A Note on Bonaventure

PSA: Bonaventure says the rational form of the irascible and concupiscible powers are according to which "immediate nati sumus in deum ferri, communicavimus cum Angelis, et in qua...habet reponi theologicas virtutes."

III Sent, d. 33, a. unic, q. 3, ad. 1

That's the tweet.

— Luke Togni (@LukeTogni) June 9, 2022

Can the Practice of Mindfulness Be Christianized?

CWR Dispatch: Anxiety, mindfulness, and prayer: Questions and a Catholic perspective

Is mindfulness a morally neutral psychological technique? Or should Catholics be wary of the use of mindfulness?

Eastern Christian Books: Scripture and Emotion in Maximus the Confessor

Eastern Christian Books: Scripture and Emotion in Maximus the Confessor

Brill: Divine Scripture and Human Emotion in Maximus the Confessor: Exegesis of the Human Heart by Andrew J. Summerson

Paul J. Griffiths, Regret

German theologians do not even know who #Griffith is rather read open theism articles from the 1980s. #German #theology #regret https://t.co/7qp2gyx9Jo

— Ulrich L. Lehner (@ulrichlehner) February 6, 2021

This. https://t.co/GnN82Wpo91

— Kyle (@home_grown_sanc) February 6, 2021

What We Would Call Dialectic

The front matter of my book 'The Dialogical Roots of Deduction' is already available online! It includes the ToC and the Preface, which offers a summary of the book as well as the acknowledgments (which is what everyone reads first anyway...).https://t.co/QyssckpzdK

— Prof. Catarina Dutilh Novaes 😷 (@cdutilhnovaes) November 27, 2020

Cambridge University Press

Philip Brickman and the Pursuit of Happiness

I have wanted to tell this story for 14 years. Today, I finally did. https://t.co/nAomzzXGY0

— Jennifer Senior (@JenSeniorNY) November 24, 2020

Acedia

New blog post on "Despondency": //svspress.com/blog/despondency-the-spiritual-teaching-of-evagrius-ponticus-on-acedia/ pic.twitter.com/VgSC6hGGqS

— SVS Press (@SVSPress) November 19, 2020

SVS Press

The Real Red Pill: Orthodoxy and Conspiracy Theories by Fr. Joseph Lucas

And yet, Christians did not focus on the conspiracy itself, but rather on the role they were to play within society. So how did they live in those days?

Both the New Testament and the writings of early Saints seem unconcerned with the power of the persecutors. They understood that God is also the Lord of history, and that the gates of Hades shall not prevail against the Church (Matt 16:18). In spite of the hatred often fulminated against Christians, they continued to love and pray for society and its leaders.

Yes Christians should be walking the ordinary path of holiness and practice agape, but is that all there is to it? The early Christians did not have a theory of just resistance to tyranny. Do we? And if we do, can we apply it?

Christ Martenson: Welcome To The Interregnum

The Weeping of Christ

One more follow up to this post. I definitely need to become more familiar with the writings of St. Maximos, so I can't write a response to his writings on this topic.

What of the difference between Christ and the mourners for Lazarus? Did the mourners, including Lazarus' sisters Mary and Martha, sin when they experienced grief, wept, and spoke and acted while in that condition, or was their sadness blameworthy?

It may be objected that Christ does not have any reason to weep for Lazarus as such, because of the knowledge that He possesses. He knows that Lazarus is not lost forever (but temporarily in Hades?). He knows that He will raise Lazarus from the dead (as a prefigurement of His own resurrection), and that Lazarus will be redeemed.

Is death an evil, something to be sad about, even if "everything will be ok in the end"? Even if we believe in the Resurrection of the righteous, when we grieve and weep for those who have passed away, is that a sin, a mark of imperfection or some sort? Can and did Christ feel sadness because someone has died, despite everything that He will do to remedy death? Christ knows as God that He saves; would it be objectionable to claim that Christ knows as man what he will do to redeem mankind ?

Does not Christ also know as man that He himself will be raised from the death on the third day? How could he make that prediction to His apostles if He did not know? And yet he nonetheless suffers in the garden before He is betrayed by Judas, and He has fear of death. How can such an emotion be justifiable (or sinless) if He knows that He will be triumphant over death? (And I know that St. Maximos at least does not claim that our Lord sinned in fearing His Passion and  His Death, though St. Maximos has his way of explaining it, something along the lines of His fear not affecting or swaying His will.)

It would seem that even for Christ, knowledge that Death does not have the last word, etc. does not exclude the possibility of associating emotions relating to death as an evil. So could it not be reasonable, then, for someone to be sad that a friend has death? And if it is reasonable, is it therefore sinless? And if sinless, could we not say that Christ did experience sadness that Lazarus had died, and not just out of compassion for the suffering of those who still live, not just sympathy, but a true sympathy, a suffering with others?

