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buritobr
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« on: August 30, 2022, 04:36:44 PM »

This short video talks about the dialogue between protestant churches and leaders of the orthodox catholic church soon after Luther's reformation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgYWbWUmLKE

In few words
At the beggining: we have something similar, we are christians but we don't recognize the authority of the pope
Few years after: oh, but despite this similarity, our differences are much bigger
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« Reply #1 on: September 01, 2022, 12:39:08 PM »

     The big issue is that Orthodox and Protestant approaches to discerning doctrine are very different. Orthodox epistemology is founded in the Scriptures as read through the Tradition of the Saints and the Councils, whereas Protestant epistemology is founded in a plain reading of the Scriptures. This created a problem because the way the Protestant Reformers read the Scriptures had some major differences from how our Tradition reads them. These differences precluded the possibility of a theological union occurring, though some Orthodox patriarchs would go on to work surprisingly closely with the Protestants.
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Georg Ebner
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« Reply #2 on: September 02, 2022, 08:32:14 AM »
« Edited: September 02, 2022, 08:41:37 AM by Georg Ebner »

Protestant epistemology is founded in a plain reading of the Scriptures.
That's the opinio communis, i.e. wrong: LUTHER stressed, that He would keep His doctrine on justification even, if the whole Bible said something different. And indeed You can read a lot for or against anything out of this thick book. And protestantism took over a lot of extraBiblical traditions.

Generally WestRome is the missing link between EastRome and protestantism. These two have in common - apart from their antiPapalism, of course - an antagonism to exactly my 2 big idols: PLATO (in space) & AUGUSTINE (in time). To the former by an agnosticism (according to them Christian faith cannot be proved by nature&culture, thus sidelining all pagan culture&philoSophy); to the latter by ignoring the originalSin (in theory the protestants claim the opposite, in practice most protestants are shameless pelagians; the EastRomans are usually semiPelagians - as many WestRomans -, who have no relationship to St.AUGUSTINE, with some like C.YANNARAS even rejecting Him openly; S.ROSE tried to "rehabilitate" Him among the OrthoDox).
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« Reply #3 on: September 02, 2022, 10:21:36 AM »

Protestant epistemology is founded in a plain reading of the Scriptures.
That's the opinio communis, i.e. wrong: LUTHER stressed, that He would keep His doctrine on justification even, if the whole Bible said something different. And indeed You can read a lot for or against anything out of this thick book. And protestantism took over a lot of extraBiblical traditions.

     To be fair to Protestants, people often hold views outside of their normative epistemology on account of human weakness. Whatever Luther's personal hangups, the dialogue between the Lutherans and the Orthodox occurred some decades after his death and so the representatives of the Lutheran camp were men who were convinced that sola fide was taught by the Scriptures. My point is that this was the normative epistemology they operated on, and it is incompatible with that which we operate on. When it comes to the process of discussing theology and trying to reach a consensus, that is a major obstacle that the two parties were not able to get over.

Quote
Generally WestRome is the missing link between EastRome and protestantism. These two have in common - apart from their antiPapalism, of course - an antagonism to exactly my 2 big idols: PLATO (in space) & AUGUSTINE (in time). To the former by an agnosticism (according to them Christian faith cannot be proved by nature&culture, thus sidelining all pagan culture&philoSophy);

     I wouldn't go so far as to say we sideline all of that, but they are definitely lesser in importance. St. Basil the Great discusses the value of pagan literature, and for him it only has value insofar as it mirrors the Scriptures and teaches the virtues. And even then, pagan writings should be studied by those too immature to glean the true spiritual teachings from the Scriptures. The ultimate point is that pagan writings have value, but they have less value than those of Christian writings.

Quote
to the latter by ignoring the originalSin (in theory the protestants claim the opposite, in practice most protestants are shameless pelagians; the EastRomans are usually semiPelagians - as many WestRomans -, who have no relationship to St.AUGUSTINE, with some like C.YANNARAS even rejecting Him openly; S.ROSE tried to "rehabilitate" Him among the OrthoDox).

     Orthodox do not ignore original sin, so much as understand it in a different sense (which I suppose would be ignoring it from a Western perspective). I cannot deny that many Orthodox fall into semipelagianism by accident, though that is primarily a consequence of focusing less on that debate; where Orthodox saints have treated the question they have generally rejected semipelagianism. For a recent example of this, look at St. Theophan the Recluse.
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Georg Ebner
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« Reply #4 on: September 03, 2022, 03:30:22 PM »

Protestant epistemology is founded in a plain reading of the Scriptures.
That's the opinio communis, i.e. wrong: LUTHER stressed, that He would keep His doctrine on justification even, if the whole Bible said something different. And indeed You can read a lot for or against anything out of this thick book. And protestantism took over a lot of extraBiblical traditions.

     To be fair to Protestants, people often hold views outside of their normative epistemology on account of human weakness. Whatever Luther's personal hangups, the dialogue between the Lutherans and the Orthodox occurred some decades after his death and so the representatives of the Lutheran camp were men who were convinced that sola fide was taught by the Scriptures. My point is that this was the normative epistemology they operated on, and it is incompatible with that which we operate on. When it comes to the process of discussing theology and trying to reach a consensus, that is a major obstacle that the two parties were not able to get over.

Quote
Generally WestRome is the missing link between EastRome and protestantism. These two have in common - apart from their antiPapalism, of course - an antagonism to exactly my 2 big idols: PLATO (in space) & AUGUSTINE (in time). To the former by an agnosticism (according to them Christian faith cannot be proved by nature&culture, thus sidelining all pagan culture&philoSophy);

     I wouldn't go so far as to say we sideline all of that, but they are definitely lesser in importance. St. Basil the Great discusses the value of pagan literature, and for him it only has value insofar as it mirrors the Scriptures and teaches the virtues. And even then, pagan writings should be studied by those too immature to glean the true spiritual teachings from the Scriptures. The ultimate point is that pagan writings have value, but they have less value than those of Christian writings.

Quote
to the latter by ignoring the originalSin (in theory the protestants claim the opposite, in practice most protestants are shameless pelagians; the EastRomans are usually semiPelagians - as many WestRomans -, who have no relationship to St.AUGUSTINE, with some like C.YANNARAS even rejecting Him openly; S.ROSE tried to "rehabilitate" Him among the OrthoDox).

     Orthodox do not ignore original sin, so much as understand it in a different sense (which I suppose would be ignoring it from a Western perspective). I cannot deny that many Orthodox fall into semipelagianism by accident, though that is primarily a consequence of focusing less on that debate; where Orthodox saints have treated the question they have generally rejected semipelagianism. For a recent example of this, look at St. Theophan the Recluse.
The reSearch on LUTHER & early protestantism is funny: There are on the one hand the people of general history, who see prot. as another step in secularization; and then there are on the other hand the specialists, who insist, that LUTHER was conservative: His genial&great justificationTheory restoring PAUL-AUGUSTINE-WILLIAM/St.Thierry-BERNHARD/Clairvaux, opposing the naturalism of Scholasticism and in reTurn being opposed by most univ. (Erfurt, Cologne, Vienna,...) and Umanisti (ERASMUS,...), praying to St.MARY, confessing aso.. And amusingly both are right: LUTHER was one of Germany's many "Conservative Revolutionaries" (from OTTO/Freising to prof.RATZINGER, once also lecturing in Freising), so a well-minded, who ends up at the opPosite out of german(ic) unwordliness&greenness. LUTHER's followers had no sense for His genial reDiscovery and were&are usually pelagians (apart from few quietists), what I.J.DÖLLINGER showed excellently in His books on early prot.: MELANCHTON (leader of the moderates) rehabilitated ARISTOTLE and ended up with the worst elements of both conFessions; and M.FLACIUS (chief of the radicals) was - despite all words - also not capable to hold it up and looking for another basement He founded the sola scriptura (whereas the early LUTHER had been - like the Catholics - very relaxed on Bible-critics [Revel., Jacob, Judas, Hebrew, Rom.16 unapostolic, cf. His preWords 1522]).
I am aware, that we today can learn more from the Apologets&ChurchFathers than from exChristians like the professors BAUR & BAUER, BARTH & BULTMANN, but the formers' ignorance of the pagan's ability to detect GOD in the beauty of a body is just a shame - HOMER & PINDAR, SOCRATES & PLATO are surely in heaven, not so sure about agnostical barbarians.
Concerning (semi)pelagianism in the OrthoDoxy a big problem is, that monks&reCluses tend to a moral perfectionism (like the Calvinists, just not in an immanentistical way) - faith as sports... (After all it is not unlikely, that PELAGIUS Himself and His monastery were strongly influenced by the East.)
Yet, don't see it as a big critics on OrthoDoxy, please - i am theologically mostly on Your side, am against the reForms of Cluny & GREGOR VII and worship also at the Byzantine rite, listen to every mass of rev. Nikodimos Kabarnos aso.
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Statilius the Epicurean
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« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2022, 03:16:40 AM »
« Edited: September 05, 2022, 03:27:14 AM by Statilius the Epicurean »

I would mention Ockham in Luther's intellectual genealogy, in fact almost as central to it as Augustine. Luther's philosophy could be described as Augustinian anthropology plus Ockhamist voluntarism equals accepting God's freely given grace as the only possible soteriology. And indeed Luther even called himself an Ockhamist and also used his nominalism to criticise Aristotelianism. (And interestingly the Ockhamists were frequently condemned by their opponents as Pelagian, for reasons which I find inscutable rn.)
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« Reply #6 on: September 07, 2022, 12:05:27 PM »

Protestant epistemology is founded in a plain reading of the Scriptures.
That's the opinio communis, i.e. wrong: LUTHER stressed, that He would keep His doctrine on justification even, if the whole Bible said something different. And indeed You can read a lot for or against anything out of this thick book. And protestantism took over a lot of extraBiblical traditions.

     To be fair to Protestants, people often hold views outside of their normative epistemology on account of human weakness. Whatever Luther's personal hangups, the dialogue between the Lutherans and the Orthodox occurred some decades after his death and so the representatives of the Lutheran camp were men who were convinced that sola fide was taught by the Scriptures. My point is that this was the normative epistemology they operated on, and it is incompatible with that which we operate on. When it comes to the process of discussing theology and trying to reach a consensus, that is a major obstacle that the two parties were not able to get over.

Quote
Generally WestRome is the missing link between EastRome and protestantism. These two have in common - apart from their antiPapalism, of course - an antagonism to exactly my 2 big idols: PLATO (in space) & AUGUSTINE (in time). To the former by an agnosticism (according to them Christian faith cannot be proved by nature&culture, thus sidelining all pagan culture&philoSophy);

     I wouldn't go so far as to say we sideline all of that, but they are definitely lesser in importance. St. Basil the Great discusses the value of pagan literature, and for him it only has value insofar as it mirrors the Scriptures and teaches the virtues. And even then, pagan writings should be studied by those too immature to glean the true spiritual teachings from the Scriptures. The ultimate point is that pagan writings have value, but they have less value than those of Christian writings.

Quote
to the latter by ignoring the originalSin (in theory the protestants claim the opposite, in practice most protestants are shameless pelagians; the EastRomans are usually semiPelagians - as many WestRomans -, who have no relationship to St.AUGUSTINE, with some like C.YANNARAS even rejecting Him openly; S.ROSE tried to "rehabilitate" Him among the OrthoDox).

