| Russian intellectuals in exile analysed the reasons of the collapse of their ideas in the storm of the Russian revolution, unleashed by them: “The prevailing simple explanation, which every average “repenting” Russian intellectual arrived at, is “people’s unreadiness”, S.L.Frank wrote in the “repentant” collection “From the depth”. “According to this explanation “people” due to their ignorance and lack of education in state issues, where the same the “old regime” was at fault, turned out to be unable to realize excellent reforms planned by the intellectuals and ruined the country and the revolution with their rude and awkward behaviour. Today there is a tendency to explain all the faults of “democracy” and market and criminalization of the Russian economy again with the primeval Russian habit of slavery, irresponsibility and paternalistic role of the state, Russian inability of self-dependence and unreceptiveness of civilization. Such explanations are a diagnose of irresponsibility of the politicians, who developed their programmes and actions counting on some invented ideal people, and not the existing one. But such statement of the question is inherently false. It goes without saying, that it depends on the cultural and moral consciousness which ideas and mode of operation will be most effective. But the general total is always determined by the interaction between the public consciousness and the course of ideas of the minority that becomes the herald. If Frank is not surprised that in the course of the revolution “people’s passion” in its straightness only tested in real practice the given ideas, and uncovered “the intellectuals’ slogans from the wraith of philosophising and moral-free tactical distinctions”, so one should not be surprised at the mass moral lapse in the 90s. Double experience in the 20th century shows the rule: in the same society and the same individual there always co-exist anarchical, anti-state and socially destructive passions and instincts as well as great creative, conservative-protective, spiritually healthy, nationally uniting forces. |
| Similar abstraction continues and develops among existentialists of the XX century. According to religious existentialism, freedom can be found only in God, but thus genuine freedom begins “on the other side of the social sphere” 23 . Society and communication between individuals “limit the individual personality”, “reduce every man to the level of an average person, and deprive man of his real existence” 24 . In addition, Camus declared that freedom is acquired through negation of the importance of the surrounding world. Social revolutionary movements have shown themselves in history as those which finally lead to tyrannies of the worst type. External freedom appears to be in conflict with internal freedom because it sets free the numerous passions and low instincts of fallen human nature 25 . “The modern world evidently has altogether lost the capacity to understand what freedom is. Freedom is not pretension and a demanding by man, freedom is not a lazing about and dissipation in life. Freedom is not a demand put forth by man to God, but the rather, a demand put forth by God to man … Freedom is not easy … Freedom gives rise to suffering” 26 . “Freedom for”, unlike “freedom from”, is understood, first of all, as a creative power of overcoming the conditionality of this life. Unlike the negation of the deep value of the world around us and the runaway from reality which we meet in existential philosophy, the thought of the Church Fathers considered our freedom as a God-given “ school of piety ”, and people surrounding us as direct assistants on the way to God. “Freedom for” is not freedom of egoistic self-affirmation, but “freedom for being” 27 according to God’s plan, freedom of realization of the Divine idea of unity of mankind in mutual kenotic love. It is also appropriate to name such freedom as “freedom in”, implying that true freedom can be attained and realized only in and through the reality of Divine love. After his Fall man had lost his former free integrity. “Weak-willed, shattered in himself, he had turned into his own enemy and executioner” 28 and into an enemy of his fellow men as well. Overcoming this internal and external dissociation of the human being demands a refusal of the false understanding and fake implementations of freedom based on egotistic principles. For “personal freedom is not freedom from “another”, but for “another” 29 . “Perfect personal love overcomes the individual nature and enters into close relation with personal freedom. We can say that without personal freedom, personal love in general is impossible”, 30 and vice versa! 4. Restoring the gift of Freedom |
| Rightly or wrongly, most ancient readers would have drawn moral connotations from the number of her marriages. Even though grounds were not mandatory for divorce, usually husbands divorced their wives because they found fault with them (e.g., Sir 7:26; 25:26 ); thus even Gentile texts in the Diaspora could praise a woman who had never given her husband grounds to divorce her as a «one-man woman.» 5453 Even if we implausibly assume that she was widowed five times without the narrative specifying that circumstance, many of her peers would have assumed (rightly or wrongly) foul play: when several husbands of a wife died in succession, it was assumed that something was wrong with the wife (perhaps the attachment of a demon, as in Tob 3:8). 5454 Roman satirists complained about authoritarian wives who changed husbands frequently, «wearing out her bridal veil»; 5455 one satirizes for serial polygamy a wife who will marry eight husbands in five years. 