Thank you for this generous & selfless thing that you have done. I appreciate the tenacity and follow-thru required to start this and see it thru to its completion. May blessings blindside you when you need them most.
The early Christians called themselves the people of the Way. The Way is the Tao and Jesus is the Logos. So the Christ is the Eternal Tao/Logos/Way. Thank you for reading this lovely book.
Yes - Jesus is incarnate Logos/Tao and he fulfils both the Hebrew and Taoist visions - and all other spiritual/religious visions. Thank you for reading this great book.
Thanks for sharing, I am going to read this soon. In your opinion, is this the best Orthodox book that addresses the practices of Eastern religions/yoga/etc.?
I operate in the world of American contemporary art, music, and the culture around it. The main thing I’ve noticed about ‘woke’ people, and I’ve known a LOT of them, is that they tend to turn on their own friends. In other words, their weird emotional attachment to political or social issues that may not even directly affect them, causes them to put their self-righteous moral indignation ahead of their integrity. It makes them disloyal, untrustworthy, and sadly lacking in the capacity to love, forgive, trust, or show some humility with others. It drifts towards looking like a Cluster B personality disorder in worse cases. If we are being honest, fundamentalist evangelical Christians are very similar in all of these qualities, just on the other political side. So we can learn a lot of lessons about how to be a person by observing those who have lost the script.
@@JAMESKOURTIDES I mean that, when a Christian loves something from the world, there is always a risk that he will put it on an equal footing with Christ or even above. Mixing Orthodoxy and philosophy, for example, was fatal for many Early Christian figures and not only for them. The same thing is about culture.
Very interesting. I am reminded of a book I read recently, D.C. Schindler's "Love and the Postmodern Predicament". In the subchapter "Creation as Fait Accompli", he presents love as "always already presupposing what it gives". The idea that what we love is what the other lacks would absolutely converge, as he says that it is by love that the lack is filled/completed. By loving, you actually *create* the thing that is lacking and give it to the beloved. Another way to say it would be that love acts as if the thing that is lacking is already present, and by doing so, love creates it. We could say "love is the giving of being", in both the objective and subjective sense of the genitive: love gifts being and love is the gift that Being offers (which is itself). It's a wonderful book that I would highly recommend. He also talks a lot about the transcendentals, which made me think of The Ethics of Beauty.
Here's an excerpt on this idea (p. 127-128): As Aristotle saw, but Montaigne denied, it is precisely because the relations that constitute the family are “pre-given” that we take them to represent love in a particularly profound way. A child is (already) in some real sense one’s flesh and blood, and this real unity makes the relationship something altogether incomparable. From a different angle, there is Kierkegaard’s beautiful statement, which the philosopher Ferdinand Ulrich has meditated on in such depth: “Love builds up by presupposing that love is present,” which is to say that love presupposes precisely what it gives. The recognition of love as already there in the other is an act of generosity, but this generosity is just what love is. As Stefan Oster has explained, the truth of this statement is obvious to anyone who has raised or educated children; we allow them to grow by showing to them what they already are; we give them a capacity by recognizing it as present. Love does not im-pose, but generates, by pre-sup-posing, creatively acknowledging and giving attention to what is already there. Genuine love is said to be “unconditional”; this means that it does not insert itself, as it were, into pre-established conditions so as to take its measure from them. Instead, love comes, as it were, before the conditions; it “pre-empts” them. In this respect, it itself presents the reality to which the conditions must conform. This absolute priority, this “already-ness,” is why we associate love with gratuity, a generosity that is not measured by pre-given conditions, but “superabounds” them. For the same reason, we associate love with mercy, a generosity that transcends the “pre-established” limits of justice.
If love is to be creative at all, it has to love what is missing, what is lacking, what is imperfect. God, after all, loved the world (nothingness) into existence. And He did so, we could say, by presupposing (and therefore giving) what the world lacked: Himself.
About faith..people talk about childlike faith which could be so..but maybe childlike faith is buried under a heap of rational crap or hindered by unforgiveness or who knows what..I've often thought about faith as being "the least of all the seeds that are in the field.. The field or ground is ones own heart which could encompass the unconscious mind as Jung might reason.. .. faith as being the smallest seed amongst all the other seeds we have planted..could essentially mean that stillness of being in mind and in emotions may be required for that holy seed of faith to show itself and come a reality.. I just say such because I prayed many prayers believing as much as I can that the things I have declared in the name of Jesus be done..and the mountain goes unmoved..I wonder what Tomberg would say...?? About faith that is .. I just ordered the book about a week ago..knowing it's about christian hermeticism on the tarot and not faith per se..thanks for doing what you do
Amazing video, the last part about sadism especially so, it seems to me like the sadist could actually be identified with the fideistic pietist that professes faith and the law alone to be salvific but that also identifies that faith and law with the individual subject and it's experience, a mysticism of 'the apophaticism of the essence' as Yannaras calls it, aside from the pietists catholic mystics fit this description even better, people like John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila etc.
Our reality as perceived is made up of concepts and words, thoughts and ideas. These things are not reality at all, they merely point. The Holy knowledge and wisdom of “ God “ to use a word. Is to transcend the concepts and labels and experience the Divine. As it is and always has been, devoid of projected thingness projected from wo/man. Solve et Coagula 🌞🌙
This was great, thanks for sharing. Jordan has been a major intellectual mentor figure for me and seeing him translate the Christian vision into some of the language and ideas he's been working with is incredibly helpful in making it more viable, intelligible and real for me. I also loved your breakdown of John 1, James. Especially the Logos as the appropriately mediated and symbolic event of pattern and matter (and Jesus as the cosmic quarterback). Same with the brain as a second stomach, of the head which is heaven to the body (as above so below); need to be mindful of what you incorporate in both cases / organs, and how prayer drives right relevance realization.
Please read the full translation of the triads! There are copies available from new found publishing , I can send you a link if you give me a place to send it! It would be so helpful to so many to have an English narration of the full edition of the triads . Thank you
Genesis 1 is Lucifer and the fallen angels. They made man in their image. Man is AN IDOL, a trap for angels. One Gospel: Gospel of Reconciliation. Jesus Christ came into THEIR kingdom to reconcile fallen angels unto Himself. We are the fallen angels (ELOHIM) kept in DNA chains of darkness. If you do not confess being a fallen angel in Lucifer's kingdom, then you are an unbeliever. Unbeliever = those that claim to be made in the image of ELOHIM(gods). REPENT FALLEN ANGELS.
Loving your channel, James. I first saw you in conversation with Jordan Hall. I am a catechumen in the Eastern Church and have read some philosophy and these videos bring a lot together.