     Orthodox do not ignore original sin, so much as understand it in a different sense (which I suppose would be ignoring it from a Western perspective). I cannot deny that many Orthodox fall into semipelagianism by accident, though that is primarily a consequence of focusing less on that debate; where Orthodox saints have treated the question they have generally rejected semipelagianism. For a recent example of this, look at St. Theophan the Recluse.
The reSearch on LUTHER & early protestantism is funny: There are on the one hand the people of general history, who see prot. as another step in secularization; and then there are on the other hand the specialists, who insist, that LUTHER was conservative: His genial&great justificationTheory restoring PAUL-AUGUSTINE-WILLIAM/St.Thierry-BERNHARD/Clairvaux, opposing the naturalism of Scholasticism and in reTurn being opposed by most univ. (Erfurt, Cologne, Vienna,...) and Umanisti (ERASMUS,...), praying to St.MARY, confessing aso.. And amusingly both are right: LUTHER was one of Germany's many "Conservative Revolutionaries" (from OTTO/Freising to prof.RATZINGER, once also lecturing in Freising), so a well-minded, who ends up at the opPosite out of german(ic) unwordliness&greenness. LUTHER's followers had no sense for His genial reDiscovery and were&are usually pelagians (apart from few quietists), what I.J.DÖLLINGER showed excellently in His books on early prot.: MELANCHTON (leader of the moderates) rehabilitated ARISTOTLE and ended up with the worst elements of both conFessions; and M.FLACIUS (chief of the radicals) was - despite all words - also not capable to hold it up and looking for another basement He founded the sola scriptura (whereas the early LUTHER had been - like the Catholics - very relaxed on Bible-critics [Revel., Jacob, Judas, Hebrew, Rom.16 unapostolic, cf. His preWords 1522]).
I am aware, that we today can learn more from the Apologets&ChurchFathers than from exChristians like the professors BAUR & BAUER, BARTH & BULTMANN, but the formers' ignorance of the pagan's ability to detect GOD in the beauty of a body is just a shame - HOMER & PINDAR, SOCRATES & PLATO are surely in heaven, not so sure about agnostical barbarians.
Concerning (semi)pelagianism in the OrthoDoxy a big problem is, that monks&reCluses tend to a moral perfectionism (like the Calvinists, just not in an immanentistical way) - faith as sports... (After all it is not unlikely, that PELAGIUS Himself and His monastery were strongly influenced by the East.)
Yet, don't see it as a big critics on OrthoDoxy, please - i am theologically mostly on Your side, am against the reForms of Cluny & GREGOR VII and worship also at the Byzantine rite, listen to every mass of rev. Nikodimos Kabarnos aso.

     Interesting dissection of the early history of Lutheranism. It makes me wonder what the leaning of the people that talked to Pat. Jeremias was.

     As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.

     You make a good point about monks tending to moral perfectionism; I heard a story once of a man who confessed at a monastery and was excommunicated for eight years. I have immense respect for monks, because they adhere to a far stricter code of moral conduct than is expected of laity. The result of this also is that monastic elders also tend to have a far deeper grasp of the truth than even the most learned layman. People travel long distances to receive the counsels of monastic elders, and while largely forgotten in the West this is something that happens to this day in Eastern Christianity. This is fundamentally why the decline of monasticism in the West has been such a tragedy.
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Georg Ebner
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« Reply #7 on: September 08, 2022, 06:41:25 PM »

Protestant epistemology is founded in a plain reading of the Scriptures.
That's the opinio communis, i.e. wrong: LUTHER stressed, that He would keep His doctrine on justification even, if the whole Bible said something different. And indeed You can read a lot for or against anything out of this thick book. And protestantism took over a lot of extraBiblical traditions.

     To be fair to Protestants, people often hold views outside of their normative epistemology on account of human weakness. Whatever Luther's personal hangups, the dialogue between the Lutherans and the Orthodox occurred some decades after his death and so the representatives of the Lutheran camp were men who were convinced that sola fide was taught by the Scriptures. My point is that this was the normative epistemology they operated on, and it is incompatible with that which we operate on. When it comes to the process of discussing theology and trying to reach a consensus, that is a major obstacle that the two parties were not able to get over.

Quote
Generally WestRome is the missing link between EastRome and protestantism. These two have in common - apart from their antiPapalism, of course - an antagonism to exactly my 2 big idols: PLATO (in space) & AUGUSTINE (in time). To the former by an agnosticism (according to them Christian faith cannot be proved by nature&culture, thus sidelining all pagan culture&philoSophy);

     I wouldn't go so far as to say we sideline all of that, but they are definitely lesser in importance. St. Basil the Great discusses the value of pagan literature, and for him it only has value insofar as it mirrors the Scriptures and teaches the virtues. And even then, pagan writings should be studied by those too immature to glean the true spiritual teachings from the Scriptures. The ultimate point is that pagan writings have value, but they have less value than those of Christian writings.

Quote
to the latter by ignoring the originalSin (in theory the protestants claim the opposite, in practice most protestants are shameless pelagians; the EastRomans are usually semiPelagians - as many WestRomans -, who have no relationship to St.AUGUSTINE, with some like C.YANNARAS even rejecting Him openly; S.ROSE tried to "rehabilitate" Him among the OrthoDox).

     Orthodox do not ignore original sin, so much as understand it in a different sense (which I suppose would be ignoring it from a Western perspective). I cannot deny that many Orthodox fall into semipelagianism by accident, though that is primarily a consequence of focusing less on that debate; where Orthodox saints have treated the question they have generally rejected semipelagianism. For a recent example of this, look at St. Theophan the Recluse.
The reSearch on LUTHER & early protestantism is funny: There are on the one hand the people of general history, who see prot. as another step in secularization; and then there are on the other hand the specialists, who insist, that LUTHER was conservative: His genial&great justificationTheory restoring PAUL-AUGUSTINE-WILLIAM/St.Thierry-BERNHARD/Clairvaux, opposing the naturalism of Scholasticism and in reTurn being opposed by most univ. (Erfurt, Cologne, Vienna,...) and Umanisti (ERASMUS,...), praying to St.MARY, confessing aso.. And amusingly both are right: LUTHER was one of Germany's many "Conservative Revolutionaries" (from OTTO/Freising to prof.RATZINGER, once also lecturing in Freising), so a well-minded, who ends up at the opPosite out of german(ic) unwordliness&greenness. LUTHER's followers had no sense for His genial reDiscovery and were&are usually pelagians (apart from few quietists), what I.J.DÖLLINGER showed excellently in His books on early prot.: MELANCHTON (leader of the moderates) rehabilitated ARISTOTLE and ended up with the worst elements of both conFessions; and M.FLACIUS (chief of the radicals) was - despite all words - also not capable to hold it up and looking for another basement He founded the sola scriptura (whereas the early LUTHER had been - like the Catholics - very relaxed on Bible-critics [Revel., Jacob, Judas, Hebrew, Rom.16 unapostolic, cf. His preWords 1522]).
I am aware, that we today can learn more from the Apologets&ChurchFathers than from exChristians like the professors BAUR & BAUER, BARTH & BULTMANN, but the formers' ignorance of the pagan's ability to detect GOD in the beauty of a body is just a shame - HOMER & PINDAR, SOCRATES & PLATO are surely in heaven, not so sure about agnostical barbarians.
Concerning (semi)pelagianism in the OrthoDoxy a big problem is, that monks&reCluses tend to a moral perfectionism (like the Calvinists, just not in an immanentistical way) - faith as sports... (After all it is not unlikely, that PELAGIUS Himself and His monastery were strongly influenced by the East.)
Yet, don't see it as a big critics on OrthoDoxy, please - i am theologically mostly on Your side, am against the reForms of Cluny & GREGOR VII and worship also at the Byzantine rite, listen to every mass of rev. Nikodimos Kabarnos aso.

     Interesting dissection of the early history of Lutheranism. It makes me wonder what the leaning of the people that talked to Pat. Jeremias was.

     As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.

     You make a good point about monks tending to moral perfectionism; I heard a story once of a man who confessed at a monastery and was excommunicated for eight years. I have immense respect for monks, because they adhere to a far stricter code of moral conduct than is expected of laity. The result of this also is that monastic elders also tend to have a far deeper grasp of the truth than even the most learned layman. People travel long distances to receive the counsels of monastic elders, and while largely forgotten in the West this is something that happens to this day in Eastern Christianity. This is fundamentally why the decline of monasticism in the West has been such a tragedy.
I thank for Your interEst! For me, who has read little about the Fathers and very little of Them, Your reMarks are very interesting - and deepening my worries: Yes, the ancient world was decadent&dying and on its way into, what the moderns suffer today; and the Apologets&ChurchFathers opposing that breakDown with asketic rigorosity was remarkable, as even nonChristians must admit. Plus the West's deCline began with e.g. P.ABAELARD's revolutionary pantheistic "Heloise" (on which ROUSSEAU based later His "New Heloise"). So neither is fine: Not WestRome's worldSeeking, not EastRome's worldFleeing. We men must adore every beautiful body brought by the Graces - and at the same time be blocked by knowing to be insufficient and thus not remaining there, but climb upwards, as described by St.PLATO (St.AUGUSTINE's "uti & frui").
By the way: The philosophical schools were the monasteries of the pagans, from the PYTHAGOReans to even the EPIKUReans, and PLATO's teachings of askesis&mathesis would fit into every Christian one. All the more sad, that many eastern monks seem to use usually of PLATO not more than the pseudoPLATONic NeoPlatonism, which is as false as ARISTOTELism (neither is GOD not autonomous from the world; nor is the world autonomous from HIM).
And to Your very right words on monks&West: "When the monasteries were burnt down, that kind of Christianity emerged, which was demasked by Kierkegaard." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
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« Reply #8 on: September 14, 2022, 11:01:11 AM »

I thank for Your interEst! For me, who has read little about the Fathers and very little of Them, Your reMarks are very interesting - and deepening my worries: Yes, the ancient world was decadent&dying and on its way into, what the moderns suffer today; and the Apologets&ChurchFathers opposing that breakDown with asketic rigorosity was remarkable, as even nonChristians must admit. Plus the West's deCline began with e.g. P.ABAELARD's revolutionary pantheistic "Heloise" (on which ROUSSEAU based later His "New Heloise"). So neither is fine: Not WestRome's worldSeeking, not EastRome's worldFleeing. We men must adore every beautiful body brought by the Graces - and at the same time be blocked by knowing to be insufficient and thus not remaining there, but climb upwards, as described by St.PLATO (St.AUGUSTINE's "uti & frui").
By the way: The philosophical schools were the monasteries of the pagans, from the PYTHAGOReans to even the EPIKUReans, and PLATO's teachings of askesis&mathesis would fit into every Christian one. All the more sad, that many eastern monks seem to use usually of PLATO not more than the pseudoPLATONic NeoPlatonism, which is as false as ARISTOTELism (neither is GOD not autonomous from the world; nor is the world autonomous from HIM).
And to Your very right words on monks&West: "When the monasteries were burnt down, that kind of Christianity emerged, which was demasked by Kierkegaard." (GOMEZ DAVILA)

     I think the important thing to remember about monasticism is that it is not the template on which the whole world should be built, but as the Apostle Paul acknowledges most people are called to marriage. Monastics flee the world and they find great wisdom in their prayers, but most of us are called to find salvation in the world. It is common for people converting to Orthodoxy to think you need to become a monastic in order to have a chance of reaching salvation, but that isn't the case and holy people can be found in the world if you look for them.

     Ultimately, while learning is good, there is nothing greater than attaining holiness. I think it is important to keep in mind that if Plato and Aristotle are indeed saints (which I consider rather likely), it isn't simply because they had wise ideas about the nature of the world, but rather because they lived in ways that brought them closer to God.

