Jeremiah
@OnAncientPaths
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Philosophy PhD, Orthodox Christian, software engineer, classical guitarist, vegan bodybuilder. Mostly theology/philosophy, but eclectic enough to annoy everyone
Joined May 2022
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Today is the day (according to official, though disputed, Soviet records) that St. Pavel Florensky was martyred, shot dead by the authorities in a forest in Siberia (or perhaps, with many others, at an Artillery Range outside Leningrad). 🧵 (1/7)
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Today we celebrate my favorite modern saint, Mother Maria of Paris. A unique character: a former revolutionary and deputy mayor, poet and theologian, twice married, nun in the world; she could be seen always either serving the poor or smoking cigarettes and discussing theology.🧵
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A good time to remember that the first saint jointly canonized by ROCOR and Moscow was an anti-fascist anti-imperialist who was martyred by the Nazis he rightly called demonic.
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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. I hope we can do and be better. (OC)
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Today we celebrate my favorite modern saint, Mother Maria of Paris. A unique character: a former revolutionary and deputy mayor, poet and theologian, twice married, nun in the world; she could be seen always either serving the poor, or smoking cigarettes and discussing theology.
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Today is the day (according to official, though disputed, Soviet records) that St. Pavel Florensky* was martyred, shot dead by the authorities in a forest in Siberia (or perhaps, with many others, at an Artillery Range outside Leningrad). Florensky was one of the most remarkable
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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
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New DBH has arrived. A 500 page dialogue between Greek gods on mind and matter. ❤️🔥
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During the trial of St. Maximus for his teaching on the two wills of Christ, the bishop representing the emperor suggested that it would be better to stick to the “simple words” of Scripture without entering into elaborate speculations. The saint responded:
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Today on Orthodox twitter I learned that if a non-Orthodox person says "God bless you," that is in fact predatory dictatorial imposition that must be rejected, because blessing is a clerical act and *real* Orthodox don't accept blessings from schismatics or heretics...
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Today we celebrate Abba Sisoes, one of the early desert fathers. A favorite saying of his:
A young monk said to Abba Sisoes: “Abba, what should I do? I fell.” The elder answered: “Get up!” The monk said: “I got up and I fell again!” The elder replied: “Get up again!” (1/2)
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My favorite saying for the season, from St Gregory the Theologian’s (4th cent.) Oration 38.
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“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,
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Today in the Orthodox Church we celebrate perhaps my favorite saint of the last hundred years, Mother Maria Skobtsova (St Mary of Paris). In earlier life she was a radical intellectual and poet, and even served as deputy mayor after the Russian Revolution…
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“God is everywhere. There is no place God is not…In Him we live and move. We breathe God, we eat God, we clothe ourselves with God. Everything praises and blesses God. All of creation shouts His praise. Everything animate and inanimate speaks wondrously …Let every breath
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"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
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Today is the feast of St Columba of Iona in Scotland, one of the great Celtic saints. His biographer St. Adamnan tells that once he unknowingly blessed a knife belonging to one of the brothers. When he realized what he had done, he said..
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DBH's forthcoming book on consciousness: "David Bentley Hart’s book on consciousness (due out from Yale in 2024 and first talked about in 2015) will be titled *All Things Are Full of Gods* ...Hart has shared that it is “...530 pages of platonic dialogue,” between Psyche, Hermes,
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Being Orthodox because it is "based" or "traditionalist" or anti-whatever is just as much a capitulation to culture, missing the forest of the eternal for the trees of contemporary culture wars. It is essentially reactionary, 'tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind'
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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
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“Get into the habit, train yourselves, to do whatever you are doing conscientiously, with elegance, with distinction, don't blur your work, don't do anything in bad taste, all anyhow. Remember that you can waste a whole lifetime on all anyhow, whereas in measured, rhythmic
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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
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“Piety, piety, but where is the love that moves mountains?” According to witnesses, today is the day St Maria Skobtsova was killed in the gas chamber by the Nazis for her role in helping Jews to escape occupied Paris.
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Today we celebrate St. Macrina the Younger, sometimes called St. Macrina the Teacher, for she was the older sister of Sts Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, and impacted them deeply by both her philosophical learning and her personal holiness.
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Looks like Rowan Williams has another book out on the Eastern Christian tradition of spirituality. I’m excited to read it. His book *Looking East in Winter*, on Eastern and Orthodox theology more broadly, was very good.