As I stated before, I hardly know the writings of St. Maximos, so I don't know if these objections are answered or deal with by him. I don't know if he (or St. Cyril of Alexandria) makes a mistake of applying a priori reasoning about human passion on Christ or the Theotokos. Perhaps the mourning of Martha and Mary was "imperfect," as their sadness lead to them being tempted to have doubts about Christ or to experience other disordered movements in the soul. We have their words at least to claim as evidence of this at least.

Is self-love bad? Disordered self-love that is so because of a rejection of God? Yes. But does that mean that everything that is done through disordered self-love is evil in itself? Is any passion associated with something perceived as evil necessarily blameworthy or sinful? Or only that which is motivated or left unchecked by disordered self-love? And would not passion motivated by a rightly-ordered love that is one with the Divine Agape be not blameworthy but praiseworthy? (If it is indeed possible to be righteous and yet experience the passions associated with evil or loss.) It seems that St. Maximos or St. Cyril of Alexandria might accept these distinctions, but need confirmation.

Not "Romantics" at Heart?

What would St. Maximos the Confessor and others who think like him of the sadness manifested by lovers who have to part from one another? Sinful? Not fully continent with respect to their emotions, like children, and unseemly in their tears? Can reason permit the expression of emotion out as a sign of how deeply united emotion is to love? Can we say that certain Christian models of the divisions of the soul are too "stoic"? Do we need to concern ourselves so much with the emotions per se, or with their healing and how they are united to agape?

A MV for 孫露: 『離別的車站』 coupled with clips from the Korean Movie, The Classic.

Speculation on Prelapsarian Human Nature

How far can one take it? And why should one take St. Maximos the Confessor as THE expression of Tradition on these points?

Orthodox Christian Theology: How Does Grief Demonstrate Our Original Sin?

If passions, like sadness (or "grief") is a consequence of the Fall, then it is because death is a consequence of the Fall and so we suffer loss and are sad as a result. But what does it mean that sadness is "blameworthy"? Are there no legitimate reasons for being sad, because we have suffered a loss? Is it only legitimate to feel sad out of compassion for the suffering for others? This seems too strict or rigorist to me. 

Saint Maximus taught that sadness is in fact a blameworthy passion that is the result of the fall—a stain of original sin. In the Questions to Thalassius he writes that after the Fall:

[T[he great and innumerable mob of passions was introduced into human life and corrupted it. Thus our life became filled with much groaning…If, on the other hand, our condition of self-love is distressed by pain, then we give birth to anger, envy, hate, enmity, remembrance of past injuries, reproach, slander, oppression, sorrow, hopelessness, despair, the denial of providence, torpor, negligence, despondency, discouragement, faint-heartedness, grief out of season, weeping and wailing, dejection, lamentation, envy, jealousy, spite, and whatever else is produced by our inner disposition when it is deprived of occasions for pleasure. (1.2.15)

Now, many may contend with Maximus’ teaching by saying Jesus “groaned” (John 11:34) and “wept” (John 11:35). We must be careful to read these passages in a Christologically orthodox way.

We know that Jesus “was tempted in every way,” but we also know that “God cannot be tempted by evil” (James 1:13). So, we must understand He was “tempted in every way, WITHOUT SIN” (the Greek does not necessarily include the word “but.”)

In other words, He was tempted in every blameless, without sin. sort of way—hunger, thirst, pain, privation—but not by sinful temptations such as sex, avarice, and the like. I have covered in detail elsewhere that Jesus Christ voluntarily assumed blameless passions, which were in fact not inherent to His sinless human nature as by nature flesh that is sinless, like Adam’s in paradise, experiences none of these things. However, Jesus did voluntarily experience these things as it was naturally possible for Him to. Adamite (prelapsarian) flesh is not glorified flesh—it can contain fallen aspects naturally because the fall did really occur in the prelapsarian flesh, turning it into postlapsarian flesh. Prelapsarian flesh tends towards immortality, but it is not truly immortal until it is glorified. Glorified flesh cannot experience the fall. So, Enoch, Elijah, Moses, Mary, and others (if they exist) with resurrected bodies cannot fall into sin like Adam and Eve, because they have glorified bodies. This, for them, would be an impossibility.

This being said, we must be careful not to assume Jesus weeps for the same reason we grieve. We often grieve because we feel an intense, sorrow due to personal loss or some sort of self-love. Jesus did not experience this sort of sorrow, which Maximus states is from the passions.

Weeping that arises from the blameless passions is much different. For example, weeping from laughter is not the same as grief. Weeping from hitting one’s thumb with a hammer also is not the same as grief. Weeping out of compassion and empathy is also not the same as grief.

When Jesus wept, this does not mean he was weeping from grief—which clearly the
Theotokos did during her son’s crucifixion.

As a brief aside, while grief and weeping from such are blameworthy passions, only the consent of the will to despondency is sin. So, our Orthodox icons of the Theotokos and Saint John weeping at the crucifixion is not a terrible example of sin—this would be absurd. It is a demonstration of God’s people, with postlapsarian flesh, experiencing grief as we all do. They were not despondent and so did not sin. Saint Basil (Letter 260, Par 9) and Saint Maximus (Life of the Virgin, Par 53) both speak of the Theotokos having instant healing from precisely this predicament.

