The mind of the Fathers
Western Christian theology is founded on the phronema of Augustine. The East did not acquire the mind of one Father, but the mind of the Fathers.
Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, Thinking Orthodox: Understanding and Acquiring the Orthodox Christian Mind
There’s a lot more that could be said about this, but I’m not the guy to say it nor is this a good forum. That’s why I give you the link.
Redemptionist Theology
Christian horizons are limited by the drama played between God, who is infinitely offended by sin, and man, who is unable to satisfy the impossible demands of vindictive justice. The drama finds its resolution in the death of Christ, the Son of God who has become man in order to substitute Himself for us and pay our debt to divine justice. What becomes of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit here? His part is reduced to that of an auxiliary, an assistant in redemption, causing us to receive Christ’s expiated merit. . . . The price of our redemption having been paid in the death of Christ, the resurrection and the ascension are only a glorious happy end of his work, a kind of apotheosis without direct relationship to our human destiny. This redemptionist theology, placing all the emphasis on the passion, seems to take no interest in the triumph of Christ over death. The very work of the Christ-Redeemer, to which this theology is confined, seems to be truncated, impoverished, reduced to a change of the divine attitude toward fallen men, unrelated to the nature of humanity.
Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, Thinking Orthodox: Understanding and Acquiring the Orthodox Christian Mind
No creed but the Bible
By the 1840s one analyst of American Protestantism concluded, after surveying fifty-three American sects, that the principle “No creed but the Bible” was the distinctive feature of American religion. John W. Nevin surmised that this emphasis grew out of a popular demand for “private judgment” and was “tacitly if not openly conditioned always by the assumption that every man is authorized and bound to get at this authority in a direct way for himself, through the medium simply of his own single mind.”48 Many felt the exhilarating hope that democracy had opened an immediate access to biblical truth for all persons of good will. Americans found it difficult to realize, however, that a commitment to private judgment could drive people apart, even as it raised beyond measure their hopes for unity.
Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity
John Wilson Nevin, Philip Schaff and Mercerburg Seminary are three names that bring a wistful smile to my face. American Protestantism would, I’m almost positive, be much healthier had they heeded these far-seeing voices.
Change and decay around me all I see
I Didn’t Leave Protestantism Because I Hated It. I Left Because It Kept Changing
Frankly, that’s not why I left Protestantism. My church was changing relatively slowly. But I agree with the author completely about the facts: Protestantism does keep changing, and the more thoughtful Protestants make a virtue of that necessity: “Isn’t it wonderful that everyone can find a church to suit them!”
No. It would be wonderful if we were all one. You can look that up.
Meaning
They were freed from worry about getting their souls into God’s heaven by the discovery that they had no souls and that God had no heaven. They were freed from the terror of devils and plagues by the knowledge that the thing that was making them scream and foam was not an imp but only their own inability to cope, and that the thing that was clawing out their entrails was not divine wrath but only cancer. Altogether, life became much more livable since it was clear that in fact nothing lay behind things. The age was called enlightened.
The myth sovereign in the old age was that everything means everything. The myth sovereign in the new is that nothing means anything.
Tom Howard, Chance or the Dance?
Ancient Presbyterian mistrust
What she disapproves is not that I am doing public penance. No, what bothers her is an ancient Presbyterian mistrust of things, things getting mixed up in religion. The black sweater and the ashes scandalize her. Her eyelid lowers—she almost winks. What have these things, articles, to do with doing right?
Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins
… and worst of all
- It misrepresents (I’m pretty sure) Catholic teaching on the relationship of works and righteousness.
- It cherry-picks and decontextualizes an Orthodox source who would disagree with its conclusions.
- Worst of all, it reminds me of something equally cringe I wrote, and Christianity Today published, when I was young and foolish.
I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on my favorite no-algorithm social medium.