     I am curious, what is the difference between Platonism and Neoplatonism? I know there is a distinction, but I am not very familiar with it.
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« Reply #9 on: September 14, 2022, 02:36:54 PM »

I thank for Your interEst! For me, who has read little about the Fathers and very little of Them, Your reMarks are very interesting - and deepening my worries: Yes, the ancient world was decadent&dying and on its way into, what the moderns suffer today; and the Apologets&ChurchFathers opposing that breakDown with asketic rigorosity was remarkable, as even nonChristians must admit. Plus the West's deCline began with e.g. P.ABAELARD's revolutionary pantheistic "Heloise" (on which ROUSSEAU based later His "New Heloise"). So neither is fine: Not WestRome's worldSeeking, not EastRome's worldFleeing. We men must adore every beautiful body brought by the Graces - and at the same time be blocked by knowing to be insufficient and thus not remaining there, but climb upwards, as described by St.PLATO (St.AUGUSTINE's "uti & frui").
By the way: The philosophical schools were the monasteries of the pagans, from the PYTHAGOReans to even the EPIKUReans, and PLATO's teachings of askesis&mathesis would fit into every Christian one. All the more sad, that many eastern monks seem to use usually of PLATO not more than the pseudoPLATONic NeoPlatonism, which is as false as ARISTOTELism (neither is GOD not autonomous from the world; nor is the world autonomous from HIM).
And to Your very right words on monks&West: "When the monasteries were burnt down, that kind of Christianity emerged, which was demasked by Kierkegaard." (GOMEZ DAVILA)

     I think the important thing to remember about monasticism is that it is not the template on which the whole world should be built, but as the Apostle Paul acknowledges most people are called to marriage. Monastics flee the world and they find great wisdom in their prayers, but most of us are called to find salvation in the world. It is common for people converting to Orthodoxy to think you need to become a monastic in order to have a chance of reaching salvation, but that isn't the case and holy people can be found in the world if you look for them.

     Ultimately, while learning is good, there is nothing greater than attaining holiness. I think it is important to keep in mind that if Plato and Aristotle are indeed saints (which I consider rather likely), it isn't simply because they had wise ideas about the nature of the world, but rather because they lived in ways that brought them closer to God.

     I am curious, what is the difference between Platonism and Neoplatonism? I know there is a distinction, but I am not very familiar with it.
The universe was not made for soulless plants&animals; and not for huMen, who are involved and as a result absorbed by Mrs. Terra (cf. Mt.26,52). But per se only for the spiritual aristoCracy, who are in this world, but not from this world; who form alone the ecclesia (as the communio sanctorum). Others like i deserve to live only, as long as we are servants aimed at Them. And "The perfect aristocrat is the ascetical monk in his convent-cell." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
ARISTOTLE (and His scholar ALEXANDER) ruined holy Hellas by basing their philoSophy (and pouring out Their energies) on Mrs. Terra.
I am glad, though, to see SOCRATES & PLATO worshipped in Your churches as saints - after all They were both: abstinent&ascetical and at the same time highly plastic&sensual.
The holosophical nonSense of Neo"Platon"ism was just a turned-around Aristotelism (from which PLOTIN characteristically derived).
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« Reply #10 on: September 15, 2022, 11:48:49 AM »
« Edited: September 15, 2022, 11:56:52 AM by Associate Justice PiT »

I thank for Your interEst! For me, who has read little about the Fathers and very little of Them, Your reMarks are very interesting - and deepening my worries: Yes, the ancient world was decadent&dying and on its way into, what the moderns suffer today; and the Apologets&ChurchFathers opposing that breakDown with asketic rigorosity was remarkable, as even nonChristians must admit. Plus the West's deCline began with e.g. P.ABAELARD's revolutionary pantheistic "Heloise" (on which ROUSSEAU based later His "New Heloise"). So neither is fine: Not WestRome's worldSeeking, not EastRome's worldFleeing. We men must adore every beautiful body brought by the Graces - and at the same time be blocked by knowing to be insufficient and thus not remaining there, but climb upwards, as described by St.PLATO (St.AUGUSTINE's "uti & frui").
By the way: The philosophical schools were the monasteries of the pagans, from the PYTHAGOReans to even the EPIKUReans, and PLATO's teachings of askesis&mathesis would fit into every Christian one. All the more sad, that many eastern monks seem to use usually of PLATO not more than the pseudoPLATONic NeoPlatonism, which is as false as ARISTOTELism (neither is GOD not autonomous from the world; nor is the world autonomous from HIM).
And to Your very right words on monks&West: "When the monasteries were burnt down, that kind of Christianity emerged, which was demasked by Kierkegaard." (GOMEZ DAVILA)

     I think the important thing to remember about monasticism is that it is not the template on which the whole world should be built, but as the Apostle Paul acknowledges most people are called to marriage. Monastics flee the world and they find great wisdom in their prayers, but most of us are called to find salvation in the world. It is common for people converting to Orthodoxy to think you need to become a monastic in order to have a chance of reaching salvation, but that isn't the case and holy people can be found in the world if you look for them.

     Ultimately, while learning is good, there is nothing greater than attaining holiness. I think it is important to keep in mind that if Plato and Aristotle are indeed saints (which I consider rather likely), it isn't simply because they had wise ideas about the nature of the world, but rather because they lived in ways that brought them closer to God.

     I am curious, what is the difference between Platonism and Neoplatonism? I know there is a distinction, but I am not very familiar with it.
The universe was not made for soulless plants&animals; and not for huMen, who are involved and as a result absorbed by Mrs. Terra (cf. Mt.26,52). But per se only for the spiritual aristoCracy, who are in this world, but not from this world; who form alone the ecclesia (as the communio sanctorum). Others like i deserve to live only, as long as we are servants aimed at Them. And "The perfect aristocrat is the ascetical monk in his convent-cell." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
ARISTOTLE (and His scholar ALEXANDER) ruined holy Hellas by basing their philoSophy (and pouring out Their energies) on Mrs. Terra.
I am glad, though, to see SOCRATES & PLATO worshipped in Your churches as saints - after all They were both: abstinent&ascetical and at the same time highly plastic&sensual.
The holosophical nonSense of Neo"Platon"ism was just a turned-around Aristotelism (from which PLOTIN characteristically derived).

     The concept of a spiritual aristocracy reigning over Creation strikes me as being somewhat Gnostic, no offense. The Orthodox perspective on the relation between the spiritual beings and the physical world would be that both are called to serve God, and both have value as long as they do so. That is why Satan earned condemnation when he fell from Heaven, and those human beings that refuse to serve God are fellows with Satan and his fallen angels. God created humanity to fulfill a purpose that the angels could not, which is that we can, having fallen from grace, repent and be restored to the inheritance He created us for. For now we are less than the angels, but in the Resurrection the righteous will be made greater than them. We confess that the Blessed Virgin is greater than the angels, because through her dormition and subsequent assumption she already partakes of the Resurrection.
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« Reply #11 on: September 15, 2022, 06:41:24 PM »
« Edited: September 15, 2022, 06:45:59 PM by Georg Ebner »

I thank for Your interEst! For me, who has read little about the Fathers and very little of Them, Your reMarks are very interesting - and deepening my worries: Yes, the ancient world was decadent&dying and on its way into, what the moderns suffer today; and the Apologets&ChurchFathers opposing that breakDown with asketic rigorosity was remarkable, as even nonChristians must admit. Plus the West's deCline began with e.g. P.ABAELARD's revolutionary pantheistic "Heloise" (on which ROUSSEAU based later His "New Heloise"). So neither is fine: Not WestRome's worldSeeking, not EastRome's worldFleeing. We men must adore every beautiful body brought by the Graces - and at the same time be blocked by knowing to be insufficient and thus not remaining there, but climb upwards, as described by St.PLATO (St.AUGUSTINE's "uti & frui").
By the way: The philosophical schools were the monasteries of the pagans, from the PYTHAGOReans to even the EPIKUReans, and PLATO's teachings of askesis&mathesis would fit into every Christian one. All the more sad, that many eastern monks seem to use usually of PLATO not more than the pseudoPLATONic NeoPlatonism, which is as false as ARISTOTELism (neither is GOD not autonomous from the world; nor is the world autonomous from HIM).
And to Your very right words on monks&West: "When the monasteries were burnt down, that kind of Christianity emerged, which was demasked by Kierkegaard." (GOMEZ DAVILA)

     I think the important thing to remember about monasticism is that it is not the template on which the whole world should be built, but as the Apostle Paul acknowledges most people are called to marriage. Monastics flee the world and they find great wisdom in their prayers, but most of us are called to find salvation in the world. It is common for people converting to Orthodoxy to think you need to become a monastic in order to have a chance of reaching salvation, but that isn't the case and holy people can be found in the world if you look for them.

     Ultimately, while learning is good, there is nothing greater than attaining holiness. I think it is important to keep in mind that if Plato and Aristotle are indeed saints (which I consider rather likely), it isn't simply because they had wise ideas about the nature of the world, but rather because they lived in ways that brought them closer to God.

     I am curious, what is the difference between Platonism and Neoplatonism? I know there is a distinction, but I am not very familiar with it.
The universe was not made for soulless plants&animals; and not for huMen, who are involved and as a result absorbed by Mrs. Terra (cf. Mt.26,52). But per se only for the spiritual aristoCracy, who are in this world, but not from this world; who form alone the ecclesia (as the communio sanctorum). Others like i deserve to live only, as long as we are servants aimed at Them. And "The perfect aristocrat is the ascetical monk in his convent-cell." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
ARISTOTLE (and His scholar ALEXANDER) ruined holy Hellas by basing their philoSophy (and pouring out Their energies) on Mrs. Terra.
I am glad, though, to see SOCRATES & PLATO worshipped in Your churches as saints - after all They were both: abstinent&ascetical and at the same time highly plastic&sensual.
The holosophical nonSense of Neo"Platon"ism was just a turned-around Aristotelism (from which PLOTIN characteristically derived).

