Date: 8/26/07
Articles & Resources:
Article 1. Art And The Formation Of Orthodox Culture
- Author: Dr. Clark Carlton
- Source: http://audio.ancientfaithradio.com/carlton/fandpweek12_pc.mp3
Article 2. Something No Woman Wants
- Author: Frederica Mathewes-Green
Article 3. Concerning Angels, the devil, and demons; from An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
- Author: St John Damascene
- Source: http://www.orthodox.net/fathers/exactii.html#BOOK_II_CHAPTER_I
+
MP3 Corner Presents:
Faith and Philosophy - Reflections on Orthodoxy and Culture
Clark Carlton was reared as a Southern Baptist in middle
Tennessee. He was enrolled as a Raymond Brian Brown Memorial Scholar at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC when he converted to the Orthodox Church. Clark earned his B.A. in philosophy from
Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, TN and and M.Div. from St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in NY, where he studied under the renowned church historian, Fr John Meyendorff. He also holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Early Christian Studies from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. At present, Clark is assistant professor of philosophy at
Tennessee Tech University, where he teaches the history of philosophy as well as philosophy of religion and logic. He writes on a number of subjects and has had articles published in the Journal of Christian Bioethics, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, and the Journal of Early Christian Studies. Dr. Clark is also the author of ”The Faith” series from Regina Orthodox Press: The Faith: Understanding Orthdoox Christianity; The Way: What Every Protestant Should Know about the Orthodox Church; The Truth: What every Roman Catholic Should Know about the Orthodox Church; and The Life: The Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation.
Today’s Program Presents: Art And The Formation Of Orthodox Culture
What is the function of art and music in our Orthodox worship?
To download the following link simply Ctrl + Click(point and Left click while holding Ctrl control button on keyboard) To Follow Link (No Viruses There)
http://audio.ancientfaithradio.com/carlton/fandpweek16_pc.mp3
+
Something No Woman Wants
Thursday,
August 16, 2007 Frederica in Pro-Life
[Human Life Review, Symposium on Post-Abortion Syndrome, Summer 2007]
Shortly before Christmas, I got an email from the journalist and Slate.com editor Emily Bazelon. She said that she was writing an article for the New York Times magazine about “women’s experiences post-abortion.” She said she hoped to talk to me that day or the next, and apologized for the short notice. Since I was in and out of the office a lot those pre-holiday days, and thought we might not connect by phone in time, I drafted a quick email it hopes she could mine it for some quotes. Here’s what I wrote her:
I feel bad that I’ve gotten rusty on this topic—lately I’m writing more about Eastern Christian spirituality, etc. So I’ve forgotten all my statistics, and hope I can be a useful interview.
The main general reflection-thing I’d say is that it seems that the abortion issue is “cooling off” — not that advocates on either side are any less passionate about it, and not that the political fight is concluded, but that the public has lost interest. Other issues have grabbed their attention. I first noticed this in 2000, when Newsweek’s 6-page comparison of Bush and Gore on important issues did not include abortion.
So I like to say “The abortion debate is over,” meaning that folks aren’t listening any more. The “fight” isn’t over, from the point of view of either side, but the debate is over because we’ve run out of interested listeners. The auditorium is empty and the lights have been turned off.
I think in a way this is a good thing. That there is a lot of ambivalence about abortion out there, as well as much submerged post-abortion grief. This needs a “moment of silence” to be able to rise to consciousness, so people can admit and recognize these conflicted feelings, and move to a new stage. As long as the debate is hot, people immediately think in terms of “which side are you on,” and these deeper questions — about what abortion really is, about how it makes us feel, how it affects our relationships and our sense of ourselves—keep getting stuffed down.
One of the women I interviewed in my book “Real Choices” told me that after the abortion she felt she couldn’t tell anyone about her sad feelings. She said that if she told pro-life friends she was depressed about her abortion, they would reject her, saying, “You had an abortion? You’re a murderer!” And she couldn’t tell her pro-choice friends because they would say, “What are you complaining about? You had a choice. Are you a traitor to the cause?” It seemed like there was nowhere to go. As the heat cools off, voices like hers can be heard.
