On Ancient Paths

28/11/2023

“We know God through his activity of and within creation, and we also participate in this divine activity in a more and more complete way as we are perfected. But God’s activities are not, like our activities, disconnected and imperfect expressions of a changeable nature performed within time. They are rather perfect “uncreated” expressions of the essence, and the primary referents for all that can be truly said of God. Thus, in a real sense, “each divine power and each energy is God himself.” Thus, to participate in God’s energies/activities is to participate in God himself, but not in a way that makes one literally part of the Godhead. One does not come to share in God’s essence, but in God’s self-expression, if I may put it that way. The deified person is not God by nature, but God by grace (as St. Maximus puts it)."

The return of my commitment to philosophical writing was happily marked earlier this year by the acceptance for publication at Religious Studies of a short essay I wrote, “On Orthodox Panentheism.” The goal of the paper was to explicate a picture of the God-world relation which is both Orthodox ...

27/11/2023

“A man is truly ill when he succumbs to the generic malady of the passions and spends his whole time in the sickroom of inertia.” - St Gregory of Sinai, celebrated today November 27

25/11/2023

Today is the feast of St. Katherine of Alexandria, patron, among other things, of philosophers.

According to her legend, she was a beautiful and educated woman of 4th century Alexandria who converted to Christianity after receiving a vision. At the age of 18, she debated 50 pagan philosophers. Amazed at her wisdom and debating skills, they became Christians—as did about 200 soldiers and members of the emperor’s family. All of them were martyred.

Sentenced to be executed on a spiked wheel, Katherine touched the wheel and it shattered. She was beheaded. Centuries later, angels are said to have carried the body of Saint Katherine to the site of the famous monastery named after her at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

22/11/2023

"All creatures are balanced upon the creative word of God, as if upon a bridge of diamond; above them is the abyss of the divine infinitude, below them that of their own nothingness." - St Philaret of Moscow

15/11/2023

When is it ok to start playing Christmas music? An Orthodox perspective:

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Nativity Fast, a period of 40 days leading up to Christmas Day (analogous to the Western Advent), begins on November 15. So it might seem that this is the official beginning of the “Christmas season.”

However, it is also true that this is a period of fasting rather than festival, and that there is nothing really done liturgically to mark this point.

On the other hand, five days after the the beginning of the fast, on the eve of the feast of the Presentation of the Theotokos (Nov. 21) the church first sings the part of Christmas matins canon that doubles as the Nativity greeting: “Christ is born! Glorify Him!” This is then repeated at all festal and Sunday matins for the duration of the season.

Therefore, I conclude that it is permissible to enjoy all Christmas music beginning the evening of November 20.

14/11/2023

"God both is and is said to be the nature of all things, in so far as all things partake of him and subsist by means of this participation...In this sense he is the Being of all beings, the Form that is in all forms as the Author of form, the Wisdom of the wise and, simply, the All of all things. Yet he is not nature, because he transcends every nature; he is not a being because he transcends every being; and he is not nor does he possess a form, because he transcends every form...He is everywhere and nowhere; he has many names and he cannot be named; he is ever-moving and he is unmoved and, in short, he is everything and no-thing." - St Gregory Palamas, celebrated today, Nov. 14

13/11/2023

The latest is up. I have to admit that even I was surprised in compiling this at how radical some of his views sound to modern ears.

In short:
(1) Human beings are made in the image of God as free and kingly, and thus no coercive authority over others, whether in slavery or government is natural, but is a result of sin.
(2) Excess wealth is always a result of injustice and literally belongs to the poor.
(3) Private property is unnatural and a result of sin. Common ownership is God's economy.

12/11/2023

Today (Nov. 12) we commemorate St John the Compassionate, Patriarch of Alexandria.

St John was Patriarch of Alexandria in the seventh century. When he was elected Patriarch he immediately asked that a list be drawn up of “all my masters, down to the least of them.” When asked what he meant by this strange request, St John replied “The people whom you call poor and beggars are my masters and helpers, for it is only they who can really help us and bring us to the Kingdom of Heaven.” The list ended up containing 7000 names, and to each one St John allotted a daily allowance of money.

St John then issued decrees about commerce, imposing penalties for those who cheated others in the markets, and then built seven hospitals, each with forty beds. To women who came to give birth in these hospitals, he gave a ‘maternity benefit’ upon leaving. He also built homes for the aged and infirm, and houses of hospitality for strangers.
..