     The concept of a spiritual aristocracy reigning over Creation strikes me as being somewhat Gnostic, no offense. The Orthodox perspective on the relation between the spiritual beings and the physical world would be that both are called to serve God, and both have value as long as they do so. That is why Satan earned condemnation when he fell from Heaven, and those human beings that refuse to serve God are fellows with Satan and his fallen angels. God created humanity to fulfill a purpose that the angels could not, which is that we can, having fallen from grace, repent and be restored to the inheritance He created us for. For now we are less than the angels, but in the Resurrection the righteous will be made greater than them. We confess that the Blessed Virgin is greater than the angels, because through her dormition and subsequent assumption she already partakes of the Resurrection.
I agree on everything else, yet calling my concept "somewhat Gnostic" is not a, it is the offense!!!
The modern world is - what even a rather mediocre prof. like E.VOEGELIN was able to realize (with some support from H.U.v.BALTHASAR) - gnostical (sive anthropotheistical sive selfdeifying). And in order to become absolute, the moderns have 2 choices, both necessarily resulting in suicide: Mankind being either everyThing, i.e. a solipsism inclusive taedium vitae (the variant for the less stupid ones); or manKind being noThing, an autonomous perpetuum mobile, robot, pure animal - what all marxism, materialism, mechanism, monism and ecologism is about (the variant for the totally stupid masses, which have already widely sunken into vegetating animality).
Needless to say, that the homo religiosus rejects both variants of gnosticism. For Him the forms/ideas are DIVINE (=good); the unformed materia is as a defectus DEI not good, but also not bad; the voluntas propria of demons&huMen is bad.
Out of that fiat voluntas TUA we must serve those gifted by The Graces (as "my" personal&concrete master GOMEZ DAVILA put it: "Vulgarity is essentially to be on first-name-basis with a Plato or Goethe.") - of course, only as long as that nobility of birth<blood<soul<spirit is gearing towards the Emperor in heaven.
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« Reply #12 on: September 16, 2022, 11:47:42 AM »

I thank for Your interEst! For me, who has read little about the Fathers and very little of Them, Your reMarks are very interesting - and deepening my worries: Yes, the ancient world was decadent&dying and on its way into, what the moderns suffer today; and the Apologets&ChurchFathers opposing that breakDown with asketic rigorosity was remarkable, as even nonChristians must admit. Plus the West's deCline began with e.g. P.ABAELARD's revolutionary pantheistic "Heloise" (on which ROUSSEAU based later His "New Heloise"). So neither is fine: Not WestRome's worldSeeking, not EastRome's worldFleeing. We men must adore every beautiful body brought by the Graces - and at the same time be blocked by knowing to be insufficient and thus not remaining there, but climb upwards, as described by St.PLATO (St.AUGUSTINE's "uti & frui").
By the way: The philosophical schools were the monasteries of the pagans, from the PYTHAGOReans to even the EPIKUReans, and PLATO's teachings of askesis&mathesis would fit into every Christian one. All the more sad, that many eastern monks seem to use usually of PLATO not more than the pseudoPLATONic NeoPlatonism, which is as false as ARISTOTELism (neither is GOD not autonomous from the world; nor is the world autonomous from HIM).
And to Your very right words on monks&West: "When the monasteries were burnt down, that kind of Christianity emerged, which was demasked by Kierkegaard." (GOMEZ DAVILA)

     I think the important thing to remember about monasticism is that it is not the template on which the whole world should be built, but as the Apostle Paul acknowledges most people are called to marriage. Monastics flee the world and they find great wisdom in their prayers, but most of us are called to find salvation in the world. It is common for people converting to Orthodoxy to think you need to become a monastic in order to have a chance of reaching salvation, but that isn't the case and holy people can be found in the world if you look for them.

     Ultimately, while learning is good, there is nothing greater than attaining holiness. I think it is important to keep in mind that if Plato and Aristotle are indeed saints (which I consider rather likely), it isn't simply because they had wise ideas about the nature of the world, but rather because they lived in ways that brought them closer to God.

     I am curious, what is the difference between Platonism and Neoplatonism? I know there is a distinction, but I am not very familiar with it.
The universe was not made for soulless plants&animals; and not for huMen, who are involved and as a result absorbed by Mrs. Terra (cf. Mt.26,52). But per se only for the spiritual aristoCracy, who are in this world, but not from this world; who form alone the ecclesia (as the communio sanctorum). Others like i deserve to live only, as long as we are servants aimed at Them. And "The perfect aristocrat is the ascetical monk in his convent-cell." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
ARISTOTLE (and His scholar ALEXANDER) ruined holy Hellas by basing their philoSophy (and pouring out Their energies) on Mrs. Terra.
I am glad, though, to see SOCRATES & PLATO worshipped in Your churches as saints - after all They were both: abstinent&ascetical and at the same time highly plastic&sensual.
The holosophical nonSense of Neo"Platon"ism was just a turned-around Aristotelism (from which PLOTIN characteristically derived).

     The concept of a spiritual aristocracy reigning over Creation strikes me as being somewhat Gnostic, no offense. The Orthodox perspective on the relation between the spiritual beings and the physical world would be that both are called to serve God, and both have value as long as they do so. That is why Satan earned condemnation when he fell from Heaven, and those human beings that refuse to serve God are fellows with Satan and his fallen angels. God created humanity to fulfill a purpose that the angels could not, which is that we can, having fallen from grace, repent and be restored to the inheritance He created us for. For now we are less than the angels, but in the Resurrection the righteous will be made greater than them. We confess that the Blessed Virgin is greater than the angels, because through her dormition and subsequent assumption she already partakes of the Resurrection.
I agree on everything else, yet calling my concept "somewhat Gnostic" is not a, it is the offense!!!
The modern world is - what even a rather mediocre prof. like E.VOEGELIN was able to realize (with some support from H.U.v.BALTHASAR) - gnostical (sive anthropotheistical sive selfdeifying). And in order to become absolute, the moderns have 2 choices, both necessarily resulting in suicide: Mankind being either everyThing, i.e. a solipsism inclusive taedium vitae (the variant for the less stupid ones); or manKind being noThing, an autonomous perpetuum mobile, robot, pure animal - what all marxism, materialism, mechanism, monism and ecologism is about (the variant for the totally stupid masses, which have already widely sunken into vegetating animality).
Needless to say, that the homo religiosus rejects both variants of gnosticism. For Him the forms/ideas are DIVINE (=good); the unformed materia is as a defectus DEI not good, but also not bad; the voluntas propria of demons&huMen is bad.
Out of that fiat voluntas TUA we must serve those gifted by The Graces (as "my" personal&concrete master GOMEZ DAVILA put it: "Vulgarity is essentially to be on first-name-basis with a Plato or Goethe.") - of course, only as long as that nobility of birth<blood<soul<spirit is gearing towards the Emperor in heaven.

     The reason I make that connection is that I recall reading that the Apostle Paul was rebutting a mix of Gnostic and Judaizing ideas in his epistle to the Colossians, and that the Gnostic aspects of this consisted largely in believing that mankind was subject to a spiritual bureaucracy. Re-reading it, I don't know if that is the case, but I think Pseudo-Ambrose alludes to this point in his commentary on Colossians.

     You make a good point that the world today quite fully embraces the duality of Gnosticism, considering both ends of the Gnostic worldview (extreme indulgence and extreme mortification) as being valid. It struck me as odd how a worldview with such a fundamental contradiction to it can have such enduring popularity, but then I realized that it is at its heart the rejection of the narrow path that leads to life. Swerving to the left or to the right are both fine, because either way you are not serving God.
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Georg Ebner
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« Reply #13 on: September 16, 2022, 08:13:46 PM »

I thank for Your interEst! For me, who has read little about the Fathers and very little of Them, Your reMarks are very interesting - and deepening my worries: Yes, the ancient world was decadent&dying and on its way into, what the moderns suffer today; and the Apologets&ChurchFathers opposing that breakDown with asketic rigorosity was remarkable, as even nonChristians must admit. Plus the West's deCline began with e.g. P.ABAELARD's revolutionary pantheistic "Heloise" (on which ROUSSEAU based later His "New Heloise"). So neither is fine: Not WestRome's worldSeeking, not EastRome's worldFleeing. We men must adore every beautiful body brought by the Graces - and at the same time be blocked by knowing to be insufficient and thus not remaining there, but climb upwards, as described by St.PLATO (St.AUGUSTINE's "uti & frui").
By the way: The philosophical schools were the monasteries of the pagans, from the PYTHAGOReans to even the EPIKUReans, and PLATO's teachings of askesis&mathesis would fit into every Christian one. All the more sad, that many eastern monks seem to use usually of PLATO not more than the pseudoPLATONic NeoPlatonism, which is as false as ARISTOTELism (neither is GOD not autonomous from the world; nor is the world autonomous from HIM).
And to Your very right words on monks&West: "When the monasteries were burnt down, that kind of Christianity emerged, which was demasked by Kierkegaard." (GOMEZ DAVILA)

     I think the important thing to remember about monasticism is that it is not the template on which the whole world should be built, but as the Apostle Paul acknowledges most people are called to marriage. Monastics flee the world and they find great wisdom in their prayers, but most of us are called to find salvation in the world. It is common for people converting to Orthodoxy to think you need to become a monastic in order to have a chance of reaching salvation, but that isn't the case and holy people can be found in the world if you look for them.

     Ultimately, while learning is good, there is nothing greater than attaining holiness. I think it is important to keep in mind that if Plato and Aristotle are indeed saints (which I consider rather likely), it isn't simply because they had wise ideas about the nature of the world, but rather because they lived in ways that brought them closer to God.

     I am curious, what is the difference between Platonism and Neoplatonism? I know there is a distinction, but I am not very familiar with it.
The universe was not made for soulless plants&animals; and not for huMen, who are involved and as a result absorbed by Mrs. Terra (cf. Mt.26,52). But per se only for the spiritual aristoCracy, who are in this world, but not from this world; who form alone the ecclesia (as the communio sanctorum). Others like i deserve to live only, as long as we are servants aimed at Them. And "The perfect aristocrat is the ascetical monk in his convent-cell." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
ARISTOTLE (and His scholar ALEXANDER) ruined holy Hellas by basing their philoSophy (and pouring out Their energies) on Mrs. Terra.
I am glad, though, to see SOCRATES & PLATO worshipped in Your churches as saints - after all They were both: abstinent&ascetical and at the same time highly plastic&sensual.
The holosophical nonSense of Neo"Platon"ism was just a turned-around Aristotelism (from which PLOTIN characteristically derived).

     The concept of a spiritual aristocracy reigning over Creation strikes me as being somewhat Gnostic, no offense. The Orthodox perspective on the relation between the spiritual beings and the physical world would be that both are called to serve God, and both have value as long as they do so. That is why Satan earned condemnation when he fell from Heaven, and those human beings that refuse to serve God are fellows with Satan and his fallen angels. God created humanity to fulfill a purpose that the angels could not, which is that we can, having fallen from grace, repent and be restored to the inheritance He created us for. For now we are less than the angels, but in the Resurrection the righteous will be made greater than them. We confess that the Blessed Virgin is greater than the angels, because through her dormition and subsequent assumption she already partakes of the Resurrection.
I agree on everything else, yet calling my concept "somewhat Gnostic" is not a, it is the offense!!!
The modern world is - what even a rather mediocre prof. like E.VOEGELIN was able to realize (with some support from H.U.v.BALTHASAR) - gnostical (sive anthropotheistical sive selfdeifying). And in order to become absolute, the moderns have 2 choices, both necessarily resulting in suicide: Mankind being either everyThing, i.e. a solipsism inclusive taedium vitae (the variant for the less stupid ones); or manKind being noThing, an autonomous perpetuum mobile, robot, pure animal - what all marxism, materialism, mechanism, monism and ecologism is about (the variant for the totally stupid masses, which have already widely sunken into vegetating animality).
Needless to say, that the homo religiosus rejects both variants of gnosticism. For Him the forms/ideas are DIVINE (=good); the unformed materia is as a defectus DEI not good, but also not bad; the voluntas propria of demons&huMen is bad.
Out of that fiat voluntas TUA we must serve those gifted by The Graces (as "my" personal&concrete master GOMEZ DAVILA put it: "Vulgarity is essentially to be on first-name-basis with a Plato or Goethe.") - of course, only as long as that nobility of birth<blood<soul<spirit is gearing towards the Emperor in heaven.

     The reason I make that connection is that I recall reading that the Apostle Paul was rebutting a mix of Gnostic and Judaizing ideas in his epistle to the Colossians, and that the Gnostic aspects of this consisted largely in believing that mankind was subject to a spiritual bureaucracy. Re-reading it, I don't know if that is the case, but I think Pseudo-Ambrose alludes to this point in his commentary on Colossians.

