Month: August 2018

Morality

St Maximus the Confessor and St Augustine, Discussing Problem of Self Love

Bruce Strom 3

In his day, St Maximus faced problems of definition when describing the Trinity and the Incarnation. Today we have a different problem. Rather than letting the Scriptures or the Church Fathers define key spiritual words such as love, we understand concepts like love using definitions formulated by psychologists. Sadly, we do not even realize when there is discordance between them. In nearly all of the writings of St Maximus, self-love and perfect love are polar opposites, and self-love is the mother of all passions and vices. […]

History

Ordinary Life and Justice in Ancient Athens, Rome, and Israel

Bruce Strom 5

The ancient world is very different from the modern world. We in the modern world view life is sacred, today we expect our children to survive until old age, because modern medicine ensures a long healthy life to most of us. If I had lived in the ancient world, I would have died as a teenager from appendicitis. In the ancient world, parents often did not name their children until they were a few weeks old due to the high infant mortality rate. Only half of children survived to adulthood, some scholars estimate that only one in ten survived to a ripe old age.
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