St John loved to get money from the wealthy to give to the poor. One time a certain wealthy person tried to ingratiate the saint by buying him a lavish gift. St John sold it and gave the money to the poor, so another gift was given. This kept happening and St. John said “We shall see who gets tired of this first!” He would also say “If in order to help the needy one is able, without ill-will, to strip the rich down to their shirts, one is not doing wrong, especially if they are heartless skinflints.”

09/11/2023

Those who follow this page may be interested to know that I've started a substack where I will post longer, more personal and speculative, reflections on philosophy, religion, and society. The introductory post can be found here: https://onancientpaths.substack.com/p/welcome-to-my-substack .

Please subscribe if you feel inclined to do so.

“On Ancient Paths” “This is what the LORD says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it.’” (Jeremiah 6:16) I can’t say when I first read this verse, but it became important to me at some point early in graduate school. I w...

06/11/2023

"Kant’s concept of the sublime, though he did not himself apply it to art, suggests something essential to the nature of serious art: how the world overflows the art object, how it transcends it, how emotions attend the experience of this...The art object is porous or cracked, another reality flows through it, it is in tension between a clarified statement and a confused pointing, and is in danger if it goes too far either way." - Iris Murdoch

31/10/2023

For Halloween, St. Gregory of Nyssa on the existence of ghosts: "Around their graves shadowy phantoms of the departed are often seen. If this is really so, an inordinate attachment of that particular soul to the life in the flesh is proved to have existed. . . . It remains near the frame even after the dissolution of the frame, and . . . hovers regretfully over the place where its material is and continues to haunt it” (from On the Soul and the Resurrection).

27/10/2023

“The church is the perfect image of the sensible world. For sky it has the divine sanctuary, and for earth the nave in all its beauty. And vice versa the world is a church. For sanctuary it has sky and for nave the grandeur of the earth.” - St Maximus the Confessor

23/10/2023

“You have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you?” - St James the Just (cel. Oct 23).

20/10/2023

It looks like although the earliest reports were in error, St. Porphyrios Orthodox Church in Gaza has now in fact been hit by an Israeli bomb. It was the oldest church in Gaza, and one of the oldest in the world. It was being used to shelter Palestinians, Christian and non-Christian. At least 18 Palestinian Christians are reported dead, including at least one child. Lord have mercy and welcome the New Martyrs of Gaza

19/10/2023

I get asked pretty often about the Orthodox view of animals (especially beloved pets) in the afterlife. So far, I’ve only been able to say that reason applied to our tradition of the relationship between God, man, and the cosmos, and applied to the nature of our own loving relationships with animals, indicates to me that there could be no happiness or fulfillment of creation without the existence of animals in eternity. Met. Kallistos Ware has at least expressed hope in this regard. But I’ve recently come across a rather strong Saintly confirmation of this by Saint Luke the Surgeon of Simferopol:

“Does man only possess immortality? The great words: ‘Behold, I make all things new’ are certainly related not to man only, but to all creation, to every creature. We have already said that the spirit of animals, even the smallest part of it, cannot be mortal, for it is from the Holy Spirit….In the new Jerusalem, the new universe, there will be a place for the animals, too….Eternal life for [non-human] creatures will be only quiet happiness and enjoyment of the new radiant nature full of light, in communication with man, who will no longer torture and exterminate it.” (*Spirit, Soul, and Body*, pp. 120-121)

18/10/2023

A saint testifies that Plato is a Christian? There’s another great story I recently learned about St. Anastatius of Sinai (early 8th cent.). He was asked about whether it is fitting to pray for pagans who did not know Christ. He responds by telling of ‘an ancient tradition concerning a certain scholar who frequently cursed the philosopher Plato. And so [one day] Plato appeared to him in a dream and said; “Man, cease from cursing me, it is your own self that you harm. I admit that I was a sinful man: but when Christ descended into hell, truly, no one believed in him more quickly than I did.”’ The saint’s conclusion is especially interesting and striking: ‘Having heard this you cannot believe that there is no repentance in hell.’

17/10/2023

Reminder that St. Nikolai Velimirovic, himself no ecumenist, in his mature theological writings calls Confucius, Laozi, Krishna, and Buddha prophets sent to their countries by the Holy Spirit. He blesses and glorifies their memories, calls them righteous, meditates on their counsels, which he says were offerings to God. “Do not slay the prophets sent to you,” he says at the end, but “[b]e wise…and cordially receive the precious gifts of the wise men from the East, intended for your Son.”*

* From number 48 in Prayers by the Lake.