     You make a good point that the world today quite fully embraces the duality of Gnosticism, considering both ends of the Gnostic worldview (extreme indulgence and extreme mortification) as being valid. It struck me as odd how a worldview with such a fundamental contradiction to it can have such enduring popularity, but then I realized that it is at its heart the rejection of the narrow path that leads to life. Swerving to the left or to the right are both fine, because either way you are not serving God.
St.JOHN came as probably the first apostle with gnosticism into concrete contact&conflict (causa CERINTHUS).
Well, taking over the offer of the snake must "have such enduring popularity", mustn't it?! After all the homoiosis to THEO is indeed our only goal - who is imperfect, has failed - and as soon as a society was as centred on thymos as "the blond beast" (NIETZSCHE) is according to PLATO&others and wasn't as aware of human limits as the ancient Greeks with their unique intelligence were, the catastrophy emerged...
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« Reply #14 on: September 19, 2022, 09:57:49 PM »

I thank for Your interEst! For me, who has read little about the Fathers and very little of Them, Your reMarks are very interesting - and deepening my worries: Yes, the ancient world was decadent&dying and on its way into, what the moderns suffer today; and the Apologets&ChurchFathers opposing that breakDown with asketic rigorosity was remarkable, as even nonChristians must admit. Plus the West's deCline began with e.g. P.ABAELARD's revolutionary pantheistic "Heloise" (on which ROUSSEAU based later His "New Heloise"). So neither is fine: Not WestRome's worldSeeking, not EastRome's worldFleeing. We men must adore every beautiful body brought by the Graces - and at the same time be blocked by knowing to be insufficient and thus not remaining there, but climb upwards, as described by St.PLATO (St.AUGUSTINE's "uti & frui").
By the way: The philosophical schools were the monasteries of the pagans, from the PYTHAGOReans to even the EPIKUReans, and PLATO's teachings of askesis&mathesis would fit into every Christian one. All the more sad, that many eastern monks seem to use usually of PLATO not more than the pseudoPLATONic NeoPlatonism, which is as false as ARISTOTELism (neither is GOD not autonomous from the world; nor is the world autonomous from HIM).
And to Your very right words on monks&West: "When the monasteries were burnt down, that kind of Christianity emerged, which was demasked by Kierkegaard." (GOMEZ DAVILA)

     I think the important thing to remember about monasticism is that it is not the template on which the whole world should be built, but as the Apostle Paul acknowledges most people are called to marriage. Monastics flee the world and they find great wisdom in their prayers, but most of us are called to find salvation in the world. It is common for people converting to Orthodoxy to think you need to become a monastic in order to have a chance of reaching salvation, but that isn't the case and holy people can be found in the world if you look for them.

     Ultimately, while learning is good, there is nothing greater than attaining holiness. I think it is important to keep in mind that if Plato and Aristotle are indeed saints (which I consider rather likely), it isn't simply because they had wise ideas about the nature of the world, but rather because they lived in ways that brought them closer to God.

     I am curious, what is the difference between Platonism and Neoplatonism? I know there is a distinction, but I am not very familiar with it.
The universe was not made for soulless plants&animals; and not for huMen, who are involved and as a result absorbed by Mrs. Terra (cf. Mt.26,52). But per se only for the spiritual aristoCracy, who are in this world, but not from this world; who form alone the ecclesia (as the communio sanctorum). Others like i deserve to live only, as long as we are servants aimed at Them. And "The perfect aristocrat is the ascetical monk in his convent-cell." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
ARISTOTLE (and His scholar ALEXANDER) ruined holy Hellas by basing their philoSophy (and pouring out Their energies) on Mrs. Terra.
I am glad, though, to see SOCRATES & PLATO worshipped in Your churches as saints - after all They were both: abstinent&ascetical and at the same time highly plastic&sensual.
The holosophical nonSense of Neo"Platon"ism was just a turned-around Aristotelism (from which PLOTIN characteristically derived).

     The concept of a spiritual aristocracy reigning over Creation strikes me as being somewhat Gnostic, no offense. The Orthodox perspective on the relation between the spiritual beings and the physical world would be that both are called to serve God, and both have value as long as they do so. That is why Satan earned condemnation when he fell from Heaven, and those human beings that refuse to serve God are fellows with Satan and his fallen angels. God created humanity to fulfill a purpose that the angels could not, which is that we can, having fallen from grace, repent and be restored to the inheritance He created us for. For now we are less than the angels, but in the Resurrection the righteous will be made greater than them. We confess that the Blessed Virgin is greater than the angels, because through her dormition and subsequent assumption she already partakes of the Resurrection.
I agree on everything else, yet calling my concept "somewhat Gnostic" is not a, it is the offense!!!
The modern world is - what even a rather mediocre prof. like E.VOEGELIN was able to realize (with some support from H.U.v.BALTHASAR) - gnostical (sive anthropotheistical sive selfdeifying). And in order to become absolute, the moderns have 2 choices, both necessarily resulting in suicide: Mankind being either everyThing, i.e. a solipsism inclusive taedium vitae (the variant for the less stupid ones); or manKind being noThing, an autonomous perpetuum mobile, robot, pure animal - what all marxism, materialism, mechanism, monism and ecologism is about (the variant for the totally stupid masses, which have already widely sunken into vegetating animality).
Needless to say, that the homo religiosus rejects both variants of gnosticism. For Him the forms/ideas are DIVINE (=good); the unformed materia is as a defectus DEI not good, but also not bad; the voluntas propria of demons&huMen is bad.
Out of that fiat voluntas TUA we must serve those gifted by The Graces (as "my" personal&concrete master GOMEZ DAVILA put it: "Vulgarity is essentially to be on first-name-basis with a Plato or Goethe.") - of course, only as long as that nobility of birth<blood<soul<spirit is gearing towards the Emperor in heaven.

     The reason I make that connection is that I recall reading that the Apostle Paul was rebutting a mix of Gnostic and Judaizing ideas in his epistle to the Colossians, and that the Gnostic aspects of this consisted largely in believing that mankind was subject to a spiritual bureaucracy. Re-reading it, I don't know if that is the case, but I think Pseudo-Ambrose alludes to this point in his commentary on Colossians.

     You make a good point that the world today quite fully embraces the duality of Gnosticism, considering both ends of the Gnostic worldview (extreme indulgence and extreme mortification) as being valid. It struck me as odd how a worldview with such a fundamental contradiction to it can have such enduring popularity, but then I realized that it is at its heart the rejection of the narrow path that leads to life. Swerving to the left or to the right are both fine, because either way you are not serving God.
St.JOHN came as probably the first apostle with gnosticism into concrete contact&conflict (causa CERINTHUS).
Well, taking over the offer of the snake must "have such enduring popularity", mustn't it?! After all the homoiosis to THEO is indeed our only goal - who is imperfect, has failed - and as soon as a society was as centred on thymos as "the blond beast" (NIETZSCHE) is according to PLATO&others and wasn't as aware of human limits as the ancient Greeks with their unique intelligence were, the catastrophy emerged...

     It seems we are on the same page now, but I found it interesting that you speak of the unique intelligence of the ancient Greeks. It has long fascinated me that the Epicureans were wise enough to understand that, even in a philosophy based on valuing pleasure, moderation is key in order to avoid the misery that excess brings. Sadly, modern people lack this wisdom. Despite this, they fancy themselves brilliant because they have access to so much information.
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« Reply #15 on: September 23, 2022, 11:46:47 AM »

As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.
As You have - contrary to me - knowledge of the eastern Fathers i want to ask You a question: The de facto faithless theologicans at the public universities here usually do, as if the Fathers were alltogether so narrow-minded to believe in inSpiration in a rather strict sense (verbally aso.). Just ORIGENES being "critical". But apart from e.g. the still useful 4tiers-scheme of EUSEBIUS/Caesarea (or His perfect critics of Revelation) i have never found a Father claiming this - have You? Surely They believed in the HOLY SPIRIT leading or being the Church, but inspiring the different scriptures of the Bible?
As far as i know the rationalists of Scholasticism were the first ones to debate the exact extent of inSpiration (and even THOMAS/Aquino's The HOLY SPIRIT as auctor and the human writers as instrumenta is not as clear as it appears at first glance).
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« Reply #16 on: October 07, 2022, 01:23:53 PM »

As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.
As You have - contrary to me - knowledge of the eastern Fathers i want to ask You a question: The de facto faithless theologicans at the public universities here usually do, as if the Fathers were alltogether so narrow-minded to believe in inSpiration in a rather strict sense (verbally aso.). Just ORIGENES being "critical". But apart from e.g. the still useful 4tiers-scheme of EUSEBIUS/Caesarea (or His perfect critics of Revelation) i have never found a Father claiming this - have You? Surely They believed in the HOLY SPIRIT leading or being the Church, but inspiring the different scriptures of the Bible?
As far as i know the rationalists of Scholasticism were the first ones to debate the exact extent of inSpiration (and even THOMAS/Aquino's The HOLY SPIRIT as auctor and the human writers as instrumenta is not as clear as it appears at first glance).

     I've seen that the Church Fathers are pretty uniform in considering the Bible to be fully inspired. The important thing to understand is that they did not generally follow a dialectic of literal vs. figurative; in the patristic understanding there is always a spiritual sense, but invoking that is not meant to cast doubt on the literal reading; rather those are things that exist side by side. You have some instances of Church Fathers reading passages in a deliberately non-literal fashion, like St. Gregory of Nyssa suggesting that God did not actually kill all of the firstborns of Egypt. But the concept that it's not fully inspired would still be quite alien to him.
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« Reply #17 on: October 08, 2022, 06:51:59 PM »

As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.
As You have - contrary to me - knowledge of the eastern Fathers i want to ask You a question: The de facto faithless theologicans at the public universities here usually do, as if the Fathers were alltogether so narrow-minded to believe in inSpiration in a rather strict sense (verbally aso.). Just ORIGENES being "critical". But apart from e.g. the still useful 4tiers-scheme of EUSEBIUS/Caesarea (or His perfect critics of Revelation) i have never found a Father claiming this - have You? Surely They believed in the HOLY SPIRIT leading or being the Church, but inspiring the different scriptures of the Bible?
As far as i know the rationalists of Scholasticism were the first ones to debate the exact extent of inSpiration (and even THOMAS/Aquino's The HOLY SPIRIT as auctor and the human writers as instrumenta is not as clear as it appears at first glance).

     I've seen that the Church Fathers are pretty uniform in considering the Bible to be fully inspired. The important thing to understand is that they did not generally follow a dialectic of literal vs. figurative; in the patristic understanding there is always a spiritual sense, but invoking that is not meant to cast doubt on the literal reading; rather those are things that exist side by side. You have some instances of Church Fathers reading passages in a deliberately non-literal fashion, like St. Gregory of Nyssa suggesting that God did not actually kill all of the firstborns of Egypt. But the concept that it's not fully inspired would still be quite alien to him.
But does Your example of the allegorical sense of St.GREGOR/N. (or the Alexandrine School in general) not absolutely prove my thesis?: The Church - and thus the Bible - being [fulfilled by] The HOLY SPIRIT - yes; but not lecturing, that the scriptures were dictated by HIM mechanistically to human marionettes.
By the way: Interestingly the Tridentinum taught, too, that the imPression of THE SON on HIS human audience was another possible origin. (Quasi all bioGraphers forget unfortunately, that one's fame in later times is part of that person's personality, just like its shadow.)
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« Reply #18 on: October 11, 2022, 09:48:41 PM »

As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.
As You have - contrary to me - knowledge of the eastern Fathers i want to ask You a question: The de facto faithless theologicans at the public universities here usually do, as if the Fathers were alltogether so narrow-minded to believe in inSpiration in a rather strict sense (verbally aso.). Just ORIGENES being "critical". But apart from e.g. the still useful 4tiers-scheme of EUSEBIUS/Caesarea (or His perfect critics of Revelation) i have never found a Father claiming this - have You? Surely They believed in the HOLY SPIRIT leading or being the Church, but inspiring the different scriptures of the Bible?
As far as i know the rationalists of Scholasticism were the first ones to debate the exact extent of inSpiration (and even THOMAS/Aquino's The HOLY SPIRIT as auctor and the human writers as instrumenta is not as clear as it appears at first glance).