5456 Even if the complaint involved the less controversial notion of a husband changing wives, it could often be used to create moral suspicion if malice generated it. 5457 This woman may have lost some husbands through death, but her coming to the well alone (4:7), her possible designs on Jesus (4:17), and her current nonmarital sexual union (4:18) together would probably suggest to most ancient readers that she had somehow morally warranted at least part of her situation. There is little doubt that most ancient Mediterranean men would have assumed a large number of divorces to reflect badly on the woman herself, and to judge the situation in moral terms. One cannot guess her age from the text, but after five husbands she is undoubtedly older than the average bride; given the preference for young virgins, 5458 she probably appears a less valuable commodity. 5459 The public perception of her failure in the socially expected wifely role and perhaps by now even in her ability to bear children and attract men makes abundant psychological sense in the story world of her openness to a man s affirmation and probable misinterpretation of it. |
| About Pages Проекты «Правмира» Raising Orthodox Children to Orthodox Adulthood The Daily Website on How to be an Orthodox Christian Today Twitter Telegram Parler RSS Donate Navigation Is It Possible to Live a Holy Life in the World? Source: Holy Nativity Orthodox Church Archpriest Michael Gillis 04 June 2021 Photo: hranitel.club In my last post , I spoke of two options for Christian living. These options, marriage or monasticism, are the dominant options throughout most of Christian history—but not the only options. In the past twenty years in North America (and a little longer in Western Europe), there has been a dramatic rise in the average age for first marriage, a divorce rate that has hovered around 50% and, outside the Orthodox world, a noticeable increase in the number of monasteries that are closing down. Although Orthodox monasticism has seen somewhat of a revival over the past fifty years, still the relative number of Orthodox monasteries outside traditionally Orthodox countries is very small compared to the growing number of Orthodox Christians outside these lands. This confluence of trends has led to a large number of single Christian adults who do not live in marriage relationships or in monasteries. I think we might group these single Christians in the following way: Those who are living a profligate lifestyle. Those who are striving to live a holy life. I know these are rough categorizations, but I choose them because looking at things this way will help me say what I want to say. First off, there are many Christians who are living a profligate lifestyle. The religious sensibilities of our contemporary North American culture teach us that religion is merely a matter of feeling, of the “heart,” or of “faith.” Particularly, this culture teaches that one’s sexual practices are irrelevant to spiritual or religious life. If one is a good person (by the culture’s standards) and believes sincerely in and practices some religion or spirituality, that is good enough. In many ways, today’s culture is like the pagan world into which Christianity first entered. At that time, like today, sexuality was largely irrelevant to spirituality, and in some cases, extra-marital sexuality was encouraged as an expression of religious devotion. |
| The ultimate reason for Christ’s death must be seen in the mortality of man. Christ suffered death, but passed through it and overcame mortality and corruption. He quickened death itself. By His death He abolishes the power of death. «The dominion of death is cancelled by Thy death, О Strong One.» And the grave becomes the life-giving «source of our resurrection.» And every grave becomes rather a «bed of hope» for believers. In the death of Christ, death itself is given a new meaning and significance. «By death He destroyed death.» III. Immortality, Resurrection and Redemption Death is a catastrophe for man; this is the basic principle of the whole Christian anthropology. Man is an «amphibious» being, both spiritual and corporeal, and so he was intended and created by God. Body belongs organically to the unity of human existence. And this was perhaps the most striking novelty in the original Christian message. The preaching of the Resurrection as well as the preaching of the Cross was foolishness and a stumbling-block to the Gentiles. The Greek mind was always rather disgusted by the body. The attitude of an average Greek in early Christian times was strongly influenced by Platonic or Orphic ideas, and it was a common opinion that the body was a kind of a «prison,» in which the fallen soul was incarcerated and confined. The Greeks dreamt rather of a complete and final disincarnation. The famous Orphic slogan was: σμα-σμa. 149 And the Christian belief in a coming Resurrection could only confuse and frighten the Gentile mind. It meant simply that the prison will be everlasting, that the imprisonment will be renewed again and for ever. The expectation of a bodily resurrection would befit rather an earthworm, suggested Celsus, and he jeered in the name of common sense. This nonsense about a future resurrection seemed to him altogether irreverent and irreligious. God would never do things so stupid, would never accomplish desires so criminal and capricious, which are inspired by an impure and fantastic love of the flesh. Celsus nicknames Christians a «φιλοσματον γνος,» «a flesh-loving crew,» and he refers to the Docetists with far greater sympathy and understanding. 150 Such was the general attitude to the Resurrection. |