Edit: Two necessary corrections (I was going by memory): he doesn’t mention Confucius, only Laozi. The fourth is Zoroaster. Also, these prayers were written fairly early, and so are not “mature” writings at least in the sense of being late in his life

17/10/2023

Reminder that St. Nikolai Velimirovic, himself no ecumenist, in his mature theological writings calls Confucius, Laozi, Krishna, and Buddha prophets sent to their countries by the Holy Spirit. He blesses and glorifies their memories, calls them righteous, meditates on their counsels, which he says were offerings to God. “Do not slay the prophets sent to you,” he says at the end, but “[b]e wise…and cordially receive the precious gifts of the wise men from the East, intended for your Son.”*

* Source is the 48th of his Prayers by the Lake.

16/10/2023

In case you weren’t aware, both the Latin (Catholic) and Greek (Orthodox) patriarchs of Jerusalem have jointly called for tomorrow (Tues. Oct 17) to be a day of prayer and fasting for Gaza and those suffering from the current crisis.

16/10/2023

"One should know that it isn't easy for a person to arrive at a firm judgement unless, day after day, he states and hears the same principles, and at the same time applies them to his life." - Epictetus

15/10/2023

“Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart, It will not come nigh unto me. Even by the falling of water-drops a water-pot is filled; the fool becomes full of evil, even if he gather it little by little.

Let no man think lightly of good, saying in his heart, It will not come nigh unto me. Even by the falling of water-drops a water-pot is filled; the wise man becomes full of good, even if he gather it little by little.” - Bhudda, Dhammapada 9:121-122

13/10/2023

"You are unmoved, yet ever-moving,
and You are wholly outside of creation, wholly in every creature.
The whole of You fills all things, yet You are completely outside of everything,
above all things, Master, above all beginning,
above all essence, above the nature of nature....
You are beyond understanding and remain without change,
You are simple, whole, and You are many-faceted,
and a mind is totally unable to understand the diversity of your glory and the splendor of your beauty....
You yourself are entirely and inseparably with us,
and You are in the world, yet again You cannot be contained by the world.
For you are in the all, You are above the all."
- St Symeon the New Theologian, celebrated today Oct. 12

12/10/2023

“All things are full of angels."
- Origen of Alexandria, HomEz., 1.7.
(H/t Ryan Haecker)

10/10/2023

“How, then, shall we face the future? When the sailor is out on the ocean, when everything is changing all around him, when the waves are born and die, he does not stare down into the waves, because they are changing. He looks up at the stars. Why? Because they are faithful; they have the same location now that they had for our ancestors and will have for generations to come. By what means does he conquer the changeable? By the eternal, one can conquer the future, because the eternal is the ground of the future, and therefore through it the future can be fathomed.” - Kierkegaard

06/10/2023

"The 'churching of life' is the realization of the whole world as one great church, adorned with icons - persons who should be venerated, honored, and loved, because these icons are true images of God that have the holiness of the Living God within them." - St. Mother Maria of Paris

06/10/2023

I love the Orthodox Church. But I’m not the first to doubt whether I would have converted if I had been exposed to its current representation back when I was first inquiring.(OC)

01/10/2023

"Gregory [of Nyssa] says that God pervades each being and that this mixing with ‘the all’ keeps beings in being...In another text from the same work we hear of the ineffable wisdom of God, which appears in the cosmos and shows us that ‘the divine nature and power is in every existing thing’. Because of this presence all things remain in being. From the Oratio catechetica we gather that the divine is present in everything, it penetrates, embraces, and is seated in it. All beings depend on He Who Is, and nothing exists which does not have its being in God (‘that which is’).

This terminology has a certain pantheistic ring to it. There is a divine presence in the created cosmos, and this presence may be described both as permeation and mixing, as envelopment or embracement. God, of course, is not a body and cannot physically permeate or embrace anything in that sense. Nor can He physically mix with anything. These terms are obviously applied metaphorically. Even so, there is no reason to weaken the realistic picture Gregory presents. He obviously thinks that God is present in the whole of creation, not present by created replicas of His perfections, but rather really present by His uncreated power." - Torstein Theodor Tollefsen

30/09/2023

It do be like that sometimes. (OC)

24/09/2023

Today we celebrate St. Silouan of Mt. Athos, a 20th century saint known for his loving compassion for all creation: “The heart that has learned to love feels sorry for every created thing…

Once I needlessly killed a fly. The poor thing crawled on the ground, hurt and mangled, and for three whole days I wept over my cruelty to a living creature, and to this day the incident remains in my memory…

The Spirit of God teaches the soul to love every living thing so that she would have no harm come to even a green leaf on a tree, or trample underfoot a flower of the field. Thus the Spirit of God teaches love towards all, and the soul feels compassion for every being.”