     I've seen that the Church Fathers are pretty uniform in considering the Bible to be fully inspired. The important thing to understand is that they did not generally follow a dialectic of literal vs. figurative; in the patristic understanding there is always a spiritual sense, but invoking that is not meant to cast doubt on the literal reading; rather those are things that exist side by side. You have some instances of Church Fathers reading passages in a deliberately non-literal fashion, like St. Gregory of Nyssa suggesting that God did not actually kill all of the firstborns of Egypt. But the concept that it's not fully inspired would still be quite alien to him.
But does Your example of the allegorical sense of St.GREGOR/N. (or the Alexandrine School in general) not absolutely prove my thesis?: The Church - and thus the Bible - being [fulfilled by] The HOLY SPIRIT - yes; but not lecturing, that the scriptures were dictated by HIM mechanistically to human marionettes.
By the way: Interestingly the Tridentinum taught, too, that the imPression of THE SON on HIS human audience was another possible origin. (Quasi all bioGraphers forget unfortunately, that one's fame in later times is part of that person's personality, just like its shadow.)

     I think you are quite right here. Synergy between the works of God and man are key to building the Church. That is why St. Paul says "we are labourers together with God" (1 Cor. 3:9). The Son of God unified His divinity to a human nature, that humanity could be redeemed and adopted into sonship of the most high God. This understanding is key to how we see the interaction between humanity and the divine; the saints (and this includes those who wrote scripture) do God's will, not because they are mere tools of God, but because they are attuned to the will of God and their hearts seek Him.
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« Reply #19 on: October 12, 2022, 07:20:07 PM »

As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.
As You have - contrary to me - knowledge of the eastern Fathers i want to ask You a question: The de facto faithless theologicans at the public universities here usually do, as if the Fathers were alltogether so narrow-minded to believe in inSpiration in a rather strict sense (verbally aso.). Just ORIGENES being "critical". But apart from e.g. the still useful 4tiers-scheme of EUSEBIUS/Caesarea (or His perfect critics of Revelation) i have never found a Father claiming this - have You? Surely They believed in the HOLY SPIRIT leading or being the Church, but inspiring the different scriptures of the Bible?
As far as i know the rationalists of Scholasticism were the first ones to debate the exact extent of inSpiration (and even THOMAS/Aquino's The HOLY SPIRIT as auctor and the human writers as instrumenta is not as clear as it appears at first glance).

     I've seen that the Church Fathers are pretty uniform in considering the Bible to be fully inspired. The important thing to understand is that they did not generally follow a dialectic of literal vs. figurative; in the patristic understanding there is always a spiritual sense, but invoking that is not meant to cast doubt on the literal reading; rather those are things that exist side by side. You have some instances of Church Fathers reading passages in a deliberately non-literal fashion, like St. Gregory of Nyssa suggesting that God did not actually kill all of the firstborns of Egypt. But the concept that it's not fully inspired would still be quite alien to him.
But does Your example of the allegorical sense of St.GREGOR/N. (or the Alexandrine School in general) not absolutely prove my thesis?: The Church - and thus the Bible - being [fulfilled by] The HOLY SPIRIT - yes; but not lecturing, that the scriptures were dictated by HIM mechanistically to human marionettes.
By the way: Interestingly the Tridentinum taught, too, that the imPression of THE SON on HIS human audience was another possible origin. (Quasi all bioGraphers forget unfortunately, that one's fame in later times is part of that person's personality, just like its shadow.)

     I think you are quite right here. Synergy between the works of God and man are key to building the Church. That is why St. Paul says "we are labourers together with God" (1 Cor. 3:9). The Son of God unified His divinity to a human nature, that humanity could be redeemed and adopted into sonship of the most high God. This understanding is key to how we see the interaction between humanity and the divine; the saints (and this includes those who wrote scripture) do God's will, not because they are mere tools of God, but because they are attuned to the will of God and their hearts seek Him.
Well, something like the quoted St.PAUL (or St.JOHN's cooperatores veritatis) is nowadays often abused.
In fact a homo religiosus is neither a willless marionette, nor a cold technician. Let us just look at poets: RIMBAUD or MALLARME were only capable to achieve anything, when They put aside Their boundless poetoLogy of THE SPIRIT leading Their pencil; on the other side it's ridiculous, when the cold classicists mean, that poetry is nothing else than capable technics of free men (in that case MARLOWE, for example, would have been a better poet than SHAKESPEARE...).
A homo spiritualis is someone, who gets overwhelmed by the Graces and reacts afterwards in a settled condition (not cold, but cool).
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« Reply #20 on: October 13, 2022, 05:36:42 PM »

As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.
As You have - contrary to me - knowledge of the eastern Fathers i want to ask You a question: The de facto faithless theologicans at the public universities here usually do, as if the Fathers were alltogether so narrow-minded to believe in inSpiration in a rather strict sense (verbally aso.). Just ORIGENES being "critical". But apart from e.g. the still useful 4tiers-scheme of EUSEBIUS/Caesarea (or His perfect critics of Revelation) i have never found a Father claiming this - have You? Surely They believed in the HOLY SPIRIT leading or being the Church, but inspiring the different scriptures of the Bible?
As far as i know the rationalists of Scholasticism were the first ones to debate the exact extent of inSpiration (and even THOMAS/Aquino's The HOLY SPIRIT as auctor and the human writers as instrumenta is not as clear as it appears at first glance).

     I've seen that the Church Fathers are pretty uniform in considering the Bible to be fully inspired. The important thing to understand is that they did not generally follow a dialectic of literal vs. figurative; in the patristic understanding there is always a spiritual sense, but invoking that is not meant to cast doubt on the literal reading; rather those are things that exist side by side. You have some instances of Church Fathers reading passages in a deliberately non-literal fashion, like St. Gregory of Nyssa suggesting that God did not actually kill all of the firstborns of Egypt. But the concept that it's not fully inspired would still be quite alien to him.
But does Your example of the allegorical sense of St.GREGOR/N. (or the Alexandrine School in general) not absolutely prove my thesis?: The Church - and thus the Bible - being [fulfilled by] The HOLY SPIRIT - yes; but not lecturing, that the scriptures were dictated by HIM mechanistically to human marionettes.
By the way: Interestingly the Tridentinum taught, too, that the imPression of THE SON on HIS human audience was another possible origin. (Quasi all bioGraphers forget unfortunately, that one's fame in later times is part of that person's personality, just like its shadow.)

     I think you are quite right here. Synergy between the works of God and man are key to building the Church. That is why St. Paul says "we are labourers together with God" (1 Cor. 3:9). The Son of God unified His divinity to a human nature, that humanity could be redeemed and adopted into sonship of the most high God. This understanding is key to how we see the interaction between humanity and the divine; the saints (and this includes those who wrote scripture) do God's will, not because they are mere tools of God, but because they are attuned to the will of God and their hearts seek Him.
Well, something like the quoted St.PAUL (or St.JOHN's cooperatores veritatis) is nowadays often abused.
In fact a homo religiosus is neither a willless marionette, nor a cold technician. Let us just look at poets: RIMBAUD or MALLARME were only capable to achieve anything, when They put aside Their boundless poetoLogy of THE SPIRIT leading Their pencil; on the other side it's ridiculous, when the cold classicists mean, that poetry is nothing else than capable technics of free men (in that case MARLOWE, for example, would have been a better poet than SHAKESPEARE...).
A homo spiritualis is someone, who gets overwhelmed by the Graces and reacts afterwards in a settled condition (not cold, but cool).

     What you describe is very similar to the Orthodox concept of "dispassion", which is not about being devoid of passions, but rather not being controlled by them. Human artistry and creativity have value, but they should be used in service of God. I recently have been reading "Death to the World", which is a punk zine about Orthodox content. It's very interesting, because it shows how the punk ethos lines up quite well with Orthodox ideas about the world. And indeed the saints have a certain honesty and reality about them, much like was always the goal of the punks. I've never been very interested in punk, but it demonstrates that people can come to Christ from unlikely places, and that it is not necessary for that process to wipe out our individuality.
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« Reply #21 on: October 16, 2022, 08:26:42 PM »

As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.
As You have - contrary to me - knowledge of the eastern Fathers i want to ask You a question: The de facto faithless theologicans at the public universities here usually do, as if the Fathers were alltogether so narrow-minded to believe in inSpiration in a rather strict sense (verbally aso.). Just ORIGENES being "critical". But apart from e.g. the still useful 4tiers-scheme of EUSEBIUS/Caesarea (or His perfect critics of Revelation) i have never found a Father claiming this - have You? Surely They believed in the HOLY SPIRIT leading or being the Church, but inspiring the different scriptures of the Bible?
As far as i know the rationalists of Scholasticism were the first ones to debate the exact extent of inSpiration (and even THOMAS/Aquino's The HOLY SPIRIT as auctor and the human writers as instrumenta is not as clear as it appears at first glance).

     I've seen that the Church Fathers are pretty uniform in considering the Bible to be fully inspired. The important thing to understand is that they did not generally follow a dialectic of literal vs. figurative; in the patristic understanding there is always a spiritual sense, but invoking that is not meant to cast doubt on the literal reading; rather those are things that exist side by side. You have some instances of Church Fathers reading passages in a deliberately non-literal fashion, like St. Gregory of Nyssa suggesting that God did not actually kill all of the firstborns of Egypt. But the concept that it's not fully inspired would still be quite alien to him.
But does Your example of the allegorical sense of St.GREGOR/N. (or the Alexandrine School in general) not absolutely prove my thesis?: The Church - and thus the Bible - being [fulfilled by] The HOLY SPIRIT - yes; but not lecturing, that the scriptures were dictated by HIM mechanistically to human marionettes.
By the way: Interestingly the Tridentinum taught, too, that the imPression of THE SON on HIS human audience was another possible origin. (Quasi all bioGraphers forget unfortunately, that one's fame in later times is part of that person's personality, just like its shadow.)

     I think you are quite right here. Synergy between the works of God and man are key to building the Church. That is why St. Paul says "we are labourers together with God" (1 Cor. 3:9). The Son of God unified His divinity to a human nature, that humanity could be redeemed and adopted into sonship of the most high God. This understanding is key to how we see the interaction between humanity and the divine; the saints (and this includes those who wrote scripture) do God's will, not because they are mere tools of God, but because they are attuned to the will of God and their hearts seek Him.
Well, something like the quoted St.PAUL (or St.JOHN's cooperatores veritatis) is nowadays often abused.
In fact a homo religiosus is neither a willless marionette, nor a cold technician. Let us just look at poets: RIMBAUD or MALLARME were only capable to achieve anything, when They put aside Their boundless poetoLogy of THE SPIRIT leading Their pencil; on the other side it's ridiculous, when the cold classicists mean, that poetry is nothing else than capable technics of free men (in that case MARLOWE, for example, would have been a better poet than SHAKESPEARE...).
A homo spiritualis is someone, who gets overwhelmed by the Graces and reacts afterwards in a settled condition (not cold, but cool).