| Tweet Нравится Unique prayer book for the blind published in Arkhangelsk Arkhangelsk, November 10, 2016 Photo: http://www.arh-eparhia.ru/ A Braille prayer book for the blind has been presented in Arkhangelsk. The publication was blessed by Metropolitan Daniel of Arkhangelsk and Kholmogory. The unique book was printed in the regional specialized library for the blind, reports the Arkhangelsk Diocese’s website . Methodologist at the library for the blind Nikolai Smirnov related how the idea of creating the unique prayer book was born. “Once a reader asked me to print her prayers in Braille. I printed something for her, but then it occurred to us that we must prepare a whole prayer book so that it might be available for everybody, because we had not had such a book before,” said Nikolai. According to the specialist, the technical process entails difficulties related to transcribing the text into Braille: “It’s done by a special computer program and a special printer is used for printing in Braille. If an average print page has fifty lines and each line has up to eighty characters, then a Braille page has twenty-seven lines and each line has twenty-eight characters. Thus three – four Braille pages make up one page of a text in print.” Photo: http://www.arh-eparhia.ru/ Photo: http://www.arh-eparhia.ru/ According to Metropolitan Daniel, today’s event is of great importance as henceforth visually impaired people who bear a heavy cross will be able to read prayers which were composed by the holy fathers. “Through prayer the heart, the main organ of our body, transforms. Strong prayers give one’s heart a deep feeling which we call happiness, joy, bliss. The more people partake in prayer, the better,” said the archpastor during the presentation at the creative hall of the youth center. Photo: http://www.arh-eparhia.ru/ Twelve copies of the Braille prayer book have been issued in Arkhangelsk in total, each consisting of two parts. During the presentation ceremony blind believers received the edition as a gift and Metropolitan Daniel blessed everybody with an icon of St. Matrona of Moscow. According to the library director Svetlana Borisova, the icon will become the main relic of this center. |
| 7285 Tg. Neof. on Gen 6:11, 13 later interpreted a major part of the violence that merited God " s anger as robbery. Rhet. Alex. 1,1422b.5–8, portrays deceivers as «thieves» (κλπτας) of understanding. 7288 Cullmann, State, 22; Wood, «Interpreting,» 266. Shepherd, «Jews,» 100 applies it against both false christs and false teachers in genera1. 7290 Hunter, John, 102; Mary, «Shepherd,» 2660. Bruns, «Shepherd,» 387, applies it to the temple priesthood, wrongly citing the Hanukkah story before 10:22; Stauffer, Jesus, 93–94, wrongly applies the false-shepherds image to Pilate (also the wolf, 99). Bowman, Gospel, 199–200, applies it to Moses and to the rabbis who abused him; Valentinians applied to OT prophets (Hippolytus Haer. 6.30). 7291 Odeberg, Gospel, 328; Quasten, «Shepherd,» 12,153,159–60; Jeremias, Parables, 167; Barrett, John, 367. Augustine Tr. Ev. Jo. 45.11.4 recontextualizes the image for false teachers leading people into heresy. 7292 With Jeremias, Parables, 133; Matt 18:12; Luke 15:4. Three hundred was large (t. B. Qam. 6:20); cf. eighty in P.Hib. 33.16 (245 B.C.E.); 12 in P.Oxy. 245 (26 C.E.); a poor widow had one sheep (Babrius 51.1). 7293 E.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus R.A. 9.10.1 (which also appeals to the named ones» desire for personal recognition). 7294 Longus 4.26.4 (a novel), in Hock, «Novel,» 139. For calling sheep by name, Watkins, John, 232, cites Idyll 5.102–103; Bailey, «Shepherd Poems,» 10, attests that some modern shepherds in the region name their sheep whereas others do not but that shepherds can always distinguish their sheep individually. 7295 Jeremias, Parables, 215 n. 37, following Dalman, Arbeit, 6:250–51. Brown, John, 1notes that Palestinian shepherds apparently often have «pet names for their favorite» sheep, such as «Long-ears» or «White-nose.» Haenchen, John, 2:46, doubts that sheep would each have their own names in a large flock; but in Palestine an average-sized flock was only about a hundred (Matt 18:12; Luke 15:4; Jeremias, Parables, 133), as noted above. |
| The rate of increase of the length of a day due to slowing down of the earth’s rotation, back to the 8th century BCE, has been fixed at an average of 1.7 milliseconds per century (1.7 ms/c; Stephenson, op cit. pp. 513, 514; cf. New Scientist, 30 January 1999, pp. 3033). For this period, therefore, we are on “safe ground.” Furuli can hardly be unaware of this. Today, the gradual change in the rate of the earth’s rotation is definitely not a significant source of error when using astronomical tablets from the NeoBabylonian and Persian eras to calculate the chronology of these periods. The interpolation of intercalary months to compensate for the difference between the solar and the lunar year Arguing that the interpolation of intercalary months in the Babylonian lunisolar calendar might be another potential source of error, Furuli (p. 34) quotes Drs. Ben Zion Wacholder and David B. Weisberg, who say: “As Professor Abraham Sachs pointed out in a communication to us, some of the readings of the intercalary months recorded in Parker and Dubberstein’s tables may not be quite reliable, while a handful are admittedly hypothetical. But even assuming the essential correctness of Parker and Dubberstein’s tables, Professor Sachs maintains, the supposition of a 19year cycle prior to 386 B.C.E. may be reading into the evidence something which possibly is not there.” (Ben Zion Wacholder, Essay on Jewish Chronology and Chronography, New York, 1976, p. 67) Nothing in this statement is not also admitted by Parker and Dubberstein, as can be seen in Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.