- Apr 6, 2018
- 7,356
- 5,235
- 25
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Eastern Orthodox
- Marital Status
- Single
I read in an article of Orthodoxinfo that that is the case. What do you guys think about?
I read in an article of Orthodoxinfo that that is the case. What do you guys think about?
I read in an article of Orthodoxinfo that that is the case. What do you guys think about?
I agree that's why I also mentioned an abuse in Economia for certain things.It kind of guarantees a brushfire if you start a thread without immediately including the quote you are referring to, and not defining terms.
If, as gzt says, we are all modernists, then the word doesn’t mean anything, it makes no distinctions. It IS true that we all live today (duh!) and in that sense are modern, but that can’t be what the word means. The word does have objective meaning, from Latin, “moda”, “fashion”, compare with Russian “sovremenniy”, “so-vremenem”, literally “with the times”. One thing I have learned is that if you go with the times, you go where all times go - into the past, to be forgotten. To be modern in that sense is to be doomed to be outdated.
It refers to passing things, the antithesis of eternal truth. So yes, there is definitely a distinct phenomenon that is definitely pushing to introduce the Spirit of the Age, the Zeitgeist, into the Church. In the quote you offer, it lists a number of small things. I agree with Fr Matt that not all of them are a threat, though I don’t think it good in general that we should become more like the Christian West that fell away from Orthodoxy.
I do think worldliness to be a threat, and Bingo in church is something that sets off an alarm bell, as does ecumenism, which seeks to ultimately establish that it doesn't matter whether one is in the Orthodox Church or not. Those ARE threats. The rest are not good, but are not major threats. They (like pews) have small bad effects, but not large or massive ones. The upshot is that it is better not to have those things, and to ask what the Church has been doing over the past millennium, and conform ourselves more to that as far as possible, but if we make Roman/Western tab collars the focus of our concern, we aren’t going to be taken seriously. It is only a symptom, not the cause.
The real central cause is the heresy of our time, which isn’t even ecumenism, but the idea that “We can know better than the historical Church” (maybe we could call it ‘Meliorism’, after the Latin for “better”?). It says that, because we live today, because we have the internet and iPhones, modern education and science, we can correct the “misunderstandings” of the fathers, and the consistent ancient practice of the Church. THAT is the source of the real modern threat to the Church.
It kind of guarantees a brushfire if you start a thread without immediately including the quote you are referring to, and not defining terms.
If, as gzt says, we are all modernists, then the word doesn’t mean anything, it makes no distinctions. It IS true that we all live today (duh!) and in that sense are modern, but that can’t be what the word means. The word does have objective meaning, from Latin, “moda”, “fashion”, compare with Russian “sovremenniy”, “so-vremenem”, literally “with the times”. One thing I have learned is that if you go with the times, you go where all times go - into the past, to be forgotten. To be modern in that sense is to be doomed to be outdated.
It refers to passing things, the antithesis of eternal truth. So yes, there is definitely a distinct phenomenon that is definitely pushing to introduce the Spirit of the Age, the Zeitgeist, into the Church. In the quote you offer, it lists a number of small things. I agree with Fr Matt that not all of them are a threat, though I don’t think it good in general that we should become more like the Christian West that fell away from Orthodoxy.
I do think worldliness to be a threat, and Bingo in church is something that sets off an alarm bell, as does ecumenism, which seeks to ultimately establish that it doesn't matter whether one is in the Orthodox Church or not. Those ARE threats. The rest are not good, but are not major threats. They (like pews) have small bad effects, but not large or massive ones. The upshot is that it is better not to have those things, and to ask what the Church has been doing over the past millennium, and conform ourselves more to that as far as possible, but if we make Roman/Western tab collars the focus of our concern, we aren’t going to be taken seriously. It is only a symptom, not the cause.
The real central cause is the heresy of our time, which isn’t even ecumenism, but the idea that “We can know better than the historical Church” (maybe we could call it ‘Meliorism’, after the Latin for “better”?). It says that, because we live today, because we have the internet and iPhones, modern education and science, we can correct the “misunderstandings” of the fathers, and the consistent ancient practice of the Church. THAT is the source of the real modern threat to the Church.
Yes. But it has reached a point of actual heresy, of denying traditional Church teaching, asserting that the Church must "try new, experimental ways", through talk of "a living Tradition", implying that faithfulness to a permanent Tradition is somehow not "living Tradition". Snobbery itself is against Church teaching, but this goes beyond snobbery, and can affect any and all aspects of Church life.it's what CS Lewis called chronological snobbery.