     What you describe is very similar to the Orthodox concept of "dispassion", which is not about being devoid of passions, but rather not being controlled by them. Human artistry and creativity have value, but they should be used in service of God. I recently have been reading "Death to the World", which is a punk zine about Orthodox content. It's very interesting, because it shows how the punk ethos lines up quite well with Orthodox ideas about the world. And indeed the saints have a certain honesty and reality about them, much like was always the goal of the punks. I've never been very interested in punk, but it demonstrates that people can come to Christ from unlikely places, and that it is not necessary for that process to wipe out our individuality.
That "dispassion" sounds terribly like the ataraxia of the awful Stoa - but GOD-given geniality in prophecy/poetry/painting/... is a beatific "mania" (PLATO)! Just, that even the romantics express it afterwards in their works, not during their adventures; the classics are the ideal combination of hot romanticism (content) and cold classicism (form), which is caused by a remaining selfAwareness.
Your "should be used in service of God" can also be understood either in a very correct way or not: On the one hand we have still the gnostical/anthropotheistical "EnLightenment", which claims, that art should lecture or entertain mankind (as the new pseudoGOD) - but that results only in worthless AgitProp or shallow vanity; since romantics we could know, that l'art pour l'art! On the other hand the aestheticists forgot, that the Musae are independent from the homo, but that the pulchrum is not independent from the bonum and the verum and their common origin.
Those "punks" are not more than the worthless endProduct of a self-idolizing society, which is at its very end. What began ~1000 years ago not without some glamour, will have ended with such scum.
"The modern do not hope, but take refuge in utopical fictions; do not believe, but take refuge in idiotic systems; do not love, but take refuge in holdless sentimentalism." (GOMEZ DAVILA)
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« Reply #22 on: October 23, 2022, 04:55:35 PM »

As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.
As You have - contrary to me - knowledge of the eastern Fathers i want to ask You a question: The de facto faithless theologicans at the public universities here usually do, as if the Fathers were alltogether so narrow-minded to believe in inSpiration in a rather strict sense (verbally aso.). Just ORIGENES being "critical". But apart from e.g. the still useful 4tiers-scheme of EUSEBIUS/Caesarea (or His perfect critics of Revelation) i have never found a Father claiming this - have You? Surely They believed in the HOLY SPIRIT leading or being the Church, but inspiring the different scriptures of the Bible?
As far as i know the rationalists of Scholasticism were the first ones to debate the exact extent of inSpiration (and even THOMAS/Aquino's The HOLY SPIRIT as auctor and the human writers as instrumenta is not as clear as it appears at first glance).

     I've seen that the Church Fathers are pretty uniform in considering the Bible to be fully inspired. The important thing to understand is that they did not generally follow a dialectic of literal vs. figurative; in the patristic understanding there is always a spiritual sense, but invoking that is not meant to cast doubt on the literal reading; rather those are things that exist side by side. You have some instances of Church Fathers reading passages in a deliberately non-literal fashion, like St. Gregory of Nyssa suggesting that God did not actually kill all of the firstborns of Egypt. But the concept that it's not fully inspired would still be quite alien to him.
But does Your example of the allegorical sense of St.GREGOR/N. (or the Alexandrine School in general) not absolutely prove my thesis?: The Church - and thus the Bible - being [fulfilled by] The HOLY SPIRIT - yes; but not lecturing, that the scriptures were dictated by HIM mechanistically to human marionettes.
By the way: Interestingly the Tridentinum taught, too, that the imPression of THE SON on HIS human audience was another possible origin. (Quasi all bioGraphers forget unfortunately, that one's fame in later times is part of that person's personality, just like its shadow.)

     I think you are quite right here. Synergy between the works of God and man are key to building the Church. That is why St. Paul says "we are labourers together with God" (1 Cor. 3:9). The Son of God unified His divinity to a human nature, that humanity could be redeemed and adopted into sonship of the most high God. This understanding is key to how we see the interaction between humanity and the divine; the saints (and this includes those who wrote scripture) do God's will, not because they are mere tools of God, but because they are attuned to the will of God and their hearts seek Him.
Well, something like the quoted St.PAUL (or St.JOHN's cooperatores veritatis) is nowadays often abused.
In fact a homo religiosus is neither a willless marionette, nor a cold technician. Let us just look at poets: RIMBAUD or MALLARME were only capable to achieve anything, when They put aside Their boundless poetoLogy of THE SPIRIT leading Their pencil; on the other side it's ridiculous, when the cold classicists mean, that poetry is nothing else than capable technics of free men (in that case MARLOWE, for example, would have been a better poet than SHAKESPEARE...).
A homo spiritualis is someone, who gets overwhelmed by the Graces and reacts afterwards in a settled condition (not cold, but cool).

     What you describe is very similar to the Orthodox concept of "dispassion", which is not about being devoid of passions, but rather not being controlled by them. Human artistry and creativity have value, but they should be used in service of God. I recently have been reading "Death to the World", which is a punk zine about Orthodox content. It's very interesting, because it shows how the punk ethos lines up quite well with Orthodox ideas about the world. And indeed the saints have a certain honesty and reality about them, much like was always the goal of the punks. I've never been very interested in punk, but it demonstrates that people can come to Christ from unlikely places, and that it is not necessary for that process to wipe out our individuality.
That "dispassion" sounds terribly like the ataraxia of the awful Stoa - but GOD-given geniality in prophecy/poetry/painting/... is a beatific "mania" (PLATO)! Just, that even the romantics express it afterwards in their works, not during their adventures; the classics are the ideal combination of hot romanticism (content) and cold classicism (form), which is caused by a remaining selfAwareness.
Your "should be used in service of God" can also be understood either in a very correct way or not: On the one hand we have still the gnostical/anthropotheistical "EnLightenment", which claims, that art should lecture or entertain mankind (as the new pseudoGOD) - but that results only in worthless AgitProp or shallow vanity; since romantics we could know, that l'art pour l'art! On the other hand the aestheticists forgot, that the Musae are independent from the homo, but that the pulchrum is not independent from the bonum and the verum and their common origin.
Those "punks" are not more than the worthless endProduct of a self-idolizing society, which is at its very end. What began ~1000 years ago not without some glamour, will have ended with such scum.
"The modern do not hope, but take refuge in utopical fictions; do not believe, but take refuge in idiotic systems; do not love, but take refuge in holdless sentimentalism." (GOMEZ DAVILA)


     From what I understand, the Stoics sought to wipe out emotion, and therein lies their problem. I am reminded of a certain Stoic philosopher who heard his son had died, and reasoned that he should not be sad because his son was a mortal man and he knew that he would die someday. Sorrow over the loss of your loved ones is something that should be respected and cherished, but it should not overtake you and lead you to act in ungodly ways.

     Likewise, I agree that attempts at didactic art are generally worthless. This is the basic reason that most Christian movies and television shows are terrible; they try to push a message and the art suffers as a result. The relationship between art and God, much like any work, should be organic and follow naturally from a legitimate personal commitment rather than forced into place as part of a rigid, wooden framework.

     Indeed, the punk movement as a whole was nihilistic and self-destructive, and the men behind Death to the World freely acknowledge as much. Until they found Christ, they wasted themselves in a meaningless rejection of a shallow and materialistic society. Orthodox Christianity was significant to them because it gave shape and purpose to their rebellion, and gave them something legitimate to strive for. The world today is founded in false dialectics, which have the effect of distracting us from what really matters and encourages us to waste our energy on foolish and empty things. To legitimately follow Christ requires us to learn to ignore these false dialectics and focus on what matters more than anything.
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Georg Ebner
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« Reply #23 on: October 23, 2022, 05:41:25 PM »
« Edited: October 23, 2022, 05:48:15 PM by Georg Ebner »

As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.
As You have - contrary to me - knowledge of the eastern Fathers i want to ask You a question: The de facto faithless theologicans at the public universities here usually do, as if the Fathers were alltogether so narrow-minded to believe in inSpiration in a rather strict sense (verbally aso.). Just ORIGENES being "critical". But apart from e.g. the still useful 4tiers-scheme of EUSEBIUS/Caesarea (or His perfect critics of Revelation) i have never found a Father claiming this - have You? Surely They believed in the HOLY SPIRIT leading or being the Church, but inspiring the different scriptures of the Bible?
As far as i know the rationalists of Scholasticism were the first ones to debate the exact extent of inSpiration (and even THOMAS/Aquino's The HOLY SPIRIT as auctor and the human writers as instrumenta is not as clear as it appears at first glance).

     I've seen that the Church Fathers are pretty uniform in considering the Bible to be fully inspired. The important thing to understand is that they did not generally follow a dialectic of literal vs. figurative; in the patristic understanding there is always a spiritual sense, but invoking that is not meant to cast doubt on the literal reading; rather those are things that exist side by side. You have some instances of Church Fathers reading passages in a deliberately non-literal fashion, like St. Gregory of Nyssa suggesting that God did not actually kill all of the firstborns of Egypt. But the concept that it's not fully inspired would still be quite alien to him.
But does Your example of the allegorical sense of St.GREGOR/N. (or the Alexandrine School in general) not absolutely prove my thesis?: The Church - and thus the Bible - being [fulfilled by] The HOLY SPIRIT - yes; but not lecturing, that the scriptures were dictated by HIM mechanistically to human marionettes.
By the way: Interestingly the Tridentinum taught, too, that the imPression of THE SON on HIS human audience was another possible origin. (Quasi all bioGraphers forget unfortunately, that one's fame in later times is part of that person's personality, just like its shadow.)

     I think you are quite right here. Synergy between the works of God and man are key to building the Church. That is why St. Paul says "we are labourers together with God" (1 Cor. 3:9). The Son of God unified His divinity to a human nature, that humanity could be redeemed and adopted into sonship of the most high God. This understanding is key to how we see the interaction between humanity and the divine; the saints (and this includes those who wrote scripture) do God's will, not because they are mere tools of God, but because they are attuned to the will of God and their hearts seek Him.
Well, something like the quoted St.PAUL (or St.JOHN's cooperatores veritatis) is nowadays often abused.
In fact a homo religiosus is neither a willless marionette, nor a cold technician. Let us just look at poets: RIMBAUD or MALLARME were only capable to achieve anything, when They put aside Their boundless poetoLogy of THE SPIRIT leading Their pencil; on the other side it's ridiculous, when the cold classicists mean, that poetry is nothing else than capable technics of free men (in that case MARLOWE, for example, would have been a better poet than SHAKESPEARE...).
A homo spiritualis is someone, who gets overwhelmed by the Graces and reacts afterwards in a settled condition (not cold, but cool).

     What you describe is very similar to the Orthodox concept of "dispassion", which is not about being devoid of passions, but rather not being controlled by them. Human artistry and creativity have value, but they should be used in service of God. I recently have been reading "Death to the World", which is a punk zine about Orthodox content. It's very interesting, because it shows how the punk ethos lines up quite well with Orthodox ideas about the world. And indeed the saints have a certain honesty and reality about them, much like was always the goal of the punks. I've never been very interested in punk, but it demonstrates that people can come to Christ from unlikely places, and that it is not necessary for that process to wipe out our individuality.
That "dispassion" sounds terribly like the ataraxia of the awful Stoa - but GOD-given geniality in prophecy/poetry/painting/... is a beatific "mania" (PLATO)! Just, that even the romantics express it afterwards in their works, not during their adventures; the classics are the ideal combination of hot romanticism (content) and cold classicism (form), which is caused by a remaining selfAwareness.
Your "should be used in service of God" can also be understood either in a very correct way or not: On the one hand we have still the gnostical/anthropotheistical "EnLightenment", which claims, that art should lecture or entertain mankind (as the new pseudoGOD) - but that results only in worthless AgitProp or shallow vanity; since romantics we could know, that l'art pour l'art! On the other hand the aestheticists forgot, that the Musae are independent from the homo, but that the pulchrum is not independent from the bonum and the verum and their common origin.
Those "punks" are not more than the worthless endProduct of a self-idolizing society, which is at its very end. What began ~1000 years ago not without some glamour, will have ended with such scum.
"The modern do not hope, but take refuge in utopical fictions; do not believe, but take refuge in idiotic systems; do not love, but take refuge in holdless sentimentalism." (GOMEZ DAVILA)


     From what I understand, the Stoics sought to wipe out emotion, and therein lies their problem. I am reminded of a certain Stoic philosopher who heard his son had died, and reasoned that he should not be sad because his son was a mortal man and he knew that he would die someday. Sorrow over the loss of your loved ones is something that should be respected and cherished, but it should not overtake you and lead you to act in ungodly ways.