I think that as these conflicted feelings rise to the surface we’ll be better able to understand what abortion does to a society, and admit how many of them are negative. That abortion adapts women to a hostile situation, rather than challenging and changing that society — adapts her physically, like a whalebone corset does.
When I was a college feminist and championed women’s right to abortion, I thought of it as something liberating. I had no idea that there would be so *many* abortions—I think the total now is 47 million. We all thought it would just be a few “hard cases.” But it seems like abortion is a funnel that women’s complex situations get stuffed into — she gets changed, so that those around her don’t have to. And the idea that an abortion was a liberating experience was quickly overturned by the reality that women go into it pressured and panicked, and come out of it weeping. Abortion is not something any woman wants. And if women are doing something 3500 times a day that they don’t want to do, this is not liberation that we’ve won.
best wishes for your article, and give me a call if I can help any more.
—Frederica
I did get a call from Emily a little later. I was struck by how young she sounded, and also by the fortification of her voice—the way responsible journalists talk when they’re interviewing psychos. It was clear that there was nothing a pro-lifer could ever say that she could consider reasonable. A pro-lifer who sounds reasonable is worse than a clinic-bombing freak, because at least those guys are honest. A pro-lifer who sounds reasonable is also *lying*—misrepresenting herself and impersonating a normal person. And that’s just sad.
Early in the conversation I learned that her article was not so much about post-abortion grief as about the political usefulness of the concept. And, though I might have had something to say about the pro-life cause in general, I’m a complete washout when it comes to politics. I took part in the
Maryland abortion referendum of 1992, and finished the course depressed and drained. That was my first and last foray into politics, as I detailed in an essay for these pages (Human Life Review, Spring 1993). After our phone conversation, I described it in a note to a friend:
I had a hard time getting a handle on what she was getting at. Her theory seems to be that some time, years ago, pro-lifers became interested in using post-abortion women in their political efforts. But after Surgeon General Koop disappointed them by failing to endorse the concept of post-abortion trauma they let it drop. (He believed that argument diluted the strength of pro-life argumentation based on the right to life of the unborn.)
I told her that it wasn’t like that, from my perspective; post-abortion women had always been steadily present in the movement. And that I didn’t think there was ever any broad attempt to “use” them in a political sense. Even though some of us had been encouraging a broadening of the pro-life message to emphasize the good works we do for women and their needs, the emotional core of the message pretty consistently focused on unborn babies and fetal development. I said, “We walk the walk but we don’t talk the talk.” The great efforts pro-lifers make to help women are not something we parade in the public square or employ to change opinion.
Emily told me that there is now revived interest in post-abortion women, and mentioned the organization Operation Outcry. But, she asked, if pro-lifers support post-abortion women, why won’t they fund them? Why won’t they give them money?
I kept saying “Huh?” Give them money? I didn’t get it. Eventually I said that pro-lifers do fund projects for post-abortion women. They do it mostly through local pregnancy care centers, because that’s where the services are.
It turned out that Emily meant funding for political campaigns. Apparently someone in
South Dakota had told her that national organizations would not fund the recent campaign in that state, and Emily seems to think this is because the campaign used post-abortion women. I said that couldn’t be so. There was no blanket refusal to speak of post-abortion grief in political settings. There must be another explanation. I told her that I thought I’d read somewhere—maybe the New Yorker—that some pro-lifers felt the South Dakota campaign was not the right way to go. But that wouldn’t have anything to do with the involvement of post-abortion women.
I don’t think she was convinced. I am frankly not sure what she’s getting at.
Since I’d proved my incompetence to answer Emily’s questions, we concluded the conversation, and I suppose she went on to locate other pro-lifers who were more familiar with the topic under discussion.