Yes. But it has reached a point of actual heresy, of denying traditional Church teaching, asserting that the Church must "try new, experimental ways", through talk of "a living Tradition", implying that faithfulness to a permanent Tradition is somehow not "living Tradition". Snobbery itself is against Church teaching, but this goes beyond snobbery, and can affect any and all aspects of Church life.
Lewis' chronological snobbery is looking down on the past because it's the past, we're too enlightened to believe that. What I'm saying is nothing of the sort. What I'm saying, rather, is that we deceive ourselves if we think that we can turn our mode of thinking, shaped by modernity, back into the sort of immanent frame experienced in the pre-modern era (and, I would contend, we deceive ourselves if we think that's desirable). Traditionalist reactions to modernism are not a return to being, say, medieval but are conditioned by their modernity. I think you would really like to read Charles Taylor or, failing that, James K A Smith has a digestible thing that I haven't read but which other people seem to have liked, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor, though this assertion also draws on MacIntyre. The Smith book is discussed for a good chunk of this episode of The Areopagus, if you're interested: Are We Doing (Youth) Ministry Wrong? - The Areopagus | Ancient Faith Ministriesit's what CS Lewis called chronological snobbery.
I would also say that, while that site has a lot of good information, it also has a lot of... schismatic... information.I read in an article of Orthodoxinfo that that is the case. What do you guys think about?
Lewis' chronological snobbery is looking down on the past because it's the past, we're too enlightened to believe that. What I'm saying is nothing of the sort. What I'm saying, rather, is that we deceive ourselves if we think that we can turn our mode of thinking, shaped by modernity, back into the sort of immanent frame experienced in the pre-modern era (and, I would contend, we deceive ourselves if we think that's desirable). Traditionalist reactions to modernism are not a return to being, say, medieval but are conditioned by their modernity. I think you would really like to read Charles Taylor or, failing that, James K A Smith has a digestible thing that I haven't read but which other people seem to have liked, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor, though this assertion also draws on MacIntyre. The Smith book is discussed for a good chunk of this episode of The Areopagus, if you're interested: Are We Doing (Youth) Ministry Wrong? - The Areopagus | Ancient Faith Ministries
Lewis' chronological snobbery is looking down on the past because it's the past, we're too enlightened to believe that. What I'm saying is nothing of the sort. What I'm saying, rather, is that we deceive ourselves if we think that we can turn our mode of thinking, shaped by modernity, back into the sort of immanent frame experienced in the pre-modern era (and, I would contend, we deceive ourselves if we think that's desirable). Traditionalist reactions to modernism are not a return to being, say, medieval but are conditioned by their modernity. I think you would really like to read Charles Taylor or, failing that, James K A Smith has a digestible thing that I haven't read but which other people seem to have liked, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor, though this assertion also draws on MacIntyre. The Smith book is discussed for a good chunk of this episode of The Areopagus, if you're interested: Are We Doing (Youth) Ministry Wrong? - The Areopagus | Ancient Faith Ministries
I definitely wouldn't say he is any less of a saint!I don't think you are saying that in this thread. so, to your point, St Dmitri of Rostov was very influenced by Baroque terminology which came from the West but was influential in the Slavic world doesn't make him any less a saint.
I don't think what you brought up is what we are talking about when it comes to modernism, which is not the same as being influenced by the modern world (which you are right to point out we cannot not be influenced by).
It really is, though you folks go off into some idiosyncratic definitions of modernism conflating it with all the evils of the world. Much of what distinguishes modern argumentation about, say, morality from medieval modes of argumentation are present in both people in favor of the modern project and its (modernist) detractors (this is one of MacIntyre's big arguments).
idiosyncrasy (n.)
c. 1600, from French idiosyncrasie, from Latinized form of Greek idiosynkrasia "a peculiar temperament," from idios "one's own" (see idiom) + synkrasis "temperament, mixture of personal characteristics," from syn "together" (see syn-) + krasis "mixture," from PIE root *kere- "to mix, confuse; cook" (see rare (adj.2)).
Originally in English a medical term meaning "physical constitution of an individual;" mental sense "peculiar mixture" of the elements in one person that makes up his character and personality first attested 1660s. In modern use, loosely, one's whims, habits, fads, or tastes. Sometimes confused in spelling with words in -cracy, but it is from krasis not kratos.