does not follow that Irenaeus is a more reliable witness than Vatican II to how the teaching authority of the Church functioned in his time.”

-Michael Liccione’s comment  on his blog highlighting the shear gnosticism of Vatican II vs. the Orthodoxy of Irenaeus. That is one of the most amazing statements I’ve EVER read. They’ve locked themselves up in infallibility in which there is no turning back.

No critically thinking Orthodox could take this idea of tradition seriously.

I Don’t Get It

I must confess that the following is something of a rant on my behalf. Oh, its not that bad of one so don’t click away just yet.  In graduate school as well as meeting people through other means, I have fairly often run into intelligent people who have converted from Protestantism to Rome. That’s fine. I usually don’t make a big deal of it. After not so long a while, they usually start poking me as to why I am not Catholic.   This turns into a rather dogmatic attempt to convert me. Inveitably this ends up in a complicated theological, philosophical and historical discussion. (Translated from the Dwarvish-I have to take people out to the theological woodshed.) But what amazes me, repeatedly, is the answer I routinely get in one form or another to a simple question.

An Appropriate Orthodox Ecumenical Strategy

The Plurality of the Good and the Heart of Capitalism

When I first read Joseph Farrell’s, Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor back in late 1997, it struck me that the insight of Maximus on the plurality of the Good and a denial of absolute simplicity had so many potential applications. Some of these applications are fairly obvious, once you grasp the initial insight. There are numerous applications to resolving problems in historical and philosophical theology and many of them have been discussed here in the past. There are also applications in ethical theory, specifically in cashing out moral particularism.

 But other applications are not so obvious, such as in social and political philosophy and economic theory. I’d like to take some space to point some of these out for further development. The dialectic of modern social and political thought is freedom and equality. To the degree that you make people free, you permit them to be unequal. Likewise to the degree that you make people equal, you restrict freedom. Capitalism is on the freedom end of the spectrum and Communism is on the equality end of the spectrum.  The backbone of socialistic political and economic models seems to be the singularity and simplicity of the Good. Since the Good is the same for all, what is good for one member is good for all since Goodness is one thing. It is the same. If the same is not meted out to everyone equally, then the good must be many different things (relativism) or there will be inequality. The same is to equity as the different is to inequity. But the Good isn’t many different things since it is one, therefore there will be inequality.