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.
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.
This is good, but it is pretty long. I didn't read it all, because I'm not going to read 4K words on my screen right now. Have you considered editing or dividing your missives by word count (maybe 1500), especially if you'd like for people to not stare at their screens for extended periods of time? The medium is the message, after all.
“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).
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
this is a good message.
I deeply appreciate that comment.
This is good, but it is pretty long. I didn't read it all, because I'm not going to read 4K words on my screen right now. Have you considered editing or dividing your missives by word count (maybe 1500), especially if you'd like for people to not stare at their screens for extended periods of time? The medium is the message, after all.
Pascal - “not the God of the philosophers”
“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).
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.
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!
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
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