–A.D. 75 (1956), pp. 19. As Wacholder and Weisberg further demonstrate in their work, the development of the 19year standard scheme of intercalary months was a gradual process begun in the 7th century. The final stage took place in the 5th and early 4th centuries, when the seven intercalary months of the 19year cycle were fixed in years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14,17, and 19. This process is also clear in PD. Furuli concludes: “This means that calculations based on the Julian calendar can be wrong as much as 44 days or even more if the intercalary months were not added regularly.” (p. 35) This conclusion is based on the unlikely supposition that sometimes four years could pass before an intercalary montli was added. But the weight of evidence, based on the economic and the astronomical texts, shows that this never happened after 564 BCE. (See the updated tables of documented intercalary months presented by Professor John P. Britton in J. M. Steele & A. Imhausen (eds.), Under One Sky, Munster: UgaritVerlag, 2002, pp. 3435.) |
| At the other end of the list, we see children from Finland, Germany, and Switzerland. They study less than 40 hours a week. Studying takes a little less than half of their available time, and they manage to balance between studies and life. Children from these countries consistently show high results. At the same time, schoolchildren from Singapore or China need to study more to achieve the same results. The countries in the study were divided into several groups. There are those who study a lot and achieve high results. These are mostly schoolchildren from Asian countries. There are countries where the results are just as good, but teenagers study significantly less. Finland, Germany, and other European countries are leaders in efficient use of school time. The saddest thing is that there is a group in which students study a lot, but their results are below average. The absolute leader here is the United Arab Emirates where children study even more than in China and the results are worse than in Chile. Russia is also in this group, surrounded by Spain, Greece, and USA. Our teenagers spend 48 hours a week studying. By the way, this is more than the length of a working week for adults. The Labor code limits it to 40 hours. Many children around the world spend too much time studying after school. This does not improve their results. However, it makes it impossible to have a balanced lifestyle. They do not have time for walks, hobbies, and socializing with their friends. The 10-minute rule for homework Scientists have been debating the issue of homework for decades. The results obtained in a particular study depend on how the experiment was constructed. That is why different authors may come to conflicting conclusions. Nevertheless, we can distinguish the results that are common to all among this variety. Cathy Vatterott, an American teacher, did this (Cathy Vatterott. Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs. ASCD, 2018): 1. Homework is useful. Students who received homework showed better results than those who did not receive it at all. It is not essential to get rid of homework. |
| One must make, however, a distinction between knowledge of the presence of the principles of creation – that is, that there are the logoi that hold the creation – and the contemplation of the logoi as a special stage of an advanced spiritual development. If the former is probably accessible to discursive reason (through scientific research, for example), the latter requires one to have made an advance in religious contemplation, which is sustained by one’s participation in ecclesial life. When both knowledge of the existence of the logoi and their contemplation are combined in one human person, then science definitely can be said to participate in the contemplation of the logoi of creation. On average, however, it would be a modest task to demonstrate only the presence of the logoi in created being. On the relation of knowledge of the logoi to knowledge of the Logos, which holds them together, Maximus the Confessor asserts that the contemplative activity reflects the convergence of the logoi to the divine unity and the unifying intention of God and the Logos. The Logos is itself the many logoi, but then the logoi may be said to be the one and only Logos, although what we know of them and their variety does not exhaust what is contained in the Logos. Thus there is no complete identity. In addition, what we know about the logoi can contribute only to our knowledge of the Logos as the common source of their differentiated inhabitation in the created world. In other words, knowledge that the logoi exist does not provide itself the inference to the divine Logos, as the personal God of Christianity. The latter requires one to advance in apophatic mystical theology, that is, in religious life in God. The logoi of Creation and Antinomies Because natural contemplation of the logoi is not entirely based in discursive thinking, it is important to try to formulate an algorithm of demonstration of the presence of the logoi (not their contemplation) in the rubric of a purely discursive analysis of scientifico-philosophical affirmations about created nature. In a way, this task is quite paradoxical, for we are trying to discover through analysis of worldly things their logoi, the presence of the uncreated principles of the existence of created beings, which manifest that the ontological grounds of the worldly things studied by science are beyond the world and that everything in the world is rooted in its otherness. This is why these transcendent principles, if they exist, are present in scientific or philosophical arguments only in a hidden, mystical way. They can be revealed only from an a priori theological perspective and expressed in an apophatic and paradoxical way. |
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