This morning I went to a local Catholic girls’ high school for Career Day; I talked about being a free-lance journalist. Several of the girls want to write fiction and others want to be opinion or nonfiction writers; one wanted to be an editor. I warned them about how tough the competition is, and how hard it is to get started, and how thin the pay is thin even when you’ve been at it for decades.
But, I said, there’s good news. One day, everybody who’s my age will be dead. And people in your generation will be writing the novels and opinion pieces and features and book reviews, and editing them, too. The best, most influential writer of your generation is someone who is your age today, I told them. Why shouldn’t it be you?
When that day comes, perhaps pro-life convictions and reasoning will be heard in the big Establishment publications, and allowed to express themselves in their own terms. I hope some of those girls will make it happen. I will be happy to lean over the edge of the cloud and cheer them on.
Article originally appeared on Frederica.com (http://www.frederica.com/).
See website for complete article licensing information.
+
An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
St John Damascene
Concerning angels
He is Himself the Maker and Creator of the angels: for He brought them out of nothing into being and created them after His own image, an incorporeal race, a sort of spirit or immaterial fire: in the words of the divine David, He maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire: and He has described their lightness and the ardour, and heat, and keenness and sharpness with which they hunger for God and serve Him, and how they are borne to the regions above and are quite delivered from all material thought.
An angel, then, is an intelligent essence, in perpetual motion, with free-will, incorporeal, ministering to God, having obtained by grace an immortal nature: and the Creator alone knows the form and limitation of its essence. But all that we can understand is, that it is incorporeal and immaterial. For all that is compared with God Who alone is incomparable, we find to be dense and material. For in reality only the Deity is immaterial and incorporeal.
The angel's nature then is rational, and intelligent, and endowed with free-will, change. able in will, or fickle. For all that is created is changeable, and only that which is un-created is unchangeable. Also all that is rational is endowed with free-will. As it is, then, rational and intelligent, it is endowed with free-will: and as it is created, it is changeable, having power either to abide or progress in goodness, or to turn towards evil.
It is not susceptible of repentance because it is incorporeal. For it is owing to the weakness of his body that man comes to have repentance.
It is immortal, not by natures but by grace. For all that has had beginning comes also to its natural end. But God alone is eternal, or rather, He is above the Eternal: for He, the Creator of times, is not under the dominion of time, but above time.
They are secondary intelligent lights derived from that first light which is without beginning, for they have the power of illumination; they have no need of tongue or hearing, but without uttering words they communicate to each other their own thoughts and counsels.
Through the Word, therefore, all the angels were created, and through the sanctification by the Holy Spirit were they brought to perfection, sharing each in proportion to his worth and rank in brightness and grace.
They are circumscribed: for when they are in the Heaven they are not on the earth: and when they are sent by God down to the earth they do not remain in the Heaven. They are not hemmed in by walls and doors, and bars and seals, for they are quite unlimited. Unlimited, I repeat, for it is not as they really are that they reveal themselves to the worthy men to whom God wishes them to appear, but in a changed form which the beholders are capable of seeing. For that alone is naturally and strictly unlimited which is un-created. For every created tiring is limited by God Who created it.
Further, apart from their essence they receive the sanctification from the Spirit: through the divine grace they prophesy: they have no need of marriage for they are immortal.
Seeing that they are minds they are in mental places, and are not circumscribed after the fashion of a body. For they have not a bodily form by nature, nor are they tended in three dimensions. But to whatever post they may be assigned, there they are present after the manner of a mind and energies, and cannot be present and energize in various places at the same time.
Whether they are equals in essence or differ from one another we know not. God, their Creator, Who knoweth all things, alone knoweth. But they differ from each other in brightness and position, whether it is that their position is dependent on their brightness, or their brightness on their position: and they impart brightness to one another, because they excel one another in rank and nature. And clearly the higher share their brightness and knowledge with the lower.
They are mighty and prompt to fulfill the will of the Deity, and their nature is endowed with such celerity that wherever the Divine glance bids them there they are straightway found. They are the guardians of the divisions of the earth: they are set over nations and regions, allotted to them by their Creator: they govern all our affairs and bring us succor. And the reason surely is because they are set over us by the divine will and command and are ever in the vicinity of God.
With difficulty they are moved to evil, yet they are not absolutely immoveable: but now they are altogether immoveable, not by nature but by grace and by their nearness to the Only Good.
They behold God according to their capacity, and this is their food.
They are above us for they are incorporeal, and are free of all bodily passion, yet are not passionless: for the Deity alone is passionless.
They take different forms at the bidding of their Master, God, and thus reveal themselves to men and unveil the divine mysteries to them.
They have Heaven for their dwelling-place, and have one duty, to sing God's praise and carry out His divine will.
Moreover, as that most holy, and sacred, and gifted theologian, Dionysius the Areopagite, says, All theology, that is to say, the holy Scripture, has nine different names for the heavenly essences. These essences that divine master in sacred things divides into three groups, each containing three. And the first group, he says, consists of those who are in God's presence and are said to be directly and immediately one with Him: the Seraphim with their six wings, the many-eyed Cherubim, and those that sit in the holiest thrones. The second group is that of the Dominions, and the Powers, and the Authorities; and the third, and last, is that of the Rulers and Archangels and Angels.
Some, indeed, like Gregory the Theologian, say that these were before the creation of other things. He thinks that the angelic and heavenly powers were first and that thought was their function. Others, again, hold that they were created after the first heaven was made. But all are agreed that it was before the foundation of man. For myself, I am in harmony with the theologian. For it was fitting that the mental essence should be the first created, and then that which can be perceived, and finally man himself, in whose being both parts are united.
But those who say that the angels are creators of any kind of essence whatever are the mouth of their father, the devil. For since they are created things they are not creators. But He Who creates and provides for and maintains all things is God, Who alone is uncreated and is praised and glorified in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Concerning the devil and demons
He who from among these angelic powers was set over the earthly realm, and into whose hands God committed the guardianship of the earth, was not made wicked in nature but was good, and made for good ends, and received from his Creator no trace whatever of evil in himself. But he did not sustain the brightness and the honor which the Creator had bestowed on him, and of his free choice was changed from what was in harmony to what was at variance with his nature, and became roused against God Who created him, and determined to rise in rebellion against Him: and he was the first to depart from good and become evil. For evil is nothing else than absence of goodness, just as darkness also is absence of light. For goodness is the light of the mind, and, similarly, evil is the darkness of the mind. Light, therefore, being the work of the Creator and being made good (for God saw all that He made, and behold they were exceeding good) produced darkness at His free-will. But along with him an innumerable host of angels subject to him were torn away and followed him and shared in his fall. Wherefore, being of the same nature as the angels, they became wicked, turning away at their own free choice from good to evil.
Hence they have no power or strength against any one except what God in His dispensation hath conceded to them, as for instance, against Job and those swine that are mentioned in the Gospels. But when God has made the concession they do prevail, and are changed and transformed into any form whatever in which they wish to appear.
Of the future both the angels of God and the demons are alike ignorant: yet they make predictions. God reveals the future to the angels and commands them to prophesy, and so what they say comes to pass. But the demons also make predictions, sometimes because they see what is happening at a distance, and sometimes merely making guesses: hence much that they say is false and they should not be believed, even although they do often, in the way we have said, tell what is true. Besides they know the Scriptures.
All wickedness, then, and all impure passions are the work of their mind. But while the liberty to attack man has been granted to them, they have not the strength to over master any one: for we have it in our power to receive or not to receive the attack. Wherefore there has been prepared for the devil and his demons, and those who follow him, fire unquenchable and everlasting punishment.
Note, further, that what in the case of man is death is a fall in the case of angels. For after the fall there is no possibility of repentance for them, just as after death there is for men no repentance.
GLORY TO GOD FOR
+