Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Reading Group, 4c


The Absence of this Concept in Contemporary Morality and Philosophy

a. Both humanistic and Protestant morality have arrived at the conclusion that in order to strengthen love it is necessary to break away from scholastic concepts. Instead, they wish to establish a single divine life diffused in creatures and striving to blend once again into one blessed fullness, thereby replacing spiritualism with pantheism.

b. This contradiction between egoism and the principle of love is not resolved by the searching of philosophical thought as long as this thought is based on one or another principles of natural life. The Church represents a concept in which the “not I” is not somehow the opposite of the “I.” The most typical representatives of this combination are found in the categories of holy martyrs, ascetics, and hierarchs of the Church.

c. The Christian truth about the Church frees man from the natural contradiction between the self-consciousness of the individual and self-denying love as a principle of life.
  1. What are the three categories of which Metropolitan Anthony speaks, and what do they represent?
  2. How does Metropolitan Anthony draw his definition of the Church not from concepts of earthly life, but from the teaching of the Triune Being of God?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

1. The three categories of the most typical representatives of the individuals who develop in the church and combine the fullness of self-denying love with a high degree of individual will are: i) holy martyrs; ii) ascetics; and iii) hierarchs.

2. Met. Antony draws his definition of the Church from the Triune being of God based on the Scriptures in John 17, the “High Priestly Prayer”: That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
(My inference, perhaps the Metropolitans implying) It cannot be on anything earthly because of the fallen nature of man which “naturally” clouds our “concepts” and understanding. Therefore the concept has to come from something super-natural and therefore be able to be obtained in a supernatural way, ie. the work of the Holy Spirit on man in the Church.

Matthew