Orthamerica: Energy & God

Orthamerica: Energy & God: "In the ancient theology of the undivided church, we find a concept of God that has been lost in the contemporary west. I refer to the concep..."

Oneness & Threeness

See here.

Orthamerica

One God, One Mind, One Mision here

Farewell Blog

Greetings dear bloggers; I started this blog in April of 2009, & since then I have written 155 posts, and the site has seen over 8500 visits. My goal for this blog was to integrate patristic Christian teaching into our contemporary Christian thinking. I hope that the blog has accomplished that goal in some small way.

The time has come for me to shift gears. I am going to move my blogging to a new blog site called “Orthamerica”. In this blog I will focus on describing the orthodox faith of the undivided church, without the additions or subtractions that are common in America’s Christianity. Then, in this blog I will try to imagine what this orthodox faith of undivided church could look like in modern day America, hence the name “Orthamerica”.

Go to the new blog here.

Ruling the Passions

Since the reformation, and Luther’s rejection of monastic life, western Christianity has considered monasticism to be an expression of Christian living that is to be rejected. As a consequence of this rejection, we in the post-protestant west have lost our understanding of asceticism in general. Below is a short excerpt from an article that explains the central role of asceticism in the life of the Christian.

ASCETICISM

Asceticism is practiced through the will in prayer to God and for life. On account of the centrality of the will if anything is going to change for the better in our lives it is the sin of pride that must be dealt with first if further progress is to be made. Pride places ourselves where God should be. It replaces His rule for ours. It subverts our relationships with Him and others through all manners of self pre-occupation. In short, pride has to be killed. In abject poverty of spirit we need to come to God and "throw in the towel" as it were and surrender ourselves to Him. Then, and only then can we hope to make progress with the other sins.

Sin	Sin's Target	Ascetic Task	Fruit
Pride	Will	Surrender to God	Communion with God
Anger	Control	Humility	Reconciliation, Forgiveness
Envy	Relationships	Thanksgiving	Contentment with God's Gifts
Greed	Possessions	Offering	Attachment to God alone
Gluttony	Food	Fasting	Strengthened body and will to serve God
Lust	Sex	Chastity	Depth in relationships
Sloth	Energy	Work discipline	Human development

From: Antiochian Orthodox UK

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N.T. Wright: Working on a building | Faith & Leadership

N.T. Wright: Working on a building Faith & Leadership