Archive for May, 2015
D.B. Hart: “For my money, if Origen was not a saint and church father, then no one has any claim to those titles.”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets on May 13, 2015
David Bentley Hart (born 1965) an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion, is a philosopher, writer, and cultural commentator. His books include The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss and That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, Universal Salvation, and The New Testament – A Translation. He lives in South Bend, IN.
“For my money, if Origen was not a saint and church father, then no one has any claim to those titles. And the contrary claims made by a brutish imbecile Emperor are of no consequence.”
D.B. Hart, from Eclectic Orthodoxy blog post, 11 May 2015.
D.B. Hart: “Wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets on May 13, 2015
David Bentley Hart (1965- ), is a contemporary American Eastern Othodox theologian and philosopher.
“I start from the conviction that many of the most important things we know are things we know before we can speak them; indeed, we know them—though with very little in the way of concepts to make them intelligible to us—even as children, and see them with the greatest immediacy when we look at them with the eyes of innocence. But, as they are hard to say, and as they are often so immediate to us that we cannot stand back from them objectively, we tend to put them out of mind as we grow older, and make ourselves oblivious to them, and try to silence the voice of knowledge that speaks within our own experiences of the world. Wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience; it is the ability to translate some of that vision into words, however inadequate. There is a point, that is to say, where reason and revelation are one and the same.” ~ David Bentley Hart. from “The Experience of God”.
St. Gregory Palamas: “Deification is an enhypostatic and direct illumination…”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, Monasticism, Patristic Pearls on May 11, 2015
St. Gregory Palamas (Greek: Γρηγόριος Παλαμάς; 1296–1359) – was a monk of Mount Athos in Greece and later the archbishop of Thessaloniki, known as a preeminent theologian of Hesychasm. The teachings embodied in his writings defending Hesychasm against the attack of Barlaam are sometimes referred to as Palamism, and his followers as Palamites.
“But when you hear of the vision of God face-to-face, recall the testimony of Maximus: ‘Deification is an enhypostatic and direct illumination which has no beginning, but appears in those worthy as something exceeding their comprehension. It is indeed a mystical union with God, beyond intellect and reason, in the age when creatures will no longer know corruption. Thanks to this union, the saints, observing the light of the hidden and more-than-ineffable glory, become themselves able to receive the blessed purity, in company with the celestial powers”
~ St. Gregory Palamas, The Triads, III.i.28
First Thoughts 