The preceding being said, how did Jesus weep? First, let’s plainly look at what the Scriptures indicate. In John 11:31 there are “Jews” consoling Mary and Martha. It is not clear whether they were professional mourners (Jer 9:17), but they wept with Mary and Martha (John 11:33) akin to those wailing for a ruler’s dead daughter in Matt 9:23. Clearly, community-mourning was some sort of social custom in Judea. Contextually, we must understand that Jesus was joining in this social custom, which He was obviously accustomed to. What he was not doing was grieving the death of Lazarus, as He was calm four days beforehand being fully cognizant of its occurrence. Clearly, Jesus was showing pity for Mary and those there, joining in the community mourning.

Romanus Cessario, OP: Accompaniment and Moral Development

Guilt and Shame

A Necessary Healing

CWR: Abuse, Trauma, and the Body of Christ by Dr. Adam DeVille
Absent an honest and truthful admission of our brokenness, and the telling of the whole story, we can never find freedom and healing—let alone restore the Church’s bella figura.

While I am usually wary about DeVille's posts on psychotherapy, I think there is probably much of value here, though it would still be go if someone could analyze it from "Thomistic" principles, as Conrad Baars did.

Dealing with Death

CWR Dispatch: November and remembering our beloved dead by Adam A. J. DeVille
The vacuous talk used today in addressing death is becoming common, but it is the disappearance of practices around death that is infinitely worse.

I need to reread what St. Augustine recounts is St. Ambrose's objection to the following practice:

Edifying in an even more physically basic fashion is to have a picnic in a cemetery, which may seem the height of weirdness to some, but it was a wonderfully jovial and human thing to do. After the prescribed panachyda was prayed (a short memorial office in the Byzantine tradition) we relaxed by sharing drinks and food while recounting stories of those whose graves became makeshift tables for our libations. Our solemn prayers and tears were mingled with laughter and shots of vodka as we feasted in anticipation of the wedding feast of the Lamb, where there will one day be neither mourning nor dying, but all of us reunited around the table of eternity.

Melancholy

Body, Soul, and Spirit?

1 Thessalonians 5:23
Hebrews 4:12

David Clayton poses a question:


NLM

Someone points to Rosmini as having some things to say.


NLM

Does Scheeben discuss this as well?

What is the correlation between the spirit of man and the Holy Spirit?

OCA: Orthodox Spirituality
Forming the Soul -- Spirit, Soul, and Body
"The unity of the human person: The body-soul relationship in Orthodox Theology? by Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia

A Thomist perspective: Do we have spirit, soul, and body or just soul and body? by Dr Taylor Marshall

Reverence

Liturgical Piety and Emotion

From "What Became of the Spirit of the Liturgy? Implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium 1963—1965" by Susan Benofy

However, Guardini also says, the liturgy is difficult to adapt to modern man, who often finds it artificial and too formal, and prefers other forms of prayer which seem to have the advantage “of contemporary, or, at any rate, of congenial origin.”[8] But to be appropriate as a prayer for all people, and any situation, the liturgy must be formal, and keep “emotion under the strictest control.”[9]

The direct expression of emotion in prayer is more appropriate in personal prayer or popular devotions. These are rightly intended to appeal to certain tastes and circumstances, and consequently retain more local characteristics and aim more at individual edification, but they must remain distinct from the liturgy. “There could be no greater mistake than that of discarding the valuable elements in the spiritual life of the people for the sake of the liturgy, or than the desire of assimilating them to it.”[10] The liturgy is celebrated by the whole body of the faithful, not simply the assembled congregation. It embraces “all the faithful on earth; simultaneously it reaches beyond the bounds of time.”[11]

Guardini notes that, since the liturgy doesn’t fit any personality type exactly, all must sacrifice some of their own inclinations to properly enter into it. And, though liturgy requires fellowship, this does not mean ordinary social interaction. “[T]he union of the members is not directly accomplished from man to man. It is accomplished by and in their joint aim, goal, and spiritual resting place—God—by their identical creed, sacrifice and sacraments.”[12] Guardini insists that liturgical prayer “must spring from the fullness of truth. It is only truth—or dogma, to give it its other name—which can make prayer efficacious.”[13]

Theology of Presbyterate/Episcopate

MASCULINITY AND THE LITURGY by Fr. Thomas Loya

If the priest acts in persona Christi, how does he strengthen the "mystical understanding of his husbandhood and fatherhood"? Do presbyters participate in Christ's role as Bridegroom/Husband for the Church as the Mystical Bride? Not directly but as intermediaries or representatives of Christ who teach and lead, subordinate to Christ and the Holy Spirit. But in what way is Christ analogous to the human husband? Who would claim that Christ and the Church share some sort of egalitarian or even a complementarian relationship?

Psychology To Orthodox Spirituality: A Talk By Abbot Jonah Paffhausen (Now Metropolitan Jonah)