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But the young monk asked: “For how long should I get up when I fall?” “Until your death,” answered Abba Sisoes. “For a man heads to his judgment either fallen or getting back up again.” (2/2)
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“You men transformed [paradise] for us into hell. What devils are to you, you men are to us [animals]….On the day of Judgment men will have to give an answer for all the torments, for all the sufferings, for all the troubles, for all the deaths of all earthly beings and
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Today is the feast of St Columba of Iona in Scotland, one of the great Celtic saints. His biographer St. Adamnan tells that once he unknowingly blessed a knife belonging to one of the brothers. When he realized what he had done,
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TIL St. Gregory of Nyssa believed in 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...
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A prayer of St Nicodemus the Hagiorite, celebrated today July 14: “Lord Jesus Christ, moved by your tender mercy, take pity on the suffering animals... For if a righteous man takes pity on the souls of his cattle, how should you not take pity on them…
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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
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"Thus, as Maximus the Confessor said, to contemplate the smallest object is to experience the Trinity: the very being of the object takes us back to the Father; the meaning it expresses, its logos, speaks to us of the Logos;
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Semi-regular reminder that breath-focused mindfulness meditation is not inconsistent with Christian traditions of prayer but is in fact recommended by St Gregory Palamas as a helpful stage of mental prayer:
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“Abba Xanthios said, ‘A dog is better than I am, for he has love and does not judge.” — Sayings of the Desert Fathers
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Today we celebrate St John Chrysostom, who, it is worth pointing out, taught that common ownership is natural and private property an unnatural cause of sin, that common ownership is good, and that it is a good even when the common ownership is by way of and managed by the state:
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"If someone turns...toward another person...He comes into contact with the true image of God in man, with the very icon of God incarnate in the world...And he needs to accept this awesome revelation of God unconditionally, to venerate the image of God in his brother."
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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
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"This grass is an icon; this stone is an icon; and I can kiss it, venerate it, because it is filled with God’s grace. The world is not for us to take things from, but a place where we cast off our passions and desires." - St Paisios, celebrated today July 12
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I’m very excited that I can now announce my paper “On Orthodox Panentheism” has been accepted for publication in Religious Studies!
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"If someone turns...toward another person...He comes into contact with the true image of God in man, with the very icon of God incarnate in the world...And he needs to accept this awesome revelation of God unconditionally, to venerate the image of God in his brother."
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Apparently, DBH is editing a reader on Christian Socialism. That makes me very happy.
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“Piety, piety, but where is the love that can move mountains?”
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“Do you know that God gave us one more commandment, which is not recorded in Scripture? It is the commandment “love the trees.“ When you plant a tree, you plant hope, you plant peace, you plant love, and you will receive God’s blessing.” - Elder Amphilochius of Patmos
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@amytheartist
Pretty sure teenagers still do that. They just aren’t famous so you don’t see them…
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Today we celebrate St Justin Martyr, a patron saint of philosophers (and, I think, a reasonable Christian inclusivism).
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until finally he was transferred to Leningrad in 1937 and was sentenced by an extrajudicial NKVD troika to death. Solzhenitsyn called him "perhaps the most remarkable person devoured by the Gulag." (7/7)
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“In saying this, you are introducing new rules for exegesis, foreign to the Church’s tradition. If one may not delve into the sayings of Scripture and the Fathers with a speculative mind, the whole Bible falls apart, Old and New Testament alike...
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Florensky was one of the most remarkable, brilliant men in history; a priest, theologian, philosopher, art theorist, mathematician, scientist. Wanting to join the monastery, he was convinced by friends to become a scholar instead. (2/7)
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[Those content with the simple words of Scripture] carry a covering over their hearts, so as not to see that “the Lord is Spirit” (2 Cor 3:17), hidden within the letter, and that he says, “The letter kills, it is the Spirit that gives life!” (2 Cor 3:6).
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New print of Origen teaching the saints added to icon corner. (Don’t tell the Ortho-bros that St Francis of Assisi is on the right.)
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Political changes, personal tragedy led her to the Church. She fled to Paris, became a nun on condition she could live in the world and directly serve the poor. When Nazis took Paris, she did all she could for the Jews and was eventually martyred in a gas chamber in Ravensbruck.
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I posted a similar picture to this before, noting the way that St. Nikolai Velimirovich, in his Prayers by the Lake, refers to Buddha, Krishna, Confucius, and Laozi as prophets of blessed memory sent by the Holy Spirit. It was somewhat controversial, and I later realized that
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"What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy
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Political changes, personal tragedy led her to the Church. She fled to Paris, became a nun on condition she could live in the world and directly serve the poor. When Nazis took Paris, she did all she could for the Jews and was eventually martyred in a gas chamber in Ravensbruck.
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My favorite statement of Orthodox ‘panentheism,’ from St Gregory Palamas, whom we honor today: "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,
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“Christian morality is a labor of vision - to see the form of Christ, to see all creation as having been recapitulated in him, and to see in all other persons the possibility of discerning and adoring Christ’s form in a new fashion.” - David Bentley Hart
(Icon by Lyuba Yatskiv)
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He also says “all sacred Scripture can be divided into flesh and spirit as if it were..man. For the literal sense of Scripture is flesh and its inner meaning is soul or spirit. Clearly someone wise abandons what is corruptible and unites his whole being to what is incorruptible."
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Today the Orthodox Church celebrates the 18th century Saint Seraphim of Sarov. Living many years as a hermit in the forest, his friendship with the local animals was often a source of wonder to visitors and fellow monks. One eyewitness speaks of how rabbits, foxes, lynx, bears,
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The saint was amazed that the animal was aware of realities the monks were not, and had come to bid him farewell. He blessed the horse, who turned and went sadly on its way (ibid. III. 24).
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the literal and external forms of religion; for he does not nourish his intellect with the splendor of his intellections, but imbues his perception with impassioned fantasies derived from the material aspects of scriptural symbols.”
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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,
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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
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My paper "On Orthodox Panentheism" has now been assigned an issue and been published "in the flesh."
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During this he wrote a textbook on electrical engineering that was a Soviet standard for nearly three decades. He also wrote on ancient Russian art and was rumored to be the main organizer of a conspiracy to save the relics of St. Sergii Radonezhsky from gov't destruction.
(5/7)
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‘I trust in my Lord that the implement I have blessed will not harm man or beast.’ His prayer was answered—when the brother tried repeatedly to use the knife to slaughter a steer, he found it simply would not cut (Life of St Columba II.30).
There is another story that,
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"The Christian should see two realities at once, one world (as it were) within another: one the world as we all know, in all its beauty and terror, grandeur and dreariness, delight and anguish; and the other the world in its first and ultimate truth, not simply “nature” but
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Today starts the Nativity Fast in the Orthodox Church, a 40 day period of fasting before Christmas which is our rough equivalent to western Advent.
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near the end of his life, he became aware that he had not long left in this world. The week of his death, he sat down from a walk, wearied, and the loyal white work-horse of the monastery ran over to him, rested his head on his breast, and wept as a man would…
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After this, he was accused of various things, sentenced to labor camps, and offered exile to Paris, which he refused. In various camps, he was always humbly continuing his scientific research (at the end, into producing iodine and agar out of the local seaweed in Solovki), (6/7)
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Man, just heard about Met. John Zizioulas. Guess it’s time to finally push this to the top of the reading stack. Memory eternal.
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If you are a Christian (of any sort) and haven’t read Olivier Clement’s book The Roots of Christian Mysticism, you definitely should. Read it for Lent.
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“Nobody can embrace the least natural principle or thought if he devotes himself merely to a literal observance of the Law, since symbols and nature are not identical...So, too, is the soul of every man who has abandoned the grace of spiritual contemplation and become a slave to
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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…
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The same applies to the Law and to external religious practices, which are only symbols of what they represent and are harmful to spiritual life when exalted too highly:
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"Who, looking at the universe, would be so feeble-minded as not to believe that God is all in all; that he clothes himself with the universe, and at the same time contains it and dwells in it? Nothing can exist except in the bosom of Him who Is." - St Gregory of Nyssa
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Eight people baptized and Bulgakov cited in the sermon is a pretty good Sunday morning.
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For his feast day, I wrote about the political and economic views of St. John Chrysostom. 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
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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,
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@enzoreds
Depends on definition of famous, but Harry Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit” was a best seller, he was on Colbert and a bunch of other places.
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himself to move to Moscow to help with the project to bring electrification to Russia. According to contemporaries, Florensky in his priest's cassock, working alongside other leaders of a Government department, was a remarkable sight. (4/7)
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"This grass is an icon; this stone is an icon; and I can kiss it, venerate it, because it is filled with God’s grace. The world is not for us to take things from, but a place where we cast off our passions and desires." - St Paisios, celebrated today July 12
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“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
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Going to start a new tradition of reading St. Maximus’ Ambiguum 7 every Jan. 21. If you haven’t read it, it’s probably the deepest short bit of philosophical theology and theological anthropology in existence.
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“The prodigal son, we are told, went to a far country and there spent all that he had. A far country! It is this unique definition of our human condition that we must assume and make ours as we begin our approach to God. A man who has never had that experience, be it only very
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“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
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who will no longer torture and exterminate it.” - St. Luke of Simferopol, celebrated today
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