Carnivals...
20/06/2007 Filed in: Other
Sarah, from
"SnoringScholar" has done us the great honour of
featuring my post on the Vatican's
International Theological Commission's report on
unbaptised children on her beautiful blog. Please
make sure to check her fine blog over
here, especially if you like
flowers! Living in Scotland sometimes makes you
forget that this is the season during which they
grow.... as I write this, rain is pouring down, and
it's cold enough for me to be wearing winter
clothes. Oh well... Sarah has done a great round up
of recent Catholic-oriented
posts in the blogosphere... let her guide you through them!
The Hesychast and the Ten Commandments - Second Commandment
17/06/2007 Filed in: Church
Fathers & Mystics
This post
is the second in a series examining St Gregory Palamas’
New Testament Decalogue. The first of the series can be
read
here.
2. “You shall not make an image of anything in the heavens above, or in the earth below, or in the sea” to which St Gregory Palamas adds: in such a way that you worship these things and glorify them as gods. In the KJV, Exodus 20:4-5 gives “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them”. I mentioned the iconoclast movement which took this commandment without its qualifier. Read More...
2. “You shall not make an image of anything in the heavens above, or in the earth below, or in the sea” to which St Gregory Palamas adds: in such a way that you worship these things and glorify them as gods. In the KJV, Exodus 20:4-5 gives “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them”. I mentioned the iconoclast movement which took this commandment without its qualifier. Read More...
The Hesychast and the Ten Commandments - First Commandment
14/06/2007 Filed in: Church
Fathers & Mystics
This is
the first part of a series of short posts discussing
Gregory Palamas' "New Testament Decalogue". Stay
tuned!
How did the incarnation of Christ transform the Ten Commandments of the Mosaic Law? How does Christianity incorporate the basic moral framework of the Torah? These questions are central to the notions of reconciliation and reintegration that I have presented before (follow the "reintegration" and "reconciliation" tags in the sidebar), because they lay out the most fundamental virtues that one must cultivate in order to live in accordance with the Christian faith. One of the most contemplative and introspective traditions of Christianity, the Orthodox hesychast movement, has given us a profoundly pastoral summary of Christian moral teaching, that weaves together “worldly” codes of conduct and finer theological positions.
Read More...
How did the incarnation of Christ transform the Ten Commandments of the Mosaic Law? How does Christianity incorporate the basic moral framework of the Torah? These questions are central to the notions of reconciliation and reintegration that I have presented before (follow the "reintegration" and "reconciliation" tags in the sidebar), because they lay out the most fundamental virtues that one must cultivate in order to live in accordance with the Christian faith. One of the most contemplative and introspective traditions of Christianity, the Orthodox hesychast movement, has given us a profoundly pastoral summary of Christian moral teaching, that weaves together “worldly” codes of conduct and finer theological positions.
Read More...
Updated RSS feed
14/06/2007 Filed in: Other
Those who had
previously subscribed to my RSS feed, please note that the
url has changed, as an unintended consequence of my
recent tinkering...
Therefore, please take a couple of seconds to reset your RSS aggregator by clicking on the RSS link in the sidebar on the right of this page.
Right, that's enough procrastinating for me... back to regular posting!
Therefore, please take a couple of seconds to reset your RSS aggregator by clicking on the RSS link in the sidebar on the right of this page.
Right, that's enough procrastinating for me... back to regular posting!
Have your say!
12/06/2007 Filed in: Other
As you have
certainly noticed, I have been experimenting various
layouts and presentations for this blog. Basically, I’m
looking for something minimalist, elegant and yet
powerful enough to allow readers to browse contents
easily, in a way that adapts to their needs, rather
than them having to adapt to the way the blog is
structured.
One noticeable consequence of this tinkering has been an increase in the number of hits from search engines, Google and Yahoo. The audience of this blog is gently increasing, and a number of readers are returning, which is a good thing indeed!
Currently, there are three ways for the reader, that would be you, to browse the contents of this blog:
- categories: these are “Church Fathers”, “Symbolism”, etc. that are listed in the top section of the sidebar, on the right of this page.
- by date: although usually of little significance for the topics I cover in this blog, each post gets a time stamp that allows you to group posts by date. This may be useful if you wanted to see the evolution of the topics I cover over time...
- tags: this is a new feature of this blog. Each post gets several tags, or keywords, that reflect the contents of the post. Several posts cover the same topics with different angles, e.g. “Reintegration”, and this overlap is reflected by the relative size of each tag in what is called a “tag cloud”, which you can see on the bottom of the sidebar.
Click around, experiment, and let me know how it feels in the comments.
I have also chosen to give the blog a different feel from the rest of the website, in order to reflect the different style and content it offers.
Additionally, and this is an important aspect for me, I want to create a very comfortable environment for the reader, with a pleasant layout that makes you want to come back and read more...
Lastly, and most importantly, I aim to develop a network of related posts that give a variety of sources that treat of the same topic, reintegration of course, and the ways that it impacts our lives.
On all these points, your feedback will influence the evolution of this blog, regarding both format and content. If there are things you think I should cover that I haven’t, or things that I should be doing differently, feel free to leave your comments in the comment section or by email. I will give them my most open-minded consideration ;-)
I still am not entirely satisfied with the present system—can one ever be?—and one likely change ahead will be the hosting of the website on a better server than the current one. That transition, hopefully, should go unnoticed by the readers in most cases...
Remember that you can subscribe to the RSS feed of the blog so you can be sure never to miss a single post, without having to come back to the web page every day... There are plenty free RSS readers around for both Mac (I use NewsFire, but can recommend Vienna as a free alternative) and Windows.
One noticeable consequence of this tinkering has been an increase in the number of hits from search engines, Google and Yahoo. The audience of this blog is gently increasing, and a number of readers are returning, which is a good thing indeed!
Currently, there are three ways for the reader, that would be you, to browse the contents of this blog:
- categories: these are “Church Fathers”, “Symbolism”, etc. that are listed in the top section of the sidebar, on the right of this page.
- by date: although usually of little significance for the topics I cover in this blog, each post gets a time stamp that allows you to group posts by date. This may be useful if you wanted to see the evolution of the topics I cover over time...
- tags: this is a new feature of this blog. Each post gets several tags, or keywords, that reflect the contents of the post. Several posts cover the same topics with different angles, e.g. “Reintegration”, and this overlap is reflected by the relative size of each tag in what is called a “tag cloud”, which you can see on the bottom of the sidebar.
Click around, experiment, and let me know how it feels in the comments.
I have also chosen to give the blog a different feel from the rest of the website, in order to reflect the different style and content it offers.
Additionally, and this is an important aspect for me, I want to create a very comfortable environment for the reader, with a pleasant layout that makes you want to come back and read more...
Lastly, and most importantly, I aim to develop a network of related posts that give a variety of sources that treat of the same topic, reintegration of course, and the ways that it impacts our lives.
On all these points, your feedback will influence the evolution of this blog, regarding both format and content. If there are things you think I should cover that I haven’t, or things that I should be doing differently, feel free to leave your comments in the comment section or by email. I will give them my most open-minded consideration ;-)
I still am not entirely satisfied with the present system—can one ever be?—and one likely change ahead will be the hosting of the website on a better server than the current one. That transition, hopefully, should go unnoticed by the readers in most cases...
Remember that you can subscribe to the RSS feed of the blog so you can be sure never to miss a single post, without having to come back to the web page every day... There are plenty free RSS readers around for both Mac (I use NewsFire, but can recommend Vienna as a free alternative) and Windows.
Does Pope Benedict XVI endorse apokatastasis?
02/06/2007 Filed in: In The News
The Vatican’s International Theological Commission
recently published a document on unbaptised children
that may signal an important evolution in the Catholic
Church’s position regarding a number of crucial
debates. The core message of the report may have been
much publicised, but what few have noticed is that it
is, I believe, the tip of a very large and important
iceberg. Read More...