The Limits of Ecumenism

I have a good friend with whom I take pleasure no end in needling about his heretical notions (he’s a Calvinist, probably greater than which cannot be thought). Though, as I often keep reminding him, holding heretical notions does not ipso facto make one a heretic, at least certainly not formally, though perhaps materially, if we can use a distinction that Rome employs, and which I find happily valid. A material heretic is one who holds wrong notions, even heretical ones, or notions founded on what are heretical axioms, but has done so not against the truth as they have learned it from childhood, for indeed, they have not learned it from childhood. A formal heretic, however, is one who is presented with the clear teaching of the Faith, and then summarily turns his back on it. Such a person is one who had been well-grounded in their education, and then makes this choice. Thus while my friend would decry Nestorianism, he has to assert that the righteousness by which we are justified is that of the human Christ, and at the same time has to admit of a coincidentalist view of the two wills of Christ that is only monergistic, and thus monothelitist. He was reared, in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, or the Only Pure Church, as we used to say when I myself was a member of that small but august body, and thus has really known no other doctrine, even though he has read some of the Fathers now and again.

The Way of All Blogs

If something can’t go on forever, it won’t. At some point I will pack this blog in, and given that I have been too overwhelmed with other matters to pay proper attention to this, now would seem like a good time to do so.

Fasting: It’s the Latest Fashion

This was originally a talk delivered at Eastern University, which somehow got transcribed here. When I saw this I wished that whoever had been my amanuensis had asked me for some feedback, as the original talk covered a number of items, and included the great line from St. John Climacus, that repentance is “self-condemning reflection, and carefree self-care . . . . the daughter of hope and the renunciation of despair. A penitent is an undisgraced convict.” But, as I have a blog, I guess I can try to right all wrongs there. And so, without further comment:

I was reared in Baltimore, the Baltimore of the late 60s and 70s, and so I always love it when I see the Ravens or Orioles on TV and hear the national anthem, and hear the Baltimorons give the “O” cheer at the appropriate part of the Star Spangled Banner, which is itself also from Baltimore. I was present at the creation of that Baltimore affectation to scream “O” at “Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,” which started in upper deck section 34 of old Memorial Stadium. Those were great days for the Orioles. A few Sundays ago, Fr. Andrew was preaching on Zacchaeus, and noted that, as the children’s song put it, he “was a wee, little man.” That Sunday a Pentecostal minster was visiting the parish, and he informed me that the Zacchaeus song was still sung in the children’s school of his church.

Defending Creation

We are already behind in my Orthodoxy class, but this was a foreseen inevitability. It is one of the reasons I despise so-called course objectives, with their demonstrable and measurable outcomes: how do you measure the mind altering confrontation a student has with St. Athanasius or even with Origen, a confrontation which all-too-often must consume more than a week of class? You can’t, and thus these items are so much cant that has been imposed on us by the most illiberal flatulence of what I would say is a misuse of the social sciences. A good antidote in this regard, on the birth of the social sciences, is Hayek’s The Counter-Revolution of Science. The first part is a dense philosophical essay on the nature of scientific inquiry, its methods and it limits. In the second part Hayek is in high dudgeon laying out the career and mania of Henri comte Saint-Simon and his various attempts to skewer the liberal arts (in this he was simpatico with Napoleon and Descartes) and bolster the polytechniques. One of Saint-Simon’s students and secretaries was August Comte. I highly recommend the book if you want a glimpse at what stands behind so much modern hubris about social planning. I am not saying social science has no place, not at all, but I see it as a descriptive set of disciplines, and not at all predictive.

A Nominal Question

I was asked recently about how a nominalist would interpret the verse in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (chapter 15) “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” On the face of it, this seemingly asserts a substantial link between Adam and the whole of our race, and also between Christ and the whole of our race (the Christian tradition has always asserted that even the resurrection of the damned is predicated on the humanity of Christ). A nominalist would assert that this is indeed the case. For the nominalist, it is not that there are no such thing as substances, but that there are no necessary substances. God only is necessary.

A timely sermon

Below is the sermon preached today by my parish priest, Fr. Andrew Damick, OSI. About half of the parishioners at St. Paul’s today were of Syrian descent, and the other half love the first half dearly. I am no gun control advocate, and I grew up with guns in my house, as did all my neighbors and all our friends, and I still take great care of the ones I have. In Switzerland for some years now, all males are obligated by law (and many females too) to own and know how to operate a military rifle. Gun crime in Switzerland is almost non-existent. While I believe we should make every effort to keep guns out of the hands of the insane and unstable, I also have no confidence in our government’s ability to protect us when such people do obtain them. And while I have no immediate fear of our government, there are millions of people around the world who wish they had the opportunity to stand up against tyranny with something other than their fists and stones. But our problems are so much greater than questions about the second amendment. I would commend to all of you this article written some 14 years ago when this rash of school shootings started. No, though accessibility to guns is a problem, our problems are much, much deeper.

Some passing thoughts on some Scripture (and the nature of our predicament).

My Interlocutor whom I had responded to before asked also the following question, and this one in a most real sense gets to the whole question of Scripture and imputed righteousness. Now, the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone does not stand or fall with imputed righteousness, as Luther had no clear concept of it, at least not a stated one at first, though it is implicit in his teaching on alien righteousness. To the question: