I'm not sure why you sometimes hesitate to write auto-biographically, it's always far and away your most powerful and thought-provoking writing. I'm fascinated by your journey and I want further essays on each part of your journey (especially Sufism!). I have an icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov in my daughter's bedroom and I love him very much. My second son's middle name is Isidore, and as a hideously theoretical man who loves Florensky, I feel compelled to learn about his spiritual father now. Thank you for bringing him to my attention. I've always been drawn to the figures who wed the affective and the discursive: Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Bonaventure, Soloyvov, Bulgakov, Florensky, and of course, the great mystic and conceptual artist Al-Ghazali. I'm obsessed with Nicholas of Cusa and his theological metaphysics, but I've also been to his body and placed my hand on his grave. Reading his texts goes hand in hand with praying for his help.
Much appreciated, brother, thank you for your kindness! (BTW, do you know that Semyon Frank, my favorite Russian religious philosopher, said that Cusanus was "in a sense, [his] only religious teacher"?
Ah, amazing! That makes sense. Would you believe I don't own that? Must remedy that. His "God With Us" was balm for my soul for years. Still is really.
I loved this article. I used to really enjoy reading theology books. I used to be enthralled by apologetics. And now, after a lot of hard life experiences in the last few years, I’ve come to find that it’s never the theologians who come to mind anymore when life is going poorly. It’s the poets, the novels, and the spiritual writings I’ve read. I have a piece on here about the limits of theology and the need for art. To me, the difference between the two is best found in Dante and Aquinas. Aquinas can define to me what love is. Dante shows me love, and in showing it to me, gives words to my own experience, my loftiest sensibilities and actions. Preachers can tell me how to live, but novels show me what life looks like from another person’s eyes. I am increasingly willing to say I don’t know the answers to the deep theological questions, and far more centered on trying to become more like the Christ I see in the gospels, because amazingly, that’s where so many of the great artists point me.
Amazing, isn't it, how suffering/hard experiences help us to wisdom. Can you link that piece you refer to, I would love to read it. There are some great lovers of spiritually powerful fiction here -- John Carr, Jonathan Geltner come to mind immediately. Your last sentence -- chef's kiss, I agree entirely! And to me, the saints are the poets of life, of the soul. The storytellers who tell the story in flesh and blood!
If you enjoy it, you might like another article I wrote, “A Wilde Look at Christian Sex Scandals,” which examines Oscar Wilde’s life and writing as a way of examining contemporary Christian sex scandals.
This essay speaks to my heart for I do not have the rich vocabulary to explain the truth as you did. Yet I get it. You are truly sincere in what you had said spoken in truth and love.
Loup des Abeilles, I looked up the meaning of your name. Your writing resonates with me. Is that why the name? All theology is incomplete, imperfect but love? A challenge?
There are some of us who read theology and find God reflected in it. It isn’t theology per se that is the issue as I see it. It is the attempt to confine God with words which is the issue, rather than gesturing towards God foolishly out of love. True theologians are poets, even in their prose such as St. Maximus. The point isn’t to encompass God with our mind by reading these saints, but to feel into their heart and dare we say God’s heart through the words. Some people are like that-the intellect and the heart are strangely intertwined. Not that this is a requirement either-people should connect most to which ever saints and writings are most helpful to them.
But I agree with much of what you say. Did you see this note of mine on a related topic?
Very nice article. The autobiographical presentation mirrors the content of your message, because you had to give something of your self, place your heart out there at the mercy of the social media world.
This resonated with me. In our cultural environment, where it's common for people to think of faith as belief or some kind of intellectual commitment, it’s an important reminder for practitioners, regardless of the religion they follow.
You call them saints, in Hinduism they are Sri Guru. The via medium for knowledge of God, the knowledge is dancing in their heart, it comes to life there. In theology and the intellect, the knowledge is static, frozen in a material form. Knowledge of God doesn’t mean intellectual facts, it’s relational, like how you know a person as opposed to facts about them you get from reading their resume.
One of my favourite quotes is from a book called Sri Guru and his Grace - “Before an open and unbiased eye, the sat guru (real guide) shines above all professors of phenomenon.”
Encountering Sri Guru is kinda like looking into the sun, at such times the intellect is irrelevant.
Excellent post. Thank you. I too have a heart for the Orthodox saints persecuted under Soviet totalitarianism. And being a mathematician I am prone to depending on logic to understand things. But Jesus gate crashes that barrier! Opening one's heart to God is always the answer.
There are progressional theologians who need not even to have real faith or communion with God and then the true theologian—the one defied and who proclaims through there life and the grace at work in them.
“God has shed abroad his love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit he has given us” Look at the intensely personal relationship Jesus had with the Father, utterly non-philosophical. He came so he would be our Elder Brother, firstborn among many brethren who know the Father as he did. My suggestion really examine the in action spirituality recorded in the New Testament, Psalms, Abraham, David, Moses, Elijah. It does say in Romans that “the paths of God are past finding out” but we have this in the here and now - “God has shed abroad his love . . . . . . “ Frankly the methodology is that of a little child with an invisible friend, you know “ become as a little child”
A beautiful essay. I resonate with it to a high degree. But if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever fallen in love with a proper saint—one of the sage and ascetic masters duly consecrated by the authority of the Church. The ones I’ve fallen in love with have been great artists—writers, painters, composers and musicians (those last most of all, perhaps).
Perhaps then your great feast is All Saints' Day, when all those unsung saints are also remembered. (For us, it's the Sunday after Pentecost, essentially, the last celebration of the Paschal cycle, the end to which the entire cycle leads, which to me is just glorious.)
What a beautiful and an important message. Thanks for writing this. And it wasn't too long at all!
It reminded me of how the Greek word *pistis* is the same word that is used to describe the trust between two people -- not quite the same flavour of cognitive belief that we use in English, but a more relational and interpersonal experience, the same as in a relationship with a spouse. Indeed if we clung white-knuckled to every piece of "evidence" that our spouse was trustworthy, paradoxically, our *pistis* in the relationship would be totally extinguished because we would be more invested in our evidence than in the relationship.
You probably have heard this, but I'm not sure how the subjectivity of all-powerful etc making the question as meaningful as saying "everything is x" when we have no epistemic access to everything. It fails on its own terms. We also know why evil exists with the great deceiver being sent away from heaven and man having sin.
Yeah, it's hard to say something is God's doing when we say all-powerful. All-powerful is a vague assessment of our own awareness, but our own awareness doesn't actually say what God is doing (and therefore gives us an extremely shallow perspective with no meaning of why something is done). In logic you need semantics to give something a truth value. Since there are no semantics (or has subjective semantics) in the term, it makes the logic fail on its own.
If we seek to know why death happens or horrendous things in nature, then the only actual narrative we have is the biblical one because the scientific materialist can't ever give a narrative. Any of the atheists who ask that don't actually even say they believe in good or evil (whether they do or not is irrelevant here), so we become neck-deep in headcanon in terms of an atheist interlocutor. Meaning is found in the bible.
I found this cool article about evil and demons. It'd be interesting to connect with evolution. Not sure how, though, but I see a way to connect the two into a single narrative.
I am curious how you got to know the saints well enough to fall in love with them. I find the short descriptions in the online calendars of the saints or the Prologue give me the barest hint of their lives but not enough to hang a relationship on.
Reading Wounded by Love by St. Porphyrios has brought me a little closer; same with the epistles of St. Cyprian. So perhaps I should seek out the longer form biographies or writings, but there are so many that it seems like a haphazard exercise.
I'm not sure why you sometimes hesitate to write auto-biographically, it's always far and away your most powerful and thought-provoking writing. I'm fascinated by your journey and I want further essays on each part of your journey (especially Sufism!). I have an icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov in my daughter's bedroom and I love him very much. My second son's middle name is Isidore, and as a hideously theoretical man who loves Florensky, I feel compelled to learn about his spiritual father now. Thank you for bringing him to my attention. I've always been drawn to the figures who wed the affective and the discursive: Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Bonaventure, Soloyvov, Bulgakov, Florensky, and of course, the great mystic and conceptual artist Al-Ghazali. I'm obsessed with Nicholas of Cusa and his theological metaphysics, but I've also been to his body and placed my hand on his grave. Reading his texts goes hand in hand with praying for his help.
Anyway, please write more about your life!
Much appreciated, brother, thank you for your kindness! (BTW, do you know that Semyon Frank, my favorite Russian religious philosopher, said that Cusanus was "in a sense, [his] only religious teacher"?
I will write something about Sufism!
Tremendous! It was through S.L. Frank’s Solovyov anthology that I first came to Sophiology.
Ah, amazing! That makes sense. Would you believe I don't own that? Must remedy that. His "God With Us" was balm for my soul for years. Still is really.
I loved this article. I used to really enjoy reading theology books. I used to be enthralled by apologetics. And now, after a lot of hard life experiences in the last few years, I’ve come to find that it’s never the theologians who come to mind anymore when life is going poorly. It’s the poets, the novels, and the spiritual writings I’ve read. I have a piece on here about the limits of theology and the need for art. To me, the difference between the two is best found in Dante and Aquinas. Aquinas can define to me what love is. Dante shows me love, and in showing it to me, gives words to my own experience, my loftiest sensibilities and actions. Preachers can tell me how to live, but novels show me what life looks like from another person’s eyes. I am increasingly willing to say I don’t know the answers to the deep theological questions, and far more centered on trying to become more like the Christ I see in the gospels, because amazingly, that’s where so many of the great artists point me.
Amazing, isn't it, how suffering/hard experiences help us to wisdom. Can you link that piece you refer to, I would love to read it. There are some great lovers of spiritually powerful fiction here -- John Carr, Jonathan Geltner come to mind immediately. Your last sentence -- chef's kiss, I agree entirely! And to me, the saints are the poets of life, of the soul. The storytellers who tell the story in flesh and blood!
James 1:22 yields an improv translation: "Be ye poets of the Logos." The saints. Doers of the word. Us too, blessed and guided.
Here’s the link to the article I mentioned.
https://open.substack.com/pub/noahdaniels/p/the-value-of-great-art?r=359q84&utm_medium=ios
If you enjoy it, you might like another article I wrote, “A Wilde Look at Christian Sex Scandals,” which examines Oscar Wilde’s life and writing as a way of examining contemporary Christian sex scandals.
this is a good message.
I deeply appreciate that comment.
This essay speaks to my heart for I do not have the rich vocabulary to explain the truth as you did. Yet I get it. You are truly sincere in what you had said spoken in truth and love.
Loup des Abeilles, I looked up the meaning of your name. Your writing resonates with me. Is that why the name? All theology is incomplete, imperfect but love? A challenge?
The name is, I must admit, just a play on my real name! But sure, yes -- a challenge, perhaps a gift *and* a challenge.
There are some of us who read theology and find God reflected in it. It isn’t theology per se that is the issue as I see it. It is the attempt to confine God with words which is the issue, rather than gesturing towards God foolishly out of love. True theologians are poets, even in their prose such as St. Maximus. The point isn’t to encompass God with our mind by reading these saints, but to feel into their heart and dare we say God’s heart through the words. Some people are like that-the intellect and the heart are strangely intertwined. Not that this is a requirement either-people should connect most to which ever saints and writings are most helpful to them.
But I agree with much of what you say. Did you see this note of mine on a related topic?
https://substack.com/@pj12835079/note/c-163867785?r=2akcql&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Very nice article. The autobiographical presentation mirrors the content of your message, because you had to give something of your self, place your heart out there at the mercy of the social media world.
This resonated with me. In our cultural environment, where it's common for people to think of faith as belief or some kind of intellectual commitment, it’s an important reminder for practitioners, regardless of the religion they follow.
You call them saints, in Hinduism they are Sri Guru. The via medium for knowledge of God, the knowledge is dancing in their heart, it comes to life there. In theology and the intellect, the knowledge is static, frozen in a material form. Knowledge of God doesn’t mean intellectual facts, it’s relational, like how you know a person as opposed to facts about them you get from reading their resume.
One of my favourite quotes is from a book called Sri Guru and his Grace - “Before an open and unbiased eye, the sat guru (real guide) shines above all professors of phenomenon.”
Encountering Sri Guru is kinda like looking into the sun, at such times the intellect is irrelevant.
Excellent post. Thank you. I too have a heart for the Orthodox saints persecuted under Soviet totalitarianism. And being a mathematician I am prone to depending on logic to understand things. But Jesus gate crashes that barrier! Opening one's heart to God is always the answer.
A previous post I published on the topic is here: https://revfrpaul.substack.com/p/many-voices-but-just-one-heart
Peace and Blessings to you and yours! Keep up the good writing!
There are progressional theologians who need not even to have real faith or communion with God and then the true theologian—the one defied and who proclaims through there life and the grace at work in them.
Pascal - “not the God of the philosophers”
Forgot to quote him.
“God has shed abroad his love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit he has given us” Look at the intensely personal relationship Jesus had with the Father, utterly non-philosophical. He came so he would be our Elder Brother, firstborn among many brethren who know the Father as he did. My suggestion really examine the in action spirituality recorded in the New Testament, Psalms, Abraham, David, Moses, Elijah. It does say in Romans that “the paths of God are past finding out” but we have this in the here and now - “God has shed abroad his love . . . . . . “ Frankly the methodology is that of a little child with an invisible friend, you know “ become as a little child”
A beautiful essay. I resonate with it to a high degree. But if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever fallen in love with a proper saint—one of the sage and ascetic masters duly consecrated by the authority of the Church. The ones I’ve fallen in love with have been great artists—writers, painters, composers and musicians (those last most of all, perhaps).
Perhaps then your great feast is All Saints' Day, when all those unsung saints are also remembered. (For us, it's the Sunday after Pentecost, essentially, the last celebration of the Paschal cycle, the end to which the entire cycle leads, which to me is just glorious.)
What a beautiful and an important message. Thanks for writing this. And it wasn't too long at all!
It reminded me of how the Greek word *pistis* is the same word that is used to describe the trust between two people -- not quite the same flavour of cognitive belief that we use in English, but a more relational and interpersonal experience, the same as in a relationship with a spouse. Indeed if we clung white-knuckled to every piece of "evidence" that our spouse was trustworthy, paradoxically, our *pistis* in the relationship would be totally extinguished because we would be more invested in our evidence than in the relationship.
Perfect analogy!
You probably have heard this, but I'm not sure how the subjectivity of all-powerful etc making the question as meaningful as saying "everything is x" when we have no epistemic access to everything. It fails on its own terms. We also know why evil exists with the great deceiver being sent away from heaven and man having sin.
I’m not sure I understand — could you elaborate a little?
Yeah, it's hard to say something is God's doing when we say all-powerful. All-powerful is a vague assessment of our own awareness, but our own awareness doesn't actually say what God is doing (and therefore gives us an extremely shallow perspective with no meaning of why something is done). In logic you need semantics to give something a truth value. Since there are no semantics (or has subjective semantics) in the term, it makes the logic fail on its own.
If we seek to know why death happens or horrendous things in nature, then the only actual narrative we have is the biblical one because the scientific materialist can't ever give a narrative. Any of the atheists who ask that don't actually even say they believe in good or evil (whether they do or not is irrelevant here), so we become neck-deep in headcanon in terms of an atheist interlocutor. Meaning is found in the bible.
I found this cool article about evil and demons. It'd be interesting to connect with evolution. Not sure how, though, but I see a way to connect the two into a single narrative.
https://substack.com/@shawnruby/note/c-164914734
I am curious how you got to know the saints well enough to fall in love with them. I find the short descriptions in the online calendars of the saints or the Prologue give me the barest hint of their lives but not enough to hang a relationship on.
Reading Wounded by Love by St. Porphyrios has brought me a little closer; same with the epistles of St. Cyprian. So perhaps I should seek out the longer form biographies or writings, but there are so many that it seems like a haphazard exercise.
Keep thinking of a zine...
That’s pretty punk rock.