21/09/2023

Met. Anthony Bloom on meat-eating as a failure of the human vocation: “People were getting further and further away from God, to the moment when God, glancing at them, said: ‘These people have become flesh.’ There was no spirituality left in them…And after the flood God says for the first time: ‘Now all living things are given to you for food. They will serve you as food and they will fear you and dread you.’ This is very frightening. It is frightening to imagine that Man, who was called to lead every being along the road to transfiguration, to the fullness of life, came to the point that he could no longer ascend to God, and was compelled to obtain his food by the killing of those which he should have led to perfection. This is where the tragic circle closes. We find ourselves inside this circle…[Still, the] saints show us that we can through prayer and spiritual endeavor gradually free ourselves form the need to feed on the flesh of animals, and, becoming more and more assimilated to God, require less and less of it.”

18/09/2023

‘“Reverential attention to straighten the inner aspects of life; righteousness to square the outer aspects of life. When reverential attention and righteousness are established, Virtue will never be alone.” Virtue will never be alone: because one regards oneself as the same as other things, one can never be alone.’ Cheng Hao (10th cent. Neo-Confucian)

16/09/2023

Today we celebrate St. Ninian, a fourth century bishop born in Roman Britain who is known as the first Christian missionary to Scotland. Like other important figures in Celtic Christianity, he was especially fond of nature and animals. His biographer Aelred of Rievaulx tells that when he would visit the huts of shepherds, he would have them gather together all of their animals as well, so that “the flocks…should be partakers of the episcopal blessing” also. “Therefore, all the animals being gathered into one place, when the servant of the Lord had looked upon them, he lifted up his hand and commended all that he had to the Divine protection. Going, therefore, round them all, and drawing as it were a little circle with the staff on which he leant, he enclosed the cattle, commanding that all within that space should that night remain under the protection of God. “ (Shown is St Ninian’s chapel in Whithorn, Scotland.)

15/09/2023

St. Gregory Palamas on divine goodness and simplicity.

06/09/2023

With the apparent far-right takeover of public American Orthodoxy, it is a small comfort, perhaps, to think that the time of the popularity of the Black Hundreds in Russia was also the time of the young Bulgakov, Florensky, Berdaev, Florovsky, Sventsitsky, etc.

The question of the “real” character of Orthodoxy, the battle between reach and reaction, preserving the fire vs. guarding the ashes, etc., is not new (with the multitude always being, no doubt, somewhere in the middle and none-the-wiser).

03/09/2023

This is, I hope, the most fundamental truth about reality.

31/08/2023

An Orthodox Thomist Saint?

Today the Orthodox Church celebrates an interesting figure called by more than one scholar "a Byzantine Thomist", St. Gennadios Scholarios. Also sometimes called "the last Byzantine," he was the first Patriarch of Constantinople after the final fall of that city to the Turks in 1453.

An avid student of philosophy, he was one of the first to translate and summarize the works of Thomas Aquinas into Greek, and claimed that "I do not think that anyone of his disciples honors Thomas Aquinas more than I...and he can be accounted fortunate who becomes his disciple in everything."

Though he is mindful of certain views of his which must be rejected by the Orthodox (especially the filioque), ("let no one be troubled by this" he says,) he calls him a "wise and profitable teacher for those acquainted with him." He has nothing but praise for his logical method. Though as only a human, "Latin by birth", he could not avoid falling into some errors, he is nonetheless according to St. Gennadios "a wise man and inferior to none of those who are perfect in wisdom among men."

27/08/2023

Christian monism (even, *gasp*, pantheism)? Two quotes from St Gregory Palamas:

”Where can we learn anything certain and true about God, about the world as a whole, and about ourselves? Is it not from the teaching of the Holy Spirit? For this teaching has taught us that God is the only Being that truly is.”

“God both is and is said to be the nature of all things, in so far as all things partake of him and subsist by means of this participation...In this sense he is the Being of all beings, the Form that is in all forms as the Author of form, the Wisdom of the wise and, simply, the All of all things.” - St Gregory Palamas

(FWIW, St Gregory here is surely referencing inspired Scripture (at least for Orthodox and Catholics), Sirach 43:27: ‘Though we speak much we cannot reach the end, and the sum of our words is: “He is the all.”’ (τὸ πᾶν ἐστιν))

These sayings seem to me plausibly described as a type of monism. And I think if you look charitably at what Vedanta and other traditional monisms actually teach, there probably isn’t much difference at all.

14/08/2023

Today we celebrate the Prophet Micah.

13/08/2023

Today we celebrate the sixth century saint Dorotheus of Gaza