     Likewise, I agree that attempts at didactic art are generally worthless. This is the basic reason that most Christian movies and television shows are terrible; they try to push a message and the art suffers as a result. The relationship between art and God, much like any work, should be organic and follow naturally from a legitimate personal commitment rather than forced into place as part of a rigid, wooden framework.

     Indeed, the punk movement as a whole was nihilistic and self-destructive, and the men behind Death to the World freely acknowledge as much. Until they found Christ, they wasted themselves in a meaningless rejection of a shallow and materialistic society. Orthodox Christianity was significant to them because it gave shape and purpose to their rebellion, and gave them something legitimate to strive for. The world today is founded in false dialectics, which have the effect of distracting us from what really matters and encourages us to waste our energy on foolish and empty things. To legitimately follow Christ requires us to learn to ignore these false dialectics and focus on what matters more than anything.
Ad mortem: We must fail, because on the one hand "Only GOD is worth thinking about." (PLATO), on the other hand "Our speaking is trivial, as it cannot be permanently about death.": Another's mastery and our own misery would each require our unlimited attention. Living is nothing else than dying, because all ob-jects destroy the entelechia of a freshBorn. As a conSequence of having lived together with "brother death" a reflective person can indeed not be overwhelmed by him. Although we know, that "the most natural thing on earth" is not natural, but in some way our fault. The music of MOZART (all of it, not just His Requiem) is unreached in that aspect, i would say.

Ad artem:  Non-westRomanCatholics can often not understand spirits like MONTAIGNE, DESCARTES, SHAKESPEARE, WINCKELMANN, HAMANN (or once more MOZART, also BRUCKNER) for their bigotry despite their obvious frivoltry (and vice versa). Even more irritating, that it were not only few exceptional spirits, but the cath. nations in general: the French, Italians, West&South-Germans and even the infamously "severe" Spaniards with their inClination to distance themselves shamefully from their belived faith (cf. CERVANTES, GRACIAN). What those nonUnderstanders do not take into account is the original sin!
Does anyone, who is seriously preaching (like our protestants), believe in it? (GOMEZ DAVILA: "It would be interesting to research, whether any sermon has not resulted in murder.") Or any self-declared "Christian artist"? Really?? Really???
You know, of course, what catholic means: It includes all ways of GOD to man, thus also all real art is per se catholic. But at the same time for the explained reason no "catholic art" exists!
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Associate Justice PiT
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« Reply #24 on: October 26, 2022, 10:07:16 AM »

As far as classical learning goes, it just was not as valued in the East, even by those who were well-educated. St. Gregory Palamas knew Plato and Aristotle, but the main thrust of his response to Barlaam in the Triads was that it is better to study the Fathers and learn the spiritual life than it is to learn science. Orthodox today still value classical learning for the education of children; there is an Orthodox classical school near me and I recently read a story about another one that opened in Pennsylvania. So I would not say that the Greeks were totally ignored in the East, but in spiritual terms we tend to read them more through the Fathers who knew them (and I have more examples I could give than just St. Gregory Palamas, if you are interested), because they baptized their wisdom.
As You have - contrary to me - knowledge of the eastern Fathers i want to ask You a question: The de facto faithless theologicans at the public universities here usually do, as if the Fathers were alltogether so narrow-minded to believe in inSpiration in a rather strict sense (verbally aso.). Just ORIGENES being "critical". But apart from e.g. the still useful 4tiers-scheme of EUSEBIUS/Caesarea (or His perfect critics of Revelation) i have never found a Father claiming this - have You? Surely They believed in the HOLY SPIRIT leading or being the Church, but inspiring the different scriptures of the Bible?
As far as i know the rationalists of Scholasticism were the first ones to debate the exact extent of inSpiration (and even THOMAS/Aquino's The HOLY SPIRIT as auctor and the human writers as instrumenta is not as clear as it appears at first glance).

     I've seen that the Church Fathers are pretty uniform in considering the Bible to be fully inspired. The important thing to understand is that they did not generally follow a dialectic of literal vs. figurative; in the patristic understanding there is always a spiritual sense, but invoking that is not meant to cast doubt on the literal reading; rather those are things that exist side by side. You have some instances of Church Fathers reading passages in a deliberately non-literal fashion, like St. Gregory of Nyssa suggesting that God did not actually kill all of the firstborns of Egypt. But the concept that it's not fully inspired would still be quite alien to him.
But does Your example of the allegorical sense of St.GREGOR/N. (or the Alexandrine School in general) not absolutely prove my thesis?: The Church - and thus the Bible - being [fulfilled by] The HOLY SPIRIT - yes; but not lecturing, that the scriptures were dictated by HIM mechanistically to human marionettes.
By the way: Interestingly the Tridentinum taught, too, that the imPression of THE SON on HIS human audience was another possible origin. (Quasi all bioGraphers forget unfortunately, that one's fame in later times is part of that person's personality, just like its shadow.)

     I think you are quite right here. Synergy between the works of God and man are key to building the Church. That is why St. Paul says "we are labourers together with God" (1 Cor. 3:9). The Son of God unified His divinity to a human nature, that humanity could be redeemed and adopted into sonship of the most high God. This understanding is key to how we see the interaction between humanity and the divine; the saints (and this includes those who wrote scripture) do God's will, not because they are mere tools of God, but because they are attuned to the will of God and their hearts seek Him.
Well, something like the quoted St.PAUL (or St.JOHN's cooperatores veritatis) is nowadays often abused.
In fact a homo religiosus is neither a willless marionette, nor a cold technician. Let us just look at poets: RIMBAUD or MALLARME were only capable to achieve anything, when They put aside Their boundless poetoLogy of THE SPIRIT leading Their pencil; on the other side it's ridiculous, when the cold classicists mean, that poetry is nothing else than capable technics of free men (in that case MARLOWE, for example, would have been a better poet than SHAKESPEARE...).
A homo spiritualis is someone, who gets overwhelmed by the Graces and reacts afterwards in a settled condition (not cold, but cool).

     What you describe is very similar to the Orthodox concept of "dispassion", which is not about being devoid of passions, but rather not being controlled by them. Human artistry and creativity have value, but they should be used in service of God. I recently have been reading "Death to the World", which is a punk zine about Orthodox content. It's very interesting, because it shows how the punk ethos lines up quite well with Orthodox ideas about the world. And indeed the saints have a certain honesty and reality about them, much like was always the goal of the punks. I've never been very interested in punk, but it demonstrates that people can come to Christ from unlikely places, and that it is not necessary for that process to wipe out our individuality.
That "dispassion" sounds terribly like the ataraxia of the awful Stoa - but GOD-given geniality in prophecy/poetry/painting/... is a beatific "mania" (PLATO)! Just, that even the romantics express it afterwards in their works, not during their adventures; the classics are the ideal combination of hot romanticism (content) and cold classicism (form), which is caused by a remaining selfAwareness.
Your "should be used in service of God" can also be understood either in a very correct way or not: On the one hand we have still the gnostical/anthropotheistical "EnLightenment", which claims, that art should lecture or entertain mankind (as the new pseudoGOD) - but that results only in worthless AgitProp or shallow vanity; since romantics we could know, that l'art pour l'art! On the other hand the aestheticists forgot, that the Musae are independent from the homo, but that the pulchrum is not independent from the bonum and the verum and their common origin.
Those "punks" are not more than the worthless endProduct of a self-idolizing society, which is at its very end. What began ~1000 years ago not without some glamour, will have ended with such scum.
"The modern do not hope, but take refuge in utopical fictions; do not believe, but take refuge in idiotic systems; do not love, but take refuge in holdless sentimentalism." (GOMEZ DAVILA)


     From what I understand, the Stoics sought to wipe out emotion, and therein lies their problem. I am reminded of a certain Stoic philosopher who heard his son had died, and reasoned that he should not be sad because his son was a mortal man and he knew that he would die someday. Sorrow over the loss of your loved ones is something that should be respected and cherished, but it should not overtake you and lead you to act in ungodly ways.

     Likewise, I agree that attempts at didactic art are generally worthless. This is the basic reason that most Christian movies and television shows are terrible; they try to push a message and the art suffers as a result. The relationship between art and God, much like any work, should be organic and follow naturally from a legitimate personal commitment rather than forced into place as part of a rigid, wooden framework.

     Indeed, the punk movement as a whole was nihilistic and self-destructive, and the men behind Death to the World freely acknowledge as much. Until they found Christ, they wasted themselves in a meaningless rejection of a shallow and materialistic society. Orthodox Christianity was significant to them because it gave shape and purpose to their rebellion, and gave them something legitimate to strive for. The world today is founded in false dialectics, which have the effect of distracting us from what really matters and encourages us to waste our energy on foolish and empty things. To legitimately follow Christ requires us to learn to ignore these false dialectics and focus on what matters more than anything.
Ad mortem: We must fail, because on the one hand "Only GOD is worth thinking about." (PLATO), on the other hand "Our speaking is trivial, as it cannot be permanently about death.": Another's mastery and our own misery would each require our unlimited attention. Living is nothing else than dying, because all ob-jects destroy the entelechia of a freshBorn. As a conSequence of having lived together with "brother death" a reflective person can indeed not be overwhelmed by him. Although we know, that "the most natural thing on earth" is not natural, but in some way our fault. The music of MOZART (all of it, not just His Requiem) is unreached in that aspect, i would say.

Ad artem:  Non-westRomanCatholics can often not understand spirits like MONTAIGNE, DESCARTES, SHAKESPEARE, WINCKELMANN, HAMANN (or once more MOZART, also BRUCKNER) for their bigotry despite their obvious frivoltry (and vice versa). Even more irritating, that it were not only few exceptional spirits, but the cath. nations in general: the French, Italians, West&South-Germans and even the infamously "severe" Spaniards with their inClination to distance themselves shamefully from their belived faith (cf. CERVANTES, GRACIAN). What those nonUnderstanders do not take into account is the original sin!
Does anyone, who is seriously preaching (like our protestants), believe in it? (GOMEZ DAVILA: "It would be interesting to research, whether any sermon has not resulted in murder.") Or any self-declared "Christian artist"? Really?? Really???
You know, of course, what catholic means: It includes all ways of GOD to man, thus also all real art is per se catholic. But at the same time for the explained reason no "catholic art" exists!

     It's true that there is something deeply personal about art, including the art of speaking. Original sin clouds how we understand, and human intellect struggles to comprehend that which is holy. What one writes or thinks or creates is apprehended imperfectly by another. Growing closer to God enables us to understand more deeply the truth that is spoken, but there are limits to how far we can go on this side of the veil. I often wish the Christian West had placed more emphasis on this aspect of the Fall; perhaps it might have been possible to avoid the Enlightenment and its consequences! Nevertheless, it is useless to fret over what has happened, because God in His wisdom permitted it to happen that way.

     Interestingly, I am friends with a seminarian's wife who is also a fan of Gomez Davila. I need to start reading him, because I can tell he is a very interesting writer.
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