Archive for category New Nuggets
Rohr: “… Jesus is never actually upset at sinners…”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets on July 11, 2016
– Fr. Richard Rohr from his “Eight Core Principles”
Rohr: There is no sacred and profane…
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, New Nuggets on March 10, 2016
“There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments— and it is we alone who desecrate them by our blindness and lack of reverence.”
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
Arch. Ireini : “…encountering Christ but in a way we can’t understand…”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets on March 6, 2016
Archimandrite Ireini (Steenberg) – was born in the United States in 1978 . He was head of Theology & Tutor for Graduates, University of Oxford. In 2011 he became Founder and Dean of the Sts Cyril & Athanasius Institute for Orthodox Studies, San Francisco.
“… being general in a Christian way—[mysticism is] encountering Christ but in a way that we can’t understand or can’t articulate.” ~ Hieromonk Ireini (Steenberg) from a lecture on “Orthodoxy and Mysticism”, 2010.
Rohr: “First-hand Experience”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, New Nuggets, Theology on March 1, 2016
“. . . All knowledge of God is first-hand experience.”
~ Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, from his homily 28 Feb 2016
St. Nikolai Velimirovich: “Our religion is founded on spiritual experience…”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, New Nuggets, Theology on March 1, 2016
Saint Nikolai Velimirovich (1881-1956) – was a bishop in the Serbian Orthodox Church, an influential theological writer and a highly gifted orator.
“Our religion is founded on spiritual experience, seen and heard as surely as any physical fact in this world. Not theory, not philosophy, not human emotions, but experience.”
~ St. Nikolai Velimirovic
St. Porphyrios: “A person can become a saint anywhere”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets on February 20, 2016
St. Porphyrios (Bairaktaris) (1906-1991) – was an Athonite hieromonk known for his gifts of spiritual discernment. He was officially recognized as a saint by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 2013.
“It is a great art to succeed in having your soul sanctified. A person can become a saint anywhere. He can become a saint in Omonia Square, if he wants. At your work, whatever it may be, you can become a saint through meekness, patience, and love. Make a new start every day, with new resolution, with enthusiasm and love, prayer and silence — not with anxiety so that you get a pain in the chest.” ~ St. Porphyrios
Andreas Andreopoulos: “On Apokatastasis”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets, Universal Restoration (Apokatastasis) on February 13, 2016
Dr. Andreas Andreopoulos (1966- ) – Orthodox priest, studied in Greece, Canada and the UK, obtaining his Ph.D. in Theology and Art at Durham University.
“Alexandrian theology in the second/third century starts a particularly Eastern theological strand of eschatology that leads all the way to Mark of Ephesus in the fifteenth, one which differs from most Western views if not necessarily and officially on the eternity of evil, at least on the question as to where this evil is to be found and therefore comes from – in doctrinal contrast to the views of Western theologians such as Abelard, who saw the torments of hell as a punishment very often more cruel than the sins that warranted it, in a place that had specifically been created by God for this purpose, as it was believed after Augustine. The ancient as well as the late Byzantine position, certainly before the Western influences on Greek and Russian theology after the Renaissance, was that nothing evil can come from God, not even punishment. The punishment and torments of hell are only inflicted from ourselves, both in this world and in the next one. Hell and its fire is not different, essentially, from the benevolent energy of God, when experienced by the sinners. The restoration of all, at best an interesting and possible speculation though not a doctrine, is an idea not too far from all this.”
~ Andreas Andreopoulos from “Eschatology and Final Restoration (Apokatastasis) in Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximos the Confessor”
Yanarras: “Repentance has nothing to do with self-regarding sorrow for legal transgressions.”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, New Nuggets, Theology on January 30, 2016
Christos Yannaras (1935 – ) was Professor of Philosophy at Pantion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens. His books include Freedom of Morality and Person and Eros.
“To share out your soul freely, that is what metanoia (a change of mind, or repentance) really refers to: a mental product of love. A change of mind, or love for the undemonstrable. And you throw off every conceptual cloak of self-defense, you give up the fleshly resistance of your ego. Repentance has nothing to do with self-regarding sorrow for legal transgressions. It is an ecstatic erotic self-emptying. A change of mind about the mode of thinking and being.”
― Christos Yanarras, from “Variations on the Song of Songs”
Met. Hierotheos (Vlachos): The distinction between the “Person” and the “Individual”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets, Theology on December 30, 2015
Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) – (1945- ) is a Greek Orthodox metropolitan and theologian. He graduated from the Theological School of the University of Thessaloniki and is one of the finest Patristic scholars living.
“…today a distinction is made between the person and the individual. The term ‘person’ is used to mean the man who has freedom and love and is clearly distinguished from the mass, and the term ‘individual’ characterizes the man who remains a biological being and spends his whole life and activities on his material and biological needs, without having any other pursuit in his life.” ~ from “The person in the Orthodox Tradition”, p. 79
David Bentley Hart: “On Contemplative Prayer”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, New Nuggets on September 5, 2015
First Thoughts 