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

Thought and Action

This may be more questionable...

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

Finality... and Natural Inclinations

The question of finality in nature is key to an understanding of natural law. Hence a moral philosopher or moral theologian must study natural philosophy. pic.twitter.com/UHueXblZlO

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) October 27, 2020

The Will as Rational Appetite

A new episode of Sed Contra is now available. Join Drs. William Diem, @MDugandzic, @thomaesplendor, and @FrDylanSchrader as they discuss whether the will always chooses the good that it perceives to be higher. https://t.co/xS3epiY2XN

— The Sacra Doctrina Project (@sacradoctrina) July 7, 2020

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.

Romanus Cessario, OP: Accompaniment and Moral Development

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]

From 2017: Stephen Brock, "Thomas Aquinas, the Bearer of Practical Truth, and the Rationality of Action"

Means to End, End to Means

Time to reconsider God as end in respect of the relationship of the common good to the ultimate end?

From The End of Modernity by Thaddeus Kozinski:

According to St. Thomas, men cannot adequately understand in theory, let alone fulfill in practice, the detailed precepts of the natural law without the help of its author, God, and its divinely appointed interpreter, the Roman Catholic Church. With regard to a non-sacral foundation for political order, the Thomist Joseph May in the 1950s stated: “The only true doctrine is that civil society cannot prescind from the ultimate end [emphasis mine] both because the temporal welfare implies an ordering to the spiritual and supernatural, and because the individual citizens are directly and positively bound to tend to it.”[8] And even Dignitatis Humanae insists that it “leaves untouched the traditional Catholic doctrine about the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ” (Sec. 1). As Pope John Paul II often reiterated, the face of Jesus Christ is the only true mirror in which man can fully and accurately contemplate and comprehend his own nature and destiny; thus, only therein can he discern the moral values and goods most perfective of himself and the political order.

Joy

Christian joy cannot be faked or forced; it is the gift of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of the exercise of agape, ascesis, and suffering in Christ. It is certainly not the same as niceness.

The Intention

If the Intention is Unclean.

Posted by Orthodox Christian Network on Wednesday, October 21, 2015